Animals Doing What Animals Do...

[seer]

Yes, but it is in epistemology where the rubber meets the road and we can test the usefulness and validity of moral systems. I know you think it is easy to determine correct moral views from the Bible, but history and the positions of your fellow Christians today undermine your case.

Enjolras, for the most part it is pretty straight forward. I think we all intuitively understand the golden rule, what it means to love our neighbor. We understand what sexual chastity is. We understand what it means to cloth the poor and feed the hungry. What greed is or chronic drunkenness are. The problem is that we are sinful and often muddle the clear meaning of a text to justify our own bad behavior. So again, though there are some gray areas, the "plain is simple and the simple plain."

I will grant that justice in the afterlife for evil deeds is an advantage for your system. I would like to think that Hitler, Stalin, Mao etc did not get away with the evil they committed. But this is counter-balanced by the thought that most of their victims would share the same fate. It has always struck me a bizarre and unconscionable to imagine that the Jews Hitler murdered are in hell with him because they did not believe Jesus was the Messiah.

We will leave the Jews to God. No matter who finds themselves saved or lost we can be assured that justice was done. We either live in a moral universe or an amoral universe.

[whag]

We will leave the Jews to God. No matter who finds themselves saved or lost we can be assured that justice was done. We either live in a moral universe or an amoral universe.

You should always clarify "justice" when you mention it. In a perfectly "just" world, you'd be hellbound according to Christianity. Mercy tempers justice in this belief system.

Re: the Jews, I think you're afraid to address the obvious. For millenia, the Jews were instructed that the idea of human sacrifice is evil, no matter what form it took. So if the concentration camp Jews were actually pardoned by God sans belief in human sacrifice, it was most likely because God showed mercy on them because of that powerful predisposition. That's the nuanced part you and MaxVel skip over.

[seer]

You should always clarify "justice" when you mention it. In a perfectly "just" world, you'd be hellbound according to Christianity. Mercy tempers justice in this belief system.

No Whag, justice was met in Christ on our behalf ("He who knew no sin was made a sin offering for us"). So either way justice is accomplished.

Re: the Jews, I think you're afraid to address the obvious. For millenia, the Jews were instructed that the idea of human sacrifice is evil, no matter what form it took. So if the concentration camp Jews were actually pardoned by God sans belief in human sacrifice, it was most likely because God showed mercy on them because of that powerful predisposition. That's the nuanced part you and MaxVel skip over.

I have no idea what this means.

[whag]

No Whag, justice was met in Christ on our behalf ("He who knew no sin was made a sin offering for us"). So either way justice is accomplished.

That's human sacrifice.

I have no idea what this means.

Somehow I thought you wouldn't. If, as you say, God pardoned the concentration camp Jews who don't believe the Christian human sacrifice story, it's because He understands their reticience to believe that which He told them was anathema for thousands of years. Why else would unbelieving Jews get a pardon? I'm presuming God is understanding of cognitive obstacles.

[Truthseeker]

No Whag, God has promised to "wipe away every tear." I trust that He can and will do that. Besides there are people who I have loved that that I'm pretty sure died as unbelievers - I'm reconciled to that fact. And there are people I cared for that I'm pretty sure died as believers.

Are you "pretty sure" that is not wishful thinking?

[seer]

Are you "pretty sure" that is not wishful thinking?

No, the point is that I can not see a man's heart.

[seer]

That's human sacrifice.

No actually it is Divine sacrifice.

Somehow I thought you wouldn't. If, as you say, God pardoned the concentration camp Jews who don't believe the Christian human sacrifice story, it's because He understands their reticience to believe that which He told them was anathema for thousands of years. Why else would unbelieving Jews get a pardon? I'm presuming God is understanding of cognitive obstacles.

Again, I don't know what this means since Christians don't teach human sacrifice per se. Yes, Christ had a physical body but it was God the Son that died for our sins.

[Enjolras]

Enjolras, for the most part it is pretty straight forward. I think we all intuitively understand the golden rule, what it means to love our neighbor. We understand what sexual chastity is. We understand what it means to cloth the poor and feed the hungry. What greed is or chronic drunkenness are. The problem is that we are sinful and often muddle the clear meaning of a text to justify our own bad behavior. So again, though there are some gray areas, the "plain is simple and the simple plain."

I think basic morality is easily understood, but more so without any reference to God or the bible. It is when you bring religious texts into the mix where it gets muddled. You mention sin muddling the interpretation, but how do you know whose interpretation is being biased by sin? Yours, or theirs? Maybe both? Maybe the abolishionists were misinterpreting the texts, and the slaveholders were more righteous and had the correct view. How do you really know? If you are in sin you might be blinded to the fact that you are in sin. It is a vicious circle. With the bible, you are just adding more more complication, not less.

