Amen-Moses

Watch out luvluv you've said enough for some around here to label you a child torturer with a penchant for clitoris removal!

Sorry about that I couldn't resist.

Amen-Moses

luvluv

Would you believe I've been called worse?

KnightWhoSaysNi

Okay, let's try it again:

1. Hank is omniscient and is the perfect poker player.

2. Therefore, without Hank, there are no independent grounds on how to win a game of poker.

I still don't think your conclusion follows. Would you also say that it's impossible to know if 2 + 2 = 4 unless some omniscient being existed that knew all about the rules of mathematics?

Humans are fallible creatures and atheism does not guarantee morality, just like theism doesn't. There can be some subjectivity and debate in determining what is good or harmful to humanity, but we have to try our best. Your worldview is vulnerable (and I would even say far more vulnerable) to this subjectivity too, as I will discuss in a moment.

As for social Darwinism, I would argue that it would be simply harmful to humanity, and therefore it is wrong. It's irrational to say 'is' should become 'ought'. I think it would not be in humanity's best interests to live in a society where an elite thrive and others are consigned to death, marginality, enslavement, and neglect.

I think if we put the shoe in the other foot, it becomes a much more difficult situation for a theistic moralist:

Suppose one theist is an evangelical Christian and the other is a <a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/reconstr.htm" target="_blank">Christian Reconstructionist</a>. They run across a man who performs homosexual acts. The evangelical Christian wants to befriend and hopefully "save" him eventually by witnessing. The CR wants to have him stoned to death at a public assembly because we wants to obey OT law (CR's believe that Jesus only fulfilled dietary and ceremonial OT laws, not moral ones).

Who is right? According to the CR's biblical interpretation, he would be just as right, within his values, to stone the homosexual as the evangelical Christian would be to tolerate him. After all, since an omniscient god knows best, who are we as depraved humans to question the homosexual's stoning? Why should we accept your interpretation of scripture over the CR's? Because it's yours? I thought that humans were fallible and corrupt. You could have the wrong interpretation. So without begging the question, whose biblical scripture interpretation is correct to determine what values are "good" in this case? The best way I see of solving this problem is thinking out of the biblical box. We can observe or predict the consequences of what society would be like if homosexuals were tolerated vs. stoned to death.

Because torturing children is harmful. If you accept that morality is independent of God, then why do you think God would consider torturing children immoral?

I wanted to add a few things. First, if you think morality is incompatible with atheism then why am I and many other nontheists not moral nihilists? What do you think is keeping us from raping, looting, and murdering people at whim? Why is it that most nontheists can behave morally, feel empathy for others, and perform altruistic acts without appealing to the supernatural?

In closing, I agree that there can be difficulties with nontheistic morality, but I think they're miniscule compared to the problems theistic morality faces. For example, compare these two very different views on religious tolerance:

"If anyone secretly entices you—even if it is your brother, your father's son or your mother's son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend—saying, "Let us go worship other gods," whom neither you nor your ancestors have known, any of the gods of the peoples that are around you, whether near you or far away from you, from one end of the earth to the other, you must not yield to or heed any such persons. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and afterwards the hand of all the people. Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do any such wickedness." -- Deut. 13:6-11

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." -- Univeral Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18

Now one of these is claimed to have been inspired by an omnibenevolent deity. The other is inspired by depraved fallible humans. Which society would you prefer to live in, if one of these views were adopted as law?

[ November 10, 2002: Message edited by: Nightshade ]</p>

Primal

So something is moral....because God says so. And omniscience is the precursor, but you are using the term omniscient in two different senses. In one sense to indicate moral rightness, in another to indicate truth as matter of knowledge.

What you are then saying is that God made moral standards but that these standards hold because God is omniscient, but why does omniscience matter at all?

Is morality then simply a matter of who is the smartest? Do smartest people get to make up the rules because they are smartest...if so why?

luvluv

Primal:

No, I'm only using omniscience in the one sense, that what an omniscient being knows is by definition true. It does not have to be so because God said so. It may be or it may not be. What matters is only that God knows so, that is enough to establish it's truth. We don't know how God knows it and we don't need to know to establish it as the right. So long as he knows it, that is sufficient to establish it is true.

