Oh by the way, Travis, I just have to ask you something... I happened to glance over the thread "The Dark Side of Theism" and noticed a couple of things. Here is a quote from you, in reference to ISIS blowing up an infant for practice:

"Perhaps it would ruin my day, if it actually surprised me even a little, but it really doesn't. This type of behavior, for [ISIS], isn't really new. They have continuously proven themselves willing and despicable enough to kill infants and children, even their own, as they consider life to have little value; and thought even less ... They are impossible to reason with, and they do deplorable things because they believe despicable things, and nothing we can do will be able to raise these people to the basic moral level beyond a pack of rabid hyenas. Well, I should apologize to the hyenas, actually. They don't kill their children for no good reason, or kill thousands of other hyenas because they like the wrong fairy tale, even when they are rabid.

The sheer stupidity, immorality, and wonton hate of these people are enough to separate them from everything else on Earth. They are a cancer to be excised, a disease to be eradicated, and there is not enough that could ever be done that could redeem these people to the point that one could even consider them human."

I now quote you again, in reference to whether or not an absolute ruler would be wrong to murder your own child for pleasure, and if you would be wrong to murder a man for sheer pleasure. Your respective statements:

"No. There are no absolutes to trespass, though you may have trespassed on a social moral value, and be punished for it.

If I did not believe I was morally culpable for an act, and I couldn't be convinced, then not as far as I am concerned ... I know that it isn't satisfying to think of morality as a mental construct, but it is, it just happens to be shared socially."

Given that a sadistic murderer could not be considered objectively morally culpable, and that even if you murdered a man for the fun of it, you would not consider yourself morally culpable in an objective sense, how do you justify your outright condemnation of these people? Morality is a subjective construct that does not describe objective truths, correct? It seems the most we could say about ISIS is that we would view them as wrong, but in their own context, they are morally upright and not guilty of anything.

So am I to take your comments merely as the voice of your evolutionary and social context, or do you feel you have grounds to say that blowing up a baby to practice rigging more bombs is actually morally reprehensible? Is it really okay to eradicate a group of people from the earth because their subjective moral values differ from yours? On what basis?

"Because from the very start he supposedly created a situation where he either screwed up, or purposely screwed people over, depending on his level of foreknowledge."

Supposed by you... We have to speak of claims as they are actually made, not as we suppose them to be. The Biblical claim is that man screwed himself over, and God was willing to sacrifice His only beloved Son to restore him. While God takes credit for creating beings of agency, He in no way takes credit for creating their sinful choices. He DOES take credit for using those sinful choices for His glory, however. The foreknowledge of evil, according to Scripture, does not constitute the creation of evil, and the allowance of its consequences for a time does not mean that God is blind to it. People often ask how a loving, all-wise God could allow evil. Well, Biblically, we know that He does not. In the end, there is no more evil, and everybody gets justice. However, He extends grace to us in that He does not immediately destroy us, but offers us time and opportunity to repent. But don't think He has no anger against the evil in His universe.

"Character and principles is all a man really has, a man that has abandoned those has abandoned himself."

The remarkable thing about discussions like these is that I continually find that most people think very Biblically, whether they like to believe it or not. You're on the right track. Christ said, "If any man will come after me, he must deny himself." And again, "whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." The acknowledgement that your character is deeply flawed and needs to be changed, as unthinkable as it may seem to you, is the first step in regaining a proper life before our Creator. You've got to give it up. It's like an anchor that's going to pull you down and drown you.

"Only if you believe in god, and believe it some sort of standard against which to measure yourself. Otherwise, not really."

No argument here per se, but as a point of comparison, this basically comes across to me like, "Jumping off of buildings is only scary if you believe in gravity. Otherwise, not really." Your non-belief in God's displeasure does not make it go away, and does not remove my responsibility to warn you about it.

"It seems to me, more generally, that you are more of a relaxed and comfortable Christian. You do not appear to be all that loud about your beliefs, but you do have a great deal of conviction in them, so seem less angry or defensive than many of the theists I tend to meet here. You worldview isn't exactly uncommon among Christians, but you appear to be a little more comfortable with it than many that I have met."

I do feel extremely comfortable in my beliefs. They fit life like a glove. The Scriptures teach me a lot about life and people, including you, and they haven't steered me down a path I regret at all. I have nothing really to be unsettled about.

"You believe the god of the bible created the universe, and is active in it. You believe that this god created morality, and endowed man with it. You believe that your god is all good, and all knowing, but allows evil for the sake of agency. I don't know a great deal beyond that, other than your beliefs about gods properties, as we haven't really covered a lot beyond physics and morality."

I would just add that I believe God is Himself moral, and so morality has always sort of existed within His knowledge of Himself. He then endowed man with the capacity to understand moral duties, and to be culpable for not carrying them out. Hopefully we can fill in the other pertinent details as we go.

As for your worldview, it appears that you're an unusual mix of materialist, agnostic, and something else. You believe that the origins of the universe cannot be fully known, but that the universe is wholly material, brought about by natural processes, and that life evolved. However, as brains became more complex, consciousness entered the picture, which you describe as "something beyond pure chemistry." Some kind of entity that is not governed by strict processes or laws. I'm still unsure about what precisely this means, or how you propose this entity came to exist in an otherwise material world. You believe there is no objective morality unless you're condemning theists for blowing up babies, in which case they are definitively in the wrong. I would agree with this last part. You believe that history is moving toward no specific purpose, and that the meaning of life and our duties within it are unknowable or nonexistent. I hope that's an accurate picture so far...

