Secular parents: teaching better values than religious parents, study (myth, Commandment, pray)

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Originally Posted by cupper3 View Post
How secular family values stack up - LA Times

“Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious' parents in our study,” Bengston told me. “The vast majority appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose.”

Originally Posted by GoCardinals

Keyword highlighted.
Misleading thread title.

It is a common mythology among Christians that God and a strong belief in God represents the source of all moral foundation. Therefore, those who are without God can not possibility even have a concept of morality, much less act in an ethical, principled manner. In fact, according to Christian mythology, most if not all non believers have rejected God for the very purpose of choosing to live lives of depravity. And then Christians are genuinely shocked when non believers mock them!

But as this study shows, "The vast majority (of secular families) appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose.” The study also noted "“Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious' parents in our study.”

Rather than a "misleading thread title," what we have discovered here is that, not only is it possible for non believers to have a sturdy moral compass despite not believing in the existence of God, the "vast majority" not only DO have such a moral compass, but were able to articulate that moral compass better than "some" of the religious parents.

And the reason for this is that rather than trying to teach a set of values from a confusing, often contradictory, and certainly frightening and threatening, book of ancient rules and regulations that is frankly close to incoherent, even for adults, non believers rely on one simple principle as the moral standard for simply teaching their children right from wrong. It's called the Golden Rule.

"For secular people, morality is predicated on one simple principle: empathetic reciprocity, widely known as the Golden Rule. Treating other people as you would like to be treated. It is an ancient, universal ethical imperative."

And it requires no supernatural beliefs. As one atheist mom who wanted to be identified only as Debbie told me: “The way we teach them what is right and what is wrong is by trying to instill a sense of empathy ... how other people feel. You know, just trying to give them that sense of what it's like to be on the other end of their actions. And I don't see any need for God in that." How secular family values stack up - LA Times

There is another feature of non belief that tends to elevate non believers to a moral high ground over their Christian counterparts. And that is the ongoing process of "forgiveness" that Christians have constructed for themselves. This Christian principle is commonly professed on bumper stickers: "I am not perfect, just forgiven." Christians believe that God understands that they are weak sinners, prone to doing sinful things. All a Christian has to do is admit their guilt and ask for forgiveness, and all their sins will be washed away. Again and again. This, I suspect, explains much of the furor non believers encounter from Christians over the possibility that there is no God. If there is no God, then Christians would be forced to wear all of the naughtiness they know they have done, but which they thought was hidden away in the closet of forgiveness so that they didn't have to feel the guilt of it.

We non believers however, having no such easy out, are forced to do our best to get it right the first time. We have to live with our mistakes. We can only atone for our mistakes by apologies or other compensatory action, and by seeking to learn from our mistakes by ensuring that we never make such mistakes again. One of the things you learn as you age, is that life is long and there are no do-overs.

Believers attempt to live moral and ethical lives because of their fear of God. Non believers attempt to live moral and ethical lives for no other reason than because it is the right way to live. In fact, far from being the unprincipled immoral wretches of Christian mythology, non believers in fact own the moral high ground over non believers in various ways.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by LuminousTruth

Which version of "the Bible"? what interpretations? How was this created guide crafted? How did human error not get in it but did get into other simple-minded Bibliolatries? Have any ideas?

Having studied it for years and knowing Biblical Greek and the history of the manuscripts in existence I have confidence. The "errors" are minimal and detectable and do not impact doctrine or teaching at all. The Bible is the most documented work on earth from that time or prior. The simple minded are the ones who do not know the facts about it and reject it based on meaningless copying errors or identifiable insertions all of which are known do to the thousands of manuscripts available.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by Pleroo

Apparently, Mystic. Otherwise, expat would be able to see how the comparison he is trying to make is absurd.

A Loving God, according to you expat, warns people that he will annihilate them if they do not believe/behave in ways that please him. That you cannot see the difference between parents warning children that various behaviors may be harmful to them (or others) versus telling your children that if they make you angry, you're going to kill them, tells me that your idea of what loving is is horribly skewed.

Actually you do not understand how God's love is present in such. What would you do with an adult child that continually tried to kill his siblings and refused any help you offered to get him to stop? What would you do when he (or she) was pointing a loaded gun at one of his siblings after killing one and saying he was going to kill them all?

[TroutDude]

Originally Posted by expatCA

Having studied it for years and knowing Biblical Greek and the history of the manuscripts in existence I have confidence. The "errors" are minimal and detectable and do not impact doctrine or teaching at all. The Bible is the most documented work on earth from that time or prior. The simple minded are the ones who do not know the facts about it and reject it based on meaningless copying errors or identifiable insertions all of which are known do to the thousands of manuscripts available.

