[quote]krsoneeeee wrote:
because if he created humans, we wouldn’t have needed to evolve…[/quote]
Unless humans were meant to be physical beings, in a physical world, subject to physical laws.[/quote]
what does that even mean…?[/quote]
It means that evolution doesn’t disprove God’s creation of the universe and/or it’s laws, therefore the creation of evolution. And issuing from evolution, the human being.[/quote]
Evolution also doesn’t disprove that the skygod Xenu created us, or that captain picard went back in time and planted the seed which led to evolution taking place throughout history.
Evolution also doesn’t disprove the allah created create us, or that the thirteen headed dog of the lower heavens created us …
What I mean to say is, evolution doesn’t prove that your god created us. It just gives us an explanation (far better suited to the evidence) of how we’ve developed. Nothing more, nothing less.
[/quote]
In the original post we were being accused of believing that Adam and Eve lived in Bedrock and the Earth is only 6000 years old.
We weren’t trying to convince you or anyone else that evolution proves a damned thing about God.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…perhaps i’m simply a better person than you?
I kid, but is it really necessary to trot out Nazis again and again?
Repeat a lie over and over again and people will start to believe it’s true.
The dehumanisation of Jews began long before the Endlosung. IOW, they prepped the germans to think of Jews as subhuman. I kill mosquitos without a shred of guilt. I can’t imagine thinking the same about another human being, but many a nazi did.
The most important aspect of my way of living is honesty. Clear, unrelenting and bold honesty. Without that, you’re right; it would just be a go-with-the-flow kind of thing. Wishywashy.
You’ve made me change how i format my posts. Don’t know how, but i’ll keep it this way.[/quote]
In Sloth’s defense, eph, using Nazis as examples in a moral relativity argument is extremely relevant, as they are a perfect study: A society only a few years removed from us, that virtually everyone, in every society in the whole world, can agree was fucking evil. Argue this or argue that, but it’s pretty hard for anyone to say that they actually feel, deep down, that the Nazis were just going with their own feelings, doing what was right for their particular situation and society at the time.
I just got done watching the Russian film “Come and See,” and had my eyes opened to a heretofore unknown aspect of the pure, absolute evil that the Nazis embodied. Ever seen it? There’s a long scene where they load an entire Belorussian village, basically peasants, men, women, little boys and girls, babies, all, into a wooden church house. They tell the adults that they can leave through the side windows, but they will have to leave their children inside. After shooting round after round into the farmhouse, laughing maniacally, they set the entire thing on fire, burning up every last person remaining inside. One woman is “allowed” to escape. She brings her toddler, but they throw the child back into the window, drag her away by her hair and rape her repeatedly. At the end of the movie, we learn that this happened some 628 times.
Now, again, can any one of you tell me that it just happens to be because of the particular environment that you were raised in that you happen to find this morally repugnant? Can you think of any excuse for this?
No, using Nazis in internet debates may be cliched, but when the example calls for some pure, unadulterated, absolutely Satanic evil, the Nazis are your go-to guys every time. [/quote]
Chiming in just to say that, yes, using the Nazis as a case study can be fruitful, and sometimes extremely relevant. What you described above is harrowing.
In my mind, the Asch conformity experiments only go so far to explain the sort of situation you’ve described. Not quite made up my mind how/why this happens.
As for moral compasses, and where people get theirs from. I can’t accept that it all flows from judeo-christian tenents. Yes, a lot of it does, but at the end of the day, we guarantee our own moral compass. We declare some of the teachings as immoral or irrelevant.
For me, the clincher is in the fact that I don’t believe that such commandments are god given. It means that we’re building civilisations on moral guidelines given to us by men of old. I’m ok with that, just as long as we remember that these commandments are man made.
[/quote]
I think you may be getting ahead of are argument. We’re not quite there yet. Not one of us, so far as I can tell, has stated that morals come from Judeo-Christian tenets (note the spelling, sorry, pet peeve of mine…).
