Leveling the playing field, Origin of Morality, Christianity and slavery

Dawsonzhu@aol.com writes:
>Such a long list of crimes? How can any of us answer your
>objections?

ED: Hello Wayne, I am merely concerned with leveling the playing field,
so that the Bible and Christianity and its supernatural claims are not
viewed as superior to all other systems. Once you see that, you can
understand where I'm coming from. It's sad that Christians continue
getting inflated heads concerning their own history and superiority, such
than anyone who merely wants them to think of themselves like other people
and other groups, is branded an "atheist" [Glenn] or "objector."

---------------------------

> I don't see Solomon or David's example to be
>one worth following on their handling of women

ED: Solomon and David were not the only polygamists in the Bible, and God
was only aggreived at David's adultery, not his polygamy. Your own voice
as a Christian is conciliatory and kind, civilized. But I doubt that you
obtained all of your values and worthwhile knowledge primarily from the
Bible. You are the product of late 20th century, midde-class, American
Evangelicalism, that's your culture, and helps explain your
education-enhanced knowledge of cultural relativity and moderation in
viewpoint.

---------------------------

>all, "all men are created equal" bears some influence
>from Jesus' teaching and Peter's sudden realization in Acts
>10.34. Again the bible is not about people who have arrived,
>but people who are striving in the right direction.

ED: "Striving in the right direction" is rhetorical, I'd like to know
what it means in practical terms, in defined terms. Anti-slavery? Southern
theologians beleived that Northern theologians were striving in the wrong
direction by treating slavery as if it was a "sin." The Bible never said
slavery was a "sin," but the obedient slave brought honor to both God and
master. I think culture had a lot to do with abolishing slavery, a
culture involving newspapers that detailed in lurid terms how much slaves
suffered. Crucial Enlightenment-influenced politicians in Britain were
anti-slavery. The vote would never have gone toward abolishing it even in
Britain without support from non-religious and semi-religious political
leaders as well. The times were ripe as a whole for abolishing it.
Though amazingly the American South and it's three major Christian
denominations were extremely resistant to abolishing slavery. They
severed denominational ties with their northern brethren over the slavery
question (whether ministers ought to own slaves), right before the Civil
war, and even screamed the loudest for political secession when the time
came.

----------------------------

>Finally, on the genocide or ethinic cleansing issues (your point 2)
>these are most problematical. Why does God chose to wipe out whole
>nations in Old Testament times? Indeed, some passages read
>like the authors are happy about what they have done.
>Aside from accepting that God is right and the devil wrong,
>I struggle with these points too.

ED: Who says the "devil" was involved? Read the Evangelical Commentary,
THE NIV APPLICATION COMMENTARY on Genesis by Walton at Wheaton College to
understand why "Satan" is practically a non-player in the entire Old
Testament. The point is that God commanded the Israelites to kill every
man, woman, child and animal in the Canaanite cities. Archeologists today
debate that such carnage and literal conquests ever took place. So, if
the archeologists are right the stories are made up anyway. I'm concerned
of course about why religion would inspired people to make up such
stories.

---------------------------------

> There is however, a clear
>evolution (perish the word!) of thought about what God is and
>what God requires that had evolved into a very different view
>by New Testament times. That view is still evolving (I hope),
>although some days I wonder. Again, what is important is not what
>people have done and rationalized away throughout history, but
>where we can go from here.

ED: I have hopes mankind does go somewhere from here, though Glenn Morton
seems concerned we may not, what with the oil shortage and world-wide
recession on the way.

------------------------------------
>
>As to your point 3), I don't know either. It is
>sometimes said that the people get the government they
>deserve. I don't think North Korea's leader deserves
>to be in power, but such as it is. Maybe the people of
>the US also has the leaders they deserve.

ED: So true.

