"I did not miss your point."

Yes, you did.  Otherwise, you wouldn't have pointed out that you don't have indisputable evidence.  Also, you wouldn't have suggested that I think that I do.  My point is that you and I do not have such evidence.

"The Israelites had no such indisputable evidence.  They were no different from any other tribe of people who had a tradition of religious belief.  And the existence of a theocracy did not make fanatical religious persecution any more moral than it is today.  You are quite the moral relativist here, aren't you?"

This is a classic illustration of not understanding an argument or a system on its own terms.  Naturally, you think they had no indisputable evidence.  You're an atheist, a positive atheist at that.  However, the same texts that make statements about punishing the adulterer with death are the same ones and refer to the same people who we are told saw the sea of reeds part for them to make their escape, who saw a pillar of fire lead them by night and a pillar of cloud by day, who saw water gush out of a rock, who watched each day as breadlike substances coated the ground (and they still weren't happy), who felt the mountain tremble, who, once the tabernacle was complete, saw the glory of God as an ever present reality. 

If these things did not happen, then perhaps you have a case.  However, even despite your hostile position, you should still be able to imagine for a moment how circumstances might be different if they had happened.

The other thing you fail to recognize is that the Scriptures, both old and new, insist that the consequences of all sin is death.  It is a mercy when we are not struck down for even the mildest of offenses.  As for the Israelites, since they had a higher level of direct exposure to God, they also had a higher standard.  Also, God was actually present to assist in administering justice, ie, the umim and the thummim.  When he was no longer present in that capacity, the ones left to administer justice were just as sinful as before, but now they did not have the assistance of God himself and also the clear and indisputable reminder that God was present was gone, too.

Your inability to comprehend this is due to the fact that you refuse to evaluate the passages in question in the context in which we see them. 

"You are forgetting that I was the one who compared theists to atheists, and I definitely was not confining my concept of theism to "Christian theism".  In fact, I was quite explicit that I was not.  My point was that generic theism, like generic atheism, is completely devoid of any moral code whatsoever.  I stand by it."

Oh, so like when you go to France or something and you use a word with distinct American nuances and the Frenchman responds using the same word, you correct him, do you?  You say, "Oh, well, actually I'm the one who used the word.  It's the American meaning that is right."  Is that how linguists operate, Cop?  Here you know full well exactly what was meant by 'theism.'  It is not France it is Christian Forum.  You are a trained linguist.  You ought to be able to perform the necessary mental calculations so you can keep up with the conversation and not derail it.

So, do you then concede then that Christian/Aristotilean Theism (pardon the redundancy) would have moral implications, even if no revelation was in hand?

"I understand theism in its normal sense--to refer to a belief in a god or gods."

That is not the normal sense.  A belief in more than one gods already has a name.  It is 'polytheism.'  Perhaps you've heard of it?  And even if we granted for the sake of discussion that it really was a normal sense, and not some sort of bastardization of the last couple of centuries, you knew precisely what I meant, didn't you?  By choosing to retreat behind your definition rather than the meaning you knew I had in mind, you ignored answering my objection.  Just in case you missed it:

Theism* would have moral implications, even if no revelation was in hand.

"Atheism is not just rejection of belief in your god.  It is rejection of belief in any god."

Look ma!  More dogmatism!

What about those atheists who insist it isn't that at all?  The ones you took issue with who said it is a lack of belief?  Are they not true atheists?  To the gulags with them!

*By theism, of course is meant- as if it was really important to clarify it further, I mean you visit France you know its French you're going to be using- theism in the classical sense upheld by thousands of years as the belief in one transcendental, immanent, non-contingent agent, proposed by Aristotle, Plato, etc.  Oh yea, and when Christians use the word theism this is what they mean, too.

Who will join me in calling for the outlaw of meat cleavers!  Or, can we at least agree that we need to make it illegal to use a meat cleaver to inflict bodily harm with?  http://www.myfoxboston.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5772608&version=6&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.3.1

Who will join me in calling for the outlaw of meat cleavers!  Or, can we at least agree that we need to make it illegal to use a meat cleaver to inflict bodily harm with? 

It is already illegal to use any instrument to inflict bodily harm.  There is no need for special laws to regulate meat cleavers, because they pose far less of a threat to the public than guns do. 

"And mine was that we have no credible evidence that the ancient Israelites did, either."

A trivial objection.  We already know how you feel about that.  It is nonetheless unfair, nay, absurd, to try to make an assessment of the morality of passages like this one apart from the context in which we find them:  allegedly, an actual, honest to goodness theocracy in the purest sense of the term.

