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Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:34 am**

matthew wrote:Also, how can you say anything is evil or bad or not good or just simply distasteful when you deny the existence of an unshakable moral foundation? How then can you possibly defend sanity if you have no firm moral ground to stand on? You're bloviating!

infidel pig dog wrote:Of all the arguments that fundamentalists resort to in their defense of the Bible, none is more ridiculous than their claim that the Bible is necessary for people to know how to live moral lives. They arrive at this conclusion through a series of assumptions. Their first assumption is that God exists, and onto this assumption, they pile another one: morality (and they even make it an absolute morality) emanates from the nature of God. Then, of course, they assume that their God, in verbally inspiring the Bible, revealed absolute morality to mankind. Hence, man must rely on the Bible to know what is moral and immoral. They envision life without the Bible as a moral chaos reminiscent of ancient Israel before the time of its kings when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).

The whole superstructure of this argument is built upon another assumption that is incredibly cynical on the part of a group that delights in condemning the pessimism of philosophies that question the existence of God. This assumption is that man is incapable of making moral decisions without divine guidance. In other words, man must have God's help or else he just can't determine for sure what is right and what is wrong.

Were it not for the seriousness of fundamentalist attempts to impose this belief on society in general, it would be too ridiculous to deserve comment. We have used human intelligence to cure diseases, split the atom, and invent a technology that has us reaching for the stars, yet Christian fundamentalists would have us believe that we are too stupid to discover that lying, stealing, and killing are harmful enough to the general welfare to be considered morally wrong. That view of life is about as pessimistic as any that can be imagined, infinitely more pessimistic than the mental action of a skeptic who questions the existence of an afterlife for which he can see no verifiable evidence.

http://www.infidels.org/library/magazin ... ont94.html

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:57 am**

matthew wrote:It may sound trite and tired, Steve, but the answer to how God relates to man is the person of Christ. It's as simple and intellectual as that.

That IS trite, because all you've done is choose Door Number 1, which in turn demands you show evidence, which you choose not to do because of its shocking lack. You have to offer us non-shitty evidence for:
1) The historical existence of the person identified as Jesus (I'll let you pass on that one 'cause it's pretty firmly established)
2) His divinity (specifically divinity! This one is impossible, so skip to number 3)
3) His miraculous powers, while simultaneously disproving or otherwise accounting for every single other magicmaker, mystic, and miracle man from every single other culture.

Also, you'd have to explain the Old Testament God's physical interactions with the world, or abandon those to the realm of myth where they rightly belong.

Also, how can you say anything is evil or bad or not good or just simply distasteful when you deny the existence of an unshakable moral foundation?

He could just not like it. Some people obviously think oppressive theocracy is awesome; the equal validity of their opinion in the cosmic sense still lets us tell them to go fuck themselves.

How then can you possibly defend sanity if you have no firm moral ground to stand on?

A true moral stance can only be taken by an individual without desire for heavenly reward, nor fear of divine retribution in this world or the afterlife. It is, in fact, the absence of Divine Law that makes true moral reasoning possible.

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest (nay, snarl) that my moral ground is a hundred times as firm as anyone who acts (or doesn't act) out of fear of sin.

I would suggest, further, that his defense of sanity is more along the lines of an argument against self-delusion, which would remain sound even if Steve ate babies.

As long as he, you know, ate them because he liked eating babies.

And not because god told him.

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:16 am**

matthew wrote:Also, how can you say anything is evil or bad or not good or just simply distasteful when you deny the existence of an unshakable moral foundation? How then can you possibly defend sanity if you have no firm moral ground to stand on? You're bloviating!

Who needs Jesus or God to have a moral foundation? Do you think atheists are amoral because they lack the belief in God?

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:31 am**

caix wrote:
matthew wrote:Also, how can you say anything is evil or bad or not good or just simply distasteful when you deny the existence of an unshakable moral foundation? How then can you possibly defend sanity if you have no firm moral ground to stand on? You're bloviating!

Who needs Jesus or God to have a moral foundation? Do you think atheists are amoral because they lack the belief in God?

Unshakable Moral Foundation sounds like it could be either a really bad hardcore band or a pretty good funk band

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:38 am**

caix wrote:
matthew wrote:Also, how can you say anything is evil or bad or not good or just simply distasteful when you deny the existence of an unshakable moral foundation? How then can you possibly defend sanity if you have no firm moral ground to stand on? You're bloviating!

Who needs Jesus or God to have a moral foundation? Do you think atheists are amoral because they lack the belief in God?

Yes, he does. If he says he doesn't, he's lying.

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 1:29 pm**

im really drunk

but if two sides (god exists vs god doesnt exist) start to argue which one of them is able to act morally, the "nope, (s)he doesnt" always wins. it's a fact.

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:39 pm**

sorry fellas but "God(s)" just in't real, it's just that simple.

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:04 pm**

Antero wrote:I mean, seriously, that's why cheetahs are doomed to extinction - because their gene pool is more like a gene puddle, thanks to some long-ago disease.

So now they just get fucked-up-er.

---

Mutations caused by inbreeding aren't mutations so much as they are the emergence of awful recessive traits. That's why royal families have hemophillia.

Well, that and they are hunted...

This is short sighted though... In 20 generations, you will have Cheetas with completely different genotypes. In the short run, of a few generations, inbreeding is bad. I am not a proponent of inbreeding, but simply stating the fact that it is a mechanism to eventually force genetic diversity from a limited gene pool.

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:40 pm**

matthew wrote: However, there is no solid evidence that this in fact has taken place; the theory of biological evolution is riddled with holes and severe problems which I won't mention here.

Got that, everybody? Matthew sez: don't believe in stuff that hasn't been scientifically proven!

matthew wrote:It may sound trite and tired, Steve, but the answer to how God relates to man is the person of Christ. It's as simple and intellectual as that.

Wait, what?

Posted: **Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:43 pm**

Linus Van Pelt wrote:
matthew wrote:It may sound trite and tired, Steve, but the answer to how God relates to man is the person of Christ. It's as simple and intellectual as that.

Wait, what?

I think he said

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