Finally, concerning morality, you mention God and satan. And if I understand you correctly, you are asking why is God the good and satan the evil. Let me ask you this: is it good to kill? Is it good to steal? Is it good to destroy? Is …it evil to love? is it evil to feed someone who is hungry? Is it evil to give a cup of water to someone who is thirsty? I think that you and I would both agree on these things that it is NOT good to kill, it is not good to steal, it is not good to destroy. All of these things take life away. We see all around us in nature the reproduction of life in the plants, trees, everywhere. Nature screams that LIFE and living and producing is good and fruitful. Therefore, even outside of “god”, we can conclude that morality that is life-producing is good, no? And I believe that we would agree that those same things, killing, stealing and destroying are evil. Thus anything and anyone who functions in these ways has an evil influence on or in or acting upon them. But you see, as an atheist, you MUST, if you are logical, conclude that there is no standard of morality. You cannot ever, and remain truly logical to atheism, say that morality has somehow “evolved” because if there is morality, then the logical conclusion is that there is an ultimate standard of morality, an ultimate standard of good and therefore that had to start somewhere….it didn’t simply “pop into being” out of nowhere, out of water and nitrogen and oxygen….someone sometime made a decision that “this” is the good thing to do in this situation….it did not come from chemical reactions withing them, but rather morality that is outside of them and acting upon the chemicals within them. I know you will want to argue this point again, but I strongly encourage you to get the book I first mentioned, Genetic Entropy, which will really cause you to reexamine your arguments about our chemical make-up and therefore all of this. Ok, I really need to run….thanks for your patience.

I too have really enjoyed this. I am and will continue to pray for you, that you will be willing to be open to things spiritual; but also that God will continue to reveal Himself to you in ways you are able to understand. Oh, one more tho…ught regarding my faith being the “right” one. Religion is essentially man’s way of trying to reach God…and most religions are based on what are called “works”…you do this and you get this from god. My faith is the exact opposite: I cannot do anything to earn anything from God, and I don’t have to because He has done it all in the person of Jesus. His grace (unmerited favor) paid everything for me, for you and for every person on the planet. Lastly, life for me is not about man’s glory, but the naturalist and rationalist have put man at the center of everything and have made life about man’s glory. That’s why we’re so screwed up, even in various world religions…it’s about man at the center. In my faith, it starts with the glory of God as revealed in all of creation and all of His creatures. Each one of us is a reflection of His glory, and everything in the natural world is a reflection of His amazingly creative glory. Instead of starting from the bottom up, I begin from the top down, which brings a sobriety and a humility (in the most positive sense of the word) as I recognize that the God of the universe has chosen me to bring glory to Himself and to usher His love into this world through every means possible. And you know what, it’s ok if you think I’m a fool and foolish….the Bible has already said you would think this way about me and it’s ok. I bless you with all of His blessings in Jesus! Thank you for this amazing dialogue! You are a treasure!

Boy you got fired up about the comments. I read through them, but won’t really address them…I respect what each of them has to say, but I’d rather, at this point, stay focused on our discussion. So, if I understand you correctly, You believe (which, by the way is a manifestation of what I would deem ‘faith’ because whether you want to accept it or not, you DO have faith…you have faith in science and only that which can be seen), so, you believe that Love, in all of it’s manifestations, is nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain and there is absolutely NO CHOICE involved in love? I conclude this from your rationalism because first, if everything is chemical, then you have no control over it, unless you accept that you actually have choice, which implies that even though the chemicals are shooting off, they don’t completely control you and every single aspect about you, so you choose to love so and so more than so and so or differently than you do your parents. A true scientist and rationalist would argue that there is not choice in the matter, it is simply a matter of the chemicals firing in our brains and we just react to those firings rather than having choice in who we love. To say you have choice is to acknowledge that there is something ‘more’ than simply chemical reactions because you are making a conscious decision.

