Well, one has to ask why murder is usually wrong, and why honesty is usually good.

If you look at most murder cases in the U.S., by certain moral standards you could conclude that in reality, most murder is actually just, and its the rare case of cold blooded psychopathic murder without reason that is wrong.

Okay, I'm combining everything into one post now, since the evil forums make me re-login each time anyway. Let me know if this gets too confusing...

I think you misunderstand. I was not implying that people who don't believe in God don't care about other humans. I'm questioning - what reason do they have to care?

When I say that I believe morality comes from God, I mean that I believe he instills it in us universally. I'm not speaking of the bible or anything of that sort, I mean simply that I believe God universally gives some concept of right and wrong to all people when he creates them.



This is a very good question, and one that I had to think about for quite awhile before replying. For the first part, I honestly don't know. I know that he does request and require our worship - in fact, that is the very reason we were created. What's more, he wants genuine (not robotic) worship, which is why he gives us the choice to refuse him. As for WHY, I honestly don't know.

The second part is easier - we were created specifically to worship God. It gives us a joy that goes beyond happiness and circumstances, and gives us the opportunity to live with Him. That doesn't seem all that exciting on its own, but in reality it's an amazing thing.

I'm afraid this doesn't demonstrate the truth or reality of who God is. I think part of the problem is that it lumps several acts together into one lump category, when in reality each of those actions does make perfect sense and does not seem so immoral when truly considered.



This is true, in part. Christians do tend to focus on the New Testament, which we believe provides vital additions to the Old Testament, and completes God's message to us. However, I think we take this too far, even to a fault sometimes. We also believe in the Old Testament, and believe that even though God's means of interacting with us might have changed, He did not. So, if he does say that the God of the Old Testament is immoral, that is the same God we believe in.

I believe you have to go back to the base question to really appreciate the point. I can recognize that you follow the same code of morals that I do - in fact, I think that's exactly the point. How do you suppose that we all came to the same general idea about what is right and what is wrong?



If you truly believed it was relative, then you would have no reason or purpose to ever judge anyone else as 'evil' or 'wrong.' Maybe in their code of ethics, it's perfectly acceptable. The issue comes up when (as C.S. Lewis points out) we recognize that there is truly a universal set of ethics that has been accepted by every major culture. Which again makes me wonder...where do you suppose we got that idea?

If they truly believe that then there is a lack of reasoning going on. It seems pretty clear that there is a difference between the god of the old testament and the god of the new testament. The new testament god is all about love. The old testament god is all about obedience. Unless the bible portrays him improperly in either the old or the new testament. Or unless god changed. Neither options mesh well with the standard Christian's belief structure.

I am curious though, for those Christians out there, how do you reconcile within yourself the contradictions regarding the portrayal of Jesus in the different gospels of the New Testament? Also, do you believe that he was born of a virgin, which is first suggested in Matthew's gospel and never mentioned in Mark's? Do you believe in his divinity? If so, why do you suppose no mention of it is made in the Gospel of Mark?

Also, when it comes to how you are to be saved, which of the paths laid out in the New Testament do you subscribe to? In Mark we have Jesus clearly stating that to be saved one must follow the commandments as laid out in the old testament but in other gospels, to be saved one must go through Jesus. Of course the difference between Mark and the other gospels is that Mark was written prior to the laying out of the Christian theology by those who came after.

Do you feel that those who wrote gospels after the foundations of the Church were laid may have doctored them a bit to be more appealing to the people they were attempting to convert by giving them familiar symbols to relate to?

Finally, given the Church's (and the majority of the spin offs of the Church) history of syncretism do you reject those practices that are a result of this, such as Christmas, in favor of a more pure adherance to the teachings of Christ? If not, how do you reconcile it?

I am curious since belief in the teachings of Christ, belief in Christ, and belief in the Church of Christ are all different things even though they tend to get muddled together.

You are a lot more clever than you pretend to be in the game!

In my opening post, I mentioned that for my own studies, I went through a sort of evolution. If there were some way I could absolutely prove to you that some sort of god-like entity existed, that still would not prove Christianity. However, it would be the first step.

From that point, we could start looking around at what this god-like entity created. There's a great deal of beauty in nature, and He also gave us the ability to appreciate it. He allows things to happen on the Earth which just seem wrong to us, but also steps in to make amazing things happen from time-to-time.

Following this same process, you can learn quite a bit about this god-like creator. From there, you can start looking at the different religions to see which describes this creator. Then, compare the religions and the differences between them. Christians believe in the New Testament, while Jews do not. Why do Christians believe in the New Testament?

