Video: NBC reporter stops poop-cruise passenger from quoting the Bible

So what you’re saying is that you’re unable to distinguish the literal from the instructional. Therefore you reject the entire premise in favor of … (your opportunity to fill in the blank)

By the way, you still haven’t answered any of my questions. I frankly don’t care what you believe in -I’m no thumper, myself- but your attempts to deny that all human morality is derived from a belief in -or fear of a higher power is juvenile.

BKeyser on February 16, 2013 at 11:58 AM

You assume that out of all the religions we know about that one of them is true, but what if the real answer is that NONE of them are true or right? That what we have is simply competing tribes of people with fairy tale beliefs who all happen to believe that their rendition of the god that could be is the one real one.

I don’t deny that certain people BELIEVE that morality is derived from a belief in – or fear of – a higher power, but if you’re ONLY good BECAUSE you believe in – or fear – a higher power then I contend you’re not really being good. You’re just “going through the motions” to put yourself in a favorable position with the imaginary god you happen to believe in.

You don’t NEED a god to be good, and you don’t NEED a religion to know “god”, and you certainly don’t have to prostrate yourself before the altars of gods constructed by people who had much less of a perspective of the universe than we do today. Morality predates any religion and just like we didn’t need a god to come down and give us our traffic laws, we didn’t/don’t need him to come down to give us our morality. An example would be this, nowhere in the bible is their an injunction against slavery yet here we are today erecting laws prohibiting it. In fact, the god of the bible appears to have condoned it with rules on how slaves are to be bought and sold, etc… Examples abound my friend.

SauerKraut537 on February 16, 2013 at 12:50 PM

See, bad form there. You don’t know what I assume. So, you’re not off to a good start

It’s a safe assumption, else why would you choose one religion over another. There is no other reason to do so other than you believe one of them to be right and true.

That very well could be the case. Maybe morality is a construct of man’s own mind, but neither you, nor anyone else can state how many was able to develop that construct originally. Your faith in such a notion is no less strong than those who believe in God.

I don’t say I don’t believe in a god or gods, I just find the Abrahamic varieties of the god that could be to be especially repugnant.

And if people are good because the believe in -or fear a higher power, is that a bad thing? And if not, then why would you ridicule them?

Yes, it’s a bad thing, because it’s better to be good for the right reasons. Being good ONLY because you are fearful from retribution, or because you expect some reward from the god that could be is selfish. Don’t you think this omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient god is going to see through your selfish charade?

I said, Morality predates any religion

You said. Back that up. You made the statement, now offer evidence that any atheistic culture ever thrived at any point in history.

Chinese and Indian culture predate anything the middle east has to offer my friend, and the golden rule was written down hundreds of years before Rabbi Hillel first uttered them, and many more years before Christ supposedly came along to elucidate it again. Confucius, Mozi, Laozi all wrote this simple precept down ages before the bible rehashed it into the form you’re familiar with.

Buddhist culture is an atheistic one that has been around a lot longer than the Abrahamic gods have been.

Let me tell you… Pretentiousness and narcissism are the domain of every religious person as they look down their noses at people of other faiths. I’m not arguing that you have another faith.

The only thing in this universe which either requires or desires your faith are con men, frauds and charlatans trying to deceive you with otherwise unconvincing lies.

Deceivers NEED “believers”. and THAT’s why religion needs and calls itself faith.

That’s why it promises unimaginable rewards only for those who are easily fooled, and that’s why it threatens a fate worse than death to those with the temerity to try to understand it, who ask too many questions, or who dare to peek at that man behind the forbidden curtain.

SauerKraut537 on February 16, 2013 at 2:01 PM

That’s neither evidence of atheism nor success.

Again, provide evidence of a successful, thriving culture at any point in history that exhibited no belief in any form of higher power.

BKeyser on February 16, 2013 at 2:31 PM

Buddhism is a godless life philosophy and it’s plenty successful. Still around, several thousand years after its inception…

Correct me if I’m wrong, my understanding of atheism is that it is the belief that there is no god or higher power; not some angry rant against Christianity.

Just like agnostic means to be without knowledge and atypical means to be without typicality and amoral means to be without morals and ahistorical means to be without historicity and apolitical means to be without politics… Atheism means to be without theism. So what is theism and how can one be without it?

Theism is the belief in a god or gods as the creator and ruler of the universe, WITHOUT rejection of revelation. In other words, the belief in a god with a name and a “purpose” for us.

I’m not against the Creator(s), if they exist, if they ever existed. I’m not against the search for the Creator(s). What blows MY mind is that people like you think religion has anything to do with it at all.

As Bishop Lancelot Andrewes once said, “The nearer the church, the further from god”

I am an agnostic atheist, and I am without belief in theistic gods anymore (whether polytheistic or mono). There very well may be a god, I kind of lean towards that being the case, but he most assuredly ISN’T the god of the bible, or the koran, or any other religious text purporting to be the word of god

You seem as though you believe that at some point, you were wronged by your belief in God. Of course, that’s impossible to tell without you explicitly stating it, but your obvious disdain for Christianity in particular is what leads me to believe that.

I don’t have an obvious disdain for Christianity in particular, I have disdain for all religions purporting to be the word of god.

Once again, I’ll ask you directly: From where do your morals originate?

My morals come from my experiences, and from what I’ve been taught throughout my life, and from learning from other people’s experiences. It is from the application of the golden rule that I get my morals, simply put.

It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emergent technology.

To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture.

We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.

SauerKraut537 on February 16, 2013 at 4:01 PM