Judging God

[j102]

They HAVE no moral code; if there are no eternal consequences for actions, there is no moral code.

Of course they have a moral code. If we need fear of eternal punishement to behave morally,

then humanity would be in a really sorry state indeed.

And they do not judge/hate God (that would be absurd); they judge the contardicting qualities that

believers ascribe to Him (e.g. the sanctioned violence in the OT vs. being benevolent).

humanity is indeed already in a very sorry state, but one CAN NOT understand that untill they come to christ and their spiritual eyes are opened. by the way who are we to tell god what he can and cant do?

[j102]

They HAVE no moral code; if there are no eternal consequences for actions, there is no moral code.

Of course they have a moral code. If we need fear of eternal punishement to behave morally,

then humanity would be in a really sorry state indeed.

And they do not judge/hate God (that would be absurd); they judge the contardicting qualities that

believers ascribe to Him (e.g. the sanctioned violence in the OT vs. being benevolent).

humanity is indeed already in a very sorry state, but one CAN NOT understand that untill they come to christ and their spiritual eyes are opened. by the way who are we to tell god what he can and cant do?

This is your opinion that might be valid in your country or society. i would not generalize, since we do not feel in a sorry state at all.

Ciao

- viole

the heart and mind of man (and woman) are the easiest things to decieve, and by it's very defination a person wont even be aware that they are being decieved- i wouldnt of believed most of the things i say now 10 years ago. that why god gave us an "textbook" for life and to know truth from falsehood.

[LuftWaffle]

They HAVE no moral code; if there are no eternal consequences for actions, there is no moral code.

Of course they have a moral code. If we need fear of eternal punishement to behave morally,

then humanity would be in a really sorry state indeed.

And they do not judge/hate God (that would be absurd); they judge the contardicting qualities that

believers ascribe to Him (e.g. the sanctioned violence in the OT vs. being benevolent).

humanity is indeed already in a very sorry state, but one CAN NOT understand that untill they come to christ and their spiritual eyes are opened. by the way who are we to tell god what he can and cant do?

This is your opinion that might be valid in your country or society. i would not generalize, since we do not feel in a sorry state at all.

Ciao

- viole

"Much that we take for granted in a ‘civilized’ society is actually based upon the assumption of human sin. Nearly all legislation has grown up because we simply cannot be trusted to settle our disputes with justice and without self-interest. A promise is not enough; we need a contract. Doors are not enough; we have to lock and bolt them. The payment of fares is not enough; tickets have to be issued, inspected, and collected. Law and order are not enough; we need the police to enforce them. All this is due to our sin. We cannot trust each other. We need protection against one another. It is a terrible indication of what human nature is really like" - John Stott

[LuftWaffle]

I want to thank you, Shilo and Luftwaffle for giving me a lot to think about. Morality is a tough subject and I'm by no means competent at it, it's been a fun ride so far.

Yeah, morality is difficult indeed.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, it's been a pleasure talking to you too.

[LuftWaffle]

They HAVE no moral code; if there are no eternal consequences for actions, there is no moral code.

Of course they have a moral code. If we need fear of eternal punishement to behave morally,

then humanity would be in a really sorry state indeed.

And they do not judge/hate God (that would be absurd); they judge the contardicting qualities that

believers ascribe to Him (e.g. the sanctioned violence in the OT vs. being benevolent).

humanity is indeed already in a very sorry state, but one CAN NOT understand that untill they come to christ and their spiritual eyes are opened. by the way who are we to tell god what he can and cant do?

This is your opinion that might be valid in your country or society. i would not generalize, since we do not feel in a sorry state at all.

Ciao

- viole

"Much that we take for granted in a ‘civilized’ society is actually based upon the assumption of human sin. Nearly all legislation has grown up because we simply cannot be trusted to settle our disputes with justice and without self-interest. A promise is not enough; we need a contract. Doors are not enough; we have to lock and bolt them. The payment of fares is not enough; tickets have to be issued, inspected, and collected. Law and order are not enough; we need the police to enforce them. All this is due to our sin. We cannot trust each other. We need protection against one another. It is a terrible indication of what human nature is really like" - John Stott

This guy is right that civilized societies are based upon the assumption of sin. Why? Because without this assumption we would not even be a society. Sin is actually useful for the evolution of a society LOL.

Why do I say something so provocative? Well, sin, as it is meant by Christian apologetic, has of course no meaning to me. I prefer to consider strategies deployed by interdependent organisms in order to increase their chances of survival. These strategies include reciprocal altruism (righteousness), defection (sin), defensive mechanisms against defection, exploitation mechanisms of altruistic behavior and a delicate equilibrium between these strategies in order to reach an optimum.

Consider for instance a world without theft. A world where people's brains are completely incapable of stealing, having an intuition of it and see the advantages of it, in the same way we are incapable to visualize 10 dimensional geometry. From an evolutionary point of view, cognitive mechanisms to detect and fight theft (punishment, suspension of mutual altruism, etc.) do not need to co-evolve since there is no need to spend energy and devise a solution to a non extant problem.

Now suppose that a gene mutation, that affect some cognitive functions, makes some organisms suddenly capable of stealing. These organisms will have a huge evolutionary advantage; they can steal at will without being punished. After a while the world will consist only of thieves, but this is also an unstable a non optimal solution for further evolution of the species.

Reciprocal altruism can work only if there are cognitive mechanisms to detect defectors, and this form of detection can evolve and persist only if there are, indeed, defectors.

The structure of morality (reciprocal altruism) and sin (strategies of defection) are interdependent. You cannot have one in a certain form without the other having a specified form.

It is a little bit like exercising our immune system; it might be healthy to play in the dirt sometimes, so to speak.

Ciao

- viole

Let me see if I understand this correctly:

-We said: Humanity, morally speaking, is in a sorry state of affairs

--You said: This is a generalisation and it seemed that you were implying that it wasn't the case in your society

---I then quoted Stott, which I think shows extremely well, not only how we distrust and in a sense fear each other, but that this is taken for granted even in civilised society.

----You say: This is a good thing.

It seems then that you're conceding the initial point. Humans really do not trust each other, and rightly so. Just Imagine even civilised society without a police force, without contracts, without vaults, locks, passwords etc.

To now argue that this sorry state of affairs is good, makes the discussion rather meaningless, because any status quo can be considered beneficial, if one only attaches an evolutionary story to it.

What do I mean?

Suppose society was morally perfect. To explain this you'd argue that genes promoting altruism was more beneficial and thus were selected, ergo we have a perfect society.

Suppose society is completely wicked. To explain this you'd tell a lie, since well... you'd be wicked and so would I. Evil would be justified as more beneficial and so the more beneficial (evil) was selected.

Suppose society is somewhat wicked. To explain this you'd argue as you did. Spotting defectors is evolutionary advantageous and for that you need defectors.

This means that any idea can be supported by making up an evolutionary story for it. Obviously there no empirical basis for any such story, so we're ultimately pitting faith against faith, or imagination and imagination (if the term 'faith' offends you)

Now let's look at your point, that spotting defectors provides an evolutionary advantage, and that in order for this to obtain one needs defectors.

This is like arguing:

Without wounds we wouldn't have invented band-aids and Savlon.

Without criminals we wouldn't have police.

Without computers virusses we wouldn't have Norton Anti-Virus.

Without terrorists we wouldn't have counter-terrorism.

etc. etc.

I fail to see how spotting defectors is more beneficial than not having defectors at all. In a society without defectors spotting them would be meangless, and being able to spot them would

be bad, as it would be a useless ability and thus a waste of genetic and other resources.

So by your reasoning one could argue that a society that has defectors is beneficial, and if a society doesn't have defectors then it is beneficial.

