Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart in rebellion. Whoever conceals his sins will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy and forgiveness. If you repent and believe in the gospel, placing your faith in Jesus Christ, you will inherit salvation, which leads to everlasting life. With this salvation comes a necessary spiritual rebirth; God will give you a new heart and His Holy Spirit, which will give you wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, put His Laws into your heart and write them in your mind, guide you into all the truth, help you, and comfort you. By the blood of Jesus, sanctifying you and cleansing you of all unrighteousness—conforming you to His image.
He who conceals his sins doesn’t prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Blessed is the man who always fears; but one who hardens his heart falls into trouble. (Proverbs 28:13-14 WEBPB)
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we haven’t sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10 WEBPB)
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms concerning me must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds, that they might understand the Scriptures. He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send out the promise of my Father on you. But wait in the city of Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:44-49 WEBPB)
That is such a weird standard to judge whether or not religion is needed to be a good person, especially since the Bible is chock full of moral relativism.
Good exists outside of religion, Evil exists outside of religion, there should be no supernatural basis explanation needed for things that are inherent. indeed endemic to the human experience. Societies devoid of centrally controlled organized religion, like the Japanese and Shinto, have a much closer to connection to treating others and the world with reverence and peace than Christianity ever has.
Great but calling something weird is not an argument. You should be able to provide justification for morals in your worldview then (whatever it is) instead of reasserting your position that we don't need Christianity or religion. What is good and evil? Does it exist universally? What is morality grounded in (as in where it is located and what is the objective standard)? How do we have knowledge of it?
Here's the thing, I could try my best to justify my positions on the inherency of good and evil, but to what end? Am I trying to convince you to not believe what you believe? Never. I would never do that.
There are things I quite like about the blood sacrifice, supplanting the sacrifice of the lamb by the ancient Hebrews with the ultimate sacrifice of the purported son of YHWH, because mankind is so flawed that without that atonement they could not possibly meet the criteria to stand in the presence of their preferred deity of reverence is a brilliant idea.
The Maunday Thursday worship service is a beautiful time of reverence, and I do enjoy attending it from time to time. It is, to my thinking (and this is only an opinion, not based in any liturgy) the only time in the Christian year that it is appropriate to take communion.
I make no distinction from those that believe in the symbolism of the act, the bread v wafer, the grape juice v wine arguments are moot as far as I am concerned. The blood cult weirdness I referred to is more pointed at those the believe in the literal transmutation of the bread to the body and the wine to the blood. Take your communion with hershey bars and sprite for all I care, the symbolism is what is important. I do apologize for the diminishing term "weird" in my first post. Just because I find it that way is of no consequence.
Having a philosophical bent, especially in regards to the Socratic Method, I question that which I am presented with. I have rejected the idea in my head, and mine alone, that the "sin nature" of man as taught by modern evangelicalism is errant. To me, it shifts the blame away from the person committing the act to an external source, which is never healthy for a mentally well person. I know that you will counter with that is what the atonement is about, taking responsibility for your trespasses and asking for forgiveness, but I put this argument against this idea forth.
Imagine if you will a person who murders a child, worst than that, molests and violates this child to the extent that it dies. The child is aware of the person who did the deed and knows them. This person goes to prison, commits many other heinous acts over the course of their life, and recants on the deathbed, ask for forgiveness, which according to modern christian theology, is granted simply because they asked. Assuming a heaven, this person arrives and the very child betrayed has to share an eternity with their abuser and murderer?
This I cannot abide.
Good v Evil is too easy, Good and Evil are the opposite ends of a spectrum, with most of humanity hoping, like I am, that I will do just as much good in the world as I do harm. I know that Christianity says that I cannot achieve paradise through works alone, that I must pledge fealty to a god that I am unsure even exists, a fact that no one who is still alive can confirm. I choose agnosticism, it does not matter to me whether or not god exists or not, and if (they) do and I do not follow what I see to be a very confining path, and in the (afterlife) I am rejected from paradise, so be it. I know in my heart that I am a good person.
People who know nothing of religion KNOW inherently when something is considered a GOOD act. The opposite, I believe , is also true. People inherently KNOW when something is wrong. The problem here is exacerbated by mental illness and sociopathy. Not nurturing our young in loving homes is causing many of the problems that plague society. Organized religion has done very little throughout history to make a dent in this issue. Abuse, institutional or familial, has created people whose maladjusted thoughts cannot be cured with platitudes from a set of books written by MEN, some of then hundreds of years after the events they purport to be eyewitness accounts of.
Phew....have to take a break...
I am sure that you will have problems with what I have written, but my screed is not to convince or even explain. It is simply a statement of beliefs.
That's demonstrably false. I can go to history or different cultures and point out human sacrifice was deemed moral. But I don't even have to do that because there is human sacrifice in our society as we speak in the form of abortion. If people inherently knew what was good and evil there would be zero debate on any moral issue including abortion. Same goes for slavery, death penalty, freedom of speech, homosexuality, adultery, indecency, etc. None of this is inherently good or evil outside of a specific moral framework.
The problem of justifying morality outside of religious dogma has been a major one for Enlightenment philosophers and was relevant until the 20th century when they dropped it because they saw it's a fools errand. One of the major empiricists, David Hume (an atheist) posed a very important problem - that you can't get an "ought" from an "is". You can't infer a moral truth through knowledge about the world as it is. What this means is you can't expect people to know what's good, desirable, valuable via observation of the world around them.
If you're somewhat familiar with philosophy you should know there aren't self-evident basic truths outside of a worldview/paradigm that interprets the world. This is true for metaphysical and epistemological problems, but it's most evident and most accessible to lay-philosophers in the ethical field. This is why I asked what's your account for morality under your worldview since you obviously reject the Christian account. What's the framework that let's you determine what is good and what is bad and is that just your subjective preference or is it an universally valid objective principle?
You have presented many OPINIONS based on your worldview. Aborting a FETUS...not a baby, you cannot freeze a baby and still have it be viable, once a fetus is viable, at about 17 - 20 weeks, and even that is early, more like 22 weeks, it then has the ability to live independently from the mother, that is a viable human. Until then it has the proper DNA to be a human, but not the ability to live on it's own.
I know that you will reject this view, and you are right to have your beliefs and opinions, and I would never do anything to impune.
I had forgotten the work of Hume, and that was a good rebut
I feel we are at an impasse. Your point about human sacrifice is interesting, but from the view of the practitioners of that ancient practice, was it not done for the greater good? Heinous though it may seem to modern worldviews and practices. It is the same with abortion, some (not me as you might suspect) may see it as serving a good, but you do not, who is right?
Good is what you say it is in line with your preferred sins. You worship yourself as the highest being, we get it.