Religion and morality & ethics

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I would argue that the evidence of the existence of a god is zero, to pose the question that there is no evidence that god does not exist is semantics. We are dealing with the proposition of probability, it was understood at the time the biblical texts were written that the world was flat. With the limited understanding of the world they lived on, it would be conceivable that these tent dwelling Arabs came to this conclusion as there was no evidence they had to formulate any other proposition. Did this conclusion make it a reality? No, at no time in history has the world ever been flat, I have no evidence the world is flat, only that it is not.
As with a deity there is no evidence to back up any claim of the existence of a god, therefore I can only conclude that the lack of evidence supports there is no god.

To postulate something can exist without evidence is special pleading, to suggest that because we have a name for things, does not suggest they exist.

Make better instruments
To suggest that something does exist but cannot be measured yet is to argue that all things do exist including fairies & unicorns. You freely acknowledge these are “mythic creations”, but there is no scientific device capable of measuring their existence and of cause there never will because you can’t create a device to measure untruths.
Are you suggesting that before the microscope was invented man knew the names of all of the micro organisms but just couldn’t see them or do you agree that only after the invention did science come to understand something previously unknown and only then gave them names and acknowledged their existence as fact.
It is only the supernatural that expects to be considered to exist before it has been show to be measurable. I am open to the theoretical, based of cause on the scientific understanding that we can theorise new understanding based on what science has already discovered.

How we approach god
I would not agree that those who refute scientific fact can live normal lives, as their belief clouds their decisions and allows the teaching of untruths to the innocent.
I have no “faith” so you cannot propose that my position is faith based, rather my position is born out of the lack of evidence that supports your position. Your uses of certain words have an underlying connection to faith, when I use the word “truth” it is based on logical truth. The “truth” of religion is used to dispel logical truth over “god’s” divine truth.

Make comparable comparisons
You are asking for special treatment of what I consider to be imaginary, I hold no favour for your god over any other imaginary being. It is you that must understand I will give no more credence to the god of the torah because evidence that the universe can be created from nothing by a supernatural being, to me is no more plausible than a fairy leaving money for children’s lost teeth.
Where I will make the distinction is that on the grounds of moral & ethical superiority expected by such deities. In that, belief in the tooth fairy would not wish for a child to wage war on the sweet makers because they disrespect the tooth fairy.
Other gods exist, sort of
That is an incongruous statement; you are only proposing one god and again pinning ethics to be derived from it. You expect this special treatment that your pagan belief is somehow above that of any other. The druidic pagans are no more unethical than any other religion and therefore have as much value (or not) in their teachings as those who worship the god of the Judaism.

Misquoting text
I do not need to study your religion to oppose it, in the same way I do not need to read the entire works of Shakespeare to conclude either way whether I like his work or not. This request to study your religion is a very old attempt at conversion, the belief that if I read it all I will then understand the “truth”.

You wish for me to give factual examples of deaths caused by Jewish laws but when I quote your own religions texts you refute they actually happened, it was all in the understanding and meaning of the text. What a load of rot, my exact point is that all of these writings are falsehoods and by quoting them to you only shows how they are completely meaningless. You forget I do not hold these writings with any regard to reality and those who study it look for loopholes to excuse the uncomfortable conclusion that a fist reading conveys.

To Google something serves to increase ones learning (not always), something a Jew should be happy with. What you are actually doing is closing your mind to anything which opposes your faith and attempts to use passages from your own religious text to support the opposition.

So you ask for examples of when Jewish law has been carried out and someone dies as a result. Metzitzah b’peh using direct oral suction to remove blood from the circumcision wound has been documented to cause infection, brain damage and death. In 2012 this ritual is limited to the most fundamental Jews and I would propose that the reason for this aspect of bris milah has been deemed to be ethically wrong on the grounds that it is not in the best interest of the child. So where have the current ethics come from, not the religious text as it is clear what should be carried out to uphold the ritual but from the influence of society. Ethical standards being defined by human need to be part of the social group, continuing to carry out a barbaric ritual would only serve to be excluded, so the act of religion is changed to favour the wider social aspect. An evolved process of human nature, that when exposed to the wider group and the reverse, impacts on the ethical & moral evaluation of an act. This process has been in place within human and other animals for millennia, not given by god but written down by men who already had the basic understanding of social interaction and the reality that ethics is derived from psychology. Tell enough people that something is wrong or right and the ethical standard changes, religious text used this existing human trait to the most part to justify hatred of others.

