philechat

"God works in mysterious ways," essentially?
I just read the Bible recently, with a focus on the OT stuffs.
As I said, what does "the truth" means and what was the criterion for knowing it? If it be my intuition then I think I am blameless.
Okay. Let's pretend it so, we hope. As Shelley would say, "if God were eternally just, why fear him?"
Maybe. Not all flaws are like addictions, however. We may become too attached to certain things, but I doubt character is suspectible to our will, instead our will obeys our characters.
This I know. I am hardly resentful of them...resentment is a powerful emotion that plagues believers and unbelievers alike, and according to Nietzsche the origin of religious intolerance.
Because we are just like other animals? Because we experience suffering and pain, and emotions are a reaction to the experiences?
Gross generalization. Because they performed some detestful acts we have to destroy them completely, including their women and children? Including their lifestocks? Hardly a neutral reaction, I would think.
Why the disdain of aesthetics? I consider aesthetics the most important branch of philosophy. Given that truth is dependent on our value judgments and our interpretation of experience, should not we occupy ourselves with the question of value and meaning in philosophy?
Do not read the OT with respect to the NT, since the NT is obviously written after the OT, with some intention of paralleling the events in the OT. I imagine the NT writers re-interpreted the OT event as an atonement, while the OT was more about returning the debt people owed God when God liberated them (not that it happened historically, as a side note).
Then I apologize. But what religion do you practice, or are you a generic theist? Does your god intervene in human life and answer prayers? Does your god have emotions such as love, disappointment, and anger? Is your god seperate from the creation or one with Nature?

yguy

You make an error by trying to fit what I said into a ready-made cliche.

What I'm trying to avoid is inducing anyone to conceive an image of God. I'm reminded of the time I overheard a conversation between a young Christian man and a girl about 8 years old, where he asked the kid what she thought God looks like. I found the question odious. He was tempting her to fabricate God in her own mind.

The Truth is that which shows us what we are. The pharisees saw Jesus as evil because He showed them what they were, and the adulterous woman saw Him as good for doing the same thing to her.

Exactly. Only the unjust need fear Him.

What would be example of a flaw which is not like an addiction?

IOW, we do things or harbor attitudes against our will. Have I got that right?

Haven't read Nietzche, but I sure copy on the rest of it.

Is that what you think? I don't. Animals can't be virtuous, because they can't be wrong. Male polar bears routinely eat their own young, but if a man did that, he'd make Jeffrey Dahmer a forgotten bit of trivia.

But the question is whether we can react in a non-animal way to such experiences. That's what Christ did.

It is, but not easily refutable by the facts available, it seems to me.

Neither was the chasing by Christ of the moneychangers from the temple a neutral reaction.

As for the genocide, again you presume the innocence of the children. I believe it is possible for a people to become so degenerate that their children are irredeemably corrupt. Maybe that describes the tribes in question.

The word evidently has a meaning to you that escapes me. To me it brings to mind superficial appearance.

Truth isn't dependent on our perceptions in the least, any more than the sun disappears when you close your eyes.

Again, forgive my ignorance. I don't see how aesthetics relates to this.

The logic here escapes me. What does chronology have to do with it if any of it was divinely inspired?

Forgive me, but your speculation in that direction doesn't have much value to me. If you have some basis for it, bring it on.

An understandable misperception. No harm, no foul.

Close enough.

Yes, although I don't pray myself.

I think so - though they are quite different from their human counterparts, being uncorrupted by injustice.

He is separate from it in the sense that He can exist without Nature, but the reverse is not true.

And just a small correction: He isn't my God. The way you say it, it sounds like I created Him.

dk

First a rapist in wartime can rape with impugnity, so there's no reason to restrain himself. In the moral confusion of war rape may appear almost charitable. Many women are forced to submit themselves to sex for the welfare of themselves and/or children. Faced with such dire consequenes one can hardly call prostitution anything else but rape. In wartime the price of sex goes so low, its becomes like the free sex our society so proudly hails as a liberty.

