Jim Perry (perry@dsinc.com) wrote:  : }Xenophobia, both *de facto* and *de jure* as implemented : }in legal systems, is widespread, while the Bible, : }although not 100% egalitarian, specifically preaches : }kindness to the stranger, and emphasizes in the Book : }of Ruth, that a foreigner can join the nation and : }give rise to one of the great heroes of the nation. :  : Clearly better than the alternative, but as an American what strikes : me as strange about this story is that it should have even been : considered an issue.  Jim,  There are a couple of things about your post and others in this thread that are a little confusing. An atheist is one for whom all things can be understood as processes of nature - exclusively. There is no need for any recourse to Divnity to describe or explain anything. There is no purpose or direction for any event beyond those required by physics, chemistry, biology, etc.; everything is random, nothing is determnined. This would also have to include human intelligence of course and all its products. There is nothing requiring that life evolve or that it acquire intelligence, it's just a happy accident. For an atheist, no event can be preferred to another or be said to have more or less value than another in any naturalistic sense, and no thought -about- an event can have value.  The products of our intelligence are acquired from our environment, from teaching, training, observation and experience and are only significant to the individual mind wherein they reside. These mental processes and the images they produce for us are just electrical activity and nothing more; content is of no consequence. The human mind is as much a response to natural forces as water running down a hill. How then can an atheist judge value? What is the basis for criticizing the values ennumerated in the Bible or the purposes imputed to God? On what grounds can the the behavior of the reliogious be condemned? It seems that, in judging the values that motivate others to action, you have to have some standard against which conduct is measured, but what in nature can serve that purpose? What law of nature can you invoke to establish your values. Since every event is entirely and exclusively a physical event, what difference could it possibly make what -anyone- does, religious or otherwise, there can be no -meaning- or gradation of value. The only way an atheist can object to -any- behaviour is to admit that the objection is entirely subjective and that he(she) just doesn't like it - that's it. Any value judgement must be prefaced by the disclaimer that it is nothing more than a matter of personal opinion and carries no weight in any "absolute" sense. That you don't like what God told people to do says nothing about God or God's commands, it says only that there was an electrical event in your nervous system that created an emotional state that your mind coupled with a pre-existing thought-set to form that reaction. That your objections -seem- well founded is due to the way you've been conditioned; there is no "truth" content. The whole of your intellectual landscape is an illusion, a virtual reality. I didn't make these rules, it's inherent in naturalistic atheism and to be consistent, you have to accept the non-significance of any human thought, even your own. All of this being so, you have excluded yourself from any discussion of values, right, wrong, goood, evil, etc. and cannot participate. Your opinion about the Bible can have no weight whatsoever.