It's the subliminal chatter running in your mind as the English language is butchered-Very few of these are clever, either.

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

The moral standard of western civilization is founded upon judeo-christian beliefs. Read:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595555455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366921071&sr=8-1&keywords=book+that+made+your+world

Following the morality the biblical God advocates is the hardest thing you will ever do. The standard of today is a superficial, politically correct morality where you pretend to be nice to people but curse them when they aren't around. God requires a transformation on the inside where you have genuine love for your fellow man.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Are you saying nigh universal adherence to certain moral standards isn't evidence for an absolute standard of morality?

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

You don't understand what God was doing in the Old Testament, or why He did it the way He did. It is morally consistent with His goodness and holiness, and there are logical reasons for why this is so. So far you are not interested in hearing them or discussing them. When you are let me know. In the end you don't have any excuse for suppressing the truth about Jesus, no matter what you think about how God acted in the Old Testament.

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

Basically, what you're saying is that because 2+2 probably equals four everywhere in the Universe, you are free to make absolute statements about morality? The fact is that your belief system leaves you with no justification for any absolute statement what so ever. Why should 2 + 2 always equal 4 in the first place? Can you tell me why the laws of physics should work in the same way 5 seconds from now without using circular reasoning?

Can you justify any piece of knowledge without God? If you can then tell me one thing you know and how you know it. Could you be wrong about everything you know?

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

It comes back to the same question: As the giver of life, and the adjudicator of His Creation, is it wrong for God to take life?

And here's another interesting brain tickler. If everything god commands is right, and god has a track record of testing his faithful with their willingness to commit infanticide, how can you say that this lady isn't moral?

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170166_1_baby-s-death-baby-s-father-documents

The scripture is finished and anything which contradicts it is not of God.

Wrong, I know that things are wrong because humans and cultures have a long history of interacting with reality, and certain strategies have been more successful than others. You haven't spent one iota of your time discrediting this notion, whereas I have given you plenty of examples crediting mine and discrediting yours.

What I am supposed to be discrediting? You're asking me to nail jello to a wall. You have not even defined what "successful" is supposed to mean beyond pure survival. In that case, every civilization has been successful. Tell me what your definition of success is supposed to be.

For the millionth time, I have no hopes of convincing you of anything - you'll defend your stance against literally any proof. But you seem to come here on the sift with the intent of demonstrating to others that there is some logical basis for your beliefs.

What proof? The foundation of atheism stands upon the shifting sands of relative truth. You, the atheist, ultimately make yourself the measure of all truth. Because of that, you can't tell me a single fact about the world that you can justify.

Well you're failing miserably, mainly because you are only capable of restating the following sentence as if it is an agreed upon truth:

"Not only is the entire concept logically contradictory, but it doesn't match our experience, which is that some things are absolutely wrong. "

I don't expect you to have any good support for that, but the audience out there just waiting to be convinced, they will need at least something.

Torturing babies for fun; not absolutely wrong?

I'm still waiting for you to give Stalin some kind, any kind of argument as to why he should adopt your morality and abandon his own. If you can't tell Stalin why he is wrong, then you have no hope of escaping the charge of incoherency.

"... If people rob and cheat you, you don't say that they are just executing their particular survival strategy, you say that those things are wrong. You know they are wrong because you have a God given conscience which tells you that they are. "

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

Do you see that these are absolute statements? On what grounds do you say there is no absolute morality? Saying there are no rules is a rule; this statement contradicts itself

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

When God issued the command to wipe out Canaan, it would have been immoral for the Israelites to disobey Him.

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

I loved his show "The F Word" it was a truer Gordon, He took a bunch of heat from PETA cause he showed his son how to kill a rabbit on the air, they trapped one and broke it's neck backwards for insta kill. Then he had his son dispatch the next one. On a later show he cut a lambs neck to bleed it as it hung upside down then butchered it. Then on another episode brought a deer in draped over his shoulders to the kitchen.

and another episode killing puffin in Iceland got him a lot of PETA controversy.

I love that show The F Word, you can download every uncensored episode on torrent sites like kat.ph or thepiratebay.se since it doesn't air anymore all 4 seasons and they don't censor any of the episodes.

it's his best work.

@shinyblurry

I'm not claiming any moral high ground here. I'm just asking you to convince me that YOUR claim that the god of the Old Testament is a solid foundation for morality is correct.

So convince me.

How is Jehovah's inability to take a consistent stance on whether or not it is ok to butcher toddlers consistent with YOUR claim that God is a solid foundation for morality?

