To ask if you are not a Christian, what non Christian values you live by?

[BlossomBlanket]

Just that really!

OK

Why is me offering an opinion any different from you "self-appointining" as advocate for the PP's abusive grandfather?

Why can't you interact without any honesty or decency?

Thanks for trying but she won't apologise. She is very certain she is right about everything and nothing anyone can say could possibly prove her wrong.

It's this kind of belief in things I find dangerous. General faith in a power bigger than us, absolutely fine and I can understand it. This blind belief that they're totally right, scares me.

No, she's simply telling you what I said.

OK

"She" is the cat's mother ! 🙂

OK

@esthersouwester
I really don't think you should make assumptions about someone or their family like that. Some people have awful experiences and they don't need to be lectured by a stranger on the internet about it. We can all agree it's good to be compassionate and forgiving, but it's for each person to find their way to that, along with processing a lot of other complex feelings. If you insist on someone else forgiving, that's really just taking the side of the abuser against the victim. It's not your forgiveness to give or pressurise. Maybe focus on your own spiritual issues whatever they may be, rather than the speck in someone else's eye.

Facts and evidence I'm afraid are not as real as you believe they are. I know you think I am Donald Trump, but actually it was my uber leftie sociology lecturer who taught us about Foucault

The problem is the lack of reliable sources

It's trust, faith.

"(I wonder: what, if anything, do you think follows from the lack of any transcendental signified?)"

Isn't that what we are talking about? Semiotic breakdown, no stable anything, nobody can agree on what male or female means, when life begins... anything. Mathematical facts are easy to establish. But agreeing on any kind of common good as a society becomes an increasingly remote prospect, everyone has their own facts. For me, I disregard any source that has ever claimed that men can become pregnant, if they make such an outrageous claim, I can't trust a single other thing they have to say on anything, they've demonstrated their willingness to lie. That doesn't leave many sources of "facts and evidence". God is the ultimate principle, not a man on the moon or a gas. Many people here are railing against a very poor conception of God. Postmodern chaos is not obligatory as you say, it simply is, its what Neitszche understood when he proclaimed the death of God.

"What has materialism got to do with atheism?"
It seems obvious to me that most here say they don't believe in something that can't be empirically verified. I.e material things and a rejection of anything metaphysical... am I wrong?

I didn't "lecture" anyone.
I gave another viewpoint based on my considerable experience with older people, Palliative Care and the Marie Curie nursing organisation.
If you insist on someone else forgiving, that's really just taking the side of the abuser against the victim.
Not at all.I did not "insist" - where did that come from?
I asked for the PP to show some compassion for the elderly gentleman's position.
It's not your forgiveness to give or pressurise.
I never said it was.
Maybe focus on your own spiritual issues whatever they may be, rather than the speck in someone else's eye.
I really don't know what you are talking about as you seem to have totally misunderstood my post.
Don't forget the original poster isn't without agency here

I suppose if you want absolute black and white certainty, then faith would hold a deep appeal. However, making that leap does leave one open to missing the genuine complexities that make up life in the real world. The question of when life begins is one of those complexities - if you take the simple 'sperm meets egg, that's it' then that does make life nice and easy. If you look at the bigger picture, which also involves the pregnant woman and everyone around her, then it becomes more complex and a solution that makes sense for one person may not make sense for another. If you then look at what happens when pregnancies go wrong and the choices that can entail, it becomes more complex still.

For me, being an atheist is being at peace with not knowing and not having those certainties.

Are you saying values override facts and evidence? Or that there are no facts or evidence when it comes to many issues fundamental to human lives and experiences

You told her she didn't sound like a very nice person, you passed comment on a situation you didn't know anything about, you called for compassion without taking into account her own perfectly reasonable feelings (which may include compassion anyway).

What I mean by your own spiritual issues is that you seem to think it's appropriate to criticise the PP here, to which I think Jesus had some words about looking at your own faults first and foremost, whatever they may be.

I really can't stand it when people present themselves as ever so virtuous and religious and then behave with a lack of basic courtesy.

Yes you are wrong. Because all have mentioned many things that are not material things. Society, friends, family - caring, nurturing, looking after each other…the list goes on. All non-material. And none of which are the exclusive remit of the religious; indeed they all existed millennia before Christianity.

Where did I say I was "virtuous and religious"?

As I said, the PP isn't without agency here.

The latter. There are of course many things which through lived experience going back thousands of years have shown themselves to be effective ways of handling certain issues, but like everything in the accepted scientific method, everything is a theory, to be accepted only until such time as something happens to prove that theory is incorrect. In practice this means, for example, that homosexual relationships or sex outside marriage between consenting and available adult partners is not harmful or wrong, because it has not been demonstrated that it is. I don't apply Karl Popper to life in general in a particularly rigid way, but his methodology can be a useful guideline. What I like about it is that you can't verify anything - only falsify it. It's a good way of underpinning that when it comes down to it, we don't know.

Present yourself, not say

Presumably if you're here to speak for Christianity, it's not too much to expect a little sensitivity towards others as well? That might be considered a virtue?

Do you think it was appropriate to say the poster doesn't seem like a nice person? Did it occur to you that they've been hurt and were simply expressing that? I'm curious with your experience in caring for people, if they were upset and said something you didn't agree with would you have told them they weren't nice?

Must admit I wonder where children get their "moral codes" from nowadays? A generalised idea of right and wrong seemed much more in your face when I was growing up, via religion, TV, radio, society in general etc, than I think is the case now.

Yes, it's much more about achieving your dreams etc as opposed to doing your duty. Probably too much of either isn't great.