Bleak Conclusions

Excellent point. I often hear athiests claim that they are moral, but never here them explain why. Apprantly, it is just because they prefer to be moral.

Usually they appeal to their capacity for “empathy.” This is just a fancy way of saying they prefer to be moral for no particular reason

No, Barry, it’s just not the reason you want to hear.

Do I hear you right? I hear you arguing that:

(1) “Nietzsche atheists” are”atheists with the courage and honesty to accept the bleak conclusions logically compelled by their premises”

(2) One of these conclusions is that “every action Hitler performed was permissible”

(3) You wish more atheists were Nietzsche atheists. In other words, you wish that more atheists believed that every action Hitler performed was permissible.

What have I got wrong? Sounds pretty twisted to me.

(BTW, though not an atheist, I am a relativist, and I don’t think you understand relativism at all.)

My reading of the Bible suggests that what God really hates is self-righteousness. Jacques Ellul, in his book The Subversion of Christianity, has some decidedly heterodox thoughts about morality. I offer them as a way to reframe the debate. The passages below are taken from pp. 69-70.

“In the minds of most of our contemporaries, Christianity primarily means morality. The spiritual aspect is forgotten except among a few.

God’s revelation has nothing whatever to do with morality. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

First, in the Hebrew Bible the Torah is not a book of morality, whether constructed by a moralist or as lived out by a group. The Torah, as God’s Word, is God’s revelation about himself. It lays down what separates life from death and symbolizes the total sovereignty of God. Similarly, what Jesus says in the Gospels is not morality. It has an existential character and rests on a radical change of being. Again, what Paul says in the exhortations in his letters is not morality but consists of practical directions by way of example.

Second, there is no moral system in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. There are no moral precepts that can exist independently in some way, that can have universal validity, and that can serve the elaboration of a moral system.

Third, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is against morality. Not only is it honestly impossible to derive a moral system from the Gospels and the Epistles, but further, the main keys in the gospel–the proclamation of grace,the declaration of pardon, and the opening up of life to freedom–are the direct opposite of morality. For they imply that all conduct, including that of the devout, or the most moral, is wholly engulfed in sin.”

I suppose one answer is that even though conceptually an atheist might recognize this bleak view, in practice this is rarely manifested. Either through nuture or nature (and probably both) we are constrained by societal norms, mores, cultural values etc. And these appear to exist in many different cultures, all with different religious worldviews. And many biologists think that we all share an innate set of “values” through an evolutionary process (perhaps Allen can talk to this more).

Furthermore atheism can provide a liberating influence for many (it has for me); rather then accept this bleak prospect we recognize that we are masters and mistresses of our own lives. We take responsibility for our own well-being and future happiness (and that of our families and friends too). Part of that is recognizing the societal and tribal natures of our existence – if you like the “golden rule” (which of course can hardly be claimed as a uniquely Christian stance). What may be perceived as “permissible” is really not because not only does it harm other sentitent beings, it is likely to harm myself as well.

But I must admit that if I follow Christianity to its logical consequences, I find it equally as bleak if not more so. According to mainstream evangelical theology, many believe that those who do not accept Jesus as their savior will not only not be with God in the afterlife, but will receive unspeakable eternity-long suffering and torture. The world population is somewhere between 6 and 7 billion and probably about one third of these are Christian (and of course many of those are probably nominal and not truly evangelical). That means approximately 4+ billion of the people alive today are going to be subject to this fate (let alone the people that have already died). And depending on your theological viewpoint, some Christians either believe that these individuals have ‘chosen’ this fate for themselves or that it is even pre-ordained.

Now, that’s what you call bleak! At least with atheism there is the hope that for the many millions of people who suffer in the world today, there’s some hope that this suffering will finally come to an end, but that is not the case with Christianity.

JTaylor, what’s bleak about this?

Matthew 13:50 and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Mark 9:48 where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched

Rev 14:11 And the smoke from their torture will go up forever and ever, and those who worship the beast and his image will have no rest day or night, along with anyone who receives the mark of his name

David Kellog: “JTaylor, what’s bleak about this?”

It makes ‘Bleak House’ seem like ‘Animal House’…

David,

Josef Stalin died peacefully at a nice old age in his bed, as the powerful (and arguably richest) individual in the world. Do you see anything bleak about that?

Barry Arrington,

William [1]. Usually they appeal to their capacity for “empathy.” This is just a fancy way of saying they prefer to be moral for no particular reason.

Why the scare quotes around the word empathy? Do you doubt that atheists possess it?

I believe the key to understanding this seeming paradox is contained within this part of Barry Arrington’s quote:

[A]n action is permissible if and only if it’s not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action. This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal deontic logic. [Emphasis added]

Let me begin by pointing out that I believe that conflating the terms “atheist” and “naturalism” is to perpetrate a logical fallacy. I agree with T. H. Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Jay Gould (among many others) that there is no necessary logical connection between these two terms. One — “natural” — refers to objects and processes that can be empirically studied, while the other — “atheist” — does not. Trying to lump these together is to confuse logical categories, and therefore results in confused and logically contradictory conclusions. I shall therefore consider the two terms separately, and then consider whether there is any merit whatsoever in conflating them.

To begin with the term “atheist”, I believe that if one defines this term as meaning “the assertion that there is no God”, then conflating this term with “naturalism” is to create an oxymoron. There is no empirical evidence one can cite that would either validate or falsify the assertion that there is or is not an empirically unverifiable entity. To even suggest so is to state a direct contradiction in terms. Ergo, I believe that it would be much more accurate (and accord with what we understand about logical categories) to refer to “naturalism” as “non-thiest”.

That is, “theism” has nothing whatsoever to do with “naturalism”. The former has to do with “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”, while the latter has to do with “the description of the way things are, as far as we can see”. In precisely the same way, “atheism” also has nothing whatsoever to do with “naturalism”. The former has to do with the conviction that something for which there is no empirical evidence either way nevertheless absolutely, positively does not exist. By contrast, the latter has to do with the assumption that those objects and processes that we can empirically observe and describe do, in fact, exist and can be described without necessarily referring to non-natural explanations.

Furthermore, as I pointed out in the previous thread, there is an immense amount of human thought that is not subsumed under the rubric of “naturalism”. While some might like to categorize these modes of reasoning as “supernatural” (to contrast them with “natural”), I prefer to refer to them as “non-natural”. Once again, here is the short list:
• Aesthetics (including the fine arts)
• Epistemology
• Ethics
• Logic
• Mathematics
• Metaphysics
• Ontology
• Religion
I believe that most people would agree that none of these are “natural”, in the sense that chemistry and physics are “natural”. I also strongly suspect that most people would agree that none of these are necessarily “theist”, including religion. In this context, please recall that I have already discussed in detail (in the previous thread) the idea that there are “atheist” — I would prefer to say “non-theist” — religions, such as Zen Buddhism.

Here is a short list of the categories of explanations that most people would agree are subsumed within the domain of the “natural” sciences:
• Astronomy
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Geology
• Physics

It is a generally accepted tenet of philosophy that one cannot derive “ought” statements from “is” statements. Attempting to do so is to commit a “naturalist fallacy” by conflating logically separate domains of human understanding. This distinction has been around since at least the time of Socrates, and was systematically analyzed and affirmed by René Descartes, David Hume, Emmanuel Kant, G. E. Moore, and John Rawls, among others. Ergo, attempting to explain concepts in the second list with reference to concepts in the first list (and vice-versa) are logically incoherent.

Where things become more complex is when we consider the so-called “social sciences”:
• Anthropology/Archaeology
• Economics
• Government/Political Science
• History
• Law (common and legislative) [1]
• Psychology
• Sociology
In these domains of scientific (i.e. empirical) explanation, human behaviors are studied using empirical methods in an attempt to formulate reliable explanations for the patterns observed. As Richarson and Boyd, Jablonka and Lamb, Lumsden and Wilson, and many others have pointed out, this means that some “non-natural” phenomena (i.e. ideas from the first list, which are formulated entirely “non-naturally”) can and do have significant effects on “natural” phenomena (i.e. human behavior) and again vice-versa) .

However, this still does not mean that the various human “non-natural phenomena” (i.e. the first list) can be reduced to explanations entirely subsumed in the list of “natural” sciences (i.e. the second list). Ideas have behavioral consequences, which have consequences for the further development of ideas, ad infinitum. To be very specific as to the point of this thread, the idea of God(s) (i.e. a “non-natural” phenomenon) can and does have observable consequences for human behavior (i.e. a “natural” phenomenon). However, the two are still subsumed within logically separate, though related domains.

The key word here, and the one that ties all this to the quote from Barry Arrington’s post at the head of this comment is the words “consequences”:

[A]n action is permissible if and only if it’s not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action. This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal deontic logic. [Emphasis added]

Yes, as Richard Weaver pointed out, “ideas have consequences”, and that is precisely the point. There is another, entirely logically separate way to justify ethics: on the basis of the consequences of the ethical prescriptions that flow from such ethical precepts. Such ethics are referred to as teleological ethics, and are contrasted with deontological ethics (i.e. the kind that Arrington refers to in his post). It has been my experience that when people formulate ethical prescriptions (and when they review their own behavior and the behavior of others in the light of such prescriptions), they generally evaluate the efficacy of such prescriptions on whether or not they have had the desirable effects. Furthermore, when people in groups formulate ethical and moral principles they do so via negotiation based on the same teleological criteria. That is, do our ethics produce the kind of society that all of us want to live in?

Under such conditions, it is not entirely surprising that, regardless of one’s society there are a few ethical prescriptions that appear to be virtually universal. The most obvious of these is the “golden rule”: “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”, also known as the ethic of “universal positive reciprocity”. There is a deep unity in human social interaction, as testified to by the empirical fact that something like the “golden rule” exists in nearly all human societies, regardless of the details of the religious beliefs of those societies (see http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm for a list). And if one uses the “golden rule” as the basis for one’s ethical system, then one usually derives approximately the same ethics, regardless of where one believes that the “golden rule” itself comes from.

Personally, I think that the “golden rule” is one of those very basic logical statements that needs no additional justification. It is what it is, says what it says, and has the effects that it has, regardless of whether one is a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Baha’I, agnostic, or atheist.

So, Barry, is it necessary for one to be a Christian (or some other kind of “theist”) to believe in the efficacy of the “golden rule”, especially if one has observed the effects of acting according to its precepts? And, if your answer is “no”, then why do you consider this to be a “bleak conclusion”?

[1] Yes, I’ve moved law from the non-natural sciences to the social sciences, as the kinds of laws formulated by law courts and legislatures (and studied in law schools) are clearly the result of human social interaction and negotiation.

tribune7, sure I do. My kind grandfather also died peacefully in his bed. According to evangelical Christianity, he’s supposed to be going to the same place as Stalin.

In evangelical Christianity, the vast majority of individuals are consigned to eternal torment. In the Calvinist version, they are predestined to go there. True or not, it’s bleak for everybody but the few who are saved.

I think it is too bad that Barry has such a bleak view of the humanity of people who believe differently than he does – I would not want to live with such a black-and-white worldview.

David Kellogg: “the Calvinist version, they are predestined to go there. True or not, it’s bleak for everybody but the few who are saved.”

And if we are to accept Christian eschatology, and that the end times is ’soon’ (as many Christians believe), then vast numbers of people will experience horrendous violence, disease and other calamities here on earth (prior to enjoying an eternity of even more suffering).

I read one apologist who estimated that this would impact at least 2 billion people, which would make all of the atrocities of the 20th century pale in comparison.

tribune7:

Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head in a besieged bunker in Berlin and his body (and that of his wife, Eva Braun) was soaked in gasoline and set afire just ahead of the arrival of the victorious Russian army. Your point?

Nothing is more bleak than Christian Hell, a place for which there is no evidence. People choose whether to believe in Hell or not. What does it say about the character of people who choose to believe that others who don’t share their personal beliefs will suffer an eternity of torture for that crime? And what does it say about a god, who remains invisible, and would know that the vast majority of people absorb their beliefs from their environment, would never the less torture for an infinite amount of time beings who did not believe in his existence because they were born in places and times when they were steeped in a culture of other gods or no gods?

Responding to this: “for any action you care to pick, it’s permissible to perform that action. If you’d like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan ‘if atheism is true, all things are permitted.’ For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don’t like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.”

As an atheist, I think all things are potentially permissible. We have seen plenty of societies that have permitted and even encouraged all sorts of atrocities against targeted groups and individuals. But this is why societies need to establish laws and determine for themselves what actions and behaviors will and will not be tolerated.

In America, we permitted slavery, then Jim Crow. We denied women the right to vote. We allowed polygamy in some parts. We interred our own citizens in camps. We know what Nazi Germany permitted, what the Stalinist Russia permitted, what Puritans permitted, and so on.

Everything is indeed permissible except for what a society prohibits. The role of public discourse is to help shape what we decide is permissible and prohibited. To me, this is the very opposite of bleak. It would rather be bleak if injustices and inequities could never be redressed because of an exaggerated assignment of authority to some ancient collection of tales and wisdom now taken to be sacred.

My kind grandfather also died peacefully in his bed. According to evangelical Christianity, he’s supposed to be going to the same place as Stalin.

Here’s a verse to give them David:

15″Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Barry Arrington:

For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don’t like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.

All you are showing is that all human actions are permissible by the Universe. I have no problem with this statement at all. The universe is not a thinking being, it doesn’t care what you do. But all human actions are not permissible by other human beings. Moral rules are made by people to allow societies to exist and to allow for people to live in relative peace. If a person chooses not to follow these rules he or she is likely not to have a very good life because they will be in conflict with other human beings. Some people do choose this route of conflict. They pay a penalty in most cases for their behavior. And they are penalized by evolution because they will have a more difficult time passing on their genes successfully. People who follow the law and moral conventions are generally more successful at having and raising children successfully and this is why, more often than not, people will choose to follow moral rules set by society.

Barry, the flaw in your argument is that it leads to the same dismal conclusion even if you replace the initial atheistic assumption with a theistic assumption.

Observe. Here’s the argument, rephrased accordingly:

Make two assumptions:

(1) That theism is true.

(2) One can’t infer an “ought” from an “is.”

Given our second assumption, there is nothing in either the natural or supernatural world from which we can infer an “ought.” It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there’s nothing in the natural or supernatural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action.

Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it’s not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action. This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal deontic logic. We’ve conformed to standard principles and inference rules of logic. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion that for any action you care to pick, it’s permissible to perform that action. If you’d like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan “if theism is true, all things are permitted.” For example if theism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many theists don’t like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.

Restating the argument this way makes it obvious that the logic hinges not on the first assumption but on the second: that you cannot derive an ought from an is. But this applies equally to the theist and the atheist. Asserting the existence of a god doesn’t suddenly make it magically possible to derive “ought” from “is”.

Hoist by your own petard, eh, Barry?

Of course, the solution is obvious: just add a third, uncontroversial assumption: One shouldn’t do something that one believes is immoral. Adding this assumption solves the problem, in exactly the same way, for both the theist and the atheist.

In comment 9, I think tribune7 means that unless we believe that Stalin ultimately paid for all his atrocities, then we should assume that everything Stalin did was morally benign. Under this view, might doesn’t just make right, it equals right; justice only exists if the universe, by means of God, automatically enforces justice for us.

So yeah, that isn’t nihilistic at all… /sarc

Allen -Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head in a besieged bunker in Berlin . . . dying fairly painlessly after being idolized by millions and getting pretty much whatever he wanted in the way of the material.

Your point?

Some people might think he had a pretty good life.

Mr Arrington,

I am attempting to state Mr Kairosfocus’ logic in symbolic terms, and facing some difficulties. If you could persuade him or Mr Vjtorley to comment with a symbolic representation that is consistent, I would appreciate it.

For example, my poor attempt
U
U imp poss x
For all x: -( x imp Ob(x))
PE(x) iff -(Ob(-x))

where
U = the universe
imp = implies
poss = possibility
iff = if and only if (biconditional)
Ob() = Obliged
Pe() = Permitted
x = a particular proposition (such as ‘murder’)

If another reader has worked out the steps between “the universe includes the possibility of murder” to “murder is permissible” in detail, I would appreciate seeing the derivation. You can see that in my system

-(x imp Ob(x)) via instantiation
-(-x or Ob(x)) def. of implication
- -x and -Ob(x) De Morgan’s Law
x and -Ob(x) double negative
-Ob(x) simplify

but I need
-Ob(-x) to conclude
Pe(x)

Thank you

The issue of hell and judgment is a difficult theological problem, and from the arguments I’m seeing, it is not being treated as such. Furthermore, it is unfair to judge Christianity based on the tenets of Arminianism and Calvinism alone.

B L Harville–Nothing is more bleak than Christian Hell

Well, for those who wind up there, I guess.

People choose whether to believe in Hell or not.

And some choose right. Why would the concept of Hell bother you, anyway? You don’t believe in it.

Basically what Christians appeal to for their “ought not to” is the consequences of hell or the consequences of losing the love of a divine being or of gaining a reward. What atheists appeal to for their “ought not to” is consequences in this world, like punishment, guilt brought on by empathy (because we have an inherent fellow-feeling) or rewards given by cooperation. Atheists have as much reason to be moral as theists.

I have a question for any theist regarding a central statement of this original post: ‘ One can’t infer an “ought” from an “is.” ‘

My question is, apart from moral enforcement via afterlife, what “oughts” can we infer from the “is” of God’s existence? As an atheist, my answer would be something like, if God is a being with needs and desires, than we ought to try to help him fulfill them, within reasonable limits constrained by the needs and desires of other beings. (Of course, if the God we’re talking about is omnipotent, I fail to see how anyone else has any responsibility to someone who can easily solve all his own problems.) But God merely being the Creator wouldn’t carry any extra weight. If I knew I had been built by Dr. Frankenstein, I wouldn’t assume that everything he desired for me was best.

PS: I would like to apologize for any hurt caused by the sarcasm at the end of my last post. It’s just that sometimes the value of life is so intuitively obvious to me that I get ever more annoyed when people try tying all of it to God and God alone. I wonder if God gets annoyed about that too…

tribune7 wrote:

Some people might think [Hitler] had a pretty good life.

This is a truly weird statement. So, are you arguing that God screwed up in not giving Hitler a bad life, or that God had nothing to do with the “goodness” or “badness” of Hitler’s (and, by extension, anybody else’s) life? Do you think that people get what they deserve because God ensures that they do?

If you do, I own several nice bridges in the five boroughs that I will gladly sell to you, so that you can charge tolls and get all the money you need to live the kind of life you “deserve”.

Berceuse,

The issue of hell and judgment is a difficult theological problem, and from the arguments I’m seeing, it is not being treated as such. Furthermore, it is unfair to judge Christianity based on the tenets of Arminianism and Calvinism alone.

True enough. How about this?

The grounding of an atheist morality is a difficult philosophical issue, and from the original post, it is not being treated as such. Furthermore, it is unfair to judge atheism based on the writings of Arrington, kairosfocus, and Hawthorne.

St. Augustine asserted that one of the eternal pleasures that await those in Heaven is the ability to view for eternity and in exquisite detail the unending tortures of the damned in Hell. And this is a religion of “compassion”?

And yes, I am aware that some Christian theologians are so put off by the idea of eternal torment without the possibility of redemption that they assert that a compassionate God would not really condemn anyone to Hell.

Furthermore, the prospect of spending eternity anywhere in any conceivable state of consciousness would be equivalent to, if not worse than spending it in Hell (can you imagine 100 million billion trillion years of amateur harp music, not to mention a trillion times that many years listening to your uncle Fred?)

What we do during the lifetimes we have, and how our actions affect those around us (and vice-versa) is all we really know about anything at all, and therefore the only things upon which we can reliably base our ethical judgments.

You see why judgment begins at the house of God!
5 Wise / 5 FOOLISH – Wheat / Tares and the Tribulation that separates them etc. Jesus spoke in parables – rightly divide the Word – HELL is NOT ETERNAL except in the minds of “christians” following traditional, but woefully incorrect interpretations of parables. Hell is the loss of eternal life by those not willing to come humbly to Gods Revelation in its proper Hermeneutic of scripture interpreting scripture and losing their “Oil” Hell is death and is cast into the lake of fire to be forevermore DESTROYED = God’s mercy in executing just punishment by one and only one final (2nd) death for Hitler as well as anyone else. NO ETRNAL torture for the baby, child or adult which could not only not serve anything respective to just punishment not anything whatsoever in accordance with God’s character.
Sooo much can be know about this, but todays “christians” are too lazy and too sold on their church and too scared to look diligently into the entire WORD. And as to Bleak – You CAN believe what you want and God in His mercy will give you what you want (”they have their reward”)- your “hope” that keeps you blind – so blind you can make up purpose as if you created the universe yourself and I’m sure someone has put forward a good sounding argument for that as well and why stop there – for infinite universes – now that’s a good bowl of hearty soup if you know what I mean.
J. Ellul is right as to his point. There is none good – no not one – none who seek after God – until -

So, the question remains, how do atheists and materialists discern an ought from an is?

How do theists do it? Simply assuming the existence of a god into your worldview doesn’t help you do this, from what I can tell. Euthyphro’s Dilemma always rang true for me on this. Unless you start twisting around the definitions of words, you’re stuck in the same position.

Well I’m not claiming to have the answer. This is certainly not my area of expertise. But I find your answer just as unsatisfying as you find ours. If we’re trying to nail down exactly what “goodness” is, you can’t just pull out your deity and claim that it solves everything by definition.

Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.

Quite ironically, he does:

Secondly, natural selection is a good object lesson in how NOT to organize a society. As I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian. But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical fallacies to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’….

I’ve wondered since I first read that, just where he got his moral standards from; for not only is it impossible to draw ‘oughts’ from ‘is-es,’ if it were possible, as Dawkins himself points out, the ‘is-es’ (on his assumptions) would lead in directions quite opposite to those he has taken. He’s saying that nature is one thing, but humans are another, which is quite in contradiction to his believing that humans are not at all different from nature.

Mr Hayden,

I can’t agree with you, even within the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The story of Abraham’s life illustrates both sides of Euthyphro’s Dilemma. At one point, God informs him of his plan to destroy Sodom and Gommorah. Abraham does not accept this idea as ‘good’ just because it came from God. His question is, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” But in other circumstances Abraham is quite ready to kill his son because God told him to.
Further, the Book of Job would seem to indicate that God’s willingness to be a moral standard has some limits. What is God’s answer to Job except that might makes right?

I think your position in the previous thread might have been too reductionistic. We all construct our own private morality, and pretend we agree with others, just as we pretend we agree on what ‘red’ means.

How about some ten year old kid in Tibet, raised in a Buddhist culture, who dies from lack of medical care after an infection.

Is he going to hell?

Darwinism is atheism pure and simple. The Darwinian not only refuses to believe in a living God, he refuses to believe that God ever existed.

Allen MacNeill, the quintessential Darwinian, can dance around this issue until the cows come home but the simple truth is that the entire Darwinian fantasy is atheist based from beginning to end.

Furthermore, it is unfair to identify Frederich Nietzsche as an atheist. His “Gott ist tot” clearly indicates that his God once lived.

I have written an essay – “What is an atheist?” It is available on my weblog on the Essays button on the home page. I recommend it for those who want to know or even care what I believe and why I believe it.

I have nothing more to offer on this subject at this time.

Continue your nice cozy “debate,” something that has no place in science.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

“War, God help me, I love it so!”
George S. Patton

jadavison.wordpress.com

Before this thread gets completely theojacked, can someone address the morality of the original post? Because he thinks (wrongly, in my view) that it would prove a point, Barry longs for atheists to believe that “every action Hitler performed was permissible.” Some morality you have there, Barry.

I’m not trying to change the subject, I’m just saying that I’m just saying that I haven’t found a real solution (theist or atheist) that I found to be satisfactory. And yes, I’ve read some Christian apologetics and philosophy, including spending some time pouring over that link you just posted. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to be saying that a “unitarian” deity (like Allah) WOULD be vulnerable to Euthyphro’s Dillema, but the Christian God is conveniently a Trinity just when it comes in handy to solve that problem? I dunno…

I don’t think it matters too much in practice. Atheists and theists alike come to their moral decisions based on their own cultural upbringings and their ability to empathize with others, not logic. Jeffery Dahmer, being a sociopath, lacked that ability and used logic to justify something he was already going to do. If killing and mass murder really was the logical result of atheism, you’d see a lot more atheists out on killing sprees, yet somehow the 30-40 million of us in the USA seem to commit crimes at exactly the same rate as people of other faiths (correcting for socioeconomic backgrounds, of course).

Hazel said: “How about some ten year old kid in Tibet, raised in a Buddhist culture, who dies from lack of medical care after an infection.

Is he going to hell?”

Some Christians will say: Yes, it is pre-destined

Some Christians will say: Maybe, depending on whether he would have accepted the gospel had he heard it

Some Christians will say: Yes, because he never accepted Jesus as savior

Some Christians will say: Yes, but only for a short time

Some Christians will say: No, he will be annihilated as there is no hell

What’s remarkable about this is that Christians like to say that, despite all their theological differences, they are in basic agreement on the basics. But these responses (which I don’t think are at all exagerrated) belies that. The most basic question – are you going to be in hell or heven cannot be unequivocally answered and agreed upon.

How about some ten year old kid in Tibet, raised in a Buddhist culture, who dies from lack of medical care after an infection.
Is he going to hell?

Hazel, instead of asking those of us without authority questions we can’t answer why not trust God’s mercy and wisdom. The Bible says don’t judge. We don’t know what’s in anybody’s heart.

1) Are you saying that perhaps the Buddhist kid will go to heaven if he has something right “in his heart.” Assuming that he has never even heard of God or Jesus, are you saying that one can go to heaven without being a Christian?

2) What kind of mercy is there in a God who condemns billions to hell?

“Before this thread gets completely theojacked, can someone address the morality of the original post? Because he thinks (wrongly, in my view) that it would prove a point, Barry longs for atheists to believe that “every action Hitler performed was permissible.” Some morality you have there, Barry.”

Is Hitler being held up as some form of standard? Is he the worse? If so on what dimensions is Hitler the worse? Why do these dimensions matter if they are judged to be relevant? It is possible for Hitler to be the worse today and ok some other day?

Usually I think these discussions are a colossal waste of time but am curious on this since I could never find anyone on this site who could tell me what evil means.

1) Are you saying that perhaps the Buddhist kid will go to heaven if he has something right “in his heart.” Assuming that he has never even heard of God or Jesus, are you saying that one can go to heaven without being a Christian?

If God were a fundamentalist that woman who committed adultery would have been stoned. I think God’s mercy far transcends what is written.

2) What kind of mercy is there in a God who condemns billions to hell?

I don’t think God condemns anyone to Hell. Those who end up there choose it because, I think, they don’t like God because they want to be their own God. I think God lets them in a place where He can’t answer them, as per their wish. I don’t want to go there.

tribune7 said: ” don’t think God condemns anyone to Hell. Those who end up there choose it because, I think, they don’t like God because they want to be their own God. I think God lets them in a place where He can’t answer them, as per their wish. I don’t want to go there.”

This seems to be a fairly standard evangelical reply that I’ve heard many, many times. In other words, why blame God, He’s just being God, right?

But the truth is that God created the very system that allows such everlasting condemnation.

God made the law that allowed this. God prescribed the sentence. God is the judge who passes the sentence. God created the prison that will hold the guilty.

God could have done it very differently, but His cosmic game (of His own devising) apparently would not allow this.

In the end, is it just to eternally punish somebody for the crimes of distant ancestors, who arguably were only fulfilling that most human of occupations (and what we are all practicing here) – the search of knowledge? Does the punishment fit the crime?

In #32 Clive Hayden wrote:

“If the individuals didn’t already know, before hand, what is right or wrong, putting them in a group won’t suddenly create it, anymore than the rules of a new sport would be magically discerned once you get enough people together. It wouldn’t matter how many folks were together, if you didn’t already know the rules individually, you couldn’t start playing just by virtue of being around others.”

Accotding to this reasoning, we are all born knowing the rules to baseball, basketball, cricket, tennis, etc. and therefore the rules to all of those games never had to be invented nor negotiated. However, this is patently absurd and falsified by the actual history of all of these games.

How do people invent new games? I have participated in the invention of about two dozen games in my lifetime. In every single case, I got together with some other people and we agreed to play a game. Sometimes the rudiments of the game were based on some other game, the rules of which we already knew, and sometimes we just started with something virtually new.

What happened next is precisely how people have negotiated the various rules of ethics and morals that have guided our behavior since prehistory. We played the game, and paid attention to how the rules we started out with affected the fairness and progress of the game. If certain rules didn’t quite work, we changed them. Gradually, through a process of give and take, combined with our learned experiences in the playing of the game, we refined the rules until they became fairly fixed.

So yes, ethics are indeed an emergent property of the interactions between individual humans in social groups. What else could they possibly be?

Also, based on my training in anthropology, it is very clear that this same process is exactly how all human social interactions have developed; through trial and error, based on prior and current experience, and tempered with a little prognostication about possible future developments. Indeed, this also describes how all human cultural institutions, including religions, have evolved.

Note that I am not saying that this kind of evolution is strictly biological. On the contrary, it is a combination of biological predispositions, combined with a huge amount of learned experience, gained within the context of cultural evolution.

Once again, here are some direct quotes from Richerson, P. & Boyd, R. (2006) Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, University of Chicago Press, ISBN #0226712125, 342 pages:

“Culture is crucial for understanding human behavior. People acquire beliefs and values from the people around them, and you can’t explain human behavior without taking this reality into account….Culturally acquired ideas are crucially important for explaining a wide range of human behavior — opinions, beliefs, and attitudes, habits of thought, language, artistic styles, tools and technology, and social rules and political institutions.”

and

““Culture is part of biology.…Much evidence suggests that we have an evolved psychology that shapes what we learn and how we think, and that this in turn influences the kind of beliefs and attitudes that spread and persist. Theories that ignore these connections cannot adequately account for much of human behavior. At the same time, culture and cultural change cannot be understood solely in terms of innate psychology. Culture affects the succes and survival of individuals and groups; as a result, some cultural variants spread and others diminish, leading to evolutionary processes that are every bit as real and important as those that shape genetic variation. These culturally evolved environments then affect which genes are favored by natural selection. Over the evolutionary long haul, culture has shaped our innate psychology as much as the other way around.”

In #32 Clive Hayden also asked:

“How do atheists and materialists derive any “ought,” for all that exists is the “is” by their scheme? I would really like to know the answer to this question.”

Not being either an atheist nor a materialist, I can only hazard a guess. They do it the way all people work out the rules by which they live; through negotiation and experience.

But I’ve made this comment multiple times in multiple threads, and Clive continues to ask the same question. Clearly, he doesn’t really want an answer, nor does he really want to discuss possible answers. He only wants to use the rhetorical gimmick of asking the same question over and over again, while disregarding the answers, in a vain attempt to make it seem as if his opponents haven’t provided an answer. At least that’s the way it appears to me.

JTaylor –God made the law that allowed this. ,

And He gave us the choice to obey or not. He gave us freedom. That’s the greatest gift you can give someone.

The only strawman here is the one you have created: the allegedly inconsistent atheist.

I believe in entry 17 of this thread I provided a direct response to the original post.

Everything Hitler did was permissible. Germany allowed it. Pope Pius allowed it. England allowed it. Russia allowed it. The US allowed it. It was able to be permitted and it was in fact permitted.

In my experience and understanding of history, the commitment to reason and the free ability to question authority openly have been prized in atheistic viewpoints and admonished in religious.

Make no mistake, Hitler’s was a religious crusade against a set of religious targets. We see similar such crusades emerging right now in parts of the US that are inventing so-called “liberal” bogeymen who want to come and take their freedom in the night.

Only calm, reasoned dialogue – not debate, pace JAD – by parties that want to live together can save us now. Increasingly, it seems to me that creationists, atheists, liberals, and conservatives are choosing instead to opt-out and not seek mutual reconciliation.

I wonder if this site considers itself part of the solution or part of the problem?

Mr Arrington,

I do want them to ADMIT that their premises logically compel the conclusion that everything that Hitler did was permissible.

I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble working out the logic. See my comment 23. Do you have any suggestions?

In #57 Barry finally clarified exactly what he was asserting in this post:

“The natural world is all there is.”

This assertion is the root of the problem. This is clearly a false premise, and therefore the logic derived from it is false as well. I have commented repeatedly that no scientist of whom I am aware (and I include Richard Dawkins in this) would agree with the premise stated above.

As I have commented repeatedly, there are a great many things about which humans think (and as a consequence, act) that are not natural in any way. I won’t post the list again, but I find it quite interesting that neither Barry nor Clive nor anyone else whose expressed intention here is to show that atheists (by which they clearly mean anyone who accepts the theory of evolution as a reasonable description of how living organisms have come to be the way they are) are either morally bankrupt or unable to accept the “bleak” logic of their position.

So, let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? Barry, Clive, et al: do you acknowledge (along with virtually all other non-psychopathic thinking people) the obvious fact that there are things about which humans think (and sometimes act) that are not “natural”? And do you also acknowledge that it is possible for a non-theist to come to the same conclusion, without stretching the limits of logical argument to the breaking point?

I was unclear earlier, I didn’t mean to imply that Dahmer’s reasoning was logically sound, only that he was trying to rationalize the actions he had already decided to take. He wasn’t a normal guy who happened to take a wrong turn through a logical argument and ended up a serial killer, he was a complete and utter sociopath. Using him in this argument is like using Andrea Yates to argue that religious people are immoral.

Nakashima:

Thank you so much for your analysis. It confirmed what I had also concluded, but with much less rigor: that Barry’s logical is flawed as the result of a flawed major premise.

BTW, if memory serves me right, Hitler (and Stalin, Pol Pot, et al) were all defeated as the result of superior military and economic force, and not just through superior moral force, right? Of course one could argue that such force was the result of God pulling strings to make things come out that way, but the fact remains that the “good guys” won and the “bad guys” lost, not because the “good guys” were more moral, but because they/we were much better at killing large numbers of people than the “bad guys” were. And isn’t it interesting that during World War II the “good guys” included the Soviets, headed by the very same atheist, Joseph Stalin, whose military forces are now considered by many historians to have actually won the Great Patriotic War (with our help, of course). This is indeed how we defeated both the Germans and the Japanese in World War II; by total war against both civilian and military targets, without any moral restraint whatsoever. We just happened to get there first, with the biggest bombs and the largest air, sea, and ground forces. At least that’s the way it seems to this Friend.

And yes, I was a CO during the Vietnam War, and in all military conflicts since then as well.

Hazel

1) Are you saying that perhaps the Buddhist kid will go to heaven if he has something right “in his heart.” Assuming that he has never even heard of God or Jesus, are you saying that one can go to heaven without being a Christian?

Yes. That’s Catholic teaching. See http://www.staycatholic.com/sa.....church.htm .

On the derivation of “ought” from is – readers might like to have a look at these article by John Finnis on natural law:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entr.....political/

http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co......7181-X.pdf

Off to work now. Back later.

tribune7: “And He gave us the choice to obey or not. He gave us freedom. That’s the greatest gift you can give someone.”

I wonder what kind of freedom it is when the only two choices are a) eternal suffering b) a servile existence to a deity (who by His own design) has condemned probably 90% of all humans who ever lived to eternal torture.

What if my choice is to say “I didn’t ask to born, and I didn’t ask to play this silly game”? (especially since God already knows the outcome). What if I want to say that this law, is as measured against our human laws, a law that is unusual and cruel punishment, beyond anything that the cruelest human dictator could devise?

It feels like the freedom a bull has running around the bullring. It may feel like freedom for a while, but ultimately no good is going to come of it.

Sorry, I’m just not very happy with my “gift”…

Nakashima:

The lack of rigor in logical analysis was mine, not yours. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

Barry Arrington, your “is” is an “ought”.

Pardon the cross post, but I intended the post the following here, in response to something Clive said here:

Clive:

How do atheists and materialists derive any “ought,” for all that exists is the “is” by their scheme? I would really like to know the answer to this question.

Referencing my comment vis incompatible frameworks that appeared on the “Quote of the Day” thread, the atheist response to your question, directed to the religiously inclined, is in the neighborhood of, “The same way you do.” Their response is to argue that religious assertions of “morality derived from God,” from organized religion, and from religious traditions are no less human inventions than explicitly humanist creeds – although they are burdened with fewer fictions and are more honest about their human and cultural origins. The bottom line, from this perspective, is that we are all in the same boat with respect to the human origins of moral codes of conduct – although some of us aren’t aware of it.

Of course believers take umbrage at this argument. But it is internally coherent. Therefore the key question cannot be, “Which viewpoint yields a more valid and justifiable morality” – because the answer one gives depends upon the framework from which one answers. The key question really is, “do you believe in God” – e.g., which organizing framework do you accept. Everything else follows from your response to that question.

If the answer I get is “from cultural evolution” that’s just another way of saying “from a bunch of individuals put together”–as if the fact of their being together magically produces the “ought” as an emergent quality of a group of more than one person. I don’t see how that would work, for any judgment of morality is only discerned by the individuals.

As I noted in the previous thread, your view of culture is decidedly reductionistic, and, in a very real sense, materialist – much more so than my own. The notion that “thoughts are only biochemistry” should be quite congenial to you, as it reflects exactly the same sort of reductionism.

JTaylor, maybe this earth is a “Matrix”-like prison camp, where supercosmic entities have had their past memory stripped of the dastardly evil perpetuated against other supercosmic entities. That you and I are guilty of much worse than we can imagine. The Bible is silent about such possibilities. But redemption is offered for those who lay down their arms, so to speak.

Maybe there’s WAY more than meets the eye. Surely you will concede it’s possible. Maybe instead of cursing the dark, you could try seeking the Light.

Barry Arrington:

Give me a break. The logic is unassailable. It can be reduced to a simple syllogism:

The beauty of the syllogism is that, because of the slipperyness of human language, one can prove anything, and without any of that tiresome evidence-collecting.

mike1962: “Taylor, maybe this earth is a “Matrix”-like prison camp, where supercosmic entities have had their past memory stripped of the dastardly evil perpetuated against other supercosmic entities. That you and I are guilty of much worse than we can imagine. The Bible is silent about such possibilities. ”

It sounds like the synopsis for a Ron L Hubbard novel.

Mike1962: Maybe there’s WAY more than meets the eye. Surely you will concede it’s possible.”

Sure it’s possible – about on a par with the story that our ancient ancestors came from the planet Xenu on DC8 lookalike spaceships.

Would you concede then that this whole thing could be a legend created by ancient people who were trying to make sense of the world they lived in (and is akin in many ways to other similar myths and legends made by other ancient peoples). Possible? Which is the most parsimonious explanation?

JTaylor,

Can you explain how God “should” have done it? To be clear, a quick reminder of what Christians believe He did do:

create a world with creatures that have free will (in order to have meaningful relationships),

watched as his creation turned away from him to sin (barring a full relationship with Him),

sent his Son to die for them to restore that relationship and set a sad world back to right,

allowed those creatures the opportunity to choose to be reconciled back to him or not,

to ultimately spend eternity with those who choose him,

and allowing those who don’t to live forever away from him (Hell, by the way, is probably nothing like the medieval conception of a fiery torture chamber, but rather simply a place of separation from our creator and source of life; see Lewis’ The Great Divorce, e.g.)

Please, what should He have done?

“(Hell, by the way, is probably nothing like the medieval conception of a fiery torture chamber, but rather simply a place of separation from our creator and source of life; see Lewis’ The Great Divorce, e.g.)”

This is [[somewhat]] inconsistent with descriptions of hell in the bible.

“And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” Matthew 25:30 ..etc.

theface said,

["This is [[somewhat]] inconsistent with descriptions of hell in the bible.
“And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” Matthew 25:30 ..etc.”]

I’m not seeing the inconsistency; these verses are trying to describe what separation from God might be like. Some verses describe darkness, some flame; all point to the fact that separated from our creator is not a good place to be, but are probably not meant to be taken literally. In an autobiography someone may refer to a “dark” time in their life; do they mean it was literally dark?

jlid: “Can you explain how God “should” have done it? To be clear, a quick reminder of what Christians believe He did do:…”

I’m not sure He should have done or do anything. You’re assuming there’s a problem to be solved. I’m not. Here’s how I look at the story, perhaps in a more facetious (but I think essentially accurate) tone:

God created mankind with the capability to sin. Sin is a concept God created so that He can be offended. Man sins and God is duly offended and punishes man and gives him a draconian law that cannot be followed, and in the process kills of a considerable number of both His chosen people and the scumbags that are His chosen peoples enemies. And the only way God can appease himself of the sins of the people he created is for them kill livestock in a special house. God eventually decides a better way is needed and sends himself to earth and decides to sacrifice himself so that himself will no longer be offended at the sins of the people himself created. But it’s not a real sacrifice because himself pops back to life again and all is well (except for the billions that don’t accept this sacrifice because they don’t see sufficient evidence for it and are therefore doomed to suffer in Mordor in utter excruciating agony for evermore).

Yes, I know this is extremely facetious. When you put it like this, does it really have the ring of truth? Does it not sound like a legend and is not congruent with the kind of storytelling that ancient people used to explain the world?

JTaylor,

Hmmm. I can’t help but feel you sliding out of facing up to my question. Mischaracterizing an intellectual opponents’ idea and then dismissing it is not satisfying to me.

“When you put it like this” you say. Indeed, why would I put it like that, when it is not like that at all? I wait for a response to my post, not to your own.

Barry,

Think about what you’re saying.

1. You’ve said more atheists should be “Nietzsche atheists.” You have defined a Nietzsche atheist as an atheist who reasons to the logical conclusions of his beliefs.

2. Eric Harris was a “Nietzsche atheist.” In your own words:

Harris (and to a lesser extent Klebold) was a self conscious atheist and disciple of Frederick Nietzsche. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant of the facts or a liar. . . .

Don’t tell me Harris was crazy, that he was not motivated by anything rational. Just the opposite is true. He thought long and hard about the logical consequences of the ideas he had been taught. He reached conclusions – evil conclusions to be sure, but not irrational – and he acted on those conclusions.

3. Should therefore more atheists be like Eric Harris?

The logic is unassailable.

jlid: “Hmmm. I can’t help but feel you sliding out of facing up to my question. Mischaracterizing an intellectual opponents’ idea and then dismissing it is not satisfying to me.”

I think I answered your question – I said that I’m not sure how God would do it because I don’t think there is anything ‘to do’. I don’t accept the concept of sinning against a deity. It’s a honest answer.

As to my mischaracterizing. OK, I know I slipped in Mordor (whenever I read Revelations it always makes me think of LotR). But the part about God sending Himself to make a sacrifice to appease Himself, I believe is quite correct.

b) a servile existence to a deity

Considering Jesus, I don’t see God as being bossy or expecting us to be servile. I see being with Him as attending the greatest party ever conceived with the most interesting and decent people beyond our imagining.

(who by His own design) has condemned probably 90% of all humans who ever lived to eternal torture.

God wants all to be saved, according to the Bible. It just, it seems, most people aren’t going to want anything to do with Him.

Imagine a place where everyone is equal in power, and that everyone one is convinced that he or she is the most important thing in the universe, and that there is no appeal to God’s mercy, justice or guidance. That is my vision of Hell. The conditions would be like the worst prison you could imagine multiplied by the highest number you can imagine multiplied by itself.

But I don’t think God sends anybody there. Nobody has to go there. I think those who go there choose to do so because they don’t want to be with God, much less show an ounce of real concern for their neighbor.

Granted, they will regret it once there are there but it was still their choice.

“For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don’t like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.”

They don’t like the obvious consequences of their worldview. So why do atheists persist in denying the consequences and believing that such a thing as “morality” exists? It’s because they are not actually atheists.

An Orthodox Christian priest told me many years ago that there really are no atheists in the world. I didn’t really understand that at the time, but in my recent readings of Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens, I’m very inclined to believe that priest.

These guys are just posers who want the order required of an external God, but are too proud to acknowledge that God’s existence.

JTaylor said,

[I think I answered your question - I said that I’m not sure how God would do it because I don’t think there is anything ‘to do’. I don’t accept the concept of sinning against a deity. It’s a honest answer.

As to my mischaracterizing. OK, I know I slipped in Mordor (whenever I read Revelations it always makes me think of LotR). But the part about God sending Himself to make a sacrifice to appease Himself, I believe is quite correct.]

I am looking for a response to my beliefs, beyond merely “they are not my beliefs.” I know that already. Earlier you commented that you were not happy with your “gift” of life and choice etc. If it is true (as I believe) that God created man with free will in order to have meaningful relationships etc. (see previous post for complete list) then how would you respond? What would you have God do differently?

tribune7: “Considering Jesus, I don’t see God as being bossy or expecting us to be servile. I see being with Him as attending the greatest party ever conceived with the most interesting and decent people beyond our imagining.”

And while we’re at this party are we supposed to forget about all our loved ones and friends who didn’t “accept the invite” who at the same time are burning in hell? Or is God going to arrange it so we won’t have to think about that?

tribune7: “God wants all to be saved, according to the Bible. It just, it seems, most people aren’t going to want anything to do with Him.”

It’s hard to believe that – both because of the vehicle of the Bible itself and honestly because of the church. If everybody in the church truly, truly believe that 90% of the population are going to suffer for eternity would they not give up everything, do anything to ensure that this message gets out. I don’t see much of a sense of urgency with many in the church (they seem to busy living their own lives, pursuing careers, enjoying life, just like the rest of us).

tribune7: “God wants all to be saved, according to the Bible. It just, it seems, most people aren’t going to want anything to do with Him.”

Well of course ultimately I don’t think there’s any evidence to believe in hell (particularly when it seems such a loosely developed concept in the Bible, and barely even makes an appearance in the OT). As we’ve seen on this thread, not even Christians can really agree on the nature of hell – what, how long etc.

Maybe the reason why most people don’t want anything to do with him is because for all intents and purposes He seems a despot? I don’t really buy the “we send ourselves to hell” – that’s just saying a kangaroo court has the authority and power to sentence people, but does not make it just

God certainly doesn’t have a good track record in the OT and according to Revelations we can expect a lot more of that kind of thing before we’re done. I would not want to serve him because He is basically an unjust God as story after story in the OT informs us.

It scares me to think that this kind of story can so corrode our thinking so that what is so obviously unjust is now seen as God’s righteousness. I think if I believed this it would completely undermine my moral compass.

I have spoken to several Christians about this, and a few have admittedly candidly that they really do struggle with this and privately wish it was not true. I guess we have to ask ourselves why is that what seems righteous to God seems so despicable and unjust to us?

jlid: “If it is true (as I believe) that God created man with free will in order to have meaningful relationships etc. (see previous post for complete list) then how would you respond? What would you have God do differently?”

Do what most real life families have to do – live with each other and deal patiently with each others imperfections and faults. Learn to forgive, and then learn to forgive some more. Nothing more.

JTaylor: Would you concede then that this whole thing could be a legend created by ancient people who were trying to make sense of the world they lived in (and is akin in many ways to other similar myths and legends made by other ancient peoples). Possible?

Sure. And that’s the point. It makes no sense to dismiss any of these ideas merely because certain features are immediately appalling. Christianity may be true or false, but either possibilities is not dependent on the exceptions you have raised.

“Which is the most parsimonious explanation?”

Parsimony is a guiding rule of thumb within science. It is not some overarching law that all ideas must bow to. In general human affairs, parsiminous ideas often turn out to be the wrong.

“I’m not seeing the inconsistency; these verses are trying to describe what separation from God might be like. Some verses describe darkness, some flame; all point to the fact that separated from our creator is not a good place to be, but are probably not meant to be taken literally”

I can’t deny you the ability to figuratively interpret anything you like, and of course, your chosen interpretation of these passages could be accurate. It almost sounds as if you believe hell is a negative punishment, the removal of a “positive” stimulus (the quotations are for me [[shudder]]), rather than the presentation of a negative stimulus (that after death, one is fully conscious in some sort of void for eternity). If the former is the case, then for non-believers (in this one god, of thousands, no less), nothing happens at death. They live their lives disconnected from god, and then rest in peace, out of the clutches of yahweh. But if the latter is true, hell really is a “place” that god sends the soul after death, which would constitute an eternity of a “sort” of torture, and thus your down playing of its implications would be unwarranted, at least according this figurative interpretation.

There is also, however, a high degree of internal consistency in the descriptions of hell in regards to torment and flames, especially coming from the mouth of jesus, which I should think has some merit as he (through his father?) created hell.

mike1962: “Sure. And that’s the point. It makes no sense to dismiss any of these ideas merely because certain features are immediately appalling. Christianity may be true or false, but either possibilities is not dependent on the exceptions you have raised.”

It’s not just as to whether the are appalling but also whether they are probable. For example, do you put any credence in Scientology and their bizarre stories about thetans, Xenu and auditing? Yet, many do and find it just as likely an explanation for the world as Christianity (and naturally enough it reflects our culture and technology of the day).

So when you have two explanations and one is based on wildly inventive supernatural events (which do not happen in the modern world), and which have the clear hallmarks of legend (Noah, Red Sea, Passover, Jonah etc), and which come from a time when this kind of storytelling was prevalent in many cultures – then you have to seriously ask if there is not a more simpler explanation.

Here the parsimonious explanation is the more probable and the better fit for the evidence. Of course if God turned up tomorrow in modern Israel and parted the Red Sea we have to rethink that…

JTaylor–forget about all our loved ones and friends who didn’t “accept the invite” who at the same time are burning in hell?

I know God. I know Jesus. I know there is evil in the world — the vast, vast majority of which is caused by the choices of people. I know there is a Hell. Who is going to go there I can’t say.

I am not a fundamentalist. I do not know where you are getting your 90 percent figure from. I know about the broad and narrow gates but I’m not aware of any set proportions.

I know people can be troubled by zealots over picayune things. If that should be your case, I hope you find the strength to ignore them.

We can be certain of the goodness of God through Jesus and through His commands. If you can’t handle the Old Testament stick with the New.

I see the OT as a record of man’s wickedness and God’s patience, but if it troubles you that much don’t read it.

The New is what is applicable.

Regardless evil is a reality and philosophies implying there is no purpose to our existence and that we are all here by accident give license to evil.

JTaylor –I guess we have to ask ourselves why is that what seems righteous to God seems so despicable and unjust to us?

You know, that is a very good thing to ask yourself

theface – this is not a ref. to hell, but to the day of judgement which is the 153 days or 5 months (Rev. 9) prior to the end of this universe and the beginning of a new one. “Outer darkness” is the time after the rapture when light (=Gospel) is taken out and men will be left with all their totally natural selves left to do only what will then be possible – weeping and gnashing of teeth in their revealed true nature of hatred of God, His Tree of Life and The Living waters. It is the time of the revelation of the justice of judgment ending in destruction by the 2nd death – annihilation = never the possibility of Eternal life. The new heaven and new earth then are created. Look, to begin with at Jude v 5 & 7. The blind will lead those who follow. The doctrine of eternal suffering of the lost in hell is totally unbiblical and bankrupt. Please don’t let traditional church teaching keep you from learning how to divide the word – life unto life or death unto death – its a two edged sword – to the disciples He explained privately, but to others – especially religious leaders he spoke parabolically to reveal the intent of their heart. So indeed – hath God said? Daniel is open – the wise shall know time and judgment and it is coming very soon. Rev. 3: 3-6. The Bible is a two edged sword guarding the way to the Tree of Life. It will keep out those who can only think in terms of God being some Master Egotist demanding worship etc. – they have no understanding and will only repeat natural questions and will not likely come to the knowledge of the truth. Many years ago I was an atheist – I can relate to the mind set yet more than joyful at my release from its grip. The “is” of the universe in it natural state will justify itself with its own “ought” Golden calves and anti (instead of) Christ’s are abundant. The believers ought is in seeing with some understanding the character of God. “Good Master – why do you call me good? there is none good but God. The natural man will seek and justify his own goodness and will be left to weep without the Source. they will argue their philosophy with each other and be left gnashing their teeth.

p.s. a Bleak Conclusion indeed.

——-Allen: “It has been my experience that when people formulate ethical prescriptions (and when they review their own behavior and the behavior of others in the light of such prescriptions), they generally evaluate the efficacy of such prescriptions on whether or not they have had the desirable effects. Furthermore, when people in groups formulate ethical and moral principles they do so via negotiation based on the same teleological criteria. That is, do our ethics produce the kind of society that all of us want to live in?”

How many times can you beg the question in one paragraph? What are desirable effects? How do you know good effects from bad effects? What is your definition of a good society? What kind of citizens is it supposed to produce? How do you guard against tyranny of the majority?

—–“Under such conditions, it is not entirely surprising that, regardless of one’s society there are a few ethical prescriptions that appear to be virtually universal. The most obvious of these is the “golden rule”: “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”, also known as the ethic of “universal positive reciprocity”. There is a deep unity in human social interaction, as testified to by the empirical fact that something like the “golden rule” exists in nearly all human societies, regardless of the details of the religious beliefs of those societies.

The questions are: [A] is it binding? [B] Is it discovered or created? If it is not binding, then it has no moral force. If it is created, then it can be uncreated. The true natural moral law not created by man, it is discovered by man. The difference is all importatn.

—–Allen: “Personally, I think that the “golden rule” is one of those very basic logical statements that needs no additional justification. It is what it is, says what it says, and has the effects that it has, regardless of whether one is a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Baha’I, agnostic, or atheist.”

You have to justify it to the tyrant who would prefer not to believe it. On the one hand, you tell him that we should all just get along and love each other.” On the other hand, he says that he would prefer that you be his slave. You have no answer, because you can appeal to no authority higher than him.

JTaylor,

Thanks for your response. But I think you overlooked one of the premises. If it is true that God cannot have full relationships with humans who have a sinful nature, much the same as it is impossible for a plant to grow without water, or for carbon to be a liquid at standard temps and pressures, then something more is needed than mere patience. A bridge is needed. A way. A chance for reconciliation. You speak of forgiveness, but it has been extended to us. Jesus taught that we need but ask for it; he already paid the price for our sin. And God is patient too, as the scriptures teach that he delays his return to allow us choice; he desires that all accept forgiveness. So I sincerely cannot quite understand your response.

Your response to tribune raises important issues. They are truly difficult; I have wrestled with them (and continue to). As a Christian I am torn as to the proper way to “evangelize”. You speak of how Christians should prioritize sharing the gospel; many Christians do this. Some have probably knocked on your door, given you pamphlets, preached at you. Have you listened? I don’t think I would either. Others try to live a sincere Christian life and, when a situation naturally arises, through friendship and trust, has a more meaningful discussion about their beliefs. I am not denying that many Christians don’t; I just want to point that there are plenty who do care.

As for how we could live happily while friends and loved ones presumably are miserable, I don’t know. It sounds awful. I have noticed though, that right now people around the world are starving, being beaten, raped, etc. while I live a, if I am honest, relatively happy life despite that knowledge. I am not saying this as if it is some final answer; just an observation.

Anyway, I’ve got to get to sleep. But I do (sheepishly) ask that you judge Christianity by Christ, not by his followers (we are mostly screw-ups, like everyone else).

The point of the thread is that atheism can provide no rational justification for any morality whatsoever. Atheism = amorality. So, is amorality such a bad thing? Well, yes, amorality is undesirable because it always leads to immorality. If a man’s behavior does conform to a philosophy of life, he will find a philosophy of life that conforms to his behavior. If he does not subordinate his desires to the truth, he will bend the truth to fit his desires. As a result, everything and everyone will be twisted to fit his wishes.

The honest atheist admits the point, realizes that he worships himself, and doesn’t try to dress it up with a lot of sweet talk about societal love and good will. That kind of atheist is to be preferred over the one who tries to paper the whole thing over and starts talking about the golden rule. I always test that little golden rule of theirs each time I ask them if they apply it to societal laws to protect unborn babies. In all the cases in which I have asked that question, no atheist has ever answer in the affirmative. So much for loving thy neighbor as thyself.

tribune7: “I am not a fundamentalist. I do not know where you are getting your 90 percent figure from. I know about the broad and narrow gates but I’m not aware of any set proportions.”

It’s an estimate. Total number people ever born (as homo sapiens) is something like 100 billion (amazing isn’t it). So perhaps only 10 billion of these would be ’saved’. And a good number of these would have been in non-Western countries. Who really knows who are ‘True Christians’ but I’m sure it’s not much higher than 20 percent.

tribune7: “We can be certain of the goodness of God through Jesus and through His commands. If you can’t handle the Old Testament stick with the New.”

As much as it would be tempting, you can’t really just ignore the OT. Although I know churches and Christians who effectively do! (sermons are either based on the Psalms or Proverbs or very carefully chosen, especially if children are present. The God of the NT is the same as the God of the OT. It’s part of the package.

tribune7: “I see the OT as a record of man’s wickedness and God’s patience, but if it troubles you that much don’t read it.”

Well, I’m not sure I read much patience on God’s part, especially the bit where He floods the entire earth. Yes, we can say “different time, different context, different worldview” but genocide is genocide? Otherwise we are saying “genocide is wrong, except when God did it because the circumstances demanded it”. That is essentially what we are saying, and yes, it is more than troublesome. Murder: bad when humans do it, but righteous when God does it.

If your great-great-great-grandmother many times was a member of a tribe living in Canaan who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got wiped out by the avenging army of Israel at God’s command, what would you feel about it? We seem to forget that (if these stories are true) that God chose to wipe out people (including children) just like ourselves, with hopes, aspirations, families, loved ones – simply because they were ‘collateral’ in God’s bigger game plan. It’s truly ghastly .

theface,

I do not deny that this place of separation will be awful; I believe that there is probably nothing worse than being separated from our creator. God knows this; this is why he sent Jesus to offer a way to be reconnected to him. I am saying that hell is most likely not some literal torture chamber, with God at the controls. Rather, God has completely cut them off from himself; I think you misunderstand the import of this in the Christian understanding of humanity and its relation to and dependence on God.

Also, JTaylor, I think maybe you should check out a book called Blue Like Jazz. It’s an easy read that you may find interesting.

StephenB: ” Atheism = amorality. So, is amorality such a bad thing? Well, yes, amorality is undesirable because it always leads to immorality. f a man’s behavior does conform to a philosophy of life, he will find a philosophy of life that conforms to his behavior. If he does not subordinate his desires to the truth, he will bend the truth to fit his desires. As a result, everything and everyone will be twisted to fit his wishes. ”

StephenB: “That kind of atheist is to be preferred over the one who tries to paper the whole thing over and starts talking about the golden rule. I always test that little golden rule of theirs each time I ask them if they apply it to societal laws to protect unborn babies. In all the cases in which I have asked that question, no atheist has ever answer in the affirmative. So much for loving thy neighbor as thyself.”

I do agree that atheism is a-morality. I’m not sure how you make the leap from here to morality. You seem to suggest that an atheist can’t have a philosophy of life – but many do and many are also secular humanists. For myself, I think I’ve probably taken a little bit of many philosophical systems, especially Buddhism. Why is it a given that an atheist then must by necessity fall into immorality? It’s a choice that we make and perhaps there’s even a genetic component at work too.

I don’t think we are papering things over with the golden rule. For many atheists, because we value individuality we also respect it in others. And I think too because perhaps atheists realize the fragility of life as much or as more as others, many of recognize and respect the rights of other individuals. It is actually possible of an atheist to have an honest unfiltered respect for other livings things and not be completely selfish. OK, a little bit of Buddhism in there probably…

As the unborn baby issue. I’ll try and answer it honestly. I’m neither a parent or married, so I’m probably not the most qualified person to speak to it.

Firstly I hate the idea of it; it seems an appalling choice and certainly I do not support late term abortion. At best it should obviously be last resort. And even though I’m liberal on most matters I do support parents rights to be informed of their underage daughers’ desire to have an abortion (a measure on many US ballots to stop this). But on the other hand there is another line that seems to matter too – and that is the right of the mother and her wishes (and the ultimate well being of the child too). So it becomes an extremely difficult balancing act I have actually leaned to be more pro-life as I’ve got older, and it’s possible I may swing more this way eventually. A friend once pointed out that my views are inconsistent since I’m anti-death penalty so why would I also support abortion – and they had a good point.

On the abortion issue: those who view abortion as murder make an assumption which to them is self-evident, but which is in fact quite arbitrary, namely, that a fertilized human egg is a human being (otherwise killing it would not be murder). To me, this assertion is quite absurd. A fertilized egg has none of the characteristics of a human being except genetic material (which the sperm and the egg also possess before they join)–no limbs, no face, no sense organs, and most notably, no brain.

I believe that who we actually are is eternal and non-physical (our soul, if you will). We come to earth and inhabit physical bodies repeatedly until we no longer need that kind of experience for our (spiritual) evolution. We cannot occupy a body that has no central nervous system, including a well developed brain. So until the fetus has reached that stage of development, it has no soul, and thus is not yet a human being. Killing it simply means that no soul will occupy it.

I don’t write this with the aim of converting anyone to my point of view. Rather, my purpose is to open people’s eyes to the fact that their outrage at abortion is based on assumptions that other people may not agree with. In fact, I would argue that the majority of Americans do not share the view that a fertilized egg is a human being (even if they don’t share my particular spiritual perspective), since everyone agrees that murder should be illegal, but the majority still accept a woman’s right to choose.

On the issue of morality: the use of the word “permitted” is in the passive voice (permitted by whom?) and thus implies an authority who does the permitting. There really is only one such possible authority, and that would be God. However, I think a strong case can be made that God in fact does permit anything. This case is based on the fact that He has left us no definitive unequivocal moral code. The Bible itself is open to many interpretations (look at the variety of moral codes held by various Christian sects), and the other holy books (the Koran, the Buddhist scriptures, the Bhagavad Ghita, etc.) contain even more possibilities, and each of those sources has also been interpreted multiple ways by people who are absolutely certain that they are right.

Let me offer another possibility: This veil of tears is an illusion, a place we come to experience and grow in the knowledge of who we really are. We are made in the image and likeness of God, but we have forgotten. Part of that likeness is that in the deepest core of our being there is only love. A large part of our job here is to experience that loving core. There is no morality. Everything is permitted, for only in total freedom can we truly find ourselves. What appears to be moral action is in fact love operating in the world through an individual human being. The only question that matters in any situation is, “What would Love do now?”

jlid: “If it is true that God cannot have full relationships with humans who have a sinful nature, much the same as it is impossible for a plant to grow without water, or for carbon to be a liquid at standard temps and pressures, then something more is needed than mere patience.”

I don’t obviously accept the concept of “sin”. My own hypothesis is that “sin” is simply an invented idea by ancient people (with an external agency) to explain why people sometimes do bad things.

But taking that aside, why exactly is it that God requires this separation from sinful people? Think about it for a moment – God, the ultimate creator of the Universe (100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars), can be offended because I have a wrong thought, or lie, or steal, or some other deed. In fact He is so offended that He demands some appeasement to ameliorate the bad odor of sin.

It’s even stranger because we also have to conclude that the very concept of sin (and what constitutes sin) must have originated with God Himself. And of course living in the age we do, it’s quite a challenge to argue that some “sins” are really all that “sinful” today when they do not seem to harm anybody but God. A good example of this is homosexuality when practiced by two loving adults in a consensual relationship – it’s really hard to argue what harm this does and why exactly God would be “offended” – particularly when it’s clear that homosexuality appears not to be a learned behavior but an innate one (although many do even argue that homosexuality is going to destroy marriage as we know it – which is not borne out at all by the evidence – and besides heterosexuals seems to be doing a good job of this without any help from the gay community). So it’s fair to say then that what was once labelled sin was really perhaps a reflection of social norms of the day, and as I said today’s social norms have moved on.

Is there perhaps a reason then to explain why God has to “separate” from us? Perhaps an obvious one is that since this actually an invisible (i.e., non-existent) entity, it is easier to explain it this way rather than have to deal with the fact that this God does not ever seem to show up (except on special occasions, but then only usually to prophets etc).

