Your understanding still gets filtered through your subjectivity. Anything filtered through subjectivity is subjective.

Christ said the Kingdom of Heaven is spread out all around you and within you. That can be understood as perfect morality is all around you and within you. It’s not a matter of access.

Alternatively, God is speaking perfect morality to you in every moment through the spirit of truth. The disconnect is not one of access, but your ability to receive it.

With that said, the inability to receive something is a matter of access. So it’s not a matter of access, but at the same time, it is a matter of access.

Only lunatics, morons, and the gullible believe in the Kingdom of Heaven! But Such people are useful as they are more easily manipulated by the powerful for their own nefarious ends.

God is a moronic sycophantic rat-brained slime ball of low intelligence and even lower morals.

I spit in God’s face and laugh!!!

-Zeno, Master of the Universe!

No you don’t. You are imprisoned and have no access to God. Only the one who is savvy enough to get access to God can enact revenge and retribution, fulfilling his mission.

And how do we decide which of the untold fabricated(?) gods is the real one? The one they told your culture about in Sunday School, like of course? There is a little problem there if objectivity means anything.

Calling the fabricated god of ignorant, superstitious barbarians "objective" is one of the worst parts of theism. All they are really looking for is universal and authoritarian morality, not objective. As to where the need for authoritarianism comes from, it's the same as it ever was. Clinging to dogma emotionally is the name of the game in lieu of being a responsible agent. God killed every child on earth? "Okay with me. That's part of that perfect morality of his."

"God told me and I'm a blind follower" produces profound immorality, even evil. And where do we get this information from about perfect morality: in the good book of mass killing, child killing, rape, slavery, superstition, magic, misogyny, bigotry?? Or does god tell you personally? Let's hear how he tells you. Of course we are a bit skeptical that you can do such a thing or would even try, knowing that such analysis would expose the whole thing as a fanciful inner narrative.

Religion is mythological narrative ... over and over and over again. And that's anything but objective.

If there is such a thing as objective morality it need not be in the form of authoritarian universal rules. But for a particular situation it may be the case that a specific action is simply right or simply wrong. It's important to realize that the "situation" includes the particular person considering the action and that each situation is unique. It may also be the case that actions in many situations have both a rightness and wrongness to them which requires a judgment call. I think the best we can do is listen to a conscience that's been informed by well chosen principles, ones that speak to both yours and society's welfare - both short term and long term. If you want to have a relationship with a God of ultimate reality, your understanding of that God should conform to those principles.

You hope through experience your conscience grows in wisdom. This doesn't mean a God of ultimate reality and objective morality has changed. Only that your hearing has improved.


PairTheBoard

The religious mindset starts with a need to be dogmatic, sure, and emotionally utterly attached to their "answer." Then it finds/concocts its god as omniscient, and voila, they have a perfect circular system in which their original need is not only fulfilled, but perfect. Obviously the whole thing is exempted from critical thinking and reality testing, and is just held in the "I believe it" category. None of this is how the world works in any other area and it isn't a genuine pursuit of understanding. So coming up with a system of morality doesn't work like coming up with an understanding of anything else. No, we have to have a perfect and unchallengable one or it has no legitimacy, and they can play a bizarre "I got you" game with their "perfect" system when yours isn't perfect. I mean, you know, like no other discipline under the sun is complete or perfect. It's a fantasy.

"You don't have a perfect moral system ... therefore god!" That's really what they are doing.

Supernatural religion is a shallow type of morality. As in: "We know God and what he demands. He is perfect morally and you have to do what he says or he'll kill you."

That isn't morality at all. That is authoritarianism. That's, "I'm not an agent at all. I'm a willful totalitarian subject. Morality doesn't come from people, it comes from magic. I forfeit any agency/thinking in the realm of morality, and get it from ancient myths. What do you want from me? You want me to consider myself whether killing every child and fetus on earth (such as in The Flood) is good, holy, righteous and loving? I don't get to say that's wrong. Who am I to say that is wrong?"

And that's the moral high road within most religious circles.

I’m an apologist?

A group of mistaken beliefs and blind assumptions by true believers:

1. There is no morality without god.
2. There is no purpose without god.
3. There is no meaning without god.
4. There is no truth without god.
5. There is no love without a god (who kills by the millions).
6. There are no values without god.
7. What good is life if it isn't eternal?
8. Life is a waste without god.
9. You need supernatural salvation for being naturally human.
10. You need to be burned in hell for doing wrong.


I apologize if that sounds like satire. It's so ridiculous that an honest expose of it sounds like satire. All of it is bullshyt.

I continue to spit in God’s face and the moronic sycophant is helpless to do anything about it.

"If some ancients wrote in a book thousands of years ago that killing, genocide, slavery, misogyny, bigotry, metaphysics based on magic is all okay, that's good enough for me."

In this way religious values remain primitively backwards, ignorant and barbaric ... all under the banner of perfect objective morality. Consider that if you've become unwittingly involved in such religion: genocide, slavery, bigotry, magic ... those horrendous moral elements as a perfect objective morality.

From a 1st Century culture rife saviors, sacrificing, gods, belief in superstitious magic ... the story that won out is considered to be ultimate truth, to be gospel. Now, 2000 years later, to some, morality is still about believing these ancient stories of demons, devils, angels, magic.

