RE: "Our current morals are therefore just a way station on the road.

- Yes."

Ah, shades of Joseph Fletcher and his "situation ethics"

Ok, I understand where you are coming from. What I don't "Buy" however is that you really think you can live by this "fluctuating" moral code

Reminds me of the movie "Sophie's Choice". Seen it?

A Nazi guard at Auschwitz commands the young mother to choose which of her children will be sent to the ovens. If she cooperates in the crime, the one she selects will be burned; if she refuses, then both of them will be taken to their deaths. After a slow, hanging moment, she pushes away her smallest child and cries out that he take that one--not the other! Not her favorite! Her choice is plainly evil; for the sake of a better result, she has united herself with the sin of the murderer. And in the end the other child dies too. But how could she choose otherwise, if she had no faith in God?

When one of my professors asked this to us years ago, we were all astonished at the answers. One argued that it would have been "selfish" for Sophie to refuse to mark one of her children for death. How could it be selfish? Because, he said, she should have been willing to "sacrifice herself" -- by which he meant to sacrifice her conscience. It took me some time to realize that one of the students, and agnostic ( I still remember it ), considered, "I must promote life" to be a real moral duty, but viewed "I must not kill" as a mere scruple, an item of personal identity, on a par with "I am not the sort of person who skips bathing." He didn't deny that conscience speaks differently; he only thought it was a liar. For the sake of a better result, he said, Sophie should have been willing to suffer the agonies of its accusations.

And if there is no God, why not? The motto "Do the right thing and let God take care of the consequences" makes sense only on the assurance that He will take care of the consequences. Without that assurance, doing the right thing means taking care of the consequences--or trying to. And so, unless there is providence, the urge to do good irresistibly consorts with evil. Unless God is just, "our" justice becomes unhinged.

This will be my last post with you as JonJon has created a new thread for you and he is correct that the majority of your posts are off topic and I certainly haven't been helping the matter by arguing off topic as well. I may debate you with further, but I'd rather just go and watch Lost as it's a far more entertaining way of going round in circles with absolutely nothing to be gained out of it.

'If our morality evolved, then that means our morality changes.'

- Yes. In the United States 150 years ago, a Black man was not considered to have any rights and now a man with Kenyan Heritage is President.

'If evolution isn't done yet...then that means our morality is involved in this on-going flux as well.'

- Yes. In twenty five years time, nobody in the West will care if two men who love each other want to get married. I don't know if that's a problem for you, but it certainly isn't for me. For me, that is a good example of evolving morals.

And that means that everything we consider to be "moral" is really up for grabs.

- Yes, in the sense that we need to decide for ourselves what constitutes moral or not and not look to some sadistic fuck in a two thousand year old book of bullshit. The phrase 'up for grabs' suggests morals are arbitrary, when they are not.

Our "vague yet grand conception of human rights" might flat disappear just like our gills did.

- It's possible, but unlikely, as Humanity's survival and continued evolution is largely based on the way we treat each other, which has been steadily improving since we were caveman.

Our current morals are therefore just a way station on the road.

- Yes.

No sense really getting attached to them, right?

- The fact that they may not be permanent does not mean that they are not important now. I'm sure that in the future, people will look back and see our morality as very primitive, just as we do when we look back at, for example, the Middle Ages. But at the moment it's the best we've got and a step in the right direction.

Secondly, which concerns our evolved morality and the past. When dealing with people whose moral judgments have differed from yours, do you regard them as "immoral" or as "less evolved"?

- That questions a bit vague to give you a proper answer - it would have to depend on the circumstances. If I read in the paper that, for example, Catholic Priests in Ireland repeatedly abused children sexually and physically over a thirty year period and that the Pope, Irish Government and Police covered it up, I would call that immoral.

Ok, then I'll pose the same old question again that STILL hasn't gotten answered: If our morality evolved, then that means our morality changes. If evolution isn't done yet ( and why should it be? ), then that means our morality is involved in this on-going flux as well. And that means that everything we consider to be "moral" is really up for grabs. Our "vague yet grand conception of human rights" might flat disappear just like our gills did.

Our current morals are therefore just a way station on the road. No sense really getting attached to them, right? Secondly, which concerns our evolved morality and the past. When dealing with people whose moral judgments have differed from yours, do you regard them as "immoral" or as "less evolved"?

'So you believe God exists, but that He's "evil" ( "depraved" ) because he slew Egyptians who were "supposedly" innocent?'

-No, that's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying that YOU believe that we get our morality from God, yet your God spends most of the Old Testament acting like a deranged lunatic. If we actually followed God's example, which you believe we should, then we'd all be child murdering, mysogynistic sadists.

'You do realize that "Survival" of the fittest and Cruel nature is a much "bleaker", much more harsh reality, right?'

- No, again, not true. Firstly, humans have managed to move away from their original 'Survival of the Fittest' past and we now live together in well-functioning societies. I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect system, but here in Europe, for example, if someone collapses in the street and can't afford healthcare, they get treated for free with other people's taxes, yet very few people complain. It's only the Religious Republicans in the USA who would let someone die because they can't afford to pay.

I'd much rather live in a world where bad things happen by accident than on purpose. I had a neighbour who died at eighteen from Cystic Fibrosis. What would be bleaker? That he was the unfortunate victim of a sad genetic twist of fate, or that God willed him to have it?

'show me a real world example of that [forgiveness] that might look like with, oh say, a thousand different people? Would those thousand think it the same?'

- You cannot get a thousand people to agree on anything. That includes Atheists, Christians, Agnostics etc. The fact that I could not get a thousand people to agree on what forgiveness means is no evidence at all that it comes from God.

'You count yourself as "innocent." How does that work? By what logic do you use to account yourself "guiltless" before God?'

I don't count myself as either innocent or guiltless, but my 'sins' are my own and only I am accountable for them. I am not accountable before God, because he either doesn't exist, or (less likely) is a completely immoral sack of shit.

Ah "self-interest" alone right?

Self-interest is not the only thing that tempts us to commit injustice. One of the strongest motives to do wrong, Yahweh, is to make everything go right. For sometimes justice requires allowing bad things to happen to people. If we forbid hanging innocent men, the mob may break out in a riot. If we forbid targeting noncombatants for bombing, the war may be prolonged. If we forbid giving perjured testimony, the murderer may go unpunished. Surely it isn't right, we reason, that there are riots, longer wars, and murderers free in the streets. Let us do evil for the sake of good. It doesn't seem just to do justice. Of course, what IS "justice" in an agnostics eyes, but what 'seems' right to him. Here's the rub Yahweh. What seems right to you AINT right to your "other" atheist buddies. You forget: You guys aren't in agreement.

We can't just wipe away the "law" from our intellects. It seems to be woven into the deep structure of our minds, as experts on linguistics say the threads of language are. Unable to make it go away, we use every means we can devise to pretend that we are really good. Evasions and rationalizations spread through our intellects like the fringe on a fungas in its host. That is why the ancient world was brutal, as we of all people should understand. Not even the greatest of the pagans could admit what was wrong with infanticide, although they KNEW that the child was of "OUR KIND." Neither can we admit what is wrong with abortion and a host of other evils.

It is hard enough to face the moral law even with the revelation that divine justice and divine mercy are conjoined. It offends our pride to be forgiven, terrifies it to surrender control. Without the possibility of forgiveness, how could we ever bear to face how wrong we had been about anything, how could we ever bear to change our minds? The history of ethics would be a history of digging in against plain truths. COnsider how many centuries it took natural law thinkers, even in the Christian tradition, to work out the implications of the brotherhood of master and slave. At least they did eventually. Outside of the biblical orbit, no one EVER did--not spontaneously.

So all of this:

"- He killed the firstborn of all the Egyptians. These children were clearly too young to be guilty of anything but being Egyptian, but God had them killed anyway.
- God sent 2 bears out of the woods to have 42 little kids ripped to shreds for mocking Elisha's bald head.
- He purposefully makes people disabled.
- He condones slavery."

are just reasons you "don't believe" right?

But you are perfectly "OK" with the "perfectly" cruel world you live in right?

Your reasoning is: "Because it is Cruel" God could not exist or be its "Creator." That right?

Caddy asked: "By what logic do you use to account yourself "guiltless" before God?"

My answer: There is no god to be guiltless before.

So you believe God exists, but that He's "evil" ( "depraved" ) because he slew Egyptians who were "supposedly" innocent?

"Slavery": You do understand "slavery" described in the Bible was a very different concept than our more modern "racial" slavery, right?

So James G: Are you really conflicted about evil in the world? You do realize that "Survival" of the fittest and Cruel nature is a much "bleaker", much more harsh reality, right?

