muidiri

It is not moral for a human to worship an immoral entity.
It is simply inane for a human to worship an amoral entity.

So says I, anyways.


Yay - I'm at the top!

Valmont

By your criterion, we can make moral judgements about an earthquake. And I don't dispute that we can. But they are, in essence, meaningless. We can take no sanction against the malefactor. The sphere of moral discourse, as you have it, is the sphere of human association. Beyond that, any conclusions are absurd.

Regardless of the validity of this argument, God's immorality has yet to be established. Let me be quite clear about the standard of proof to show this: you must demonstrate that there is a moral obligation upon God. Thus far this has only been asserted not demonstrated.

I know what you are asserting but I do not agree. As I have already explained, my position is that if the act of worshipping God is beneficial to some and not deleterious to others than, by any reasonable definition, it is a moral act. Certainly, it seems perfectly compatible with just about every statement of the Golden Rule I have seen, not to mention most formulations of utilitarian ethics.

So do not simply assert as this is unpersuasive. Explain why you believe it is not moral to worship an amoral entity.

This seems to be an overly simplistic formulation of morality. If I were a murderer I would not want to be punished. Is it then wrong to punish murderers?

No. As a Christian I believe that "love your neighbour as yourself" captures not only the essence of morality but also its spiritual aspiration. In any case, I do not doubt that its various formulations provide a very apt prescriptive axiom from which derive a moral system. What I find lacking is a description of the necessity or nature of such a prescriptive axiom. What I am asking is "Why ought we to follow the Golden Rule?" Simply to assert that we should is question-begging.

Inadequate for what? It suited God's purposes perfectly, reconciling His specific love for humankind with His generic love for His creation as a whole. We have already argued this one to a stalemate. As for Prometheus and Odin, of course you know that my theology does not recognise them as real. That sounds like the start of completely different discussion.

We do not need to be saved from sin. We can choose not to be. But, as a Christian, I choose to be saved. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yahzi

Well, no. The earthquake is not a moral agent, so it is immune to moral judgements. The earthquake is not a sentient being who directs its own acts, which is why it is not a moral agent.

That does not make them meaningless! The entire point of morality is about "should." Hitler is dead; we can take no sanction against him; but that in no way diminishes our moral judgement of him.

To judge something moral or immoral is entirely divorced from whether you can enforce your judgement. To assert otherwise is to state, in the barest terms, that "might makes right."

He is capable of understanding and implementing the Golden Rule. Therefore, he is a moral agent. Therefore, he is morally obliged. To be a moral agent is to be morally obliged, to fall under the scope of moral law; surely you agree on that. So if God is moral, he is necessarily bound by moral obligations - if he's in the game at all, he has to play by the rules. And the fact is God can understand our suffering, would not desire to suffer himself, would desire us to use our power to ameloriate his suffering, and consequently is bound by the same rules.

It does no good to suggest that God doesn't consider it suffering, either, because that's not the point. The of suffering is that you are in a place you don't want to be; however you define it. The GR demands that people who can help you out of that place do so (unless helping you out puts them in a place they don't want to be, in which case your own application of the GR should prevent you from asking them to suffer).

This is my demonstration: that a moral agent is necessarily bound by moral rules, that if God is considered to be anything but immoral or amoral he must necessarily be moral, and that only moral agents can be moral; QED, God is bound by the GR.

How can it not be deleterious to others, when God is not moral? Apparently we have entirely different ideas of what the word "worship" means. I take it to encompass "serve his will," and if his will is not moral, then you will eventually find yourself doing a not moral act. You seem to think that worshipping means doing what seems right to you, what you would have done anyway, and in fact hardly binds you in anyway.

You seem to be saying, "Why can't I do something that is beneficial to me, as long as it doesn't harm others?" To which the rest of us are saying, "No, you can't buy lampshades from Nazis; I don't care if we can't prove your specific payemnt went to some evil cause, the Nazis are evil and doing even legitimate business with them is a moral crime."

It is only acceptable after you have neutered the words "worship" and "amoral" to the point of meaninglessness.

Human beings are moral agents. To seek to serve, assist, approve of, or in any other way give comfort and assistance to non-moral agents is a crime against all moral agents, a perversion of the entire point of being a moral agent. Non-agents are tolerated, because we have to tolerate them, and because their status as non-agents removes them all moral consideration. Agents that could be moral but choose not to are immoral, and aiding and abetting them is a crime, as surely even you would agree.

