A Devout Christian

  Hey,  How would you know? Fuck you. Ever eat pussy dumb ass?  You suck flesh too, as we all lovingly do.  I hate your gay prejudice ... you really piss me off .... you blind ignorant fool .... as if lovers are to be scorned. Fuck your rules.

  I despise christian idol worshiping ..... I AM JESUS, just as You ... fuck your blindness, you xains .... as story jesus called peter satan, and yelled at the temple church of idol worship!

 http://thoughts.jessenickles.com/old_testament_law.html

the Reason we "Christians" get offended is because this nation was built on a Christian Background and instead of leaving the Historical proof of it people like yourselves want nothing to do with God so you want as much of it out of this country as possible..so we Stand up for ourselves..now why does it bother you that we do such a thing?

let me ask you this..if you Athiest choose not to believe in God why is it that you guys get so offended when we speak about Him..? you speak freely that you supposibly there is no God, let us speak freely proclaiming that really is one, and try atleast listening to our facts instead of attacking us..

I am compelled to suspect that JesusSavedMyLifeAndItsNotGonnaChange is in that Atheist Challenge. 

edit: So, I hope you're purposely using poor grammar?

Oh, that's a simple one:

Paul stated that it is by faith alone that man is saved, and explicitly said it is not through works.

Jesus stated (parable of the sheep and the goats) that the criteria for salvation will be caring for others (ie: works), and that those who pray without works (the goats in the parable) are doomed.

Direct contradiction.

I consider myself a person. I try to be a good person, but in the end, I am flawed and fallible, and so claim for myself no special virtue. What about you? Do you claim virtue?

Do your homework. Read this entire thread for lots of answers. Separation of Church and State, thank goodness.

Oh my...............FSM.

How does your right to exercise your religion include forcing it upon me? Obviously, you don't remember the details of the first amendment, so here's a refresher.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

What if the government heralded a chapter from the Quran in all public places? Oh, you don't like that? Why not?

Not only is this a pointless assertion, it is simply factually incorrect. Many of the Founding Fathers may have been moderate Christians, but they were also, more than anything else, secularists.

Here's a nice source.

http://www.barefootsworld.net/founding.html#jefferson

www.wikiquote.org is also good. And, of course, you can just search on google.

Thomas Paine was an agnostic deist. He's my favorite.

"The Persian shows the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the lawgiver of Persia, and calls it the divine law; the Bramin shows the Shaster, revealed, he says, by God to Brama, and given to him out of a cloud; the Jew shows what he calls the law of Moses, given, he says, by God, on the Mount Sinai; the Christian shows a collection of books and epistles, written by nobody knows who, and called the New Testament; and the Mahometan shows the Koran, given, he says, by God to Mahomet: each of these calls itself revealed religion, and the only true Word of God, and this the followers of each profess to believe from the habit of education, and each believes the others are imposed upon." Thomas Paine

"The belief of the redemption of Jesus Christ is altogether an invention of the Church of Rome, not the doctrine of the New Testament. What the writers of the New Testament attempted to prove by the story of Jesus is the resurrection of the same body from the grave, which was the belief of the Pharisees, in opposition to the Sadducees (a sect of Jews) who denied it." Thomas Paine

"But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved." Thomas Paine

"When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of probability, the salvo is to call it revelation; but this is only putting one difficulty in the place of another, for it is as impossible to prove a thing to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was gotten with child by the Holy Ghost." Thomas Paine

See Todangst's article.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/people_in_hell_according_to_the_tenets_of_christianity 

By the way, Barack Obama supports the separation of church and state, so hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Barrack Obama supports separation of church and state? Maybe he's the anti-christ?

Let's be honest Atheists: The real reason you deny the possibility of the existence of God is because you don't want to be held accountable.

I challenge the rational response squad anywhere, anyplace and anytime!

cams card shark, Deny god?, I AM GOD, as all is god, and I deny all god definitions of any separatism, like that mythical silly dangerous God of Abraham's. Heck, biblically speaking we are all the christ, as the gnosis buddha story jesus tried to convey, as better found in the "dead sea scroll gnostic books", banned from the pathetic bible cannon.

Paul won, Jesus lost .... as the simple buddha jesus message of ONE was perverted into faith in idol worship. In a gnosis sense of knowing, Christianity is indeed the anti-christ, as faith is blind, rooted in ignorance, superstition, control, and fear, spewing dogma.

"Let's be honest" ... ye faithful idol worshipers: The real reason many of you deny we and all is God, is because you don't want to be held accountable, and face the  reality of a deterministic all connected reality where no caring sky daddy creator exists that thinks of us. There is no purpose as all is eternal, yet ye faithful can't face the nihilistic reality, and so you invent and cling to your sky daddy for a meaning of life, and deny you are simply god experiencing it self.  

We are One with the father/mother/eternal cosmos of zero possible separation, as all is equal and connected, and that is the "saving good word", as is the best gospel yet called "thermodynamics". Go go  science. 

Absolution is a Catholic practice and is not practiced my most Christian denominations.  Judgment is Gods and not a man with a fancy collar and a theology degree. You're right that this is practice is problematic.

I was just interested in your comment that "Atheism demands accountability". What does that mean? In conversation with others I have be told that Atheism in itself has no consistent moral code and is not aphilosophy or religion or worldview. It is simply a disbelief in God...so how does Atheism demand accountability? Just wondering.

I'm afraid you need to double-check your list of 'Christian Denominations'. While it's true that most protestant denominations don't practice Absolution, the Anglicans/Episcopalians to, as do the Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Coptic Christian, Ethiopian Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox...

There are more Christian sects that were never part of Rome's hierarchy than all the splinter groups who left after Martin Luther and John Calvin raised their objections. Christianity, in fact, stems from five Apostolic Thrones (Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria), each of which began their own brands. The RCC just gets the big press because Europe's been pushing a Euro-centric worldview since Alexander the Great.

Atheism itself has no moral code, that is true. But people do possess morals, or ethics, and societies possess morals and ethics both. In order to function within society, people need to function within those parameters... or find an excuse that justifies (to themselves at least) an exemption.

Atheism demands accountability in that there is no higher power. There is no arbiter that exempts us from the judgment of our peers. There is no justification for saying 'I'm right, your laws are wrong' as there is with the religious appeal to 'God's Will'. Thus, for society to function, we must all be accountable to ourselves, and moreover, to one another, for our actions and our inactions. We cannot say 'you have no right to judge me, only God can do this'. In fact, there is only the judgment of society on which to base our evaluation of our own morals. If we feel society is in error, then it is our responsibility to convince others of our rightness, based not on justification from Divine Authority (ie: "This is wrong because it opposes God's Word&quot, but instead based on the actual merits of our argument. There is a simple term for an atheist who believes themselves above society's accountability: Sociopath.

Where we, as individuals, differ from society's ethics, we are either right - and can make an argument for our position based only on the merits of our position - or we are wrong, and should accept that. When we err, we must accept the verdict of our fellows. Failure to do so is a rejection of the base premise of society.

And yes, all of this is true of theists as well: theists who reject the validity of society's judgments on right and wrong without a reasonable and coherant rationale for that rejection are sociopathic. The difference is that theists can (and do) claim exemption, and claim that their deity gives them the right to exempt themselves from the judgment of their peers. They claim, as you have stated above, that judgment is reserved for God. Atheism carries no inherint plea to accountability in its lack of a god-belief... but it also carries the implication, when you think it through, that accountability is here, now, every moment of every day... because the ones who will judge are the very ones you interact with all your life.

Except that I am no more important than anyone else, Whitefox. Your God demands the sublimation of not just 'me' in favor of his decrees, but that of every 'me', in service of 'his' demands, which are communicated only by humans. It's those humans, who insist that everyone else must sublimate their own sense of right and wrong to theirs that are the 'lovers of themselves'. That you would apply that label to those of us who instead hold that we are all responsible to one another... that's just a bit ironic, isn't it?

What pretentious and arrogant crap.

I am an atheist. I know I am since I have no belief in a supernatural being of any description, no suspicion that anything is intelligently controlling "destiny", no belief in a requirement for such a being to have "originated" the universe so that I could play a role in it - or any other human for that matter - and no belief in a requirement to hold such a belief in order to behave in a moral and decent way. This apparently is what's called an "atheist" so that is what I am in the vernacular. Personally I just call myself "me" most of the time.

Yet you say that as an atheist I "must have" self-fulfillment. What the fuck does that mean? I wish for contentment in a world which often militates against me having it. Some aspirations are fulfilled. Others aren't. That's life. What are you on about?

You say that I "must have" self-gratification. I beg your pardon? How on earth does my level of gratification or my desire for such gratification define me as either a religious or irreligious person? You presumptious git! I desire no more or less gratification than I can realistically expect to acquire and I am intelligent enough to have moderated such expectations from a very young age and continue to moderate them wth experience. It doesn't sound like you're keeping pace, if you don't mind me saying so.

You say that I "must have" self-worth. Of course I must. That is a concept related to dignity. Are you saying that I should not hope to retain my dignity? Is that what religious people think? Are you sick in the head, man? What on earth type of society do you think we'd live in if the individual's respect for dignity and desire for self-worth was eroded by people like you?

You say I "must have" a self-image. Come again? As opposed to what? Even were I stupid and lacking in appreciation of self-dignity enough to believe I was "made" in the "image" of some supernatural deity - isn't that still a "self-image"? What utter bloody twaddle.

Then, as if you have made a clever opening remark you seek to enforce its validity by suggesting that the intelligent pursuit of a rational assessment of one's value, potential and ability is inferior to a lifetime of comparing yourself against the perceived values insisted upon by a phantom deity which itself is the invention of the human mind - just someone else's. And this is better? This not a "crutch"? It is, you know. And if ever an implement which supports you while keeping you stuck in a quagmire of presumptious crapology can be called a "crutch" you're leanng on it! A decent crutch would at least assist you in making forward progression. You don't even have that.

They saw you coming, man! You lean so hard on your crutch you can't even see that others do not require it. I am not my own god - I reject that whole terminology as bullshit. But I am my own person. You can believe any amount of rubbish you want and lean on it as much as you wish too, but don't ever tell me that I'm doing the same thing as you and just transposing myself with your "deity".

Why are religious people so fucking arrogant?

Lol. I guess I have to earn the right a little more for what I said.

I find atheism to be very religious. Because I find this to be the case I logically conclude there must be a god of the atheist and the closest thing I can find is agrandisement of the self.  I find so many self-isms that my logical conclusion is it must be the self. Statements in history like "I am the captain of my ship. The master of my destiny"  I me my etcetera.

I find atheism to be religious because it has to believe things.

To be an atheist you have to believe in Evolution.  Which is another self-ism. It's the belief that material existance is self created from nothing. We agree on the nothing as the starting point except for the fact of who the creator is.  Evolution is a belief system you must put your trust in to be an atheist.

To be an atheist you must believe in the sciences of the Psyche as opposed to believing in absolute right and wrong as dictated by a God-given conscience.  Psyche in greek by the way means "soul" in english. So Psyche sciences are an attempt to deal with your soul but void of God. Is it any wonder that the first thing Psyche teaches is that there is something other than the conscience called the subconscious that guides you. This is a denial of the biblical teaching that you know when you do wrong becuase your God given conscious tells you. We all know right from wrong and we are all programmed with the same sense  right and wrong which should lead you to a logical conclusion that there is a programmer who instilled this in everybody to give them the same standard to live by.  But as an atheist you must fight against this notion and instill in yourself a support system which helps you to counter this sense of right and wrong instilled in you. You must allow yourself to believe that your sense of right and wrong is merely repression caused by people such as myself pointing the finger. If you accept the conscience. If you accept the absolute right and wrong standard it gives you then you must accept there is a God who put this in you. That is why I say you must have the Pscyche sciences as your belief system to put your trust in to be an atheist.

To be an atheist you must believe in laws; not the giver of laws but the laws themselves. You must believe that laws will protect you. You must surround yourself with them.  Rather than the 10 Christian laws (the ten commandments) you need to have 10,000 laws and more. You must believe in the State and put your faith in it to be an atheist.  You must believe that infractions of laws are infractions against the state which you substitute for the Christian belief of violating God's will. You must as an atheist be a legalist. Sins for you must be violations of laws, not the law giver.  That is how you justify murder of unborn children as it does not infract the law to do it.  Perhaps you know of an atheist who does not agree with the murder of the unborn. I am yet to meet one.  But it is possible as it is possible for a person to change their stance from atheism to belief in higher principles such as liberty, justice, freedom (which are biblical concepts). For example who are the defenders of Justice, liberty and freedom for the unborn? Is it atheists who are defending this? I don't think so.

There are many negatives you must believe also but I don't know why you would want to believe these negatives.

You must believe that life here on earth is final, wheras the bible says we are eternal beings. The quality of our eternity however is dubious for those that do not come to terms with God during this life. The atheist has to believe what I just said is untrue. The Atheist has a very complex and difficult religion that he must maintain.  You might call it a world view.

I might call my faith in the Lord JEsus Christ as my God, Creator and Saviour as a world view as well. But you cannot say Atheism is any less religious than Christianity.  Atheisms high priests are Darwin and Freud and their god is themselves.

That is the longer form of what I was saying.  I have more such info at my website. I don't mind you pulling apart some of what is said there in this forum if you like.

God Bless,

Ray,

You're free to say whatever you like, Ray. Just don't expect it to go unremarked when folks don't agree.

Well, that statement was W.E. Henley, so I assume that you have some basis for referring to him as an atheist? I can't find it, but that doesn't mean someone else couldn't. But I can find similar sentiments from theists, as well. Being self-assured does not necessarily mean someone believes they are the alpha and omega of their world. It simply means that on a day-to-day basis, they trust their own judgment. Many people who trust their own judgment without ever questioning it do so because of a deep faith that God is guiding them, you know.

No, you simply have to not actively believe in a deity. But let's go down the list!

First of all, Darwin didn't believe in 'Evolution'. He hated that term. It implies moving from an inferior form to a more perfect, somehow 'better' form. Natural Selection isn't about becoming more perfect or better. It's about the critters that are best suited to their specific environment having the best chance of breeding. That means that they're the ones whose traits get passed on. That's it. That's all Natural Selection says.

Do you prefer LaMarke? Use and Disuse? What you're complaining about isn't believing in 'Evolution', it's rejecting Creationism, specifically, Young Earth Creationism. After all, even the Catholic Church has said that the Big Bang, Natural Selection, Plate Tectonics, and other theories that describe the progression of universal development from early stages to our present condition don't technically preclude God doing it through those mechanisms.

Well, it would follow that if you don't believe in God, you don't believe in a 'God-given' conscience. Personally, I find that the theory that sits best with me is the one that says that our conscience is an expression of fairness and social justice tendencies that we observe in other apes. You know when you have done 'wrong' because you're taught 'right' and 'wrong' at an early age by your parents. I tell you what: if you feel we all know right from wrong implicitly, because of divine programming for it, then you shouldn't need to teach your kids right from wrong. You shouldn't need to teach them to share, or not to hit and bite, and you shouldn't need to teach them not to take whatever they like. In fact, you shouldn't need to teach them about God, because they're programmed for 'right' and 'wrong', which would include whether or not to give glory to God, and in fact which God to glorify.

In fact, there isn't a single 'standard' of right and wrong across the globe. There are some baseline concepts that are pretty close to universal, like 'don't murder', 'don't take things that belong to others', and all sorts of other 'don't do things that work against the interests of the group' behaviors... but again, we see that in gorillas, chimps, orangutan, etc, even baboons (which are, after all, monkeys, not apes). In fact, we see it in pretty much every social animal with complex interactions.

Not at all true. You could be a sociopath. There's nothing stopping you. No need to trust in the laws. You could be an anarchist; not only don't you trust the laws, you want to abolish them. Here's the thing: 'the law' is nothing. If you trust 'the law', you're not trusting the words on the pages in the legal texts. You're trusting exactly what you claim isn't being trusted: the giver of laws. The difference is, the giver of laws is the collective will of the group. You say there are '10 Christian laws'. Ok, so where in those 10 commandments is the proscription against homosexuality?

Ah, wait, that's in Leviticus, isn't it? Damn those pesky books of laws! Of course, that's the same book of laws, supposedly directly given out by God, that says to kill the unborn if mom's an adulterer, or gets raped by her father-in-law, etc. But then, you don't have to worry about that, do you? You just pick and choose which of those laws still apply. After all, the Law was changed... didn't Paul say so? Of course, that brings us right back to the 'not one jot or tittle' clause, but hey, it's Paul's religion, not Christ's.

