luvluv

This question has been brought to my mind from the constant sight of the bumper sticker "Question Authority". I can certainly see the need of questioning authority to a point, but it seems to me that this mentality is ultimately self-defeating. You question authority using your reason, but should you also question the authority of your reason? Of reason itself?

I think a better philosophy would be "Verify Authority". Rather than operate under the assumption that all authority is arbitrary, one should seek to establish whether or not an authority is real and whether or not it is worthy of obedience. That brought another question to my mind, though.

Is there a moral question involved in obeying benevolent, superiorly knowledgable authority? Should a child, who knows that his parents love him, obey his parents when faced with issues in which his parents are more knowledgable? Is this true of all of us? Should we always obey the advice of those who have demonstrably better knowledge than we do in an area and who have our best interests at heart. If it were possible to know for certain that another person's advice is better than our own decided course, is it immoral to still take our own course? Is it rational to still take our own course?

This ultimately lead me to the big question:

If God were to demonstrate his existence, and if he established Himself to be omnibenevolent and omniscient, should we obey his commands even if they went against our personal affinities? For example, if such a God demanded that sex be restrained to marriage, should this commandment be obeyed?

What would be the rational grounds for disobeying an omniscient omnibenevolent Being? What would be the moral grounds?

Godless Sodomite

What reason would I have to obey an omniscient, omnibenevolent being? An omniscient being would already know what I will do before even I know. And an omnibenevolent being is in the position to forgive my every transgression.

If there were an omniscient, omnibenevolent being, how does that translate into a moral imperative to obey it?

In other threads you argue for "Free Will." If my will can be said to be free, it is not incumbent on me to obey anyone--including proposed omni-max beings.

In short, I don't see any rational or moral grounds to obey an omni-max being.

-Jerry

ExTheist

It sounds like slavery to me. In which case my main duty would be to escape or to mess up the "master" by any means necessary.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

One cannot disobey an omniscient god.

Any disobedience would be known beforehand, expected and--if this omniscient God were also the Creator--preprogrammed.

Keith.

pug846

luvluv said:

What does it mean to say that God is all-good? If God is by Her very nature moral, all you would be saying is that God does what She does. Would God punish me if I didn’t obey Her?

If God asked you to fly a plane into a building, would you? Would you set aside your “personal affinities?”

luvluv

Godless Sodomite:

Well, the rational reasons for obeying an omnimax being are kind of obvious. If He really loves me and He really has perfect knowledge about what decisions were best for me, then it would be in my best interest to obey Him.

My question concerns the rational grounds for disobeying Him.

If He loves you, and knows what's best for you, what is the rational grounds for not going along with His advice?

Extheist:

No, in this case there is no slavery, because you are free not to obey. My guestion, though, is given an authority that desires your well-being, and has a perfect knowledge about how to accomplish your well being, what is the rational or moral grounds from which to disobey that authority?

[ August 30, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Ojuice5001

Well, if an authority has a habit of giving little or nothing in the way of reasons why a command should be obeyed, even when he is asked for such reasons, then it is reasonable to doubt that all his commands really are good.

There are commands in the Bible that can be heard by morally normal people and rejected as rather arbitrary. For instance, there's your example of premarital sex, and there's the command to not worship the Roman gods. Jehovah never really explains why those are good commands. I mean, an in-depth study of the Bible can yield remotely satisfying explanations (though even then reasonable people may disagree), but no book of the Bible ever explicitly says "Some may doubt that premarital sex and polytheistic worship are wrong, but they are, and here's why." (Correct me if I'm wrong.) So what you have is Jehovah giving commands, but allowing people who want to be good to remain ignorant about why they should be followed. That seems to me to indicate that perhaps Jehovah doesn't have adequate moral reasons why premarital sex and polytheistic worship are wrong.

To paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci, the reasons for moral commands must be either something that people see, see when they are shown, or do not see. If the wrongness of premarital sex and polytheistic worship is something that people see, why is it that a Margaret Sanger or Celsus is morally sound in general, but honestly doesn't see? If people see when they are shown, why doesn't God show them? If they are something that God couldn't explain to us in principle, why are we held accountable for breaking those rules? And why would it be bad for God to take away our free will to do them, any more than it is wrong to keep an ignorant baby from holding a gun?

Bible Humper

If this God is both omniscient and omnibenevolent, I would say yes.

This God's omnibenevolence automatically dispels all objections, if omnibenevolence is even a coherent concept.

Coupled with omniscience, there would be no question of error or subjective judgement calls either.

I would gladly heed such a being!

99Percent

luvluv: If God were to demonstrate his existence, and if he established Himself to be omnibenevolent and omniscient, should we obey his commands even if they went against our personal affinities? For example, if such a God demanded that sex be restrained to marriage, should this commandment be obeyed?

Fact is you can never know if in fact a God is omnibenevolent and omniscient unless you are omnibenevolent and omniscient yourself (which you know is not the case).

For example if a being came up to you and said: I know what is happening everywhere. In order to confirm if he in fact does know what is happening everywhere you would need to know what is happening everywhere also yourself. Likewise with omnibenevolence.

That is why such a being is impossible to exist.

MrDarwin

Interesting question, and a very tough one to answer. Personally, I reject the concept of an omniscient, omnibenevolent deity. Were such a being to reveal itself to me, I really have no way of knowing how I would react.

It would partly depend on what the penalties were for disobedience. It would partly depend on just what the law or rule is. It would partly depend on how strongly I feel about the subject.

But let's cut to the chase. luvluv, I presume that you believe in an omniscient and omnibenevolent God. If this God told you (and you really believed it was God speaking to you) that you must have sex with somebody whom you find utterly repulsive--e.g., a person of the same sex as yourself (presuming you are heterosexual), would you do it?

If God told you to mutilate yourself, would you do it?

If God told you to kill your child, would you do it?

If God told you to kill a neighbor's child, would you do it?