Without God, without Christ and His Holy Spirit, "morality" and a sense of right and wrong is unknowable and unattainable.
Am I saying that people who have faith in God have an unquestioned compass of right and wrong and flawless morality? Absolutely not. We're still flawed human beings with a sinful nature.
Am I saying that people who lack faith in God have no ability to act in the "right" way occasionally, or even frequently? Absolutely not.
What I am saying is that without God and His word as your guiding compass, you are wholly separate from the light and can only continue to fumble in the darkness. Sometimes you will make right and just choices. Often times you will not, thinking that you in fact are. But without Him, you are building your worldly sense of morality, justice and "rightness" on a fundamentally flawed foundation.
It cannot and will not co-exist alongside the perfect and complete righteousness of God. No amount of wailing or gnashing of teeth will change this.
See, I like to believe personally (And I've heard this sect of Christianity before) But that God was a logical being, and he created us to be logical creatures who use Logic and reasoning to decide things. His words in turn, are logical and reasonable. While a lot of the lessons in the bible have what I consider "set dressing" when you remove all of the set dressing, and get down to brass tacks, they're pretty logical and reasonable ways to live. Now obviously I'm not a dyed in the wool perfect christian, but I try to follow his light and I try to live up to his moral standard.
Set dressing is cultural context. Add to that linguistic difficulties, ironing those out not in English but getting a better gist of what the original language is trying to convey which can be done without having to learn the actual language
and you've got most of Scriptural understanding. This is why it's good to caution against reading the whole Bible through for the first time by beginning in Genesis and just going to the end. If you start in John and go to the end you encounter a much more confined "set dressing," and at least the language functions somewhat like our own.
I don't think morality is unknowable and unattainable without God. I believe that morals and ethics came before - If I live in a community where I make tools and my neighbor grows wheat, I know that by killing my neighbor I can't barter for wheat any longer, for example. I think that morals and ethics, in their basic principles, are based in selfishness/survival in communities. I think religion drastically helped spread the basics of morals, however I don't believe religion is the basis.
Without God, without Christ and His Holy Spirit, "morality" and a sense of right and wrong is unknowable and unattainable.
Am I saying that people who have faith in God have an unquestioned compass of right and wrong and flawless morality? Absolutely not. We're still flawed human beings with a sinful nature.
Am I saying that people who lack faith in God have no ability to act in the "right" way occasionally, or even frequently? Absolutely not.
What I am saying is that without God and His word as your guiding compass, you are wholly separate from the light and can only continue to fumble in the darkness. Sometimes you will make right and just choices. Often times you will not, thinking that you in fact are. But without Him, you are building your worldly sense of morality, justice and "rightness" on a fundamentally flawed foundation.
It cannot and will not co-exist alongside the perfect and complete righteousness of God. No amount of wailing or gnashing of teeth will change this.
See, I like to believe personally (And I've heard this sect of Christianity before) But that God was a logical being, and he created us to be logical creatures who use Logic and reasoning to decide things. His words in turn, are logical and reasonable. While a lot of the lessons in the bible have what I consider "set dressing" when you remove all of the set dressing, and get down to brass tacks, they're pretty logical and reasonable ways to live. Now obviously I'm not a dyed in the wool perfect christian, but I try to follow his light and I try to live up to his moral standard.
Set dressing is cultural context. Add to that linguistic difficulties, ironing those out not in English but getting a better gist of what the original language is trying to convey which can be done without having to learn the actual language
and you've got most of Scriptural understanding. This is why it's good to caution against reading the whole Bible through for the first time by beginning in Genesis and just going to the end. If you start in John and go to the end you encounter a much more confined "set dressing," and at least the language functions somewhat like our own.
From there, the OT is much more approachable.
I don't think morality is unknowable and unattainable without God. I believe that morals and ethics came before - If I live in a community where I make tools and my neighbor grows wheat, I know that by killing my neighbor I can't barter for wheat any longer, for example. I think that morals and ethics, in their basic principles, are based in selfishness/survival in communities. I think religion drastically helped spread the basics of morals, however I don't believe religion is the basis.
I don't believe religion is the basis, either.
Quite the opposite, I think religion is a bane to morality much of the time.
I believe that Jesus is the basis to morality. Pure and simple.