Zuri

God creates the world and all living things in it. He even creates human and then settles down to create the laws for them to follow. Option 1: God arbitrarily picks what is right and what is wrong for his own amusement and what he wants to see his new little people doing. Option 2: He tells people what is right and wrong based on natural principles higher than himself.

Either 1: Right/wrong is an arbitrary flip of the coin decided by God.

Or 2: There is a form higher than God that dictates what is right/wrong.

Any thoughts?

Tercel

3. Right and wrong is intrinsic to the nature of God.

Bill Snedden

That's the common theist response. However, doesn't it beg the question? Suppose for a moment that it's true. How do we then know the difference between right and wrong?

One possibility is one I call the "moral intuition" argument. I think I first saw it in one of C.S. Lewis' works. It holds that as we are made in God's image, that "right" and "wrong" are also part of our nature; that our "moral intuition" is a sign of that.

Of course, original sin means that our intuition is often wrong, so there are some distinct flaws in this possibility.

Another possibility is, of course, that God just tells us (via the Bible), what "right" and "wrong" are. Unfortunately, this leads ineluctably to the idea that genocide & rape can be "right" when ordered by God. It also means that only God really knows what "right" and "wrong" are; all we can know is that His will is right. Essentially that's no different from "God flips a coin" (in terms of our ability to judge actions right or wrong).

If this is true, then this possibility would seem to lead to moral solipsism (in regard to the moral status of human actions).

Regards,

Bill Snedden

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: Bill Snedden ]</p>

Eudaimonist

Zuri, Socrates had some interesting thoughts on this in <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html" target="_blank">Euthyphro</a>.

Draygomb

Now that's an interesting thought. If our morals are built-in then anything we feel that we should do is moral and anything we don't feel like doing is immoral. So anything done or not done because of peer pressure would be immoral.

If True it would disqualify any religion that had mandated rules of behavior.

If Not True it means there are definately things higher than god.

That's A Hoot.

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: Draygomb ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

Which, in fact, is precisely what is argued.

Amos

Zuri, maybe you are confused because God never created humans but God created man and the human nature of man is secondary of his own imagination.

The laws were given to Moses not to stop sin but to serve for the conviction of sin. Hence Jesus was convicted by Judaic law and not by civil law.

Right and wrong are relative in the eyes of God but not from the perspective of religion.

There is not a "form" higher than God but there is natural law in the adaptation argument for the survival of the fittest. It is here that God is the leading edge of evolution wherefore God is the God of the living and not of the dead.

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Bill,
'Original sin' does not imply our intuition is wrong...we usually KNOW when we do something bad. It implies the choice we've made is wrong. Big difference.

2 points:
#1-genocide:the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. Websters
God has never ordered the destruction of people based on their racial, political or cultural status. God ordered Isreal to war (a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end, Websters) against certain surrounding tribes based on their moral status.

Again...big difference.

#2-God has never ordered anyone to rape another.


Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Danya

And the difference between man and human is what?

Amos

Well, for one, the nature of man is opposite to human nature in that the nature of man is eternal and the nature of humans is temporal. In here, the nature of man pertains to the non-rational animal man and the human nature points to our nature as rational animal. Our faculty of reason is what constitutes our rational nature and is merely a condition of being and therefore temporal and not not part of the being but merely an attribute.