Whose Morality Is It Anyway?
A pastor visiting our church shared a story from when his children were young. The oldest was four years old, and the younger three, when their mother served them grapes on the vine. As they plucked the sweet fruit, the younger child asked of the older, “How does Mommy get the grapes on there?”
Summoning elder gravitas, the firstborn replied, “Mommy doesn’t put the grapes on there.
“The store does.”
Children have a wonderful way of modeling our deficiencies. While it is easy to laugh at the reasoning of a child, we ought to consider how silly our reasoning might prove if the whole truth were known. Indeed, if we cannot point to an idea or two which we have reconsidered in light of new evidence, it cannot be said we have grown.
One idea which I used to hold, which made perfect sense to me at the time and still makes perfect sense to most of my Christian brethren, is the notion that man cannot rationally demonstrate an absolute morality in a world without God. My reasoning echoed that of Jeff Jacoby in a 2010 piece for Townhall. He wrote:
For in a world without God, there is no obvious difference between good and evil. There is no way to prove that murder is wrong if there is no Creator who decrees “Thou shalt not murder.’’ It certainly cannot be proved wrong by reason alone. One might reason instead — as Lenin and Stalin and Mao reasoned — that there is nothing wrong with murdering human beings by the millions if doing so advances the Marxist cause. Or one might reason from observing nature that the way of the world is for the strong to devour the weak — or that natural selection favors the survival of the fittest by any means necessary, including the killing of the less fit.
…
Reason is not enough. Only if there is a God who forbids murder is murder definitively evil. Otherwise its wrongfulness is a matter of opinion. Mao and Seneca approved of murder; we disapprove. What makes us think we’re right?
This perspective contrasts with that typically offered by atheists and agnostics, who assert that right and wrong can be discerned without reference to the supernatural. As a Christian, it is tempting to respond to such skeptics as PJ Lifestyle contributor John Hawkins did while affirming Jacoby.
Writing for his Right Wing News site, Hawkins claims “Without God, All Morality Is Subjective“:
Put another way, if I steal $20 out of your wallet to spend on concert tickets, I’m a hypocrite. That’s because I know, you know, and Christians almost everywhere are going to agree that stealing that $20 out of your wallet is an immoral act.
Now, is an atheist/agnostic violating her moral code if she steals $20 out of someone’s wallet? Maybe, maybe not. It’s entirely possible that she could reason that there’s nothing wrong with stealing $20 from someone if she doesn’t get caught. But, what if you’re an atheist/agnostic who disagrees with that reasoning? Well honestly, if there’s no God, humans are just sophisticated animals and it’s ultimately no more right or wrong for you to steal that $20 than it is for a chimp to grab another chimp’s banana while he’s flinging poo.
As proofs of God’s existence go, this notion that morality could not otherwise exist is incomplete. Like the solution to a math problem given without showing work, it teaches nothing.
True, morality could not exist without God. Nothing could, which remains the only proof of his existence that anyone needs. However, if a skeptic is not compelled by the necessity for a Cause of Cause, they aren’t likely to be compelled by a derivative of the same argument.
Of course, the Great Commission of the Christian is not to compel skeptics with crafty arguments. Rather, our mission is to present biblical truth and leave the skeptic’s response to God. Yet, even here we fail if we utilize the commonly offered proof from morality, because it is neither wholly true nor biblical.
It turns out that morality can be discerned through reason. As much was discovered in the twentieth century by Ayn Rand, whose philosophical system of objectivism claims a morality which is “absolute, objective, and secular.” Entire books have been written explaining her reasoning, and they must be read in order to fully understand it. For the sake of this discussion, here is objective morality in a nutshell.
It begins by considering the Socratic questions offered by Christian apologist Michael Horner. He asks rhetorically:
How do you get ethics from only different arrangements of space, time, matter and energy?
A purely materialistic universe would be morally indifferent. Humans, like everything else in the universe, would be just accidental arrangements of atoms, and therefore, we could not justifiably declare that humans are objectively valuable. And why think the morality of the human species, above all other species, is objectively binding rather than just our opinion?
Value stands out as the central concept here. Rand asked “of value to whom, and for what.” Her point was to define value as that which living things act to obtain and keep. All manner of values permeate our lives, from the mundane to the profound. Life sits atop a pedestal, valued above all. Only living things, those capable of self-generated self-sustaining action, can pursue value. Furthermore, that particular breed of creature which conceives of and pursues value though a process of thought – human beings – needs a code of behavior to determine which actions are life-affirming (good) and which are destructive (bad).
Given that life is the basis of value, and action informed by rational thought is the only means for humans to obtain and keep their values, it follows that liberty is the condition in which men must live. Such objective liberty is not licentiousness, but merely the ability to act upon one’s judgment in pursuit of happiness without coercion from others, a condition made possible only by mutual respect of boundaries.
That is how you get ethics from “only different arrangements of space, time, matter, and energy.” The material universe proves anything but “morally indifferent.” If morality is the code by which we arrive at choices, the material universe harshly rebukes those who choose to act against its nature.
