well it appears "PreciousLife" that you are big on honesty so let me ask you an question ...if you heard the word of God telling you to "stone adulterers and unruly children to death" would you do it today without question?

..er..by stone I mean stone with bricks not drugs ...ok not a brick of cocaine I mean like a rock...ok not a rock of crack..you know hit somebody...no not give someone a hit off a crack pipe ...ok forget it..let's rephase it... would you kill if God told you to kill people like he told Moses

ater reading this whole discussion, one piece at a time, during different times of the day I have come to see that things are getting mired in personal emotions over the validity of the objectiveness in viewing anything through our own filters.

To this end, I agree with Voila.(my nickname for my friend)

His challenge is very steep. Nothing personal has entered into his observations. The man has been trapped by the sheer snare of the questionable motive of the survey used as an example of an emotional hot button in our society.

As have I.

I agree with Voila. no sides...all on the same team.

His is an extremely well thought point.

Very difficult to do and express.

It touches me because I believe in mutual respect and dignity for and towards all men.

Women and children too, for of such are men.

I don’t mean to be using semantics as an excuse, but I genuinely think that we both mean differnet things by the word, “Obligation”.

Let me put the following questions to you,…

Are you obligated to love your creator?

Is your creator obligated to love you?

Think about these two question and let me know your answers. Then I’ll tell you whether or not we are using the word to mean the same thing.

Abra,

I am astonished by your answer that we don't have an obligation to save another human's life. Would you care to expand on your answer? I don't want to jump to conclusions. Perhaps you have a more detailed explanation.

is a bible basher someone that ask questions because they want to know or is the believer a logic basher because they rely on "faith" not to know



and if you were honest you wouldn't be preaching that this type of debate rely on hate to take place, unless you are the one that is doing the hating

and more than 3 million people watched David Copperfield perform miracles ..but David Copperfeild wasn't on stage claiming that he heard voices



again just because someone heard a voice doesn't make it a miracle ..those mountains can throw an echo pretty good ..it could have been a prankster that said "I AM" and the mountains made it sound like a Godly voice and with a little drug inducment Moses became a believer that it was God

In an amazingly twisted, antagonistic, and warring style worthy of the most pathetic apologetics fanatics, your post is totally vindicating the point I offered. Albeit confusingly, but vindicated nonetheless.

Your hero is 'separating' the moral landscape, and goes on to self-servingly suggest the superiority of one moral code adopted by some (bible+), through the invalidation of a totally fabricated illusion of 'heart' based morals, which he blows to such unbelievable dimension, only to serve his 'US-THEM' aplogetics warring mode. It is a profoundly dishonest premise.

The hero again, seems to imply that he knows what the person meant when she answered '... My heart tells me...'.
He also implies to know what is meant by a bible sourced moral code?!?!?

That's the serious and dangerous issue with fanaticism, they're absolutists!

Nothing is more sketchy as to take '... What My heart tells me...' and turn it into a simplistic reduction of the essential 'moral' duality of our time, as measured to the equally sketchy assumptions of so-called uniform biblical morality. '... What my heart tells me...' is somehow suggested to be misguiding, whereas '...what 'god' tells me...' would be sound, represent the moral absolute...'. PLEASE PEOPLE!!! Can we have an intelligent conversation here?!?!?

As for your 'MOST' argument, where you make the impertinent point of '... most religions...'. Impertinent 'spiderCBM' because I never suggested otherwise. Maybe you mix me up with another one of your imaginary 'ennemies'. You could just as readily add 'MOST Christians' to the list. Religions and genuine believers are not the ones my post addresses.

This post, has stated, is strictly intended for the proselitizers, the fanatical, the apologetics mercenaries.
A tiny, but disturbingly delusional troup of absolutists, at war with the rest of the world.

For this warring tribe, to which I associate you 'spiderCBM', it is never enough to express their beliefs. It must always be against, or at the expense of some other belief, another camp, another ennemy.
And when there isn't an antagonistic target to 'war' against, the fanatics make one up out of 'nothing', as the OP's author did in this thread.

That is the obligatory 'apologetics' tradition and dogma. Their delusion is that they are being 'attacked' 24/7/365. The corrolate delusionary reply is to 'defend' themselves against these delusionary attacks.

His case for the 'heart' vs the bible is juvenile, unfounded, and self-serving. One can only ackonwledge the fanatical obsession and compulsion of the apologetics-proselitizer, and denounce it as such.

I don't expect the proselitizers to ever agree with my views consciously. But I must admit that their compulsion to keep contradicting for contradiction sake, unconsciously brings them to support the opponent's argument.

Vindication, however it is served, is a sweet dish.

Thank you 'spiderCBM'.

