Are you asking why evolution doesn't behave in a more efficient manner? For what purpose would you filter out the natural qualities of existence that give it diversity?

The lazy mistakes of our universe are erosion, planet formation, star formation, etc. etc. It's all mistakes. The universe doesn't care if one quality is more beneficial than another, otherwise all of existence would be perfect and in harmony -- One thing changed and causation caused another thing to happen. Because those things happened, it lead to another thing, which formed another thing in a pattern that eventually gave shape to something greater than all the random, lazy changes before it.

That's language, that's sports, that's art, that's technology, and that's mankind.

The universe is not "correct" as defined by human concepts of efficiency or return on investment. Things take time to evolve because the process of evolution is gradual and made up of changes with no particular value. We merely add value to things based upon our needs and desires. Correctness forms over time, as we either process things into "culture" or deviate from that culture for a more efficient pathway.

Try taking a favorite chewtoy away from your dog and then tell me that property is a concept particular only to mankind ;-)

People are aware that the concept of property is particular to mankind, and only fairly recently in the historical scheme of things at that, right? Not to get too philosophical, but basically what you're laughing at is a dumb bird getting hurt, but not a thieving bird.. Which is fine, I guess, if that's your bag.

I do have some anger issues-The crux of that issue perhaps possibly, my perception that I might be living in an era of mass-hypnotism of the planet's inhabitants through technologies envisioned originally to afford power now hi-jacked (and historically so) by charlatans posing as world leaders?

Another obvious turd lodged in my craw? How about a social-evolutionary path akin to Bradbury's "Fahrenheit" or Orwell's "84" turning an entire continent of what formerly consisted of self-determined, practical, and classically educated hard-working sorts into a cast of extras from "Idiocracy?"

Yeah, it pisses me off that so many people are distracted by what they are being told about some illusory process in which the common citizen might take part to imagine some bright future for mankind falling somewhere between the golden rule and the code of Hammurabi. The planet is being hi-jacked by a new breed of criminals frighteningly similar to the most egregious of old-For everything there is a season my friend, Solomon's wisdom in Ecclesiastes 3 it just as pertinent today as it will be for humans for the next 10,000 years-"a time to kill and heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up."

I'd like to imagine the new-construction-upon-the-ashes to include projects both organic and nano-technological in nature with the transformation of our specie's bodies, minds, souls and spirits as a prime objective.

You are living in these wonderful and frightening times, consider this incarnation your most favorable having been born when, where, how, why, and what you are-You are an amazing collection of cellular consciousness manifest in the wonder of flesh.
It's pretty fucking cool actually, and these are the ideas upon which I try to meditate upon every waking hour.

Oh yeah, and I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore, Hail Satan, Hail Eris, Jesus Saves.


(BTW, to answer your inquiry as to the "knowledge" that administrations keep in the dirty-little-secrets folder? Do you really have to ask about need-to-know information that would end the lives of yourself and everyone you know, because that's what the United States can do for you alla-Hoover, alla-Bush, alla-New World Order Über Alles.
What you think you know you don't, and you can't form an opinion or come to a conclusion on a subject for which you have incomplete data with which to arrive at those opinions or conclusions. Simple deductive reasoning or even a pragmatic model of the scientific method should make this screamingly clear to anyone who distrusts the anemically hostile Babylonian system .

Where's the love. I not hear to say that the Republican are morally superior in today's society.

I'm not implying that the Republicans are in the same groove as Lincoln. But still they freed the slaves , set up black Colleges and the the NAACP.

While the Democrats wiped their slaves, formed the KKK and hindered the civil rights for as long as possible. Democrats are despicable. They promote equal rights only if you view is the same as theirs. They have enslaved the poor for over 50 years, telling them keep voting for us and well keep giving you substandard living. That's not freedom that's enslavement.

All of this and the media of today hails the Democrat party as the greatest party of mankind. What blind sheep.



Even worse if you are a black republican. You are deemed an Uncle Tom by the left. That's the exact opposite of the original meaning.

By far the Republicans are the lessor of 2 evils. Both parties are corrupt beyond any sense of the measure.

Both are so far from the ideals founding fathers and the Constitution.

