Spirit Branded

Since when is liberal a dirty word?

Blessings and Peace

Hilarius

HelenM

Is it? Who says so?

love
Helen

HelenM

Likewise!!

(If you think I said 'liberal' was a dirty word, that is...)

love
Helen

Spirit Branded

Hey Helen

If I was stirring up negativity against me I must have been doing something right

LOL

Hilarius (returning to defend himself)

HelenM

Yikes...Hilarius is back!!!

Spirit Branded

Helen

I wasn't referring to your comments ... but rather to their ringing endorsement by the poster who followed ... his endorsement rang so loud that I could not but think he doubts the bona fides of those who do not interpret as he does.

Blessing and Peace

SB

Spirit Branded

Hello Rainbow Walking (my long lost friend - due entirely to my neglect) :--

You said :-

The proper definition for a free moral agent is: one who is free to dictate his own moral prerogatives. Thus one who cannot create his own moral prerogatives is constrained to live by a moral code not of his own making and therefore is not free to alter it. The apologists’ version of free moral agency limits itself to one who has the free will to choose between compliance or rejection of a moral stricture inspired by God as defined in the scriptures. As we can see his definition is self-limiting in scope and does not accurately reflect the realistic boundaries of humanities prerogatives. Men can, and have, created their own moral codes independent of God.

Spirit Branded
I would like to query some of the above.

RW
The proper definition for a free moral agent is: one who is free to dictate his own moral prerogatives.

SB
The problem with this statement is that it assumes the right to dictate or to create is a human prerogative.

If that prerogative is not an attribute of humans but only (at its origin) of God then one component of free moral agency (creative power) is not available to humans.

That said, a human can still freely choose whether to try to be an agent of for example Yahweh, Zeus, Buddha, etc., or no God, can he not?

The Christian God is invested according to scripture with unique creative powers which I suggest remove both the right and the role of humans to originate moral good themselves.

RW
Thus one who cannot create his own moral prerogatives is constrained to live by a moral code not of his own making and therefore is not free to alter it.

SB
Why should an alteration right exist? The creator has copyright over the code in my view. As to being constrained ... the Christian view is the contrary ... that we are liberated by our choice to follow the good and eschew the evil. Did not Jesus say that he came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly?

I reject the idea that Christ's moral code imposes constraints on good behaviour, though it may well constrain evil ... and what would be bad (not good) about that?

RW
The apologists’ version of free moral agency limits itself to one who has the free will to choose between compliance or rejection of a moral stricture inspired by God as defined in the scriptures.

SB
In friendship I ask ... have you not included some loaded language there?

"Limits" ... "compliance" ... "rejection" ... "stricture" ... "scriptures".

These sound to me like words chosen by a person who may have been bruised in confrontations with false non-Christian "Christian" authority figures.

Even if that is not the case the words suggest a background of (perhaps unconscious) influence from fundamentalist control mechanisms in a sect.

The real point of a moral code is not that it is a diminishing and restricting force ... but a liberating one which allows the spirit to soar to new undreamed of heights when freed from the burdens that sin imposes. This is the joy of the non fundamentlist Christian life.

RW
As we can see his definition is self-limiting in scope and does not accurately reflect the realistic boundaries of humanities prerogatives. Men can, and have, created their own moral codes independent of God.

SB
Because of their propensity to err I believe God rightly excludes humans from a creative role in morality. We may try to understand but we should not aspire to create or alter.

Given the risks involved in creation I am glad that God has set the standards, and that my free moral agency consists in the right to choose the straight and narrow path of pure good or to stray from it.

If I am simultaneously building the path that I wander away from God along, I am indeed building my own destruction and the means for it to occur.

Far better that God builds the path and that I do my best to find it, and stay on it, with his unlimited Grace assisting me when I seek it diligently.

Blessings and Peace

Spirit Branded

HelenM

Hi Mr Pope-to-be!

Actually Photocrat's not one I'd have put in the anti-liberal camp, myself...I had him down as liberal himself by some standards...

Well, let's see what he says for himself when he next drops by

love
Helen

p.s. You said rw was your long-lost friend entirely due to your neglect.

I understand that kindness intended in saying that but - if you haven't been in contact with rw might it not also have been that he's been away? He was away from here for a while - but maybe in your own absence you didn't notice his...so perhaps you didn't know...

rainbow walking

Hi Meta,
Wow!, I’m gone 3 days (and 2200 miles) and return to find quite a bit of activity has transpired in my absence. I haven’t had any sleep in about 27 hours so if my responses are incoherent just let me know and I’ll clarify later.
I tried to post this very argument on your board but it rejected the post saying my password was incorrect. So I tried every password I could think of that I might have used with no luck. So I re-signed up with a new password and the EZ board accepted all the info and informed, per normal procedures, that I would receive an e-mail to which I was to follow the directions therein to become a global member once again. To date I haven’t received this e-mail. I’ll try to sign up again today or tomorrow.


Meta => No your defition of free moral agency is totally wrong! First see Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology and also Antony Flew's Philosophical Dictionary and almost every moral philosopher I've studied in Graduate school. I used to be the Teaching assistant for ethics classes. A moral agent is merely the actor, the person trying to be moral. "Free" moral agency merely means that the person is capable of understanding moral codes and of internalizing them and thus has responsiblity.

Rw: Then we shall have to examine this more closely…eh? I concur on your definition of a moral agent. Actor seems reasonable enough and intuitively satisfying to me, so let’s focus on the adjective “free” as it applies conceptually to the term “free moral agent”.

Basically, you’ve listed two qualifications:
1. Capacity to understand
2. Capacity to internalize
O’kay, again I concur, but, is this all that’s required for a “moral agent” (actor) to qualify as “free”?
Let’s consider a particular moral that this agent has both understood and internalized. Say, “Thou shalt not bear false witness”. This one should do nicely. Immediately we see that this free moral agent, to qualify as a truly free actor, is faced with a choice: To lie or not to lie.
So we, both theist and atheist alike, might agree[/b] (or, at least, I will assume we both agree), that the actor, to be genuinely free, must be free to choose from among the available options to qualify as a free moral agent. So what if an available option is to declare that certain lies are acceptable to protect ones life or liberty? Now we have an actor who has altered the original “Thou shalt not” with a situational qualifier.

Which brings us to a third qualification necessary to free moral agency:
THE AVAILABILITY OF ALL OPTIONS FROM WHICH TO MAKE HIS FREE MORAL, (OR IMMORAL) DECISION.

Now, bear with me and I hope you’ll see that my definition is equivalent to your own and that our parting of ways will revolve around another question aside from this, (That question being whether morals from God are open to qualifiers). By expanding the concept of FREE to include the option of moral relativism and situational ethics i.e. to ignore and/or exclude any reference to a god or gods, I have rendered a much needed more accurate definition to the term Free Moral Agent

This definition doesn’t negate Westminster or Flew or any other mainstream philosopher, (unless they also see it as a black/white choice). In order for the moral actor to qualify as FREE he must have the widest freedom available that can only be afforded by the widest possible set of moral options from which to choose. In addition, he must have the FREEDOM to reject all available moral options and create a new one. If he hasn’t this much freedom he is not a Free moral agent in the proper sense of the term. If he has mentally blindfolded himself into believing that he has only two options, when more are available that he refuses to consider, he has lost his claim to FREE moral agency in the proper sense of the term. If he claims to be an adherent of one particular moral and yet, when a situation presents itself, he chooses to act contrary to his original claim, he loses ground as a free MORAL agent if that which he originally agreed to is recognized and internalized by him as a genuine moral stricture. As I hope you can see, either way a Christian goes, he loses ground.

Meta: If your only understanding of morality is that one follows rules or makes up his own then you are stuck in the adolenscent phase or the rule keeping phase of Koleberg's hierarchy and I suggest you need some personal growth (but I don't think that's the case, I think you are capable of understanding the idea of internalizing moral concepts).

Rw: If there is more to morality than choosing to comply with or ignore a particular rule, more, or socially expected level of decency, I should be interested in learning of it. In any code of ethics or morals one has the choice of accepting, internalizing and complying, or rejecting (in part or in whole) any particular set of morals. One also has the option of accepting or rejecting anyone’s claim as to the origin of a particular set of morals without having to reject those morals. (Separate issue of course) And, if one rejects a particular code or some aspect of it, one has the option of replacing that which has been rejected with another or creating one of his own. This is what I understand Free Moral Agency to mean and how I defined it. So, unless you expand on the above statement, I see no argument.

My own personal maturity is irrelevant to the argument that stands on its own merits. It sounds as if you are equating my personal maturity with an alleged lack of knowledge of this subject. I fail to see how you’ve arrived at this particular assumption from the argument. I am capable of understanding any concept that you are capable of explaining. So if you’d be so kind as to elucidate precisely what you mean by “internalizing moral concepts” I can better judge if I am lacking somewhat in knowledge of morals and ethics.



Meta => that's an absurd argument RW. No one lives by a code of his own making! Everything we think or believe comes to us through culture. We do not invent anything from whole cloth. Now we internalize it and make it our own, and when we do that then we become capable of diciding between alternatives and changing our minds about conflicting moral values and so forth.