Indeed, In past arguments on this subject I have pointed to Confucianism as a great source of morality.
The bottom line is, we know certain acts are evil. Even though the Nazis or the Aztecs or the Spartan baby-lobbers agreed as a society to perform these acts, we understand that there really are certain situations where none of us are willing to condone the acts as an expression of their culture, time and circumstances. The Nazis work well because they are so close to us in history that we cannot pretend ignorance of the reality of the horror that was.
And unless you are willing to condone those acts, you are going to be forced to admit that you hold something as a moral absolute. In other words: morals are not relative.
I understand the atheists are very emotionally attached to their atheism, and feel threatened when confronted with these sorts of moral questions. That’s why we keep seeing red herring after red herring throughout this discussion, of posters trying to avoid confronting these issues and pushing the argument into “Yall think Adam and Eve lived with teh dinos!!11!” and other similarly insidious (haha) deflective techniques.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…perhaps i’m simply a better person than you?
I kid, but is it really necessary to trot out Nazis again and again?
Repeat a lie over and over again and people will start to believe it’s true.
The dehumanisation of Jews began long before the Endlosung. IOW, they prepped the germans to think of Jews as subhuman. I kill mosquitos without a shred of guilt. I can’t imagine thinking the same about another human being, but many a nazi did.
The most important aspect of my way of living is honesty. Clear, unrelenting and bold honesty. Without that, you’re right; it would just be a go-with-the-flow kind of thing. Wishywashy.
You’ve made me change how i format my posts. Don’t know how, but i’ll keep it this way.[/quote]
In Sloth’s defense, eph, using Nazis as examples in a moral relativity argument is extremely relevant, as they are a perfect study: A society only a few years removed from us, that virtually everyone, in every society in the whole world, can agree was fucking evil. Argue this or argue that, but it’s pretty hard for anyone to say that they actually feel, deep down, that the Nazis were just going with their own feelings, doing what was right for their particular situation and society at the time.
I just got done watching the Russian film “Come and See,” and had my eyes opened to a heretofore unknown aspect of the pure, absolute evil that the Nazis embodied. Ever seen it? There’s a long scene where they load an entire Belorussian village, basically peasants, men, women, little boys and girls, babies, all, into a wooden church house. They tell the adults that they can leave through the side windows, but they will have to leave their children inside. After shooting round after round into the farmhouse, laughing maniacally, they set the entire thing on fire, burning up every last person remaining inside. One woman is “allowed” to escape. She brings her toddler, but they throw the child back into the window, drag her away by her hair and rape her repeatedly. At the end of the movie, we learn that this happened some 628 times.
Now, again, can any one of you tell me that it just happens to be because of the particular environment that you were raised in that you happen to find this morally repugnant? Can you think of any excuse for this?
No, using Nazis in internet debates may be cliched, but when the example calls for some pure, unadulterated, absolutely Satanic evil, the Nazis are your go-to guys every time. [/quote]
Chiming in just to say that, yes, using the Nazis as a case study can be fruitful, and sometimes extremely relevant. What you described above is harrowing.
In my mind, the Asch conformity experiments only go so far to explain the sort of situation you’ve described. Not quite made up my mind how/why this happens.
As for moral compasses, and where people get theirs from. I can’t accept that it all flows from judeo-christian tenents. Yes, a lot of it does, but at the end of the day, we guarantee our own moral compass. We declare some of the teachings as immoral or irrelevant.
For me, the clincher is in the fact that I don’t believe that such commandments are god given. It means that we’re building civilisations on moral guidelines given to us by men of old. I’m ok with that, just as long as we remember that these commandments are man made.
[/quote]
I think you may be getting ahead of are argument. We’re not quite there yet. Not one of us, so far as I can tell, has stated that morals come from Judeo-Christian tenets (note the spelling, sorry, pet peeve of mine…).
