Christian Morality

>>1847902
Of all the semitic religions it's certainly the most individualist, probably because it's morality (and many of its stories) were borrowed from earlier Greek thought. However it still faces the same dilemma that all monotheistic religions share, how can God be infinitely good if he spent so much of the old testament doing such heinous shit e.g : the story of Lot, the flood, mock child sacrifice, casting out Adam and Eve for disobeying him when they had no concept of good and evil and couldn't know that what they were doing was wrong, original sin, etc. Which is why the character of Satan had to be invented.

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>>1847902

Christian ethics is the highest expression of ethics. The other option (eye for eye, hate your enemy, treat others worse than yourself, etc) is not morality it is retribution, revenge and mental illness.

>>1847959
>Lot

nothing wrong with that story, his wife? God gives life and takes life.

>the flood

aka he gave the man a second chance, despite his wickedness.

>adam and eve

they didn't die on the spot even though they deserved it, he gave them another chance, and guided them and their kids, and through their off-spring he redeems the world they messed up. God gives man chance after chance after chance in the OT.

>mock child sacrifice

Abe and isaac? Read Kierkegaard.

>Adam and eve couldn't know cause no concept of good

They understood right and wrong since they are humans, made in the image of God, aka rational. There was no confusion that God said "don't do this" and what that meant. The problem was Eve put her faith in the devil and what he said above what God said. The knowledge of Good and Evil that came afterwards is the knowledge of their depravity and separation from God that their actions caused, in a visceral and experiential way. Which led them to be insecure, ashamed of their bodies, etc..

>>1848830
How are you this wise to understand these meanings behind the stories of the bible? Are you blessed with the wisdom of God or did you learn this knowledge?

>>1849048

>how are you this wise

I'm not, I've just read the bible and commentaries on it. These questions have been answered a long time ago, far better than I did in that post...

Christian morality is a joke

There is no ethics or morality in Christanity. There is only commands and obedience.

>>1849150
Can you explain why you think this? An unfounded claim is less valuable that empty space.

>>1849136
please this:
>>1849156

>>1849157
>>1849156
>love thy neighbor
Fine
>sell all your shit and give it to the poor
No
>love god above all else
Nah

>>1849150
>>1849136

not an argument.

>>1849167

>give to the poor

charity is an expression of goodness.

>sell all your shit

that was told to a rich man, ensnared by wealth.

>love god

god is good, the highest good, of course any moral being will seek him and love him.

>>1849193
Is god the highest good because he is god, or because he is the most moral being?

>>1848830
Both Tao and zen do not include a deity. Yet both focus on morality and truth.

Finding your way to a moral and truthful life is difficult but
entirely possible. It requires strength of character.
A willingness to act without temporal or spiritual reward.

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>>1849209

God's existence is his beauty, his goodness, his perfections. There's no separation or process of 'becoming' involved. He exists in an eternal now with no equals.

>>1849238
So the first choice

That means god can commit mass genocide with no justification, kill children and defenseless people, etc

And it will still be moral

Thus morality has no meaning

you just got euthryphod son

>>1849231

Tao and Zen have no morality.
The behaviors they engage in are just means to an end to avoid apparent suffering and unfavorable-rebirths, it's selfish. Also their morality has no foundation, it comes from nowhere, just vows they make to themselves, totally optional. And lastly Zen denies personhood and claims this apparent world is just maya, illusion, and humans are just a bundle of processes, not unlike a tornado or river...so it's very easy to create a Zen-monster using this philosophy. Which is what happened in WW2 when generals used Zen monks to train Kamikaze pilots to think of their enemies as illusions and to think of themselves as "already dead".

Christian morality is not done to attain anything or avoid anything selfishly. Their salvation is through faith alone, they behave morally out of love alone and gratitude for God. Their morality is (supposed to be) an expression of actual selflessness, not the fake selflessness of the drowsy zennist.
Also their morality is grounded in an objective reality. The Zen morality is grounded in maya, ignorance, and personal promises to yourself in order to feel less "sufferings"

the word compassion might appear but compassion is impossible in the buddhist world-view, since personhood is an illusion you can't have compassion for phenomena that are fundamentally empty and impersonal, soulless, transient processes.

>>1849136
Tbh we are our church was corrupted it's like Islam it started off good but then it got corrupted by a bunch of assholes that gained to much power then pushed for their own shit

>>1849247
>So the first choice

No, it's both choices. I already said there's no separation between the two when it comes to God.

The way you formed the question is redundant.
It's like saying: is 2 even because it's 2? or is it even because it's divisible by 2?

>>1849259
>Christian morality is not done to attain anything or avoid anything selfishly
Can you really call it an expression of selflessness when there exists an ultimate reward (heaven) for living this way?
>Their salvation is through faith alone
Many Christians would argue that works are necessary for salvation as well, though one could also assume that works would naturally manifest through living a life of genuine faith.

