Christian Overconfidence

[ProDeo]

I mean I've always thought I was unique but i dont think I'd be the first guy whose head explodes if God sent me a vision...Like is there a single recorded case of traumatic vision injury? I get it it maybe I don't like it, I captured fried and ate cicadas last brood I didn't not do it because they might taste like tree sap and dirt ...which they did and a little like shrimp, 3 out of 5 would eat bugs again. Likelihood, Oh I have no idea we'd need to be specific. A guy once told me something about traffic lights changing after he prayed being a sign of Gods glory, that one I could definitely wriggle my way out of pretty easily though I might run some tests to see if its repeatable and if it is then I might end up getting arrested for tearing apart traffic lights. I mean why would God send a vision that is obviously misconfigured for me, fine if free will is important i'm cool with seeing how I deal with just enough wiggle room. Thine is, the faithful get visions so its all kinda moot. No, Its more like I frequently require proof or some compelling rational argument (or I at least have to find it so) to believe things. God doesn't owe me anything as I understand it, But he both loves and wants me...I know how I act under those conditions, take me out for dinner and dancing...but His ways I suppose. It doesn't make sense to me, actually not making sense is something I can deal with, It has internal logic, but it does not seem to comport with reality or reason.

Don't underestimate prayer. As a young Christian I once had to make a hard decision, what to do with the rest of my life, I had two choices and I did not know what to choose. I decided to leave it up to the Lord because He would know best. Now at that time I drove in a very old Opel Ascona (my first car) with as license plate 17-23-UX and I knew there were only 2 newer cars (and one old like mine)  in the Netherlands that had the same 6 characters only in a different order. And I asked the Lord to show me one of those as a sign what to decide. At the time the Netherlands had 5 million cars. It's a bit like winning the lottery if that would happen.

The months passed nothing happened (to my shame I was already a bit forgotten about the prayer) and then on a sunny afternoon I saw one driving right in front of me. Shock! The same week I saw the second one. Shock! Two jackpots in one week.

It's seems I am a bit hard of hearing, God answering in plural to me, maybe He was making fun of my unbelief.

[ProDeo]

I see a lot of pain. Maybe you are closer to the Kingdom then you think.

I mean, from your perspective it is and always has been all around me like the matrix, or at least the keys have. Of course I have pain, i'm suspicious of anyone claiming not to and as an American Christians causing pain is practically a national sport. I am curious as to why you think pain may indicate closeness to the kingdom? Or is it that I have pain around Christians and Christianity that you think is the real indicator? I hope not, people calling themselves Christians and in the name of God have been scarring people for centuries, Many of those folk were born, lived and died in that pain, pain incomparably worse than mine and they died as something other than Christian...nah pain is an unfortunate part of life, and Christian caused pain is an unfortunate fact of history and the present...I'm vaguely repulsed by the notion you've expressed every time I hear it...its almost like saying , well, people suck and the abuses you suffered at the hands of people that claim to follow him were just God inexplicably making things painful and really friggin confusing just to bring you closer to him because this is a really good tactic. I mean I know a lot of people that claim to be Christians claim to believe some form of this...And again I suppose i'm supposed to read it and feel the deep transcendent wisdom in it but it sort of sounds like what an abusive parent or spouse says "I'm only doing this because I love you, but you just wont listen!"...Don't get me wrong its not an idea unique to Christianity, but when in rome, criticise the deeply held beliefs of the romans.

That's exactly what I meant, the part I colored red.

When I started reading this thread I thought, Oscar is showing his intellectual muscles making fun with Christians which is of course fine. Followed later with a couple of postings which I could not decide if you were trolling or just seriously meant what you said, maybe even a mix. Reading further I saw also pain. The pain (the red) I have seen so many times even among Christians, judging, damaging and destroying each other while Christ said: Don't judge. Love each other. And often the end result is that some people are so damaged they say farewell to their faith.