What else would morality be about if not that? Certainly not about using one's agency and thinking about right and wrong, moral and immoral, sacred and evil. If they arrived at the conclusion thousands of years ago that killing every human child and infant on earth was holy, good, just and moral, who am I to question that? I believe it. This is belief as the standard of morality.

I press this point about the immorality of such a slaughter of innocents ("But they aren't innocent, Eve ate an apple!!!", lol) in the hopes that some believer has the balls to say, "Well, yeah there is a problem with that. It's probably just a story and didn't actually happen." Because once they say that, ALL of the doctrine is suspect as highly likely just story: the resurrection, salvation and the need for it, the miracles, etc. And then one can actually make of the religion a reasonable if mythologically tinged system of morality that is not literal in its alleged metaphysics. That is, one need not sacrifice reality to practice it. Because as is, the real sacrifice that is going on is reality sacrificed to myth, legend and fantasy -- mind to superstition -- and that is a profoundly immoral sacrifice.

Moral reality is different than the reality of the world. The most moral person is not the one who knows world history the best. This should be painfully obvious to an adult. Only the rationalists seem to struggle with this. “This didn’t actually occur in world history” does not make stories irrelevant like you want it to.

Moreover, the idea that if a story contains certain aspects of its characters, including the character of God, then it should automatically be dismissed - this idea is untrue as well.

If someone posts on this forum that they don’t understand why these religious stories should be relevant, I would not be harsh to this person. However, with the posture you continue to take, and refusal to reconsider, I will continue to expose you as the fool you are to the eyes of the truth.. if I feel like it.

And so exposing people as fools instead of serving them in love is your MO? Is that the Christ-likeness in you? Or just the opposite ... is it religious ego?

How do you love a tyrant who keeps your brother imprisoned in a basement without food, drink, or care? Forgiveness is absolute but that person must repent, and there is no repentance without facing the judge who judges righteously.

I think maybe you are overlooking the little detail that it is god that is the ultimate tyrant who tortures in the basement of hell, by the hundreds of billions according to the doctrine. You don't have a moral system. You have a "I believe in the ignorant, primitive barbaric authoritarianism of ancient religion because I refuse to take on the responsibility of being a moral agent myself. What they believed when they believed kissing donkeys cured colds is good enough for me. It makes me moral to have this kind of belief. And the more high falutin' religionizing I can do to obscure what this religion is really about, obscure mostly to myself and to indulge my religious ego ... the more wise and moral I am."

Isn't it odd that forgiveness for this god claim, is about torture, killing, sacrifice ... instead of "You are worthy of love and I forgive you." Instead, it's a torture fest exactly paralleling the brutality of ancient human moral codes? Isn't that odd ... that perfect love is a slaughter fest like this? But all you have to do is believe that it comes straight from divinely perfect love and morality, meanwhile dismissing reality to believe it.

The king knows the dishonest hired hand that he hires is dishonest, which is why he doesn’t share the inner workings of his kingdom with the hired hand or his many children. A son can only do what his father does. A son of a liar can only tell lies about the king and his kingdom.

Like I said, you keep the one who is worthy of the kingdom locked up in your basement and then lie to yourself about it. You do the will of your father. I do the will of my father.

It is the spiritual path that is sacred, not the religious one. In it we leave behind such things as the divine slaughter of innocent children, the evilness of nature, the bigotry of self-righteous fools, the clinging to authoritarianism ... and we walk an undefined path while thinking about meaning and morality without, blessedly without, the superstition, myth and magic of ancients.

Discernment does not take the word of the ignorant as gospel, does not sacrifice reality to myth and magic claims. A spiritual path is unique, not cut and pasted from corrupt religion, not about sacrifices, scapegoats, and stand-ins, not about miming doctrine and dogma, is willing to reconsider mightily, is willing to be led readily, does not believe blindly that saviors who believed disease was caused by demons created the quantum fields, is about experiencing human nature and learning from it and not condemning it ignorantly and irrationally.

Divinity does not reflect the sick ethos of a human culture in revealing itself, unless of course that deity is fabricated and designed by that culture.

Religious grandiosity is to assign to oneself, very foolishly and for maybe the billionth time in human affairs, the revelation of god. In the evolution of spiritual experience in the human race, depicted brilliantly by William James among many others, there are those who refuse to evolve, who cling to these early forms and claim it a virtue. That's only fitting and appropriate given the stance such religion often engenders toward the natural sciences. Well, being a human animal is a natural thing. The first step away from dogmatic misinformation and ridiculous belief in the realm of religion --> spirituality, is respect for reality. Then a willingness to apply one's mind to understanding that reality as opposed to merely believing in unrealities.

Gnosis for The Mystery is good; false claims of certainty insulting The Mystery is the enemy of good, the enemy of knowledge, the enemy of truth.

You’ve taken the image of the mother and mixed it together with the image of science. Then, you call the mixture ‘spirituality’.

Nah. Matters of the human spirit are spiritual. All very natural.

The parasite whispers sweet sounds into the ear of its host. Just like a mother does to her sleepy child.

… as the parasite sucks the life out of the host.

What do you call matters of the human spirit .... maybe "humanist iniquity?" Something enlightened like that, meaning, something exactly in line with the thinking of 1st Century ignorant zealotry?