Also, if there is no absolute standard of forgiveness and it doesn't come from God, show me a real world example of that that might look like with, oh say, a thousand different people? Would those thousand think it the same? Yes, no?

So, we don't get our "morality" or "forgiveness" from the Bible. I guess getting your morality apparently consists of justifying any action provided it can be shown to have occurred somewhere in the pages of scripture--like your example to us of the "Egyptians". And since no one, not even the most rigorous follower of the courtship model, sets a bride price at 100 Philistine foreskins, we must all be really inconsistent in understanding those "harsh" things in the Bible, huh?

Sorry, but most agnostics knowledge of scriptural hermeneutics and the nature of unfolding revelation is sophomoric. I have noted that even Alvin Plantinga noted, that actually constitutes a gratuitous insult to sophomores!

So, again, were the Egyptians "guiltless"? No, no more than you or I are "guiltless" before the All Holy Creator of the Universe. All men are "Guilty" before him. You count yourself as "innocent." How does that work? By what logic do you use to account yourself "guiltless" before God?

There are plenty of people who take the events in the book of Judges, for example, as literal history who do not believe that carving a dead concubine into pieces as a summons to war is righteous. We believe this, not because the incident offends our modern moral sensibilities ( which it does ), but because the text itself leads us to this conclusion. The text is the basis for our modern moral sensibilities. This was a time in Israel's history when every man did what was right "in his own eyes" ( Judges 17:6 ), and the results were frequently appalling.

We are talking about having a basic understanding of culture and principles. Just because something is mentioned in scripture does not mean it is being condoned. We have these 'problems' however for one express purpose: Men are fallen and creation is fallen. We are sinful and the whole earth groans because of it. Things are NOT as they should be and we know it in our souls.

I find it amusing caddy says we don't understand him because of our "fallen minds" instead of because of his lack of communication skills.

Caddy, many of us know exactly what you're saying, because we believed it. Is that so hard for your "fallen mind" to understand? But now we know it to be complete bullshit.

'The "Gospel" truth huh James G. One study written by one man and you are ready to proclaim it from the rooftops.'

- I don't have any intention of 'proclaiming it from the rooftops' as you're the one who believes in The Gospel Truth, not me. I was simply citing it as a piece of additional evidence that presents an interesting counterpoint to your unsubstantiated claims. And even if I had provided fifty studies, it wouldn't have been enough for you anyway, would it?

'Wondering if you are ready to drop your present job and go live in one of those countries. Maybe you are.'

- I do live in one of those countries.

'If both ( good and wicked behavior ) are innate, what distinguishes them?'

- John Locke claimed that we have no innate ideas of good and evil. Lord Shaftesbury argued that we have a moral sense, just as we have sight and hearing. Adam Smith "identified the moral sense with the imagination, whose job it is to make us feel the effects upon others of our actions. In other words, the sympathetic imagination, as it was called, provides the psychological mechanism of the Golden Rule: we do not steal from others because our imagination projects us into their vantage point (into their minds), and we thus experience how it would feel to be a victim."

I can't really go any further because I'm not a philosopher and do not claim to be. But what is obvious is that good and evil clearly exist and are very similar across practically all religions or lack thereof. And what is also true, and provable by the vast majority of studies, is that non religious people are not, in any way, more murderous or prone to criminal activity than believers.

Also, if you want to look at your God as the epitome of all that is moral and good, perhaps you ought to take another look at some of the stuff he got up to:

- He killed the firstborn of all the Egyptians. These children were clearly too young to be guilty of anything but being Egyptian, but God had them killed anyway.
- God sent 2 bears out of the woods to have 42 little kids ripped to shreds for mocking Elisha's bald head.
- He purposefully makes people disabled.
- He condones slavery.

I can think of hundreds of examples of God's depravity and you've read the bible, so I know you can too.

'A "fixed" standard, grounded in the character of God, allows us to define evil, but this brings with it the possibility of forgiveness. You reject forgiveness, but at the end of the day this means that you don't believe there is anything that needs forgiveness. This means you have destroyed the idea of evil, regardless of what you might "call" behaviors that happen to be inconvenient for you.'

- Complete and utter nonsense that you just made up. I truly believe in forgiveness. I don't believe it comes from God.

'I see NO ONE even attempting to answer this "conundrum," James G, not you, not FREGAS, Not Daniel. No one.'

