God and Morality
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 05:29:38 PM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Discussion
  Religion & Philosophy (Moderator: World politics is up Schmitt creek)
  God and Morality
« previous next »
Pages: 1 [2]
Author Topic: God and Morality  (Read 4090 times)
World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 34,249


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #25 on: January 07, 2012, 12:34:15 AM »
« edited: January 07, 2012, 12:36:37 AM by Nathan »

Forgive me, but I remain mystified as to how one could possibly define any kind of absolute as opposed to subjective morality contra God in the event of God's existence. Again, if God has the position with regards to the universe that He's constructed as having in Western thought. If it's otherwise I don't honestly understand why we would even be talking about this.

I don't really understand how this argument is different than "that's just part of God and we know it is"?

Because if God has the rest of the traits defined in Western theology, then I don't understand how there's any basis for holding back on omnibenevolence. It's conditional on the idea that that's the concept of God that we're going with. If you want to discuss concepts of deity more generally in this area, then by all means, I'm fine with having that conversation too.

Quote
You must be logged in to read this quote.

We are judging God using a standard related to our observation of existence when we use analogies like perception and thought process to describe things that He does or that He might do. Thinking of God analogically like this demands, technically, a position of agnosticism, yes.  It doesn't necessarily demand de facto agnosticism, since we can still determine which of various possibilities of God's very general nature we're talking about and go from there by analogy. For example, if we were discussing the set of possibilities relating to how the universe would work if the supreme existences were the kami, then we'd have an opening to discuss concepts like humans being destined prey of the gods or the gods existing in a dangerous symbiosis with humanity and nature. Since we seem to be discussing the set of possibilities relating to how the universe would work if the supreme existence roughly resembled the God of the Book religions, we have an opening to discuss concepts like omnibenevolence and how it relates to the fact of having created the universe and everything in it (including such things as 'right' and 'wrong'), even if we don't (as I assume you don't; you may correct me if I'm wrong and you're doing something Socratic or diabolically advocative) actually think that this is the way the universe does work.

As for how one can be other than agnostic while taking the position that thinking about God in terms of what is observable will be analogical at best, there are at least two ways to go about this. We can make an attempt to assign probabilities or guesstimates as to the likelihood of different conceptions being the way things are, and/or we can do it emotively or volitionally (the 'leap to faith'). In fact if you take this position any belief or strong hunch about God, even strong agnosticism, is one of these things.
Logged
Alcon
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 30,867
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #26 on: January 07, 2012, 07:41:29 AM »

behh.  I had an extensive post typed and then "session expired."  Road trip tomorrow but I will reply ASAP.  Sorry for ruining the flow of things.
Logged
World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 34,249


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #27 on: January 07, 2012, 01:58:38 PM »

It's all right, I have some stuff coming up too. My dad's fiftieth birthday celebration is this weekend and there are several things that I'm supposed to be working on writing.
Logged
True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
Moderators
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 42,157
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #28 on: January 09, 2012, 09:01:26 PM »

Most posters in this thread seem to be accepting as axiomatic that there are objective rules by which one can determine whether certain behaviors are moral. I disagree with that proposition.

While in general we can define moral behavior as that which achieves the greatest good, the question is, the greatest good for whom?  The individual?  The family?  The clan?  The tribe?  The nation?  Humanity? Sapient life? All living things? The universe?

Even if one chooses to define "good" for social structures larger than a single individual by the rule that the good of the whole equals the sum of the good of its parts, acts can have varying degrees of morality based on the scale at which we consider the consequences of the act.

Consider that much of the storytelling in Asimov's robot stories comes out of the difficulty in quantifying the concept of "harm" as it is applied to the three laws of robotics, which are an idealized version of morality expressed in terms of minimizing harm.
Logged
World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 34,249


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #29 on: January 09, 2012, 10:23:44 PM »

We're accepting several things as axiomatic for purposes of this argument that we might not accept as axiomatic in other circumstances. We're accepting the idea of absolute moral facts for purposes of arguing about how that ties into ideas of God and where such facts come from or would come from in the event of God's existence.
Logged
True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
Moderators
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 42,157
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #30 on: January 09, 2012, 11:09:46 PM »
« Edited: January 10, 2012, 12:15:09 AM by True Federalist »

And yet the Bible can be viewed as showing God as having a changing standard of morality.

In the time of Abraham, the good of the family was the paramount good, to the point that Lot was saved because he was a close relative.

In the time of Noah Moses, the good of the nation was the paramount good, to the point that other nations are to be destroyed or subjugated for the sake of Israel.

In the time of Christ, the good of humanity as a whole was the paramount good.

Of course this need not mean that God changed, but that man changed so that his ability to apply moral behavior expanded to encompass the good of larger groups.

(EDIT - Did a Perry there and goofed on which three I meant to use. Oops.)
Logged
World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 34,249


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #31 on: January 09, 2012, 11:55:39 PM »

And yet the Bible can be viewed as showing God as having a changing standard of morality.

In the time of Abraham, the good of the family was the paramount good, to the point that Lot was saved because he was a close relative.

In the time of Noah, the good of the nation was the paramount good, to the point that other nations are to be destroyed or subjugated for the sake of Israel.

In the time of Christ, the good of humanity as a whole was the paramount good.

Of course this need not mean that God changed, but that man changed so that his ability to apply moral behavior expanded to encompass the good of larger groups.

Except for the good of the nation of Israel coming in actually significantly after Noah (remember, the Noahide Covenant is the one that's considered to be binding on the whole human race in traditional Jewish law), yes. I'm particularly fond of your last sentence, as that's long been my understanding of it.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2]  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.035 seconds with 11 queries.