So I don’t really think a bridge is needed – I think that’s just an elaboration we’ve invented to bolster the story of “sin”. Even in the Genesis story in the garden, it is never exactly clear why eating of the tree of life was quite so awful. If it’s true (and there is little reason to think it is), then I’m personally glad – because knowing good and evil is arguably what makes us human. I don’t think that eating that fruit was so much the ‘original sin’ as perhaps the original enlightenment.

But the idea of needing a ‘bridge’ and one that involves sacrifice (and death) implies too a God that is ultimately constrained. He does not have the power to give forgiveness freely, but has to craft an elaborately staged sacrifice so that He may be appeased. And then rather than accepting this sacrifice freely for all, He throws it before us as an ultimatum – believe or else! I like what Christopher Hitchens has to say on this (and I’m paraphrasing) – that he never asked God to do this, that he is appalled that this sacrifice has to involve the loss of life, and that ultimately we are boxed into a corner to accept or reject this God with His bizarre game plans. Isn’t it just weird that God is offering us freedom but that freedom is ultimately freedom from God’s own wrath? Isn’t it like the despotic Emperor who reprieves the prisoner unjustly jailed on death row, and gives them another year to live – and somehow we are supposed to be grateful for this “act of mercy”?

I quite agree with JTaylor and with Hitchens (as paraphrased). However, because there are inconsistencies in the Christian idea of God (or that of any religion) does not justify the conclusion that He doesn’t exist. The only valid conclusion is that Christianity probably got some of it wrong.

My view of Christianity is that there are two sides (a vast oversimplification, I acknowledge): the “sin” side and the “love” side. I think the whole notion of sin and punishment by an angry or vengeful God, or of the idea that we can’t be one with Him if we have sinned and are thus “impure” contradicts the very nature of an infinitely loving and omnipotent God. If God is omnipotent, He can make the rules any way He pleases, and if He is infinitely loving, well, He loves us, for God’s sake (double meaning intended).

On the other hand, there is a deep current within Christianity that encourages and nurtures the loving beings that we truly are, and this, I think is the real message of Jesus. There are many Christians who strive to live as he lived, and I believe that Jesus actually came to show us, by example, who we are.

JT…did you and Bruce come in with Allen?

Folks:

A corrective/clarification:

The ought-is gap emerges on a naturalistic premise [and, we know or should know that the relevant form of atheism in our culture is naturalistic evolutionary materialism . . . ]; which could have been more clearly stated by Hawthorne, but is implicit in his context.

Citing Arthur Holmes on Ethics:

However we may define the good, however well we may calculate consequences, to whatever extent we may or may not desire certain consequences, none of this of itself implies any obligation of command. That something is or will be does not imply that we ought to seek it. We can never derive an “ought” from a premised “is” unless the ought is somehow already contained in the premise . . . .

R. M. Hare . . . raises the same point. Most theories, he argues, simply fail to account for the ought that commands us: subjectivism reduces imperatives to statements about subjective states, egoism and utilitarianism reduce them to statements about consequences, emotivism simply rejects them because they are not empirically verifiable, and determinism reduces them to causes rather than commands . . . .

Elizabeth Anscombe’s point is well made. We have a problem introducing the ought into ethics unless, as she argues, we are morally obligated by law – not a socially imposed law, ultimately, but divine law . . . . This is precisely the problem with modern ethical theory in the West . . . it has lost the binding force of divine commandments.

So, the issue faced by evolutionary materialist atheists — who happen to be precisely the new atheists we are now dealing with at UD and in the wider culture — is to ground their ethical claims, in a context where,a s Holmes goes on to point out, the very issue of rights (as the foundation of liberty) is at stake:

If we admit that we all equally have the right to be treated as persons, then it follows that we have the duty to respect one another accordingly. Rights bring correlative duties: my rights . . . imply that you ought to respect these rights.

In short, a right is a binding moral claim we make on others, based on our inherent dignity as persons. this finds — as rthe US DOI of 1776 testifies – a very natural home in a judaeo-Christian, Creaftion anchored worldview, but becomes immensely problematic once we see teh substitution of an evolutionary materialistic one.

For, on those premises, the Hawthorne challenge becomes at once central:

Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can’t infer an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ [the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces]. (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an ‘ought’. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there’s no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it’s not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action. (This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal deontic logic.) We’ve conformed to standard principles and inference rules of logic and we’ve started out with assumptions that atheists have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion: therefore, for any action you care to pick, it’s permissible to perform that action. If you’d like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan ‘if atheism is true, all things are permitted’. For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don’t like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.

Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more intuitively appealing) principle that one can’t infer ‘ought’ from ‘is’.

So, the question now comes back with double force: why should we consider that people have rights at all?

The only enduring answer to this has been aptly summarised in the US Declaration of Independence of 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

In short, the is-ought gap of naturalistic ethics points to the question that the binding force of rights and correlative duties arises most naturally from our being equally valuable as creatures of God.

But, if we do not accept that premise, then where do we go to escape the Hawthorne challenge?

I search in vain above for a solid answer to that — most relevant — dilemma of our time.

GEM of TKI

I don’t have much to add to this debate except to point out the problem I see with the group morality notion propagated by some atheists and also by some Christians I might add, who do not accept the idea of absolute morality.

I can’t help but notice that with group morality also comes group evil. M. Scott Peck pointed this out in his book “People of the Lie,” although I personally have some issues with his analysis and conclusions.

An accurate observation (and in-fact study) is that people in groups also do evil things towards one another. Look at the treatment of Jews in Germany during WWII. It wasn’t just the Nazi’s or the SS who were responsible for this mistreatment, but ordinary citizens, who engaged in attrocities. In fact, the very first orders of the Nazis were carried out by ordinary citizens – police officers and others who had no official connection to Hitler’s SS. Or how about the great American evil of slavery? Same issue.

So to argue that human beings for the most part base their sense of morality on what is acceptable to the group, or to the good of the group, is obviously problematic. After all, in the perspective of many ordinary citizens in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, ill-treatment of the Jews was seen as something that was for the good of German society.

So how does one reconcile this very real phenomenon with the notion that groups of people form a moral code that is acceptable to all, and intended for the good of, and preservation of all and as a natural consequence of evolution?

JTaylor continues to mention his assessment that the god of the bible is somehow guilty of genocide. I respectfully disagree with this assessment, but an attempt at a point was made, and it deserves an answer beyond the common Evangelical answers.

If as Evangelicals and other Christians argue; God is the “law-giver,” which I also believe, then as we see in all legal codes, there is either a deterrent and/or a consequence for doing evil, which is meted out by the law-giver. Otherwise, no code of morality is enforceable. You can’t simply say “do not do this,” and expect that all will obey. It’s absurd to think this, given the reality of evil in the world, which is in most cases, done by free choice, and not by coercion.

We get all of our sense of justice from law. If there is no law (or “ought”) then by all means, we are free to do as we please as a group or as an individual. All laws as we know them, have deterrens as well as consequences, which give force to the laws themselves.

Several above mentioned that Christianity is not a moral code, and I would agree with this. However, the Judeo-Christian ethic is a justice ethic. In other words, it is an ethic, which deals with good and evil, whether in a group, or in an individual. Good is rewarded with positive consequences, and evil suffers negative consequences, whether in the present life or in the next.

Now the issue with a Christian sense of justice, is that it includes the element of mercy. We see evidence of mercy practiced in the Old and the New Testaments. Of course, it also includes elements of no mercy, as well.

If the God of scripture exists, then He is the law-giver, and at the same time, the rewarder of good and the punisher of evil. Death is a consequence of evil. Therefore, it is within the prerogative of a just God to mete out punishments for evil in this life or in the next. Of course, it is also His prerogative to grant mercy. It may not be the right of the human to possess the knowledge of to whom God metes out punishment, and to whom he grants mercy, for this knowledge on our part might impact the acts of evil upon which He ordains punishment.

Furthermore, genocide is a human act, and cannot reasonably be attributed to a law-giver, who possesses the authority to mete out punishment or to grant mercy as He sees fit in dealing with the problem of evil. Scripture points out that God’s highest value is the freedom to choose to do good or evil. This appears to be the very first choice He gave to his human creation. That value does not then necessitate that there be no consequence either way with such a choice. In fact, to not have a consequence for evil contradicts the very notion of there being evil in the first place. If there is no consequence then it is not evil. We are free to do what pleases us without consequence.

There is no narrative in scripture, which shows God meting out death and destruction upon a group of people simply for His own pleasure, and outside the context of law and consequence: “If you do thus, such will happen.”

The whole context of God’s involvement in human affairs is to do justice. In an environment where sentient beings are free to choose, such choices inevitably involve both good and evil. Evil is the antithesis of a loving God. As such, in order for God to love us unconditionally, our choice to do evil (which is not without effect on others), is to mandate a consequence.

It is also within God’s prerogative to use tools to mete out consequences for evil, which are outside of His supernatural capacity, such as ordering and/or ordaining that humans be involved in the consequation of evil. Thus, we too, as humans, are not completely reliant on God to recognize what evil is. Evil is often self-evident (or should I say evident by a heart-born revelation or intuition). So the argument that because other societies, which are outside the Judeo-Christian construct of justice have their own sense of morality, implies that the Judeo-Christian construct cannot be the moral authority in matters of good and evil, is problematic as an apologetic against Christianity.

Let me make this point more forecefully by observing that in scripture we have a sort of “devolution” of morality among humans, and “evolution” of consequent law. In the 2nd chapter of Genesis we have only one given law – do not consume a certain fruit from a certain tree. In response to increasing human disobedience, we see an evolving system of law.

This implies that as law was passed down and as societies formed in the ancient Near East and in migration to other areas of the world, such understanding of law was carried out to societies, which were outside of the geneological line, which made up the semitic people. Therefore, other societies were aware of the God-given laws, which developed as a result of human disobedience. Now it really makes no difference whether or not one accepts the Noaic deluge – for after that event, the process of law and disobedience started over, and the same phenomenon would continue as before.

This possibility (and I make it a mere possibility in the interest of my atheist friends here) negates the notion among atheists and other skeptics of Christianity that the moral argument for the existence of God is negated by the existence of morality among cultures foreign to the Judeo-Christian ethic.

So back to the point of the original post: an “is” cannot lead to an “ought.” There are too many moral relatives, which make morality meaningless. If your morality is contrary to and at the same time, as good as mine, then there can be no logical objection to also accepting Hitler’s morality as legitmate and acceptable.

Now we can admire atheists who have a sense of morality that is inconsistent with a materialistic metaphysic, but it’s difficult to overlook just that – the inconsistency.

Somewhere upthread, Barry wrote, “The point is whether the atheists believe materialism is false.”

An small but important point that I am interested in emphasizing is that not all atheists are materialists. Many people who don’t believe in a theistic God nevertheless believe in some type of metaphysical/spiritual component beyond and/or in our universe. It would really be better to address these arguments towards materialism, not atheism per se.

Second comment: the argument being advanced is that if there is no God, there is no higher external authority as the source of morality, and thus all actions are permitted. When someone like me, an atheist, says that I have morals, and that societies create and uphold moral systems for the general good of all, the rejoinder is that if I can’t deliver a rational defense of those morals, they are really empty, and I would be more honest to admit that in fact everything is permitted.

The short version of the whole argument being that you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is.”

But what if there really is no God and no other spiritual reality – what if materialism is true? Then the argument that God is necessary for morals means nothing because there is no God.

At that point one has to ask oneself, then why do people, universally and in all cultures, have a sense of right and wrong; why do societies have moral systems and laws; and why does people’s behavior range from the very good to the very bad, as defined by both social and individual standards of what is good and bad?

I know – the rejoinder to this is, again, how do you know what is good or bad without reference to God?

But my rejoinder is, again, what if there is no God? People don’t act as if everything is permitted. If there is no God then there needs to be another explanation. Obviously that explanation can’t be one which invokes a higher power if there is no higher power.

I can’t give an argument about the source of morals to a theist who will only accept an argument which grounds morals in a higher power if in fact I don’t believe there is a higher power. My arguments about morals being grounded in the nature of human beings and their societies are deemed inadequate in respect to arguments grounding morals in God, but if there is no God, those arguments fails.

And, I repeat, since it is a fact that people don’t act like everything is permitted, then other types of explanations must be searched for to account for the fact that people universally act upon what they understand to be moral standards.

“So to argue that human beings for the most part base their sense of morality on what is acceptable to the group, or to the good of the group, is obviously…….”

The above could have been better worded: “So to argue that human beings can reasonably base their morality on what is acceptable to the group, or to the good of the group…….”

Hazel: “And, I repeat, since it is a fact that people don’t act like everything is permitted, then other types of explanations must be searched for to account for the fact that people universally act upon what they understand to be moral standards.”

Hazel, I appreciate your attempt to argue the atheist point of view. I can only point out the circularity of the above statement though. Where does the moral standard come from? If you read my previous post on this thread, can you reasonably believe that human moral standards come from humans themselves, when humans are the ones who break those standards?

Something is wrong with your premise: “people don’t act like everything is permitted.” History shows us that humans have permitted everything that is possible for them to permit. Murder, theft, rape, genocide, slavery, etc… have all been permitted by humans in history, so where on earth does the standard against such behavior come from?

Your argument is full of holes, but I appreciate your attempt, because it strengthens the theistic position.

Your argument is full of holes, but I appreciate your attempt, because it strengthens the theistic position.

Only if there is a “God”.

On the abortion issue: those who view abortion as murder make an assumption which to them is self-evident, but which is in fact quite arbitrary, namely, that a fertilized human egg is a human being .

It’s not arbitrary. The DNA of the zygote shows it to be an individual different than either parent. You might disagree with the conclusion that it is a human being worthy of protection but the “assumption” is not “arbitrary”.

Further, most of the debate with regard to legal abortion does not involve the zygote so much as the embryo and fetus, and involves long-standing and traditional determinations as to the existence of life and “personhood” such as heartbeats and brain waves.

JTaylor –We seem to forget that (if these stories are true) that God chose to wipe out people (including children) just like ourselves, with hopes, aspirations, families, loved ones – simply because they were ‘collateral’ in God’s bigger game plan. It’s truly ghastly .

Remember your question:

I guess we have to ask ourselves why is that what seems righteous to God seems so despicable and unjust to us?

Have you considered an answer?

In #94 Barry Arrington asserts:

“The point is whether the atheists believe materialism is false. They do not. You also say you know of no scientist who believes materialism.”

I do not think it is the case that all atheists are materialists; indeed, from my own experience I know this to be a false statement. For example, my wife is an atheist, but she is most definitely not a materialist. If one believes that there is more in the universe than just energy and matter (e.g. information, or “ideas”) and that the list of human intellectual creations that I have posted multiple times actually exist (i.e. in the human mind), then one is not a “materialist” by definition.

Ergo, not only is the syllogism you present at the head of this post false, but your assertion about all atheists being materialists is false as well.

And, since we’re supposed to be discussing evolutionary biology, it is clearly not the case that all evolutionary biologists are atheists, nor are all evolutionary biologists materialists. Indeed, two of the founders of the “modern evolutionary synthesis”, Ronald Aylmer Fisher and Theodosious Dobzhansky, were most definitely not atheists (Fisher was a life-time Anglican and Dobzhansky – like many Russians – was a life-time believer in Eastern Orthodoxy). And I am myself also not an atheist (but rather a Friend), nor is Ken Miller (a Catholic), one of the most famous evolutionary biologists working today.

When confronted with this obvious contradiction to their unshakable belief that scientists who accept evolutionary theory must be atheists, many creationists and ID supporters assert that people like Fisher, Dobzhansky, Miller, and me are simply “muddle-headed” and cannot see the obvious logical contradiction in our thinking. However, the reason they make arrogant and uninformed assertions like this is because they (just like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and PZ Myers) believe that if one is an evolutionary biologist one must also be an atheist. Ergo, they must conclude that evolutionary biologists who are not atheists are either misinformed, insane, or liars (sound familiar?)

Useless as it may be at this website, may I nevertheless propose an alternative hypothesis: that there is no necessary connection between accepting evolution as a reasonable description of how living organisms have come to have the characteristics that they have, and believing that there is (or isn’t) a supernatural entity or entities (commonly referred to by the “role name” of God or gods). Indeed, based on experience, I believe that it is possible to be an intellectually fulfilled theist and still accept all of contemporary natural science, including evolutionary biology.

This entire thread has focused on the question of whether a belief in God is necessary for being a moral person. Based on my own experience, I believe that this question is entirely logically separate from the question of whether some supernatural entity participated in the creation of life on Earth and its evolution to current forms. Indeed, there is no logical contradiction whatsoever between believing that a supernatural entity (or entities) provide(s) the foundation for moral prescriptions and the simultaneous belief that including the participation of a supernatural entity (or entities) in the evolution of life on Earth is unnecessary in a logically consistent explanation of how such evolution has occurred. This is especially the case if, as most people have already agreed, it is invalid to derive an “ought” statement (i.e. an ethical prescription) from an “is” statement (i.e. a description of nature).

In #93 stephenB asks:

“How do you know good effects from bad effects?”

“And what is good, Phædrus,
And what is not good…
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
- Socrates (The Phædrus)

hazel wrote:

The short version of the whole argument being that you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is.”

Exactly. What Barry and kairosfocus fail to acknowledge is that if the atheist must address the question of “ought” vs. “is”, then so must the theist, as I pointed out way back in comment #20.

Barry can’t have it both ways. If his argument shows that all things are permitted under atheism, as he claims, then it also shows by the same logic that all things are permitted under theism. If he claims that theism is exempt from his argument, then by the same reasoning so is atheism.

For Barry’s project to succeed, he would need to show that the “is” of “God exists” leads logically to the “ought” of “we therefore ought to behave a certain way”.

He hasn’t done so. Instead he just keeps repeating his argument and insisting that the logic is “unassailable”.

B L Harville put it succinctly:

Barry Arrington, your “is” is an “ought”.

If the theist is permitted to magically turn “is” into “ought”, then why is the atheist denied access to this alchemy?

“To assert that Richard Lewontin, an atheist, is also a materialist, and therefore all atheists are materialists is such an absurd perversion of basic logic that I am amazed that you would attempt it in public.”

Well where is the case for the non materialist atheism made. I do not mean the people here but the case laid out for all of us to look at. And does this mean that science must abandon methodological naturalism since there are potential non material causes.

And if there is such a thing as “non materialist atheism ” does it mean that all these particular atheists are getting religion?

There is neither evidence nor need for a living God. That does not mean that one does not exist. What cannot be denied (except by congenital atheists) is that one or more Gods once existed. To deny that is to accept the preposterous position that it was intrinsic in the nature of prebiotic matter to spontaneously self assemble into self-replicating, metabolizing and evolving entities. Those that are still willing to believe that proposition are fools. That is not an ad hominem attack but an attack on a huge segment of the present scientific community, a segment both blind and deaf to the world which surrounds them.

“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for believing it to be true.”
Bertrand Russell

A perfect commentary on Darwinism and all those, like Allen MacNeill, who still believe it. I select MacNeill only because I will not honor those who refuse to identify themselves, the vast majority of those who comment on these threads at Uncommon Descent. MacNeill’s allegiances and alliances are freely available in his blogroll on the home page of “The Evolution List.” They define his real position perfectly.

It is hard to believe isn’t it?

Not at all. The proof is right here for all to see.

“Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.”
Harry S. Truman

tribune7: “Remember your question:

There’re are probably other explanations too, but with out more research this is the one that comes to mind first. I’m sure with some digging there is probably a lot of material on this.

Allen MacNeil writes:

And, since we’re supposed to be discussing evolutionary biology, it is clearly not the case that all evolutionary biologists are atheists, nor are all evolutionary biologists materialists. Indeed, two of the founders of the “modern evolutionary synthesis”, Ronald Aylmer Fisher and Theodosious Dobzhansky, were most definitely not atheists (Fisher was a life-time Anglican and Dobzhansky – like many Russians – was a life-time believer in Eastern Orthodoxy). And I am myself also not an atheist (but rather a Friend), nor is Ken Miller (a Catholic), one of the most famous evolutionary biologists working today

Can’t you add Sewall Wright and G. Ledyard Stebbins to that list? I don’t recall either of them being atheists either.

Since Allen MacNeil insisted that morality can be judged by its effects, I asked him how we could distinguish good effects from bad effects.

As a response, he writes,

“And what is good, Phædrus,
And what is not good…
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
- Socrates (The Phædrus)”

Allen, I didn’t ask the question because I don’t know the answer. I asked the question because I knew that you don’t know the answer.

The last person that you want to quote is Socrates. You think that we can “create” morality through concensus, but he realized that we can only “discover” it as an objective reality.

So, if you are going to say that we can “know” good effects from bad effects,” which indeed we can, then you must also say that we can know the “objective moral law” that defines them as good and bad. Plato and Socrates are not your supporters, they are among your severest critics.

JTaylor

Murder: bad when humans do it, but righteous when God does it.

If your great-great-great-grandmother many times was a member of a tribe living in Canaan who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got wiped out by the avenging army of Israel at God’s command, what would you feel about it? We seem to forget that (if these stories are true) that God chose to wipe out people (including children) just like ourselves, with hopes, aspirations, families, loved ones – simply because they were ‘collateral’ in God’s bigger game plan. It’s truly ghastly.

Before you continue, you might to have a look at these two articles by Christian apologist Glenn Miller at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html (on the destruction of the Canaanites), and at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/rbutcher1.html (on the Amalekites).

