Sri Lanka hotel bombings! Almost 200 dead so far

Because you are an Arkansas school teacher and your praxis scores are faked I will explain the simple thing you do not seem to understand about the reps. They have different meanings. So if you just want to insult someone you should use the GFY one, where as if you disagree with someone and think they are wrong then you use the disagree one. If you are not actually disagreeing with a person and are just looking to insult them do not use disagree as it is not what you mean.

Now back to playing with your balls mr. Assistant gym coach.

Morality comes from the existence of sentient life in the universe. If there are or have been intelligent life in the universe, then it stands to reason that they have pondered a lot of the same philosophical questions we have and eventually came to the same conclusions we have, thus morality is universal and has always existed.

Pathetic.

agree that the average muslim has no obligation to denounce the terrorists because the muslim world is a very widespread & diverse religion. If islam only had a few million followers and all their extremists came from one country? Then sure, there might very well be huge red flag staring the world in the face. But with Islam being a "world wide" religion followed by people of many different cultures why should an Uzbekistani sheep farmer get wrapped around the axle over this any more than any other person of any religion?

In other words it's a given that everyone - except perhaps a terrorist - would denounce terrorism!

Empathy, we instinctively know that other humans feel pain and have the urge to not hurt others because we don’t want to be hurt ourselves. Seeing others in pain actually hurts us and raises stress levels. It seems to be common in mammals, rats will try to comfort and help other rats that are trapped.

Religion is probably how primitive man tried to explain why they felt that way. Every single religion seemed to have come up with nearly identical rules too, Christianity and Judaism were far from the first.

I find it interesting that a lot of countries that aren’t majority Muslims that deal with domestic terrorism from radicalized groups also limit their freedom and treat them like shit. While America, until recently, has given them freedom like any other religion and we haven’t seen anything on the scale of other countries. There are still bigoted assholes but the government wasn’t cracking down on them. American Muslims are generally considered Americans and work, go to school, relax, chill at Starbucks and spend time with their families like all of us and mixed in with the rest of us.

Maybe treating people like shit is a good way to piss them off and cause teenagers who are by default crazy as shit join some group and fuck things up.

Yep.

The god of rats didn’t give these rats rules.

They are adorable though.

yes morality as a concept might be universal, but if what is considered "moral" behavior can't be agreed upon by everyone on this planet, it probably won't be agreed upon by people from other planets.

Sure, still doesn’t mean it isn’t universal.

Limiting suffering seems to be universal. Other planets would be interesting, but in order to have a stable population and society they'd need some of the same basic morals. Unless they produce a lot of offspring and competition requires a lot of killing. Like a lot of intelligent insect colonies sharing a world and confined spaces.

We probably would do good to avoid them and find the Vulcans.

empathy, for it's nature is to be just.

Why?

Not an answer.

Evidently you have never seen Ben or Willard.

Society falls apart without some guidelines. People organize themselves around a set of rules and ethics, regardless of religion. Would you say the Eskimos are immoral? I think they know its not a good idea to steal or kill from your neighbor. Things like hatred, greed, jealousy, and falsehood tend to disrupt societies, large and small.

We could be talking about a tribe, a village, a city, a kingdom, or an empire. They all have a basic set of principles. We may disagree with some of their morals. They may disagree with ours. The Aztecs sacrificed people to their gods. We may consider that immoral, but that was part of their religion. If various religions can disagree on morals... and if non religious societies can have their own morals... then morality need not be derived from some divine book.

I do agree that threats of eternal damnation or threats of reincarnating into a roach could put some force behind those moral pronouncements, especially for the simpler folk. A person inclined to rape, kill, steal regardless of the greater good may think twice if he believes Odin, Zeus, Allah, Yahweh, Krishna, Cthulhu, Karma or whoever will punish them for it. But that's not strictly necessary.

I'm agnostic, yet I consider myself a moral person. How is that possible?

Ben just wanted to be loved.

This is true.

It comes from us.

If morals change from place to place and person to person then there is no moral standard. This is why we need God to provide it.

Not by me. Not for a second. Their "religion" is completely antithetical to the American value system and way of life. Not even close.

You seem to have a poor grasp of the english language. You should probably study up because you seem to have no comprehension of the meaning of what you read. You are not even in the ballpark and if this is your level of understanding you are not able to contribute to the conversation.

Shame there are so many Gods with so many different standards.

It is possible, you know, to take responsibility for your own standards of behaviour without dreaming up a supernatural being to palm it off to.

Neither is yours.

Shame for you, not for me. Moral standards set by humans (you) are not absolute and can change at any time. Meaning that you actually have no moral standard.

America wouldn't exist if not for Christianity. At least not as a force for goodness. Get over it.

How do you figure that out?

I'm looking at the constitution right now, not one mention of God, Jesus, Christ or Christianity.

Not a single one, anywhere. Lots of stuff about equality, tolerance, dignity and human reason though.

Some of the colonies were set up by Puritans, some were not, but the interesting thing is the nations they split from were all explicitly Christian, so maybe that's what you mean. There wouldn't be an America if there hadn't been people fleeing religious persecution by Christians.

The Spanish Inquisition had absolute moral standards. The IRA were rather fond of blowing people up in the name of Christianity. Killed far more over here than Muslims ever have in fact. How many have been killed by armies fighting in the name of God? Surely history has lost count by now. Same applies to all the many others Gods out there, pretty much every iteration of religion has different moral standards to each other and to their earlier iterations, which to choose when they all end up committing genocide?

It's almost as though if you really care you have to think for yourself, because religion can be (and has been) used to justify pretty much anything. Ever heard of a little thing called prima nocta? There's questions over whether it was ever actually written into law, but the church supported it sure enough.

Ethics shouldn't be set in stone, they should be questioned, they should be reconsidered as the world changes because what held a thousand years ago might not today. Good thing too, not sure you'd enjoy feudalism not matter how much the church endorsed it in the name of God. Nor the witch trials, still got problems with peadophilia in the church though.

That's the problem, absolute moral standards don't allow us to learn, they don't expect us to take personal responsibility, they rely on the fantastical invention of a sky being of some sort and worst of all they leave no scope for us to improve. If the church still had the widespread control it did over morality we'd be still be living in the barbarism of centuries ago.

I just threw up a bit in the back of my mouth.

Slow down on the sacramental wine, it's basically vinegar.

which god? Five different religions will produce five gods who each religion claims is "the only god."
Focusing only on Christianity god provides one moral standard for god and a different moral standard for humans.
God says killing is bad, then floods the earth.
God says rape is bad, then commands armies consisting of his followers to rape the enemy army's women - and kill all their kids - and probably kick their dogs too while they are at it.
They have websites listing hundreds of bible contradictions addressing morality & behavior. Morality from a book written by mankind thusly comes from mankind. So I guess all humans recognize that certain ways to behave are better than other ways. Now whether these ways benefit society or individuals can vary with the situation and the individual.

Bottom line humans eventually evolved the mental capacity to understand the concept of morality so it's in nearly all of us. Obviously once we came up with the concept of god/religion dictating morality would be incorporated into the powers of god. So it's nothing supernatural but very much human.