We will leave the Jews to God. No matter who finds themselves saved or lost we can be assured that justice was done. We either live in a moral universe or an amoral universe.

What does 'leave the Jews to God' mean, exactly? According to a widely-held Christian interpretation of scripture no one gets to heaven without believing in Jesus. If that is the view you hold, then those gassed in the holocaust are in hell along with their Nazi tormentors.

[Kelp(p)]

I wasn't trying to win anything.

I know you weren't.

[MaxVel]

What you mean is God is perfectly merciful.

Although He is that, too, that is not what I said, nor what I meant.

Justice, according to Christianity, merits Hell. Mercy bypasses justice, in a sense.

You seem to be saying that works, heredity, longsuffering--or a combination of all three--save, rather than the specific belief standard Christianity demands (i.e., faith in the person of Jesus, which the Jews mostly did not have).

No, I'm saying that God is completely fair, and no-one who doesn't deserve separation from God will be separated.

ETA: that's the comforting part.

God is perfectly just, and everyone - sans the forgiveness available through faith in Jesus - who deserves eternal separation from God will get that too.

That's the frightening part.

[Kelp(p)]

No actually it is Divine sacrifice.




Again, I don't know what this means since Christians don't teach human sacrifice per se. Yes, Christ had a physical body but it was God the Son that died for our sins.

No, that's Nestorianism. Christ was of two natures in one being- man and God at once. The godman, the Lord of Glory, truly died on the Cross. But it was not possible for death to hold Him because of His divinity.

You need another tack to show that Penal Substituionary Atonement was not human sacrifice. (Personally, I think it is human sacrifice which is why I reject it for the Recapitulation and Christus Victor views of Atonement, but anyway).

[MaxVel]

That's human sacrifice.

Somehow I thought you wouldn't. If, as you say, God pardoned the concentration camp Jews who don't believe the Christian human sacrifice story, it's because He understands their reticience to believe that which He told them was anathema for thousands of years. Why else would unbelieving Jews get a pardon? I'm presuming God is understanding of cognitive obstacles.

Because they kept the Law faithfully?

Because God sees the sincere intent of their heart?

Because they were honestly ignorant?

Because someone deliberately misled them?

Because they called on Jesus in extremis?


There are a whole lot of possible reasons why God may have pardoned particular people who do not know Jesus. We can't really know exactly what every one of their particular circumstances were, including their innermost thoughts and beliefs.

Which is part of my point: an actual nuanced view, unlike yours, is sensitive to the limits of our knowledge, and doesn't - unlike you - lump a group of people into one category.

[Kelp(p)]

I should add here that there theologians who accept an eternal Hell also often teach that it has gradations of punishment. Even if the Jews did go to an eternal Hell for not excepting Christ, they are most certainly not "burning with the Nazis." They'd probably be in a relatively mild place.

[seer]

I think basic morality is easily understood, but more so without any reference to God or the bible. It is when you bring religious texts into the mix where it gets muddled. You mention sin muddling the interpretation, but how do you know whose interpretation is being biased by sin? Yours, or theirs? Maybe both? Maybe the abolishionists were misinterpreting the texts, and the slaveholders were more righteous and had the correct view. How do you really know? If you are in sin you might be blinded to the fact that you are in sin. It is a vicious circle. With the bible, you are just adding more more complication, not less.

Like you said Enjolras, basic morality is easily understood, as it is in scripture. The problem is, and always has been, our ability or desire to carry it out. Like I said there are gray areas, but that should not prevent us from embracing what is perfectly clear. As far as morality without God - we are back to the fact that apart from God there is no ultimate ruling authority. "Do no harm" is a nice idea but if you can violate it and get away with in in this life time, you win. That is why Kant, no great theist, knew that his moral system was pretty useless unless there was a God to deliver justice in the end.

What does 'leave the Jews to God' mean, exactly? According to a widely-held Christian interpretation of scripture no one gets to heaven without believing in Jesus. If that is the view you hold, then those gassed in the holocaust are in hell along with their Nazi tormentors.

No man is saved apart from Christ - Jew or Gentile. I personally knew two Holocaust survivors, Rabbis no less, who came to receive Christ as the Messiah. The Son of God. The bottom line is that God will remain what He always is - perfectly just. Our sense of justice could no more rise above His than a river could rise above it's source. And it seems to me that if you are worried about those outside of Christ the worse thing you could do is remain outside of Christ yourself.

[The Pixie]

LOL... The reason for this thread is to kind of show that even atheists really do believe that there are objective moral wrongs. Wrongs that are not relative or based simply in culture.

Yes, I believe that.

Unlike certain Christians, who think killing the innocent is fine if God does it, but not if I do. That is a relative morality.

Which I believe is inconsistent with their worldview.

Yet to see any reason to suppose that that is true.