I was just looking for an example of what sort of things you find today that are possible candidates for future condemnation.
I haven't the foggiest idea. It is impossible to know today what the moral standards will be in a few hundred years. It is reasonable to assume, however that they will change. They have always changed, throughout history, why should they stop changing now?
What sort of religion do you think people will have in 2000 years, if people are still around? Do you think that it will resemble, in any way, what you believe today? I'm sure that you think that your beliefs are eternal, but don't you think the followers of Zeus, Ra, and Odin thought the same thing, in their day?
No, No, Yes and No, respectively. Treating Human beings, (created in the image of God) with disrespect and unjustified malice was, and is, wrong.
Why, then, did good churchgoing Christians keep slaves and burn witches, and why did they see no conflict between their beliefs and these actions? Did God tell them something different than what he's telling you? Remember, if you were living in those societies, you would not have the moral standards that you have today. Those standards did not yet exist. Are you really so confident that if you had been alive then, your beliefs would be so different from those of everyone around you?
Regarding the Old Testament, you are seriously mis-characterizing what it teaches
How? Has some scholar discovered that the words which have always been translated as "smite" and "slay" actually meant "hug" and "kiss"? If your local religious intermediary told you to slay the unbelievers and grab their land, would you do it? If you are an old testament believer, you'd better.
Rather they refuse to stop using selective, "absolute" statements about right and wrong
When did I do that?
Your utopian ideas about why we all just can't get along are as naive as they are unrealistic.
We all just can't get along because we all have very different ideas about what is wrong and what is right. This problem is greatly complicated by the fact that so many of us believe that our opinions about what is wrong and what is right are not merely our opinions, but some sort of absolute truths. Naturally, when two people disagree on what is wrong and what is right, and both believe that they possess absolute truth, inadmissible of error, there's going to be trouble.
I think that people have to work together, compare their ideas on right and wrong, be reasonable and flexible, and work out compromises that most of them can live with. I know that's hard, and I know we've done a piss-poor job of it in the past, but there have been major improvements in the last few centuries, and there is hope that the improvement will continue.
You, on the other hand, seem to believe that you know what is right and right and what is wrong, and that what you believe reflects absolute truth, and that therefore everybody ought to stop believing what they believe and start believing what you believe.
Which of us is closer to fascism?
God is alive and well thank-you very much
I don't doubt that God is alive and well, in your imagination. I'm just not much interested in letting your imagination dictate the rules by which I will live. |