You mention loving parents is completely instinctual. I agree to a point, but not completely. If my dad chooses to abuse me physically or emotionally, then that “instinctive” bond is affected in a major way and it will affect everything else that takes place in my life regarding relationships with men in general, and quite possibly, with my future husband or even wife (in the case of boys who are abused by fathers) and so they make choices based on the demonstrations of love they received or didn’t receive.

To me and many others (even non-believers), there is much, much more to love and any emotion than simply chemical reactions and chemical firings in the brain. I would even venture to propose that if you conclude it’s all chemicals, then you are copping out on taking responsibility for your own choices and your own behaviors. You begin to fall into the slippery slope that we see rampant today of those not taking responsibility for their own actions and behaviors and “blaming” it on the “chemicals” in their bodies. I keep hearing you say that people created god to ease their own consciousnesses. that is the conclusion you have reached based on what? Your limited scientific reality?

Would it really be a huge stretch calling the term “love” simply “not specific enough”? i think not. both of them manifest spiritually as well as physically (wanting to hug your parents for example), so it is understandable that people see the two so closely together as to have given them the same name. still, i agree that they’re distinct emotions, simply because of, yes, different chemicals.

where do morals stem from. so what is morality? it is basically the differentiation between good and bad. now i assume you’re asking how we came to have an agreement on what good and bad things are. i also also assume you’re saying it could have only come from god, because human beings can not discover on their own what is good and bad (because if they could, there would be no need for god). okay. how could humans discover that god was good and satan was evil? if you asked god and satan which one of them was evil, how would you know which one to believe? on the basis of the standard god wrote down of course. wait, why not the one wrote by satan? what is a valid way of figuring out which one is which – without randomly picking one of course – without having an ability to discover it own your own? but then again, if people can do that, then there’s no need for god.
“but since god created everything, he decides what’s right or wrong” – and you know this because god told you that he was the one who did it. if satan claimed that he himself had created everything, and that god was his creation as well, how could we decide who was telling the truth?

the logical conclusion is that human beings are able to distinguish right from wrong themselves. no morals are absolute, you just have to simply “do unto others as you would have done to you” i think, and this sums up the whole idea. and just because this is in the bible, it doesn’t mean it stems from god himself, but that people who wrote the bible figured some great morals out themselves.

This is a very interesting debate, and I hope none of you will mind if I bring my own thoughts into it and join the fun

With so many forms of religion and spirituality out there, you can truly find the divine wherever you look. It is only a question of what you consider to be divine. So where do we start looking? Do we look at the endless expanses of our comprehension, such as eternal, timeless, out of time, endless universe, forever, etc. Things that are really hard to comprehend for us in my opinion due to the fact that we are limited by time. We could also look for divinity in the machine, the machine in this case being science and the laws of science and the world. If all the laws that make our world go would become know, would that make the machine not divine? In my opinion it wouldn’t, we would just understand it. Understanding something doesn’t make something less divine, it’s not a about knowing or not knowing, proof or no proof. It’s about having something to believe in.

Now I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t make a comment on the faith healers thing. Truly there are probably more conn artists out there than actual healers and I also find that people have higher expectations than what can be actually achieved. All methods of healing using divine energies that I am familiar with work by healing through the soul and thus giving the recipient a stronger will to fight their illness, thus speeding up the natural healing process. Such methods do not replace going to the doctor, always go to the doctor, faith healing works after you got treated by the doctor to help you get back on your feet faster.
Consider it a mind trick if you want, even if it is just that it does work and by doing so brings happiness and hope to people. Or could it be the power of love? The fact that a friend or maybe a stranger is there with you caring enough to help you get better? This brings us to love again. You love your girlfriend, no doubt about that, but I’m sure you also love your parents (at least I hope) and some of your friends. Sure it’s a different kind of love, but it is love. A kind of love that is not influenced by the chemical reactions and the mating instinct. I guess that, for me, that means that there is love that is not chemical or physical.

Okay, I know there was more that I wanted to add here, but reading the entire debate and trying to keep my thoughts in order through it all wasn’t easy, so I’ll add more as the convo keeps going on