Posted on 01/05/2002 11:44:50 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
It was a later misrepresentation of the former that lead people to think the baby, not the issue itself, was in limbo.
Well I learn something new every day. Went to a Catholic high school and Catholic College for two years in the 50s and this is the first I have heard of this. Heard limbo went away along with St. Christopher and a bunch of others. I guess that statue I had on my dashboard was a misunderstanding also. I visit these threads and usually don't post to them, but this one just brought back all the things that pushed me away from "The One True Church". For those of you that are so secure in your faith and your belief in the accuracy of its dogmas, I welcome you to the comfort it provides. I would not try under any circumstances to disuade you. The thing I find most offensive on these threads is the arrogance implied by many that they posses THE TRUTH, and woe to those who don't accept it as they can't possibly be a "good" as those "in the know".
Sort of like the Bakers, Jim and Tammy Fay.
You speak of good and evil as self-evident(and they are), but why are they self-evident? What is the basis for their objective existence?
Every atheist I've ever met has been a good person trying to do good, to the best of their abilities. The atheists I've ever met on the whole have been the moral equivalent of Christians, but have been driven to be so not because of a fear of God, but because they knew it's the right thing to do.
You beg the question: What is good? You posit its existence without justifying its existence. I agree with you that atheists/agnostics may have an excellent moral sense, better than many Christians. But this is irrelevant, we must go deeper, why is there a binding morality at all?
You continue to assert that Christians seek to be moral only out of fear of God. If this were true, you would be correct- because acting morally merely as a means to an end is not to act morally at all. However, this is the very antithesis of a Christian morality- one cannot truly be moral to they love others for their own sake and love God freely.
Well said; Rather notably, I'd replace "If this were true" with "Where this is true".
Ummm... I think God can be arbitrary if he damn well pleases. God *IS* God, after all. I've been told that it isn't wise to state what God can or can't do.
Golden Rule = Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.
It isn't so much that it is self-evident as it is that it is rational behavior. The rational behavior in this case has long-term benefits to all parties, whereas irrational behavior has long-term negative consequences. Most people figure this out subconsciously pretty early on, and behave rationally without consciously thinking about the rationality their behavior. A small fraction of the population IS aware that good behavior is optimal and beneficial (independent of any religious system) and behave accordingly. The combination of positive and negative feedback create a system with a fairly strong vector towards behavior that is "good". The word for people that don't learn these patterns or figure it out is "sociopath".
Not without abandoning logic. There is no good and evil if there is no God. There is only, as Richard Dawkins says, dancing to one's DNA. Who decides what is good? Stalin, or you. One has no foundation to claim killing a child is evil. They may rationalize and say something like " well based on reason it is evil" How can one determine whose reason is superior, the killer's or yours? Well, if one rapes a women, I'm not going to say the rapist was just "dancing to his DNA". I would say it is ojectively wrong to rape, not because I or anyone else say it is, but because it is divine moral law.
As a real life case, let's look at abortion. If a person gets his morals by what is socially acceptable, we see that once A was verboten, then it was only for hard cases. Fast forward to those who are defending China's enforced abortion to solve the problem of "overpopulation" and thosse who approve of killing babies in their first month of existence outside the womb.
No absolutes means slippery slope.
This is an empty statement because the one committing rape or any other cruelity could turn it around and say it is wrong for someone to tell me not to. It may appear wrong to you and me because of how we were brought up, but the nut has his "reason"s. No rationale argument can be made against another's cruelity (in a Godless world). It may cause the women pain, but it gives the nut pleasure; isn't pleasure a good thing? By what objective standard can a non-theist say causing another's pain for ones pleasure is wrong?
The whole of the law is summed up with these two commandments, love God with all your heart and love your neighbor.
No one is born knowing right from wrong. We are born with an instinct of survival and that means behaving in a brutish way in order to seek pleasure and security. Believing in a universal Godhead and that is Jehovah and his son Jesus creates a framework leading to a consciousness based upon rules and prohibitions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.