So I am wondering how much influence bad Christianity had in your life to become a staunch unbeliever.
 

[RabbiKnife]

I think the point here is that lacking religion, one can't command good behavior or even suggest it in most circumstances.

my point is of course they can, people do it all of the time, what exactly is stopping them? Like if I invoke God they aren't struck by lightening or anything if the offender wants to do it my philosophical stance on metaphysical objective morality is as unlikely to stop them as insisting that I'd rather they didn't.

Ah
Fatalism

sure I know what you mean...I dont think rape is predetermined just that neither of those things are particularly good deterrents, yelling "rape!" is probably orders of magnitude more effective or running or fighting.

Like how would our rape debate be any different if I were the rapist and you insisted that God was going to judge me for it? I'd just keep saying I don't believe in God so that threat is meaningless to me. I'm not especially compelled to rape any more than I am to kill babies or do much more than plan the murders of my enemies in my mind, Not because I might get caught by the authorities, or I fear retaliation or being judged or ostracised by society even though those do deter some people just like The threat of God deters some people. I don't even avoid those things because I don't want anyone to do the same to me, Its mostly the I don't even have the urge. If you asked me about reasons that I avoid lying that is a real test for me because I struggle with it because It has been easy for me to lie as far back as I can remember. That is a thing that i've had to summon all of the tools I have to combat.

No, not fatalism in the sense of predestined or predetermined.  I mean fatalism in the sense of "nothing matters."

For some reason, you just won't answer a straight question.  So let me summarize what I think you mean and you can correct me if I am wrong.  It will help clarify some things

1.  You do not believe that any action is either inherently evil or good.
2.  You do believe that a majority of humans, either intentionally or accidentally, create cultural standards of right or wrong that should be binding on everyone.
3.  You believe that if one is in the minority and the majority decides that an action taken by Person X that impacts a member of the minority in a manner with which the minority member disagrees is acceptable for the majority and for Person X but is offensive to the member of the minority but that the member of the minority has no remedy for that action.
4.  You feel guilt over actions you done in the past, but have no standard other than your own internal understanding of what society does or should permit upon which to assign guilt or wrong to yourself.

Are all of those statements true?

And, while we are at it, why should anyone care less if you lie or not?  Isn't the act of telling a falsehood amoral like everything else in your analysis?  Or does lying fall under the rubric I outlined above?

[Oscar_Kipling]

Like how would our rape debate be any different if I were the rapist and you insisted that God was going to judge me for it? I'd just keep saying I don't believe in God so that threat is meaningless to me.

The difference is that the moral imperative is situated externally to the human mind. The warning is of some greater wrongdoing against a higher being and not just the violation of a person according to shared moral values, which may or may not change over time. To claim that the threat is 'meaningless to [you]' is not to claim that the threat itself is meaningless or is of an invented moral character vis-a-vis social contract, i.e. social construction.

Much like Pascal's wager that RK mentioned earlier, the rape may be engaged in and lead to no consequences beyond this life, or it may be engaged in and lead to eternal consequences. On the other hand, to acknowledge that moral imperatives are purely human inventions is to affirm that they may be violated so long as one is willing to violate a given social order, which constitutes a rejection of the social contract. But then why should that contract be morally binding - and not just socially binding - as if the individual has violated some greater order?

And so that age-old complaint isn't "atheists can't be moral without God" (as an example). It's that the moral framework developed thereupon can't be binding in the same way. I know all about rejecting social conventions, and while people generally don't like it, it's just a convention at the end of the day. It's nonsense to say something like, "you're immoral if you don't live this kind of life" because that affirmation is nothing more than majority agreement in disguise. Immoral by X standard, maybe, but not by Y standard, and I like Y. Should I accept X over Y because many people are telling me I should? I think they should leave me alone and let me live my life.

