One thing I often think about is the idea that if there are genuinely evil people in the world, and we know there are, then suggesting that they need religion is kind of redundant isn’t it?

I mean, religion isn’t something that can be forced onto people.

In other words, good people are good, and bad people aren’t. Trying to force religion onto bad people with the idea that religion will make them good is a futile notion.

Our prisons are full of criminals who were raised in religious families. Clearly religion had no affect on changing their behavior.

Religion doesn’t make good people out of bad people.

This is like the conclusion that was made about owning pets. A study showed that people who own pets are more calm and have less stress than people who don’t.

So should stressed out people run out and buy a pet?

Maybe not!

Maybe what the study actually shows is that people who are naturally loving tend to be calm people who don’t get stressed out so easily. They also happen to be more like to by a pet than non-loving people.

So not if non-loving people run out and buy a pet, instead of that pet calming them down, they will probably stress out the pet, it will get sick and die on them.

Seriously!

I think we need to be careful about what we point to the ‘cause’ of things.

I don’t think that history supports the idea that mankind is any different today than at any other point in history. People often talk about how bad the world is today. Yet, they would be hard-pressed to point at any time in history when things were better. In fact, most of history was much worse!

Some of the most religious times were the most gory of all. Just look at the Crusades! That was religion at it’s peak. What did that help?

I already mentioned about the White man (a religious culture) coming to America and eradicating the natives. Religion didn’t seem to give those people any better morals. Then they turn around and enslave another race of humans. I don’t see where religion was beneficial at all.

The whole country became focused on mammon, and we know live in a purely competitive economically driven society. That all stemmed from a religion-based society.

I just don’t see where religion has any historical record of providing humans with decent morals.

I just don’t see it at all.

By the way,… to S1owhand,… this post wasn’t aimed at you, I just rambled on after using a thought from your post as a springboard.

i understand.

my point is that of standards versus no standards. if morality is purely relative then Stalin's morality is just as valid as Abra's morality.

you can't force religion down anyone's throat of course. nor ANY standard. that does not mean that morality is necessarily purely relative.

many evils have been perpetrated with religious zeal - with ardent fervor! no denying it. this is obviously a perversion of religion as all religions advocate love and peace.

on the other side of the balance is all organized charity
and the positive influence that religious teachings have had
on people through the last 2-? millenia. do you disavow all religious and philosophical reasoning about what is good based on the fact that some have perverted or misused such philosophical arguments or moral reasoning?

one has to start somewhere...

i don't blame the bible or religion. but Prager's point that we must use the old noggin and try to examine what is right and wrong with less emotional attachment is i think a reasonable point. he is being somewhat inflammatory in his choice of hot button topics but spicy is better than pablum.

so do you think that "bad people" are inherently bad and cannot be taught or rehabilitated?

about the world getting worse or better or staying the same.......

how about islamic extremists and cartoons? how about religious wars in the 21st century? convert or die! infidels!

neener neener neener...

its a free world .i've known many women that have been raped.i have a cousin born out of rape .she was given up for adoption.she's also my aunt by the way.i asked my aunt if she minded me looking for her.she said ok so i did.i found her on myspace.shes's 20 now.my aunt had tears after meeting her.all of the past has caught up with her now.her daughter is full of anger not at my aunt totaly.she somehow blames my family for not raising her.theres no right way to decide if abortion is right or wrong .its a woman's choice the choice is never easy and to the self rightous people who want to make people believe they are wrong for making the choice to do what they want i say the hell with yall

Isn't that amazing!

There you have it. Someone with a stagnant 'one track' view on life (the bible is the word of god, and th only truth for humans!) turns to someone with a different perpective:



The opening question is loaded! It is conditional on coming up with the right answer according to the prozelitizer.

Stagnant and 'one track' view, based on the fact that the only purpse of any exchange with anyone, is to seek out different minded people, and stop at nothing to 'convert' them to 'THE ONLY VIEW'.

To the question do you believe in god, you MUST be a friend of the cult and it dogma, OR ELSE!!!

And so, when the 'targeted person' answered: "... No, that's silly...", the fanatical prozelitizer went to work with his arsenal of manipulative and half baked follow-up questions (apologetics rethorical affirmations).

The corner stone disqualifyer being the infamous:

"... Oh My!, but if you don't believe in MY god, and HIS bible, HOW DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG?!?!?..."

Are you serious people?!?!? No bible according to you would equate to 'no morality' ?!!? No principles?!?!? No values?!?!? No conscience?!?!? CHAOS?!?!?

Get real. Eventhough I have no intention to embark on such a crusade, it would be infinitely easier to demonstrate that the bible is a source of far greater immoral actions by man, than any other single identifiable source of dictatorial dogma.

Religious fanatics are the ultimate minority of people whom are totally and unconsciously lead by their instincts, what appears to be confused with 'heart' in the 'OP's text. All emotions, supported by preposterous disguised and make believe logic.

To desparately 'fill' one's fundamental and instinctive insecurity (not knowing), with a made-up fable of a particular 'god' and a 'conveniently made-up 'absolute knowledge' or 'certainty' to feed our 'not knowing insecurity' is to be totally emotionally driven, which is part of being human. Nothing fundamentally wrong with that.

