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To the people saying that God makes morality absolute: you may *think* it does, but if God isn't real... then that morality is simply another man-made system, and thus not absolute. Given that you cannot prove that God exists, it is pretty silly to say that his supposed holy books are somehow better than a cultural system of morality.
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Dragon-fair point. The existance of what i claim being an actual absolute does depend on God's existance. I can't much prove it, but i can claim it.
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The brain works on electrical impulses and chemical signals, all of which follow known physical laws. Are you suggesting that the brain defies such laws?
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CS-No, and i think you give my imagination a little too much credit here. Perhaps it will be possible at some date to fully understand the software, if you will, of the brain. As it stands, there is much we don't. This is my sole assertion-that the information that the physical brain contains is more than just electrical impulses-it is part of the most powerful learning computer we've ever seen. I don't think that's irrational at all to state.
My conclusion from this? Part of that mind seems to dwell on the "religious." Is that all a physical interaction? Perhaps. But that still doesn't disprove God. As i've stated before...it would not surprise me in the least to know that a physical, rationally understandable part of our brain is responsisible for us processing information relivant to reality known as "God". We have understood science through our minds...we have understood subjective ideals such as love and freedom through our minds. Why do you expect us to understand God differently?
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But what point is there in worshiping God, if there is nothing after life? Is kind of the exact opposite of Pascals Wager.
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What point is there in living a life of the mind and learning about science if there is nothing afterwards? What point is there in experiencing love if there is nothing after we die? If there is a reality greater than us, why not journey through life with that force? If God is real, why would one want to spend life away from God
especially if this life was all you have?
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So where do you get YOUR sense of absolute objective morality from? How does it differ form my subjective personal morality?
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I don't personally hold the key to every absolute moral. I believe that many human traditions, including secular humanism, are discovering more and more about the "law written upon our hearts" (Jer 31:33, Rom 12:15). The claim that i make is not that i know when something is wrong, but that even when mankind fails to decry an evil, that it is still wrong, and that sin is not condemned only by fickle human audiences. Wrong is wrong, even when nobody is watching, or when nobody cares.
I am a professing Christian.
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How do you decide what is true and what is not out of the bible?
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With much thought and prayer, with great respect to tradition, and skeptic's mind. But, decide is a tough word...since i know that i cannot be certain in many ways. In the end, i learn more from the engagement, the mental arguement, and the process, than a simple "true/false" dichotomy. The particular facts are
much less important than the current engagement and relationship. The bible records the faith journey of a community over generations-and i read it to experience the ideas they had, to feel their revelations, and to connect myself to what they learned. "Right" or "wrong", it is in working out the answer that i experience the divine.