- Philosophers have been answering these questions since the very beginnings of history.

I would just say someone whom is agnostic as opposed to either theistic or atheistic, is not hedging, not having it both ways but being truly open minded(granted I can see and agree with Iracundiarock's point as written on this page of the thread in response to other posts), so it's not having it both ways as has been said...I would like to consider myself agnostic, but realize at least for me it would be a lie....and furthermore if god(any) came to me and told me they existed and had a plan for me etc. and I would be saved by certain behaviors and accepting them into my heart I would hopefully still deny them my heart and soul,as they would have proven to be unworthy of both by the inaction/actions they have upon this planet.(about the only place I can see a point for god/s is in an RPG which is of course a fantasy).

I think my friends need to re-read what I wrote. I think Iracundlarock understood it. Wondering why the others can't. It's really a simple concept. The fallen mind truly is fallen when it comes to basic concepts about God. ** Sigh **

@Iracundiarock

ha, ha doesn't actually answer the question does it ... care to have another try?

To elemenope:
A Christian who believes in God but not in Allah is not a partial atheist. That is equivocation of the word atheist. Equivocation is the changing of a meaning of a word. Atheism means 'belief in no god', right? How can you partially not believe in no god or partially believe in a god. One either believes in a God/god or doesn't believe in a God/god.

To Jabster:
Ha ha.

To fregas:
I would say that there is a way for our senses to perceive the sun (by sight and touch). There is a way that we perceive God too (by my previous examples).
Thanks, fregas, for all the numerous examples you gave concerning morality in animals (# of examples=0). Those things that animals do come from instinct. They don't have a choice in doing what they do; they just do it because it is hardwired into their system to do so. Can you persuade a dog not to walk on its four legs and only walk on two? No. You can only teach it to do so by forcing it to do so but in the end you have only given it one choice. It will eventually resort back to its instincts. "...the animals protect their young..." why would they protect their young if the welfare of the young had nothing to do with the welfare of the parent?? You have some okay counterpoints, but you make many mistakes in your logic.
Why did you lose your faith?
I like your paragraph about God being "cruel". This "cruel" is your own standard. Yes, he can give any punishment he wants. Can't he do whatever he wants to his own creation? Can't you do whatever you want to your own clayman creation without being evil? We are His claymen and He is the God who does what he wants. He is so kind and loving as to give us a chance to repent from our faults against Him. God isn't our human father, remember that. He didn't have a wife to give us birth. We are made from the earth and to the earth we shall return.
Let me tell you that my version of Christianity is NOT the right one. By saying that I mean: I still sin against God. I do not do exactly what He wants me to do all the time. Actually, I am probably a worse sinner than you, fregas. It's just that I choose to believe in a God that rules everything but chooses to stay away from human eyesight but not mindsight. This way He makes those who are faithful to Him that do not see Him with their eyes living testaments to His love.
It's better to read the Bible (the closest to the older ones) and decide for yourself what you should believe. A church is just a group of people that believe the same thing. It's not (or at least shouldn't be) a collection of people who decide to believe something after they had gotten together. If you study the Bible to learn about God, you will learn about God. It's not that hard to see what exactly one needs to do to become a Christian: Believe, repent, be baptized, (there's more but those are the main 3).
You are studying the Protestant Reformation, correct? Then even you should know that the fighting in Christianity occurred only because reformers either wanted to go farther away from the true faith or closer to it. The Protestant Reformation was a movement to send the church back to its prior, purer state.
You talk of the Bible being so far back in time that it is almost useless to believe the accounts of the eyewitnesses, but how can you believe in evolutionary theory that goes back millions of years, has no witnesses, is constantly changing in its most basic principles, and has little evidence that could be considered freakishly hard to believe by thinking people.
The gospels do not disagree. Wow. You should know that that kind of thing has little importance in the Bible. Humans wrote the Bible. Humans are imperfect. God inspired them to write it, and they wrote what they saw. Do you believe that books written in the 1700's are historically accurate to the point of every single detail is right? But on the other hand, do you think that they did not have editors or critics or that everything they wrote is made up or false?? There were critics of the Bible that would have decided what was true or not (example: the Council of Chalcedon: but there are many others around the same time it was written). Look, the writers may not have gotten every unimportant detail right, but they certainly got the main things down as carefully true as they could.
As for your deluded agenda: you definitely would not act as morally as you do right now if you found out that there really was no God (but I say there is a God). You have fooled yourself if you think otherwise.
Why do you love your fellow man? Is it a mutual love that originally came from a higher power? If you do love others the same way you love yourself but you think there is no God, then where did the first act of kindness come from??? Yes, something would had to have started the grounds for your "cooperative" world in which you help each other. So tell me, who first helped his fellow man so as to gain cooperation with him? If someone did start that thing, he would have had to help without knowing that the help would come back to him. Why would he do that? Why would he start doing something kind (never been done before here) if it didn't help himself?
So you think I am a pleasure seeker to gain heaven. Then yes, I am a pleasure seeker because I follow in the footsteps of other pleasure seekers who were persecuted and crucified for their beliefs. Yes, they were pleasure seekers to be shunned and insulted by others because they were Christian. Yes, I am a pleasure seeker because it pleasures me to write this post to you and spend time trying to convert others when I could be using that time to play a game of monopoly. Yes, I seek the pleasure of God's love, which requires hard discipline and patience with my enemies.
That still begs the question of why you would feel gratitude towards someone if they are not feeling anything. Gratitude is something that comes from love. How can you love someone that is no more?
So you would rather live 100 years of your life as a pleasure seeker than eternity as a pleasure seeker? Okay, but I'm just trying to show you that it might be wise to choose eternity. Besides, life as a Christian isn't devoid of pleasure. There is actually more pleasure in Christian values than in self-seeking values.
I'm not calling you a lazy or stupid person if you are not. However, I call a spade a spade. It is what it is. If you are stupid, I'm not going to be politically correct and call you "wrong". Logic doesn't ignore the ground upon which it stands.

