You said, "John Lennon called from the grave, he wants his hippy view back."
Answer = Very ironic that you used this. Although John was an atheist, much of his music was inspired by what he learned in Scripture.
Im going to address this last.
You said, "Love does not put food on the table and a roof over one's head."
Answer = Believe me, sometimes it is my decision to love my family that keeps me at my job in order to provide these things.
As I stated before, your example is your example and does not equate the same view for everyone else.
You said, "You don't need love to want to protect someone else, being a good person and not wanting to see someone else hurt is more then enough but that doesn't equate to being love."
Answer = I think we may be confused in our terms. Love, by definition, is protects. It is selfless. What you are describing is loving behavior, although I will give you that if you, for example, saved a girl from a sinking ship just so you could rape her once you got to a deserted island, then saving her in the first place had very unloving motives.
Love by definition. Instead of quoting Im just going to link it. Love holds a number of different meanings. We can play semantics over the word love but then we're getting into just plan subjective view, which I guess you've already started with your personal examples of love.
The example you provide is pretty sad and a bit psychopathic. How about saving a person from a sinking ship, just because it's the right thing to do. The fact that you try to throw in rape into that example shows you have a bit of some dark side of yourself to work through.
You said, "The way you posted comes off that you can't be a good person who can stay off drugs unless you have god and that's simply just not true ... [People] can have the same drive to do good for their fellow man, stay away from drugs and be pretty much exactly like you without faith, god and ultimate love. People can be good for the simple reason of just wanting to be good.
Answer = I am not saying that people who don't believe in God can't do good, loving things. They most certainly can. My observation has been that without a Judeo-Christian moral framework, people tend to find more ways of rationalizing selfish behavior. The teaching of the Scripture don't let you get away with that. It is hard as nails.
Again you show a subjective view that's limited to you. Just like you I have my own subjective view, one that sees religion, specifically yours as nothing more then the blind leading the blind all for the hopes of getting into a special place. In seeing that, I don't see selflessness but selfishness because of the fear and hope of ending up in one place and not another. Where an atheist doing good, is very simply doing it for the sake of doing it and not some potential reward or punishment.
You said, "John Lennon called from the grave, he wants his hippy view back."
Answer = Very ironic that you used this. Although John was an atheist, much of his music was inspired by what he learned in Scripture.
As for Lennon, Ill let his words speak for him.
Lennon: "If you say you don't believe in God, everybody assumes you're antireligious, and you probably think that's what we mean by that. We're not quite sure 'what' we are, but I know that we're more agnostic than atheistic."
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god....that's it, nothing more to it. That says nothing about scripture or even some religious views. As an atheists, not believing in god does not in anyway mean I can't find value in scripture itself. After all, as an atheist, scripture is nothing more then words written by man for man. We do not believe it is the inspired word of god but of man. It also means it doesn't really matters who wrote it if it has meaning to those who read it. For example....
Great liars are also great magicians.
He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
Hate is more lasting than dislike.
Above are quotes by Hitler, now just because Hitler said them, doesn't mean that seeing the value or truth in those statements somehow means you accept Hitler and follow him. It simply means you can see the statements for what they are worth, nothing more. The same goes for scripture, just because Lennon might have been inspired by scripture, doesn't mean anything beyond that, just that he found meaning in words that happened to also be scripture.
