Cmon Salon you're not even trying anymore. Religion is the root of all evil and the Jews are the worst.

What will happen to earth's religions if/when:

* extraterrestrial life is confirmed

* science theory turns out to be right, and eventually it is proved that there are multiple universes

Just these 2 discoveries would blunt existing religions, which are totally wrapped in human behavior.

Seriously, are humans evolved enough to know anything about whatever God might be? I doubt it. It seems to me that every earthly religion was created to give us a way to deal with the scary unknowns of life. Whatever designed the laws of physics remains unavailable so far.

"People in the modern world, certainly in America, think of religion as being largely about proscribing moral behavior."

Proscribe = ban. If this isn't a typo, then that means the interviewee says that religion is largely about prescribing immoral behavior. Maybe it should have read "proscribing immoral behavior.

People often say we need God for the source of absolute moral values. But that begs the question of how do we get these values from God?

If you the say from the Bible, then you have to explain why it has an alarmingly high number of immoral guidelines, like to kill non-believers, gays and children who misbehave. For examples see Deuteronomy 13:6, Leviticus 20:13 Exodus 21:15 Matthew 10:21, 5:17. Are we suppose to follow these edicts?

In reality people use their own inner moral compass and cherry pick the good advice from the Bible or Koran; and even then it often takes complex interpretations to figure out what it means. So we are actually creating our own morality and use God as an abstract vessel of morality that evolves over time with society. For example, slavery is now considered immoral, whereas in the days the Bible was written it was more acceptable.

It is noteworthy that only 3 of the 10 commandments are worthy of being laws in the USA. So how doe we get absolute moral values?

The word you're looking for when you talk about conditional or flexible morality is 'convenience'.

Any religious scholar worth their salt talks about western ETHICAL Monotheism, not just monotheism. The great leap in the west is that essential coupling of ethics to religion in monotheism. The Egyptian, Sumerian and dozens of other pagan faiths were specifically non or even ANTI ethical. Their gods were flawed men and women with super powers. They drank, fornicated, murdered, stole, lied, cheated. They were specifically not ethical, they were, in effect a projection of the people they lead. Ethical monotheism asserts that man is the projection of God.

God isn't 'moody' once you understand that, any more than your parent is moody because they occasionally punished you because you were bad.

God isn't 'moody' once you understand that, any more than your parent is moody because they occasionally punished you because you were bad.

I don't know about your parents, but whenever my parents disciplined me it always seemed they were in a pretty foul mood. Like Pavlov's dog, after a while, all they had to do was get in a bad mood to make us behave.

Oh? And what about when your parents or "god" punishes you for someone else's bad behavior, when you haven't actually been bad at all by any rational standard. When god supposedly killed everyone on Earth except Noah's family and whatever he could fit on the ark, wasn't that being excessively moody? And I seriously doubt that every single human being in the cities of Sodom & Gamorrah, except ol' Lot, were really all that bad to warrant being slaughtered; God was just grumpy again. Ultimately, god doesn't make any sense at all, except as a mythological character reflecting the temperament of the people who wrote stories about him.

<<God isn't 'moody' once you understand that, any more than your parent is moody because they occasionally punished you because you were bad.>>

I accept like the author that most of the Old Testament is a nationalistic fiction written to keep the community together or serve its interests... and I especially agree with the portrayal he gives of God in the Old Testament, as part psycho part compassionate loving humanist. What I believe sets Christianity apart is the concept that mankind is so precious that God would die for mankind. In a sense it is the ultimate humanism, and for me the only God worth believing in and only God worth loving and paying attention to is one that would die for me. The second feature of Christianity that makes it attractive is that it is largely based (in the main sects Catholic, Eastern orthodox) on Ancient Greek thought (Plato and Aristotle). All advanced modern civilizations are based on ideas that came from the Ancient Greeks, what sets Christianity apart is that it took a nationalistic tribal religion of Israel and used it as a bases to create a code of ethics and belief that have universal appeal. I will buy this book, I like what this author has to say.

Religion is the root of all evil and the Jews are the worst.

I thought the love of money was the root of all evil. I didn't hear RW say religion is the root of all evil. I heard him say that human beings are the root of all evil.

And the Jews are the worst at what, exactly? I've always thought of them as smart, capable people. Most of the Jews I know are kind, thoughtful, generous people. Worst at what, exactly?

God is an invention of man to help explain the universe. If the universe changes, the explanation, god, must change. When people's perception of the universe changes, their explanation, god, must change.

Replace "god" with "science" to see how this works. The difference being, of course, that one is based on experimentation and evidence and the othe is based on guesses and desire.

You are as funny as a barrel of Nazis.

I hate to invoke the "Hitler" analogy so soon, but if the Biblical God is "ethical" because he didn't drink and fornicate like the other gods of his day, then Hitler was ethical because he didn't drink and fornicate like Churchill and Roosevelt, and was even a vegetarian--all he did was advocate mass murder, like the Old Testament God did, time and again.

The "moral truth" society is moving towards is simply society itself. People would be against murder, stealing, etc., with or without God simply because you can't have a civilized, orderly society with businesses, neighborhoods, schools and supermarkets with people wantonly murdering and stealing left and right with impunity. And as society matures, it leaves behind the ignorant prejudices that ancient scripture has saddled us with (like the subjugation of women or the persecution of homosexuals) and moves toward a more enlightened system that takes into account only that which is actually harmful or helpful to society and the rights of the individual. That is the direction in which mankind has been headed since recorded history, and religion has been more hindrance than help along the way.