I agree that what I believe we have as far as a moral framework is not binding in the sense that God's would be...I feel like i've been very open about that, its a conversation and a struggle, unspecific and what is generally accepted today as moral can change tomorrow.
I think the world changes and for better or worse our moral framework changes alot with it, and vice versa. If There are Objective morals from God then they do have the advantage of being   static while  accounting for all circumstances over all times with perfect clarity. Its a case of what I believe we actually have to work with as opposed to a thing that is conceivably better but we don't have.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I mean I've always thought I was unique but i dont think I'd be the first guy whose head explodes if God sent me a vision...Like is there a single recorded case of traumatic vision injury? I get it it maybe I don't like it, I captured fried and ate cicadas last brood I didn't not do it because they might taste like tree sap and dirt ...which they did and a little like shrimp, 3 out of 5 would eat bugs again. Likelihood, Oh I have no idea we'd need to be specific. A guy once told me something about traffic lights changing after he prayed being a sign of Gods glory, that one I could definitely wriggle my way out of pretty easily though I might run some tests to see if its repeatable and if it is then I might end up getting arrested for tearing apart traffic lights. I mean why would God send a vision that is obviously misconfigured for me, fine if free will is important i'm cool with seeing how I deal with just enough wiggle room. Thine is, the faithful get visions so its all kinda moot. No, Its more like I frequently require proof or some compelling rational argument (or I at least have to find it so) to believe things. God doesn't owe me anything as I understand it, But he both loves and wants me...I know how I act under those conditions, take me out for dinner and dancing...but His ways I suppose. It doesn't make sense to me, actually not making sense is something I can deal with, It has internal logic, but it does not seem to comport with reality or reason.

Don't underestimate prayer. As a young Christian I once had to make a hard decision, what to do with the rest of my life, I had two choices and I did not know what to choose. I decided to leave it up to the Lord because He would know best. Now at that time I drove in a very old Opel Ascona (my first car) with as license plate 17-23-UX and I knew there were only 2 newer cars (and one old like mine)  in the Netherlands that had the same 6 characters only in a different order. And I asked the Lord to show me one of those as a sign what to decide. At the time the Netherlands had 5 million cars. It's a bit like winning the lottery if that would happen.

The months passed nothing happened (to my shame I was already a bit forgotten about the prayer) and then on a sunny afternoon I saw one driving right in front of me. Shock! The same week I saw the second one. Shock! Two jackpots in one week.

It's seems I am a bit hard of hearing, God answering in plural to me, maybe He was making fun of my unbelief.

Maybe, or maybe it wasn't as statistically unlikely as you think...but idk It just doesn't do much for me.

[RabbiKnife]

Like how would our rape debate be any different if I were the rapist and you insisted that God was going to judge me for it? I'd just keep saying I don't believe in God so that threat is meaningless to me.

The difference is that the moral imperative is situated externally to the human mind. The warning is of some greater wrongdoing against a higher being and not just the violation of a person according to shared moral values, which may or may not change over time. To claim that the threat is 'meaningless to [you]' is not to claim that the threat itself is meaningless or is of an invented moral character vis-a-vis social contract, i.e. social construction.

Much like Pascal's wager that RK mentioned earlier, the rape may be engaged in and lead to no consequences beyond this life, or it may be engaged in and lead to eternal consequences. On the other hand, to acknowledge that moral imperatives are purely human inventions is to affirm that they may be violated so long as one is willing to violate a given social order, which constitutes a rejection of the social contract. But then why should that contract be morally binding - and not just socially binding - as if the individual has violated some greater order?

And so that age-old complaint isn't "atheists can't be moral without God" (as an example). It's that the moral framework developed thereupon can't be binding in the same way. I know all about rejecting social conventions, and while people generally don't like it, it's just a convention at the end of the day. It's nonsense to say something like, "you're immoral if you don't live this kind of life" because that affirmation is nothing more than majority agreement in disguise. Immoral by X standard, maybe, but not by Y standard, and I like Y. Should I accept X over Y because many people are telling me I should? I think they should leave me alone and let me live my life.

