Are there no good people?

[marco]

Why do we concentrate on man's badness and forget his goodness, his clever efforts to make life better? I watched a TV documentary about a lady who rescued hundreds of injured wild animals and birds. She feeds them like a mother and restores them to health and puts them back into their own environment. I immediately thought: "What a kind soul" but one would be hard pressed to find praise for such actions in the Bible.


Much of what Christ says is condemnation. There are no good people. (Mark 10: 18) I disagree; the world is full of good people.


So was Christ wrong? Are there no good people? Should the lady in the story be called "good"?

[Goose]

Firstly, a very minor quibble. Wholly here is an adjective, not an adverb.

More importantly you complain the adjective wholly is missing from Christ’s statement. You make the accusation that I’ve “invented it.�

I didn't complain of an adjective but about the adverb "wholly". It is an adverb of degree. You are attracted into calling it an adjective by regarding "good" as a noun; the word "wholly" still remains an adverb of degree, not a descriptor of the noun. No one is possessed of holiness to a complete extent. The last four words are an adverbial phrase of degree. You make the comment: "The idea being that only God is morally perfect and perfectly good. " Perfectly performs the same adverbial role here.

ουδεις αγαθος ει - Mark 10:18

I'm regarding αγαθος (good) as an adjective here, not a noun. Wholly then, as I've used it, is likewise an adjective. It may be redundant in Greek to say wholly but it helps bring context in Enlgish to what Jesus meant.

[Goose]

I was saying that you added words Jesus did not use. You placed a meaning there that his reported speech does not justify. I did not.

Yes you did. You took a word in a preceing statement ("call") and applied it to a following statement thereby changing the intended meaning of the statement "no one is good except God."

"And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God."

You've taken a statement that indended to assert that no is good but God and turned it into Jesus saying you should call no one good. But that makes Jesus contradict himself. If Jesus was saying call no one good, then he can't call God good. But he does call good so he obviously wasn't saying you shouldn't call no one good. He was saying no one is wholly good but God.

Knocking down a strawman.

[marco]

I'm regarding αγαθος (good) as an adjective here, not a noun. Wholly then, as I've used it, is likewise an adjective. It may be redundant in Greek to say wholly but it helps bring context in Enlgish to what Jesus meant.

Then it is straightforward. You are wrong. The word "wholly" modifies an adjective and so is an adverb. There is absolutely no justification for calling it an adjective. I was prepared to see some slight justification if good meant goodness.


Translating it from another language would still involve the same modification and were I translating into another language I would employ an adverb of course.

[Goose]

I'm regarding αγαθος (good) as an adjective here, not a noun. Wholly then, as I've used it, is likewise an adjective. It may be redundant in Greek to say wholly but it helps bring context in Enlgish to what Jesus meant.

Then it is straightforward. You are wrong. The word "wholly" modifies an adjective and so is an adverb. There is absolutely no justification for calling it an adjective.

That's fine. I have no problem conceding I'm wrong here. I'm not a grammarian. Like I said, it's a very minor quibble.

Now back to your strawman...

[marco]

"And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God."

You've taken a statement that indended to assert that no is good but God and turned it into Jesus saying you should call no one good. But that makes Jesus contradict himself. If Jesus was saying call no one good, then he can't call God good. But he does call good so he obviously wasn't saying you shouldn't call no one good. He was saying no one is wholly good but God.

Knocking down a strawman.

While such argumentation contains an iota of interest, so absurd is the point being made I feel my time is being wasted. We are playing with words and while I've spent much of my life doing this in a more elevated fashion, I don't really see any profit here for me.

If you think God is included in "Are there no good people?" we do have Christ's say so that He's good. So all we do is what Christ did - remove him from the discussion. Then we can talk about bipeds, humans, mortals..... people.


I doubt if we will ever find out via these channels.

[marco]

I'm regarding αγαθος (good) as an adjective here, not a noun. Wholly then, as I've used it, is likewise an adjective. It may be redundant in Greek to say wholly but it helps bring context in Enlgish to what Jesus meant.

