Religion is good because it gives the believer an objective and absolute standard of morality

[Vivacia]

(This idea was introduced in another thread, but it felt like an unfair tangent for that thread to be taking in my humble opinion, but one I'd be interested in discussing).

Firstly, I absolutely disagree with the statement.

Secondly, I feel as an atheist I have an objective morality, if not an absolute one.

There's a lot of mental gymnastics required to make sense of the contradictions and nonsense in the bible.

If you approach the Bible as a set of rules then in makes no sense because it is not a book of rules. To insist that it is would be a category error and discussion becomes impossible because someone is defining an object as one thing when those who use it everyday are defining it as something else which is just daft.

Christianity is a religion with relationship at its heart and that is a relationship with the divine through Jesus. The Bible records the stories and histories and myths of people over thousands of years. As Christians believe that Jesus is God then the writings in the New Testament take precedence over those of the Old Testament but there is still wisdom those older books so they are not discarded. Mostly what you can't do with the Bible is go to it and expect a simple plain reading. It is in Hebrew or Ancient Greek for a start. What you do have to do is translate, work with the context and culture and the genre and then you can start having a go at meaning.

The Bible is not an instruction manual. It is more of a history of encounter which helps interpret and contexutuallise an experience of God that someone has today.

So going back to the OP. I don't believe that Christianity gives someone an objective standard of morality or ethics. What it does is frame an experience of the divine through Jesus who is the absolute good and gives resources to work through ethical issues of the day.

I don't think we can have it both ways, "The bible tells us how we should live and that there's 1/2/10/lots (delete according to decade) of rules that we should live by" and "It's not a book of rules, you shouldn't take it literally, it's a history of encounter and divine relationship".

You can want the Bible to be a book of rules in order to dismiss it. Fine do that. It isn't a book of rules so it has been dismissed for an invalid reason, but if that is what you want to do then that is your choice.

Ethics are not about rules. Some ethical reasoning is about rules but not all as the past few thousand years of philosophical thought has covered rights, natural law, virtue and more. But if you want to believe that all moral reasoning is about rules then it is your right to do so.

Back to the study then.

Would you say that to the christian who takes pleasure from her religion because it gives her morality, and freedom from having to decide between right and wrong for herself?

I’m also interested in the question of the significance or purpose of the Bible.

As an outsider, my understanding is that the Bible is a book that can be read on several different levels. One level or function is as a moral guidebook – the commandments and parables fulfil that purpose - but that is not the only function.

For Christians, as I see it, the Bible is much like a multi-faceted crystal which can be turned in the palm of the hand so that one facet or another catches the light.

So one facet of the crystal in its entirety is moral instruction – and it is this aspect of the whole that has been illuminated by the light of our attention in this thread.

.it was the religious leaders who were laying down the law without thinking which was why Jesus broke a few of the laws occasionally,to make the point that they were general rules for mans benefit but common sense also had to prevail.

"Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation; and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. - Numbers 15: 32-36 (NASB)"

"Would you say that to the christian who takes pleasure from her religion because it gives her morality, and freedom from having to decide between right and wrong for herself?"

Does such a person exist? Certainly Christianity does not provide that level of guidence. According to Christianity salvation is by faith and not by good works. Maybe your friend is happy in that she knows she is forgiven if she doesn't always make the right decisions.

Does such a person exist?

Er, yes, that's why I started the thread. However, I am not comfortable quoting her name on this thread. If she wanted to discuss what she said, I think she'd be here joining in with the discussion.

So, would you tell her, "You're doing Christianity wrong. You should be interpreting the bible my way"?

What I find hard to understand is that atheists are constantly reiterating that the only common belief they hold as a group is that there is no God, and yet there is some expectation that to call yourself a Christian you have to believe exactly the same as every other Christian or there is hypocrisy going on somewhere. Christians follow Jesus Christ and to do that they use to Bible,which documents His life and actions,to try and understand how Jesus would want them to be living their lives. If a bunch of atheists all sat down and read a very long book together and then discussed it,is is realistic to suggest that everyone would think exactly the same at the end of it and would have all got the same out of it?

I think that that's a very good point vbd. Well made, and it's given me something to think about.

My gut reaction is not the argument is not, "You all read this book, you should all interpret it the same way" so much as "You say you follow this book, you should follow it all and not pick and choose the nice bits and deny the worrying bits".

You hear a lot about "God is good" and "Jesus loved little children". Where was the mention of stoning, persecution, slavery, fear and punishment?

vdb, hollow laughter at all Christians believing the same thing. I've yet to find two who do. It does make it difficult as an atheist to say "I'm not a Christian because..." because there's always someone who comes along and says no no I'm a Christian that's not what I believe. I'm still waiting for any of them to come along with a version that makes any logical sense to me. (Having spent years trying and failing to find one for myself.)

If a bunch of atheists all sat down and read a very long book together and then discussed it,is is realistic to suggest that everyone would think exactly the same at the end of it and would have all got the same out of it?

But you're not claiming that the bible is just a book, you believe that god wrote it/shaped it. You believe that the creator of the universe used that book to communicate a very important message to mankind, so important that it could affect someone's eternal destination, so even more important than instructions for mouth to mouth resuscitation or similar.

Further down thread someone used the analogy of the bible being like a prism with many sides catching light and creating many different colours which is fine if it is just a book, but if someone believes it is a message from god, one of life or death importance, then how does one explain the way Christians come to wildly different beliefs and opinions all with biblical basis. Imagine CPR instructions were as easily misinterpreted?! Would you not query the credentials of the experts who wrote it?

If I passed you a book and said 'this was written by the one true god' how would you test it?

Going back to the group of atheists coming to different opinions about the author, fine, unless you expect us to believe the author is an omniscient supernatural being who wrote the book to transmit a message of vital importance to us, in which case the supernatural being is a bit shortsighted.

