To further clarify:

The bible does nothing and can do nothing towards inculcating moral behavior on its own. Christians must steal from secular moral systems, and then merely graft their 'god threats' on top of this moral system. This is necessary. And the reason for this is simple: there is no morality in the bible and there can be no morality in the bible, because the bible holds that 1) ALL 'sins' are equivalent (destroying any moral sense) AND 2) all moral behavior is immaterial, because works cannot save a person, AND finally all people are damned from birth.

However, since christians realize, implicitly, that all of these these points are obviously, prima facie false, they must steal from secular systems, that hold that 1) man obviously has a value 2) all 'sins'are obviously not equivalent and 3) a person cannot be held to be doing anything 'immoral' without intent.

So, whenever you apply some concept of punishment found in the bible to a moral situation, you are actually just grafting something from the bible onto a secular moral system.

In case you care to know: The bible is about obedience, not morality. The bible holds that a person must 1) concede that humanity is worthless, 2) believe that an intelligent, loving god is the most cruel force imaginable, and 3) hold that the best thing a person can do is grovel in obedience before this cruel tyrant, or face hellfire. This is not the inculcation of morarlity, this is coercision. One is forced to obey, or be destroyed.

This is not a moral system. It undermines morality itself. It is merely obedience.

If we look at Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning, we see that a system built upon punishments and rewards is pre conventional morality, and not a mature moral system at all:

Stages 1 and 2 in the preconventional level involve an "egocentric point of view" and a "concrete individualistic perspective" in which the person makes choices based on the fear of punishment and the desire for rewards.

Stage 1 Punishment/Obedience - Consequentialism. This stage is characterized by avoidance of punishment and unquestioning deference to power as values in themselves. Simple Hedonism. Morality is seen as based on self interest; the goodness or badness of action is determined by their physical consequences, regardless of any human meaning attached to these consequences.

Stage 2 - Instrumental Relativist Orientation - defined by a focus on instrumental satisfaction of one's own needs, as the determiner of "right". Reciprocity may be present, but it is of the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" kind.

Convential Stage (Late childhood, early adolescence)
In Stages 3 and 4 of the conventional level, persons make choices from a "member-of-society" perspective, considering the good of others, the maintenance of positive relations, and the rules of society. This level generally involves a move towards gaining approval or avoiding disaproval as the basis of morality; law and social rules are seen as valuable in their own right.

Stage 3 - Interpersonal Concordance (Good boy/girl orientation) - this stage is driven by a desire to please or help others with hope of winning their approval.

Stage 4 - Law and Order orientation - Focuses on the maintenance of social order and the importance of authority and strict rules. This is not the blind, unquestioning belief in power of stage one, however.

Postconventional level (This may develop in late adolescence, more likely in our mid 20s and beyond. It may never develop for most of us.)
Persons in the final stages of the postconventional level, Stages 5 and 6, reason from a "prior-to-society" perspective in which abstract ideals take precedence over particular societal laws.

Stage 5 - Social Contract/Legalistic Orientation - This stage involves a recognition of the relative nature of personal values, and the importance of having procedures for reaching a consensus and changing unfair rules. The individual at this stage can separate the legal world from individual differences of opinion.

Stage 6 - Universal Ethical Principle Orientation - This stage involves defining what is "right" in one's own conscience in a way that is consistent with one's own abstract ethical principles that are based on inclusiveness and responsibility to others; there is a clear emphasis on universality, consistency, logic and rationality. The highest stage of moral development in Kohlberg's original theory. Some state that stage 6 is only hypothetical. On the other hand, philosophers like Ken Wilber point to a 7th stage - the centaur - where univeral concern for humanity is combined with a concern for all nature - indentification is broadened to the universe itself, care is held for all nature in a manner such that one cares for the universe around him just as another cares for his own body.

In order for a man to be moral, to reach levels 3, 4, and beyond, he must disregard the claims of theism.

As the philosopher Spinoza stated: "A moral act is never an act done solely for an external reward, it's done because the act, itself, is rewarding"

Christianity can only undermine matural morality....through it's infantile use of external threats. True morality is internal.

Here's a nice quote from Alan Dershowitz who backs this up:

There is a wonderful Hasidic story about a rabbi who was asked whether it is ever proper to act as if God did not exist. He responded, “Yes, when you are asked to give to charity, you should give as if there were no God to help the object of the charity.” I think the same is true of morality and character: in deciding what course of action is moral, you should act as if there were no God. You should also act as if there were no threat of earthly punishment or reward. You should be a person of good character because it is right to be such a person.

Not at all, consider it public domain. Others have asked me if they could use it as well. (such as Franc Tremblay)

Absolutely! Please feel free to post updates, corrections, etc....

todangst was being mild. There's more.

Perhaps including the story of Uzzah would help to illustrate the obedience thing as well.