I agree that what I believe we have as far as a moral framework is not binding in the sense that God's would be...I feel like i've been very open about that, its a conversation and a struggle, unspecific and what is generally accepted today as moral can change tomorrow.
I think the world changes and for better or worse our moral framework changes alot with it, and vice versa. If There are Objective morals from God then they do have the advantage of being   static while  accounting for all circumstances over all times with perfect clarity. Its a case of what I believe we actually have to work with as opposed to a thing that is conceivably better but we don't have.

I'm assuming in the last sentence that "a thing that is conceivably better but we don't have" is a reference from the first sentence related to a binding moral framework from God.  The following question is based on that premise, so if that premise is wrong, just ignore this question.

On what basis do you base your believe that "we don't have" a binding moral framework from God? 

[Oscar_Kipling]

I see a lot of pain. Maybe you are closer to the Kingdom then you think.

I mean, from your perspective it is and always has been all around me like the matrix, or at least the keys have. Of course I have pain, i'm suspicious of anyone claiming not to and as an American Christians causing pain is practically a national sport. I am curious as to why you think pain may indicate closeness to the kingdom? Or is it that I have pain around Christians and Christianity that you think is the real indicator? I hope not, people calling themselves Christians and in the name of God have been scarring people for centuries, Many of those folk were born, lived and died in that pain, pain incomparably worse than mine and they died as something other than Christian...nah pain is an unfortunate part of life, and Christian caused pain is an unfortunate fact of history and the present...I'm vaguely repulsed by the notion you've expressed every time I hear it...its almost like saying , well, people suck and the abuses you suffered at the hands of people that claim to follow him were just God inexplicably making things painful and really friggin confusing just to bring you closer to him because this is a really good tactic. I mean I know a lot of people that claim to be Christians claim to believe some form of this...And again I suppose i'm supposed to read it and feel the deep transcendent wisdom in it but it sort of sounds like what an abusive parent or spouse says "I'm only doing this because I love you, but you just wont listen!"...Don't get me wrong its not an idea unique to Christianity, but when in rome, criticise the deeply held beliefs of the romans.

That's exactly what I meant, the part I colored red.

When I started reading this thread I thought, Oscar is showing his intellectual muscles making fun with Christians which is of course fine. Followed later with a couple of postings which I could not decide if you were trolling or just seriously meant what you said, maybe even a mix. Reading further I saw also pain. The pain (the red) I have seen so many times even among Christians, judging, damaging and destroying each other while Christ said: Don't judge. Love each other. And often the end result is that some people are so damaged they say farewell to their faith.

So I am wondering how much influence bad Christianity had in your life to become a staunch unbeliever.

Well I do find this to be an intellectually satisfying exercise, and I do think its fun, I do think some  of the things you guys say is funny and worthy of a little light poking fun at, but to be fair I think alot of life is funny and worthy of a little poking fun at and myself especially. I would be very uncomfortable not using humor because that's just my personality and it breaks up the very serious and dramatic things I have to think about when I choose to honestly immerse myself in this. I've meant everything I said, I mean except when I was joking but even then It was rhetorically true...I think, as i've said sometimes what I think of as a joke comes off as a lie to others, because in my mind some jokes are lies...idk I hope i've represented my actual beliefs and thoughts clearly over the totality of my posts.

