Do you think people should make life long commitments before having sex and living with each other to see if they are compatible (this seems foolish to me)? Did or will you do this?

Also i know a couple who have been together for over 40 years. They have kids, grand kids and seem form the outside to be in a happy committed relationship without marriage. Why should they get married? And if they dont will God condemn them for not getting married and do you agree with that condemnation?

I suspect in some way the more educated you are and the higher your intellectual standards the less Hitchens will appeal to you.

I find his writings on god to be his worst because in that area which I have done the most reading in general I have come to expect much more intellectual rigor and far less wild passion than is manifest in Hitchens writing on that topic. It always seems like an epic rant, just a random emptying of all ammo he has.

On the other hand I am not that well read in many other areas that he covers, and as a result the passion and poetry in a lot of his other prose is brilliant to me. I find him to be incredibly engaging and charming in a way that I haven't found in another author.

cool much respect.

In regards to confession & people going to heaven unfairly

Christianity teaches that God is able to take into account peoples different experiences/backgrounds. Why assume his judgements will be unfair? I agree catholic confession is lame. But Jesus dying for everyones sin is not lame. That is the whole point of Jesus dying to avoid jumping through religous bs hoops. You can directly address God and directly receive forgiveness and have a friendship with God because Jesus forgives all your sin. Its epic.

I lust all the time too. The point is not that you come to God as morally perfect. The point is not also that you become a Christian and never sin again. These would be unrealistic. People turn to Christ because they know they need help. It is an admission of weakness. People have a problem with sin and guilt and Jesus offers the solution for that problem.

In regards to scripture being bogus:
Why is God not allowed to use metaphors? So if God uses metaphors the bible is not legit? I think God should be allowed to use metaphors and poetry and still be truthful.

In response to the personal note:
I follow Christianity because I think it is true. I don't feel like there is one thing that I can't do because I am a Christian and its a total bummer and I am missing out. I believe God's commands are also for my good. For example God's command to be faithful to my wife. Obviously sometimes I might not feel like doing this. But ultimately its a good command. It honours God and also keeps my marriage together.

I think people should wait to have sex until they are married. I did wait to have sex with my wife until we were married. I think people should commit to one person for life and be married to that person. I should point out I did not do this out of pure religious duty. It is a command of God but I also just think it is a good idea. People save themselves a lot of heartache by not getting mixed up in tons of relationships. No STDS No pregnancies. Keeps life simple.

However I should point out as well that I did look at porn lots while I was single. And yes this would qualify as sin because it is lust.

In regards to your couple friends:
They are living out the spirit of what God has commanded. They are doing better than many Christian divorced people - so kudos to them. I don't know if God will condemn them. God's desire is to be in a relationship with them. People probably are not going to follow God's commands if they don't believe in Him or are not Christians. I think the worse thing is rejecting God.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/euthyphro-dilemma
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-e...emma-once-more

I think the original dialogue by Plato is interesting. The question was "What is the just(good)?" One proposal was "What the gods say" to which Plato responded "But the gods say different things". This actually works as an argument against atheism as well. If there are objective moral values what are they? They can't be what finite beings say, because finite beings say different things. If there is no ultimate ground for moral values then how can moral values even exist?

Yeah I know how WLC answers it and which horn he embraces. I find it hard to believe that is how ordinary Christians (of which I used to be one) intuitively think of God's goodness though.

As to the second part of your post, you seem to be attempting a version of the Moral Argument. I've started a thread here talking about the philosophical arguments for god, so you might want to check that out if you are interested in defending it.

?????

It is still unfair because then people who aren't exposed to Christian stuff, get to have more fun and have more 'freewill'. It is unfair because god makes all conditions, so whoever goes to hell, god would have either directly or indirectly made them evil.

Why can't god just forgive all our sins, be all like 'hey I made It this way (omnipotence/presenece) and knew what I was doing(omniscience)! not your fault!'

Metaphor- is bad because it is subjective. Just look at how different each type of Christianity is. Its not fair not knowing the rules to his game.

I don't think it is a good command. Its not fair that one woman gets all my love, I got well more than enough to share around and I don;'t like denying my god given instincts. Marriage doesn't really mean anything. Just ties yourself to vows, traps you because your word is more valuable than your happiness. Are you allowed concubines? Doesn't seem very fair on the concubine. If I like two girls, have a good friendship with 2 girls and love them both its not fair on one of them.

