No, Divine Law is not whatever any particular religion, believer or religious leader deems it to be.

To say so is relativism speak. 

There is but One Holy God and one set of His Divine Laws which He revealed.

The Ten Commandments are an expression of the natural law which God has written in every man's heart, and which every man can know if he listens to the voice of reason and conscience. That's why the Ten Commandments given to Moses apply to all men and for all times. God wrote them on stone to signify that they are as durable as stone and are to last for all ages. Christ came not to destroy the Law but to fulfill it.

God gave the Divine Law to us for our temporal welfare that peace and order might reign among men.  We see how the world is faring for those who cast His Divine laws aside or deem them to mean what they reveal them to be. Nobody is sure of either life or property. There is an end to order and obedience to lawful authority in the family and civil spheres. Evil and lawlessness reign. 

Then reveal them for all to see. There are certainly laws and policies that "extremists" propose and some that occasional slip through the cracks, but show me those lesser versions which have not only been instituted but have also already passed muster in the judicial system.

Actually, that does help, quite a bit, to understand your view, thanks!

Now my question is this, If you see how finite and exceedingly special Life is, why do you reject the possibility that Life is a Design, not an accident?  I've done years of study on life, evolution, natural selection and origins - but I always come back to simple math... The odds are simply too great for this to be an accident.  Life is too complex for it to have just happened.  Humans have too great of a capacity to reason for it to simply be chemistry.

And I understand not liking others pushing their views on people.... I don't like too.  That is why I simply ask questions, not write walls of text and proofs.  It isn't up to me to convince anyone, I'm just looking for further clarification on how people think.  Its fascinating.

The odds of life developing in any one place at any one time is almost 0, sure. But I think you are missing the sense of scale. There could easily be trillions and trillions of planets in a universe that is 13 Billion years old. Each, if the conditions are right, could see life develop if given enough time. Statistically when you have a test case that large, no matter how small your odds are (so long as its not zero), it will happen eventually.

And even if the odds weren't so good on a universal scale, I would still choose to believe in those small odds for one simple reason; we can see and figure out how each work by themselves. Evolution and natural selection are facts, you can see them in action over your own life time with life forms that have very short life spans, hence why we have all of these antibiotic resistant bacteria even though penicillin is only around 70 years old.

With more complex life forms sure it takes a lot longer, but it happens. But the fact is that simple life is perhaps not that hard to create. A few research teams are very close to making a microscopic organism entirely from those raw chemicals you distrust so much. That proves you don't need an all powerful deity to make life; we can do it ourselves. And given most of the chemicals they are using were around in great abundance in the early earth, its not hard to imagine these chemicals getting arranged by chance into the first life form.

To me, the only question that cannot be answered is not where we came from... but its where the universe came from. The big bang is really not an answer to this question, all it says is that at one point the entire universe was squished in a very small point. What might have been before that, if anything, or why it happened, we can never know, as clues that might have existed would have been destroyed by the big bang itself. And even if some clues did still exist, I don't know if we will ever be able to figure out a mystery that is 13 billion years old this far away from a crime zone that we aren't entirely sure where it is. If you want to believe a god made it happen more power to you, I don't have a better answer. But in my opinion its not a question that really needs to be answered to live my life.

But your response doesn't go to the difference between believers like me who would never raise humanity or self to gods and atheists who do. 

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LULA POSTS:

GOAFAN77 POSTS:

No sale. surgeons can't operate and remove chemicals that are love, memory, good and evil. Maybe in Hollywood or in fantasy video games. Atheists denial of God predicated on what is known as the Naturalist worldview is filled with incoherencies and contradictions becasue of their abject inability to account for various immaterial realities was my point and that still stands.

This is an example of an an incoherence at work within Atheistim and Moral Relativism.  This is explained by asking a question. What possible meaning can "good" have in a truly Atheist world in which God does not exist? It's meaningless...you've got chaos.

As to your first statement..."Even if you believe in god, you have to make up your own mind on what you think he thinks is good and evil"....

