If I'm asking anything of Christians it's that they take part in the usual social game of post hoc rationalisation that everyone else plays. — Isaac

But they refuse to do so. Now what?

- - -

Christians, or anyone else, have to justify themselves to whatever extent the situation requires. If you put up a sign and say, "I only admire people that don't admire an evil god," and a Christian walks over to your table and says, "I want you to admire me, but I worship an evil god," then the Christian is obliged to justify themselves as qualifying under your criteria. — Ennui Elucidator

You can hold up your sign all day long, for years, and no Christian will come along. IOW, the situation you describe doesn't happen in real life. Christians don't care if you admire them or not, they don't care about your standards of respect. They don't seek your admiration, nor your respect. If anything, they want you to obey them, to submit to them.

People operate in a social sphere and are subject to all of the same conditions as anyone else. When discussing social interactions and the negotiation of power, justification is a basic means by which one person attempts to accomplish their purpose. You can't just exempt yourself from justification to another because you think some claim of yours is sacrosanct - the other person dictates the rules for what is required for them to cooperate.

Except that Christians (and religious/spiritual people in general) don't care about this silly little expectation of yours. They very much do exempt themselves from justification.

Discussing your own personal conduct (which is what both Lewis and Banno do) is not the same as establishing what governments can or should do. A "human right" to religion is a claim made against states, not individuals.

On the contrary, it is from Christians that I have heard the idea brought up first; I hadn't thought of it before.
For example, a Christian lady once defended her case this way in a discussion, namely that she has the constitutionally granted rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The rest of us then had no choice but to shut up and respect her constitutionally granted rights.

You are capable of acting and making moral judgments independent of the state and in opposition to that state, be it secular or not.

Unless you live in a state that is only nominally secular.

It would be great if you could talk about your judgment rather than hypothesizing about the judgment of some nondescript moral agent cum state actor.

I think religion/spirituality is the triumph of Social Darwinism. I don't admire the religious/spiritual, or the Jehovah worshippers, but I acknowledge that they have devised an evolutionarily advantageous way of life.

Look at us, talking about them, giving them our headspace and forum bandwidth for free. While they don't care about us. They surely know something we don't!

- - -

Maybe that second question is somewhat out of the scope here. But to me, the answer is exactly what Lewis is driving at, because I'd hazard the answer would be "well that's obviously allegorical because if it wasn't, it'd be awful" — Isaac

Would it?

Whom would a group of people who is intent on surviving and prevailing worship?
Someone very powerful, someone who can grant them victory, someone who can grant justification for their struggle for survival and power.
In short, someone like Jehovah.

No, not "any" sentiment, just the racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. ones. This isn't complicated at all,just don't post hateful/prejudiced BS and you're fine — Seppo

LOL.

I once posted a couple of posts where I expressed my concerns over the safety and effectiveness of the covid vaccines. From this, a prominent poster and a moderator accused me of being an anti-vaxxer, and the moderator even went on a crusade against me for it. Repeatedely accusing me of stances I don't hold.

So much for not posting "hateful/prejudiced BS".

There is no line - how can there be? Determining what is acceptable to a site by mods is not a science but an interpretive art. — Tom Storm

Surely there are principles.

What are you really getting at? It appears you are looking for rigid categories of unacceptability because your sense of fairness has been pinged by mod decisions. You've noticed that some objectionable ideas are allowed and some are not and there doesn't seem to be a measurable line for determination. I think this may be unavoidable. I recall Emerson's aphorism - "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Watch it, you might get banned, and not having seen it coming!

How do you explain the consistency with which religious/spiritual people don't act on what they preach?
How do you explain that when conversing with so many religious/spiritual people, there is a palpable contempt or hatred, sometimes blatant, sometimes just under the surface on their part?
— baker

To be fair this applies to many (if not all) areas of human behaviour not just religion. The same thing happens in most organised value systems - especially politics - where people regularly betray their ostensible principles. There's a reason there's a word for hypocrisy...