Then it is straightforward. You are wrong. The word "wholly" modifies an adjective and so is an adverb. There is absolutely no justification for calling it an adjective.

That's fine. I have no problem conceding I'm wrong here. I'm not a grammarian. Like I said, it's a very minor quibble.

Now back to your strawman...

That is most gracious of you. My thanks.

I haven't presented a strawman, which would involve some dishonesty. I can argue perfectly well without cheating. The contentious point is not my mentioning "call" which troubles nobody, but your phrase "wholly good." Adding this makes a huge change to the given statement; putting in the word call or leaving it out makes no difference. I can argue without "call". Can you argue without "wholly"?

Go well.

[Bust Nak]

This is a form of moral relativism. You asked the general ethical and analogous question, “Why is it a foul to punch an opposing player?� You then went on to say it is a foul because the rules in football say it is. So relative to football punching an opponent is bad. However, relative to MMA punching an opponent is good.

I am going to pretend you said "punching an opponent is legal" and "why is it a foul to punch an opponent. In the analogy we are talking about rules, not morality.

And since Bob prefers the rules of MMA he holds that punching an opponent is good. So we are no closer to answering the question, why is it bad to punch an opponent.

Because the rule of the game says it's a foul, why are you talking about MMA when we are playing football?

Unless of course we simply assume, with no justification whatsoever, the rules of football are the rules by which all sports ought to conduct themselves.

Why do assime that we we can without assumption, point to the fact that the context is football, so we appeal to the rules of football and not MMA?

That merely tells me why it is a foul in football. I could say the rules for football are irrelevant to answering the question of why is it bad to punch an opponent.

But it is relevant to answering the question of why is it a foul to punch an opponent in football.

Your analogy does not tell me why it is bad to punch an opponent. And that's the analogous question which has been asked.

No, the analogous question is "why is it a foul to punch an opponent in football."

Furthermore, the way you’re framing this analogy you make it sound like the rules of football just are.

Incorrect, I did no such thing. Recall if you will, I stated "why would one adopt one particular standard over another is a very different question." Where the rules came from, and how the rules came to be is just another topic that is irrelevant to the question why it's a foul in football. That it is against the rule fully answers that question.

You know full well there are people behind the rules.

Of course I knew full well there are people behind the rules, why the presumption that I was framing this analogy as if the rules just are?

I’m asking why those people who determine the rules for football made it such that punching an opponent is a foul? In essence I’m asking for the reasons why they think it should be a foul.

If that's what you wanted to know, you did not phrase your question correctly. Instead of asking "why is it a foul," you should have asked "what were the designer thinking when they came up with that rule." Why is Hitler immoral, and why do I perfer the moral standard that says don't murder Jews, are very different questions.

With the analogy carried over I’m asking why you (or whomever) have made the standard in question such that helping an animal is good? Or why is it that what Hitler did is bad? What are your reasons for thinking so?

You say "or why..." here, but they are not equivalent questions. The reason why what Hitler did is bad, is because it went against my perfered standard. The answer to the other two questions is because I have empathy for certain animals and people and don't like it when they are treated unfairly.

But that doesn’t tell me what’s good about the act of helping an animal. That just tells me I’ve done something good when I comply with an arbitrary standard.

But it does tell you: what is good about helping an animal is how exact it matches up with the standard that says one ought to help animals. It does not only tell you you've done something good, it also tells you why it is good - the fact that is comply with an arbitrary standard that says it's good, is what makes it good.

If the standard of good was to be cruel to animals or slaughter Jews it would be good to do these things. Because, in your view, the standard itself is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.

Granted.

Good has nothing at all to do with the standard itself. Good is the act of compliance with whatever the standard says is good.

I am not seeing the distinction here, If good is the act of compliance with the standard, then surely it follows trivially that means good has everything to do with the standard. How can something is defined by a standard and yet have nothing to with said standard?

I don’t quite follow you here. It seems you are saying I’m free to choose whatever standard for good/bad I want in any given situation to attain the desired moral outcome. So if I’m playing football and I want to punch someone I just appeal to the rules of MMA and say something like well it’s okay to punch an opponent in MMA.

No, I am saying if you want to be in a game that allow punching, then pick MMA; if you don't want a game where punching is allowed, then you can play football. You are free to choose: punching, or no punching, but that doesn't mean you get to mix the games up.

Now you might be saying to appeal to a standard that has the capability to say certain things are good or bad. But then we still just have different sets of standards. Neither standard itself can be said to be good or bad. I don’t see how you’ve addressed this.

I addressed that by pointed out that an unwritten rule of football, is to follow the explicit rules of football, remember? A standard can easily say that it itself is good.

Well so what if one standard says it’s wrong to pick another standard?

Then it's wrong to pick another standard, according to that one standard.

A person can just choose the standard that allows one to pick whatever one wants.

Sure, he can.

Since it’s all arbitrary no person is morally obligated to follow any particular standard.

Not if a particular standard says it's wrong to pick another standard, a person has a moral obligation to follow this one particular standard, according to that standard.

Here’s why. When I pointed out in post 19 the way you were framing things that it may as well be the case that what Hitler did was good you replied in post 22, “It might be, but it is [not]...�

You explicitly asserted a moral fact. The moment you said “it isn’t� in reply to what I said you negated the case. You asserted it is not the case that what Hitler did was good. You then went on to assert it is not the case what Hitler did was good because the standard you arbitrarily prefer says it is not. In other words, you justified a moral fact with an arbitrary moral standard. And it’s an arbitrary standard because you refuse to acknowledge there is anything inherently bad about what Hitler did. It’s just bad according to your standard.

So far so good. It just isn't clear where this next bit came from:

You don’t get to assert moral facts if you are a moral relativist or subjectivist.

How are you getting to this conclusion? Earlier I asked you to fill in the gaps, here you seem to be filling in some blanks but it still missing the critical bit. Care to give a a real go this time?

1) Moral is relative: standards are arbitrarily choosen.
2) Bust Nak has a preferred arbitrary standard.
3) No standard is inherently better than another.
4) Hitler is wrong according to Bust Nak's standard.
5) Hitler is not inherently wrong.
...
n) Therefore Bust Nak does not get to assert what Hitler did is wrong / assert moral facts.

Exactly. It’s only relative to your preferred standard that punching an opponent is bad. You’ve offered no further justification for why it is bad to punch an opponent. That’s why you only get to point out it runs against your preferred standard.

But that's all I am doing, pointing out that it runs against my preferred standard.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, earlier you say all I get to do is point out that there are different sets of rules, here you are saying I only get to point out that it runs against my preferred standard. Which is it? Maybe both? Or perhaps you think they are the same thing?

And if I get to do both, then what's seems to be the problem with asserting moral facts? Is asserting "Hitler was wrong" not the equivalent of asserting the fact that punching is against the rules?

Oh sure you can say it not good. Just like Bob can say what Hitler did was good.

You say that now, yet in your last post you said I don't get a say.

You just can’t say it as a moral fact what Hitler did was not good because you don’t allow for moral facts. In the end, it’s just two different sets of moral opinions, right?

This last bit is right, it's just two sets of moral opinions; but it's not clear why that is leading you to the conclusion about not allowing for moral facts. I do allow for moral facts. Perhaps you are getting anti-realism mixed up with non-cognitivism?

We’re no closer to answering the question why it is bad to kill Jews. Or why it is good to help animals. Or why it is good to help the poor. Or why it is bad to punch an opponent.

That's because there cannot be anything closer than being right on top of it. It is bad to kill Jews because my perferred standard says so. It's good to help animals because my perferred standard says so and so on. That's the entirely of it, nothing more, and nothing less.