You didn't know what to say? I'm confused why? Was the question poorly worded and confusing? I'd like to stick with the sin nature that you initially brought up, there is no point in diving further into other teachings about marriage that resonate with you if you can't really answer my questions about the sin nature resonating with you.

Essentially you stated that a big part of your reasoning for becoming a Christian is that the Bibles teachings resonate with you. I never implied that that sort of personal experience was similar to the visiting of an angel, but unless you can explain the reason why the Bibles teaching about sin nature should resonate with you more than the perfectly reasonable hypothesis I put forward which equally accounts for "sin nature" in a much simpler fashion then you really are accepting the Bible based on some personal resonating experience as opposed to anything that can be taken intellectually serious. So again I will pose the question I asked of you previously:

Let's say that you are correct and that it is the case that humans have a bent towards doing what is wrong (do you have any sort of evidence that suggests this by the way, anything empirical or is it also based on personal experience) why do you find an elaborate story about Adam & Eve and a garden and a snake and a tree of knowledge of good and evil to be a more plausible explanation of a phenomenon which is equally explained by an observation like "natural selection benefits a creature that is cunning and ruthless in it's behavior and as a result it should not be unusual that we observe creatures (humans) with the propensity towards 'evil' "? It accounts for the same exact sensory data that you observe, but it accounts for it without positing mythical beings that none but thousand year old texts claim to have witnessed.

In other words, why upon personally observing that humans nature is evil do you think that the BEST explanation is the mystical one that resonates with you in the Bible?

He doesn't embrace a horn - as many before and since WLC, he points out the dilemma is false.

No, I was just pointing out that the Euthyphro "dilemma" in its original form doesn't have as its main point what atheists try to make it, and that the logic of it is more applicable to moral relativism than theism - just a bit of philosophical irony.

No one would argue that Christianity isn't rooted in history, that it doesn't have a factual beginning in time or that it isn't directly influenced by the Bible/New Testament of which there are so many original manuscript copies of. But this is really not what is trying to be claimed by people that point to the thousands of manuscripts though is it? What is generally being claimed is that somehow the massive amounts of original manuscripts lend credibility to the idea that the Bible is God's Word, that some how just because there are tons of manuscripts available it means that Virgins give birth and the dead rise.

Do you believe that there is 12% as likely of a chance that the supernatural stories in Homer's Iliad occurred as did the events of the New Testament based on the fact that there is 12% as much manuscript evidence of the Iliad as there is the New Testament? Or do you think there is about 0% chance any of the supernatural reports from the Iliad are true. Why is that? Now ask yourself why you think that the number of original manuscripts of the NT somehow give credibility to its supernatural claims, the ones upon which you base your beliefs.

It's interesting that you express it this way because that, to me, is to take the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma - God commands it because it is good. In this sense, God doesn't merely decide on marriage on an arbitrary whim, but because of it's (positive) consequences for happy human relationships. In other words, God has perfect knowledge of moral truths (because he knows and understands all the possible consequences) but those moral truths are not simply 'another word' for His opinion.

As I said earlier, I really think that accepting the first horn (Moral Realism) is how most theists tend to intuitively think about God, but the second horn (Divine Command Theory) tends to be embraced by those who wish to argue with atheists or are troubled by the implication that it might conflict with God's omnipotence. Strangely, most theists don't think that God being subject to the law of logic conflict with God's omnipotence e.g. most theologians don't think that the idea that God can't make a square circle (a contradiction) is inconsistent with being all-powerful.

Anyway, just some more food for thought. And do check out that link to Richard Carriers essay.

Moral realism is the attempt to ground morality without God, hardly a theistic position. Richard Swinburne is the only theist I can think of who is also a moral realist and he's pretty much alone among theists on this point.

FYP

When I say 'most' theists I mean the general church-going crowd, not scholars. i.e. I don't think the average sweet old lady on the pew intuitively feels that if God commanded cannibalism then cannibalism would be morally good, rather that there is an obvious sense that moral goodness corresponds with objective facts about what makes us and others happy and productive (of which God has perfect knowledge).

To use another example, the tendency to think of God as 'our Father' draws a parallel in how we think about God to a divine version of a parent-child relationship. We don't tell our children not to touch a hot stove because hot-stove-avoidance is an arbitrary preference but because touching it will have unpleasant, painful consequences. This also is our intuition when we tell one child not to punch his brother - it's wrong because it causes hurt.

