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luvluv:

You've claimed many times that theists morality is rational because they believe that God is speaking to them.

Is it also rational when paranoid scizophrenics do what the voices they hear tell them to do? Is it rational for Islamic fundamentalists to take out the World Trade Center because they believe Allah has asked them to (and will reward them with 73 virgins)? If so, you have a different view of rational than I do. If not, why is listening to God any different than listening to Allah?

Jagged

whoawhoawhoawhoa!
1. Did you or did you not state that theists have a RATIONAL basis for belief while atheists do not?
2. Did you or did you not require PROOF in order for any atheistic belief to be considered RATIONAL?
3. If theists do NOT indeed require proof for belief, why should they be considered RATIONAL while atheists are not?!!!
4. Is rationality defined differently for theists as opposed to atheists?
5. In other words, do you get to change the definition of rationality even within the same statement?

”Nifty” indeed. So basically, you believe everything God tells you EXCEPT you have the ultimate power of veto at all times. Anything you doubt about what God says, you don’t feel bad about declining to act on. Luv… if this is true, what assurance do you have that EVERYTHING you believe is not simply a construct of what you WANT to believe--a subjective philosophy coifed in biblical language?

You recently stated that you have belief in your own experiences as absolutes, excluded from all questioning. Do you not believe that you are a fallible human being? Could not your experiences have been misinterpreted? Could not that bogeyman have really been the shadow your mother’s bathrobe? Could not what you were convinced was gold have been fool’s gold? Why should you deify certain experiences at the exclusion of others?

Also, if you are not, as you say, a biblical “literalist,” how do you know from one verse to the next which times god is truly revealing himself and which times he is effectively saying: “April Fools!!” How do you know the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac was not the work of god? And why is it in the bible at all if it was not? If everything in the Bible is subjective for you, how do you any part of it is true? And if you are the only judge of what to take seriously and what to toss out, how do you know you will not use the Bible to justify ANYTHING YOU WANT TO??

LUV I KNOW THE TRUTH--YOU ARE A SUBJECTIVE EXISTENTIALIST IN THEIST’S CLOTHING!! You have deified your self instead of a supposed superior being! You rule in your own universe and you feel you have the power of god behind you! Noone’s opinion will be considered save your own! You believe yourself justified in manipulating human language for your own purposes! Who knows what else you believe yourself sovereign over?

[ December 01, 2002: Message edited by: Jagged Little Pill ]</p>

winstonjen

My view: Most theists have morals of their own, as long as they're not too extreme. The really fanatical zealots have 'the Bible' as their morality, which means that they allow the writers of the Bible to decide their morality for them.

Primal

luvluv is still simply avoiding the question of if God invents morality of His own free will or IF god draws his morality from another source. Saying "I don't know" does not cut it nor make your morality rational. Luvluv is simply avoiding the question and finding her morality in ignorance. In pure orders, hence morality then is whatever one is ordered to do my the wisest i.e. omniscient being that is "right" by definition. Though luvluv uses the term right in two different senses i.e. the purely moral and purely factual. Ok, then why can't anyone else invent morality according to this line of reasoning? Cause they lack omniscience?

Is the apeal to omniscience hence your only sole(very questionable) qualifier for allowing someone to be moral arbiter? Hence then if Hitler was omniscient and said "genocide against the Jews is ok" Hitler would be right by definition and it would be ok. A rather bankrupt morality I'd say with very questionable premises. I honestly cannot see why one's ability to invent morality depends on ones intellect, as moraluty is still then simply made out of thin air.

Jagged

(luvluv is a "he")

Primal

Hmm, sorry for the confusion, I didn't know so I just assumed, not thinking it mattered.

Jagged

I only point it out because I made the same mistake, and it does annoy me when people refer to my by the wrong gender too... nothin' personal.

Polar Bear

ooof, someone invoked Hitler ... but the point is still valid.

The question is, "Can theists have morals?" And I think the answer is a conditional "yes." The question is not "Are theists moral by the standards of atheists?" or even "are theists moral by generally accepted common standards?" because then the answer would be an unconditional "no."

I understand the basic argument that luvluv has put forth -- God is omniscient, therefore any knowledge God has must be correct -- but I think there is a difference between knowing everything and always being right. That is, as long as you accept the idea that morality is separate from God. If whatever God says is automatically considered good or moral, then there can be no argument, even if God commands you to kill your own children.

Is Lucifer omniscient? Suppose that he was -- then we have the problem of two entities who are both quite powerful, and who know all that there is to know, but who have different motives and goals. I don't think motives and goals have anything to do with knowledge or omniscience. For example, you and I can both sit down and learn everything there is to know about writing programs, but if your goal is to make a new version of Solitaire and my goal is to create an unstoppable virus, then we are going to have very different ideas about what kind of code we are going to use in our programs -- despite our hypothetically complete knowledge of computer programming.

In that respect, I do not see how God's omniscience automatically makes him "moral" iff morality is separate from God.

I think that the majority of human beings would agree that it is wrong to rape, kill and eat your own children (aren't you glad I didn't use a Nazi example? ). However, if God is the true author of all morality, and God commands us to rape, kill and eat our firstborn sons, then that act becomes good, right and moral, simply because God commands it.

Of course many theists say "God would never do such a thing," but we don't need to go there ... there are literally dozens of OT examples of such atrocities, as we all know. The followup is usually "The NT changed all that" but who is to say that God will not change his mind again? Perhaps after the Rapture, a new morality will be handed to us once again -- a new set of rules, perhaps?

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the topic ...

Primal

Well then Polar I would say theism lacks morality as such a statement denies basic moral facts. Also it denies an objective source for morality: making it purely arbitrary. Would man in such a situation really be moral or fearful?

galiel

Why is it that people who insist on the limitations of logic and the supposed inability of the scientific method to "prove anything" so desperately attempt to (mis)use scientific methods and terminology to find logical "proofs" to justify their irrational faith?