INFORMATION
This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are essential to make our site work and others help us to improve by giving us some insight into how the site is being used.
For further information, see our Privacy Policy.
Continuing to use this website is acceptance of these cookies.
We are not accepting any new registrations.
This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are essential to make our site work and others help us to improve by giving us some insight into how the site is being used.
For further information, see our Privacy Policy.
Continuing to use this website is acceptance of these cookies.
We are not accepting any new registrations.
Ethics and Christianity
-
Lifelinking
- Posts: 3248
- Joined: July 4th, 2007, 11:56 am
Hey Compassionist, good to see you here 
Please do not take the following as a criticism, rather as honest comment as invited by your good self.
I found the sites you linked to, to be rather 'breathless' in style.
Some of the moral, not to mention social and political messages in the New Testament are actually very powerful. Finding other statements in the gospels that contradict these messages does not in itself gainsay those powerful messages, if you know what I mean.
As an atheist and humanist, I see no reason why I should not recognise the beauty, and the moral power, of much that is written in the bible. This does not mean I am in any way supporting an argument for the existence of God, or accepting the harmful and negative aspects of religious thought.
Of course, as many commentators such as Dawkins have mentioned, thoughtful and non 'fundamentalist' Christians have to 'cherry pick' the good stuff, and reject the stuff that is mad or bad.
It is probably a sign of my advancing middle age but I also found the spelling mistakes on those sites irritating and a distraction.
You may find the following page interesting, as well as rather more measured and carefully put together.
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/con ... ticle=1209
Kindest regards,
L
Please do not take the following as a criticism, rather as honest comment as invited by your good self.
I found the sites you linked to, to be rather 'breathless' in style.
Some of the moral, not to mention social and political messages in the New Testament are actually very powerful. Finding other statements in the gospels that contradict these messages does not in itself gainsay those powerful messages, if you know what I mean.
As an atheist and humanist, I see no reason why I should not recognise the beauty, and the moral power, of much that is written in the bible. This does not mean I am in any way supporting an argument for the existence of God, or accepting the harmful and negative aspects of religious thought.
Of course, as many commentators such as Dawkins have mentioned, thoughtful and non 'fundamentalist' Christians have to 'cherry pick' the good stuff, and reject the stuff that is mad or bad.
It is probably a sign of my advancing middle age but I also found the spelling mistakes on those sites irritating and a distraction.
You may find the following page interesting, as well as rather more measured and carefully put together.
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/con ... ticle=1209
Kindest regards,
L
"Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice."
William McIlvanney
William McIlvanney
-
Titanium Wheels
- Posts: 143
- Joined: July 4th, 2007, 8:20 am
Well, Compasionist, the site to which you refer are OK in themselves but they are not very good in terms of attributing ideas or as readings of the Gospels.
The Gospels were first written in the late 60s for Mark and up to 90 for John so a generation after Jesus. What they record is, effectively, what the Early Church needed to know to keep going. Whilst there are a lot of genuine sayings of Jesus there, there are als quite a few where the writers attribute ideas back to Jesus to justify present action. The outcome is that the texts are the words of the author and the community leaders. Thus it may be that threats of Hell were added by the leaders to ensure people would stay with the Church.
This is a bit topic but the main point I want to make is that the text is the work of others reporting Jesus' sayings a generation later and modifying / inventing as they went along. We don't know precisely what Jesus said and I suspect some of the harder parts may well not be genuine Jesus.
We also need to understand the texts as texts for their time. 1st Century Palestine was not like modern Palestine / Israel and the morals of the time were different for ours. Thus judging the texts as absolute against our standards is hardly fair.
Of course, the source of morals and ethics can be claimed to be Biblical, but it si clear that the real source of morals must be man made apart from the bible as the way the 'cherry picking' of texts used suggests the ideas were there and the texts were looked for later to justify the ideas.