Now stop being a coward and give it your best shot.

I wouldn't say anything, I don't think that it would be particularly effective. We all have our own idea of what morality is, and Stalin's is a very complex result of innumerable factors like upbringing, disposition and circumstance, and it would be a bit self important of me to think that I could argue that out of him. He lived, acted, died and left his mark on history. The paremeters set forth by the physical world and the collective actions of everyone else who has lived either as a contemporary or since has judged which of those actions have value and will live on. It's a messy process, certainly, but it's just how things work.

In other words, you don't have any argument as to why Stalin should adopt your morality and abandon his own. If you do I invite you to post it here. How can you escape Ravi's charge that atheism is incoherent in the absence of any such argument?

Thankfully, we seem to be heading in a direction that diverges considerably from that Stalin would espouse. I think that a certain evolutionary tendency towards beneficial collectivism is responsible for that.

Mind you that I'm not arguing for a one world government here, but rather I think that a sense of connection and personal responsibility for the wellbeing of everything else on this planet, ecosystem and all, will bode well for how I and my descendants experience this thing we call life.

It's only one of many competing survival strategies, and nothing more.

So if Hitler had won and the world was in the grips of his totalitarian regime, this would just a particular evolutionary tendency playing out? What makes one better than the other?

"Do you believe that there has ever been a case where slavery has been justified, and do you believe that there has ever been a good reason for anyone to butcher a toddler with a sword?"

Why is it wrong to do either of those things?

@shinyblurry - I'm still curious as to how you'll answer this:

"Do you believe that there has ever been a case where slavery has been justified, and do you believe that there has ever been a good reason for anyone to butcher a toddler with a sword?"

Personally could have done without the butcher element ... other than THAT ... ^ up

Saying that Hitler's or Stalin's actions are extreme but logical conclusions of an Atheistic worldview is as dumb as me saying that the Spanish Inquisition or the crusades are a similar indictments against Christianity. Personally, I won't stoop so low.

In pointing out that Christians have had wildly varying interperetations of morality, I am just arguing that your method does not yield particularly impressive results in a broad sense. Which is only relevant because the whole talk seems to spend a lot of time concentrating on horrific results that are supposedly a logical conclusion of atheism, and then it argues that it has a better idea.

However since you can just endlessly cherry pick which individuals and even which specific actions do or do not reflect this "ultimate truth," then I'll just limit myself to your God and ask the following question:

Do you believe that there has ever been a case where slavery has been justified, and do you believe that there has ever been a good reason for anyone to butcher a toddler with a sword?

*length=3:07 *quality cheesy goodness from one of my all time favorite comedians [right up there with Jonathon Winters].

I still quote his: "Show me a butcher on vacation and I'll show you a meat loaf" from time to time

we've got one of these out at the pork processing plant for lykes. Pigs are killed with this huge device that look like headphones but it's actually 2 metal probes that go on the head and zap it with tons of electricity that kill the animal fairly instantly. Then they are hung up and butchered in an almost assembly line fashion. Workers all stand in line getting their bits and pieces assigned to them.

but some pigs are discarded for not passing inspection, sick, or whatnot, their entire body goes into the shredder that looks just like this. it's a gruesome scene to watch. There are many many videos of such from horses to pigs going into this same exact brand shredder on liveleak, theync, or ogrishforum

thankfully I don't work there any longer, I still love pork though. But that shredder is insane.

You couldn't have possibly read my post and the spirit in which it was written and mistook me for someone who has a desire to place in office someone who would fiscally damage this country more than it already is. Or was that rhetorical question just designed to make a point? I want all the boats to rise, don't you?

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

I'm not 100% against businesspeople being involved in politics, but you have to understand where a Venture Capitalist like Romney comes from.
For example. Sealy used to be the biggest seller of mattresses in America by a wide margin. Huge, very successful company. Bain (under Romney) bought a controlling share and re-structured the company. They slashed the ad budget and dropped the quality so mattresses lasted only half as long. Profits shot up, and a few years later Bain flipped the company for a huge profit. But those profits were at the expense of customer loyalty Sealy quickly started to hemorrhage money, and competitors were quick to swoop in and take up the slack. Two weeks ago Sealy agreed to a buyout to avoid bankruptcy. It's estimated several thousand employees will be laid off in the process. They go from being a rock steady, solid-performing company, to ruin because of Bain's involvement.
Is that the kind of government you want?
>> ^silvercord:
It's also important to remember that neither broke businesses nor broke governments can take care of people.
I have run my own business off and on for thirty five years and can honestly say that I have never looked at it with the cynicism I see in the general population. I believe that if we take care of people, both our customers and employees, the dollars will take care of themselves. By the same token, I can't cripple the business by taking care of people or there won't be any business left to take care of people. That is what making a profit is all about; people get taken care of.
The same applies to government. The government which insists on not operating in the black will ultimately hurt the very people it desires to help. Our government simply must get back in the black. And when that tide comes in, all the boats rise. >> ^Drachen_Jager:
>> ^Mauru:
How do you call that: "Saved by the bell" For Romney?
To be fair, Obama was playing hugely on his experience there.
I am not a huge fan of Obama, but in this whole debate Romney came across as a bit of a clown. He obviously knows a lot about business stuff but his world-view really is quite skewered as many have suspected.