>>1849156
Thou Shalt not this, thou shalt not that, being servants, soldiers of god. Christianity are just agents of God's will, which they claim to be wholly good. That's another subject however.

This is a weaker argument on my part, but the vast majority of Christians I've discussed this with always pose the question that if without god, what's stopping society from turning into muderers, rapists, bla bla bla. I find this question weak, because there were dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of societies that functioned cohesively before Christian, before Judaism, before we even had a solid concept of religion as early humans. The idea of empathy and social contract is unsatisfactory to them, because imo once you set a presupposition of a peferct, omnipotent God, anything seems unsatisfactory next to it. Since they have no proof and faith alone, then I'd be happy to hear them explain how the heathen pagan societies of Rome or China grew to such power without them.

>>1848830
>nothing wrong with that story, his wife? God gives life and takes life.

I'd like to add on that what happened to Lot is especially not "evil" when you read it in context. Basically, God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because they are wicked, but Abraham first intercedes and says "wait, will you spare them if I can find 50 righteous people there?" and God says, "ok."

Then Abraham asks again, "what about 45?", and God says "ok", and then 40, then 30, then 20, and finally 10, and God always says "ok."

It's one of the first instances where we see how God listens to the pleas of his people, and can be reasoned with, which happens again many times with Moses. Anyway, there simply aren't any righteous people there. Not even ten. So God sends the angels to save Lot and his family first, and the angels are swarmed on by rapists. Lot offers to protect them, and they tell him to flee into mountains. He says "please let me go to the city of Zoar instead" and they say, "ok, but do not look back or you will be swept away and destroyed." (Perhaps it was such an intense blast, the destruction wasn't really a punishment but rather an effect—like how looking at a nuclear blast will blind you.)

So he asked the angels if he could go to Zoar, but then after Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, he flees into the mountains anyway because he is scared Zoar might also get destroyed. He shows he doesn't really trust the angels (or God), because they came to save him, let him go to Zoar, and didn't tell him that place would be destroyed. Then, when he's in the cave, his daughters are worried that all of civilization is destroyed (again, a result of his not trusting God. The daughters thought that they would have to live from now on in the wilderness and that all men were dead), so they get Lot blackout drunk and sleep with him to preserve his seed, since his wife was now dead as a result of also disregarding the angels and looking back on the destruction.

>>1847959
how is it individualist when you need to be part of a church and cant take sacraments etc without the church's priests?

in islam there is none of that, you dont need to be part of any community or obey any man

>>1849535


It isn't about society falling into chaos without Christianity, but no society has been without religion except modern secular ones beginning in the 1700s. Even then, they have a vague deism or agnosticism about them.

>>1849691
Personal creator gods who haggle with mortals like some polytheist deity are a primitive superstition.

>>1849535
Refer to individuals throughout history. Those who did not know god (aka were in a companionship or metaphorical marriage with him) were more violent and mistreated their fellow man. This is still observable today.

>>1849306
>Can you really call it an expression of selflessness when there exists an ultimate reward (heaven) for living this way?

There is no reward for living this way. God knows we will inevitably fuck it up at some point. Not a single Christian has a blemishless streak.
The reward of heaven is not form what we do to look good to gad, because he knows the intentions of our heart. Instead, God invites us to know him (in a sort of spiritual marriage) through the blood of Christ and, as a result, persue him in this life. Our pursuance in this life continues in the next.

>>1850193
The individual component is in our personal relationship with God. He knows the intentions of our hearts, so we can hide nothing from him.

The church part is because, as a community unified in our personal relationship with God, we can spread the word and let more people come to know God through Christ.

>>1850901
Or just the way things are.

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>>1851102
Cool story bro, but you know, I happen to have pretty cool god here who also seems worthy of worship based on anecdotal evidence about his interactions with the other spirits and hillarious storys about how he fuced with mortal like he was himself one-collected by a bunch of bronzeage warmongers..

>>1847902
Nobody follows that shit not even so called Christians, pretty progressive though, too bad nobody cared about it.

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The Beatitudes

>And He answering said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God out of all thy heart, and out of all thy soul, and out of all thy strength, and out of all thy understanding, and thy neighbour as thyself.' Matthew 10:27

First love God, then love your neighbor as your own self. The outer meaning of this scripture is "Love God" which could mean "read the Bible" or "go to Church" or "pray the Rosary", but the deeper meaning isn't just "Love God"

Love God with all the heart, soul, strength, and understanding. Christ needs us to gain divine knowledge of God, more knowledge than the outer meanings in the Gospels. To clean the heart of lustful passions gives room for God's love in purity. The soul is the most subtle body, even above the mind, in which we understand that we are a living force with the Living God, who is also a force. The strength is endurance, and we have to actually be willing to bear our journey with patience and strength, we cannot succumb to our adversary. Understanding, is a quality that we use, our intellect is over our mind, meaning that while our mind can race itself into endless thought loops, intellect is using the will to understand how to operate the mind consciously, in order to help us bring our practice into a successful approach towards God.

