Quath said:
I don't find moral decisions so cut and dry. For example, if three children are drowning. I can save two strangers children or my child, I will save my child. Yet to someone else, this may be the wrong moral choice to make. There is nothing which says which one is right.
Your example is one where I find a different moral ground, I would die trying to save all three as I wouldn't be able to live knowing I didn't do my best to save them all. A pretty cut and dry moral on my part, I have yet to find an issue of morals that isn't cut and dry for me anyhow.
I would disagree with this. Government can justified by purely selfish motives. It is not about right or wrong, but about everyone agreeing to cooperate so everyone can maxamize on something like security, health, social goals, etc.
That doesn't justify the laws the government creates. Back to the original point at hand, original sin, I point toward this link
http://www.gospeltruth.net/menbornsinners/mbs07.htm I have a really hard time following the docrtrine of original sin. You may disagree with the one analogy I posted from the site but I'm sure you would have a hard time biblically refuting the information the site contains.
I am not sure how this addressed what I said.
I said that man has the law written in their hearts and it was obvious when you see a mans conscience. In response to that you asked if it was obvious when a man commits murder. I was assuming that you were trying to say that a man who had the law written on their heart could not commit a sin because they knew it was wrong so I pointed out that men who know the law through the Bible still sin. I don't know how else I could have addressed the issue.
Is it ok to kill another soldier? To kill the unborn? To kill a convicted prisoner? To kill someone for working on the Sabbath? To kill a non-virgin bride in front of her parents? To target children in war?
Ecclesiastes 3:1-22 Are you trying to say that the Bible teaches to kill for working on the sabbath? It is at this point that I really have to ask this question, are you a Christian? The only reason I ask is because most Christians seem to understand the difference between the old and new covenants. Some of the questions you posed above show a clear misunderstanding of the Bible. The Bible is very clear on what is right and what is wrong, and your conscience will let you know if you are about to do wrong. Go ahead and ask any soldier who had to fight in a just war if they had a guilty conscience when they shot at the enemy ;)
People disagree on these. That would seem to indicate we have no hard morality within us.
People disagree on a lot of things but does that mean they don't know what is truley right? A man might fight for gay marriage and ask to be accepted but the only reason he seeks acceptance is to verify his own belief. As I said before, an atheist comes to a Christian forum pushing his own POV to help him justify what he knows to be a lie. There are too many examples to list. There are people that disagreed with Jesus, people who disobeyed God's word, and I would venture to say that Satans trouble came from disagreeing with God himself. Just because some people disagree doesn't mean they have different morals, it just means that some people are better and hushing that voice inside their heads. I would also like to point out that not everyone does what they find morally acceptable, the way you can usually tell is when a man/woman either attempts to lie about what they have done or they try to blame it on someone else. Some examples of this would be the murderer who lies about his crime, or the rapist who claims he did it because she was wearing clothing that was too skimpy.
The Bible says that slaves may be bought and sold. It gives rule for handlin slaves. It even tells you how hard you may beat a slave (such they do not die 2 days later). Did the Israelites do evil by owning other people as they had ben owned? Why did God not only permit this but help establish rule for it?
Let me say that slavery in that time period is very much different from what was done to African American slaves, it has even been compared to what modern people get in the military. Slavery was not always lifelong and not even close to what early Europeans put men through. You try to say God condones slavery in a futile attempt to make it look as if God is morally wrong, but what God condoned is very different than modern slavery and you probably know that already. The Bible strictly forbids the type of slavery that happened in America,
Exo 21:16 LITV And he that steals a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, dying he shall die.
That verse shows the condemnation of what Europeans did as far as slavery. The "slavery" that was common place during Bible times was more of a indentured servant. I don't want to get too far off topic but if you want to debate this further make a thread and I will join :D. I will warn you though, you better be able to back up that scripture ;) as I already know what verses you are reffering to above and those alone don't make a very good argument for what you are saying here ;)
Do you think that Christians hate the non-Christians thet try to enlighten? If not, why do you think the opposite of atheists?
An atheist who "preaches" his or her "gospel" is only doing so because misery loves company :P Honestly, give me one good reason an atheist would have to attack a religion? If they honestly believe that God doesn't exist and that at death that is the end then why would they have to save anyone from a belief that brought them comfort? Even if they were wrong, wouldn't this atheist's attempt at proving the theist wrong be morally wrong for the atheist?
Martin Luthur King tied very hard to convince people of his moral stance. Was he going against his moral conscience? I seriously doubt it.
King didn't have to fight hard to convince people of his moral stance, instead he had to fight hard to be heard by people that were ignorant of the situation and to make known to America what wrongs were being done. Kings voice was used to make the plight known, not to prove to people that what was being done was wrong.
So killing an unborn is a sin like excessive drinking, working on the Sabbath and cursing. Do you agree it is not about the unborn then and it just people trying to legislate away sin? Do you feel the same about stopping the sins of sloth and gluttony?
