Originally Posted by DBT
Originally Posted by Tarquin
Originally Posted by DBT
Originally Posted by Tarquin
Originally Posted by Starman
Pagans seemed to get along just fine when
it came to personal choice of Gods.

The greeks, Romans. Gauls, and further east regions
Like Egypt, Persia, etc,.didn't squabble over their Gods.





You're missing the point: each of those societies/cultures/countries appealed to a diety or dieties and held a belief in an absolute moral code.



The moral code of Babylon differed to Sumer which differed to Judaism which was not the same as Greco Roman morality, which was not the same as ours. Similar principles, but not the same. Similarity does not make an absolute.

Similarity comes from existential conditions, death, property, family, friends, nation, state, tribe....


Each believed their God was the true God and from that belief they derived what they also believed was a non-relative standard of right and wrong by which they regulated their behavior. Exemplary are the immortal words of Lord McCauley "Then out spoke brave Horatius, the captain of the gate. To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods." The salient point is that true religion and morality (not the spurious kind that characterizes so much of Christianity today [Exhibit A being our own Mr. Texas Jaguar]) tends to result in beings who regulate their own behavior without need of external regulation from the state. They don't tend to steal (for example) not merely because they might get caught, but because it is wrong. A society of those kinds of people requires a far less intrusive government than their opposite. The Founders were explicit about this.


Morality is relative to death, property and human relations, self defence, etc. The benefits to not killing wontonly are that you yourself and your family are safer if your society adopts this standard. The same for stealing, social manners, etc, everyone benefits. We don't need religion to tell us that.

Secular societies now are doing better than theocracies ever did.


Against any measure of well being, the less theocratic the society the greater the well being of it's people. The same plays out across American states.

You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.

You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell