"Why act morally?" cannot be given an answer that will provide everyone with overwhelming reasons for acting morally. Ethically indefensible behaviour is not always irrational. We will probably always need the sanctions of the law and social pressure to provide additional reasons against serious violations of ethical standards."

The quote is from the militantly anti-religious Peter Singer (Princetown uni.) and it is rather touching in its unwitting support of the religious imperative.

"Yes, although I'm no theologian, the constant refrain that one hears about purgatory being "unbiblical" seems to be wholly untrue. There seems to be a Judaic foundation for that concept, even if it is not a point of emphasis."

In Judaism hell is rabinic (which doesnt mean it is any less divine to most) There are plenty of places where you could find support for a belief in Satan, a belief in hell, or even in the belief that Jesus was the messiah in the old testement- if you read it and translate it to serve your purposes. On the other hand there is no direct reference to hell or purgatory in the torah or the books of the old testement, it does not mean that it has no Judaic origin because Judaism at the time of christ was anything but a monolithic religion

@Santa - that's why I made a point of saying the word was actually Sheol. As you say, the real translation would be depths, not hell. I was just providing the one place where I remembered seeing fire in relation to Sheol, and even that was not an ongoing thing, but a wrath of God thing.

@Putin - Hot or cold can be relative to neutral. And, as I have expressed, Evil is about intent. Good without bad, arguably can't be. But you can have good intent even if there is not nor ever has been evil intent, because you can also have neutral intent, that is, no clearly defined intent. So, if you have many things with no clearly defined intent, but one thing with a clearly defined intent, then you can recognize the difference. And if the outcome of that which has a clearly defined intent imporves the situation from bad or neutral to good, then it was good intent. You need to stop thinking in black and white and see the middle ground.

By extension, if the majority of what we felt was the same temperature as ourselves, then suddenyl we felt something that seemed extreme and caused our skin to bubble up and hurt, we could say that was hot without cold ever actually existing. The reverse could be said to be true as well. If we were beings of flame hotter than the sun, then we wouldn't knwo the concept hot, but could still graspo the concept cold if thrust into the vacuum of space.

Hor and Cold, Good and Evil, all are relative and if you exist at one extreme or the other, then you don't have the concept of that extreme because it is the norm for you, therefore you only have the concept of the other.

Here is another one for you... A dog has such a sensitive nose that it doesn't have a concept of good or bad smelling, only strong or not strong. to a dog, anything strong is interesting and anything not strong is boring.

In other words Putin, you seem to be viewing Judaism as the Catholic church, with an approved program of dogma, which it is not now, and certainly was not when Christianity was born.

That's apparently all you Theists do now, go around cherry picking quotes.

Of course what is left out of your cherry picking is that there is nothing there to suggest that religion need be the source of the social pressure and sanctions of law. Morality without social pressure doesn't make any sense anyway, since morality is a societal construction to begin with.

"On the other hand there is no direct reference to hell or purgatory in the torah or the books of the old testement"

Is Maccabees not considered Old Testament? It's so odd how some books get selected out, but yet are still referred to elsewhere. Either the book is acceptable or it isn't, it can't be both.

1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees are part of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments, but not the Hebrew Bible.

Epic Fail as Santa is clearly of Jewish descent and speaking of the Torah as it relates to the OT, not books the Catholic Church added later. If we are going to go that poath, perhaps the Book of Judas should be added to the NT... Or maybe some play that some people think Shakespeare wrote but others don't and for which there is no definitive proof of his writing should be included in the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

What does that have to do with hell, I seriously dont know, if it does let me know

@Santa - Putin is just being obstinate. I doubt *he* even knows if there is any reference in any of the books of Maccabees to hell. an honestly, they may be part of the Catholic canon, but the majority of Christianity doesn't view them as canon. Catholicism may be the largest Christian denomination, but Protestantism is larger collectively and those books are not part of the Protestant bible.

and whether the books are considered divine or not by Jews has little to do with whether they are "acceptable" or not, Jews accept the story of the Maccabees and we have a largely historical holiday to celebrate the story. On the other hand, the story occurred very late in the history of the Jews and probably was not seen as being divinely inspired (or written)

but awe shucks we've gotten off topic. Whats the point? Why does there have to be one?

There is no "point". Just monkeys killing time.

"So, if you have many things with no clearly defined intent, but one thing with a clearly defined intent, then you can recognize the difference. And if the outcome of that which has a clearly defined intent imporves the situation from bad or neutral to good, then it was good intent. You need to stop thinking in black and white and see the middle ground."

Why isn't clearly defined intent which leads to a deterioration of the situation "bad intent"? Are you suggesting that deliberate intent will always lead to good results?

Anyway, you essentially concede that for good to exist, you need some reference to bad. For "good" intent to be possible, you need to be able to refer to deliberate intent which has good or bad results. Although I don't see how 'good' intent can be measured according to the results. Good intentions often lead to bad results. How do we know the intent was good or bad in such a case?

"By extension, if the majority of what we felt was the same temperature as ourselves, then suddenyl we felt something that seemed extreme and caused our skin to bubble up and hurt, we could say that was hot without cold ever actually existing"

Err..no. "Cold" in such a situation would simply be something higher than what we are now accustomed to.

For example, I give my students two exams. In one exam the statistical distribution of grades has a midpoint at around 75, with most students falling either 10 higher or lower than that score. In exam two, the midpoint is 85, with most students falling 10 higher or lower. Just because in the second case, the midpoint is higher, meaning that the lowest scores are higher than the first test, doesn't mean they aren't the *low* scores on the test. The lower bound is simply different. So cold in your situation would be something we'd call lukewarm right now. The lower bound is higher.

People in Florida think 60 degrees is a "cold" day. I think 60 degrees is warm. The "extremes/bounds" are different because the climate is hotter in Florida than where I grew up. All of these adjectives are on a continuum.

"Hor and Cold, Good and Evil, all are relative and if you exist at one extreme or the other, then you don't have the concept of that extreme because it is the norm for you, therefore you only have the concept of the other."

You cannot avoid upper and lower bounds ("extremes"). You can change where the midpoint is, but all of these adjectives are on a continuum of lower and higher values.

"A dog has such a sensitive nose that it doesn't have a concept of good or bad smelling, only strong or not strong. to a dog, anything strong is interesting and anything not strong is boring."

I fail to see how this makes your point. You still have opposites in this case.

On Maccabees:
In my view Job should be in the New Testament rather than the Old. But what the heck anyway? Of course Putin is looking for the absolute word of God in the texts whereas others here are looking for the word of God revealed through man. How much more challenging and thought provoking is the latter approach than the straw man set up bty Putin.

@Putin - I am *not* suggesting anything of the sort, with regards to intent. My suggestion is that, were there a universe/world/plain of existence in which therewere no Evil intent, then Evil would not exist in that plane. So, Heaven does not require a Hell to exist and your statement way back about Heaven and Hell both being destroyed is false. Her on earth, in the mortal realm, there is Evil and there is Good, by intent. In the afterlife, all that was Evil is destroyed and only Good exists.

And both Good and Bad will exist in the afterlife as those who are kept out of the inner sanctum will attest to, but not Evil as there will be no intent to cause harm or chaos.

And your exam example misses my point entirely. What if the typical score on the exam were a perfect score or were a completely failure with 0 scored. Then, there could be no high or low score respectively, because they were already at the extreme of the scoring spectrum. If, somehow, we survived at zero kelvin then there would only be hot, not cold as there is nothing colder.

"Epic Fail as Santa is clearly of Jewish descent and speaking of the Torah as it relates to the OT"

He said Torah *or books of the OT*. Maccabees was part of the OT for hundreds of years until Luther unilaterally deleted some books out of the OT that didn't conform to his doctrine, but yet Prots still refer to them in the NT. Anyway I wasn't talking about hell, but *purgatory* Maccabees refers to praying for people after they're dead, implying support for purgatory. If this wasn't Jewish practice or belief by at least some people, it is a wonder why it is mentioned.