Rw: Give me some credit here, Meta. That’s precisely what I mean. Although I’m not as eager as you to say that we can’t create a particular moral out of whole cloth, I would be more receptive to our creating new morals by altering or adding to existing ones. . We shall see how MAN deals with the question of cloning and stem cell research. We’ve already seen how man has dealt with the question of slavery: A question that seemed to elude the asking by such men as Peter, Paul, James, Jesus, or the church. Someone, somewhere, had to decide that slavery wasn’t a moral practice. Since it isn’t spoken against biblically, can we then take that to mean some man somewhere created it out of whole cloth?

It’s interesting that you claim everything we think or believe as having come through culture. Culture is a man-made medium. Where, exactly, does your version of God fit into this picture? It has always been my understanding that a Christian accepted that his moral code was handed down to him by God.

It’s also interesting you should mention conflicting moral values. Which Christian morals do you value the highest? Do you interpret particular moral strictures differently than they were originally interpreted and applied and if so, how does this set with God? Since God supposedly communicated to Moses the way to treat slaves when did slavery become an immoral issue for Christians and how does this translate into a moral value when no one biblical figure obviously saw any moral devaluation to owning slaves?

Meta: No one says Christians can't do that, we do it all the time.

Rw: Since, as you say, Christians are free to establish their own value system in determining which biblically conveyed moral is to be complied with and which is to be rejected, what standard of value is used? How is this accomplished without devaluing the Christian doctrines? You say above that all beliefs and morals are devised culturally. What happens when it becomes culturally passe’ to bear false witness? Do you know a single Christian who has never violated this commandment? And when a believer does so are they not casting a vote in favor of moral relativism? When it becomes a common practice within the church how does this align with the doctrine?

Meta: That is the limited, shallow, fundamentalist version of Christianity. Anyone who thinks that is just not withit in terms of spirtual growth.

Rw: Well, Meta, I guess that may be my problem. My spiritual growth began to wither at precisely this point and I can’t seem to find any food or water for my soul in any of the places I’ve been told to seek. And I’m even beginning to feel the very roots of my faith turning to dust under the blistering merciless judgment of my brethren.


Meta: Except that you misconstrue the meaning of the term.

Rw: But that hasn’t been established. The definition you sought to insert in its place has fallen a bit shy of the mark. You must establish a definition that negates the one I’ve established rather than one that partially complies with it and omits the obvious inclusion of extending that freedom beyond God/not God.


Meta: One is a free moral agent because one has internalize a set of moral values and is thus capable of actually deciding for one's self to follow those values in ceratin situations. It doens't matter if that set of values is given to one by society or a religious tradition (and in fact they cannot help but be given by a culture because we cannot think apart form culture).

Rw: Those morals a Christian has been taught to internalize are not negotiable and the Christian is further taught that his choices revolve entirely around morals established by God (not culture)… or no morals. Now, if what you mean is that morals are culturally interpreted and culturally established until they take on the mantle of “religious traditions” we have another serious challenge to Christian doctrine which holds that its morals were handed down by God and are not negotiable, meaning not subject to cultural or social pressures. That is the entire purpose of men attempting to establish their particular morals as having come from a higher authority than man: the purpose of preservation. When morals, established in this manner, fall victim to interpretation, social pressure and cultural reform, they lose their potency as morals from a higher source than man. Christian and “free moral agency” are antagonists and counter-intuitive to the gospel. The Christian is either a slave of sin or of God. He is allowed to see it no other way. Remember the scripture, “You are not your own. You have been bought with a price”? He sees it no other way. Any attempt to define it any other way, call it modern, liberal, or non-fundamentalist all you like, it is a direct affront to the christian message and the NT doctrines conveyed by Paul and Jesus as they have been interpreted thusfar traditionally and otherwise, by the church and its Fathers.


Meta: The fallacy there is that you forget that people can also misue or refuse to use their moral agency.

Rw: Are you sure? It looks to me, for all the world, like a sound argument that demonstrates the fallacy in an apologetic that claims free will as a defense in a world populated by sinners. Points 1 thru 4 are all standard doctrinal apologetics.

As a Christian apologist, do you dis-agree with any of them?

