Deva Posted December 1, 2012 Share Posted December 1, 2012 I see a basic problem with morality in the Bible, starting with the Jews as a chosen people especially favored by God, while other people are cursed from the beginning for no particular reason. This is used as a justification for all the wars in the OT. Personally, I can't get past that. Of course I am looking at this whole thing as a modern person who is a citizen of the world first and foremost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted December 1, 2012 Share Posted December 1, 2012 My simple statement was just that it contains and promotes good morals, not to say that everything in it is the juice of life. But "it promotes good morals" is a generalization. That is a claim that generally the Bible promotes what is good. Taken as a whole the Bible mostly promotes evil. That doesn't mean every part of the Bible is evil nor that there is no good parts. Of course there are exceptions. It's these exceptions that preachers and Bible teachers like to focus on. The response I receive are interpretations to suggest rape, and the proposition that it implies rape, completely disregarding the culture at the time, and I don't mean culture in the sense that "consent is not necessary", but just he culture. So we judge it on our common lens, which in itself is not a bad thing, but then use that to suggest that "bible does support [statutory] rape, therefore that contradicts its prohibition of rape, therefore meaning either (a) it is pro rape or ( it has no good morals", sort of thing :/ Sorry but those type of apologetics are cop outs. I know as Christians we have all heard them Sunday after Sunday. Of course the culture that wrote the Bible was barbaric. That is the point. As a whole the Bible is not a source of good morality nor the word of a God. If the Bible had been the word of a moral God then God could have told that culture "respect women or else". God dictated so many things that people were supose to accept on pain of death. The message was obey or die. So the culture does not excuse God for being immoral in the story. You will not find a single sin in the Bible prohibiting rape of a woman. Having sex with a woman owned by another man was a sin but having sex with her against her wishes wasn't. If the men agreed that you owned a given woman then that was it. I personally weigh each thing to its own rather than considering everything under bias where things are only acknowledged if it supports your own idea, ignoring everything challenging a few of your own premises. Most of use have compeltely changed our worldview due to evidence. Our premises were challenged so we discarded what was false. That is how we got here. That being said, it's clear that some people just have a particular conclusion and have no interest in acknowledging the existence of things that challenge that conclusion, even at the expense of suggesting that all THEY got from the bible was permission to rape women :/ Please identify the verse that makes rape a sin. God felt the need to devote three of the Ten Commandments to protecting his own ego but could not find time to make any prohibition against forcing a woman against her will. Some of the things I listed are very simple statements literally paraphrased from the bible. Read 1 Cor 13, nothing but speaking about love, charity, patience. Gal 5 from around 18 or so, speaks about various QUALITIES. Proverbs lists many virtues, so it's incredibly ignorant to suggest "the bible does NOT ever ever promote good morals" Who claimed the Bible does not ever promote good morals? Perhaps you defeated a position that nobody took? when they are clearly written, and then used that unsatisfied logical statement to derive the statement that "all christians are therefore immoral". Same problem. Who took the position that all Christians are immoral? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RipVanWinkle Posted December 1, 2012 Share Posted December 1, 2012 Cybelle: I'll bet you didn't expect that your innocent post would spark such an explosion, did you? But this is the difference between agnostics/atheists and fundies. This has been an honest debate about very basic issues that the Bible raises. Everyone understands that and doesn't think someone who expresed an opposite opinion is evil and going to hell. It is refreshing in that sense. But I worry that we didn't help you as much as we should. Please keep coing here. You'll find honest, intelligent opinions even though we don't always agree. Good luck to you. bill 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RachelSkates Posted December 1, 2012 Share Posted December 1, 2012 I have heard that, too. It is like saying you have no basis for having brown hair or green eyes. No one prior to Xers ever thought humans were too stupid to understand some law of nature, that we tend to want to do good for the most part because it's beneficial. Xers like to think that there is no basis for taking a shit unless you are an xer, that there is no love, no compassion, no ability to hold a little new baby and feel joy! Nooooo. You can't feel joy because you are not connect to the Real Source Of Joy. It is so absurd. This god of theirs is the benchmark for joy, peace, love, morality, goodness, magnanimity, and all things good, and YET he or she or it still watches a tiny 7 year old crying herself to sleep in a childrens' cancer ward? Can someone say STUPID! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RipVanWinkle Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 RachelSkates: I don't even think stupid is strong enough to cover it. But then I was a believer for many, many years. Maybe that's why my anger at being fooled for so long slips through as much as it does. falemon: I also see the beauty and wisdom in the Bible. Some of the best literature ever written. My argument is not with you, but with the Xtians that think atheists can have no basis for real morality without the Bible, while ignoring all the horrendous things it contains which were purportedly done or authorized by god. That's all. Its inconsistancy proves the entire Bible was not a good god's handiwork. bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCBooster Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 falemon: I get your point, and I think everyone's being so civil. It's refreshing to have a debate without it getting personal. One of the many upshots of accepting moral relativism is that you don't have any need to defend any sense of moral superiority. Cbelle: I responded to this one because I've had people say this to me. It's not only hurtful, but also ludicrous, for the reasons that I think that people who say things like your brother-in-law did are so wrapped up in their own conflation of self identity and moral superiority that they don't realize how it sounds to others. They've also probably never been seriously challenged about why they believe what's right is right. I also agree with what someone earlier said about how "no god, no values" type people or "you left Christianity just so you could sin" types weirdly imply that THEY'd go on some kind of stabby rampage without their skydaddy to hold them back. You could easily strike back by pointing out that lack of conscience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
