response 67 of 121:

Feb 15 19:31 UTC 2006

Re #48: First, I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth. If a
proposition is true, then its inverse is false. (In other words, I am most
certainly *not* a relativist.) Second, I believe in God because I've met him
and I know him (in a certain small, very limited way). And by "God" in that
last sentence I mean the God that Christians worship -- I'm not going to waste
disk space and inflame tempers by listing titles. I have since demonstrated to
my satisfaction the truth of the testable parts of the Christian confession.

Re #49: I don't know where you got that impression.
Christ most certainly did *not* reject the Old Testament; Matthew 5:17-18 (in
the NIV translation) records him as saying, "Do not think that I have come to
abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill
them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest
letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law
until everything is accomplished."

Loving one's neighbor and believing in God's vengeance are not mutually
exclusive. 

Re #61: Christians -- Catholics and Protestants, at least -- all believe that
they are local "chapters" of a larger organization that is metaphysically
called "the Body of Christ", and that while the other denominations may be
wrong where they differ, they can still be Christians [saved, etc.]. In
addition, there's a body of literature (in the sense of "a mass of hisotorical
textual information") that all agree to -- the first several ecumenical
councils, for example. Nearly all, if not all, Christian churches hold to the
Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.  They don't have the same sort of relationship
with other religions. 
You're right -- it is indeed possible to hold to multiple religions at once. It
is possible to be Jewish and Christian, and possibly others as well.

response 69 of 121:

Feb 15 21:35 UTC 2006

Fundamentalism believes in moral relativism when it's convenient for it to
do so, you just have to describe moral relativism in fundamentalist language
by using phrases like "human misunderstanding of God's will" or that the
"hard heart of man" could not accept the position of God.  Such arguments
are usually employed when discussing things which most of us would regard as
universally immoral but which the Bible explicitly condones (e.g. slavery,
murdering the innocent, genocide, etc.)

So, the language is different from that of moral relativism, but the
result is not.  Everyone is a relativist, but some are more relative
than others. :)

response 71 of 121:

Feb 16 00:15 UTC 2006

By that definition nobody is a relativist, which doesn't make for a very
useful model.  I'd say relativists as we're talking about here claim that
humans understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of
their historical and cultural context.  For example, when a biblical
literalist tries to explain that it was OK for the Israelites to kill
all of the Canaanites in a brutal genocidal slaughter, but it's not OK
to commit genocidal slaughter today because things are different, he is
being a relativist.

response 73 of 121:

Feb 16 00:51 UTC 2006

Re #71: And by that definition nearly everyone is a relativist, which means
you've turned a perfectly good word into a meaningless one.

response 75 of 121:

Feb 16 01:54 UTC 2006

A relativist believes either that there is no such thing as a universal (i.e.,
applying-to-everyone) truth or that there is no such thing as a universal
religious truth.  Believing in absolute truth does not mean that one believes
that every truth is universal. And I don't know where you jumped from
"religious belief" to actions.

I am against slavery *as practiced in the "modern" era*, human-designed
genocide, human [burnt-offering] sacrifice [because God doesn't want it], and a
whole host of other practices, some of which I think are henious enough for
governments to punish harshly, and some of which are on the order of suicide by
some gradual means -- that is, it's their choice, and if I can't talk them out
of it, they may receive a worse punishment for it than any human government
could devise.

response 77 of 121:

Feb 16 06:33 UTC 2006

Re #70: Jon says "I would say that "God exists" is an absolute truth", but
an "absolute truth" would have to be acknowledged by all rational persons.
"God exists" is at best a hypothesis held by some people, such as Jon. No 
matter how fervently he "believes" this, it remains soley a hypothesis
without foundation, based solely in what I think he would call "faith", a
personal feeling.  

Jon, please answer my question, "Could you name some other "absolute
truths" that are not definitions that we make up, and how you determine
that they are "absolute truths"?, without citing your personal hypotheses.

response 79 of 121:

Feb 16 21:30 UTC 2006

re #78
"slightly socially lower"?
Did you miss the part where humans were put in last will and testaments
alongside butterknives and quilt collections cuz they were ONLY property?
Slavery was not a lowest rung.  It was a dehumanization.  Your Jesus guy was
a decendent of such abuse.  You're missing the whole point of Exodus, d00d.

response 81 of 121:

Feb 16 21:38 UTC 2006

It was the gross national product of the Phillipinnes for decades and more
than half the times it were the parents selling off their own teenage
daughters.  You couldn't find a better example of a completely desperate
society.

response 83 of 121:

Feb 17 01:47 UTC 2006

Define "feable".

Like I said, something can be true in all circumstances even if everyone
believed it to be false. Truth does not depend on human belief, verification,
demonstration, or logical support -- and all of those can be found in abundance
for falsehoods, too.

By the way, what does "feable" mean?

Absolute truths are not figments of *anyone's* imagination; they are truths
whether anyone believes them or not. Whether any particular statement is
absolutely true or not is open to debate, of course, but if a statement is
absolutely true it should be believed because it is true.

response 85 of 121:

Feb 17 08:03 UTC 2006

Right, feable = feeble misspelled.

Re #83: so, lets have an example of an "absolute truth" that is NOT just
a belief, and how you establish the absolutness of said "truth".

response 87 of 121:

Feb 17 12:06 UTC 2006

Re #85: I highly doubt that I could name anything that is an absolute truth
that you would admit to even being true -- but *that has nothing to do* with
its truth value or the absoluteness of that value.

Re #86: No. I only mentioned my belief in absolute truth to forestall the
objection of "that may be true for you, but how can you say it's true for
people who don't believe that?" The status of any particular proposition may be
debated.

response 89 of 121:

Feb 17 17:01 UTC 2006

is that right, klg?