The logical consequences of this view is that using it, a thief might demand a reward for stealing. Since moral goodness, in naturalistic terms, equates to "beneficial to society" and since you

claim that defectors are beneficial to society, the crime becomes a "good" thing. But if the crime is a good thing then the law enforcer preventing the crime is doing a bad thing. Now, the law enforcer is

a "defector" so he does something good and the criminal is bad once again. etc. etc.

This view seems to be an infinite regress of shifting culpability and virtue, and thus it becomes impossible to really distinguish between good and bad.

We're back to square one: No grounding for morality in a naturalistic worldview.

But even aside from that, why is altruism "good"? If it promotes survival, then why is survival "good"? When we see an amoeba gobbling up another amoeba, we don't view that as morally wrong. It's just what amoeba do. Likewise if somebody acts anti-socially, then that's just what anti-social people do. So if a murderer kills and eats his victim, he isn't doing anything that we don't see happening in nature all the time. How do we get from brute facts to moral imperatives, or to put simply, how do we get from an "IS" to an "OUGHT".

I'd also like to know, Viole, are you a determinist?

[Guest]

.... I cannot even exclude that cognitive mechanisms that we interpret as religious beliefs or beliefs in a higher power that watches over us, puts us at the center of creation's purpose, accepts and forgives our "weaknesses", supplies immortality, etc. provide survival advantages against feelings of despair, nihilism, low self-esteem and self-destruction....

Some Walk In Nature And Call It Mother

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:20

Some Walk In Creation And Call Him Wonderful

The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory. Psalms 97:6

And The Reason For Life, The Universe And Everything

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Revelation 4:11

Jesus Is Salvation

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Romans 4:5

Believe And Be Blessed Beloved

Love, Joe

[LuftWaffle]

I am not offended so easily

I agree (in part) that we do not have direct evidence of this given the time required to achieve this forms of complex behavior. We have, on the other hand, mathematical models (based on the theory of games) which allow us to simulate these effects. A good entry point is the theory of reciprocal altruism and how it solves the prisoner's dilemma in the long run.

I'm not going to get into a discussion on evolution, but I will say that there are huge leaps going from a computer simulation to actuality. Just because something is mathematically possible, doesn't make it plausible or probable in any way. Additionally such computer programs have predetermined goals and designers. Neither of which is allowed in the naturalistic view.

On the other hand, if you are ready to concede that our "imaginations" or "faith" are, in the best case, on equal footing, that would imply that the moral argument for the existence of God has an alternative and cannot be used anymore to prove anything.

My entire response to you was speaking from a atheistic viewpoint (devil's advocate) The issue here is that faith is seen as imagination by materialism, and that inserting God as cause is often mislabled as a God of the gaps argument. Inserting a materialistic story, which isn't empirically verifiable or observable seems to me a case of merely imagining and inserting materialistic explanations.

I think it goes without saying that I don't believe God is an imagined explanation, and that the Christian view has explanatory power and scope, to explain morality.

Because we cannot avoid defectors. The complexity of life (and social behavior) is the result of an arm race between organisms competing for a certain finite amount of resources. Without defectors we would still be protozoa. Go to a forest and take a look at the trees. Why are they so high? Would not be more beneficial, in terms of energy consumption and complexity (look at those big expensive trunks, roots, water canalization mechanisms, etc.), if they had settled for a lower height so that they all could profit equally from sunlight without the increased costs? It does not work like that. Suddenly, a small genetic mutation will make one of the trees an inch higher, providing it with an evolutionary advantage (more sunlight than the rest) and it will spread his modified genes more easily than the other trees. Soon all trees will be an inch higher, and so on. Trees cannot go out of the system, compute the optimum and decide the best strategy; for the same reason we cannot go out of our system and settle for the perfect world. Unless, of course, you really believe that trees have already been created in their current (inefficient) form

This merely illustrates the problem you have. We do not see tall trees as "evil" or morally "bad".

There is an optimum within physical constraints (trees cannot go to the moon), but not an optimum in the general sense; actually natural life does not follow an optimal deployment of the available energy, which also hints at the non-existence of an external architect. Thinking about it: optimal for what? Nature has no goal so there is no sense of talking about an optimal goal.

This makes little sense. On the one hand the non-optimalness (your own untestable personal view) in natural life hints that there is no creator, and on the other hand talking about optimalness is meaningless? Even if you could prove the assertion that natural life isn't optimal, it simply doesn't follow that this hints that there is no Creator.

[

LOL. I never thought of that. No, as I said we cannot go out of the system and decide the optimum, that would be absurd. We just lock into a pattern which emerges from local (not global) interactions of detection and correction. A bit like a crystal, you just need a local law working only in the neighborhood of the interacting particles to have the macroscopic effect.

If viruses did not exercise my immunity system and the ones of my ancestors, it would not be able to provide detection when one arrives. Detection without correction would also not be useful from an evolutionary point of view. Rewarding the thief, would not be rewarding for the stability of the system as a whole, therefore it is not coded into our mental processes. The recognition of the "importance" of defectors's detection cannot be decoupled from the recognition of "punishment" of them. My car detects the presence of a fault in the engine, that does not mean I should value faults in the engine and tell the service man to let them there because they are useful, LOL, but the fact that faulty engines are possible and we have experience of them is useful in providing mechanisms to detect and correct them; otherwise the first failure would leave me lost in the middle of nowhere.

But as I illustrated, it's not even possible to truly detect a defector.

You're not really dealing with the problem here, so let me state it in a simpler way.

If A = B and B = C then it follows that A = C, right?

If Good = that which promotes evolutionary filtness

and defectors = that which promote evolutionary fitness then

defectors = good.

But defectors are bad ergo, good = bad

Because we attribute different meaning to the word good and bad. For me, they have a functional meaning within a certain context and have no absolute value outside of it, obviously. For the universe as a whole they are dummy words, you can replace them with x and y: x favors a certain configuration within a system of interacting units and y is detrimental for this configuration.

Then you're conceding that morality has no absolute grounding in a materlialistic worldview. Slavery, chauvenism, greed, oppression etc. as all dummy terms.

That's it. You assume that words like good and bad have an universal intrinsic value decoupled from a certain system but by doing that you are begging the question and automatically declare yourself as the winner just based on some a-priori assumptions.

Not at all, and in fact that seems to be what you're doing. The fact that your second sentence in the quote above this one starts with, "For me" is a clear demonstration.

The existence of moral absolutes is an inductive exercise. Actions can be morally neutral, good or bad, and this seems to be independent of opinion. Even if Hitler had won WWII and killed everybody who disagreed with him, so that the only people left on earth would be those who agree with him, it would still be wrong.

You yourself have refuted your own view of morality as merely subjective when somebody offended you. You make moral judgements all the time, and without them being absolute those judgements are nothing more than statements of preference.

I'm not going to try and prove moral absolutes to you, instead I'll sketch some examples for you let you use your reasoning to figure this out for yourself:

Right wing militants capture and beat a young man to death purely because he is gay.

Islamic Jihadists hijack airliners full of cililians and fly them into office buildings, killing thousands.

The soldiers in Pol Pot's regime would capture anybody that they considered a threat to the regime, round them up into camps, take their babies and fling them into the air and impale them on their gun bayonets. They'd then cast them into barrels of water and force the captives to drink this rotting "babybroth".

Roman soldiers under Nero would capture Christian children, dress them in sheepskins and feed them to lions for mass entertainment.

Hitler's regime killed 10 million people including 6 million jews. His scientists performed cruel experiments. People were beaten, starved and tortured by his regime who perceived them to be subhuman.

You can make up your own mind on this, are these actions really wrong? Are they wrong regardless of subjective opinion?

In other words does "wrong" say something about the actions themselves or does "wrong" only say something about the observer/speaker, in this case you, which makes it merely an opinion in a sea of opinions.

You mean in terms of cognitive processes and free will? Yes. What we call free will is just the ignorance we have of the states of our brain and the reaction it has to external stimuli. This ignorance is a necessity, for in order to understand our own mind and control its behavior, we would need our mind (which leads to a cognitive loop).

Free will is just an illusion. Free from what, anyway? I am not free to visualize complex multidimensional geometry and I am not free to change the paths of the computation my mind performs. If I were able to do that, I would have a master mind that controls the decisions of my slave mind based on some criteria, but this mechanism would be also restricted by being computational, and I would be back to square one. I cannot go out of the system because I would not be I, anymore.

But that does not mean that we cannot understand the mind of someone else, at least in principle. After all it is a processing device: if we knew in detail the algorithmic function that it implements (finite state machine), then we could anticipate what commands it will send to its periphery (muscles, etc.), and the new state it will go into, depending on external information from the sensory units (eyes, ears, etc.).

These algorithmic functions of transformation are what constitute our physical brain and are directly controlled by genes and can change/rewire themselves during life according to some rules also coded initially. In other words our mind is a Turing machine that contains in its original configuration also the mechanism to change its current algorithmic instance (learning) according to some predefined rules.

How this machine reacts and learn from external stimuli is initially defined by our genetic structure and the resulting effects are what we call human behavior. Emotions and feelings of retaliation, punishment, approval, disapproval, love, sorrow, empathy, regret, repentance, sadness, etc. are also ultimately algorithmic and are in the form to increase our chances to survive (on average) as a system of interacting units sharing a big part of available genes.

I cannot even exclude that cognitive mechanisms that we interpret as religious beliefs or beliefs in a higher power that watches over us, puts us at the center of creation's purpose, accepts and forgives our "weaknesses", supplies immortality, etc. provide survival advantages against feelings of despair, nihilism, low self-esteem and self-destruction.

Actually, sentences like "our mind" do not make any sense since "we" are "a mind"; it would be as absurd as saying "our us".

This once again shows that there is no grounding for morality within your worldview. If one isn't free to make choices, then there is nothing that one ought to do. This means that you have lost the right to say people ought not do this or that, or people ought to do this or that. At best, morality to you is an illusion, if freedom is an illusion.

You can have the last word, Viole. I'm taking a break from these discussion for a while.

It's been fun.

Blessings.

[Guest]

.... looks common amongst Christians and I consider it a bit dangerous, even though we live in countries with a separation between civil rights and religion. it is a slippery slope to think that only people who believe in an objective morality are entitled to make moral assessments.....

Beloved You Do Know

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:16

Freedom

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. John 8:36

Is Fast Sliding

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:15

Forever Away Down

The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. John 3:35-36

That Slippery Slope Of Unbelief

And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear. Revelation 13:6-9

[Exaeus]

I have noticed that atheists bring judgement against God based on there personal morals.

God is not loving because he did x, y,z God is not good because, x, y, z. These are all statements based on a moral view point that their idea of God does not line up with.

So my question is where do atheists get the moral code to judge God by?

That's an interesting question, but another question popped into my head as I was reading it: where do theists get the moral code to judge God by and decide that God is good?

I'll start another thread if this question is deemed off-topic.

[Isaiah 6:8]

I have noticed that atheists bring judgement against God based on there personal morals.

God is not loving because he did x, y,z God is not good because, x, y, z. These are all statements based on a moral view point that their idea of God does not line up with.

So my question is where do atheists get the moral code to judge God by?

That's an interesting question, but another question popped into my head as I was reading it: where do theists get the moral code to judge God by and decide that God is good?

I'll start another thread if this question is deemed off-topic.

From God. So where do you get your moral code?