Judging God

[OneLight]

Stargaze, Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, to begin with. By saying we are primates, you are saying God is also a primate, since He made us in His image, or better, in the image of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Genesis 1:26-28

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Who do you say God is?

I'm merely referring to taxonomy, whether we like it or not we're classified as "Primates". When the Bible mentions made "in the image of God" I didn't think it was speaking about our physical form. Who do I say "God" is? God is a construction of humans to assign personage to things we can't explain. It's my belief that before mankind had any good understanding of the natural world, everything we saw around us appeared to be governed by unseen forces. This is was the beginning of religion. The idea that if you do X [sacrifice an animal, prayer, push virgin into volcano etc] you will employ the spirits or gods to come to your aid or give you direction. Many of these religions have died off but some are still alive today. So, for the most part, over time we've evolved from polytheism to monotheism.

I don't make the claim that there is no God, I'm just not convinced that there is one.

Thank you for your honesty. I do not look at life through the eyes of science, so we will disagree in places.

[OneLight]

Your point that animals scold and punish isn't true at all. There's no justice system in the animal kingdom in a moral sense. Animals will show dominant behavior in establishing a hierarchy or will attack to protect their food or their territory. It has nothing to do with punishment in a moral sense. It is all driven by self-preservation. But if we're going to get our moral cues from the animal kingdom, does that not establish my point about behaving like advanced primates in your house?

Thus far you haven't explained what humans ought to do, but you've mentioned alot about what animals do. Is it fair to say that without God, we're morally left with a) making up our own morality and b) copying animals.

This is quite easy for you to say living in a society where all you have to do is go to the store and get your next meal, or better yet call the pizza guy. Get into a survival scenario where your chances are kinda slim and things will change, suddenly stealing won't be so bad as it once was. I don't know if you've ever heard the stories of people who barely made it out alive in a crash landing etc. We humans aren't that different from the rest of the animal kingdom when you take away our luxuries, our civilization and our easy access to necessities.

What a sad way to look at life. Have you ever considered learning how to survive in the wild without stealing or eating a dead human?

[LuftWaffle]

I've grounded morality in terms of increasing happiness or pleasure, survival AND freedom [not just your freedom, remember we're social creatures.

But that's the thing. You haven't really grounded morality in anything. Pleasure is entirely subjective. So is what's good for survival.

Freedom is an interesting one. I assume you're not a determinist then?

I have another question. Is it okay for a pervert to install hidden cameras in a public toilet so that he can watch women undress? Does his actions hamper survival, pleasure or freedom in any way provided he remains careful not to get caught?

If I asked 100 people the same question I don't imagine too many would say "yeah I want to live in a society where I'm in constant fear of my life and I can't trust anyone". I know why you're answering the questions the way you are, I get that, but your responses borderline absurd.

That my responses are absurd are purely your subjective opinion, though. In the end basing morality on pleasure, survival and freedom is contingent on everybody agreeing on the virtues of those terms. However there's absolutely no reason to compel men to live by them and frankly there's nothing inherently wrong with rejecting them, other than you claiming it's absurd. Why should things you deem absurd be important to the rest of us?

Didn't Jesus have a golden rule to live by? Do unto others ... That assumes the person in question is not a psychopath doesn't it?

Psychopaths know they're hurting people, it's just that they don't care. You seem to be assuming that psychopaths are unable to understand that they're hurting people.

But you've not answered my question.... Let's timeout for a second here. Are you going to play the standard atheist strategy of dismissing/criticising what Christianity espouses, while not answering questions and explaining or accounting for your own worldview? If you want your worldview to be taken seriously, you'll have to carry your own burdens of proof as we do.

The idea that atheism is somehow a default position, and that all you have to do is dismiss Christian arguments and then your atheism is justified is a common, but intellectually bankrupt notion. If atheism cannot make sense of reality, then it is false, just like any other idea. That's just fair isn't it?

So...I've asked you what standard you're using to measure whether the Christian standard is inferior to others. Saying standard A is better than standard B requires a kind of meta-ethic C for comparing A and B. What is that standard?

Then, I would like to know what a psychopath would think of the notion that he should acknowledge other people's pleasure, survival and freedom, based on the idea that we're social animals? Psychopaths by definition are anti-social.

