If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

And it's this complete moral vacuity of secularism, coupled with the inherent badness that it releases in humanity, that makes secular regimes so extraordinarily deadly -- deadly statistically far beyond anything the "religious" world has ever produced. (Again, check the stats!)

I'm not morally vacuous. I'm not inherently bad.

[Harbal]

Secularism itself has no ethics. Now, that's not to say that many secular people don't arbitrarily choose to behave ethically, because they're nice folks

You could say there's more credit in that than doing it out of the fear of God.

[Harbal]

I'm not morally vacuous. I'm not inherently bad.

Neither am I, Belinda, I think his statistics are being massaged somewhat.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can wrote:

And it's this complete moral vacuity of secularism, coupled with the inherent badness that it releases in humanity, that makes secular regimes so extraordinarily deadly -- deadly statistically far beyond anything the "religious" world has ever produced. (Again, check the stats!)

I'm not morally vacuous. I'm not inherently bad.

Well, I hate quoting myself, but in this case, I need to:

I wrote: "Now, I imagine that will irritate you, and you'll probably start telling me about all the wonderful secular people you know."

I was wrong. Your immediate reaction was to tell me how wonderful YOU are.

However, none of that is really on point, either way.The question is "WHY are you that way," and your answer, if it's on point, has to be something like, "Because secularism tells me X."

Then, and only then, does your response amount to something relevant to the question. Otherwise you've just misunderstood the problem and gone ad hominem using yourself.

[Belinda]

Immanuel, I'm not morally vacuous or inherently bad.

[Harbal]

Well, I hate quoting myself,

One would never have guessed, given the frequency with which you do it.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel, I'm not morally vacuous or inherently bad.

You'll need to read it a third time: I said secularism is vacuous, not that you are.

[thedoc]

Some people seem to have difficulty differentiating between telling something 'to' another person and saying something 'about' another person. This seems to be causing some problems on this thread.

[Belinda]

Doc, I align my beliefs with those of secular people.

[Immanuel Can]

Doc, I align my beliefs with those of secular people.

Do you mean that you align your beliefs with the (inconsistent) beliefs of people who happen to imagine themselves as "secularists," even though they live like Christians or Jews or whatever, or that you actually draw on Secularism itself for your moral information?

It's clearly not the latter, because Secularism itself has -- and professes -- no moral information.

[Belinda]

Immanuel what I understand about religion comes from several sources. Church of Scotland. Standard schooling. Arts undergraduate. Philosophies of Spinoza and a few other important mostly modern philosophers . Humanism. Unitarianism. Personal relations, friends, and acquaintances from assorted ethnic backgrounds but predominantly white European liberals.

[thedoc]

Doc, I align my beliefs with those of secular people.

IC wasn't posting about your beliefs and I was commenting on your responses to his posts. IC stated that secularism had no basis for morality, he was not accusing you of being morally vacuous, and you responded by asserting that you were not morally vacuous. So what does your alignment of beliefs have to do with anything being discussed.

[Greta]

Secularism itself has no ethics. Now, that's not to say that many secular people don't arbitrarily choose to behave ethically, because they're nice folks and because they have vestiges of some other morality in their minds. But secularism itself, by definition, offers them no basis for any morality at all. Secularism itself is morally agnostic.

So secular regimes don't have to "ignore secular ethics." There's actually nothing substantial there to ignore.

Your claim, then, is that human morality commenced two thousand years ago in the Middle East and that the Greek philosophers had no influence on any western society's ethical frameworks.

[thedoc]

Secularism itself has no ethics. Now, that's not to say that many secular people don't arbitrarily choose to behave ethically, because they're nice folks and because they have vestiges of some other morality in their minds. But secularism itself, by definition, offers them no basis for any morality at all. Secularism itself is morally agnostic.

So secular regimes don't have to "ignore secular ethics." There's actually nothing substantial there to ignore.

Your claim, then, is that human morality commenced two thousand years ago in the Middle East and that the Greek philosophers had no influence on any western society's ethical frameworks.

As usual You are totally misconstruing what IC has posted, I don't understand why it is so difficult for anyone to just read what is posted, without bringing their own biases and prejudices into it. IC made no claim about human morality except in relation to secularism, and he has stated that secularism has none.

[Harbal]

IC made no claim about human morality except in relation to secularism, and he has stated that secularism has none.

The only thing you can say about secularism is that it is living with an absence of religion. That is the only thing you can infer from it.