Ed

You misunderstood my point. Without a free will you cannot make a choice based on anything. With a free will you can make a decision based on empathy or self interest or scientific evidence or some other reason. You decide between the different options. Without free will you cannot do any of these things.

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jtb: Similarly, weighing arguments isn't FREE will, because the process involves predictably selecting the "best" option. The option selected is dictated by the circumstances.

Again you misunderstood my point. You have the ability to NOT choose the best option if you have free will. And without a free will you cannot even determine what is the actual best option.

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Ed: The biblical understanding of omnipotence does not mean that God can do absolutely anything. He is limited by some things such as logic and his moral character. And there may be other things and situations in the spiritual dimension that we don't know about that limit what exactly he can do in some situations in order to bring about the greatest good which is always His goal. jtb: In other words: God is not omnipotent. There are "things and situations in the spiritual dimension" that conveniently interfere to absolve God from the charge that he is simply incompetent.

He is not omnipotent in the sense that you understand it. He is omnipotent in that he has ultimate power in the universe. You have yet to demonstrate incompetence.

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Ed: Fraid so, it is "You shall not murder." The ancient hebrews were God's arm of justice against the Amalekites for what they had done, Hitler killed the jews for who they were, what they had done was irrelevant. Therefore what Hitler did was murder, what God did thru the Israelites was legitimate capital punishment. jtb: This is doubly false. The Amalekites were NOT killed for what they had done. They were killed for who they were: the DESCENDANTS of those who had done what God disapproved of.

They were killed for that AND what they had done and what they were doing and for things that are not revealed in the bible. There is such a thing as collective and national guilt. See above about the scriptures not being exhaustive.

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jtb: Similarly, the Jews were killed largely for being the DESCENDANTS of those who had done what God disapproved of: rejecting and executing Jesus.

While that may be true for some of the ordinary germans, most of the Nazi leaders hated Christianity, see Ian Kershaw's excellent bio, "Hitler". The Nazis primarily hated the Jews because they considered them subhuman parasites on the evolutionarily advanced Aryans.

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jtb: They were also killed as an act of jealousy and greed, for something they had done: making money.

That was the secondary reason for their hatred.

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Hitler claimed to be "doing the Lord's work". His killing of the Jews was just as "legitimate" as the massacre of the Amalekites, according to the rules of Christian morality.

No, that quote comes from the obvious political propaganda of "Mein Kampf" which was written for the ordinary germans who considered themselves christians. Early in his career he had to placate the german "christians". Again read Kershaw's excellent bio, Hitler hated Christianity.

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Ed: No, you are misunderstanding. See above for the rational basis for Christian morality. Christians obey Christ out of love for him, but the difference is that the Christian's emotion has the rational basis mentioned above. jtb: Obeying Christ "out of love for him" is an EMOTIONAL reason. It is not a RATIONAL reason.

No, you are misunderstanding. Emotions can have rational and irrational bases. The Christian's emotion has a rational basis, the atheist's does not.

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jtb: But my worldview remains superior to yours because it provides an entirely rational explanation for WHY we have these emotions. "The existence of a moral God with an objective moral character and standard" is not an answer to the question of WHY God supposedly has these characteristics.

We don't know why God has something similar to emotions.

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Ed: Actually human morality is more than emotions. People generally try to live their lives according to what they think is reality. If they think that there is an objective moral standard, ie God's moral character, they are more likely to live according to that standard. On the other hand if they think that morality is just based on subjective feelings then they have a tendency to live their moral lives in a less consistent manner. Their behavior becomes more centered around the self and its emotions, i.e. they do what feels good irregardless of what it does or does not do to others around them. This can eventually be detrimental to society. jtb: However, the Bible contains many contradictory statements on moral issues (e.g. the punishment of innocents for the crimes of others) and fails to provide guidance on many others (e.g. slavery, abortion). As a result, Christians can do pretty much anything they like, as they can find the verses which support them.

That has yet to be demonstrated.

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jtb: I suggest you have a look at the Ten Commandments again. Look at what the FIRST commandment is, and how much space is given to it compared to the others. Even Jesus, who reduced the list to TWO commandments, placed worship of God ahead of "love thy neighbor". This is the handle that allows the priesthood to control the population: above all else, the people must be mindless sheep ready to obey "God" (the priesthood) above all else.

The reason there is an emphasis on worshiping God is because morality at heart is a spiritual and relational problem not just a list of dos and don'ts. Once you have a right relationship with God then all the morals generally fall into place. And the mindless sheep quip is wrong, both the OT and the NT say you should test the teaching and leadership of your religious leaders to see if it matches God's word.

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jtb: So the only real constraint on Christian morality is the morality of whichever type of "spiritual authority" that particular Christian chooses to recognize (or has been brainwashed into following).

Evidence {}.

Ed

The only way you could know that is if you were omniscient.

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Ed: And there may be other things and situations in the spiritual dimension that we don't know about that limit what exactly he can do in some situations in order to bring about the greatest good which is always His goal. tc: Where do you get this information from Ed?

The Bible.

winstonjen

*snort*

The only other 'evidence' you offered us is the so-called 'celebration.' If the all-knowing 'word' of the 'all-knowing' 'god' isn't exhaustive, then what is?

Duh. God is supposed to be all-knowing AND all-powerful. Therefore, he would have no shortage of options to stop the bomber.

Jack the Bodiless

You are obviously not a computer programmer!

Almost every program I've ever written has some sort of input function. The results of the program are therefore dependent on what's happening outside it.

Justice isn't free will. Justice is an output determined entirely by the processing of inputs. Processing of evidence is what determines guilt or innocence.
All of these involve the processing of inputs to determine an output. They differ only in the weighting given to the various factors during processing.
See above. Free will is not necessary for selecting the "best" option. If it gives the freedom to select the WRONG option, then why claim that it's necessary for "justice"?
How can I "demonstrate incompetence" when you're willing to invent any number of imaginary problems that God can't handle?
The Bible says WHY they were killed. So the Bible is lying, because it doesn't agree with Ed. Gotcha.
The Nazis were primarily Christians. They were 50% Lutheran, 35% Catholic. That makes them at least 85% Christian.

And they believed the Jews had SUPERhuman powers of cunning, deviousness and so forth. There was obviously no factual basis to the claim that the Jews were subhuman, so the claim that they WERE subhuman was pure propaganda born of pre-existing hatred. This hatred stemmed from what the Jews did, and what they were accused of doing.
Exactly the opposite is true, as I have already demonstrated. We have a rational basis for why emotions exist: you do not.
AT LAST!

So why did you just claim that "The Christian's emotion has a rational basis"?
The Nazi example demonstrated it.
But whenever those who profess to be Christians act immorally, you conveniently invoke either the "no true Christian" response or the "God has inscrutable reasons" response. Being Christian apparently makes no real difference to morality.
...Which is determined by the religious leaders. Heck, they even voted on which books to include in the Bible! How much more obvious could this be?
Violence between different religions, and between different denominations of the same religion, throughout history.

Bill Snedden

The underlined portion represents, of course, the typical argumentum ad undulatus mani (hand waving) commonly employed by apologists. In effect, Ed is saying, "well, if the reasons given in the Bible are insufficient, then there must be some good reason not given in the Bible."

The problem here is that such a statement assumes without argument that a good reason must exist. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the apologist is attempting to prove and is thus fallacious circular reasoning.

I beg to differ; there is not, at least not in the sense in which you mean.

I am not in any way, shape, or form guilty of the past crimes of another regardless of my association with them as part of a socio-political group. To sanction me for the sins of another is evil, pure and simple. There is and can be no justification for such an act.

The only way in which I might be held "collectively" responsible is if I actively condoned the act in question. I am not "guilty" of slavery simply because my ancestors or fellow American citizens own slaves, even if the government has made it legal. I can only be said to bear any part of the guilt if I actively support slavery, either by word or deed. Even then, the "guilt" is certainly less than born by those who actually own or owned slaves.

Even more, such a "collective" guilt is ONLY possible in a democratic society, where membership conveys a certain amount of responsibility for the acts of others (specifically, the government). It cannot be true AT ALL in an autocracy, such as most likely existed for the Amelekites.

BTW, I'm still interested in hearing your non-self-referential definitions of "person" and "personal".

Regards,

Bill Snedden
_______________
"More than once I have been humiliated by my resemblance to God the father; He is always longing for the love of His children and trying to get it on the cheapest and laziest terms He can invent." Mark Twain

Ed

Your character is where your morals come from. There is nothing circular about God's goodness coming from his good moral character.

winstonjen

In that case, god (according to the Bible) has little to no goodness. Take a look at http://members.aol.com/ckbloomfld/bepart11.html#ref119

I'll post the highlights to save you the trouble.

Ed

Why not? Your character is where your moral behavior comes from. If your moral character is good then your behavior will be good. God has a good moral character therefore he is good.

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j tb: WHY does God have a "moral character" which makes him "good"? Why doesn't God have a moral character which makes him evil instead?

We don't know WHY He is good. There are many things we don't know about the ultimate being especially given that we are finite limited beings. This is to be expected. If we knew everything about him that would be evidence that he was manmade.

Ed

There are plenty of people who DO wake up one morning and decide that something that they thought was immoral one day is moral today. I am afraid you need to go deeper Gary. Why is desiring human civilization rational? What is special about humans? If evolution is true then there is nothing special about humans. It is just sentimentality for your own species, not rationality.

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Ed: Fraid so, it is "You shall not murder." The ancient hebrews were God's arm of justice against the Amalekites for what they had done, Hitler killed the jews for who they were, what they had done was irrelevant. Therefore what Hitler did was murder, what God did thru the Israelites was legitimate capital punishment. gw: Do you really believe this? That this is 'legitimate captital punishment'? Do you realize what a precedent this sets? By using your reasoning we can justify executing the grandchildren of the Nazis, for what their ancestors did. After all, we'd only be acting as "God's arm of justice," doing his will by following the example of his Holy Word.

No, if we follow his word we see that only the ancient hebrew army was commanded to do such a thing and only this one time. No individuals or governments are allowed to do such a thing, see Deut. 24:16.

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Ed: Actually human morality is more than emotions. People generally try to live their lives according to what they think is reality. If they think that there is an objective moral standard, ie God's moral character, they are more likely to live according to that standard. On the other hand if they think that morality is just based on subjective feelings then they have a tendency to live their moral lives in a less consistent manner. Their behavior becomes more centered around the self and its emotions, i.e. they do what feels good irregardless of what it does or does not do to others around them. This can eventually be detrimental to society. gw: I've often seen this asserted, and it looks reasonable enough, at least on the surface. But can you back this up, at all? Do we have any evidence that atheists are less moral than theists? Are they, statistically, more likely to commit crimes and less likely to help little old ladies across the street?

Well not specifically atheists but there is evidence that people who are not religious are less moral than religious people. Harvard economist Richard Freeman did a study on young inner city men and found that church attendance was the best predictor of which of the young men would likely end up in prison or gangs or etc.

winstonjen

Isn't god an individual too?