So according to runner, we can all be dreadful sinners, wreak havoc and pain on all while we are on earth and all we have to do is seek salvation and we will be alright Jack.

I often wonder at those men who collaborated to write the Bible back then, possibly well intentioned to get people to think about selflessness, compassion etc, are now turning in their graves at what they created and probably never intended to be eternal - merely a short term means to an end.

Philo,

"...social conscience and judgment based in love are a divine construct." - P.

Can you develop? How does one demonstrate that underlying factors framing the construct are supermundane and that these factors achieve convergent validity, while there is discriminant validity, diminishing the mundane, pointing away from the natural, proving the factors studied are not natural, e.g., sociability "not" having value as a species specific response to ecology: Instead other-than-Earthly factors lead to the divine?

Philo:

I am scrupulous about facts. I quoted Anglican Bishop Spong who has recognised the bigotry inherent in Christianity. The website: http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/bishopspongon_theTerribleTexts.aspx

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." Years later, when in power, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.

Three years later he informed General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church, and the church never left him. Great literature was banned, but Mein Kampf never appeared on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.

Many Christians have recognised the link. "CONSTANTINE'S SWORD The Church and the Jews: A History." by John Carroll tells of the centuries of Christian persecution of the Jews.

The Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, Darmstadt, Germany; is a community founded in 1947 by Mother Basilea Schlink in atonement for Christian antisemitism.

Her words:

"Instead of being united in love for God, we as Christians have sinned grievously against God's covenant people. Two thousand years of Church history have left a trail of blood: contempt, hatred, hostility, persecution and wholesale slaughter.

Time and again the Jewish people have suffered at the hands of Christians. They have been humiliated, deprived of their rights, accused of murdering God and blamed for every imaginable calamity. During the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms and, most horrific of all, the Holocaust, millions of Jews have suffered flagrant injustice.

At the beginning of the third millennium we can only confess this terrible guilt in deep shame before God and the Jewish people, deploring the involvement of many Christians. We seek His forgiveness for all the anguish that Israel, His chosen people, have suffered. By the grace of God we resolve to turn from these ways."

Whistler:

I didn't ask where you got the idea that God is a human invention. I asked where you got the idea that secular humanism accepts the mythology of a creator god as a repository of knowledge?

Seriously, Oliver, did you expect Philo to wade through that crap and respond in kind, or did you think Philo would say "gee, this bloke knows more big words than I do, I guess I'd better shut up".
I think it's safe to assume anyone who believes in a creator is going to think "social conscience and judgment based in love are a divine construct".
After all, they believe they themselves are a divine construct, so how can any of their thoughts not be?

Whistler, you given me a thought.

>>i got the idea it is reasonable
to assume God is a human invention
from Aborigines, david f.<<

Your posts are short ones
And neatly laid out. Do you
think in haiku too?

It could quite improve
The impact of argument
If we did the same

No more rambling thoughts
Just pithy and to the point
Easier to read.

Discipline is all.
Train our minds to a new path
Short and sweet is best.

Graham, up to you.
No more need to count our words
Only print haiku.

(And please don't flame me
for omitting Spring or Fall
This is OLO)

God will be perfectly just to send lawbreakers to hell of which we all are. What amazes me that He is so merciful and loving that He has provided us with a way of escape. The self righteousness of people who can't see their need of salvation amazes me. Most are bound by lust, greed and self righteousness. Paul accurately describes mans heart in the days we live in. He describes people will be lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, lovers of self, disobedient to parents, lovers of money, ungrateful, blasphemers.

The only reason people can't see the love and mercy of God is that they can't see the rottenness of their own heart.The rejection of the gospel has nothing to do with being intellectual or open minded but everything to do with self righteousness.