Abortion: How can you look at a sad 18-year-old who had unprotected sex and not be moved? What kind of heartless person is going to tell her she shouldn't have an abortion and should give birth?


WHO with a heart can not feel for the baby??

would this be considered as being a miracle?



so you believe that it doesn't make sense that Moses was stone on drugs when he heard voices but yet you believe that it does make sense that Moses heard voices without being stoned on drugs? ...either way drugs was involved or should have been involved in the form of medication

You are completely missing the point. What Dennis Prager is presenting here is the moral differences between someone who bases their beliefs on religion or based on their own heart and mind. As he said in the article "MOST" people simply judge issues by their eye and heart ("MOST" implicitly includes most religious people also). Knowing that, your "No Bible = no Morality" hypothesis is out the window. What Dennis is discussing is the difference in the morals of those who base their moral decisions upon the Bible (or Torah, I would assume) and those who do not. The article is discussing the difference between depending upon your own eye, heart and wisdom to determine what is right or wrong vs trusting thousands of years of accumulated human wisdom.

The article isn't an attack against anyone, it's comparing and attempting to show the value of an "old book of parables" as so many insist that the Bible is.

Simple answer - No.

More complex answer – it all depend on who the people are.



Yes, but not without explanation. Teaching them what’s right and wrong without explaining to them why it’s right or wrong isn’t teaching, that’s just dictating.

since you want to get nit-picky I said scrolls not parchment."unless there are still people writing on scrolls"
and yet you side stepped the pertinent question yet again. Why didn't Christians invent it?

That would have made sense if there was an all powerful being right?

I for one am done this debate. Neither one of us will agree PreciousLife. We have both been raised to think differently. Not to say one is better, just different.

What you miss here altogether is that I don’t even THINK in terms of moral obligations.

That’s a mental thing. That’s using your mind. That's all I meant by that statement.

When I see someone in need of help I don’t stop and think to myself. “Hmmm? Do I have a moral obligation to help them?”

There is no thought process at all. I react instantly and spontaneously from my heart. There’s no need to even think about mental concepts like “Was I taught to do this?”

All I need to do is be who I am and everything else will take care of itself.

Earlier you wrote:


This is where we disagree. If I act on my heart I will always do the right thing. No questions asked.

I don't need to stop and think about what some ancient book might have to say about it.

We just view the world from two entirely differnet perspectives is all.

No, IT TOOK not takes, unless there are still people writing on scrolls. And your avoiding the point.

"If there was a god, don't you think that paper would have been invented sooner and by a Christian for record keeping purposes?"
Instead the Chinese invented it, unless the christians have taken it upon themselves to blur that fact. Which really isn't surprising since the whole book you claim to live by is full of contradictions and blurs.

You just contradicted yourself. You said that my ‘heart’ decides what is and isn’t an obligation and then you say that I ‘decided’ that I don’t have an obligation to save a human life.

You don’t ‘DECIDE’ things with your heart. You ACT from your heart. It’s spontaneous. This is why I said that the survey about the heart is absurd. People are answering the survey with their MIND not their heart.

And that was my whole point of why Prager’s research is flawed.

Most people DON’T act to save others (and that includes religious people). That’s why we call the ones who do ‘heroes’.

This has nothing to do with religion. This has to do with the mettle of the person in question.

The thing is that YOU are deeming yourself better than the pregnant woman at making this decision!

That is utterly ridiculous! You are not the one who will have to carry an unwanted child in your belly for 9 months. What you need to do is get off your high religious and woefully archaic horse and put yourself in her shoes.

And why are you so positive this is the right thing to do? Because a book of parables that has been changed throughout the course of history tells you it's right?

Sir I am a writer, and I know full well what happens in the editing process. Do you think that the tales in the bible have not been embellished upon? Those tales weren't even written until 500 years after the fact.

If there was a god, don't you think that paper would have been invented sooner and by a Christian for record keeping purposes?

Moreover, no human being is under and moral obligation to save any other human being. Even the Bible doesn’t suggest that, or if it does, it only does it in-between all the times when God is telling men like Joshua to go out and murder entire civilizations.

Give me break.

This is a absolutely totally meaningless survey.

You can’t ask people that kind of question and give any value to their response because it isn’t a real situation. It’s easy to say that they will save their dog when asked that question. But put them in the real situation and WATCH what they ACTUALLY DO!!!

I’m willing to bet that you will be shocked to learn that people who answer survey questions one way, act entirely differently under real conditions.

The Bible doesn’t instill good morals. The Bible instills more bigotry than morals.

No I don't want to live my life the way King James sees fit. You really think that it is the absolute word of some supreme being?
Just because it's in red? You are really sad and weak minded.