Question for nonbelievers, atheists, seekers

[other one]

God certainly did a real number on the human race in the flood.  I could call that genocide.

[JDavis]

 

 

I'm not "forcing" the contradiction, I'm exposing it.

 

 

nothing to expose, it is just your mistaken view of God. 

 

as my favorite apologist, Greg Kokul put it...

 

 God, being the Author of life, has the absolute right to take life away whenever He wants to. Simply put, He gives life, He takes it away. Life is His to do with what He wants. He can give it, as the Author, and as the Author, He can take it away again.

 

 

Again, God didn't "wipe out" anyone.  The Israelites did.  The actual act of genocide was carried out by the Israelites.

 

Yes, God did.  The Israelites were the tool he used. 

[LuftWaffle]

Except again, God didn't kill anyone.  The Israelites did.  The actual act of genocide was carried out by the Israelites.

As I said, the Israelites were acting under God's command. Surely you don't really expect me to believe that the notion of acting on behalf of an authority is foreign to you?
When a judge sentences a criminal their acting on behalf of the state, they're not acting in their own capacity. Hence the words, "by the power vested in me by the state".
Likewise when a traffic officer issues a fine they're not acting in their private capacity but as an agent of the law.

So again, genocide is morally wrong if humans do it on their own, but if God tells them to do it, it's just fine and dandy.

I know, who does God think He is, right?

It matters to all the Israelites who weren't directly commanded to commit genocide.  They're 100% relying on the word of another human, yet not one of them objected and from the accounts we have, the genocide was seen as a great thing.

This is pure speculation on your part. You have absolutely no idea of knowing what they knew, what they thought, or what epistomological warrant they had.

So what do you think is the source of morality?  The God who commands genocide and sexual slavery?

God is the source of morality. "Sexual slavery" is a distortion and a red herring. I've addressed the "genocide" issue. I have yet to see you provide any reason to place God under the same limitations and prerogatives that humans have.
I see no reason why the Source of morality isn't also allowed to judge based on moral reasons and effect moral justice.

Can you quote for me the part in the Bible that says, "Genocide is no longer moral"?

I needn't do that because "genocide" was never a moral precedent. Jesus once told the disciples to sit on the grass (Mark 6:39). There's no reason to construe this as a moral precendent that we always ought to sit on grass unless told otherwise.
You're assuming that all commands are moral precendents, but you have offered no justification for such a bizarre assumption.

Why then complain when I say that your view can't find anything wrong with genocide?

Because it's not accurate.  I can list lots of things wrong with genocide, and I would never ever defend it in any context.

Sure you can list lots of things wrong with genocide, but you cannot say it's really morally wrong for another culture to commit genocide, if you're consistent with cultural relativism.
In cultural relativism saying "X is wrong" simply means "we in our culture prefer not X", which is equivalant to a cultural preference for eating with chopsticks.
It's not that the action is actually wrong, but that it's unfashionable in your culture.

It does for me.

And that matter because?

Under cultural relativism right we in our culture prefer X. If some cultures prefer to eat with chopstick why should your culture be obliged to do likewise?
If some cultures like to listen to heavy metal, why should another culture adopt the same preference?
You keep talking as if there's some objective standard about genocide that makes it immoral, but if you wish to be consistent, you cannot appeal to such a thing. It's all just cultural fashion.

But you don't think it's really morally wrong, otherwise you would never believe in or worship a God that not only condones it, but directly orders it.

Homicide is unjustified killing. Genocide is unjustified killing of many. The operative word here is "justified". If God had a morally sufficient reason for ordering the destruction of Canaan(and you have offered no reason to assume there was't any), then isn't isn't wrong.

Again this comment shows a misunderstanding of what objective means, and I have repeatedly stated that morality is always circumstance dependent.
If a person cuts somebody open with a knife, then it's usually wrong.
If that person happens to be a surgeon performing an operation then it is not wrong, because the virtue of performing a vital medical operation outweighs the virtue of not cutting people open.

If God reason's for destroying the Canaanites is morally weightier than the reason for letting them live, then the morally weightier option is correct.

Yes, you are justifying genocide.  You can dance around it all you like, but the fact remains....when faced with a clear depiction of genocide in the Bible, you have crafted a defense of it.

I'm not dancing around anything. You have yet to establish that God is subject to the same restrictions and prerogatives that humans have. Without that missing piece of the puzzle there's no need for me to "dance" around anything. I'm simply seperating the rhetorical value of your argument with it's substance. I prefer clarity, what's wrong with that?

On one hand you argue that there is an objective morality where genocide is always immoral

Here again you're assuming that objective morality isn't circumstance dependent.

Further, to the point of the OP, if God (the one in the Bible) is the source of this objective morality, then we must conclude that genocide is a moral act, since that same God has set the precedent by directly ordering humans to commit it

God didn't set a moral precedent, He judged.
When a traffic officer issues a fine they're not setting a moral precedent for civilians to follow. This really shouldn't be difficult to understand.

My position is that the reason you view genocide as immoral is because of the time and culture in which you live.  Had you been an ancient Israelite, a Nazi soldier, or a Hutu tribesman, you likely would have crafted a moral justification for your actions.

Had I been a Nazi soldier, taking part in the "final solution", I would have been wrong regardless of whether I believed my actions to be wrong if moral objectivism is true. If cultural relativism is true, then there'd be nothing wrong with my actions as there's no objective moral standard, my culture simply defined the Final Solution as right, so I'd be right in taking part.

This is the problem with cultural relativism, which you still need to address.

So no other genocidal acts have been justified by claiming "It's what God wants"?

I can claim to be a policer officer, but the mere claim doesn't authorise me to go about arresting people.
Likewise the mere claim that a genocidal act is the will of God, doesn't justify the action.

I'm assuming that now you'll try to say something to the effect of "how do you know the Israelites weren't mistaken about God ordering the killings?"
Am I right?

If my suspicion is correct, then for the sake of not wasting time the simple answer is we're discussing whether the claims in the Bible are consistent, not whether they're true.
In order to float a case of inconsistency you have to assume the claims to be true.

Right.  You are justifying and supporting genocide in one context.  So on what basis is it objectively immoral?

In a vacuum it is always immoral. However, as I've stated many times before objective morality depends on circumstance.
In a vacuum lying is always immoral. However if you're a French farmer harbouring jews in WW2 and an SS officer knocks on your door and asks if you're harbouring jews, then the virtue of saving the lives of the jews is weightier than the virtue of not lying. This doesn't nullify the virtue of not lying, such that lying under any circumstance now becomes virtuous.
The virtue of not lying is still in place. It still adds it's weight to the moral equation, but the greater virtue (saving the lives of the jews) must be satisfied.

[LuftWaffle]

We've spent a great deal of time running down the epistemological rabbit trail of Bible atrocities, but I have yet to get a response to my question about moral reform given cultural relativism.

If cultural relativism is true then whatever a culture prefers is morally right for that culture. So if a culture prefers to view blacks as inferior then it is morally right for that culture to do so. Anybody who goes against the cultural "fashion" is immoral.

 

This poses a huge problem when it comes to moral reformers because while in real life we hail the efforts of Martin Luther King for going against the cultural norm, cultural relativism dictates that we view such people as immoral.

 

Likewise the very notion of moral reform is impossible. One cannot look back at a culture and say that it is now morally better than it was before, because that presupposes a moral standard beyond the culture which the culture is now closer to adhering to.

 

I'm hoping that Gerald will begin addressing this issue as it deals with moral ontology which is what the topic is actually about.