I'm not saying that. The fact that God made the moral standards does not follow from the fact that God knows them. He may have made them, or they may be, as it was said, ontologically prior to Him. Omniscience is all that matters in my statement.

No, it's not a matter of smartest, it's a matter of omniscience. The smartest being in the universe, if they were not omniscient, could be mistaken. An omniscient being is not the smartest being, but the being who holds all possible knowledge. Smart really has nothing to do with it, it is the definition of omniscience which says that God cannot hold a false belief.

Nightshade:

Again, I think your analogy is a little faulty. This would certainly be true if, as with morality, there were no universally agreed upon rules as to how to play poker. In such a case, no one could be SURE that they were winning poker because by not knowing the rules, they would not know even if the game was truly over, or if it had ever even begun. Of course, just by sheer probability, someone would occasionally play a perfect poker game, but they wouldn't be sure they had because there were no universally agreed upon rules of poker.

But if Hank has real knowledge of the TRUE game of poker, then yes it would require Hank's input, in that case, for anyone to KNOW that they actually won a poker game (or even got one started!).

No, because we all know and can agree from experience both mathematically and practically that 2 and 2 are 4. But with morality, people disagree often violently (take abortion for example). In such a case where there is no authority and no agreed upon answer how can we know who is right, or, indeed, if there is even a such thing as right?

I wasn't asking you what you thought, I was asking how the secular humanist would verify that his values were the true ones. Why should I value someone else's (or even my own) freedom over the progressive evolution of the species?

I see your point, though this is a bad example. One would have to literally not be able to read to ignore that this basic scenario was played out and that Jesus himself gave an example of how to live in that case.

However, both Christians could agree that there is a real right that holds absolutely, and they know that there is a source of that right, and that they can continue to progress towards that right.

I was never saying that Christianity lead to a morality that promoted no disagreement, but that it produced a morality which can have a rational justification. Even if the two Christians disagreed on the matter it wouldn't make a whit of difference to my point. Christians do not claim to limit their beliefs to what they can rationally justify, as most atheists do. Even if both of the Christians arguments contradicted each other, and even if they were both wrong, their beliefs can still be rationally justified (as you know, rationally justified beliefs can be mistaken).

The atheist, however, cannot even establish that right and wrong exist, and they have no grounds for believing that their concept of right and wrong is the correct one. It follows therefore, as they temper their beliefs to evidence (supposedly), that they cannot adopt a single moral principle without being hypocritical to the grounds upon which they supposedly disbelieve in God.

So what?

As you may have guessed from some of my comments to Primal, I have changed my opinion about that.

It is not necessarily true that because God knows good to be good, that goodness is ontologically prior to Him. It could be that He knows good to be good because He made it so, or it could be that goodness is ontologically prior to Him. But in establishing his belief that his good is the true good, the theist need progress no further than the fact that an Omniscient God knows it to be true. That is enough to establish the veracity of his beliefs. The theist can answer "I don't know" as to HOW God knows this and it would have no bearing on the fact that BECAUSE God knows it, it is therefore true.

The point of this discussion, from my point of view, is not that theists are immoral but that they are hypocritical. If they can believe in morals they cannot prove then why can they not believe in a God they cannot prove? It would seem, therefore, that their disbelief is not simply the result of God's existence not being proven, but something of else.

As for your two ending quotes... you are aware that there is a second part of the Bible? I believe the young people call it the New Testament?

Your selection is rather loaded. I could pick any quote from any atheist (say Stalin) and put it against the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and we'd come up with the same loaded results. How about if we compare the story of the prodigal son and the parable of the sheep and the goats to some of Mao Tse Tung's writings? Now which one represents an omnibenevolent deity?

I'm not a Biblical literalist, in fact, in my opinion the position is impossible to hold since it has been pretty explicitly established since the Old Testament that God is more concerned about mercy than keeping rules. There are large parts of the Old Testament which I consider to be blatantly false. That's if you were asking my opinion, I'm not sure if you were. But that little cut and paste exercise might make you feel better but unless you have a good working knowledge of the entire philosophy of the Bible, your comparison is VASTLY premature.

