2023 : Basis for morality thread

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2023 : Basis for morality thread

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Post by Wootah »

viewtopic.php?p=1110735#p1110735
benchwarmer wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 1:41 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 1:14 pm As was said earlier and before now "I really hope you stay a Christian..." where a poster or debator has sworn that without Jesus in their life they would run amok on an orgy of rapine and plunder.
Yes, I've used that one myself in the past when a theist implies that atheists have no morals or reasons to 'behave'. People who need a god to act morally should definitely remain theists. I have no desire to deconvert anyone. Deconversion should be something that is arrived at naturally. Like when you discover "Santa's" gifts under your parent's bed before Christmas.
Welcome to a new year of debating. What is the basis for morality?

Options raised in this thread:

1) opinion - fails on people having different opinions

2) genes - fails - If an insect gets taken over by a parasite and then that insect is more helpful we would not say it was being more moral. If a gene is making someone good we would not say they are moral. If a robot could be programmed to be good it would not be making choices and not be moral.

3) cooperation - fails on the logic of a group not being right just because there are more of them.

4) God - So, for me, if morality exists it has to have an objective basis. If it is objective and because it applies to only free-willed creatures then it has to be an opinion of a free-will creature who can impose their will objectively such that we can know their opinion on what is moral. That's where I am heading with morality coming from God.
Last edited by Wootah on Fri Feb 10, 2023 12:04 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #351

Post by Wootah »

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #349]

I think the right to bear arms is fundamental in getting a fair living wage. The threat of force needs to be real enough to impact the discussion.

What you don't see is after the chaos the winners will still establish hierarchy. Right now we are getting close to fair than before. Look how marvellously rich the poor are compared to being poor in the past. To even have a shrinking middle class is a testimony to our success.

The red pill is to understand none of it came from antidiscrimination and got intervention. All of it came from grace, the invisible hand of God on the market.
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #352

Post by JoeyKnothead »

Wootah wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 4:25 pm ...
All of it came from grace, the invisible hand of God on the market.
I challenge you to show you speak truth in this claim.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #353

Post by Purple Knight »

Wootah wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 4:25 pm I think the right to bear arms is fundamental in getting a fair living wage. The threat of force needs to be real enough to impact the discussion.
I agree with this at least. Ultimately if you create an underclass who has it so bad they have nothing to lose, they will use force whether it's moral or not. But that ends up being a restraint on how bad you can treat people, and that's arguably a good thing.
Wootah wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 4:25 pmWhat you don't see is after the chaos the winners will still establish hierarchy. Right now we are getting close to fair than before. Look how marvellously rich the poor are compared to being poor in the past. To even have a shrinking middle class is a testimony to our success.

The red pill is to understand none of it came from antidiscrimination and got intervention. All of it came from grace, the invisible hand of God on the market.
We have more stuff yes. I don't know if any of this extra stuff is a real benefit. You can have too much stuff. You can have too much food. I think what people are upset about, when they decry disproportionate wealth, is the disproportionate power that produces over people who have vastly comparatively less. For example, it is nothing to a billionaire to pay someone $100,000 to fire me. He can do it on a whim, for what to him is a pittance, and he could send me to ruin. I would rather have less stuff, and not have to worry about giants stepping on me fur the luls.

I'm not saying that my preference is righteous, I'm just saying that I care more about disproportionate power than I care about having, what, tiramisu for dinner and eight pairs of nice shoes? Yeah I'll have the one pair of cruddy shoes and a turnip for dinner if it means there are no giants around to crush me. I prefer less stuff and more equality.

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #354

Post by theophile »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm
theophile wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 8:44 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 12:08 pm
theophile wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 8:47 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:42 pm It all sounds a bit simple and obvious to me. Believers want there to be a god doing morality and so apologetics are used to try to make the case. Sorry, but that's basically it.

Morality is something humans have had to devise to try to help us operate together, and is a work in progress. Crediting this to a god has obvious problems and so all kinds of excuses have to be produced to either get God off the hook or blame it on mankind. It's always been known but up to a couple of hundred years ago, anyone saying so got cancelled.

