His Noodly Appendage

What does creating the universe have to do with anything? What is there about that 'is' that defines an 'ought'?

Kassiana

--I would refuse whether it were a God or a human ordering me to kill another.

--That's correct, and I believe no God ever has done so.

--Nope. That's an invention of some human members of Abrahamic religions in order to make themselves feel superior.

--Never.

--Never.

arkirk

Why do some insist on diluting these forums with preaching...that old time religion. I do not believe that God is anything like the Bible says. "He" is most probably an "It" and "It" probably in some regions is "Us."

What I am saying is that there is no way to know this stuff you say is true is even a remote possibility. So if you hear a voice where there ought not be one, it is best to first attempt to determine you are not delusional. This Christian God nonsense is just that. You can't really believe you should kill for such a person or even associate with "Him"

arkirk

That's pretty frightening, mr. Kool. Just what do we require as proof? That it makes us feel good? Please reconsider your answer. We need to communicate not assasinate. Just what would we be killing in this little scenario? our fellow human beings (like a common murderer), or perhaps a whole planet, like the oil industry. or perhaps just a few select people world wide for the next 30 earth centuries.

Taking orders to kill or destroy others carries with it co-guilt of the doer of the deed and the commander...the subordinate takes on to his own being the guilt of the person who conceived and ordered the action. That pretty much the way the Nuremburg Trials interpreted it.

Atheist and particularly agnostic logic simply does not command of its proponents that they murder. That's not saying atheists and agnostics don't ever murder. It just that they are not murdering in defense of their beliefs. It is true that non-religious logic could find that if you did not kill another determined to kill you, you would die. This kind of logic has the effect of loosening up the old trigger finger and I am sure in some instances it would be quite justified.

In the course of adding x to y, murdering your fellow man has little chance to become "rational." It seems only the Christians, the Capitalists and the Facists deduce orderly murder. Common people don't kill to shift either world politics or the pinions of heaven.

coldskool

If a being appeared before me out of thin air and said it was god or the entity responsible for creating the Universe, youre damn right I would require proof (that it was exactly that), especially if it asked me to kill one of my friends. Now.. if It could do this for ME, in MY mind (and this is a whole other thread).... I would not want to question it. I'd pull the trigger.

His Noodly Appendage

The problem with this thread (as with all too many threads in this forum imho) is that it was phrased as 'would you do X?', rather than 'would it be RIGHT to do X?'

People keep answering the latter, and that's really not what's at issue.

That's the question here. If someone who actually was Lord God Almighty, Author of the Universe, asked you to perform a given act, would that fact automatically make the act Right And Good And Proper And Virtuous And Commendable, or would it depend entirely on the nature of the act in question?

If the latter, whence derives goodness?

TrueMyth

Thanks for your thoughts!

You speak of organized killing as if it were the only evil, instead of one of numerous (perhaps infinite) possible evils to which every belief system is prone, to varying degrees. This is not the thread to go into this in depth, but I believe very strongly that human beings are hardwired with a need for purpose, for overall significance, which cannot be granted through a naturalistic/atheistic/agnostic worldview. This is simply my opinion, and believe me, I have reasons for this opinion, but assuming for the sake of argument that I am correct, how is it any worse to slowly kill a human being spiritually? To live one's life as an island, shaking your fist at a God you don't believe in, and finding at the end of your life that you feel wasted, meaningless, and insignificant. I can respect atheists like Sartre, who at least face (what I believe to be) the reality of existence without God and get on as best they can. The numbers of spiritual corpses might not be as sexy, attention-grabbing, or enraging, but is it any less of a murder?

Just some thoughts I should probably keep to myself...

arkirk

Spiritual Corpses...that is an oxymoron if ever I heard one. I don't shake my fist. This God is little more than an opiate one becomes addicted to and has to deal into everybody's lives as many ways as possible. The God seems more real when a hundred heads bow to him all at once. It looks like this God is willing to be punitive with man. Nature too is all to willing to be punitive. We violate some aspect of our environment upon which we rely and our whole species could be just a big cypher...at some point it seems a certainty.

The other possibility is that we see the various forms of happiness that can be enjoyed in this life and seek those. I am not talking about being a rampaging forager. I am talking about being calm after you realize there is no god. Perhaps realizing that we are NOT hardwired and CAN change our course. We can move toward delusion and we can move toward sanity...an issue for another time and place.

Kassiana

No, it would not, as I believe I made clear in my response you didn't read.

seebs

See, we have a secondary problem. For those people who are quite convinced that God is genuinely good, the answer might be "it is proof that the act is morally right"; not that it is made right by being asked, but that a good God would by definition never ask any non-good act of someone.

I am not sure how to separate these out except by explicitly drawing that contrast and asking people to consider the hypothetical.

I believe that anything someone is genuinely asked to do by God will be morally right. I do not believe that God can command someone to do a wrong thing, and thus make it right; I just think that God will never ask anyone to do a wrong thing.

I have absolutely no idea whence derives goodness. I consider it roughly like physics and mathematics; it appears to exist regardless of our opinions, but I have no frame of reference for understanding the mechanism by which this should be so, nor the ability to meaningfully form thoughts like "a world in which malice is morally right".