Actually, I'm not sure that there ever was a pure theocracy.  The Yahwist cult ultimately became the dominant religion among the tribes of Israel, but it certainly competed openly with other religions during the reigns of David and Solomon.  We have little information now of what life really was like back in those days, just what is recorded in biblical scripture--seen from the bias of Yahwists and later generations--and whatever else we can scrape together from archaeological sources.  A fair assessment of the Bible would interpret it in the light of other liturgical literature from those days.  Because of your clear bias, you give it special credence as literal truth.

"So what?  I can show you plenty of ancient texts that report similar miracles (e.g. the Gilgamesh epic)."

Irrelevant.  Show me ancient texts that describe these miracles in the context of a theocracy.  That's the point.

A theocracy is a government controlled by religious authorities.  In those days, all governments were mired in theocratic tendencies.  Religion was always intertwined with government.  Different nations had different gods, and empires tended to see religion as an arm of public policy.  That is why the Roman emperors established Roman Catholicism as the imperial religion in the 4th century.  There was nothing special about the situation of the Israelites.  They were just one community of tribes among many in that region and in those times.  For a period of many decades, Israel and Judea formed an influential empire in the region, but they were crushed and absorbed by the Babylonian empire.  The Bible was probably compiled during that time as part of the standard practice of glorifying the origin of the state.  The Romans did the same thing when they created the myth of Romulus and Remus.  Hence, the Bible contains a mixture of semitic mythology and actual historical records, especially as seen through the eyes of the Yahwist priesthood.

"There is no reason to believe that the authors of the Bible were any more accurate about such tales than the authors of other scriptures that we both agree are made up of false and distorted reports."

Don't put words in my mouth.  This is typical atheistic hubris.  You assume that I agree that they are 'made up of false and distorted reports.'  It is more complicated than that.

Really?  Do you think that the more ancient Gilgamesh epic, which existed before the semitic Akkadians (first semites in recorded history) adopted it from the earlier Sumerians, was borrowed from Hebrew-speaking bedouins, of which there was no historical record at the time?  I don't think so.    We find parts of the Bible in pagan mythology that existed throughout the region in those times.  There are almost verbatim portions of the Psalms in Ugaritic texts, although the Ugarits likely had little contact with Hebrews, and there are pagan versions of the Daniel myth, also found in Ugaritic texts.  The most likely interpretation of the historical record is that the Hebrews incorporated material from older religious traditions, not vice versa.

More importantly, whether or not they actually witnessed them as real events in history is not the point here.  The point is that these commands which you would like to use as prima facie evidence against the morality of the Bible emerge in a context where the story is that the people actually witnessed God at work.

The more reasonable interpretation of the historical record is that all of the ancient accounts of miracles were inaccurate.  You may choose to select one set of accounts and take them seriously, but that is because of your prejudgment.  It is not an objective assessment of biblical accuracy.

Simple question, Cop.  If God made himself indisputably known to you but you chose to say he didn't exist, what kind of person would that make you?  Assume he did.  Now what?

No empirical knowledge is indisputable, but that isn't the point here.  I tend to trust my senses as much as anyone else, and I might well believe that I was in direct contact with a god.  So, yes, I could imagine myself believing that God existed, even though I might be experiencing hallucinations.  So what?  The fact remains that no god has made itself indisputably known to me, and I have not hallucinated any either.  Virtually all of the contacts with gods that humans have historically claimed to have been made never were made at all.  So the weight of evidence would suggest that you are being over-credulous in the case of biblical tales.  They ought to be treated with the same skepticism that we apply to all ancient myths. 

Another simple question:  Do you believe that resisting arrest should be a crime?  Imagine this scenario:  a uniformed officer attempts to arrest somebody.  The person resists arrest.  Crime?  Now imagine this one:  An un-uniformed officer attempts to arrest somebody but does not offer anything to identify himself, no badge, no "I'm a cop" nothing, he just announces "You are under arrest."  The person resists.  Crime?

In the first case, yes; in the second case, no (ceteris paribus).  The second case would be illegal under our laws, if the officer failed to identify himself.  Relevance?

"Or your inability to see my interpretation of scripture is due to the fact that you refuse to evaluate the passages in question in the context in which you and I both see other ancient tribes and nations.  You are blinded by your religious bias."

See, there you go again assuming that I see ancient tribes and nations like you do.  Not even close.