To the meat! I became an atheist because I stopped ( or some would say I never did) believing in God. Don't take offense, I'm not infantilizing believers when I say it was akin to finally putting together that Santa is actually your parents or even more traumatically that you're parents are just people that don't always know exactly what to do. Bit by bit it stopped making sense to me, It stopped seeming like a given then it stopped seeming true at all. For a long time I was Just like, Okay, I guess this is just how it is, lots of people believing this not true stuff because they want to or were raised in it or haven't bothered to really think about it....Most Christians I grew up with were not especially deep thinkers and even at a very young age I very much was by comparison to them if not the greater world. Anyway for the most part I didn't think about it much and just had other interests. Then I came across apologies, particularly some form of the transcendental argument (I think, it might have been a different one if i'm honest about my memory)....and I was liked DOPE! this is awesome people thinking about this stuff in depth. It wasn't even a Christian that introduced me it was another atheist kid, We talked about our thoughts on God and he had thought and read much more deeply than I ever did..he was sophisticated and i loved it. Sorry I went on a tangent, What I mean is I was pretty young when I stopped believing, People that called themselves Christians had done awful things to me when I was a child and a believer, but in my child brain they were just false Christians as I was familiar with that concept. When I stopped believing they were just people with no special knowledge doing the kinds of crappy things that people do. It wasn't until I studied more and interacted with more Christians in the greater world that I started becoming angry and hurt by the widespread and general hypocrisy and contradictions of if all....but to be fair that's being in your 20's for you lol. The pain, I think the most it does is make me not give Christians or anyone any special trust or respect just because they say they follow Christ or Buddah or they are humanist or whatever. I'm sure without the pain I'd have had a similar initial journey out or maybe not, maybe that early pain is why I though a little deeper and was a little less trusting of the things that my community believed...Sometimes , maybe most times we don't get to know exactly how our experiences have shaped us, Anxiety or ptsd is an easy one, but how and what and when you are likely to think something because of those experiences is much more nebulous. I think that's the best i've got right now.

[RabbiKnife]

Thanks, Oscar, for that response.  Much appreciated and understood.

[Oscar_Kipling]

No, not fatalism in the sense of predestined or predetermined.  I mean fatalism in the sense of "nothing matters."

For some reason, you just won't answer a straight question.  So let me summarize what I think you mean and you can correct me if I am wrong.  It will help clarify some things

Sorry, its funny because I often think the same of you all, but I will take it for granted that neither of us is doing it on purpose. To be clear I believe that people that aren't suffering from depression or some other condition are practically incapable of feeling that nothing matters in any practical way. I think that the idea that nothing you do will have an effect on anything is different than nothing that you do will matter to you because mattering is in our heads.

1.  You do not believe that any action is either inherently evil or good.
2.  You do believe that a majority of humans, either intentionally or accidentally, create cultural standards of right or wrong that should be binding on everyone.
3.  You believe that if one is in the minority and the majority decides that an action taken by Person X that impacts a member of the minority in a manner with which the minority member disagrees is acceptable for the majority and for Person X but is offensive to the member of the minority but that the member of the minority has no remedy for that action.
4.  You feel guilt over actions you done in the past, but have no standard other than your own internal understanding of what society does or should permit upon which to assign guilt or wrong to yourself.

Are all of those statements true?

1. Yeah, pretty much. I don't use good and evil in the way that you do...but of course I do think some things are Good or Bad For me , for you, for humanity, because I have notions of both. Those notions of course are unsupported by anything but the tools available to us that I discussed earlier, so maybe to you entirely unsupported in any meaningful way.

2. Yes I think that humans have come up with some Good guidelines that would work toward the embitterment of humanity. I speculate that the very best ones are just humans codifying in language facts about  human biology & psychology...like do unto others, to my mind that is almost definitely the pro social purpose of empathy said in a succinct little witticism.

3. I mean that isn't even a belief so much as a state of affairs that has and continues to happen all throughout the history of humanity, heck its earlier behavior than humanity. There may be no recourse, there may be no options, you may not even get the chance to say no, stop , dont! Powerlessness is real.

4. Well I also have seen what consequences my actions have had, I've seen how i've hurt people and I've seen how I have ruined opportunities for others. I have been told as much by the hurt parties as well, I suppose they could have been lying about being in pain but it is reasonable to believe that they were being truthful in light of the circumstances and their being humans. Being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes is one of our greatest talents, but even that isn't perfect because it does not scale well...Moreover even the wisest and most thoughtful of us are trapped at human scale intuitively. Like how you can find with astonishing frequency that humans that have peered furthest into the tiniest and largest scales of our universe are humbled by the fact that it is only the collaboration over history and through the tools created by the combined toil of all our antecedence can we describe scales that are impervious to our bald intuition. Just saying we get by with a little help from our friends.

And, while we are at it, why should anyone care less if you lie or not?  Isn't the act of telling a falsehood amoral like everything else in your analysis?  Or does lying fall under the rubric I outlined above?

I actually think the better question is why should I care less about lying if I enjoy it and can get away with it. The damage that my lies cause for other people is reason enough for them to care, but why should I? To be truthful I don't think that I care, not in the sense that my emotional reaction to other violations is automatic. For me it is almost entirely academic. There are the obvious reasons, getting caught in a lie can cause me personally lots of problems, boy who cried wolf, broken relationships, lost jobs and opportunities, heck even legal troubles. A Lot of lies are also a lot of lies to remember and that is on top of needing to also remember the truth, for me this is very practical. I think the one that makes me most tentative on a deep emotional level is that lies are unpredictable, or their effects are. When you are contradicting reality you do not have control over what that may do, what it may grow into...Once the reality of that set in it put the fear of God into me so to speak...it is chaotic and chaos doesn't allow for what I want to do or build or how I want to live, It takes away my choice , my autonomy and makes me more unsafe than I need to be in a world that is already all of those things to a degree. the fact is, as I see it, you cant actually know if you can "get away with it" or how it may come back to bite, its paranoia inducing, looking over your shoulder for something that you can have no reasonable expectation that you will see it coming.. So idk if everyone or anyone else will find that compelling but I believe all of those things are true, and as based in objective facts about the world and humans and societies as I have been able to muster to date. Still people lie, heck I still do it when I'm not vigilant or arrogant or just can't resist for some dumb reason or another, but now I pay for it, only inside, only while i'm alive, but because of my beliefs about the reality of lies my lies cannot rest well...and unfortunately as easy as it is to lie to others, I've never been even considered intentionally lying to myself about reality,

[Oscar_Kipling]

Like how would our rape debate be any different if I were the rapist and you insisted that God was going to judge me for it? I'd just keep saying I don't believe in God so that threat is meaningless to me.

The difference is that the moral imperative is situated externally to the human mind. The warning is of some greater wrongdoing against a higher being and not just the violation of a person according to shared moral values, which may or may not change over time. To claim that the threat is 'meaningless to [you]' is not to claim that the threat itself is meaningless or is of an invented moral character vis-a-vis social contract, i.e. social construction.

Much like Pascal's wager that RK mentioned earlier, the rape may be engaged in and lead to no consequences beyond this life, or it may be engaged in and lead to eternal consequences. On the other hand, to acknowledge that moral imperatives are purely human inventions is to affirm that they may be violated so long as one is willing to violate a given social order, which constitutes a rejection of the social contract. But then why should that contract be morally binding - and not just socially binding - as if the individual has violated some greater order?

And so that age-old complaint isn't "atheists can't be moral without God" (as an example). It's that the moral framework developed thereupon can't be binding in the same way. I know all about rejecting social conventions, and while people generally don't like it, it's just a convention at the end of the day. It's nonsense to say something like, "you're immoral if you don't live this kind of life" because that affirmation is nothing more than majority agreement in disguise. Immoral by X standard, maybe, but not by Y standard, and I like Y. Should I accept X over Y because many people are telling me I should? I think they should leave me alone and let me live my life.

I agree that what I believe we have as far as a moral framework is not binding in the sense that God's would be...I feel like i've been very open about that, its a conversation and a struggle, unspecific and what is generally accepted today as moral can change tomorrow.
I think the world changes and for better or worse our moral framework changes alot with it, and vice versa. If There are Objective morals from God then they do have the advantage of being   static while  accounting for all circumstances over all times with perfect clarity. Its a case of what I believe we actually have to work with as opposed to a thing that is conceivably better but we don't have.