It's been used as a gap for God, too as nobody know where morality came from, or pretended they didn't, but like the other gaps for god, we have half an understanding and even if we didn't that would only make God a valid hypothesis if you already believed it was the go - to hypothesis. Bottom line, the debate is as dead and gone as the Creation debate, but Believers keep it going.
I assume this was somewhat in response to my last post? To be clear, again, this is not me trying to credit morality to some god-being. I've said it before and I'll say it again: we can cut God and the bible out of it completely if you want. I'm happy to have a purely secular discussion on the topic with nothing lost. But this is the Christianity and Apologetics board, right? So it would be a bit remiss if there was no Christian apologetics going on? We can't just dismiss it all outright with a swoop of the hand like you try to do here.

Also, to your answer that morality was devised by humans, sure? But that doesn't really get us anywhere. Even the bible was devised by humans, so any god-morality present there still fits within your view, doesn't it? And should be considered as such?

So what I'm personally after, to be clear, is not giving credit to God, but finding convergence between the secular and the biblical, because I don't think the line is quite as hard as many want to make it.
As I said above, the morality problem is not solved or even helped by religion.

Religion, as I have said, tries to claim morality, but morality is - so I argue - manmade, and that's why it is a problem. It is better to discus the problem than point to a religion and think that will solve it.

I agree this forum is about religion so if religion doesn't help with the problems of morality, then the problems of morality actually have no bearing on the religion - discussion, which is why I say apologetics from morality is no loner valid apologetics for Theism.
This is where I get confused, because religion too is manmade. Like it or not, it's been and still is an integral part of the process you describe above about morality, i.e., "something humans have had to devise to try to help us operate together, and is a work in progress." It contains moral thinking irrespective of its religious trappings, and its religious trappings do not necessarily negate its moral value...

That, I think, is where we fundamentally disagree. You seem to think we should toss the baby out with the bathwater, whereas I keep saying a baby is a baby irrespective of its skin...

Now, I'm sure it's also a part of your argument that you've looked at the baby and deemed it ugly, but all I see you offer there is statements about theists giving God credit where credit isn't due. But that's not the baby that's ugly but just certain theists, right? To which I'm also sure you'll cite all the atrocities in the bible that God commits, and how this makes the baby ugly, but then you won't be able to give any objective morality to back it up. It'll ultimately just be opinion, right?

So this is not about religion 'claiming' morality, but recognizing religion as a valid, moral voice.
Where we disagree, I think is which is the baby and which is the bathwater. Manmade social structures (of which religion is one) is the baby, religion is the bathwater. That's why I argue that religion claims the manmade social structures as their own (God -given) but which were there long before the earliest religion (probably Hinduism, if Mohenjo - Daro was Hindu).
I'm not sure if you accomplish a clean separation here. I feel there is still 'religion' in both the baby and the bathwater... I'm fine to get rid of the bad aspects of religion, if that's what you're saying (and we can discuss what those are), but I'm not fine to get rid of the baby part (which for me is the subjective morality that religion contains).
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm The metaphor should really be keeping the bathwater we pour off and finding there actually is no baby (1). Which explain why the various 'mothers' couldn't agree what it looked like.
Why do you say keep the bathwater? Isn't that the bad stuff we want to get rid of? As to there being no baby, that's an interesting idea but I think it gets to what I tried to preempt in my previous post. To say there is no baby is to say the baby is ugly. Stillborn. Not worth existing. Non-existent...