Is there some reason why you aren't bothering to explain the difference?  I'm quite willing to stand corrected, but all you have done is assert there is a difference.  What exactly do you have in mind?

"How can I concede what I did not dispute?  Your question is loaded with a presupposition that I reject."

Ok, so you don't dispute that Christian theism rationally implies moral values.  Great.  Mission accomplished.

George Bush has managed to severely reduce the impact of such claims. 

"No, I rebuffed your attempt to change the meaning of my words.  And the problem here is that you won't grant my meaning, lest you be forced to accept my rather obvious point:  theism and atheism carry no moral implications.  They name categories of belief about the existence of gods."

Actually, you haven't rebuffed my point.  If it is the case that the Christian concept of theism, even apart from revelation, generates moral values, then your flat assertion that theism carries no moral implications is patently false.  You could only say that SOME kinds of theism carry no moral implications, because in fact you would be aware of at least one kind (see how I am not quibbling with your arbitrary redefinition of theism but accepting it for the sake of argument?) that did have moral implications.

Oh, but you are quibbling and being very obtuse about it, too.  I have never wavered in what I meant by my use of the word "theism", which is the primary sense of the word that you will find in a dictionary.  Neither theism nor atheism promotes any particular concept of morality.  Your "brand" of theism does, just as a "brand" of atheism can.  I can blow the smoke away as fast as you can produce it.

We are led to believe that if theism is here interpreted to refer to Christian theism that you do not dispute this.  Right?

I would not dispute it if I had used "theism" in your sense.  At the time I used the word, it was quite clear that I was not, and it is still clear now, no matter how many times you try to deny it.

If you don't dispute this, then you have refuted yourself, as you have insisted that by 'theism' you also allow it to mean Christian theism, and if Christian theism has moral implications then you cannot categorically state, as you have, that theism has no moral implications.

Well, I think that I have disputed your attempts to change the sense of "theism" that I clearly intended when I used the word in the first place.  You are going to extreme lengths to pretend otherwise.

"I just don't like the debate tactic of refusing to engage theists on the point that atheists really do reject belief in gods.  It is more than a pure lack of belief."

They would say that it is ALL that it is.  You know there are a lot that will insist that it is ALL that it is.  Are they wrong?  Are they not true atheists?

I would agree with you that they are wrong to insist on that, and I do consider them true atheists.  I treat such assertions as on a par with Christian rhetorical tactics--e.g. defending deism as if it were a defense of Christian theism.

"Well, I've been to France quite a bit more often than you."

Lol, as if that's the point.  No rhetorical nonsense here.  You know darn well that when I use the word 'theism' I mean Christian theism in particular.  You're trying to hide behind generic theism because its the only way you hope your point will stand.  However, by insisting that Christian theism is still theism as you understand it, you force the issue:  you must state your position on whether or not one of the brands of theism you insist is within your definition actually does imply a morality.

Please do so.

I know only that you insist on not using 'theism' in its primary sense, because you are trying mightily to create a straw man of my position.  I won't let that happen.  I will only grant you that particular brands of theism have implications for morality, but that is also true of particular brands of atheism.  It is not true of theism in general, nor of atheism in general.

Or, you could say that there is no need for special laws because the laws against assault and batter and murder already do the trick.     That is surely what you mean by 'it is already illegal to use any instrument to inflict bodily harm.'  It should follow, then, that we don't need special laws to apply to guns on the matter, because the same laws against harm that would apply to the cleaver can apply to the gun.

No, because different objects call for different types of regulation.  We have laws that regulate the sale of alcohol and the operation of automobiles, because those things pose a threat to the public.  We do not regulate them in the same way, because they pose different types of danger, and the public has different needs with respect to those things.  Meat cleavers are far less dangerous than guns, so nobody proposes to regulate their ownership and use as strictly as guns.  Meat cleavers are not designed to be weapons, and they are not perceived as a serious threat to public safety.  For example, it would be much more difficult, albeit not impossible, to kill someone accidentally with a meat cleaver.

There have been knife attacks that have killed dozens of people, too you know...

True, and there are reasons why they don't allow knives, guns, or other objects that could easily be used as weapons on airplanes.  Knives are considerably less dangerous than guns, and they have other legitimate purposes than killing or threatening violence.

You take very gun off the street and you simply increase the number of events like this one.  You remove knives, they'll use rocks.  You remove rocks, they'll use their hands.  After that, they'll make knives legal again in order to chop off everyone's hands.  People will be chasing each other around with bloody stumps, but hey, at least people won't be getting hurt.  :)  Meanwhile, criminals will be smuggling in guns for those who violated the law and still have their hands.