Funny to me that Dawkins thinks he's charming, and the lack of the trait is due to negative media. Heh.
As someone who is Atheist/doubtfully-Agnostic (understanding that something like this can never, ever be proven one way or another, damn religious "logic"), I've really hated Dawkins and the late-Hitchens monologues about religious belief.
While I wholly agree with them, I could never reconcile that someone who had the world-stage could be so obtuse and offensive about spreading their beliefs. I could never claim they spoke for my beliefs, because they treated those who held that which they found false with such disrespect and disregard to the point of actually lowering themselves below those which they attacked.
You will never change the minds of those you disagree with by calling them ignorant or stupid, and for years that is exactly what they have done, in all all their own personal ignorance and blindness in the face of their celebrity. It was disgusting.
In this interview it seems like Dawkins has now found a "rival" who has tempered his idiocy to some extent (though the quote I started this post with would be argument to the contrary), but hopefully they will learn.
I abhor fundamental religious belief, but Dawkins and Hitchens were two atheists who, by their attitudes and egos alone, proved a need for a supposed moral belief system for all of mankind.

Wish those guys had gone to school or somethin'!

I'll try a point by point and then I'll probably lose track.

-I wouldn't say courage. I would say naivety (the two are confused alot....maybe you need one for the other...idk). He was used by wiki-leaks and the gang as a suicide bomber and now he will be raped in jail for the rest of his life...and nothing will change except that wiki-leaks gained notoriety. I bet he would take it back if he could.

-He was and is a traitor to his country (it's sad because I get the feeling he didn't fully understand what he was doing...prob. blinded by wiki leaks and gang). You don't release gobs of state secrets like that. Why couldn't he just release the helicopter video or other choice things? (still bad even then).

-He was a soldier. He swore an oath. Anyone even remotely connected to the military understands what I'm getting at. If he wanted to be a champion of truth he shouldn't have gone into the military. Become a reporter, a politician. There are plenty of more legitimate (effectiveness aside) ways to do what he did.

-The concept of total transparency as applied to states is stupid. Every state since the beginning of time has functioned because of its ability to have secrets. Try it on an individual level....go around 1 day and tell everyone everything.

-You talk about the absolute hypocrisy of this administration? Every administration in the history of mankind (excluding Camelot, the Magic Kingdom, and/or Castle Greyskull) to a greater or lesser has done the same thing. To think otherwise is naive. Thats how States function....by not telling, lets say, North Korea that we dropped off patriot missiles in Japan or that we have a secret agreement to to attack them with China should anything happen.

-Am I saying that we should be able to hush up the deaths of innocent civilians and etc......no. I'm just saying that there are more responsible ways to ensure that stuff like that doesn't happen.

If Tesla could see them now he may wonder aloud as to why mankind hasn't "switched" the hardware for the transmission of electricity....We'd have to explain to Nicola that unfortunately for mankind, the same cunts drunk on power and control are still alive and kicking.

Your problem is that you confuse the world with what people do. The things people do are the shields against the forces that surround us; what we do as people gives us comfort and makes us feel safe; what people do is rightfully very important, but only as a shield. We never learn that the things we do as people are only shields and we let them dominate and topple our lives. In fact I could say that for mankind, what people do is greater and more important than the world itself.

The world is all that is encased here; life, death, people, the allies, and everything else that surrounds us. The world is incomprehensible. We won't ever understand it; we won't ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat it as it is, a sheer mystery!

An average man doesn't do this, though. The world is never a mystery for him, and when he arrives at old age he is convinced he has nothing more to live for. An old man has not exhausted the world. He has exhausted only what people do. But in his stupid confusion he believes that the world has no more mysteries for him. What a wretched price to pay for our shields!

A warrior is aware of this confusion and learns to treat things properly. The things that people do cannot under any conditions be more important than the world. And thus a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery and what people do as an endless folly.

