Raf

The non-scientific answer is that our morality develops as a people over time. We are an interdependent species. We cannot afford to allow an "anything goes" mentality to survive because it threatens the welfare of everyone else. If I can go and kill anyone I want, you will reasonably perceive me as a threat, and you will kill me to preserve yourself. It becomes very obvious very quickly that it's in both our best interest to protect each other -- to be friends rather than enemies. The Golden Rule comes from this realization, not vice versa.

More lyrics: I can see myself tearing up the road, Faster than any other boy has ever gone. And my skin is raw but my soul is ripe. No-one's gonna stop me now, I gotta make my escape. But I can't stop thinking of you, and I never see the sudden curve until it's way too late. I never see the sudden curve 'till it's way too late.

Some tough things to recognize. 1. Morality is not "objective." It's a value, and all values are subjective. To argue as some do that we cannot judge an act as moral or immoral without an objective morality is akin to arguing that you cannot call someone attractive or unattractive without an objective standard for beauty. I can say without hesitation that Jennifer Aniston is more attractive than Aunt Esther from Sanford n Son. But I cannot list objective standards that apply universally to make that so. It's a value judgment, subjective by definition. You can base your morality ON something objective. But that doesn't make the morality itself objective. 2. You CAN get your morality from religion, but that does not prove the morality came from God. This should be obvious. A religion focused on the Sermon on the Mount will be quite moral (although we can nitpick). A religion focused on numerous passages in the Old Testament or the Quran will not. My earlier thread is a direct challenge to the notion that we get our morality from religion. We obviously do not. The hilarious effort to sanitize the Old Testament practice of slavery, pretending the book doesn't say what it says and that it does say what it doesn't, reinforces my position better than I ever could by stating it. 3. Not believing in objective morality is NOT the same thing as saying "anything goes." Moral people don't subscribe to anything goes. That is mere character assassination (such as you will find in the Bible's obnoxious, bigoted description of those of us who say there is no God). We're not the ones who justify a capricious and arbitrary death penalty on the grounds that man is the Potter's clay, and the Potter can do with us as he wills. It takes religion to come up with THAT one. There's nothing moral about it.

Nothing ever grows in this rotting old hole Everything is stunted and lost Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls And nothing's ever worth the cost.

Rock around the clock

Upon further reflection, the method of execution of sacrifices is really off topic. Let's drop it. But the fact that animal sacrifices were to please God... is in dispute?

http://www.hsa.org.uk/downloads/related-items/religious-slaughter.pdf http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/waitrose%E2%80%99s-response-bnp%E2%80%99s-halal-campaign-claims-%E2%80%9Chumane-slaughtering%E2%80%9D-exposed http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17972-animals-feel-the-pain-of-religious-slaughter.html But the Muslims have a study saying slitting the throat is more humane. Because, you know, people who defend their religious practices would never continue to do so if those practices were judged to be inhumane or immoral. Clearly they did the research before reaching their conclusion and not vice-versa. Mind you, this digression is brought to you by the fact that the Muslim practice of Halal was raised as a defense against a claim that Biblical animal sacrifice is immoral. However, let's all keep an eye on the topic and not stray much farther from it. Our hold is getting tenuous. ;)

The Walking Dead is correct.

He could have just told us all about how DNA works, so there would never be any question of who the baby-daddy. But that would require a level of scientific knowledge that was unavailable to [an omniscient] God at the time. While He was at it, He could have told us about germ theory. Not only would it have been handy to know, saving countless lives, but it would have demonstrated unequivocally that He had a base of knowledge far above and beyond the limited culture of the time. If you had life-saving information and the means to communicate it to people, would you do it? You would, if you valued those people's lives. Yahweh kept that information to himself.

The show is currently on the air. Its title characters do not speak. I thought those two fact alone would have done it. I'll add: It's fiction. So far. (And we ALL hope it stays that way).

Well, there are whoremongers in the Bible. Interesting in English: The word "whore" does nothing to judge the man, but the word "whoremonger" judges not only the man, but also the woman he beds. I wonder if that's the same in Greek or Hebrew.

Hold on! You're forgetting about love! The REALITY is that benevolent slave owners acting in love while holding wives and children hostage unless their recently freed slaves agree to have auls driven through their ears to signify they are "volunteering" to be slaves for life, and who demonstrate their adherence to the First and Great commandment of loving God by keeping His commandments by tithing, stoning to death homosexuals, stoning to death non-virgin women, and stoning to death mouthy kids while avoiding pork, shellfish, and milk with their meat are the most virtuous people on the planet.