Your example is a problem for anyone who thinks homosexuality is wrong. I think this issue of evolving moral standards only matters for those who are concerned about the moral state of future generations. If one doesn’t care about that then I don’t see how this would pose a problem. If one does care about the moral state of future generations, then yes this possesses a problem.

If one was pessimistic, sure. I have enough faith in humanity that morality will evolve for the better - I care about the moral state of future generations, and yet this "issue of evolving moral standard" still this isn't a problem, but a feature. It got humanity to reject slavery and accept homosexuality so far, the trend is looking great.

Under naturalistic evolution morals evolve. In a few generations the moral standard may evolve to where killing Jews and cruelty to animals is good. And helping the poor is bad.

Don't see that happening, but sure, it might happen.

As an atheist I don’t see why the moral state of future generations should matter at all. The atheist will be long dead when the standard has evolved to where it says killing Jews is good. If an atheist does happen to care about the moral state of future generations I would wonder why it would matter to an atheist?

Because I have a mind that has the capability to imagine and predict what things would and could be like in the short to medium term, to a time after my death.

[Goose]

I haven't presented a strawman, which would involve some dishonesty.

A strawman accusation doesn’t necessarily imply an accusation of dishonesty. A strawman can be erected unintentionally due to simply misunderstanding the position of one's opponent.

The contentious point is not my mentioning "call" which troubles nobody, but your phrase "wholly good." Adding this makes a huge change to the given statement; putting in the word call or leaving it out makes no difference. I can argue without "call".

Can you? What does your argument look like without it?

Are you still arguing that we should call good someone who has helped an animal?

Can you argue without "wholly"?

Yes, I can ague without inserting the word “wholly� because that’s the implied context.

�And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.� – Mark 10:18



The sentiment that God alone is good, perfect, blameless, holy, etc. is echoed throughout the Bible.

"His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.� - Deuteronomy 32:4

�Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins.� - Eccl 7:20

“There is no one holy like the LORD� – 1 Sam 2:2

This God—his way is perfect� - Psalm 18:30

�The law of the LORD is perfect� – Psalm 19:7

�You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect� - Matthew 5:48

�For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God� - Romans 3:23

[Goose]

I am going to pretend you said "punching an opponent is legal" and "why is it a foul to punch an opponent. In the analogy we are talking about rules, not morality.

You do mean for the analogy to apply to morality though don’t you? You can try to draw attention away from the salient point by pointing to a trivial technicality but that doesn’t address the salient point I’ve made here. This all boils down to a form of moral relativism. Relative to football punching an opponent is a foul (bad). However, relative to MMA punching an opponent is legal (good).

Because the rule of the game says it's a foul, why are you talking about MMA when we are playing football?

You mean the rules of football say it’s a foul. The rules of MMA say it’s legal. Why are you talking about football when Bob is doing MMA? Stop trying to force poor Bob to play football. He hates football. He likes MMA.

Why do assime that we we can without assumption, point to the fact that the context is football, so we appeal to the rules of football and not MMA?

Haven’t the foggiest what this sentence(?) means.

But it is relevant to answering the question of why is it a foul to punch an opponent in football.

Well so what? Bob is doing MMA. Stop talking about football.

No, the analogous question is "why is it a foul to punch an opponent in football."

Nope. The analogous question is: why is it bad to punch an opponent? You even implied this yourself when you asked the similar question, “Why is it a foul to punch an opposing player?� There’s no reason to use football rules when Bob is doing MMA.

Incorrect, I did no such thing. Recall if you will, I stated "why would one adopt one particular standard over another is a very different question." Where the rules came from, and how the rules came to be is just another topic that is irrelevant to the question why it's a foul in football. That it is against the rule fully answers that question.

Answers the question why it is a foul relevant to football. It does not answer the question why it is bad to punch an opponent.

Of course I knew full well there are people behind the rules, why the presumption that I was framing this analogy as if the rules just are?

Because your entire justification for why it’s a foul amounts to simply because the rule says so. Nothing more, nothing less.

