Morality and the Bible
 

Anytime you base any decisions in you life on what's in the bible you are making an enormous mistake.








Moderator note:
Split off from the gay marriage thread so if this seems like an odd start thats why. This is where the basis of the argument started.
- Sleepy Jack

really? i think if you're considering being really cruel or killing someone, the bible might have some useful advice. the problem with the bible for me is that as soon as you open it up to interpretation you can justify just about anything, which is helped extraordinarily by its constant self-contradictions. but still, pretty clear on the whole don't murder innocent people thing. that's a pretty good lesson.

I don't know about that though. Murder being bad is pushed in most places where murder is mentioned so you don't need the bible for it. People like Ann Coulter and George W. Bush went on and on about how putting it the ten commandments in schools would stop school shootings but who's going to look at it after shooting up thirty people and go "Oh thou shall NOT kill?! Shit!"

I think that was a clear thought-process before any organized religion though.

Yeah, if you're a non-believer, a ***, a non-virgin getting married, or wear clothes of mixed fabrics chances are you're not so innocent.

Most people define innocent way different than the bible does though. Except for Pat Robertson.

Don't take it so literally. I would suggest that if you need the bible to tell you not to kill we got a lot bigger things to worry about with you then your literary selections.

I agree with the second portion of that statement, the interpretation of the bible allows bad people to justify their actions in more cases then it guides thew good to the path of righteousness. (Whixh of course is beset on both side...etc etc etc Big Kahuna Burger)

and yet, don't we need something to tell us not to murder? is love for your fellow man really instinctual? it might just be my pessimism but it seems to me that cruelty is more inherent than compassion--every organism starts by viewing itself as everything and slowly starts to recognize others only by relating them to itself. generally we quickly adopt cultural values, but specific situations can cause us to question these values--when that happens, those values need to relate back to something for their legitimacy. if they just relate back to other people than there is no reason not to simply replace them with your own. that's where religion comes in, and that is the context in which i see it as useful. the problem is updating a religion as a lot of what used to be considered sinful becomes acceptable, without revealing the whole thing to be built on nothing.

Well, yes. I would assume compassion, or rather the will to survive to be instinctual. I think through years of cultivating we'd adapt a code of being good to each other because it prolongs our ability to live. Being good to your fellow man seems natural. Its the destruction, which religion often encourages, that doesn't.

I believe people are naturally good and capable of evil.

There were lots of people before God came in the picture and those generations survived and evolved.

We have plenty of things that teach us right from wrong, parents, environment and our conscious perhaps most of all.

Unfan said it better then me.