If "Our Creator" endowed us with rights...

If I were a non-believer, I'd see life through the same prism as you do. I just had a question, however. Do you know why God commanded the Israelites to go into the land of the Canaanites and destroy all of them?

 

I don't believe in objective morality so I am open-minded to the possiblity that in some extremely cases genocide might be necessary. However genocide doesn't feel good when you use your emotional sense on it.

They even killed the women, children, babies, and animals. In some cities they did take slaves and spared their lives. A verse even alludes to rape when the men are commanded to take the women for themselves. In addition to genocide they basically stole their property and their land. Also, commanding men to commit genocide must surely have a major psychological toll.

One wonders why God didn't find them some uninhabited land and there was a lot of that around. He could have also snapped the Caananites from existence or used a national disaster. Seems a lot more humane than a genocide war. But I am open to the possibility of a pragmatic reason since I don't believe in objective morality anyway.

 

I don't know why God does what he does, but if look closely, Cain is never listed as a son of Adam. In the Bible you had Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. The whole genealogical chart is in Genesis. Cain slew Able and was banished to land of Nod where he built a city and had two wives. What gives? Where did those people come from? God did not want his people intermarrying with the Canaanites because they were a cursed seed. The whole Bible is about this warfare that was to take place between the seed of the woman and the seed of Satan (represented in the Canaanites - the descendants of Cain.) Cain intermarried into a pre-Adamic people. IF you should ever want to know why the fight started and what it means:

https://archive.org/details/2seedsgenesis315

You should read it. You have unresolved questions that keep you from understanding a few things from a different perspective.

 

Religion is often used by political leaders to justify their actions. Back then it was commonplace to murder people who didn't share the same culture or religion. Religion is an effective tool to motivate a nation to do some bloodthirsty stuff, like genocide.

So because you had an ancestor thousands of years ago, this means you inherit a "curse?" It doesn't make logical or moral sense to judge a person by the actions of an ancestor. Genesis 4 is very clear that Cain was the son of Adam and Eve. There is no biblical reference to Cain's lineage being the seed of Satan. Also, Cain's line was wiped out in the flood and only Noah's family survived. Cain's line could only have survived through one of the wives. But then why would God select her to be saved if she is Satan's seed and wouldn't Noah know better than to allow a marriage like this? Additionally, since the entire planet came from this small family, and the Isrealites didn't actually wipe out all the Caananites, the seed of Satan lives on in millions of people today. Sounds kind of racist to me.

A better justification is that Caananites was genocidal and they were extraordinarily evil and did a lot of horrible stuff like human sacrifice. They had a horrible culture, would have tried to kill all the Isrealites, and everyone was better off with them gone. But then why kill the children and animals? Maybe the children would have learned about their lineage and gone back to their ancestor's ways. Also, death isn't the end of your existence and only takes your soul to another place. Since God created us and made this planet as a test, he has the right to remove people from that test. This explanation actually works a lot better in my mind although one can pose some questions.

 

Your lack of insight shows that you have not read the Bible. Again, in Genesis the sons of Adam are listed. Cain is not among them. Cain's seed is the cursed seed. If you ask me why Eve wasn't cursed as well, it's not in the Bible... sometimes the WHY is revealed to those that use the Bible to seek the answer. The flood was a localized event and the biblical accounts are limited to the writers knowledge of the world when they say the whole earth was under water. So, if something sounds "racist" to you, then you're back to your standard canard about morality?

That book, though the writer and I disagree on the flood, answers the rest of your questions. There are entire chapters of the Bible that refute what you're claiming. That little book is 86 pages long. Let me put it to you a different way. I've won 36 cases in court without losing or being overturned on appeal. The secret is that I can argue the other guy's case better than he can. When all you do is wander through life expecting bias confirmation, it limits your ability to learn and to have insight.

In the instant case the Canaanites are the pure embodiment of evil. And yes, you can inherit a curse. You can inherit a disease, so it's not that much of a stretch of the imagination that a seed line can be cursed.

 

Genesis 4:1
Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.”

