Is there a link to this curriculum? I did a search and couldn't find anything.

Christians pray for others because we believe someone is listening and someone will answer. It's not really that complicated. Why does it need a special kind of mechanism?

Apparently, OIS is one of PM David Cameron's favorite books. I'm always curious to hear a British view of the book. http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/feb/07/our-island-story-conservative-david-cameron

Timothy Keller just tweeted a list of books yesterday. "Need a reading list for how Christianity makes emotional, cultural, and rational sense? See-http://download.redeemer.com/pdf/qc_reading_list.pdf …. Read a book with others."

My kids love it. They are always finding connections to their game and our history/science/geography readings. "That's just like in Minecraft where you blah blah blah blah." :mellow: I guess that's good. I played once for about 10 minutes. I don't get it. It seems horribly boring. Maybe I'm just losing my creativity as I get older.

Now that my kids are older, I think it is weird that the snack thing stops when they actually need it. My oldest plays high school baseball and club ball in the summer. He doesn't like to each much before games but afterwards he is starving. Sometimes they play double-headers. I always make sure I have sandwiches, chocolate milk, etc, for him. A couple of times I made big batches of homemade granola for his high school team. They scarfed it down so fast! We've attended quite a few rookie league MiLB games. After the games, they get huge sandwiches, fruit and drinks as they get back on the bus to go home. We laughed over that but I guess they do work a lot harder and longer than the little 8-year-olds running around!

I think we'd be fine as long as something doesn't happen to dh. He grew up living in the mountains, off the land. We couldn't stay where we are though. We have half-jokingly picked a spot where we would meet up if something awful happens and we are separated.

Yes. :-) His explanation of how the feudal system arose is interesting too. I think we do tend to think of history as eras rather than a continuous story. Here's the Roman Empire and now, suddenly, here are the Middle Ages and now it's the Renaissance! (I guess that's why the people of the Renaissance always irked me a little. "The Roman Empire was amazing and WE are amazing and all those years are simply in the middle of two wondrous time periods and therefore insignificant." Jerks. Lol)

I'm reading How the Irish Saved Civilization right now. The author--Cahill--is fascinated by the transitional periods in history. He discusses how as Roman power declined, the power of the church rose. The bishops and priests did not flee the areas invaded by barbarian tribes and were often seen as the last hold out of law and order in a tumultuous time. For one thing, they could read and write. The bishops believed one of their roles was to civilize the new barbarian leaders, teach them about law and government. In the early church, bishops were appointees of the congregations. After so much societal upheaval and more and more uneducated congregants, the bishops began to appoint each other. I suppose it is only natural for power to become more and more consolidated?

:grouphug:

I know atheists have consciences. We all do! And I agree that our consciences can be developed. But what principles do we use to develop the conscience? We are still left with the problem that right and wrong can only be subjective and no right or wrong can ever be universal. We are left with the idea that the ultimate authority in what is right and wrong is popular opinion in democratic societies or whatever governing force that exists and can never be more than that. By what authority can we tell someone they are wrong?

I wish I could figure out the way to break up a quote. :glare: I don't really understand how higher/lower or more/less are different. If we are determining one behavior to be more ethical than another, we are comparing and contrasting with a concrete idea of what is ethical behavior, aren't we? Or are we only comparing and contrasting with the two behaviors? But then we still have to know what end of the spectrum we are placing the behaviors: to the more ethical end or the less ethical end. So we still have to start with an idea of what is ethical. That's what I meant by reasoning from point A to point B. We can't get to the conclusion (point B) of what is more ethical if we don't start from point A (what ethical actually is). If our idea of ethical is the well-being of an individual, then the door is wide open to all kinds of behaviors that are not in the interest of someone else's well-being. (Not that all behavior benefiting one inevitably harms another, but some kinds of behavior are at the expense of others. Are those behaviors unacceptable from the beginning of deliberation?) Re: selfish gene, if altruism is simply a genetically-based behavior, then by what reasoning do we extrapolate that into a way of life? That's kind of what I was asking with overriding their biology. If people are acting in a non-altruistic way, then are they acting in a way that violates their biology or is their biology just screwed up? Why were early civilizations so barbaric according to our standards? Were they suppressing their biology? Why would they do that? Wouldn't biology eventually triumph over thought? Has it taken 200,000 years for biology to win? If we were less understanding of biology in our beginnings as a human race, why were we so able to use our wills and minds to overcome our biology and act in more non-altruistic ways than we supposedly do now? Are we more willing to conform our minds to our biology since we understand more how biology works? Were we significantly different genetically-wise from, say, the ancient Sumerians? I really have to stop for now or my brain will never shut off enough for me to sleep!

