I like the guy who just wrote a poem about his cat.

"For I will consider my cat Jeoffrey..."

Britten used that as part of the text for "Rejoice in the Lamb." Crazy religious stuff is fun to sing.

For H is a spirit
And therefore he is God.
For K is king
And therefore he is God.
For L is love
And therefore he is God.
For M is musick
And therefore he is God

See, I see HKLM and I think hkey_local_machine, which I think means God must be Bill Gates.

Wolfram, don't you actually believe the moral duty lies with protecting my children? Aren't you conflating the duty itself with how you think I'll be able to fulfill it.

What if I have a giant gun in my hand, or what if the police are upstairs, surrounding my children who are dressed in bullet proof clothing, etc.? Do I still have a duty to lie, or do I just have a duty to protect my children, and stop the murderer?

That said, I do agree that the duty to protect my children is bound to be more urgent in a particular set of circumstances than ... well than pretty much any of my duties.

If you, like Abraham, would answer “Yes, I’ll kill my son for you because you are God and I know that the highest good is to follow your will,” then you probably will make a good Jew, Christian, or Muslim.

If you would say “Killing my son goes against all that I know about morality, so in the absence of clear evidence that there is a God and that this God has the highest moral authority in this situation, I must refuse,” then you probably would make a good agnostic.

Of course killing his son did not go against all Abraham knew about the world. Child sacrifice was not uncommon at the time in that region. That account of Isaac on the altar, and God providing another sacrifice was the beginning of monotheism, and the start of a child-sacrifice-free religion for Abraham and his descendents.

I wanted to pick up the book, but now can't remember the title or author, and the Daily Show site is giving me no love.

Could it have been by Robert Walter Funk, Allyson?

The changes are actually less than most people would imagine. There are some differences between the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures (called the Septuaguint--the Bible for Hellenistic Jews) and the Masoretic Text, which was the text for Jews who were able to retain copies of the scripture in Hebrew, and they're not too stark. They wouldn't lead to a whole new theology.

That's true for both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, actually. The stuff that's in question (which version is right) is usually not going to change doctrine, either way.

In the Christian scriptures, the biggest changes I can think of [apart from where they use the Septuaguint (or the Latin Vulgate which used the Septuaguint) or the Masoretic] are (a) the endings to Mark (and since Matthew and Luke tell the same story, it's not like the story isn't out there, no matter how Mark ends) and (b) one paragraph which doesn't appear in earlier manuscripts of John.

If you ignore intentionally paraphrased versions, most changes are simply updating the language, or in translation method (formal versus dynamic equivalence; that is more word for word versus thought for though). There is of course the differences between each of the four gospels, but I wouldn't expect four witnesses to tell me what they saw exactly the same.

And that's just the mistranslations (thank you, King James I). I'd love to find the bits they left out for "editorial" reasons, if I could read Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew, that is.

Most major editorial decisions are noted in modern translations. They'll have foot notes right on the page that explain the difference between the selected text, and the one(s) rejected. I'm right with you on wishing I had the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew under my belt, though. But I still love the poetry of the King James version, even though I don't think it's the most satisfactory translation. Mistakes aside, some words in English have taken on opposite meanings since that time.

But I still love the poetry of the King James version, even though I don't think it's the most satisfactory translation

KJ is good for reading aloud. For study, we tended to use one of the others.

Weren't some old texts recently found that required some reinterpretation of existing translations, or seemed to imply that some things we thught were original were later additions?

I'm sure I could vague that up a little more if I really tried

The trouble I'm having is that I'm not sure what people mean by moral duty or moral beliefs. Or morality, period. It's possible that I have moral beliefs, and just call them something else, but it makes this conversation sort of surreal. Moral and immoral aren't words I use seriously. I do use "good" and "evil," but they basically mean "characterized by empathy" or "showing a lack of empathy," and nothing beyond that. Useful adjectives, but not... well, nouns, I suppose.

But I'm a behaviorist running dog, so there's that.

And an internal tug-of-war for most of us, jerking us back and forth between "Fuck this noise, I'll go find myself someplace that agrees with me on this and to hell with these bigoted assholes" and "Fuck this noise, this is my church too, and they don't get to weasel around and try to passive-aggressively make me feel so uncomfortable I leave on my own.

As long as either way, this noise is getting some action.

I think I've seen a picture of a turtle attempting to mate with a crash helmet, does that count? Or only if the love that dare not [turtle noise] itself is consumated?

I've seen a bull elephant seal trying to mate with a VW Beetle. Bull elephant seals, I have to report, are into teh rough sex. VWs, not so much.

You don't think, like BT posits, that morals can determine religious beliefs?

I saw billytea's point last night, and I'm glad you highlighted that bit ita, because I do largely agree with that assertion too, even though it's coming at the issue from the opposite direction.

I would like to say that I do believe that one's morality and one's religious beliefs will interact and connect in myriad ways. Furthermore, I do indeed hold that morals can determine religious beliefs. But what I said went a bit further than that to. I was saying that I reached the position that I realised I would hold my moral beliefs independent of any religious beliefs. Whether I was Christian, atheist, Wiccan, a Muslim or a Satanist, my morality would be the same. It would, of course, determine something of the kind of Christian / atheist / Wiccan etc I could be. (Is that part of my religious view? It's certainly part of my worldview, it certainly would relate to and would affect my religious view, but I tend to think calling it part of my religious view is not the most accurate way of putting it.) But my ceasing to be a Christian, while initiated by this realisation, was not determined by it.

Morality is a code to me. Code of desired behaviour, either in you or someone else.

Amoral is without a code. Immoral is against the code I prefer.

Good and evil, on the other hand, get a lot fuzzier in my lexicon. They act a lot more absolute.

I was all ready to leave for the day, and then I went and started a client download from the FTP server. Stoopid Stoopid Stoopid me.

Do you have to be there for the end of the download?

I'm getting a migraine. Wanna go home.