The kinder explanation for this would be that those folk are stuck in dualistic thinking and divide the world into winners and losers, with scorn and hatred constantly on the boil. In other words, their spirituality is shallow and ritualistic and they are unable to partake in the good or the true. — Tom Storm

The simpler explanation is that religion/spirituality is exactly as it appears, exactly as it is practiced by religious/spiritual people.
Thus:

It _is_ religious/spiritual to be eager to assume and take for granted the worst about others.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to act in bad faith.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to make empty promises.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to quickly resort to ill will.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to promote one thing and do another.
It _is_ religious/spiritual to have double standards.

And this is not to be repudiated. Religion/spirituality is the triumph of Social Darwinism, an evolutionary success.

If we start from the premise that Philosophy in the original or true sense is love of, and quest for, truth and that systems like Buddhism also aim to discover the truth — Apollodorus

Wrong. Buddhism isn't after the truth in the general sense you're using the word here. For the Buddhist quest, most truths that people tend to be after are irrelevant.

For example, from what I see, there is no evidence that Buddha attained enlightenment.

Guess what? There is no Buddhist who is losing sleep over your not seeing any evidence that Buddha attained enlightenment.

But, more importantly, you don't care whether they do or don't.

I'm not saying that this applies to Buddhism exclusively but, basically, what tends to be the case is that what we’ve got is evidence-free assertions that are being defended by means of other, similarly evidence-free claims.

Upon which you pile on more evidence-free claims. But wait, that pile is evidence!

The fact that someone can be one's guru and another's charlatan just goes to show that there is no objectively determinable fact of the matter about whether anyone is a guru or a charlatan.
— Janus

Or does it just say that determining the difference is very hard? — Tom Storm

No, it means it's advisable not to be a dick.

You guys have been displaying here a pervasively passive attitude toward religion/spirituality. As if religion/spirituality was something that is done to you, that others do to you, or that others manifest (or fail to manifest) for you. As if you played no part in the matter, or as if what you do has no bearing on the quality of the interaction between yourself and the prospective teacher. And as if the quality of the interaction between yourself and the prospective teacher is entirely and solely the responsibility of the prospective teacher; or at least that as far as you are concerned, you can do no wrong.

This is the stereotype about men and sex; you are replicating it in reference to religion/spirituality.

The difference of opinions shows that there is no objectively determinable quality of art works, music and literature. — Janus

The difference of opinions shows only that there is a difference of opinions. Nothing more.

Someone being one person's guru and another's charlatan doesn't make that person a guru, or a charlatan.
— baker

The fact that someone can be one's guru and another's charlatan just goes to show that there is no objectively determinable fact of the matter about whether anyone is a guru or a charlatan.

I'll translate this into language that you might be better able to understand:

Harry: Hey, I got laid last night. Susan is really good in the sack!
Dick: Really? I want to hit that too!
(a week later)
Dick (to Harry): You liar! You told me Susan was great in the sack! I did her last night, but it sucked. Man, you made a fool out of me!


Question: Is Susan to blame for Dick's bad experience of the sexual relation between them?

Pretty much the way Buddhists and Hindus disparage and misrepresent Christianity. — Apollodorus

Because when foreigners invade your country, the only sensible thing to do is to kneel before them and let them have your country, right?

Or is that only when Christians invade your country ...

yet the Holocaust was wrong, really bad. — jorndoe

The Nazis didn't think so, obviously.

Anyway, the point is that you're setting yourself up as the epistemic and moral authority over Christians when you expect them to justify their beliefs to you. Why should they submit to you?

The ultimate solution to the problem of solipsism is watching your teeth rot.

What use is illusory fairness?

I studied the non-technical essays of Sigmund Freud as an undergrad - Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents. This is more or less his view. — Wayfarer

I didn't study Freud, I observe people who claim to be religious/spiritual.

I don't agree with it,

Why not?

How do you explain the consistency with which religious/spiritual people don't act on what they preach?
How do you explain that when conversing with so many religious/spiritual people, there is a palpable contempt or hatred, sometimes blatant, sometimes just under the surface on their part? Why all the religious wars?

It's hard to argue that those are just "flaws", "human failings", "human imperfections". Religious/spiritual people are just too consistent in their behaviors, too deliberate in them, too proud of them, for us to still think those were merely "mistakes" or "flaws".

but I do agree that 'spirit' and 'spiritual' are rather threadbare terms. Maybe that reflects the poverty of current English lexicon on this respect.

I see no problem with the word itself.

Whatever rules they pick up from their text doesn't somehow absolve them. — jorndoe

In their eyes, it does. Just like the Nazis didn't consider the Nuremberg tribunal to be a valid judicial authority, so religious/spiritual people don't consider outsiders to be people with whom to have a straightforward discussion of their religion/spirituality.

You probably do the same: Just because someone comes to judge you doesn't mean you are obligated to accept them as a judicial authority over yourself.

I'm making the argument that it is fair to interrogate the beliefs of Christians in the same way we interrogate the beliefs of non-Christians, we do not need to 'stand in their shoes', nor understand their faith, nor give special dispensation - that if we find something apparently contradictory, incoherent, or morally objectionable, we can legitimately point that out and expect some justifications in return (normal discussion methods - exchange of justifications). — Isaac

It's not clear how this is the case.

For one, the secular constitution protects religion, but it doesn't protect philosophy. Religious people can always fall back on the secular constitution and demand respect (which includes not demanding justifications from them). Discussing religion is pretty much a matter of walking on the edge of attacking another person's constitutionally given human rights.

For two, in practice, Christians and other religious/spiritual people not rarely act exactly that way. Ask them for a justification of a belief of theirs because it doesn't make sense to you, and chances are they will accuse you of being disrespectful toward them (and who do you think you are to even dare talk about that with them).

The bottomline is that as a matter of principle, religious/spiritual people don't consider outsiders to be their epistemic or ethical peers, but necessarily lesser than them, and that's why they don't discuss their beliefs with them (at least not in any depth or in a way that would satify the outsider's standards).

It is the concern only of trolls to know exactly how much offence they can give before they are ejected. — unenlightened

And of the naive who think discussions are about arguments, and not about the social power hierarchy.

And since we were talking about "Nirvana", here is another interesting perspective that I think should not be ignored:

To many Americans, Buddhism is about attaining enlightenment, maybe even nirvana, through such peaceful methods as meditation and yoga. But in some parts of Asia, a more assertive, strident and militant Buddhism is emerging. In three countries where Buddhism is the majority faith, a form of religious nationalism has taken hold: in Sri Lanka, in Myanmar, in Thailand ….

Nirvanaless: Asian Buddhism’s growing fundamentalist streak – Religion News Service — Apollodorus

You keep focusing on these externals and incidentals, as if they would be the defining factors of Buddhism, or, more specifically, the Dhamma. They are not. The cultural, historical, social, economical, and political realities of life in some traditionally Buddhist countries and elsewhere are not what defines the Buddha's teachings.
Granted, for many people who consider themselves Buddhist, regardless of their provenance, those are the defining factors of their identity as Buddhists. Such identity, however, is not what the Pali suttas are about.

Secondly, part of the reason for the radicalization and nationalisim that we can see in some traditionally Buddhist countries is that they are a defense against aggressive Christian missionaries. These missionaries are using food, medical services, and the prospect of employment as means to lure in people. They sometimes try to subvert Buddhism into a kind of "preparatory religion for Christianity", claiming that God has sent the Buddha to teach the people morality, so that now they would be ready for Jesus Christ. They also generally disparage and misrepresent Buddhism.

That doesn't sound reasonable to me. You're responsible for what you do. That's it. — frank

Not if you claim membership in a group and demand to get special, preferential, or lenient treatment on account of such membership.

Gang laws, tribe laws.

If you're a member of a gang, you are accountable for what another gang member does. Even if you were nowhere near when he committed the crime, even if you knew nothing about the crime being planned. Simply by being a member of the gang, you make yourself accountable.

Making use of the name and demanding special treatment on account of one's gang/tribe membership, makes one such a gang/tribe member and it makes one accountable for anything other members of the gang/tribe do.