Heading off charges of heresy from my Christian brethren, let us turn to scripture for some confirmation. The apostle Paul writes in Romans 1:18:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
In the study bible which bears his name, John MacArthur writes of the Greek word translated “is revealed”:
More accurately, “is constantly revealed.” The word essentially means “to uncover, make visible, or make known.” God reveals his wrath in two ways: 1) indirectly, through the natural consequences of violating his universal moral law, and 2) directly through his personal intervention…
“Go and try to pour a ton of steel without rigid principles…” – Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
In other words, even absent supernatural intervention, the created order punishes bad behavior. Rand put it another way:
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
Paul continues in Romans 1:19-20:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Creation is God’s first testament, sufficient to hold men accountable to the moral law. As an atheist, it was surely not Rand’s intention to echo the apostle Paul. Nevertheless, both speak to the same essential truth, that the nature of reality presents evidence of a moral order. While irreconcilable differences persist between objectivism and the Christian worldview, rational thought should not be sold short by believers. After all, the ability to think is bestowed from on high.
Acknowledging conversion as the work of God, Christians nonetheless want to avoid placing stumbling blocks in front of skeptical seekers. The commonly offered proof from morality can stumble, because it does not present the whole truth. Acknowledging that absolute standards of right and wrong can be discerned through reason in no way detracts from the glory of God. On the contrary, we should expect creation to testify to the will of its creator.
Why is murder wrong? It deprives an individual of his right to life. How do we know such a right exists? It is derived from the concept of value, the recognition of life as the ultimate value, and the observation that individuals are an objective moral end onto themselves rather than a means to the ends of others. Craig Biddle, editor of The Objective Standard, fleshes out the argument.
Of course, Biddle and his fellow objectivists would cringe at the intermingling of Rand’s theory of rights with the theistic claims of Christianity. Such objections are a topic for another day. Meanwhile, Christians should have no problem reconciling objective morality with their faith in God. The revelation of scripture builds upon what is objectively true. While objectivists reject revelation as a legitimate source of knowledge, Christians ought not reject or marginalize reason. After all, scripture doesn’t (Isaiah 1:18; Acts 17:2,17; 18:4,9; 19:8-9; James 3:17).
It is through reason that we confirm our Christian faith. The fact that absolute morality has been objectively demonstrated bolsters the believer’s claim. As Isaiah spoke of “the circle of the earth” thousands of years before it was objectively proved to be round, so scripture spoke of absolute morality thousands of years before Ayn Rand objectively discerned it. Such discoveries take nothing away from God. On the contrary, they prove Him true.
****
Previously from Walter Hudson at PJ Lifestyle:
Would You Meet Your Killer Halfway?
Related at PJ Lifestyle from John Hawkins:
Thank you, I love this.
This is a comedy website, right?
No, it is all too serious. I was distressed too, and so wrote this response on my website: http://clarespark.com/2013/01/24/culture-wars-and-the-secular-progressives/. I am sorry that such extreme counter-Enlightenment sentiments found a home here on PJM.
Claire, your reading of the Establishment Clause in the US Constitution is dead wrong. It was a federalist provision, a limitation on the Federal Government, not a general principle of governance. The VAST majority of Founding Fathers (of which their are 1000s who debated and ratified the US constitution in the states) saw it this way, and passed it thusly.
That being said, I am a secularist but not a radical secularist. I support the separation of organizations Church and State, but not the separation of religion and governance or Christianity informing legislation and law, via the Christian citizenry (especially lay).
And Christianity and the Enlightenment are not hostile adversaries, for your information…with regards to your “counter-Englightenment” comment.
Moral relativism is an unmitigated disaster. Shame that so many defenders of Western Civilization such as yourself, turn out to be supporters of Leftist ideas, like this. Which is part of the reason why Western Civilization is such a shambles.
Aww, you got us, Teddy. You figured it out. Yeah, it’s all comedy. The whole conservative movement in America — Republicans, Christians, Tea-partiers, moralists, economists, the whole shmear — exist solely for your amusement.
Enjoy it. Listen closely, and pay attention. It’s all comedy, and since apparently you are a bitter person, you should read as many conservative essays as you possibly can.
The fact that creation reflects a moral God is indeed compelling. But the fact that His law is written on their minds independent of their wills is compelling as well.
The fact that people still believe in sky gods who actually care about our little corner of the universe is amusing to me. Come on people, it’s 2013!
Absolutely! What do we need a God for when all-powerful, infallible, omnipotent people like yourself have all the answers? People like you deny the existence of a God simply because you wish to declare yourselves gods and don’t want any competition.
What a ridiculous reply. Not believing in the supernatural is not the equivalent to believing oneself to be supernatural, and whether one has the answers to any unknown argues neither in favor or against the existence of God. Just because something is unknown does not militate for a supernatural explanation.
“True, morality could not exist without God. Nothing could, which remains the only proof of his existence that anyone needs.”
Circular reason much?
You do realize that value is subjective, right?
Here, I will prove Ayn Rand’s thesis wrong. You say that life is ultimate value because it can be objectively discerned in nature. Ayn Rand was an ardent arbortionist. If life is the ultimate value she is violating her own principle because each baby conceived has a right to life as accorded by her own principle. Of course she would probably argue that whatever is inside in the woman is not living. She is violating herself again: After all, as you’ve quoted, Ms. Rand said, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
Ayn Rand made good arguments as to why capitalism is preferable to any other economic sytem; I wouldn’t use her as a justification for morality. Which is probably why after I had enough time to stew over her philosophy I decided that it is haphazard and would ultimately fail if ever fully practiced.
