What's more important, virtue or kindness? Who's better, a pure virtuous person or kind compassionate person?

If one person is very good & pure but occasionally has a mean streak, and another has lots of sex but is really nice, who's the better christian?

I was watching Doubt (Meryl Streep) and the priest said it's possible to kill kindness in the name of virtue. That's the origin of this question. Feel free to define what virtuous, pure or kind mean to you.

For those of you who would self-identify as Christian - do you find yourself 'shaped' more (in a moral formation sense) by the bible or by prevailing moral culture (i.e. what secular society values as good/moral)? I'm not saying they don't overlap - they certainly do - but they aren't always in agreement by any means. If there's a conflict between them (real or perceived), how do you go about deciding between them? Do you wish one shaped you more, or less?

Or do I even have my question wrong? :') Let's hear what you think.

Here's a question that has been floating around in my head for a while:

For those who would call themselves atheists/agnostics/freethinkers - What is the philosophical foundation of your morality? That is to say... why BE good? How do you know what good is? Does good/evil, right/wrong even exist?

If you have a moral system, where does it come from? What justifies it's form and existence?

A short time ago, you were annoyed because you thought I was calling you a nazi. I wasn't. But I have begun to realize my thinking has been taking me somewhere even worse.

Hitler has been universally condemned not just as cruel - but as a madman, a monster, someone so wildly different from the normal human that he has fostered a growth industry of psychiatric studies. The Germans, too, have fallen under the same cloud, a perverse people who can only be seen as a gross perversion of normal humanity. I am beginning to realize something much worse.

I have been pondering this lately: How much of what we call conscience, or our "moral compass" is learned? How much is hereditary or even genetic? How much is spiritual?

I subscribe to the Pew Research mailing list and thought this might be a timely and interesting topic. If I've set it up right, there should be a linked graph in this topic as well as a link to the article on the Pew Forum site.

Hey all,

I listen to a certain speaker on the internet regularly.  He answers a certain question in an interesting way.  The questioner will usually say something like: "How can a good god.....?"  The question is usually asked to show that God does not exsist.  The answer that this speaker gives goes something like this: