one perhaps may have a right to thought..but because a belief could infringe on the rights of others or inject an ideaology into society beyond what the laws can regulate and then to use Faith as a way to solidify the belief as truth is why the right to believe is questionable or becomes a moral issue

which brings up the question ..is Faith moral?

to inject what one claim is Truth into society with no proof beyond Faith that it is Truth actually moral?

and this is why the thread seeks an explantion as to what Faith actually is

my answer would be

yes, faith is moral

'truth' is something that has to be tempered with logic and knowledge and the ability to put things in context and understand 'truth' as both subjective and objective, depending upon the situation,,,

a Truth is Truth and therefore would not require Faith that it was Truth

which is why explaining what Truth is does not explain what Faith is or if Faith is Moral

1. Not a believer. Two, that was eye-for-an-eye; kill, yes, justified, more than likely if you believe the tales. But it doesn't state anywhere: "Believe in me, kill for me." Not to mention, it's not like God speaks to us now, is it? So that would totally just nullify 95% of all your comments if you believed that.

2. Not exist and perceived differently are two totally different concepts.

3. Maybe you're a bit of both and wish you could do both and thus its all backed by your jealousy and you want to worship a murdering psycho so you can be a sociopath and plead that God said I could?

Hmm..

Funches,
That is not religion /believe , that is tradition/ritual part of its base is in tales concerning the historical figure of gift giver Saint Nicholas.
Just for your 'Santa's" record - not all the ppl /countries have that tradition /ritual.



Calm down , here we call that 'show' :)



Find where God said ppl to kill other ppl in his name ?

would that apply to all that would follow the ideaology of someone or an entity that make promises or prophecies of torturing and/or tossing others into lakes of fire? ....

God told Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a sacifice

Where He said that ?

..you're comparing your views..

..to the final judgment?

I know not of this 'torture' he will 'bring' when such an 'event' if possible would take place.

Throw 'Satan' and those who follow him and those who till deny God into the fires, I know of; but I see not how that is torturous or in anyway.. bad? So long as George Bush Jr and Hitler are among those he tosses in there. *grumbles* ..but even if not them, that'd be 'His' call not mine.

Those not meant to be in this fiery prison and those who 'served' their time; are supposed to re-ascend to Heaven with him when said judgment takes place.

So, that said, I find it hard to answer your question..

..since it wasn't stated properly.

Bro, that was merely a test of his faith.

Genesis 22:12

12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”

..maybe read the WHOLE passage?

In other words..

God said that to Abraham to see if he, would, without question do as he commanded; but then ultimately interrupted seeing that he would in fact do it.

Then your religious belief would be a made up stupid immoral criminal
disgusting behavior which is not a religious belief at all and goes
against the teachings of all the rest of the world's religions.

But don't let inanity stand in your way! Rant on about why people
are criminalized simply for doing criminal things like murder, rape,
thieving and destruction of property. Jeez life is just one big
unfairness to people who simply want to do bad things to others. Must
be darned frustrating to all the prisoners.

Sure, that is an observation of what happens to be currently true about social value systems today. The next step is to ask why.

My explanation is that a person develops their initial foundational value system by how they are treated and how they perceive the interactions of shared social experiences during childhood. A person then through normal development of the mind advances in abstraction and then finds reasons to apply their own shared experience social value system to the entire world, or an ideology. Ideology from this perspective is really just an extension of the social value system. A way to author/illustrate the shared values of a given tribe.

It is human nature to project our own values on to others, and vice versa and if we find that they do not share our values we tend to place them into another tribe and fear/revile them via Xenophobia.

So pedophilia being a common yet statistically rare subset of the human population really cannot gain the kind of social ground required to setup a system of shared experiences which would support that set of behaviors as moral. You have far more social value systems that would revile this for it to gain traction.

Also from an evolutionary stand point the damage caused by pedophilia as a moral guideline would be counter productive, thus highly unlikely to ever evolve as a working moral value.

So from both perspectives those kinds of behaviors just do not fit well with how humans build moral guidelines.

Religions have really nothing to do with it except as clubs/groups where people can group up into tribes based on sharing most if not all of the already developed social value systems they have learned through social shared experience. ie the authoring of the system for purposes of sharing with large groups.

Sure why not?



Inject? o.O
Last I checked..
..no one is 'forcing' you to believe anything.



..and such was answered.

it's a biblical story in which God commands Abraham to kill his son as a burnt offering to him

"FALSE".

*brands it and walks away*

*scurries back, scratches out false and puts...*

"INVALID".

I used the example of child molestation because apparently some Priests were religiously practicing it and supposedly the church has been covering it up for perhaps centuries ...or was it a cover up or was it a belief of priests that later on became criminal

just as "RoamingOrator" pointed out...Mormons once practiced "simultaneous Multiple Marriages" until the government deemed polygamy illegal

Where they really religiously practicing it? Or are you just using that in the form of doing something so often . . . ex. Martin goes to the deli religiously?


The distinction is important. If you were just being hyperbolic then I don't think the point is cogent.

The act of covering it up while disgusting is easily explained via the tribalism of the church. No different then law officers covering up other police officers crimes, heinous certainly, specifically religious . . . emm, not sold.

Only knowledge I have of this laid in the fact that, yes, the Vatican at one point, was trying to cover-up the stories of several priests engaging in sexual relations with young boys.

Why?

To protect the reputation of the Church and Gods' Holy Name; which, is kind of understandable; however, it is still very, very wrong.

However.

These priests were ex-communicated and were prosecuted; so, not a major cover-up as the due process still took place; from my knowledge; they just tried to keep from public knowledge that the molesters were, in fact, ordained priests.

It was a test.

Abraham failed (but God judged him not).