I’d agree with you that the author does make a fundamental error here; he presumes that objective, logic-based morality will assume that all life has meaning. Most atheists, I’m sure, agree that life has meaning. But obviously, as with Mao and Stalin who saw human life as a secondary matter to that of the State, objective morality can be predicated on other assumptions besides “life is the highest value of the universe”. Logic can still be used to twist morality in ways incongruent with Christianity. It disproves his point, doesn’t it, because one must accept something on faith in order to construct that logical foundation.
“I’d agree with you that the author does make a fundamental error here; he presumes that objective, logic-based morality will assume that all life has meaning. Most atheists, I’m sure, agree that life has meaning. But obviously, as with Mao and Stalin who saw human life as a secondary matter to that of the State, objective morality can be predicated on other assumptions besides ‘life is the highest value of the universe’.”
I assume by “meaning” you mean “value.”
It is true that, from the perspective of those who do not hold their own lives as the ultimate value, morality does not apply. But the facts of human nature that necessitate morality for those who *do* value their lives, still operate. The choice of every human being is: value your own life and be moral, or suffer and/or die early. (I won’t go into all the ways dictators suffer here, but just say that they are observably unhappy people.)
Deduction from baseless premises is not logical. The ultimate base of all logic is sensory evidence, and Communists start with the baseless and irrational premises of Marx. In other words, one needs to properly *induce* general premises from reality before one can logically deduce from such general premises, and have it represent knowledge. Marxist theory flies in the face of sense-based logic.
“…one must accept something on faith in order to construct that logical foundation.”
As I mentioned above, the foundation of logic is sense data, which is the truly self-evident. It is necessary to use sense data even to initially *define* such an idea as “faith.” So faith is not the foundation of logic or knowledge.
“But the facts of human nature that necessitate morality for those who *do* value their lives, still operate.”
What is important is not important to anyone else.
“The choice of every human being is: value your own life and be moral, or suffer and/or die early.”
In the meantime Fidel Castro lived through ten presidencies. Oh, and if human beings don’t follow your code what are you going to do about it?
“SoA”…SOLDIER OF ALLAH?!? Got goat?
Who’s “God”? And why is human life more important than the lives of all other living beings on Earth? Objectively we are currently the dominant species on Earth. Because of this, we tend to believe that our lives are more “important” than the lives of any other form of life on Earth. However from observation it becomes obvious that all living things value their lives and attempt to preserve their lives to the limits of their own abilities. Human beings also discriminate upon the value of life. Historically the dominant group has viewed their lives as being of more importance than the lives of those who were not members of the dominant group. A good example of this is the value placed upon the lives of minority racial groups as opposed to the value placed upon the lives of the dominant racial group in the US “South” not that long ago. And this was in a society supposedly “Christian”.
Oh, Jerome…dear Moral Relativist holier-than-thou Jerome…
Be sure to repeat that as they are about to behead you.
Or, do think you “feel pretty, oh-so pretty” in a burka?
Nihilist nitwit.
I would also point out that for communists or Marxists, it is value as defined by the state. So, an unborn child has no real, tangible value, and even after being born will not become anything of true value to the state for quite a few years.
“If life is the ultimate value she is violating her own principle because each baby conceived has a right to life as accorded by her own principle. Of course she would probably argue that whatever is inside in the woman is not living.”
Well, a fetus is not living in the full philosophical sense of autonomously pursuing values. But the fact that it is living (in the biological sense) is not what gives it rights, according to Rand. After all, she would say that plants and animals don’t have rights, either. What gives living beings rights is the fact that they have a rational faculty and survive by reason. An embryo/fetus is a potential human being with a potential rational faculty, but does not have an actual rational faculty.
So, your statement that Rand violated her own principle is absurd.
Indeed, it is not life everywhere that is the ultimate value for any given individual, but his own life. And respecting the rights of others in a society is good for each individual’s own life, overall.
What gives living beings rights is the fact that they have a rational faculty and survive by reason. An embryo/fetus is a potential human being with a potential rational faculty, but does not have an actual rational faculty.
By that definition, almost all kids (and most liberals) have no rights because they lack rational faculty and can’t survive by reason. I don’t accept that definition. People have rights because they’re alive and human.
“By that definition, almost all kids (and most liberals) have no rights because they lack rational faculty and can’t survive by reason. I don’t accept that definition. People have rights because they’re alive and human.”
Well, why just humans? Why don’t plants and animals have rights? Or even rocks? Do you mean to say that a two-year-old has the right to liberty from his parents?
Children have partial rights because they have developing rational faculties. The rest of their rights are held by their parents on their behalf. (If a child is born completely brain-dead, then what would be the point of his rights to life, liberty and property?)
A rational faculty is the basic *capacity* to be rational in a being’s nature. Liberals have rational faculties, but whether they *use* them or not to actually *be rational*, is another matter.
“Children have partial rights because they have developing rational faculties. The rest of their rights are held by their parents on their behalf.”
So…then a parent has the right to off their own children? Of course they don’t. What are “partial rights” anyway? The right life and liberty but no pursuit of happiness? Well, we made sure of that when we banned children from being able to work except on movie sets and in the home (and progs want to severel regress the latter).
Your posts are becoming more incoherent. I guess you are an Objectivist.