6:7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
6:13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
6:17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.
7:3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.
7:4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”
7:19 They [the waters] rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.
7: 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.
7:22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.
7:23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
8:21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
9:11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
9:15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
9:16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
9:17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

The bible is very clear that God expressly stated that he is killing all life, all people, and the human race besides who was on the ark. So why load up all the animal species on the planet on the ark if the flood was just local? If this was a local flood and God promised never again to make a local flood, then why do local floods still happen? If the Flood was high enough to cover the highest mountains in the Middle East for the year, wouldn't it cover the rest of the world too since the water level is flat?

I'm just saying that the seed of Cain is likely to be Middle-Eastern or African. I'm just calling it racist. If you are fine with racism, then at least you are being honest about your beliefs.

That argument can potentially justify genocide. But then, how do you think we Americans would be described if the Nazis wrote the history books? History is written by the winners and its a little biased judge an entire culture worthy of genocide simply because their enemies said bad things about them. For all you know, the Caananites were just a run-of-the-mill imperfect ancient culture. Sure they probably slaughtered people in battle but everyone did that back then, including the Israelites. When the bible says bad things about them, its mostly because they have a different religion.

Diseases are merely a physical a malady. Can you explain exactly what an inheritable curse is and what will happen to me if I inherit one?

 

Since you know it all and have your own version (not a real Bible) from which to come to erroneous conclusions, and you can't read a small book that refutes what you got taught via a paraphrased version of the Bible, this would be a pointless discussion. Your version as well as your interpretation of the Bible are pure fantasy and erroneous fairy tales.

 

The version of the bible I am quoting is the New International Version. Which version are you using? King James Version?

 

The Authorized King James Version is by far much more accurate and authoritative.

 

Fair enough, and you given me no reason believe our moral experience is so utterly unreliable, that we may apprehend no objective moral values or duties whatsoever. You have been very honest about some of the uglier logical outcomes of your view. One of the very refreshing things about the ministry of Jesus was how heavily he weighted actual physical acts over the theoretics of how one came to believe it was right to do these things.

This is your claim that shows my moral experience to be utterly untrustworthy? Just that our moral beliefs are the result of evolutionary development and are therefore aimed at survival, not truth? Is that it? Well, what evidence is there for that?

There is no compelling evidence that our moral beliefs are the product of biological evolution. Even biologists admit that not only do they currently lack a fully adequate evolutionary account of morality, but the many accounts they do have are also disparate and are often represented by explanations as having resolved issues that are still in dispute.

For example:

The evolutionary debunking argument assumes that moral beliefs are in fact adequately explained by natural selection and that there is little question that they are not. Dispositions toward certain behaviors (reciprocity, parental care, etc.) do have fairly compelling evolutionary explanations. But we don’t actually have a plausible evolutionary proposal for the moral beliefs associated with these behaviors. I’ve done a fairly recent review of the literature, and I can’t find any coherent account for moral beliefs or even normative intuitions.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/wri...n-objective-moral-values-and-duties/#_ednref2​

Conduct your own search, the above is a very fair rendering of the actual lack of grounded support for your belief system.

Study this pair of statements you just made:
i) Evolution doesn't care about objective right or wrong and only cares about survival.
Therefore
ii) Just because we feel moral emotions only indicates they evolved for survival and isn't evidence they are based on objective moral truths.
There is nothing in ii) that particularly supports i). I'm not knocking you, I've searched for the actual under girding of the belief system you are describing and what you have put forward is as good as anything offered.

The assertion that because our moral beliefs have evolved, they are aimed at survival, not at truth, presupposes atheism. Keep in mind that if God exists,as was the view of the Founders, then plausibly our moral beliefs, though evolved, will be generally reliable. Your propositions presuppose naturalism which begs the question. You are the one debunking our moral experience so you have the burden of proof to supply a defeater of our moral experience. You need to prove that our beliefs are not aimed at truth if they evolved, but obviously that's not true, unless one presupposes atheism.

Our Founders were very clear that our rights come from God and boldly so stated in the Declaration of our Independence and we are perfectly justified in joining them in that premise.

That's unfortunate, but so long as you never do so, or influence another in a way that makes it easier for them to do so, I don't see where your beliefs have any negative real world impact. You strike me as a person who has given morality a great deal of thought and who conducts themselves with reasonable restraint, may we all do the same

You give yourself away. "the right to abuse what?" You clearly do recognize objective rights or you would have have no idea what to avoid, and if merely following your evolutionary impulses, you would, given the circumstances, violate the rights of others without hesitation. Say you found yourself very thirsty and had not had the forethought to bring a bottle of water, but, you happened on a weaker person who had, on the evolutionary viewpoint, were circumstances dire enough, you would demand the water and beat his ass if he didn't hand it over, yet, I bet you wouldn't.

