RichardMorey

Actually, the word holy means righteous, which does have to do with morality. You are confusing "holy" and "whole"; they are not related in the way you think they are. You thus did not answer the question.

Huh? Could you be more clear? What is "solitary (non-social) God-like wholeness"? And what does "an other than God-like idenity" mean? I don't understand how this addresses the question.

How are we not whole? What is not whole? What is "made whole"? Remember, just because you can put words together does not mean they make sense. Please be exact and logical when you write, otherwise it is very difficult to communicate.

I don't think you understand the problem as it was posed.

Either:
1. God determines what is moral and is the absolute judge or
2. God relies on some "outside" measure of right and wrong (ie, lying is wrong...because it is wrong, not because God says so)

If 1. is true, then morality would seem to be arbitrary. God could say that killing is moral. There is a problem with this; we would not want to say that morality is that arbitrary. Killing would be wrong whether or not a being said it is or not. At least, theists generally claim this.

If 2. is true, there arise two problems. First, God is held to a "higher standard". This is clearly unacceptible, as God MUST, by definition, be the highest standard. Two, humans no longer need a god to tell them what is moral or not. Morality is independent of God.

Hence, question 3.

You can read Euthyphro here:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html

Amos

How can holy mean righteous if holiness is an attribute of God but righteousness is not? God is the essence of existence which either is or is not and therefore never right or wrong. For example, an apple merely IS and so how can an apple be right or wrong.

The question was: For instance, if you look at the Ten Commandments, every commandment is in regards to either the relationship between God and the individual or between individuals. If God were the only entity that existed, it would be silly to call Him/it holy or moral. God's holiness DEPENDS on other beings, and thus is contingent. This violates the way the attributes of God are generally viewed.

God is the only entity that exists and an apple is God, just as "this" is Buddha or "this" is my body. An apple, like man in the image of God, is whole, solitary, non social and never wrong. If you don't accept that and think that apples can be bad you ascribe another meaning to God and set up your own image of holiness that you are trying to shoot down. This is a common error and to be relieved from this error the Ten Commandments were given.

Whole means holy and to be holy we must be united with the essence of our existence. In this wholeness we are neither male nor female because our sexuality is the condition of being that will have its own essence that therefore belongs to our ego consciousness. In this ego identity we are divided with our God-like identity and therefore not holy in either and because of this unholiness we have become social animals.

All the problems you cited pertain to our ego identity and have nothing to do with our image-of-God identity. Morality is thus part of our social identity and has nothing to do with God. God will not be the judge but we will be our own judge if and when our God idenity has victory over our ego identity.I do understand but I object to both your either/or's because God has nothing to do with it. The Ten Commandments et al are both the cause of the problem and the solution but since they exist only in our imagination they have nothing to with God. First, they provide the moral guide against which the forbidden fruit is made attractive in a compettive social world (not universe). Second, they provide the anvil against which the concept sin is made known. In civil law this anvil is enforced by the authorities and in religious law this anvil is enforced by the human heart that leads to the conviction of the outer man. Notice that they are written on the human heart "as if in stone."

I'll try to read the Euthyphro later today. I could add that God is the "higher standard" but I have some problem with the word higher as "compared to what" because there is no standard with which to measure "liberty."

RichardMorey

I see the problem, Amos. You do not conceive of God the same way as the three major monotheistic religions do. The questions are therefore meaningless to you, which explains our difficulty in communicating. I was actually directing my question at the average theist, who is Christian or Muslim.

Regarding the word "holy," it does indeed mean righteous.
http://www.m-w.com
You can choose to redefine it as you want, but "righteous" is the gerally agreed upon definition. Righteousness is an attribute of God as well, according to theists, but they normally use the word "holy" because it is much stronger.

philechat

I would understand Amos as epousing a kind of Pantheism (or Panetheism) that is sometimes picked up by modern existentialist theologians such as Tillich, and not the traditional Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim) definition of God. But the problem is that Amos' beliefs are usually not recognized by the mainstream churches, which do see God as a seperate being from (human) existence, and representing all the moral values such as goodness and righteousness. And it is toward the traditional theists (who sees the natural conditions of humanity as seperate from God) that Plato's argument is effective against.

Amos

Richard, I can fully agree with you here and this is why I wondered if I qualified as a theist in my first response to you.

Your "holy-righteous" definition is based on the same perspective and I don't agree with this because it doesn't work for me. When classic theism refers to God as righteous they base that on nature and the laws of nature.

Otherwise I have no objection to your questions and would never try to answer them.

I would like to answer Philechat that I used and equated "this is Buddha" and "this is my body" with "this apple is God" to indicate that the end of both Buddhism and Catholicism are equal to the ideal behind Pantheism. IOW, not Pantheism as an -ism but just the concept sought in the -ism. Notice that I said "the end" of Buddhism and Catholicism wherein religion is a means to "the end" (of our searching).

Svt4Him

Hello. This is my first post here. But here is how I see it. Lying isn't wrong because God says it's wrong, it's wrong because God is truth, and lying is against the character of God. As for the definition of Holy, I believe it is applied to God's character or sinlessness because God is holy, but holyness in itself means set apart. So what can God be set apart from? Every single thing He's created. So is God set apart from angels, creation, man, etc? Sure He is. Now part two takes the emphasis off man's sins, and places it on God. If God was good, why did He create evil? If God was good... But the problem is God is good, so why is there then evil? First off, lets focus on who created the evil. I have two sons, one who doesn't talk yet. He will lie to me. I know this, yet I had a son anyway. So did I create the lie, or is it because he has a choice to lie and may choose to do so? So the emphasis shouldn't be on my creating the sin, only on my son making the wrong choice to do so. Man sinned, and was warned about the consequences. We are now suffering the consequences, but does that reflect on the character of God, or the effects of our wrong choices? And an act is moral because it is in line with the character of God.

philechat

I would epouse the problems inherent in Svt4Him's assertion, for Plato's question is not answered, but avoided by (slyly) equating God with goodness. The problem is that goodness is a value term requiring a valuer. You could say God is the valuer of his own character, but then it would forces God to be the one determining good and evil, leaving it to be arbitrary again.

One then has no (independent) criterion of judging God's goodness because God is the maker of good in this case. How do we know God's character is good? Did he determine it himself? If God's character is good, is it good because God said it is good or it is good because there is an independent criterion of goodness which affirms God's "goodness of character" per se?

Theli

Obviously I was not talking about natural law.
I thought the concept of good was handed down by god as one of the possibilites of free will. Now, why should this be vague?

Amos

It isn't vague at all. It is because of our oblivion that they appear vague. I made this clear with this:

So it would perplex us because in a world where we are 100%free the concept good and evil canot be conceived to exist. It is for this same reason that determinism (not 100% free) cannot be conceived to exist except in the world of good and evil. So we must either settle for a world view wherein good and evil exist because we are not free to choose, or, we live in a world where we are free and the concept good and evil does not exist.

RichardMorey

God cannot BE truth. That may make some kind of poetic sense, but it does not work as a proposition. It doesn't make any sense. You cannot equate the two. One is an entity, and one is a character of a statement.
And, as Philechat has pointed out, you have fallen into the problem again. "Good" is arbitrary under what you have said.
That is not what holy means. That is your interpretation of what holy means.
This is a totally DIFFERENT problem, and not the subject of any of my three questions, really.