Indeed, In past arguments on this subject I have pointed to Confucianism as a great source of morality.
The bottom line is, we know certain acts are evil. Even though the Nazis or the Aztecs or the Spartan baby-lobbers agreed as a society to perform these acts, we understand that there really are certain situations where none of us are willing to condone the acts as an expression of their culture, time and circumstances. The Nazis work well because they are so close to us in history that we cannot pretend ignorance of the reality of the horror that was.
And unless you are willing to condone those acts, you are going to be forced to admit that you hold something as a moral absolute. In other words: morals are not relative.
I understand the atheists are very emotionally attached to their atheism, and feel threatened when confronted with these sorts of moral questions. That’s why we keep seeing red herring after red herring throughout this discussion, of posters trying to avoid confronting these issues and pushing the argument into “Yall think Adam and Eve lived with teh dinos!!11!” and other similarly insidious (haha) deflective techniques.
[/quote]
Haha, funnily enough, I’m updating a tenancy agreement today, so must have mistyped a fusion of tenet/tenant in there.
Apologies for jumping into the argument (further than y’all were at this point) - truth is, I wasn’t able to read each and every post that went before.
I think I may partly agree that certain morals are absolute. I say partly because I don’t agree that every single person has the very same reaction to rape/murder etc. There may be various degrees of repulsion to the same act, for example.
Also, regardless of whether morality is relative/absolute, it has - controversially - no bearing on a divine source as far as I’m concerned. Crudely put, the old question comes into play:
Is it good because god commands it, or does god command it because it is good?
If it is the first, then the definition of good is arbitrary. If it is the second, then good/bad already exists and god merely follows it. In either case, god not necessary/necessarily desirable.
I can’t see why these questions should trouble atheists more than theists. They ought to make everyone’s head spin in equal measure.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…perhaps i’m simply a better person than you?
I kid, but is it really necessary to trot out Nazis again and again?
Repeat a lie over and over again and people will start to believe it’s true.
The dehumanisation of Jews began long before the Endlosung. IOW, they prepped the germans to think of Jews as subhuman. I kill mosquitos without a shred of guilt. I can’t imagine thinking the same about another human being, but many a nazi did.
The most important aspect of my way of living is honesty. Clear, unrelenting and bold honesty. Without that, you’re right; it would just be a go-with-the-flow kind of thing. Wishywashy.
You’ve made me change how i format my posts. Don’t know how, but i’ll keep it this way.[/quote]
In Sloth’s defense, eph, using Nazis as examples in a moral relativity argument is extremely relevant, as they are a perfect study: A society only a few years removed from us, that virtually everyone, in every society in the whole world, can agree was fucking evil. Argue this or argue that, but it’s pretty hard for anyone to say that they actually feel, deep down, that the Nazis were just going with their own feelings, doing what was right for their particular situation and society at the time.
I just got done watching the Russian film “Come and See,” and had my eyes opened to a heretofore unknown aspect of the pure, absolute evil that the Nazis embodied. Ever seen it? There’s a long scene where they load an entire Belorussian village, basically peasants, men, women, little boys and girls, babies, all, into a wooden church house. They tell the adults that they can leave through the side windows, but they will have to leave their children inside. After shooting round after round into the farmhouse, laughing maniacally, they set the entire thing on fire, burning up every last person remaining inside. One woman is “allowed” to escape. She brings her toddler, but they throw the child back into the window, drag her away by her hair and rape her repeatedly. At the end of the movie, we learn that this happened some 628 times.
Now, again, can any one of you tell me that it just happens to be because of the particular environment that you were raised in that you happen to find this morally repugnant? Can you think of any excuse for this?
No, using Nazis in internet debates may be cliched, but when the example calls for some pure, unadulterated, absolutely Satanic evil, the Nazis are your go-to guys every time. [/quote]
Chiming in just to say that, yes, using the Nazis as a case study can be fruitful, and sometimes extremely relevant. What you described above is harrowing.