If that's what you wanted to know, you did not phrase your question correctly. Instead of asking "why is it a foul," you should have asked "what were the designer thinking when they came up with that rule." Why is Hitler immoral, and why do I perfer the moral standard that says don't murder Jews, are very different questions.

I didn’t ask “why is it a foul"? You asked that. But now that you’ve reworded my question in the way you think I should have asked it, what were the designers of the football rules thinking when they came up with that rule?

You say "or why..." here, but they are not equivalent questions.

The use of “Or� here implied they are equivalent questions, the second regarding Hitler being a condensed version of the first regarding animals.

The reason why what Hitler did is bad, is because it went against my perfered standard.

But that just makes it bad relative to your arbitrary preferred standard. Hitler’s standard says what he did was good. So we are still are no closer to answering the question why what Hitler did was bad.

The answer to the other two question is because I have empathy for certain animals and people and don't like it when they are treated unfairly.

But that doesn’t tell me anything other than your personal preferences.

But it does tell you: what is good about helping an animal is how exact it matches up with the standard that says one ought to help animals.

That doesn’t tell me what’s good about helping an animal. That just tells me I ought to help an animal relative to that standard.

It does not only tell you you've done something good, it also tells you why it is good - the fact that is comply with an arbitrary standard that says it's good, is what makes it good.

Complying with an arbitrary standard that that says X is good doesn’t make it X good anymore than it makes what Hitler did good because he complied with an arbitrary standard that said killing Jews was good.

I am not seeing the distinction here, If good is the act of compliance with the standard, then surely it follows trivially that means good has everything to do with the standard.

How can that follow when you deny the standard itself is neither inherently good nor bad?

Standard A says: it’s good to kill Jews.

Standard B says: it’s not good to kill Jews.

Both standards attempt to tell us what is a good thing to do but they make contradictory claims about what is good. But that doesn’t matter in your view because neither standard is itself inherently good or bad. One just picks whatever standard one prefers.

In your view, good isn’t the result of complying with a standard which is itself inherently good. No, in your view good is merely the result of complying with a preferred standard. It doesn’t matter what the preferred standard itself actually says is good. It only matters that one complies with the standard.

How can something is defined by a standard and yet have nothing to with said standard?

What?

No, I am saying if you want to be in a game that allow punching, then pick MMA; if you don't want a game where punching is allowed, then you can play football. You are free to choose: punching, or no punching, but that doesn't mean you get to mix the games up.

I don’t see any good reason why someone can’t mix the games up. These are just arbitrary rules subject to change after all. I see no reason why someone can’t start a football league and make the rules such that punching an opponent is legal.

In any case, I’m saying Bob wants to be in a game that allows punching. That’s why Bob has picked MMA. You just keep telling Bob punching is a foul in football.

I addressed that by pointed out that an unwritten rule of football, is to follow the explicit rules of football, remember? A standard can easily say that it itself is good.

But that doesn’t at all address the fact that neither standard itself can be said to be good or bad in your view. That the standard declares itself to be good is hardly sufficient justification to make it good. If that were sufficient then killing Jews is good because Hitler said so.

Then it's wrong to pick another standard, according to that one standard.

Well so what?

Not if a particular standard says it's wrong to pick another standard, a person has a moral obligation to follow this one particular standard, according to that standard.

How can one have a moral obligation to follow an arbitrary standard? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

You don’t get to assert moral facts if you are a moral relativist or subjectivist.

How are you getting to this conclusion?

This conclusion comes from your user group registration as a moral relativist. Which is defined as:

“Those who believe that there are no moral absolutes, that what is "right" and what is "wrong" is entirely in the eye of the beholder.�

Maybe you now hold to moral realism?

But that's all I am doing, pointing out that it runs against my preferred standard.

Great but that doesn’t tell me why it’s bad to punch an opponent.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, earlier you say all I get to do is point out that there are different sets of rules, here you are saying I only get to point out that it runs against my preferred standard. Which is it? Maybe both? Or perhaps you think they are the same thing?