God is by definition reasonable. He cannot be otherwise, for His nature is to have perfect knowledge and love of everything and everyone. I suggest you take that as your starting point when interpreting passages in Scripture that appear to depict an irrational, heartless, bloodthirsty, vengeful or capricious God.

God is not a utilitarian, because He knows full well that people are ends in themselves. God never treats human deaths as mere “collateral.” Therefore if God really did ordain that innocent Canaanites should be killed, then it must have been in their own best interests – in other words, God decided that they should die now, because He infallibly knew that something worse would have happened to them had they lived. As Christian apologist Glenn Miller points out in his article on the massacre of the Canaanites at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html , the Canaanites engaged in a number of extremely nasty practices, including child sacrifice (with at least some of it in fire), incest, bestiality and cultic prostitution – both male and female. I think it is rational to believe that in ordaining the deaths of people born into this culture, He was indeed doing them a favor.

God is not a sadist: He delights not in pain, and would never inflict pain needlessly. Now, if God actually ordained that innocent people be killed, then He made Himself directly responsible for their deaths: He actually inflicted death on them. Could a just and reasonable God have additionally inflicted pain on these innocent people? No.

Why not? Well, the deaths of these people might have been necessary, to rescue them from a greater evil that would otherwise have befallen them; but the suffering of these innocent people could have served no purpose, especially if they had done no wrong (which would have been the case for young Canaanite boys killed by the Israelites).

I therefore conclude that if God actually told the Israelites to kill the Canaanites, He must have intervened to ensure that innocent Canaanite woman and children suffered no pain or distress in the process.

There would have been a very easy way for God to do that, without violating any laws of nature. Many people are under the mistaken impression that theists merely envisage God as a First Cause, conserving all beings in existence but typically as a remote rather than an immediate cause of events. Not so. As Professor Alfred Freddoso points out in an interesting article at http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/chance.htm , this view, which he dubs the “conservationist” view, is most emphatically not the traditional Christian view. The traditional view is that God is not merely at the top of every causal chain; rather, God also works concurrently with every cause in the chain – in other words, not like this:

God -> X -> Y -> Z

but like this:

God -> X
God + X -> Y
God + Y -> Z

On the traditional “concurrentist” view, if God wishes to stop an effect from occurring, all He has to do is to withdraw His co-operation from ONE of the causes in the chain, and the effect will not occur. No law of nature is broken in the process, because laws of nature simply describe what happen when God chooses to work concurrently with natural causes, in His usual way. When God, for reasons best known to Himself, withholds His co-operation from these natural causes, they have no effect.

Thus it would have been quite easy for God to withhold His co-operation from the natural bodily processes that were keeping the innocent Canaanite women and children awake, thereby causing them to lose consciousness, so that they were not aware of the Israelite attack and consequently felt no pain or distress as they were being killed. In a similar fashion, God could also have prevented the Israelite soldiers from experiencing any trauma as a result of carrying out such a gruesome task, by withholding his co-operation with the neurological processes that normally lay down memories in the brain: the soldiers may have had no memory of the killings afterwards.

Professor Alfred Freddoso illustrates how God can prevent pain with an example, in the article I cited above, at http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/chance.htm :

Think of Shadrach sitting in the fiery furnace. Here we have real human flesh exposed unprotected to real fire, and yet Shadrach survives unscathed – even though the fire is so hot that it consumes the soldiers who usher him into the furnace. How, on the [conservationist] view, can God save Shadrach? Only, it seems, by either (i) taking from the fire its power to consume Shadrach, which is inconsistent with the soldiers’ being incinerated but in any case amounts … to destroying the fire and in that sense overpowering it; or (ii) endowing Shadrach’s clothing and flesh with a special power of resistance, in which case God is opposing His creature, the fire; or (iii) placing some impediment (say, an invisible heat-resistant shield) between Shadrach and the flames, in which case God is yet again resisting the power of the fire. By contrast, on the … concurrentist [model], God accomplishes this miracle simply by withholding His own action. The (real) fire is, as it were, beholden to God’s word; He does not have to struggle with it or overcome it or oppose it. The fire’s natural effect cannot occur without God’s action, and in this case God chooses not to act in the way required. An elegant account, and one that does not in any way give any creature a power that God must oppose.

The interpretation of a book written 3,000 years ago in a foreign language is a task fraught with peril, as it is no easy matter to determine what the sacred author meant to communicate to his readers. What I have endeavored to do is demonstrate that even if the account of the conquest of Canaan is a completely literal one, and all of the events narrated actually occurred as described, there is no need to suppose that God is bloodthirsty, capricious or a cold-blooded utilitarian bean-counter.

You may object that no sensible person would obey a command to kill innocent women and children, regardless of who issued it. Ordinarily I would agree. However, I would also add that if

(i) the command issued from a Deity who confirmed His Reality and His Goodness with numerous public miracles over a 40-year period; and

(ii) the individuals being killed were part of an unremittingly hostile culture that threatened to wipe out your own; and

(iii) unfortunately, there was no practical way of taking care of most of the innocent women and childrn being killed; and

(iv) the culture in question was also uniquely depraved, and its vile practices threatened to overwhelm engulf your own culture’s new and very fragile way of life; and

(v) nothing short of a massacre of this depraved civilization would persuade other civilizations dwelling in the region to “back off,” leave your society alone, and refrain from tangling with your Deity; and

(vi) the depraved civilization had received numerous warnings of impending attack; and

(vii) the Deity commanding the attack repeatedly showed His concern for innocent human life – e.g. by denouncing child sacrifice and infanticide as abominations, and by issuing laws to protect the rights of innocent women and children in your own culture,

then it might be reasonable to believe the word of such a Deity, and to assume that its command to kill was a kind and not a cruel one.

Lastly, I might add that no Christian commentator has ever suggested that God might issue a new command to kill the innocent at some future date; all commentators agree that the destruction of the Canaanites was only justified by the unique circumstances which the Israelites found themselves in.

JTaylor –There are certainly some interesting hypotheses. One is that man is not made in God’s image, but perhaps it’s the other way around.

Somewhere along the line you have developed beliefs that mercy is good, that cruelty is bad, that one should not inflict suffering needlessly, that disproportionate punishment is bad etc.

Somewhere along the line you have developed a belief that compassion is a virtue and suffering should be alleviated. For instance, if you should see a man beaten by the side of the road you should go out of your way to care for him despite the inconvenience rather than letting him lie there.

These values can be traced to a certain fellow who walked the Earth 2,000 years ago, although I’ll grant you can come to a similar understanding through a fair reading of the Old Testament — I’ve met very few Jews who were brutal people — despite your objections.

Now, you might reply these values are innate and you would be wrong. Someone, on this thread, I think, said babies are born atheists. No, babies are born quite convinced they are God and the world is there to serve them. Parents are required to teach them love and compassion for others, sometimes through discipline but mostly through example.

If you were born in a different society you might be quite accepting of cannibalism, or human sacrifice — burning babies for luck a la the Carthaginians, or torturing to death captives as per Iroquois squaws or raising sons to be suicide bombers as certain mothers do in Gaza or genitally mutilating daughters when they reach a certain age as is the practice in parts of North Africa.

So the reason you are offended by parts of the Old Testament is because you were raised in a Christian culture which decrees harsh brutality to be offensive.

JTaylor:
“Why is it a given that an atheist then must by necessity fall into immorality?” EVERYONE DOES – Think of God’s “righteousness” metaphorically/meta-morally if that helps.

Buddhism = Annihilation (true nothingness) that aspect of the human philosophy of Buddha is true for the natural man. Choice – Free Will – Yes, you can do what you will, but NOT in the arena of true morality. Like C.S. Lewis said “I’ve never had a selfless thought since I was born.” No one is perfect (totally moral) yet – there are those being perfected – the remnant. This is where Christ came to save His People from Their sins.

You can not understand what God did from your present point of view. Look into 1. All flesh is like grass (due to our falling away from believing God – “Hath God Said?” @. God has a specific plan for all of eternity being worked out for His purpose not yours. 3. Study types and shadows and prophecy asking for eyes to see and ears to hear. The OT is MOST essential in understand the NT. “There was a time before the past when things to come were clearly cast.” (verse 1 of “What Is That To You” found at mortaldreamer.me)
Patience? – Genocide? – What is life anyway and for what or better Who’s purpose and how is it that with ALL that has been Revealed most either ignore it or compromise it for their own faith and their own hope which keeps them blind. What is it to you that the Record is so plain – fulfilled prophecy in strict adherence to type and shadow with Christ plainly lifted up for all to SEE – and the response is talk talk talk – debate – complain sophomorically so – ignorantly so – immorally so – and thinking they judge the Bible!? – Truly ghastly.”

“A friend once pointed out that my views are inconsistent since I’m anti-death penalty so why would I also support abortion – and they had a good point.” The opposition to the death penalty come out of a belief that life is special or even “sacred” The penalty of death instituted by God is a type and the punishment is death Because life IS sacred.

Theface: “I am saying that hell is most likely not some literal torture chamber, with God at the controls. Rather, God has completely cut them off from himself. Hell IS complete total final and never reversible condition of annihilation” – yes they have forfeited the Gift – “Eternal Life In Christ” God’s plan of Redemption. So can you agree at least that if they are “cut off” from God who is Life that they DON ‘T have any life?

In reading the rest of the posting – from 97 on – my point is made – the natural man’s (both “religious” and atheist – which is a religion) arguments/ beliefs are totally self justifying and un –“researched” in terms of biblical pontification. “ever learning, (and “thinking as JTaylor admonishes us to do #102) yet unable to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

StephenB: thank you for you summation in 96
Bruce David: how do you know its a wrong assumption and your assumption is correct – seems to make my point. New Age thinking is quite self serving – a type if you will of the natural man trying to be “spiritual” in self justification and self glorification – drinking as the scriptures say from their own well/river – their “instead of” Christ.

So JTaylor: YOU don’t think a “Bridge” is needed. Please just take a thought on the immense amount of information given that came from beyond space and time telling us before hand of the Redeemer – When and Why He would come and then still truly believe your philosophy is the rational and dare I say “moral” choice.

Bruse David: your assessment of inconsistencies in the Christian idea of God is correct, but let me say that is due to the (hard to explain in brief) lazy – self serving hermeneutic of “Christians” (Tares – Foolish “virgins if you know what I’m referring to) rather than Scripture itself – this seen and understood within the hermeneutic of scripture interpreting itself. This is why judgment begins with “Christians” those to whom He says “I never knew you” and to their surprise. I will tell you straight out – no apologies whatsoever – you don’t have the slightest idea of what the “real message of Jesus” is – offensive – so be it, but it is given in Love. Anti – you are replacing the True “message” (work) of Jesus with you own. The truth is that you can’t say what you said and have any knowledge of what the Bible actually says – sorry.

Kairosfocus: thank you for your post #105

CannuckianYankee: thank you for your post #106

Hazel: grasping at straws I think – materialism v. atheism – come now. AND God has created humans with conscience – the “sense of right and wrong” as you say. Believe me – I know atheism – at one time it gave me the “freedom” to my own sense of right and wrong. Thankfully that has given me a little better understanding of just what sin is….

God reveals – Man rejects – judgment (after “much patience”) is sure and just – and coming soon – “the wise shall know time and judgment.”

OH – tribune7: thank you for that most excellent question. Let me hint at an answer – ”

Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” We think God should be serving our purposes and thoughts not having the knowledge of why this earth exists in the first place -

vjtorley @122. As usual, your post is a gift to be treasured.

JTaylor: Again my point – you have your interpretive filter serving you well. It’s inaccurate, but it works.

vjtorley tries to enlighten on the viewpoint you use and brings up some good logical/”spiritual” insights. More importantly however is the judgment on the “tribal” nations are examples and types for our knowledge about the last days and the “Day of Judgment”
The Watchmen are on the wall – as it was in the days of Noah. Do you seek knowledge in place of repentance?

tribune7: #123 – your examples and last paragraph – great point – thanks.

vjtorley: “Lastly, I might add that no Christian commentator has ever suggested that God might issue a new command to kill the innocent at some future date; all commentators agree that the destruction of the Canaanites was only justified by the unique circumstances which the Israelites found themselves in.”

None are “innocent” Rom. 8:1 and the judgment are written for our admonition and discernment regarding understanding God’s judgment plan and process. So, yes you are correct in the literal hermeneutic, but should point out the higher – prophetic aspect. I do obviously acknowledge that the materialist will not have much of a handle on this. I will also acknowledge that tares and foolish virgins don’t either.

mauka

If the theist is permitted to magically turn “is” into “ought”, then why is the atheist denied access to this alchemy?

The reason is that God is the only Being for whom “is” and “ought” necessarily coincide. God cannot fail to be what He ought to be: someone who knows and loves perfectly. That’s because God does these things by nature: He is essentially omniscient and omnibenevolent.

Creatures, on the other hand, are not morally perfect by nature; on the contrary, they are quite capable of doing wrong. For such creatures, the “is-ought” distinction is a real one; what they ought to be may be very different from what they actually are.

The fact that God, who is essentially good, created human beings with certain built-in goods of their own is surely a sufficient reason for treating these natural human goods with respect.

Of course, even if you didn’t believe in God, you could still hold to a kind of natural law morality, from a recognition that there are several practical human ends (basic human goods) whose goodness is self-evident, and which can be pursued for their own sake. For a discussion of these ends, and an explanation of why our recognition of these ends does not involve jumping from an “is” to an “ought,” see this article by Professor John Finnis at http://plato.stanford.edu/entr.....political/ .

One question which an atheist might have a hard time in answering, though, is the question of why we should refrain from genetically re-engineering human beings, in such a way as to alter their psychological nature, and change the way they feel. A theist would have a perfect answer here: it is not our prerogative to do so. God, who made us, knows best.

“the question is whether an atheist can ground his/her morality in anything other than sentiment. So far, no one has demonstrated that they can.”

The same can be said of a theist, with at least the difference that the atheist does not have religious ideology to use in rationalizing criminal behavior.

Barry says,

For our purposes let us assume that I am not talking about the irrational type of atheist who denies the existence of God but, for whatever reason, refuses to accept the logical consequence of that denial – that materialism is true.

Buddhist, Taoists, and others deny the existence of a personal God and also deny materialism. Are they irrational?

In other words, is it irrational to believe that there might be a non-material spiritual aspect to reality that is diffuse rather than consolidated into a willful, foresightful purpose “person”, and that personhood as we know it is a emergent property that arises that in fact creates an illusion about the true nature of spirit.

For this is, approximately, what Buddhists believe, and it makes more sense to me than theism.

Tribune7 @124

So the reason you are offended by parts of the Old Testament is because you were raised in a Christian culture which decrees harsh brutality to be offensive.

I’m reminded of the Sawi people of Indonesia, who considered treachery a virtue until Christian missionaries introduced a different way. The former Sawi practice involved befriending a person then killing them when their trust in your friendship was complete.

So far, no one has demonstrated that they can.

Including the theists, I would argue.

As I stated before, this is not my area of expertise, and so my responses to this topic haven’t been as well organized or clear-cut as I’d like since I am still sorting out my own views on this. However, for me, I think it really comes down to a question of objective morality versus a transcendent morality. The theists want a way (and I would too, I might add), independent of human subjectivity, to condemn the actions of people like Hitler or Dahmer. Unfortunately, if we learned anything from the last few thousand years of studying the cosmos, it is that the universe is fundamentally indifferent to our plight. This “grounding” of morality that theists are looking for would be some fundamental property of the universe that “cares” about what humans do to each other, but I don’t think such a thing could exist or even makes sense. As I stated earlier, I don’t think God solves this problem unless you do silly things like define God to be “goodness”, and I don’t think fundamental truths about the universe can be discovered by semantic weaseling like that.

However, I think you can still have an objective morality, ie, one that is not subject to the whims and desires of every dictator and serial killer. Others will be able to state this much more elegantly than I can, but even though the universe itself may not “care” what Hitler does, other humans do. It is objectively true that what Hitler did caused human suffering and therefore his actions matter to a great deal of people. We can’t condemn him for violating some unseen moral property of the universe, but we can condemn him for violating near-universal human standards of moral behavior.

Barry Arrington: “…God has prescribed a universally binding moral code…”

Please explain the origin and nature of this code and how it is administered.

Off Topic (so sorry):

Does anyone know how to get a hold of Dave Springer…can’t get his old email to work.

Please email me at hansjohns1@yahoo.com

Barry Arrington:

“the question is whether an atheist can ground his/her morality in anything other than sentiment. So far, no one has demonstrated that they can.”

Larry Tanner:

The same can be said of a theist, with at least the difference that the atheist does not have religious ideology to use in rationalizing criminal behavior.

Wrong, Larry. A Theist can appeal to an ultimate source of moral authority. Whether that source exists is a separate question. But it makes logical sense for him to point to a higher source for his moral code.

As for rationalization, the Theist may rationalize his criminality, but the Atheist cuts out the middleman by not having a moral code that anyone (including himself) is bound to recognize. He may choose to bind himself, but he’s free to change his mind when it suits him. All things being equal, I don’t see how removing the need to justify/rationalize one’s actions makes others safer from “criminality”.

139 Barry Arrington
04/22/2009 12:10 pm

Hazel writes: “Buddhist, Taoists, and others deny the existence of a personal God and also deny materialism. Are they irrational?”

Yes, deeply.

I think that the word irrational has lost some meaning here.

Believing in a transcendental being who we can not see or other wise directly experience, and who has taken this peculiar interest in a subset of human beings on this little planet, and who condemns to hell countless millions who have had the misfortune to not believe in him even if they in fact have other deeply held religious beliefs of their own, is rational, but to believe in a universal spirit that pervades the universe and in which we partake, is irrational.

I don’t believe that whatever distinctions are separating the rational from the irrational here are in fact rational. Seems like special pleading for one’s own case to me.

Hazel writes: “Buddhist, Taoists, and others deny the existence of a personal God and also deny materialism. Are they irrational?”

Of course they are. ALL natural “rational” philosophy is irrational in it ultimate sense. May I ask what you find so compelling about Buddhism? That would be Eastern not Western Buddhism. No creator – no Father Creator in Heaven – just ultimate nothingness as the grand prize. I just wonder and please correct me if I am mischaracterizing this philosophy.

Larry Tanner 133 – You don’t get a get out of jail free card for simply stating atheism is not a religion as it most certainly is. It is indeed a belief system.

riddick: you are kidding – right? May I ask your age?

Please explain the origin and nature of this code and how it is administered.

Not speaking for Barry, but…

According to Judaism and Christianity, this was accomplished by revelation, i.e. direct and indirect communication from God, at times accompanied by miracles and moral insights that are confirmed by human intuition. You may doubt the historical accounts, but that’s at least a partial answer to your question.

You will say that Hitler caused a lot of suffering. Yeah, why should I care. Churchill caused a lot of suffering when he firebombed German cities. You call Churchill a hero and Hitler a villain. So, merely causing people to suffer cannot be the ground on which to choose which behavior is moral.

Well, I wouldn’t necessarily call Churchill a hero for firebombings. Perhaps they were necessary to save even more lives, perhaps they were just an act of unnecessary evil.

It really comes down to what kind of moral system you think is possible here. The world is not black and white, there are shades of grey where it is not always possible to categorize actions as 100% moral or 100% immoral. In practice, we all tend to use some kind of Utilitarianism to judge people’s actions where we look at the results of that action in terms of human suffering or human benefit. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that Hitler’s actions fall pretty heavily in the “immoral” category based on the effects of the Holocaust in that context.

Again, when you ask for me to logically prove that causing human suffering is “bad”, I don’t know that that is possible. I don’t think that admission of ignorance opens the floodgates to dictators and genocide though, because most of us have empathy and can recognize the value of reducing human suffering, even as a simple selfish desire to make the world a better place to live in.

“A Theist can appeal to an ultimate source of moral authority. Whether that source exists is a separate question.”

Whether that source exists may be a separate question, but it’s a biggie. Am I supposed to be impressed by the mere fact that one claims to “appeal to an ultimate source of moral authority”? Appeal away, but it doesn’t get you a “get out of jail free card,” to use alan’s words.

You still have not shown that theists can ground their morality in anything other than sentiment. This is, of course, the same criticism you level against atheists.

Why you feel the need to level such a criticism is another matter.

You still have not shown that theists can ground their morality in anything other than sentiment.

We don’t both agree that it is “sentiment”. We perhaps both agree that if atheists are right it is only sentiment, and perhaps we both might agree that it is phenomenally sentiment, but one of us believes that we can consider something more than it appears, and another of us believes that’s foolishness.

Thus the person who believes it’s foolishness is more chained to the conclusion that is is “simply sentiment” than the observer who is not. The one who thinks that everything useful must resolve in the state of things as they are known at the time, must admit that all they can see is sentiment and preference and at most intuition–but that would yield too much ground to the intuitionists as well.

vjtorley in #121:

I evidently must reconsider every kind word I have ever said about your comments. The content of #121 is so hideous and morally repellent as to actually have made me somewhat nauseous reading it.

Why?

Consider the minor wording change in the following:

Der Führer is not a utilitarian, because He knows full well that Aryan people are ends in themselves. Der Führer never treats human deaths as mere “collateral.” Therefore if Der Führer really did ordain that innocent Jews should be killed, then it must have been in their own best interests – in other words, Der Führer decided that they should die now, because He infallibly knew that something worse would have happened to them had they lived. As National Socialist communications minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels points out, the Jews engaged in a number of extremely nasty practices, including child sacrifice (with at least some of it involving mahtzos made from the blood of children), incest, bestiality and cultic prostitution – both male and female. I think it is rational to believe that in ordaining the deaths of people born into Jewish culture, Der Führer was indeed doing them a favor.