To confuse being emotionally driven with reality and fact, on the other hand, is nothing short of PATHETIC and DISHONEST!!!

To believe in the bible, and to believe in a particular god is everyone's PERSONAL privilege.

To turn this personal belief into a public 'military' cause, aimed at converting the whole world towards the same (false) unattainable 'CERTAINTY' (abscence of insecuriy), is misguided at best, and dishonest at worst.

It is an inescapable evidence that you will not spread 'Christ's love through a fanatical military and antagonistic modus operandi.

Attacking others whom do not share your beliefs will not bring peace, love, and understanding amongst humans.

It will on the other keep spreading the most primitive and barbaric behaviors, all based on the powerful instincts of fear, insecurity, and separation. That is tribal and antiquated.

If the bible is a source of inspiration for humans, the 'one track' view of some fanatics whom claim it so (not all Christians, and not all believers in Christianity), sure are speading a most confused and antiquated self-serving interpretation of the book.


As for the rest of the article, the incredibly dishonest and unfounded examples are a perfect match for the equally dishonest and leading starting premise. There is little need to comment any further.

Something which is contaminated, doesn't become less contaminated when exposing yourself to more of it.

The fanatics must accept the 'objective' challenge to revisit their own false premises without acrimony, and in good faith.

Chief among them, is the infamous "... no human morality without the 'revelated' christian god and his equally 'revelated' 'word' in a book...". Fanatics must get off their high horses and allow balance and wisdom to enter the landscape. Christianity and the book associated to it, has absolutely no monopoly on morality, far from it.

Humans have started questioning the possible alternative to their barbaric and instinctive 'exclusive' behaviors way before the 'book' of christianity showed up.

Bringing some sort of moral order, civility, and ethics to humanity, has been evolving over a period of millions of years. For Christianity, or any other religious group to pretend having some sort of monopoly on the matter, is proof of profound ignorance at best, and dangerous barberic bad faith at worse.

Let's put the dogma and the apologetics arsenal aside, and le's (possibly) discuss these issues objectively and in good faith: no superior 'truth' on either side. Better yet, let's come from 'no sides', ALL ON THE SAME TEAM!!!

What do you say people?!?!?

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.

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.

As far as teaching children, of course we should explain to them morals and values. Whatever gave you the idea that we just tell them to do as we say without explanation? If you would study the Bible you would see the love, compassion and justice behind all things. Of course you have to read it with an open mind and not jump to an immediate conclusion the first time you encounter something that requires thought and contemplation. The lessons in the Bible are incredible and as Prager says are the foundation of the United States.

Beautifully and eloquently said, Spider! ;-)

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??

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! They take a 'word for word' first degree view of things when it serves them, and have no issue with 'out of context' mischaracterizations.

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 misguided, whereas '...what 'god' tells me...' would be sound, and moereover, would 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'.

That's his point. We SEE the 18 year old but we don't SEE the child. So our heart is moved by the 18 year old and not by the child. So what ends up happening is that the emotional difficulties of carrying a baby to term outweighs the moral obligation to save and treasure life.

That's the danger of following our eyes and heart over values and morality outlined in the Bible.

I really don't understand your point at all. Why don't you discuss the issue at hand? Prager makes a very legitimate point. You can't tell me that many folks are not guided by their "feelings" exclusively. When they are guided JUST by their emotions then they may end up with terrible consequences like the notion that ones beloved dog is more valuable then a human being who is a stranger. He is making an excellent logical point.

Address the issue please.

Voil,

You aren't my enemy. I was simply attempting to point out that I think you might have missed Dennis Prager's point. It wasn't Dennis Prager's intention to insult anyone and it was not my intention to insult you. Here's a for any hurt feelings.

Nope you are definitely wrong about that. Guaranteed. Because I have read the Bible with an absolutely open mind. I never jump to any conclusions. You just think I do because you are seeing the results of over 40 years of having thought about these things. You think I’m jumping to conclusions, but I have thought about these things quite deeply for almost a half a century. Not conclusion-jumping being done here.

In fact, in the early going I was twisting the Bible as far as I possibly could to try to justify it. But it wouldn’t twist that far, it kept breaking. I finally had to come to the only reasonable conclusion that it simply can’t be made to work no matter how hard I try.

You insinuation that I’m merely jumping to conclusion is totally without merit.

The lessons in the Bible are incredible and as Prager says are the foundation of the United States.

What biblical laws are the foundation of the United States?

The bulk of the 10 commandments are just common sense and would be implemented by any humans who never even heard of the Bible.

What specific laws are you talking about? Any government whose purpose it is to protect the people is automatically going to have laws against murder, rape, stealing, etc. Those are just common sense that any group of people who are trying to make a civilized government would naturally agree to.

Moreover, the Bible can actually be used to support discrimination against women. You talk about the lesson in the Bible being incredible, but there is a lot of bigotry in the bible too. In fact, it wasn’t for man-made laws religious people could still use the Bible today as an excuse to burn witches at the stake!!!

We actually have man-made laws that PROTECT us from the Biblical laws.

