[DanaC]

My last post was an instant reaction to something that stuck out at me. This is a more considered response to the post as a whole

Originally Posted by Ruminator

Wow Dana, if you think the evidence for evolution is overwhelming; you should see the weight of evidence against evolution.

*Smiles* I've seen quite a lot of that evidence actually. It was unconvincing to me, founded as it appeared to be, on misunderstandings of evolutionary biology and repeating, as it appeared to do, tropes which have been thoroughly answered and debunked by evolutionary biologists. You seem to make an assumption that because I have fallen down on the side of evolution, this is because I have only seen the evidence for it. I have studied a good deal of the 'evidence' put foward against evolution.

But please, if you have something you consider particularly compelling, I'll happily look at it.

Dana, I wasn't meaning any mutual exclusivity, but rather that additional moral values can remove the selfish aspect.

Why would you want to remove the selfish aspect? We are, by our very nature 'selves'. This is the beauty in human civilisation: look what we have built through our selfish need to co-operate; look at the art we have made with our self-absorbtion; look at the great kindnesses we have offered through our selfish empathy.

I'm not used to, and am having a hard time understanding how one makes absolute statements based upon conjecture.

I have posited what I think to be true. I think this based on the evidence I have encountered and my own human instincts and reading of the world I am in. It profits the discussion not one jot if I start including caveats in every statement to the effect that this is simply what I believe to be true.

There is no difference between the 'absolute' statements I have made and this one from yourself:

I agree Radar, certainly those concepts existed long before the Bible. That doesn't eliminate God as their source however, since He was in the picture from the beginning. The Bible is just simply the eventual writing down of God's teachings that had been being given to men.

You don't appear to be having any difficulty with absolute statements there *smiles* but then it would have made a much clumsier post if every assertion of 'fact' as it appears to be in your worldview was couched in caveats of belief

Jesus' disciples suffered horrendous deaths in the process of teaching others of Jesus' teachings.
On the other hand, people following Jesus' teachings have spent their lives serving others across the world, feeding, clothing, making wells, homes, etc. giving of their resources.

On the other hand people following Jesus' teachings (as they understood them and as preached by the Holy See, the suppsed direct inheritors of St Peter) have supported and carried out some of the most appalling atrocities in human history against non-Christians and Christians alike and done so under the banner of the Cross. Ask the Jews of 15th century Castile if they saw any great humanity in the followers of Jesus.

And which teachings of Jesus are you following incidentally? The accepted texts were only finalised hundreds of years after Jesus' death. The Aryans thought they were following the direct teachings of Jesus...and so did those who condemned them as heretics. The monks who oversaw the wholesale slaughter of the Cathars were directly following Jesus' teachings, living as they did an apostolic life.

Those who follow Jesus' teachings have also done much good in the world. The equality of all God's children and the special care shown to those suffering in poverty is a wonderful thing, and has underscored many of the most progressive and marvellous movements of human understanding in our long history. But so have many of those who follow Mohammed's teachings, reviling as they do the iniquities of usury, compelling as they do to the care of the poor, insisting as they do on an equality of God's children.

Religions (all the major religions) have been used to justify appalling inequalities and wonderful equalities, acts of cruelty and acts of kindness. Because we have made them and they reflect us.

What I was meaning is that if one believes that there is no God, all of one's life is spent doing what pleases and makes oneself happy, satisfied, fulfilled rather than offering any action or thought to please God. I was just seeing a difference of focus, ie. living one's life for oneself/ living one's life to please God.
Sorry for the confusion

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I think you may be misunderstanding the nature of that selfishness. The selfishness of altruism doesn't necessarily feel selfish. One's conscious focus may well be on pleasing another, or even pleasing God. My own focus is a consciously selfish one some of the time and not so at other times. I dont spend my whole life pursuing what pleases me and makes me happy. I also go out of my way at times for someone elses benefit, at a genetic level (and some might say also a pyschological level) I am pleasing myself when I act with another in mind, but that isn't necessarily how it feels in the moment.

If you act with God as your focus, then (in my worldview) you are doing so selfishly: to get closer to God, to earn his approval/a place in heaven/an assuasion of guilt, to feel pious, to feel chosen/special/planned for, to elevate yourself by submitting. To me there is no more value in this than any other reason to dig deep for your fellow man and try to make the world a better place.