-------------------------------------
>
>>4)  Leaving the above questions aside, compare the view of the
>>philosopher, Mary Midgley. And ask yourselves whether she doesn't make at
>>least as much sense as either of your own notions of the theological
>basis
>>of morality:
>>
>>MARY MIDGLEY:  Darwin proposed that creatures like us who, by their
>>nature, are riven by strong emotional conflicts, and who have also the
>>intelligence to be aware of those conflicts, absolutely need to develop a
>>morality because they need a priority system by which to resolve them.
>The
>>need for morality is a corollary of conflicts plus intellect:
>>
>>Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflectionE
>>Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would
>>inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its
>intellectual
>>powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed
>as
>>in man.
>>- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
>
>Which quote is this, Darwin's or Migdley's? I haven't read either
>(but I should read Darwin at least).

ED: The paragraph directly above Darwin's name is what Darwin said.

----------------------
>
>Evolution simply moves from where we are. The likelihood that
>we share common decent with other animals on this planet is
>probably close to as certain as there is a moon in the sky.
>However, the fact that we have evolved says little about what
>is good or evil.

ED: Not according to evolutionary psychology, or even comparative
primatology. Man is a social speciers, like his primate relatives, and
they have reconciliation behaviors, practice forgiveness, as well as
murderous tribal rages.

-----------------------

>And lets not forget that most of the people who protect
>Jews from the Nazis were Christians,

ED: How do you define "Christian?' I suppose most of Europe was
"Christian" as that time, though who knows how many were backslidden, or
nominal Christians? The Evangelical world of course promotes stores of
Evangelicals like Corrie Ten Boom or Bonhoeffer, while people like
Spielberg promotes stories of other less Evangelical, plainer people who
also worked to save Jews. The Lutheran and Catholic hierarchy seemed to
work well enough with both Hitler and Mussolini. And how many Christians
hated theJews for CENTURIES before Hitler rose to power? Luther sure did,
and Catholic radio DJs ranted against the Jews prior to the rise of the
Nazis. I don't suppose Hitler would have risen to power, nor focused on
the Jews as such, without literally centuries of Christian anti-Judaism
preceding his rise in Christian Europe.

-----------------------

> and people who protected
>slaves were mostly Christian as far as I know.

ED: Again the nations of Briitain and America were mostly Christian.
But the only type of Christian that was most consistently anti-slavery
were the Quakers, which were not a group that the other Christians loved.
In fact Quakers used to be hung by other Christians in colonial North
America, just for being Quakers. Even when the southern U.S. and norther
U.S. denominations split rigtht before the Civil War, the northern
denominations did not say slavery was wrong, only that a minister ought to
be above reproach and not own slaves. Some quotations below to
substantiate what I have said:

SLAVERY

"It is certainly true that the campaign against slavery and the slave
trade was greatly strengthened by [some] Christian [individuals],
including the Evangelical layman William Wilberforce in England and the
Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing in America. But Christianity,
like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many
centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was
different for antislavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There
had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce
nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather
the eighteenth century has seen a widespread increase in rationality and
humanitarianism, which led others - for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy
Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan [and Thomas Paine in America] -
also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion.
Lord Mansfield, the author of the decision in Somersett's Case, which
ended slavery in England (though not its colonies), was no more than
conventionally religious, and his decision did not mention religious
arguments. Although Wilberforce was the instigator of the campaign against
the slave trade in the 1790s, this movement had essential support from
many in Parliament like Fox and Pitt, who were not known for their piety.
As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the
spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from
religion....Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support
of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in
Parliament to defend the slave trade."
- Steven Weinberg, "A Designer Universe?" New York Review of Books, Oct.
21, 1999

We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and
babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of
God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the
church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the
heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious
master. Revivals of religion and revivals of the slave trade go hand in
hand... Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to the
enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the
greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom
I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found
them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others?
It was my unhappy lot to belong to a religious slaveholder. He always
managed to have one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning? In
August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting and there
experienced religion. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very soon
distinguished himself among his brethren, and was made a class leader and
exhorter... I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a
heavy cowskin whip upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to
drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote the passage
of Scripture, "He who knoweth the master's will, and doeth it not, shall
be beaten with many stripes." (Luke 12:47)? I prayed for freedom twenty
years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An
American Slave

