Generally, question one of moral philosophy is whether something is moral because God says so, or whether God says so because something is moral. Both are supposed to be true, but there is a motive for picking the first and denying the second. By orienting morality around God, the rationalizing of error is easier. Supposedly, God says so, and objective evidence cannot be allowed to contradict God.

There is nothing humans can know about God other than what the objective evidence in life indicates. This means the morality has to be determined from the objective evidence.

This gets to a related point, divine revelation. This is another rationalization for sin. How does anyone know the difference between divine revelation and contrivance? Only through the objective evidence. Of course, the persons who argue divine revelation have a different version than someone else, and it is used to rationalize their sin.

Here is the correct evaluation of divine revelation. In the religion called Christianity, Christ is supposed to be the reference. He said he and the father are one (John 10:30). He then said people are supposed to look and listen to develop understanding as the basis for honest judgment (Mat 15:10)(Mark 4:13, 7:14, 8:21)(Luke 12:57, 24:45)(John 7:24, 8:43). This means using objective reality as the source of information, while Christ clarifies the basics as the starting point and foundation (Luke 6:48).

Notice in the rationalizations for "God's will" and "divine revelation" that the attempt is to move the subject away from the objective evidence in the lessons of life and into an ethereal realm, where sin can be rationalized. And notice that one of the central concerns of Christ was to do the opposite—to align moral and religious truth and knowledge upon the objective evidence in life. He did that through parables and examples including his own life, where the ultimate truth was demonstrated that humans would murder God for doing good deeds and teaching morality.

All corruptions within Christianity start with something other than Christ's words. The truth would replace the corruption if the starting point were Christ's words, because he taught with super-human communication and knowledge. Whenever there is a question within Christianity, it is imperative to first determine what Christ said and use it as the reference for determining the meaning of anyone else's words. If this is done, errors would be virtually eliminated.

Here's an example. The meaning of the crucifixion is said by fundamentalists to be atonement, because Paul said so. Atonement means sin was taken care of on the cross by appeasing God in some strange way. But if Christ's words are the starting point and foundation of the subject, a totally different subject of morality is found. First, Christ said his entire purpose in appearing in the human society was to "testify to the truth" (John 18:37). Why truth? He said truth would set people free from sin (John 8:32). This is because sin cannot exist in the light of truth. Sin must be concealed, denied and rationalized. If people are supposed to use truth to overcome sin, then sin wasn't taken care of through atonement by appeasing God.

Rationalizers for sin will go in circles arguing the meaning of every word. But the end results condemn them. Christ said you can know a tree by its fruit (Mat 12:33), and he taught a very difficult path for overcoming sin (Mat 7:14). Rationalizing away everything Christ taught is not Christianity.

Claiming that people are saved by faith rather than works sweeps away everything Christ taught in one word. Everything Christ taught was the works of salvation. He called it a path (Mat 7:14). It is summarized by the golden rule, which says to do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Mat 7:12). Doing unto means works. Not only is it work, it is a path which is difficult to find and follow, because sin requires hypocrisy, where the standard for others is not the standard required for self.

Another summary of the "path to life" is to make friends with this world's goods, so when they fail, you have friends in heaven (Luke 16:9). One could make friends with the wrong bunch and not end up in heaven, but there is a lot more to the path which clarifies it.

A key example of how to go about it is the parable of the Samaritan (Luke 10:30-36). The Samaritan pulled the victim of a robbery out of the ditch and cared for him. Christ said this is what people are supposed to do to get saved. It means there needs to be works with the faith. The fundamentalist claim that people get saved and then do the good works contradicts Christ's teaching that doing the good works are the requirements for getting saved.

So where does Paul get a theology which contradicts Christ? He claims he was told by Christ to ...(vague something of the other)... and so he speaks for God. When Christ speaks for God, he shows the evidence and says to study the evidence. When Paul speaks for God, he contradicts all logic and evidence and claims his authority allows him to do so. God does not contradict logic and evidence. He created all of material life out of logical relationships between realities.

So what is sin, and why human life? Sin is anything which destroys life. This is known through applications of the term sin and the reactions. People react to anything which destroys life. And this explains why material life exists. It is used to overcome sin, because the evidence needs to be clarified. Christ never described any other purpose for material life than overcoming sin; and eventually, all material life is abandoned, which demonstrates that it is not an end in itself.

Matter was needed for the same reason street lights and police are needed. There are no street lights or police without matter.

Only after sin ends can there be spiritual life without street lights and police.

Some religious beliefs (Buddhism and elements of fundamentalism) assume there is no life in the spirit world. Christ taught eternal life in the spirit world (Mat 25:46)(John 5:24, 6:47, 12:50).

Morality Summary