Raf

Definitely not 98.6. 101? 105?

Yes, I picked quotes that I felt made it clear we were talking about Norman Bates but also that time had passed since the first movie. Or so I thought. I'm also taking an extended break from games, in case that was not clear.

I am choosing not to micromanage this thread. If the Christians are ok having their faith questioned outside the questioning faith forum, cool. But for precedent's sake, let's not make a habit of it.

Yes, but honestly, did he seem like he had the slightest idea what he was talking about?

Charity, I think you can get a pass on calling the idea of punishment by immolation "abhorrent." I don't think that's an atheist conclusion and I do think a significant number of Christians share it. I suggest in the future you could add a qualifier to make it clear that you're interjecting your feelings, ("abhorrent to me") to make the statement a little more diplomatic. I will leave it to the page's Christians to determine whether you crossed a line in their view. In mine, you did not. But I will yield to our brethren of faith ...

Quantitative: countable. We have a soul. One. It's a thing. Not part of our imagination. Immeasurable: it doesn't have weight or mass. There's nothing about a soul that science can point to, independent of the body, in order to demonstrate its presence. It might be easier if I asked you what a soul is, independent of the body. I'm suggesting that St. Thomas Quinas' meditations on the soul carry no more weight in the real world than George Lucas' notes on how The Force works. (If you can think of a polite way for me to say that, I'm all ears)

My apologies to you personally. I thought I was clear that this was as a species, not a criticism directed at you personally. I thought I was as far from singling you out as I could possibly be. But it is inherent in our opposing views that we will occasionally step on each other's toes. So allow me to rephrase, please, in a way that does not insult anyone directly or indirectly: Again with my apologies, is that better?

Since this is the "atheism" side of the fence as far as conversation goes, it's not off topic to posit that the soul simply does not exist. It is a function of the body, the name we give to this complex firing of synapses that I cannot begin to articulate because of its chemical complexity, but when the body stops, so does the soul. We believe that for almost literally every other animal. But in our arrogance as a species, we imagine ourselves to be an exception. We, alone in the animal kingdom, possess a quantitative, immeasurable attribute that contains our personality and will survive the cessation of our physical bodies. I know, the alternative is to have "no hope," and that leads to a feeling of, well, hopelessness. Then again, 10 trillion trillion years from now, I will not be burning in hell, so I have that going for me.

The topic of this thread is objective v subjective morality, not objective truth claims v. subjective truth claims, a whole different subject.

We would have to restrict any references to the land post 1948. We would have to keep it in doctrinal (since in this forum too many of us would just say "No, God didn't give you the land, stop using ancient fairy tales as an excuse for what you want to accomplish in the 21st Century." So the question would have to be, "do you believe modern day Israel has a claim to the promises recorded in Genesis and/or the Bible. To avoid politics, the answer would be Yes or No followed by an analysis of what the Bible has to say about the subject (the closest we could get to modern politics is establishing that modern Jews are the descendants of ancient Jews and Arthur Koestler was proved wrong by DNA).

A corollary of my point is that all morality is subjective by definition, including God's, assuming his existence. Objective morality, in that framework, is merely acceding to HIS subjective morality, which would be as perfect as we presume Him to be.

I submit that these are conflicting claims to objective truth. I don't see anything subjective in either claim other than the decision of which claim to accept. Objectively, only one can be right (but both can be wrong, objectively).

I felt the rest of his post was needed for context, because the idea that we have a natural, built-in sense of morality raises the question how that happened. The post provides a natural explanation for how that could happen.

Could you? J/k

2 billion Muslims say yes. Willing to take that chance?