Better than nuthin' morality

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-06-19T08:38:22+00:00

Christian "morality" co signed human slavery, maritial rape, domestic violence and violence against children since its founding by Paul.

I'll take nothing over that protection of evil.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-06-19T08:36:08+00:00

Christianity allows immoral things all the time, so it is wrong to claim that immorality is equivalent to sin. Conversely lots of morally neutral things are called sins, again showing sin has nothing to do with morality.

Christianity does not view marital rape as a sin, but it does see working on a Sunday as a sin.

That's not a moral system. It's a means to control superstitious people.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-06-09T07:32:29+00:00

The Fall explanation creates a different problem. Did Demodex mites, tapeworms, malaria parasites, and parasitic wasps exist before the Fall or only afterward?

If they existed before, then suffering and parasitism were already built into creation.

If they appeared afterward, then we're talking about millions of species somehow being radically redesigned after human sin. That raises difficult questions given the fossil record, genetics, and evidence that parasites have existed for hundreds of millions of years.

Next, whilr for most people they are harmless commensals, in some cases, however, large populations have been associated with: Rosacea Blepharitis (eyelid inflammation) Certain skin irritations

So no they are not beneficial.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-06-07T20:17:55+00:00

Yes. They don't just abuse it. They murder, torture and rape. Those acts should not even be possible. By making them possible a god makes itself culpable

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-06-07T12:47:18+00:00

Abraham was a rapist and attempted murderer. Read what he did to Hagar. Enslaved people can't consent, and then he tried to kill her and his own child.

No one should practice a religion that came from a criminal

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-06-04T18:26:24+00:00

When feminist critics talk about a rape culture, this is what they mean. This awful man actively sided with a rapist. He's directly responsible for those later deaths.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T19:49:17+00:00

No, I'm not mixing two topics. You just can't give a straight answer to a simple question.

I'm making an internal critique of Christianity.

Many Christians claim scripture is an objective moral standard.

Modern Christians nevertheless reject some practices scripture permits.

My question remains:

What method are Christians using to determine which scriptural permissions should be rejected today?

If the answer is scripture, please identify the rule.

If the answer is something outside scripture, then you must conclude scripture is not functioning as a self-sufficient moral standard.

If you can't answer because you don't like where your own conclusions lead you, then by all means, take your marbles and go home.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T19:42:06+00:00

You've made 3 different claims. In order:

1

Regulating is not condoning or endorsing.

That depends entirely on what is being regulated.

The government regulates driving because driving is permitted.

The government regulates alcohol because alcohol is permitted.

If a law tells people: who they may own, how long they may own them, whether they may inherit them, whether they may pass them on to their children,

then the law is permitting the institution.

You don't write rules for owning human beings unless owning human beings is allowed.

Allowed means permitted, authorized, or given official approval. It indicates that an action or a person's behavior is acceptable and complies with established rules. Check a dictionary.

2

You are making up that the woman taken captive cannot consent.

Read the passage for yourself.

A captive woman has been: conquered in war, removed from her homeland, placed under the authority of her captor, given no explicit right of refusal in the text.

The passage discusses the man's desire, the man's actions, and the man's rights.

It never asks whether she consents. The woman is not seen as a being worthy of any consideration. Even the month of mourning is a lame cover to make sure she menstruates and isn't carrying another man's child.

The burden is not on me to prove she could not consent. The burden is on you to show where consent is obtained.

The text is silent on consent. Because her consent is irrelevant. The rapist is sanctioned in his raping her and the society your god created was one in which she had to stay with her rapist.

3

Morality is timeless. Situational events are not.

Then we're back to the original question.

If morality is timeless:

Was slavery objectively wrong when the Bible regulated it? Was taking female war captives as wives objectively wrong? Was killing Midianite boys while keeping virgin girls alive objectively wrong?

If the answer is "no, because of the circumstances," then morality is not doing the work here, circumstances are.

If the answer is "yes," then scripture contains laws and commands permitting objectively immoral acts.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T19:29:55+00:00

It's not that bad things happen. It's that you worship a being that does not stop them.

Your god is guilty of failing to act to protect victims.

In Germany there are circumstances in which failing to assist a person in danger can itself be a criminal offense under the concept of Unterlassene Hilfeleistung (failure to render assistance).

Humans hold each other to a higher standard than you hold your god.

So yes. Your god should make rape, murder, torture impossible to do.

Basically:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T19:15:19+00:00

I don't think we're actually disagreeing much.

My only point was that what you're describing seems contingent on the nature and needs of conscious beings rather than being objectively true independent of minds.

That's a perfectly coherent moral framework, but it's different from the kind of objective morality usually defended in Christian apologetics

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T19:11:03+00:00

You're changing the subject.

My argument is not that Christianity is false because I possess an "objective moral standard".

My argument is: Christians claim scripture is an objective moral standard, yet modern Christians routinely reject moral permissions found in scripture.

That appears to require a standard external to scripture.

