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Very good post from our precious moderator.

Moral standards and all ... are subjective.

However, one can argue that his standards don't clash well with God's standards, and that would still be a very valid reason to reject God.

Morality is subjective, but I don't think the same can be said about ethics. While ethics are not entirely objective, they come much closer to objectivity than morality.

Hitler's attempted genocide was objectively wrong. The same can be said about torturing and killing rape victims for the crime of having been victimized. Both was and is objectively unethical because the suffering of the victims, who didn't do anything to deserve such a cruel punishment, cannot be denied or argued away.

By the way, there is a good argument for the arbitrariness of a classification system based on genetic relationship. Did you know that there is an infectious disease with the DNA of a Beagle? It's called canine transmissible venereal sarcoma (CTVS) and is essentially a dog tumor that has developed the ability to spread through sexual contact. Its DNA is canid, and Beagles are closer related to this infectious tumor than they are to Great Danes (Cochran, 2001; Yang, 1996).

Things like that turn the entire zoological taxonomy upside down. I expected MCalavera to make this argument, but it seems that I have to do everything myself

never heard of that,

curoius, though it is only a tumor (a mutation) with another mutation so in reality i dont know how much it would turn upside down,
there are certainly flaws with (especially the older parts) taxonomy, some species feature twice, some are misclassified and others dont have a strict classification yet.

its a process, species are revised and reclassified and even the system itself is changing to accomodate for new information.

hahaha thanks

Last edited by hyperlexian on 21 Feb 2012, 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What about human sacrifice? This used to be generally condoned in many ancient cultures. Who's to say that it's objectively wrong?

That's what happens when I don't read enough books.

This is essentially murder. Since nobody would want to be killed without consent, I think we can all agree that it's unethical to murder a person (except perhaps to remove a dangerous individual from society, although I'm personally not very fond of capital punishment because guilt can rarely ever be proven beyond doubt). It might be a different matter if the victim was a volunteer, but religious brainwashing is also unethical imho.

Those cultures disagreed with you, though. Who's to say you're right and they're wrong for sacrificing their children to appease the angry gods?

Thats nonsense.
First of all- the phrase "on all fours" maybe an Anglosaxon translation of the original semitc words of the bible which may not even mention any numbers.

Second even if both the original and the english translations are something like the English phrase "on all fours" then its obviously just a figure of speech.

The idea is that insects are not upright bipeds like humans (or like birds or kangaroos) but walk horizontally on thier fore (as well as hind ) limbs with no limbs free ( just like most nonhuman mammals and most land vertibrates). The number of limbs ( the bible would have go into an exhaustive litiney of "all 100's like centipedes, and all 1000's like millipedes, and all ten's like pill bugs, etc) is not the point - its the manner of locomotion.

God, or the human authors of the bible, were addressing the people of that time in terms that made sense to them.

And the book was not intended to be a zoology textbook anyway.

The American Indians fo the Great Plains did not know of horses until the animal was introduced to them by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1600's. So it was not until the 17th centurey that those tribes needed a words in their languages for the new alien animal- that would soon become central to their way of life on the great plains.

So the modern words for "horse" in languages like Apache, Comanche, and Dakota, are all phrases that litereally mean things like "super dog", "wonder dog", or "magic dog" because the only beast of burden north american indians had before Columbus was the dog. Horses do what dogs do- only a zillion times better!- in the native american pov of that time.

An exception were the Arapaho who dubbed the new animal from Europe "the hornless elk". Zoologically speaking thats actually not far off the mark- horses are alot closer to elk than they are to canids.

So be grateful that God didnt choose the Cheyenne as "the Chosen People" because then the Bible wouldve classified horses as a breed of dog!

Well, good, that supports the lack of error in the original language if that's the case. Ruveyn might be able to help us out with the exact translation here.



Why is it obviously just a figure of speech?



Possible interpretation, but the question is whether it is supported well by the immediate context or not.



That's what I've been arguing. Are you really in disagreement with me here?

I generally don't come to the defense of the bible. But it popped into my head randomly, that there is a solution for why a circle could measure out to be 10 cubits across, and 30 cubits around.

So I looked into my hypothesis, and indeed, a cubit had a measuring stick, it was common to use a stick with markings on it to measure with.

Well, as you all likely know, a straight stick when used to measure a curve will not work perfectly. And if you were to take a 1 unit long stick, and measure out the circumference of a 10 unit diameter circle, you'd come out to pretty damn near 30 units, not 31, and not 31.415...but 30.

Discuss?