FREDERICK DOUGLASS WAS NOT THE ONLY WITNESS TO TESTIFY THAT CHRISTIANS
WERE THE CRUELEST SLAVEHOLDERS
Henry Bibb...lists six "professors of religion" who sold him to other
"professors of religion." (One of Bibb's owners was a deacon in the
Baptist church, who employed whips, chains, stocks, and thumbscrews to
"discipline" his slaves.) Harriet Jacobs, in her narrative, informs us
that her tormenting owner was the worse for being converted. Mrs. Joseph
Smith, testifying before the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission in
1863 tells why Christian slaveholders were the worst owners: "Well, it is
something like this - the Christians will oppress you more."
- Donald B. Gibson, "Faith, Doubt and Apostasy," Frederick Douglass: New
Literary and Historical Essays, ed. Eric J. Sundquist Gibson

LETTER WRITTEN BY A SLAVE TO A WHITE MINISTER OF NORTH CAROLINA WHO HAD
RECENTLY PREACHED AT THAT SLAVE'S PLANTATION
I want you to tell me the reason you always preach to the white folks and
keep your back to us. If God sent you to preach to sinners did He direct
you to keep your face to the white folks constantly? Or is it because they
give you money? If this is the cause we are the very persons who labor for
this money but it is handed to you by our masters. Did God tell you to
make your meeting houses just large enough to hold the white folks and let
the Black people stand in the sun and rain as the brooks in the field? We
are charged with inattention. It is impossible for us to pay good
attention with this chance. In fact, some of us scarcely think we are
preached to at all. Money appears to be the object. We are carried to
market and sold to the highest bidder never once inquiring whether sold to
a heathen or Christian. If the question was put, 'Did you sell to a
Christian?" what would be the answer, 'I can't tell what he was, he gave
me my price, that's all I was interested in?' Is that the way to heaven?
If it is, there will be a good many who go there. If not, their chance of
getting there will be bad for there can be many witnesses against them.
- Blacks in Bondage: Letters of American Slaves, ed., Robert S. Starobin

"English North Americans embraced slavery because they were Christians,
not in spite of it...In the 1700s, defenders of slavery among men of the
cloth were far more numerous than opponents... The involvement of northern
denominations and congregations [in the anti-slavery movement] was
virtually nonexistent. It is not an exaggeration to assert that the
clergyman or church member who marched with the abolitionists did so in
spite of his denominational connection, not because of it. The antislavery
movement [in both the U.S. and in Britain] owed much of its impetus to the
efforts of individuals [who were often considered radicals or
fanatics]...Harriet Beecher Stowe's enormously popular anti-slavery novel,
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was written in reaction to her denomination's
acquiescence to the practice of slavery."
- Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in
America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth

"Britain abolished slavery peacefully in 1833, but in the United States
these disputes over slavery brought Presbyterians, Methodists, and
Baptists to schism by 1845, and encouraged the fratricidal Civil War that
finally resolved that crisis. One of the chief ironies of the conflict
over slavery was the confrontation of America's largest Protestant
denominations with the hitherto unthinkable idea that the Bible could be
divided against itself. But divided it had been by intractable
theological, political, and economic forces. Never again would the Bible
completely recover its traditional authority in American culture."
- Stephen A. Marini, "Slavery and the Bible," The Oxford Guide to Ideas &
Issues of the Bible, ed.
by Bruce Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Oxford University Press, 2001)

JEFFERSON DAVIS AND THE SOUTH'S VIEW OF SLAVERY AS ESTABLISHED AND
SANCTIONED BY GOD
Jefferson Davis, the leader of the South during the American Civil War,
boasted, "It [slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is
sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to
Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people
of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in
the arts...Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God -
let him go to the Bible...I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible,
authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation...
Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of
God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of
time shall come [Rev. 6:15; 13:16; 19:18]. You find it in the Old and New
Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find
it recognized, sanctioned everywhere."
- Dunbar Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Vol. 1