2 Samuel 6:6
and
1 Chronicles 13:9

According to the stories, King David wasn't very happy with that smiting. Even in the bible, human morality had problems in relation to god's.

Sure.
In Genesis 20, Abraham lies to a king about his wife/sister and god promises to kill the king even though he didn't know the truth. god's prophet is a liar.
Then in Genesis 26, Isaac uses the same lie to protect his own life.

In Genesis 38
god kills Er for some obscure transgression
then kills Onan for jerking off
then judah's now widowed twice daughter-in-law gets a visit from dear old dad-in-law for some money. Dad didn't know it was her but she showed the gifts. BUSTED! No one gets burnt or stoned and we have twins Pharez and Zarah. Apparently, grandpa-dad's are okay in the bible because earlier Lot gave such a shining example of morality.

In Exodus 22:18 we're not supposed to let witches live. However, the wiccan faith has many, many members that don't fear for their lives. I personally know three and have no desire to allow them to die.

I'll add some more later. It seems obvious so far that even the most 'righteous' men in the bible followed their own morality most of the time regardless of commandment.

Jephthah was in Judges 11

Have these been verified for accuracy?

Generally all of them. But no worries, I'll eventually have a look.

We get the "out of context" reply so much that we usually just dismiss instantly, however it's best to be sure so to not go in with 'blanks'.

I think ALL forms of deconversion are valid - different methods work for different people. Some have never read the buybull and will think hard about the immorality & errancy in it. Others can work around that but can be swayed by deeper philosophical or logical concepts. Others maybe by the history of the bible and church itself. So it's all good.

Yes.

Christian 'morality' is a preconventional morality.. it's external, it's based on obedience... on fear, on punishment and rewards. Such a "morality' is not a morality at all, it is mere prudence. It's driven by a hedonistic need to avoid torture and seek out pleasure

Real morality is internal. It's part of your character, of who you are. It's a set of values - literally things that you value other than just yourself....

So even if we take the christian at his word, his argument that these biblical actionsa are 'moral' because they are the rules of an unquestionable tyrant, still falls to pieces, because prudence is not a true morality.

And the christian himself refutes himself on this matter, because he himself rejects this paradigm as a moral system in his own daily life... Just look at his actions: he recognizes that some immoral actions are worse than others, he places moral actions on a hierarchy. He expects others around him to be reliable moral agents... he doesn't consider his fellow man incapable and loathsome, but someone to be relied upon. He lives his morals as something internal to him, something to be done because they act itself is a value... he helps others not because he will recieve a reward, but because the helping behavior itself IS the reward.

The christian expects, in other words, that both he himself, and others around him, will operate under a conventional morality, a secular morality, a true morality.

I'm thinking of putting it up on my site, just want a good title and author for it, if okay with you.

Okay, cool. I had planned on editing it some. I'm happy to give you credit for it, or if you don't want it, I'll post it as anonymous or something.

Yes, precisely. They rely on an inter-subjective standard - the morals of their community, which in turn are founded on human empathy.

Take away the bible, and this moral standard remains. The evidence, of course, is the fact that most human moral systems are basically equitable.

The problem, of course, is there is a direct refutation of this available in the works of Karen Horney and other analysists.

We know from analytical work that we have a more parsimonious explanation for conscience: our conscience is introjected into us, as young children, through the rules and desires of our parents. What becomes our conscience was once the words of our parents, our families, etc.

But this alone is merely the more parsimonious explanation, and not the refutation. The refutation comes from Horney, in her concept of the "Tyranny of the Shoulds"

In her work with patients, she found that many statements stemming from the conscience of her patients were NOT moral in character, only in tone. What I mean by this is that people's conscience often speaks in a moral sounding way on things without any moral bearing.... "I should be able to get through traffic without delay" "I should be able to finish my work faster than my co workers:

These "shoulds" have the same moral tone of any other conscience statement, yet they are without any actual moral import.

So from this, it is clear that there is no "supernatural moral law from a god' introjected into us... our conscience is not merely a set of 'moral rights and wrong' but all sorts of statements that have the tone of 'right and wrong' but not always an actual moral character.

For this reason, it is not only more parsimonious to hold that conscience is a set of family values introjected into us as children, it is logical to reject the idea that our conscience is a moral thermometer set up by any god, seeing as our conscience is not wholly moral at all.

So, once we remove the erroneous presumption that our conscience is solely a 'moral guide' the theist argument loses its power.

I've written a paper on this, in response to C S Lewis' argument to conscience as evidence for a 'god'....

Excellent point.

heheh...

Well, I must say again that I love posting my responses as I read along.... makes reading statements like this fun.

