Ms. Siv

I dont think thats the argument here.
It is probably more to highlight the subjective nature of subjective morality.

swamp

I disagree with this point. While it may just be a cop-out, another way of saying that "my God would not do this by definition," I think it fair of a Christian to claim that morals come from God and that he/she would not commit the act.

If I were to hypothetically buy into a worldview in which I believe in a higher power who gave me free will and an innate sense of right and wrong, it seems reasonable to me to try to be the best person I can be, according to my intuitions, which come from God. If something came to me, and I was sure it was God, I could look at it in a few ways, but they all involve my not following His order.

For instance, maybe God is weeding out blind followers and having them kill so they don't get into heaven. Not that this doesn't have it's own set of problems, but come on everyone, let's hold hands and discover a happy medium between embbittered sceptics and pie-eyed fundies. Koom-ba-yah.

(claps deliberately, slowly, to get the ball rolling)

JamesBannon

Then your God isn't the biblical conception because this is frequently what God actually does.

swamp

I have never found sufficient impetus to accept the God presented in the bible. More to the contrary, actually.

Nero's Boot

....yet more proof that fundamentalist theists are incapable of thinking outside their own narrow little worldview...

--sad really, but predictable NB

Nero's Boot

....again, I am faced with evidence that theists cannot think outside the box.

--because sir, your God commanded far worse atrocities than one murder NB

whichphilosophy

In some cases some may not think beyond a restricted viewpoint.
On the other hand for those who try to look at how it all began from a logical point of view there is very little difference between the two concepts of how we came about which I repeat quite a lot.

Either we evolved from eternal energy which may have been constant forever before our time, or a prime cause created the changes in energy and matter that brought us about.

Some atheists may argue that we are all derived from energy (that solidified into matter). Some theists may say the same but that the energy is live or emited from a live source.

Therefore I would not see any point if a God coming up and giving me a gun. I'd refuse. My wife might be different because she owns a gun as it is to keep peace in the bar she owns.

David Vestal

I seriously doubt I'd do it. If there were no repercussions, and I felt nothing for the person in question, I might. I'd also strongly consider the possibility, before taking such a drastic action, that there might be a flaw in the proof that I was too flawed to see. As my dad likes to say, "faced with a dilemma, always choose the one that you can undo later."

arkirk

"Logic" doesn't say things like "You must kill so and so." I think this may be the place to again restate the Agnostic position. As soon as people start talking about Morals, very soon they are talking about enforcement of personal opinion on the world. We get tons of hypotheses that start out with would you kill or otherwise punish somebody if your "logic" dictated it? Again and again....belief dictates, logic is just a method of dealing with data.

When dealing with fervently held beliefs, logic finds itself out to lunch. I would suggest that the vast majority of posters on this board do not regularly contemplate murder and violence as a method of living their lives.
When people commit murder or gross violence, they have to screw up a lot of "courage" to do these things. Being present at an actual (not hypothetical) murder is not a pleasant thing...especially when it is your own, but nevertheless, we revile at this kind of thing when we do not "understand it."

So we are normal and concern ourselves with life in rational ways only when we are not endowed with the idea we understand. When this idea is more fervently believed, it becomes easier and easier to kill and commit gross violence in its name. We must never assume we have intuition (Hitler's inspiration) or commands from God, or a special moral compass that clarifies moral issues and clearly spells out right and wrong. We are very faulty creatures and make lots of mistakes. Perhaps the worst and most dangerous of these mistakes is believing. You can do it with or without God. If you do it with God, then your mistake is the standardized mistake of your particular cult. If you do it without God, then you are merely installing another fictitious authority over our actions. If you just don't do it (believe), you cut to the chase....real life situations and seeking to use the mechanics of your situation to optimize conditions. It's boring to be this way until you realize you have freed yourself from slavery to fundamentalism.

More power to DV's dad. :thumbs:

seebs

Indeed. And really, that's about my response to the original dilemma. You say I'm "sure"? What's that mean? Sure enough to kill someone? I doubt I'm that sure of claims like "my memory records previous experiences I actually had" or "my experiences are often related to things external to me".