In my mind, the Asch conformity experiments only go so far to explain the sort of situation you’ve described. Not quite made up my mind how/why this happens.
As for moral compasses, and where people get theirs from. I can’t accept that it all flows from judeo-christian tenents. Yes, a lot of it does, but at the end of the day, we guarantee our own moral compass. We declare some of the teachings as immoral or irrelevant.
For me, the clincher is in the fact that I don’t believe that such commandments are god given. It means that we’re building civilisations on moral guidelines given to us by men of old. I’m ok with that, just as long as we remember that these commandments are man made.
[/quote]
I think you may be getting ahead of are argument. We’re not quite there yet. Not one of us, so far as I can tell, has stated that morals come from Judeo-Christian tenets (note the spelling, sorry, pet peeve of mine…).
Indeed, In past arguments on this subject I have pointed to Confucianism as a great source of morality.
The bottom line is, we know certain acts are evil. Even though the Nazis or the Aztecs or the Spartan baby-lobbers agreed as a society to perform these acts, we understand that there really are certain situations where none of us are willing to condone the acts as an expression of their culture, time and circumstances. The Nazis work well because they are so close to us in history that we cannot pretend ignorance of the reality of the horror that was.
And unless you are willing to condone those acts, you are going to be forced to admit that you hold something as a moral absolute. In other words: morals are not relative.
I understand the atheists are very emotionally attached to their atheism, and feel threatened when confronted with these sorts of moral questions. That’s why we keep seeing red herring after red herring throughout this discussion, of posters trying to avoid confronting these issues and pushing the argument into “Yall think Adam and Eve lived with teh dinos!!11!” and other similarly insidious (haha) deflective techniques.
[/quote]
Haha, funnily enough, I’m updating a tenancy agreement today, so must have mistyped a fusion of tenet/tenant in there.
Apologies for jumping into the argument (further than y’all were at this point) - truth is, I wasn’t able to read each and every post that went before.
I think I may partly agree that certain morals are absolute. I say partly because I don’t agree that every single person has the very same reaction to rape/murder etc. There may be various degrees of repulsion to the same act, for example.
[/quote]
That’s exactly what I mean. Because we can agree that, regardless of how each individual views the issue, baby rape, for example, is always going to be bad. What you are talking about is matters of individual opinion, not the act itself. If you follow the road you’re taking too far, well then, some people do indeed ENJOY raping babies, and some of them further believe that the little kids they’re diddling like what they are getting. There really is no accounting for taste, is there?
Even the fact that we are discussing different levels of revulsion suggests a standard we are holding to the act.
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God.
And so, to get back to why atheists’ eyes start darting when they get close to admitting that there are certain inarguable standards of good and evil: If there really is an absolute moral Good and Evil, then it starts to become harder and harder to deny that there might be something behind that law. I won’t try and get into that just yet, but trust me when I say there’s a reason that you’ll typically find very few atheists who will readily admit in the existence of an absolute morality.
hmm, not exactly.
true relativists may well end up “getting stuck on his dilemma” with an “anything goes” conclusion.
but naturalists actually acknowledge that there is a universal human nature and, therefore, some kind of universal moral law that define good and bad.
when you got a definition of human nature, you can distinguish inhuman behavior from human behavior.
that was the conception of the vast majority of the modern atheists. which called themselves humanists for this very reason.
actually, very few atheist philosophers were relativists.
and the archetypal atheist teenager of our postmodern age is not a relativist either. he is just deeply confused.
in a way, the relativist “anything goes” atheist is as much a strawman than the fanatic and antiscientific christian is.
i’m one of these happy few. and i happen to have found this thread.
you really don’t want “to try and get into that just yet” ?
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back.
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
I mentioned the same dilemma. Unfortunately, connection timed out in my subsequent post and lost my whole damn reply!
