Adam or ape?

[Gob]

This illustration portrays the consequences of building your thinking on the Bible or on man's opinions. If Biblical history is true and all people are descendants of one man Adam, whom God created just a few thousand years ago, then this means that every person is accountable to the God of Creation. Because God created us, He owns us, and therefore has a right to set the rules. Because God is the absolute authority, it means He determines what is right and what is wrong.

But if you believe that life arose as a result of natural processes and that all humans are descendants of animals (and ultimately back to the first life that evolved in some primeval soup), then humans are accountable to no one but themselves. Thus people have a right to set their own rules about life (if they can get away with this in their society). In this system, all morality is relative—there are no absolutes (which in actuality is the one absolute which these people can hold!).

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/ar ... 010316.asp

[Scooter]

The idea that morality is not relative or situational in theocratic systems is absurd - every religious moral code of full of exceptions and circumstances that absolve or reduce culpability for otherwise immoral acts. Equally absurd is the notion that human-generated moral codes can be reduced to "anything goes" - most societies have managed pretty successfully to enforce a commonly held moral code, either through formal legal systems or through the pressure of informal social groups to which individuals belong. Has the person who wrote this actually studied any theology/sociology/anthropology?

[loCAtek]

That's how they want to see it: Black or White.

[Andrew D]

I'm with Scooter on this.

(There's a missing "is," but the point is plenty clear enough.)

[rubato]

"God created me"

"Adam in your past"

= Killing Jews is good and god loves you for it. If anyone differs from your conception of god you must kill them.

for 2,000 years.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

...or it could be that Man created God in his own image and likeness, and over a span of several thousand years developed a moral code based on observation and experience, but attributing it to the man-made "God."

And contemporary Man, whose figurative godfather is Darwin, decided that S/He could abandon those thousands of years of knowledge because - what the hell - there is no "god," and, hey, we're smarter now, right?

So it's just fine and dandy to copulate with whomever you want, to break your promises, to steal from insurance companies and the government, to ingest anything into your body that makes it feel better...and so on.

Take your pick.

[Grim Reaper]

...or it could be that Man created God in his own image and likeness, and over a span of several thousand years developed a moral code based on observation and experience, but attributing it to the man-made "God."

And contemporary Man, whose figurative godfather is Darwin, decided that S/He could abandon those thousands of years of knowledge because - what the hell - there is no "god," and, hey, we're smarter now, right?

So it's just fine and dandy to copulate with whomever you want, to break your promises, to steal from insurance companies and the government, to ingest anything into your body that makes it feel better...and so on.

Take your pick.

Or we can go with the non-strawman option where people choose to be moral because it's the right thing to do, not because an invisible sky-being is holding a big stick over your head if you screw up.

[loCAtek]

Well not an 'invisible sky-being', but your own karma, you generated yourself, FOR yourself. ...

[GrossDad]

...or it could be that Man created God in his own image and likeness, and over a span of several thousand years developed a moral code based on observation and experience, but attributing it to the man-made "God."

And contemporary Man, whose figurative godfather is Darwin, decided that S/He could abandon those thousands of years of knowledge because - what the hell - there is no "god," and, hey, we're smarter now, right?

So it's just fine and dandy to copulate with whomever you want, to break your promises, to steal from insurance companies and the government, to ingest anything into your body that makes it feel better...and so on.

Take your pick.

You mean, a moral code that calls for the stoning of gays, adulterers, Sabbath-breakers, and the like? And how many people do you think really subscribe to your list of "fine and dandy"--a list, I might add, that lumps some moral issues with others that, while they might have a moral dimension, are of an entirely different order?