Originally Posted by expatCA

Actually you do not understand how God's love is present in such. What would you do with an adult child that continually tried to kill his siblings and refused any help you offered to get him to stop? What would you do when he (or she) was pointing a loaded gun at one of his siblings after killing one and saying he was going to kill them all?

[pneuma]

Originally Posted by expatCA

Having studied it for years and knowing Biblical Greek and the history of the manuscripts in existence I have confidence. The "errors" are minimal and detectable and do not impact doctrine or teaching at all. The Bible is the most documented work on earth from that time or prior. The simple minded are the ones who do not know the facts about it and reject it based on meaningless copying errors or identifiable insertions all of which are known do to the thousands of manuscripts available.

What a load of bull, either you are not very good in your knowledge of the bible and you are just parroting others or you are just plain ignorant to the fact that there is a huge difference in doctrine so it does in fact impact doctrine and teaching.

Try reading the dead sea scrolls for yourself, don't just parrot what someone else tells you about them, then get back to me. And I will know whether you have read them or not because there is a huge difference in doctrine.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by LuminousTruth

Which version of "the Bible"? what interpretations? How was this created guide crafted? How did human error not get in it but did get into other simple-minded Bibliolatries? Have any ideas?

Originally Posted by expatCA

Having studied it for years and knowing Biblical Greek and the history of the manuscripts in existence I have confidence. The "errors" are minimal and detectable and do not impact doctrine or teaching at all. The Bible is the most documented work on earth from that time or prior. The simple minded are the ones who do not know the facts about it and reject it based on meaningless copying errors or identifiable insertions all of which are known do to the thousands of manuscripts available.

Originally Posted by pneuma

What a load of bull, either you are not very good in your knowledge of the bible and you are just parroting others or you are just plain ignorant to the fact that there is a huge difference in doctrine so it does in fact impact doctrine and teaching.
Try reading the dead sea scrolls for yourself, don't just parrot what someone else tells you about them, then get back to me. And I will know whether you have read them or not because there is a huge difference in doctrine.

There is a lot of posturing among the fundies . . . pretending to knowledge they do not have. No sane human being who is familiar with the actual processes that resulted in the compilation of the Bible and its subsequent Protestant culling believes that God did anything to protect the Bible. God had nothing to do with deciding what to include or exclude . . . men did. There is no evidence that suggests that God in any way preserved the integrity of the message in any of the writings. In fact, the lack of consistency or coherence or in the overall themes and context completely rule it out. There are and were many inspired writings that were rejected while uninspired ones were included because they conformed to the dominant beliefs of the time . . . the very beliefs Christ refuted and came to correct. The Bible is useless if the content is NOT tested against the main theme Christ taught and demonstrated unambiguously . . the Spirit of agape love (who IS God)! Failure to test the content of the Bible against the only standard of God's truth is the major failing of Christian dogma.

[Pleroo]

Originally Posted by expatCA

Actually you do not understand how God's love is present in such. What would you do with an adult child that continually tried to kill his siblings and refused any help you offered to get him to stop? What would you do when he (or she) was pointing a loaded gun at one of his siblings after killing one and saying he was going to kill them all?

Originally Posted by TroutDude

I second that .

Expat, the example you brought up was warning your child not to play in the street, so don't change the story now. If your child disobeys you and plays in the street, are you going to be so angry at them for disobeying you that you will kill them?

[thinkalot]

Originally Posted by expatCA

No, but it helps when properly applied. Just as we have violent and immoral non religious people we have the same among those claiming to be religious.

According to the article we don't have many violent immoral non believers since atheists in prison are a rarity.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by TroutDude

Yep, you need to read with understanding not rejection.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by pneuma

What a load of bull, either you are not very good in your knowledge of the bible and you are just parroting others or you are just plain ignorant to the fact that there is a huge difference in doctrine so it does in fact impact doctrine and teaching.

Try reading the dead sea scrolls for yourself, don't just parrot what someone else tells you about them, then get back to me. And I will know whether you have read them or not because there is a huge difference in doctrine.

Uh, note I said I read Biblical Greek not Hebrew; and the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, Aramaic, Nabataean and a few in Greek (Those I can read). However I have several friends who are scholars/Professors at major Universities and they read Biblical Hebrew like people do the daily paper. A normal language to them and .... they are among the many who help me see the reality of no doctrinal deviation.

Please rather than just claim it, show a Doctrinal deviation.