Then at that point, God is just a word for something that is beyond the word "God", calling God "God" is unsatisfactory, because we know now that God is only a word to attempt to describe what we are trying to talk about.

>>1851590
The New Testament generally asserts that all morality flows from the Great Commandment, to love God with all one's heart, mind, strength, and soul, and to love one's neighbor as oneself. In this, Jesus was reaffirming a teachings of Deut 6:4-9 and Lev 19:18

>>1851682
Come to think of it the Bible and the prophets have some really simple to understand messages and it's only today people "make them absurd" to make religion look bad, yet they quote scripture with intent to deceive religious people, the same way religious people use scripture to deceive religious people.

>>1849247
>mass genocide with no justification

Your father lies to you about God. I suggest you stop believing him. And by father, I mean spiritual father. And by your spiritual father, I mean the Father of Lies.

If you want to know what God is like, meet God.

>>1851214
Many people have made that same mistake.

>>1851556
Don't read these as platitudes.

Read them as revolutionary slogans, as intensely controversial, because they are. They violated everything in Pharisaical Judaism when they were uttered, and the people loved it.

>>1851590
God is a person you have not yet met.

>>1852040
Yes, and in a very redundant manner.

God: Tell the people to eat one apple each.
Prophet: I will tell the people to eat one apple each.
Prophet: Thus saith the Lord. Eat one apple each.
Prophet: Lord, I told the people to eat one apple each, and most of them ate two.

And so on.

>>1852065
He is also a not person we have not seen. God can transcend form, and still remain personality

>>1852067
Even the prophets give chances for the people to repent, but they don't listen and then the prophets warnings start to come true.

Was talking on the lines of how badly people misuse bible quotes to support their atheistic or religious opinion. Atheists try to deceive Christians and "Christians" try to deceive other Christians, all with bible verses.

>>1850193
>>1847959

Christianity is the perfect balance of individualism and collectivism

- Killing children
- Killing gays
- Killing unbelievers
- Sacrificing humans and animals to god by burning them
- Giving your daughter to rapists
- Keeping slaves
- Marrying children
- Treating women like objects
- Killing others to get their land
- Being held responsible for the wrongdoings pf your father, grandfather, great grandfather...

Moral as SHIT

All those and many more being done and/or commanded by your stupid bronze-age god.

Religion is an oxymoron to morality.
The worse are your 3 abrahamic

>>1852860
Even heathen barbarian tribes did the same bronze age shit without a God.

You know every religion has war stories against opposing forces. It isn't the bronze age anymore, we know that and God knows that, but the people have forgotten.

>>1852860
>implying genuine christian morality involves killing gays or unbelievers
We're called to justify the sins of others and view only ourselves as the chief sinners, judging nobody before God has.

>sacrifices
Why sacrifice animals to appease our God who was victorious over the death and offered a path of forgiveness? The only sacrifices we make our personal ones for our own good, like fasting.

>surrendering family or friends
We do not set aside our duties to God, which include a duty to our families and friends and basically everyone. We don't live by the sword, but Jesus still had his followers sell their cloaks and buy 2 swords. It is your duty to protect those people, and a regretful one if it should lead a man to kill, but one nonetheless.

>keeping slaves
If God delivers men into your hands you have responsibilities to them and them to you. The scripture mentions master fulfilling his responsibilities to those below him, and slaves fulfilling a responsibility to your masters. Sometimes these responsibilities include teaching them, sometimes freeing them, especially where law would have that, but always loving them as a brother and not property. The practice of slavery broadly in itself is a social one which many church fathers condemned. This and many old testament behaviors can be seen "only as a concession to the hardness of your hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended".

>>1853150
cont:
>marrying children
not all Abrahamic religions are Islam.

>treating women like objects
Again this one is pretty unique to Islam. Jews stress the importance of mothers, while Christians value chastity and women, being that while the fall was of both women and man, salvation was born from a women and came as a man. Basically Christians value and respect the distinct and noble roles of both women and men.

>killing others to get their land
Are you talking about the Hebrews taking the land they were promised from other violent peoples, and then loosing it after they turn away from God? War will remain the reality of this life regardless of your view of it, and there's no ideology or people that is ever going to be fully removed from it. Besides, the land isn't "theirs" before it's Gods. No genuine Christian kills for land, at most they kill for their duties and then are surely penitent for their killing.

>being held responsible for ancestors
We inherit the consequences of our fathers actions, not their sins themselves. Ancestral sin > Original sin

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>>1852860
- Sacraficing animals and humans to god.
God only sacrifices 1 human, and it was his own son, he did not enjoy it. Animals were sacrificed as a temporary covenant between God and man until they sinned again.

