Saturday, August 04, 2007

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Too funny.

4 comments:

Tim said...

never let it be said that I don't appreciate the logic and wisdom it took for these two people to write these essays. I apologize if i have come across as overbearing in my religious agnosticism on other sites to you Andy. Here's a good article for you! i simple no longer have the belief that humans need religion to master morality. and therefore I see little to no reason to believe in a mystical religion to give me those values.
http://tinyurl.com/2ydsqc

Andy said...

i simple no longer have the belief that humans need religion to master morality.

Well, that's not the spin that my faith tradition puts on it. Yes, some Christians do teach that you need Jesus in order to be able to tell up from down. The Episcopal Church, however, recognizes that it is entirely possible to lead a perfectly moral life and not believe in God (the opposite is also true). Morality does not come from the Bible; certainly, even if you take things on a baldly-literal basis, one would not propose that it had never occurred to the ancient Hebrews that it was wrong to murder or commit adultery prior to Moses coming down the mountain with the 10 Commandments. (Like how I circled back to -- sort of -- the original post?) And if you read CS Lewis, one of the arguments he makes for the existence of God is that morality, which is largely universal, exists independent of faith. Morality tends to be something organic, and something shared. We may differ on specifics from culture to culture and between individuals, but I think we can say that we are each endowed with an innate sense of justice and compassion, which are the bases for morality. That is, for many of us, one of the singposts that points to the existence of a God, that his law and his will are imprinted on the hearts even of nonbelievers.

And, I must confess, I'm not sure to which essay you are referring...?

Lukers said...

Is there a site that collects these? I remember viewing "Shining" a romantic comedy spin on "The Shining."

Andy said...

Oh duh, now I see the link to the articles. Hello. I'll try to get to them this afternoon, thanks!