Hope this clarifies things.

Yes. You reject the Bible. Got it.

@Hugo

Before you kill this thread, I want to thank you for having me here and teaching me what a christ follower believes and rejects. Not everybody is this open about it. I am especially grateful to you for alerting me to the freedom of speech issue. It has been right in front of me for years and I missed it. Of course, emergents do not use that term, but they are teaching their followers to refrain from saying ‘hurtful’ things. It would be in the interest of ‘peace’ and the unification of all religions to silence the fundamentalist by taking away their right to freedom of speech, just as Gerhard advocated. This one is definitely going onto my checklist. This weekend we have the spectacle of Tony Campolo coming to Moreletapark’s Missions Fest. I wonder if all the attendees will be issued with their own little white flags:

On evangelicals and interfaith cooperation: an interview with Tony Campolo by Shane Claiborne 2005:

We don’t have to give up trying to convert each other. What we have to do is show respect to one another. And to speak to each other with a sense that even if people don’t convert, they are God’s people, God loves them, and we do not make the judgment of who is going to heaven and who is going to hell.

I think that what we all have to do is leave judgment up to God. The Muslim community is very evangelistic, however what Muslims will not do is condemn Jews and Christians to Hell if in fact they do not accept Islam…

I think there are Muslim brothers and sisters who are willing to say, “You live up to the truth as you understand it. I will live up to the truth as I understand it, and we will leave it up to God on judgment day”…

Catholicism would say that at the moment of death every person is confronted in that split moment with Christ and is given the opportunity of saying yes or no. To say otherwise is to say God has got to be a pretty unfair deity, to condemn three quarters of the human race to hell without them ever having a chance.

Hugo, thank you for your patience and hospitality.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Rev 3:20)

Here is a very interesting article on morals you can read.

http://www.thebereancall.org/node/7125

Remarkably interesting stuff, I should’ve studied anthroplogy!

There is an immense literature on the evolution of altruism out there. For one thing, it increases the chances of survival of your close kin, who carry your genes. For another, if you can trust someone to reciprocate your good deeds, then both of you win in the long run. Thus altruism has been shown to be an evolutionarily stable outcome, both by models of kin selection, and by game theory. More importantly, it is supported by huge amounts of evidence.

So this is a non-question. It assumes that morality come from god. We have no evidence to show that it does. We have abundant evidence to show that empathy, compassion, co-operation, and altruism are evolutionarily favoured traits within the context of a social primate such as ourselves.

If morality does not come from a supreme being called God, from whence does it come? Kenneth supplies the answer in his rather selfish solution for the problem : “For another, if you can trust someone to reciprocate your good deeds, then both of you win in the long run.” Trust between two human beings can be a very shaky thing especially when you want the other persons to reciprocate (or imitate) your good deeds. By doing this you are immediately assuming the role of a trendsetter for high morals, engendered by your personal opinion of good deeds. As soon as you set the standard for altruism and expect others to follow suit you are playing God. “Ok guys, here are the good deeds I want you to do. Trust me and follow my example of doing good deeds and we will all win in the long run.” Had this been the ultimate solution, countries would have had no need of governments and leaders to make laws to protect the law abiding citizens and to punish the law breakers.

The alternative, of course, is to gather a group of people around you who are in sympathy with your particular brand of good deeds. You see, no two people always agree on what constitutes good deeds. You may want to be a Robin Hood figure who steals from the rich to give to the poor. Which one of the two is the good deed? Morality is not determined so much by what you do but what you actually refrain from doing. Most of the Ten Commandments are negative commands beginning with “You shall not.” Man will never be uplifted morally by telling him what to do, for the simple reason that he already knows what it means to do good. Even the beast, Adolf Hitler, knew how to extend an altruistic hand to his next of kin.

No matter what you say or believe in regard to altruism and its so-called evolutionary development, the laws of a country are derived from the Ten Commandments which proves that morality comes from God. You cannot separate empathy, compassion, and co-operation (your own words) from God’s Commandments. Stealing from your neigbour and lusting after your neigbours wife (even in your thoughts) comes from a heart that is devoid of empathy, compassion and co-operation.

Right. So absolute evil cannot exist.

I don’t recall making the argument that it does. Neither does absolute good.

@Ben-Jammin’

Yes. There’s not much point in two people with different understandings of what the + symbol means arguing about the correct answer to 2+2.

Point taken. Lets hope we can agree on the plus sign, then.

@gerhard
AFAIK, he is only giving a single talk, in Grahamstown. I don’t really know much more, but if I hear anything more concrete, I’ll let you know.

The God of the Bible has given me enough evidence to come to have faith in Him and to love Him and to serve Him.

What is this evidence?

You are saying the God of the Bible should have given more evidence of His existence and because He has not, He cannot be true?