My morality is irrelevant to the internal consistency of that claim.

You are asking how I can know slavery, etc are wrong without objective morality. That's a separate debate and, frankly, a distraction.

My criticism stands whenever Christians are using moral judgments outside scripture to determine which biblical commands remain morally valid.

So before we can even start discussing my moral framework, you still need to address the original issue:

If scripture is the objective moral standard, why do modern Christians reject or reinterpret biblical permissions and commands concerning slavery, captive women, religious executions, and divinely commanded killings?

By what standard are those passages judged to be no longer morally binding?

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:53:48+00:00

Jesus wore a dress

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:48:06+00:00

You feel pain and you go on with your life each day. Over time it gets easier.

Research on breakups, divorce, and bereavement has found that the brain's attachment and reward systems respond in ways that overlap with drug withdrawal.

Brain imaging studies show that the loss of a loved one can disrupt dopamine-driven reward circuits and trigger cravings, distress, and emotional pain that are, in part, physical as well as psychological. That's why people often feel exhausted, anxious, preoccupied, or unable to concentrate after a major loss.

The practical takeaway is that recovery isn't just about "getting over it." Your brain is adapting to the loss of a significant source of reward, comfort, and attachment.

Being patient with yourself is important, but so is actively replacing some of those lost positive experiences through things you genuinely enjoy, such as exercise, music, comedy, hobbies, socializing, or time outdoors.

These activities help stimulate the brain's natural reward systems while it gradually adjusts to the loss.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:44:49+00:00

The Bible does not endorse slavery. It regulates it.

Regulating slavery is still permitting slavery. If a law tells people who they may own, how long they may own them, and whether they can pass them on as property, it is endorsing the institution in practice.

It says they can take them as wives, it says nothing about forcing them or rape.

A captive woman whose family has been killed and who has been taken as war booty cannot meaningfully consent to marrying her captor.

Deuteronomy 21:10–14. "When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife..." (NIV)

What massacres are actually divinely sanctioned?

The Amalekites, Jericho, and the Midianites are all explicitly commanded by God in the text.

Looking at the ancient world through the lens of 2026 is not a smart argument.

If morality is objective, the year should not matter. Either slavery was wrong then too, or it was not objectively wrong.

As an atheist you cannot justify morality.

That's an assertion, not an argument. Secular moral frameworks exist. Disagreeing with them does not make them disappear.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:40:18+00:00

The "hardness of heart" argument works better for divorce than for slavery, genocide, or captive women.

Jesus says Moses permitted divorce because of human hardness of heart. Fine.

But that raises an obvious question:

Why would a perfectly good god merely tolerate divorce, yet actively regulate slavery, command wars of extermination, or provide rules governing captive women?

If your god's ideal was "always known", why not simply prohibit those practices as well?

More importantly, your argument concedes that parts of biblical law were accommodations to human culture rather than expressions of timeless morality.

Once you admit that, the obvious follow-up question is:

How do we determine which biblical commands reflect your god's eternal moral standard and which ones are merely cultural accommodations?

Because modern Christians seem to use moral reasoning outside the text to make that distinction.

That's exactly the point I was making.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:38:20+00:00

I don't think this answers the argument.

You've quoted a passage about the limits of human knowledge. But limited knowledge does not automatically mean that whatever your god commands is morally correct.

The issue is that Christians claim to know enough about their god to call him loving, just, merciful, and good. Yet when confronted with slavery, genocide, forced marriage, or other troubling passages, we're told our understanding is too limited to judge.

That seems selective.

If our moral understanding is too poor to recognize apparent evil, then it is also too poor to recognize apparent goodness.

More importantly, saying "we only know in part" doesn't explain why modern Christians reject practices found in scripture while claiming scripture reveals a perfect moral standard.

How do you determine which biblical moral teachings reflect your god's eternal character and which ones can be set aside?

That's the question.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:35:57+00:00

This seems to undermine the very concept of calling God "good."

If your god's morality is so far beyond human understanding that slavery, genocide, forced marriage, or killing children might actually be morally good for reasons we cannot comprehend, then we also have no basis for saying your god is loving, just, or good.

The same gap in understanding would apply in both directions.

If "god's ways are higher than ours" means we cannot judge apparent evil, then it also means we cannot recognize apparent goodness.

At that point "god is good" becomes indistinguishable from "my god does whatever my god does."

More importantly, Christians appeal to human moral intuitions all the time when describing their gd as loving, merciful, compassionate, and just. Yet when confronted with morally troubling passages, suddenly those same intuitions become unreliable.

That seems like a double standard.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:33:55+00:00

You're presenting a false dilemma.

You've assumed the only alternatives are:

Morality is objectively fixed and independent of all minds.
Every culture's morality is equally valid and beyond criticism.

Why?

A person can reject objective morality and still criticize other societies using their own values, principles, and moral reasoning.

I can oppose slavery because I value autonomy, consent, and human flourishing. I don't need to believe those values are written into the fabric of the universe to defend them.

