Anyone know what this sculpture is of the "torture stake?"

by charity7 in

hey guys!

i'm new on this site and am a non jw here married to a jw.

my husband's family are active members and they daily post articles on facebook from jw.org which i know is meant for me to see and read.

Sea Breeze

Welcome to the board Charity.

Here area some early references to the cross:

Alexamenos graffito

Pompeii, Roman and Herculaneum

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

We all know you have compassion Nicolaou. This is not the question. The question is how did you get it?

Animals don't care if another animal runs off a cliff. In your world view, that's a good thing, right? We're just animals right?

If one animal runs off a cliff, doesn't that allow more food for those that don't? Doesn't that increase the gene pool of those that don't run off cliffs?

The simple fact is that you know that child headed for the train has intrinsic value because he is made in the image of God and is your neighbor. You know that you are obligated to save that child because God is a savior God. You know the Christian God in your heart of hearts.

You can deny God because God gave you the ability to do so. But you cannot escape the reason, compassion and love of God no matter how much you hate him, because his attributes are part of you.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

If my actions cause harm to other people, creatures or the planet they are 'wrong'. If they benefit others they are 'good'.
See how easy that is?

Nicolau

Your answer presupposses that you know what "harmful" or "good" to others is. Why would a chemical accident assume to know this for himself, much less others?

I asked how you know if a moral rule is doing either harm or good? This the formost issue some nations are facing right now.

God says it is the parents responsibility to read God's word to their children daily.

Men with deviant sexual preferences want to educate our children to 'free" them.

Can't you see the inherent arbitrairiness in the atheist worldview? It makes no sense. ANY morality not rooted in the character of God is inconsistent, arbritray and ultimately meaningless.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

Nicolaou,

I didn't dismiss your response. But you never responded when I challenged your assumption:

how do you determine "good" in a chance universe?

What if one person says they benefit from eliminating Jews, and another person says they benefit by changing the definition of marriage, and yet another says they benefit by educating our youth on transgenderism?

What say you?

In other words, what is objectively wrong with this picture? Isn't he just another chemical mistake like you claim that you are?

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

Cofty,

Those topics have been covered many times before on this forum. There are many good websites that demonstrate the errors in your assumptions, like:

https://christianthinktank.com/

And:

https://www.gotquestions.org/

Are you done defending your atheism? Or, do you have another source (other than God) to present that accounts for your objective morality?

14

Observation

by pontoon in

haven't been to a meeting in 13 years.

family that lives 1300 miles away doesn't know.

just visited them and here is what i observed.

Sea Breeze

Thanks Smiddy,

The suffering we have all experienced is very real and does not discriminate for or against one worldview or another.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

The only way to avoid this (sinning) would be to have our free will stripped away, to become someone -or something- that we are not.

@Tonus

If, out of our own free-will we ask God to give us the new nature he promises, one that cannot sin; how is that violating our God-given free will? Would not that be free wills' ultimate expression?

So, I will either spend eternity incapable of independent thought/action, or I will spend eternity suffering because I invariably broke a rule or crossed a line.

The removal of the sin nature doesn't make sin impossible or render us incapable of independent thought or action. It does however make us adoptable by God, sharers of his nature & heirs of everything he owns - capable of receiving his pure love and returning it without fear or hesitation of any kind.

This is the primary purpose of man - to love God; it is why we are here. It is why there is anything at all. The second purpose is to love our neighbor as ourself.

You mean a moral code that everyone, everywhere will agree with? Assuming such a thing is possible, you get there by trial and error. You experience things, you learn, you adjust.

So, you think that the origin of morality is a convention? I appreciate you presenting possibilities. It's a very important topic.

A convention is something that we all agree to do... like driving on the right side of the road. If we all agree - it works. But we are not talking about getting morality to work. We all know that it works. How we got it is the question. If morality is a simple artifact of convention, then drivers in Britian who drive on the left side of the road are just as correct as those who drive on the right side of the road. This does not account for the existence of universal morality.

I once asked DJW on this forumn if I put a gun to his head and threatened to pull the trigger, would there be anything objectively wrong with that? He could not bring himself to admit that it would be universally morally wrong for me to shoot him in the head.

we now have the ability to reason. And that means we can make determinations

But this is at the heart of Christian criticism of atheism. We know atheists have the ability to reason, be moral, employ logic etc. The problem is that the atheist cannot account for it with his stated worldview. It violates his own presuppositions of chaos, happenstance, copying mistakes and chemical accidents. If the atheist really believed these conditions are what created him, to be consistent he would not be able to "know" anything at all.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

@Cofty on where he gets his morality:

From approving those things that promote the well being of conscious creatures.

@ Nicholau :

If my actions cause harm to other people, creatures or the planet they are 'wrong'. If they benefit others they are 'good'.

Nicholau, how do you determine "good" in a chance universe? Totally abritrary standard.

Cofty: How do you know what brings happiness to other creatures? Isn't happiness just a chemical reaction in the brain? Since my chemical reactions are different than your chemical reactions, what gives you the right to impose your chemical reactions over my chemical reactions?

Furthermore, why should I pursue one chemical reaction over another .... like pain for example? The marquis de sade enjoyed toturing women. What if the pleasure he derived was greater than the pain he caused? Wouldn't the "good" outweigh the bad?

The atheist worldview is totally arbitrary and inconsistent in every possible way, it doesn't work even a little bit. It is the most inconsistent of worldviews.

But, Cofty; more to your point - In your worldview, why should I be concerned with the well-being of humans in Austrailia? If they are just rearranged pond-scum, why should I be concerned about their happiness?

This makes sense in a Christian worldview where God says to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But, this is the polar opposite of the "tooth and claw" model that atheists claim was the mechanism that produced us. Again, this is irational, inconsistent and a "just so story" designed to try and conceal the presuppositional theft (do unto others) from the Christian worldview needed in order to attack it.

I don't think that either of you have really thought out your atheism before jumping it to it.

People who joined the WT, proceeded with the same recklessness.

Any other ideas on where atheists get their morality?

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

If we can reason out why actions are moral or immoral, no god is necessary.

@Tonus - You are borrowing from the Christian worldview here to be able to attack it. You are pre-supposing that you know what correct reasoning is. How do you arrive at universal correct reasoning in a chance universe? What makes your reasoning "right" and others "wrong".

Why would animals want to reason anyway? Why wouldn't laws or reasoning be different in different places. It's all blind chance, chemical reactions and copying mistakes, right?

You are standing on Christian ground when you appeal to reason. "God cannot deny himself". You should either get saved or go get your own reason. Stop trespassing.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

Sea Breeze

Morality is a product of evolution just like everything else. In parts it's messy, fluid and open to debate but at the core is something that all primates have learned over millions of years.

@ Nicholau,

First of all there is no proof of evolution whatsoever. There are lots of made up "just so stories" that try to prop it up, but it is positioned on just sand that won't support it's claims. Using very liberal parameters, world renowwed geneticists proclaim that it would take far longer that the supposed age of the universe to get only one 8 letter genetic word into a population of say 10,000 members of that species from DNA copying mistakes. This is the real science atheists suppress.

It you are just a chemical accident and a DNA copying mistake (nevermind where this multi-language and multi-coded alphabet comes from) why on earth would anyone (including yourself) trust anything that you say?

The atheist view doesn't make sense: Why would there be a standard of reasoning in a chance universe? Why would we all have the same basic morals all over the globe if we all evolved differently and separately?

This makes sense from a Christian worldview because our shared standards of logic, reasoning, and morality are reflections of God himself, since we are made in his image. It is consistent.

It is inconsistent to assume that after millions of years of unguided "might makes right" survival of the fittist, that everything suddenly changed. Aren't we supposed to be just animals. Animals don't care about what happens to other animals.

Why don't we put monkeys on trial for killing their own and sometimes eating them? Animals do what animals do. Morality, justice, grace, substitutionary atonement make no sense in an atheist worldview. Your world view blows itself up on its own claims. No bible needed here.

Nicholau, This is a simple but honest question that I would like to hear your response to:

How do you determine right from wrong?

Sea Breeze

Posts by Sea Breeze