Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Is it true? (Long Friday rant)

A personal moral compass is, by definition, PERSONAL.

But even if you are a self professed Christian who thinks your morals derive from the bible, you are still picking and choosing from a small portion of the Bible. Do any of the Christians present really believe it's acceptable to slaughter an entire town just so you can take all the virgin women for yourselves, or keep slaves, and beat those slaves so long as you don't beat them to death? Of course not, which means your own moral compasses transcends that of the Bible.

A true moral compass is routed in the understanding of how one's actions effect the states of well being, and suffering of others. This is why the vast majority of Christians are Cafeteria Christians who pick the good parts of the bible and ignore the bad.

Romans 5:18-19

"So then as through one man's (Adam) transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, The Law came in so that the transgression would increase;

The old 'Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven' defense. That marginalizes the damage that many 'Christians' do to the cause of Christianity. Nobody here is advocating that 'Christians' be perfect...but to give lip service to being a 'Christian' and then behaving like anything BUT a follower of Jesus...that is very different from the statement that there are "no perfect messengers". Simply put, the whole of Jesus' ministry on earth can be summed up in His two greatest commandments that were posted earlier. An abject refusal to strive toward those ends is very different from the 'no perfect Christians' defense.

Divorce Source, the 'reference' you listed...states they have "a passion for a better divorce". They help people get divorced, even online...they sale books and forms advising people how to get divorced. In other words...they derive their income off of people getting divorced. Just like a used car salesman would marginalize the faults of a junker sitting on his lot that he's trying to sale...companies that derive their income off of people getting divorced would marginalize the negative aspects of divorce and the damage that divorce causes.

antelope_sniper,



You are showing what happens when someone uses their own ideas for their moral compass. You either blindly follow liars or intelligently and purposefully distort the position of Christians by bringing up the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a history of the beginning of the world and Jewish history.

If you don't mind try to prove your point by using the Words of the Christ and His apostles, the founders of Christianity, to show Christians are picking and choosing.

Ephesians 2:20-22
"built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy [q]temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit."

With The Absolute Standard there is no contradiction.

You misunderstand the Bible sir.

You guys don't understand the idea of an Absolute Standard by which all standards can be compared.


Read the whole story. Noah used God's morality.

I could say mine is best but then Antelope_Sniper could say his is best, and you guys could say yours is best. No matter how much we each like our own philosophical position it is flawed by sin; whether we want to admit it or not is irrelevant.

If you push the idea of individual morality to its limits you will discover contradictions. With The Absolute Standard there is no contradiction.

Except for the over 300,000 variation among the manuscripts, and that only counting those in the New Testament.

How many people did God murder in that story??

If you don't mind would you post about twenty and not use the ones from the tomb of Jesus, please? The ones from the tomb are generally not accepted as contradictions by average history students.

Zero. For the Creator to break one or all of his pots is not murder. You can't seem to get over the idea you are a pot in the Potter's hand. There is a greater gap between you and a grain of sand and you and the Creator. The commandments were for the creation.

Without God's Absolute Standard for man there is no right or wrong.

You should pick up a book on textual criticism. The first major contribution to the subject was John Mills New Testament in Greek with a compendium noting the differences in the 100 texts available to him at the time. Between them he noted . Keep in mind we was not noting differences between Mark and John, but differences in one version of Mark vs. another version of Mark, such as the early text missing that last 12 verses of Mark, and the story in John of Jesus and the woman caught in adult y.. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" which doesn't appear until the middle ages.

George, I understand it all too well.

The drug dealing Christian murder who repents as the needle goes into his arm goes to Heaven. The Shinto doctor burns in Hell for ever.

This makes no sense. He notes 30,000 significant variations between the texts in Mark alone. I see two problems for you here. Based on this the book of Mark has more documentation than almost any other literature from antiquity. Or, there are more variations than there are verses in the whole book of Mark. You claim the verses are missing. Many years ago I heard something like that for the first time. The guy told me,
"Some of the oldest manuscripts don't contain those verses."
"Wow. Would you say that again. I want to make sure I understand what you said," I asked. He repeated it. I then said,
"So then it is found in some of the oldest manuscripts!"