The "Gospel" truth huh James G. One study written by one man and you are ready to proclaim it from the rooftops. Wondering if you are ready to drop your present job and go live in one of those countries. Maybe you are.

I'm still waiting on the answer to my above question:

If both ( good and wicked behavior ) are innate, what distinguishes them?

I have yet to hear an account of why one deed should be seen as "good" and another "evil." I keep hearing implications that we have no alternative but to call sociopaths and psychopaths "evil." But you surely do have an alternative. Why not just call them "different" ?

A "fixed" standard, grounded in the character of God, allows us to define evil, but this brings with it the possibility of forgiveness. You reject forgiveness, but at the end of the day this means that you don't believe there is anything that needs forgiveness. This means you have destroyed the idea of evil, regardless of what you might "call" behaviors that happen to be inconvenient for you.

I see NO ONE even attempting to answer this "conundrum," James G, not you, not FREGAS, Not Daniel. No one.

Well, according to this article, religious nations such as the United States don't practise what they preach:

“Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece

This study states that secular nations are happier and more prosperous than religious ones:

"Paul...also believes his study helps refute the controversial notion that the moral foundation of religious doctrine is a requisite for any high-functioning society."

http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/who-needs-god-when-we-ve-got-mammon-5634/

Caddy,
I'm with you on Rev being written pre-70 AD.

RE: blotonthelandscape: "@Caddy, this undermines your (implied) claim that we do not understand the reasons we obey the law. Indeed we understand them better than you. We have a more complete law, because ours has had 2000 more years of trial and error, retrospection and humility to refine, whereas yours is stuck in the stone age.

It also undermines your assumption that the moral code is unchanging. It isn't, or at least shouldn't be, because we are not guaranteed that we have got it right yet. We also cannot assume that it is "written on our hearts". We don't do good because it's natural, we do good because if we didn't no-one else would, and the world would be a much worse place for most of humanity. We do it through nurture, not nature."

Interesting. I particularly like the VERY 1st Sentence: "@Caddy, this undermines your (implied) claim that we do not understand the reasons we obey the law."

Amazing how someone can read your words and interpret the complete Opposite of what you actually believe or stated!

I have been asking many in this forum to provide a "warrant" for morality, given atheism, and you have mostly responded with assertions that atheists can make what some people call moral choices. Well, sure. But what I have been after is what rational "warrant" they can give for calling one choice "moral" and another choice "not moral." Most atheist seem to appeal to "innate human solidarity."

I have read Hitchens & Dawkins works and I have determined that they believe that we have an innate predisposition to BOTH good and WICKED behavior. But we are still stuck here guys. What I want to know ( still ) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." You atheists NEVER go deep enough into the question:

If both are innate, what distinguishes them?

