Ferno wrote:au contraire, I understand it more than you do, apparently.
If you wish to make a case for your take, you're welcome to make it on PM.
Ferno wrote:And speaking of misunderstanding, I noticed you slipped in Atheism in with slavers, nazis and supremacists. That's extremely dismissive and pretentious... another thing that the bible says for you not to do. You know.. "For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again". If you need a religious text to determine right or wrong, you lack empathy.
Would you like to be judged the same way you're judging Atheists?
I'm judging that all of those groups have no objective source of morality - which does relegate you to empathy, and leaves you open to excusing crimes against those with whom you don't empathize. There is nothing that says that empathy and moral codes are mutually exclusive - so with the Bible I can both have empathy and have an objective reason for which to have said empathy. I'm not saying that all these groups have performed the same level of crimes... but I am saying that leaving our morality to just empathy, common sense, or respect leaves you without an objective argument to use against crimes against humanity.
tunnelcat wrote:Snoopy, you're never going to convince me that religion and theology are requirements for morality.
Note that I never (directly) made that argument. I argued that your philosophy is the source of your morality... which is simply saying that what you believe about existence will inform what you believe about how you should behave toward those around you. Similarly, you do indeed have a theology (a belief about God - which can very well be that you believe He doesn't exist), and what you believe about God does indeed also inform your morality... even a belief that it's irrelevant in indeed a belief about it. (Or, a belief that it's wrong and misguides you is still a belief.) Yet... this is all addressing a misunderstanding of what the argument was in the first place.
Vision said "Theology is not the source of morality" - I disagree: specifically what I believe about God has a very large effect on how I believe I should treat those around me. Generally, what a person believes about God, as part of their larger beliefs about existence, drives how that person believes they should behave toward others.
You said: "Theology is not morality" - I agree. The study of God is not the same thing as the study of how we should behave toward each other. They do, however, have relevance to each other.