Are you actually arguing that there would be as many deaths and injuries without guns as with them?  That's utterly absurd.  The reason that our rates of violence and suicide are so high is that guns make violence much easier and more likely to happen than other objects.  (This phenomenon is called "instrumentality" in the literature on gun control.)  It is very hard to prove or disprove anything statistically, but the New England Journal of Medicine once published a very good comparative study of Seattle and Vancouver, which, for the period of study, were demographically and culturally similar and were also using roughly the same methods for data collection.  The study showed a large discrepancy in rates of violence, where most methods of violence were roughly equivalent but for gun violence.  That is, the statistical difference seemed to show that Vancouverites were just as violent as Seattleites in every way except with guns.

Each new law only means that the only people really reduced to it are the ones obeying the law in the first place.  Thus, outlaw knives, and the law abiding will only have rocks (or chairs) to fight back with.

Nonsense.  You forget that criminals get their supply of weapons primarily from weapons that were legally purchased in the first place.  And you also forget that many crimes of passion are not committed by professional criminals, nor are suicides.  In a domestic dispute, guns cause death and serious injury far more often than other objects.  If you keep a gun in your house, it is statistically far more likely to be used against a family member or acquaintance than against an intruder or criminal.

People should have the right to defend themselves with the same level of force that it is reasonable to expect a criminal to utilize against them.

Not if that right actually causes an increase in overall rates of death and injury.  That is actually at the heart of the gun debate--not whether a gun will prove useful when you are threatened, but whether you will be threatened with violence and injury more often because of lax regulation of gun possession.

It is pure common sense to acknowledge that the passage of laws, even for what you think to be of greater threat, the gun, does not hinder the criminal.  It only hinders the honest man.

The criminal is not the only problem associated with high rates of gun ownership, but those high rates will leave criminals with a much higher supply of weapons to threaten you with.

Quite the opposite, it is the religious faithful who are showing the bias.  My basis for this claim should be quite obvious, but your bias prevents you from seeing it or acknowledging it:  You reject the claims of all the other religions for the roughly same reason that atheists do.  They lack the plausibility of evidence.  It has very little to do with naturalism, because, even if one is a supernaturalist, one still requires positive reasons to believe a claim.  You just suspend that natural skepticism for your own religion, because you have been taught to suspend it.  Atheists lack any religious bias and, therefore, any reason to put a mental thumb on the scales of reason when weighing the evidence for any particular religious claim.  All gods are just as likely, and just as unlikely, to exist, other things being equal.

Quite the contrary. I do not dismiss the supernatural claims of other religions. I maintain that the "gods" do indeed exist. This may flabbergast you, but it is in no way contradictory to my Christianity. More on that below.

That atheist lacks all other religious bias only misses the glaring obvious that you retain a naturalistic bias and therefore whenever you makes such arguements show that yours is indeed a belief system like all other religions. Only yours is a less honest religion, in that it deny's it's religious nature.

Actually, I did not really question Christ's historicity for decades after I became an atheist.  It is only more recently that I have become skeptical of his existence, because of the plausible case that can be made against it.  There are still many atheists--Christian apostates--who believe that Christ really did exist.  The well-known atheist historian, Richard Carrier, who specializes in Roman history, believed in Christ's historicity until just a few years ago.  He found Earl Doherty's Jesus Puzzle to make a compelling case that the story of Jesus might have evolved as a case of religious syncretism--two converging popular trends known as the "Son of God" and the "Son of Man" that existed in the Eastern Roman Empire shortly before Christians appeared as a religious cult. 

"Plausable case" means little. That you can think of halve a dozen alternatives doesn't refute the original. Much like alternatively Christ's body was stolen, or Christ had a twin imposter after the ressurection. All are naturalistic logically conceivable, and obviously they all can't be right. Frankly given that all previous refutations of Christ's ressurection fall short, I take such an attempt to undercut Christ's very existence as a poor man's act of desperation that reveals how this is more about choice than evidence. Much like thinking that historical supernatural events didn't occur because you can think of naturalistic alternatives and a dismissal of God's existence a priori.