- Giving your daughters to rapists

To be married probably. You must realised that unlike today, women were screwed and would likely die if they did not have a husband to provide for them. This is still somewhat true today, as women in poor countries have to whore up into order to get their food, and they are still defenceless if someone decides they want to have a 'joy ride'.

- Keeping slaves

The wrongs of slavery is not the having of slaves, as slaves often willingly give up their freedom and dignity in order to live. The evil of slavery is the slave owner mistreating their slaves. There were slave owners who treated their slaves like brothers and sisters. The bible (in the old testament of all places) asks Gods people to treat their slaves with dignity and goodness, be a good owner.

- marrying children

I wont disagree, that's bad. Its too bad the bible does not condone it.

- treating women like objects

Marriage in the bible is sacred. It is the combining of wto fleshes into one flesh, in a way not unlike the trinity. For this reason Judaic peoples when married often shared all their secrets between each other (the spouses did). The Man was to be the priest, provider, and teacher of the family.

- Killing others to get their land

Thou shall not covet thy neighbors belongings
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shall not murder
all from the bible

- Being held for the wrongdoings of your father, or ancestors

"The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, and the father shall not suffer for the iniquity of the son"
The bible clearly states that children are only responsible for their own doings, not their ancestors'.

tl;dr - the bible opposes this shit. It is Moral af

>>1852860

Spot the feminist.

>>1847902
>Turn the other cheek
Only if it's not worth your time to engage the person who infringed upon you.
>Love your neighbour as yourself
Depends on the person. You don't have to love them, just don't hate them.
>Treat others how you would want to be treated
Treat others how you think they want to be treated.
>Love your enemy
No. Just don't hate them; hate their actions, and try to come to an understanding.

>>1853244
looks like we got a moral relativist over here.

also:
>Love your enemy
>No. Just don't hate them; hate their actions, and try to come to an understanding

that is the point of that one, I think. Hate the sin, not the sinner.

>>1853255

>Hate the sin, not the sinner.

Ding, Ding, Ding!

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All the best parts of Christianity were already in eastern religions centuries earlier

>>1853281
Proof?

>>1850901
I'm just recounting the story dude, chill.

>>1851029
Yes, the creepy early christian terrorists, the Crusaders, the Nazis, the litany of tyrannical Popes, etc were all paragons of Jesus, meek and mild.

>>1847902
>- Treat others how you would want to be treated

so if i wanna get fucked in the ass forcfully, its ok for me to go and forcfully fuck someone in the ass aswell?

>>1847959
>infinitely good
Please define this, be as specific as you can.

>>1849306
>there exists an ultimate reward (heaven)
I hate this meme. Is being full a reward for eating? Is pissing a reward for having functional kidneys? Vapor a reward for heating water to 212 degrees and waiting?

There's no reward, no contract or agreement being fulfilled. It's just what happens to souls in communion with God.

>>1853350
How about the fact that all the ethics OP listed are present in just about every society in the world

Pacifism, love, and the golden rule, are all things that religious leaders and philosophers had been writing and teaching for centuries

>>1850193
>in islam there is none of that, you dont need to be part of any community or obey any man

>Death for apostasy and a dozen other sins.

>>1847959

That's why I follow a Thomist form of Christianity. Aquinas essentially provided a fix for Christianity.

Everyone who isn't an atheist is retarded.

In my opinion as an atheist, Christian morals have held the western world together, and has Christianity starts to fade away, degeneracy will grow like a tumor in western countries

>>1854995
There is no evidence a god exists, but that doesn't mean that Christianity is bad, in fact, I believe it keeps the unintelligent masses in check, they won't do evil so they don't end up spending eternity being tortured in hell

Christian morality as is taught by Jesus is pure unmixed cuckoldry.

Christian morality as taught by Paul is a step up from Jesus.

Christian morality as is taught in the OT is based as fuck.

Christian morality as is taught by the Catholic Church pre-Vatican II (which is basically Aristotelian ethics) is also based.

>>1853929
Nice anecdote, now give a real world example.

>>1853980
this guy gets it.
>>1854188
All these ethics were unheard of before the advent of Judaism and Christianity. It was so successful that if eventually became a cultural norm in western society.
>>1854995
Atheism is a BELEIF that there is no God. Theism is a BELEIF that there is a God.
Both have an element of faith, because neither side can prove the existence of an intangible thing. So instead of telling people who don't agree with you that they are stupid for doing that, evangelise instead why you believe what you do and be open for criticism.
Instead of doing this:
>atheists: religious people are retarded
>theists: secular people are retarded
and it has to go on, and on, and on, and on.
This guy gets it:
>>1855055
So does this guy:
>>1855035