I do like the question of - does your god ask you to perform immoral acts. This really troubled me back in the believing days. Even if I skipped over all this, I couldn’t get past the idea of a god burning humans (for eternity) in hell. It looked like disproportionate punishment, to the nth degree. It looked a lot like murder, borne about by anger.
Does hellfire become good because god creates it? Surely not!
Does god create hellfire because it is a good thing? Again, surely not!
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
“Good” is defined by God. In a godless world there’s simply action and it’s sibling, reaction. Good, evil, moral, and immoral are religious concepts. In a purely mechanical universe, they don’t exist. They are no more real than God, and no less a fairy tale than God.
[quote]krsoneeeee wrote:
because if he created humans, we wouldn’t have needed to evolve…[/quote]
Unless humans were meant to be physical beings, in a physical world, subject to physical laws.[/quote]
what does that even mean…?[/quote]
It means that evolution doesn’t disprove God’s creation of the universe and/or it’s laws, therefore the creation of evolution. And issuing from evolution, the human being.[/quote]
Evolution also doesn’t disprove that the skygod Xenu created us, or that captain picard went back in time and planted the seed which led to evolution taking place throughout history.
Evolution also doesn’t disprove the allah created create us, or that the thirteen headed dog of the lower heavens created us …
What I mean to say is, evolution doesn’t prove that your god created us. It just gives us an explanation (far better suited to the evidence) of how we’ve developed. Nothing more, nothing less.
[/quote]
Exactly that is what we’re trying to get across to krsone, that the theory of evolution does not conflict with the principles of Christianity. Therefore, the Church says that it is not in conflict to accept the theory of evolution.
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
I mentioned the same dilemma. Unfortunately, connection timed out in my subsequent post and lost my whole damn reply!
I do like the question of - does your god ask you to perform immoral acts. This really troubled me back in the believing days. Even if I skipped over all this, I couldn’t get past the idea of a god burning humans (for eternity) in hell. It looked like disproportionate punishment, to the nth degree. It looked a lot like murder, borne about by anger.
Does hellfire become good because god creates it? Surely not!
Does god create hellfire because it is a good thing? Again, surely not!
Interested in how Cortes views it though.
[/quote]
Hopefully one of the believers will chime in, but while I was a believer what I learned is that the hellfire and all that goodness was largely medievil and renaisance ideas and that hell is complete and utter separation from God and as a perfect and just being He can’t allow someone who rejects the Christ into the gates of Heaven.
hmm, not exactly.
true relativists may well end up “getting stuck on his dilemma” with an “anything goes” conclusion.
but naturalists actually acknowledge that there is a universal human nature and, therefore, some kind of universal moral law that define good and bad.
when you got a definition of human nature, you can distinguish inhuman behavior from human behavior.
that was the conception of the vast majority of the modern atheists. which called themselves humanists for this very reason.
actually, very few atheist philosophers were relativists.
and the archetypal atheist teenager of our postmodern age is not a relativist either. he is just deeply confused.
in a way, the relativist “anything goes” atheist is as much a strawman than the fanatic and antiscientific christian is.
i’m one of these happy few. and i happen to have found this thread.
you really don’t want “to try and get into that just yet” ?[/quote]
When a person finds out I’m atheist, they always think of the nihilistic or postmodern atheist when in fact I much more a humanist than either of those. And I believe that biological and cultural evolution have brought some moral absolutes into humanity (and life in general) that will always be right or wrong. If it looks like my stance has changed, that’s because I have a stronger concept of what morality is after this discussion.
hmm, not exactly.
true relativists may well end up “getting stuck on his dilemma” with an “anything goes” conclusion.
but naturalists actually acknowledge that there is a universal human nature and, therefore, some kind of universal moral law that define good and bad.
when you got a definition of human nature, you can distinguish inhuman behavior from human behavior.
that was the conception of the vast majority of the modern atheists. which called themselves humanists for this very reason.
actually, very few atheist philosophers were relativists.
and the archetypal atheist teenager of our postmodern age is not a relativist either. he is just deeply confused.
in a way, the relativist “anything goes” atheist is as much a strawman than the fanatic and antiscientific christian is.
i’m one of these happy few. and i happen to have found this thread.
you really don’t want “to try and get into that just yet” ?[/quote]
When a person finds out I’m atheist, they always think of the nihilistic or postmodern atheist when in fact I much more a humanist than either of those. And I believe that biological and cultural evolution have brought some moral absolutes into humanity (and life in general) that will always be right or wrong. If it looks like my stance has changed, that’s because I have a stronger concept of what morality is after this discussion. [/quote]
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
I mentioned the same dilemma. Unfortunately, connection timed out in my subsequent post and lost my whole damn reply!
I do like the question of - does your god ask you to perform immoral acts. This really troubled me back in the believing days. Even if I skipped over all this, I couldn’t get past the idea of a god burning humans (for eternity) in hell. It looked like disproportionate punishment, to the nth degree. It looked a lot like murder, borne about by anger.
Does hellfire become good because god creates it? Surely not!
Does god create hellfire because it is a good thing? Again, surely not!
Interested in how Cortes views it though.
[/quote]
Hopefully one of the believers will chime in, but while I was a believer what I learned is that the hellfire and all that goodness was largely medievil and renaisance ideas and that hell is complete and utter separation from God and as a perfect and just being He can’t allow someone who rejects the Christ into the gates of Heaven. [/quote]
A very quick response to this: Almost. Except your explanation glosses over the most important part, and that is, as I mentioned before, the essential element without which morality cannot exist: free will.
God does not “send” anyone to Hell. We have to choose, one way or the other (and if ignorance is a factor, it will be taken into account).
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
I mentioned the same dilemma. Unfortunately, connection timed out in my subsequent post and lost my whole damn reply!
I do like the question of - does your god ask you to perform immoral acts. This really troubled me back in the believing days. Even if I skipped over all this, I couldn’t get past the idea of a god burning humans (for eternity) in hell. It looked like disproportionate punishment, to the nth degree. It looked a lot like murder, borne about by anger.
Does hellfire become good because god creates it? Surely not!
Does god create hellfire because it is a good thing? Again, surely not!
Interested in how Cortes views it though.
[/quote]
And to clarify, without over-explaining it, the essence of the matter is that Hell is complete separation from God. So, thereby, complete separation from all that we see as Good.
To think about it another way, Heaven and Hell are not places, they are states. The former is the state of with-God, the latter, without-God. The state may be characterized by certain desirable or undesirable characteristics, but to say God created something evil is a misunderstanding of the entire nature of the matter.
hmm, not exactly.
true relativists may well end up “getting stuck on his dilemma” with an “anything goes” conclusion.
but naturalists actually acknowledge that there is a universal human nature and, therefore, some kind of universal moral law that define good and bad.
when you got a definition of human nature, you can distinguish inhuman behavior from human behavior.
that was the conception of the vast majority of the modern atheists. which called themselves humanists for this very reason.
actually, very few atheist philosophers were relativists.
and the archetypal atheist teenager of our postmodern age is not a relativist either. he is just deeply confused.
in a way, the relativist “anything goes” atheist is as much a strawman than the fanatic and antiscientific christian is.
[/quote]
I may have been conflating naturalists and physicalists. Thanks for the clarification. I’ll do some research on the naturalists, especially if it helps me understand your philosophical position, kamui. You are a real enigma to me, for sure.
[quote]
i’m one of these happy few. and i happen to have found this thread.
you really don’t want “to try and get into that just yet” ?[/quote]
I’m trying not to spread myself out over too many topics all at once. I have a business to run and a 1 year old son to take care of that tend to rather limit my Very Important Internet Debating Time.
I do think your explanation of the modern atheist/so-called relativist fits the definition of who I am talking about, though, just to clarify.