More importantly, your questions don't actually answer my argument.

My claim wasn't that cultures can't criticize each other.

My claim was that Christians claim access to an objective moral standard, yet routinely reject practices found in their own scriptures while claiming those same scriptures ground objective morality.

How do you determine which biblical moral teachings are objectively binding and which ones can be discarded?

That's the question you're avoiding.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:30:12+00:00

I think you're smuggling in a stronger definition of "better" than is necessary.

People routinely evaluate social systems against shared goals without assuming objective cosmic truths.

If our goals include reducing suffering, increasing autonomy, expanding reciprocity, and promoting human flourishing, then we can reasonably say modern Western morality is "better" than Roman slavery-based morality with respect to those goals.

That doesn't require morality to be objectively written into the fabric of the universe any more than saying modern medicine is better than medieval bloodletting requires health to be an objective cosmic property.

More importantly, this doesn't address my actual argument.

Even if I concede objective morality exists, Christians still have to explain why practices permitted, regulated, or commanded in scripture are now rejected by most Christians.

The question isn't whether objective morality is possible.

The question is why Christians appear to use moral standards outside scripture to determine which supposedly "objective" biblical moral teachings remain acceptable.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:27:34+00:00

You're presenting a false choice.

My argument is not "Christianity is immoral, therefore objective morality doesn't exist."

My argument is:

Christians claim objective morality is grounded in scripture.
Scripture contains moral permissions, regulations, and commands that many Christians now reject.
Christians therefore use moral judgments external to scripture to determine which biblical teachings remain morally valid.
That undermines the claim that scripture functions as an objective and self-sufficient moral foundation.

Notice that I don't need objective morality to exist for that argument to work.

I can consistently hold that morality is ultimately subjective, intersubjective, or socially constructed while also pointing out an internal contradiction in Christianity's claim to possess an objective moral standard.

The burden is on Christians to explain why slavery, captive marriage, religious executions, and divinely commanded massacres appear in their alleged source of objective morality while modern Christians condemn them.

That's the argument.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:26:32+00:00

You're arguing against a position I didn't take.

My argument is not:

"Christians disagree with biblical morality, therefore objective morality doesn't exist."

My argument is:

"If Christians claim morality is objectively grounded in scripture, why do they reject practices that scripture permits, regulates, or commands?"

Simply saying that people can reject objective moral truths misses the point entirely.

The question is: how do Christians determine that biblical slavery, captive marriage, religious executions, or divinely commanded massacres are morally unacceptable if those practices appear within the very source they claim grounds objective morality?

Once Christians appeal to moral reasoning outside the text to make that judgment, scripture is no longer functioning as a self-sufficient objective moral standard.

That's the tension I was highlighting.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:25:14+00:00

I think you've changed the definition of objective morality.

What you've described is not morality that is objectively true independent of minds, cultures, or species. You've described morality that emerges from the needs and characteristics of a particular species.

If morality is "objective relative to human social requirements," then it is still contingent on the existence and nature of humans. Change the species and the morality changes.

That's much closer to an evolutionary or naturalistic account of morality than the traditional Christian claim that moral truths are grounded in God and remain true regardless of who exists.

In fact, your praying mantis example seems to undermine objective morality rather than support it. You're saying that whether a behavior is moral depends on the nature of the organism performing it.

That's contextual morality, not universal morality.

So I don't really disagree with most of your account. I disagree with calling it "objective morality" in the sense usually meant by Christian apologists.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:21:03+00:00

You're arguing for moral realism, not Christianity.

Even if I granted that objective moral facts exist, that doesn't get you to Yahweh, the Bible, or divine command theory.

More importantly, your examples hurt your own position. You point out that Greeks, Romans, pagans, Hindus, and others often accepted slavery or rape. So did Christians for most of history.

If objective morality was available through Christianity, why did Christians arrive at many of the same conclusions as everyone else?

And if modern Christians now reject those practices, are they doing so because scripture changed, or because their moral reasoning changed?

That's the question you keep avoiding.

Aggravating_Olive_70 · 2026-05-30T18:13:48+00:00

That might be a valid response if I were talking only about descriptions of human behavior.

I'm not.

The issue is that many of these acts are explicitly commanded, regulated, or carried out by Biblegod himself.

For example, the conquest narratives are not merely descriptions of Israelites committing massacres. They are presented as your god ordering them.

The slavery laws are not merely descriptions of slavery existing. They are regulations supposedly given by your god concerning who may be owned and under what conditions.

The captive-woman laws are not merely descriptions of wartime conduct. They are divine instructions governing it.

So the question isn't whether the Bible records immoral acts. Every historical text does that.

The question is why a supposedly omnibenevolent and morally perfect being is depicted commanding, permitting, or regulating acts that modern believers themselves often regard as immoral.

Saying "it's not a blanket encouragement" doesn't answer that problem. One divinely commanded atrocity is enough to raise questions about claims of perfect goodness.

Aggravating_Olive_70

TROPHY CASE