- castaneda

Yummy, arguing on the internet!
I haven't done this in years, I'm gonna throw my hat in the Ring now.
I spent countless hours here for years, just enjoying the show. Staying out of all this, in the end at least, unimportant chatter. I came for the videos. Then somebody starts singing about sluts and I end up with an account. What can I say? I like sluts.
I spent much time reading and skipping over the posts of @shinyblurry here. And I still wonder why people feel the need to argue with him in such detail and length. He talks a lot about his faith in God and Jesus but what it come down to is this: He believes in The Bible.
The Bible features God and Jesus and all that but most important of all, it features a heckload of arguments for all kinds of things that are often in direct conflict.
Earlier in this thread, somebody threw a Bible quote about how rape victims have to marry their rapist in @shinyblurry's face and he actually started to explain (correct me if I misunderstood) how it's a punishment for the rapist that he has to pay money and marry the woman if the father chooses that.
I have money to burn. Is Jessica Alba married and where does her dad live? She's super hot and I *need* that kind of punishment. God wants her to fulfill her marital duties, right? If she's not available, I could make a list.
Now, I could argue this IMO rather distasteful idea with him, quoting the Bible back and forth, using other philosophical sources for arguments (I'm sure Hitchens mentioned rape somewhere sometime) but all that doesn't matter.
He believes in The Bible.
If I went back in time and edited early versions to my liking to include gems like "Every man shall also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed no abomination: they shall surely be praised", old shiny here would organize gay pride parades now. Because it's in the book. Whatever is in there, it's the truth. Whatever.
It's the same reason why creationist (I have no idea if old shiny is among them) can not accept evolution. It's not in the book.
They believe in this powerful, omnipotent god, not just in I-can-command-all-sea-animals-god. No, not that Aquaman shit the Greeks had, I'm talking about I-invented-the-universe-god. Get this, this guy did *invent* the universe. And still it was all some Siegfried and Roy BS we *know* to be nonsense. 7 days? Really? Was he in a hurry? Couldn't he wait until we get to the Game of Thrones and Tivo part of History? Was there another Earth to take care of? Contract work?
The idea to credit that dude for creating Evolution itself is too much to ask for these people. The idea that God created a giant machine (the universe) and allowed it to feature other tiny, tiny machines that repair, reproduce and improve themselves (life itself; evolution), is too mindblowing.
Who's more awesome in your book? The god that can do magic or the god who could do magic but opted for inventing everything science has discovered so far?
You know, science failed to disprove the existence of god. They can't do that yet. But they can disprove The Bible, at least parts. And yet, they still side with that darn book.
They don't care about God, the don't even care about Jesus. They care about what they read about them. They care about their perception of it.
Telling @shinyblurry that Jesus was a little, brown, jewish Hippie who got mixed up with existing mythology is like telling a fourteen year old that Ed Cullen is, by his own admission, a creepy murderer who stalks underage girls 80 years his junior. They don't want to hear it because that is not what the book said. They book didn't say that god created the natural laws of physics, chemistry and biology and set them upon the universe to wreak havoc until dinosaurs showed up. The book said it took 7 days. And ribs and dirt.
The Bible says so. Nothing else matters.
That's why it's pointless to argue scripture with him. The book is everything and allows so brilliantly for circular logic and cherry picking. It worked with slavery and how many are willing to argue nowadays in front of a TV camera for it? But gays are not slaves and women can always be picked on. Some wrong ideas are easier to conceal behind a book cover than others.
The Bible is everything to him, God and Jesus are just featured players. In the end they could be replaced by Donald Duck and Batman, they just weren't around back when they started to write it.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to hear your thoughts about the latest Daft Punk single, @shinyblurry. Or are you more into Rock music?

On a daily basis, politicians, like Obama, and pundits in the lamestream media mindlessly bump their gums about global warming, uh... "climate change" (the term employed when the earth stopped warming), without having the slightest idea what they are talking about. Most simply parrot the line about a "so-called "consensus of scientists," without the slightest knowledge of the science or data, or point to extreme weather events as “proof.” Al Gore and Henry Waxman have become masters at this. Noam Chomsky should stick to linguistics. Once he ventures outside of his specialty, he’s just a run-of-the-mill leftist loon.

Science does not operate on the basis of consensus, but provable fact and hard DATA that is replicable. No one can prove that C02 causes warming, apart from the other forces that are chiefly determinative of climate--solar output, cosmic rays (and their effect on cloud cover), the earth's elliptical orbit, its axial tilt, etc. The earth's climate cycle has been in place for eons and is not being altered by any significant degree by anthropogenic CO2. In fact, 99% of the people who believe in the "global warming crisis" cannot even tell you what the current globally-averaged temperature is, nor how much it may have risen over the past century (or any other time frame for that matter). Nor do they know that the current globally averaged temperature is 1-2 degrees C below what it was during the Medieval Warm Period, when human activity could not have been a factor.

Neither temperatures nor sea level rise are accelerating. Temperatures haven't risen since 1997. And even the U.N. predicts just an 8.5" to 18.5" sea level rise by 2100 (2007 IPCC Report), far below the 20 feet predicted by Al Gore, or the 35 feet predicted by Joe Lieberman in 2002. In fact, sea levels have been rising at a rate of about 7" per century since the end of the last age 12,500 years ago, so the U.N.'s predicted range is likely to fall at the low end.

Weather stations around the world are notoriously unreliable, many placed in locations now near asphalt parking lots, etc., replicating the urban island heat effect. Calculating the globally averaged temperature in an enormously complex task. compounded when scientific frauds like Phil Jones and Michael Mann (of the infamous "hockey stick" graph) hide, and would not supply, their data because it does not support their predetermined conclusions of anthropogenic global warming. (Climategate). This is not surprising, however, since thousands of scientists stand to collectively lose billions in federal research grants if the hoax is exposed (more than $80 billion has already been spent on such research, nearly 500 times what oil companies have spent to fund so-called “skeptics”), a fact totally lost, or grossly misrepresented, by global warming religionists.

The fact is: even if the earth's temperature is rising marginally, from natural forces, it will be far better for mankind than falling temperatures. It will result in higher crop yields and less death around the world. More than twice as many people die of extreme cold than extreme heat.

Contrary to morons such as Al Gore (who will never agree to debate the topic, so fearful is he of getting his clock cleaned), scientific evidence clearly shows that we have had no increase in extreme weather events. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, summed up the latest science on weather extremes when he wrote that “There is no evidence that disasters are getting worse because of climate change....There's really no evidence that we're in the midst of an extreme weather era - whether man has influenced climate or not,”
Pielke also explained that the data does not support linking Hurricane Sandy to man-made global warming. “Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a relative hurricane 'drought'.” But that doesn’t stop politicians from trying to make political hay from them.

Much of the gum bumping about "global warming" may be attributed to the political aspirations of Al Gore who hoped to ride an environmental white horse into the White House. It all comes down to a politically-motivated overreaction to a 0.35 degree C increase in globally-averaged temperatures in the period from 1978-1997. Since 1998, temperatures have flat-lined. They are now at 14.5 degrees Celsius which is exactly where they were in 1997. What this amounted to was a hyperbolic response to a temporary and cyclical climate phenomenon, which has been replicated a myriad of times in human history.

The climate history of the 20th century, by itself, contradicts the CO2 equals warming hypothesis. From 1913-1945, CO2 was not a factor and temperatures rose slightly. And from 1945-1977, temperatures fell in the face of rising CO2. It was only in the period from 1978-1997 that temperatures and CO2 rose simultaneously. But since CO2 is likely to continue to rise for the foreseeable future, we will have periods of both rising and falling temperatures in the face of rising CO2.

The scientific travesty is that many politicians are trying to transform CO2 into a “pollutant” requiring draconian federal regulations whose only effect will be to stifle economic growth. CO2 is a harmless trace element constituting just 0.039 per cent of the earth's atmosphere (390 parts per million by volume). It's what humans and animals exhale and its presence helps plant production. 500 million years ago, CO was 20 times more prevalent in our atmosphere. The aim is to convince the uninformed that carbon dioxide is the equivalent of carbon monoxide, a highly toxic gas.

With time and historical perspective, the global warming crisis will turn out to be the greatest scientific fraud in history. But that won’t politicians from exploiting it in the short term.

On a daily basis, politicians, like Obama, and pundits mindlessly bump their gums about global warming, uh... "climate change" (the term employed when the earth stopped warming), without having the slightest idea what they are talking about. Malloy is just the latest in a long line of demagogic politicians trying to capitalize on the scare. Most simply parrot the line about a "so-called "consensus of scientists," without the slightest knowledge of the science or data, or point to extreme weather events as “proof.”

Science does not operate on the basis of consensus, but provable fact and hard DATA that is replicable. No one can prove that C02 causes warming, apart from the other forces that are chiefly determinative of climate--solar output, cosmic rays (and their effect on cloud cover), the earth's elliptical orbit, its axial tilt, etc. The earth's climate cycle has been in place for eons and is not being altered by any significant degree by anthropogenic CO2. In fact, 99% of the people who believe in the "global warming crisis" cannot even tell you what the current globally-averaged temperature is, nor how much it may have risen over the past century (or any other time frame for that matter). Nor do they know that the current globally averaged temperature is 1-2 degrees C below what it was during the Medieval Warm Period, when human activity could not have been a factor.

