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Friday, September 5, 2008

Sweaty Morals: Enslave, Hate, and Subjugate

I wanted to kick the weekend off with a challenge to Newtonists, but until I can find my camera I will have to find other ways to suppress my baby eating, erm, predilections.

Speaking of baby eating, I received an email alert today. I stopped reading Dan's blog over at Debunking Atheists as he kept deleting my comments. I failed to unsubscribe from comment notifications, though, on his Atheists Eat Babies! entry. He posted a comment which I hear made a lot by Ray, that God has written his moral code "in our hearts" as a conscience. Therefore, it does not matter if we disbelieve the Bible as he's given us a permanent copy. Dan writes, in response to Adrian Hayter:
For example, it's a proven fact that with ALL people, across all genders and races, the consequences / telltales of when a person lies, are that;

They experience sweaty palms.

They experience induced swallowing.

Their heart rate increases.

Their faces turn red.

They avoid eye contact.

They speak more quickly, etc. etc. (The same old, same old with everyone human being on the planet. Except of course for sociopaths and those who have perfected evil deception.
I will spare you the rest that leads up to God's moral law is our conscience, atheists are immoral because we disobey our conscience, and feeling bad for lying or "raping and murdering a baby" is evidence for this. I address this point as, I said, it's brought up a lot. Not just by Ray, but also by a commenter of this blog some months ago:
"And if you fail to receive a copy of these laws, through no fault of your own, you are to be tortured for all eternity, regardless of whether or not you lived your life better than those who are getting into Heaven?"

Yet, God gave us a conscience. Man knows what is right and what is wrong. [...]

God is going to judge all mankind.
He will judge the ones who have been given the law stricter than those who have never heard of it.

Therefore the people who have not heard of the law will indeed be judged by the law of God which has been placed into there heart.
So, to begin, the obvious question arises: what about sociopaths? Dan begins by saying that, it's a fact, "ALL people" have it and then he concludes with "except of course for sociopaths and those who have perfected evil deception." I wonder if he just stated it ambiguously or if he really believes that sociopaths have "perfected evil deception." The notable feature of sociopaths is that they do not have a conscience: "Because of the psychopaths inability to internalize superego precursors, they are unable to learn from past mistakes, and are completely devoid of a conscience." So, why has God given a conscience to some people but not to others -- especially if he is supposed to judge everyone by that standard?

It has been advanced by the above, and Ray, that the conscience is God's moral laws written on our hearts (which makes you wonder why, then, go through the trouble of writing them down?). Their assertion is that God's moral laws are absolute -- after all, their whole shtick is about the necessity of dictated moral absolutes. Therefore, everyone's conscience should match up and also with the Bible.

This is demonstrably false, though. I can speak only for myself, as the conscience is necessarily a first hand experience. Here are a few things my conscience "tells" me:

Slavery
When I think of enslaving anyone -- anyone -- it makes me queasy. It makes me literally queasy to close my eyes and imagine going out, capturing someone or paying a slave trader, and then infringing on that person's right to liberty for as long as I please in the most inhumane manner possible. It shocks my conscience. I think, perhaps, it is the most immoral thing you can do; even greater than murder as, at least then, the person can actually die. And yet, this moral law God has supposedly written in my heart is in direct conflict with the moral laws he has written in the Bible that slavery is moral:

** (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
** (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)
** (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
** (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)
** (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)
** (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)
** (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)

Morally repugnant. Egregiously immoral. Unconscionable.

Homosexuality
What is there to say about homosexuality in the realm of morality? About as much as there is to say about the preference of green towels over red towels. If someone I knew preferred members of their sex over members of the opposite sex, I would have about as strong of feelings towards that revelation as if they were to tell me that they preferred green towels of red towels.

What I do find immoral is judging them for their nature. That is truly wicked. It is just as immoral as judging them based on their skin color -- in fact, actually worse as you are sullying something essential to them and often desecrating something sacred they may hold for someone else. It's morally repugnant and abominable, especially to impose some sort of penalty on them. And yet, this moral law God has supposedly written in my heart is in direct conflict with the "moral" laws he has written in the Bible that homosexuality is immoral:

* Genesis 19:1-9 (as it relates to it)
* Leviticus 18:22
* Leviticus 18:29
* Leviticus 20:13
* Romans 1:26-32
* 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

I'm supposed to feel that it is wicked that my sister, a loving mother of a beautiful daughter and an all around gregarious person, is some sort of immoral deviant or scourge because she is naturally attracted to females? Morally reprehensible.

Subjugation of Women
What is there to say here that I have not said before? Women are not my equals; I am their equal. Women are just as capable as men and they are born with the same inherent rights: life, liberty, and property. Misogyny is deplorable in all its forms. And the woman's place? The woman's place is any where she damn well pleases. The man's place is to treat her as the person she is. That's what's written in my heart. I wince -- literally -- any time I hear some "good" Christian talking about the role of women or women "pretending to be men." And yet, this moral law God has supposedly written in my heart is in direct conflict with the "moral" laws he has written in the Bible that women are inferior to men and/or property:

* Genesis 3:16
* Genesis 19:8
* Exodus 21:7-8
* Numbers 31:15-19
* Deuteronomy 22:20-24
* 1 Corinthians 11:3
* Ephesians 5:22-24
* 1 Timothy 2:11-12
* 1 Peter 3:1

Vile commandments and "morals." Paine was right when he described the so-called teachings of the Bible to be more the word of a demon than of a god. I was going to go on into shellfish, treatment of children, rape, taking a day off, but this is about all the scripture from the "good" book that I can stomach in one evening. I once was truly horrified by what the Bible taught, but even the cruel wickedness of the Bible I have become desensitized to.


So, from all of this, the question is: Why write these things in my heart, and then write something entirely opposite in the Bible? Why God? Did you plan on me being an atheist and, therefore, decided to make it so that I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't? Are you just trying to cover all your bases to ensure that I'm going to Hell? Either my conscience is wrong or the Bible is false. I choose the option that doesn't allow me to enslave, hate, and subjugate: my conscience.

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