By the way, I hope you saw my comment about your statements in "The Dark Side of Theism." That's something I'm really wondering about...

Sure thing. It's difficult to give specific standards without first laying the underlying principle. The Bible says that the beginning of right living comes from a reverence for God (Prov. 1:7). Practically, this would mean a few things. First, it means we recognize Him as the Creator and thus the Owner of all things (which in turn is a recognition that He has the right to tell us what to do). It also means recognizing God's immense power and control, and realizing that anything good we have comes from Him. So if He did something we didn't necessarily like, there isn't much we can do about it, and we have to simply look to Him for success. It lastly means that we reckon our moral compass by His Word. We consider life from the idea that He is right in what He does and says, whereas we are often not, and we thus strive to order our lives after His commandments. Thankfully, we are also promised that God desires that our lives be joyful and productive, so following Him is not only a reasonable service to our Creator, but, because of His goodness, it is for our benefit as well. When you take these into consideration, you've got the foundation for ethical behavior. Often, people assume that in order to initiate a right relationship with God, they have to do good to other people. While you certainly have to be nice to people, a right relationship with God is Biblically prior to right living between people. This relationship with God is based on thankfulness for His goodness, and humility in light of His authority and power.

While I could go off and list a bunch of specific commandments, Christ told us that there is one commandment from which the others derive: love your neighbor as yourself. And the driving impetus behind this command is the intrinsic worth of all human life as the image of God. If God has made man in His image, then I cannot violate that image, out of love for the God that every person was made to reflect. Also, because God loves people, and I love God, I too will love people in the way that He loves them.

This means it is inherently wrong to murder, because that is a severe violation of the image of God. It is wrong to steal, because God has provided everything that we possess, and to take things from someone else would be a violation of His wise provision for that person. Also, it is right to be zealous for holiness among people, because I reverence the holy God that we were made to reflect. So I speak against sin and plead for repentance and restoration. I long to see God's image fully restored in others, and wish them to enjoy the benefits of the life God offers them.

If I could summarize my ethical system into a succinct phrase, I would say this: Recognize that each man bears the image of God, and out of an affectionate devotion and reverence to the God who made them, seek to maintain that image in all people.

That would preclude certain actions, and prescribe others. If you want more specifics, I'd be happy to go into them.

I'm becoming more convinced that being an atheist is a simple two-step process of having your cake and eating it too. I hope to explain that more while I comment on your objections...

First, I readily concede that the Midianite tragedy is shocking. I don't necessarily want to apologize for it, since God offers no apology for His actions, and presumably doesn't owe us any apologies; but I admit that it is a difficult event to grapple with. The most I can offer you is a framework for understanding these things.

The Bible tells us that God saw the wickedness of the Canaanites, and waited for centuries for them to repent, but eventually they reached the breaking point. So He sent destruction upon them. The violent reaction against their wickedness is indeed astonishing. They are pillaged, some are taken captive, and their cities and possessions are burnt. There is not much explanation, but from it we learn that God is furiously opposed to sin in His world, to the point of destroying civilizations. He was determined to dwell with His people, and He could not dwell in a land filled with evil. Now the New Testament furnishes us with deeper understanding of God's full intentions. After Christ had perfected the law of God and took His violent wrath upon Himself as a sacrifice for sins, God revealed that His will was now for us to "mortify" (or put to death) the sin within our hearts. We are likewise told to "take captive" any thoughts that would draw us away from Him. God's intentions are still the holiness of His people, but He now offers us a way to destroy the evil internally rather than externally. One day, He will put everything right, and we will have to answer for our sins. We will either bear them ourselves, as the Canaanites did, or we will have Christ to plead for us. Somebody is put to violent death for sin, us or Christ. So far from apologizing for the destruction of Canaan, the Bible offers us a means of escaping the same fate, through the merciful gift of God.

And THIS where I become confused with your questions. I literally asked someone here if there was any way to judge one system of morality against another, even if we were talking about the society surrounding the holocaust. The reply was a no. And yet here, you've said that we have evolved past the woeful moral ignorance of the past. How would you know that, if there is no standard by which to judge systems?

Further, if you look above, you will find a quotation that I literally pulled straight from the comments of someone here, who got a bunch of "agrees" for his statement. He said that anyone who rigs bombs to babies in the name of their god ought to be eradicated from the earth. What I don't understand is that when God actually steps in to remove a civilization that for centuries had been throwing children into fire to gain favors from their gods, you accuse Him of wrongdoing and cruelty. But when I tell you that God is also merciful and waits for evil men to repent, you accuse Him of allowing far too much evil in the world and not being just. And when I tell you further that God has made a way to both destroy evil and save men, you accuse Him of foolishness.

Step 1. Have cake.
Step 2. Eat it too.

You haven't addressed the issue at all. Whether or not you can stomach my beliefs is completely tangential to what we're discussing. The issue is that on the one hand you say you would be happy to take out people who murder children in the name of their god, but then you hear a story about how people who murdered children in the name of their god were taken out, and you call it horrifying. This is called an inconsistency. I would at least understand you if you would make your claims uniform. Like you could claim that God's punishment of evil makes Him cruel. Or you could claim that His allowance of evil makes Him unjust. But you cannot have it both ways.