“Phil, your last Comment is as silly as your first article I responded to.

You make fabulous pronouncements about things which you really know nothing about. Your latest is that ‘religion gave rise to the Ten Commandments’. I’ll deal with that momentarily.

Our first encounter occurred because you claimed that Aristotle thought the world was flat. That was patently false, and clearly demonstrated that you knew nothing about Aristotle even though you were happy to attribute to him false thoughts.

When I offered you a way out (because of your poor grammatical construction), by giving you the opportunity to retract, you claimed that you meant that the people at the time of Aristotle thought the world was flat. Of course, you could provide no evidence of that either – you simply throw out these factually ridiculous statements without ever checking anything. I demonstrated that you were wrong about that as well.

In between then and now, you have made so many similar gaffs, and arguments that don’t even meet the fundamental requirements of logical argument, that I decided to refrain from correcting you – until the verbiage you produced in response to this and my Palin argument.

Now let me return to your latest gaff – that religion gave rise to the Ten Commandments. That statement simply demonstrates that you haven’t even read the first two books of the Scriptures, let alone understood them.
Before the Ten Commandments, there was only the Jewish People, not the Jewish religion. The Jewish religion rests squarely on The LAW (derived from the Ten Commandments). So how on earth can you claim that the ‘religion’ preceded the basis of the religion’?

Phil, all this simply demonstrates that you base everything you say, and all your arguments, on assuming that your opinion of this or that must render it true – from Aristotle, to your latest ridiculous statement about the Ten Commandments. Your ‘philosophy’ is simply ‘because Phil ‘thinks’ this or that, it must be true’.

With that, I hope this is the last time I will have to deal with your fantasies!”

I trust that deals with your last Comment.

Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com

All I can say in response to all this “verbiage” is that von Schiller grossly underestimated the “struggle” which the god’s face.

Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com

The interesting thing to all of us about your original essay, as well as the vitriol of your responses to those who dared disagree with your dictates about conservatism, is the thin-skinned nature of your debate. You cannot accept any questioning of your position without taking it as a personal attack, and you can’t respond to any specific challenges other than to dismiss them with blanket statements.

If you want to put your ideas out for discussion, don’t be afraid to debate them. I’ve had two people (Jim Carmine and Raymond Ingles) formally debate my ideas about a UMC. I didn’t tell Jim he was a phony conservative, or belittle Raymond’s religious beliefs to dismiss his objections. Rather, I went point by point through their objections in an adult manner. We may still disagree about certain points, but the debate has allowed each of us to fully clarify our views on this matter. And from that clarity a lot of good conversation has taken place.

This kind of debate isn’t possible when someone makes categorical value judgments about our belief systems and refuses to engage in debate about the objections raised to your theories. So save the sanctimony for someone who cares, because all it does is invite the ridicule you’ve richly deserved.

I have just been a little busy chaining women to the kitchen sink, “barefoot and pregnant”, for having the audacity to “sit when they pee instead of stand”. [Quotes courtesy of Philip Ellis Jackson]

It’s what we more “primitive” folk here in Europe do.

Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com

Please accept my apologies: I stand corrected on your religious affiliation. Which was nothing more than a side thought anyway – the actual point, which you outrightly refused to acknowledge or address, was the seeming moral contradiction of supporting abortion for certain babies conceived under particular circumstances. A point that becomes more and more relevant as you continually insist that there is a universal morality, divorced from any particular religion. If it is universally immoral to kill “fetuses”, “babies”, “tissue masses”, whatever your preferred terminology is (and why else would there be any reason for preventing abortion in the first place?), it should be immoral regardless of the circumstances surrounding the way in which the fetus/baby/tissue mass was originally created. This point is not meant to sidetrack from your original topic (which I guess was – HEY YOU INSANE FEMINIST PUSSIFIED HOMOSEXUAL WACKBAGS, YOU’RE HYSTERICAL), but reflects on your assessment of Sarah Palin as “mindless” for supporting the universal application of a (universal) moral principle (that it is wrong to kill fetuses/babies/tissue masses). It illustrates the thinking present throughout the entire article that “Sarah Palin is a woman; Sarah Palin works; therefore Sarah Palin is not a conservative; therefore Sarah Palin is wrong; therefore Sarah Palin is not a conservative”. To “prove” this “logic” you plugged in two policy positions – support for low taxes and lack of support for abortion. Problem is, both positions you picked are pretty typical mainline conservative positions, and one of them relates directly to your argument that morality is universal! In order to believe that a support for low taxes or a lack of support for abortion is not conservative, one must already have accepted the premise that Sarah Palin is not a conservative, and therefore no position that Sarah Palin supports can be conservative. This is so egregious an example of the “begging the question” logical fallacy that it could almost have come from a definition of the term in a critical thinking textbook.

I can certainly understand why you would not want to address my actual comment, and instead focus the discussion on trivialities like your denominational affiliation, Joan of Arc, the Ten Commandments (my Bible must be missing pages or something – I missed the one that commanded women not to involve themselves in politics or leadership while they have children), the Thatcher family, and the sexual and philosophical orientation of those who disagree with you. It should hardly come as a surprise when one logical fallacy follows another (for those keeping track, that would be the “red herring” and “ad hominem” to follow up the “begging the question”). But, as I’ll note for a third and final time, it still isn’t a substitute for an actual argument. If at some point in the future you come up with an actual argument, don’t hesitate to post it – this is a group that respects intellectually honest and logically consistent debate… on those rare occasions when we actually see it :)

And no, it does not tell us completely what that perfect morality is. That’s for each and every one of us to determine for ourselves. All the Ten Commandments informs us of are the goals. The journey is ours alone.

I really dislike being informed what that destination is, and that I am failing it. I KNOW I am failing it. That’s the Human condition.

It’s the telling me I am imperfect that’s a problem to me, because usually those telling me this are themselves imperfect; but they have convinced themselves that they, and only they, “know” the proper path to that perfection.

Leaving aside the question of (a) whether God only speaks directly to Jews and no one else (after all Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and other religions weren’t there when the tablets were created), and (b) whether all translations of Hebrew are 100% accurate (culturally as well as literally), and (c) why God would directly talk to Moses but then allow confusion about such matters as “thou shall not kill” vs. “thou shall not murder” — after all, if these are words literally spoken by God, there should be no debate), might it be something simple as recognizing that religion is man’s way to connect with God, and not God’s imposition of morality on man?

My view is (as expressed above) is that a God-imposed morality, which occurs by way of man’s attempt to directly access God’s mind, is by definition imperfect. Even if we accept that some religious teaching are divinely inspired, divine inspiration is not the same thing as totally, completely, unmitigatedly correct. Thus the phrase “divinely inspired” instead of simply “divine.”

However, when God gives us a common moral code directly at the moment of conception it requires no human intervention to transport this code, other than the simple act of conception. Thus a God-instilled morality possesses none of these problems.

Discussing God and the nature of God-given morality is not the same thing as discussing one religion’s understanding of God, and the tenets and rules they create to express those beliefs. Religion may reflect the basic concepts of morality, as well as urge individuals to make proper moral choices, but it does not provide the content of that morality any more than society, culture, or an individual does. What men offer as moral principles in keeping with the tenets of their faith is not the same thing as a God-given universal moral code.

Agree or disagree with my proposition, but don’t insult our collective intelligence by summarizing the above as “Did God get it wrong with the Ten Commandments?” If that’s the only way Joseph is able to grasp the concept of God and religion, then there’s not really much more to discuss.