The boasts of atheists (Atheist self-deception)

Do those Christians who really maintain high personal moral standards feel that those standards would melt away without God or the bible? Is God the only thing keeping them from ripping off their clothes and performing live sex acts on a stage before throngs of cheering fans?

I disagree. Rape and murder are wrong, absolutely. It doesn't matter if God is there or not, they're still wrong. Christians, Buddhists, Moslems, agnostics and atheists can all easily understand that rape and murder are always wrong. You may argue that we need God for many reasons, but surely we don't need him to show us that rape and murder are wrong. Those strictures are self-evident and absolute.Sometimes there may be problems in determining whether a given act really is rape or murder, but if it is the moral rule applies with or without God's help.

jar writes me:

quote:

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And there in lies the problem. Whether it is rape or murder will depend on the culture, the era and the ethics of the community.

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That may be, but it's beside the point. If we know that a murder has occurred then we know that a moral absolute has been broken. We may make a wrongful determination about whether a rape or murder has occurred, but that doesn't change the absolute fact that rape and murder are wrong.Standards do indeed change as we go from one society to another, but moral absolutes don't. If a man in some remote third-world village commits a rape that isn't viewed as rape in his culture, to my mind he still has broken a moral absolute. I may not have a God I can sic on him to make him pay for what he's done, but I know in my heart that he's done wrong.So when I say moral absolute, I don't mean a standard that can be readily applied flawlessly in all situations. I just mean that I know that rape or murder are absolutely wrong whenever they occur.