philechat

If we cannot even conceive God, how do we know how to behave with respect to him? Why do we need to pretend we need to act a certain way such that he would be pleased? And how do we know an inconceivable being to be good, just, powerful, etc.?
"What we are?" Be more specific here. What do we mean for "what we are," since we are everchanging beings? How are we at one moment to be the same as another? I don't think humans have that unchangable identity independent of what they think, feel, and behave.
So I guess we agree. Unless you think atheism is an unjust belief...then Shelley is damned.
For example, a person who prefers solitude is considered flawed by his more sociable friends. A person who is impatient does not get addicted to his impatiences...
No. I mean our wills are direct results of our characters and what was taught to us from experiences. I don't believe in free will.
He spoke a lot about the origins of our moral prejudices...the fact that we treat those who differ from us as less moral than us, because morality is largely determined in reference to ourselves. And that people with different natural abilities and life conditions would develop different systems of morality.
To say animals have no social values is ignorance. Not only do animals often have strict social codes, those who transgress the social codes often face ostracism/agression from the other animals. And throughout history people invented social codes that were vastly different from ours--such as polygymy, suicide honor code, permission of extramaritial sex, female genital mutilation, feet binding, religious syncretism...how can we assume that our moral code is superior to the moral codes of the other cultures?
We can, due to intelligence and language. I think the difference is more quantitative than qualitative though.
And the same arguments were used by the Spanish when they invaded Central America and killed off the Native Americans (the Aztecs performed human sacrifices). And how we often called them wrong while approving the Israelites when they razed all the local tribes. Hardly any difference between the two, don't you think?
Don't Christ taught forgiveness and reformation? The children should be young enough, capable of reform...and why don't God send Christ there to the Canaanite tribes, such that they could learn about repentence?
Then you mistaken the entire philosophical field called aesthetics.
Truth is intersubjective. For example, color cannot exist without the reaction of the cones, and the sun does not exist as "a sun" if not perceived by humans who labeled that concentration of gravity and energy to be called "the sun".
Aesthetics is the study of value judgement and interpretation, which we called "beautiful" and "ugly" according to our categories and interpretation of the objects perceived by us. A more general philosophical field that concentrates on aesthetics will be phenomenology, the study of phenomena (objects as perceived and interpreted by our minds).
If you insist it is divinely inspired, then we have no ground agreement. My base assumption is that what happened in history must form causes and effects dependent on the timeline.
Not a Bible expert here. Go to BC&A forum for more details if you want.
How do you know? God is inconceivable. How do you know he cannot be corrupted or unjust?
As I said, God as perceived by you, as interpreted by you. The "phenomena" of God that is, what I meant for "your" god.

AdamWho

Arguments so far from my point of view:

Christian
God created morals, such as "don't steal" and "don't kill". Since it is obvious that these are good rules therefore god exists.

Non-christian
But those rules have been around for thousands of years before the christian god, and in every culture. Some people even developed these morals (and more) without reference to any god.

Christian
It was still god (implying the Christian god) that made the morals / rules that these people follow, even if they didn't know it.

Non-christian
But they would say that there god is not the christian god and said the same things long before anyone even dreamed of Yahweh.

Christian
Those non-christian gods are just "cultural" and invented by man. If those people have morals then god (Christian god) gave them the morals.

Non-christian
So what your saying is: If someone acts then it is by god (the Christian god) that they morally?

Christian
Yes, but going further; if a person is moral then they are "christian" and if they are not moral then they are not christian.

-Sounds like a "no true Scotsman" fallacy with a twist.

Wiploc

Where are you coming from? I need a thesis statement. You're a Christian who doesn't believe in theistic morality, or what?
crc

yguy

Don't hate Him, and you're in like Flint.

That would be a mistake - which many Christians make, of course.

What does being conceivable have to do with it? How do you know any person - whom you CAN visualize in your mind's eye - is good? You don't always; but whatever tells you that person has good in them will tell you that God is good when you encounter His presence.

I don't agree. The changes from one moment to the next are superficial. As for thinking and feeling, are you your thoughts and feelings? Have you never observed yourself thinking or feeling?

Not unjust, but false. In and of itself it's not necessarily an indicator of the state of one's soul, any more than a belief in God is.

That may or may not be innocuous depending on the reason he craves solitude.

I'm not so sure about that. To my mind, impatience is the resentment that things don't happen when you want them to, how you want them to. Resentment produces guilt, which an egotistical person will relieve with some distraction which helps him deny that he reacted wrongly, and sets him up to make the same mistake the next time. If the cycle repeats enough times, he'll end up taking his frustration out on someone else who will overreact, and so on...

If there is no free will, there is no injustice. Torquemada is no more guilty than the polar bear. You OK with that?

I don't believe I said that. In fact, I submit that our need for law is evidence of our animal nature. That's what Christ came to free us from. The law is like a bridge between here and Heaven - once you get to heaven, you don't need the bridge any more, unless you intend to go back.