Did I ever say that I believe that the law of God should be legislated? I believe the only law in the Bible that should be legislated is the most important commandment, if everyone followed it then the world wouldn't need any other legislation. If you need me to tell you that commandment just say so, but I'm assuming you know what it is ;)
If you immunize your child or go to the hospital instead of church when injured, then you are sounding hypocritical.
and how so? I said it was up to God to make life and death decisions, that doesn't mean that he doesn' provide knowledge for the use of saving life.
That is a good point. The ends justifying the means is a poor philosophy. However, the child being a victim is a bad argument because the child is definitely happy in heaven and may or may not be happy on Earth. So abortion is a definite win for the child in terms of happiness.
I'm glad we agree here. :D
The link didn't work for me. Maybe the website is down.
You are going to have Vic on here telling me my post is too long but here it goes :D , taken from
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2543
Understanding the nature of God’s interaction with man is no small task. The sincere Bible student often comes across things in the biblical text that are puzzling. Others, who are perhaps somewhat less sincere, twist these initially puzzling passages “to their own destruction†(as described in 2 Peter 3:16-1). One such idea that has been abused is the alleged contradiction between how Jehovah dealt (and still deals) with the children of sinful people. Steve Wells, author of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, insists that there is a discrepancy in the Bible regarding this subject. He lists Exodus 20:5, which states: “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.†Wells then presents Ezekiel 18:20 as a contradictory verse: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself †(Wells, 2003).
Is there a legitimate contradiction between these verses? Or, to pose the question differently, “Is there any possible way that both these statements can be true?†The fact of the matter is that both statements can be true, without a contradiction occurring. What Mr. Wells and others who twist these verses into an alleged contradiction do not recognize is that there is a difference between bearing the guilt of a parent, and suffering negative physical and emotional consequences due to that parent’s bad decisions.
It often is the case that the children of wicked people suffer terribly. Sometimes these children suffer because the parent physically or emotionally abuses them (in direct violation of Scripture; cf. Matthew 7:12; Colossians 3:21). At other times, the child suffers as a result of the parent’s irresponsible behavior. For instance, suppose a man addicted to gambling wastes his salary on gambling, instead of using it to feed his family. As a result, his children suffer hunger, shame, and poverty.
Yet, even though the children of sinful people often suffer physical consequences, they do not inherit the sin of those parents. The book of Jeremiah provides an interesting commentary on this subject. In Jeremiah 16:1-6, God told Jeremiah that the prophet should not take a wife and/or have children in the land of Israel. God explained His reasoning to Jeremiah as follows: “For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place.... ‘They shall die gruesome deaths; they shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried, but they shall be as refuse on the face of the earth’ †(16:4). Why was this going to happen? Wells is quick to refer to this chapter, especially verses 10 and 11 where the children of Israel pose the question, “Why has the Lord pronounced all this great disaster against us†(vs. 10)? Wells then records Jeremiah’s answer: “ ‘Because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ says the Lord†(vs. 11). Wells, however, does not cite the very next verse (12), which states: “And you have done worse than your fathers....â€Â
These Israelites were suffering due to the sins of their fathersâ€â€and due to their own sins. Their children were going to die gruesome deaths. The skeptic is quick to seize upon this fact, and demand that any time innocent children die, it is a travesty against justice that a loving God never would permit (a fallacious idea that I have refuted elsewhere; see Butt, 2004).
Do children sometimes die horrible deaths due to their parents’ wrong decisions? Absolutely. The Israelites had adopted the practice of sacrificing their own children to a false god named Baal (Jeremiah 19:5). The iniquity of the parents, then, can be visited upon the children in the form of physical suffering. But do those children bear the guilt of that sin? Absolutely not! Ezekiel wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son†(Ezekiel 18:20, emp. added).
Notice the words soul and guilt. Does the Bible ever insinuate, for example, that a child is guilty of idolatry because his parents were idolatrous? No (read Matthew 18:3-5; Luke 18:16-17). Bearing the guilt of sin is altogether different than bearing the physical consequences of the actions of others. As is often the case, the skeptic has confused the two, and has alleged a biblical contraction where, in fact, none exists. This is still another example in which the allegation against the Bible fails, but “the Word of the Lord endures forever†(1 Peter 1:25).
God could have made Bob and Barbara. They both had a phobia of snakes and were allergic to fruit. Thse two would not have eaten from the tree. So why did God make Adam and Eve instead of Bob and Barbara? This is really tricky because God knew what they would do before he made them.
God knew what they would do but he allowed them the opportunity to make that choice. Without giving the ability to make that choice then mankind would be nothing more than mere robots, programmed to do what God wanted them to do. God wanted people who chose to worship him, not people that did so because they had to. Again, this is a subject that is better suited to another thread, start one and I will join :D