But sure, I agree it can be hard to see the baby when it comes to us in so many different forms, and when there may be nothing objective about it that would help us recognize it.
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pmI have a theory... :roll: .... that religion is an instinct (Religious apologists may claim this too - 'God - shaped bottle') that serves to create social (not to say tribal) conventions that firms up Them and Us, keeps the supporters cheering, the Rulers in charge and nobody asking awkward questions and ready to die for the cause. It is no coincidence that flags, standards and banners form the same function in armies and religions, and the two seem to form different sides of the same coin.
Religion operates within the subjective versus objective domain (the domain of choice and faith) and answers what our end in life should be (since there is no objective answer to that). As such, it is capable of giving us a basis for morality. And I think all of us instinctually want to have that, so I tend to agree. It's basically a primer for conscience, which is part of our functional brains, and so is as instinctual as that methinks. (We can't not have conscience any more than we can not have emotion or any other brain function -- assuming normal human function that is.)
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm Now I'm not going to throw out the bathwater we all wallow in of social structures, but the various invisible babies have to go. Like morality and indeed myth, once we drop the superstition and see what the evolutionary survival - purpose of these instincts are, the better we will avoid it leading us into war and conflict following the standards of politics or religion or, usually, both.
It's only a subjective morality that I want to retain from religion, as all morality must be until we can achieve the conditions of objectivity (which I laid out earlier). And I do think that is worth retaining. We can't just reduce everything to "evolutionary survival", as if this should be our end simply because it's what's gotten us here (more or less) as a species. Hence my point that this is about recognizing that religion has a valid, moral voice, like it or not. It is not about religion claiming morality for itself (which I would say is part of the bathwater that should be thrown out).
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm (1) I have to mention the very cunning trick of the metaphor, or the trick of false analogy. It may not even be a deliberate trick but sure, a fallacy based on a priori assumption of a given god. So many theist apologetics fail because they only work if one assumes a god is real to start with. If you don't, Kalam fails. (2) There is no baby in the bathwater. We scoop away the water and there is no baby. Oh, it's hidden, to See it would destroy Faith. But the metaphor fools us into thinking that Jesusgod is as real as a baby in a bath.
No trickery or deceitfulness. It just felt like a valid metaphor to me. And not gonna lie, I'm struggling to follow your version per some of my comments above. Such metaphors are definitely an oversimplification though, but that said I find they help prevent talking past each other.

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #355

Post by TRANSPONDER »

theophile wrote: Sat Mar 11, 2023 8:35 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm
theophile wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 8:44 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 12:08 pm
theophile wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 8:47 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:42 pm It all sounds a bit simple and obvious to me. Believers want there to be a god doing morality and so apologetics are used to try to make the case. Sorry, but that's basically it.

Morality is something humans have had to devise to try to help us operate together, and is a work in progress. Crediting this to a god has obvious problems and so all kinds of excuses have to be produced to either get God off the hook or blame it on mankind. It's always been known but up to a couple of hundred years ago, anyone saying so got cancelled.

It's been used as a gap for God, too as nobody know where morality came from, or pretended they didn't, but like the other gaps for god, we have half an understanding and even if we didn't that would only make God a valid hypothesis if you already believed it was the go - to hypothesis. Bottom line, the debate is as dead and gone as the Creation debate, but Believers keep it going.
I assume this was somewhat in response to my last post? To be clear, again, this is not me trying to credit morality to some god-being. I've said it before and I'll say it again: we can cut God and the bible out of it completely if you want. I'm happy to have a purely secular discussion on the topic with nothing lost. But this is the Christianity and Apologetics board, right? So it would be a bit remiss if there was no Christian apologetics going on? We can't just dismiss it all outright with a swoop of the hand like you try to do here.

Also, to your answer that morality was devised by humans, sure? But that doesn't really get us anywhere. Even the bible was devised by humans, so any god-morality present there still fits within your view, doesn't it? And should be considered as such?

So what I'm personally after, to be clear, is not giving credit to God, but finding convergence between the secular and the biblical, because I don't think the line is quite as hard as many want to make it.
As I said above, the morality problem is not solved or even helped by religion.

Religion, as I have said, tries to claim morality, but morality is - so I argue - manmade, and that's why it is a problem. It is better to discus the problem than point to a religion and think that will solve it.

I agree this forum is about religion so if religion doesn't help with the problems of morality, then the problems of morality actually have no bearing on the religion - discussion, which is why I say apologetics from morality is no loner valid apologetics for Theism.
This is where I get confused, because religion too is manmade. Like it or not, it's been and still is an integral part of the process you describe above about morality, i.e., "something humans have had to devise to try to help us operate together, and is a work in progress." It contains moral thinking irrespective of its religious trappings, and its religious trappings do not necessarily negate its moral value...

