[arkey]

> Yes, but with Christians there's always some sort of thick-layer of self-serving dishonesty on top of it all.

At this point you're just rooted in absurd prejudice, this conversation is getting nowhere.

> because that's the right thing to do!

Quick question, how do you know what's right and what's wrong? Who says helping others and doing good to others is the right thing to do? Where does that come from?

Anyway, if you think Christians operate under/from fear, you understand nothing about Christianity.

Peace.

[Johanx64]

> Quick question, how do you know what's right and what's wrong?

So, wait a minute, you've got no idea what's right or wrong - and you're incapable deriving and figuring it out on your own?

Thus, without delegating your thinking to somebody else or some book telling you what to do - you'd have no clue what's good and what's bad?

Imagine if instead of The Bible you happened to run upon a different book that says different things, like how killing the nonbelievers is right and blowing yourself up along with bunch of nonbelievers will guarantee you 10 beautiful virgins in heaven.

I mean, you don't know what's right or wrong on your own right, so you'd go ahead and do it?

See - if you can't figure out whats right or wrong on your own - without somebody else telling you (and threatening noncompliance with being burned alive or being promised immortality and goodies) - you are fundamentally incapable of being a good person, if only by accident - as running onto one book over another would completely changes your perception of "right and wrong".

It's pretty crazy if you ask me!

> this conversation is getting nowhere.

This conversation is going somewhere, it's just not going where you want it to go at all. Sorry about that!

[arkey]

You're making my point with your rebuttal. A lot of people think different about right and wrong, good and evil, than I or you do, and that's because they look towards different sources.

I'll assume you think cutting the hands off someone who stole something from you is wrong. But some other people think it's the right thing to do.

What? Are you simply morally superior to them? Or is it that you've received from other sources than them?

Long ago slavery was globally mainstream and accepted until 'some weirdos' pointed to the Bible and said 'Hey, maybe slavery is wrong, according to this we're all created equal under God so we should not hold slaves'.

But no, I guess If you'd been born a thousand years ago you'd just simply have the moral clarity of condemning slavery, honor killings, and other things the rest of the world was happy doing?

> So, wait a minute, you've got no idea what's right or wrong - and you're incapable deriving and figuring it out on your own?

Would this mean that good and evil as absolutes exist?

edit: By they way, you never actually answered my question. Again, how do YOU know what's right and what's wrong?

[Johanx64]

> Long ago slavery was globally mainstream and accepted until 'some weirdos' pointed to the Bible and said 'Hey, maybe slavery is wrong, according to this we're all created equal under God so we should not hold slaves'.

Bible does NOT directly condemn slavery. Kind of worse than that, in the Old Testament it accepts it and puts out rules on how slaves are to be treated. The statement that Christianity is directly responsible for - or has anything to do with abolishment of slavery is absolutely baseless.

As far as Bible is concerned, it's “pro-status quo” as far as slavery is concerned.

> I'll assume you think cutting the hands off someone who stole something from you is wrong. But some other people think it's the right thing to do.

What's right or wrong doesn't change one bit depending on what other people think or what some random book says.

The goal here is to prevent theft, recidivism and to wholly compensate damages, right?

So, if you can achieve that goal causing less damage and suffering than chopping someones hands off, then that is objectively the morally superior thing to do.

You know there's this thing called a human brain, and if you can't use it and on your own derive some sort of Negative Utilitarianism or alike as your moral framework, then you're way too stupid to be a good person.

A person who can stop doing bad only via threats of most gruesome torture and promise of immortaltity and blissful after life, and wouldn't have no clue otherwise - fundamentally can't be a good person.

Imagine you're a God and you want to create freethinking beings that have free will, but you (for some reason, huh) can't create all of them "very good" to begin with, but it's more like random process - and large amounts of people created are inadvertently "bad". (seems pretty incompetent if you ask me)

So you have no other choice, but spawn them lots of them and let them "do their thing" and then at the end of it pick out the ones act well and DO the most good, and do the least bad.

Now, if you told them that doing good will let them into "heaven" and the "bad ones" will be tortured and burned alive, you're literally incentivizing (some of the most gullible of) bad people to merely "act good" under threat of gruesome torture.

You've created fakes and pretend do goodies - the self-serving dishonest kind of so called Christians (ie. vast majority of them)

The ones that don't do bad things on their own volition and do good, because it's the right thing to do, but merely because somebody is threatening them with violence, and promise of eternal bliss.

Purely on societal level - if you can manipulate bad and stupid people to do less crime and less bad things - using nothing, but make believe threats of gruesome torture and such, that's a great brainwashing tool to have. That however doesn't turn them into "good people" that can be trusted.