Topic: Health and Religion - page 26. (Read 210888 times)

What about if your neighbors are a gay couple who adopted two Christian boys and dressed them as girls.  They also sublet to a group transvestites who go door to door to sell women's underwear and lipstick.  One time you saw your gay neighbors make out right in front of your house. They also burned bunch of bibles in their backyard (they called the fire department to warn them about the yard garbage fire).

Your son goes to the same school as the two boys and fell in love with one of them.  He told you that he will marry one of them.

They also have a nice statue of Jesus sitting on a massive cock made out of wood surrounded by the village people Apostles in their backyard.

Your other neighbor is a swinger couple who host swinger's parties in their backyard.  They keep inviting you to their parties to bang some hot 20 year olds with massive boobs but you keep refusing, you dream about it, but instead you go and read the bible with your wife.

1. What does the Bible say how to deal with your neighbors?
2. What would the people in the ancient Israel do to your neighbors after reading the Bible?

But perfection is the important thing. Consider. There are countless actions and reactions between materials and energies, all operating perfectly, as evidenced by the non-destruction of the universe. Yet there is an appearance of imperfection in many things we do and think. How can we reconcile the idea of perfection necessary for existence with the imperfection that we are aware of?

The answer is the torture and death of Jesus in taking the imperfection and... the resurrection of Jesus, in perfecting even imperfection itself.

Jesus, having had enough power to take the punishment, and then having enough power to arise from the dead, shows that He has enough power to control everything. When we don't believe what He says, it's like we are asking for the destruction we would receive from having imperfection.

This perfection of imperfection is only temporary time, before the time of the new order and the New Universe. It exists only for God to find the people who will believe in Him, and who will accept movement from this life to the New Universe. It's called Jesus salvation.

But perfection is the important thing. Consider. There are countless actions and reactions between materials and energies, all operating perfectly, as evidenced by the non-destruction of the universe. Yet there is an appearance of imperfection in many things we do and think. How can we reconcile the idea of perfection necessary for existence with the imperfection that we are aware of?

The answer is the torture and death of Jesus in taking the imperfection and... the resurrection of Jesus, in perfecting even imperfection itself.

Jesus, having had enough power to take the punishment, and then having enough power to arise from the dead, shows that He has enough power to control everything. When we don't believe what He says, it's like we are asking for the destruction we would receive from having imperfection.

This perfection of imperfection is only temporary time, before the time of the new order and the New Universe. It exists only for God to find the people who will believe in Him, and who will accept movement from this life to the New Universe. It's called Jesus salvation.

More like you like to over complicate things using pseudo science bullshit to try to make your point. ''Almost all of the sexually permissive civilizations of antiquity are extinct.'' Who cares? Civilizations, descendants, they are all meaningless to me, my purpose is not to reproduce and have children. My purpose is to live my life the best I can trying not to hurt anyone, my freedom ends where yours starts and all that. I couldn't care less about someone's sexual preferences as long as he/she is not taking someone else freedom away.

I understand that a farmer getting frisky with his sheep is immoral because there is no real way of knowing if the sheep is giving consent. However that obviously is not the case with humans. Now the punishment itself seems also quite strong, death penalty, why? Doesn't god want people to repent? How would anyone repent if you get killed immediately?

Cheating is wrong but is it worth it of a death penalty? Again, it's not. In fact in current era we don't even punish people for that.

The fact is that morals change because they were bad in the first place, we are trying to achieve ''perfect morality'' whether that is possible or not, the problem is that god would have known and knows what that is if it exists and yet you don't find it in the bible. If the bible is the only proof he leaves to convince me then he did a poor job.

Yeah, I know you believe many things, however that doesn't make them true. The future doesn't exist. There could be more harm if in the future a meteorite hits the earth and everyone dies, you don't know that, I don't know that, talking about the future is meaningless.

''It is entirely possible that Biblical law was the best possible set of rules that simultaneously moved a barbaric humanity closer to moral truth'' Maybe but even If we agree on that, the bible is still useless now and it's the only proof for god. God should in any case give us new laws, is he asleep?

Read my last post again, slowly.  Don't skip important words.

As for your "logical position",  I don't see it as being logical.  You want to believe that some supernatural entity gave people the objective moral standard and in the process you ignore large swaths of the Bible, pretend they do not apply to you personally or say that the laws applied to ancient Jews.  Your first logical mistake is that you think God exists, second is that you think the OT laws are valid moral laws in the 21st century.  

We can argue about individual laws, but I have made my position perfectly clear.  OT is a bunch of horseshit, it does not matter that it is a source of reflection for you.  Slavery is wrong, the OT barbaric laws are wrong, killing babies is wrong, killing gays is wrong.  

Many books, much easier to read will provoke deeper reflections that your precious Bible.

Your position is not only illogical, but outright irrational.  But I understand it, my grandmother is following the same logic.
You need to believe what you believe.  It is the right belief for you.