That, I think, is where we fundamentally disagree. You seem to think we should toss the baby out with the bathwater, whereas I keep saying a baby is a baby irrespective of its skin...

Now, I'm sure it's also a part of your argument that you've looked at the baby and deemed it ugly, but all I see you offer there is statements about theists giving God credit where credit isn't due. But that's not the baby that's ugly but just certain theists, right? To which I'm also sure you'll cite all the atrocities in the bible that God commits, and how this makes the baby ugly, but then you won't be able to give any objective morality to back it up. It'll ultimately just be opinion, right?

So this is not about religion 'claiming' morality, but recognizing religion as a valid, moral voice.
Where we disagree, I think is which is the baby and which is the bathwater. Manmade social structures (of which religion is one) is the baby, religion is the bathwater. That's why I argue that religion claims the manmade social structures as their own (God -given) but which were there long before the earliest religion (probably Hinduism, if Mohenjo - Daro was Hindu).
I'm not sure if you accomplish a clean separation here. I feel there is still 'religion' in both the baby and the bathwater... I'm fine to get rid of the bad aspects of religion, if that's what you're saying (and we can discuss what those are), but I'm not fine to get rid of the baby part (which for me is the subjective morality that religion contains).
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm The metaphor should really be keeping the bathwater we pour off and finding there actually is no baby (1). Which explain why the various 'mothers' couldn't agree what it looked like.
Why do you say keep the bathwater? Isn't that the bad stuff we want to get rid of? As to there being no baby, that's an interesting idea but I think it gets to what I tried to preempt in my previous post. To say there is no baby is to say the baby is ugly. Stillborn. Not worth existing. Non-existent...

But sure, I agree it can be hard to see the baby when it comes to us in so many different forms, and when there may be nothing objective about it that would help us recognize it.
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pmI have a theory... :roll: .... that religion is an instinct (Religious apologists may claim this too - 'God - shaped bottle') that serves to create social (not to say tribal) conventions that firms up Them and Us, keeps the supporters cheering, the Rulers in charge and nobody asking awkward questions and ready to die for the cause. It is no coincidence that flags, standards and banners form the same function in armies and religions, and the two seem to form different sides of the same coin.
Religion operates within the subjective versus objective domain (the domain of choice and faith) and answers what our end in life should be (since there is no objective answer to that). As such, it is capable of giving us a basis for morality. And I think all of us instinctually want to have that, so I tend to agree. It's basically a primer for conscience, which is part of our functional brains, and so is as instinctual as that methinks. (We can't not have conscience any more than we can not have emotion or any other brain function -- assuming normal human function that is.)
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm Now I'm not going to throw out the bathwater we all wallow in of social structures, but the various invisible babies have to go. Like morality and indeed myth, once we drop the superstition and see what the evolutionary survival - purpose of these instincts are, the better we will avoid it leading us into war and conflict following the standards of politics or religion or, usually, both.
It's only a subjective morality that I want to retain from religion, as all morality must be until we can achieve the conditions of objectivity (which I laid out earlier). And I do think that is worth retaining. We can't just reduce everything to "evolutionary survival", as if this should be our end simply because it's what's gotten us here (more or less) as a species. Hence my point that this is about recognizing that religion has a valid, moral voice, like it or not. It is not about religion claiming morality for itself (which I would say is part of the bathwater that should be thrown out).
TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:05 pm (1) I have to mention the very cunning trick of the metaphor, or the trick of false analogy. It may not even be a deliberate trick but sure, a fallacy based on a priori assumption of a given god. So many theist apologetics fail because they only work if one assumes a god is real to start with. If you don't, Kalam fails. (2) There is no baby in the bathwater. We scoop away the water and there is no baby. Oh, it's hidden, to See it would destroy Faith. But the metaphor fools us into thinking that Jesusgod is as real as a baby in a bath.
No trickery or deceitfulness. It just felt like a valid metaphor to me. And not gonna lie, I'm struggling to follow your version per some of my comments above. Such metaphors are definitely an oversimplification though, but that said I find they help prevent talking past each other.
i get the analogy, but I'm saying it's wrong in assuming that religion (God) is the true source of morality - the 'baby'. If the situation is that human morality is the source of morality (with all itr'sflaws and problems) and religion is not the source, but claims to be, then the bathwater is the morality and the baby isn't actually there. Thus the analogy does not fit the facts, as I argue them to be.
As you say, when there are so many diferent babies (religions/Gods) is there really a baby there?

