It’s the very basis of manmade religion when studied historically. If god exists, there are 2 options irt morality.
Option 1, God’s view of morality changes throughout time (which would mean we cannot rely on modern morality interpretations to know if something is currently moral, and we can’t trust theistic morality).
Option 2, God’s view of morality does not change (which would mean, given the radical changes, man has never been able to accurately interpret morality, and we can’t trust theistic morality).
If God’s sense of right and wrong can change, can be contradictory, can be based on his whim, then how are we supposed to know what’s right and wrong?
It’s like the whole God works in mysterious ways crap. How are we supposed to know right from wrong if it’s all a mystery?
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If god exists, we aren’t meant to KNOW what’s right and wrong. We’re meant to guess.
If we were meant to know, we’d know.
It’s all easily spelled out in the book with a million contradictions that no one throughout history agrees on what it means.
But it’s not subjective somehow. It’s completely correct but even the religious leaders will change what each piece means throughout history.
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Define actual good or evil and tell me why it’s so important? It’s a paper argument. Your definition won’t match many others. Again is murder evil? What if it prevents other murders? What if it’s putting a sick animal out of its misery? What if it’s an abortion that saves the life of the mother? Have you ever stepped on an ant? Is that evil?
Is it “good” if I shoot a terrorist getting ready to blow up a plane? Or am I evil for committing an evil act? Who says? How do we know which is right? If we just say God will judge right and wrong then you can’t say you know what right and wrong is. You have no idea what’s good and evil anymore than me. What you have is a guess.
Does God not see any grey areas in what circumstances surround what someone does? If someone tries to kill my daughter tonight I will kill them if I have to. I’m not a killer but
I could be. If you think I need faith to not be considered evil for doing that then so be it. Agree to disagree.
But the actions people take and the circumstances matter here in the real world. The law will judge me quite differently if I stop someone from killing her than if I kill someone for fun.
Of course we can trust religious/theistic/ faith based morality. We’ve almost universally done so since around the time we first ritually buried our dead. It’s pretty a feature of the species. It’s the absence of that has barely begun to even be tested.
Who said it’s contradictory?
Heh, disagreements on interpretation is an argument to dismiss and adopt the view the that morality is whatever you want at any moment because really there is no such thing as good and evil. Right.
What? I don’t understand the daughter thing.
Whos religion? Yours? Catholics 500 years ago? Muslims today?
Also, if we can ‘of course’ trust religion based morality, that would mean we’re looking at the option where God’s view of morality is mutable.
Which is fine, btw, she can do what she wants. But it would mean we have zero insight into the changes of morality, or whether we’re currently complicit.
No it’s not. Organized religion has existed for a hilariously small % of homosapiens time on this planet. That’s just absurd.
Organized religion? How about religion. How about the capacity for faith, which is nearly universal? Why the caveat?
Is it evil if I kill a guy to prevent him from killing my daughter. We could come up with a ton of ok in this scenario is murder ok things. But we don’t really know what God thinks. So to say we objectively we know what’s good and evil is simply untrue. At best we think we know what’s good and evil. Which makes it essentially worthless.
Because it’s the only one that has evidence of a unified morality code, but happy to open it up to tribes. It obviously won’t help your case.
Why is capacity for faith meaningful?
Because prior to evidence of organized religion systems, there exists no evidence of faith.
I don’t really care to participate in this discussion, but I’d like to make sure we all know that would not be murder.
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Ok change it to kill. The Bible says thou shalt not kill. Is it evil for me to kill in that scenario? Will I go to hell for killing a spider?
Oh lawd
I will be back later
Have a nice diatribe on religion? You seem to hate more than I like it.
Moral relativism breaks down at the extremes.
Further, in situations when one person’s action affect another, then we have to base on whether or not the actor in the situation has the creds to back up his action same with the victim. Does the victim matter enough to merit action against the aggressor.
Based your logic anybody can do anything so long as society approves. Lots of societies approved of lots of terrible crimes against humanity. But in their society it was okay, so it’s ok.
Feel free to go nuts over religion again. I recommend punching a pillow.
I think you’re reading a bit too far into things in order to deliver a personal attack. I think you’ve also completely misrepresented the position I’ve taken. I would suggest you go back and try again. Right now you’re putting words in my mouth. I guess that’s a step forward from asking if I wanted to kill people!
But you’re also making my point for me. What’s deemed “ok” has changed over time and will continue to change over time. Values and morals change over time. What people did in biblical times wouldn’t fly today here. Neither would the Inquisition.
Saying good, evil, or ok doesn’t change anything. That’s someone putting an opinion on an action. As varied as any other opinion. Society makes and changes laws based typically on what the majority of people think about those actions. That will change like the weather. Marijuana was “evil” not too long ago to most. It was not good! If research comes out that heavy marijuana use say cures a disease we will see something go from “evil, to ok, to good.”
And anybody can do anything they want in any society anyways. Faith or lack of faith isn’t changing that. The only differences are the potential penalties.
After the Israelites left Egypt they received the 10 commandments. One of which is thou shall not kill. The Israelites then proceeded to commit acts of genocide on the way to the promised land. What is there to interpret?
And let’s not get into the New Testament and how you are supposed to love and forgive everyone. Or how Paul’s writings seem to contradict what Jesus said at times.
But I suspect you are not that familiar with the Bible or else you wouldn’t have asked about it being contradictory.
And good and evil obviously exist; the words exist for a reason. It’s that we decide what gets labelled as such.