Surely you can see that my comment wasn't so much about what you wanted Isaiah to think about as it was about thinking itself. In other words I wasn't talking about slavery, but about rationality.

I was talking about slavery, it was pretty obvious. Here is my original quote in context:

"The North decided that this wasn't permissible and the South disagreed. Let me ask a question here, where did we get our moral compass to decide that slavery was wrong? Think about that for a bit."

I know you were talking about slavery. I wasn't.

So if someone purchases and "owns" the life of another human it's ok so long as the owner doesn't view the slave as an inferior? Is it objectively wrong to own another human being? If you say "yes", tell me where you get this idea. Obviously you don't agree with my method so I'm curious where you get your basis.

I know where you're going with this which is why I was careful in defining slavery.

Let me skip right ahead through your leading questions. The sort of slavery that the Bible mentions is not the exploitative and dehumanising kind of slavery that we generally associate with the word. People were allowed to offer themselves to pay of family debt. These "slaves" weren't chained up or tortured or branded like the Romans did. They had rights. The old testament states that if one so much as knocks a servants tooth out, you have to let them go free.

In both the old and new testament there are many rules governing how masters should treat slaves and how slaves should act toward their masters, protecting and ensuring mutual respect.

Biblical slavery is not an ownership in the same way one owns objects. It's roughly the same as signing a modern employment contract or a labour lease.

The notion of one human being owning another in that sense doesn't seem immoral to me at all.

I personally believe there is a better way to run a society than what the ancient Jews had in mind. We are able to compare things and draw conclusions. I find it absurd to go to war with your enemy and then kill the children and steal the virgin women which you hand over to the soldiers as part of the "plunder of war". I find it absurd to crack a rock over someones skull because they weren't a virgin on their honeymoon night. I find it offensive to own another human being and never set them free [only Jews were given 7th year of Jubilee].

Notice how you're not actually explaining morality in naturalistic terms, but instead, you're merely misinterpreting and then criticising parts of the Bible without really taking the context into consideration. While I'd love to run rabbit trails through the entire old testament with you, we're talking about grounding morality. The Christian worldview sums morality up in the command "Do unto others..." and scripture is clear that all the commands in the Old Testament hang from loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself. This is the morality that you're up against.

You need to carry your burden now. I know you believe you've grounded morality in survival, freedom and pleasure, but I have pointed out that these aren't groundings at all, but mere subjective preferences. Why should people care about other peoples freedom other than your claiming that it's preferable. Why should anyone care about other people's pleasure other than you claiming that it is good? Appealing to social animals, seems to be valid only as long as people see themselves as social animals. If some individuals see themselves as anti-social animals, then they get to be anti-social. It seems whatever type of animal you think you are, that you get to be.

I believe humans have intrinsic value because I'm human myself, I depend on other humans and as a social creature they are very valuable.

You're saying that humans are valueable because they're valuable and because you're a human. That's a tautology.

You have not answered the question.

[LuftWaffle]

This is quite easy for you to say living in a society where all you have to do is go to the store and get your next meal, or better yet call the pizza guy. Get into a survival scenario where your chances are kinda slim and things will change, suddenly stealing won't be so bad as it once was. I don't know if you've ever heard the stories of people who barely made it out alive in a crash landing etc. We humans aren't that different from the rest of the animal kingdom when you take away our luxuries, our civilization and our easy access to necessities.

Notice how contradictory this is. On the one hand you're trying to ground morality in survival (among other things) but then when survival requires it, it's necessary to be immoral.

In other words, survival makes us altruistic, socially responsible citizens except when it makes us self-serving opportunists?

By the way, faulting me for living in a society that has fast food delivery is hardly a valid argument, don't you think?

If people who steal when the going gets tough is evidence that humans are animals, then surely the reverse must be disprove that point. Many people refuse to steal, inspite of abject poverty and need. What do you say of them? Are they stupid for not getting in touch with their 'animal' side, for not seizing freedom, pleasure and improving their survival, or is it a virtuous thing?

Honestly though, placing humans in a survival situations and then comparing similaries to animals is hardly compelling. Why should the similarities between humans and animals determine what we are, and not the differences?

[Isaiah 6:8]

Hi Isaiah,

Finally I have got some time to reply to your interesting questions.

I don't think that what we call morality needs to come from an external source. It is not like a complicated cake: if I do not have the recepy I don't know how to do it.

I also firmly believe that the sense of good and evil that Christians have would not change substantially if they had never read the Bible. I believe this by single observation. It is not unusual, not even on this board, to observe Christians having contradicting views on some moral subjects. I have the impression that what people consider moral has more to do with the person rather than with the the God they allegedly talk to.

As a naturalist I think that our sense of good and evil is ... natural. In this respect I see this as a computational process, a sort of algorithmic function of transformation that takes some inputs, computes, and generate some outputs. Our brain analyzes situations and spits out a value: good or bad (which does not have a universal semantics, you could call them x and y); this value is then fed to other brain's components that control emotions, instinct of retaliation, commands to muscles and secretory systems that controls tears emission, self defense mechanisms, approval, indignation, etc. If x is connected to the emotional part that controls indignation, you feel indignated, if not you feel approval.

But why does x connects to disapproval and y to approval? This can only be due to adaptation and is ultimately controlled by our genes. There is nothing that speaks against feeling approval for murder or indignation for charity, it is just that these connections are not sensible for our survival as a species and are, therefore, not selected in the gene pool. The societies that have such connections cannot evolve, therefore the ones that evolve have an inverse wiring. If we did not have the inverse wiring, we would not be here discussing of philosophy

In this respect, these perceived feelings are qualitatively not much different from the feeling I have when I taste Swiss cheese fondue. Since I love Swiss cheese fondue, I do not see the need of asking where my Swiss cheese fondue love comes from. It just happens that proteins in the cheese are helpful for my survival, therefore the Swiss cheese fondue appreciation genes have been selected by blind evolutionary processes.

Ciao

- viole

First of all thank you for you honestly trying to answer the op, verses trying to figure out where I am going with it and turning the op around like others have tried to do.

But i have a question with what you said. If morals come from internal things such as likes and dislikes, then how do they become there. You say its due to survival as things that taste good are usually good for us. But with that logic it makes it that there must be an external stimuli for us to have learned from to began with. You are basically saying that morals are a product of evolution right? Just to clarify.

So if you think they evolved, can you tell me how you think that morals are necessary for survival?

[LuftWaffle]

What's good for survival is subjective? Is drinking poison good for survival? Is jumping off a cliff good for survival? It's seems to me that you're saying we humans have absolutely no way of reasoning and establishing any sense of reality. Animals can manage this at least to some degree but we're uncapable?

I'm surprised that you've given this so little thought. Here's how survival becomes subjective:

If you watch Ray Comfort's movie 180 you'll notice that a number of people claim that if they could turn back the clock, they'd kill Hitler's mother to prevent him from being born and thus preventing the holocaust. Obviously nobody could see into the future, but in that sense a small debit to the survival account would result in a massive future credit.

So a person could in a sense go against survival and still claim to be adding to it.

It becomes subjective when you view holocausts; the ones doing the killing generally claim that eliminating the opposition would result in a greater good. Who decides this is entirely subjective. Nazi Germany decided that killing Jews would make everything better, from a pleasure and survival and freedom aspect for the German nation. Who is to say that such a thing is wrong?

While you can argue that it may not aid survival, we simply cannot know for sure, what the outcomes will be given certain actions. So in the end any action can be justified by simply reasoning that it will have a greater survival yield. With no concept of real right and wrong, there is no way to absolutely evaluate the moral value of any claim and so the survival issue become vulnerable to serious exploitation.

I notice that you haven't commented on point that pleasure is subjective, so I conclude that you agree that it is subjective?

I would state that I'm a self-determinist. If we're "moral" because some cosmic entity tells us what is "moral" then we're not really moral in my opinion we're merely robots.

The problem is that self-determinism doesn't really make sense in a materialistic worldview. If your actions are merely the result of natural processes then you really aren't determining anything. You're simply following the rules of nature. For you to be truly self-deterministic would mean that you're an agent of some sort, but how do you get an immaterial concept such as will from the material substances that you're made of? How does your worldview square with your belief that you're self-deterministic?

I have another question. Is it okay for a pervert to install hidden cameras in a public toilet so that he can watch women undress? Does his actions hamper survival, pleasure or freedom in any way provided he remains careful not to get caught?

If the woman consents to this then it'd be "ok" in my book. If this is w/o her knowledge then you are infringing on her rights to privacy, something we tend to hold dear. There is obvious potential that this person gets caught and this woman finds out, if this happens there would most likely be emotional and mental damage done to the woman, therefore this can be declared "immoral".

You're not dealing with my example here at all. There's no consent in this scenario, otherwise he wouldn't need hidden cameras, would he?

I agree that there'll be emotional damage when he is caught, which is why I specifically stated "remains careful not to get caught".

Saying that it infringes to her right of privacy assumes she has a right to privacy. Upon what do you ground this right to privacy? Do other advanced primates have a right to privacy too?

There is no way that you can judge voyeurism based on your ethic of survival, pleasure and freedom, because the voyeur isn't infringing on any of those as long as he remains undetected. This means that your ethic is inadequate in condemning this behavior, even though it's clear that you view is as wrong (something that one ought not do)

If you're wanting me to admit that there's an absolute morality, I easily admit that there is not. To say that therefore we have no way of determining a "good" way or a "bad" way to establish a society is in my opinion nonsense.

I'm glad that you're honest enough to admit that your worldview permits no moral absolutes, instead of trying to ground moral abolutes in materialism as some do. I'm not so impressed with the strawman you're committing when you pretend that I've stated you have no way of determining a good way to establish a society. The whole point of the moral argument is that atheists, while capable of making correct moral judgements, is incapable of grounding it in any real way.

Certain actions are really wrong, both you and I know it, the problem is that your worldview has no way of accounting for this. Without a moral law giver, you're left with basically each person, or society making up their own morality based on preference. So, at best your worldview can explain morality in a subjective evolutionary way, which by implication has no real authority. Why should anybody care about the pleasure or the survival or the freedom of others? Why should anybody act social just because we're supposedly social animals? Without any moral absolute the psychopath isn't doing anything wrong, he's just transcending his evolutionary history. In a sense he's a revolutionary, a pioneer, a ground breaker. Some atheists claim that religiousity had an evolutionary advantage, but since we don't need it anymore, we need to outgrow it. What prevents the psychopath from claiming that altruism and social behavior had it's evolutionary advantages, but that it's about time we move on?

Not all, try reading up on some of the worst serial killers in history. There are some people who truly do not feel "bad" for what they were doing. How would this golden rule apply to an ancient Spartan or Viking? Someone who prays to be in battle fighting for their tribe or honor? This rule assumes you know how the other person wants to be treated.

Your statement made me laugh. You brought up the psychopath issue in response to the golden rule, but when your own moral views are up against this psychopath, you respond as follows:

"Would it matter? Psychopaths are an abnormality, not the norm. We generally don't consult crazy people when we're trying to determine what is best."

Wow. I guess you must really despise Christianity if you'd rather shoot yourself in the foot than admit a failed argument, yes?

It's not just "making sense of reality" that you're wanting me to establish but some absolute guideline to reality.

I'm not asking for a guideline for reality. I'm asking that atheists for once, actually try an explain reality using their worldview instead of merely criticising Christianity while borrowing from Christianity to do so.

In otherwords, whining about the "evils" of Christian belief, while you yourself have no basis for condemning evil. Even if Christianity was the most morally deprived view on earth, it is nowhere near as desperate as atheism, which has absolutely zero grounds for morality.

[LuftWaffle]

I'm not selling that, I don't have a problem with the weaknesses of my worldview, religion sells absolute truths and ultimate knowledge, I don't. I don't have all the answers and I don't struggle with that. So if it makes you feel any better, my worldview has holes in it...ever worldview does.

Here's comes the atheism is humble and theism is arrogant spiel...

Here's the problem with that:

If your worldview has holes in it, severe ones I might add, then it's not a worldview worth keeping. A worldview that's full of holes and weaknesses isn't a sign of humility, it's a sign that the worldview is inadequate.

I'd still refer back to our ability to learn from history, reason, logic etc. It seems to me that we're able to refine our ways of approaching life. There was a time when women weren't allowed to vote, people were discriminated against in various ways. Through social discourse, reasoning and so forth many countries have established guidelines to rid themselves of something they consider damaging to their society.

You're appealing to reason and logic, but you haven't provided any reason or logic for why certain actions are wrong, other than appealing to subjective preference.

When we look at various forms of government, tell me how we can determine in an objective and absolute manner, which form of government is "best". If you say there is no absolute standard are you suggesting we have no way to determine a "good" government from a "bad" one??

Again you're knocking down a strawman. I never said we cannot determine what good and bad, I'm arguing that your worldview cannot explain the existence of good and bad. You keep confusing moral ontology with moral epistomology. Please, these posts are already becoming quite extensive. Why waste time with misrepresentations?

I know where you're going with this which is why I was careful in defining slavery.

I'll bet . This special definition is common, it essential states: "Slavery is bad unless you're referring to the ancient Jews".

I'm careful in my definition in order to avoid equivocation.

Since you believe there are no moral absolutes, on what basis do you condemn Biblical slavery? On the notion that freedom is somehow preferable? Why is freedom preferable and why should anybody care?

I've ignored your numerous posts of Old Testament scripture as I said I would since it's irrelevant in this discussion. With no basis upon which to ground morality you're only cutting down the branch you're sitting on by making moral judgements. Lets first establish by what authority you judge and then we can deal with the judgements. If you're impatient, there are many Christian resources dealing with specifically this issue, since it's an atheist favourite.

I also said logic and reason. I think we can determine that not only can we merely survive, we can survive AND attain as much happiness as possible.

And happiness and survival is preferable because...?

What about the happiness and survival of deadly virusses? What about the happiness and survival of neo-nazis or the happiness and survival of gay-bashing bigots? Who's happiness and survival are we talking about? If you say all humankind, then why should all humankind's happiness and survival be more important than a certain group's? What about chickens and cows? Why not base morality upon the happiness and survival of all vertibrates, lest we become guilty of species-ism. But then in order to increase happiness you may need to take the Georgia Guidestones route and kill off 90% of mankind, so that other species such and cows and chickens and other natural resources such as rainforests, fish populations and the polar ice caps can be under less pressure?

But why stop there? Why not determine what is best for the universe? How important is our survival and happiness really when considering the whole universe? According to mainstream science we only evolved recently, on a planet that's in a nowhere spot in a nowhere galaxy, in potentially one of infinitely many universes...

I'm a member of a social group, it's not hard to understand that other members are going to be vital to my survival.

So is vitamin C. Does human life have the same value as Vitamin C? Certain bacteria in our stomachs are essential for our survival. What about them? Are they just as valueable as human life?

But you haven't established that humans have intrinsic value at all. Intrinsic value means having value within it's being. You're saying humans are valuable because they're socially...'useful'. In otherwords human life's value isn't intrinsic it's contingent upon their social usefulness.

This is the crucial difference between atheism and Christianity where it comes to the issue of morality. Human life has intrinsic value because we're made in the image of God, for a divine purpose. But atheism is incapable of ascribing intrinsic value to human life. If human life has no intrinsic value then nothing of real value is lost when a human life is taken. From an atheist perspective destroying a beating human heart, is the same as detroying a computers CPU, swatting a fly. But you and I both know that it isn't the case, ergo atheism is a very flawed and inadequate worldview. Christianity can give a coherent explanation for why human life has value. We were made for a purpose, and imbued with value by a Creator.

Animals don't have gods and yet we see them [social ones] them living by codes of conduct [obviously not as vast as ours] and even punishing other members who cause harm to the group. You can deny that this happens but it's absolutely true. Our human bonds are much more powerful than those of the rest of the animal kingdom. Having said that though it's been documented in nature that some animals have actually mourned over the loss of a member. Elephants have been known to visit the resting places of a dead relative. If an elephant is hurt they will often be assisted by another elephant.

Again if we're going to get our moral cues from the animal kingdom then what would you say if my buddies and I acted like advanced primates in your house?

Also, note how you're selecting behaviors from the animal kingdom that on face value appear virtuous. Mourning over the loss of the dead, punishing bad behavior etc. Why do you pick those and not behaviors such as queen bees eating fertile females, sharks forcibly copulating with females, mantisses biting the heads off their male partners, wolves attacking neighbouring packs and killing them, male lions eating cubs etc.

You're making moral judgements to select certain animal behaviors and then claiming that your moral compass can be derived from animal behaviors. Notice how you're using morality in order to try and establish morality?

If elephants can exhibit this behavior w/o a God, why is it such a surpise that we're able to establish strong bonds with each other and build societies that promote health, happiness and freedom.

Animals aren't moral agents. They act according to hardwired instincts. Human beings however are moral agents.

What's interesting here is how you're singing the virtues of humankind and how it's supposedly inevitable that we establish and promote happiness and freedom without God, but just a few paragraphs earlier you were complaining about the Israelites and theists in general. Do you realise how self-refuting that is?

If there is no God then who exactly is it that did all the things you've been complaining about? Humans?

I have asked you why our similarities with the animal kingdom should determine what we are and not the differences. You haven't answered that question.

I have also asked you by what standard you measure that your standard is better than the Christian moral standard. Apart from subjectively(which is what you're limited to) condemning the Christian standard, you haven't provided any means to determine which is better in an absolute sense. As I said, better implies a means of measuring, you need to provide that means via your worldview.

[Guest shiloh357]

You've ignored my challenge on slavery because you know that a Christian can't base their objection to it on the Bible and that must be an awfully odd/bizarre spot to be in.

What we object to is the race-based slavery that existed in the United States. Luftwaffle has pointed that out to you. The Bible does not condemn slavery at all. It regulates it. But the slavery that existed in the Bible is not at the kind of slavery that existed in the United States. Slaves in the US were often treated inhumanely and were seen as nonhuman based on their ethnicity. In the Bible slavery was a part of the world. Every country had slaves. WE don't have a point of reference for much of the culture of the ancient near east and their worldview. They would see our opposition to slavery as odd.

We can easily ground our opposition to the kind of slavery that exists that is cruel, race-based and so on in the words of Scripture because it provides a moral framework for slaveowner conduct and the slave-master relationship.

You are willing to knock me claiming that I have no grounds to show why slavery is immoral yet you have no ground either.

His point is that you have ground for even having a moral code. He has shown how your view of morality is internally inconsistent, and you keep trying to deflect attention from that.

[Isaiah 6:8]

You've ignored my challenge on slavery because you know that a Christian can't base their objection to it on the Bible and that must be an awfully odd/bizarre spot to be in. You are willing to knock me claiming that I have no grounds to show why slavery is immoral yet you have no ground either. Apparently you believe that a worldview can't have any gaps where there is mystery or unknowns...we're obviously not going get very far in our discussion.

And you have ignored my questions to you, and you keep making this thread about a Specific moral issue. The Op was, as I ask you yet again is this. Where do YOU Stargaze, Get your moral code, if not from the Bible and God? Where we get our code and the issue of slavery is not the issue nor the core of the OP. Obviously you seem to think that Slavery is a bad thing, and question the moral's of the Bible when it comes to this.

Where do you get the moral code of slavery is wrong, and then what makes you right and the Bible wrong? You see you are doing exactly what I have mentioned in the op. You are using your own moral code to judge Christians, the Bible, and in a round about way God himself.

The question again is where do personally come up with your own private moral code. Not what is wrong with ours, as you see if there are no absolutes in moral codes, how can your code be more right then ours?

[Isaiah 6:8]

You've ignored my challenge on slavery because...

Actually we are ignoring it because you are ignoring the OP and the questions we keep asking you. Why will you not answer the question. Where do you get your Morals? Viole has answered the op, and though I disagree with her, I at least appreciate her honestly trying to answer then question. If you were not going to answer the op, why did you even bother to post in this thread? You have yet to answer the question in the op, instead just showed that you are one of the people that assume that your moral code is better then another persons. The funny thing is this, if no moral absolute exists, as you seem to claim, then your morals really are no better then anyone else. However there is a danger here. If you admit there are better morals then others, then you must admit there must me an absolute truth somewhere, and that is something you do not want to admit.