dk

Ian, I was stating a point of agreement, and explained the basis for my agreement. Obviously, belief in God is a leap of faith, not reason. I'm a Catholic and openly submit to Catholic Dogma, but maintain that Catholic Dogma is founded upon faith and reason. On points of disagreement I don't respond dogmatically. On the other hand you claim to base your opinions on science, yet on points of disagreement respond with dogma. Go figure.

Ion

I disagree with this:
1) You claim that there is a natural law on morality given to humans (mainly Jews) by the 'God' from the Bible, and that 3,000 years of Jewish history testify of this law, that you call Law.

2) I claim that there is no biological evidence for a gene in humans of a natural law on morality, the human law on morality is a social contract, today there are other modern cultures -older than the Jewish one- that were fabricating moral laws before the Bible, and that invoking the 'God' from the Bible is invoking a being who is unsupported outside religion.


1) I challenge your claim by pointing out definitions of 'God' in the Bible that are inconsistent with the reality, like the one in which 'God' -who "...knows all things."- 'knows' that a female not bleeding at first intercourse is not a virgin and should be stoned to death, but 'God' doesn't know that gynecologists in real life consider this 'knowledge' as being faulty.
With a faulty 'God', there is no basis for the right 'Law'.

2) My claim is not being challenged by any of your arguments.

dk

Ion: dk,
you take "...that as a dogmatic statement." as often as your reasoning is left behind and you want to escape reasoning.
dk: First to assert the Bible writes “them” is nonsense. You go on to matter-of-fact declare Article 18 opposes the 1st Commandment. I have no idea why or how Article 18 opposes the 1st Commandment, when Article 2 guarantees Religious Liberty.
o
Ion:
That's in the same vein as your "It's circular..." and 'fallacy'.
dk: No Ion,
I have gone on ad nausium to explain why it is circular logic. Once again, “The UN DHR is better because it is based upon human nature observed by science”. This is called a tautology or truism because it rephrases rather than expands the argument. Point in fact, everything human can be said to be based on human nature. I could say, “The Mosaic Law is better because it is based upon human nature observed by science”. My statement is as meaningless as yours.

Ion:
You are using these tactics pretty often in this thread, by now.
dk: I’m not trying to be tactical. Its irrational to propose the UN DHR as the basis of morality, without offering some rational basis for the UN DHR.
o
Ion:
Contrary to your pretense of reasoning, you are not taking as a dogmatic statement the claim of a Biblical 'God' making up a 'Law', whose existence is disproven by inconsistencies.
dk: My argument has been based on empirical evidence i.e. the Jews under the Decalogue progressed from the 12 tribes in the Late Bronze Age to an international modern community and nation in the 3rd Millennium under the Mosaic Law. Personally as a Christian I am persuaded by the openness and freedom given by the Law of Grace, but recognize that the of Rule of Law makes the Law of Grace possible. Romans 5:18-20 “In conclusion, just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so through one righteous act acquittal and life came to all. For just as through the disobedience of one person the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one the many will be made righteous. The law entered in 6 so that transgression might increase but, where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more,“ You on the other hand have tried to bolster nonsensical statements by taking the Bible out of context of Jewish history. The conduct, values, merits and accomplishments of Israel people over the last 3,000 years reveals what the Mosaic Law means. I don’t mean to imply the Jews are a perfect people, but they remain a stiff necked, hard working, productive, peaceful, and united people under the law.

dk

To claim the Jews don't exist outside of the Bible is absurd. to answer your challenge, "The literary peculiarities of the Pentateuch merely entitle us to assert that these various divisions were by later writers revised, enlarged, and brought up to date, while the changes in Israel's life, from a nomadic to a sedentary state, from a dispersed to a king-ruled nation, explain full well the appearance, as time went on, of a limited amount of new legislation quite consonant with the soul and spirit of the old.“ ----- Mosaic Law

By the way, attacking the bible, religion, faith and God doesn't make your arguments any less dogmatic/irrational.

Ion

This is pointless:
The thread is 'UN Code versus the Bible', so whether the Jews "...don't exist outside the Bible..." it doesn't matter to this thread.

As for "...attacking the bible, religion, faith and God...", I am not aware that asking for evidence outside religion backing up "...the bible, religion, faith and God..." makes my arguments "...dogmatic/irrational.".

On the contrary, without secular evidence, it makes your religious arguments being "...dogmatic/irrational.".

Ion

“The UN DHR is better because it is based upon human nature observed by science” is about right.

"This is called a tautology or truism because it rephrases rather than expands the argument." is about wrong:
“The UN DHR is better because it is based upon human nature observed by science” doesn't rephrase the argument, but it argues that the Un Code of Human Rights is a social contract, based on human nature observed by science.
There is no rephrasing.

I get the impression dk, that as long as it is not an outside divine intervention but there is only an inner human intervention in the UN Code of Human Rights, you decree it as being circular, fallacy and rephrasing.

This might come from the fact which I am guessing, that you are educated and influenced as a professional in a theology college, or doing a full-time theology work, so you are not seeing much universe outside theology.

dk

Right now I'm an unemployed Network Analyst. Believe it or not I really do appreciate your viewpoint, and find the dialogue very informative, so thanks. I won't even pretend to believe this debate will finish in our lifetime, and I think that's a good thing.

Ion

dk,

acts of selfless kindness during hard times, in my experience are not the stamp of a moral code of ethics found in the Bible, and of genes for 'inalienable rights' given to humans by the Biblical 'God'.

Nothing outside religion, proves that they are.

So, I am an atheist.