[ November 11, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Primal

So Luvluv you are basically ducking out. God knows, you know he knows but you don't know *how* he knows. Nice answer but this fails to explain how God establishes morality. All you are saying is "he just does" i.e. question begging. This is just a supernaturalists version of moral relativism if anything. Are you saying morals exist as some mysterious force outside of God? Like some Chinese Tao?

Or are you saying God's morals are just things he "invented" out of thin air and that they constitute the "one true morality" because God is omniscient?

You haven't answered how omniscience justifies Jehovah's opinion. All you are saying is it is "right by definition" but why? Isn't that "begging the question" as you are so quick to accuse others of? eh?

Please give a serious answer and quite going in circles.

luvluv

It is, by definition, impossible for an omniscient being to hold a belief that is false. Therefore, the simple fact that God holds a belief is enough to make that belief true. That is a perfectly sound logical argument for establishing the veracity of any proof if one takes God's existence as a given, as the theist does. The question is "how do I know my beliefs about goodness are true?". One does not have know where they came from to know they are true, provided God knows them to be true.

Dr. Retard

There is a small distinction to be made here, and maybe it's the seed of some confusion in this discussion. The following is necessarily true:

* If God believes p, p is true.

This follows from the concept of God, which doesn't tolerate any divine delusions. But this is false:

* If God believes p, God's belief makes p true.

Take, for example, the fact that I'm hungry. If God exists, he believes it, and it's true. But his belief doesn't make it true. What makes it true is a constellation of facts about my stomach and my brain.

Similarly, if God exists, he believes rape is wrong. But his belief doesn't make rape wrong. It just entails that rape is wrong. What makes rape wrong is a constellation of facts about dignity, pain, and the like.

Dr. Retard

Luvluv:

I don't understand what you're after. Are you arguing that if our world is a theistic world, we have a better shot at knowing right from wrong than if our world is godless? Is this your argument?:

1. If God exists, we can know moral facts, merely by knowing what God knows about morality.
2. But if God doesn't exist, we cannot know moral facts in this way, because there's no God to do the knowing.
3. So if God exists, we can know moral facts, and if God doesn't exist, we cannot know moral facts.

This argument is invalid, because it requires another premise:

* The only way to know moral facts is to know what God knows about morality.

This looks nuts to me. Do you contend that it's true?

Also, the argument's first premise is false, if "we can know moral facts" is anything more than merest possibility. Why? Because, in this world anyway, it's terrifically difficult to know what God knows about morality. He hasn't told us anything, so far as I can tell. And, if the purported scriptural sources of divine moral knowledge are all he's told us, he certainly hasn't told us anything very useful.

In any case, if this argument is to be valid and persuasive (and so not question-begging), it will have to be supplemented with extra support for (i) the only way to know moral facts is to know what God knows about morality, and (ii) it's tolerably easy to know what God knows about morality.

Maybe this isn't your argument, though.

Primal

Yes I know you already said "God invents morality" I am asking on what basis does he do so?

Why did God for example decide that murdering and eating one's children was bad instead of good? "Just cause"....."Just by definition". That's circular reasoning. Your critic of realist ethics on the basis of it being circular and that we cannot known about morality only that "God knows" makes no sense.

How can we know that God knows about morality if we know nothing abput it, it sort of removes the necessary equipment needed to check the claim.

Also you argument doesn't follow: Person A is omniscient and thus that makes rape bad.

We can say "Person A knows that rape is bad" and he's have to be right if omniscient. But that's not the question, the question is how did rape get to be bad in the first place?

It had to be a bad thing somehow, and so far all you have is some God just pulling rules out of his hat. Not a very profound system of morality if you help me. And why are we to follow through with morality?

Because otherwise the Big Guy will send us to the lake of fire. i.e. we do the right thing to avoid punishment. Also why do Gods inventions get to be called morality and nobody elses? Yes I know "cause he says so and he's not wrong by definition". But this only reflects a truth already established....how did it become established; that's the question.

The only basis I see right now is power. Ask a Xian honestly if there was no hellfire and no lake of fire would they still follow God? The answer is "no" as the whole system is built on power. People who believe that right and wrong are merely matters of weilds power are hardly ones to lecture others about morality.