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
What is God’s nature? You must be referring to something in particular. But if God is truth, and truth is, what is the case (in a philosophical point of view) Then I’d say it is good because truth is good and God it truth.
Now the important definition here is, what is “good”? What does “good” mean?
God cannot be immoral by definition because he is not beholden to the rules of his creation. Just like your parents can whoop your ass for something they do, but you cannot do it; like if you were caught smoking when your 10 yrs However, as a Christian, one believes believes that God became man in one respect to be totally submissive to the rules and will of his creation.
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
Good to see you hear anonfactor. I enjoyed your challenging banter on the last 100+ page morality thread.
Anyway I probably should have addressed this before answering all those other posts, but just understand that the other points I just addressed are my context for this answer:
In short, I think this amounts to splitting hairs, or playing with words. The definition of God is Goodness. The purest definition of Goodness is God. There is no separating the two, so there is no logical disconnect.
To look at it another couple of ways: Are we human because we understand right from wrong, or do we understand right from wrong because we are human? Well, what’s generally accepted as true is: both. What words do we use for particularly heinous psychopaths, like child rapist/murderers? Inhuman. Subhuman. Animal. Conversely, we do not expect animals to understand right from wrong, because they are not human. There is no dilemma in this. We certainly have no problem viewing either of these statements without any logical disconnect!
Another one, possibly easier to understand: light. Does it shine because it is light? Or is it light because it shines? When you are trying to find your way out of a dark forest at night, who freakin cares?
There is God and there is separation from God. That’s it.
So, does it go both ways? Can you think of a situation in which discriminating against another group would be “right?” I’m not talking about protecting oneself, because I am pretty sure that is not what the nightclub owner had in mind. What I mean is, since it’s all relative, is it possible there is place or a time or a state that would allow for blatant discrimination against another group? Another race?
[/quote]
…i see no problem with being intolerant of intolerance. The easy way out of blaming others for my problems, that’s not me. But i don’t think that a system that allows for certain freedoms should have those freedoms used against itself, in order to bring it down. I can’t think of another scenario, to be honest…
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…perhaps i’m simply a better person than you?
I kid, but is it really necessary to trot out Nazis again and again?
Repeat a lie over and over again and people will start to believe it’s true.
The dehumanisation of Jews began long before the Endlosung. IOW, they prepped the germans to think of Jews as subhuman. I kill mosquitos without a shred of guilt. I can’t imagine thinking the same about another human being, but many a nazi did.
The most important aspect of my way of living is honesty. Clear, unrelenting and bold honesty. Without that, you’re right; it would just be a go-with-the-flow kind of thing. Wishywashy.
You’ve made me change how i format my posts. Don’t know how, but i’ll keep it this way.[/quote]
In Sloth’s defense, eph, using Nazis as examples in a moral relativity argument is extremely relevant, as they are a perfect study: A society only a few years removed from us, that virtually everyone, in every society in the whole world, can agree was fucking evil. Argue this or argue that, but it’s pretty hard for anyone to say that they actually feel, deep down, that the Nazis were just going with their own feelings, doing what was right for their particular situation and society at the time.
I just got done watching the Russian film “Come and See,” and had my eyes opened to a heretofore unknown aspect of the pure, absolute evil that the Nazis embodied. Ever seen it? There’s a long scene where they load an entire Belorussian village, basically peasants, men, women, little boys and girls, babies, all, into a wooden church house. They tell the adults that they can leave through the side windows, but they will have to leave their children inside. After shooting round after round into the farmhouse, laughing maniacally, they set the entire thing on fire, burning up every last person remaining inside. One woman is “allowed” to escape. She brings her toddler, but they throw the child back into the window, drag her away by her hair and rape her repeatedly. At the end of the movie, we learn that this happened some 628 times.