Again, I can only draw on my own experience of being a Christian but I never felt that 'might makes right', and instead felt that the reason God was good was because he wanted what is best for us (omni-benevolence) and knows what is best for us (omniscience). I wasn't aware of Divine Command Theory until after I became an atheist, but it just seems completely amoral to me.

Finally, experience on this forum suggests that many theists here are uncomfortable with Divine Command Theory, as witnessed in any thread where an atheist brings up something like the story of Elisha and the bears. We tend to get replies along the lines of "maybe those children would have grown up to do many wicked things" etc rather than just a dismissive "If God desires it, anything is permissible for Him"

WLC uses DCT in a way different than you represent. I've never been happy with his use of that phrase because it doesn't have the traditional meaning. He DOESN'T mean that something is morally good because God says it is. He draws a distinction between moral value and moral duty or, alternatively, moral ontology and moral epistemology. DCT deals with moral duty and epistemology not moral value and ontology. What he says is correct but his terminology can be confusing.

What you quoted doesn't mention WLC. I know his version is modified (though I don't think it avoids the Dilemma). I also didn't catch it before, but I disagree that the Dilemma is false. It's debated, but far from considered as a closed matter (see Wes Morriston's paper rebutting WLC's moral argument

Anyway, this is a thread for Lemonzest to respond to questions, so please do start your own thread if you want to defend the moral argument or DCT, as this is derailing Lemonzest's thread.

What quote?

My posts have been about your misunderstanding of Euthyphro, DCT and WLC, which you gave to Lemon, so I don't see how that's derailing the thread.

Edit:
You said this in an earlier post:

I assumed when you mentioned DCT you had WLC in mind as well. So if you don't think WLC uses your version of DCT, fine. You're still wrong about WLC, DCT as he uses it, and Euthyphro.

You quoted me in post 65 and appealed to WLC not using that formulation of Divine Command Theory.

To clarify, me and Lemonzest have discussed this briefly before and I know he is not (or wasn't) familiar with the argument. Therefore I'm using simplified versions to see which side he falls on. I am NOT trying to disprove DCT. But launching into a long exposition of every school of philosophical thought on the Euthyphro Dilemma over the last 2500 years is not required for the discussion I want to have with Lemonzest.

So again, please start your own thread if you want to discuss the finer points of theological voluntarism, Modified Divine Command Theory or whatever.

If you feel I am deliberately misrepresenting the arguments I will point Lemonzest to these neutral sources:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-morality/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vo...m-theological/

If you only want to reach Lemon I suggest PM. If you post something I think is in error it's within thread rules to respond.

You could introduce a lot of hardship by entering into a relationship where two people dont really know each other.


To simple imo. Relationships are complicated and i think if everyone took your Gods advice, virgin marriage and no divorce accept with infidelity, misery and hardship would increase.

Well if the are sinning then God will condemn them for that sin.

But this is more of an ask me thread so i wont argue it anymore then i have. Thanks for your answers.

Emphasis mine. I feel that our back and forth over the finer points of DCT is not germane to the OP's thread and is derailing. While I won't be responding to you again ITT I would be delighted to discuss it in it's own thread, as I have suggested several times.

Hey guys sorry I have some work to do at the office. Man I wish I could weigh in more - I have lots to say ! .... great discussions! Have a good day and hopefully I can get online tonight and prove you all wrong (haha j/k).

but yeah I will try and reply this PM.

I don't mean these in any I'm just being blunt...ever never had a chance to chat with a Christian thx!

Nor can there ever be tangible evidence even if God was in front of you there is no way to know if its really him. Thinking any different on the issue is illusory

I'm bad with words but I don't understand empirical

This def suggests its about experience not logic....experience is the most subjective thing we have.
empirical [ɛmˈpɪrɪkəl]
adj
1. derived from or relating to experiment and observation rather than theory
2. (Medicine) (of medical treatment) based on practical experience rather than scientific proof
3. (Philosophy) Philosophy
a. (of knowledge) derived from experience rather than by logic from first principles Compare a priori, a posteriori
b. (of a proposition) subject, at least theoretically, to verification Compare analytic [4] synthetic [4]
4. (Medicine) of or relating to medical quackery
No there is not. You cannot cut out the illogical stuff in order to claim a logical argument. Doing so is illogical, and thinking one can do so logically is illogical. You can however, argue that however illogical it is still correct.


You are suggesting that Christianity isn't directly responsible for wiping out all other mass accounts and testaments from other cultures.

