Redy wrote:


Peter Pan replied:


The Original OP:


Indeed, I have not been careful with my words – I will be happy to amend them below:

To have a logical discussion and MINIMIZE the ability of people to MANIPULATE that discussion, it's important to KEEP focused on the topic.

So choose ‘one’ example that demonstrates judgments based on religious morals that are counter-intuitive to Constitutional values and hence civil law, or go with the one the OP has used - in this case the OP has chosen to use the example of same-sex marriage.

do we define harm in an immediate sense

as in there is no immediate harm in selling someone a bag of weed,
there is no immediate harm in a 15 year old sleeping with a 22 year old, there is no immediate harm in driving drunk UNTIL someone gets hit


I think the culture does plenty of judging of things which have no immediate harm, based upon their collective harm

if it were all truly to have no intervention , we wouldnt have most the laws that govern the land today and probably would be much more chaotic than we are now

True. And as we continually try to justify things that have no immediate harm. We are simultaniously breaking down the moral and spiritual values of our society.

"All the ways of man are clean in his own eyes but the LORD weigheth the spirits." Proverbs 16:2

"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death (pestilence or ruin)."
Proverbs 16:25

And yet, life expectancies are at an all time high and in the Western world, people are healthier and freer of disease than at any time when "Holy Men" ruled or were in league with the rulers.

The verses quoted? They are PERFECT examples of humans putting a sock puppet on their proverbial hands and speaking thru it as if they were speaking for a deity.


-Kerry O.

If you want to get technical, "holy men" have recorded lifespans of 900+ years. What book have you been reading?

"Holy Men" can record _anything_ in their "Holy Books" and the guillible can yammer all they want about the veracity of things they can't prove.

In the end it all amounts to the same thing...

"...full of sound and fury, signifing nothing." -Shakespeare


-Kerry O.

Well, not only that, but a simple calculation clears things up completely. Just divide 900 by 12 and you get 75.

Still confused. Read some ancient history. It was well-known that ancient people often kept track of things using the lunar cycle rather than solar cycles because the lunar cycles are far more evident on a small scale. So those records of people being 900 "years" old, were most likely actually 900 moon cycles or months, which comes out to be about 75 years.

So the numbers recorded in those ancient stories were most likely translated into the wrong units of measure. In fact, if you study the history of mathematics you'll see that this was indeed the most likely scenario.

To respond, specifically to the OP, here is one possible conclusion.

From various historical perspectives regarding the time of Jesus, religion was not a concern of the Roman Empire unless it contained subversive elements which could threaten the peace and power of the Empire.

At the time of Jesus, the Hebrew law could be practiced and Jews who held to their Hebrew heritage agreed to be subject to those laws. However, the hierarchy of Hebrew law like our current States in the U.S. was limited in how far they could enforce their law on Roman citizens, which included the Jews under Roman jurisdiction.

The Jewish hierarchy viewed Jesus and the following he was building as an extreme threat to their religious values but they were restricted on the action they could take to stop Jesus. So they took it further by attempting to prove that what Jesus was doing was undermining the peace and power of the Empire.

Supposedly this is what led to the crucifixion of Jesus.

Now back to the present and the OP.

When the values of the Jewish hierarchy, which were strictly based on religious belief, were threatened but their power to take action was insufficient to intercede, they solicited the power of the Empire to help them enforce their moral law. Of course, at that time, the people had almost no power to ‘change’ the laws of the Empire, so their only option was to prove Jesus was a threat to the Empire itself.

Could we relate this to the questions of the OP?

I think there is enough similarity between the biblical story of Jesus, historical data, and the present situation in the U.S. to generalize.

First, our Constitution indicates that people may practice their choice of religion within the confines of Federal and State law. Of these laws, we understand that States are limited in power as their laws cannot override or interfere with Federal law.

Today we are not dealing with any single religious hierarchy, but rather with all the people who subscribe to a moral and judgmental law derived through their religious belief.

Since the religious factions are limited in how much power they have to enforce their particular moral code, like the Jewish hierarchy, they are soliciting the governmental powers to help them in their efforts.

We would not be so harsh on such action, in our current situation, if there were not other factors which tend to show that the hypocrisy of taking this action would only reflect the same hypocrisy in our Federal law. It is the purpose of the Constitution and all the laws extending from it, to prevent such hypocrisy from existing in the law.

What is the hypocrisy?

First, that within the same religious moral code is scriptures which state that the all who rule are working with the consent of God. They are in place to fulfill the will of God. Therefore, while adhering to the religious moral code is important, it is perhaps with greater priority that the same people bow to the laws of the land under which they live.

That our country allows law to be added, or amended, often at the behest of popular social conformity, there may be some argument from the religious faction that God has given them the right to bring their moral code to bear on the law of the land.

However, secondly and perhaps more to the OP’s point, there is still the one religious moral that is more often invoked than any other – Thou shall not judge.

So the question then becomes, if religious moral code is allowed to be reflected in our Federal laws, would the religious people then be the ones actually doing the judging, or would it be the State?

Perhaps that’s the view of the religious population, like the Roman-Jews, they cannot enforce their own brand of morality on non-believers but by making that morality a part of the law of the land, they would not be judging. In both cases of God’s law, ‘to follow the law of the land’ and ‘not to judge’ THEY HAVE WASHED THEIR HANDS of God’s judgment upon them as individuals.

It’s almost impossible to make believers see the lack of logic in the above, or to even make any connection between the story of Jesus and the current situation.

So we are forced to make other arguments.