More detailed criticism of Doherty can be found here: http://tektonics.org/doherty/dohertyhub.html

Though your statement is interesting in that not long ago you said you never argued a religion as an intentional falsehood. But to advocate that Christ did not exist is basicly to say Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John were lying about being companions with Christ and following him around. Seeing him perform miracle's to thousands of people whom they later started preaching to about the miracles the people apparently never saw, and seeing him confront the Jewish priests who later persecuted the early Christians for apparently preaching about someone who did not exist and apparently the Jews never pointed that fact out. So, were you lying back then?

I have not seen sntjohnny's "uniformed cop" analogy yet.  I don't read every post here, so I'll need to have it presented more clearly to me.

It was in the very same post I quoted from:

Quote

Another simple question:  Do you believe that resisting arrest should be a crime?  Imagine this scenario:  a uniformed officer attempts to arrest somebody.  The person resists arrest.  Crime?  Now imagine this one:  An un-uniformed officer attempts to arrest somebody but does not offer anything to identify himself, no badge, no "I'm a cop" nothing, he just announces "You are under arrest."  The person resists.  Crime?

In the first case, yes; in the second case, no (ceteris paribus).  The second case would be illegal under our laws, if the officer failed to identify himself.  Relevance?

But I would point out that your sole source of information that the Jews had direct experience of a god comes from Jewish religious scripture.  That scripture is just as likely to be false as any other relgious scripture and just as likely to be true.  If the Bible is evidence that God interacted with Jews, then the Upanishads is evidence that Hindu gods interacted with Hindus.  I see no compelling evidence of anything here except that humans have the capacity to imagine gods and believe fervently that they exist.

Once again, you've missed the point. True or false, it is rediculous and absurd to try to present evidence that the Bible justify's acts similar to those commited by Stalin and such, while ignoring/refuting the context and circumstances that very same book presents that very evidence you have to draw upon to make such an arguement.

As I said above, I am perfectly comfortable in acknowledging the supernatural events and the existence of the Hindu's "gods". For you see Cop. I am a Christian. I believe that there is indeed a God. One true God. And I equally believe there is in fact a Devil as well, that roams about deceiving people. With angels and demons to go along respectively. When presented with the supernatural of other religions I am always reminded of when Moses confronted Pharoah. When Aaron's staff was turned into a snake, when the Nile was turned to blood, and when a plague of frogs was called down, Pharoah's magicians could do the same. So you see I am very comfortable in acknowledging that ancient Egypt's Ra, Anubis, etc. may in fact have real supernatural basis. This in no way conflicts with Christianity that there are in fact demons that can form limited acts of power to present themselves as gods and deceive those away from the one true God.

I am far from flabbergasted having met Christians before who claimed to believe in other gods.  It is a reasonable belief for theists.  If one god exists, why not more?  The Yahwist cult probably started out as monolatrist--believing in the existence of other gods, but only worshiping one.  Modern Jews and Christians tend not to believe in the existence of other gods, and Islam is probably the most intolerant of the idea that other gods might exist, even labeling Christianity and Judaism as "polytheism".

[insert speculation based on presuppositions and a dismissal of God and the supernatural a priori]

I'm not denying a naturalistic bias.  I would only point out that you yourself have such a bias when not specifically talking about religion.  That is, you probably accept the findings of science over claims of supernatural causes for natural phenomena.  I take that you attribute the movement of planets around the sun to the forces of gravity rather than gods pushing them.  As an admitted polytheist, you might well consider the god-pushing explanation to be just as likely as the scientific one.  Science works only when one assumes a naturalistic bias.  My point is that the naturalistic bias is not behind the weak atheism argument about lack of belief.  What is behind it is the requirement that there be some positive reason for accepting a claim.  The burden of proof is always on one making a positive claim.  Otherwise, we would be bound to accept the likelihood of everything we could not disprove.

I am not an admitted "polytheist". I am in fact a monotheist as I explained previously. That I don't dismiss supernatural basis of other religions off handedly, doesn't mean I accept them as true either. The Bible itself teaches how "signs and wonders" aren't proof alone. Indeed it's because of our scientific knowledge of the sun and lightning that allows us to dismiss Zeus and Apollo. However, as God in Christianity is nothing like Greek, Roman, or Egyptian gods (indeed not even like Islam's Allah) the standard that science can disprove His existence is ridiculous based on their very definitions.

This is of course a strawman given that I simply pulled the rug from under you in your assertion that I'm as closed minded to all other religions as atheism is about everything. That you dismiss historical accounts of supernatural events goes back that you must dismiss God's existence a priori. Which is of course Hume's question begging. However if we have strong logical evidence for the existence of God a part from supernatural events then the belief and interpretations that no supernatural events ever occured falls apart. The question become's whether God exists or not.