Perhaps by worship you mean "take advantage of." I would argue that we take advantage of all sorts of natural events, like rain; we even appreciate it and occasionally attempt to make it rain; but in no sense would anyone call that worship, and if you told people you worshiped the rain, they would think there was something wrong with your moral compass.

This is an overly simplistic analysis. Murderers don't want to be murdered; so they've already broken the GR and can hardly invoke its protection when the rest of us are trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from them. It would be a strange law that only applied when you wanted it to.

And don't even bring up maschoists. Every human being, indeed every sentient being wants its desires to be respected, regardless of what its desires are; and consequently, they must respect other people's desires.

The Golden Rule is morality. You are asking, why should we act morally? My answer is: so that we can be called moral. If you wish to be considered moral, then you must obey the rules of morality.

If you are asking, "why should a person wish to be moral?", I have no answer for you. However, kindly look the other way while I load my shotgun and alert my neighbors. Soon the question will be moot for you.

A less facile answer is that morality is what allows us, as social beings, to thrive. Whether God needs morality to thrive or not is irrelevant; we do, and any person that weakens or attacks our moral structure is our enemy, because they are acting against our thriving. To give time and resources to an agent that is at best neutral is perhaps a misdeamenor of negligence or wastefulness; to actively seek to serve the will of an entity that conciously abandons morality and rebukes the GR is a felony of treason.

Inadequate for us.

Let me put it this way: all that would be required for God's act to be rendered adequate is a phone line to Heaven. If we knew, had certain and repeateable truth of Heaven, then it would be ok. This would not destroy God's creation - unless God wants terror and fear and pain and misery for humans as part of his creation. As a method of communication, Jesus is a miserable failure. I am only asking infinite omniscient omnipotent God to come up with a more successful marketing campaign than Coca-cola. Is that too much to ask?

But we do not have knowledge of heaven: we have a case for the existance of heaven that is indistinguishable from a bunch of crap old people made up (which is why I brought up Prometheus: how, exactly do you distinguish between your made-up stuff and there made-up stuff? Isn't being able to know you actually have the truth a rather important part of your argument? If you concede we cannot know the truth, doesn't that wreck your argument?)

If it is a gift, then why do I have to choose it? If it is a gift, then why does it have to be purchased with worship and faith? And why do I need saved from sin, given that I didn't earn it in the first place?

Why is God punishing me for being what he made me? If he doesn't like sin, why can't he make it go away without bothering me? I mean, he made it appear in me without bothering me. So why do I have to do anything? How is that fair?

What if I don't like Jesus? I mean, personally, I just don't think his humour is funny, I can't stand the clothes he wears, and the sound of his voice aggravates me. Oops... eternal death and/or torment for me! Because human life is just that cheap... if you were born in India, and your only introduction to Jesus was a ranting lunatic, so you just dismiss the guy from your mind and then get hit by a bus... off to hell with you!

Why would you ever think that dealing with such a capricious agent is morally defensible, even if you happen to luck out? That's the equivalent of saying, "I got mine... so to hell with you!"

Heathen Dawn

Not the earthquake itself, since it isn’t a willful agent. But God is (unless you’re into pantheism).

And is God outside the sphere of human association? Is God totally nonhuman?

Valmont

Well, of course, we disagree about the criteria to be considered a moral agent. I still feel you have yet to justify your implicit assertion that knowledge of what is and is not a moral act necessarily entails an obligation act morally. And, I insist, it is no good to keep asserting it, you must justify it.

And the reason that Hitler is dead is because he committed suicide rather than face our sanction.

But God did choose to suffer terribly and even die at our hands. But if God did suffer, it was by His choosing and not by ours and we have no power whatsoever to ameliorate His suffering. Clearly then, the moral contract you have described is impossible between man and God.

But this supposes that our worship, in some way, encourages or aids God in His "non-moral" acts. This is absurd. God's will is decided in all things without the counsel of man. His will is done without the agency of man.

To suggest that in serving God we commit non-moral acts because His will is non-moral is equally, although more subtly, wrong. It would be perfectly moral to serve a brutal tyrant by healing his child. The fact that we do the will of a non-moral being does not make those acts themselves non-moral. We must judge the morality of each act on its own merit, by our own meter, irrespectve of whose will it is.