Exactly, beat his ass and take his water. But, what is the evidence that because our beliefs have evolved, they are aimed at survival, not truth? Evolution says: "beat his ass and take his water." Truth says: "It's his water, I have no right to take it, even though I could, and I'll endure the harm of my short-sightedness rather than violate his rights." I find it interesting how many people voice the beliefs of evolution yet in the real world, they follow the truth.

It is truly amazing. A friend of mine has a ridiculously powerful telescope, and he will make long drives to get away from light pollution and take incredible pictures that show designs and formations from the stars and gas clouds that look like paintings of recognizable objects, yet the distances between each star are light years, and there are a 1,000 stars or more in every frame, and it's only my consciousness that sees a recognizable shape, like a charging warhorse or something in the gas formation. It is truly remarkable that either of us get to experience that, on either of our viewpoints of how we came to have this vantage point.

And they were righteously hung for them, because they too had access to objective moral values that informed them that it was wrong. I once read a paper by a guy who was raised in a cannibalistic society, later through the work of missionaries became a Christian and then wrote about his younger experiences. He said that deep in his heart, even before he met the missionaries that he knew that cannibalism was wrong, but, it was so supported by everyone else in his world at the time, that he shut down the small voice, and participated, until his true beliefs were confirmed.

Agreed

That brings up another interesting discussion. It's interesting how deeply impacted we in the Western World are by the impact of the Greek thinkers of the ancient world without even realizing it. So we interpret these ancient Jewish stories, written without being impacted by the Greco-Roman world view, with the Greco-Roman viewpoint and the result is a bit of a muddle. We have a much more exacting and excluding view of reality that they did in ancient Judiasm. Take the events that led up to the 10 commandments being revealed, the 10 plagues of Egypt. You have the declaration that all of something were destroyed, and then a few verse later, obviously they weren't .

You have the same thing with Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites and so forth Supposedly they had all been killed, yet, they continue to persist in the stories. Obviously from the Hebrew mindset what is important are the lessons to be drawn from these experiences, while the Greco-Roman mindset immediately locks in on these points that aren't the reason why these experiences are being related to all future generations. Obviously these stone age societies went to war with each other a lot and killed each other, but nothing on the scale of war killing that we have seen since the Industrial Revolution, nothing even close.

That's unsurprising, it's the consequence of naturalism, theists are well aware of that. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. You might want to think about whether your are arguing in a circle here.

 

If you want to claim there is objective morality, the burden of proof is on you not me.

Your moral experience is trustworthy, but only in helping you make good decisions that benefit your survival especially in terms of working with people. There is no evidence that it is trustworthy for knowing objective truths about the universe any more than fear and anger can. Notice that I phrased this without evolution, so my case stand without evolution.

Our brains are products of evolution and our emotions are the result of chemical reactions in the brain, and also the product of evolution. Biologists don't know exactly how it evolved though.

I don't see how a creator can magically give someone rights or create rights out of thin air. Either they exist objectively like math without the need for a creator or they don't objective exist at all. Our founders were wrong about some things. They were also wrong to have slaves, oppose standing armies, and oppose foreign intervention. But they had some good ideas too and were ahead of their time.

What I mean is that rights don't objectively exist at all. So there is no right not to abuse, and there is no right to abuse. Using the word "right" is fallacious.

I'm an irrational ape with a big brain so there is a good chance I will act on my emotional impulses rather than logic. If I was about to die of thirst, I'd probably fight for the water out of instinct not logic. I've got a family to think about, and I can't let them be destitute if I die. But I would get him some water later on if I could, and deny any accusations of taking his water.

He felt in his heart cannibalism is wrong, because he is feeling emotions. We have emotions of guilt and empathy. We are social animals who are programmed to work with and help people. I can explain this from my viewpoint too.

I agree. Without a God, there isn't a good case for objective morality. But how does a creator somehow make objective moraliy likely at all?