Of course, as someone who claims to detest the atheistic double talk of "lack of belief" that tries to dodge any burden of proof you would then be forced to prove God's inexistence, wouldn't you? This is of course impossible, since it's impossible to prove the inexistence of God. Atheists are forced to give alternative explanations, but there are no arguments to support the claim that God does not exist! You can of course just claim the burden of proof is on us who believe in God's existence, but we have met that burden without turning to claims of supernatural events. The Kalam arguement still remains the most logical proof for the existence of God, much to cutup's chagrin. That matter, space, and time are created things is confirmed by science and thus it's source must be immaterial and outside space and time. Now you can no doubt point out that this doesn't tell us specifics so all the other religions are still on the table, and you'd be right. This does however, put Christianity two steps above atheism.

So as we can give "positive reasons" for God's existence without even consulting supernatural events, then cases of supernatural occurances are not placed outside the realm of logic. As such a sweeping close-minded naturalistic bias does not stand. It's simply a matter of going where the evidence leads.

Again, it would be foolish to require a disproof of every unsupported claim.  All we can do to license our beliefs is require that there be some reasonable support for them.  Hence, arguments about the existence of God and Jesus always come down to whether the available evidence is reasonable or adequate to license belief, not whether it is impossible to sustain the belief.  Plausibility is everything.  My complaint about people of faith is that they seem to have such a low bar for plausibility when it comes to arguing about their gods.

One must therefore disregard evolution under such a criteria. A very embarrasing standard for an atheist, as the odds make it far more "plausible" that absolutely nothing would have come about. In fact that mathematical odds make the whole thing impossible. As I showed above I have met that plausibility bar with the Kalam arguement and the Big Bang, plus that the universe does indeed appear created. You'll no doubt bring up Dawkins or "multiverse" type arguemetns to this, but if we're going on "plausibility" instead of "possibility" then such notions are thrown out.

Again, I find it difficult to make the claim that someone who asserts a false belief is technically lying.  Lying implies an intention to deceive.  I can imagine scenarios whereby the Gospel stories came to be seen quite differently from the stories that inspired them.  The Telephone Game or "Chinese Whispers" is a case in point of how a story can become garbled or distorted without any clear intention of deceit by the people relating the story.  Note that the gospel stories all started out as an oral tradition that was recorded in writing by later generations.

This falls apart for very simple verses in Acts 2:22-23:

"Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did amoung you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him on the cross."

All of which signifying that when Peter preached to the people he was appealing to their first-hand knowledge. That those who they were preaching to were they themselves witnesses and knowledgable of Christ existing, performing miracles, and being executed. Hardly a "chinese whispers" game if the earliest preachers of the gospels appealed to first-hand knowledge time after time. "We are witnesses to these things." was their constant message even to hostile witnesses looking to discredit them. It would indeed have to be lying for you to be right, but then we get into the fact that they were persecuted and sometimes even killed, but did not retract their testimony. Not very "plausible" for them to die while knowing it was a lie.

Indeed as the NT documents were all composed about 60 years of the events recorded this is hardly enough time for the Gospels to develop "quite differently" as you assert. Your whole notion is tantamount to someone constructing the idea in the 1990's that Kennedy never really died after the Dallas shooting, but the whole thing had been faked by Hollywood. This story wouldn't go anywhere, because there are too many eyewitnesses still alive today who could contradict it.

OK, I thought that there was more to it than that.  Notice my question at the end of my response to it:  "Relevance?"  I did not see the point he was trying to make, and I still don't.  Sorry to be dense, but the point needs to be made more explicit.  I didn't see what "resisting arrest" had to do with his remarks about indisputable proof of God's existence and ancient theocracy.

Don't worry about it. It's something I'm becoming quite used to when talking to you. 

If you can make that paragraph more comprehensible, I might respond to it.  I can only say that I might be missing your point, because I cannot make sense of your language.  And please don't introduce Stalin into the discussion.  We don't need to bash each other with atheists-behaving-badly vs. Christians-behaving-badly contests.  My point was that the Bible per se is no better or worse than other religious works, e.g. the Upanishads.

As has been very well established by now, you've been missing the point almost from the very beginning of sntjohnny's post to DB that started this chain of discussion. This whole line of posts started with how DB asserting that he could show Biblical verses permitting the same thing as what Stalin did, and sntjohhnny pointing out that the circumstances presented in that same Bible showed a direct theocracy with God. You have just been quibbling that the circumstances never happened, as you must being an atheist.

