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Originally Posted by jillianleab

Morality is not only found in religion. It's found in community and society, not the will of the fittest.

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I agree with you that morality can be found outside of Christianity.

But the question is not whether morality can be found but how is it defined. Within Christianity, there is an unmovable standard. Some people may add their own bits to it, but that does not change the standard.

If you go by the community and society, the standard can and will change. We see that over time and we see that when we look at different societies and communities in the world today.

That's right if we go by the unchanging morals of the bible we would have such great morals as
2 If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
3 If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he be married, then his wife shall go out with him.
4 If his master give him a wife and she bear him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
5 But if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:
6 then his master shall bring him unto God, and shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever.
7 And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do.
8 If she please not her master, who hath espoused her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a foreign people he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.
9 And if he espouse her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.
10 If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.
11 And if he do not these three things unto her, then shall she go out for nothing, without money.

So yea boo changing community morals. Boo not having slaves. Boo treating women as equal.

We would obviously be better of with the bible morals than with changing community ones.

Do you really buy into your own rhetoric or are you just joking with us TJ3?

Hey, mich, how about fast forwarding to the teachings of Christ?

So that is why Christians ended slavery in 30 AD. Oh wait they didn't. In fact they continued to claim that god gave them the right to own slaves right up to the 1860s and continued to treat women as property until the 1950s.

How about Luke 12:47?
47And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

NT says if your servant doesn't do your will it's okay to beat him. Good thing you Christians base your moral on these non-changing morals. We wouldn't want our servants not doing our will and think that they wouldn't get a beating.

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Originally Posted by jillianleab

Certainly you're entitled to your opintion, but I fully, 100% disagree with you.

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Yes, I have an entitlement to an opinion. I'll avail myself of that opinion whether you agree. To me it's like the science of mathematics, the correctness being black and white.


Immorality: “The result is inevitable; a corrupt generation necessarily begets a revolutionary generation…Freethought begets freemorals or immorality. Restraint is thrown off, and a free rein given to the passions. Who thinks what he pleases will do what he pleases… intellectual order is license in the moral order. Disorder in the intellect begets disorder in the heart, and vice versa. 1886, Dr. Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany, El Liberalismo es Pecado

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Originally Posted by jillianleab

Morality is not only found in religion. It's found in community and society, not the will of the fittest. You make it sound like a dictatorship - the man in charge sets the morals - but that's not how things work in functioning societies. For example, it's not good for society if we go around squashing people's rights and killing people who wear red shirts. Those things make society bad. So, we don't do them. Are morals subjective? Sure, some of them are. Many Christians think premarital sex is wrong, I think there's nothing wrong with it. But the BIG morals - the one's that legislate the world we live in; those come about through humanity - "god" is not required.

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Yes, theological morality is founded only in our religious faith. Catholics hold morality based on Divine law to be objective in nature. Morality needs a standard or a guide for intelligent action; putting forward an end, a right order, and defines inferior principles to achieve the stated end.

There is a secular sense of morality, but it not quite what I'd call morality; instead it's what is found in the positive law (laws made by men). Those laws we sometimes think of as being different from natural law (those laws set by nature) and the tenets of our Catholic faith, God's law. Positive law is made for the common good in regard to some individual work to otherwise rule and measure. In addition, positive law is for the purpose of directing a community's affairs. Human law is ordained by man, not God, and pertains to justice between men and as such is subjective in nature. Thus we find morals based solely on positive law to be mutable and subjective.

Conversely, virtuous morals derived from the Divine law, ordained by God for His relation with men in this world and the next. “The moral virtues set in good order the acts of the reason in reference to the interior passions and exterior actions.” St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica Part 2, I Q100, 2. We find some of these moral virtues in our Declaration of Independence as “certain inalienable rights.” Divine law is an order of law higher than that of positive law and as such we find the derived morals immutable, unchangeable, and as such are objective.

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Originally Posted by jillianleab

You might think your statements aren't misinformed opinion, but I still say they are.

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I know my statements are not malformed. I've taken the time to become informed, limited only by my abilities.

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Originally Posted by jillianleab

You are essentially saying without god one can't be moral.

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I'm saying without God one cannot have virtuous morals as I've tried to define above.

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Originally Posted by jillianleab

If that's not your intention, you might want to revise your thoughts - because that's how it's coming out.

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I hope it came out as I intended. Based on your objections I'd say I came reasonably close.

JoeT

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Originally Posted by michealb

That's right if we go by the unchanging morals of the bible we would have such great morals as
2 If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
3 If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he be married, then his wife shall go out with him.
4 If his master give him a wife and she bear him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
5 But if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:
6 then his master shall bring him unto God, and shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever.
7 And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do.
8 If she please not her master, who hath espoused her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a foreign people he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.
9 And if he espouse her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.
10 If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.
11 And if he do not these three things unto her, then shall she go out for nothing, without money.

So yea boo changing community morals. Boo not having slaves. Boo treating women as equal.

We would obviously be better of with the bible morals than with changing community ones.

Do you really buy into your own rhetoric or are you just joking with us TJ3?

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Michael:


Look up abolition and Wilberforce or the Quakers.

Slavery is a human invention that crosses all cultures. You can't just attribute it to Christians and the bible, because it is a widespread phenomenon.

Were not the Jews slaves to other peoples like the Eygptians?

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Originally Posted by inthebox

The absolute truth, Cred, is that you attack those you disagree with, and your post is OSE of it.
Hitler truly believed in a superior race, eugenics, which fits in with the theory of evolution. Is Hitler's truth any more true than yours or mine? Who is to judge who is misinterpreting when there are no absolutes?

