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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:37
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Ben - quote:
Ah, but this begs the question. Suppose that people, because they are flawed cannot put religion into proper practice? Then we would expect precisely this when people try, that they still get things wrong and mess things up. This is what is known as the human nature of the church, in that it is composed of human beings. |
Then religion doesn't necessarily = morality much less preclude other paths to morality because it depends on people to not only practice it but create it. Religion must be compared to a different standard - one based on logic. But let's assume the moral teachings of your God are found using logic and not religion, how would that impact the argument that religion is required to be moral? Frankly, what Jesus taught - the Golden Rule, etc. - doesn't require any God to discern, just logic.
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However, this says nothing about the divine nature of the church, which does not change. |
But that begs the question, how can a church be divine when flawed humans make up the church?
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There are some really good debates as to what precisely constitutes the divine nature of the church, but that will be for later. |
But that debate is required before we can determine if religion is a requirement for morality. And even if we find a religion that is moral, that doesn't mean it precludes other paths to morality.
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Through those to whom God has spoken, and our own conscience. |
How do we know who God speaks to? And conscience isn't proof of God... it's proof of conscience... And do we even know how a conscience is created? Is it nurture or nature?
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Very true. And I would argue that Christianity offers both an inspired text and the testimony of God. |
Proof? No proof, that's why faith is needed...
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True. Which returns us to the resurrection. If Christ died and rose from the dead, then he must be God, and we ought to believe what he said. If he did not, then he is not god, but rather an agent of the devil sent to decieve people. |
I can think of a couple more options, but assuming Jesus is God, we're still left with the task of comparing what Jesus taught to our logical standard to see if God is moral. And you'll have to explain why Jesus changed aspects of the OT if he authored both texts. Furthermore, why is God, or the correct religion, needed if our standard based on logic is moral?
If two people, one religious and the other not, reach the same conclusions about morality, why does the one preclude the other from being moral?
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There is no middle ground, of a great moral teacher, for Christ did not claim to be one, but rather, claimed to be God himself. |
He never claimed to be God and he repeatedly referred to God as his and OUR father who is in heaven. Jesus was not the first nor the last person to believe he and we are children of God...
Leaving religions aside for the moment, what is at least one standard of morality? If anything can be called moral, it requires us all to agree (excluding of course children and the mentally deficient)... So what can we all agree upon? We don't want to be murdered, we don't want to be enslaved, we don't want others imposing unhappiness upon us. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... That is a logical standard for morality...
From this standard we can continue using logic to arrive at other moral judgements. Unfortunately, too many people don't use logic, they don't try to be consistent, and too many Christians ignore what Jesus taught... Too many Christians believe Jesus wants them to punish "sinners", including people who've committed no transgression against others (you know, the people Christians are supposed to forgive) - people whose "sin" doesn't harm others... That makes a mockery of the Golden Rule and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"... So how about the "Church"? Can you identify a church that embraces what Jesus taught?
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loinburger
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Sweet Sauce Jones
Jul 1999
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Elok
And in a morality based on social cohesion... |
It's not that morality is based on social cohesion, it's that moral terms originated from the need for social cohesion. Terms like "benevolent" and "malevolent" were necessary for group interaction -- f'rinstance, if somebody caused you injury, then you would need to be able to differentiate between an injury that was done by accident (in which case you'd do well to be wary about the group member's klutziness) and an injury taht was done with malevolent intentions (in which case you'd do well to expel the member from your group). Then, once the terms were in place, people grounded them on all sorts of different things (e.g., "good for goodness' sake," or "good so that God will reward me," or "good so that I'm not thrown in jail," or whatever).
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And we might call outselves atheists, but in positing an absolute morality we really have a very primitive religion. |
Which atheist(s) posited an absolute morality?
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:37
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wow this has gone in a different direction than my quoted post was meant to take this. I followed that quote up with...
quote:
if you reject divine revealation, all you are left with are man-made moralities which are necessarily subjective. |
my point was that an athiest or an agnostic has no right to call anything evil as his morality is inherently a subjective one. Even moralities which claim to be absolute (Kantian, utilitarianism, etc.) still hinge their concept of good and bad on assumptions such as the universality of a maxim or the importance of human happiness. Furthermore, the simple fact that they are made by imperfect humans is enough to constitute them as subjective, imperfect moralities.
I already assumed that religious morality was a simplistic human construct...
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loinburger
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Sweet Sauce Jones
Jul 1999
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Albert Speer
my point was that an athiest or an agnostic has no right to call anything evil as his morality is inherently a subjective one. |
The term "fast" as it relates to running speed is inherently a subjective one, because what you consider to be fast might not exactly correspond to what I consider to be fast, and there is no such thing as an "absolutely fast" runner. So, I guess this means that nobody has the right to use the term "fast." Ditto with the terms "long," "tall," "fat," "smart," "rich," "old," etc. (I suppose that those who worship entities who supposedly embody the absolute concepts of "fast," "long," "tall," etc. are still permitted to use these terms.)
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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
1. Is it possible to have evil without a concept of a moral absolute?
Speer's answer here, would be no. The only other option is some form of relativism, where things can be considered personally wrong, but not wrong for everyone. In this, one can hardly label such things as 'evil' since they are not totally devoid of good. |
Why not? Darth Vader was evil, despite having some good in him 
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First of all, it cannot be ourselves. Anything that is good has to come from outside of ourselves, in fact, it cannot exist in nature. Everything here is flawed to some extent. |
How so?
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So if it doesn't come from nature, and it does not come from ourselves, then what else is left to be the origin of the good? |
God is part of nature. Everything is part of nature, by definition.
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It would have to be something that does not change, since morality would not change, |
Why not?
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:37
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Sorry, Loin, but I have to answer the UR backlog first...
