Raf

I'm pretty sure the message behind the original photo on this thread is, "If you want to discriminate against people on the basis of your deeply held religious beliefs, you need to understand that we can turn that principle right back around on you." It's not more complicated than that.

At all

So, on slavery, we seem to be at a standstill. I think the Bible very clearly talks about a lack of freedom and one human being owning another, able to beat the other within limits, able to hold the other's children hostage unless they agree to become slaves for life (a promise that is utterly empty if it's not enforceable). I think the Bible makes provision for for slaves who escape INTO Israel from other countries, but somehow does not even consider the scenario of a slave IN Israel escaping from his master. I think there is a profound difference between being owned by someone and being employed by someone (even the Bible knows the difference between a slave and a hireling). TnO appears to disagree with me on all of these issues save one: the notion of a master keeping a wife and son "hostage" (my word) unless the freed slave agrees to become bound to the master for life. It's not that TnO agrees with me there, however. Rather, he simply hasn't addressed it. At all. He is certainly free to do so. TnO I appreciate you taking the time to share your views and insights. I do not find them compelling or in the slightest bit convincing. Tzaia used the word "sanitizing," and I agree with that assessment. I think you're sanitizing Biblical slavery, changing it so that it's palatable to you. I think you're sincere about that. I don't think you're correct. If there's anything else about slavery you wish to address, have at it. If you'd like to move on to the death penalty (and have something to say other than we're the potter's clay to be broken as he pleases), I invite that discussion as well. Or any other topic you'd like to address.

It is indeed

It's kind of complicated, I think. We get some of our morality from religion, to be sure. But where did religion get its morality? [in my view] religion gets its morality from the people who invented the religion. A religion created by a people who saw women as second class citizens and slaves as property will never rise above those practices on their own, but they may indeed harbor principles that would eventually overturn both (people don't have to be without error or contradiction, remember). But once something becomes codified in a religion, it becomes very difficult to break beyond that religion's moral code. That's why, hundreds of years later, the religious folk could bring a woman taken in adultery to Jesus' feet with the perfectly Biblically accurate intention to stone her to death. The story is an interpolation, but the plausibility of the story remains intact because the law of Moses does indeed teach that she should have been put to death. In the story, Jesus doesn't say, "killing someone over adultery is immoral." That would be calling the Old Testament law immoral. So he finds another escape route. A clever one, it must be admitted. But today, if I were to propose a law identical to the Old Testament law on adultery, we would call such a law immoral. Not that adultery is cool. We have simply evolved in our morality to the point that we do not consider it a capital offense. The writers of the Old Testament had a different moral code, a stricter one. A less moral one, according to our values today. According to even Christian and Jewish values today. We elevate love, compassion and forgiveness as positive values, never admitting that in doing so, we are simultaneously denouncing the Old Testament law as immoral by our standards. We DO get some of our morality from our religion, but our religion got its morality from the people who invented it. Barbaric people? Barbaric morality. Less barbaric but still unenlightened people? Less barbaric but still unenlightened morality. It's only if you insist that religion's morality is absolute and objectively moral because it comes from God that you run into the trouble we';re exploring in the other thread: an absolutely objectively moral God would not impose laws we all agree would be immoral. But that's an exploration of where we DON'T get our morality. Where DO we get it from? We get it, ultimately, from reason.

Be patient, MRAP. Not a lot of people post here who are still active with STFI and company. It may be a while before you get an answer. :)

Yes

Awesome!

Clint Eastwood

Bye Bye Birdie

Welcome, MRAP. You'll find a WIDE variety of opinion here, some friendly to TWI/CES/STFI/TLTF, some critical and some quite hostile. Some of us have remained with offshoots. Some of us have joined mainstream Christian churches. Some of us (myself included) have abandoned religion altogether. What binds us here is a shared history and a shared concern for those who are still in TWI who think leaving is the worst thing that could happen. We're here to show it is not. We left. We thrived. Feel free to poke around, revive old threads and see if anyone bites. Nice to see a new face around here. I bid you peace. 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.