As atheist as I am, I did help out total strangers when I could, because they needed it, and I didn't expect to ask them for reimbursments or for my promotion, but I told them to do the same with people around whenever they can in order to facilitate co-existence.
One poster in this thread who has an input that deserves slow, respectful re-reading is Ipetrich, because he is researching historical instances before posting.

The most astonishing debate that I saw in this forum, was at the end of December 2000, under 'Biblical Criticism & Archaeology', thread 'Refutation of Nomad'.
I printed the debate, because of its extraordinary logic and information advanced by penatis, a poster engaging another poster signing as Nomad.
In that debate, Ipetrich wrote January 7, 2001:
"Furthermore, Nomad's faith on oral histories seems to me to be misplaced; that could "prove" the historicity of Homer's account..."
as a parallel between the oral histories in the New Testament and the oral histories in the Greek mythology.

What I am saying by bringing up Ipetrich from January 2001, is that Ipetrich had been in some profound debates, with lots of research in them.

dk

Ion: dk,
acts of selfless kindness during hard times, in my experience are not the stamp of a moral code of ethics found in the Bible, and of genes for 'inalienable rights' given to humans by the Biblical 'God'.
Nothing outside religion, proves that they are.
So, I am an atheist.
dk: I’m not even sure whether you’re asking a question, giving an explanation, or presenting a problem. To my knowledge a workable theory to derive morality/ethics or inalienable rights from science doesn’t exist, but Aquinas did derive from the Bible a coherent theory of divine law, natural law, human law and moral law from the Bible t.
o
Ion:
As atheist as I am, I did help out total strangers when I could, because they needed it, and I didn't expect to ask them for reimbursements or for my promotion, but I told them to do the same with people around whenever they can in order to facilitate co-existence.
dk: I find it strange that atheists so often feel obliged to rationalize charitable acts.
o
dk:
Believe it or not I really do appreciate your viewpoint, and find the dialogue very informative, so thanks. I won't even pretend to believe this debate will finish in our lifetime, and I think that's a good thing.
o
Ion:
One poster in this thread who has an input that deserves slow, respectful re-reading is Ipetrich, because he is researching historical instances before posting.
The most astonishing debate that I saw in this forum, was at the end of December 2000, under 'Biblical Criticism & Archaeology', thread 'Refutation of Nomad'.
(snip)
dk: Ipetrich is very knowledgeable about secular history. But I personally find the treatment of myth, culture and causation peculiar in secularized rational history. For example, rationalists assume the Enlightenment was caused by the reformation, and the Age of Discovery and science the fruits of the ensuing internal conflicts. I would argue it was the push of the Islam hegemony first met by the Crusades that opened up feudal Europe to commerce in the 11-13th Centuries, and then the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in the 14-15th that pushed Western Europeans into the Atlantic. The Byzantine Empire from the fall of the Roman Empire had protected Europe’s eastern flank, and the Iberian Peninsula and Pyrenees Mountains the western flank. With the collapse of the Byzantine Empire Western Europeans stared directly into the face of Islam, and by comparison the once terrifying depths of the Atlantic Ocean began to look hospitable, promising and then wondrous. The Age of Discovery was but one side of the coin, the other being a sense of religious mission. The Islamic Empire having lost its monopoly on the spice trade simply atrophied while Western Europe harvested the resources from the Americas, India, China and Pacific Rim to fuel industrialization.

In the 19-20th Century the European blue bloods under the tutelage of Mathis’s Population Principle, Darwin’s survival of the favored races, laissez-faire capitalism, Mercantilism, and Enlightened Despots saw an opportunity to rid itself of the inferior classes as they underwent industrialization. This accounts for the mass emigration to the New World and the brutality of factory life. In this vein the rational philosophies were forged. That’s why I scoff at the rationalist ideas of social justice theories of Marx, Hume, Bentham, and Malthus, it was on these ideas that Europe sold its soul for a guns, butter and empire. I actually like most of what Malthus wrote, but his hopelessly flawed population theory was what the rationalists locked into. My perspective is way off the beaten path recollected by secular historians.

Ion

It does exist, albeit without "...inalienable rights..." but with "...morality/ethics..." based on science:
the UN Code of Human Rights.

The problem with Aquinas' theory is that is based on the Bible, a book of falsehoods to the trivial human knowledge.
Nothing should be strange:

like I wrote in this thread already, we humans are on our own to do "...charitable acts..." as part of the social contract we do create by means of human reason.

There is no evidence of the 'God' described in the Bible by contradictions and antagonism with the reality, to carry humans like a parent would carry somnolent children.

The humans should be big enough to take intelligent responsabilities within a nature observable by science:
what humans put in the UN Code of Human Rights, that's what humans get from the UN Code of Human Rights.

There is no will from 'God' (i.e.: "If God wants me to..."), since 'God' as described in the Bible cannot exist.
Marx, Hume, Bentham and Malthus have an unspecified input in the UN Code of Human Rights.

The idea of the UN Code of Human Rights came mainly after 1945, and was inspired by the burgeoning idea of the Declaration des Droits de l'Homme, from France at the end of the 18th. century:
create a standard code of ethics for all people, based on rationality and with the objective of justice.

For example, the concept that 'Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.' is a rationality started in the Decalaration des Droits de l'Homme that is adopted today in the law of democracies.

After the idea of a standard of justice was revived in 1945, the UN Code of Human Rights strives to promote social justice based on the scientific knowledge up until now.

To invoke a 'God' described in the Bible as the basis for human laws, is to invoke a being that is inconsistent within the text of the Bible, is antagonist with the reality observed outside of the Bible, and is without empirical support.

Therefore, to invoke a 'God' described in the Bible, is false.