What could be wrong with just flipping a coin? Again, I stand by my reply that I would rather have my God AND the problem of EVIL than your NO GOD and "EVIL? NO PROBLEM!"

After much back and forth I now feel comfortable in asserting that I have posed this question to many from every point of the compass and have not yet received anything that approaches the semblance of an answer. Instead, my plain words are even mis-read and mis-interpreted. On this question I am tempted to quote Wyatt Earp from the film Tombstone--"you gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?" -- but I'll pass. Earp was not very much like the Good Samaritan.

Concerning "It also undermines your assumption that the moral code is unchanging. It isn't, or at least shouldn't be, because we are not guaranteed that we have got it right yet."

Staggeringly interesting here: So, we don't really have a good handle on that "murder" thing huh? And we don't have a firm grasp on that "stealing" thing huh? Makes me wonder if the "innate" law which I will state for the record has ( and will always be the same ) there ever been a man--past, or present who had his pocket picked and his valuables stolen and actually liked having that done. Hmmmmmm. Let me think about that for a second. Ok, done. No, I don't think we 'evolved' that morality from day one sir. I don't think we will will ever get 'beyond' thinking thieves are thieves in history past, nor do I think that future generations will enjoy having their valuables stolen and their children murdered or raped. Morality does NOT evolve and it does not change.

YOU Say "Our Morality evolved" and is ever changing. Ok, 2 points about this reply. 1) Concerning this evolved morality and the "future." If our morality evolved, then that means our morality changes. If evolution isn't done yet ( and why should it be? ), then that means our morality is involved in this on-going flux as well. And that means that everything we consider to be "moral" is really up for grabs. Our "vague yet grand conception of human rights" might flat out disappear just like our gills did.

Our current "morals" are therefore just a way station on the road. No sense getting really attached to them, right? When I am traveling, I don't get attached to motel rooms. I don't weep when I have to part from them. So, in the future, after every ferocious moral denunciation you choose to offer this reading public, you really need to add something like, "But this is just a provisional judgment. Our perspective may evolve to an entirely different one some years hence," or "Provisional opinions only. Morality changes over time"--Let's just shorten that so you can refer back to it: POOMCOT

It might look like this: "The Rev.blotonthelandscape is an odious little toad, not to mention a waste of skin, and his proposal that we prosecute the brassiere editors of the Sears catalog on pornography and racketeering charges is an outrage against civilized humanity. But....POOMCOT !

2nd Point--which concerns evolved morality and the PAST. When dealing with people whose moral judgments have differed from yours, do you regard them as "immoral" or as "less evolved"?

Your notion of morality, and the evolution it rode in on, can only concern itself with what "is." But morality as Christians understand it, and the kind you surreptitiously draw upon, is concerned with "ought." David Hume showed us that we cannot successfully derive "ought" from "is." Have you discovered the error in his reasoning? It is clear from how you defend your ideas of "morality" that you have not done so.

You believe yourself to live in a universe where there is no such thing as any fixed "ought" or "ought not." But God has gifted you with a remarkable ability to denounce what "ought not" to be. And so, because you reject Him, you have interesting "sermons" but no way of ever coming up with a text. When people start to notice the absence of texts, the absence of warrant, the absence of "reasons, you adjust and compensate with rhetorical embellishment. I don't buy it and I don't think you really do either. You are like the minister in the story who wrote in the margin of his notes, "Argument weak. Shout here."

There is much debate about "when" "Revelation" was written as well. I tend to agree with Phillip Schaff ( and K.Gentry ) that it was earlier ( Pre 70 A.D ) rather than Later ( 95A.D):

http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pt552.htm

I hold that Revelation was produced prior to the death of Nero in June, A.D. 68, and even before the formal engagement of the Jewish War by Vespasian in Spring, A.D. 67. My position is that Revelation was written in A.D. 65 or 66. This would be after the outbreak of the Neronic persecution in November, 64, and before the engagement of Vespasian’s forces in Spring of 67.

"Though the late-date view is the majority position today, this has not always been the case. In fact, it is the opposite of what prevailed among leading biblical scholars a little over seventy-five years ago. Late-date advocate William Milligan conceded in 1893 that “recent scholarship has, with little exception, decided in favour of the earlier and not the later date.”[1] Two-decades later in 1910 early-date advocate Philip Schaff could still confirm Milligan’s report: “The early date is now accepted by perhaps the majority of scholars.”[2]"

Ty,
I'm pointing out that Jesus lived to be older than 1 year old... It was more like 32 or 33. 60 AD is not 60 years after Christ. It's 60 years after his birth.