Animals are creatures of instinct and are therefore innocent and have no need of morality. Humans are not innocent; they are fully aware of good and evil/right and wrong and therefore need morality to overcome because many of the actions prompted by our instincts lead to evil/wrong.
Thank you for merely reinforcing my point and continuing to accept your contradictions as did your mentor Ayn Rand. The fact that she hated contradictions but accepted them when they worked to her favor shows how much a hypocrite she was.
Rand didn’t bother to respect the rights of her boyfriend’s wife. Or, better, Rand decided that this lady had no rights that Rand needed to respect, under the latest issue of Rand-Ethics 5.2. Forget the BS philosophy, Rand’s own life demonstrates the flexibility of atheists’ ethics. As a Jewess, Rand’s ultimate life-goal was the undermining of Christian/Western/European society, particularly the foundation of every human society — religion. Jews have been the ‘despised other’ in Europe for 2,000 years. European Jews concluded that, because all Europeans are Christians, that Christianity was the problem. Maybe that’s easier to accept than the fact that Europeans are simply different people from SW Asian Semites, and that different peoples do not, ever, anywhere, co-exist in peace.
I pressed the reply button, but on further thought decided that this posting deserves no reply.
It must be very dark in the alleys of this mian’s mind.
Let me attempt some clarification. There are two things you must understand which will change how you think about both Rand and my analysis of her. First, realize that I do not subscribe to objectivism. I am a Christian and adhere to a biblical worldview. So I ultimately concede that Rand is in error. However, her error is one of omission, not distortion. She starts from an epistemology which limits reality to what can be objectively perceived. This is like a blind man insisting there is no such thing as color. That said, what she perceives about objective reality is perceived clearly and cannot be dismissed on account of her views on an issue like abortion.
Now, I agree with you on abortion and disagree with Rand. My reasons would fill another post, but are moot, because the real issue you’re speaking to is not abortion but value. The reason Rand supported abortion was because she did not recognize the unborn as individuals whose nature was to pursue value in a social context. I disagree with her there. But that disagreement does not mean her conception of objective value is wrong. I hold that it is misapplied in the case of abortion (again, for reasons I won’t get into because we’ll get of into the weeds).
Life is the standard if value because life is what makes value possible. You can not act to obtain our keep something if you are not alive. It’s easy to confuse particular values with the concept of value, which I believe you’re doing here. It is true that what a person values is commonly subjective. My wife likes olives. I can’t stand them. However, the concept of value is objective. No matter what you like, you act to obtain and keep it, and you do so in furtherance of your life – the ultimate value.
Chris Bolts Sr’s point still stands. You merely skirted around it.
The fact that Rand failed to recognize pre-born humans as valuable proves that value is subjective, unless anchored to a universal law giver who determines value objectively.
Furthermore; what about humans who are incapable of reason? What about babies, the severely mentally disabled and those in late stages of senility? They’re incapable of assigning value to anything, because they do not have the mental capacity to do so. Do their lives have value? Why?
Only humans can figure out what is objectively true about values (because human have a conceptual consciousness). Nothing supernatural has any such capability (since nothing supernatural can possibly exist).
The problem still remains that there is no way to determine what has value. Ayn Rand made an attempt, but while being ‘objective’ she is still subjective. Heck even the most basic math which is to be pure logic and proof rests on assumptions.
Why is life of value? This can not be answered objectivly, but is answered subjectively? For that matter, what is value? I realize I’m beginning to circle here, but isn’t that the point. you can’t define words without words, and at some level assumptions must be made to make the rest work. And when it is pointed out that subjective assumptions are made by an objectivist, people take offense. But Geometry(the High school math of all proofs) relies on the concept of points, lines planes and spaces, that these exists and are pre defined and unprovable.
I do agree that life has value. I disagree with large portions of Ayn Rand, including that one can from pure logic get to the idea that life had value. >shrugg<
How can you say that “nothing supernatural can possibly exist?” You have no proof to back up your very major claim, and there is plenty of evidence supporting the existence of the supernatural (i.e. miracles with multiple witnesses and all natural explanations conclusively ruled out by experts on said natural explanations).
The problem with your argument is that the supernatural said He is existed and will exist, to the exclusion of all others, at least as far as power is concerned. Then He authored a script to prove it. The Revelation continues even today.
You can disagree that the above is true, that is your choice, but that is another gift He provided. If you read the script you will find the source of good, the one and only source. To deny this calls into question your perception of reality.
>>>How can you say that “nothing supernatural can possibly exist?” You have no proof to back up your very major claim, and there is plenty of evidence supporting the existence of the supernatural (i.e. miracles with multiple witnesses and all natural explanations conclusively ruled out by experts on said natural explanations).<<<
No. Lack of explanation doesn't mean anything is supernatural, it means that we lack understanding of nature. Yours is a god of the gaps argument. Modern antibiotics would seem to be a miracle in the dark ages, nobody alive would be able to explain it, and "myth buster" would proclaim that inability as proof. What a tiny and sad world you live in.
I think we can accept that there is no natural means by which a piece of bread can start bleeding.
