I realised that these last couple of posts have the potential to sound like attacks, and they're absolutely not intended to be. I'm not at all interested in the game of tying up someone else's belief system, claiming to have defined it and then claiming it is in some way inferior. I hate having it done to me and I don't want to do it to anyone else. Please consider these to be invitations for further discussion among friends.

Shane never indicated that atheists cannot have a code of ethics. My point was that if we are just another species of animal, then morality would have no more of an application to us than it does other animals. Some atheists reject that by trying to differentiate us from other animals by the fact we have the ability to reason. From my perspective, I don't buy that. I see that many animals have the ability to reason too.

Sorry, what I meant to say was that you indicated ethics are based on God's authority.

Of course I do not agree with Friedrich Nietzsche's world view but for purposes of communication I will use his terminology.

Non-religious people are more inclined to accept master-morality instead of slave-morality. However the question arises, 'what difference does it make?' If nothing we do matters. If the universe is destined to go black. If we are all destined to die and there is no afterlife, why does it even matter? Because it causes pain? Because it hurts someone's feelings? Well if that be the case, and we are just animals then it would reason that morality for us would be the same as it is for animals. Is it wrong for a lion to steal meat from another lion? Is it wrong for a mother sow to eat her piglets? Why was it wrong for Hitler to try and exterminate the Jews? If he believed they were an inferior race, exterminating them (in his mind) would have made the world a better place - just like natural selection eliminating the weak and less useful species.

No, because every man for himself doesn't work. We essentially do what is right in our own eyes whether we are religious or not. There are checks in the natural world established by the community. We see this in animals as well.

I once observed in a herd of 60 horses when one horse killed another during feeding time. While I was not there, it was immediately obvious which horse had killed the other. All the other horses turned their back on this horse and moved as far away from him as possible. He was rejected by the herd.

These types of natural processes happen all the time. I believe chaos results when people are taught to rely on an outside moral guide and that force is removed.



Slave morality is based on the idea that I can't come up with any moral guide myself since I'm totally depraved. So I need a book of rules to guide my life backed by the threat of punishment.

If animals can develop basic moral principles within their own group, I think its more likely for humans, who have access to feelings, thinking, and reasoning, to come up with sophisticated moral guidelines.

I would suggest that greater cruelty has resulted from ignoring the feelings of empathy than all the silly self indulgent things we do from feeling. It is religionists who decided when they had rejected their feelings of empathy, that they need to burn witches at the stake. It was religionists who reasoned that the indians weren't really people or that black people where descendants of Ham and were cursed that decided that certain people should not be treated even as well as animals.

This suggests that feelings of love and empathy are of prime importance to being fully human. Feelings may not tell us why something is working or not working, but they quickly tell us when things are out of balance.

Even the mentally retarded can tell when they are being insulted through the use of feelings. They may not be able to add and subtract or form thoughts in sensible ways, but through their awareness of emotions they certainly can tell when they are not being treated with respect. I have seen this many times. So there is a complex intelligence at work in the process of feelings that has been marginalized far too long.

Again, it is this intelligence of feeling that I believe Jesus referred to in his statement to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It is poor logic to associate the sins of a few with the entire group. Throughout the history of Christianity, many Christians have committed many crimes. This is true of perhaps all religions and especially of atheistic communist regimes. So shall we conclude that all religions and atheists are guilty of such crimes?

The point is you have to use sources outside of the Bible to determine that this is wrong. And this view, at the time, was certainly NOT the minority view. This was held to be true across denominational lines by the majority of Christian people. This is still held to be true by some Christians today.

Because of the Bible's view of slavery the early Saint John Chrysostom wrote...



Saint Augustine wrote in the work City of God...



18th century orthodox Christianity held slavery to be unchanged even for Christians. The Anglican Bishop of London Edmund Gibson wrote...



So, if you are saying that it is sinful to hold slaves, then you are not relying on a Biblical source for that belief. Because, clearly for the majority of Christianity's existence it has held slavery to be a moral obligation to maintain.

I don't agree. The Indians and Africans fall into the gentile group like so many other ethnic groups. The Bible does not teach that gentiles are less than human nor does the Bible itself teach that blacks are descendants of Ham. But even if they are, that wouldn't make them less than human.



The remnant of God's people have always been in the minority. I can think of no time in Earth's history when the true followers of God were a majority. Even today, Adventists are far from making up the majority of Christians much less of the entire world population.

This is beside the point. You have to have an outside source to determine if slavery is wrong. The Bible clearly supports it. And if a remnant at anytime determined that slavery was wrong and a sin, it too, would have to come to that conclusion from an outside source.

And the ancient Jews gave their slaves less rights because if you killed your slave you were fined, but if you killed another Israelite you were given the death penalty. This would clearly be from a less than human perspective, because the death of animals involved fines. And it was from the gentiles that the Israelites were instructed to make slaves.

Sorry, it was a comment, not on virtuous, but rather on consistancy. Twas a TIC comment...sorry not to myself clear.



No, I will not make a 'case'. I am not here to "make a case"...I am here to be a witness. I can offer this-

I have found no other God who has been as consistant as the one in the bible with His own rules. I have found none who have sacrificed so much to make thier case that says that He loves His creation. I, like the prophets before me, have found none other who demonstrates love and compassion, and at the same time, been so vulnerable so as to be misinterpreted by the very people He has come to save as the One Person who claims to be God in the bible. I have found none who has open His heart to me, who have demonstrated to my satisfaction that He is the ONE true God of the universe, as the one described in the bible. I have found none who have consistantly attempted to discipline me as the one discribed in the bible. I have found none that will allow me to grow into the person that He has in mind for me as the one discribed in the Bible.

That is what I have found. Not a "proof", just evidence that satisfys me according to the fleeces that I have put out...Ain't gonna attempt to convince you that my evidence that speaks to me is gonna do the same for you. So don't insist that i do so...