Free will and omniscience are NOT mutually exclusive. That's based on a bizarre limitation of thought imposed by a determinist philosophy. Maybe people aren't machines, and our idea of cause and effect cannot be applied to ourselves. Are you familiar with the old saying about how you can't design a computer that comprehends its own workings?
Maybe it's not the laws of physics being violated...the idea is that reality itself flows from God. If he really wanted, he could presumptively alter the nature of reality so that two plus two is three and a rock can be lifted and stay on the ground simultaneously, or in some weird way match whatever hoop you hold up for him to jump through. But our universe is based around certain truths, such as the idea that "can" and "can't" are mutually exclusive concepts. And there's no point in redefining a system just to prove you control it, especially when the proof won't be accepted. The asker will just turn around and challenge god to make an object that is simultaneously a star, a plant, the city of San Francisco and its entire population, and a guy named Fred, or some such babble. Or a man who is his own grandfather. Anyway, the mistake is in thinking that the extremity of nonsense we can think up makes God somehow impotent.
As for "democracy and communism," there needs to be a limitation on the word "creation" here. God created the particles of carbon, hydrogen, etc. that became the bread I ate today. That doesn't mean God is directly responsible for the existence of that bread. Nor, to sort of use your analogy, is the inventor of currency to blame for communism, though the beginnings of a market economy did lead to the reaction of a Socialist Paradise. When the ingredients stir themselves, as is the case with our universe, you can't blame the guy who just made them, even if he knew what would happen.
"But why couldn't God just make the world differently so people wouldn't choose evil?" Because evil is, like I said, the essence of contrariness. It's the impulse for things to be not as they are for no good reason other than sheer willfullness. It makes no sense that such an impulse would arise on its own, but neither does the impulse itself. My understanding of evil is as a force of nothingness, and asking who made nothing is like asking the chemical composition of a vacuum.
For evil-as-contrariness, take rape as an example. Traditionally, rape has been regarded as about power. Men prove their dominion over women with forced sexual congress and in some way this makes them feel better about themselves. There's no logic in that idea. The actual pleasure of the act would probably be exceeded by just jerking off or something. The unique factor in rape is that it imposes one will forcibly on another. And, for some perverse reason, making others unhappy somehow makes some people happy. This is an extreme example, but see also my recent thread about voyeurism for a more moderate form.
Or Road Rage. No, you don't get there any faster by cutting the guy off in revenge, but it's important to score points off people you've never met, because of course tons of people are making a record of your humiliation and deciding to destroy your career for being so weak. Or cigarette smoking, or dreaming about acquiring more money than you can actually spend (will your average CEO ever want for anything if he stops screwing people over today?), or gossip (your neighbor dyes her hair? Wow, what useful information!). Everybody's got his or her own dysfunction, and my observation of myself and others is that the only common link is that none of it makes any sense in the long run. It's just random perversity. Which of course is what Christianity says, which is why I'm inclined to follow it. Cold rationality can lead to immense scientific progress, but people will continue to use those breakthroughs for more and more efficient ways of hurting each other, sans spiritual contemplation to find the problem within. Which rationality can't do on its own, because nothing can understand its own workings.
Oy. I'll get back on the subject later. My eyes are starting to go funny from staring at this same text box for so long...
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:37
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fine, yall could use the term evil but, at least to me, it denotes a far greater absolute than fast... it's more like fastest, actually than fast...
but in any event, if you choose to use evil, it should be made with the full understanding that your concept (as well as the Christian concept) of evil is subjective.
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loinburger
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Sweet Sauce Jones
Jul 1999
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Albert Speer
but in any event, if you choose to use evil, it should be made with the full understanding that your concept (as well as the Christian concept) of evil is subjective. |
If my concepts of the terms "good" and "evil" are subjective, then so too are my (and everybody else's) concepts of "fast," "long," "tall," "fat," "smart," "rich," "old," etc. What's the problem? Nobody in their right mind argues that we ought to have an absolute concept of "fat" or "rich" or whatever, so why should "good" and "evil" be treated any differently?
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Albert Speer
fine, yall could use the term evil but, at least to me, it denotes a far greater absolute than fast... it's more like fastest, actually than fast... |
That's retarded. Why can't we denote something as being evil, even if it is subjective? Unless you're going to assert there's not varying degrees of evil. Evil isn't absolute, and nothing about its definition connotes it has to be so.
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but in any event, if you choose to use evil, it should be made with the full understanding that your concept (as well as the Christian concept) of evil is subjective. |
And this is even more retarded. Should we go around saying, "That guy is evil (subjectively speaking)."? And what point would that serve? Do you seriously think someone would misunderstand my meaning were I to say that? We live in a society with norms of morality wherein it's pretty darn easy to know what someone else means when they say, "that's evil." Further qualifications are unneccessary.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
I think the Chinese are a great example vs. Deism. A society that existed as was stable for thousands of years without a religion that believes in one creator beingwho is omnipotent or omnicient. They do have dualistic system, but if I understand it correctly, neither side is "good" or "evil"- you need both. |
The Chinese had (has?) a crazy mythology with huge numbers of deities, demigods, heroes, monsters, etc. We have the Celestial Emperor, who's supposedly the head, but he's far from either omniscient or omnipotent. In fact, he's sorta mediocre. In fact, heaven is just a big fat burreaucracy with all kinds of rules.
Then over the ages Buddhist deities (I think they are called Bodhisattvas), Daoist deities, and even Christianity were added. Quite an interesting mix.
On one hand, we have lots of temples and people worshipping their gods. OTOH, even they don't really believe.
One word about Daosim. It started out as a philosophy, which was later bastardised to become a "religion."
Last edited by Urban Ranger on 06-07-2004 at 20:13
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