I actually do think that WBGD is likely to be ethical. After all, surrogacy is extremely expensive. If this can significantly reduce the costs of surrogacy, then why not aim for this? — Xanatos

How does financial saving translate into ethics?
And why is it more ethical to co-opt the bodies of unsuspecting brain-dead women for the use of privileged infertile people than to have them pay someone who actually benefits from the transaction?

I recently read "Jesus Interrupted" by Bart Ehrman and he made the point many times that biblical criticism is taught at most seminaries and pastors are well aware of it, but it's not taught to the congregation, and he didn't have a good explanation for it. — Hanover

I can offer one - the same one you did, below. The faithful are too dependent on their faith, whether it's simple and ignorant or learned and sophisticated: the minister has to address minds of every caliber and belief at every level in his mixed audience. In fact, those with simple, unquestioning faith are the most vulnerable and in need of protection from complexity. (Unfortunately, they are also the most exploitable and exploited by religious charlatans. )

No [can't give up reliance on the book], because you have thousands of years of analysis that has in fact led many to a more meaningful life. — Hanover

I wonder how that number would fare in the balance against lives ruined. It doesn't matter: individuals and communities, parishes and entire nations, have too much invested. All they can risk is gradual adaptation to modernity, minor adjustment to religious claims and demands.

The fundamentalist position is an impossible one to maintain, but it has very strong contemporary (but not historical) influence, especially in the US South. — Hanover

That's because it's uncompromising. They're not appealing to reason, but to something far more atavistic - the very roots of religiosity. People love crusades and circuses.

the answer lies in accepting the obvious fact that the Bible has been used for a particular purpose by people and it has been given significance by people and that is what makes it relevant. — Hanover

Yes, I do realize this. Many of us take a third option: Read the text, make up your mind what the contents mean (both in the context of how, when and why it was written, and the purpose it serves now) then determine its place in your life, in your understanding of belief and history.
But we can't very well have presidents sworn into office, holding a copy of the Constitution....

Sure, why not? The ineffable universal Light doesn't demand that you chop off your baby's foreskin or make your daughter cover her face in public. It doesn't ask for tithes, set up an army of arbiters of its will, declare entire nations heretical or insinuate itself into civil jurisprudence. A rational person can live alongside such a god.

Critical biblical scholarship, which is taught in most universities, and is likely something any formally trained minister is well versed in (although not preached from the pulpit) — Hanover

I see. They If they don't ask, don't tell them. So, what most Christians believe is not what their pastors believe. But is it then still the same God they both worship?

if you want to know the broader truths of a certain passage, then you would need to identify the one you're asking about and the tradition that you wanted interpreted under and from there you can engage in the Bible study class you're asking about. — Hanover

IOW: Pick your cherry and ask an expert what varietal it is in his bailiwick.
[metaphor]This is what happens when you put all your vested eggs into one basket. Technology comes up with wooden flats, paper trays, styrofoam cartons, and by each change some of your eggs have passed their sell-by date, so you need to manufacture chocolate ones to replace them. Five minutes later, styrofoam goes out style and you look bad again.[/metaphor]

Sooo... By saying that what the authors wrote was what they meant (give or take a few errors in translation), I'm the one who is twisting and distorting their images of God. Because what they really meant - all of them, centuries apart - was to be so abstruse that only a few highly specialized scholars could decode it. I wonder what might be the underlying broader, deeper truth beyond Numbers or how Leviticus can be untwisted into something that doesn't resemble instructions for prescribed atonement.
Rather than jump through all these intellectual hoops, wouldn't it be easier to let go of the book as their basis for belief? It would, if an alternative, more reliable authority were available.

We were taught that the Bible stories were allegories to tell a broader truth about the nature of god and man. — Tom Storm

Okay. So, none of the stories are true? What is this "broader truth"? For that matter, what is it broader than? Who are these allegorical stories really about?
In Whom, exactly do you* believe?
* Not necessarily you, personally, but anyone who reads the stories, knows they're not true, but thinks they're about something or somebody wider than the god depicted in them?

If you want to go any deeper into Christian doctrine or history, I'm not the one to be talking to. — T Clark

I don't.
I'm asking the most superficial, obvious question - not necessarily of you, but of any or all apologists:
If not from the Bible, where does the character of God come from?

Look. It's not that difficult a question.
Do Christians believe in the God of the Bible, or don't they?

Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. — T Clark

They do. It isn't.
So... No missionaries? No conversions to the God of the Bible? No cathedrals? Atheists imagined the whole thing?

your contention that Christians consider the bible "infallible truth." — T Clark

It's God's word when it suits them, on some subjects. Pick'n'choose. I added:
"Or claim to believe, even while they deny that what's written there means what is written there. Oh, yes, God really means it about resurrection for the ones He likes, but he was only kidding about drowning all the bunny-rabbits, and stoning all the homosexuals. He's dead serious about transubstantiation... well sorta serious... no, that was a metaphor, it's really just a cracker.... but He changed his mind about witches in 1728(AD), but didn't get the word to the New World until 1879... but all the other stuff is true... except Abraham and the badger game... well maybe the frogs in Egypt were an exaggeration, but He really, really meant it about saving everybody who sincerely repents of their sins. Original sin ...weeeeellll....um....
And again we come back to: Where else did they get their image of God?

believers only believe in the ineffable, not anything particular, and not the words that are preached to them. — praxis

...so they put on black cassocks and sail around the world to tell the heathen.... What, exactly? "My dear savages, I feel in my bones that Something ineffable exists, so I want you to renounce your own version of it and embrace mine. It's so much better, trust me!"

You're arguing with a man who's been dead for 1592 years. — T Clark

You sure don't look it!

You can't not know that most Christians don't see the bible as infallible. St. Augustine didn't 1,600 years ago. The Pope doesn't.

Gee, one's a saint and the other's infallibe...
And yet that scripture is the source of their belief in sin, Jesus, resurrection and eternal life. Cherry-picking is not a modern practice.
Are there alternate sources for a description of that Christian god, or not? Is there an alternate, more reliable account of the roots of Christianity?

Do religious authorities present God or the ineffable? How can they if it is beyond words and mundane experience. Followers must rely on faith. They must have faith in the words (strawmen) of their leaders. — praxis

And that's what atheists reject. The ineffable doesn't need great big piles of filigreed stonework, or Indian converts, or red letter days to glorify it.

Atheists question these boxes of strawmen. They don't question what is beyond the boxes when questioning theistic claims. — praxis

Okay, you're on!
What is beyond these boxes of theistic claims that should be considered?
If all gods described in all holy books and pulpits are of straw,
What god is made of something else?
What is that god made of?
How can you know and how can I find out?

I did ask, in one of the disappeared threads: If the bible and the priests are not telling the truth about god, what sources do?

equating theism with fundamentalist Christianity. Which is what you have done here. — T Clark

No. I have said that the god most frequently referred-to in discussions is the one depicted in the Bible. Do non-fundamentalist Christians draw their understanding of their god from some other source that I can consult? Then they should cite those sources during the discussion.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. — T Clark

I never called the writers of scripture unlearned. I have no record of their educational backgrounds. Is he not referring to that selfsame Bible? Perhaps the theologians that have come to prominence since the move to Rome had other reference material. I Only said I get my image of their god from that book. I'm not sure what other scriptures Augustine consulted, but I don't remember being more impressed with his god than Matthew's. (Granted, I read him and Aquinas quite a long time ago and forgotten everything except that 1. Aquinas was more literary and 2. neither of them convinced me, even though I was more open to persuasion in my youth.)

I think this works - TC seems to be saying that atheists twist ideas of god into distortions and then use those distortions as evidence that God is a problematic idea. In other words, it's a variation on a straw man argument. — Tom Storm

How can I twist and distort the idea in someone else's head? I can respond only to what they describe and recount. If I give a false version of the theist's account, he's right there to correct me and point to the source of accurate information. Incidentally, does any version of the Christian god stack neatly?

