Is this the forum are there any Christians

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There is no prove of any existance of a deity, your default position is god did it so all your reasoning is circular. Which god? The Christian one, Allah, Yahweh all are interpreted as having laid the foundation for ethics and morals.

Judaism decribes moses as a law giver, when it suits, you forget that so you can reinterpret meaning and your meanings change to suit the secular, not the religious. You are no different to an atheist, in so much that you have to work out which moral principles you wish to apply because to obey implicitly the will of whichever god you believe in would conflict with current ethics and morality.
For example would you say it is correct that I be stonned to death for working on a particular day, but be seen to be moral for killing my child because I wished to sacrifice her to my god?

If ethics and morals come from the "word of god" why are they open to so much interpretation, he must not be very literate if he can't put his words down in a way that only those who spend their lives interpreting meaning can gain the "true understanding" of the instruction.

"attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group" - Michael Shermer.

All are human traits, not taught but evolved, passed down in genes from one generation to the next. The above quote is not about man but primates and other social animals have similar traits, of cause anyone of religion will state that these traits are "god given" because they fail to understand the concepts involved to conclude anything else.

You are like a child in the playground who braggs about how "my dad can do that" whenever he hears another child giving an account of something previously unknown. This "child like" explaination of the unknown is a trait of the need to be included in the social group and acceptance that their elders know more, rather than wishing to understand the unknown.

A child who does not have these traits can be classed in some cases as autisic/aspergers, were the genetic traits are switched off.

To hold the view that the reasons why you currently don't steal is because you beleive god said so, is idiotic, the vast majority don't steal because of the predifined genetic code in our DNA that is programmed to want to be part of a social group and such actions would be detrimental to this.

The ethics that work in the bible, had already been definded from the evolution of morality over thousands of years and hijacked as with many other natural traits to suggest that an imaginary being was the cause is what I would expect from primative tribes of the middle east. Don't understand so write it in the book "god (my father) did it".

You propose that the Jews are people of study who wish to gain understanding but the only understanding you gain is to reinterpret a badly written book so it sounds good. I am an athiest to all parts of your book but you as a (reforming?) Jew are an atheist to the parts that don't fit with modern understanding and ethics.

Where I would through the book away, you hold on to it like a security blanket. As with a child beleiving that you can't exist without it, children learn to let go once they grow up and so will man.

As I have stated, our evolution will make such fairy stories irrelevant to our progress and the book will be reclassified to sit on the shelves with the other works of fiction like Harry Potter.

Good point. The Bible was not intended to inflict ethics..but rather to prove we are all unethical (total depravity maybe?) Like lost sheep we have all gone astray and are in dire need of The Good Shepherd to lead us out of this mess.

Never trust any self-proclaimed authority, including the Bible.

Whom do you trust?

Those who judgements are backed by empirical evidence.

ruveyn

Well, when I was Protestant I was just as afraid. Even as a Fundie Baptist as a kid, nothing felt comfortable with "once saved always saved." I knew it was wrong in my heart, and even as a kid, got "saved" probably like 4-5 times or something. The problem with being saved is, it's an emotional response. There must be a conscious decision to either follow Christ or not. Even Judas was "saved" but he fell and was damned. The entire epistle of Jude is a warning against falling away.

As far as the saints and popes and whatnot. There's not really a reason to NOT ask for intercession from the saints. They're in heaven more or less cheering us on. It's like asking a friend for prayers.

As far as priests, priests existed in the New Testament. James 5:14.
Elders in Greek is presbyter, which is still used as a title for priests in Orthodox Churches today.

As far as the Pope, that's where Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism part ways (other issues too.) The pope is just Bishop of Rome. Just like there's a bishop of Constantinople, bishop of Antioch, etc. What happened was (and this is where Catholics and Orthodox argue back and forth) the Bishop of Rome was given head seat at ecumenical councils. Rome interpreted this as being supreme over all the other bishops, and tried to enforce Roman practices on the rest of the Christian world. It's not recorded for sure who the first few bishops of Rome are actually. The Romans like claiming Peter, but Peter was the first Bishop of Antioch, actually. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pa ... of_Antioch For example, too, St. Thomas went to India and established churches there. St. Thomas was the first bishop of India.

Those who judgements are backed by valid empirical evidence ... which excludes all religious leaders and evangelists, of course.

If something empirical is really evidence, then it is almost by definition valid. If something empirical does not either support or refute the judgement it is not evidence. It could be a straw man or a diversion.

ruveyn

I'm Catholic as well; hopefully I'm living my life in a way that's pleasing to God. Yes I like vampires, but I also know they're fictional creatures, and I try to keep that in mind.

Condolences on having to hang with the Fundie Baptists..lol. They are scary. Sorry they dont quite have the Calvinist concept worked out either. You are surely correct in that works based religions can make a person feel good about themselves. Guess thats why they are so popular. While wild emotions can accompany salvation it's an instantaneous Spiritual Event. Not a process..no. It happens when the Holy Spirit moves from the outside where He has been nagging at us..to the inside where He starts trying to Sanctify us. Throw out sinful conduct. Teach us right from wrong..give us a super keen conscience and a thirst to know God better. You should try it sometime. It feels good..woops I get a little emotional sometimes..lol. .

I give you several NOT's on communicating with Dead Folks. Let us begin with the prohibition concerning necromancy. Other than that the Bible clearly tells us only God knows the disposition of departed souls. That does not seem to be a task easily taken over by the Pope. How do the person asking intercession know whether they are linked up with a nice departed Saint or maybe a demon from hell? Lot of spirits out there in the world ya know. My Bible says there is one Mediator between God and Man and that is Christ Jesus. I do not see any fine print which might allow the role to be fulfilled by dead humans. I have heard the dogma that the dead folks aint REALLY dead..but yep..they are deader than a hammer. Sorry. If those nice folks are frolicking around with Jesus that is good. While we can hope thats the case..its not our place to know of it or exploit the situation. Sure they have better things to do than listen to our seances. Thanks.

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As far as the saints and popes and whatnot. There's not really a reason to NOT ask for intercession from the saints. They're in heaven more or less cheering us on. It's like asking a friend for prayers.

As far as priests, priests existed in the New Testament. James 5:14.

Elders in Greek is presbyter, which is still used as a title for priests in Orthodox Churches today.

As far as the Pope, that's where Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism part ways (other issues too.) The pope is just Bishop of Rome. Just like there's a bishop of Constantinople, bishop of Antioch, etc. What happened was (and this is where Catholics and Orthodox argue back and forth) the Bishop of Rome was given head seat at ecumenical councils. Rome interpreted this as being supreme over all the other bishops, and tried to enforce Roman practices on the rest of the Christian world. It's not recorded for sure who the first few bishops of Rome are actually. The Romans like claiming Peter, but Peter was the first Bishop of Antioch, actually. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pa ... of_Antioch For example, too, St. Thomas went to India and established churches there. St. Thomas was the first bishop of India.[/quote]

I don't like Calvinism. In fact I'm not much of a fan of John Calvin as a person either. To me Calvinism is fatalistic. What about all the people predestined to go to hell, then? What is to say I'm not predestined for hell? Calvinists just flip it around and go "nah don't worry, YOU'RE not predestined for hell, only other people." What I'm saying as far as salvation goes, Jesus says we all shall be judged by our deeds. Do you really want to disappoint God himself? That said, God is merciful, and does know everything. We don't know how we will all be judged, we can only pray that God is merciful with us, and the world.

As far as prayers to the saints, we're not expecting saints to communicate back. As far as the mediation, they're asking Christ. Then Christ to God the Father. Again, not much different than asking your friend to pray for you. Do you know your friend's eternal disposition? As far as the argument it could be demonic spirits, well, you can say that about pretty much everything. That said, if you don't want to pray to saints, I mean, you don't HAVE to, I don't all the time, but I can think of times where a saint's intercession may have helped me. But, with demons again, though. As far as better things to do than listen to us? How do you know? Surely God has better things to do than listen to us also, but he still cares about us. As far as logic goes alone, it's "illogical" to pray at all. You don't actually know whether God is there or not. All you have is your faith and possibly some personal experiences.