OK, this needs some explanation.

I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with me that human beings are capable of imagining a tremendous, some might say infinite, number of different things. I also think you will agree with me that many, if not most, of those things do not correspond to reality. Think of fantasy/scifi books or shows, for example. In order for us to determine which of our internal ideas closest match reality, we need to test those ideas against the evidence.

An example. Say the light in your room doesn’t go on. There are a tremendous number of possible reasons why this might be the case. They might be plausible (the bulb has blown, the power is off) or they might be bizarre (the power-pixies have stolen all the electricity; the electrons are tired), but only one corresponds to reality. We can test this (in most cases) pretty easily to determine which of these conceptual models most closely approximates reality. Replace the bulb, check the mains etc. etc., and you can see which of your explanations is the more correct one. You gather evidence to choose between your hypotheses.

How does god factor into this? In two ways. You might hypothesize that god exists. Lets assume this is the Christian god for now. We’ll come back to that later. Another hypothesis is that all of the actions attributed to this god actually happened. In other words, the Bible is literally true. This provides us with a tremendous number of possible hypotheses to test. If there was a global flood, then fossils in older rock strata should not be different from those in younger ones. If Jonah really survived in a whale, then whales should be able to support a human being in their alimentary canals. If the sun stood still for Joshua, then the movement of the planets should reflect this.

The problem is, virtually all of these hypotheses have been convincingly refuted, or, if shown to be true, to have other, more natural explanations. What this means is that we cannot trust the Bible to tell us anything about the god which inhabits its pages. Fossils are stratified. Whales have gullets so small an orange can’t pass through. Our understanding of planetary movement is so good that we can show conclusively, to the minute, when and where an eclipse will occur. And the chance of the sun standing still, or even of the earth standing still (a much more plausible hypothesis), based on this evidence, is incredibly remote.

So, where does that leave us? We can test many things that the Bible tells us. Almost all of those stories fail the test of reality. Which means that, even if there were a god, with every falsified hypothesis, we lose information on who he is. We can’t assign any personality traits to him. We know nothing conclusive or strongly-supported about him. We must be very careful about trusting anything the Bible says is the literal truth about him. At best, this will force a person to consider the Bible in a more metaphorical light. It cannot be literally true, simply because the evidence does not support it.

This brings me back to the first point. We’re still left with the hypothesis of a god. I will fully concede that I cannot, ever, disprove the existence of a god. There is always a possibility that this is the case. There are two answers to this. One is Russell’s teapot. The other is more tangential, in that, if that god exists, then he/she/it/they do(es) not have any of the characteristics assigned to it by any conventional religion, because virtually all of those characteristics have either failed the test of evidence, or are untestable, and thus unknowable with any degree of certainty. The chances of your conception of god and the real thing being the same, given we can’t know it, are extremely small.

So. That is effectively my reasoning behind my lack of belief in a god. It’s not about faith (inasmuch as I lack it), or getting back at someone for not existing, or any somesuch. It is a simple lack of evidence.

Hope this clarifies things.

@amanda

If there is no God, then there is no reason why you should not help evolution along by killing off the undesirables, the sick, the elderly, the unwanted, the unborn, the handicapped and the inferior. Why would you allow them to drain the earth’s resources and jeopardizes the survival of the fittes?

I think you mixed up darwinism and social darwinism Do you know of a utilitarian thinker called peter singer?(i’d expect you to know of him) I think the operative word is sentience. May i ask why you’d equate a belief in natural selection to people wanting to carry out selection? Contradictory mutually exclusive concepts no?

maybe i should rephrase your question:
if there is a god , then there is no reason why you should not go helping god along by killing off the undesirables (non believers , those evil muslims that you mentioned etc), the sick (gays apparently) ….Why would you allow them to poison the god’s resources and jeopardizes the soul of the willing? Why not repeat the last couple of thousand of years worth of religious oppression, destruction and torture in god x’s name? hey , i mean , come on , you guys obviously failed the last couple of times you tried, surely at some point you guys will figure out how to do it properly. (after all now you have that christain, hitler as template to follow, apparently he was quite good at ad hominem’ )

like the Muslim extremist , it is your duty and divine right.

I’d like to know why you think so. I am pretty familiar with the idea, but perhaps this is not evident from my posts. Do you mean how I deal with those who advocate this particular mindset?

Yes. There’s not much point in two people with different understandings of what the + symbol means arguing about the correct answer to 2+2.

I do suck at mind-reading, though, so it could just be the way I’m reading things today…

No! This isn’t a case of submission or refusal, it is a case of no evidence supporting the hypothesis of a god.