"Davis's defenses of slavery are legion, as in his speech to Congress in
1848, "If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your
action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common
law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine
decree." After 1856, Davis reiterated in most of his public speeches that
he was "tired" of apologies for "our institution." "African slavery, as it
exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political
blessing."
- William E. Dodd, Jefferson Davis

After being elected President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis said,
"My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and
abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in
nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for
servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as
useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."
- Kenneth C. Davis, Don't Know Much About the Civil War: Everything You
Need to Know About America's Greatest Conflict But Never Learned]

When the Confederate states drew up their constitution, they added
something that the colonial founders had voted to leave out, namely, an
invocation of the Deity. The South's proud new constitution began: "We,
the people...invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God."
- Charles Robert Lee, Jr., The Confederate Constitutions

Southern clergymen and politicians argued that the South was more
"Christian" than the North, it was the "Redeemer Nation."
- Charles Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 1980

"With secession and the outbreak of the Civil War, Southern clergymen
boldly proclaimed that the Confederacy had replaced the United States as
God's chosen nation."
- Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the
Antebellum South]

The Old School (Presbyterian) General Assembly report of 1845 concluded
that slavery was based on "some of the plainest declarations of the Word
of God." Those who took this position were conservative evangelicals.
Among their number were the best conservative theologians and exegetes of
their day, including, Robert Dabney, James Thornwell and the great Charles
Hodge of Princeton - fathers of twentieth century evangelicalism and of
the modern expression of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. No one can
really appreciate how certain these evangelicals were that the Bible
endorsed slavery, or of the vehemence of their argumentation unless
something from their writings is read.
- Kevin Giles, "The Biblical Argument for Slavery," The Evangelical
Quarterly, Vol. 66, No. 1, 1994

THE CLERGY PLAYED A PIVOTAL ROLE IN PROMOTING SECESSION
Southern clergymen spoke openly and enthusiastically on behalf of
disunion... Denominational groups across the South officially endorsed
secession and conferred blessings on the new Southern nation. Influential
denominational papers from the Mississippi Baptist to the Southern
Episcopalian, the Southern Presbyterian and the South Western Baptist,
agreed that secession "must be effected at any cost, regardless of
consequences," and "secession was the only consistent position that
Southern freemen or Christians could occupy." (One amusing anecdote tells
how a prominent member of a Southern Presbyterian church told his pastor
that he would quit the church if the pastor did not pray for the Union.
Unmoved by this threat, the pastor replied that "our church does not
believe in praying for the dead!")
Meanwhile, Northern clergymen blamed their Southern counterparts for
"inflaming passions," "adding a feeling of religious fanaticism" to the
secessionist controversy, and also blamed them for being "the strongest
obstacle in the way of preserving the Union." In this way, the Northern
clergy contributed to the belief in an irrepressible conflict, and aroused
the same kind of political passions they were condemning in their Southern
brethren... One Southern sermon that had "a powerful influence in
converting Southern sentiments to secession," and which was republished in
several Southern newspapers and distributed in tens of thousands of
individual copies, was Reverend Benjamin B. Palmer's sermon, "Slavery a
Divine Trust: Duty of the South to Preserve and Perpetuate It," delivered
soon after Lincoln's election in 1860. According to Palmer that election
had brought "one issue before us" which had created a crisis that called
forth the guidance of the clergy. That issue was "slavery." Palmer
insisted that "the South defended the cause of all religion and truth...We
defend the cause of God and religion," while abolitionism was "undeniably
atheistic." Palmer was incensed at the platform of Lincoln's political
party that promised to constrain the practice of slavery within certain
geographical limits instead of allowing it to expand into America's
Western territories. Therefore, the South had to secede in order to
protect its providential trust of slavery...When Union armies reached
Reverend Palmer's home state, a Union general placed a price on his head,
because as some said, the Reverend had done more than "any other
non-combatant in the South to promote rebellion." Thomas R. R. Cobb, an
official of the Confederate government, summed up religion's contribution
to the fervor and ferment of those times with these words, "This
revolution (the secessionist cause) has been accomplished mainly by the
Churches."
- Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion (See also Edward R. Crowther's
Southern Evangelists and the Coming of the Civil War)

