The Greatest Speech Ever Made

[Clavin12]

Okay HitchcockGreen, where DO you get your morals?

[Josiah]

why do potentially great discussions ALWAYS devolve into arguments around here? seriously, it's not even worth jumping into now...

[HitchcockGreen]

Okay HitchcockGreen, where DO you get your morals?

From experience and from an underlying sense of what is right and wrong.
You can't tell me that you, yourself, need religion to tell you murder, theft and rape are wrong?

[Clavin12]

Okay HitchcockGreen, where DO you get your morals?

From experience and from an underlying sense of what is right and wrong.
You can't tell me that you, yourself, need religion to tell you murder, theft and rape are wrong?

If, by religion you mean a book with a set of rules, then no. But I do need to have been created by an intelligent designer. If I was merely evolved from lifeless matter I would not have said underlying sense of right and wrong.

Christianity should not be about rules. It should be about a relationship between you and God.

[HitchcockGreen]

But I do need to have been created by an intelligent designer. If I was merely evolved from lifeless matter I would not have said underlying sense of right and wrong.

So then by this statement you suggest that atheists do not have a sense of right or wrong?

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

[Red Spot]

Never heard this before, but it's quite inspiring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEG ... r_embedded#!

I find this one a bit better, if you want to count it as a speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5NAPZp2w-o

I almost want to start crying when hearing Chaplin, even if he is mostly correct, it isnt a 'passing age'. We tried communism and failed at it ...

[Clavin12]

But I do need to have been created by an intelligent designer. If I was merely evolved from lifeless matter I would not have said underlying sense of right and wrong.

So then by this statement you suggest that atheists do not have a sense of right or wrong?

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

No. By this I suggest that if there were indeed no God, then we would not have a sense of right and wrong. The very fact that atheists DO have a sense of right and wrong is contrary to their beliefs.

[HitchcockGreen]

No. By this I suggest that if there were indeed no God, then we would not have a sense of right and wrong. The very fact that atheists DO have a sense of right and wrong is contrary to their beliefs.

The error in your argument is that one can only derive a sense of right or wrong from God. Having a sense of right and wrong is not contrary to anything an atheist believes.
Interesting note on that atheists, for some time, held the #1 spot in most unliked groups in the U.S. There are a lot of crazy myths and strange beliefs about atheists in the U.S. and none of them true.

[Clavin12]

Okay HitchcockGreen, where DO you get your sense of right and wrong?

[HitchcockGreen]

See above.

All complex societies have social contracts for behaviour. This isn't limited to humans, animals do this as well.
A social species will have a much better chance at survival if they get along in a cooperative manner than they would if they constantly battled one another.

If I'm walking down a street and see a man beating on a woman, I don't need to consult with a higher authority or establish a relationship with an 'intelligent designer' or deity to determine if that is good or bad.
On a very base level this is intuitively wrong to me.

[TheJamsh]

Being generally 'nice' and social probably creates a certain hormone somewhere that makes the mind and body feel good, and people get a buzz from it. Some people get the opposite.

I have no problem with the idea that we are created by a designer, In fact I believe it 100%. I still can't understand how everything just "came-to-be", even the amino acids that formed on our planet many billions of years ago. I just hate the idea of a religious institution of some kind.

In my head, When I die and pass on to the next world, whatever that may be, my impression of God is some entity ill shake hands with, have a chuckle about what killed me then pass on to peace.

Hell I don't know what I believe, quite honestly. I'd call myself Christian because from what mid-level knowledge I have about it, it fits my interpretation close enough and I could believe what happened in it.

[HitchcockGreen]

I still can't understand how everything just "came-to-be", even the amino acids that formed on our planet many billions of years ago..

Elements and material cast off from dying stars. It ends up in everything (including primordial earth) and becomes the base for the chemical compounds present here.

It's actually been simulated in a laboratory; the basic chemicals and atmospheric conditions were set into basically a sealed environment. Once electricity was fired through it amino acids began to form on their own.

[VSMIT]

Please stop this argument, Clavin12 and HitchcockGreen. It goes nowhere, has nothing to do with the topic at hand, and has the potential to create horrible disaster.

Last chance.

[Nielk1]

I feel like interjecting before the lock.

I believe in God, the concept, just as I believe in evolution. Morals are the creations of societies that help them stabilize. Societies are the relinquishment of various freedoms to live together and in a better situation.

I find it silly to think that there is no concept of God when the origin of the universe lacks a reason. I also find it silly to think of that concept in such a simple way as a single being. Conversely, God does not need to be the origin of everything.

Morals come from society, not from God. Laws from from Morals. Society comes from humanity. Humanity evolved here. Here was formed eons ago along with the rest of the solar system, that from the big bang which gave birth tot he universe. But what formed that?

For those that claim that God would not want us to do something, I say we were put here to learn and experiment.
For those who claim that God does not exist I say 'and why do we exist?'

In a universe where the mere observation of something in a quantum state can cause it to collapse into an absolute, where an intelligence is required, what caused our universe, the macro world, to be an absolute?

What there are out there are questions, not answered. To say unequivocally that one answer is the answer with no absolute evidence there of is nothing but foolish.

Petty arguments like the one preceding illustrate this.

Not every moral is from God, just like we cannot prove that every moral is not. Arguments about this are pointless; I would argue immoral themselves.

As I am at work, I cannot even approach that video. Barracuda fire-walled.

[HitchcockGreen]

Please stop this argument, Clavin12 and HitchcockGreen. It goes nowhere, has nothing to do with the topic at hand, and has the potential to create horrible disaster.

Last chance.

With due respect and apologies, I was not arguing here, simply a friendly debate.
I'll abandon the topic.