Coming to believe in God is not the entire process, but it is an important first step before you can get to other questions. It wouldn't be very productive to jump in and start talking about why Christians believe in the New Testament, Jews believe in the Torah, and Muslums believe in the Qu'ran if you don't believe that there is a god to begin with.

Murder is "wrong" for humans because if we started killing one another willy nilly based on each of our individual beliefs, we'd quickly descend into Chaos. Murder has been a nono long before the belief in the Judeo-Christian tradition became dominant.

Plus, murder is far more horrifying to those who do not believe in god or any of these teachings of an afterlife than it should be to those who do. If I kill someone and I believe that this is truly the end for them (They will get no more chances, there will be no judgement, they will just cease to exist) then I have robbed them of something exceedingly precious and irreplaceable. Humans have a natural empathy seperate from that instilled by doctrine of religion. Whether that empathy comes from a higher being or not is relevant to the discussion as it is the specific morals taught by the religions that are being argued.

Haven't read the rest of the thread. Flame away if you wish.

My belief is people originally shied away from murder because it protected themselves. If the entire community didn't murder anyone, there was a much less chance they would be murdered themselves.
I could be entirely wrong, but its an idea.

Actually, I don't believe that God changed at all between the Old and New Testament. The way in which he communicates with us changed a bit. God was always all about love and obedience. For example, take a look through Solg of Solomon in the Old Testament for one of the greatest expressions of love in the Bible. Or, for obedience, you could look at 2 Peter, which stresses obedience to God. What changed was God's communication - he no longer had many prophets walking the earth and performing miracles, nor did he communicate directly and openly with people. If you look through the Old Testament, the vast majority of those miracles you think of were actually performed by prophets on God's behalf. In the New Testament, he begins a different approach (think of it as phase 2 of the plan).

Actually, there are surprisingly few differences between the four gospels. The four gospels are not meant to be the exact same book over and over. They are each written by different people, for different purposes. Matthew focuses in particular on showing that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecies about the Messiah - he was a Jew writing for Jews. Luke, on the other hand, was a Gentile doctor, who focuses more on helping the poor and weak. John was passionate and fiery, his gospel focuses quite a bit on the miracles and wonders of Jesus and other more spiritual aspects. Mark is more difficult to nail down. He was the youngest, and was not truly one of Jesus 12 disciples. He was one of his followers, though, and his gospel was one of the earliest (if not the earliest) circulated.

It's also a misconception that Mark does not make the claim that Jesus was God. Let's take even the first chapter as an example. Not only does Jesus command out an unholy spirit, but notice what the spirit asks - "Have you come to destroy us?" (v. 24). Who do you suppose has the power to destroy unholy spirits? This is only the first example, there are a few others as well.



Actually these are both correct. If you were absolutely perfect, and followed every letter of the law perfectly, you could absolutely earn your way into heaven.

Unfortunately, I have already failed, as has every other person ever born. From where we now stand, Jesus is the only option.

Not at all. In fact, the gospels do just the opposite. Take, as example, Jesus' resurrection. Who found him at the tomb? Women?

Women were not to be believed during that era, and were not even allowed to testify in court. There are several other examples of facts which most likely would have been changed if any intelligent person were going to doctor the facts to make them seem more believable.

J. P. Holding (www.tektonics.org) also has written a few very good articles related to this topic, where he makes the case that the disciples themselves must have believed what they wrote. They died brutally for it, and did not receive any real benefit for it. There is a lot more detail in his articles, I'd recommend having a look.



I would reject anything that does not serve a purpose. Christmas is a good example. The date of Christmas was decided on because of its proximity to the Solstice and the holy days for the Roman sun god. However, just because it comes from that background does not mean that it is inherently wrong. Every year, people who avoid the church the rest of the year will show up to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, for the sake of Christmas. It also draws families together; it accomplishes a lot of positive things from the Christian perspective. So, even if it comes from a syncretic background, it is now accomplishing something very different.

That is a really nice theory, but from my understanding reality of human behaviour says otherwise.

The following type of murders have been justified and even seen as necessary by many people in many cultures throughout the world:

1. Murder for political gain.
2. Murder to remove harmfull elements of society (Like academics, or poets)
3. Murder for betrayal.. i.e. killing a traitor, or killing your ex-husband.
4. Murder out of lust.
5. Murder to prevent another "bad thing." Like somebody robbing your house.
6. Murder for honour.
7. Murder as a form of prevention.
8. Murder as a sign of commitment to a cause.
9. Murder for sport.
10. Murder for population control.

