Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> If the latter, it's nonsensical to say that religious people are more 
>> moral or kinder or whatever than areligious people.
> 
>   That depends on the definition of morality. Who says your definition is
> better than someone else's?

I thought that was the point of religion, yes? If you actually start 
talking about *why* one set of morals is better than another, then 
you're not longer talking about religion, but science. I have no bones 
to pick with that approach.

>> If you're going to take something as clear as most of the comandments 
>> are, and add interpretations and exceptions, then the religion stops 
>> having anything to do with it.
> 
>   In your opinion religion cannot have generic rules with exceptions,
> in the exact same way as for example constitutions and penal laws have?
> Religion can only have absolutes?

Human laws have checks and balances built in. When there's a death 
penalty, there's an explicit law stating the person pulling the switch 
is not guilty of murder. Police have the ability to do things that would 
land a non-authorized person in jail. Detectives can get pieces of paper 
from judges that let them bash in your door and haul away your stuff, 
which would be theft if done by your neighbor. And, in most civilized 
places, this is all written down. Admittedly, maybe so difficult to find 
that it takes years of training to learn how (i.e., law school), but 
written down nevertheless.

I'm not saying religion can only have absolutes. I'm saying that as it's 
written in the Bible, it's pretty absolute. And one would hope that the 
creator of the universe and the font from which all morality flows would 
be capable of making his desires clear to those who believe in him. 
Especially given the kind of punishments JHVH seems to dole out to those 
who piss him off.

>> Just like if you're going to make excuses for God punishing the serpent 
> 
>   Excuses? I don't understand. Someone made something evil and he was
> punished. Why does that need some excuse?

I'm sorry. There's too many pronouns there for me to understand what 
you're referring to. Who is the someone that made something evil, and 
what was that something that was evil, and what made it evil?

>> [*] That whole tree-of-knowledge bit was really one giant cock-up, 
>> showing just how evil JHVH really is
> 
>   Just because you don't understand what it means doesn't necessarily
> mean that it's not logical or fair in the original context.

Ah, so now God's message is context-dependent? Sounds like God is 
getting weaker and weaker with every excuse. First, there are unwritten 
exceptions to very clear commandments. Then you have to take into 
account whether a creature that God created and controlled, which had no 
free will of its own, telling the truth when God didn't, should be 
punished for eternity by God for contradicting him? :-)

Of course, if you read the Bible as fictional literature with 
allegorical suggestions about some good ways to think about the world, 
and you use your own brains to determine what parts you want to accept, 
and you don't insist that because it's written in the Bible that your 
conclusions about that stuff are better than mine, then sure, maybe it's 
a decent place to look for inspiration. Better than more modern works? 
That's a different question.

My opinion is that neither of us can be sure we understand what the 
original means. I base my analysis on the actual text in the book 
sitting on my bookshelf. Admittedly, it's English, so it has already 
been translated at least once. On the other hand, my interpretation 
hasn't been filtered through the advice of someone who has a vested 
interest in making the characters in the story look good or look bad or 
have any particular attributes. I.e., I haven't in years sat down with a 
religious leader and asked him to explain why God was actually just in 
punishing the serpent, or Adam and Eve for that matter.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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