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I note that you exceed Joe's comments with an even higher level of BS!!
You managed to drag even Hitler into the "discussion".
And that in a topic that asks itself the question "What is Truth ?"

Well : one thing is completely sure now : neither you nor Joe are - by your actions in this topic - capable of posting an honest anwer to that question.

How sad !!!

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

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That's only a greater argument that we get our morals from culture not from the bible.

Thank you for agreeing with me, that people have always gotten their morals from the culture they are in not the bible.

Cred:

When there is no absolute truth - Hitler / eugenics / genocide cannot be viewed as good or bad / true or false - because it is up to fallible individuals to interpret their reality as you have put it.

Again

The absolute truth, Cred, is that you attack those you disagree with, and your post is OSE of it

I'll welcome a discussion on Hitler being a good Catholic if you want to post it. We shouldn't take up ClassyT's thread with it though.

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Originally Posted by inthebox

Cred: When there is no absolute truth - Hitler / eugenics / genocide cannot be viewed as good or bad / true or false - because it is up to fallible individuals to interpret their reality as you have put it....

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I NEVER even suggested that. You can rephrase your words. But you can't take back that you referred what I stated to something that had nothing to do with what I posted.

All I posted was that in Linguistics truth is something that is linked to reality, and therefore it requires OSE for what is stated.

And in contrast we have "religious "truth" : a wild claim that seems to support whatever is suggested, but that lacks completely any format of OSE.

Without any reason you have connected the content of my original post to Hitler, to eugenics, and to genocide.
Talk about morals and ethics !!!
If you were anything of an example of a standard for an average Christian, I am glad not to be a Christian.

And that dear box is the TRUTH !

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

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That is what you believe Cred - your own interpretation of your own reality - Enjoy

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Originally Posted by inthebox

That is what you believe Cred - your own interpretation of your own reality - Enjoy

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Box : it's not here about what I believe. It is about what everyone can see you have been doing here...

:D :D :D :D :D :D

.

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Originally Posted by JoeT777

Yes, I have an entitlement to an opinion. I’ll avail myself of that opinion whether you agree. To me it’s like the science of mathematics, the correctness being black and white.

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Why are you getting snippy? I said you are entitled to your opinion, we don't have to agree on your thoughts.

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Yes, theological morality is founded only in our religious faith. Catholics hold morality based on Divine law to be objective in nature. Morality needs a standard or a guide for intelligent action; putting forward an end, a right order, and defines inferior principles to achieve the stated end.

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Theological morality? You're going to throw that out there so you can "win"? Well, duh, non-Christians don't have theological morality.

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There is a secular sense of morality, but it not quite what I’d call morality; instead it’s what is found in the positive law (laws made by men). Those laws we sometimes think of as being different from natural law (those laws set by nature) and the tenets of our Catholic faith, God’s law. Positive law is made for the common good in regard to some individual work to otherwise rule and measure. In addition, positive law is for the purpose of directing a community’s affairs. Human law is ordained by man, not God, and pertains to justice between men and as such is subjective in nature. Thus we find morals based solely on positive law to be mutable and subjective.

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If this is what you believe, you must live in a constant state of fear. What with all the people who have only secular morals running around. You do know Christians are outnumbered, in this world, right?

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I know my statements are not malformed. I’ve taken the time to become informed, limited only by my abilities.

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There's a key word in that statement...

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I’m saying without God one cannot have virtuous morals as I’ve tried to define above.

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You're saying that unless someone fits your very narrow definition of "moral" they are immoral.

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I hope it came out as I intended. Based on your objections I’d say I came reasonably close.

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Yup. Sure did. I'm not sure that would be something I'd be proud of though. Whatever. You "win", this coversation isn't likely to go anywhere. I'm done.

Duplicate

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Originally Posted by michealb

That's right if we go by the unchanging morals of the bible we would have such great morals as

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I have seen all these before, but what is interesting is that I never see any atheists who take the time to look at these in context and often they quote things which are either not even in the Bible, or are mis-quoted, or partial verses.

[QUOTE=michealb;1371289]So that is why Christians ended slavery in 30 AD. Oh wait they didn't. In fact they continued to claim that god gave them the right to own slaves right up to the 1860s and continued to treat women as property until the 1950s. [/quotes]

It is interesting that atheists always point to those who mis-use Christianity rather than deal honestly with the Bible. Like this one:

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How about Luke 12:47?
47And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

NT says if your servant doesn't do your will it's okay to beat him. Good thing you Christians base your moral on these non-changing morals. We wouldn't want our servants not doing our will and think that they wouldn't get a beating.

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Notice how carefully this deception is? He says that the NT says it, but what he doesn't say is that this describes what happens in the secular world. And indeed the context is not what such deceptive people claim:

Let's read the context:

Luke 12:45-48
45 But if that servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming,' and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and be drunk, 46 the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. 47 And that servant who knew his master's will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. 48 But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.
NKJV

Note that it is speaking of the punishment which would typically be meted out in the secular world to a servants who beat other servants.

So why don't you enlighten us then. Please explain how the those aren't rules on how to treat your slaves or tell everyone that they aren't really in the bible. It's unlikely that most of the believers will look it up if you say they aren't there.

Tom, you're so fond of bible verse. What about these;

"If any man takes a wife, and goes in on her, and detests her, and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings a bad name on her, and says, 'I took this woman, and when I came to her I found she was not a virgin..." (Deuteronomy 22:13,14)

"But if ... evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones..." (Deuteronomy 22:20,21)
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"If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched." (Mark 9:43)
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"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel. " (1 Peter 2:18)
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This is the book that I'm supposed to follow, to obey? This is "God's word"?

Not my God.

And more about slavery.

"When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money."

—Exodus 21:20-21 (RSV)
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