Another Christian Being Offered On The PC Alter?

[Sam]

Yep, still trying to justify your disgusting ideology, eh? The fact that you compare the lives of children, with the lives of animals, should indicate how morally repugnant you are and why you should never be allowed around children, since you view their lives as disposable.

Not a fan of Peter Singer, eh?

[Tassman]

This is stupid Tass. If you have a largely Christian or Muslim society then it would function just fine.

And let's make it clear there is no diversity of thought with you leftists. As I have shown in thread after thread. It was not Christians who invented speech codes and Political Correctness.

Again Tass, this is just silly. You can have social cohesion and cooperation in totalitarian states. And have for centuries, so your standard of social cohesion doesn't tell us anything.

Except they did work. The largely Christian US has become one of the most potent forces in world history, and let me remind you Norway would be speaking German or Russia is not for the US. And you might be speaking Japanese.

And we know what purely Secular states eventually turn into, just look at the former Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, and more recently Venezuela where there is no longer any freedom of the press. Like speech codes and Political Correctness you leftists must curtail dissent.

or religious. Neither permit dissent.

Are the 1% of alpha males in primate groups restrained? And they don't need to be, they survive just fine, the group survives just fine. Your whole argument is just irrational Tass bro...

[Tassman]

That's what I had thought, but Abigail was hypothesizing a difference. So I was interpreting her charitably to mean that she has only couple figurines, and not individual person figurines. And I was going on that assumption.

Abigail specifically said she would only stock male/female figurines and that she would explain her Christian views to homosexual couples as to why she didn't stock same-sex figurines. Namely that homosexual marriage was against her personal beliefs. In short, discrimination!

Actually my position is that all anti-discrimination laws should be repealed. It should be legal.

This is not an option and the provisos of the Civil Rights Act apply. Sadly they're needed because discrimination continues to be a problem.

On the other hand, I think that prejudicial discrimination is bad.

All discrimination is prejudicial by its very nature.

But what I was pointing out to Tass is that even given the existing laws in the U.S., they don't force someone to stock goods they don't want to stock.

the existing laws in the U.S. do force service-providers coming under the auspices of the Civil Rights Act to provide equal service to all and outlaw discrimination based on race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin

Whatever sign Abigail wants on her shop. She has to deal with her customer relations. Or perhaps no sign. My point wasn't that a sign should be required. My point was that a person's mere expectations should not be enforced upon others. A person's mistaken expectations are the person's own problem.

Not so. A couple's reasonable expectation is that a cake shop catering for weddings will cater for all legal weddings complete with the appropriate accoutrements such as figurines.

If there exists any objective moral standard, it will be divisive in a multicultural, diverse society. Such a standard is necessarily radical in the sense that any deviation from it is wrong, and that it is always condemning the (imperfect) status quo.

There will always be differences of opinion in a multicultural, diverse society. This is why laws such as the Civil Rights Acts, which ban discrimination against those that are different or in a minority, are very important.

[seer]

You mean “just fine” for the Muslims or Christians…what about everyone else? Furthermore we live in an increasingly multicultural, diverse world where religion is increasingly divisive.

First of all the US was rather multicultural, but still largely Christian and did just fine. And you don't think secularism is divisive? Nonsense. And in your world all that matters is social cohesion, and religion certainly can offer that - and has.

Nonsense! “Diversity of thought” is precisely what you have without the imposed conformity of religious dogma; religion is totalitarian in essence.

Tass, is it the Christians who are imposing speech codes on campus? And Political Correctness in general? Who is telling the Christian baker that if he doesn't make a wedding cake for a homosexual marriage that he will face the law? But like you made clear, there is no problem with totalitarianism, like with the higher primates, if it brings social cohesion.

Ah, so for you theocratic morality is about God granting national power, not about a divinely mandated code of behaviour? So, if you’re correct, Alexander the Great conquered the known world under the auspices of his pagan gods. <sarcasm>

Really! This largely Christian nation saved the world from Nazism, Communism and Japanese Imperialism. And if we wanted to, we could have kept Germany, most of the Continent of Europe, and Japan. But what did we do - we gave it all back. We just kept a little land for the graves of our soldiers and Marines. Believe me Tass bro, when Islam comes to your door you Secularists will not have the will or the ability to resist. This is already happening in Europe where Political Correctness won't even let them rightly define the Muslim problem. Where sharia law is being allowed in more and more areas - especially in France.

What an absurdly inaccurate generalization. You’re confusing secular states with ideologically based totalitarian states…secular or religious. Neither permit dissent.

Yes just like the liberals do not permit dissent. The only difference is that you guys don't have complete control - yet.

Yes, they’re restrained by rivals seeking to take their place, as were rival claimants to the throne in the days of absolute monarchies. The non-human primates of course don’t have the intellectual capacity to modify behavior over time in the same way we do.

Wait - I thought all our behavior was predetermined?