There is no reason to take the Bible as anything more than a hodge podge of real historical records and religious mythology.

How dogmatic of you.

End Bringer,

i'm going to try to condense our discussion a little because it is in danger of getting unmanagable.  If you think i have left out something important then feel free to include it in your reply.

Atheists and 'Objective Morality'.

And it's exactly because atheism has no objective moral code that allows such acts by Stalin or sociopaths.

i have obviously failed to address this issue properly otherwise you'd have quit repeating this tired line by now.  It's muddled, short-sighted, and honestly a little offensive.  Here we go.

Theist = belief in god(s)
Atheist = disbelief in god(s)

You say that atheism has no objective moral code, and this is true.  THEISM also has no objective moral code - it has millions of different ones, and plenty more subjective ones.  Theism takes in such a wide range of views that it is not even a useful category.  Ditto atheism.  Just as you dont want to be lumped in with the Druids, Hindus, Muslims, Gaia worshipers and those frikkin liberal christians, i dont want to be pigeon-holed with murderous communists just because you have identified that we have something in common.  We do - one thing.  But not something which predicts anything about our behaviour.

i am happy to go on the record and say that Theism predicts nothing except that a person will believe in some form of god(s).  They could be a psychopath or a saint, and there is nothing explicit in theism to stop them from going either way.

Many atheists will have what they consider to be an objective moral code.  You may not be able to conceive how they could derive one without reference to a 'Higher Law Maker', but that's their business.  Since none of you theists can agree on what the objective moral code actually is you're in no position to look down on anyone else's.  Other atheists, myself included, have very clear moral codes (whether we consider them 'objective' or not) which would forbid us from shooting up a town hall even if we wanted to - and of course had access to a gun, another issue - and might not take kindly to being lumped in with Stalin because we share a favourite colour, or something else equally trivial and non-predictive about ourselves.

If you want to know more specifically what i am, you have only to ask.  Referring to 'atheists' as a unified group that you can generalise about is useless.

"..an atheist may be a good person or an 'evil' one, we dont know.  All we can predict is that she wont believe in god."

That "she" won't necessarily be a Stalin isn't the issue, it's that under atheism she is allowed to be.

If, as you imply, theists aren't allowed to be murderous dictators then you have the majority of recorded history to explain.  By the way, do you have a problem with me alternating the gender of the impersonal pronoun?

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i dont think we're going much further with the gun control debate.  We have very different opinions and the only thing we've so far agreed on is that correlations dont prove anything.  Since controlled lab experiments on the effect of gun legislation are impossible, we have little left to argue with except opinion and personal experience, which is not usually productive.

As i say, if you think i've left anything important out, please re-include it.

That you attribute theism in the general sense to outline the different standards to disprove an objective standard is not surprising. What you fail to realize is that this is easily countered by the fact that out of all theistic beliefs one, numero uno, can be correct. To find the true objective standard is to simply find the what theistic belief is true...

And just how do you go about doing that?  There is nothing simple about it.  There is no consensus on which theistic belief is true, or even if any of them are true.  You seem to believe that you are among the lucky few who have stumbled upon religious jackpot, but isn't that true of just about everyone else?  About the only thing that people of faith do seem able to agree on is that they see the truth that most other people miss.  It is their own particular scripture, or their own unique spin on interpretation, or their own little cult of worshipers that has caught the eye of the almighty creator of the universe. 

Yes I've ran into such arguements. They ultimately fall apart for a variety of reasons. Like your "clear moral codes" it goes to show that you have yours and Stalin and Hitler had theirs. One quickly sees the absurdity in such thinking. Once again that atheism allows it is a point you are failing to recognize.

But why would Stalin's gulags be evidence against atheism and Torquemada's torture chambers not against theism?  It seems that Dannyboy made this point very clearly--that these canards applied to atheism are a sword of Damocles for Christians.  And it all just blew right over your head.  You just repeat the refuted claims.

If, as you imply, theists aren't allowed to be murderous dictators then you have the majority of recorded history to explain...

Simple. Their theistic beliefs were wrong. Now unless you can show the Bible allowing similar practices out of the contexts sntjohnny pointed out then we'd have something to talk about.

The truth is always "simple" to those blinded by dogma.  Arguments about how scripture ought to be interpreted are a non-starter with those who think the scripture errant in the first place.  That is for you and other Christians to sort out.  And you know very well that it is not hard to find Christians who disagree vehemently with your glib assertions about what the Bible allows and what it doesn't. 