I think it's important to remember though, a businesses first concern is to make money first, take care of people second. A government's job is to take care of people first.
Hiring a venture capitalist to run a government is a little like hiring a butcher as a dog-walker because he 'knows about animals'.

I'm not 100% against businesspeople being involved in politics, but you have to understand where a Venture Capitalist like Romney comes from.

For example. Sealy used to be the biggest seller of mattresses in America by a wide margin. Huge, very successful company. Bain (under Romney) bought a controlling share and re-structured the company. They slashed the ad budget and dropped the quality so mattresses lasted only half as long. Profits shot up, and a few years later Bain flipped the company for a huge profit. But those profits were at the expense of customer loyalty Sealy quickly started to hemorrhage money, and competitors were quick to swoop in and take up the slack. Two weeks ago Sealy agreed to a buyout to avoid bankruptcy. It's estimated several thousand employees will be laid off in the process. They go from being a rock steady, solid-performing company, to ruin because of Bain's involvement.

Is that the kind of government you want?

>> ^silvercord:

It's also important to remember that neither broke businesses nor broke governments can take care of people.
I have run my own business off and on for thirty five years and can honestly say that I have never looked at it with the cynicism I see in the general population. I believe that if we take care of people, both our customers and employees, the dollars will take care of themselves. By the same token, I can't cripple the business by taking care of people or there won't be any business left to take care of people. That is what making a profit is all about; people get taken care of.
The same applies to government. The government which insists on not operating in the black will ultimately hurt the very people it desires to help. Our government simply must get back in the black. And when that tide comes in, all the boats rise. >> ^Drachen_Jager:
>> ^Mauru:
How do you call that: "Saved by the bell" For Romney?
To be fair, Obama was playing hugely on his experience there.
I am not a huge fan of Obama, but in this whole debate Romney came across as a bit of a clown. He obviously knows a lot about business stuff but his world-view really is quite skewered as many have suspected.

I think it's important to remember though, a businesses first concern is to make money first, take care of people second. A government's job is to take care of people first.
Hiring a venture capitalist to run a government is a little like hiring a butcher as a dog-walker because he 'knows about animals'.

It's also important to remember that neither broke businesses nor broke governments can take care of people.

I have run my own business off and on for thirty five years and can honestly say that I have never looked at it with the cynicism I see in the general population. I believe that if we take care of people, both our customers and employees, the dollars will take care of themselves. By the same token, I can't cripple the business by taking care of people or there won't be any business left to take care of people. That is what making a profit is all about; people get taken care of.

The same applies to government. The government which insists on not operating in the black will ultimately hurt the very people it desires to help. Our government simply must get back in the black. And when that tide comes in, all the boats rise. >> ^Drachen_Jager:

>> ^Mauru:
How do you call that: "Saved by the bell" For Romney?
To be fair, Obama was playing hugely on his experience there.
I am not a huge fan of Obama, but in this whole debate Romney came across as a bit of a clown. He obviously knows a lot about business stuff but his world-view really is quite skewered as many have suspected.

I think it's important to remember though, a businesses first concern is to make money first, take care of people second. A government's job is to take care of people first.
Hiring a venture capitalist to run a government is a little like hiring a butcher as a dog-walker because he 'knows about animals'.

>> ^Mauru:

How do you call that: "Saved by the bell" For Romney?
To be fair, Obama was playing hugely on his experience there.
I am not a huge fan of Obama, but in this whole debate Romney came across as a bit of a clown. He obviously knows a lot about business stuff but his world-view really is quite skewered as many have suspected.


I think it's important to remember though, a businesses first concern is to make money first, take care of people second. A government's job is to take care of people first.

Hiring a venture capitalist to run a government is a little like hiring a butcher as a dog-walker because he 'knows about animals'.