The Southern Presbyterian Church resolved in 1864 (while the Civil War was
still being fought): "We hesitate not to affirm that it is the peculiar
mission of the Southern Church to conserve the institution of slavery, and
to make it a blessing both to master and slave." The Church also insisted
that it was "unscriptural and fanatical" and "one of the most pernicious
heresies of modern times" to accept the dogma that slavery was inherently
sinful. At least one slave responded to such theological resolutions with
one of his own: "If slavery ain't a sin, then nothing is." - E.T.B.

To judge by the hundreds of sermons and specially composed church prayers
that have survived on both sides, ministers were among the most fanatical
of the combatants from beginning to end. The churches played a major role
in dividing the nation, and it may be that the splits in the churches made
a final split in the nation possible. In the North, such a charge was
often willingly accepted. Granville Moddy, a Northern Methodist, boasted
in 1861, "We are charged with having brought about the present contest. I
believe it is true we did bring it about, and I glory in it, for it is a
wreath of glory round our brow." Southern clergymen did not make the same
boast but of all the various elements in the South they did the most to
make a secessionist state of mind possible. Southern clergymen were
particularly responsible for prolonging the increasingly futile struggle.
Both sides claimed vast numbers of "conversions" among their troops and a
tremendous increase in churchgoing and "prayerfulness" as a result of the
fighting.
- Paul Johnson, A History of the American People [Other "results of the
fighting" that clergymen were not nearly as boastful about included
tremendous outbreaks of syphilis and gonorrhea among both northern and
southern troops who took time out from their fighting and prayers to visit
women who attended to the troops' less than holy concerns.]
AMERICA'S "HOLY WAR"
The Crusades aside, Civil War armies were perhaps the most religious in
history. Troops who were not especially religious prior to the war often
found comfort in religion when faced with the horrific reality of combat.
Those who had held strong religious beliefs before they went into battle
usually found their faith strengthened. One southerner reflected that "we
are feeble instruments in the hands of the Supreme Power," while his
northern counterpart believed that he was "under the same protecting aegis
of the Almighty here as elsewhere.It matters not, then," he concluded,
"where I may be the God of nature extends his protecting wing over me."
... Religion, specifically the Protestant religion, went to the very heart
of the American experience in the nineteenth century. Both northerners and
southerners were used to expressing themselves via religious metaphors and
Scriptural allusions. Once war broke out, both sides saw themselves as
Christian armies, and the war itself served to reinforce this... The
Confederate soldier, in particular, was encouraged to equate the cause of
the Confederacy with the cause of Christ, by the efforts of religious
journals such as The Army and Navy Messenger and The Soldier's Friend,
many of which began publication after 1863. The Messenger advised southern
troops as late as 1864 that the Confederacy was "fighting not only for our
country but our God. This identity inspires our hope and establishes our
confidence. It has become for us a holy war, and each fearful and bloody
battle an act of awful and solemn worship." In the same year, The
Soldier's Paper reminded its readership, "The blood of martyrs was the
seed of the Church, the blood of our heroes is the seed of liberty."
According to the Mississippi Messenger, the Civil War was no more nor less
than ".the ordering of God's Providence, which forbids the permanent union
of heterogeneous nations." The southern soldier responded to such
arguments, and took them to heart. Even after the fall of Atlanta, an
artillery lieutenant from Alabama could not "believe that our Father in
Heaven intends that we shall be subjugated by such a race of people as the
Yankees."... Northern soldiers too, were encouraged to find Scriptural
justification for the Union cause, particularly over the matter of
slavery. After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Julia
Ward Howe composed the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which
was set to the tune of "John Brown's Body." Union troops needed little
encouragement to sing "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the
Lord," nor to reassure themselves that as Christ "died to make men holy,
let us die to make men free / While God is marching on."
- Susan-Mary Grant, "For God and Country: Why Men Joined Up For the US
Civil War," History Today, Vol. 50, No. 7, July 2000, pp. 24-25
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died in the Civil War, more than the
combined number of all the American soldiers who died in every other war
from the Revolutionary War through two World Wars, right up to the Gulf
War. (Admittedly, diarrhea killed more Civil War soldiers than were killed
in battle. But then, influenza killed more World War I soldiers than were
killed in battle.) Neither is there any doubt among historians that
religion played a larger role in the Civil War than in those others. And
neither is there any doubt that the last time Jefferson Davis walked out
of Washington, Jefferson Davis was pleading for was the expansion of
slavery into the new western territories recently acquired by the U.S.
government. Davis wanted a line drawn through those territories making all
the states below that line "slave states." But Lincoln had been elected on
the promise that none of the new western territories would include slave
states. So, Jefferson walked out and formed the Southern secessionist
government. Of course all three of the major Southern Christian
denominations had ALREADY secceeded from their norther brethren over the
question of whether or not a minister ought to own slaves. So the southern
Christian churches led the way for seccession and argued vigorously in its
behalf.

