Morals are not history. Feeling Christ.

As far as I can tell there are two main appeals to religion.

1. Whatever that religion's view is of the afterlife.

2. The morals and philosophical views of that religion.

I'm gonna focus on the second one right now.

In the case of Christianity, I don't think many people say "Oh, this history is true so I believe in Christ!" It's usually the other way around, "I believe in Christ so this history is true!" When you think about it that way, it sounds almost ridiculous but this happens all the time.

"These morals are true to me so everything else in this book is too."

It's easy for people to get caught in the compassion for humanity that Christ shows in the Bible. People seem to be willing to bend their own reason and not look at history clearly because they see these morals that should have nothing to do with history in the first place.

Thomas Jefferson edited out everthing that was supernatural in the story of Jesus and basically just left his morals behind. He and many of the other forefathers liked to go by this for their moral education. They believed in those morals but not the history.

The bottom line is that morals are not history. People did moral things in history but don't bend your own reasoning just because you like the morals of something.

When people say they don't believe in religion, etc, they're always confronted with others who say "well what do you base your morals on?" What about basing them on REASON. Man in a reasoning animal. Thinking that religion and morals are inseparable is just...dead wrong. There is such a long history of secular morals and ethics in Rome. People could look that up if they want to.

A lot of people say that they "feel Christ." Christ is true because they feel them. They think try to convert you because of this feeling. Isn't this a form of arrogance? That is YOUR feeling. I've seen other people REALLY feeling some Islam. REALLY feeling some Buddhism. This is when people start saying "Well, you can't say all religions are true" or "Well, you can't say there are true parts to all religion." I'm not getting to that. I'm saying that people's feelings are exactly that, just their feelings. Don't try to say it's some dogmatic universal truth just because it's YOUR feeling. Saying that your feelings are somehow connected to the Creator and everything that YOU say about this subjects of God and morals is the truth because it comes from the Creator is a bit fishy to me.

Don't you think?