No, it means that Rand was wrong about the unborn. The value of the life of the unborn or of any oppressed minority is objectively the same as any other human being (yes, even condemned criminals, for if their lives had no value, then killing them would be no punishment). The fact that Rand disagreed about the value of the unborn is not hypocrisy, but rather a factual error. Her adultery, I’ll grant you, is hypocrisy, because adultery is an act in defiance of a contract, but refusing to recognize the unborn as human beings is a delusion, not an act of hypocrisy.
The body or being, is the standard of value; defined upwards to include heart, intellect and soul. This value is coherent because it is modelled on the Revealed G_d, otherwise it is confusion as when neolithic pagans saw living beings everywhere in trees, rocks and rivers. This being has life, but life doesn’t stand apart from being in having value. Life begins absurdly and ends pointlessly in death. If life negates the being it certainly doesn’t have value, more it is a curse………
Our skeptical and atheist friends are properly post-christian. They borrow and use the structures and accomplishments of the Christian world-view and discard Revelation as no longer needed by human civilisation. The argument made by Kierkegaard behind the morality of torturing infants illustrates this point, not claiming a working morality uninformed by G_d cannot work. The inherent moral decency of libertarians and objectivists is because they ride atop the shoulders of giants and we all have no options otherwise. The Christian morality is written into our software, that’s the basis of it…….
The writwr needs a course in logic. All human opinion is subjective. An objective morality can only stem from an objective source. Ayn Rand hardly fits that definition. The universe does NOT punish evil behavior. Thats why we have armies and police. Monsters like Obama sin their satanic ways through life and are never punished until they wake up in an eternal Hell. The writer has his facts wrong and his “thinking” is confused.
Oh, of course. There is no morality without God. And we Buddhists, who believe in not lying, not cheating, not sleeping around, and not drinking to excess, as well as charity, helpfulness, and loving kindness, but who do it out of compassion and the recognition that those things increase both our suffering and the suffering of others, have no morals and no concept of right or wrong.
I can’t decide whether this seems more ignorant, arrogant, or bigoted, but it’s sure somewhere in that triangle.
I’m right with you here, Charlie, speaking as an atheist who also also disdains lying, cheating, and the rest.
Make that two of us.
When you claim that belief in God is the only source of morality, you are calling me immoral without knowing anything about how I conduct my life. Apparently, belief in God is not sufficient for you to know that this is wrong.
Make it three. With all due credit to Hitchens, apparently there was zero morality for the ten thousand years prior to the “revelation.” I was raised and continue to live unapologetically godless. My moral code, while initially directed by my parents, has been constructed over time using empirical evidence gleaned from personal experience. If you act in a moral manner, do you do so only because you fear fire and brimstone if you don’t? It would seem you have no true respect for the rights of your fellow man and are only motivated to treat him decently due to threats from the sky-wizard if you don’t. But for god you would be raping and pillaging to your hearts content. Good thing we have this grand lie to keep the simple-minded in line, lest society collapse under the perpetual chaos of unfettered free will.
Question: can’t remember the name of this paradox, but it’s an oldy but goody in philosophical circles. Are the commands of god moral because he commands them, or because he is god and would only command moral things? The former would indicate that if morality exists because god says it’s good, then he could command you to murder and it would be moral. The latter would indicate that a morality exists outside of and above god and he commands actions from a set of established precepts. If so, his whole existence is subservient to an even higher power and your worship means fuckall. Discuss.
Christ sums up the Decalogue perfectly with the words, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and your mind and your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
That you do not murder, steal, or covet because of concern for your neighbor is irrelevant because you do not do so with the above in mind. God requires it for Him to consider you righteous, but as such no one is capable, thus the need for the Savior. This doesn’t mean mankind is without merit, nor does it mean you are as evil as you could be, but God’s Law serves to highlight man’s total depravity and inability to please God. God through His son Jesus Christ provided the only means for man’s redemption.
As for your supposed paradox, you do not understand God’s attributes properly. God is absolutely righteous and perfect, and any word out of His mouth is truth, and He cannot contradict Himself. God has never commanded anyone to murder, because murder is sinful. God has commanded others to kill, but as a judgment on their sinfulness or as the consequence of sin. This does not equate to murder, which is man exacting his own unrighteous judgment on another.
I may have never taken another person’s life, nor have I ever physically cheated on my wife. But I have been angry at another person without cause, and I have looked at other women with lust. That makes me equally guilty as a serial killer or a philandering husband. I am utterly incapable of pleasing God as all are, but through God’s charitable grace alone I am considered righteous.
Not exactly. What the author is saying here is that there’s is no morality without recognition of the fact that the universe is ordered. Essentially, that morality based upon the recognition of the laws of reality and morality based upon a Christian god (as the fundamental element of that reality) are not dissimilar, as they are founded upon a similar concept, expressed in different ways.
It makes sense that, if morality is founded on an understanding of reality (and perhaps more importantly, of human nature), that many world faiths would arrive at similar conclusions about what is right and what is wrong.
Nowhere does the author say that God MUST exist; rather, that Christians shouldn’t reject other sources of morality outright. He’s not attacking anyone. If anything, he’s supporting your own point.
Well, no, he pretty clearly says that the “created order” reveals God and thus necessitates morality. The issue there is that it’s assuming its consequents. I’m exhibiting a counter-example, that Buddhists don’t believe in a Creator or Creation, and Buddha — and Buddhists since then — have managed to none the less develop an idea of morality that doesn’t depend on a Creator.
