Without God...

why does God make no sense to you? Should we all just live without boundaries, and in Anarchy instead?

 

Catholicism and Christianity are different.

 

God help those people for whom their god is materialistic things. For my God is not.

 

many different myths out there

 

Some have trouble believing in fairy tales.

People that can get by without the magic guy in the sky have plenty of boundaries.

By and large, we embrace the values of the Enlightenment. Which is the opposite of anarchy. Now,about all those religious wars...

 

that is where you are wrong. God is ALL that exists. We are all god. Every rock, every blade of grass you see is god. All existence is made up of what is real and what is not. This contrast creates reality as we know it.

 

There are a number of ways to parse that.

If everything is the deity, it's simpler to say "We are the Universe made aware". You don't need the deity part.

 

I suppose what you call it is irrelevant. Call it the universe, creation, god, consciousness, whatever.

 

You are conflating the authority of those who pretend that their will is Gods will, with one who serves the true God. You think the man/prophet acts on his own. So you cannot justly lay that to God if as you think that the man acts alone. Similarly you cannot say that because Jesus hungered, thirsted, suffered, bled, and died like a man, therefore he was not God. One may as well rape a virgin and then say to your victim, where is your virtue now.

 

According to God's law, the severity of such rape would depend on whether or not the woman was betrothed. Raping a woman, in Biblical law, is a crime against the woman's male owner (either father or husband), not against the woman. Raping an unbetrothed woman was "punishable" by . . . marriage. By marrying the victim. That's ****ing insane.

 

Not to me, deity implies sentience. Calling it the Universe doesn't have to mean sentient.

 

Good thing the Christians progressed and very few believe that today. I bet the vast majority of Christians today don't even know that part of the Bible (and yes it is in there). Hence why I ask them if they are cool with rewriting the Bible to get rid of the nasty bits. Sadly the answer is almost always no. They'd rather adjust and twist and bury their moral compass beneath obedience to what they perceive as ultimate power (God).

 

I see no way to tell the difference. And even if there are people who "serve the true God", if that God is demanding unethical behaviour, then what's the difference? Its wrong to obey. Just following orders should not be an excuse.

I COULD say whatever I want, but no, I don't say that.

Complete nonsequitor. How is that in any way analogous?

 

There are too many different interpretations/translations of scripture to say for sure. As I understand it, it says that to be caught with a virgin or unbetrothed, would leave the matter to the womans Father. He can demand payment. Or he can also demand that they be married and that the man can never divorce her for any reason. He will have to spend the rest of his life taking care of and providing for her. It says nothing of rape.

 

it does though, these are what some believe to be God's words

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 22:28-29&version=NIV

 

It specifically talks about rape in that instance. And, yes, it is insane. But let's assume for a moment that it isn't talking about rape . . . If that's the case, then now you are arguing that raping a virgin was completely legal in God's law, with no penalty at all. So either there was no penalty, or the only "penalty" except for further victimizing the victim.

 

Lets go with that. You find that moral? The father should get to force the man to marry the woman and take care of her for the rest of his life? He and ... the woman herself shouldn't be deciding this?

 

Sad that inventing an invisible magic man in the sky is required by some for life to have a purpose. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll provide a better purpose than worshiping an invisible man.

God is love? Was inventing the polio virus an act of love? Is letting close to 800 million people around the world go hungry while remaining invisible an act of love?

I keep waiting for someone making claims of a God to provide empirical evidence for their claims.

 

Is it moral to run around having sex with reckless abandon like dogs? LOL! Your focus on faulting religious based culture has blinded you to the nature of the alternative.

 

Evolution and natural selection have created a fear of death. Individuals with little or no fear of death are not going to live long enough to reproduce and pass on their genetic traits. Evolution and natural selection, in humans, have also created the intelligence to be aware of one's own mortality. So having a fear of death and knowing one is going to die creates a cognitive dissonance. To resolve this mental conflict humans have created religions that assert an afterlife, reincarnation, and so forth, as a denial of death.

So that is one reason, and of course another reason is the power that people gain from being self proclaimed intermediaries to invisible supernatural deities.

 

If you are going to define what is moral using the Bible, then slavery, i.e., owning another human being is moral. Genocide, and belief in a superior race are also moral according to the Bible.

 

That is one translation. Another does not say rape. And there is another that says if they are "found together", and then goes on to say the punishments are the same(marriage and payment to the womans father). At any rate, todays culture is so corrupt and promiscuous that what some prematurely perceive as mind blowing in the OT is actually quite quaint and moral in comparison. We used to have shotgun weddings in America. And it was quite common for couples to get married if the woman missed her period, to save face and their families from shame.

 

Are you asserting that reincarnation is real. If so what is your evidence for your claim. Asserting the supernatural based on what you expect, does not make for a logical argument. Just what makes you think there is some hidden truth to be searched for? Perhaps the universe is not designed around humans as a some sort of a cosmic classroom. No offense intended, but humans practicing religion not only seem to think the universe centers around them as a species, but they think it centers around them as an individual, controlling their actions via an invisible magic man (god), an invisible magic force (karma) and the like. But if you do think there is some continuity from one incarnation to the next, what exactly is passed on, and what is the mechanism to pass it on.

 

Unless you can show the Bible is something other than a book written by humans, why does it matter what it says anymore than any secular book on morals and ethics?

 

Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He apparently had sex with reckless abandon. And the Bible tells us that God loved Solomon. And it goes without saying that God gave Solomon the "energy" required to perform prodigious duty, so to speak.