And anyway I'd like to see your demographic statistics about the size of Protestantism.

http://www.adherents.com/adh_branches.html#Christianity

http://religions.pewforum.org/reports
78.4% of America is Christian in one form or another
51.3% is Protestant
23.9% is Catholic

Are those numbers enough for you? I'm sure the numbers vary significantly when the entire world is taken into account and it may well be that Catholics outnumber Protestants the world over.

@Putin - Santa also said *Hell* wasn't mentioned in the Torah or OT. He said nothing about Purgatory. And arguably, one would assume he was speaking to the OT as it resides in the religious canon of Judaism (aka the Torah/Talmud aka the Law and the Prophets) of which Maccabees is *not* considered a part. Jewish tradition sets Maccabees as a history book, not a holy book. And, based on it's accurate portrayal of the events, it very much conforms to being a history book that speaks to the events and the practices of the 2nd Century BC.

Santa said this,

""On the other hand there is no direct reference to hell or purgatory in the torah or the books of the old testement"

I was saying there was Judaic support for purgatory. I don't know why you and Santa keep claiming I am referring to hell.

"Are those numbers enough for you? I'm sure the numbers vary significantly when the entire world is taken into account and it may well be that Catholics outnumber Protestants the world over."

So America = all of Christianity? I gave you numbers showing you are wrong.


Major Traditional Branches of Christianity
(mid-1995; source: Encyclopedia Britannica)
Branch Number of Adherents
Catholic 968,000,000
Protestant 395,867,000
Other Christians 275,583,000
Orthodox 217,948,000
Anglicans 70,530,000

So Protestants being the *majority* is supposedly the basis for accepting their deletion of OT books, but now that's it clear they're not, I'm sure you'll change your tune.

I was using OT to describe books accepted by Judaism, I only used OT to make it clear to non jewish readers, otherwise i would have just said holy books. Jews do not accept Maccabees as a divine book, it was added by the Catholics, so I wouldnt think it was considered old testiment in the first place.

Jews pray for people after they are dead and that is in the old testament. It doesn't necessarily assume purgatory. Though many Jews today do believe in a temporary purgatory and/or resurrection , as I mentioned before.

"

actually i take it back, that isnt in the old testament either, but we use a prayer from the old testament to remember the dead among others not from the old testament

@Putin - I stand corrected. I didn't notice the "hell or purgatory" reference in Santa's original statement. Of course, seeing as Maccabees is not part of the Jewish holy texts, I could see someone who is an expert in Jewish faith but not Christianity as innocently ignoring it.

P.S. Does anyone else feel weird writing Santa and referring to a person of the Jewish faith? Just a little disconcerting is all... :-)

I love Christmas, I just dont view it as holy ;)

And I'm sorry if I'm a bit US-Centric in my statistics view. It comes with being a stupid American who doesn't study religion or genetics or anything much more than computer science. It is interesting that the Non-Catholic denominations worldwide still roughly equal the Catholics. But I & II Maccabees are in the Orthodox Bible as well, so world-wide, I was wrong. Maccabees is in more Christian texts than not.

See, I can admit when I'm wrong...

@Santa - I honestly don't either. The Christian church just coopted the Pagan holiday of Winter Solstice for it's own purpose. But I love the idea that it stands for "good will towards men" regardless of religious creed, race, or any other usually separating factor. It's the one time of year when we all treat each other like we would like to be treated (theoretically). In fact, Dicken's A Christmas Carol is my favorite Christmas story and there is nothing overt beyond Bob and Tiny Tim going to Church that is specifically Christian about it. It's not a veiled retelling of the Christ story, but is instead a solid morality tale of treating our fellow man well and of finding redemption and joy through our actions in this life.

So Fag-Naur, do you believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God?

Why yes, I do believe that, maple. I just don't believe he was born around the winter solstice.

OK Fair enough.