hahaha Bush says he doesn't believe in the Bible, does believe in evolution

For someone that keeps bringing up history, you seem to be confused on some of your posts.

I find it hard to believe that printing the Bible set Western Civilization way back. In the mid-15th century Western Europe had not begun to claw its way out of the Middle Ages yet...I find it hard to believe that the catalyst for the Reformation and Renaissance "set back" Western Civilization. By another metric, the "world power" in 1400 was China, who was still practicing Emperor Worship. I guess you really have to be "Enlightened" to not believe in a higher power...since humans have been doing it since recorded time began.

I'm pretty sure we're talking about the Conquistadores ("conquerors"), many of whom killed their trading partners in a dash for land rights and riches.

When Columbus reached Guadalupe, iirc, he named it "Satan's Island", since the unchurched natives who attacked him when he landed there decided eating their enemies was a good idea.

Who do you think gave you the "Golden Rule"? A secular atheist philosopher?

Examples of leaders who professed atheism: Stalin. Maybe Mao, though he could have been lying. Kim Il Jong? Who am I missing?

 

Now we're getting somewhere...if you define right and wrong by your own metrics, you're presupposing that you get to be the moral authority of your universe...all you've done is set yourself up as the "god" who gets to define and judge morality. Instead of a faith in a perfect, all-powerful Creator of the Universe, it's...You!

Living The Golden Rule each second of your life in every thought is actually the second-closest one can be to being "sin-free". The line right before that is "You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul and mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: You must love your neighbor as yourselves". Matthew 22:36-38

 

Poppycock yourself

The indians and european settlers were rather friendly towards one another, though there were small battles from time to time. The indians fought with the French in the French and Indian War against the British. They taught the colonists to grow corn. As late as the 1650s, they were showing us paths through the mountains to California.

It wasn't until the secular US government went on an outright extermination campaign in the post civil war years that there was any mass killings of natives by europeans (non spanish). George Custer ring a bell?

Yet you have a population of 6M natives turned into 60K by the spanish and somehow they were out to convert them to christianity? That's just one of many similar stories about the spanish conquests of the New World. Poppycock indeed.

Speaking of secular wars... WW II took 55M lives, and religion had nothing to do with it. WW I had nothing to do with religion. Civil War had nothing to do with religion. Vietnam had nothing to do with religion.

Speaking of slavery... it was a spanish invention here. They enslaved the natives by the millions. Slavery as we know it started out as indentured servitude, where white people and black people sold themselves as slaves for a short period of time (far less than a lifetime) in exchange for a boat ride to get here.

Finally, Hitler was an occultist, but the Nazis were anti-religion, too.

 

Again... your logic is horrible.

People make irrational decisions all of the time. People have unprotected sex in spite of the danger of disease and pregnancy. People drink and drive. People smoke cigarettes. People do a LOT of things that are bad for them... not because they don't believe that consequences exist, but because the future bad things are disregarded in favor of present pleasure.

I'm not a theologian by any means, but of COURSE that is the essence of sin... if sin could be avoided through mere logical application of rules and decision making, then no believer would sin. Of course, the thinking goes, people can't help but sin because they're human.

The act of sinning does not mean that one does not believe that the act is a sin.

Ed O.

 

What you are saying has the potential to make sense, and to a certain point I agree with you about personal responsibility. It's not "shirking"...as a member of society you have given up that right to "not be cowardly".

I'll ask a couple of questions:
Since you're the moral authority of your actions, you can't be taken to court? (Since you probably wouldn't do something that you don't feel is moral, right?)
Since you're the moral authority of your actions, you can't go to jail? (Though the "jury of your peers" would probably argue, since they seem to have authority over whether your actions were moral/legal?)

Since those are all laughable and rhetorical questions, who then is the moral authority? It's the government. They make and enforce our laws. And where did they get their "moral authority"? Someone's imaginary friend. And the people of the US bought into that. And it seems that citizenship is based upon acceptance of that moral authority.

 

Wrong. Sinning does not necessarily result in damnation. There is repentance and a lot of alternate paths to have sin forgiven. It depends on the faith.

And are you actually claiming that every person who smokes cigarettes does not believe she/he will get lung cancer? That's preposterous.

Ed O.

 

Legal's foundation is moral, and I submit that no they haven't. If you want to use the biblical perspective that I do, Imaginary Friend created the universe. If you want to use the evolutionary tale, cavemen were staring at the heavens and making up imaginary friends to answer their questions well before anything past "pack/herd mentality" was established, which by definition isn't "moral" b/c animals use it.

We're starting to get into a secular/philosophical area that I'm not as equipped to deal with...I just remember bits and pieces of college philosophy/ethics.

Lemme see what I can dig up about this.

 

I hope you're right. So that's one person down, tens of millions to go.

I totally believe that some (even many) people who smoke think they will avoid any unpleasantness, but there's no way that every one does, and MARIS is claiming that a willingness to do something in spite of harmful effects indicates a lack of belief in the effects. And that just logically does not follow.

Ed O.