These are all common concepts both pre and post the existence of the Kingdom of Israel.

Based on the bible, the first murder was for political gain, and many subsequent murders happened to prevent other bad things from happening.

If you look at Africa, you see more stable governments that were a result of mass murders, than you do stable governments that were a result of peaceful protests. Human nature is that if I kill off my adversaries, I will have nobody to worry about.

A lot of this is going to mirror Shamarah's sentiments.

First question is directed specifically to the Protestant crowd. The Bible you use, at least substantially, comes from Catholicism, and it was propagated through doctrines that Protestants explicitly do not accept (apostolic succession and ex cathedra papal infallibility). How do you accept the book on the words of these people who you do not believe or trust without any recourse to its authors?

Second question is to all Christians. Christianity is not and never has been Earth's dominant religion. Without question, religious belief, even non-mainstream ones, correlate very strongly with geographical locations. If God is the sole deity of all that exists, why was the message of Christianity given to such a small group? Why was the message given only once?

Third question is to the entire Western monotheistic tradition. A long, long time ago, in a place far, far away, the voice resonating in Abraham's and Moses's heads established a covenant with the Hebrews. These people did not believe in monotheism, nor did their voices suggest that he is the only deity, simply the only deity who cared one whit about this extended family. Humans have proven themselves to be extremely malleable for voices resonating in their heads. One would presume that the omnipotent deity has retained this talent. Why are there so many disagreements regarding religosity across human populations, and why are we to believe that, even presuming the existence of one God, that morality is a universal, divinely mandated thing?

For a point of clarification, I don't buy the universal morality argument. I just don't see it in reality.


There is an argument that says that anything in the Torah is there because it is not obvious, although it may be obvious in hindsight. This argument leads to many interesting discussions about many sections and ask why are these particular statements not "inherent."

In the Talmud they talk a lot about what is natural human ideas that we just have, and what is learned by the society. On thier list are things such as clinging to your Mother, listening to your Father, losing control for the sake of food and sex, and a desire to be "noble." But they never bring up moral concepts that I know of.

Though I must say that I have always been surrounded by people who do argue for the existance of a universally accepted "built -in" morality, I just personally, don't see it either in the texts, or in reality.

Many of the above posts rather exemplify why I didn't really want to get into a deep discussion of exactly what morals are, being as that's not actually the purpose of this thread. That's an entirely different topic and maybe someone should make a thread for it if people want to discuss it.







Well, right, but that doesn't really answer the question; I'm just asking why you and the other Christians in this thread believe it. (Or, if there are people of other religions, why they believe in theirs.)

That is complete nonsense, sorry.

As to the rest of the question, I will push it a step further. Why is there religious disagreement within the same families, and often within the same person during different periods of their life? If its universal and perfect, how come it is always changing within a single person?


Ofcourse, the question is the answer.

For the same reason you believe in gravity. TESTIFY!

If god is omnipotent and perfect, why would he have to change his approach in dealing with humans between the old testament and the new? Would he not already know the best way to approach things? And if he knew the best way but did not utilize it, why would that be? And why are we not punished now in the same way we were punished in the old testament? I suppose we could argue that the punishments in the past were to lay a foundation for a fuller appreciation of things that would come later but that seems to be stretching a bit.

Also, this is unrelated for the most part, but why would a loving god give people free will to do whatever they like with their life but then judge what they do with that free will once they are dead? In fact why would god give free will at all if there is only one path someone can take in order to not be miserable for an eternity? It does not compute with human logic but then god would not be human so it all boils down to faith. Though honestly, the whole thing boils down to faith in the end.

As for the gospels, you're interpretation of them is clearly different than mine so we'll have to leave it at that I suppose and since people who dedicate their lives to the study of this still can't agree, we'll have to assume it's not exactly a clear cut issue. Though I will point out that the verse does not say "If you perfectly follow the commandments" it just says if you follow the commandments. Perhaps something was lost in translation. Also, the commandments do not speak anything of loving your neighbor or what have you. So if you follow the commandments strictly but you don't believe in Jesus, would you be saved? Christian doctrine and the other gospels says that the only way to salvation is through Jesus. I'm also curious about your take on the other gospels that were written but culled out of the final work. Do you feel they do not have the same validity of the official gospels and if not, why not? Does not the hand picking of which gospels could go in and which would not by flawed humans make the whole thing suspect?

Also, about your women comment, women were not subservient slaves in the times when this was being formed, especially Roman women who were not of equal stature with men of course being that they could not participate in politics but were quite influential and had a considerable amount of freedom. The women in the New Testament play a role that would have resonated with the acceptable way of things in the Roman (and likely other) view of things and it is the Romans that they needed to convert. Perhaps in orthodox Judaism a woman's word was to be discounted as a matter of course but it seems clear this was not the intended audience.

The fact that the disciples died brutally for their writings does not strike me as proof that they believed the truth of the writings themselves but rather that they believed the cause was worthy. One must first assume a certain level of integrity for these individuals to subscribe to the belief that they were martyrs persecuted for their writings rather than political activists persecuted for trying to upset the standing order of things.

In regards to the Christian habit of integrating other idealogies and practices into their religion, how do you not know that they simply did not do the same with a good portion of their current idealogy? Do you believe Jesus was born of a virgin? Do you believe Jesus was Divine? Beyond the writings of individuals who had a vested interest in these things being believed in order to more rapidly accelerate the acceptance of their new religion, do you have evidence of these things? You will note the long tradition in many cultures of people (usually rulers) claiming divinity in order to secure their position. Why is the claim of Jesus' divinity different?

Does it ever seem curious to you that Christians would (and still do!) adopt all sorts of traditions and different cultures into their faith for the purpose of expanding it? What was the rush? If people are essentially just worshipping what they've always worshipped but calling it a different name, are they actually converted? And if they are not actually converted, could it not be a logical assumption that it is not really their souls that the leaders of the religion were interested in but their resources and political backing?

Having faith is one thing. Attempting to logically justify that faith utilizing the tools written by the sponsors of that faith is something else. If I declared that I was a goddess and I attracted some followers, and those followers wrote some stuff, and then their followers wrote some stuff, and after awhile no one who was alive and knew the truth of me, and by this time my following was really large and had a lot of power so could just make those things that didn't agree with their version of things go away....

I don't know, I suppose I just do not see how one could just trust that these things were true without faith. So it boils down to you have or you don't. Especially since when we're talking about the bible and what did and did not make it in, we're talking about the Catholic church and if you believe the Catholic church was led by good and just individuals moved by the spirit...well, you have more faith than me!

Comments in Bold.




Lastly, the early Gospel's were written trying to convert Jews, only after that failed did it move to the Romans.

You're kind of proving my point here. You're giving reasons people gave in order to justify murder. Why would they need to justify it if murder was considered a matter of course and nothing was wrong with it in their minds? Beyond murder as a sport, which was not widespread, do you have examples of widespread instances where it was considered acceptable to walk up to someone, kill them, and just walk away without anyone being concerned by this?

The coliseums were not wide spread?

People justify taxes, are you saying that normally taxes are considered immoral?

Is slavery another one of those universal morals?

..what are you talking about? In the great scheme of things in the entire world history, no, coliseums were NOT wide spread heh.

The moral in question would be the sense ingrained in human beings, outside of any religious doctrine, that killing another human is wrong. The fact that people would attempt to justify an action would mean that they had some reason to need to justify it, i.e. were it not justified, it would be seen as wrong. If killing is something that human beings would engage in willy nilly were it not for religious doctrine telling them not to, then it stands to reason that prior to the religions that established murder as wrong, there would be widespread killing whenever one person felt like it. I am asking for the evidence of this propensity in humans. I am not saying that humans do not and did not kill for some rather questionable reasons but that does not mean killing one another was the norm.

And yes the taking of money from individuals without an immediate and tangible return to that individual, would normally be considered immoral. In fact, it would be considered theft. It needs to be justified with the reasons for it so it is not perceived as such.

I really have no clue what you're talking about with the slavery piece though, you'll have to explain.

Animals kill each other all the time, I'm not sure why you think humans are any different.

In fact the whole concept, of "If I do something, others might do it also, so I should not do it so others don't do it to me" is a very complex concept and was argued and debated about for many years before people reached a general consensus about it. It is even something that children have to be explicitly taught and walked through for them to understand it. It is such a novel concept that specific people are even given credit for coming up with it.


Slavery is seen by many people these days to be something that is abhorrent in any form no matter what, a universal human right that all people recognize. Historically however, it's a very new concept.

I am not asking for proof that animals do it (though..you really don't see animals just..killing one another just because, especially their own kind) I am asking for your evidence that the notion that killing another human was perfectly acceptable prior to the introduction of religious doctrine. Though if you believe humans to be the same as animals, clearly our viewpoints differ widely and simply agreeing to disagree now would be the logical course.