I don't think I am over complicating things at all. Quite the opposite actually.

If you don't care about the future we are unlikely to agree on much at all. Personally I believe we have a duty to pass on a world to the next generation that is better then the one we inherited. That requires us to think about civilizations, and descendants even if we don't have children. If you don't care about maintaining your civilization you are hurting someone. You are hurting the unborn who will inherit the mess. The fact that those individuals don't exist yet does not mitigate the harm.

In regards to changing morals over time please see my next post.

You are better off with any other book.

As for God telling you what the moral standard is, be careful, hearing God is a sign of insanity.
 

Ok I think we are talking about different things.

But I think I understand what you are looking for.

You want an objective moral code? Here it is:

1. Do not harm life in any form.

The details are subjective just like the 10 commandments. They are subjective interpretation of the moral code above.

Unless God comes back and updates the details, the laws in the scriptures are subjective and wrong because they violate the objective moral code above.

More like you like to over complicate things using pseudo science bullshit to try to make your point. ''Almost all of the sexually permissive civilizations of antiquity are extinct.'' Who cares? Civilizations, descendants, they are all meaningless to me, my purpose is not to reproduce and have children. My purpose is to live my life the best I can trying not to hurt anyone...

The fact is that morals change because they were bad in the first place...

I think the real problem is that you are unwilling to look past the superficial.

The overall moral message of the Bible in regards to human sexuality seems to be a pretty simple one.

In the Bible any sexual activity outside of traditional marriage is immoral and prohibited period end of story.

Like the challenge of sleeping with married women -> Death Penalty
Farmer who gets frisky with his sheep -> Death Penalty
Man who prefers men to women -> Death Penalty
Rapist -> Death Penalty

Even unmarried consensual sex leads to either the death penalty or a forced marriage depending on the specific circumstances.

If you were serious about examining the morality of this you have to ask yourself not the specific question but the broad one. Is this strict prohibition of all sexual relations outside of marriage moral.

Setting aside the traditional religious answer yes because God declared it  this is not an easy question to answer. What if the functional alternative to such a restriction is cultural destruction and cessation. That appears to be the position of Rabbi Nachum Amsel above. Maybe it's simply not competitive.

The historical record supports this. Almost all of the sexually permissive civilizations of antiquity are extinct. It was the puritanical ones that survived.

We are currently running a real time experiment to find out if this holds true today. In Europe the loosening of the restraints on sexuality is quite advanced.

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/out-wedlock-births-rise-worldwide

In Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway and Sweden the majority of births now occur outside marriage, with government assistance typically provided to single mothers.

Will European civilization continue or will it fall like so many decadent civilization throughout history have fallen when confronted with a culture that lacks this trait?

...
Rand basically said that values that support and enhance life are objective moral values. They are good values to follow, but the problem arises when the life changes.  The values that were objective need to be updated to be objective again.

Imagine a new technology that would allow us to clone human brains, or run ancestor simulations, or make hybrids with AI, or give AI our human cognitive abilities
...
The search for morality is work in progress.  Anything else is just an attempt to stop the process, and fix the objective morality in time.  With God or without it.

I am amazed by how otherwise sane people cling to ancient texts for moral guidance.  These texts clearly demonstrate that people who wrote these books knew very little about the world they were living in.  Yet some of us in the 21st century ignore these obvious details.

What are your reasons to believe that the objective morality exists?  Assuming God does not exist.

I gave you my reasons why I think morality is relative to the present.

Ayn Rand The Objectivist Ethics

"There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence – and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible. it changes form, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of “Life” that makes the concept of “Value” possible."

Biddle adds in his commentary:
"The reason why living things need values is: in order to live. The answer to the question “for what?”is: for life."

Life is the ultimate end served by our pursuit of values, and thus reigns as our objective standard of value. Something has value to us only to the extent that it furthers or enhances our life

But what do we mean by “objective”? Isn’t the idea that life is the standard of value just Rand’s opinion?  Can’t you choose another standard based on your subjective tastes?

Craig Biddle answers:

"No, free will do not make the issue subjective. It does mean that a person can choose not to live; but it does not mean that he can choose a standard of value other than life.

… Without life there would be no one to whom anything could be beneficial or harmful. And why do such alternatives matter one way or the other? Because of the requirements of life. They are values or non-values only in relation to the alternative of life or death – and only for the purpose of promoting one’s life. The fact that we have free will does not change any of this; it simply grants us a choice in the matter: to live or not to live – to be or not to be.

Having discovered this objective standard of value, we have our reference point for further unveiling an objective morality. From the fact of our own existence as living beings with a particular nature, we can rationally ascertain what we ought to do.

Generally speaking, we ought to work to provide for our needs. We ought to act to obtain or keep that which furthers our survival and makes us happy.

This happiness, the sort referenced by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, is not a hedonistic whim. It’s not chocolate for a diabetic. It’s not an affair for a married man. Rather, true happiness is gauged in the context of how life works and what we can reasonably expect to follow from our actions. The diabetic who eats lots of chocolate may gain short-term pleasure, but at the expense of his long-term well-being. The same can be said of the adulterer.



Odd how this objective morality, discovered by an unrepentant atheist, starts to dimly echo the Ten Commandments. Indeed, if God exists, and if He created the universe, it follows that his moral commandments would jive with the facts of his crafted reality – that He would prescribe action in our best interest.

...
Moral objectivity does not exist.  You are wasting your time looking for it.

By applying ancient moral rules you are short circuting all the progress we have made as humanity.

Moral realism (also ethical realism or moral Platonism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism (which denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true); and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all). Within moral realism, the two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.

Many philosophers claim that moral realism may be dated back at least to Plato as a philosophical doctrine,[1] and that it is a fully defensible form of moral doctrine.[2] A survey from 2009 involving 3,226 respondents[3] found that 56% of philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism (28%: anti-realism; 16%: other).[4]

The problem, you knucklehead is that you are arguing that in ancient times god was there to help people, if we know those things were immoral now, god would have known then too and he would have done something about it not fucking help them with stupid laws that supported their immoral actions.

You are not being logically consistent in your arguments.

If you truly think morality is subjective then it shouldn't bother you that sex with 9 year olds occurred in ancient cultures. That's was moral by their standards so it should be totally ok with you. Different day different morals.

Similarly you should have nothing to say about the holocaust or the mass starvation and purges of China's cultural revolution. The majority of Germans and Chinese supported the Nazi and Communist regimes respectively and those regimes considered their actions not only moral but necessary for "victory".

If morality is subjective all you can say about these things is that you don't like them or don't agree with them. You can say that according to your own subjective standard that's not appropriate behavior but you cannot say your code is better then theirs. Both codes are meaningless social constructs totally arbitrary.

The reality is that you are actually applying an objective moral standard to your arguments. You are taking the position that your rule "Do not unnecessarily harm other people or animals." Is objectively true and thus it can be used to judge the conduct of others and our predecessors.

I agree with you. I think your rule is objectively true. I just don't think it is sufficient or complete.

Cells in the body do change but the underlying truth of cells the code that guides them in that reproduction usually does not. When it does change it normally manifests as cancer and kills us.

You have figured out something you feel is objectively true. Your casual dismissal of other possible objective truths from your predecessors many of whom spent their entire lives pondering that very issue is unwise.

ISIS style genocides occur despite moral objectivity. It occurs because of a subjective warping and misunderstanding of objective reality. I agree that such evils represent a reason to be cautious in our interpretation of reality. However, our limitations are not a reason to embrace subjectivity. Moral subjectivity facilitates far greater horrors as history has demonstrated.

Everything in the universe does change but it changes in an orderly fashion via a chain of cascading causal orderly interactions that ultimately trace back to a first cause. Emergence is indeed real. It's existence shaped and guided by that same overarching order. The fact that we have free choice in such a universe even if it is an illusion so perfect we cannot see through it is nothing short of miraculous.

Slavery is not moral because it causes harm to individuals.  So the Bible moral code cannot be objective.

If the morality is objective, how would you know that it was written somewhere?  And why on Earth would you think that the ancient Jewish leaders figured out what the objective morality suppose to be.

...

I don't think morality is objective because the environment, knowledge, customs change over time.  Everything in the universe is constantly changing. Cells in your body are replaced every 7 years, so technically you are a different person every 7 years.

Do you think having sex with a 9 year old is moral?  It was few centuries ago, in some cultures.

Moral objectivity can lead to ISIS style genocides.

PS.  Morality has to change as everything in the universe changes.  Nothing stays the same.  Life becomes more complex. Emergence is real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16W7c0mb-rE

Hmm, so you think that the OT laws are moral (i.e. God is moral) but you personally would not kill gay people (i.e. let the society at large decide)?  Is that your position?

In my opinion, the OT laws were moral at the time they were written.

Today, the OT laws are demonstrably immoral, ...

Morality changes over time,

PS. The fact that morality or immorality changes over time is proof that the scriptures were not divinely inspired but are product of a human mind, frozen in time they were written. 

The question is not to whom the OT laws where given.

The question is whether the OT laws are immoral.

There are two options you have with regards to the authors of OT:

1. The OT laws are moral, then the authors (God) were moral and killing of gays is a moral action.
2. The OT laws are immoral, then the authors (God) were immoral and killing of gays is an immoral action.

So you, CoinCube, think that the authors of OT were immoral because you stated that you would not kill gays.

I want to hear what BADecker thinks.  I want him to see that the laws given by God are immoral, hence God of the Bible is immoral.

Either God is immoral or God did not inspire the Bible.

Or God is moral and killing of gays is a moral action.

Which one is it?