Why?

[Proinsias]

...and can't think of anyone I know who doesn't partake of drugs.

Interesting. I can think of a only a very few people I know today that do. We are obviously running in very different circles. I run in church circles and you run... wherever the dope is I guess.

I'm a huge fan of tea, if I take more than a few days off my body feels a little strange due to the lack of caffeine, I do make sure I take time off though. I smoke, not constantly, I can have a few days off but I smoke and enjoy it. I drink and enjoy a nice single malt or ale. When I give my daughter sugar or when the family cuts out sugar completely for a while it's pretty obvious it's not just that we're accustomed to the taste, mood swings ensue. I just had to leave my computer to wake up my daughter and give her steriods and salbutamol. I drug my cats with catnip.
The knowledge of drugs discussed by mainly older women at the church coffee mornings simply astounds me.

When you say drugs I assume you mean something very particular and don't actually mean 'drugs'.

I imagine if our law and social contract promoted things like stealing, backstabbing and exploiting people things wouldn't be very nice.

[Proinsias]

I've met many wonderful, thoughtful, intelligent, warm, friendly, stimulating people that I've learned a lot from and would consider dear to me from many different walks of life.

That's funny you've met so many people with all those wonderful traits because I've been a non-Christian and a Christian and traveled the world for decades. Most of the people I've met thought they were all of those things but upon closer inspection: really were not. In fact, they could get quite nasty when their view of the world was openly refuted in their presence.

I don't tend to refute people's worldview in their presence, as I said my stance is more to listen and learn. Depending on how it is done I can easily imagine the nicest of people becoming nasty when one refutes their worldview in front of them.

[zoegirl]

lol, wow, way to be judgemental. So you've met every non-believer have you? I could easily say most christians aren't true christians and lump you all into that category.

You don't need religion in order to have morals.

So the question becomes where do these morals come from?!?!? Why is there, in every person's heart, this drive for *what is right?*

we can all agree that there are some pretty nasty people out htere, some who call themselves Christians and some who don't.

there can be some pretty nice people who aren't Christian who in all liklihood will never cheat on their spouse or cheat on their taxes.

This isn't about some tally system or checklist of what has been done. this is about the heart, the desires, of all of us. Even in that nice non-believer, they have a selfish heart. all of us do.

All of us have hearts that are as *dirty rags*.... there is none righteous. this isn't about the fact that most of us haven't been as evil as we could be....it is about the fact that we have are not righteous.

[ageofknowledge]

I've met many wonderful, thoughtful, intelligent, warm, friendly, stimulating people that I've learned a lot from and would consider dear to me from many different walks of life.

That's funny you've met so many people with all those wonderful traits because I've been a non-Christian and a Christian and traveled the world for decades. Most of the people I've met thought they were all of those things but upon closer inspection: really were not. In fact, they could get quite nasty when their view of the world was openly refuted in their presence.

I don't tend to refute people's worldview in their presence, as I said my stance is more to listen and learn. Depending on how it is done I can easily imagine the nicest of people becoming nasty when one refutes their worldview in front of them.

I prefer to discourse. I've meant Hindus that came off as the sweetest people in the world until you mentioned you were a Christian and the Christian belief system is that Jesus is the only way to the one true God. I've had them then come unglued with curses and they would have assaulted me were it legal. Or Native Americans that practically attacked me because I questioned their assertion that the clam God arose from a certain river (near their tribe of course) spewing forth the first man and woman (members of their tribe long ago of course). I could go on but I think you get the point.

The fact you would prefer to sit there and listen and take it all in and be non-judgemental without discoursing with them and offering them the authentic Christian worldview is not something, as an authentic Christian, I am willing to do.

[Proinsias]

Fair enough, I don't think I'm much of an authentic anything - I'm working on authentic person.

[DannyM]

The problem with this is that the Theist is unable to prove the existence of their God. So faith is required to believe in their God.

On the other hand, it is impossible to prove the non-existence of anything, so your "2 is unprovable" is essentially meaningless. Try proving leprechauns don't exist.?

It simply does not matter. The theist cannot prove that God exists; the atheist cannot prove that God doesn't exist (although the likes of Richard Dawkins believes science CAN prove the nonexistence of God). The point is, both BELIEFS have to be maintained by faith; there is no way of really KNOWING. Hence atheism, too, is a form of faith.

As another way of looking at it, consider a magic show. The magician saws his assistant in two, you have no idea how he did it. Do you assume it really WAS magic and the assistant actually WAS cut in half and then put back together? Or do you assume it was an illusion that you haven't figured out. Wouldn't it take a substantial amount of credible proof to convince you that it wasn't just an illusion but REALLY was magic? Are you basing this on "faith" in the non-existence of magic or the lack of any credible proof of its existence?

Now you are taking the mataphysical down to an absurd level. I'll tell you what, if we are talking about "proof" and the burden of, then it seems to me that any "burden of proof" is now firmly on the side of the atheist. It is the atheist who has a lot more to explain in terms of how it is we are here if he is convinced there is nothing behind our existence. But that's just an aside.

[DannyM]

Heaven may know but being friends with people brought up in non-Christian cultures has led me to believe that my morals are not too dependent on the culture I was brought up in. I have found I have more in common with the morals of close friends brought up in very different cultures than I have with some of the people I went through school with or work with.Civilization and what it means to be civilized is another rather vague term, especially when used to make judgments. Again I need to ask which morals it is you are talking about..

Civilisation, true civilisation, is not hard to ditinguish. Jesus Christ was the first to step amongst prostitutes, destitutes, the poor and the downrodden. Women were revered not just as reproductive humans but as human equals. Christianity and much which has been done in Christ's name has a lot to answer for. But it is Christianity which set the wheels of true civilisation in motion. It was the OP who trigered the "morals" question, so I'm jusat chipping in with my view, and I believe it to be historically accurate.

As for your definitions of theist, agnostic and atheist. It seems not only myself and many atheists but also fellow Christians on the board who disagree with you. Personally I came here, and mainly lurk, to find out what theism means to people here. I've always found it more beneficial to listen as to how people describe themselves and their outlook on life as opposed to telling them what the label they have chosen to identify with 'actually means'.

As before if I've overstepped the boundaries of this forum I will retract my recent posts and go back to reading and thinking around here instead.

My definition of atheism is actually quite correct; how can it be otherwise? An atheist believes there IS NO GOD. The agnostic is UNDECIDED. One is positive, the other passive, and there can be no inbetween, such as agnostic-atheist, which is just absurd, surely?

God bless, Dan

[DannyM]

So the question becomes where do these morals come from?!?!? Why is there, in every person's heart, this drive for *what is right?*.

I don't see the problem Zoe. The OP said he didn't need religion to be moral; I and others pointed out that any morals he possesses are purely down to the Christian culture in which he has been educated and raised. If an atheist chooses this root of "I don't need Christianity to be moral" then the record really does need to be set straight. I'm happy that there are moral atheists out there, but for them to refuse to acknowledge the foundation of their morality, and even to disregard Christianity in this way, is not only ungrateful, it is plain rude.

All of us have hearts that are as *dirty rags*.... there is none righteous. this isn't about the fact that most of us haven't been as evil as we could be....it is about the fact that we have are not righteous.

There is no-one truly righteous bar Christ, but by the same token all of us *do not* have hearts that are as dirty rags. This is a generalisation in the extreme. It's a bit like saying we are "all born in sin" when we were not; we were all born into "a world where it is possible to sin".

God bless

[jlay]

You don't need religion in order to have morals.

If you are interested, we have a thread going right now regarding objective morality.

Any Christian who says that a non-Christian can not exhibit morality is greatly mistaken. In fact Paul states in Romans 2:15.

in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them

This is referring to those who are not in Christ, but demonstrate that they know right from wrong.

Here is a question. What if there were no Christians on the earth today. Would that change the claims of Christ?
Conversely, what if everyone on the earth was a "christain." Would the fact that everyone was a Christian result in Christianity being true?

The answer is clearly no. Christ was either who the Bible says He was, or not. Paul makes it pretty clear that we can't claim that Christians are the only ones who have a moral compass. But, in fact God has bestowed on everyone a conscience to discern right from wrong. Even those who refuse to recognize the source of objective morality.

From what position is the atheist boasting about his own morality?

[megacab64]

Santa,
come on back so we can chat. Actually I am off to bed as I am working nites this week. I can be back on line around 7 pm mountain time.

I too was an athiest until age 35 or so. I have lots to share. No "bible thunping" I promise.

[ageofknowledge]

Santa,
come on back so we can chat. Actually I am off to bed as I am working nites this week. I can be back on line around 7 pm mountain time.

I too was an athiest until age 35 or so. I have lots to share. No "bible thunping" I promise.

And bring a pen and notepad with you. There's a whole bunch of good kids here that would like to get our Christmas wishes in early this year.

[Proinsias]

Civilisation, true civilisation, is not hard to ditinguish. Jesus Christ was the first to step amongst prostitutes, destitutes, the poor and the downrodden. Women were revered not just as reproductive humans but as human equals. Christianity and much which has been done in Christ's name has a lot to answer for. But it is Christianity which set the wheels of true civilisation in motion. It was the OP who trigered the "morals" question, so I'm jusat chipping in with my view, and I believe it to be historically accurate.

I think it is rather hard to distinguish myself, and from what little anthropology I've done at university and some casual reading it seems to me that the scholarly consensus is similar to my own thoughts on the matter but of course we are all entitled to our own opinions and there is a great deal I still need to learn about early Christianity. I'm not sure what you mean by saying that Jesus was the first to step amongst prostitutes, destitutes, the poor and the downtrodden - that seems like quite a claim. I read Job last week for the first time and he claimed to step amongst similar sorts and help them where he could, I believe the Buddha also stepped amongst them. Are you suggesting no one ever crossed class boundaries until Jesus turned up?

As for women being human equals, in my opinion the last century made far more leaps in that direction than the thousands of years preceding it. And in my experience of Christianity the only woman who was really revered was the one that gave birth to Jesus, *edit* - but then I was brought up in a very Polish Catholic tradition, at times in Poland it really seemed like Mary was the one getting most of the attention with Jesus and the Father taking a bit of a backseat.

My definition of atheism is actually quite correct; how can it be otherwise? An atheist believes there IS NO GOD. The agnostic is UNDECIDED. One is positive, the other passive, and there can be no inbetween, such as agnostic-atheist, which is just absurd, surely?

God bless, Dan

There is plenty of middle ground and blurry ground. As I have said previously one can be an agnostic theist, there is secular pantheism, spiritual pantheism, soft atheism, hard atheism, humanism and probably many others I have no knowledge of.

It may seem absurd to you to think of an agnostic atheist but there are many out there. To all intents and purposes they are atheist but as they cannot see into the future they leave a small window of possibility open much as they would for the flying spaghetti monster, Russell's teapot or the previously mentioned leprechauns. There are also doctrines which hold that one is/can become God which are generally rather difficult to pigeon hole.

I'm not saying that your definitions don't make perfect logical sense in and of themselves it's just that they become a little more vague and meaningless when you try to apply them to the vast range of believe systems out there.

[Gabrielman]

I'm not sure what you mean by saying that Jesus was the first to step amongst prostitutes, destitutes, the poor and the downtrodden - that seems like quite a claim. I read Job last week for the first time and he claimed to step amongst similar sorts and help them where he could, I believe the Buddha also stepped amongst them. Are you suggesting no one ever crossed class boundaries until Jesus turned up?

In the Jewish culture prostitutes, and the sick and the lame and blind were looked down upon and even considered unclean. The Jewish rabbi and dedicated members of the synagog would not go around those types of people because they didn't want to be amongst the unclean and risk making themselves unclean. Jesus didn't hesitate to seek them out. In fact look at His disciples. They were undesirable, poor, and at times ignorant people. They questioned Him time and agian, Thomas doubted Him, Peter denied Him 3 times after His arrest, and they were His chosen. He didn't want some self riteous people who everyone would automatically love, He used the unlovely and made them storng people of God (which they weren't before.). Budah was only around after Christ, Christ trancended the laws and concepts of Jewish faith to bring salvation and to teach and set us free. Read through the gospels and you will see several times the pharices questioning Him about His actions and saying they were unlawful.

As for women being human equals, in my opinion the last century made far more leaps in that direction than the thousands of years preceding it. And in my experience of Christianity the only woman who was really revered was the one that gave birth to Jesus.

The woman who anointed the feet of Jesus, the desciples questioned this, the woman at the well, His many female followers, Mary Magdaline, many women were held in high esteem by Christ. The problem is that not everybody agreed with the way He did things. It also seems the woman were portrayed as having more faith than the men. Who was there at the cross? His dicipels? No, but His mother and a few female compnioins and His brother. The "manly" disciples were afriad to die by their God, but He still loved them with all His heart.
I was having computer issues so I was gone for a while, I am going to read more of the thread and see what I missed, you all just keep posting!
God bless!

[Proinsias]

Sorry about the above sort of double post shambles, I tried a small edit, messed it up and can't see a delete post button - although the second post has the minor edit

Thanks Gabrielman, as I say I don't know a lot about the culture at the time. But I'm willing to learn.

Mary Magdalene and Jesus holding her in high esteem I can understand, but again to my knowledge this wasn't really the same view taken by much of Christianity in the west that was heavily influencing our current civilization.

As for the Buddha, even the most conservative of estimates put him far before the time of Christ.

[Gabrielman]

As for the Buddha, even the most conservative of estimates put him far before the time of Christ.

Wait really? You're right, sorry just been a little muttled in the head lately. Thanks for correcting me though.

Mary Magdalene and Jesus holding her in high esteem I can understand, but again to my knowledge this wasn't really the same view taken by much of Christianity in the west that was heavily influencing our current civilization.

Yes the Christians did mess a few things up, but they are fine now... I hope. We are not perfect after all. There were manythings that Christians did in the past that were wrong, as did many other religions.
God bless!
I'll provide a link later if my computer holds up.