Since I took it as a given that everyone pretty much knows that man doesn’t always properly apply his morals, I thought it would be obvious that point 4 (which is the apologist’s argument in a nutshell against evil) exposes the fallacy in a Christian doctrine that holds forth all men to be evil, and stained with sin, rather than good because he is endowed with free moral agency. As you can see I started those points by classifying them as an expansion of the apologists’ argument. It’s not my own argument. The apologist argues that evil is a necessity and an extension of free moral agency which is a good thing. Therefore it follows that a man, endowed with free moral agency, is a good thing. However, standard Christian doctrine holds that man is born into sin and that no good thing dwells in him. Now somebody needs to get their story strait. I didn’t write the story. I didn’t invent the apologetic. I just made a sincere attempt to homogenize the conflict into a coherent argument in the hope of seeing the contradiction resolved. As I said to Tercel, between tradition, doctrine, apologetics and sectarianism, Christianity, as it now exists, has enough rotted timbers in its foundation to make it unfit for residence.


The argument also demonstrates how the Christian’s compressed version of free moral agency, down to nothing more than God/not God, negates his claim to free moral agency. Since the standard apologetic holds that God endowed man with free moral agency, yet the christian’s doctrine holds that man is not free to alter those morals revealed to man by God, we see another contradiction emerging when we consider that a man, so endowed, must, by necessity, be free to establish his own morals independent of God to properly qualify as a free moral agent. Doctrine declares this a sin. The apologist declares it a good thing but limits it to a God/not God choice. Using your,(albeit, rather un-orthodox), apologetics as a classic example, (and, by-the-way, I agree that morals are culturally established and traditionally protected), we have to weight this with the doctrinal view that morals are a product of God’s love and not to be tampered with. Again, another contradiction that this argument didn’t create, just exposed.

Meta: As the argument form suffering goes your argument does nothing to answer the free will defense.

Rw: No offense intended Meta, but with rebuttals such as this one going for it, not only does it stand unrefuted but, applying your theologics, the Christian message itself has been negated and any doctrinal claims that Christian morals are a product from heaven have now been diffused. Since, according to your rebuttal, they are a product of cultural norms solidified into religious traditions, we are now free to pick and choose among those we find most palatable and to regurgitate those we cannot digest. Since that is, after all, what the church has contented itself with doing over the ages I can only thank you for conceding the point.


Meta: Yea show them how ignoarnt you are! You what? I've studied ethics at the graduate level and even taught it in college. I've also studied it in seminary with one of the top ethicists in the country. I find very people on these boards, on either side, who know jack about ethical theory. Usually all that happnes is both sides just display their ignoarnce. NOw I know that makes me an arrogant slob, but heck man it's my profession! I have an expertise in it, I' have credentials. What is your job? If you say you know your job does that make you arrogant?
I wish both sides would put a moratorium on discussions of ethical theory until they can take some ethics classes.

Rw: Well, Meta, I can only hope that in your next rebuttal, (if you decide to submit one), you will demonstrate your expertise more succinctly, formulate a professional counter argument and do your job for me and Jesus with an ironclad rebuttal that responds to the actual points of the argument. Rattling ones credentials, while I’d hesitate to call it arrogant, does sound more like a toothless dog whose bark is all he’s got. No offense intended.

rainbow walking

Hello Rainbow Walking (my long lost friend - due entirely to my neglect) :--

Hi Roger,
I’m neither long nor lost…but I hope still a friend. If any friendship has been lost it can hardly be due to your neglect. We all have our lives and families, hobbies and jobs to attend to. I still consider you a friend and I hope the same can be said from your perspective.

Spirit Branded
I would like to query some of the above.


SB
The problem with this statement is that it assumes the right to dictate or to create is a human prerogative.

John: This is true Roger, but it is based on observations of the real world so it has some precedent upon which the assumption rests. I would hesitate to call it a right as much as a responsibility. This does not mean that one has to re-invent the wheel. Humans have created so many new and exciting worlds and some of those creations have required moral guidelines that can be established from existing structures. But, for this very reason, humans must be able to establish their morals based on their existence in the here and now. There are so many new issues facing mankind as we race into our future that a moral code locked into something as intractable as a “thou shalt or thou shalt not” will eventually begin to impede our progress as a species. We’re already seeing that struggle in America as our leaders struggle with the moral implications of cloning and stem cell research. Also the battle still rages over abortion and euthanasia. Likewise, believers often base their morality on Christs’ admonition to love thy neighbor as thyself. I fear we live in a world where the language of love has become such an ambiguous term. And the question still rings pertinent, “who is my neighbor?”

SB: If that prerogative is not an attribute of humans but only (at its origin) of God then one component of free moral agency (creative power) is not available to humans.

John: Can you support that “if”? Freedom cannot have limitations where knowledge of options exist. And men are always pressing the envelope of that knowledge further into the stratosphere. I remember well the words, “these people are wise to do evil but to do good they have no knowledge.” If we restrict our knowledge of good to only what God says is good and God refuses to address our reality today…what choice have we? I cannot see how a loving God can restrict man’s power to adapt his circumstances to himself, if that same God created man to function that way…can you?

