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I researched all of this before really playing with any seriousness and found all of thse arguments to be lacking.

This argument really tweaks me. Christians often accuse atheists, like myself, of being amoral because of our lack of faith in God, but I find this sort of external basis for morality far more damning than my different moralistic base.

The idea that you need to research your morality (at least in this case) based on what other people have said makes me feel that, without that external impetus, you would be amoral. Now, I doubt that that is actually true, but you need to stand on your own two feet and take a position of your own, not be subservient to what everyone else says. I know that you say you found "their" arguments against gambling to be uncompelling, but why do you feel the need to know "their" opinion at all?

Don't get me wrong. There are often more far-reaching results to our actions than it initially seems, and it's worth it to look and see what those non-obvious results might be and how our moral centers would react to those, but I don't get the impression that you were researching gambling, but, rather, researching Christianity, and that speaks to me the notion that you need to be a good Christian more than you need to follow your own compass. You'd already decided that you were personally okay with gambling; you just wanted to see if other Christians had a valid argument to cast aspersions.

Now, I'm not sure what your basis for that last part might be. It might just be a desire to fit into the group. It might be that if they can cast valid aspersions, so could God, and it would prevent you from getting into heaven. There might be some other basis that I can't see, but none of them seem to be based on what you think is right.

(I know. You claim that God is inside you, and therefore it's not external, which I can understand, but if it's inside you, again, why are you looking outside for confirmation?)

I see a lot of bumper stickers out there that I can't quote verbatim, but say something along the lines of "I don't need to do anything; God will take care of me". I know that that's not a universal Christian ideal, but to me, the attitude I'm describing you as having is just another aspect of that same idea. And that attitude really pisses me off. It's certainly not the only cause of this, but I do think it's one thing that's leading to the ever-increasing lack of mutual respect in our society. If God's in control, there's no need for you to apologize when you bump into someone in an aisle, not park in handicapped spots, etc. There's no reason not to be rude. There are a lot of atheistic bases for that attitude, as well, but this is the only one I've seen with a supposedly positive written philosophy.

I know I've gone off the deep end, but when I see stuff like this -- stuff that makes me see the moralistic base of the group that claims to be the most moral group in the US -- it really sets me off.

What makes it worse is that I know you have a personal moral base. Sure, it's been influenced by Christianity; so has that of virtually every American, personally Christian or not. There's nothing that says that Christianity contains an invalid philosophy. Personally, I think that, it contains a pretty solid, if simplistic, philosophy, even if I feel that a lot of people who publically espouse to be Christians fail to follow it. But no external source, whether it be Christianity, Islam, Existentialism, Objectivism, or anything else, should be the sole guiding force for your morality. They can help you put into words how you feel, but they don't and shouldn't define what you feel.
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Bitt Faulk