"Subtract about 32 or 33 years from each."

Based on what information? Where do your much more accurate dates come from?

fregas,
I got a good laugh out of your added commentary to your wikipedia findings...

______________________________________________________________________________________

From wikipedia:

"The first canonical gospel written is thought by most scholars to be Mark (c 65-70),"
60+ years after christ!

"By the 20th Century it was believed that the writer of the Gospel of John could never have been an eyewitness to the Historical Jesus…The Gospel was likely written c 90-100"

Thats nearly 100 years after christ!
______________________________________________________________________________________

Subtract about 32 or 33 years from each.

It was my study of history that pretty much finished off the faith that science had mostly killed.

The bible is pretty flawed historically, and in some ways that make the rest of its message pretty suspect. One of the things I couldn't get over is how often god (through the bible writers) messed up some very important details that are pretty easy to check on. Seems like stuff that's not only important to get right, but really easy to get right.

To swmr1:

You could be right of course. I've always enjoyed studying the bible from the standpoint of the critical historian. And it takes the "angst" out of it when you can look at it seperately from the religous aspects of it.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is one of my favorite subjects in WWII to study, and yet it is gut wrenching sometimes. Also, submarine warfare in WWII is preety cool, I am currently reading "Escape From the Deep: The Story of the USS Tang".
Good stuff.

"On another point, claims for things that have no secular evidence, this is not just a problem for the bible, but is a problem for historians in general."

I understand what you are saying but I think, when the argument is about general history, fragmentary evidence only affects accounting or interpretation of events so much. When the argument is about the specific nature and the absolute words of GOD (that are intended to direct every movement of mankind), fragmentary evidence is a much larger (IMO, an insurmountable) problem.

Thanks for your reply smwr1. The debates of the inerrancy of the Bible are complicated and well-known. As far as the omissions/additions you mentioned, as one scholar noted:

"...most changes are careless errors that are easily recognized and corrected.."

So, that is not a huge issue with me.

On another point, claims for things that have no secular evidence, this is not just a problem for the bible, but is a problem for historians in general. After all, by my favorite college history professor's own admission, we often deal with fragmentary evidence. Most things are simply not preserved, that's just the nature of the beast. You could actually take a few presently well-known events, and in another 2000 years they are going to be difficult to prove one way or the other. Just an opinion of course...

@ gleaner:

I would think that any god worth his salt would be able to communicate clearly (as in clearly written documents that hadn't been subjected to second, third, fourth-hand oral accounts for years before being written and then transcribed complete with errors and intentional omissions/additions and then lost and found in bits and pieces only to be compiled by fallible and sometimes corrupt men). If the bible was truly god's word, I would expect it to be clearly written by god--transcending error, transcending time, clearly communicating this supposed ultimate love for mankind. Instead, we have a mess of stories, meaningless laws, contradictions, outdated rules and claims for things that have no secular evidence.

I didn't say it had anything to do with you as a "person", not in a worth sort of way.

Didn't think that it did.

I was merely arguing that you would not have held your tongue if a theist listed as one of his argument for belief in God was the arrogance of atheists.

On this point you are flatly factually incorrect. Feel free to peruse the archives, but I can recall many times that people have advanced the "atheists are arrogant" argument (and the "theists are arrogant" argument), and I have responded to it exactly zero times. Mostly I find that particular argument silly from any side, because there are plenty of arrogant and plenty of humble people on both sides of the theistic divide, and I try not to engage in arguments I find to be that depthless because they end up being quite boring.

I dislike bad arguments, no matter which "side" has proffered them, and gleefully critique the worst ones when they actually have some meat to them. (Seriously, ask around.) The arrogance card is just one too boring to bother with.

swmr1 writes:

"My lack of belief in Jesus is exactly like your lack of belief in Allah or pink elephants. I don't see the evidence so I don't believe. I reject the gods that have been postulated. Nothing more."

Let me ask then, and I am asking this because I have an ever so slight background in the legal system. When you say that you don't "see the evidence", what in your mind, would constitute evidence in the case we are talking about? What would you accpet/reject as evidence and why?