Another Christian Being Offered On The PC Alter?

[seer]

As does greed, cruelty and dominance - so what is your point?

[Starlight]

And get off your high horse Sam, you just are not as bright as you think you are.

[seer]

But if challenged before the SCOTUS and ruled against, then The Constitution by virtue of being is the supreme law of the land would prevail.

The point on that discussion Tass was to show the strong Christian influence on the Founding of this nation, and to show that the Founders did not have any problem with showing preference to the Christian religion - even using tax dollars to support it.

No citizen has the legal right to marry their sister whereas, until the SCOTUS ruling last week, some citizens had the right to marry the person they were attracted to whilst other citizens were denied that right. In short, discriminated against.

But no person had the right to marry someone of the same sex. What legal reasoning could you possibly offer to discriminate against a man and his sister?


This does nothing Tass to tell us how rights become inviolable. None of this is sufficient - it is a mere assertion. When a primate takes the food and female from another primate, or a Nazi gasses Jewish children, where are your inviolable rights? Inviolable means incapable of being violated. You are not making sense.

Well where, in your supposedly godly universe, were the inviolable rights of the victims of the Inquisitions, or the Crusades, or the 30 years war, or the Native Americans slaughtered by the Christian colonialists, or the Latin American natives destroyed by the Christian Conquistadors etc, etc, etc?

That has nothing to do with anything. We agree, men can be wicked. My point is that in a godless universe inviolable rights are a legal fiction, a myth.

[The Thinker]

Some yes, you no. You are angry and knee jerk.

Well, all you do all day is complain about atheists, leftists, gay marriage, and abortion on this website. You sir, are pretty damn angry.

[The Thinker]

So you agree that slavery is only wrong in a relative sense?

No. You do.

[Sam]

Right, and you are incorrect. I am not speaking of epistemology when it comes to ethics but of ontology. And my point is that objective moral law (i.e. objective to and independent of mankind) can't not exist, apart from God. If God does not exist moral ideals are subjective to human beings. Where no moral opinion is more correct or valid than its opposite. Tell me exactly where I am off.

Last time you claimed to be talking ontology, you couldn't even define what an "ontological quality" was. Regardless, your question oft repeated isn't "Explain how morality without God can exist" (metaphysics/ontology) but rather "How is morality without God not arbitrary?" And that is an epistemological question, not a metaphysical one, since you're asking a question about a knowledge/belief claim. And as beliefs about God are dynamic, the counterclaim is easily given: "Ascribing 'objective' morality to God merely adds one more element of arbitrariness."

It's the wrong hill to fight on, whether you're talking ontology or epistemology. And continuing to use it as some sort of argument-ending cudgel whenever possible is counterproductive. Move on, man.

[The Thinker]

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.

I don't have to borrow anything from theism to have an objective moral standard. I've already shown how the euthyphro dilemma nullifies divine command theory and you still have not refuted it. If you claim you did, link me to your "refutation." You're just asserting claims after claims. I will debate you any day on morality and ethics. Bring it on baby.

[RumTumTugger]

I don't have to borrow anything from theism to have an objective moral standard. I've already shown how the euthyphro dilemma nullifies divine command theory and you still have not refuted it. If you claim you did, link me to your "refutation." You're just asserting claims after claims. I will debate you any day on morality and ethics. Bring it on baby.

keep saying that to yourself and you may come to believe it but it is not the truth.

[seer]

Last time you claimed to be talking ontology, you couldn't even define what an "ontological quality" was. Regardless, your question oft repeated isn't "Explain how morality without God can exist" (metaphysics/ontology) but rather "How is morality without God not arbitrary?" And that is an epistemological question, not a metaphysical one, since you're asking a question about a knowledge/belief claim. And as beliefs about God are dynamic, the counterclaim is easily given: "Ascribing 'objective' morality to God merely adds one more element of arbitrariness."

Nonsense Sam, I gave you a dictionary definition of ontology that fit perfectly with my point about killing unborn children. And I never claimed that morality can not exist apart from God - never. Only that it can not be objective to humankind. And that no moral opinion would be more correct or valid that its opposite. And it is decidedly not about epistemology it is about what moral law or ethics actually are. Are they merely subjective human inventions or are they grounded in something more. Something eternal, immutable - certain. And that is my only point.

[seer]

I don't have to borrow anything from theism to have an objective moral standard. I've already shown how the euthyphro dilemma nullifies divine command theory and you still have not refuted it. If you claim you did, link me to your "refutation." You're just asserting claims after claims. I will debate you any day on morality and ethics. Bring it on baby.

Really? I didn't see you respond to Joel's last post: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post216377

[seer]

No. You do.

Good Thinker - I have been waiting for a rational response from you for how this could be in your world. How could any moral or ethical belief not be relative. You already agree that if you were born white in the antebellum south you would probably have had no problem with slavery. So who is correct - the Thinker of today, or the Thinker of yesterday - and why?

[The Thinker]

And your opinion, that anybody should take him seriously, is noted and dismissed as such.