[seer]

Social animals such as us are evolutionarily predisposed to maintain social cohesion. It’s a survival thing. What's the alternative, doing what your imaginary deity wants? You can't even tell me what that is.

So if multiculturalism and diversity undermine social cohesion then they are bad things - correct?

[The Thinker]

You're a fundy atheist. Your modus operandi is to try to deconvert Christians to your hopeless worldview. Jesus wasn't nice to the Pharisees. I don't have to be nice to someone who is just barfing out the same dumb fundy atheist canards. Know your little patch of vomit in Biblical Ethics? Repost that in the Tektonics area. I dare you.

and yet you can't refute my arguments.... ha. Your worldview is all hope, no evidence, just like Scientology. I'm trying to spread reality, not fantasy. Your religion is dying every year and good riddance.

[The Thinker]

If an honest seeker asked: Because you should love your neighbor as yourself. If you asked: You already know why. Why do you think so?

Why should I love my neighbor as myself? Suppose my neighbor was a Canaanite? Or a Midiannite? What then?

[Christianbookworm]

and yet you can't refute my arguments.... ha. Your worldview is all hope, no evidence, just like Scientology. I'm trying to spread reality, not fantasy. Your religion is dying every year and good riddance.

You have no valid arguments to refute. So, I'll just continue mocking you!

[seer]

and yet you can't refute my arguments.... ha. Your worldview is all hope, no evidence, just like Scientology. I'm trying to spread reality, not fantasy. Your religion is dying every year and good riddance.

Really Thinker? Where exactly was your evidence for your fictional objective moral standard? And even if there is no god, human beings are religious by nature, we may even be hard wired by the evolutionary process for belief. And it is not dying, you may exchange Christianity in the west for something else, and that something else may be Islam.

[The Thinker]

I'm sorry, but anybody who quotes Thom Stark, as a serious source, does not deserve to be taken seriously.

That's your opinion.

Since you like elephant hurling though, try to refute this:

http://www.christianthinktank.com/qnoslave.html

Have fun. Many have tried and failed to refute it.

From A History Of Ancient Near Eastern Law which your link cites:

4.5.5.1 Enslavement

A citizen could not be enslaved against his will if independent or
without the permission of the person under whose authority he was
if a subordinate member of a household. The only exception was
enslavement by court order for commission of a crime or civil wrong.
Although in practice economic circumstances would often force a
person into slavery, in law his act was, strictly speaking, voluntary.
The foreigner, by contrast, could be enslaved through capture in
war, kidnapping, or force, unless protected by the local ruler or given
resident alien status. In the latter case, protection still might only be
partial. As a proverb puts it: "A resident alien in another city is a
slave."

Foreigners in Israel could be taken into slavery by force and kept for life just as Stark said in his quote and just as in Leviticus 25:44-46 says.


And here's some wonderful "objective" biblical wisdom of the ANE:

Causing the death of or injury
to a slave gave its owner a right to compensation as for loss of or
damage to an economic asset, no different than for an ox. The same
applied to the defloration of another's slave woman, which was treated
as an economic rather than a sexual offense.

Let's make this law today folks, since hey, morality isn't relative to time, place, and culture as the Christian fundies keep saying.

[The Thinker]

You have no valid arguments to refute. So, I'll just continue mocking you!

Assertions, assertions, assertions...

[seer]

Let's make this law today folks, since hey, morality isn't relative to time, place, and culture as the Christian fundies keep saying.

Hey genius, no one said that some laws, even divine laws, could not be relative (Christian are not required to keep the Sabbath). But that they are objective and authoritative. I'm still waiting for a rational explanation concerning your "objective" moral ideal.

[The Thinker]

Really Thinker? Where exactly was your evidence for your fictional objective moral standard? And even if there is no god, human beings are religious by nature, we may even be hard wired by the evolutionary process for belief. And it is not dying, you may exchange Christianity in the west for something else, and that something else may be Islam.

Well you're the kind of person who will just keep asking why? why? why? why? why? why? as a reflex. I can do the same to you. You cannot refute the euthyphro dilemma, and if you cannot do that, you have no basis for divine command theory, which is your "objective" moral standard.

[seer]

Well you're the kind of person who will just keep asking why? why? why? why? why? why? as a reflex. I can do the same to you. You cannot refute the euthyphro dilemma, and if you cannot do that, you have no basis for divine command theory, which is your "objective" moral standard.

Stop trying to turn it around, show us how your moral ideal is objective. Or stop accusing us of "fantasy" when you have one of your own. It is amazing how some of you atheists need to borrow from theism to try and develop an objective moral standard - knowing that without it ethical systems are bankrupt.

[Christianbookworm]

Stop trying to turn it around, show us how your moral ideal is objective. Or stop accusing us of "fantasy" when you have one of your own. It is amazing how some of you atheists need to borrow from theism to try and develop an objective moral standard - knowing that without it ethical systems are bankrupt.

He's a fundy atheist, nothing will get through that thick skull of his.