Now, again, can any one of you tell me that it just happens to be because of the particular environment that you were raised in that you happen to find this morally repugnant? Can you think of any excuse for this?
No, using Nazis in internet debates may be cliched, but when the example calls for some pure, unadulterated, absolutely Satanic evil, the Nazis are your go-to guys every time. [/quote]
Without excusing anyone from acts against humanity you cannot discuss these issues without context. Why were the Germans able to do the things they did? Because they were primed to believe they were Ubermenschen.
After WW1 Germany was in shambles. Deep economic depression, hyperinflation, starvation and disease were a fact of life during the '20s and early '30s. The Germans were at their weakest, lowest point in their history. Then Hitler came to power. He promised them better times, and with foreign financial support he started to transform Germany, from the hellhole it was, back to it’s old glory.
Not only did he give them food, work, housing and money, he also gave them back their pride. Combine a charismatic leader with kept promises, and new sense of nationality that says you’re better than anyone else and, most importantly, give you a bad guy; when someone picks you up from the gutter like that, you tend to believe him.
This all hinges on beliefs: the belief that you are better, and the belief that others who are inferiour to you were the cause of your misery. This is the underlying cause of one of the largest atrocity in human history, and it has nothing to do with morality being relative.
As far as the Nazis were concerned, their belief in German rightousness was absolute.
[quote]anonfactor wrote:
Interesting thread, I’ll have to go through it completely when I return.
I will make a quick comment on one thing, though.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, good old Euthyphro. Naturalists/Physicalists (ie the morals derive from evolution crowd) end up getting stuck on his dilemma as well, because if they are right, then damned well anything goes. Thing is, theists have a pretty easy out from the dilemma. I thought of it myself before I ever even read all of the counter-arguments to it. God IS Good. Meaning, the nature of God is Goodness, so it’s a false dilemma. That which we can all agree is morally good (truth, justice, freedom, courage, self-sacrifice, love, etc.) is actually a reflection of the nature of God, himself. Whereas that we consider evil (deception, murder, rape, injustice, selfishness), is actually the result of separation from God. It is, in simplest terms, not-God. [/quote]
Not out of the dilemma yet, just changes how it’s organized.
The new dilemma is then: Is God’s nature the way it is because it is good or is God’s nature good simply because it is God’s nature?
Further, does your God command or perform immoral acts? [You can probably see where I’m going to go with this]
I should have time for a more suitable response when I get back. [/quote]
Good to see you hear anonfactor. I enjoyed your challenging banter on the last 100+ page morality thread.
Anyway I probably should have addressed this before answering all those other posts, but just understand that the other points I just addressed are my context for this answer:
In short, I think this amounts to splitting hairs, or playing with words. The definition of God is Goodness. The purest definition of Goodness is God. There is no separating the two, so there is no logical disconnect.
To look at it another couple of ways: Are we human because we understand right from wrong, or do we understand right from wrong because we are human? Well, what’s generally accepted as true is: both. What words do we use for particularly heinous psychopaths, like child rapist/murderers? Inhuman. Subhuman. Animal. Conversely, we do not expect animals to understand right from wrong, because they are not human. There is no dilemma in this. We certainly have no problem viewing either of these statements without any logical disconnect!
Another one, possibly easier to understand: light. Does it shine because it is light? Or is it light because it shines? When you are trying to find your way out of a dark forest at night, who freakin cares?
There is God and there is separation from God. That’s it.
And I’m out for the night.
[/quote]
I have heard - and read superficially - of this concept of with-god and separation from god. However, my own background - ex-muslim - means that my conception of any afterlife was dominated with a very physical, hot place called hell. Of course, I understand that not everyone views it that way.
And I know many, many christians who view it the same way. However, if you’re one that views it in terms of state (spiritual disconnect from god) I still feel that there is something resembling a punishment going on here. A friend of mine accepts this definition, but adds that the disconnect can last forever.
Do you subscribe to the punished-for-eternity paradigm?
