The Hubris of Man

” Or observation. I’d still make an argument for a morality based on natural law, with religious or cultural morality added on top on a voluntary and individual basis”

The only natural law is what can be done and what cannot.  But that is not morality, it’s mechanics.  There is no such thing as a universal morality. Humans do not have innate morals.  Those are learned.

However, I do agree and like the idea of an area being allowed to govern itself based own it’s own morality formed from secular and religious sources.  I mean that is much of state law now in the USA.  The federal gov is the one trying to ruin that by overriding state law to centralize power.

” In the US, too, I presume there are less consequences for saying “I hate god” than “I hate Christians”. In the end, it means the same thing.”

Consequences?  If you are anti-God and ESPECIALLY anti-Christian here they throw you a parade and give you a goverment grant.

“I don’t. I legit never accepted any dogma.”

You don’t need to accept a dogma to have faith. You do have faith.  You place it in humans.  I am not saying that is entirely wrong I am just saying every human places faith in something.  People take the word of others whether that be governmental or scientific figures etc.  Again Pluto.  You believe it exists but you have never proven it yourself.  Hence, faith.

“Can you name this proof? I mean for the historical Jesus, not the faith aspect of his divinity. Proof dating back to his lifetime, not something written 50 years later.”

To my understanding much of ancient history (I am no historian nor do I claim to be lets get that straight) is taken as fact with less points of evidence than what we have for the existence of the man known as Jesus. I think you are placing an undue burden of proof but that is just an opinion clearly.  Let’s take someone super historically famous from the ancient world.  Alexander the Great.  The written works that refer to him come after him.  I think they refer themselves to other works that were written at his time but those works no longer exist.  This is just an example, again I am not a historian.  I think discounting the works of an actual historian (Tacitus)  who was within the same or 1 lifetime of Jesus because he was his writing was not at the exact time of is incorrect.

“Or perhaps we simply evolved to trust our senses. It is, after all, the only way we can experience the world around us. We see, we hear, we smell, we feel. Relying on our senses is not hubris in my opinion. On the contrary, there is a certain ascetic discipline to it.”

If this were the actual case then there would be no such thing as history or any sense of scientific evolution because we would never trust in what what we cannot sense for ourselves.  Again Pluto.  Do you sense it yourself?  No.  Can you yourself prove it without placing faith in the words and works of others past and present?  No.

Human history is replete with things beyond us coming to fruition. Whether that be an idea, a thought, or simply an instinct that we cannot explain.  In fact I would say that without this innate ability to see and think beyond what is right in front of us there would be no human history.

When you boil it all down this is what I think.  Faith is a test of Love put in place by God so that we can choose to love him but not be forced to.  We are all born with a thirst for something bigger than ourselves.  This was put there by God so that we seek him.  But it is not imprinted on us what that thirst is for so it is up to each person to decide for themselves (not a Church or a religious organization) what they try to satiate that thirst with. So at the end of the day we all choose whether we want to love God or not.