Vexen:
Do I 'know' it to be moral? No, no I don't, and I often question my own beliefs and sometimes my opinions and conclusions change, depedning on the things I've expereinced and seen. I believe there's some wisdom in not assuming your way of doing things is the right one.
I thank you for your honesty, and I would agree with you in that there is a value to being open to being wrong. As hard as this may be to believe, I hold to that even in my Christian faith. While I believe infatically that God exists and would never doubt it, I also am certain that I don't know everthing about Him or His ways and purposes. I certainly don't have all the answers. The things I can be sure of, however, are the things that please Him and the things that don't.
I heard someone recently say this and I thought it was a very good explination of God's "morality".
When God says "Don't" He is really saying, "Don't hurt yourself".
I think too often God gets a bad rap for the don'ts because people have used the don'ts to elevate themselves above others and lord them over others. Falkus, your absolutely right, horrible things have been done to people and by people in the name of Chritianity and just about every other religion and philosopy. Even your unitarianism, which is the foundation of Communism if I remember my high school governments class correctly (it's been a while). I don't think you can find a system of belief, devine or not, that hasn't had it's share of extremists and wackos.
And that is why its difficult for me to believe that you, as a mere human being would leave something as astronomically important as what is right and wrong to "I'm not really sure." None of us humans are infallable, so how could ultimate good or rightness ever come from us? The best we can hope to cling to is idealism, which is something unatainable, and if we all individually are responsible for deciding what's moral or right for ourselves, then who's ever really wrong? By your own system of justice, how can you fault Christians who blow up abortion clinics for doing what they think is "morally right"? They're just doing what they sincerely believe is the right and best thing to make the most people happy aren't they?
There is something inside of us as human beings that longs for rightness. Granted we don't always follow it, but it's the reason that movies with a happy ending do better than those where everyone dies and the hero is defeated. On a whole, even people who would be considered morally bankrupt who create movies that promote promiscuity and debauchery will still have hints of morality intertwined. In another thread we were talking about the movie "The Golden Compass" and I commented there that it was suprising to me that someone who was so adamantly opposed to a Christian worldview would include traits like loyalty, self-sacrifice and justice in the core of their story. Now I know that statement will raise your hackles a bit Vexen, but let me say for the record, I know many poeple who are not Christian and even a few who would consider themselves agnostics that are, by human standards, good people. They don't steal, murder, cheat, lie, etc, etc. I'm not saying they can't BE good people, I just don't understand WHY they would want to be good people.
Without a perfect, divine creator it just seems like there would be no real reason to be moral. At the end of your life, what have you gained? It wouldn't be friends, because I guaruntee you Hugh Hefner has lots of friends, money too. So what does it gain you? A sense of accomplishment? Who would care? So what if your better than your neighbor or your boss? There's someone out there that's better than you, so in the end your always second in line. I'm not "incredulous" about anything, I genuinely don't understand. Perhaps it's because I was raised Catholic and later became a penticostal, so I have alway had an understanding of God from a child.
The point I'm getting at is, Falkus said he doesn't have to answer to a pope or priest, and your right, you don't. But if Christianity is correct, then you will have to answer to God. Now before you go off on me threatening you with damnation, that's not what I'm saying. Where you spend eternity isn't any of my business, nor is it my decision, and ultimatly, it's not God's decision either. It's yours. See, that's what it means when I say don't means don't hurt yourself. God knows that the things He tells us not to do will ultimatly lead to our harm and ruin, yet because He desires free agents to give love to Him, he has created a system by which you may choose to love Him or not, to serve Him or not, and because He created you in His own image and breathed life into you by His own spirit, you have innate traits of God in you. One of them is a desire for justice and what I'm calling "morality". You can't get away from it even if you decide not to believe. Still something within you longs for justice and truth. It's what seperates us from the animals, and while we do see some animals that will fight for another animal's safety and take in another animal's child to raise if the parent dies, you don't see things like charity, worship, and longing for purpose in animals. It just isn't there. But it is in us as humans, and nothing in the DNA code accounts for it. It in our soul, because God put it there. Now you can choose to believe that or not, and if you choose not to believe it, you'll still try and live up to your own moral code. The only difference is, when you finally come to the end of your life and you find out that God was real all along, you'll have no excuse for not believing in Him, because we've had this conversation, and your making the choice to believe or not to believe right now. This is a moment in history where God will be able to point to and say, "You chose to reject Me, to believe I was just a fabrication of men."
Maybe you'll say you lived a moral life, but none of us has lived a perfect life, and if the Bible is true, that's what Jesus did, so he's the standard. Now if you don't believe the bible is true, that's fine, you don't have to, but one day you'll find out the truth, and then it will be too late. What if I'm wrong you might ask. What if I'm the decieved one and not seeing the "facts" clearly? What if we are just worm turf when we die? Then I wil have lived a great life, helping an loving people and missed out on none of the pain associeated with "immoral" living. I'll have children that know how to live a life free of those bondages and vices, just like you did. See Christians are covered both ways. :p
As far as doing whatever makes the most people happy, give me a break. You'll run yourself into an early grave with that one. And so if what makes the most people happy is for Falkus to crawl on his belly or eat worms for the rest of his life, will you be bound to that for the "happiness" of the masses? I'm guessing this "philosophy" would loose it's appeal quickly.
Oh, and Falkus, one more thing, was there no morality before Epicurus?