Understand that my intended audience is other Christians. So I’m going to address them in the terms of our faith. Regardless, whether you want to call the universe a created order or not, the objective facts Rand observed and her conclusions regarding morality are true. They affirm that morality can be discerned through reason. As a Christian, I hold that method to be grossly limited. But it is nonetheless a tremendous discovery which affirms what Christians have been saying from the start, morality is absolute and apparent.
“morality is absolute and apparent.”
Don’t wish to speak for Charlie, but I think that may have been in part, his point. All known societies are rather communal in nature and with or without the word of God as we know it, have established societal values and laws written or unwritten.
@ Charlie Martin
How do you know that the Buddhist concept of morality is right? After all, aren’t we all just living in a fantasy (your words)?
What if a person chooses to live in a fantasy in which “not lying, not cheating, not sleeping around, and not drinking to excess, as well as charity, helpfulness, and loving kindness” are all immoral?
“The Oneness of Good and Evil”..”good” and “evil” are not separate and distinct (an artificial duality) Life in fact holds the potential for both to manifest, and always holds the potential for it’s opposite to appear. “Two but not two,” (body and mind)…
I thought I made my point fairly clear. There’s nothing special about having a morality as such, a code upon which you base decisions. What is special is having an absolute morality which you can objectively justify. Christians have always claimed that morality is absolute, but always justified the claim with scripture (nothing wrong with that). After Rand, we can now point to objective proof of absolute morality. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not sure where you came away with the notion that I was saying atheists or Buddhists can’t have a morality. In fact, my thesis was the contrary.
That was how I read it. Your way, that is.
> And we Buddhists, who believe in not lying, not cheating, not sleeping around, and not drinking to excess, as well as charity, helpfulness, and loving kindness, but who do it out of compassion and the recognition that those things increase both our suffering and the suffering of others, have no morals and no concept of right or wrong.
Charlie, assume for a minute for the sake of argument that the Christian concept of God is objectively correct. If God is the source of morality, then morality too is objectively real and can be perceived even by creatures who do not believe in Him — much as somebody who doesn’t believe in seeds can still whack his head against a tree.
Nobody is questioning whether Buddhists are moral people. Non-believers often behave morally and believers often behave immorally. It happens.
The question, properly posed, would be this: how does a belief in an absolute morality follow from the precepts of Buddhism?
> …but who do it out of compassion and the recognition that those things increase both our suffering and the suffering of others, have no morals and no concept of right or wrong.
Well, this statement is a truth claim, is it not? It puts forth the claim that immorality causes suffering and that we should regret it when someone suffers.
What can Buddhism offer to defend the idea of absolute truth?
Why does Buddhism offer us the notion that suffering is bad?
And if it is bad, what does Buddhism offer to the man who is convinced his own suffering is bad, but yours, maybe not so much?
Belief in karma?
How does karma know the difference between good and bad?
How does karma know what makes people suffer?
When man is extinct, will karma still exist? Will its ideas about good and bad matter anymore?
How does karma know the difference between good and bad? It does’nt. Only the human can say..”that was a bad cause which led to a bad effect,..” Does the trombone know when it hits a bad note?
If “God” is the source of Morality (good), then God would be the source of Immorality (bad), as well, right?
No, because immorality is not something that exists on its own. Immorality is not a thing; rather, immorality is that which is contrary to good, and thus it is a rebellion against God.
Yes, I think you are very close. God is the creator – set apart from it. But he is only good, so evil is in forms are seperation from good– God
> Only the human can say..”that was a bad cause which led to a bad effect,..”
“The human” includes Jesus Christ and Josef Stalin. It includes Mahatma Gandhi and Pol Pot.
Off the top of my head, I would say “the human” is not specific enough.
I missed the “loving kindness” part that you described as a central value.
I regret this comment. I had not read all of the commentary on this particular thread and I find it to be good and the intentions genuine. I apologize.
Revelation is the manifestation of the Divine and Holy in all the various forms that give human Being coherence and meaning. I should’ve noted that in my posting above, but it wasn’t in my function as a pet tr0ll to do so…..’>>…….
All morality is relative, unless their is a law giver. You chose your morality, it is not rooted in objectivity, merely pragmatism or sentimentality(emotion).
That is the point. There must be a law giver for objective morality to exist.
But Atheists and Buddhists and non-Christians are all likely to jump to offendedness, instead of actually thinking things through.
Sure Christians may be wrong, or have no supernatural revelation. But they are the majority, and so make law and order society upon their morality. Lowest common denominator morality will be (and is) an unmitigated disaster.
Guys, you are ignorant of the doctrine of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He made it clear that the primary duty of man is to love and serve God,Lk.10.28 He, not the humans y’all so revere, is the only way to the Father, Jn.14.6; and the only One Who can save men, Acts 4.12.When you refuse to love and serve Him you commit the greatest of sins, and damn yourselves, ICor.16.22. Best fetch out your New Testaments and start reading carefully, before it is too late.
I would go easy on tossing around ignorant lest you commit the same offense you accuse others of comitting. Jesus Christ is a poor transliteration of a “Jewish Messiah” that gets lost in translation of your supposed “New Testament” which is another man made tradition. Be careful
The New Testament, as the remainder of the Bible, is a collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses and during the lifetime of eyewitnesses. It was written by multiple authors over a period of several centuries, in several languages and on several continents. They describe supernatural events and claim their writings are divine in origin.