Neither temperatures nor sea level rise are accelerating. Temperatures haven't risen since 1997. And even the U.N. predicts just an 8.5" to 18.5" sea level rise by 2100 (2007 IPCC Report), far below the 20 feet predicted by Al Gore, or the 35 feet predicted by Joe Lieberman in 2002. In fact, sea levels have been rising at a rate of about 7" per century since the end of the last age 12,500 years ago, so the U.N.'s predicted range is likely to fall at the low end.

Weather stations around the world are notoriously unreliable, many placed in locations now near asphalt parking lots, etc., replicating the urban island heat effect. Calculating the globally averaged temperature in an enormously complex task. compounded when scientific frauds like Phil Jones and Michael Mann (of the infamous "hockey stick" graph) hide, and would not supply, their data because it does not support their predetermined conclusions of anthropogenic global warming. (Climategate). This is not surprising, however, since thousands of scientists stand to collectively lose billions in federal research grants if the hoax is exposed (more than $80 billion has already been spent on such research, nearly 500 times what oil companies have spent to fund so-called “skeptics”).

The fact is: even if the earth's temperature is rising marginally, from natural forces, it will be far better for mankind than falling temperatures. It will result in higher crop yields and less death around the world. More than twice as many people die of extreme cold than extreme heat. The scientific evidence clearly shows that we have had no increase in extreme weather events. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, summed up the latest science on weather extremes when he wrote that “There is no evidence that disasters are getting worse because of climate change....There's really no evidence that we're in the midst of an extreme weather era - whether man has influenced climate or not,”
Pielke also explained that the data does not support linking Hurricane Sandy to man-made global warming. “Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a relative hurricane 'drought'.” But that doesn’t stop politicians from trying to make political hay from them.

Much of the gum bumping about "global warming" may be attributed to the political aspirations of Al Gore who hoped to ride an environmental white horse into the White House. It all comes down to a politically-motivated overreaction to a 0.35 degree C increase in globally-averaged temperatures in the period from 1978-1997. Since 1998, as Mr. Hart correctly points out, temperatures have flat-lined or declined. What this amounted to was a hyperbolic response to a temporary and cyclical climate phenomenon, which has been replicated a myriad of times in human history.

The climate history of the 20th century, by itself, contradicts the CO2 equals warming hypothesis. From 1913-1945, CO2 was not a factor and temperatures rose slightly. And from 1945-1977, temperatures fell in the face of rising CO2. It was only in the period from 1978-1997 that temperatures and CO2 rose simultaneously. But since CO2 is likely to continue to rise for the foreseeable future, we will have periods of both rising and falling temperatures in the face of rising CO2.

The scientific travesty is that many politicians are trying to transform CO2 into a “pollutant” requiring draconian federal regulations whose only effect will be to stifle economic growth. CO2 is a harmless trace element constituting just 0.039 per cent of the earth's atmosphere (390 parts per million by volume). It's what humans and animals exhale and its presence helps plant production. 500 million years ago, CO was 20 times more prevalent in our atmosphere. The aim is to convince the uninformed that carbon dioxide is the equivalent of carbon monoxide, a highly toxic gas.

With time and historical perspective, the global warming crisis will turn out to be the greatest scientific fraud in history. But that won’t politicians from exploiting it in the short term. Obama has already wasted billions trying to fix a non-problem.
And now he’s even orchestrating the mindless followers of a new secular religion to march on the Mall to advance this silly agenda.

@alcom

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

There is always an appeal to authority, either to God or to men. There are either objective moral values which are imposed by God, or morality is relative and determined by men. If morality is relative then there is no good or evil, and what is considered good today may be evil tomorrow. If it isn't absolutely wrong to murder indiscriminately, for instance, then if enough people agreed that it was right, it would be. Yet, this does not cohere with reality because we all know that murdering indiscriminately is absolutely wrong. The true test of a worldview is its coherence to reality and atheism is incoherent with our experience, whereas Christian theism describes it perfectly.

If you feel the videos provide a valid refutation, could you articulate the argument that they are using so we can discuss them here?