 

Then I've also made a comment about morality given a purely materialistic perspective, which is what most atheists adhere to. I asked:

 

 

What precisely is wrong with some aggregates of particles that we call human interacting with other particles in a way that you call "genocidal", given that from an atheist perspective human beings are essentially recycled stardust arranged mammal-wise on a obscure planet in a very large universe?

This question has been completely ignored, but I think it's a very valid question and I'd like it answered.

 

In an atheistic worldview, humans beings don't have intrinsic value and our sense of value is merely and illusion and so is morality. Given atheism morality boils down to nothing more than chemistry and physics. But given that view, how is it possible for a deterministic chemical reaction to have any normative value? I can't which is why most well known proponents of atheism declare that there is no such thing as right or wrong.

 

I have entertained your questions about genocide, but attempting to vilify God or Christianity doesn't magically give atheism a free ride when it comes to grounding morality. So I'm hoping we can get back on topic and discuss this important issue which has been largely ignored thus far.

 

I've had a number of these discussion and at this stage I find it quite telling, that whenever the issue of moral grounding is raised, many atheists prefer to ignore the implications of their own worldview and instead redirect the topic to a discussion of Old Testament "atrocities" as if making the Bible look bad is an adequate response to the questions of moral ontology.

It would be refreshing to see more atheists employ some of their professed superior reasoning (rational freethinking "brightness") to reason through their own worldview instead of just flailing against Christianity. I find this tendency to be a smudge on the new atheism.

[JDavis]

 

That's exactly how I've been describing it (God can do whatever He wants).  It's interesting how Christians hold their God to a lower standard of morality than their fellow human beings.

 

 

and the dishonesty begins again...

 

Christians do not hold God to a lower standard of morality, just the opposite in fact.  God's actions are moral based on authority, not human failed understandings.

 

Let me use this example....

 

A judge can order you locked up for life in a 10x10 cell, it is not an immoral action because the judge has the authority to do so.  If I were to lock you up in a 10x10 cell for the rest of your life that would be immoral because I do not have the authority to do so.  

 

It is a fairly simple concept

 

 

Well, I'm sure that's the same argument used to justify many genocides...."We're agents of God!" 

 

You are now making a different argument, that God didn't really tell them to do it.  Please make up your mind, you cant have it both ways.

[Diatheosis]

The basic conflict between those believing in God and those believing in something else has to do with just that; belief.

 

Not believing in God, it can be hard to find justification why something that in general is outright considered immoral would be considered suddenly a righteous thing to do, even though supposedly done by all-knowing God. As a former atheist, I can well understand the logic as for how it works. After having experienced God's living presence so many times, it would be difficult to not to believe in Him, although I have taken my discerning to its outer limits in trying to figure out all possible alternative scenarios and explanations to replace God. Which brings me to say, there being a God who has set universal rules and foundation to good and bad, I still understand how even offensive this way of thinking may sound to someone who has no direct personal experience and thus no reason per se to believe in God.

 

But the discussion has been colorful and provided many interesting thoughts. And by all means, let it continue.

 

I was too considering the problem of understanding God's point of view. Him being transcendental and thus above time and space as for limiting factors, we cannot possibly realize His sometimes strange to us motifs. But whatever God decides, it is for the best of all Creation, including us. Of course, the problem still has not vanished in that those believing in something else have it difficult to relate to this.

 

As addressed in previous posts, it would perhaps be better then to explain what one believes in.

 

Being a sentient personality, I would spontaneously say we all agree in a sense what basically is right or wrong but explaining why is another thing.

 

My question for now is, if God does wrong taking a life, can an abortion then be in any way defended?

Edited August 16, 2013 by Diatheosis

[LuftWaffle]

 

 

Yes, within that culture.

Which makes it completely nonsensical to claim that Nazi culture did anything wrong. Yet it seems obvious that they were wrong, which makes cultural relativism a rather poor theory of ethics. According to cultural relativism if the Nazi's had won then killing jews would be morally correct and attempting to save them would be an immoral act.

