During the two men's night conversation on the Addison Walk in the grounds of Magdalen College, Tolkien showed Lewis how the two sides could be reconciled in the Gospel narratives. The Gospels had all the qualities of great human storytelling. But they portrayed a true event—God the storyteller entered his own story, in the flesh, and brought a joyous conclusion from a tragic situation. Suddenly Lewis could see that the nourishment he had always received from great myths and fantasy stories was a taste of that greatest, truest story—of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Love is literally a physiological set of chemical reactions which occur in the brain. Free will isn't a prerequisite for such reactions.

The good finding everlasting rest after death might be the most recurring theme in religion and mythology. In Star Wars, it is no different: those who strived for purity of heart and harmony with the Force are rewarded by the Force with neverending life. The wicked in the Dark Side, if the mythic elements are consistent, will be consigned to eternal contempt and damnation. These two exclusive destinies are part of another theme of many belief systems: that evil will one day be defeated for all time. That death and suffering and Hell, and all such change, will be brought to an end. There comes a hope, a promise even, for not change but everlasting renewing of all things. In the meantime, good fights evil because evil has staked a claim on the souls of men, and evil must be given time to makes its case, to justify its existence. This proceeds because good, to be known as good with justice, must be fair also. It must prove why evil is wrong, even though sometimes this isn't so much a problem for good as it is for us poor mortals in the way of this fairness being met out. But if good is right, and we know that it is, then even this suffering will end eventually.

And conversely, there are people who have a very HIGH opinion of the US's practices. Yes, there are disagreements within societies--that's where the wonderful, migraine-filled world of politics comes into play. So are you saying that people who have a different set of opinions on specific morals are just plain wrong? That they don't understand what the "true" global morals "should" be?

Which means its all already there, and to his perception (which is more acute then ours) all of existence is nothing nothing more then an unmoving picture.

Prophecy isn't compatible with Quantam Theory, because a prophecy will be inaccurate in the mass majority of all future universes.

Love is literally a physiological set of chemical reactions which occur in the brain. Free will isn't a prerequisite for such reactions.

Your real arguement of course is that love is not meaningful without free will, but what is meaning? Can even god have anything more then an opinion on that, that will stand up to the socratic method?

I'm saying that by the very fact that we can compare moral practices means that there must be a standard to which we compare it.

That still does not mean that such a standard is inherent in human nature or that it is obviously a result of God. It just means that there are correlations. The correlations could have a number of causes, the most obvious one to my mind being that some basic laws are necessary for civilization to survive. The laws that are common to all societies in the past and present really strike me more as common sense than anything. I don't think a deity is necessary to have common sense.

- Kef

Quantam

If you said god created us to choose to love him, you could bypass websters wall, but you would still be left with the conviction that god would have been better off leaving us as addicted to him, as we can be to narcotics? We would still have the choice to leave him, but why would we?

To summarize it, we were made to love God with all our heart, body, and mind.

And what is gods purpose if nothing made him? If we are merely extensions of him, then how can we ourselves have purpose?

Show me a definition that will back you up.

Agapē (written αγάπη in the Greek alphabet, and pronounced /aga̍pe/ or /a̍gape/), is one of several Greek words meaning love. The word has been used in different ways by a variety of contemporary and ancient sources, including Biblical authors. Many have thought that this word represents divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, thoughtful love.

Well, yes, the easiest thing for a theist to do is throw up his arms and say "god doesn't need to make sense to our limited puny human minds", but I don't think Eldiran want's to play it that way.

This whole debate for me of course, is a massive battle of hypotheticals, as gods existence is pretty much one of it's main axioms.

I'm saying that by the very fact that we can compare moral practices means that there must be a standard to which we compare it. Some of us may not be as attuned to it as others, so yes, some people are wrong; this isn't a matter opinions; beliefs aren't opinions. (My use of 'having a low opinion' was probably a bad choice in wording.)

Sorry in getting to this so late...but according to the dictionary, opinions ARE beliefs. But who are you to define what the global morals SHOULD be? Everyone on the planet thinks that they themselves have it all right somehow. In fact, they believe it so much without even often realizing it, that they carry the attitude that they know that they are right. Homophobes know that they are right. Monogamists know that they are right. Pagans know that they are right. Mormons know that they are right. Ghandi knew that he was right. Hitler knew that he was right. Ann Coulter knows that she's right. So...since you seem so sure that you're right in your moral beliefs (i.e. opinions), how do you really KNOW?

I still think that the only truly universal laws, if we consider both the past and present, are "don't kill people" and "don't steal stuff", and I still think they don't take a deity to understand.

But don't confuse morals for laws.

if humans have traits which are not results of evolution, and that is all you know, how could you possibly infer from that, that christianity is true? How could you even extrapolate from that, that a god exists?

But aren't laws generally based on ideas of morality? (Well, a lot of laws have purely administrative purposes, but I mean laws against common crime.)

I will repeat once again, that such morals can easily be correlated to perversion of natural instinct. This assertion is parallel to your earlier assertion that bad is nothing more then misconstrued good.

Evolution by the way, does not infer perfection. Flaws insubstantial enough to convey little effect on survival crop up all the time. Certain dolphin species living in very murky waters, are almost completely blind. Its been proven that human noses are genetically equivelent to those of cats, but are less potent due to a higher tendency towards genetic error in pertinent genes.

I don't really buy the notion of morality being an intrinsic human trait, anyway. If you come across a feral child (a child who has grown up in the wild, like Mowgli in The Jungle Book), what ideas of morality do you think he'll have? I doubt he could even grasp the very idea of "right" and "wrong".

Here's a little food for thought from a different angle: many animal species have a code of conduct. Some species mate for life, for example. To act outside this code of conduct would seem unnatural to them (but, depending on the species and act, such "violations" can occur). But are they moral creatures? Is a swan a saint and a cat a sinner? Kind of a silly question, isn't it? How are humans any different?

I'm not sure if you're insulting me or not. Either way, I'm trying to put forth my ideas and reason through any disagreements. Correct me if that's not what this forum is for.