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

The idea of agape love is a Christian idea, and agape love is unconditional love. You do not get agape love out of natural selection because it is sacrificial and sacrificing your well being or your life has a very negative impact on your chance to survive and pass on your genes. However, Christ provided the perfect example of agape love by sacrificing His life not only for His friends and family, but for people who hate and despise Him. In the natural sense, since Jesus failed to pass on His genes His traits should be selected out of the gene pool. Christ demonstrated a higher love that transcends the worldly idea of love. Often when the world speaks of love, it is speaking of eros love, which is love based on physical attraction, or philial love, which is brotherly love. The world knows very little of agape love outside of Christ. Christ taught agape love as the universal duty of men towards God:

Luke 6:27 "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
Luke 6:28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Luke 6:29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
Luke 6:30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Luke 6:31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
Luke 6:32 "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
Luke 6:33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
Luke 6:34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.
Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Luke 6:36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Some people, like Richard Dawkins, see infanticide as being the greatest utility. Some believe that to save the planet around 70 percent of the population must be exterminated. Green thought is to value the health of the planet above individual lives; to basically say that human lives are expendable to preserve the collective. This is why abortion is not questionable to many who hold these ideals; because human life isn't that valuable to them. I see many who have green thoughts contrast human beings to cattle or cockroaches. Utility is an insufficient moral standard because it is in the eye of the beholder.

In regards to the Levitical laws, those were given to the Jews and not the world, and for that time and place. God made a covenant with the Jewish people which they agreed to follow. The covenant God made with the world through Christ is different than the Mosaic law, and it makes those older laws irrelevant. If you would like to understand why God would give laws regarding slavery, or homosexuality, I can elucidate further.

In regards to your paraphrasing of Deuteronomy 23:13-14, this is really a classic example of how the scripture can be made to look like it is saying one thing, when it is actually saying something completely different. Did you read this scripture? It does not say that:

Deuteronomy 23:13 And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.

Deuteronomy 23:14 Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

Gods home on Earth was in the tabernacle, and because God dwelled with His people, He exorted them to keep the camp holy out of reverence for Him.

The rules that God gave for cleanliness were 2500 years ahead of their time:

"In the Bible greater stress was placed upon prevention of disease than was given to the treatment of bodily ailments, and in this no race of people, before or since, has left us such a wealth of LAWS RELATIVE TO HYGIENE AND SANITATION as the Hebrews. These important laws, coming down through the ages, are still used to a marked degree in every country in the world sufficiently enlightened to observe them. One has but to read the book of Leviticus carefully and thoughtfully to conclude that the admonitions of Moses contained therein are, in fact, the groundwork of most of today's sanitary laws. As one closes the book, he must, regardless of his spiritual leanings, feel that the wisdom therein expressed regarding the rules to protect health are superior to any which then existed in the world and that to this day they have been little improved upon" (Magic, Myth and Medicine, Atkinson, p. 20). Dr. D. T. Atkinson

What's interesting about that is that Moses was trained in the knowledge of the Egyptians, the most advanced civilization in the world at that time. Yet you will not find even a shred of it in the bible. Their understanding of medicine at that time led to them doing things like rubbing feces into wounds; ie, it was completely primitive in comparison to the commands that God gave to Moses about cleanliness. Moses didn't know about germs but God did.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_Ancient_Greece

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

If one thing can be said about mankind it is that we have a talent for finding ridiculously extravagant ways of killing ourselves.

This is beautiful and if you're tripping over the spectacle of it, just forget about that for a few minutes and try and feel what they're feeling. Be human for a second, you know that emotional being that existed before the all knowing fact checking internets ruled our way of life?

Just because you don't understand their reality doesn't discredit the authenticity of their love. You will NEVER understand what it is like to be them but their love is meaningful and the ability to show this type of unashamed honesty in front of the world is a TALENT. And it is freeing. Are you free? Really? Hahahahaha

People try so hard to dismantle the beauty of emotional reality for their constantly refined objective truth -- BUT I'd rather be in love and feel what that means in my heart than know a single fact about the mechanics of our universe.

It really is as simple as that for me. Love will always move me and I will die happy for knowing that. Not even the greatest feat of mankind could dwarf the concept of sharing love with another intellect. My obsessions and ambitions are firmly rooted and actualized, but love shakes me to the core as to make all else meaningless. It makes me forget my purpose.

If this is what Christians talk about when they aren't being socio/political judges, and God is love, then I am down with that.

Raise your fist and resist, but don't resist love. It's the only thing that matters.