Principled living means having principles to live by. Where do we get those principles? Biology? How do we extrapolate principles from biology if biology is chemicals, neurons, genes, etc? Regarding your abuse, :grouphug: :grouphug:

Currently modern societies are still steeped in religious tradition. At least that is what was argued somewhere in this thread. Not sure who or where at this point. :001_smile: Every generation passes on some way of thinking to the next. I think it will be quite some time before we see how society evolves from the materialist point of view onward because as far as I know the majority of people in the western world still identify with some form of religion or spirituality.

I did consider this. I remember a quote from somewhere and wish I could remember! It had to do with the situation over British rule in India and how civil disobedience can only end peacefully and end in freedom where there is a higher good to appeal to. That's why civil disobedience worked in India and here in America during the Civil Rights Movement--because leaders in the US and in England had consciences. Civil disobedience doesn't end well in countries where the ultimate authority is the state. And if there is no authority but the state, how can it end in anything but tyranny by the state? It's definitely a more efficient form of government.

So people are at the mercy of others' biological make-up? Then the conclusion would be have to be that there is no higher good to appeal to. Some people's biological make up is different than others, or at least, they act as if it was. Those who harm others are only doing so because they are overriding their biology with an idea? Where do experience and information, logic and reason fit into people reacting to neurological or genetic factors? It would seem that experience, information, logic and reason have the potential to muddle the biological factors. Do experience and information change our genetic make up? Reason is a tool used to get from point A to point B. If there is no point A, how can logic and reason be used to get to B? There has to be an idea to start at. From what I've read on the selfish gene, it seems the highest good is survival, not diminishment of pain and suffering. Are we left with the thought that an idea that ensures survival is a good idea and one that does not ensure survival is a bad idea? But there are ideas that ensure survival for some that I think we'd all agree were bad ideas. They do not necessarily have to involve pain and suffering. Do the number of survivors factor into the logic and reason phase? Is it whatever ensures the survival of the most? Then we are in the quandary of classifying behavior by a higher ideal such as 200 people surviving is better than 100 people surviving.

This is what has been rolling around my head since yesterday. I'm struggling to see how a society based on materialism leads to anything other than tyranny. If there is no outside truth/authority/ideal (whatever word you want to use) to appeal to, then how does right and wrong become anything other than what a stronger entity imposes on a weaker entity? Is "might makes right" all we are left with? I'm definitely open to clarification and suggestions! ETA: I'm thinking down the line. I don't think if everyone in America, say, suddenly turned atheist overnight, we'd have a dictator come next election. But every generation builds their thinking on what came before them. That's why in my original question I was wondering what life might be like in 100-200 years from now if everyone now did become materialists.

(Trimming for purposes of responding. Hopefully nothing out of context there.) By referring to "getting it right", that implies that there is a Right way to do things and, by talking about "knowing better", that implies that there is a Better. By saying life isn't meaningless because it isn't meaningless to you implies that meaning is found when it is projected onto something, not because the 'object' has intrinsic meaning or value because it shares in that Right or Better. Are those contradictory ideas? Can they both exist or be true at the same time? Is there some middle ground I'm missing? Sometimes I think these conversations end up with more questions than we started with. :confused1:

This is what I'm wondering. What does this look like? What does growing up mean? How do we determine what is meaningful and beneficial? Is it no pain? Is it no death? Is it the flourishing of the largest group at the expense of the fewest? How do we determine who should "pay" for this flourishing? Can we come up with a system where there is no suffering at all? When it sometimes seems that suffering produces growth in character and understanding, do we want to eliminate it altogether? What parameters do we use? Are all laws up for a democratic vote? What is assumed at the beginning that is non-negotiable? Why would there be non-negotiables? "Accountability is a good thing." Accountability to who or what? It is interesting that two answers contradict each other. One says higher ideals can only be achieved by throwing off superstitious religious beliefs and another says that higher ideals are merely a construct of religion. If higher ideals exist, then there is something outside of ourselves that we are responsible to live in obedience to. If higher ideals do not exist, then there is nothing to move towards and therefore all actions are ultimately meaningless. Now that my brain hurts, I'm going to take a nap. :willy_nilly:

Yes. I think even my active middle schoolers would be starving an hour later.

Last time we were at Disneyland, we also spent an afternoon at Little Corona Del Mar beach. Lots of tide pools to explore if he's into that sort of thing. My kids loved it. It was maybe a 1/2 hour drive or so?

Out of curiosity, for albeto, since I can see and respect how much effort you have spent in formulating your beliefs (for lack of a better word ;-) ) or anyone else who cares to respond!, how do you see this worldview playing out in society at large? The world is never static but always changing and ideas held a century or two before strongly influence how people live afterwards. At some point this worldview has to be acted upon rather than it being a reaction to another worldview. So I'm curious what you think society would or could be like if everyone, or most everyone, views the world in the same way as you. If everything is reduced to matter, how is any life more precious than another? Some have stated above that, to sum up, humans already have a higher opinion of themselves than they should. How is life better than non-life? How do you judge any thing or idea better than another if there is no higher ideal that actually exists rather than being something we make up in our minds? I don't see how there could be an ideal because then something would exist outside of ourselves, an ideal we could appeal to, but yet couldn't exist because it wouldn't be composed of matter. What influence do you think that would have on our daily lives, on our form of government, on our personal relationships, on everything? If you don't think there would be much change, why not? (This thread has me thinking a lot!)

Miss a day and miss a lot. :001_smile: The conversation has moved on but since I keep being brought up for my incredulity, maybe I’ll explain that statement further. All I meant was that science doesn’t answer the questions I have, not that science is incapable of explaining how the natural world functions. I don’t see how science can answer my questions because science doesn’t deal with purpose, only observable natural phenomena. It doesn’t touch on the essential question of why we are here. Some people are content with the answer that there is no answer. I’m not. The basic principle of biology is life comes from life (well, except the one-time instance in the murky beginnings of history where it didn’t). It’s logical within the framework of modern scientific thinking to assume that there was life that begat life on this planet because everything we have observed tells us that only life produces life. (Someone upthread posted some theories about how life began so hopefully I’ll have some time to look those over because that would be interesting.) If there is life outside of our creation/universe/realm/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, that is fascinating. Something that existed before the beginning of the universe is naturally outside of it, not part of it. Even if you only assume matter and energy have always been here, then you are still talking about the eternal. All very interesting. I don’t understand how people can brush these ideas aside. Just an observation, incredulity is on both sides. Many here can’t believe in God because he doesn’t fit what they think God should be. The basic argument seems to boil down to “I can’t believe in a God like thatâ€â€”presumably the Christian definition of God—but there is no explanation as to how they arrive at their definition of God and what they think he should be like, if in fact he exists.

You are the one who keeps insisting that that is what religious people believe. I have yet to hear one religious person in this thread make that claim so I'm not really sure what you are arguing against.

I still fail to see how the scientific explanation of anything explains away God. You keep claiming that it does. I'd say your entire thought process concerning the divine is flawed because you see god as merely an explanation for the natural world. That might have been true with some animist religions but it has never been true in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Our worship services don't consist of pleading to an invisible being to protect us from these scary, natural things we can't understand. We aren't secretly offering some kind of sacrifice to appease the scary god living in the volcano. As far as evidence from the spiritual realm, there's this interesting book where historical events were recorded involving people over thousands of years but particularly one, completely unique person.... The fact that some choose to relegate that book to the category of fiction is their concern, not mine.