Consciencebound

Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category

Interesting discussion on morality from a youtube vlogger. Most memorable quote is at the very end of the video,

The problem is not that people don’t believe in objective morality, the problem is… that they do.

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When pondering the subject of morality, the subject of God’s actions and the questionable morality of those actions often comes up. When I refer to God’s actions, I would be referring to any religion which seems to make a claim to actually knowing what God’s actions are. In my case, Christianity is the closest to home and so that is where my questions are directed.

We are told by Christians that we derive our morality from God himself. We are told that without God there would be no morality and that God gives us moral directives which come from his nature. So a certain thing is not moral just because God says it, but rather it is moral because that is part of who God is and he can do no wrong.

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I love debates. I hate debates. Long live debates!

I love debates because I love the intelligent discussion of ideas. I love finely crafted arguments and skillful rhetoric. I love to watch someone with a quick wit and a storehouse of knowledge in their head articulate their position well in the face of equally talented opposition.

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Here is a cool video that I came across explaining evolution.

My friend Paul wrote this and I thought it was really good so I am re-posting it here.  It provoked a very long discussion on Facebook which has been quite good.  I hope you find it interesting…

I am writing from exile. I have been out of the Church now for over 4  years, because ultimately, my conscience led me here. As many of you know, I was once a Calvary Chapel Pastor and missionary, but it slowly stopped making sense. I do have reasons for this, but that is not what I am writing about now. I was taught to believe that people like me became this way because of a gross sin, or because they loved the world more than they loved God. I now know this to be a lie. I am really not much different morally than I was then, nor do I wish to pursue things that would harm myself or others. Ironically, to be quite honest, I think I’m a bit more moral than I was then. I am most definately way more honest.

I’m not writing to make a case for leaving Fundamental Evangelicalism, because I know that to be a waste of time. The real point of writing is to ask a question to those who prefer Dogma over their own conscience when they collide. My question is:

If Conscience brought you to believe a certain Dogma, what do you do when that same conscience tells you to leave it?

A friend of mine who is also no longer involved in Christendom uses the analogy of Martin Luther. Martin Luther, upon leaving the Catholic Church, gives conscience as one of the reasons for his “protest” against the Catholic Church. “For a man to deny his conscience is neither right nor sane…..here I stand I can do no other”. As a Protestant, I found that statement to be very moving. I still consider it to be moving. However, the Catholic Church found it to be heresy.

For whatever reason, the high value of following ones “heart” seems to be a commonly held belief. As Joseph Campell puts it, to “Follow your Bliss” seems to be the key to happiness and fulfillment. He goes as far as to say that Maslow’s theory of five human needs mean nothing to a man who lives his passion. Following our heart is obviously a foundation for happiness and true fulfillment. Read the rest of this entry »

This is an article by a guy who lost his Christian faith as a result of studying Islam. I can relate to his questions as I ran up against many of the same problems. When you are committed to a certain religious belief system (in my case it was Evangelical Christianity), you are not looking for ways to debunk it. You know it is true already and almost everything you see in the world is CONFIRMING evidence to you. You see answers to your prayers, you see and hear of miracles, you see how your worldview makes the most sense of the world compared to other worldviews. Sure, you know about other religions that have similar claims that yours does but you KNOW they are false. THOSE people are deceived but of course I know the one true God. And it seems so obvious too. Miracle stories in another religion sound like superstitious nonsense or wishful thinking, but they are anything but confirming evidence for this other religion. Miracle stories in My religion are solid evidence that it is true.

But then one day you look at things a little differently. You take a second look at your own beliefs from the perspective of someone who is OUTSIDE of your faith and it looks… well, different. This is what John Luftus calls the Outside Test for Faith and is a good exercise for anyone to do, even atheists.

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I love that the internet is full of so much information that 15 years ago, was only available to a very limited amount of people. This video is taken from academicearth.org which like The Teaching Company (teach12.com) has classes from prominent teachers and professors across the world that you can watch or listen to only academicearth.org is free. This video is of a class at Yale university which is an introduction to the Old Testament of the Bible. If you are interested in understanding more about the Bible as a literary book, this is a great video to watch. Some surprising things that you might learn is that the Old Testament is NOT:

1) The OT is NOT a Single Book with a single point of view but rather a collection of many different writings from divergent points of view that are often not in agreement.

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People often look back to the Leave it to Beaver 1950’s as if it was the ideal moral family setting. As if the 1950’s society was the pure expression of God’s family values. But was it? This lecture which I found through my learnoutloud.com daily email, challenges this notion. The lecture is titled The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap which is the same title as the speaker’s book.

“Scholar and author Stephanie Coontz explores the myths of traditional marriage. Coontz is a faculty member at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and the director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. She has published extensively on the topic of marriage and family life and is the author of several highly praised books, such as The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap and Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.”

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 I came across this site today that I thought was pretty good.  There is  a lot more on this site than just he page I link to but the section on the Bible I found to be pretty good.  This is coming from a skeptical and atheistic point of view but I believe it represents in some manner what much scholarship today has to say about the Bible.  Read it just as skeptically as the writer is about Christianity.

The sections discussed on this page are the following:

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In my previous post, I started to discuss my questions and thoughts on the moral argument for God’s existence.   In that post i dealt with my question about the differing moralities that we find in this world between different people.  In this post I would like to discuss something else which is another question which makes me doubt or at least question the idea that there is objective morality which exists in this world and is a clue to lead us to belief in God.

Question #2.  If we are born with a moral sense from God, shouldn’t we see evidence of this from birth or at least from very early on?

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