By directly I mean people lit fires and burned texts and yelled "This is in the name of Christ" And they did it in every land on this earth essentially.

This is one of the things Hitler was so pissed about, the destruction of ancient texts, that have an objective view on judaic christian society. He was an idiot but in this sense I'm kinda pissed too.

So now we understand why there is so much Christian text. Also I will not deny to you the existence of god, however, we can agree that a good way to spread a false religion is to quickly write as many accounts as possible from as many 'credible' sources as possible. It would also be important to hide original copies of things so they can never be lost, destroyed, or tampered with.

Also in your statement you didn't account for the possibility that there are many other texts out there that are hidden from the destruction of false belief, awaiting a time when man doesn't instantly destroy what is different from his belief.

lastly theres 10 thousand years of civilization and texts we have that we can't read yet...remember the rosetta stone and the pyramids? One would think once we cracked hieroglyphs there would be ultimate supporting evidence to the bible. I'll admit though typically through history when one group conquers and takes over another, they generally destroy all past texts and historical evidence in an attempt to wipe the conquered from the history of man. Perhaps the Pharaohs are guilty of doing this.

They would be more credible if they were dropped from heaven. Not saying the testimonies are false, but having a person write them doesn't make them credible by any means what so ever.

being married does not suggest that you or your wife agree to this whatsoever. That mistaken assumption is the problem with marriage and the foundation of divorce.

You can also do it without marriage and without biblical marriage. At this point in the paragraph you've left yourself nothing to claim.

So thats fighting lying cheating jealously no freedom etc. vs a quiet loving gay couple? God seems slightly less intelligent than man here.

I didn't see any logic here whatsoever.


I'm under the impression it looks more like a covered up lie that way.


I don't understand what you think empirical evidence is doing to support your statement, but regardless you can't just put Jesus or Christianity in a sentence and then write the word fact at the end of it.

This section starts out implying fact and then ends with illogics. Its not a battle between logic and illogics...there is no logic in the section quoted.

That is not objectivity nor can one be objective 'enough' when it comes to something so big. To be objective you need to throw away your Jesus glasses completely and then inquire. Looking at something partial with partial Jesus glasses is to see something in a completely tainted way

you can not have a proper conversation or a relation with someone without completely letting go of your own view point. And truly the other person must do the same.
Again, to relate someones view through ones own view taints our objective observation of theirs.

Jesus dying for everyones sin is lame and you've given no reason why it isn't. And its not epic, epic is a buzz word used to instill emotion just like the passion of the Christ. But what they won't teach you in bible school is that the emotional center and the logic center of your brain cannot function at the same time. So when you get sad and upset over the passion of the Christ you are incapable of logic. This is an important point in understanding the world for real.

So next time you go to a sermon and everyone is pumped up and jazzed up and emotional, remember that you are in a room full of irrational people...just like a picket line, or a protest, or a political rally, or a lynching. Refuse to be involved in emotional propaganda then you can see God.

Jesus gives no such solution, nor is he alive to do so. Its thoughts on Jesus that you are referring to and he gives solace and comfort to the problem, he doesn't solve it. The problem can be gotten rid of completely, but first you have to leave comfort and solace, to face the problem for real and head on. After that you are free to seek god through Jesus by your own will not out of fear and sorrow or the seeking of security.

What you fail to realize because no one taught you this is you cannot know that which you do not know.

you are going to have relationship problems if you see this as god's command and a tribute to god. This is what im referring to....wait wtf?! does your wife know this? Can you expect to not cheat or want to cheat on god?

No it is a division between you and your wife and there is no proof evidence or supporting words that suggest it honors god.


As long as we agree that sometimes want to cheat on your marriage may not be cheating god but it is cheating your wife

But you've never heard of a rejection of the self. Or does your self not approve of such action?

by the definition I posted experience is empirical evidence?


Anyways i have some questions to follow just wanted to get caught up!!!

Perhaps the phrase "empirical evidence" is used in some contexts such that "I had an experience with God last night" is equivalent to saying "I have empirical evidence which demonstrates God's existence," but my usage of the word excludes anecdotes such as that one and refers to evidence derived from a more rigorous collection, observation, and analysis of data such as consistent with the scientific method.

One of the definitions suggests its not about the scientific method or experiments...but I guess it means medicine wise.

I have no idea how to use the word, but we should make sure that both sides of the conversation aren't using their own conflicting versions.