I've Moved!

Atheist Morality is now West Coast Atheist at Wordpress. Stop on by and feel free to comment over there!

27 April, 2011

The Voice of God

No one can agree on everything in the Bible. It's why there are 30,000 different sects and denominations in Christianity, all claiming have the "correct" interpretation of the Holy Book. There are obviously things in there people today wouldn't agree with. The majority (I say majority, because who knows, maybe some do) of Christians aren't going to sell all of their possessions to join the church. They aren't going to stone Gay people to death. They don't sell their daughters into slavery. If someone today was telling them God commanded them to sacrifice their child on an alter, even the most fundamentalist Christians would call the police, and yet Abraham is revered for nearly killing his own son in the name of God.

So obviously some other morality is involved in Christian lives if it's so clear that they aren't getting all their values and ethical judgements from the Bible. How, then, do they know what is God and what is their own imaginings? I'm not going to take any "feeling" or "just knowing what's right" as an answer, because crazy-ass people who drown their children also had a "feeling" God was telling them it was "right." I also won't accept the "Well, if what you think God is telling you to do is abominable, it probably isn't God," because obviously, Abraham would have been 5150'd by those standards.

I'm asking for someone to draw out a definitive, clear standard for determining whether or not a voice, feeling, intuition-whatever- is actually from God and not an internal delusion. If you can do it without relying on the examples above, by all means. If not, what, then, is the difference between a secular morality  and conscience inspired solely by the divine?

No comments:

Post a Comment