Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> """
>> Just because the same word, "slave", is used, doesn't automatically mean the 
>> situations were comparable.
>> """
>> OK, so you're of the feeling that slavery *can* be good and moral.
> 
>   Assuming you understand what "slavery" means in the bible. It has little
> to do with the slavery that happened eg. in the US in the past.

OK. To me, slavery means "you work for this person, or whoever he tells you 
to work for, and you have no choice and you may not leave."  Note the Bible 
also describes the way in which a slave owner owns the wife the slave 
marries, as well as the children.

Me? I'll take that as universally unacceptable.

>> Now, how 
>> about the genocide, rape and pillage attacks, and murder of thousands of 
>> innocent babies?  :-)
> 
>   How about death penalty in the US? Is it good and moral?

That logical fallacy is called "et tu."  The morality of the US laws don't 
have anything to do with whether killing every first born son in Egypt was 
good or bad. How could it?

>   I don't know your stance on that subject (and you don't have to answer),
> but moral codes are different for different people.

Hence, you're not the person the video is addressed to. Your God isn't the 
one it's saying doesn't exist. You're worshiping some other God, one whose 
morality isn't applicable to everyone in the world by definition.

> If God indeed created us, then he basically
> owns us, and can do whatever he wants with us.

I reject that premise.

Alternately, I accept it *IF* and *ONLY*IF* you leave it up to actual God to 
be doing the whatever. If, on the other hand, you feel it's your job to 
enforce God's will because God owns us, then you are evil and immoral. :-)

>   Also, just because God has the right to do whatever he pleases, that
> doesn't mean *we* also have the right, without his express permission.

Ah, here, you see, we're sliding into evil.

"God created both me and you."  OK, who cares.
"God therefore owns both me and you and can do whatever he wants."
    OK, who cares.
"God has given me express permission to murder you."
    OK, suddenly we're in trouble here.

Yet that's pretty much how the argument goes whenever religious rules get 
enforced. If it actually was *GOD* punishing gay people or abortion doctors 
or whatever, I don't think you'd actually *have* too many atheists about.

>   The "murder of innocent babies" might sound horrible to you, but consider
> these two completely hypothetical situations (assuming God did indeed exist):
> 
>   1) These babies are born to a depraved society where they may be raised
> to hate, rape and kill people. (Usually when the bible tells about the
> eradication of some people, it gives an indication of *why*.)
> 
>   2) These babies go to heaven before seeing or learning anything bad, and
> are happy everafter.
> 
>   Maybe from your point of view situation #1 is preferable, but it might be
> plausible that God considers situation #2 even more preferable, or at least
> not that bad of an alternative.

OK, so your take is that the murder of innocent babies is sometimes good and 
righteous.  That's fine, but it's not a stance many people would take.

You're of the "it must be good, because God approves."  Unfortunately, taken 
to extremes, that turns into "it's Ok for me to do that, because God approves."

>   And no, this still doesn't give anybody permission to murder anybody.

Would you murder someone, if God told you to?  Sadly, there are enough 
people here who do just that that we actually have to pass laws about it 
specifically.

> No person can be the judge of who deserves to live.

Sure we can. Doctors and judges do it all the time, as do politicians and 
soldiers.

>   Do you have any estimate of how much of humanity's history has been lost
> forever? Written history is very fragile and gets destroyed very easily
> (by accidents, by deterioration and by vandalism).

There are *tons* of records from the same time period. Inventories from 
stores, lists of party guests, real estate records, bank records, etc. If 
you're interested, you should take a bit of a look around at resources and 
find one of those that discusses the situation.

We have *lots* of records of Jesus' time.

>   It's not completely implausible that only few records have survived.

It's not implausible. It's just not the case that only a few records have 
survived.

>   I don't want to badmouth the Catholic church here, but suffice to say
> that I don't agree with them, nor consider their intepretations of the
> bible completely correct.

Sure. But that doesn't make the argument a straw man. It just means you 
already agree with the conclusion of the argument because you already 
rejected the premise. The argument wouldn't be a straw man if addressed to 
one of the outraged church members hiring armed guards to protect bread.

>   It doesn't make any sense when it's presented as an argument that God is
> imaginary (rather than that some christians are crazy).

Except that you're not going to convince crazy Christians that their 
interpretations are mistaken. You have to go with "OK, assume everything you 
believe is true. Here's the reasonable consequence. Do you really want to 
believe that consequence? If not, can you rationally explain why not?"

In my experience, the answer is "Yes, that's all true. Yes that's a 
reasonable consequence. No I don't want to believe it. Therefore, it's not a 
reasonable consequence."  Which is why I tend not to have that sort of 
argument any more.


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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