Our opinions will rise or fall based on the evidence we have to back them up. I actually used your evidence against you, showing you how stupid you are.

That's nice, now can you show me where the link where he actually agrees with that or are you trying a desperate gambit in which citing a source somehow automatically means the person(s) in question are in 100% lock step agreement with everything the cited source says? Fascinating, I can't wait for you to actually refute the article given instead of trying this little diversion, to avoid having to deal with what the article actually says.

Haha. You're totally lost. If you are talking about your link, of course the author of your link doesn't say that slavery for foreigners could be forced and lifelong. That's because your link is written by an apologist who's trying to make Christianity look good. He cites from the book I quoted from, but he ignored the part about how slavery in the ANE wasn't mere indentured servitude for foreigners. In other words, your source is selectively quoting to try "a desperate gambit" in order to make biblical slavery appear nicer than it actually was. There's no diversion here, I directly addressed your attempt to refute biblical slavery and you have not addressed it other than claim your link doesn't agree with my link - but my link was cited by your author, but only in a part that addressed slavery among Jews, not foreigners. That's deliberate obfuscation.

Diversion noted. Your attempts to not answer the article, but try distraction after distraction is noted. What's the problem, do you think these little games impress anybody here? Now sweety, you wanted to play the elephant hurling game, now go ahead and refute what the article specifically says instead of calling people a bunch of names and trying to link up guilt by association as a way to slither your way out of the hole you dug for yourself. Keep digging and remember, you wanted to play this game so I just returned the favor. Don't get mad at me because you don't want to play your own game.

Nope. No diversion. I did directly answer your article and showed with one of its own sources that my original point, and the point Stark makes in his book is affirmed by it. You show me how slavery for foreigners was not by contrast, something that could be acquired through "capture in war, kidnapping, or force, unless protected by the local ruler or given resident alien status."

[Sam]

Nonsense Sam, I gave you a dictionary definition of ontology that fit perfectly with my point about killing unborn children. And I never claimed that morality can not exist apart from God - never. Only that it can not be objective to humankind. And that no moral opinion would be more correct or valid that its opposite. And it is decidedly not about epistemology it is about what moral law or ethics actually are. Are they merely subjective human inventions or are the grounded in something more. Something eternal, immutable - certain. And that is my only point.

No, you didn't define "ontological quality". You claimed that an ontological property of humans was being the "offspring of God" but you didn't define what an "ontological quality" is. And here in the above post, you're drifting even further from an ontological argument: you're arguing for the certainty of a set of truth claims which is as far into epistemology as you can get.

That you "never claimed that morality can not exist apart from God" is exactly what I wrote and it's exactly why you're making an epistemological argument rather than a metaphysical one. You are demanding (again and again) that people address the lack of certainty in their ethical or moral frameworks, while claiming that your own moral framework is immutable and certain because it's grounded in God.

Of course, anyone looking at the diversity of religious morality today and large changes in moral rules even within small religious subgroups would have to acknowledge that this talk about immutability and certainty in religious morality is off-base. God's morality may not change but the moral precepts of His followers certainly have, certainly do, and certainly will in the future. Lambasting others' moral framework as being prone to change is ironic at best and hypocritical at worst and myopic all the way through.

So back to my original point: if you're going to use the language of the philosophy, do the philosophy. If you're going to make a deal out of a perfect rule-giver, actually address the problem of that morality being filtered through (highly) imperfect vessels. That would be interesting, as opposed to yet another post chain about having hypothetical access to an immutable moral code.

[seer]

No, you didn't define "ontological quality". You claimed that an ontological property of humans was being the "offspring of God" but you didn't define what an "ontological quality" is. And here in the above post, you're drifting even further from an ontological argument: you're arguing for the certainty of a set of truth claims which is as far into epistemology as you can get.

See you define the terms, they cry foul when I don't meet then. Ontology has to do with, by definition, what something is by nature. Men by nature are God's children, created in His image. What more do we need?

That you "never claimed that morality can not exist apart from God" is exactly what I wrote and it's exactly why you're making an epistemological argument rather than a metaphysical one. You are demanding (again and again) that people address the lack of certainty in their ethical or moral frameworks, while claiming that your own moral framework is immutable and certain because it's grounded in God.

No I am not! It is what logically follows. If no God then, if God, then. I'm not speaking at all about how we know what it good or not.

So back to my original point: if you're going to use the language of the philosophy, do the philosophy. If you're going to make a deal out of a perfect rule-giver, actually address the problem of that morality being filtered through (highly) imperfect vessels. That would be interesting, as opposed to yet another post chain about having hypothetical access to an immutable moral code.

And in all this you have dodged my question - remember you brought up the self-evident thing, and have yet to explain how the truths in question are self-evident. Apart from bare assertion.

[Adrift]

You are demanding (again and again) that people address the lack of certainty in their ethical or moral frameworks, while claiming that your own moral framework is immutable and certain because it's grounded in God.

No he isn't. He's demanding that people address the lack of source for their ethical or moral frameworks.