So, as long God will of us is in accordance with our morals, our service remains moral. And what is God's will of us? Love your neighbour as yourself. Precisely the Golden Rule you say is the basis of morality.

If the analysis is overly simplistic it is because your statement was so. I was attempting to show that your position was nuanced than you had claimed. And you do seem to be saying that there are caveats and subclauses to the Golden Rule.

That is exactly what I am asking. And although you demurred to give an answer, you promptly gave one anyway. And the answer you gave was this, "The reason we should act morally (follow the Golden Rule) is that we have an interest in others doing so." If I have misrepresented your argument then please say so and accept my apologies. But this is how read your point.

And I am in complete agreement with this reasoning. A poster on another thread put it excellently, I thought, when they wrote this...

Do you agree with that?

In other words, morality develops from an intrinsic biological drive. Such biological (or, I suppose, "phenotypic" is a better word) drives arise not because of the logical interests of the individual but the the collective interests of the species. But this means that sentience is not the determinant of moral obligation but rather the possession of a specific biological drive.

You take my point.

But this is why I feel justified in asserting that the proper sphere of morality is the sphere of human association. Morality is a human drive to act in the collective interest of humanity. It has no universal extent.

It doesn't have to be purchased with worship and faith. It is used by faith, hope and love.

Yahzi

Um. To be a moral agent, one has to be capable of moral behaviour. If one is capable of moral behaviour, then one is a moral agent. That is what moral agent means: capable of moral action. What part of that do you disagree with?

To be a moral agent is to be governed by moral laws. If you are capable of morality, then other moral agents are allowed to judge how well you conform to morality. What part of this is controversial?

You imply that it is possible to be capable of morality, and yet somehow not be bound by morality; as if being a moral agent was an optional category. Can one choose to be not responsible? No, of course not: if one is responsible for something, one is responsible for it regardless of how one feels or chooses to discharge that responsbility or even if one ignores it: the fact remains, you were responsible for it.

To be capable of morality is to be a moral agent. To be a moral agent is to be subject to the moral judgements of other moral agents. This is all true by definition.

You don't get to just opt out. Opting out of morality is called "choosing immorality."

This does not disprove my point.

[quote]But God did choose to suffer terribly and even die at our hands.[/.quote]
No he didn't. Is God alive? Then he didn't die. You seem confused about what "die" means. And btw, it wasn't that terrible of suffering. Literally billions have died in more pain and terror and anguish and sheer misery than Jesus did.

That does not matter to the Golden Rule. The point is, if he were in our place and we in his, he would want us to act differently than he does to us. Ergo, he should act differently to be consistent with the Golden Rule.

No Jew could ever have held Hitler's office; does this mean that Hitler was not bound by the GR to Jews?

Except for saving us - which apparently requires the agency of man!

Do you see the contradiction here? If being saved does not require my agency, then why are we even wasting time talking about it? God will save who he will, and not who he won't, and so there is zero value to discussing or even knowing about it, since there is nothing we can do about it. Why even write the Bible, let alone read it, since my knowledge/acts have nothing to do with it? Why preach, why proselytize, why read the Bible, why even believe if it does not have any effect on God whatsoever?

If your belief is justified solely by the effect it has on you, this is called "delusion." While you might be justified in using it internally to manage your own emotional state, it hardly justifies asserting to anyone else that it is, in any way, true. And I think we both agree that having to rely on delusions is a less optimal arrangement than not.

This is the inherent Christian contradiction: one, that God is above man, and two, that God is not. That God is both immanent and transcendant; that God can be responsible for the good things, but man gets the other half of the coin. The Bible even says God creates evil, and yet Christians go on with there Zoarastarian heresy that God is good and Man is evil.

But the notion of "worship" does not mean "do what I would do regardless." In what sense do you "worship," given that absent your worship you would behave exactly the same? How are we to distinguish between worship and non-worship when in your view they lead to exactly the same action?

When the existance of something is indistinguishable from its non-existence, we say it does not exist. If your worship is indistinguishable from your non-worship, then you are not worshipping. I don't know exactly what worship means; but I am certain it has to mean something.

1. See above.

2. Doesn't it strike you as highly improbable that a being who takes no notice of morality will consistently have moral will?