It shows that some Westerners are more knowledgeable about Eastern traditions than about Western ones. — Apollodorus

Heh. I turned to Buddhism in order to figure out which Christian religion is the right one. (It seems absurd in hindsight, but this is how it happened.)
At some point, which is now quite long ago, I was desperate with trying to choose a Christian church which I should join. I was terrified of the prospect of eternal damnation. Some Christians told me that I should look at the various Christian denominations truthfully, without bias, and that then, I would know for sure which one to join. But how does one do this " truthfully, without bias"? I had no idea. But I faintly recalled from somewhere that Buddhism taught how to overcome all biases. So, driven by the fear of eternal damnation, I took to Buddhism, with the plan that I shall first become enlightened, and then, once free of all biases, I would be able to pick the right Christian denomination. Time was of the essence.

Needless to say, that didn't exactly work out as planned.

hat’s an interesting article. I wonder how much of that re-focussing on theosis is a consequence of the emergence of similar strains of thought in alternative religious movements with their emphasis on union. It’s certainly something I don’t usually associate with mainstream Christian philosophy. — Wayfarer

E.g. from Mormon doctrine:

Moroni 7:48

48 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/moro/7?lang=eng&id=p48#p48

If it is merely "sublimation" and the whole enterprise is deluded as to its provenance from the start, then what does that say about claims to be enlightened? — Janus

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

The greatness of a musical composition, the profundity of a musician's interpretations of Bach, Beethoven or whatever canonical composer you like, cannot be precisely determined.

They can. This is the normative aspect of art theory.

While I don't know how the art critics do it, they appear to be fully certain that it can be done, that it should be done, and that they are doing it.

Given that they fight over whose interpretation of some music piece is the right one, for example, it's clear that they are operating with the idea that there _is_ such a thing as "the best interpretation" or "the correct interpretation". If it would truly all be about opinions and subjectivity, they couldn't fight about different interpretations.
(And this isn't triflesome: a student's academic success depends on correctly identifying the professor's standards for evaluating musical pieces; higher up, careers in art are made or lost over such matters.)

There are critics who write about works and their qualities, and there are many other critics who have quite different ideas about what any critic has written, so no, not precisely determinable.

The difference of opinions about a work says nothing about the quality of said work.

The same goes with spiritual questing; one person's guru is another's charlatan.I don't see how you can claim to be familiar with the world of spiritual self-cultivation and yet disagree with that.

Someone being one person's guru and another's charlatan doesn't make that person a guru, or a charlatan.

The student-teacher relationship depends as much, if not more, on the input of the student than on the input of the teacher.

Some people, when they are in the position of a student, can act only as sycophants, so in that relationship, their teacher is going to be a charlatan.
But with that same teacher, a different student, with a different outlook on the student-teacher relationship, can perceive the teacher in an entirely different manner and make an entirely different use of the relationship.

I don't think this is about me being "well-read" at all. I think it is more a case of some people being intellectually lazy and in denial but still trying to lecture others .... — Apollodorus

And whose problem is that?


What I find so ironic about you, and I do so to the point that I actually laugh out loud, is how you ascribe to me that I am a Buddhist. I'd been around Buddhism for more than twenty years, and in all that time, no Buddhist considered me a Buddhist, at least not a proper one. A few considered me a newcomer, some a beginner (but not in the good, Zen sense). I still vividly remember the contempt that one Buddhist had for me and how he told me that I was "outside, looking in". Another one who told me I had "no interest in the Dharma" and that my time would better be spent elsewhere. Then all those who called me dumb, clueless. Then the Buddhist Asian supremacists who dismissed me on account of my being white. Then the Buddhist male supremacists who dismissed me on account of being female.
Most of all, I don't consider myself a Buddhist, and I've made that clear many times.

To then have someone accuse me of being a Buddhist is, well, laughable, to say the least.

But if there's some specific group you actually (not hypothetically) wish to express hatred towards and you're worried you'll get banned for it, feel free to run your proposed comment by us and we'll apply a common sense interpretation of the guidelines to it. — Baden

I'm not too keen on expressing hatred, nor on taking up the time of the moderators, however,
Where is the dividing line here at this forum, between the acceptable and the bannable?
Between the acceptable and the reportable?