Nope, not even close. 

How do we know what God revealed as good and evil...by practicing His religion which is the virtue by which we give to God the honor and service, worship due to Him alone as our Creator, Master and Supreme Lord.

In order to practice this virtue, we must believe all the truths revealed by God. In religion we learn what is right and what is wrong. We learn what God commands us to do.

It is by practicing God's revealed Christian religion that we fulfill the purpose that we were created....to know, love and serve Him. By believing what God has revealed, we know God. By knowing God, we cannot help but love Him. By practicing what we learn and obeying His commands, we serve Him. 

God has set His Commandments, His Moral Code before us. God sent Christ and we learn to know, love and serve God from Jesus Christ, Who teaches us through the Church He established upon St.Peter, the Catholic Church.

Christ teaches us how to know (what is good and evil), love and serve Him by establishing His religion, Christianity, the authentic Christian Faith, or Catholicism.

As to the second statement..."The Catholic church certainly doesn't agree on every single moral issue, millions of its followers clearly do not think it morally wrong to use birth control or even abortion"..

God's infallible truths are set down in the infallible Bible and in matters of faith and morals are themselves infallible doctrines held by Christ's Church. The Church infallibly teaches the Ten Commandments. She tells us infallibly what the Law means. That her members don't follow her teachings on every moral issue is not because the Church doesn't teach them, but because they for what ever reason don't want to hear the Church and obey God's laws.

But it is not Divine Law that is being imposed in places in the Middle East; it's evil. 

And yes, I am fortunate in many, many ways and I thank God every day for His blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Because there is no difference. There are both theists and atheists on both sides of that fence.

Oh but it certainly is. It may not be what you believe divine law to be but it is what they believe divine law to be. And since it is their land what they believe is what matters and what you believe means nothing.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-2662 proposed by democratic senator John Conyers and in committee.  Versions of this same bill (drafted by the Anti Defamation League) are already on the books with some arrests and convictions in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, Ireland, Sweden, France, Italy and under Pennsylvania's ADL hate law statute in Philadelphia.

Enforcement overseas has resulted in multiple arrests of Christian pastors who were charge with being "verbally violent" towards Muslims and homosexuals and in a few cases members of the public and people visiting abortion centers.  France has been particularly litigious in this regard and Canada in recent years seems to be following suit.  Sweden has had several arrests.

The law was written to provide a means to prevent physical threat and violence against specific groups--not to outlaw speech but in each country where it's been enacted it has been broadened to cover "verbal violence" and resulted in arrests accordingly--in some cases simply for bible passages being read aloud in a public square.

Radio stations deemed to be in violation--which can and often has been quite subjective--can face fines, revocation of their licenses and imprisonment.

In the lat 1990's the Hobbs Act and RICO statutes were applied to large, organized antiabortion groups because one such group in particular was very militant and threatening in it's actions.;  The result is that several large organizations with no real, direct ties were charged along with the other organization.  it was not until after the mid 2000's that the last of these cases was overturned by the Supreme Court--after millions of dollars of damages to the organizations that had to defend themselves against laws written to enable the federal government to move quickly against mafia groups.

California and several cities within my own state of Michigan not long past have presented bills that were extremely vaguely worded and included speech as part of violence but so far these have met strong challenges and been toned down--though the intent of their sponsor's is clear in their original presentation.

You can do your own searching for more info in these areas--France in particular has been "progressive" in their enforcement--probably more so than most Western countries.

That bastion of free-thought, Russia has quite prohibitive laws on public preaching.

In regards to parental rights, you have to do a lot more research.  A sample case is Mozert v. Hawkin's County Public Schools.  Where parents and the children objected to certain literature reading assignments and courses.  In defense, supporters of the bill argued for the reasons why the state had a compelling interest to usurp parental rights and even stated wishes of the children.

Mormons and particularly Jehovah's Witnesses have face state intervention in several parental authority areas over the past decade.

