Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
Frankly, coming from an atheist, your question is moot. You whine about one child, but your worldview is responsible for the deaths of millions of the same.
Well, yeah the rules of logic work universally but the conclusions reached are subject to the validitiy of the premeses. As this point Islam crumbles.
That's just it - atheists cannot have any objective moral standards. They are necessarily ethical scavengers. When an atheist tries to discuss moral issues with a theist, they usually do so by completely miscomprehending the theists starting point, and then try to play little "gotcha" games that are based off of those miscomprehensions.
Like let's take James C. Bennett on here. He goes on and on about David and Bathsheba's baby, though he is probably too badly informed and unknowledgeable about the source material to know that what was going on was basically the judgment that David himself had pronounced, and he was just receiving what he had said would be fair judgment in such a case.
Nevermind the fact that the baby also went to heaven, which means that the little guy didn't even have to go through a lifetime of suffering at the hands of his fellow human beings...which is more than we can say for many who had to endure years, or even lifetimes, under the sort of regimes that people with the same type of worldview as James C. Bennett imposed on them. As such, the child didn't even undergo what can reasonably even be called a "punishment."
So, while Jimmie goes on about Bathsheba's baby and all that, he completely dismisses the millions who died because of explicit atheist regimes. Religious people, well, see they're responsible for anything bad that anyone religious, anywhere, might have done, but not us atheists. No true atheist...and all that.
Jimmie, can you provide us with the actual formulation of these Golden Rules, as they appear in each of the traditions that you are referencing?
Further, we want to talk about pagans, well, what are atheists and secular humanists? Worshippers of themselves, or of “mankind” in general. Seriously, if you ever want a laugh, read the humanist manifestos. They are hilarious in their exaltation of the goodness and perfectibility of man. That’s what makes people like Jimmie’s complaints about the Amalekites and all that all the more laughable.
Why do you engage in conversational disputes regarding that which you must, as a materialist, deny. You deny the existence of God, yet you get involved with a discussion denegrating that which you say does not exist. You reference a demand to be given an explaination of something which you imply is not good, when in the materialist, darwinists world there can be no good or bad. Things in the materialsts' world...just are. In your worldview morality cannot be accounted for with logic, reason, or rational thought because all logic, rational thought, and reason would have to have a material explaination, yet these are invarient, abstract entities. Or...do you deny that logic exists. To be a consistent materialist you must deny that which is not consistent with the physicalists worldview. If you agree that logic does exist, you must enter the world beyond the physical (Aristotle writings Metaphysic) or the metaphysical for an explaination. To do this, you must reason, by use of the invarient laws of logic,...but again the physicalist has no explaination for reason from a materialist world view. In fact...to reason you must use your mind...which cannot be accounted for by a physicalists worldview. Do you deny that minds other than yours exist? If so, you affirm that which is metaphysical (beyond physics).
Now I do not say that you do not use logic, rational thought, and reason in your worldview....you simply cannot account for them in your worldview.
As an atheist and a materialist, Jimmie would be hard-pressed to provide a situation in which killing a child would be intrinsically bad. After all, if we're all just puffs of smoke with no souls, no eternity, who are just destined to turn back to dust when we die and be forgotten, then really, what does it matter what happens to any of us?
If they used their minds for logical discernment they would realize their worldview demands that they can believe in nothing. Why would you believe in anything which results from the chemical-physical processes of a mass of gray matter where electron potentials are depolarized across semipermeable membranes. Chemicals don't reason....they react. So they can give no reason supported logically for believing anything. In their world there is no reason to believe anything is good or bad or right or wrong or human rights or justice or injustice or any way to measure moral difference or truth. Things just are in the materialist worldview. To bludgeon a baby to death, in a materialists worldview, is no different morally than to pick an apple. Every act is determined by laws of physics and chemistry. Why would anyone become concerned about picking an apple or, say, picking an apple? Murder, rape, genocide, torture, or any heinous act cannot be criticized in the materialist view, IF, they are to be consistent.
What ethical standard does Elohim have? Have you even read the Ten Commandments? The parts about committing genocide (except for the women and girls) and not boiling a kid in its mothers milk, make for very interesting ethics.
Christians have no standing to criticize anyone on morals.
Thank you for posting that link. Very powerful presentation of that position. Is that you position....that God is not good?
Misspellers of the world....."Untie!"
If your point here is to say Christians are sinners...I suspect every Christian on this thread would agree.
Atheism’s Body Count - Ideology and Human Suffering - http://www.scholarscorner.com/apologia/deathtoll
The problem is not that there is a moral hurdle, as such accusations have been well responded to, but that those who intractably contend against God tend to evidence an unwillingness to even allow themselves to be objective, and reasonable, even on this officially pro-God forum.
http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=45&mode=detail (Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?)
A couple of threads of engagement i know of:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2578704/posts?page=15727#15727
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2562273/posts?page=196#196
Well said, and nothing they have not been told before, but in the war against God you see many reruns. Perhaps it is only a warm up for more charges, as seen in the above referenced threads.
Indeed, how cruel of the Author of Life to take the innocent to Heaven, while showing that sin has consequences, and yet work it out for good for those who love the Light.
While atheism with its “brites” pride themselves on moral reasoning, they cannot allow that a Being who knows the end from the beginning can be doing what it just as well as merciful, if the vision of the atheist cannot see it.
This is true, and as man will always worship something/someone, it easily fosters “political religion,” such as under Mao and Pol Pot, in which the objectively baseless moral reasoning of atheism easily allow it to justify atrocities that are equal to or worse than under false religion, which exalts another authority above the Scriptures (and which explains things from Islamic conquests to the Inquisition and even the Utah War).
Mr. Bennett seems to have gone dark. Perhaps he is busy and we will hear froml him soon.
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