I'm assuming in the last sentence that "a thing that is conceivably better but we don't have" is a reference from the first sentence related to a binding moral framework from God.  The following question is based on that premise, so if that premise is wrong, just ignore this question.

On what basis do you base your believe that "we don't have" a binding moral framework from God?

On the lack of belief in a God, There can be no God given moral framework if there is no God to give it.

[RabbiKnife]

Well, that's somewhat axiomatic!

If you have some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if I had some eggs...

[Oscar_Kipling]

Well, that's somewhat axiomatic!

If you have some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if I had some eggs...

I guess if I just presupposed no God it would be, but I don't it just logically follows from the first premise.

What would it look like if it looked like there was no objective moral framework from God? What can I observe about the world that would be incompatible with a reality where there is not an objective moral framework from God? How can I tell the difference?

[RabbiKnife]

Well, aren't you presupposing that in the absence of physical or observable evidence that you can prove the non-existence of the metaphysical?

[Oscar_Kipling]

Well, aren't you presupposing that in the absence of physical or observable evidence that you can prove the non-existence of the metaphysical?

I mean you could probably look at it like that because I don't believe there is a God or any gods or deities but I cannot prove probably most of them. For me though regarding GOD claims are made, arguments are made, expectations are set and none of them have had the clear bell like ring of truth when I have investigated them...So I could just as well say that I have not been convinced by anything I've encountered that was claimed about God or his existence which is less susceptible to the particular rhetorical trap you've pointed out, but I don't fret over it anymore than I fret not being able to Indisputably disprove Russell's teapot.

[Athanasius]

Like how would our rape debate be any different if I were the rapist and you insisted that God was going to judge me for it? I'd just keep saying I don't believe in God so that threat is meaningless to me.

The difference is that the moral imperative is situated externally to the human mind. The warning is of some greater wrongdoing against a higher being and not just the violation of a person according to shared moral values, which may or may not change over time. To claim that the threat is 'meaningless to [you]' is not to claim that the threat itself is meaningless or is of an invented moral character vis-a-vis social contract, i.e. social construction.

Much like Pascal's wager that RK mentioned earlier, the rape may be engaged in and lead to no consequences beyond this life, or it may be engaged in and lead to eternal consequences. On the other hand, to acknowledge that moral imperatives are purely human inventions is to affirm that they may be violated so long as one is willing to violate a given social order, which constitutes a rejection of the social contract. But then why should that contract be morally binding - and not just socially binding - as if the individual has violated some greater order?

And so that age-old complaint isn't "atheists can't be moral without God" (as an example). It's that the moral framework developed thereupon can't be binding in the same way. I know all about rejecting social conventions, and while people generally don't like it, it's just a convention at the end of the day. It's nonsense to say something like, "you're immoral if you don't live this kind of life" because that affirmation is nothing more than majority agreement in disguise. Immoral by X standard, maybe, but not by Y standard, and I like Y. Should I accept X over Y because many people are telling me I should? I think they should leave me alone and let me live my life.

I agree that what I believe we have as far as a moral framework is not binding in the sense that God's would be...I feel like i've been very open about that, its a conversation and a struggle, unspecific and what is generally accepted today as moral can change tomorrow.
I think the world changes and for better or worse our moral framework changes alot with it, and vice versa. If There are Objective morals from God then they do have the advantage of being   static while  accounting for all circumstances over all times with perfect clarity. Its a case of what I believe we actually have to work with as opposed to a thing that is conceivably better but we don't have.

The thing is, people, live as if their moral values were sourced from outside of themselves. Someone can't think paedophilia is a reprehensible evil, but change their mind and think pederasty is laudable (all the Greeks are doing it, after all). Do you suppose that's wholly explicable by social contract, or is there some sense in which moral values are legitimately outside of ourselves? Why moral development at all, or is what we consider to be moral development something else in disguise?