From seeing what posts are allowed, it's clear that it's not hatred or love alone that would be the deciding factors for a ban.

Sympathizing with Nazis gets you banned, but not sympathizing with Communists. How about sympathizing with, say, Stalinists?

Misogyny is a bannable offence -- but only if declared by men?
General misanthrophy is okay, but not misogyny or misandry?

Hating Muricans is okay, hating Africans is not okay? How about Asians?
Hating blacks is not okay, hating whites is okay?

And so on. Where's the line?

But if there's some specific group you actually (not hypothetically) wish to express hatred towards and you're worried you'll get banned for it, feel free to run your proposed comment by us and we'll apply a common sense interpretation of the guidelines to it. — Baden

And it's kind of too late for that anyway. Given the discussion between moderators after that poster was instabanned for misogyny, I've thought of many posts already made that would qualify as bannable offences. A general atmosphere of uncertainty as to what is acceptable and what isn't.

But hold on there. Yes, this is just restating the criteria for being vulnerable to Lewis’s attack. But if you look at the criteria as ways of avoiding the attack, you get a pretty strange result. Lewis says you ought not worship someone (human or divine) you believe to be evil; to please Lewis, you can of course (1) not believe in him at all; (2) not worship him; or (3) not believe he’s evil. What’s odd is that (3) is apparently entirely up to you — you can just choose to believe God, being good, would not countenance eternal damnation, declare your disbelief and be rewarded with Lewis’s approval, even if hell is real. That’s right, even if hell is real, all you have to do is not believe in this part of reality, and you get a free pass from Lewis. What the actual fuck? — Srap Tasmaner

Religious people tend to be authoritarian, and their critics tend to be such as well.

I was raised to be in bucket 1 but I’m not and I have no idea why. — Srap Tasmaner

That shouldn't be too hard. If a family are only Sunday saints and don't put in much effort into teaching religion to their children; if they are religious, but there is domestic discord; if religion was practiced primarily for socio-economic purposes; then it seems more likely that children born into such families will not develop a deep religious affiliation.

Let's focus on the ones who believe in it in Hell and eternal torture in some regard + worship the entity that tortures - regardless of their attitude towards it.

@Isaac and jorndoe seem to have made points in this quarter.

I find it quite plausible that they don't 'really worship' or 'really believe in' the God that tortures, but I'd struggle to spell out why. — fdrake

Because they themselves might not be safe from hell yet.

A proper Roman Catholic, for example, is expected to his last breath to consider himself capable of the ultimate betrayal of God, and thus even though he has lead a pure Catholic life, lose everything on his deathbed. Ideally, a Catholic is always supposed to be in a state of anxiety about his own salvation, given his capacity for mortal sin. (This is why scrupulosity is also called "the Catholic disease".)

Protestants generally don't have such concerns, insofar as they believe that their salvation is guaranteed by Christ dying for them on the cross, and doesn't depend on the purity of their conscience on their deathbed.

We can, do and ought judge folk by their beliefs as well as their actions. — Banno

I don't think something so basic was seriously disputed. — fdrake

Actually, this is precisely what was disputed by some posters this thread, and is in general disputed in society about some beliefs.

Ultra political correctness would have us not judge anyone, in any way (except, of course, those on the official list to be judged).

Religious beliefs and believers, given that they are protected by the constitution, are also not supposed to be judged.

You could find yourself sued for criticizing a Christian for his Christian beliefs.

There is a loophole in secular constitutions that gives religions a free pass. Religions and religious people thus have special constitutional protection that ordinary non-religious people don't.

BTW my computer will not download the River of Fire you linked; it advises that it is a security risk. — Janus

It opens fine on my computer. There used to be quite a bit of talk about the River of Fire about 10+ years ago (and several online sources for the text, with easy copy-paste option). It's an Eastern Orthodox take on eternal damnation. What I find esp. interesting about it is that it literally spells out that in Western Christianity, God is portrayed as a threat, as the danger from which we seek salvation.