3. Your reduction of the Bible to a single sentence is unjustifiable. If you wish to pose as a deist, for whom god has revealed himself through love, then you might have a chance; but to be a Christian, to put a name to God, to follow Jesus, one must accept the Bible; and once you do, you will notice it has a lot more rules than just the benign one you quoted.

I don't think of them as caveats; but we need not argue this point. We both agree that the GR is deeper and wiser than its single sentence would seem.

That is exactly what I am asking. And although you demurred to give an answer, you promptly gave one anyway. And the answer you gave was this, "The reason we should act morally (follow the Golden Rule) is that we have an interest in others doing so." If I have misrepresented your argument then please say so and accept my apologies. But this is how read your point.

Just a warning: I've read that guy's stuff, and he's a 'tard.

Yes.

No.

The "shape" of the universe is such that sentient beings who socially depend on each other will always develop morality, just as the "shape" of space-time demands that a billion tons of dirt left to its own devices will always form a sphere.

An alien that was not a social being - say it was the only sentient creature on its planet - might be considered a non-moral (but sentient) agent. So what? Your "worshipping" that agent would still be immoral, because you are a moral agent, and furthermore, you are human.

Secondly, I repudiate the above example: I assert that the only way a sentient being can be exempt from morality is if it is incapable of it. There are some people who cannot empathize, who cannot imagine being the other side. They are sentient, but not moral agents (we usually call them sociopaths). But this escape claus is not open to you: you cannot rest with an amoral god, because you assert God loves you.

My reformed hypothesis: any sentient being capable of love is also capable of morality. God cannot love you and not be a moral agent. If God is not a moral agent, then he cannot love you.

Then I am saved? Without any action or faith on my part? Are you now endorsing Universalism? I would say more but the wifey is glaring at me. Time to go. :wave:

Valmont

My disagreement may well be semantic. I am not sure what you by capable of moral behaviour.

Do you mean that the agent under consideration is physically able to make decisions that can be subjected to moral evaluation? This seems somewhat broad. By such a definition a tiger would be considered a moral agent. I suspect though that your definition is more subtle.

Later you say...

This implies a criterion on top of physical ability, namely empathy. This is perhaps closer to a definition I am comfortable with. Now, if this is to be our definition, that's fine as long as we know what we have agreed. I am sure you will agree that there is no explicit idea of moral obligation within this definition. So a moral agent is simply one that has some decision-making capability, informed by empathy with others.

It remains for you to show how this definition entails moral obligation. However, you seem to rather skip over this burden of proof when you assert...

Well what is controversial is that it is a bald assertion. Certainly the definition of moral agent that you implied earlier does not entail being 'governed by moral laws'. If I have misrepresented how you are defining a moral agent then accept my apologies. I distilled what I could as best I could.

Anyway, this step of the argument seems to rely on a redefinition of 'moral agent'. As such it is a fallacy of equivocation.

Again, this strikes me as a subtle equivocation. Are you using 'responsible' to mean 'the cause of' or 'under moral obligation to'? And the gap between ability and obligation cannot be bridged by equivocation. Until that gap is bridged, moral agency, in the latter sense of being 'governed by moral law', does remain an optional category.

In other words, simply asserting an obligation upon the physically able and empathic won't do. Even if there is no other reason to refute this argument, it neglects some of the power of moral obligation. It is well to say that this obligation exists but what are the consequences of not honouring the obligation. I can see none save for one being labelled 'immoral'. But immorality must be more than a label. In an attempt to generalise morality beyond its sphere you have neutered it.

Whilst I have no problem with you asserting this obligation exists under these conditions, I do not see that it is necessarily entailed by them. And this is the problem. It is not an assertion which is held to true within my theology. You haven't demonstrated an internal contradiction and therefore your case fails.

The theological significance of the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is probably a discussion for another day.

This is another debate we've had before. I'm happy to come back to it at some point but it probably isn't that relevant here.

Well I would hold worship to be fulfilling the first commandment of Jesus Christ: Love the Lord your God above all others. This does not mean that we do not love others. It means that we pray, we partake in Holy Communion, we give thanks for His creation and sacrifice, we are ever mindful of His glory. Nowhere does that entail harming others. Indeed, it is perfectly compatible with the second commandment Love your neighbour as yourself.

I agree completely. But do notice the criterion of social dependency.