falemon Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 You can find some good stuff in it but over all the Bible is a very immoral book. That was all I was saying, that there is some good stuff in it Now moving on, since learning whatever I learned from the Bible I know there are much better books to read, which is why I've not read the bible since de-converting. I might take a peek from time to time for some of the good stuff, but I've devoted moe than enough of my personal time reading it for myself, so now I'm focusing more on other literature, as so many have suggested. In my opinion, if one is interested in morals there are many books giving a brief overview of subjects to consider, and I'm sure there are plenty of such books to provoke thought, and also give you a nice starting point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owen652 Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 Biblegod was the inventor of genocide - he loves killing people by the hundreds of thousands, just read the OT. Morality? God? Pfffft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilovemybrain Posted December 9, 2012 Share Posted December 9, 2012 My brief answer to the question of whether there is right or wrong? It depends a lot on the definition of those words, "right" and "wrong." To a Christian fundamentalist, "wrong" means "broke the rules set forth by a deity." It's not the same thing non-fundies mean when they think of morality. I prefer the terms "good" and "bad" as it seems in my mind, to be more of a continuum with a lot of gray and varying levels of goodness and badness and consequences. I guess everyone else has done a good job of discussing the ins and outs of this question, but this is my "quick version." If you make sure you and whoever you are talking to, can agree on the meaning of the terms you're talking about, then it's easier to say "no, if you mean RULES set up by a god (which 30,000 different versions of christianity can't even agree on anyway) then no, in THAT sense, no there is no morality." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llwellyn Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 My brief answer to the question of whether there is right or wrong? It depends a lot on the definition of those words, "right" and "wrong." To a Christian fundamentalist, "wrong" means "broke the rules set forth by a deity." It's not the same thing non-fundies mean when they think of morality. I prefer the terms "good" and "bad" as it seems in my mind, to be more of a continuum with a lot of gray and varying levels of goodness and badness and consequences. I guess everyone else has done a good job of discussing the ins and outs of this question, but this is my "quick version." If you make sure you and whoever you are talking to, can agree on the meaning of the terms you're talking about, then it's easier to say "no, if you mean RULES set up by a god (which 30,000 different versions of christianity can't even agree on anyway) then no, in THAT sense, no there is no morality." I really like this point that you've made. "Morality" may be a term that does not have use for anyone except a Christian and a Muslim because they have already defined that term to mean "rules dictated by a superior deity, enforced with hellfire." How can anyone but Muslims and Christians have any basis for that kind of morality? It is not useful to try to co-opt their lingo and make an argument for why our definitions of that lingo are correct. Better just to leave aside the words that they have defined, and pick up words that we can ourselves define. This is why I think that Pantheists should NOT try to redefine the word "God." That word already belongs to Christianity. Shirley McClaine was wrong when she said "I am God." She was trying to employ a word that ought to be irrelevant to a pantheist. Rather than try to wrestle words away from Christians, we should just develop meaning for our own words. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lerk Posted December 21, 2012 Share Posted December 21, 2012 I'm coming to this discussion really late, but one thing that stuck out for me was when someone on g+ suggested that I read C. S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". I had asked a question about how morality proved that there is a God in a discussion where everyone assumes I am still a Christian. I don't remember the exact context, but the guy said "read Mere Christianity, it's AMAZING!" So I read it. The argument Lewis makes is that because every culture has a sense a write and wrong, that there must be some sort of moral code that we're born with, and therefore it must be put there by God, because it isn't learned. I took this argument as further evidence that there is no god. Most people seem to have negative emotions about hurting people and animals, but not all people. Some children cry when other children cry, but some children are just born mean, it seems. On top of that, not everyone agrees as to this moral code. If a god put it in us, it should be consistent, and we would not have to be taught to be ethical. This gives us all the more reason to believe that religions were developed as a way of passing down and/or enforcing a moral code as the "prophets" saw fit. Society may be better able to develop a consistent and good moral code once we get religion out of the way, because we will no longer be able to be dogmatic about adhering to different "inerrant" books that have been written. Of course, the same types of people who put it in a religious context will be involved in creating the non-religious code, so not much will change, but at least there can be real discussion rather than anyone claiming the matter is settled by a higher power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lerk Posted December 21, 2012 Share Posted December 21, 2012 "sense of". I need to post more so I can get to the point where I can edit my posts! every culture has a sense a write and wrong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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