People have gotten visions of Jesus. Some are real visions. Some are demonic. It's not a sin to reject a vision. As far as temptations go, many times visions like that are given as tests of our pride. Why should we be so presumptuous to think we *deserve* things like that? But at the same time, God does speak to us that way, too. So we cannot write off all visions/dreams/etc. Protestants, especially Charismatics/Pentecostals like I used to belong to, have tons of things like that. I feel they're especially presumptuous in assuming everything is the Holy Spirit. Many times they do this to completely disastrous consequences. Many times tongues for example, is demon possession. Sometimes what is being said with tongues is completely demonic in origin, and when translated is the most blasphemous, horrible stuff ever. Does this mean nobody can, should, or ever speak in tongues? No. Just what it means is you can be presumptuous about anything.

As far the eternal state of the dead again. In some cases God does give us hints. http://www.sprint.net.au/~corners/Nov98/StNectarios.htm Here's an example of Saint Nektarios, a fairly modern saint and the miracles that accompanied him. To say the Holy Spirit did not work through him, or worse, to attribute all the miracles to demons, doesn't sound very logical.

Gods Existence
You cannot prove or disprove God's existence. We are limited to our natural instruments meant to measure the natural world, and cannot detect, let alone measure the super natural. You can only provide evidence in either way -- proofs are better left to mathematics, or chemistry & physics.


Which God?
I am arguing for the Jewish God, which Judaism also posits (leading to a great deal of antisemitism) is the God of the World. I share this God with any and every religious person who is not Jewish, but arrives at the same value system and understanding of God. Theological differences and beliefs are not relevant unless they betray one of those things. I can share the same God with a Wiccan if that Wiccan also shares my value system, believes in the same or similar ethical monotheism, and in a god or goddess who makes the same moral demands. Then it doesn't matter the name you apply to it, it is the same entity.


Applied Ethics
Almost all laws of the Torah applies to Jews, and for a certain time period. The stoning of someone is attached as a punishment to show you the severity of the crime. It was rarely enacted, if ever.

You cannot list what you do not know without any listed examples of when and where it was carried out. For example, the burning of a prostitute in ancient Israel for being the daughter of a priest has one listed example in the 2nd century where it was reported that it was carried out. Do you have an example in Jewish history of a man killed for working on the sabbath? And don't list the man who Moses ordered killed for working on the Sabbath, that was a public revolution, he needed to be put down.

Child sacrifice was the norm in many parts of the world. Sacrificing your child to your God is immoral, God does not want or need a human sacrificed. God doesn't even need your prayers, but faith and prayer are great for the human so it is promoted. God doesn't need your animal sacrifice, but you need your animals for your livelihood, and people need to eat so there isn't a single troubling thing about animal sacrifice. You can't gossip behind Gods back, you can't rape God, you can't murder God, you can't make God feel bad about himself by libeling or cursing him, you can't extort God, but you can all of those things to Human beings.

The difference between me and an atheist is that I have a Book I source my values from, and the book I hold dear, the Torah, means "To Teach". It does not mean "LAWS YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW." Where do you source your values from? Because logic, reason, and the heart, absent a God, don't have a stellar track record of producing ethics or fighting evil. So the issue isn't picking and choosing which laws are nice for me to follow. The issue is what principles do we learn from everything we read in the holy book. Those laws were meant to condition an adhoc movement to be God's vehicle on earth for the spread of ethical monotheism. So we in 2012, understanding everything that I've said in this conversation so far, would be stupid if we were to follow every law in that book. We could do it for the hell of it, but it would be an utterly self-defeating exercise… it was never meant for you, the goyim to follow, you miss the point entirely and ruin many lives in the process.


Interpretation & Authorship
Ethics is anytime the possibility of something being right/wrong arises. Interpretation is not that big a deal for the Jewish faith in 2012 as the ages have picked out the best readings of the text that are most true to it without reading into it. Literalness or the lack thereof is of unimportance if we correctly identify the principle being taught by the text.

You are misreading my "If God isn't the author of 'Thou Shall Not Steal,' morality is subjective" argument. You can only fairly assess it it you entertain BOTH the possibility of a God existing, and the possibility that a God does not exist. If a God exists, then morality is objective. If a God does not exist, morality is subjective. If God is not the author of Thou Shall Not Steal, then it is purely opinion. You have yours, I have mine, and if we live in the secular West where morality is relative, my opinion is as good as yours.


Evolution Is No Great Producer of Ethics
Evolution has no answer as far as stealing is concerned, there is not evolutionary benefit to Evil yet we engage in it routinely. Evolution is pointless in assessing morality because none of it is provable with hard science. We can only infer a collection of likely anecdotes to fill gaps in our understanding, but there is not a shred of evidence so far linking notions of morality that the Human holds, to human evolution.

It is possible the human was infected with a virus that altered our chemistry and allowed us the moral reasoning that we have, that is possible. But simply excusing away an action because one wants to be part of a social group is far removed from reality.

1.) What about those who steal knowing full well they won't be caught?
2.) What about the robinhoods who steal from the wealthy to give to the poor, even the poor is likely to survive anyways?
3.) What about the wealthy who steal from the poor though they know full well they don't need to do so since their survival is fully taken cared of?
4.) What about those who steal the life of other human beings who they are not in competition with for anything?
5.) What about those who steal the wife of another and wreck a home un-necessarily?
6.) What about those who steal a child for sexual pleasure?
7.) What about those who steal sex forcefully through the act of rape, and then kill the women afterwards, losing both the possibility of spreading his seed and stealing a life in the process, knowing full well the damage done to his reputation if he is discovered?
9.) What about those who steal other people's time knowing full well they won't be buying something from them?

Human Evil
Evolution as it is understood has no satisfactory answer to the existence of human evil. Because there are too many exceptions for every answer given. Even if the collective reasonings that evolutionary psychologists have all come up with are put together to justify the existence of cruelty and causing unjust suffering to our fellow man, you cannot provide the evolutionary benefit of having such traits given that the way it has expressed itself in killing off large swaths of societies is an impediment to our survival. What does evolution have to say about Ego?

If ethics in the bible has already been defined from the evolution of morality over thousands of years, WHERE IS IT? Where in all of the world's theistic religions, political religions, or societies has even half of the Torah's principles and values been replicated? Try a third? Or a quarter? The Torah is exceptional in the human experience. No one has ever been able to replicate it, ever, or come close 1000 years before or after its inception.


The Text Has No Equal
This "Primitive" Text isn't being Lionized, or elevated to fit our modern framework... it is being framed in the light the authors intended you to see it. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. I not only posit that its ethics are elevated to any text pre-2012, I posit it will remain the champion of ethics so long as man's nature is the same, from Noah to Hitler to Ghandi to Kant to Christopher Hitchens to Hume to Osama Bin Laden to Mother Teresa. The understanding I have of the text is the understanding of the rabbinic tradition, most orthodox Jews agree with me, almost all conservative Jews agree with me, I am articulating a position that most religious Jews everywhere prescribe to. So I am not trying to fit this ancient text into a modern framework. The modern framework is what I am fighting.

Some of the things people mistaken for progress and modernity, I do not. The destruction of Gender is not progress. The destruction of the institution of the family is not progress. Nor is the complete removal of God from public life. Our not being able to make moral distinctions from superior culture and inferior culture is not progress. Our food culture is not evidence of progress. Our mistreatment of the environment is not progress. Our morally equating the good with the evil as to render morality irrelevant is not progress.

Prud, start a new thread. This discussion is one I'd like to bring out to the open for others who may be missing what we are saying, and we can just copy our posts from here over there.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5034965.html#5034965

We will be judged as to our works..but not regarding Salvation. Once a person reaches the point of having enough faith to get saved through use of the heart and mouth it's a done deal Romans 10:9-10. . For those who want to work to attain maximum rewards go for it. The awards ceremony for Believer's is called the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Most think that Ceremony will be going on during The Great Tribulation period on Earth. The judgement of unbelievers is commonly called the Great White Throne Judgement which is a total different ceremony which do not involve Believers. It all depends if our name is found Written in the Lamb's Book of Life. The salvation of the unfortunate souls who are condemned in the White Throne Judgement will be judged on their works because of their rejection of Christ works is all they have. None of their good works will be enough to save them. A bunch of this action can be found in Revelation 19-20. The works of Believers will be burned with fire. The ineffectual works we have done which Paul likens to wood..hay and stubble will be burned away leaving only the Gold. Even though we emerge from fire smelling like smoke..we will be saved. That will be the basis for our awards along with several other rewards or Crowns..such as special Crowns given to Martyrs..or those who are expectantly awaiting Christ's Return..which are a couple which springs immediately to mind. Rest assured God will send folks to the section they belong. Of course if we can help lead some to Christ we get an award for that too. It's commonly called the Soul Winners Crown.

James 5:20
Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.