Sorry I didn't respond to your whole post but I did read of it. I squeezed this in between work.

 

Remember!

Many were Masons.


Moi

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You seem to be saying that anything that's existence is contingent isn't objective. The entire universe is contingent. If mathematics pre-existed the universe, it's only because it existed in the mind of God.

No one has claimed otherwise, that is why the Constitution contains article five so that we have the means to correct the things they were unable to do at the framing. The Constitution starts with the preamble that explains that the purpose of the Constitution is to form "a more perfect union" that's an ongoing process. Ideally most of the amendments that have been added would have been there at the beginning, but they gave us a good start and the continual perfecting of securing our rights is left for us and future generations. We spend far too much time criticizing what they didn't do, rather than appreciating what they did accomplish, while we consider how we could more perfectly secure each others rights.

I'm amazed at how much time we spend dwelling on slavery while ignoring the complete hell that exists within our prison system, right at this very moment. Our government controls every aspect of the prisoners lives and yet they survive in a system of systematic rape. And we ignore that but eagerly condemn the shortcomings of past generations, time and energy that would be much better spent on current shortcomings.

You made the claim that you didn't think it was acceptable to violate the rights of others, I was simply pointing out that without the recognition of rights, you would have no idea what to avoid. Yet you do, and that's to your credit.

You wouldn't want me to be on your jury if you ended up charged.

I see no basis for objective moral values and duties without God. I'm sure we could formulate a system of ethics without reference to God. A person need not believe in God in order to recognize, say, that we should love our children.

If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. Some action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo; but there is on the atheistic view nothing really wrong about committing incest. If the moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion, then the non-conformist who chooses to flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably.

http://www.leaderu.org/offices/billcraig/docs/meta-eth.html

Two implications of that world view are materialism and determinism. Naturalists typically regard humans as a purely animal organism. There is no reason to think that human beings are objectively more valuable than rats. Secondly, if there is no mind distinct from the brain, then everything we think and do is determined by the input of our five senses and our genetic make-up. There is no personal agent who freely decides to do something. Without freedom, none of our choices are morally significant. They are like the jerks of a puppet's limbs, controlled by the strings of sensory input and physical constitution. And what moral value does a puppet or its movements have?

If we do think that objective moral values exist that logically leads to the conclusion that God exists. The fact is that we do understand objective value. Actions like rape, torture, child abuse, and brutality are not just socially unacceptable behavior--they are moral abominations. By the same token, love, generosity, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good. People who fail to see this are just morally handicapped, and there is no reason to allow their impaired vision to call into question what we see clearly. But yes, the existence of objective moral values serves to demonstrate the existence of God.

 

Many were not Masons... and of those that were, one wonders how "read in" they were to the whole program. The Illuminati was, after all, in its infancy having been founded in May of 1776.

 

The Enlightenment inclusive of Masons . . . .

No Illuminati required.



I mean if you can't blame the Jews
why not the Illuminati


Moi

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I'm not impressed by deflections. Essentially, what you're saying is that the majority of the people who were not Masons made no contribution to the founding of our Republic. Got it.

 

Yup!

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Then they aren't unalienable. They can be aliened by said creator.

And because something is written, and you take that to be Holy Writ, it must be the truth?

And you claim that your creator, and my creator, have a justified claim over you or I? How did they come by that claim?

I am not questioning unalienable rights, I am questioning your belief that some one,or some thing, has authority to take them from you or I. With that, I disagree.

 

I have a right to hold a gun to your head and force you to pay for my healthcare? If I don't, how does someone else get that right?

 

The same way you get to hold that gun.

 

Unalienable Rights cannot be aliened by man. That is all the presupposition means. Any other argument is pure trolling. We aren't going to reinvent the wheel or beat this dead horse any longer. It is what it is.

I think you live by the contract OR the parties who are aggrieved have just cause to exit the contract.

My Creator created me and holds a just claim, proven by the mere fact that no man leaves this world alive. That we are born with unalienable Rights is a presupposition upon which the foundational principles of our constitutional Republic are rooted in. We fought a war to establish those principles, codified and guaranteed them in the Bill of Rights only to be asking the question "IF" in a time when that Creator is the last entity left for mankind to appeal to in this time of death and destruction.