The most elemental argument we, non-believers, have to put forth is the attempt to show the unethical results of including religious moral codes into a law that was created to govern a vast diversity of people and their beliefs. The law, in this case, must be a generalization that protects the rights of this vast diversity and as such this generalized law MUST necessarily limit the power of individual and groups, such as religions so that a particular brand of religiously defined moral is not forced upon those who do not accept that moral code.

Therefore, non-believers, not only have every right to require logical substantiation of any ethical changes suggested for the law of the land, but we also have the responsibility, as citizens, to protect the rights of our diverse culture.

So when the substantiation of requested changes in law conclude solely from religious moral, we must determine if that moral can be generalized in the law of the land such that the rights of all people will not be limited further.

At this point, there have been no substantial arguments or evidence submitted to indicate that religious moral code should be introduced into the law of the land, not in the same-sex marriage debate, nor in any other debate that I am aware of.

True. And as we continually try to justify things that have no immediate harm. We are simultaniously breaking down the moral and spiritual values of our society.

"All the ways of man are clean in his own eyes but the LORD weigheth the spirits." Proverbs 16:2

"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death (pestilence or ruin)."
Proverbs 16:25

Showing that man should leave judging to their god or they may suffer the hell they fear.

Excellent interpretation as well.

Aren't religious hypocrites the greatest of all oxymorons?

Jesus certainly thought so. He ranted on and on about how hypocritical the scribes and Pharisees were. But who were the scribes and Pharisees but the religious clergy of his day.

I feel totally confident that if Jesus were alive today he would be calling the Christian scribes and Pharisees hypocrites as well, and he'd rebuke almost everything they preach in HIS NAME.

When they go to cast their metaphorical stones at the homosexuals Jesus would again say, "He who is without sin cast the first stone".

People don't realize that they are indeed casting stones at other people when they judge their lifestyles. The Christians haven't learned a damn thing from Jesus. They ignore his teachings more than anyone. All they use Jesus for, is to prop up the bigotry and hatred in the Old Testament, a Testament that Jesus clearly didn't even agree with.

Excellent interpretation as well.

Aren't religious hypocrites the greatest of all oxymorons?

Jesus certainly thought so. He ranted on and on about how hypocritical the scribes and Pharisees were. But who were the scribes and Pharisees but the religious clergy of his day.

I feel totally confident that if Jesus were alive today he would be calling the Christian scribes and Pharisees hypocrites as well, and he'd rebuke almost everything they preach in HIS NAME.

When they go to cast their metaphorical stones at the homosexuals Jesus would again say, "He who is without sin cast the first stone".

People don't realize that they are indeed casting stones at other people when they judge their lifestyles. The Christians haven't learned a damn thing from Jesus. They ignore his teachings more than anyone. All they use Jesus for, is to prop up the bigotry and hatred in the Old Testament, a Testament that Jesus clearly didn't even agree with.

Are we missing something here? I mean, obviously the OP is questioning why people, not just Christians imo, ground judgment in religious belief. In reality all judgment is grounded in prior belief about the situation being judged. This notion underwrites the topic, although it offers more as well.

I believe 'X' means I believe 'X' is true.

Therefore we can know that we all think that we have true belief because of that and because it is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood, or knowingly make a mistake.

Because we all base our judgments on prior belief, in order for the judgment to be true, it must either be based upon true premisses and have a valid construct(be logically consistent) or be based upon false premisses and have an invalid construct(be logically inconsistent). The construct represents the line of reasoning involved. Now if the latter is the case, unless the conclusion(judgment) is self-evident and obviously(undeniably) true which needs no argument to begin with, then we must throw out the reasoning and therefore the argument as well.

So, in order to have some reasonably persuasive value, an argument(for or against) must be based upon adequate evidence and the reasoning must be logically sound. I see no such evidence for gay marriage being 'wrong' or 'immoral' because all of the evidence thus far has been based upon belief in the God of Abraham. That God, according to the words attributed to 'him' has long been shown as fallible. There is also overwhelming evidence to the contrary concerning some/many things in the Bible.

Having faith that a 2,000 plus year old piece of literature is the word of God does not constitute being adequate evidence to logically ground suppressing another's rights to be married. I mean, where and how do we verify that the Bible is the word of God, and therefore must be followed? I do not think that anyone who has read it would deny that there are some valuable things contained in it, however, we cannot believe that it is God's words simply because the book itself says so. In order to do such a thing, one must override all common sense reason in order to justify what it claims.

Faith without adequate evidence does not constitute sufficient reason to suppress another's rights to freedom, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For those continuing on pursuing the Bible as grounds by which to draw conclusions(judgment), the Bible must be proven to be the word of God. The evidence must be adequate, that is real and true. Obviously the Bible is a real book. That is not in question. It even happens to refer to some real events, that is not in question either. It needs to be shown as being the word of God in order to base judgment upon it's contents.

If "The Bible is the word of God" can be reasonably and logically demonstrated as being true, I'll grant the rest.

Thomas3437 wrote:

Did Jesus ever has conflicts or disagreements with God or the Old testament?

Was not everything Jesus spoke of coming from the Old testament?

Faith without adequate evidence does not constitute sufficient reason to suppress another's rights to freedom, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For those continuing on pursuing the Bible as grounds by which to draw conclusions(judgment), the Bible must be proven to be the word of God. The evidence must be adequate, that is real and true. Obviously the Bible is a real book. That is not in question. It even happens to refer to some real events, that is not in question either. It needs to be shown as being the word of God in order to base judgment upon it's contents.

If "The Bible is the word of God" can be reasonably and logically demonstrated as being true, I'll grant the rest.

I agree completely.

In fact, as far as I'm concerned "the Bible" (which is actually a collection of conflicting stories) has already been proven to be false. So waiting around for it to be proven to be the "Word of God" would be a total waist of time.