The Gospels were first written in the late 60s for Mark and up to 90 for John so a generation after Jesus. What they record is, effectively, what the Early Church needed to know to keep going. Whilst there are a lot of genuine sayings of Jesus there, there are als quite a few where the writers attribute ideas back to Jesus to justify present action. The outcome is that the texts are the words of the author and the community leaders. Thus it may be that threats of Hell were added by the leaders to ensure people would stay with the Church.
This is a bit topic but the main point I want to make is that the text is the work of others reporting Jesus' sayings a generation later and modifying / inventing as they went along. We don't know precisely what Jesus said and I suspect some of the harder parts may well not be genuine Jesus.
We also need to understand the texts as texts for their time. 1st Century Palestine was not like modern Palestine / Israel and the morals of the time were different for ours. Thus judging the texts as absolute against our standards is hardly fair.
Of course, the source of morals and ethics can be claimed to be Biblical, but it si clear that the real source of morals must be man made apart from the bible as the way the 'cherry picking' of texts used suggests the ideas were there and the texts were looked for later to justify the ideas.
Wheelchair-Rollin' Househusband
Chrstian morality
"If you don't believe you are doomed, on the other hand if you just believe and regret your sins, you can be a homicidal, psycopathic sadistic chainsaw massmurderer and still go to heaven according to the teachings of Jesus."
This is such a travesty of 'the teachings of Jesus', showing such ignorance of the theology involved in 'justification by faith versus justification by works', the sacrament of confession and so on I stopped reading at that point. Who produced those pages? There is some good material in them (as well as very bad spellng / typos) but the type of misrepresentation shown in the quote above can only do harm to secularists / humanists.
Chris
This is such a travesty of 'the teachings of Jesus', showing such ignorance of the theology involved in 'justification by faith versus justification by works', the sacrament of confession and so on I stopped reading at that point. Who produced those pages? There is some good material in them (as well as very bad spellng / typos) but the type of misrepresentation shown in the quote above can only do harm to secularists / humanists.
Chris
clayto
I think that the essential message of Jesus - 'do unto others as you would be done by' - is a good one and one which it wouldn't do the entire world any harm to live by. I find much of the Old TEstament repugnant, however.
I think that with the thief on the cross a Christian would presume that he had repented of his sins - which were probably fairly mild anyway according to the morals of our society - as well as believing in JEsus .. I guess they'd say that the two went hand in hand.
I think that with the thief on the cross a Christian would presume that he had repented of his sins - which were probably fairly mild anyway according to the morals of our society - as well as believing in JEsus .. I guess they'd say that the two went hand in hand.
The sad thing is, a lot of the American millionaires cited in your link, have got their wealth by fleecing their flock, a lot of whom can't really afford to be fleeced.Compassionist
The Bible says that it is better to give than to receive. If that is the case, why is the world in this state
Argh! It's forum etiquette, not to mentionPenguins and Seahorses.
your fairly new, so you can be excused 
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.
Re: Yup!
It'd be great if it worked*, wouldn't it! Mind you, what's the use of sheep if you can't fleece 'em?Compassionist wrote:I saw an ad on Cable TV where some Christian faith healer prays for you to be healed if you pay him with your credit card! I feel so sorry for the sheep who fall for such fleecing.
BTW Alan C, what's happened to your avatar? I can't see it any more - just an X in a box.
Sorry! BOT (Back On Thread). Maybe we could run a humanist prayer shop as our charity fundraiser. It would be jokey, obviously. You know, Pay £10 and an atheist will recite a prayer for you. I thought I was being silly at first, but you know it could work on Comic Relief or something! Oh no. sorry - wrong thread. That idea should go on the Human Aid thread. Ooooh! Sorreeeeeeee!
___________________________________________________________
*The prayers, that is. Not the con. Clearly the con does work.
agnostic's prayer
The agnostic's prayer was of course invented by Cardinal John Henry Newman.
clayto
clayto
clayto
Alan C. wrote:I think this fits under this thread title.You just gotta love them Christians!Christian Boot Camp Officials Accused of Dragging Teen Behind Van
Story here.
That is truly shocking! I've tried to find out more but news story giving the bare bones is all I can find. I would dearly love to know how they justify this act of torturing a human being in this way.