Why is it a contradiction? You can do both.

And if I get to do both, then what's seems to be the problem with asserting moral facts?

I didn’t say there was a problem with asserting moral facts. I said, you don’t get to assert moral facts by virtue of you being a moral relativist. I implied the problem comes when one tries to justify a moral fact with an arbitrary moral standard. You seemed to have agreed with that when you said, “So far so good.�

Is asserting "Hitler was wrong" not the equivalent of asserting the fact that punching is against the rules?

Wait a minute. Don’t you mean to ask, “Is asserting "Hitler was wrong" [in my personal opinion] not the equivalent of asserting the fact that punching is against the rules [in football]?� Because that is what you have been arguing. And I will ask how is that a moral fact?

You say that now, yet in your last post you said I don't get a say.

You do understand how the context in which I’ve used the word say here right? You did notice the italics right?

In one context the word “say� was used to mean stating what is the case, a moral fact.

In the other context “say� was used to mean something like an utterance.

This last bit is right, it's just two sets of moral opinions; but it's not clear why that is leading you to the conclusion about not allowing for moral facts. I do allow for moral facts. Perhaps you are getting anti-realism mixed up with anti-cognitivism?

Well let’s clarify here. When you say you allow for moral facts, what do you mean? Do you mean that you allow for the potential of moral facts? Because that’s not what I mean. When I say you do not allow for moral facts what I mean is that you do not hold the position that moral facts do indeed actually exist in reality.

So are you are a moral realist then? And if you are how do you maintain your moral relativism? Those positions seem contradictory.

That's because there cannot be anything closer than being right on top of it. It is bad to kill Jews because my perferred standard says so. It's good to help animals because my perferred standard says so and so on. That's the entirely of it, nothing more, and nothing less.

Once again, still just telling me why it’s good or bad relative to your arbitrary standard. Still not telling me why it is bad to kill Jews or good to help animals.

If one was pessimistic, sure. I have enough faith in humanity that morality will evolve for the better - I care about the moral state of future generations, and yet this "issue of evolving moral standard" still this isn't a problem, but a feature.

But why do you care about the moral state of future generations past your death? Why does it matter to an atheist?

It got humanity to reject slavery and accept homosexuality so far, the trend is looking great.

But slavery hasn’t been universally rejected by humanity nor has homosexuality been universally accepted. Slavery has popped up and disappeared numerous times throughout history. It will come back once the standard evolves back to say it is good.

And what about the legalisation of killing children through abortion? Is that a good trend?

Don't see that happening, but sure, it might happen.

And you don’t think it’s a problem that in a few generations the moral standard may evolve to where killing Jews and cruelty to animals is good.?

Because I have a mind that has the capability to imagine and predict what things would and could be like in the short to medium term, to a time after my death.

Great. So you think you can predict the way things will be after your death. You aren’t telling me why the moral state of future generations would matter to an atheist after his death. Really, why should it matter?

[marco]

I haven't presented a strawman, which would involve some dishonesty.

A strawman accusation doesn’t necessarily imply an accusation of dishonesty. A strawman can be erected unintentionally due to simply misunderstanding the position of one's opponent.

Yes, I chose the less insulting of the options.

Are you still arguing that we should call good someone who has helped an animal?

I am puzzled by the presence of "still". The point you make is too simplistic to debate; we don't derive opinions by judging from a single act. That Hitler took trouble to find and honour the soldier who spared his life is not an indication that Hitler was good, but of course a bad man can do a good deed. The nature of Hitler does not colour the virtue of the deed.

The sentiment that God alone is good, perfect, blameless, holy, etc. is echoed throughout the Bible.

If we are searching for consistency then we should ask why in one context Jesus objects to the expression "good master" and in another descrbes himself as "the good shepherd." It seems he is being both inconsistent and pedantic. Talk of absolute goodnesss in the context of a simple address is out of place. Your examples of goodness used elsewhere might be described as red herrings.