This is not to justify slavery but merely point out that in those societies common habits were hard to undo regardless of what was said and certain stubborn cultural institutions were not seen as serious as items like murder, rape, incest, polytheism and other things more likely to destory a civlization and lead to pagan habits.

Slavery is not good, but certainly the context here is comlex in that it was seen as necessary for survival for the poor to indenture themselves to make ends meet and eat and survive in such societies. It is not the worst thing peopel can allow to happen.’

Are you wanting an army of automotons then? God might punish, and has, I think, be He does not control us like robots. We have free will to be nasty.

In other words God said to them if you’re going to insist on being vile, you’ll have rules for it, etc.

Later Paul tells us that there is neither bond nor free in Christ from the world’s point of view. So this is a matter of comparatives, etc.

More on that later.

If there is no higher standard than humanity, then it is simply a power game to define who gets to be the moral standard bearer. You say it’s the rule of happiness, someone else says it’s virtue or duty related, and someone else says it’s whatever promotes the interests of his cultural group. What is the standard above all which says that your standard is the right standard? And to appeal to what simply seems obvious to you is only more subjective question begging.

Since no supernatural beings or divine morality exist, the most I can hope for is to persuade others with objective reasons why my standards are correct. These values are what most people, religious or not, would agree were \”good.\” In one way or another, they promote human happiness and well-being.

Your response to this is probably contained in your comments about honesty: when you tell the truth you feel better and it works better for everyone around you. But this is simply self-serving pragmatism: you do it because it yields a return of investment for you personally, not that other humans are intrinsically worthy of certain treatment no matter what the cost to you. This lends no grounds for thinking that you ought to be virtuous even when no one is looking and you can probably get away with it, unless, of course, you happen to get a kick out of it.

You are right to assert that there is more to being a good person than simply going through the motions of helping and caring about others; one’s motives are at least as important as one’s actions, and should be based on genuine compassion, empathy, and respect for others.

Do you have no place for noble and courageous acts that make the heart swell when you see them in others, even if it leads to their demise? How does the rule of happiness apply to someone who has taken the bullet for a stranger? What worth is the happiness of a live stranger to a mind that no longer exists? Or is there some mystical bank account of human happiness to which we are all duty bound to make our deposits? Peeshaw! Let every man take his own bullets if there is nothing more than life.

Believers and atheists alike, of course, commit acts of courage and self-sacrifice, often at great personal cost. By “taking the bullet for a stranger,� these individuals have put the well-being of others before themselves. Some people, like soldiers, police officers, and fire fighters, even make a career of it. Whether motivated by love or compassion or duty, the overall effect is one that benefits and increases human happiness and is worthy of admiration.

The defense of the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trial was an appeal to relativism, i.e., that they were just exercising their own cultural conventions and that they were simply being judged by the standard of the victors. The reply of the court was that they were guilty of violating a higher standard to which we are all held to account. Simply outmoded traditional thinking or a bead on the truth?

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Hitler was brought into the discussion, but this really doesn’t help your argument for two reasons. First, Hitler was not an atheist; in fact, he invoked many religious themes and images, and boasted he was doing “God’s work� in ridding the world of Jews. Second, the “higher standards� the Nazis were convicted of violating at Nuremberg were international laws, specifically war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. They had no supernatural or religious basis at all.

To expand on the charges of arbitrariness and diversity, you will surely find persons and societies who agree with you on the importance of human happiness (hedonism is eminently secular), but that it only applies to themselves. For this reason, the unhappiness of others has no weight at all in their calculation of human happiness (the Romans got along quite well practicing slavery).

This simply isn’t accurate. Philosophers like Bentham and Mill were very concerned about the happiness of the individual as well as society as a whole, and were outspoken abolitionists. It should also be said that the Ancient Romans were neither secular nor hedonistic, so to use their endorsement of slavery in your indictment against my morality is misplaced.

And why should they be expected to inconvenience themselves for the sake of other bags of biochemicals in this one brief existential flash of existence?

This really sums up one of the weakest arguments against atheism used by believers. In essence, it asserts that a material, mortal existence is not worth living. This isn’t really much of an argument, however; it’s more of a metaphysical tantrum, an emotional response to the idea that there is no divine plan, the universe wasn’t made for us, and we won’t live forever. Yes, humans are flesh and bone and matter and energy. Yet we are more than mere “bags of biochemicals;� we think, learn, wonder, dream, invent, hope, and love. And one day, we will cease to exist. But this is not a reason for despair or nihilism; it is an inspiration to really live, to treasure our fellow beings because life is fragile and finite.

I too have little else to say, except to repeat myself. This is the best I can do to sum up my position right now:

The reason the unreliability of observable facts is not a tedious irrelevancy is that the consequences of over-reliance on facts, or conclusions derived from facts, are everywhere. Food is poisoned because a bottle was mislabeled, germs are at first said not to exist, space and time merge into one substance, and what one insists on to secure his happiness doesn’t line up with someone else’s canonized data from which they derive behavior standards. The universe violates human perception regularly, sometimes with serious consequences.

Therefore the axiom atheists work with is no more self-evident than the axiom that theists works with. The only difference is that theism doesn’t claim that the ultimate standard for belief is immediate proof…I’m not even sure theism is a flat denial for the need of proof, it’s just that the proof is presumed upon. Yet no less than atheism’s proof is. There’s really very little difference in their logical pursuit of their respective point B’s from their point A’s. Except that atheism demands certain standards of observable proof be met in order for belief to take place. But its own presupposition does not stand up under the very scrutiny it holds theism to. Unless you are willing to prophesy a future in which all truth submits to the knowable and provable(which is one answer atheists have given me). And yet the further you go in this direction, the more like theism it looks, and the more it walks in the very thing it has disavowed- faith.

As a theist, I will never be able to claim that facts and data can prove my belief(unless/until something drastically changes regarding God’s immediacy to the visible world), but I have yet to hear an atheist distinguish his position in a way that sounds like it’s the more rational worldview.

I take your point that some of the points here are deliberately provocative and hostile towards religion. That is undeniably so, but it does not excuse venom and hatred. Christians follow a man who was provoked beyond measure, and who endured hostility to the point of murder, and yet was still able (and willing) to pray, “Father, forgive them…”.

If Jesus is the example for Christians, then no amount of provocation or hostility (and some of the hostility is understandable) should result in hatred.

You and I are, of course, poles apart in terms of belief and unbelief, but that does nothing to diminish my respect for you as a fellow human being, and I take no pleasure whatsoever in the prospect of eternal suffering ~ Stephen.

Still, I can’t say I haven’t done anything to deserve such reactions when many of the posts here are deliberately provocative and hostile toward religion.

So go ahead and not believe b/c ur just one less person in heaven.