If you doubt the Bible’s historical authenticity I suggest you throw out every history book you own and forget everything you know about Julius Caesar, Socrates, Plato, and other historical figures. At least the New Testament can claim proof that it was written within a few decades of the events they describe. None of the documents describing the other figures I mentioned even come close to that level of authenticity.
By the way, I stole that first paragraph. Please see Dr. Voddie Baucham’s well-known “Why I Choose to Believe the Bible” for more.
Well, if there was no absolute morality at work in the universe, wouldn’t it stand to reason then that there would be nearly as many different moral systems as there are languages? Don’t you think it’s kind of coincidental in the extreme that pretty much everyone has the Golden Rule? Or what about nearly all those other values you listed?
But, of course, we all just miraculously arrived at these things independently because all those typing monkeys got stuck on repeating the same dreary morality patterns on their little mystical typewriters rather than plugging away in mad random abandon. That clearly must be it.
Don’t you think it’s kind of coincidental in the extreme that pretty much everyone has the Golden Rule?
Of course not. This is common sense and derived from observation: “when I act like a douche, people aren’t nice to me. When I act nice, people are nice. Hmmm.” Most rational thinking human individuals figure this out as children. This is no different than any other observation of cause and effect; there’s no magic required, no gobsmacking leaps of intuition needed.
Perhaps you’d like to have a conversation with Christians in the Middle East and Asia who live loving, godly lives and are persecuted and murdered for their faith. How about early Christians who were killed en masse because they would not call Caesar a god.
Or maybe open a history book to see how many dictators and mass murderers live in comfort and plenty by acting in horrific fashion.
Sorry, my personal history, knowledge of overall history, and knowledge of the nature of man indicates that being nice or being mean to others has no ability to change said nature, which is godless, immoral, and self-centered.
As a one-time Buddhist and now more-or-less Catholic, the answer is deceptively simple: Natural Law. See Aquinas, Lewis, Benedict, et al.
Interesting article, Mr. Hudson. I enjoyed it. Thanks!
The flaw in Ms. Rand’s analusis, in my opinion, is that, while living things “can pursue value”, value itself is subjective when seen from the human vantage point. Furthermore, if morality is dependent on life, that means it is not eternal and unchanging. And furthermore, because an individual may perceive value and seek it, it does not follow that he should value anyone else’s right to seek it. Her philosophy implies this “brotherhood of humanity” ethos, without explaining “objectively” — her word — why we ought to believe in it.
Human beings have an individual component and a social component. Applying this principle, what I value for me and what society values for society might be well two different things. There is no moral struggle when the two line up. It’s when they clash that we see the differences between a naturalistic ethos and a supernatural one. Rand can bang on her bass drum and clash her cymbals all she likes, but she cannot come up with an “objective” reason why an individual ought to adopt the notion that anyone else’s values should trump his own.
And that’s pretty much the way immoral behavior goes, the story of mankind in a nutshell. Ruining a young girl’s life might be bad for society, but I really wanted her bad, so there. I didn’t want to kill that bank teller, but I sure wanted that $200,000 dollars, so there. My family depends on me, but hey, you know, I like to drink and sometimes I just can’t get out of bed when the man says I should, so there. Everybody is pursuing value as they perceive it, and yet we have such a mess here to clean up.
Christianity adds a third perspective: God’s. There is nothing about morality that is hard to discern. It all follows from a basic truth: that loving relationships are the basis to all morality and therefore to ultimate happiness. This recognizes the individual and the societal. And it follows from God’s own nature: eternal, yet always Three Persons in One. If relationships were not important, Two would be always trying to kill One. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have been getting along quite well with each other for aeons, and want us to model our behavior after theirs.
“individual component and a social component.”
The societal component is the basis of laws. The ‘individual’ component is the one which can be in conflict with the law and can be the most subjective. The individual component is one that is learned from ones most immediate source of influence such as parents, etc. this is the common source of societal conflict today, as witnessed on sites such as this. The rigid socalled religious fundementalists, procaliming ‘only’ their learned source of right and wrong values should be the laws of the land while, others who share willing under the common laws of society disagree. Fortunately, our constitutions settles that conflict for us, by granting all individuals the right to follow any faith and practice they wish but are likewise, bound only to the common laws of the land. For examples. Some minority group may, by their faith, believe in cutting off the fingers and hands of a theif according to their particular faith but by common law of the land its prohibitied. Other minority groups of faithful may still believe in human sacrifice but may be prohibitied to only certain exceptions and circumstance of the common law.
> The rigid socalled religious fundementalists, procaliming ‘only’ their learned source of right and wrong values should be the laws of the land while, others who share willing under the common laws of society disagree.
So? It seems to me everyone else, including people who are in no way religious, also think their values system should be the la of the land, too. Liberals think their values should trump even the Constitution when it gets in the way of their vision. Even libertarians have a moral vision, that we should respect other people’s moral visions, that they would like to see codified into the law or the Constitution.
Why should religious conservative be any different?
> Fortunately, our constitutions settles that conflict for us, by granting all individuals the right to follow any faith and practice they wish but are likewise, bound only to the common laws of the land.
The Constitution settles nothing, as anyone who is watching the attack on the Second Amendment unfold. It’s a constant struggle.