I dunno. The God of the Bible has given me enough evidence to come to have faith in Him and to love Him and to serve Him. I impatiently mark off the signs of the end times, longing for the day that Jesus Christ will return, hoping it will be today. He has accomplished His purpose with me.

You are saying the God of the Bible should have given more evidence of His existence and because He has not, He cannot be true? What proof would you consider to be compelling enough for you to have faith in Him, to believe and trust in His Word, to love Him, more than you love yourself, to be prepared to live for Him and to die to yourself?

You agree that the existence of evil does not disprove the existence of God. Are you saying that the existence of evil proofs that God must be bad? Is this not also an argument from ignorance?

Again, the logic is false because human morality isn’t absolute. It can, and has, evolved. Certain aspects remain (near) universal, others haven’t.

Right. So absolute evil cannot exist.

I agree that a god that would permit his creations to suffer isn’t worth much

Unless He uses the suffering to achieve His good and gracious will.

Firstly, I see little evidence of my self-righteousness. Simply because I disagree with you doesn’t make me so. Secondly. I’m afraid emotional talk such as the above isn’t a logical argument. It is powerful, perhaps emotionally stirring, but an argument from emotion is nevertheless a logical fallacy.

Sorry.

Until one of us gets Amanda to see the concept of a non-authoritarian morality, arguing about what is right or wrong and why is pointless.

Hmmm…Amanda, can you conceive of a non-authoritarian morality? If not, why?

I’m not sure you’ve gotten the concept of an authoritarian morality, either, though.

I’d like to know why you think so. I am pretty familiar with the idea, but perhaps this is not evident from my posts. Do you mean how I deal with those who advocate this particular mindset?

Until one of us gets Amanda to see the concept of a non-authoritarian morality, arguing about what is right or wrong and why is pointless. I’m not sure you’ve gotten the concept of an authoritarian morality, either, though.

Authoritarian morality – asking for further and further justification leads you to, at the impossible to justify root, accepting an authority’s system of right and wrong.

Values-based morality – asking for further and further justification leads you to, at the impossible to justify root, accepting a root value of empathy as a starting point for developing systems of right and wrong.

If there is no God, then there is no reason why you should not help evolution along by killing off the undesirables, the sick, the elderly, the unwanted, the unborn, the handicapped and the inferior. Why would you allow them to drain the earth’s resources and jeopardise the survival of the fittest?

OK. This is a misunderstanding of what evolutionary theory says. For one thing, nature isn’t just red in tooth and claw. Competition is just one way to increase your fitness. What a lot of people forget, or are ignorant of, is that co-operation is also an undeniably effective way of increasing your fitness. There is an immense literature on the evolution of altruism out there. For one thing, it increases the chances of survival of your close kin, who carry your genes. For another, if you can trust someone to reciprocate your good deeds, then both of you win in the long run. Thus altruism has been shown to be an evolutionarily stable outcome, both by models of kin selection, and by game theory. More importantly, it is supported by huge amounts of evidence.

So this is a non-question. It assumes that morality come from god. We have no evidence to show that it does. We have abundant evidence to show that empathy, compassion, co-operation, and altruism are evolutionarily favoured traits within the context of a social primate such as ourselves.

Ben raises another very good point. The only major sticking point most theists have with modern science is evolution. Why don’t fundamentalists have such serious objections to general relativity, or quantum physics? But all three theories are outgrowths of the same, rigorously applied scientific method. If fundamentalist viewpoints can’t accept evolution, then strictly speaking they should also not accept the other two theories. Which means they should be objecting to the use of computers, the Internet, GPS etc. etc., as well as to antibiotics, virtually all food, pets and gardens…the list goes on.

@Ben-Jammin

That’s the beauty of the concept of hell. The fear can prevent even thinking about being wrong.

Those memes are pretty darn good replicators, I tells ya!

Ben’Jammin, I don’t seem to detect even the slightest hint of desire from them for gaining some measure of understanding of how we think. Not the slightest.

That’s the beauty of the concept of hell. The fear can prevent even thinking about being wrong. (At work, I get some ribbing for being the ‘out’ atheist. One of the Catholics told me he was honestly afraid to even consider such questions.)

How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?

@Amanda:

If there is no God, then there is no reason why you should not help evolution along by killing off the undesirables, the sick, the elderly, the unwanted, the unborn, the handicapped and the inferior. Why would you allow them to drain the earth’s resources and jeopardise the survival of the fittest?

Why do people only make this argument with evolution? If there is no God, should I also knock down trees and push people off cliffs to help gravity along? Should I neutralize electrical charges wherever I find them to help electromagnetism along?

I don’t want to knock everything over, neutralize electrical charges, or kill off certain people. Generally speaking, I want health and happiness for sentient beings.

I don’t have an authoritarian sense of morality. If there is no God as an authority, I do not substitute evolution as an authority.