More than 1 in 4 of the big guns in the Church of England voted no to female bishops in 2012. These people are eating, drinking and sleeping Christianity and even they couldn't agree on a smile yes or no. God was able to make himself amply clear in what to do in the case of the guy picking up sticks in the OT but nowadays he can't even communicate a simple yes or no? Oh and he no longer wants us to stone people for picking up sticks at the weekend. What gives?

Atheists don't necessarily believe there is no god, most are are just not convinced by the evidence of any of the known religions. I'm an atheist and find the arguments for the known religions unconvincing. Personally if there is a god it doesn't seem interested in earth in any way that is helpful or meaningful, and there's isn't any evidence for even that sort of god at the moment.

I get stuck in mental gymnastics with this idea that people think atheists believe "there is no god". It makes the assumption there IS something in which to "not believe" and is more often then not referencing a Christian god.
It is not up to the atheist to prove the non existence. It is up to the person purporting the concept to show its existence.
And it can't/hasn't been done.

Headinhands I know it is pointless getting into a debate with you because it never goes anywhere helpful. You know and understand that with many subjects it is possible to argue a convincing case for both sides and you also know that if you take the old testament stories in the whole context of the time they were living,the rules of the tribe,societies norms etc, that things that seem extreme to us were fairly normal everyday occurrences. In the time of that stick collecting story,the man concerned would have been fully aware that he was deliberately breaking an important rule of his tribe and that if he had been caught,the consequences would be death.
As you know, because you know your bible, the old testament tribes lived with a strict set of rules and many misdemeanours were punishable by death.All the odd little laws would have had reasons at the time(be they practical,cultural,superstitious, religious) and the 10 commandments would have been very important. When people fell short of Gods expectations (ie sinned) they offered sacrifices to put things right again.
As you also know,the Bible teaches that after sending endless prophets to try and get His people on the straight and narrow to very little effect,God then came to earth himself in the form of Jesus and after a 3 year ministry on this earth He was then crucified and that ultimate sacrifice removed the need for temple sacrifices to restore our relationship with God. All we had to do was believe.
This creates a seemingly huge discrepancy between Old Testament and New Testament teaching and events. However,I truly believe that reading through the Bible both old and New testament, gives a consistent message of a loving God wanting to be in close and loving relationship with His people. There were times when he was angry , yes, but rightly so.
The reason people get caught up in disagreement over the detail is often because of shifts in culture. The teaching on the role of women in the church is acceptable in most areas of the world but no longer in Western culture. The teachings on sexual purity would also only be questioned by Western culture and elsewhere it would still be acceptable to teach that sexual intercourse should be reserved for within a married relationship. As the culture becomes more liberal, the church starts to mirror that and then those who feel the church is called to be counter cultural get into battles with Christians who believe we have to move with the times. That is why genuine Christians argue over the role of women etc.
The last point I would make is that as Christians, we believe that God is the author of all creation(however he chose to do that...before we get into another pointless argument about how God created anything) We believe that he is all powerful,all present, all knowing etc. We also, because of that , would not presume to question the way He chooses to do things. How arrogant would that be? He is God afterall.

We believe that he is all powerful,all present, all knowing etc.

Apart from not knowing the prophets would be a massive failure and he'd have to send Jesus?

And Jesus wasn't a great success.

So you're saying that then it was okay for people to be stoned for picking up sticks at the weekend but now it isn't. Would it be wrong for me to throw rocks at someone on the checkout in Asda tomorrow? Why? The problem with the context defence is that your suggesting god changes, and that he used to find something good that we now find abhorrent such as slavery. Will god apologise to that guy who was stoned for collecting sticks now that he has worked out how silly that rule was?

I think that seeing as a third of the worlds population claim to follow Him 2 thousand years later, that He probably was quite a success.Why do you think He wasn't?

Well, the fact that the other 2/3 are going straight to hell.

how arrogant would that be

You weren't born accepting Christianity, god knew at some point you would have to make an 'arrogant' value judgement on his message, he relied on that arrogance for you to become a Christian, but then he gets upset if you continued to use those reasoning skills of making assessments on the soundness of one of his judgements? Makes no sense does it.

The whole point is headinhands,that God does not need to apologise to anyone. Why should your opinion be more important than His? If you were living in a culture that had a particular rule punishable by death that you for some reason chose to break then I guess you would have to live (or die with!) the consequences.
The whole slavery argument again is very simplified. Just because something existed in Biblical times does not mean God approved of it. The whole story of Moses is about the Israelites being freed from Egyptian slavery. In the New Testament a high profile Christian was ordered to release his slave and treat him as an equal brother in Christ. A friend of mine who has far more theologicalknowledge than I do also explained to me recently that the slavery often described in the bible was different to what we understand slavery to be.

The Bible does not specifically condemn the practice of slavery. It gives instructions on how slaves should be treated (Deuteronomy 15:12-15; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 4:1), but does not outlaw slavery altogether. Many see this as the Bible condoning all forms of slavery. What many fail to understand is that slavery in biblical times was very different from the slavery that was practiced in the past few centuries in many parts of the world. The slavery in the Bible was not based exclusively on race. People were not enslaved because of their nationality or the color of their skin. In Bible times, slavery was based more on economics; it was a matter of social status. People sold themselves as slaves when they could not pay their debts or provide for their families. In New Testament times, sometimes doctors, lawyers, and even politicians were slaves of someone else. Some people actually chose to be slaves so as to have all their needs provided for by their masters.

I think slaves also were released after a period of time if they wished to be.
It is also estimated that there are over 27 million people in the world today subjected to slavery of all descriptions and it is Christians who are at the forefront of trying to fight this.Where is your evidence that God thought slavery was good.