SB: That said, a human can still freely choose whether to try to be an agent of for example Yahweh, Zeus, Buddha, etc., or no God, can he not?

John: But of course, and he can also choose to represent the one he knows best …himself.

SB: The Christian God is invested according to scripture with unique creative powers which I suggest remove both the right and the role of humans to originate moral good themselves.

John: I fought tooth and nail to cling to this view also Roger but reality cannot be denied. Man has statutory law to regulate moral good. This law is not intractable because it is regulated by men who are taught to consider the circumstances around every case set before them. This is how man exorcises both his right and creative faculties to ensure both justice and mercy.

SB
Why should an alteration right exist?

John: Because we live in a universe whose foundations are CHANGE and CONFLICT.
Conflict brought about man’s changing views towards things like slavery and women’s rights. Should we effect a return to biblical standards just on these two issues alone, how would this benefit our world today?

SB: The creator has copyright over the code in my view.

John: I agree…over the code he created. But this copyright has no authority over anyone who does not care to accept it. It is not the only code nor does it accurately reflect the majority of even the believers views in todays world.

SB: As to being constrained ... the Christian view is the contrary ... that we are liberated by our choice to follow the good and eschew the evil. Did not Jesus say that he came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly?
I reject the idea that Christ's moral code imposes constraints on good behaviour, though it may well constrain evil ... and what would be bad (not good) about that?

John: The argument has nothing to do with constraints on anyone’s behavior but on a person’s field of choices as to what moral code to adopt or reject. A genuinely free moral agent is free to adopt the pertinent aspects of the Christian moral view and reject those that no longer apply. To compliment them, or augment them with moral strictures interpreted to facilitate a healthy life and value system in todays reality. This is the approach most believers take. However, it isn’t the way it’s represented by doctrine or apologetics.

SB
In friendship I ask ... have you not included some loaded language there?
"Limits" ... "compliance" ... "rejection" ... "stricture" ... "scriptures".

These sound to me like words chosen by a person who may have been bruised in confrontations with false non-Christian "Christian" authority figures.


John: And this sounds like a question a friend has launched to take my pulse ;^D No, Rog, the language is based on the argument and demonstrates how a Christian, having accepted the initial claim of God, begins to view his world thru this periscope such that all such major issues revolve around God/not God. What about the person who’s never heard of God, or who can’t hear or see? The person who has been faithful to another god? The person who doesn’t care to hear of God, or can’t bring themselves to believe in any god? How are they to behave? Why is it that many of them develop morals anyway? All that’s required to be considered moral today is to comply with the law but most of the godless love their families and friends, give unselfishly to good causes, fight and die to preserve their heritage, liberty and country, teach their children to respect and care for the weaker among them, on and on and on. All without a God or biblical moorings?

SB: Even if that is not the case the words suggest a background of (perhaps unconscious) influence from fundamentalist control mechanisms in a sect.

John: All religious sects utilize these concepts to one degree or another. If not directly, by implication.

SB: The real point of a moral code is not that it is a diminishing and restricting force ... but a liberating one which allows the spirit to soar to new undreamed of heights when freed from the burdens that sin imposes. This is the joy of the non fundamentlist Christian life.

John: The law killeth, the spirit giveth life.

SB
Because of their propensity to err I believe God rightly excludes humans from a creative role in morality. We may try to understand but we should not aspire to create or alter.

John: It is precisely because we err that we must take the lead in formulating morals geared to protect us from those errors.

SB: Given the risks involved in creation I am glad that God has set the standards, and that my free moral agency consists in the right to choose the straight and narrow path of pure good or to stray from it.

If I am simultaneously building the path that I wander away from God along, I am indeed building my own destruction and the means for it to occur.
Far better that God builds the path and that I do my best to find it, and stay on it, with his unlimited Grace assisting me when I seek it diligently.

Blessings and Peace
Spirit Branded

John: Well said, my friend, for a man of faith, it can be none else. I live by my wits now consciously. For me, the realization that I am the creator of my own destiny has not changed my mind nor my heart. It has, if anything, made the one sharper and the other more acutely aware of the influence I have at my disposal. I hope to use both for the betterment of myself and my fellow man. Iron sharpens iron. I hope your new grandchildren are fine. Sorry I haven’t been in touch sooner. Lane says hi to you and Sheila, as do I.

I leave you with these thoughts to mull over:

Jeremiah 1:10 See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.

Let us build a plant. One that will generate enough heat and light to bath the world in its own glory.

But, what shall we fuel it with?

Why, our own dreams and aspirations…what else?

What shall we call it?

The mind of man.

Where shall we start?

Today.