Atheists don't make up religions. Religious leaders do. They box up God, Gods, or whatever. Atheists question these stories or 'boxes'. — praxis

You have misunderstood and misused my metaphor. You should come up with your own. — T Clark

I had some trouble with it myself.

Atheism forces God into little boxes and then complains when the boxes don't stack neatly. — T Clark

I've never, that I can recall, attempted to box or stack a god. I disbelieve in all the ones I've heard of, and the one that is most frequent subject of discussions - and my rejection - is that jumped-up tribal deity we know only from a big book Christians revere as infallible truth. Or claim to believe, even while they deny that what's written there means what is written there. Apparently it's hard to understand, but at least it's available for everyone to read now, and judge.

What did you mean by atheist-made boxes?

I don't deny the possible existence of a something that humans intuitively suspect orders the universe, or whatever - I just don't count that among the gods that called gods.

You can't seem to have a thread about theism without the atheists being sure to enter the conversation and passionately objecting, some more respectfully than others. — Hanover

You can have all the theist conversations you like without any butting in from me.... so long as they don't open with: The trouble with atheists is...."

The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory;he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament;

Why??
What's wrong with him and his life?
This is real to me as a psychological problem unique to human animals, but not common to all human animals. I come back to a sense of loss.
But of what, exactly?
Not of the "higher" life they long for, because they haven't experienced it yet, hence the longing. It must be for a state of innocence - that is, the genuine life of appreciation for sunlight, grass, water; the joy of having limbs to move about, a voice to sing with, taste, sound, smell, exertion and rest, affection and pleasure, striving and triumph. The moments between terror and grief.
When you have defeated the body, mortified and discarded, you don't have very much left.
But this yearning to set it free of earth.
The death-wish.

the question is what do these doctrines and ideas mean? — Wayfarer

That we were at one time keenly aware of a very great loss. Whether it's interpreted as a fall from grace, original, or the inability to speak the language of other animals, something happened. Something we chose. The move to settled agriculture alienated us from, and put us in conflict with Nature (including a vital portion of our own nature.)

Within the Christian world there are more and less pantheist or panentheist visions. — Wayfarer

Which Christian denominations do not consider Christ their saviour?

I'm certain that I came into this life with some memory of previous lives, ill-defined but at times vivid. So I have the tentative view that life extends beyond the bounds of an individual birth and death — Wayfarer

I find it difficult to reconcile this ^ with this v

you will realise that your life has been misdirected, at the precise moment when you know you have no more chances to do anything about it. — Wayfarer

If reincarnation is an actual thing, that's just the moment you must resolve to do better - no?

Of course, I also have a problem with the idea of "directing" one's life, as if the playing field were level and every newborn soul had the same degree of control over their path between that point and their death... which might be only a few days off.

What is Christian faith supposed to be about, in philosophical terms? I would put it like this: it is about realising one's identity as a being directly related to the intelligence that underlies the Cosmos, a direct familial relationship, not as abstract philosophical idea. — Wayfarer

That sounds a lot like an abstract philosophical idea.
Man is directly related to the god or gods in every kind of mythology. Only the relationships are quite different. Christianity is based firmly on the sin-sacrifice-redemption dynamic, wherein the god is a discrete entity, aloof and judgmental. He is supposed to have made the world, which was then pure, but later profaned, as was God's creature, man, [Why else would his next-of-kin be not permitted to utter even a sayable version of his name?] by The Adversary*, who tempted man and led him into the sins of moral awareness and sexual awareness - the two never to be separated .
*And where did he come from? And what is his purpose?

As a consequence of these complexities, many of the arguments about 'theism' are based on very confused accounts of what really is at issue. — Wayfarer

It's exactly as complicated as some scholar or theologian wishes to make it.

An additional problem is which god do we undertake this wager on? — Tom Storm

As far as Pascal was concerned, no other gods but Jehovah would come under consideration; everyone whose religion was not rooted in the bible was simply pagan.
The real problem with the wager is that the Christian god had, by that time, been elevated to omni-mind-reader, so you couldn't fool him with insincere belief.

It's never about the existence of a god, either. We can believe, with or without evidence, that all kinds of things exist: black holes, wormholes, subatomic particles, the invisible hand of the marketplace, a conscious ordering principle of the universe.... The existence or non-existence of these things don't intrude on pour daily lives.
God-claims do. Those who claim to speak for gods also make demands.
We don't decide on the evidence; we decide on the effect.

On the one hand, I acknowledge the lack of empirical evidence for a divine being, and on the other, I cannot deny the possibility of its existence. — Thund3r

That's hardly unique.
If you really want to judge on evidence, you first have to decide what is and what is not admissible in your particular court. In legal proceedings, there are several kinds of evidence: physical, eye witness, hearsay and circumstantial. There is also a standard of preponderance - how much of each kinds of evidence is required to add to up to a convincing case.

In this situation, we have all kinds of eye-witness reports, both first-hand written. You have to decide how reliable each witness is. Again, you need to establish a basis for deciding that.

Then of course, you have to hear both sides, with cross-examination, expert testimony, everything - not just a summary of closing arguments.

The argument for a divine creator relies on the assumption that the universe had a beginning. — Thund3r

I am unaware of any scripture that refers to the universe. The creator deities I know of only made the "the world", and the world to which each myth refers is somewhat different from every other world. They usually consist of earth, water and sky or 'the heavens', in which are one sun, one moon; stars optional, but when they are mentioned, they often are the embodiment of dead people or fantastic animals. Little resemblance to the universe as described by cosmologists.
So is the process of creation different in each story, as is the deity performing it.

In our day-to-day lives, we demand evidence and validation before accepting something as truth. — Thund3r

Really?? What percent of your fellow citizens is included in the "we" and how have they demonstrated their demand for proof - of what, exactly?

Perhaps I’ve not fully understood some of the strongest theist arguments. — Thund3r

You may very well have understood the ones under consideration, but I suspect your sample size is inadequate. How many apologists for how many religions have you reviewed?

So why do smart people do things that interfere with getting the output they’re entitled to? — Ruminant

Wait a minute! The output who is entitled to? And what exactly is the 'output'? Productivity in the workplace? Monetary success? Social advancement? Winning at games?
Is 'output' a means to some end or an end in itself?
Do smart people want to put out to their maximum capacity?
Suppose I'm a 'smart person'. What's my motivation?

Social organizations are not based on any 'bottom line', because there is no final result, only steps in a series of events and relationships.
That raise only lasts until the next cycle of inflation. If one group has an advantage over another, it tends to capitalize on the advantage, consolidate and increase its dominance. (See remuneration package of CEO's) Whether we know this consciously or intuit it, we tend to resist inequity when given a choice.

How large a coin would it take for you to squat down and pluck it from the ground? — jgill

That depends on whether you believe in luck.

So I've ten dollars. To keep the money, I must divide it with you. I could give you a dollar and keep nine, and we would both be better off - you get a dollar that you would otherwise not receive, I get nine dollars. — Banno

You got free money, yes? You didn't earn it, but in order to keep it, you have to share it.
By offering a paltry share, you show yourself to be an avaricious and ungracious beneficiary.
The persons - including myself - who reject such an offer are showing you that uncivic-minded individuals like yourself are not welcome in our community; a dollar will not buy you acceptance.

The richest use private insurances and the poorest perceive the help of the state and social healthcare. — javi2541997

That's how it was envisaged in the US, back in 1965. But the results are always different from the idea: working people who are not eligible for social assistance have to devote a large portion ($500-1100/month) of barely adequate income to private insurance and are often refused either a policy or coverage for expensive treatments, and it doesn't include ambulance service or medications, both of which are costly.
That's probably why the more enlightened nations realized that in order to work properly, public health insurance, and health services, have to be the same for everyone. Of course, as soon as it was instituted, private entities began to sabotage it in the UK and Canada - in the US, I watched the Clinton plan scuttled and the Obama plan sabotaged even before they were drafted. In the US, money doesn't just talk, it shouts louder than everyone else put together.
I don't know about other European countries or Japan.

