You know, I'd get into this debate, but this line:
Quote:
Originally posted by jimf747
Without religion the actual word morality has no meaning with relation to cause and effect.
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makes it pointless. We can throw facts, conjectures, case studies, principles and such at him for weeks, but he seems to believe that "Because The Bible Said So" trumps all other arguments, and that the burden of proof is on the non-religious side.
Quote:
Originally posted by Happy Monkey
For instance there were many tribal cultures that sacrificed people for many supernatural ideas… those tribes considered their actions moral and right, do you, if you don’t, then you have to ask why.
I suspect that most of them acted somewhat morally - truly believing that they had to do it. I blame whoever set up the rules more than the people who believed them. They were products of their times. However, I am not a product of those times, and cannot speak with authority on them.
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You hit it right on the nose. The tribal cultures _did_ act morally... according to their own standards of morality. By contemporary American standards, they did not. That's what "morality" is -- a set of rules and standards for behavior, presumably for the benefit of all. Those rules vary from time to time, place to place, culture to culture.
Who's to say that "our" morality is "better" than theirs was?
There's a certain humor value in the notion of "good Christians" dying and going to their eternal judgement, only to find that instead of God or Jesus, there's a thirty-foot tribal god waiting for them who's
pissed because they never sacrificed to him.
