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I have seen this take many times but I have never taken the take from the other side: someone who admits openly that they just want a video game checklist for their own morality. It is so far away from anything I would ever want that it's impossible for me to imagine that real people would reach that conclusion. Do the people who want to live that way know that's what they want? Would they be turned off if they heard their views described the way you've described it?
They don't say it in those words. Instead, they suggest that without the fear of god and the set of rules there's simply no other way to create internal drivers for morality.
It's tough to keep your face straight when someone says the only reason they don't act like a piece of shit is the fear of eternal damnation. The vast majority of Christians aren't like this (IME) but they're out there.
No -- instead I'll suggest that without the fear of God "morality" is an unintelligible term.
If you think it's somehow 'wrong' to put your unwanted infant on a dung heap to die of starvation or be sold into prostitution; if you think it's 'wrong' to sail down the coast to where the people talk funny and kill the men, rape the women, and enslave the children; if you think that all humans are of equal (and infinite) moral worth; you just might be descended from a Christian culture.
Baseline human 'morality' looks like Genghis Khan, and I don't recognize it as such. It's just game theory.
I don't think Israel is descended from a Christian culture, and it's a lot closer to Western morality than its neighbors. I don't think Japan is descended from a Christian culture either, but if you went to Japan and started preaching about how you should sail down the coast and rape and enslave, people would think you're insane.
Boy of all the examples to pick. Japan was precisely that way within living memory. What changed?
As to Israel, modern Judaism is younger than (and a reaction to) Christianity, and also Israel is heavily populated by Western (somewhat Christianized) Jews, and if you go ask the Jews who are still fairly un-Christianized they'll gladly tell you that non-Jews are only there to serve Jews.
What? No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovadia_Yosef
So, what was his attitude towards non-Jewish people?
Do you understand the difference between "the Jews" and "one Jew"?
Do you understand the difference between "one Jew" and "one Jew, seen as the highest authority by half of the world's Jews?"
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