Der Führer is not a sadist: He delights not in pain, and would never inflict pain needlessly. Now, if Der Führer actually ordained that innocent people be killed, then He made Himself directly responsible for their deaths: He actually inflicted death on them. Could a just and reasonable Führer have additionally inflicted pain on these innocent people? No.

Why not? Well, the deaths of these people might have been necessary, to rescue them from a greater evil that would otherwise have befallen them and to save the rest of humanity (and especially the Aryan race) from the effects of their brutish and inhuman practices. However, the suffering of these innocent people could have served no purpose, especially if they had done no wrong (which would have been the case for young Jewish children killed by the SS in the camps).

I therefore conclude that if Der Führer actually told the SS to kill the Jews, He must have intervened to ensure that innocent Jewish women and children suffered no pain or distress in the process. This is why they were executed using machine guns in Russia (death from a machine gun bullet in the brain is virtually instantaneous and therefore virtually painless) and Zyklon B in the camps at Auschwitz and elsewhere in the Greater German Reich.

Need I continue, or is the parallel obvious enough now? No, there’s even worse:

On the traditional “National Socialist” view, if Der Führer wishes to stop an effect from occurring, all He has to do is to intervene in ONE of the causes in the chain, and the effect will not occur. No law of nature is broken in the process, because laws of nature simply describe what happen when Der Führer chooses to work concurrently with natural causes, in His usual way. When Der Führer, for reasons best known to Himself, intervenes in these natural causes, they have no effect.

Thus it would have been quite easy for Der Führer, by using the narcotic and painless gas Zyklon-B, to intervene in the natural bodily processes that were keeping the innocent Jewish women and children awake, thereby causing them to lose consciousness, so that they were not aware of their execution and consequently felt no pain or distress as they were being killed. In a similar fashion, Der Führer could also have prevented the SS soldiers from experiencing any trauma as a result of carrying out such a gruesome task, by withholding his co-operation with the neurological processes that normally lay down memories in the brain: the soldiers may have had no memory of the killings afterwards.

Grit your teeth, there’s only a little bit more of this horror:

The interpretation of an edict passed down more than half a century ago in a foreign language is a task fraught with peril, as it is no easy matter to determine what Der Führer meant to communicate to the German people and to the world. What I have endeavored to do is demonstrate that even if the account of the Holocaust is a completely literal one, and all of the events narrated actually occurred as described, there is no need to suppose that Der Führer is bloodthirsty, capricious or a cold-blooded utilitarian bean-counter.

You may object that no sensible person would obey a command to kill innocent women and children, regardless of who issued it. Ordinarily I would agree. However, I would also add that if

(i) the command issued from a Führer who confirmed His Reality and His Goodness with numerous public demonstrations to the German People over a 20-year period; and

(ii) the individuals being killed were part of an unremittingly hostile culture that threatened to wipe out the Aryan Race; and

(iii) unfortunately, there was no practical way of taking care of most of the innocent women and childrn being killed; and

(iv) the culture in question was also uniquely depraved, and its vile practices threatened to overwhelm engulf your own culture’s new and very fragile way of life; and

(v) nothing short of a massacre of this depraved civilization would persuade other civilizations dwelling in the region to “back off,” leave your society alone, and refrain from tangling with Der Führer and His Chosen People; and

(vi) the depraved civilization had received numerous warnings of impending attack; and

(vii) Der Führer commanding the attack repeatedly showed His concern for innocent human life – e.g. by denouncing child sacrifice and infanticide as abominations, and by issuing laws to protect the rights of innocent women and children in Aryan culture,

then it might be reasonable to believe the word of Der Führer, and to assume that His command to kill was a kind and not a cruel one.

Lastly, I might add that no National Socialist commentator has ever suggested that Der Führer might issue a new command to kill the innocent at some future date; all commentators agree that the destruction of the Jews was only justified by the unique circumstances which the German People found themselves in, which necessitated this Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.

Can anyone reading these words claim that this could not have been quoted from some long-lost apologetic authored by the good doctor (Herr Goebbels) himself?

In sum, vj, you have asserted that:

1) killing innocent people is entirely justified if God/Der Führer commands it,

2) if you follow His orders, he will make you forget what you have done, and

3) God/Der Führer will make certain that those innocent people who He has ordered to be killed won’t feel it.

And you wonder why some people cannot stand Christianity and Christians…

BarryA #151:

Hitler thought he was doing the world a favor by wiping out the Jews.

Not only doing the world a favor, Barry. Hitler also believed he was going god’s work:

I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.

- Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936

Hitler’s morality was “based on an ultimate authority,” or whatever you want to call it, just as much as any other theist.

Barry Arrington:

Who is to say you are right and Hitler was wrong?

Human beings, who else?

The 9-11 terrorists were doing what they were absolutely convinced was the will of their god and they believed they would be greatly rewarded in an afterlife. Were they acting morally, Barry? If you say no, then you are denying god-based morality.

“The 9-11 terrorists were doing what they were absolutely convinced was the will of their god and they believed they would be greatly rewarded in an afterlife. Were they acting morally, Barry? If you say no, then you are denying god-based morality.”

This is a ridiculous argument. The 9-11 terrorists were acting contrary to Judeo-Christian morality based in scripture. They may have claimed a god-based justification for their actions, but claiming such does not make it so.

alan:

“Bruce David: how do you know its a wrong assumption and your assumption is correct [?]”

I don’t. I have my beliefs, you have yours. But if you make a law based on your assumptions and those assumptions are not shared by the majority of the population, you have participated in tyranny. Such tyranny would not be an inconsequential one. Women will die or be made sterile having illegal abortions, as they did and were before Roe vs. Wade. Doctors who are otherwise law-abiding will be turned into criminals because their consciences will not let them allow a woman to suffer when they have the power to prevent it. Children will come into the world unwanted, with all the psychological and social harm that accompanies such births. And women’s (and men’s) lives will be interrupted and altered by the need to care for and raise a child they didn’t want and can’t afford. Not to mention the effect that thousands more children will have on the ecology of our already overcrowded planet.

alan:

“I will tell you straight out – no apologies whatsoever – you don’t have the slightest idea of what the “real message of Jesus” is – offensive – so be it, but it is given in Love.”

I am not offended, and I accept that it was delivered in love. I believe that Jesus came to show us by example who and what we really are. We are all the sons and daughters of God, made in His image and likeness, and we all have within us the power to be and do as Jesus did and was. I know that this is not the Christian point of view, but I do not come by my opinion lightly or without study. How do you know I am wrong?

“Human beings, who else?”

Indeed.

The fact is that in this life human beings are the only arbiters of morality. I hear a lot about the need for an objective morality, but I know nobody who has access to such a morality nor who lives according to one. Everybody — atheist and believer alike — makes local, contextual decisions. Moral rules are decided — again, by atheist and believer alike — socially and via compromise.

“Objective morality” has no effect except to say that my local, contextual moral decisions have more authority than yours, and therefore that you should have less say in the collective morality in which we all participate.

Who is to say you are right and Hitler was wrong?

What I am saying is that the transcendent morality that will allow you to condemn Hitler’s actions independently of all the suffering he caused does not exist, nor can it. We judge things to be good and evil based on the fact that they either cause or alleviate human suffering. Trying to separate the concepts of good and evil from the subjectivity of human experience is impossible, I think.

Hi JTaylor,

I’ve liked reading your posts.

Its interesting that the character you describe in post 101 (yourself?) has been “unjustly jailed on death row” (my emphasis).

Leaving that aside for now, I’m wondering how would you respond to a scenario in which the incarceration was not unjust. Imagine, for example, if a Nuremburg judge were to announce from the bench, “It is the opinion of this court that we all need to learn to ‘live with each other and deal patiently with each others imperfections and faults. Learn to forgive, and then learn to forgive some more. Nothing more.’” He then takes off his robes and walks out. Would this be acceptable to you?

“They may have claimed a god-based justification for their actions, but claiming such does not make it so.”

What would make it so?

CannuckianYankee:

They may have claimed a god-based justification for their actions, but claiming such does not make it so.

That was my point. You can’t just say something is or isn’t moral because you say that your god says so. You’d have to prove your god exists and that’s not going to happen, is it? Therefore morality can’t be god-based.

Clive @157,

Can you elaborate? Or, is that all you have to say?

Clive #157:

“Please explain the origin and nature of this code and how it is administered.”

Origin–God

Nature–God

Administered–written in your conscience.

Clive, did you employ any particular design detection technique to determine that this moral code was “written in your conscience” (presumably, by the Christian God)?

Wow, you guys are amazing!!

Simply put, whose frame of reference for morality are we to use? If there is no frame of reference then why is my moral compass better or more accurate than anyone elses? The atheist would say, “It isn’t.” And if no one person’s moral compass is better to use then who can say for certain what is right and what is wrong? In such as the case with Hitler, whose moral compass are we using to pass a judgement of evil or not evil?

However if there is an over-encompassing moral compass in which we are to abide by then all can be judged by that standard and we can succinctly conclude what is right and what is wrong for the most part.

Just remember that with “sound rational reasoning” many an innocent man has been executed.

CS Lewis does a great job of explaining the moral law of God in his book Mere Christianity.

Good discussion ya’ll.

“Compromise implies a standard that both can agree on. If there were no standard, there would be no compromise.”

Of course there are standards. They just aren’t objective.

“You’re saying that your context is relative–but so are all other contexts. But if this is true, it isn’t relative, it’s objective.”

No, that just means that context is more or less universal. It’s not objective. Every being that makes moral decisions makes them contextually, but that doesn’t mean context is objective. Similarly, every being that sees also sees from its own perspective, but that doesn’t make perspective as such objective.

Also, some contexts are individual, and some are very widely held. Every action is local, but sometimes “local” looks like the whole world. There’s nothing to be gained by adding “objective” to morality except a refusal to consider the perspective of others.

Compromise implies a failure to achieve objective standards. The parties to compromise would both rather have something different, but they go with the best option available. Context; relativism; the real world.

Clive #170:

Yes, self-reflection.

Can you calculate FCSI with that?

wagenweg @171: “In such as the case with Hitler, whose moral compass are we using to pass a judgement of evil or not evil?”

From whom or where did you learn that you are to be passing judgements on people? It’s Barry’s fault for citing Hitler in the original post. Barry, with didn’t you use yourself as an example and leave the paper-hanger alone? Are his sins worse in the eyes of God than yours?

Clive:

And my statement that culture is just a collection of individuals, I suppose, could be considered reductionist, but that would be like saying that math involves numbers.

No, it would like saying that math is nothing but numbers.

Clive #157:

I’m not a mathematician, I can’t calculate much

Maybe we can ask Kairosfocus to do it (that is, calculate the FCSI of the moral code written into the human conscience).

After all, if we don’t figure out whether the chances of that code existing are beyond the upward probability bound, we won’t know for sure that it isn’t the product of unguided evolution.

It would be a great research paper.

You know, really, we are all moral relativists in practice, whatever we like to believe is the truth of the matter. There really is no choice about it. By this I mean that ultimately each one of us must decide for him or herself what is right or wrong.

I will illustrate my point biographically. I was raised in an agnostic family. Since reaching adulthood, I have come to believe deeply in the existence of the Divine. Let’s say that I agree that I should surrender to God and allow His authority to guide my moral decisions. How do I discover what God wants me to do? Not having been raised in any particular religious tradition, I have many competing claims to sift through. The Muslims will tell me that the ultimate moral authority lies in the Koran and the Hadith of the prophet Mohammed. Buddhists will invoke the Buddhist scriptures. Hindus will point to the Baghavad Gita and the Upanishads. Just the other day, a couple of Mormons tried to convince me that the Book of Mormon was the final Word of God. How do I decide? I have no choice but to decide for myself what I believe to be true. Let’s say I believe that Jesus really lived and said and did what is claimed for him, and so I decide to become a Christian. But which version of Christian morality do I adopt? Do I accept Catholicism, which tells me that divorce, contraception, and even “impure thoughts” are sins? Or do I accept a stricter version that tells me that even dancing and non-liturgical music are crimes against God? Or do I go with a more liberal Christianity that holds that any genuine expression of love, even a homosexual expression, is good in His eyes? Again, there is no escaping it, the choice is mine. Let’s say that I decide that the only way out of my dilemma is to accept the Bible as the final authority for all moral questions. But I find that, among other things, the Bible says, “It is acceptable for marriage to consist of a union between one man and one or more women.” (II Sam. 3:2 – 5), and “Marriage does not impede a man’s right to take concubines, in addition to his wife or wives.” (II Sam. 5:13, I Kings 11:3, II Chron. 11:21), and “If the wife is discovered not to be a virgin [when she is married],…the woman is to be executed.” (Deut. 22:13 – 21) And many others, including that if a child is disobedient, he is to be taken to the town wall and stoned to death, and that if a woman, while defending her husband against an attacker, shall grab the assailant by his privates, she shall be executed. I would wager that even the most die-hard believer in the literal truth of the Bible ignores these admonitions. On whose authority? His or her own, of course. (Or else that of some other human being to whom they have surrendered their own authority).

I submit that there is no absolute moral authority precisely because God has not left us a single, unequivocal, moral guide, but rather hundreds of competing guides, each claiming to be the one true authority. I think He wants it that way, because clearly, He could have made it different if He had wanted to. The good news is that He has given each of us an unerring moral compass within our own hearts. I always know, really, what is right action for me (but NOT for anyone else) in any given situation. The only question is whether I will listen to that inner voice.

One day, we’ll be rid of atheists. But we won’t get rid of them the same way they want to get rid of us (=genocide).

Knocking down methodological naturalism is the first step.

Of course it doesn’t feel right, and of course I wish it were otherwise. Wishing doesn’t make it so, however. We have to do the best we can with what we have.

The reason I don’t think a transcendent morality can exist is that you can’t define it in terms of human suffering (it would then no longer be transcendent), and if you don’t, it comes across as being unsatisfactorily arbitrary (what if God said killing and causing suffering is good? Would we then be arguing using Mother Theresa rather than Hitler to represent evil?). It seems to be a fundamental contradiction.

Bruce David, that’s a nice post. I don’t agree with all of it, but I think your basic point is right.

Clive, you write

There would be no “best” option available if relativity were true. “Best” implies that there is a fixed standard that is being approximated to, otherwise “best” wouldn’t mean anything.

First, relativity refers to physics, relativism to philosophy.
Second, the “best” I was referring to implies at least two different “standards” — each party thinks his or her standard is best, but there is no agreed upon standard in compromise — only an agreement to settle.

Clive the “answer” to Bruce David’s point is found at the end of a long series of relatively derived, negotiated interpretations and a highly contingent history of theological conflict and struggle. That’s a pitiful excuse for an objective standard.

Could one of you who believes in objective moral beliefs offer a list. Maybe it would be useful to talk about specifics rather than just talking about these things in the abstract.

@ AmerikanInKananaskis, #185….

What on earth makes you think atheists are threatening you and yours with genocide? Is it any particular atheists, or just atheists in general?

Clive,

All of those principles (not really “moral beliefs” except when specific) seem on the whole to lead to increased human happiness. Similar principles could be derived pragmatically (Jeremy Bentham) or with secular legal theory (John Rawls). Why must they be objective or involve anything divine?

To Clive: You said,

“The authority comes from the New Testament, being that it is a fulfillment of the OT Law. The verses you cite are from the OT. I can appreciate your conundrum, but there is an answer to it.”

But don’t you see, your decision to accept the New Testament as your authority (instead of, say, the Koran, the Buddhist scriptures, or the Tao Te Ching) is a decision only you can make. No one can make it for you, and in so doing you are deciding what moral law you will adopt. There is no escaping the fact that each of us must decide for ourselves in some way what moral action is and isn’t.

Bruce David: “There is no escaping the fact that each of us must decide for ourselves in some way what moral action is and isn’t.”

Do you know the certainty of the above statement? If so, how?

CannuckianYankee, you don’t decide for yourself? How does that work?

Hazel: “Could one of you who believes in objective moral beliefs offer a list. Maybe it would be useful to talk about specifics rather than just talking about these things in the abstract.”

Any comprehensive list would be obsolete in a few years, due not to relative values, but to changing acts of evil, and the subsequent shifting in the application and synthesis of law in response to them.

If you start with Creation, there is only one law. If you go from there, say 2,500 years later, you get the Ten Commandments, and from there, the Levitical code. But according to the New Testament, these are insufficient, and the believers of the time they were written did not make themselves righteous by keeping them. New Testament morality is not based on the law of the Old – it rather transcends the law, because it is based in grace by faith.

However, law is needed in order to point to the fact that we are sinful. It is the standard by which sin is measured, and includes not only outward deeds, but inward attitudes.

So the answer, Hazel, is that while there are some objective codes in the bible, which point to our sinfulness, there is no code one can follow to declare oneself a righteous (perfectly moral)person.

I think for the sake of argument, the simplest of the codes is the Ten Commandments. You might object to the “….have any other gods before me” part, but I think you would agree with much of the rest. Is it objective? I think so, but for only one very important reason – scripture states that it came directly from God. If the Ten Commandments were simply something that Moses made up while smoking peyote and hallucinating about a non-consuming fire in a bush while meditating alone on the side of a mountain in Arabia, I don’t think we could say that it is objective.

Of course this is all dependent upon the truth of the existence of God and the truthfulness of scripture – most of us here are aware of that.

But you asked for an example of a objective moral beliefs, which is not the same as asking for an argument for the existence of objective moral beliefs. That argument would have to come from the impossibility to defend rational thought in the context of relative truth. In other words, to be certain that there can only be relative truths is self-defeating. It’s no less the case when talking about relative morality. Morality comes from truth.

—-David Kellogg: (to Clive) “Why must they (morals) be objective or involve anything divine?”

Because the moral code must be in conformity with the intellectual faculties, volitional powers, explosive appetites, and deep-seated passions inherent in a designed human nature. Humans need operating manuals just like appliances need operating manuals, except that maintenance instructions are more important for humans. Only humans can pervert their own nature. It is just as easy to ruin a human being as it is to ruin a pop-up toaster. Simply tell him that there are no objective truths or morals, in which case he will stop trying to control his lower nature and immediately start acting like an animal.

“Simply tell him that there are no objective truths or morals, in which case he will stop trying to control his lower nature and immediately start acting like an animal.”

This is rubbish. Plenty of people “with” objective truths and morals perpetrated hideous acts: abusing under-age parishioners, conducting pogroms, legislating against undesirables, colonizing and subjugating people.

I think that religion’s insane pathology for characterizing people as flawed and sinned creates the very problem it alleges it exists to counteract.

Human beings – individuals – do not need operating manuals. Such an idea is more than absurd: it’s dangerous, depraved, immoral, and incorrect.

It infuriates me to hear such self-loathing trying to be imposed itself on others – wrapped, of course, in the obligatory package of sanctimoniousness.

Barry, is your call for more “Nietzsche atheists” also a figure of speech? It suggests (see my 78 above) that you’re asking for more atheists to behave like Eric Harris.

And yes, I get the hyperbole. The underlying point, however, is repugnant beyond exaggeration.

Barry, I think you should let Stephen speak for himself. He sure sounds like he thinks atheists are more likely to act like animals.

Allen McNeill

As someone who has actually visited Auschwitz (have you?) I find it somewhat ironic that you would compare my apologia for what the Israelites did to an edict by Adolf Hitler, whoi masterminded the killing of six million Jews. That was an unfortuntate comparison. Now, let’s have a look at what I actually wrote:

I therefore conclude that if God actually told the Israelites to kill the Canaanites, He must have intervened to ensure that innocent Canaanite woman and children suffered no pain or distress in the process.

I highlighted these words for a reason. On the one hand, I am morally repelled by certain Christians who insist that God has no duties towards any of His creatures, and that He is pefectly entitled to kill anyone He wants, and command His followers to do the same, simply because He is God. That attitude strikes me as morally monstrous.

On the other hand, I am not impressed by certain modernist “revisionists” who either allegorize the Canaanite massacres away, or who argue that the accounts of the Israelite conquest were not historical anyway, so we don’t need to worry about them. The reason why I don’t accept this reasoning is fourfold: (i) the Biblical writer(s) evidently treated the events narrated in the account of the Israelite conquest of Canaan as if they were actual historical events – in other words, the literary style of the Israelite conquest is that of a narrative, not an allegorical poem; (ii) for the last 3,000 years, the Jews have consistently taught that the narratives describing the conquest of Canaan were descriptions of historical events, and Jesus as an orthodox Jew would undoubtedly have been taught the same; (iii) nowhere in His teaching does Jesus ever hint that He thought otherwise, or that He regarded the actions of God in the Old Testament as unjust; (iv) for the past 2,000 years, Christian theologians of all stripes have consistently taught that God had every right to act as He did in commanding the slaughter of the Canaanites.

The whole point of my post was to show that even God has certain duties towards human beings. In particular, (i) He may not kill or order the killing of innocent people, unless they would suffer an even worse fate had they lived; (ii) He may not inflict suffering on innocent people whose deaths He has ordained, even if it is necessary, for their own good, that they should die.

It was for that reason that I argued that God must have intervened to spare the Canaanites from any pain while they were being slaughtered. The only alternative, as I see it, is to argue that Jesus was wrong about a basic point of morality, and hence not God.

Your comparisons with Hitler are facile and beside the point. God is omniscient; Hitler was not. God loves everyone; Hitler loved no-one, except Aryans. God does want people to suffer; Hitler wanted 6 million Jews to suffer.

You write:

In sum, vj, you have asserted that:

1) killing innocent people is entirely justified if God/Der Fuhrer commands it,

2) if you follow His orders, he will make you forget what you have done, and

3) God/Der Fuhrer will make certain that those innocent people who He has ordered to be killed won’t feel it.

You ignored the numerous evidential conditions which I added in my post (#121), before any person could rationally carry out a command to kill. You also ignored the point that the deaths of the innocent people must actually be for their own good.

Listen. I have a three-year-old son myself. I could no more contemplate killing a child than you could. I don’t know what happened 3,000 years ago, but as a Christain, that would be my best guess. But if you want to call Jesus a moral monster, then why don’t you just come out and say so?

Just as an aside, it seems to me highly likely that the Exodus story in the Bible isn’t historical. But if there’s a historical component to it, it also seems highly likely that any slaughtering was performed by people rather than God. Putting the responsibility on God is a nifty rationalization.

@damitall, #193

I guess you flunked 20th-century history.

—-David Kellogg: “Barry, I think you should let Stephen speak for himself. He sure sounds like he thinks atheists are more likely to act like animals.”

Well, first of all I didn’t use the word atheist, so our visiting Darwinists can breathe a sigh of relief. Second, I was referring to anyone who abandons reason, including moral relativists. Third, I did indeed used a metaphor for hyperbolic and dramatic effect, as in, I don’t really think Darwinists go around saying, “Bow Wow,” or “Meow.”

I see Barry’s point, however, because a day or so ago, I pointed out that atheists are less enthusiastic about saving babies than Christians, [as in proabortion] and Allen immediately interpreted my allusion to that demographic group as “character assasination.” So, I can undersand why Barry was doing a heads up.

Fifty years ago 80% of Americans believed in objective truth and objective morality. Today, only one in three accept the same world view. So, in effect, I refer to what might now be classified as the majority of unfortunate souls in the Western hemisphere who have been bamboozled into believing that there is no moral map by which they may guide their lives. Some of them are in government and on Wall Street, which helps explain our current finanancial crisis. The level of malfeasance is staggering and I have no doubt that the same moral relativism that informed their behavior will sink our ship—- unless rational people keep holding the the truth deniers accountable.

Enemies of reason take heart, you have brainwashed our children and young adults so completely that they react to my appeals for reason and morality the same way you do——-W-h-a-z-z-z-z-a-t!

—-Larry Tanner: “The underlying point, however, is repugnant beyond exaggeration.”

The underlying point is that there is a moral code that was designed for humans. Is that what you find repugnaht, or do you always fail to read for context.

—-Larry Tanner: “It infuriates me to hear such self-loathing trying to be imposed itself on others – wrapped, of course, in the obligatory package of sanctimoniousness.”

In other words, you don’t accept objective morality yourself. There, that didn’t hurt so much did it.

—-”I think that religion’s insane pathology for characterizing people as flawed and sinned creates the very problem it alleges it exists to counteract.”

Its about time you got around to your bottom line. What took you so long?

StephenB:

“It is just as easy to ruin a human being as it is to ruin a pop-up toaster. Simply tell him that there are no objective truths or morals, in which case he will stop trying to control his lower nature and immediately start acting like an animal.”

I hear versions of this repeatedly from Christian apologetics, the idea that without an external, objective moral code, backed up presumably by a punitive God, people will just do any terrible thing that they want to. But any objective observation of human behavior strongly suggests otherwise. As others in this thread have pointed out, many absolutely awful things have been done by people professing Christian faith (or Muslim or Hindu, etc.), and it is also true that many agnostics and atheists are totally decent, kind people (my brother, for instance–a confirmed atheist and Darwinist, yet one of the kindest people you’ll ever want to meet, in spite of an impish propensity to tease unmercifully).

My view, as I have stated above, is that we really ARE made in the image and likeness of God. What this means to me is that the essence of our being is loving, creative, joyful, wise, powerful, free, and one with everything. This of course raises the obvious question, why do people behave in ways that are clearly in contradiction to that basic nature? The short answer is that we have forgotten who we are. It is also my belief, however, that that forgetting is part of the Plan. The long answer will have to await another post.

Another way to say the same thing: do you really need God to tell you to do what you know in your heart is right?

It has taken me a very long while, but I think I finally understand why ID exists, why this website exists, and why the regular commentators who support ID at this website are so determined to assert the absolute reality of ID, in spite of a complete lack of empirical evidence.

It’s all right here in this quote:

“Of course this is all dependent upon the truth of the existence of God and the truthfulness of scripture – most of us here are aware of that.”

I believe that this is the crux of the whole science versus ID debate: if there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God, then it all comes down entirely to pure, unsupported supposition. Yes, one can assert that God exists, and can assert that therefore whatever God asserts must, by definition, be the absolute objective truth, but by the standards of scientific logic (which are now almost universally accepted as providing the most reliable evidence for descriptions of reality), arguments based purely and solely on assertion are no longer considered valid.

Ergo, without some independent source of evidence – independent of the original assertion, that is – then it all comes down to dueling assertions, which means that eventually it all comes down to force majeure: whoever can make the most forceful assertion gets to define the Truth.

Therefore, there must be some kind of empirical evidence for the existence of God. The fact that no one has ever found any is completely irrelevant, and will remain so indefinitely. It also explains why it is perfectly legitimate to deliberately distort, misinterpret, omit, or otherwise alter empirical evidence if it does not support the otherwise unsupportable assertion that God exists. [1]

Here is the way it looks to me:

Condition #1:

• If a moral code is not objective, it is ipso facto invalid.

• The moral code asserted by God is the only objective moral code. [2]

• If God does not exist, then there is no basis for the assertion that there is an objective moral code.

• Therefore, if God does not exist, anything is permitted.

Condition #2:

• An argument supported purely by assertion(s) is invalid. [3]

• Ever since Bacon’s Novum Organum, it has generally been considered necessary that there should be empirical evidence (either direct or indirect) in support of arguments.

• Ergo, there must be empirical evidence in support of the assertion that God exists. Otherwise, there can be no objective morals, and therefore anything is permitted.

Conclusion:

Since God must exist (otherwise there are no morals and anything is permitted), then there must be empirical evidence for His existence. Finding none, it is therefore necessary to pretend that some exists, or to make some up. Otherwise there can be no objective basis for morals, society will necessarily collapse into chaos, and we will all inevitably become insatiable, maniacal, cannibalistic, orgiastic mass murderers, rapists, and thieves.

Notes:

[1] Unsupportable on the basis of empirical evidence, that is.

[2] An obvious corollary to this is that each and every one of God’s moral prescriptions is both objective and absolutely True, by definition. Hence the argument that anything God prescribes (such as the massacre of the Canaanites) is morally right, simply by virtue of His saying so.

[3] To be specific, arguments based purely on deductive (i.e. Aristotelian) logic have been largely superseded by arguments based on inductive logic. This was Francis Bacon’s fault.

P.S. It also seems to me that this is the reason why ethical philosophers now virtually unanimously agree that ethical prescriptions cannot be derived from statements derived from empirical science. To do so not only conflates two separate domains of logic (i.e. deductive versus inductive), but also requires that there be empirical evidence for something (i.e. ethical prescriptions) that are not and cannot be justified by empirical analysis (i.e. the workings of nature). Yes, we can use empirical analysis to determine if our ethical prescriptions have brought about the goals which we have decided to pursue, but we cannot use empirical analysis to formulate those goals.

Bruce David, I like some your points. Think of it this way. If a society or culture is falling into an excess of one kind or another, the proper antedote is a push from the other extreme. One hundred years ago, for example, puritanism compromised rational discussions about sex. The proper response was to tell those poor people to “loosen up.” Today, we have fallen into the other extreme of vulgarity, which also compromises reason from the opposite perspective. The proper response at this time is to say, “tighten up.”
We don’t need to be critiquing puritanism or religion, we need to be critiquing vulgarity and moral relativism. The way to do that is to push from the other side. Moral relativists must be exposed and confronted, because they have become a bigger problem than the old time bigots, which had the opposite problem.

At the moment, our citizenry needs to worry less about getting sexual neuroses from too much stricture and more about getting addicted to internet pornography from too much moral neglect.

vj:

You ask:

“…if you want to call Jesus a moral monster, then why don’t you just come out and say so?”

and you provide the obvious answer:

The only alternative [answer]…is to argue that Jesus was wrong about a basic point of morality, and hence not God.

And with assertion, I completely agree.

VJT said @121: “Before you continue, you might to have a look at these two articles by Christian apologist Glenn Miller at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html (on the destruction of the Canaanites), and at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/rbutcher1.html (on the Amalekites).”

I read the articles (or rather skimmed, they are very long!). This caught my eye at the beginning of the first one:

This is an issue I have always had profound trouble with and one I suspended judgment on when I began to believe. Lately, though, it has started haunting me again, and I have been searching and praying for an answer or insight. The responses to this problem I have seen so far (God did them a favor, they were like cancer, or God’s justice is beyond ours) seem to me to be lame or inappropriate.

It suggests that this is being written for the benefit of believers, so that brings me to my first question. Is there a similar analysis (with the same conclusions) from a non-Christian or neutral author, or is it fair to say we’ll only see this kind of reasoning from a Christian? It is hard to read this and not assume that there is no strong confirmation bias at work (and I think some very fancy post-hoc rationalization if not sophistry too).

Then the following scripture is quoted (Deut 7):

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations — the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you — 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.

This seems a rather unequivocal command to me. I’m sure if this was prophetic or it served some other kind of purpose everybody would be quite happy to take it at face value. But Miller of course tries to soft-pedal this one away too.

Then we read stuff like:

Even though they were the ’scourge’ of the earth at that time–by international consensus–God did not desire to annihilate the people. His expressed intentions were to move them away from His people.

and

And, frankly, the alternative to ‘dying swiftly with your parents’ is NOT “obviously better”–its a close call.

and

think it should be clear by now that this was neither a (1) “slaughter”; nor (2) “wholesale”! It was a deportation

and

Far from being the “genocide of an innocent people for land-hungry Israelites”, it was instead the “firm, yet just–and even a little merciful to the masses–removal of a people from a tract of land, mostly through migration.

Yes, that’s right – God was a “little merciful” that children and women (presumably pregnant ones) were slaughtered. What bothers me most is that the Caanites are also God’s children. What about their salvation? What chance did they or will they ever get to receive God’s love. Yes, they are wicked, but according to God (in the NT at least) we are “all wicked” and there are no graduations. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Could it not have at least been in His power to have “evicted” them humanely? We treat our pets (and livestock for that matter) better than God did His enemies.

The basic message throughout this piece is that the Caanites were extraordinarily wicked and deserved everything they had coming to them. And of course everything that looks like genocide isn’t really “genocide” but just God “evicting and driving them out”. It’s just that in the process many hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) got slaughtered on the way.

And the conclusion (which speaks for itself) is:
What started out as the “Unfair genocide of the Canaanites” ended up as the “Less-than-they-deserved punitive deportation from the land”

It certainly is an impressive piece of apologetics. So basically we have justified that which for all-intents-and-purposes bears remarkable similarity to genocide, is not only a justifiable act but one of even of mercy! I wonder if we applied this same process and methodology to the Jewish Holocaust in WWII whether we could derive a similar result – that the Nazis were also justified? Given how easy it is to twist and turn things, I have no doubt what the answer to that is.

lt all seems to be a prima facie case of how the Bible is selectively interpreted. The difficult and challenging parts are treated with in-depth, arcane, and lengthy apologetics that cite hundreds of BIble verses to make their case (and usually by people who already believe and are trying to make something fit into an established faith position). Yet, when there is a verse or passage which serves some end (e.g., condemnation of homosexuality or a prophecy), it is treated completely at face value and cherry picked straight from the pages. I do not doubt that anybody could pick a position (pro or con) and make a very compelling and convincing argument that it is supported by scripture (again homosexuality comes to mind where people have done exactly that). KairosFocus in one of the threads, seems to think I should just accept the prophecies at ‘face value’ as history even – but if this kind of apologetics is good enough for dealing with the “genocide” issue why can’t we subject prophecy to the same process? Apparently it don’t work that way…

VJT: “God is by definition reasonable. He cannot be otherwise, for His nature is to have perfect knowledge and love of everything and everyone. I suggest you take that as your starting point when interpreting passages in Scripture that appear to depict an irrational, heartless, bloodthirsty, vengeful or capricious God.”

By whose definition? Yours? This is a humongous presupposition. So, you’re saying that every time I read some atrocious act in the OT, I should just shrug it off as “it’s OK really, God’s quite a good guy, honest!” I honestly don’t think my brain is capable of such mental gymnastics. I’ll guess I’ll just have to burn for ever along with all the other freethinkers…

To Allen MacNeill #212

The fundamental thesis of Darwinian evolution is that a large number of small changes in a species (brought about by random mutation and natural selection) acting over a long period of time can effect macro-evolutionary change (new organs, processes, or body plans). There is NO empirical evidence for this claim. It has not been observed in nature nor in the laboratory, and it certainly has not been observed in the fossil record (which records the evolution of living things, certainly, but not the Darwinian explanation of it). Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that contradicts that claim. You will find it in Denton, Behe, Dembski, and others.

The reason that there are so many intelligent, knowledgeable people who believe in ID is quite simply that life cries out “This was ENGINEERED!” And in the light of the failure of Darwinism to explain it, the obvious conclusion is that it was. You want empirical evidence? Life itself is the empirical evidence.

But even so respected an apologist for ID as Dr. William Dembski has stated that the Intelligent Designer could have been space aliens. Why is it that, when it comes down to brass tacks, the only acceptable explanation for the evolution of life on Earth is that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim-Mormon God did it? Or have you missed all of the threads on this website in which this has been the dominant theme?

#216:

Nice tu quoque, Bruce.

At 196, after Bruce David had written, ““There is no escaping the fact that each of us must decide for ourselves in some way what moral action is and isn’t,”

CannuckianYankee replied,

Do you know the certainty of the above statement? If so, how?

This is a common rejoinder by those on the “objective truth” side of this argument, and in my opinion, it has no weight. Since I agree strongly with Bruce David, I’d like to reply to CYankee:

If I were responding, I would say “Of course I’m not certain, because I don’t believe certainty is possible. But after years of observing and studying human beings, reading widely in philosophy and religion, and reflecting deeply on my internal experience, the above statement represents something I do believe accurately reflects my understanding of the human condition. That’s the best I can do – make the most sense I can of the variety of experience I have had related to this topic.”

Now of course it would be stupid to have to make that disclaimer every time I say something. All of us make countless statements, including all the ones on this forum, of exactly this nature – our best attempt to articulate what we believe is so based on the sum total of our experience. Coming back with “well, are you really certain is a rhetorical move that adds nothing to the discussion.

Bruce David: 160 – and we all have within us the power to be and do as Jesus did and was.

really – good luck being like Him and better luck making atonement for sin and fulfilling prophecy and being the creator of all seen and unseen and of things to come. Many have that hope that we may all become like Him while at the same time refusing to accept what He has to say about that…”what is in man”. The law is a tutor to show we don’t keep it and have a need. The command to be like Him is like a mirror to also show our need to which we might come to understand its impossibility and to hopefully respond in humble repentance “unto godliness” and hope in ones heart for the “inheritance of the saints in light”.

Bruce cont. “I know that this is not the Christian point of view, but I do not come by my opinion lightly or without study. How do you know I am wrong?” – see above.

thanks for your thoughts

JTaylor

I’ll guess I’ll just have to burn for ever along with all the other freethinkers.

For the record, I don’t think you’ll burn. See my post #64 above.

So, you’re saying that every time I read some atrocious act in the OT, I should just shrug it off as “It’s OK really, God’s quite a good guy, honest!” I honestly don’t think my brain is capable of such mental gymnastics.

Suppose for argument’s sake that you’re right, and the God of the OT is indeed a moral monster. What should you do, in that case? If you find revealed religion to be intellectually incredible, then the next option to explore is bare theism: in other words, the position that there is an objective moral code, and a personal God exists who is by nature incapable of violating this code; however, for reasons best known to Him/Herself, this God has not (yet) issued any public revelation. That’s a perfectly respectable intellectual position to take, and I’d be more impressed if the skeptics on this thread were to give it serious attention.

David Kellogg

Just as an aside, it seems to me highly likely that the Exodus story in the Bible isn’t historical. But if there’s a historical component to it, it also seems highly likely that any slaughtering was performed by people rather than God. Putting the responsibility on God is a nifty rationalization.

That’s a perfectly respectable position for a person who is not a Jew or a Christian to take. There is no archeological evidence of the Exodus, at the present time. As I am a Christian, it is not an option open to me; I therefore interpret the events you describe very differently. I might remind you that we know very little about what happened in those times. Ken Kitchener is an eminent Egyptologist who accepts the historicity of the OT narratives; however, many of his colleagues in the field do not.

For the record, reading the Old Testament (especially the book of Deuteronomy) played a leading aprt in bringing me back into the Christian faith. What struck me was the fact that God wasn’t the monster everyone said He was – He displayed concern for the poor, widows, orphans and children. I suggest that you and JTaylor read the book – not once, but twice.

Allen MacNeill,

“Therefore, there must be some kind of empirical evidence for the existence of God. The fact that no one has ever found any is completely irrelevant, and will remain so indefinitely.”

Your whole premise is utter nonsense. Science itself operates with unspoken metaphysical commitments that are not part of science itself, so your lunge for scientism never gets off the ground. Second, there is empirical evidence for design and a creator. Conclusive? No, but conclusive evidence for most weighty propositions is almost always lacking – there’s evidence enough, very ample evidence, to put stock in, and likely more will arrive. Finally, that deductive logic has been ’superseded’ to such a degree is hardly a concern – it’s called “a mistake”. Aristotle, Aquinas and others have quite a lot to teach us even now.

You have a nasty tendency to fall back onto psychoanalyzing people you disagree with when you run out of ammo. You shouldn’t do it, brother. It’s not very Quaker of you.

Vjtorley,

I find myself differing strongly with you on this subject for one reason in particular: It seems to me you’re making the mistake of viewing God as yet another human-like agent, rather than recognizing that God is in a unique position. Really, the most unique position available.

Your reasoning seems to be that since God is just, that He therefore must have intervened to save whichever of the canaanites were not culpable. My response differs: God is the one being, the only being, who is capable of correcting all injustices, and righting all wrongs. What’s more, He is capable of doing this at any time. He doesn’t have to do it right when an act is about to occur, or right after it occurs, etc.

Think of it this way. It would be immoral for a father to, say, leave his young child in the wood for three days in order to teach him a lesson. Even if his intentions are good (Say, he wants to teach him about self-reliance), even if he has relative control over the situation (He knows the woods well, knows his son well, has a very good idea of how things would work out), I think the case for the immorality of this act is strong. And the reasons are: No matter how smart the father is, he’s not omniscient. No matter how capable he is, he’s not omnipotent.

If he were, then the situation changes. He knows absolutely everything that will happen to his child in the forest. He is capable of handling absolutely everything that could occur with his child in the forest. And (given this example) he loves his child, so he would want the best for his child. These capabilities change the morality of the act, and really, the morality of all acts.

Naturally, the only person who has those capabilities in tandem is God. Our moral duties are going to differ drastically in scope as a result – and it is every bit as much of a mistake to apply the exact human moral standards to God, just as it would be a mistake to apply God’s moral standards to a man (say, for example, Stalin.) What we can expect is, regardless of what took place with the Canaanites (or at any other point in history), with God these things will be ultimately set right.

In the meantime, we do what is morally right for humans – we love people, we recognize life as sacred, we do our best to do good and avoid evil. And when we falter, we pick ourselves up, recover, learn, and continue.

To Allen MacNeill

Just for the record, I myself incline towards the view that it was not God directly that did the engineering, but rather advanced non-physical entities preparing a place for us who choose to participate in human existence.

I think that the reason most ID folks believe that it was the “Judeo-Christian-Muslim-Mormon God” is that that fits nicely with their metaphysical beliefs. But you really should ask them. But I also believe them when they declare publicly, as many of them do, that they came to their position in favor of ID for scientific, not religious reasons. In other words, it was that they saw a failure of the Darwinian explanation, which they concluded for scientific, not scriptural, reasons. It is really a scientifically based conviction that the Darwinian explanation simply doesn’t cut it, coupled with an openness to the possibility that life was designed based on their philosophic/religious worldviews that led to the conclusion that ID was the most reasonable explanation.

But of course, this is just surmise on my part. Let some of the others give you their side of it.

Allen,

“Ergo, without some independent source of evidence – independent of the original assertion, that is – then it all comes down to dueling assertions, which means that eventually it all comes down to force majeure: whoever can make the most forceful assertion gets to define the Truth.”

The most compelling argument for the existence of a God is the fine tuning of the universe. This is certainly evidence and it is independent of the original assertion. If someone is going to deny the existence of a God, then hey have to deal with that. It says very little about the nature of God but it is certainly evidence for an existence.

jerry,

I think there’s an abundance of arguments. Fine-tuning (even in some popular multiverse scenarios, this remains), first cause arguments, apparent design in nature (both end-products and evolutionary history), etc. Philosophically, even more arguments, some very powerful.

The arguments – the positive arguments for atheism, for the suppositions of an utterly and ultimately Designer-less and purpose-less cosmos – are in dramatically short supply. And that’s one of the least discussed aspects of these conflicts – pretend-skeptics attack and attack, but next to none will put forth their explanation. Not because they don’t have one, but because the weaknesses and absurdities therein would make the most extravagant pagan cosmology seem reasonable by comparison.

Which is why so many of the modern/’New’ atheists put in shockingly little time advancing their own metaphysics directly. In fact, if you watch the more outspoken ones, more time is dedicated to why they should never, ever be expected to provide such.

re: 212

Allen_MacNeill:

“It has taken me a very long while, but I think I finally understand why ID exists, why this website exists, and why the regular commentators who support ID at this website are so determined to assert the absolute reality of ID, in spite of a complete lack of empirical evidence.

It’s all right here in this quote:

‘Of course this is all dependent upon the truth of the existence of God and the truthfulness of scripture – most of us here are aware of that.’

I believe that this is the crux of the whole science versus ID debate: if there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God, then it all comes down entirely to pure, unsupported supposition.”

Mr. McNeill,

I recognize that quote as mine from post # 198. I’m not certain if you meant to, but you appear to have taken the quote out of context with what I stated in the post. Perhaps I didn’t word it as well as I should, but what I meant to convey is that the objective morality found in scripture is dependent upon the truthfulness of that scripture, and is in no way self-evident. It’s not intended to convey the popular prescript “God said it, I believe it, and that’s good enough for me.”

Hazel asked for an example of what might be considered as an objective moral belief. Please read the context. I in no way aserted that the scriptural Ten Commandments proclamation was self-evidently objective. In that sense, your conclusion is not warranted.

I think it would behoove you to reexamine the whole premise of this thread – the inability of materialistic metaphysics to consistently appeal to any objective truth – including morality. What “is” does not give us what “ought to be.” If those who believe this were consistent, then they would necessarily be a-moral. On the other hand, the very fact that people in the western world appeal to the morality given in scripture – especially found in the Ten Commandments (while separating out some of the objectionable commands) indicates that there’s something within them that is objective, despite the inconsistency of their application among modern humans.

I personally believe that the moral argument for God’s existence is one of the most logically sound arguments. Truth cannot be relative, without being self-defeating. We can transcribe that also to morality, since what ought to be is a form of truth. Thus, relative morality is also self-defeating. Truth can, however, be incomplete without being self-defeating, and I think this is where the problem lies in our inability to come to an understanding between us.

I think the problem for us is that there is all kinds of evil manifested in the world and throughout human history. The application of law simply cannot be synthesized to address all evil without an occasional updating of moral law. If you read scripture carefully from the beginning, you can clearly see an updating of moral law in response to new manifestations of evil. This updating is not in any way a negating of the law that went before, but a synthesis of the old with new prescripts. Some may view this as relative, but I see it more as an “evolution” if you will, of the application of law to new manifestations of evil.

At the end of the 1980s the world saw the end of the cold war, and a new surge in world terrorism. It took a while to respond to this developing evil, but humans responded by allowing an evolution in the way previous laws were applied in response. Hence, we switched to a cold war mentality to a more global one. An interesting observation, however, is that mistakes were made in response to 9-11. Mistakes were made because some of our leaders chose to abandon previous laws in favor of new tactics. Now it seems interesting that those protesting this change the most were those who were more aligned with a materialistic and relative view of morality. What was it that made the old way of doing things preferable to the new? Was our prior commitment to abandon torture as a means to interrogate “enemy combatants” somehow an objective measure? You tell me. I sense this kind of inconsistency among materialists quite often. Of course, you might argue that it was the non-materialist leaders who were inconsistent as well. Perhaps, but I think you can see the point that we appeal to something objective when we declare our distaste to things we find abhorrent.

Now in your response, you appeal to empiricism. I’m afraid that empiricism is not without its difficulties, and especially when it comes to metaphysical questions. In order for empiricism to be valid, it must appeal to objective reality, and not so much to assertions about what that reality is. I sense that materialists produce a-priory assertions about the nature of reality without considering other options. I find this to be true among some religiously oriented thinkers as well.

Can we not agree, however, that if a god could exist objectivey (and I know that many atheists have not dismissed this possbility forthright), that there could be objective evidences for that god’s existence beyond the materialistic empiricism you demand? After all, if you don’t allow that evidence, I can’t help sensing the presence of question-begging.

Apologists appeal to arguments of logic in order to show the reasonableness of God’s existence. Could that not be a form of empiricism, however incomplete?

StephenB says:

Fifty years ago 80% of Americans believed in objective truth and objective morality. Today, only one in three accept the same world view.

Ah, the things people believed fifty years ago.

[A] 1942 survey revealed that only 41 percent of all Americans believed that black and white soldiers should serve together in the armed forces. Only 55 percent agreed that a black man could be just as good a soldier as a white man. Only 42 percent agreed that “Negroes are as intelligent as white people.” The perceived differences between blacks and whites are hard to exaggerate, as only 36 percent believed that “negro blood is the same as white blood.” In addition to these strikingly prejudicial sentiments, the bulk of white Americans preferred to maintain distance between the races. Fifty-one percent claimed that streetcars and buses should be segregated. Fifty-five percent favored active job discrimination. Sixty-eight percent believed that white and black children should go to segregated schools. When it came to restaurants, 69 percent favored separate facilities, and fully 84 percent wanted segregated neighborhoods. This complex of attitides existed in an atmosphere of denial that race was even a social problem worth addressing, as three Americans in five said that Negroes are getting all the opportunities they deserve in this country.” (From The Mass Media nd the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes, Paul M. Kellstedt (Cambridge University Press, 2003).)

“Objective morality” sure led to great moral attitudes, didn’t it?

nullasalus,

I have read and watched people discuss the philosophical proofs of God and while some convince me the typical response to them is that they are subjective and hard to pin down so that even the lay person can understand. The lay person would throw up their hands at the various arguments. They will however understand in a moment the fine tuning argument. The atheist throw the subjective understanding of the philosophical proofs at you but what they cannot throw at you is the science they so adamantly says backs up their world view. Did any of them use science to justify their view in the Shermer thread on either of the other threads since then. No they immediately retreat into the subjectiveness of a philosophical argument. They cannot resort to any science for OOL or for even evolution, only philosophical arguments. It must really irk someone like Allen MacNeill who rails about that we have no science for our point of view when he has zippo for his.

If I was going to convince the average person on the existence of God I would start first with fine tuning. How one gets to your particular understanding of God is something completely different. I am just curious how Allen will handle it since he is a scientist and it is a scientific argument.

VJT: “For the record, I don’t think you’ll burn. See my post #64 above.”

I suppose I should take comfort, but then tens of millions of people in the US do have a literal belief that I will burn. I can understand there being some latitude in doctrine, in theology, but when it comes to hell at least there does seem to be a surprisingly wide range of interpretations. Which is odd when you think about it, that the very purpose of salvation is to be ’saved from’ something, yet there is no total clarity of what we are being saved from exactly.

VJT: “Suppose for argument’s sake that you’re right, and the God of the OT is indeed a moral monster. What should you do, in that case? If you find revealed religion to be intellectually incredible, then the next option to explore is bare theism: in other words, the position that there is an objective moral code, and a personal God exists who is by nature incapable of violating this code; however, for reasons best known to Him/Herself, this God has not (yet) issued any public revelation. That’s a perfectly respectable intellectual position to take, and I’d be more impressed if the skeptics on this thread were to give it serious attention.”

Well I guess I don’t really think God is a moral monster per se, because obviously I don’t see sufficient evidence to accept that the OT/NT God actually exists. So even though I express this so-called moral outrage at God in the OT, it is only hypothetical in that if such a person existed, this is how I would feel about them. So it becomes something of a moot point.

But I do agree with you about Deism – is that what you mean? (although I’m not sure I would characterize such an entity as a personal God?) Yes, it probably is a viable intellectual position (and oddly enough compatible with atheism in as much that an atheist sees no evidence for specific gods). Perhaps I could be a Revealed Religion Atheist and an Agnostic Deist (a RRAAD)? I think if ID ever did get to the point of conclusively and verifiably providing incontrovertible evidence, it’s a position I might seriously consider.

““Objective morality” sure led to great moral attitudes, didn’t it?”

Are you trying to be ironic?

Also, Mr. Mc Neill,

nullasalus:

“I think there’s an abundance of arguments. Fine-tuning (even in some popular multiverse scenarios, this remains), first cause arguments, apparent design in nature (both end-products and evolutionary history), etc. Philosophically, even more arguments, some very powerful.”

I think in order to break down the moral argument as a whole, you need to deal with the above arguments. Perhaps you have done so?

Nevertheless, each argument has its own basis in logic. The power of those arguments together cannot really be appropriately broken down peacemeal and affect the whole, because such objections are not evidently and necessarily so. They depend on some level of assertion and circularity.

Hence, with sound logic based in objective truth, there are arguments for God’s existence, which if seen together, solidify an objective while incomplete picture of a whole.

Now you may be capable of an attempt to break down one argument – although not completely, and that’s the point. The power of the reality of God’s existence lies in the whole picture, and not in an objection to any one of the parts. The parts harmonize with the whole.

The problem with materialism is that its “parts” DO break down when attempting to look at the whole picture. This is because materialism is contingent, and cannot explain its first cause consistently within itself. Theism explains its first cause as uncaused and necessary, not contingent, and as such, is a more powerful argument.

Because we can’t identify the designer satisfactorily by this approach does not negate the whole of the argument. It simply suggests that there may be other details, which might not be evident within our own logical paradigms. There might exist a higher “super-logic,” which encompasses the mysteries we have yet to discover. Some might suggest that such a super-logic is founded in materialism, but I can’t help but view this too as self-defeating.

I wonder why a former atheist philosopher extraordinaire such as Antony Flew found it reasonable to make that switch to deism (which appeals to a desiger) based on the design argument alone (as he states). I wonder if he too looked at the bigger picture, and saw the flaws in his own materialistic assumptions about the nature of reality.

And I can’t help but be dumbfounded at any objection to the existence of a god on moral grounds. The arguments above for such, and on the “Religion” thread started by O’Leary appear to be based in an observation of human evil – the very existence of which suggests a higher morality that comes from outside a human capacity to reason about issues of right and wrong. The fact that we appeal to moral objectivity (and atheists do this as much as theists) suggests a higher moral law prescribed by a law-giver outside of human self-evidence.

—-”David Kellogg: A 1942 survey revealed that only 41 percent of all Americans believed that black and white soldiers should serve together in the armed forces. Only 55 percent agreed that a black man could be just as good a soldier as a white man.”

—-“Objective morality” sure led to great moral attitudes, didn’t it?

Your “analysis” at 227 is painfully myopic and lacking in context. From 1960 until the late 1990’s, violent crime rose 560%, illegitimate births were up 419%, Teen suicide up 300%, and SAT scores went down 80 points. Just for good measure rape, armed robbery, burglaray, arson, drug use all skyrocketed. They finally levelled off in the 2000’s becaue they could not have gotten much worse. Yes, moral relativism is death to a culture.

Does the word proportionality mean anything to you at all?

—-Allen: “Or have you missed all of the threads on this website in which this has been the dominant theme?” (Religion)

Why are you trying to mislead people into thinking that this site covers only religion. At this very moment, seven UD threads are focused on science. If you like, you can go there and peddle your fantasy about naturalisitc forces creating life. That way you will not have to complain about topics like this which, for some reason, you can’t seem get your fill of in spite of yourself.

I wrote:

If the theist is permitted to magically turn “is” into “ought”, then why is the atheist denied access to this alchemy?

vjtorley replied:

The reason is that God is the only Being for whom “is” and “ought” necessarily coincide. God cannot fail to be what He ought to be: someone who knows and loves perfectly. That’s because God does these things by nature: He is essentially omniscient and omnibenevolent.

vjtorley,

I see several problems with your reply.

First of all, “ought” and “is” coincide for God only if you define God as being morally perfect. This does not follow as a logical consequence of theism per se.

However, let’s set that aside and assume your particular brand of theism, in which “ought” and “is” do necessarily coincide for God. Even then, we run into problems:

1. What God ought to do tells us nothing about what his creatures ought to do. These do not necessarily coincide.

2. The idea that God does what he ought to do runs afoul of the Euthyphro dilemma, one way or the other. If objective morality exists outside of God, then he is subordinate to it. If objective morality derives from his nature, then it is arbitrary: if it happens to be in God’s nature to torture babies, then torturing babies must be morally correct.

3. Invoking the principle that “is” implies “ought” has unintended consequences for the theist. For example: Evil exists. Therefore, evil ought to exist. Or: Some people are cruel. Therefore, they ought to be cruel.

JTaylor: “Well I guess I don’t really think God is a moral monster per se, because obviously I don’t see sufficient evidence to accept that the OT/NT God actually exists. So even though I express this so-called moral outrage at God in the OT, it is only hypothetical in that if such a person existed, this is how I would feel about them. So it becomes something of a moot point.

But I do agree with you about Deism – is that what you mean? (although I’m not sure I would characterize such an entity as a personal God?) Yes, it probably is a viable intellectual position (and oddly enough compatible with atheism in as much that an atheist sees no evidence for specific gods). Perhaps I could be a Revealed Religion Atheist and an Agnostic Deist (a RRAAD)? I think if ID ever did get to the point of conclusively and verifiably providing incontrovertible evidence, it’s a position I might seriously consider.”

So as you stand right now, you don’t see any “verifiable and incontrovertible evidence” that ID is at least more tenable in light of the detection of irreducible complexity and complex specified information, than unplanned random mutation as a mechanism for natural selection?

Deism is really an incomplete paradigm, which appears to avoid the overall and most compelling arguments for theism. It’s a start, but it seems to be a rather timid position, which won’t go any further for fear of being labelled “religious.”

I personally would like to see the term “religious” abandoned in the halls of logical inquiry. It is a loaded term, which prescribes unjustly to its adherents the possession of logical incongruence.

I really don’t think that deism is really compatible with atheism unless of course you mean that deism is equal to atheism. I think one needs to do a paradigm shift in order to arrive at deism from atheism. Such a shift would have to acknowledge some incompatibilities between the two positions.

So if you were to become a Deist, how do you think you would envision such a deity?

I wrote:

Barry can’t have it both ways. If his argument shows that all things are permitted under atheism, as he claims, then it also shows by the same logic that all things are permitted under theism. If he claims that theism is exempt from his argument, then by the same reasoning so is atheism. For Barry’s project to succeed, he would need to show that the “is” of “God exists” leads logically to the “ought” of “we therefore ought to behave a certain way”.

Barry replied:

You are quite wrong. If one assumes the premise that God exists and that God has prescribed a universally binding moral code, then my project succeeds. That is not that hard to understand.

Circular reasoning. If a “universally binding” moral code exists, then by definition we ought to follow it. That’s what “universally binding” means. You’ve assumed your conclusion.

Let’s revise your statement to get rid of the hidden assumption contained in the phrase “universally binding”:

If one assumes the premise that God exists and that God has prescribed a moral code, then my project succeeds.

No, because the mere fact that God has prescribed a moral code does not tell us that we should follow it. You haven’t supplied an argument linking the “is” of “God has prescribed a moral code” to the “ought” of “we are morally obligated to follow it.”

Let me state preemptively that the following arguments do not work:

1. God created us; therefore whatever he commands is morally binding.

2. God is all-powerful; therefore, whatever he commands is morally binding.

3. God is perfectly moral; therefore, whatever he commands is morally binding.

If anyone doesn’t see why these three arguments fail, just ask and I’ll happily explain.

I am a believer and a mystic but
I don’t buy the argument that under atheism all things are permissible or there is no basis for morality. Life itself spirals downwards under excess trauma and becomes unhealthy. Therefore the actions of Hitler are anti-life, whereas this universe/planet produces life and fosters life.

It’s not as though the moral commands of religion are arbitrary. They are fundamental to life and reality.

It doesn’t matter to one’s personal morality whether or not you are an atheist or a believer. Religious people are quite often not living up to the moral precepts of their religion because they lack personal, spiritual development. The commands mean less than nothing. He who refrains from killing because he believes a powerful being will punish him for it is not a moral being.

No one can go to heaven until his morality is internal to himself and is self-sustaining, for otherwise heaven would not be heavenly, now would it?

Clive Hayden asks:

Why, when taking all three together, doesn’t the argument work?

Why would you expect the combination of three invalid arguments to be valid?

To Clive,

Well, I agree with you that most people don’t choose their religion by comparing moral codes. My larger point is that we are each ultimately left to our own resources to choose what we believe to be true and what our values, moral and otherwise, will be, so that practically speaking, we are all of necessity moral relativists. While it is true that many people’s choice of a religion is based on other than moral considerations, nonetheless, a religion usually includes a moral code, so that choosing a religion is choosing a morality. So we can never escape the fact that at some level we must choose, and no one can do it for us. Even if we simply accept the beliefs handed down to us from our parents, that is still a choice, although one often not consciously made.

I would add that in my observation, most people do not simply accept the moral strictures passed down from whatever sect they happen to be members of. I know Catholics who practice birth control, and other Christians who accept a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. Even within the context of a fairly clear religious dogma, people will make up their own minds.

I’m curious, though. Did Jesus ever use the word “sin”? Or was that whole concept added later?

mauka:

“Why would you expect the combination of three invalid arguments to be valid?”

Sounds reasonable, but is it? Rather, why would you not expect the combination of three incomplete but related arguments to be more completed by their combination? You did not demonstrate that the arguments were necessarily invalid, only incomplete. And I think it depends greatly on the combination:

1. God created us.

2. God is all-powerful.

3. God is perfectly moral.

Therefore, whatever he commands is morally binding.

Allow me to break it down:

1. God created us – giving us the ability to discern morality.

2. God is all-powerful – giving Him the absolute authority to set boundaries on our moral behavior, and to set consequences for our disobedience to His moral law.

3. God is perfectly moral, leaving us with an absolute standard of moral character.

There is perhaps one more axiom that I would add to this, which would make it more complete:

4. God expects His creation to be moral as He is moral – as such, He gives us the freedom to choose morality above immorality.

Therefore, whatever He commands is morally binding.

Reminds me of a quote from Romans:

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who supress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (1:18-20 NIV)

This passage implies that morality is a part of God’s character, and what goes against His character is “godlessness.” It also implies His authority in meting out consequences for disobedience to His moral law, and it implies that God’s moral character is known to us, leaving us with a mandate to follow his moral commands, thus leaving us without excuse.
All four axioms appear to be included in this text.

Clive wrote:

C. S. Lewis has already answered this question…

First, note that Lewis commits the fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam when he writes:

These may seem like fine-spun speculations: yet I believe that nothing short of this can save us. A Christianity which does not see moral and religious experience converging to meet at infinity, not at a negative infinity, but in the positive infinity of the living yet superpersonal God, has nothing, in the long run, to divide it from devil worship: and a philosophy which does not accept value as eternal and objective can lead us only to ruin.

The question of whether value is eternal and objective is independent of whether believing so will lead us toward, or away from, ruin. Lewis should know better than to fall into this freshman-level logical trap.

The rest of the passage attempts to evade the Euthyphro dilemma by arguing that:

God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.

But this is tantamount to saying that whatever God does is defined as good by virtue of being something that God does. If God starts torturing babies tomorrow, then torturing babies is therefore, by definition, a good thing. Lewis betrays his own lack of confidence in this argument when he writes: “But it is probably just here that our categories betray us.” Probably?

Lastly, the idea that God doesn’t possess his attributes (like goodness), but actually is them — known as the doctrine of “divine simplicity” — is simply incoherent.

The best-known example of this incoherence is that God is held to be both merciful and just. According to the doctrine of divine simplicity, that means that God is mercy and God is justice. Yet mercy and justice are not identical, and so God cannot be identical to both.

Bruce David asks:

I’m curious, though. Did Jesus ever use the word “sin”? Or was that whole concept added later?

If you believe that the New Testament accurately records Jesus’ words, then yes, he talked about sin quite often.

I was thinking of the objections raised here to the morality of God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments. Some here have stated (I think erroneously) that everything God does cannot contradict the moral code He has set for humans. As such, some here find in “Thou shalt not kill” a contradiction to God’s own actions of killing.

This is really not a reasonable argument against the God of the scriptures on several grounds:

Blasphemy, for example is a behavior that can only be human and not of God. God cannot blaspheme himself. Therefore, there are some practices that are morally required of God, which are morally forbidden of humans. Humans, cannot claim to be God (except in context with the one and only incarnation). God on the other hand, cannot claim not to be God.

There is a separation between the moral necessity of God and the moral contingency of humans. Therefore, there are situations in which God must kill in order to prevent a greater moral evil. This brings into question, of course, the morality of war, but wars are not fought for the sake of war, but on the basis of other humanly created moral dilemnas. So there is a difference between God killing to prevent a greater evil, and humans doing the same. Humans create the situations, which lead to the necessity of war; God does not. Furthermore, God does not create the situations that mandate His killing in order to prevent a greater evil, humans do.

All of God’s actions are necessary to His moral character. Some might argue that God has not consistently applied killing to prevent a greater evil. Such an argument does not take into account that God might not be done yet. The greatest evils we can imagine will have their day in the court of God’s judgment, and the greatest acts of selflessness will also be rewarded. Revelation makes sense in that light.

No one knows anything for certain about God