Some quick points

1. I accept that that you can be of Jewish decent and not be religious but to call yourself a Jew when you are an atheist would be to accept that the believe that all Jews descended from Abraham, an atheist would not hold this belief. So when I say Jews I mean those who believe in Judaism practicing or not.

You made a comment on the Israeli bombing of Palestine, “If it happened at all”, have you learnt nothing from your own modern history, and that you would use a term Holocaust deniers have used to ignore real truth of what happened. Shame on you, that you would close your eyes to acts of violence because it may just hold your religion up to the real meaning of ethics and morals. This just goes to show that your religion is as sick as all others, that you would deny the suffering of others because they don’t worship in synagogues.

2. I have no-one to account for; the acts Stalin, Moe & the Kim Jongs have carried out, were in the name of Communism not Atheism. This is a very tired argument, one that only serves to distract from the debate.

3. You’ve never read Harry Potter, it teaches all those things. The example was to show that if you read any book about people you will find the mainstay of ethics & morality.

4. My point exactly, except for the inclusion of the “nature of God” to the statement, you see you accept the reality but then cloud it with god, why?

5. So you’re not a Jew? You make the comment that you have studied all religions and then mention atheism, please note that atheism is not a religion it is a lack of belief in a deity. I accept you’re statement “I only know what I know from studying all religions” and if that is the case you don’t know much, why not study Philosophy, Psychology, Entomology, Physics, etc. They would enrich you much the same as a religion, but the one difference being you would have to accept that your actions are yours alone and no divine being is directing you. Now isn’t that a scary thought, being responsible for all man has to do?

6. Exactly, ethics & morals develop over time and with influence, God does not need to be considered here.

7. Evolution (not a religion, just scientific fact), random variation generated by mutation. Let’s say in some caveman a random variation resulted in the lack of fear. Such a lack of fear would result in those cavemen putting themselves into life threatening situations and of cause they would probably die from there actions. So it would result in that trait in our genes dying off and the random variation of fearfulness becoming the standard. If you fear you don’t put yourself into life threatening situations so you will survive to pass those genes onto your offspring. So fear is not the word of god but a random variation which has become the most common trait to pass on in our genes allowing for survival.

8. Jews have no problem with a homosexual being born as one, what about one living a happy life as one, to be free to live their life without prejudice of others?
I do not accept that the current conflict in Gaza is not a result of Religion and to use the term “Secular Jew” is misleading as it has a differing meaning from the European term of secular. To be a secular Jew does not mean you have no faith, only that you do not necessarily observe religious ceremonies. Secular does not equal Atheist.
Both Shimon Peres & Benjamin Netanyahu are practicing Jews, so your comments are diversionary and not based on factual evidence. So let us say secular Jews are non religious, currently only 17% in the State of Israel leaving 83% accepting Judaism as their religion. And you call it a secular state, again you are ignoring the factual evidence to defend your position.
Again you derive interpretation to meanings to fit with a scientific viewpoint. No god is required.

No let’s get on to the real question.

Religion is not the basis for ethics and morals; I am now going to Google for a quote!

“Joshua led the tribes into the promised land, driving out the Canaanites through a series of military battles

The military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Hebrews in about 1200 B.C.E. is often characterized as "genocide" and has all but become emblematic of biblical violence and intolerance. God told Moses:

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them—the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.

So Joshua [Moses' successor] conquered all the land: the mountain country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord, God of Israel had commanded.”

Do you deny that the above is not written in your religious texts; how anyone can refute the evidence above that the ethics and morals of the Jews are no different to those ethics and morals used by the Nazis to murder descendants of Jews in the Second World War.

I propose that the ethics & morals of the vast majority of religious people are in no way derived from there religious texts and their so called word of god (which I was lead to beleif is unchanging) as it was supposed to be told to man and written verbatim.
So I would ask why anyone of religion would suggest that this superior being got it wrong in the telling the first time round and now suggests its all up to how you interpret it.
This only helps to re-enforce the opinion of Atheists like me that it is all just out of date fiction that no longer fits with modern evolved man and is not required to live an ethical & moral life.

Ethics and morals have developed in spite of religion not because of it.

Prud, this was a very good response, I'll get to it tonight