But see, here's the really fun part about all this science you're railing against: You don't have to believe any of it. You can sit back and say 'nice theories, guys, but I'm not sold. Come back when you have proof.' Just because it leaves a massive empty space in one's comprehension of the world around you... doesn't mean it can't be done. Or that it isn't done, on a regular basis. After all, isn't that just the kind of empty space you're embracing with Creationism? 'God made it!' 'Ok... how?' Arguing divine power doesn't answer the question, after all... it just says 'We can't ever know, cuz we're not capable of being smart enough to understand it'... after all, if we could understand how divine power works, we'd have the basis for duplicating it... and then it wouldn't be divine power, it'd be magic.

Again, you seem to be equating 'don't believe in X' with 'believe in !X'. There's also the middle ground of 'I don't know, so I don't invest any faith in either one.'

Actually, the bible says nothing of the sort. The Bible says that those judged unworthy will be thrown into the fires of Gehenna for a thousand years, at which point they'll then be destroyed utterly, along with the Beast. That's not dubious, and it's not 'eternal beings'. It's 'suffer for a thousand years, and then be obliterated'.

As far as believing that life here on earth is final... I'd say, rather, that the athiest acknowledges that life here on earth is indisputable. We can be reasonably sure that this life happens. You're the one claiming to know about some other place that nobody's ever shown any evidence for beyond 'Bob said so.'

If I told you there was an island where everyone was happy, and that you could go there, but that nobody who goes to the island can ever have contact with people who haven't gone to the island ever again... you'd be skeptical. You'd probably ask 'then how do you know about the island if nobody who goes there can contact you?' But because it's in a book that's been used for thousands of years to gain and maintain power in the hands of an elite, often hereditary priesthood... oh, well, that makes it all ok?

Show one shred of actual corroboration, something that can't be disputed. Short of that, be prepared to be disputed.

Sure I can. Religion is a series of beliefs. Atheism requires only the rejection of claiming certainty on one issue. Anything else is irrelevant. It may not be logically consistent, it may not be sane, but the man who claims there is no God, and that the Earth was made in an extradimensional factory by aliens working under commission from hyperdimensional super-genius mice... he's still an atheist.

As for Darwin and Freud... Darwin described a mechanism. It's a mechanism we've seen in action. And Freud was just obsessed with his own cigar. What's next, you attack Einstein, despite a century of practical application of his theories?

1: all but one of the ten commandments are repeated in the New Testament

2: The Ten commandments have played a rather important role in the formation of legal systems in the history of government. Since Courthouses are places of law, it makes sense to have the ten commandments being so integral to the history of law and order.

just my .02 cents.

No they haven't, unless of course you mean their role in encouraging sane people to come up with a more intelligent and less divisive group of tenets by which just law can be framed.

Modern western law derives much of its historical impetus and structure from Justinian's Institutes and Code, themselves refinements to more ancient Roman law, a very non-religious body of legislation with an emphasis on property law - hence its popular longevity. US law more than many other western countries is also hugely in debt historically to the 18th century surge in phrasing egalitarian legislation which enshrined some basic human rights - a product of Enlightenment thinking and in which religion was generally seen as something worse than an interference in the process.

If, as a christian, you must wilfully remain ignorant of your own history in order to justify your claims and push your agenda, then you are a member of a clique which places dishonesty higher in importance than truth. As anyone with even a smattering of knowledge concerning constitutional law will tell you - such cliques must never be allowed control the framing of law, of any sort. Whether you are open-minded and intelligent enough to appreciate the fact or not, your precious "ten commandments" are - in terms of a legal system constructed on egalitarian principles - subversive.

They have no place in a court of law. Even as a statue. Unless of course occasionally when used as evidence in assessing the behaviour of most decidedly non-egalitarian fanatics claiming them as their inspiration.

How do we determine what is relevant or applicable?

Maybe you should get that sleep mate!

The principle "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" (Newton's Third Law, in colloquial terms) was quickly superseded by a better expression for the same physical propensity of the behaviour of matter which itself is colloquially phrased as "the conservativion of momentum". Quantum mechanics, for example, would make no sense whatsoever if Newton's Law was absolutely true.

But then neither Newton nor Noether would ever have imagined that their theories, derived from observation of matter and intended only as physical rules governing its behaviour, would be appropriated to be applied to human behaviour, as you are doing. Nor would they appreciate that their painstakingly constructed theories concerning universal laws would be hi-jacked quite ignorantly by people who would wish to apply their rules in any and every context just because the word "universal" was in their published texts on the subject.

So, notwithstanding the fact that the expression, even in purely physical terms, is not universally true, it cannot be assumed to be relevant in the slightest to behavioural science in any case. What you are talking about is a subjective belief along the lines of "karma" for which no evidence exists because no evidence can exist. Human behaviour, by definition, is not subject to the "rules" concerning the properties of matter except in so far as human behaviour affects physical movement.

What you have expressed above, I am obliged to tell you, is as false as any religious assertion concerning a divine purpose to our existence, or a divine intelligence controlling it.

Bunkum. Plain and simple. Not to mention deliberate theft of expressions which you obviously do not really understand.

Tradition maybe.  Plus it kinda comes out as an attack on our faith.  Just because Jesus fulfilled the law does not mean that the old law should be forgotten, it's still got some good stuff in there even if you take out all the commandments dealing strictly with God.

Honor your father and mother, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't covet.

Actually I'd say that most court cases could be prevented if people followed those, kinda ironic eh?  Wanting to move something that, if people would follow, would result in alot less problems I mean.

I don't get upset about it.  In fact I think this sort of effort has the wrong focus.

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world (or my servants would fight)."  I think it makes a stumbling block God has no intention of making for followers of Christ to try to couple Christianity with politics.  As individual citizens every man has his right to his political view but to try to moralize the world isn't even the way God goes about it.  God doesn't violate man's will by opening the treasure chest of his will with a crowbar - He uses the key of showing His undeniable love in His Son.  Our focus is to be on Christ.  The changing of man's heart is willing done by allowing Him to do it from the inside. 

Due to the corruption in our current justice system, I don't know if I'd want to give credit to such great names.   The point was that if the Bible's teachings were followed, there'd be a lot less justice to be served. 

The Bible teaches something about every aspect of life.  So far I have found the teachings to be great advice and good to follow.  Non-believers would agree despite their disbelief in God.

Depends on what part you look at. Jesus said "no," Paul said "yes... but only certain ones" (He was keen on keeping the misogynistic bits, for one thing.) Fuck you for assuming what I have and haven't researched anyway.

Not true. "Well-versed theologians" are some of the most contentious people on the planet when it comes to 'true' interpretations of the Bible. Put five theologians in the room and you'll get six opinions.

Anyway, the whole idea that 'pure reason' will give us the true interpretation of the Bible has been shown to be false, again and again. The Catholics were right to institute and uphold the Magisterium- otherwise, there are just too many interpretations. Ignoring for a moment that it was Christianity that basically outlawed classical education in the 400s or so.

If by 'dispensationalists' you mean CHRISTIANS before your 'true' Christianity claimed to fix their issues, sure; dispensationalists.

The obvious stuff WAS followed, you fucking idiot.

Think of most moral codes. Reeeeaaaaaalllly look hard, outside your xenophobic and sanctimonious holy book. Look at what each religion says: Pretty much the same stuff Jesus said. We can therefore discount Jesus as 'special' based on his moral teachings- even within the Empire, there were the Stoics and Neoplatonists, both of whom basically said what he said. So what's left? Spurious claims of divinity, an unproven story about resurrection, and this man who alternately denigrates and upholds the Law. It's just a big mess, really, and doesn't make a good case for what supposedly is a superior religion.

I mentioned some names. How about you read my response before you reply?

Ok, specific names: Epictetus; Plotinus; Lucrectius; the Buddha (title); any Zoroastrian texts; the Upanishads....

These are superior moral teachings of the Bible because they don't rely upon fear of a god who will send you to hell for not believing. Though if you're not a 'dispensationalist,' this just doesn't apply to you. Which, hey, not my fault if you want to move the goalposts and create your own god and system of belief- just don't expect me to hold back my laughter when you tell me that the Bible is the most moral book ever, even though the reason for it (Jesus coming to earth to get rid of our sins) is something you don't believe in; hence really making your case weaker.