--------------------------

>There were
>Christians on both sides of the fence, but there is a great
>difference between doers and hearers. Such strength takes
>a kind of inner enduring courage I cannot begin to imagine.

ED: Courage is a relative term in all wars. There was a pro-slavery
clergyman who had a bounty on his head, and courageously continued
preaching against the north and against abolitionism. There were those
Muslim fundamentalists who showed their fearlessness in plowing into the
twin towers, though such actions are no considered courageous, but
terroristic, nihilistic, foolhardy and fanatical. Still, their fellow
Muslims consider them courageous. Hammas calls its suicide bombers
"martyrs," and the "Muslim martyrs" who have died fighting the U.S.
occuptation in Iraq are having stories spread about them, about their
corpses, smelling like perfume and glowing.

--------------------------------
>
>Yes, we have emotions. Yes we all feel the same pain. Yes
>all societies probably have a "do onto others" clause somewhere
>in their sayings. I think what is interesting is that we have
>a manifest feeling for what is right and wrong. If these are
>simply evolved things, then there really is no such thing as
>right and wrong: "only thinking makes it so".

ED: It doesn't matter whether they are "evolved" or not, the feelings we
have are based on our existence as a social species. Without being
socialized we'd be grunting apes, unable to even speak. We need each other
like all social species need other members of their species around them.
Our feelings are based on shared needs, physical needs, psychological
needs. We have a need to be acknowledged, to be touched, spoken to, to
hear nice things about ourselves. We all shy away from physical and
psychological attackes. Those were the points I was making, we all feel
similar psychological and physical pains. We all hate having pain imposed
on us by others, and enjoy sharing joys with others. These things are so
basic to each of us (aside from psychopaths) that we all DO think in terms
of "right and wrong," probably because our brains naturally prioritize how
we live and feel toward others and can't help thinking about how we
"ought" to be treated.

--------------------------------

> Theology starts
>from the point of view that there is an objective truth. Our
>observations of belief in it neither affirm or deny that God
>has made these rules. I think God sets the rules,

ED: Did God "set" every "rule" in his most holy "ruie book" the Old
Testament? Let's discuss some of those "rules," also in light of similar
ancient "rules" like in the Code of Hammurabi that preceded the laws of
Moses. You do know that a stele exists that shows Hammurabi receiving his
sacred laws directly from the God "Shamash."

-----------------------------------

>not molecules
>or evolution, but that is in the last analysis, just my statement
>of faith.

ED: I think explaining law as coming "from God" adds nothing to them.
It's merely explaining one mystery with another. And during the time when
Europe was filled with Catholic and Protestant faith of a most heightened
sort, the nations fought what some call Europe's most bloody war, the
Thirty Years War. I have some quotes on it, but have already burdened
you with my quotes on the Civil War and slavery. Unfortunately, I learned
very little about the Thirty Years War in my history classes being raised
in America. Sheesh, what I've learned since then!
>
>
>by Grace alone we proceed,
>Wayne
Received on Sat Oct 9 21:45:43 2004