This is often the problem with trying to prove religion by analogies of real situations - they assume the real situation which the analogy supposedly describes. The usual problem - assuming as a fact that which you are trying to prove with the analogy.

The point is that religion is not a primer for morality, though it claims to be. If it was, then religions ought to be the same. Of course morality is uncannily similar in various religions, but then so is art, music and literature, though having a lot of striking dissimilarities. That suggests that it is not given by any particular god or religion but is an innate social tool developed in different ways by human societies, just as in their various religions.

Of course I recognise the subjective element in human ethics and morality, but I argue that the way to try to make the best of it is understand what it is and its' limitations. It is not to go to a religion, supposing we could all agree which one, and use that as a template, because - or so I argue the evidence indicated - religion is no better and probably worse than human forms of morality and just tries to claim the credit.

I am (finally) sure that you are trying to explain honestly in your analogy, etc. I have no doubt that you are an honourable man; 'so are they all; all honourble men'. It is religion that does the fiddle through Faith, because it puts the Belief as the starting -point as a (supposed) Fact that all the analogies, arguments and apologetics have to fit to explain it. But when (as I did above) I put the other hypothesis, the analogy does not fit or work. Therefore the analogy does not make the case.

p.s I have a thing I call 'sponder's fallacy, though it may already exist as an informal logical fallacy. It is the use of analogy as evidence. Analogies should correctly be used to explain a fact that is tricky to understand but a simple analogous model is made to get the idea over, but the initial fact has to be known to be true (1), or it is useless.

But the religion/God as the given basis (as for morality, for instance) is the thing being argued, not the 'Fact' so the analogy is inherently false, because it is treating as a fact (to be more simply explained by the analogy) that is which it is trying to prove - the classic use of the claim as the evidence.for the claim. The fundamental illogic of Faithbased argumentation.

(1) as much as the epistemology/science can show it to be.

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #356

Post by Bubuche87 »

[Replying to Wootah in post #328]

( Have been sick )
"Thou shall not commit murder" is arbitrary because god could have as well say "thou shall commit murder" and it would have been exactly equally as good, because according to you is good what god say is good.

It seems you are mistaking arbitrary and specific.
I did the Google search for arbitrary for you
1. based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2. (of power or a ruling body) unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

Fits the two definition.

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #357

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Bubuche87 wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 2:22 pm [Replying to Wootah in post #328]

( Have been sick )
"Thou shall not commit murder" is arbitrary because god could have as well say "thou shall commit murder" and it would have been exactly equally as good, because according to you is good what god say is good.

It seems you are mistaking arbitrary and specific.
I did the Google search for arbitrary for you
1. based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2. (of power or a ruling body) unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

Fits the two definition.
Yes. We can see exactly how the Christians think. Man made ethics are just our opinions. They have no empirical weight. God's ethics and morals however are a universal law.

but in fact, Morals and ethics are something as real as biology; it grows and evolves into what we actually have. Religious morality however is one person't opinion at best, and at worst many opinions of people who don't agree haven't really worked it out and are just looking to boost their own various authorities.

It holds back on moral progress and then tries to catch up and still claim it is the moral authority. It does not follow its' own moral rules and the Gods they profess don't either. The moral argument has been dead since 2020.

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #358

Post by theophile »

Bubuche87 wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 2:22 pm [Replying to Wootah in post #328]

( Have been sick )
"Thou shall not commit murder" is arbitrary because god could have as well say "thou shall commit murder" and it would have been exactly equally as good, because according to you is good what god say is good.

