ten to the eleventh

I realized while reading your post that you have never said that you accept any of the biblical accounts of God's actions as factual. If you translate liberally enough, then I suppose we have no real actions of God's to judge. We would still be left with inactions, though, and would be down to talking about the problem of evil, which I'm not wanting to get into here.

edit: This is not to say that with a more literal translation that inactions necessarily fall under the purview of apologetics of the problem of pain, as in the case of Japhtheth.

Magus55

I think evilbible.com is dumber, and more ridiculous than SAB, and I never thought anything could be as bad as SAB. Thanks for proving that the makers of such sites are the most theologically ignorant people on Earth.

Magus55

Use a lexicon to read the meaning of evil in that passage. Its not moral evil, its calamity.

ten to the eleventh

Here's an example that runs contrary to the notion of objective, universal morality.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=100683

I'm sure the men in this society would be utterly morally repulsed at the way we let our women run about unfettered. I'm also sure they feel they are doing the Godly thing.

ZooMom

Ok, I was following you up to this last part. I understand what you are saying and I don't disagree with you, neccessarily. But are you suggesting that this tendency to 'disallow any reasoning that questions' God's inherent morality...is deliberate? Kind of the Christian equivalent of a frightened ostrich?


Well, I see what you are getting at, but it's really more like the 'Mom Rule'.

Rule #1: Mom is always right.

Rule #2: In the event that Mom is ever wrong, refer back to Rule #1.




Ok. I have no problem with that. Because essentially, man is always the variable in these equations. God is constant.


Yes, I do. But I say again that as the source of morality, God cannot be that which He is not. He cannot be immoral. He is what He is. Even in Scripture, that is how He describes Himself. "I am that I am".



And that is truly why you believe murder to be bad? Because your rational mind worked it out into a neat equation?



Exactly. I just don't believe that the capacity for moral interaction was an accident of evolution.


But you have demonstrated that it is. You just showed that regardless of social groups 'murder' is intrinsically distasteful, but that 'killing' can be justified for various reasons. And that there is a moral difference between the two. Why is that? Do you think that they worked it out rationally before putting it into practice?


Thanks. I love smilies. :angel:


Peace be with you!

Sandy

ZooMom

Oh, yes! I accept many, if not all (I would need specific examples), of God's actions in Scripture to be literal truth.



Peace!

Sandy

ten to the eleventh

I'm not saying it is necessarily a fear response. What I am saying is that you have disallowed such reasoning already, as you show very clearly here:


I am not saying that there must be found instances in which God can be found to have done wrong, but that for us to claim that we have rationally evaluated the goodness of a particular action, we must allow our capacity to rationally evaluate badness. We must not, therefore, assume that any reasoning that concludes that God has done wrong must be flawed.


Note, I did not say "immoral," I said "amoral." But I'm confused here. How is it that God cannot violate a rule He created for us? The rules were created for us, and not for him, right? I don't follow that just because God wrote the rules, he must therefore always be found to have abided by those rules. If God is defined as purely good, then it is not through reason that God is found good. Again, my question: If God creates rule 1, an inviolable objective measure, but then proceeds to violate rule 1, then can we not say that God has acted immorally?

Your answer before: only serves to establish that the morality of God's (or Mom's) actions are not open for consideration. And again, we have that it is a matter of dogma, or what you might call "spiritual truth," that God is good. God's goodness was entirely determined prior to and independently of reason. Reason in this matter is wholly irrelevant, under the condition given. One may claim that it is highly improbable that God would act immorally, but the possibility must be allowed before the judgment that He never has can be made.


That is not why I feel it to be bad. I feel it to be bad because it sucks, if you know what I mean. You asked if I could deduce the badness of murder logically, and I showed that it could be done independently of supernatural notions. My logic is also a formalization of the evolutionary (both social and physical) logic behind our conviction that murder is bad.

Well, "accident," is not an accurate term, but that's another topic. The point is that there are sound explanations for the existence of morality that do not require God.

I said you said: What I am saying is that while the really basic premises that allow social cooperation may be intrinsically held, they have only been more innately applicable to intra-group interactions, and have not applied universally or absolutely.

Take caveman group 1, all getting along fine and cooperating productively. Ugh, from group 1, whacks Googa, also in group 1, over the head and takes his food. The other group members proceed to run him off. Now, Googa, recovering from a severe headache, wanders by caveman group 2 in the next valley over. He sneaks in, pounces on poor Trog, thwaks him good, and takes off with his food. Proudly, he walks back into the camp of caveman group 1 and tells of his bravery and adventure, and all the cave folk in caveman group 1 pat Googa on the back and tell him what a good job he has done, as everybody chows down on the spoils.

Actions such as killing, lying, stealing, raping have generally always been viewed as morally repugnant within groups, but not across groups. This fact is consistent with the evolutionary development of a moral sense, but not so much with a God-stamp on each of us, which would, I would think, make it as emotionally repugnant to kill Habib in Iraq, or Mr. Nuygen in Vietnam, as it would to kill Joe Smith next door. But it seemed to me that a lot of good Christian (and non-Christian) folks have screamed for the blood of caveman group 2 over in Afghanistan or Iraq.

When people have argued that we shouldn't treat others outside our groups differently, they have had to do so using reason. Their reasoning may have used biblical commands as premises, but reasoning was required to persuade because people do not feel the same sort of empathy for "the other" as they do for their familiars. Often, such reasoning has simple rational pragmatism as its base: "Hey, Googa, if you keep stealing their food, they are going to come over here and beat the crap out of us. As a matter of fact, you will be punished if you do it again."


You asked about the moral difference between murder and killing:

Yes, they often did. The Israelites reasoned that because they were God's chosen people, and that God had promised them a patch of land, that anyone on that patch of land was in defiance of God's will, and to kill them was not murder, but righteousness in action. That is reasoning. We are smart monkeys, and we often recognize apparent contradiction. Reasoning, especially highly motivated reasoning, can often overcome apparent contradictions. If we know that to refrain from something that we usually consider wrong will be to our material disadvantage, we often use reason to find a way that what we want to do is not the same as what we consider to be wrong. As a mother, I'm sure you are intimately familiar with that concept.

edit: Even better for the Israelites, they got to write up their preferred version of their history, and that version has been successfully promoted as unquestionable truth ever since.

ten to the eleventh

So, if in this history of the Israelites, written by them, under the presumption that they were God's chosen people, and without any critical editing by any neutral party, we can find a depiction of God's action, or inaction that appears, at least to ethics we hold, to be morally questionable, are we capable of rationally evaluating it? If, to this general question, you answer that first we must assume that whatever God has done is morally perfect, then we really can't have a fair analysis, can we? Our finding, given that condition, cannot be meaningful, can it? A finding of "not-guilty" cannot be said to reinforce the a priori assumption that makes such a finding necessary, can it?

ten to the eleventh

Well, when you spend 8 years getting a 4-5 year degree, that kind of bullshit is likely to creep in there somewhere.

Newton Joseph

[QUOTE=ZooMom]I think I understand your question, and the answer is 'No'. God cannot do 'wrong'. That doesn't meant that people of faith will always agree with or understand God's actions, or inactions ATCMB, but as the source of morality (according to believers) God cannot be wrong or do wrong.


Does that answer the question, or have I misunderstood something? :wave:


Peace be with you!

Sandy[/QUOTE

I am so happy that you know God's mind