moralist

I understand why you see it that way, Tony. It was only after years of meditation that I became aware of the istantaneous spontaneous silent flash of moral insight from Conscience which precedes thought processing and the consequential emoting to processed thought. It's fine if you want to lump everything together for we each still arrive at the same basic moral conclusions. It's shared moral values which span all doctrinal chasms. In my view, thought, as well as the consequent emotion which always arrives in its wake, are the resultant reactions to what we had already seen in the moment. Greg

...and to return to the original question of this thread. How do you know murder is wrong? Because you can see by virtue of your God given Conscience that it is wrong... ...regardless of what your thoughts and emotions tell you. Greg

Tony, something else happens before the process you just described. It is seeing... an instantaneous knowing... a flash of moral insight which precedes intellectual and emotional activity. Whoever loyally acts upon that moral direction will never do anything wrong. Now how can you tell you are going to do wrong? By watching your thoughts and emotions. Watch how your devious intellect tries to convice you with clever deceitful words that the wrong you are doing is right. Also watch your emotions. Every evil act on this earth is always preceded by the angry offended hateful envious covetous jealous emotional blame... ...the unjust accusation of others. This is why in ancient religious writings, Satan is referred to as "The Accuser". Every evil act is always preceded by an angry false accusation of others. Is a mistake to derive the direction of your actions from intellect and emotion. They cannot be relied upon to give you accurate moral intel. Only what you first see before they even begin to appear can be trusted to be the truth. Acting on what you see is a learned behavior... as is learning to trust in what you see. You can always think and feel about it later. As you experience the just and deserved consequences of acting on what you see, you will learn how to love what is morally right by your own direct personal experience. I cannot fully describe what this way of being spins into motion. It's enough to say that you can literally live in Paradise on this Earth... ...even exactly the way it is right now. Greg

Well put, Brant. The law serves morality. Bob doesn't know that... and he never will. Greg

Scary, isn't he, Tony? And even worse, there are tens of millions of people who were indoctrinated by the state to become just like Bob is. He would open the valve in a Nazi gas chamber if his god, the state, said it was legal to do so. His blind worship of bureaucracy uber alles is a direct result of his parasitic relationship to it. Greg

Take us as an example, Tony. Neither of us could possibly pose any threat to each other because we share the same basic moral values. I have no problem with you being an atheist because we both love what's right... and that love trumps any doctrine... religious or secular. This is how any religious secular or political ideological abyss is bridged... ...simply by sharing the same values. Greg

Bingo. You have just succinctly described why Europe is so easily being absorbed by Islam. It's morally weak. Greg

Indeed, Tony... ...and coincedently, the Constiution agrees by acknowledging the truth that those precedent rights do NOT come from government. Greg

The New Left is a secular political religion which is antithetical to the Judeo Christian values upon which America (and Western civilization) was founded... ...which lends truth to the statement that people who don't believe in God don't believe in nothing... they'll believe anything. Greg

Yes. If there is no God (objective reality) there can only be subjective opinions on morality... none of which has any more weight than any another. This gives rise to the religious belief in the secular lie that all cultures are morally equivalent, and that no culture is any better than any other. Many libertines seek the illusion of freedom from moral accountability, and God is an impediment to their quest which must be negated from their darkened intellects. The easiest way to accomplish this self deceit is to create a ludicrous false characature of God and then to negate it. The only problem with this is that the objective reality of moral accountability is not dependent upon people's subjective opinions about it Morality is just like electricity. Touch something you shouldn't and you'll damn well get a rightly deserved shock... regardless of what your subjective opinions about electricity might happen to be. The objective reality of moral accountability through the just and deserved consequences of our actions is completely unaffected by our subjective opinions about it. Greg

Well, that's one solution, Michael. If there are no humans there's no morality because only humans are uniquely held morally accountabile for their actions. Greg

Bob, you're one of the biggest collectivists here. You'd be nothing without your big fat liberal socialist government bureaucracy taking care of you. Greg

God created objective reality, so both He and His creation are rational. The well ordered moral design of objective reality itself denotes sublime rationality. It takes a rational person to acknowledge that fact. Greg

1. Judeo Christian morality is the foundation of Western civilization. This indisputable fact alone validates it. 2. Excellent point. That is my view. God created objective reality. Rand agrees with objective reality. Both God and Rand's standard of moral behavior are similar because they are both morally rational. We are subjective beings who are held accountable to objective reality through the just and deserved consequences of our own actions. Greg

Definitely B, Jerry. The same God who created man as morally accountable for his behavior also created that standard of behavior to which he is held morally accountable. Greg

For you it is, Jerry. For me it isn't opinion. It's not my opinion that God said not to murder. It doesn't matter to me whether or not you believe God exists. All that matters to me is that you agree that it's evil to murder. Behavior is all that matters... not doctrine. It is mentioned five times in the Old Testament that murderers should be put to death. Their evil act rendered them undeserving to breathe air their victims would have breathed. This is known as moral justice... and it is perfectly rational. I agree with individual rights for everyone whose life is deserving of them. I do not agree with individual rights for Islamic fascists as their evil acts invalidate any claim to rights. Greg

Your statement supports the premise that if there is no God, morality all comes down to your own opinion, which you have just stated. I wouldn't even go so far as to say whether I think your opinion is right or wrong... because without God that's just another person's opinion of no greater or lesser weight than yours. Greg

Government is Bob's god because it gives him pension checks. Greg

What are your thoughts on this? What is your best argument to refute it?

There is an obvious overlap of the God and Rand circles... and the common area can be defined as behavioral. The end product of both God and Rand is doing what's morally right. I'm a behaviorist rather than a doctrinaire so I have no problem with loving both consistently. And as far as one being faith and the other being reason... both are reason as far as I'm concerned. Greg

There's 435 in the House and 100 in the Senate, so your 500 old white guys estimate holds true. I really love how Trump plays the media. He's an extraordinary man for an extraordinary time. Most people don't realize how close the US came to irreversible ruin from the liberal Democrats. So while Trump is a wild card... I say spin the wheel and throw the dice. Greg

My wife and I are preppers in that we keep in mind that all of the things we depend on to be there might not always be there. So we live as if we could lose those things at any moment by having alternative approaches to meet any contigency. This not only makes us appreciate the comforts of technology by not taking them for granted, it also gives us the self confidence that we already have ways to live without them. Any disruption we use for practice. The last one was when our electricity went out during a rain storm. We were totally comfortable warming up dinner on the wood stove and reading by kerosene lamps. You'll LOVE Idiocracy! It's so hilariouisly funny while being totally packed with insightful social commentary. This is the President... Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Hector Comacho. Greg

Bureaucrat.

I simply described why Bob craps on Trump. Trump is self motivated while Bob isn't. Failure hates success because the successful remind the failures that they're failures. Greg

Here Bob displays the bitterness of a loser who has never taken the personal initiative to do anything useful in his life... which only makes him fit for the womb of government bureaucratic contract employment as a trained button pushing monkey. So naturally he has antipathy for an accomplished self motivated individualist self made successful American Capitalist entrepreneur. Trump is everything Bob isn't... and that's why Trump gets scorn from an unproductive do-nothing collectivist failure. Greg