It seems you are mistaking arbitrary and specific.
I did the Google search for arbitrary for you
1. based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2. (of power or a ruling body) unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

Fits the two definition.
"Thou shall not kill" is not arbitrary. It follows from a deeper reason or system per your Google definition point 1.

More precisely, it is rooted in a specific vision or end that God has for the earth (and the cosmos), one filled with life and where every kind of life can flourish. See Genesis 1 where this base intention and reason is portrayed. (Not killing as a general rule follows from this pretty clearly, methinks, as does everything else God says or does in the bible whether we like those decisions / actions or not -- although that is a far more contentious point.)

Now, the problem is you'll just say that this deeper reason is also arbitrary per your definition, since it is still ultimately God's personal whim. But that's going to be true of any fundamental reason or system underlying our morality, and why we have to, like it or not, enter into the realm of faith or choice regarding such matters. There's no way around it since no ultimate, objective basis for morality exists so far as we can tell.

It does change the discussion, however. i.e., Killing is not wrong "because God says so" (which feels extremely arbitrary), but because it goes against the interests of life, and because like God we agree that this should be our fundamental reason and end. (i.e., it is ultimately wrong because we share God's personal whim on the matter...)

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #359

Post by Bubuche87 »

This is where you are wrong: it CAN be non arbitrary. If you read the definition I gave it says arbitrary is about and personal whim etc. The core of that is that it's based upon someone, if you want, as opposed to something.

If there is no god the law of gravity isn't arbitrary because it's not based on a will/opinion/vision etc.

It's a problem only if it's "ultimately God's personal whim" ( to quote your words ). It doesn't have to be that, cf atheist worldviews.

There is a perfectly valid vision in which there is something objectively moral, independent of God, to which God is subject to. It makes, like I said, God the messenger boy of the morality, it grants us the right to question His decisions ( as we have no way to test if God is really transmitting what morality is or outright lying).
I perfectly understand it bothers you because god is no longer perfect, just a very powerful and knowledgeable entity.

But everything makes much more sense that way and entirely eliminate the issue I raised.

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Re: 2023 : Basis for morality thread

Post #360

Post by theophile »

Bubuche87 wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 1:38 pm This is where you are wrong: it CAN be non arbitrary. If you read the definition I gave it says arbitrary is about and personal whim etc. The core of that is that it's based upon someone, if you want, as opposed to something.

If there is no god the law of gravity isn't arbitrary because it's not based on a will/opinion/vision etc.

It's a problem only if it's "ultimately God's personal whim" ( to quote your words ). It doesn't have to be that, cf atheist worldviews.
Not sure we disagree on anything here.
Bubuche87 wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 1:38 pm There is a perfectly valid vision in which there is something objectively moral, independent of God, to which God is subject to. It makes, like I said, God the messenger boy of the morality, it grants us the right to question His decisions ( as we have no way to test if God is really transmitting what morality is or outright lying).
Yes, and I think this is the right way to understand the God of the bible. We don't like to think this, but God is subject to something else. And being subject to God is in fact being subject to this other thing, that God serves in turn.

As I said in a much earlier post, I would use the word champion or figurehead instead of messenger. But messenger too.
Bubuche87 wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 1:38 pm I perfectly understand it bothers you because god is no longer perfect, just a very powerful and knowledgeable entity.

But everything makes much more sense that way and entirely eliminate the issue I raised.
That doesn't bother me. God is the figurehead of those who serve this external thing (i.e., life), but that doesn't mean God is perfect at it. Part of which is because we aren't perfect at it, to your earlier point on challenging what God says (again, God is just a figurehead...). God isn't perfect in other ways either like power or knowledge for the same reason, which is funny cause usually I'm the one trying to convince atheists of that. (They just don't want to believe that a theist can consistently say such a thing, nor do they tend to take such a notion seriously...)

So I agree everything makes much more sense once you think God in this way. But because of this, what we really need to do is set God aside and understand what it means to serve life. Or whether we should treat such a notion, as God would have it, as the basis of an objective morality. And if not that, what our basic moral principle should be...

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