I'm actually all for state examination and investigation regarding child welfare (when parents are harmful or dangerously negligent in their actions) but it is something that requires really careful consideration/

By pushing religious and anti-religious groups and persons to extremes, there is a much greater chance of person's with agendas bending laws--as in prohibiting speech to protect physical safety.  Neither religious nor non-religious persons or groups are adequately qualified to "decide" for parents in other belief systems what is goodthink and badthink--thought crimes.  Hate laws were designed to provide a swift and severe remedy to those using violence and physical abuse and intimidation--more and more, they are being stretched to include far more than that.

It would take a book to cover all this but there are plenty of both right and wrong examples out there in this issue already. A little lean or bias can easily move us towards children reporting their parents for wrong ideas and actions.

I'm saying not all atheists do "raise" humanity/self. And I gave an example of what one such atheist may think. I don't understand what else you are wanting.

Not yet, but it has been proven that the brain creates chemicals to make you feel love, and likewise memories. Your feeling can clearly be somewhat manipulate with drugs. Its only another step to be able to create feelings and memories from scratch.

You don't have to believe me, I'm not trying to convert you. But I'm going to trust the neuroscientists more than a random guy on the internet.

It is chaotic in a sense. But chaos does not necessarily need to be bad. If you need order in both your life and your beliefs, than Catholicism is probably a good choice for you. But not everyone is like you. Just leave those who can handle a life with ambiguity, moral complexity, and make sense of "chaos" alone.

If your "goal" in this thread is to persuade atheists, such arguments will get you no where. Teaching and dogmas we do not believe in will not persuade us because they hold no weight with us, just as you choose to reject science.

Precisely, because for whatever reason, they decided that the church's teachings are wrong. You can claim church infallibility all you want, but clearly many Catholics think the church can be incorrect. My point is that even the faithful have to decide whether to believe the church on everything, and on which issues they choose to disagree with it. Thus they are making up their own mind.

Exactly the kind of crap I wanted you to post. The bill never became law and for good reason. Because Hate Speech Laws are unconstitutional in the US and have been deemed so with precedence all the way to the Supreme Court.That is why the bill didn't pass and if it did sneak by it would have been taken off the books as soon as it started making its way through the courts.

Why even bother posting what happens in other countries? Our constitution regarding freedom of speech is different from every other nation and does not allow for pure hate speech laws.

There is very specific precedent which only allows for laws regarding hate speech when they are specifically tied to acts of violence and inciting violence which in court has the litmus test of "must be proven to be imminent" .

On February 28, 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Scheidler v. National Organization for Women. The Court's unanimous opinion held that physical violence unrelated to robbery or extortion falls outside the scope of the Hobbs Act

Sorry Charlie... Poorly argued court case....court got it right and now there is precedent. What don't you understand about how the system works?

Like I said earlier....sometimes certain things slip through the cracks however that is why we have a judicial branch. There are just as many badly crafted laws being proposed right now from the extreme right as there are from the extreme left. It is sad but when you don't look for the truth behind the issue then you become an extremist yourself and do nothing except cause yourself grief and anxiety issues while you continue the frenzy that is causing much of the anger in society today.

The first law is being presented again and is still in committee.

Read my original post Hulda, I'm talking future possibility here.  Thse things just come back around and around until someone naively legislates them and there are many people clammoring for their approval.

The mention of the foreign actions is that it is the same source legislation pending here.

And are you just being stupid or did you read my explaining the Hobbs and RICO enforcement was ruled unconstitutional?

You kids.

They sure do. Things never change. That is how Politics works. They take social issues and run them round and round accomplishing nothing in the end. In the meantime while you are so consumed by the social issues, they legislate fiscal policy which strips you of your tax dollars, putting them in the pockets of their cronies.

They were not ruled unconstitutional. The cases were poorly prosecuted and the courts got things right in the end. Big difference. This type of thing happens everyday in this country. Not really a reason to get yourself in any tizzy.