Morals anyone?

[SSH]

Interestingly, I saw "Chocolate" on sale in a Catholic bookshop in Zaragoza recently, next to various portrayals of the life of Christ! Choclate didn't attack the religion, rather the "religous" (people). Kevin Smith and Mel Gibson are both practicing Catholics, I believe.

Here's some points on things various people have said:

1. The commandment in the Bible is not to murder, not do not kill. There are of course various legal reasons to kill: self defence being the most generally accepted, death penalty being less accepted and abortion also is contraversial. Personally, I only accept self-defence as legitimate.

2. Harvester, you are now deciding who is a "True Christian (tm)"? I think that its arrogant for any of us to think we have it all 100%. I know what you mean, however.

3. Although there are plenty of bad people who have used Christianity as an exucse for their actions, there are also plenty of people throughout history who have sincerely believed that they were doing God's work by killing the pariah of the day: Witches, Homosexuals, whatever... I am sorry for these things, but my faith is not one that believes in killing people like that, or even attacking them in other ways, as still goes on today.

4. As a Christian, I recognise that I am a long way from perfect and would probably break all my own principles if, say, someone killed my wife or daughter. On the other hand, I believe that I can be forgiven anything if I repent of it and turn to Christ: and so will go to heaven (without any wait in purgatory).

5. If you want to mock Christianity, it is much easier to mock Catholicism with all its weird and wonderful rituals and traditions or alternatrively to mock the happy-clappy "charismatic" protestants.  However, there are plenty of Christian authors who gently mock Christians themselves (e.g. Adrian Plass) becuase we do all do some pretty silly things.

6. Crime rates are higher where capital punishment exists. Fact. It costs more to have someone on death row than to have them in prison for life. Fact. These two facts mean that the death penalty is utterly impractical, never mind the moral issues.

7. Yes, there are some apparent contradictions in the bible. Google will give you a whole pile of web sites about them. It will also throw up rebuttals and rebuttals of rebuttals, etc. It's all been done before, so don't lets waste time repeating it here.

EDIT: fixed some grammar, etc.

[ArchAngel85]

Hey,
Yes ArchAngel, it's your name. You got it first. heh heh.
After thinking for 4.67 seconds, I decided I'll change it. It's kinda confusing
This is my last post in this name.

I agree with much of what harvestor says. 'cept the part about capitol punishment(yeah, you guessed it). It's deeper than you think. (I'm not gonna get to deep into it, cuz I don't want write some essay, cuz I'm lazy. But I got some more arguements up my sleeve. really!)
SuperScottishHero pretty much summurizes, The hebrew text is toward murder. sorry dudes.

Also, Pessi. About blind leaders. you're right. So stop construing indivual verses to prove your own point. read the whole text. some verses you quote got nothing to do with what you're trying to prove. It's embarrasing and frustrating.

Crusades? Yikes! where did that come from? Crusades really have nothing to with the bible. It's a dude(aka the pope) who used religion to get his own way. Get an actually arguement before you post it. (all in good intentions)
many contridictions could be due to the readers view, if you look at it another way, it'll fit together. like to non-paralell lines on a graph, there is one point where they intesect.

Evolution(quickie, don't want to change the topic to it) why I don't believe Evolution is that it makes no sense. I can't see how order and law comes from chaos and chance. What about the second law of thermodynamics? science depends on laws and order. evolution depends on chance. It's possible, but aslong as it's not run by chance. Carl Sagan condemned chance, saying there has to be a divine being to guide evolution.

"Now which is more narrow-minded, believing blindly in a 2000 year old revolutionist, or believing in the top few hundred greatest minds of the past few centuries?"
this is pretty much beside the point. You seem to be out of it. just cuz the top minds here believe evolution, does it make it true? I haven't seen one frigg'n convincing arguement. And I'm not being stubborn.

stereotypes(something that's fun to joke with, and something that makes liberals mad): yeah, true, what I said made me fit your stereotype. but then again, I didn't say much, and rest you had to assume. I pretty much believe the bible, and outside of that, I'm a critical thinker. (though it might not sound like that from the posts) If you know me, you'll understand.

It's pretty hard to understand eachother, especially when we think differently. we see the world differently. You say my arguements suck, I say yours suck. Understand? Liberals say conservative crap! conservatives say liberal crap! I personally can't really understand a liberal. They don't make much sense to me.

I don't like seperating christians into groups like that, it's not that simple. Some of course are more liberal and other's more conservative. I try to stick with the bible.

yeah, Superscot--- you got it pretty much. None of us are 100% right.

oh, one last note, "I like the fact that if kids laugh at you you can pray and god will send bears to kill them."
Actually it was a gang threatening to kill the dude. But it'll hecka sic' if those bears busted out all matrix-style.

oh, the  really last note, it could be cheaper for death row than life in prison. Bullet to head! that's cheap! but, yeah, I get you're point.  I can still argue for capital punishment, but it'll be big, you'll have to understand a lot.  I could also challenge the crime rate vs. capital punishment. I'm saying it's true, but there are alot of factors that affect these studies. Also, there are the validity of the studies and such. I'm kinda bred a scientist.

Ultimately last note, catholicism appears to be christianity which holds on to rituals and even some idoltry. yes, perfect mocking ground. should make up there mind. Not being offensive, got a lot of catholics in my family.

Crap! another huge post! If I offended any of you, sorry. not ment to be. I'm being alittle sharper than my usual self. Don't worry about offending me, I offend myself (I'm not implying anything).

[scotch]

 

While the main post wasn't a bad topic it seems to have moved on to a religious vs non religious, death penalty vs rehab, and even partly an evolution vs somethingelse and a conservative vs liberal type argument.  It often happens.. I'm sure everyone's seen them before, it's hardly ever a debate or interesting discussion unless it's very controlled.. so I think it's best to stop unless you have something really useful and interesting to add rather than each person stating their position on something and saying all the others are stupid ._.

And it'd be easy to start going on about what I think.. because usually we have stong beliefs about stuff like this, but I'm not going to of course

[wOoDz]

i've got to say when i started this post i never imagined it would stir up such strong feeling, I can’t say I agree with all that’s been said, but I have to admire the strength of some people’s conviction, and It goes to show people will take time and effort to stand up for what they believe


woodz

[Matt Brown]

my king james version of the bible says thou shalt not kill...doesn't say thou shalt not murder....

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

Angel85: most of what you say are good arguments. However, the point about the law of thermodynamics... you CAN get order out of chaos, IF you put energy into a system. Where does that energy come from? The sun, of course! A bloody huge thermonuclear power plant on our doorstep. So of course, evolution makes perfect sense, if you take religion out of the picture and reason it through.

[Harvester]

Yeah, this kinda got out of control :-) But then again, for such a sensitive subject, I think this was a pretty nice discussion. If you check evolution vs. creation forums, you'll see what I'm talking about. Good think it happens in cyberspace, otherwise those guys would have killed each other :-)

[Femme Stab Mode >:D]

I guess there's a difference between faith and religion. Religion is rituals outside and faith is in the heart.  Faith doesn't need to be directed by someone but the self, and religion is directed by books and other people. I guess Jesus promoted faith and not religion. I guess because I never met Jesus and couldn't  because he lived so long ago.  I can't say anything for certain. I guess that religion and faith mix in most cases but in many people they are separate. My grandmother is religious but I doubt she believes because she would never give me 13 of a thing and looked at horoscopes and wouldn't let me whistle. She believed in all those little signs like black cayts walking across the street and walking under a ladder and that is kind of against what the bible says... My adopted Great Grandmother, rest her soul, deeply believed in the heart. She didn't care about the silly number 13, it was just like any other number for her. She wore her cross underneath her clothes because she didn't wan't to anounce to everybody - "see, I'm a deeply religious woman", I never saw her pray but I know she did because her prayer-book looked worn and I saw the book grow old with her.  She told off a girl in my town for preaching to children because, she said " true faith is in the heart and not on your lips". Before she died she said that she was going home. She never actually said heaven. She never preached to me either.

[TerranRich]

Okay, this topic has been done before, many times, but for old time's sake, here goes.

I've said this so many time in so many forms. Faith is good because it gives a person hope, strength, etc., etc. Religion can go either way. In my own personal experiences, the Christian religion is hypcritical (I'll give reasons below) at times. But, on the OTHER hand, there is some good in organized religion. Some people find comfort in it, and there is nothing wrong with it. It's just that some of us pay attention only to the extreme fundamentalists that picket outside schools protesting the entry of a gay student. That's just sick,stupid, and pathetic.

However, there are level-headed fundamentalists, and that's great. You gotta understand that the extremists give the rest of you nice people a bad name!

Now, as for hypocrisy (as well as just plain idiocy) in my [former] religion, here goes:

Masturbation is a sin. If you believe this, you're an idiot. Plain and simple.
Premarital sex is a sin. Some people might not want to have sex before marriage. For some it's relgious. For others, it's a personal choice. Letting religion define your personal life shouldn't happen. If you don't want to do something, do it because YOU say it's wrong, not because others say it's wrong. I am a firm believer is not letting others define your own morals for you.

I'm really too tired to think of any more. Sorry for this half-assed argument.

[Paladin]

It's me ArchAngel85. I'm not running... yet.  
So many people taking my names... I wanted "bean"(a character in my game I'm making) but noooooo somebody took it. So, here's my name!

True, the sun provides us with energy, that's why we live. Yes, Gibbs free energy. It has to be negative unless to be spontaneous. But where the sun get it's energy? when you look back to the beginning of time, gee, where did everything come from? It's boggling. And I know about the Big Bang, but it still doesn't explain enough.
True, tho, I will say that many anti-evolution arguements are kinda lame (embarrasly) but there are some good ones too. I can't help but getting the feeling that evolution is gonna die out like the geocentric theory. I could be wrong tho.

Yes, alot of "fundies" make up there own rules, say that they are God's and enforce them. That bugs the crap out of me.

No person defines morals. They are absolute. It's in their very nature. How can something be "wrong" if anyone can say it's "right." Maybe we're talking about different things.
Many of the morals that we fundies hold up is hard to understand until you understand our worldview.

Sasha, I would agree with you on religion and faith, sorta. Christianity, I would say, is NOT a religion, but a faith. It's clear in the bible, though many people change it. I use the term "religion" so you would understand better, though I cringe everytime. Okay, not everytime. Rituals have nothing to do with Christianity... They're toast. though I would disagree about the "faith in the hearts, not on the lips." I would argue that if you really believe something, how can you hide it? Forcing a religion on some one, now, bad stuff. it would only be religion, never faith.

Some of you may know this now, and others might get it later, that I'm obsessed with Truth. I'm not much for relativity, unless in science theories. (e.g. my theory of spectral relativity. we're not gonna go there). Sometimes I'm close-minded when I'm sure I got a hold on it, and I'm open-minded when I think I don't. People have a right to their opinion, but it doesn't make it right. just for you guys to understand a little better on what I talk about.

And yeah, we would have like stuffed eachother full of lead.

Crap, another big post. *slapping myself*

[scotch]

Ugh ._. please end now.
I'd gladly conceed evolution and all the rest was crap and give up all my scientific knowledge if it would end online christian vs evolution arguments
Go to some origins flamewar forum, this is not what the topic was about.

[wOoDz]

yeah i agree scotch, i can't even remember i i sed to begin with!
flower arranging? no wasn't that..... knittin?? nope...
feckit

scrolls back and gets lost..

[Paladin]

Ugh ._. please end now.

Alright heh heh.

[Pessi]

The commandment in the Bible is not to murder, not do not kill.

Actually, it's "Thou shalt not kill". For reassurance, check out http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm , for example.

I won't get back to my arguments concerning ArchAngel85 mostly because everyone's tired of this discussion, and on the other hand, because he has a point. I'm in no place to argue, cause I don't have it figured out either.

Back to the drawing board.

[Synthetique]

where all gay!!!  :o

[Helm]

Pessi: what I believe should be criticized first and foremost would be religion as a social construction. The need to believe in something higher is something most people convinietly forget to question. Anything you build on uncertain foundation in bound to topple over at some point. Fucking animals that like to make up stories to fill the gaps in their experience and knowledge.

I have no beef with christian morality. But I do not like it when people consider it the model of civilization can call all that do not abide by it heathens and uncivilized.

Gospels. Love. Don't kill. Whatever. There's millions of ethical systems one could adopt and live by. There's no need to put a God in there at all. The only reason people do that, is when theirs clashes with the morality of the next person. My God is going to beat up your God! Instead of promoting tolerance, we're measuring our divine penii.

[Paladin]

uh, Helm, you probably saw this coming if you read my posts.
I disagree.
That's YOUR view on things. That man is the measure.
Christian's don't believe in a God cuz we want to feel superiour and such. We believe it cuz it's what we know to be true. It may seem arrogant, until you look at it diffentely
Things are more different than you think...
There's no hat'n going on here...

And yes, I'm getting tired... and very busy. Finals are coming up.

[Helm]

It's a good thing I didnt read your posts, then. Read that last one by accident too. Promise it won't happen again.

[Robert Eric]

I never read long threads, and for that, I am glad.

[SSH]

The commandment in the Bible is not to murder, not do not kill.

Actually, it's "Thou shalt not kill". For reassurance, check out http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm , for example.

Actually, no, by your own site:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9874.htm