It is accepted and ruled by modern societies that state's or social care support should depend on the effort of each contributor. It is just one of the basics principles to reach equity. — javi2541997

You must live in a very progressive country! Not all governance and social organization is based on a principle of equity. And not all governments have a major role in the administration and allocation of medical treatment.

If I pay a considerable amount of taxes, I have the right to "get recognized" in the future. So, I guess, the "queue" of organs receivers should depend in such basic taxation rule or [logic] law. — javi2541997

In real life, hardly at all! The richest people in the world are taxed the least, and constrained the least by government regulation. They, as well as the money they control, are international; fully mobile: literally above all the law, in their private jet planes that can be fitted out as state-of-the-art hospitals, should they need medical attention, while they also have access to all the private clinics in the world and all the markets - black, white and brown.

Sure, why waste all that food when people are starving? — DingoJones

Sentiment. Once that's changed, soylent green will be available to all who can afford it. With the usual concomitant risk of legal and criminal abuse.

Well two things, first it depends on the context under which you are asking that question. — DingoJones

Logic. You're the one who wants justification based on logic, rather than sentiment. There are too many people; 150 million are undernourished, yet we bury or burn perfectly good meat every day. For sentimental reasons.

Two, regardless of the above eating human meat has numerous harmful effects. Cannibal societies die out from the practice. — DingoJones

I don't think they had time, before the guys with guns arrived. The ones who did die of cannibalism contracted kuru a rare brain disease, not generally present in the North American and European population. However, to be on the safe side, . Stick to eating muscle tissue - which is what most of our dietary meat is anyway - and you'll be fine.

If we take a liver to help a sick person you will make him to live better or at least easier life.
It is not even close to cut up a person to eat him later on... — javi2541997

Hunger affects more people than liver disease.
But that wasn't my point. Logically, if a practice benefits someone whom we as a society consider worthy of benefit - i.e. a middle class person with a robust health insurance plan who has malfunctioning organs - rather than someone we do not value - i.e. a homeless veteran with PTSD looking for food in garbage bins - the law must follow that logic: give the homeless man's kidney to the sick executive. Buy young women from impoverished families in 'developing' countries and harvest their uterus to incubate rich barren women's babies.

it is lascivious and only a psychopath wants so anxiously to do so. — javi2541997

Sentiment!

We reject cannibalism because it is not part of our "culture" and social norms. — javi2541997

That's because "we" who rule the world now killed off the peoples who did eat or at least sample and preserve body parts of their enemies, as they were morally repugnant to peoples who every Sunday tasted the flesh and blood of their saviour.
But then, taking vital organs out of one person to save another from the same god's will to end his life, or using surrogates to thwart god's sentencing of a woman to sterility, was not in "our" culture until quite recently, and now we're comfortable with both. Logic follows: if it can be done, it can be legally mandated.

but who knows what the future holds... — javi2541997

According to this scenario: Rich people who cultivate and harvest poor people for body parts, incubators and specialty prepared meats. They don't even need to recycle incubator women for parts and then food, as long as there are billions of poor people from which to choose the choicest ones for each kind of use.

I disagree. Anything can be justified with “emotional judgements”, therefore it is a poor metric for justification. — DingoJones

True. So, then, it's okay to cut up dead brain-people and package them to sell for meat?

That doesnt mean that they are. That is a sentimental illusion people might use for comfort, but does not form an actual basis to claim anything. — DingoJones

Does when they're voting, legislating or trying civil cases.

What possible definition of “person” could you be using here that includes a biological entity with no mind in it? — DingoJones

It doesn't matter. I have already classified them as property, to be disposed like the rest of theat dead person's estate - whether according to their own explicit instructions, or the relative's with power of attorney, or, if unclaimed, the state.
Organ transplants keep other people alive; so would cheap meat. And yet most people would not allow their stone-cold-dead - let alone warm, brain-dead - relatives to be chopped up, packaged and sold in a supermarket.
Most human people are less concerned with objective definitions than with their sentiments. If most people want the bodies of their loved ones used in certain ways, and not in other ways,
that is how the government must decide.

Even if they are brain dead? Still a person? — DingoJones

To their family and friends, yes. The law will have to make its new rule according to constitution and precedent: whatever laws applied to the desecration of dead bodies presumably still applies to the brain-dead, but some new provision has to be made for newly available uses for the undead. If there has to be new legislation, I suppose it'll be up to the usual 38% of voters; if it's decided in legal actions, it'll eventually get kicked up the the supreme court.
It doesn't affect a very large portion of the population, but the publicity might motivate many more to make written disposition regarding their mortal remains.

That started me thinking. Keeping a body alive for nine months would very expensive. If it weren't covered by insurance, only rich people could do it. — T Clark

And if a very rich person invested in a whole medical facility dedicated to artificially sustaining human incubators for rent, they could get very much richer. And no orphans from lower classes will be adopted into a better shot life.
That is very much at the center of my problem with the idea of harvesting.
Buy a compatible body - from the owner, while he yet occupies it and can sign a legal will, or the opportunist heirs with power of attorney. Keep it in suspended animation for whenever you need parts. But what if he won't die young enough for his parts to be useful to an old billionnaire? Might be hurried along with a serendipitous accidental blow to the head....

If the widow already donated the corpse to the museum for scientific research, then the museum is now the legitimate "owner" of the corpse. The daughter is not legally covered to ask for the body of her father. Why she didn't opposed against the donation in the first place? — javi2541997

Because she didn't know what he was being donated for. She assumed it was medical research, which would have been all right. He had been a wasteful drunk: his corpse was displayed with its degenerating organs exposed and a bottle in his hand. The wife donated his body to this museum as revenge. When the daughter found out, she had petitioned for its removal from the exhibit and been refused. She stole it as a desperate last resort, to save her father from public humiliation.
That is the crux of the story. It centers on the interest of the dead man; not so much his body as his reputation. The arguments were over what he would have wanted, in the absence of written instruction.

[dead men have no 'interests' to protect]

Technically incorrect. A decedent's estate is just that. — L'éléphant

I covered property and wills. The body itself, however, is no longer a person whose interest the courts can protect. The body is property; part of the estate, over which the court has power to decide jurisdiction.

the dead body should belong to the decedent's estate automatically, along with their assets (property and financial accounts) and income. — L'éléphant

Just so.

His interests are not under consideration, unless he made a legally binding will. The law does provide for a dead person's property to be disposed according to his will. In the absence of a written will, the state has the right to apportion whatever property is not legally claimed by an heir. If there are no heirs, the state becomes the beneficiary.
It seems to me the same rule applies to dead bodies.
The matter of ownership is decided between the heirs and the state. If there is no legal claim to the remains, the state can take possession. — Vera Mont

There was a very good episode of the TV series Boston Legal, wherein a widow donated her husband's body to a teaching museum https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/to-do-today-see-inside-the-human-body-at-the-museum-of-sciences-body-worlds-exhibit/ and the daughter took possession, so she could bury it.

You don't have to be dead for someone to argue that there is some way you didn't consent to that you could serve a greater good. With the undead incubators, we're awfully close to a line we really should not cross.

The dilemma could be if the state should or not take those benefits the public administration when is based on public resources. — javi2541997

It's taking the bodies for the public's use. Just as it would have to pay market value when it appropriates private lands to make a park or sport stadium. Public benefit - public cost. Presumably, too, the state benefits from the saved patients' curtailed dependence on the health care system, prolonged productivity and tax-paying life.