The wants, those items higher up on Maslow's pyramid, are mind-related of course and so are on an ascetic's wish list. — Agent Smith

Then such a person is not an ascetic.

The point, however, isn't what is true of an ascetic (half-rejection of the body) but what he truly desires (total rejection of the body).

Eh? Where did you get that?

You can't hold what is a necessity against someone.

It's not clear where you're going with this.

it's merely a hipster posture I might reverse at any time. — Tom Storm

Is it or is it not? Men can be priests, monks for any amount of years, and then still disrobe. It's far from unheard of.

Re judging people by their actions:

This is a very generalized heuristics, and thus often unfair or useless for judging people.

By the time someone does something that could be problematic, it's often already too late. Such as discovering only a few years into your marriage that your spouse is a thief, or serial killer.

On the other hand, judging people merely by their actions results in the kind of absolute stigma of convicted felons, who, even though they have served their prison sentence in full, are never really allowed back into society, no matter what they do.

Look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Which of them are actually needs?

You can't be "voluntarily" poor without not only being denied the side of life given to those who are poor non-voluntarily but also being slung the responsibilities (if not just to protect) those who are not have. Therefore, you are not "voluntarily" doing anything, especially if you can talk to people who will help you out. — Outlander

Yes.
People who are in the position to voluntarily abstain from some worldly creature comforts aren't actually renouncing anything yet, even if it externally looks that way. For these people, asceticism would only really begin once they would start to renounce the desire for those worldly creature comforts, and once they would actually cut themselves off from obtaining those worldly creature comforts.

For example, having one spoon, one knife, one fork, one plate, one cup (like some modern minimalist practice) isn't yet asceticism as long as one has more than enough money (and regularly earns more of it) to buy dozens of new sets of cuttlery etc. and lives in a socioeconomic setting where they can buy those things.

Asceticism's rationale is rather simple: As you reject the physical (body) — Agent Smith

In asceticism, you don't "reject the physical body", you reject some popular notions about who we are and what we supposedly need.

The article seems to require that believers have a 'clear headed' conception of their God's atrocities to be simultaneous with their worship in order to transfer that veneration to the atrocities of God and tarnish the believer's character.

The final paragraph references nonbelievers being understanding of believers due to lack of a clear/ unified conception of God the Benevolent and God the Eternal Punisher - salvation through cognitive dissonance or avoided thought.

I wonder whether it is even possible to worship the God of the bible in such a 'clear headed' fashion? — fdrake

Machiavelli's The Prince, Green's 48 Laws of Power, and other such literature and its popularity suggest that it is possible to deliberately, in a 'clear headed' fashion think that way, and to think that way about God as well, such as in Kalomiros' River of Fire.

The River of Fire is certainly worth the read (and it's not for the faint of heart).

What if someone says, flat-out, "I hate New Agers" or "New Agers are stupid, worthless people"?

I was referring to those who are genuinely imbued with religious feeling. — Janus

And you are the judge of who is "genuinely imbued with religious feeling"?

If that were true then adult conversion would be impossible, which it obviously isn't. — Janus

Like I said in the same post of mine you quoted:

It's a feeling, an experience that is impossible to recreate at will for an adult person.
Except perhaps to some extent for adults who are going through an existential crisis and who in the process of their existential quest turn to religion/spirituality. — baker

I think that's true, but they must have some ties into the world, else what are they by little antigonish's? They need coherence, implication, consequence...something like that, to be real at all in a social world. I'm happy with incomplete commensurability, but not with no commensurability. No commensurability just means we have an entire mental world without a single tie-in to ours and that seems completely implausible on the face of it. It's not a good model of the behaviour we actually see. — Isaac

Again, this is where Kohlberg's theory of moral development comes handy, esp. on the point of how a person goes from one stage of moral reasoning to another. It takes time, and it cannot be done simply through reading arguments.