Apparently he'll only do that if you lie to the Man of God about how much money you have to put in the cornucopia or if your entire city is on fire and you succumb to the perfectly normal human impulse to look back. Picking up sticks on a Friday night does not rise to that level of evil. For that, we need a slower, more painful death inflicted by the people acting on Yahweh's direct order, which is ok, because He is the potter and we're just clay.

To sit there and justify a capricious death penalty because God can kill whoever the pluck he wants because we're mere pottery, then accuse ME of retaining a cult mindset. Gall. That said, while I PASSIONATELY disagree with TnO's arguments and conclusions, he is assuredly on topic. Unmistakably. It needs to be said because there is a continuing FALSE accusation that I declare posts off topic when they don't agree with me.

I just can't. There is SO MUCH morally wrong with this. Where to start? Do you realize you just justified ISIS? I mean, can't you see that? We are human beings, not some potter's clay! I thought atheists were the ones who didn't value human life. Now to exonerate Allah... excuse me, to exonerate Yahweh, you HAVE TO DEVALUE HUMANS! We're pottery. We're robots. Is that what Yahweh thinks of you? And you worship that? Yeah, that's morally repugnant.

Laws are not laws. Facts are opinions. Slaves are not slaves... TnO, the first words of mine you quoted were "This is pointless." You went on to demonstrate it. Since neither of us will change the other's mind, I will not go on to address your points. I apologize if it seems rude, but I can't argue with someone who reads a law and says it's not a law, who reads that you can beat your slave as long as you don't maim him because the slave is your property and concludes the slave is not your property and you can't beat him, etc. You keep accusing me of employing straw man fallacy, then you go on to validate my predictions. It's hilarious. "If all this was really about Raf's description of Yahweh, you should have said so at the beginning. I don't think anyone would have disagreed. Sure, we're all more moral than YOUR description of Yahweh." This is the guy accusing ME of strawman, ladies and gentlemen. Won't admit that I'm describing Yahweh straight out of the Bible. Has to make it about me. Transparent. A verse that talks about allowing escaped slaves to live within your gates is addressed to a class of people, not to individuals. Scholar after scholar, THE VERY SAME SOURCES I'M BEING ASKED TO TRUST REGARDING THE CULTURE OF THE TIME, agree that the verse in question is discussing foreign slaves escaping into Israel and not Hebrew slaves who escape from Hebrew masters. http://biblehub.com/commentaries/deuteronomy/23-15.htm An inconvenient truth, to borrow a phrase. To be blunt, I think you've proved my point better than I ever could. Why argue? Feel free to continue posting.

"I'm a prosecutor. I'm part of the business of accusing, judging and punishing. I explore the evidence of a crime and determine who is charged, who is brought to this room to be tried before his peers. I present my evidence to the jury and they deliberate upon it. They must determine what really happened. If they cannot, we will not know whether the accused deserves to be freed or should be punished. If they cannot find the truth, what is our hope of justice?"

No proper names.

"Hedge of protection" works if we're talking about "don't be sexually promiscuous or I will give you an STD." It's the promiscuity that brings the STD, not the person making the threat. "Don't be sexually promiscuous or I will order the people to stone you with stones until you die" is NOT a "hedge of protection" issue.

Fine, I'll do it. There's a common word for the title characters of this series. That word has not been uttered a single time in the six seasons the show has been on the air. Other words are used, the most common of which is used in another tense in the title. We could ask the title characters how they would like to be referred to, but they don't speak, so that doesn't really do us any good.

If the God is invented by the man to validate his own practices, the answer becomes clear. Same reason the Anglican God allowed divorce. Because Henry VIII wanted to be able to divorce. That simple. We keep looking for complicated answers when the simplicity is staring us in the face. Why does God come off as such a scientifically ignorant morally unacceptable intolerant, jealous horrifyingly violent monster? Simple. The MEN who concocted him, though they didn't stand out in their time, would today be treated as sociopaths. Look at Victor Barnard. Would he stand out among the 12 tribes? Hardly. But today he stands out. That's why "it was another time" loses this argument. It admits the culture created the God and not the other way around.

But he's not, Tzaia. He's really not.

Darned curious to know what's God got against dwarfs.

I was saving the crushed testicles for later