Goood morning all on this good friday. *smiles* for everyone.
Today is a day when Christians should listen to Tony Campolo's message "Its friday, but Sunnnnnnnndays a comin" its awesome.
http://www.tonycampolo.org/messages.shtml take that link and look for the title among the messages.

MORGAN your question deserves far more than a 350 word answer, as does Luigi's supporting one. Let me at least say, that the War in Iraq is not a monolithic 'Christian' war. There are 2 sides to that coin, and please always remember that the regime they kicked out, was one where the sons of the dictator could randomly select anyone's wife or daughter and use her as a sex toy for as long as the whim attracted him. The idea that you can defeat a militarized monster with kid gloves does not need any further amplification for the idea to be seen as silly.
What you and Luigi are touching on, is the dichotomy and dilemna between to sections of scripture. "Love your enemies" and "The Emporer holds the sword to deter the evil doer" (Romans 13) One point addresses the Individual, the other, the State, which at the time was not Christian. Please also don't regard America as a "Christian" state. It is a secular state which includes a variety of Christians and they from various Traditions and emphases. There was a good Southpark episode a day or 2 ago, which illustrated the USA mentality generally, where they tend to Bomb first and ask questions later.
US generals and military assessors are not neccessarily Christian.
Perhaps we can appeal to 'Do for your brother as you would have him do for you' ? in that if WE were under the domination of a wanna be Saddam lookalike, would we not want someone to save us ? I sure would.
Overall, its not an easy subject, and I'm about out of words.
jdrmot@bigpond.net.au if anyone wants to follow up on this.
And please, no invitations to join the church of Satan, I've already had some of those.

Ringtail, here is a bandaid for your tail :)

Boaz - my tail is just fine thank you. Interesting how you threaten me physically "chomp" and "I'm going to carve you up" - what would Jesus do?
I think he would far more compassionate and understanding than U boaz.

George Bush jnr is a born again christian is he not?

There is good and bad amongst us all regardless of religious belief or lack thereof.

I do believe that formal religion is a great comfort for many - it provides a shield against the unknown, helps to make death a little less fearful. If it gets you through the night, fine. However, there are those of us who can face the unknown and we don't fear death nor do we need the crutch of religion.

Happy Holidays
:)

Thanks Boaz for demonstrating that Christians engage in 'moral relativism' when it suits them, just like everybody else. So are we to take it that it's OK to disregard the commandment "thou shall not kill" when we judge that the end justifies the means?

Does Christianity have any moral absolutes, or are they all as susceptible to subjective interpretation as this fundamental 'commandment' apparently is? In that case, what is it that distinguishes Christianity from any of the plethora of alternative moral codes, both secular and religious, that are available to us?

Morgan

Aslan wrote
So you don't see any problem with a paedophile gaining a richness of meaning from his experience of molesting a child if he can deal with it and go on enjoying molesting children?

While I do take a meta-ethical moral relativistic stance I still have to live within a society whose desires countermand these individuals desires so I don’t see a problem with them being punished from a social contract point of view.

Given your ‘God’ allowed whole tribes to be slaughtered and the virgins given over as sex slaves I’d be more concerned about your ‘Gods’ moral compass than the paedophiles in ours.

Now your turn why is your ‘God’ and or evidence for it any different than the countless others?

Ringtail,

Yes I have read the link regarding sexual evolution. I not only read the Washington Post report but also the original papers in Nature. Did you? I doubt it because these reports dont demonstrate what I asked for.

They merely assert that X and Y chromosomes arose from one pair of autosomes. Female have two Xs; males have X and Y. The authors hypothesise that after X and Y seceded, mutations in genes on Y made it the male-determining chromosome, and the pair began to diverge. Over time Y disintegrated to a shadow of its former self. In turn, X developed a way to silence most of the genes on one of the two Xs in females, so that males and females would essentially have same dosage of gene products. Early in female development, cells randomly choose either the maternal or paternal X to be active X chromosome.

For one, this is a "just...so" story not empirical observation. They did not observe X and Y forming in this way - they have just asserted it.
Secondly, no new genetic information is created. The autosomes already contain all information. Y actually LOST information. X turns parts of itself on/off.
Thirdly, again this does not explain the origin of self-replicating organisms.

Morganzola,

The command you cite from Exodus 20:13 is from the almost 400 year old KJV. It is a poor translation by todays standards. Modern versions like NIV say “You shall not murder.” This is a better rendering of the underlying Hebrew word ratsah which means premeditated murder rather than “kill”. Without exception it refers to intentional, violent murder. It is never used to denote killing animals for food or killing in war. The command does not apply in cases of nighttime home invasion (Exodus 22:2). Nor does it apply to accidental killings or cases of manslaughter (Deut 19:5), or to execution of murderers by state (Gen 9:6).

Therefore this is not a global prohibition against all killing as you suppose, and so Christians are not guilty of moral relativism as you claim.

To Boaz: We are all taught morality, which is the rules of social behaviour, by the society into which we are born just as we are taught the language of that society. What is moral for one society can be different for another; there are no absolute, unchanging rules. For example it was not long ago when slavery was “normal” in the cotton and tobacco areas of the United States. We, in Australia now regard slavery as abhorrent, immoral. There are societies in which one man can marry many women. They don’t question its morality, we do.

If you care to put “egyptian book dead ten commandments” into Google’s search line you will find that our modern ten rules of morality were foreshadowed by Egyptian rules by more than a thousand years. These were in the form of confessions which had to be made before a panel of 12 judges (shades of apostles?) after death and passing through the underworld.

To Aslan: The Macquarie Dictionary definition of “evolution” is “1. any process of formation or growth; development:….”.

In my example you grew and developed. You did, indeed, evolve. Stars and the Earth have evolved. That’s why many scientists say evolution is a fact, it is undeniable. Darwin’s great contribution was to explain, with his Theory of Natural Selection, how the evolution of biological organisms, from the simplest worms to human beings, could come about. Astronomers and physicists try to explain how stars evolve from gas to solid bodies and finally massive destructive explosions. That process of evolution is a fact also.