But you haven't shown why it would be immoral. Furthermore, in talking about God we are not talking about a being that has no concern for morality. Indeed, God is concerned precisely that we do act morally. It is just that He Himself is above the moral sphere.

This is a much better, more precise hypothesis. Let's work with this one.

If God loved us uniquely within His creation then your argument would have merit. Morality is the singling out of one part of creation as special. But, and it is an argument I've made before, God's love is all-encompassing. He does not intervene in His creation to stay our suffering because that suffering is part of a greater context that He loves. He loves the part but as part of the whole.

Yes. This presentation of God seems psychopathic, immoral and inhuman. But He is inhuman. He is beyond morality. This is what we are taught by the sufferings of Job. He who 'binds the Pleiades' has greater responsibilities than human morality, greater love than human fellowship. You can judge and condemn such actions but what good does that do? We must accept God and His creation as we find them. And, yes, that is hard.

But although He loves the part as part of the whole, He was still willing to suffer and die upon the cross to save us from this context, that we might live again in Spirit. I realise that this requires much greater elaboration but I'm afraid it will have to wait.

No. I'm not a Universalist in the strictest sense of the word. I believe the grace of God is universal but not everyone benefits from that grace. His grace is life in the Spirit and not everyone desires life in the Spirit. It is everlasting but profoundly different from life in the flesh.

I do not, however, believe the gates of Heaven are closed to those that do not possess the correct doctrine. Doctrine is a useful guide but it is not itself the key.

muidiri

Valmont, you keep insisting that others demonstrate their points, yet you fail to support your position. You have chosen a thoroughly offensive {as opposed to defensive} approach, and seem to think that anyone who disagrees with your blanket statements has to demonstrate why they dare to disagree. So let me turn the tables.

Please demonstrate in what way god is amoral as opposed to immoral. Please give reasoning for why it is acceptable for him to be so, and how your definition is acceptable to a moral being. Please give consequences of this state of amorality as acceptible, with applications to other species, including the potential alien visitor from Rigel-7. Please include an explanation of why a being capable of moral discernment may be excused from having to act morally.

Please do so without quoting scripture. If you feel you are justified in quoting scripture to support your arguments, The we should be justified in quoting Dr. Suess books to support ours. Your bible is completely irrelevant as "proof" in this discussion.

Valmont

No I think that you have misrepresented me there. All I have claimed is that my theology is internally consistent. If you read the original post of this thread you will see that. The reason I ask for demonstration is because that is what is necessary to establish inconsistency. My position here is not that there is a persuasive case for my theology but that my theology is defensible.

In other words, I don't purport to show that what I'm claiming is true but you can't show that it is false.

I don't think I have ever been shy about my argument. In order to be immoral one must have been negligent in meeting a moral obligation. Moral obligation is a different and separate thing to moral discernment. Now if you think there is a reason why moral discernment necessarily entails moral obligation then I would be glad to hear it. However, unless you can show that, I am being logically consistent in treating them as separate things.

Morality is an adaptive trait which regulates interactions between social creatures. It serves a purpose. We are moral because it is in our own nature and interest to be so. My argument is simple and obvious. It is neither in God's nature nor in His interest to be moral. He is beyond good and evil because morality is entirely irrelevant to Him.

I don't think I have ever used Scripture as proof. I am well aware that my audience finds this unconvincing. I have used it as illustration and to explain my theology in another way. But my actual argument does not depend on the truth of Scripture.

muidiri

OK... maybe I'm being kinda dense here. As far as I can tell, Yahzi has given a very coherent and sensible explanation of why god has a moral obligation. I agree with it, and it has been echoed by several other posts in this thread. As far as I can tell, you've simply said "nuh-uh" to the reasoning (Am I missing something?). You've asked for someone to show you why god has a moral obligation. Yahzi shows you why... and you ask for someone to show you why god has a moral obligation. I may be missing something here, but it seems that you've been given a reason, and you've simply denied it. Shouldn't you have to give a good rationale for your denial?

Maybe I'm missing some of the nuances here... but it's sounding like all you have to do is say "This is my statement". Then everyone else has to try to knock it down. But all you have to do is deny what they say... and you win? Don't you have to defend your statement as well? Don't you have to successfully counter their arguments?

Will someone please lay out the rules for me? :huh: