Wounded King

Dear Albert,

The mere fact that loosing your faith in God would send you into an amoral spiral of depravity is just one reason why we should all appreciate the value of religious belief to many people.

The fact that you are a happy little slave to your God and happy with your free will, or illusion of same, does not mean that I must slavishly obey the edicts of natural selection. This is purely my own belief, I may be labouring just as much under an illusion of free will as anyone, I know some extreme materialists might say that I have no free will at all and am merely a slave to the chemicals in my brain. But even if I am a slave to the chemicals in my brain, that still allows me the freedom to act against the best interests of my genes.

It seems remarkable that you feel that the things we are discussing are not merely human constructs but ,if that is your position, so be it. Unforunately your position allows for any action to be allowed just as much as mine, all it needs is gods consent. Suppose those we have often considered lunatics who have murdered on instructions 'from God' are in fact telling the truth? Would these people then have been committing good deeds? A God who is Omnipotent can surely change his mind about things.

That your moral absoloutes spring from God is safe as long as God stays out of it and doesn't speak up and keeps his place as the originator of some carved stones. As soon as he starts sticking his oar in to the here and now and expressing opinions on morality, things might be different. How lucky for you then that God seems to have been on sabbatical for the last few thousand years.

TTFN,

Wounded

Non-praying Mantis

Personally, Albert, I think that this thread is going off track...

But answer me this:

If there is no God, and I can act any way that I want to, then why can't that include being nice to others and hating what Hitler did?

Remember, I am no slave to anyone or any ideal.

Think about that for a while, but I repeat, this thread is going off track...

NPM

Non-praying Mantis

Oh, Albert:

Keep in mind that Hitler had no offspring, so his evolutionary fitness is zero. So whatever he did, from an evolutionary point of view, it was a mistake!

And I bet that if I acted like Hitler, my evolutionary fitness would also go to zero (and probably stay there, since mine is currently zero anyway...). I am trying to increase my evolutionary fitness in the future, and acting like Hitler would probably ruin my chances!

NPM

Albert Cipriani

NPM,
Talk about going off track, I see the word "banned" under Fiach's name now. Please, don't tell me he has been banned. He was a bright bulb and I much enjoyed his discourse.

Doubting,
As moderator, did you ban the boye? If so, for what reason? Can you point me to the thread. He was one of your own and did your side justice. -- Potentially Shocked and Dismayed, Albert the Traditional Catholic

pz

Click on the "profile" button under one of Fiach's posts, then find his recent posts. All will be explained. Sorta.

Doubting Didymus

Well bugger me, did he actually leave? Bit of a shame, that.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Wounded,
Ouch! You wrote: Very good. One of the best examples of condescending damnation-by-faint praise I’ve experienced in a long time. Setting my “amoral spiral” aside, how do we explain the moral thermals that lift you on eagle’s wings?

Your morality is not based upon God but upon genes whose notion of the good is mere replication. Yet you do not share this notion of the good and see no contradiction nor metaphysical problem with your gene treachery. You stand indicted as a turncoat to your genetics and are not ashamed. I can only suppose that your non-existent defense expresses your lack of interest in being logically consistent.

You say, No one denies you the freedom to act. Freedom is not on the table. A rational logically consistent justification of what we do with our freedom is on the table. I’ve shown you mine, but you have not shown me yours. If you cannot hang free acts upon the meat hook of a metaphysical justification, freedom for you must remain just another word for arbitrary action.

You’ve been dialoguing with Protestant Christians too long. Catholics know that God cannot change His mind. His morality is not arbitrary as yours apparently is, but rather, a reflection of His unalterable nature. But let’s not go there, for as NPM says, we are straying far a field from the topic.

Yes. We are only capable of poorly judging ourselves by our ever-suspect objective standards. Whereas, God judges us subjectively. But you’d never know that talking to Protestants. It’s why they are fond of telling people that they’re going to hell. The Catholic Church only pontificates on who’s a saint in heaven.

What one does that one truly believes to be God’s will, is necessarily subjectively good, no matter how bad it is in truth. One may be culpable for their invincible ignorance in missing the mark, but not necessarily for missing the mark. In fact, the act of missing the mark could subjectively count to their credit.

Moral absolutes are awash in a sea of situational ethics. The only absolutely (i.e., all times, all places, all circumstances) intrinsically evil act is the act of hating. Hating what is, is a form of blasphemy for all that is, is good and of God. Thus, hate can never be justified, but everything else can conceivably be justified. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Alix Nenuphar

Albert Cipriani:

This intrigues me. Does that imply that one should not hate sin? Does it imply that I could simply shoot my boyfriend, doing it out of love and realising that he would be going to God?

pz

Nonsense. The morality of atheists comes from the same place as that of theists: from tradition, family, peers, culture. Any contribution made by genes is remote and indirect to an extraordinary degree.

That atheists/evolutionists are just as moral as theists is just further evidence that your supernatural god bears even less responsibility for our behavior than any sequence of nucleotides.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Alix,
No. It implies that we use the word “hate” loosely.

The Bible also speaks loosely of God being a jealous God and an angry God and a vengeful God. If you think He is capable of those anthropomorphisms then perhaps I’ll give into the sin myself and do as your boyfriend no doubt does: hate you!

Scratch that. It’s a poor (perhaps hateful?) attempt at humor. It’s just frustrating for me to deal with dictionary definitions and anthropomorphisms. Suffice it to say that even feelings of rage culminating in acts of homicidal violence do not necessarily rise to the level of hatred.

Hate is the rejection of what is. Sin or evil, as classically defined by the Catholic Church, is the lack of a necessary good. One cannot hate or love or in anyway interact with what does not exist. Ergo, one can no more hate sin than one can punish the air.

When Christians repeat the mantra that they hate sin but love the sinner, they should mean that they reject those incomplete acts that are sinful not the people committed to incomplete actions. Sinful acts are sinful not by virtue of the act itself, but by virtue of other necessary acts that do not accompany the sinful act.

For example, having sex is sacramental. But if the sexual partners are not open to children, then it’s incomplete in its fecundity. If only one sexual partner is willing, then it’s incomplete in its unitive function. If it is done in an alley in front of on-lookers, than it’s incomplete in its intimacy. Get the picture? And I don’t mean by that “porn.” – Albert the Traditional Catholic