 

 

We hail "reformers" now, from our current perspective.  We are looking backwards in time into another culture and applying the moral standards of today and saying "What a good thing that was".  Why?  Because...

What you're saying doesn't address the fact that they, according to cultural relativism, were acting immorally by going against the cultural norm.

Once again this doesn't seem to comport with moral reality.

 

 

The reformer is able to accomplish his objective by convincing the society that what he's advocating is morally right and what they've been doing previously is morally wrong.

You're still borrowing from objectivism to support cultural relativism. Right and wrong are what cultures define. By going against the societal norm, the reformer is by default acting immorally. We hail moral reformers because we believe they improved societal morality, but speaking of improvement requires a scale by which to measure.

 

 

 Therefore, we live in a society that has adopted the reformers views that the previous way was immoral, so it's logical that we would view the current way as morally "better" than the previous, pre-reform way.

But it cannot be called "better" in any meaningful way. It's simply a matter of back then owning slaves was the norm and now it's not because we in our culture prefer otherwise now.

Moral reform implies an improvement in morality, but such a thing is impossible if whatever culture defines at any given point is moral. You cannot look back and say we're better now, because there's no standard to measure against. Tommorow the standard might very well go back to the previous scenario and then according to cultural relativism it is once again worse.

Assuming that the current standard is better than the previous assumes an objective scale. Otherwise talking about better or worse is simply a way of saying we used to prefer such and such and now we don't. Better or worse is meaningless.

Do you believe people who act immorally should be punished?

[Diatheosis]

sounds like sort of nihilism to me. Based on that thinking, there is no value in anything, life is just an accidental reaction with no value attached to it. What that then makes us?

 

Is there then something 'preferable' one can do in life, in your opinion? Like, does life to you matter at all? I really assume it does, but you think that in itself does not matter and it's just opinion, in the end?

 

I used to think like that when I was an atheist. Now I feel life has a meaning and life is good in essence, although people, including ourselves and circumstances can make it hard from time to time. It's different to say it's good than to say it's easy.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Diatheosis

[JDavis]

JDavis,

 

 

 

 

 

The problem with your analogy to the judge is that the judge has been given the authority to "lock people up" by the very society in which he exists.  If the judge does something the society considers immoral, they can remove his authority.  God OTOH simply asserts his authority and commands people to kill babies.

 

 

I agree it is a weakness in the analogy ,but all analogies have a weakness.  But the weakness of the analogy is not as you see it.  A judge's authority depends on society, and society is flawed.  God's authority is a result of His very being.   God's authority is not granted to Him by others, it is part of how God is.   God by his nature cannot do something immoral.

 

 

And to be clear, no I don't believe God told the Israelites to commit genocide.  I think some of the accounts are exaggerated (as most ancient tales of war told by the victors are) and the others are merely an artifact of their times.  IOW, what was seen as a triumph then would be a crime against humanity now.  I'm simply adopting the Christian viewpoint being expressed here (that God commanded genocide) in order to expose its flaws.

 

Of course you don't, you don't believe that God exist.   The only flaw that has been exposed is that of your understanding of God.  And you are not  adopting the Christian viewpoint, you are taking one tiny part of it and ignoring the rest.  Something you do very often truth be told

[JDavis]

 

I agree it is a weakness in the analogy ,but all analogies have a weakness.  But the weakness of the analogy is not as you see it.  A judge's authority depends on society, and society is flawed.  God's authority is a result of His very being.   God's authority is not granted to Him by others, it is part of how God is.   God by his nature cannot do something immoral.

 

Except as you note, the weakness in your analogy is fundamental to the point, thus rendering it inapt.  

 

And your last statement exhibits the circular reasoning common to the Christian position. 

 

 

 

 

It is as apt an analogy that one can make when comparing something of this earth to God.   And it serves its purpose, showing that authority makes a difference in the action.

 

and you really should not be one to speak of circular reasoning