Prima facie evidence would be the fact that America, the best country that ever was, had the Judaeo-Christian ethic as an integral component.

I submit that intelligence has nothing to do with it. Plenty of intelligent people behave like animals.

I'm not familiar enough with the details of the Spanish conquest to say. I submit that the Aztecs got what they deserved, without regard to the morality of the Conquistadores, who likely were nothing more than murderers.

Not to be insolent, but is English your second language?

Maybe they weren't interested.

So if everyone on the face of the earth died, the sun would cease to exist?

If He can be, the entire Judaeo-Christian paradigm is a lie.

philechat

No. We obtain the belief that a given person is good by observing his behavior. What behaviors of God could we observe firsthand? I wonder?
If I am observing myself thinking or feeling, I am performing the action of thinking about what I am thinking. The act itself is still called thinking, ad nauseum.
Telling me that I am wrong does not prove that I am wrong. For example, I think you are wrong about the nature of God .
But one does not get addicted to impatience. Impatience is inherent in one's temperament, that is to say. Or perference for solitude. Or liking classical music (hey, some people thought loving classical music to be a flaw...). Or being short.
Objectively yes. I am OK with that. But I will say the actions of Torquemada to be violating my own value system.
Alright, if I did not even believe in these, why would what you just said to be significant to me? Humans always need law and that so-called lawless utopia had always been, well, the mystical landscapes of the poets and the philosophers, such as Lao Tze. It might work for a select group of individual; but for humankind as a whole, no.
America the best country in the world? Are you serious or not? Go to any less-than-affuent neighborhood in any large city, and report back to me.
Or more socially oriented or not. It is animal nature to be social, if you want to know.
Well...what about your opinion on the Israelites, who did exactly the same thing the Spanish conquerors did, convinced that God commanded them to perform these murders? And I am appalled by your assertion that it was just to kill their women and children because their superstitions compelled them to perform human sacrifices.
Hell yeah. And I lived in a country where Christianity was but a tiny minority. Just because I did not grammer-check from time to time...
Maybe maybe. Were your speculations better than mine?
The concept of the Sun would cease to exist. "The sun" as an autonomous, holistic being vanishes. It became, again, gravity and energy, which would not submit to our definitions of "energy" and "gravity" if no humans were to interpret "that thing we used to call the Sun".
Why must the Judeo-Christian paradigm be the Truth while it is okay the concepts of the other religions be wrong?

yguy

Yes, but something tells you that certain behaviorial traits are indicative of good. It's not a matter of analysis. Many times you can see it in a person's eyes.

You could start with watching a chick hatching from an egg. Awe-inspiring, is it not?

No. There is a place of stillness from which thinking can be observed. Likely you were there more than once as a child, when you could look at an object without naming it.

I am aware of this, thank you.

So is it unjust for him to violate your value system?

Then we are automatons. It matters no more what happens to you or me than what happens to a cockroach.

What would that demonstrate, besides the fact that America isn't perfect?

Show me evidence that God didn't so command them, that it was merely an excuse to satisfy murderous lust, and we'll talk.

That by itself would perhaps have been insufficient, considering the repentence of Nineveh. After all, the Israelites themselves practiced human sacrifice during the reign of Mannaseh.

The question is whether those children had any soul left in them, or whether it was bred out of them.

As for being appalled, that seems a strange emotion from one who apparently thinks Torquemada was guiltless.

I leave it to you to figure thatout.

Not all concepts outside the Judeo-Christian paradigm as it is generally accepted are wrong. Thought I'd said that before.

philechat

Yes, my past experiences are my yard-sticks, as well as my inborn character traits.
Sentimental nonsense. Why must a chick hatching be an act of God? Especially when we compare it to other wonderful natural phenomena, such as polar bears eating their babies and thousands of human babies dying of epidemic diseases.
Mystical experience? Hey...I have those too--when I was listening to classical music or reading the works of, um, Shelley?
No, but he is unjust in my opinion. Moral values need no justification beyond the scope of human emotions, I think. Only our ideals and our values count.
So what? I define a given thing to be more valuable to me than another thing. It does not need any Cosmic Justification (tm).
How do you define America as the best country in the world as a pre-supposition? I was just giving counter-examples.
I phrased it a little too vaguely. I mean both the Israelites and the Spanish thought that God was at their sides and that they were performing a just act killing off all the babies in the native tribes.
Why? I follow my character-based values on this one. It does not take much to make one feel bad about a given act.
Then fine. Why must the Judeo-Christian paradigm be intrinsically better than the other paradigms?