As for the story from John, your liberal source does not agree with the some other critics. This reminds me of evolutionists. Every time a scientist, evolutionist or creationist, brings up something another evolutionist disagrees with he says, "That has been discredited."

I didn't think you would come up with the twenty I asked for.

..that we are now embroiled in a second but cold, civil war? Yes, I think so and it's only going to ramp up; of course, this is not to mention the war against ISIS which this president is arguably responsible for. It's not division so much by geographical regions as the First, though there is some of that. It's not division so much by style of life as in the First though, again, there is some of that too. It's more fundamental than a states sovereignty versus federalist issue. It's also more multi-faceted but has one common tap root cause.

It is a Godless liberalism or secular progressivism that is informing our society "primarily through "education" and "entertainment" and has turned "up", "down." And "down," "up." There is increasing vitriol toward any opposing view, ironic since the adherents are the self named, inclusive, all-enlightened ones. On the other side are conservative, traditional, political, and social values that have had their basis in Biblical Christianity. Now, wait; you don't have to be a Christian, the driving view of the Founding Fathers, to have inculcated these values into your life and now generally live by them. But regardless, Christian or merely sympathetic to "old ways," we are being marginalized.

Certainly, not everybody in the early years of this nation were, or, are now Christians, but these principles once, at least generally, guided peoples lives and thus that of the nation. This process of jettisoning Christian values from all aspects of public life started in the '50's and 60's but had it's roots in the Enlightenment much earlier. I wonder how many Ivy League students now (especially those recently interviewed Harvard students) know their institutions of higher learning were once founded as Christian schools with Biblical knowledge considered a cornerstone of a classic education? Or that hospitals were originally founded by Christians? Or that the first purveyors of rights for women were Christians or that Christians were preeminent in iconic scientific discoveries? That Christians have contributed more in blood and treasure to ease suffering around the world than any other faith? And these, were mostly American Christians. America has exported much more than imperialism. And please, the leftist black commentator who on TV recently drew a moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam--go home, take your meds, lie down, and get in touch with reality. Read a real history book.

Even if you don't believe in the God who judges nations and who will not be mocked, look at what situational ethics or the moral relativism folks have brought us: fifty million plus--a generation or more--now aborted since Roe vs Wade; a divorce rate over fifty percent with the resultant break-down of the family and it's attendant poverty, dysfunction, dependency, and crime. Public education has deteriorated despite record high expenditures per capita so that our world rankings in various disciplines have sunk like a mill stone in a barrel of water. We have the kind of educators who so wisely dismissed and disciplined a young girl who let slip a, "bless you," after another student sneezed; who sent a young boy home for drawing a picture of a gun. I'd still be in Sing Sing. Who flirt with and carry on sexual liaisons with students.

Failing to acknowledge real evil or wrongness brings us among other rotten apples, cultural diversity, or the "all cultures are equal" progressive mantra which has now put progressives between a rock and a hard place in regard to radical Islamists. They cannot bring themselves to call crucifixion of children, genital mutilation and repression of women (where are the feminists when they actually have a chance to be intellectually honest?), and be headings evil and barbaric. A Islamist cries, "Allah Akbar," while murdering thirteen people in Texas or be heading an Oklahoma women and it's named work place violence.

After over forty years of liberal, social policies of progressive Democrats, we now have fifty-some percent of the electorate that is dependent on welfare and yet at least some of those are also without a guiding moral compass; and of course, they vote for their check. These, including those whites just enamored of a black man running for president, those perceiving white guilt is their burden for past generations' sins, and most blacks voting "straight race" have given us Barack Obama. A community organizer who did nothing in the Illinois senate, nothing in the U.S. Senate, nothing as editor of the Harvard Review (the editor is able to publish monthly reviews--he published none), whose acquaintances were anarchist Bill Ayers, and "[bleep] America" pastor Jeremiah Wright, has been our president for six and a half years now. Doesn't it seem strange that none of his academic records are retrievable? He has brought us a collage of indecisiveness, mismanagement, deceit, arrogance, untruth, ignored, crossed "red lines," and golf. He has exponentially increased national debt, regulations, taxes, and cost of living, and bureaucracy, while weakening our military, and diminishing our stature in the world. Business is the glowing ember he is the wet, wool blanket to. We have taken action to affirm an unqualified.

Again, the litany continues: he and his administration has brought us the Beer Summit (the police-white-have acted stupidly), Fast and Furious, the Benghazi cover-up scandal, the IRS scandal, Obama Care--none of you precious readers yet understand how badly it will affect you; it's effects are just starting to roll out. It will be one big snowball coming down the hill. And let's not forget the Obama Apology Tour either. Question: why is a marine still languishing in a Mexican jail for making a wrong turn at Tijuana? For over six months?

This president's record is his own indictment; he is making the impeached Nixon look like an a Eagle Scout. The hapless Buchanan, on everybody's worst president's list, is remembered "fondly" for kicking the can down the road to Lincoln. That was leading to the real Civil War. He doesn't sound so bad now.

This president, as a black man has contributed by his remarks to increased racial polarization in nationally publicized incidents where young black men have been killed by whites, both determined to have been assaulted by the now dead. However, the Knock-out Game, a black on white urban violent pastime has garnered nary a peep from him; the white teen in NH or Vermont killed by a young black Islamist sympathizer of course did not meet the threshold of public comment either. Then there was the, "police acted stupidly," when a white officer questioned a black professor trying to open a stuck or locked door. Racial tension presently is worse IMO than in the racial demonstrations and marches of the sixties.

There is the habit of he or his staff repeatedly speaking untruths; we used to call this lying. A Fox poll recently found 84% believe Obama lies to the American people on major issues at least some of the time and he has now less than a forty percent approval rating.

Apparently some of the fifty plus percent are waking up which brings us to another point: Barack Obama is but an unfortunate symptom of a much worse underlying problem--an ignorant, amoral, voting public, products largely of poverty, broken homes, and the relativism of public education which Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin warned us of. They both knew of the nature of man. "Once they know they can get free stuff they find it inconvenient to change their ways." However, there are the elite SP behind this too and they are driving the mental climate against the Tea Party types with the help of a complicit and compliant media, traditionally held to be the watch dog of truth and liberty. They have long since prostituted their estate.

Frankly, I think Christians like myself and those of our parents generation are partly to blame. We have silently let SP-like thinking hijack us and our culture. However, I don't think we would have prevented what we now see as a crude, degraded culture and leadership and I include Republicans in this. Historically, there has been a commonly seen life cycle of a nation from beginning to zenith to degradation. I think it is due to man's capacity to abuse what's good even when starting from the best of principles.

Regardless, there is now a deep and widening schism between the leftist, SP and those who hold traditional values; it may be a rift as large as the one between north and south in 1860.

Actually, the point about Christians not being sufficient "salt and light" for this culture was not my main point though it is a very significant one.

Mainly, I was pointing out what I think most here sense and that is the huge and growing chasm between diverging world views in this country. The expunging of Christian values from all aspects of public life and the very old view that man is the pinnacle of life (nothing transcendent to him) has brought us all this dysfunction, crime, rot, degradation, and simple minded political correctness. Their fix is always "just tune up the environment" and then little Omar and the dope dealing, inner city, black kid will no longer want to cut our head off or shoot us. They will then hold hands and sing kum ba ya with us. That never worked and never will.

Secular Progressives are doing nothing new here. There is nothing new. They have brought moral ruin to every nation and society they moved in. It's just that our generation's group, personalized by Barack Obama and his ilk just know they are so much smarter than those in history's dust bin. And many of the masses will follow along blithely ignorant of the path.

This will put "us" increasingly on the perimeter looking in as the additional hordes crossing our southern border seeking a better life see they can obtain the social services we cannot afford for ourselves and vote the party perpetuating that.