So I completely disagree with your premise.

I’m definitely not for bringing back the dark ages.

Anytime anyone wants to use the Bible as a guide for laws they will absolutely hear my complete opposition. If that were truly allowed all it would lead to is the persecution of all non-Christians.

It would serve to do nothing more than to give bigotry and ignorance free reign. The first thing that the Christians would do if their Bible was made into the law of the land is to probably burn ever scientific book on evolution and ban it from the schools.

We’d dive straight into a second coming of the dark ages. It would be hell come true.

No thank you.

My objective and well-researched position is that the Bible was written by male chauvinistic men who had many prejudices and were bigoted in many ways. Jesus was not one of them because Jesus never wrote a word in the Bible. Everything in the Bible about Jesus is biased hearsay.

I realize that you are a Jew, but anytime we’re talking about putting the Bible it’s legitimate to mention the New Testament as well, even if you don’t recognize it. I just want to point out to the Christians that when I say the Bible was written by men, I’m not even referring to Jesus because Jesus was never an author of the book in anyway. He was just referred to by other men who had their own motivations and agendas.
I think that’s a really GREAT point too,…..

For those who believe that the Bible is the inspire word of God, and that Jesus was this God, then why didn’t God himself write a few pages in his book whilst he was here????

Clearly he didn’t seem to be very interested in writing things down. This alone should bring into question how concerned he was about books!

Jesus seemed to be making more excuses for the Old Testament than passionately supporting it like as if it represented HIS WORD.

Just something to think about with an open mind.

Abra please respond to this. I really want to hear your view on this.

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.

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.

Wiki defines Obligation:

"An obligation is a requirement to take some course of action. It can be legal or moral. There are also obligations in other normative contexts, such as obligations of etiquette, social obligations, and possibly the In terms of politics, obligations are requirements that are to fulfill."

In those terms to answer your question I believe it is a moral obligation to love G-d as it is to love your parents. It is also an obligation for G-d to love humans as parents are obligated to love their children.

That would be great. But can you boil it down to one specific objection so we can discuss it?

Voileazur said it best.

That is the problem.

What he is saying here is lost to those that don't understand what he is saying.

Yet, peculiarly so to some, perhaps, is that I actually understand his comments completely and had absolutely no difficulty in grasping what is coming from his heart.

The only thing that I would add, is that he has expressed his point of view immaculately. That is the brilliance of his words.

The question is, can we do things to make it easier for those children to be adopted. Oh, my, why yes, I think we can AND we can put a hole through another “religiously guided” myth at the same time.

ALLOW single parent adoptions AND if the breakdown of FAMILY is the concern some have regarding same sex “marriage” well – who needs to listen to the heart, when logic says, ALLOW same-sex marriage and there will be many more HOMES available with loving families, ready and eager to adopt.

But of course, doing such a thing would be to break with religious tradition, now would that be the heart guiding the thought, or a lack of LOOKING BEYOND the heart to logic??????




Let us take a look at one of the most verbal and powerful Christians of the present time. The President, of the United States.

This mans' decisions are often based on the “morality” of his Christian upbringing, that he so clings to.

With his faith in one fist and a pen in the other he would deny humanity of a the most expedient methods of scientific research for treatments that could possibly cure:
Osteoperosis, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, cancers, nerve damage as in the case of those paralyzed from a broken neck, and a host of thousands of other human tissue diseases.

Why? Because the material necessary to continue the research is being discarded systematically, and is illegal to use in research.

Abortion, like it or not, is legal. In vitro fertilization, is legal, like it or not. And in both cases the aborted embryos and the unused embryos are simply THROWN AWAY.

Instead of something good coming from this, something that could benefit all of humanity, that which is needed most for STEM CELL RESEARCH, is illegal to obtain – because of the power that ONE person has to AVOID logic by replacing iy with a religious moral.

What reason would you,or anyone have, not to donate your dead carcass to science in the hopes that your death would provide one last change for a good deed? Yet millions of embryos, are are not so consulted they are "simply thrown away."

Research has not stopped, oh no. Only now instead of using the precious resources that could benefit humanity (AND ARE THERE, LIKE IT OR NOT) and speed along the process, the process has taken a turn. NOW scientists are FORCED to create the embryos they need themselves.

An animal egg ‘enucleated’, and replaced with human DNA – does create an embryo. Skin cells from two male donors, have created an embryo; LIVING cells capable of becoming human. Why is ok to create, with technology, that which is forbidden to scientists as a naturally occuring resource? Why is it ok to destroy the technologically created embryo – and then cry over abortions, & discarded in vitro embryos?

Ask the child who was aborted, 15 years hense, how it feels to know that it gave it’s life for millions of people? Better yet, if you are a believer, ask Jesus.



PreciousLife – you do not think with your heart, nor do you think with a mind capable of seeing beyond a dedication. This, sir, is the downfall of all who believe there is logic in accepting religious morals, whose principles are inflexible and permanent. These, your arguments, PL, are only one more assertion of your confirmation bias.

What logic serves humanity if ethics stagnate in a pool of beliefs? And what ethics can guide a society if those ethics are not capable of bending?