Christ didn't claim to have "special insight from God", He claimed to be God. A very preposturous claim, that alone sets Him apart from the rest...

I would say that proclaiming oneself to be "God" actually is a claim to have special insight from God.  Assuming that he even made such a claim, which was still controversial in the 4th century, it was hardly a unique claim.  The Roman emperors considered themselves divine, and Caesar Augustus even claimed to have sprung from a virgin birth.  (Worshipers imagined their gods to have had a thing for virgins back then.) 

...In addition His teachings were radically different from the rest. He taught that God required perfection not only in actions, but also thoughts (Matt.5:21-36, 48). He said that people should offer help and service to their enemies (Matt. 40-45). He taught that God did not value the same things men do (Luke 16:15), but looks on each man's heart. He taught that a person could know the Father by knowing Him (John 8:19).

Really standard stuff back in those days.  There were a lot of religions and cults.  You find roughly the same stuff in the vedic tradition, which had avatars--human incarnations of gods.  For example, Krishna was an incarnation of Vishnu.  He had a lot of similarities to Christ, not the least of which was having been killed and resurrected.

There have been many other religious and moral leaders who have claimed to have an insight on the truth. There have been far fewer who have claimed to be the truth, and only one who has proven His claim by dying and then resurrecting again.

Only if that you believe the myriad of similar claims were false (going back at least to Osiris).  But all had their true believers.  Christianity won the final competition to become Rome's new religion in the 4th century, after some false starts with other religions.

What [Dannyboy] doesn't say is what is implicit by even the most basic of definitions. If their is no God, then there is no reprocusion beyond this world. As such we are basicly no different than any other animal...

Why does there need to be repercussions for our behavior in some world other than the one we live in?  We are, in fact, an animal that is very different from other animals.  Our complex moral codes define how we can interact safely and comfortably with others.  That is the purpose of morality--to enable us to form safe and secure social bonds.

And as such there is no real reason from behaving like every other animal in that we can kill, rape, and eat each other and this world...

Now you're scaring me again.  Normal people don't do this to each other, not just because such behavior would make society more dangerous, but because we don't normally want to hurt other people, let alone make a meal out of them.  The cannibalism that seems to have been widespread in the past was likely caused by the need to survive famines.  Animals don't actually eat their own species as a rule, and they do exhibit some of the same kinds of "moral" behavior towards each other that we see in human society.  Our evolutionary cousins, the great apes, have many patterns of social behavior that are like our own.

Thus Stalin and Torquemada are very much in accordance with atheism. Even trying to simplify atheism down as much as possible, there is a truckload of implications that one can easily see. In fact, breaking down atheism to it's basics makes it even easier to discredit.

You missed the whole point.  Torquemada was a Christian acting out of what he regarded as Christian principles.  Since you don't want to acknowledge the point, you see him as "acting in accordance with atheism".  Well, here is an appropriate reply.  Stalin studied to be a priest.  His atrocities were actually rooted in his youthful Christianity, even though he was nominally an atheist.  Two can play that game.

Sntjohnny has already pointed out that theism at minimum implies us being created and having value. As such moral precepts are established, but this doesn't in itself give a robust morality.

Theism at a minimum implies neither thing.  You act as if his statement had gone unchallenged, but it was challenged by both myself and dannyboy's latest comments.  Theism implies no morality whatsoever.

Interestingly this matter also goes into the whole "Problem of Evil" that is also raised as an objection by atheists. To say what Stalin and Torquemada did was evil imakes no since outside the context of a moral standard. Evil as a value judgment marks a departure from that standard of morality.  If there is no standard, there is no departure. Evil can't be real if morals are relative.  All you can say is "To me it's evil, but to him it's good." Evil is real, though.  That's why people object to it.  Therefore, objective moral standards must exist as well. Isn't it interesting how seperate atheistic objections to theism often contradict and cancel each other out as a whole?

Relative standards are still standards.  The problem, as pointed out by myself and dannyboy numerous times in the past, is that so-called "absolute" moralists cannot agree on what the absolute set is supposed to be.  Therefore, there is no practical distinction between absolute morality and relative morality, except that the relativists are more honest about the principles that really underly morality.

...The only question is: Which interpretation makes the most sense from the context and intent being given?

Well, we can certainly agree on that.  I would submit that the original context in which the Bible was written can only be guessed at and deduced by modern archaeologists and historians.  You are certainly not in a position to decide what makes the most sense, since you are not privy to the historical context and intent.