Debate Rule Five

[jamesyaqub]

This is a religious debate forum. Religion is a largely a matter of opinion. In religion except where correlations can be made between what is claimed and known history or with recognized geographical situations, virtually nothing can be accepted except on the grounds of personal belief. "Facts" in religion are no more than a collection of opinions which have been agreed upon. So often a claim of being "of God" or that "God tells us" is accepted as evidence.

Since this forum is a debate place for Christianity (and other religions) it must follow that it would be OK to submit some scripture or other as evidence for a claim. The trouble is, as I stated in the first paragraph, that religious scriptures are mostly opinions voiced by other men of long ago who may or may not be any more capable of speaking truth than a man is today. Does the mere passage of time confer acceptability? It would not in science but in religion it does. I make the claim therefore that an opinion of today should be no less honoured than an opinion of ancient times. An opinion in religion cannot be considered as being other than evidence. An exception to this would be the specific debate over the meaning of scriptural passages. This would be an argument over opinions beginning and ending with other opinions. Religion, without beliefs and opinions, could not exist.

My contention therefore is that a requirement for providing evidence in matters of religion is answerable by stating an opinion. I believe that rule 5 is unacceptable in it's present wording. In science theories and opinions are fun things but only but they must be testable before they can be considered evidence. In religion opinions are facts. Rule 5 puts religion on an equal footing with science. It is illogical and nearly impossible to comply with.

As it exists now rule 5 can be used (by an unfriendly detractor) to degrade from what should be an enjoyable experience on this site. The rule for evidence in science must not be applied to a religious debate. When the sharing of ideas in religious matters are hampered by a requirement for scientifically acceptable evidences they are effectively censored.


This topic asks for a thoughtful review of forum rule 5 based on arguments presented above.

[heavensgate]

I tend to agree Jamesyaqub.
I have always thought it strange that a naturalist will demand empirical evidence in a scientific sense as the fortress of naturalistic thinking, yet only allow subjectivity when it comes to behaviour and morals.
In this there is the admission that there are areas of human experience where there is no objectivity available except perhaps in statistics.

But the very concept of morality is itself a subjective concept to begin with. It can't be made scientific precisely because it has no objective existence.

If I would assault you and do you harm, I suggest that is a moral objective reality and the Law would contend so.


In fact, just take a look around at the natural world and ask, "What do you see?"

What you see is nature taking the lives of innocent people and animals, often in very horrific ways. Natural disasters like storms, volcano, forest fires started by lightening, etc, as all examples of nature acting in ways that clearly have no moral basis whatsoever.

There is clearly no natural morality associated with the animal kingdom. It's quite literally a dog-eat-dog natural world.

Do you like being stolen from? You need to make difference between the obvious estate of man and put difference between us and the rest of the created order. If you don't you really are no better than a lame dog and regardless of your achievements should be no more esteemed than a microbe. The Law we all live under demonstrates that there is objective morality, anything short of this is supposing anarchy. I think this was settled from the earliest of human manuscripts.

So from a scientific point of view we can say, 'Yes, there is no objective morality in this universe. Any sense of morality that humans feel associated with is clearly their own invention that has nothing at all to do with any objective reality."

Can you clarify what the 'scientific point of view might be. I need objectivity on this question.



You say:

In this there is the admission that there are areas of human experience where there is no objectivity available except perhaps in statistics.

And what's wrong with that?

That is a fact. Humans create their own subjective experience when it comes to think such as what they believe to be moral or immoral. The only statistics that can be meaningful in this regard is to take a survey of the subjective opinions of the humans themselves. Thus verifying that the concept of morality is indeed entirely a human invention.

And how would you frame the questions or the data in that survey to make it scientific. I thought it was subjective???

But that doesn't make morality objective in any cosmic or natural sense. So science is not lacking an understanding of morality. On the contrary, it has shown us precisely from when morality arises and the fact that it is indeed a subjective opinion of humans that needs to become consensual to some degree if large societies are going to be successful.

Can you please quality this statement

Ironically, even then, within democracy, it is recognized that we can't just allow the majority to rule without restraint. Why not? Well, precisely because morality is indeed subjective. And because of this one particular group that happens to be the majority group can easily create moral statistics that favor their group over other minority groups. In fact this is often a large problem with democracies. There needs to be safeguards put into place to be sure that majority groups don't end up bullying minority groups.

I tend to believe the opposite. I believe democracies have a shelf life. Still, the best we have as a political and social system. Get enough politicians promising benefits for less work and eventually the system will implode. Apply this also to the moral realities of a given society and the same will occur (and many commentators are saying just this).

Why is that necessary? Well, precisely because morality is indeed subjective and not objective.

So science has an understanding of morality well under control. And thankfully some democracies also manage to curb the tendency of subjective morality from allowing majority groups to bully minority groups.

So you haven't bought forth an issue that science doesn't already have nailed.

And this may even be because, in your mind, you may very well be thinking that some sort of objective morality actually does exist, but that it just happens to be beyond the reach of science. That is simply untrue.

Man, you are making me laugh! You are telling me an objective instrument (science) is able to make any sort of judgement about a subjective reality?

Since God is not an object, it stands to reason that the rules of evidence from a naturalistic POV is ruled out of court. And this I think is some of the cosmic impetus behind the commandment to 'Have no other Gods before Me' and the commandment against idols.

The commandment "Have no other Gods before Me", comes from a very ignorant and obviously false mythology. There is no evidence that such a jealous God exists.

Moreover, you need to understand that this Jealous-God to which you reference is the fodder for countless disagreeing religious mythologies. These run the spectrum of many different subjective opinions in Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and a myriad of protesting Protestantisms. And all of those have their own inner disagreements.

There is no single "Jealous God Religion". It has already fractured into a myriad of disagreeing subjective superstitions.

A pretty loaded and scattergun approach to the subject I must say. What objectivity are you applying here? I duly note your subliminal approach to the argument by bring in bait and switch tactics in the Jealous God thing. Good luck with that.

Christianity is the epitome of subjective immorality.

Now that is just silly.

God cannot be represented....but He can be known. It is in this unique 'knowing' where the Christian finds that he or she is more known by God rather than by knowing God in an objective way.

If the story were true and this Jealous-God actually did exist I would need to refuse his ultimatum in any case because my subjective morality demands better than that. I would need to stoop to the pits of immorality to become a Christian.

I wouldn't even want to live forever after having stooped that low.

So if the Christian God is real, I choose eternal damnation. I give this God no choice in the matter and rape him of any free will he might have thought he had.

This is your choice

Apart from the many other aspects that the Bible and God can be discussed with some reasonable clarity is in History as you say, Archaeology, and the correlation of facts of the natural / human world as it relates to Gods revelation to us. This can be argued from the natural world itself, as well as from the more spiritual aspects of human nature such as love, altruism and across the spectrum to hate.

And let's not forget, if you insist on pressing this, then you would need to lay the blame for natural disasters, disease, and animals eating each other entirely on the shoulders of humans.

Get real.

How so?
Jim

[heavensgate]

[Replying to post 11 by heavensgate]

Sorry about the sloppy editing, just getting used to the quote mechanism.
Jim