Again, analysts talk about the form of the superego through introjection -

Introjection is the process wherein what is outside is misunderstood to be coming from inside. It is not a conscious indentification, but an automatic, unconscious, avolitional process of absorbtion of parental images. It happens to us most often in childhood, of course, at a time when, developmentally, we still are not fully able to separate our ideas from those of others....

If you'd like the paper, I will look for it, but I don't have an electronic file anymore....

To me, the key point is this: ask a theist if ANYTHING in his 'conscience' appears to be nonmoral.. if any of the SHOULDS he tells himself have to do with things other than morality... if he can find some, then he has to question why they'd be there at all....

o_O further more cements my thoughts the bible SUCKS. Could I use this in like a blog or w/e on my myspace page?

Yes, if they actually believed what they said, they would be amoral in that sense - even nihilistic - in that they claim their morals come only externally, as a set of hedonistic controls: threats of infinite pleasure or ultimate pain.

The would be 'amoral' in that there was nothing intrinsically valuable about moral actions, in of themselves. Here's a fascinating logical ramifiaction of this: it means that everything would simply be hedonistic prudence... which in turn means that if this 'god' suddenly rewarded rape and murder and punished charity, then the christian would have to switch actions without even a pang of guilt.

(and what would stop this god from doing so? It can't be something intrinsically good about moral actions, that would be a contradiction),

And some christians even make pretense of acting this way... despite the problems. You see it when you ask some of them "what if there were no god' and they respond that they'd no longer see any reason to be moral.

But I don't believe them.... I think that in most cases, they would remain moral, because morality is an inter-personal phenomenon.... we are moral because it is the best way to act when living in a community, and being a part of community is literally a part of what we are.

I know we tend to think of ourselves as individuals, but in a real sense, this is a 'lie' we tell ourselves, even in highly 'individualistic' cultures.

Consider:

We are created through a sex act that literally combines biological elements from two people. There's never a moment where we are literally just one person... we are created as a combination of two.

We develop inside the body of another person. Our first nine months are not even spent 'alone'

For the first years of our lives, to be separated from the direct and constant care of an adult for an extended period of time is a death sentence.

For the first few years of our lives, we need constant humane contace, just to grow up without a serious psychyopathology. Anyone who suffers abuse or neglect faces a serious risk of severe psychological handicaps - including pervasive developmental disorder and, later in life, antisocial personality disorder.

As we develop and step outside of the family circle more often, we often consider this process 'individualization. But ironically, all we really do here is trade one group of significant human contacts for another! We turn from family to friends.

Each step of they way in our development, we are interpersonal beings. In a sense, we have an 'interpersonality' more than we really have just a 'person-ality'. We are social beings, and as such, we have a need for constant human contact. Seeing as this is vital to our existence, it is no wonder that we have the ability to understand the needs of the other, and to balance them with our own, for the good of ourselves.

Unfortunately, not at present, as I wrote it in the 1990s and no longer have an electronic copy. I may retype it later in the year, but I've covered the key points here - Lewis is correct when he holds that our conscience has origin outside of us, but he oversteps the bounds of reason by holding that it must come from a god... when it could simply come from our parents.

This may seem ignorant, but what about when christians claim jesus taught empathetic actions(I know he is contradictory in other verses), not just obeying commandments. I am talking about golden rule, turn other cheek, etc.... This is still under the guise of punishment, right? So they are copting empathy(emotion)?

The problem is that the 'jesus' character in the NT equated all immoral actions as equally deserving of infinite torture.

 

Thanks for the idea, it's in my collection now!

This has always been my argument,albiet not as sophisticated. The thing that always gets me in conversations with christians is that they miss the point entirely and then futilistically proclaim that without god, there is no morality.  period.  Some of them even go so far as to say that without god, they would be a murderer, rapist, thief, etc.

 

The thing is, as Todangst clearly points out, there is no morality offered in the bible.  Stealing a loaf of bread is the same as murdering your mother in cold blood.  So, in order to develop a cohesive moral system, christians look to secular (evolutionary, rational, sensient) morality in order to develop their morality.  So they sin in order to be moral (the lie to protect life argument), they steal to feed, they kill in order to not be killed.  In other words, out of one side of their mouth they credit their moral system to the bible, and out of the other they summarily ignore it so they can develop a rational moral system.

 

It is not only contradictory, it is hippocritical and ignorant.

 

 

It's a weird hypocracy too...
We're so used to people who tell others they should be doing good and while secretly being naughty. The fundies at my university turn it on the head by being amazingly nice people. It's not that they pull punches. They believe in eternal damnation, that it is just and that humans are dirt and worthless and deserve the worst. They tell you this while giving you free food, looking after you and being genuinely nice... is this kind of hypocracy even a bad thing? :D  

(there was one lass so nice I even considered brainwashing myself into a Christian so I could marry her, but I decided it'd never work. Some contradictions I can live with but to call the Christian God good was too much for me!)