Not to mention the fact that Christians, bless them, are a part of our world, and moral actors within it. If we simply set them outside of our moral talk we undermine the whole project of morality (which is about us, not about me, you, them). Morality relies on at least a sufficient degree of commensurability to give a baseline of understanding common to all in the community.

Instead of conceiving of the problem as "us vs. Christians", we can conceive it as "person on level 1 of moral development vs. person on level 2 of moral development" and so on.

It's the same type of problem. It's why, for example, telling a small child that it is wrong to steal because it hurts the other person's feelings will do nothing, the child doesn't understand this kind of reasoning. Or if you try to argue for Social contract orientation with someone who is hellbent on Law and order morality, or someone set on "What's in it for me?", all you say will fall on deaf ears.

I think that baseline, that commensurability, is in the concept of moral judgement. A Christian child doesn't need to understand the bible to understand that hitting people to get sweets is wrong. Christian adults don't routinely consult their bible or their priest in novel situations to work out who they should and should not spit in the eye of.

So it seems 'wrong' comes first, religion then tries to piggyback off that to say 'here's some other things that are also 'wrong' you might not have thought of'.

No. The Christian child has been taught, per Christian doctrine, about right and wrong. Sure, later on, Christians don't routinely consult the Bible etc. -- but that's because by then, they have already internalized Christian moral principles, not because they would have moral principles that would be quite separate from Christian doctrine.

So with the most charitable interpretation I can muster, I find it virtually impossible to believe that a Christian has an incommensurable understanding of 'wrong'.

I find it entirely possible. Ideally, religious people do things for religious motivations, with religious justifications.

For example, ideally, a theist eats in order to get sustenance so that he can be a good steward of what God has entrusted him with. Ideally, a theist shouldn't eat to satisfy his hunger, or to enjoy the food (that would be selfish, ignorant of God).
Ideally, a theist brushes his teeth in an effort to take good care of the body God has so kindly provided him.
And so on.

All you you seem to be saying here is that some people who believe that an old book says a thing think they have more authority than someone who challenges received opinion. They might object more powerfully me, sure, and still be wrong. My standards are based on humanism rather more than a gut feeling. — Tom Storm

But you hold to humanism with your gut feeling, don't you?
Or do you feel an overwhelming certainty that humanism is the right doctrine, for which you are willing to live, die, and kill?

What I can't do is just condemn 1/4 of the species (or whatever it is) and leave it there. That's a dangerous mindset.
— frank

Why? Could you elaborate?
— baker

It sets the stage for immoral action. Any time you condemn a class of people, your unconscious, which holds all sorts of anger and frustration, will set on that class as deserving of punishment.

Then it only takes a weak moment and bad timing, and woops, you just committed an injustice and you should have known better. — frank

That's only a problem if you're poor and powerless.

Sure. To know a person's moral character, we look at that person's ACTIONS. (I'm making the words bigger so they cross the confusion barrier a little better.

ACTIONS ARE WHAT WE JUDGE.

A person could be a devil worshiper, but if they're good in all they do, we have to say they appear to have good character because we don't have X-RAY VISION into their psyche.

See? — frank

Even monkeys can discern intent, and judge an action by the actor's intent.

They did those experiments with chimpanzees (?, some primates) where a chimpanzee accidentally dropped and damaged a banana, and then deliberately dropped it. It turned out the chimpanzees can tell the difference. They punish the deliberate damaging.

I’m still not much addressing the intended thrust of the thread, I know, which was not supposed to be about what believers go through, but about how non-believers should think about believers, insofar as they accept some version of eternal damnation. — Srap Tasmaner

One part of this is actually simple: Once the eternal damnation believers discover that you don't believe like they do, _they_ will ditch you. They will be the ones who will be the first to set boundaries between themselves and you.

You are free to think about them what you want, but on their part, they will limit their association with you, so that the question of whether you should associate with them or not becomes moot. (Unless you want to force yourself on them.)

Here’s a question for you, Banno. You say above, that “perhaps there is some potential” to explain Christian behavior you find abhorrent by reference to Christian doctrine — Srap Tasmaner

It's only fair to assume that Christians do things for Christian reasons.