By what eternal principles should we bind ourselves to the common laws of the land?
If you can point to any, then congratulations, you’re fighting alongside the “fundamentalists.”
If you can’t, then who cares about unprincipled positions?
I think I’ll stick with the constitution that very clearly answers all the questions you raise.
Now, if you prefeer a change in the constitution so that it would allow lets say, Mulsims to exert their religious values and laws for all citizens, over your current religious freedoms, then get on with trying to effect such a constitutional amendment. I prefer the religion I choose for myself and not one dictated to me by a government or some extremist Christian group — or any other religions group!
Otherwise, ones religious rights are granted by the constitution to the ‘individual’ citizen and not to a government.
> I think I’ll stick with the constitution that very clearly answers all the questions you raise.
If that were true, why do we need a Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution?
> Otherwise, ones religious rights are granted by the constitution to the ‘individual’ citizen and not to a government.
The Constitution does not grant rights; it recognizes them. They are not the Constitution’s to grant.
Souonds really good until you consider that I’ve seen you play really fast and loose with that you consider to be a “religious” law or ruling and what you don’t. It seems that if you don’t like something, it maginally becomes “religious” and then you are justified to discredit it and purely those grounds despite whether the issue at hand is religious or not.
One point to consider is that while there is actual evidence for human beings in nature, there is no evidence of any kind for the supernatural. Nature is something in particular in all areas, while the supernatural is nothing in particular anywhere.
Nature is here; the supernatural is nowhere to be found.
Life is real; God is fiction.
What proof do you have that God is fiction?
Oops, that really is begging the question, isn’t it?
It begs the question: Why would someone have to prove that something is fiction?
Wrong question. The right question is: Why are you certain that God is fiction?
Other than your own faith, of course.
Hear Hear!
Prove, please, that God does not exist. Hint. You can’t. logically, universal negatives cannot be proved. Hint: Perhaps there is a God, somewhere outside that which you are able to perceive. You want to get rid of God so you can try to enjoy your sins without feeling guilt. If you work at it long enough and hard enough you may deal with the guilt. But, a nanosecond after death you will be forced to deal with God, on His terms. And you will not be inclined to affect a smartass attitude. Nor will you enjoy unending torture.
jesus h. christ…
“One point to consider is that while there is actual evidence for human beings in nature, there is no evidence of any kind for the supernatural.”
Well, what is “natural” today, was demons magic a hundred years ago. Were a person of today time travel back two hundred years, they would be burned at the stake in about five minutes, and rightly so, for being so dumb as to attempt such a thing.
The definition of “supernatural” changes, as science advances. Hardly fair to use such a changing goalpost as a basis for argument.
Only humans can figure out what is objectively true about values. Nothing supernatural has any such capability (since nothing supernatural can possibly exist).
It’s one thing to say there is no evidence for the supernatural, another to say it cannot possibly exist.
Whether you admit it or not, you do believe in some things for which you have no proof. Apparently, you believe that you’re an individual with thoughts and feelings, and not some mere pile of chemicals that goes around deluding itself with delusions of a personal existence.
And apparently, you do believe in rationality, which is itself an immaterial construct. But from a materialist perspective, I see such a belief as unnecessary. We are no more having a rational discussion than (to quote Doug Wilson) a fizzing bottle of Pepsi is having an argument with a fizzing bottle of Coke. You and I would simply be doing what fizzing bags of chemicals do.
I would think a good starting point would be to explain how this faith you have in reason and rational discourse has any basis in a chaotic, random, unguided universe.
The supernatural cannot possibly exist. That is simple fact. If it exists, it is part of existence, and is thus, at it’s base, natural.
What we call supernatural is, in most cases, natural occurences whose nature is not yet apparent to us.
That depends on how you define “nature”. I have always considered nature the physical world. Anything other than the physical I would consider supernatural.
> The supernatural cannot possibly exist. That is simple fact. If it exists, it is part of existence, and is thus, at it’s base, natural.
Nice try. Circular reasoning, unfortunately. All you did was to define the supernatural out of existence.
Your definition of existence itself depends on physicality. I guess we’ll have to throw away every book and dissertation ever written on the search for metaphysical truth.
Now that’s interesting. I would agree that everything in this universe has to exist according to the rules of this universe, but would God actually be bound by those rules? Likely not anymore than a computer programmer is bound by the rules of a program he writes. If we ever were to find God, he won’t be in this universe or found by any of the laws we understand.
I would think a good starting point would be to explain how this faith you have in reason and rational discourse has any basis in a chaotic, random, unguided universe.
There’s little that’s random about it. Light has the same speed everywhere, and hydrogen works the same way everywhere. Water is made when hydrogen combines with oxygen. Everywhere. It doesn’t make sulfuric acid in the andromeda galaxy and water in ours. “Random” would be a condition where mixing hydrogen and oxygen results in pogo sticks here and popsicles elsewhere. I just _know_ there’s a Douglas Adams quote in there someplace…
By ‘random’, I meant without aim or purpose. What I was getting at is that, in the materialist view, there is no intelligence behind the order we see.
You see the order. Fine. How do you explain it?
You see the order. Fine. How do you explain it?
Physics. In the early universe there were no elements, then hydrogen was produced by subatomic particles. Gravitational attraction in huge clouds condensed this and helped make helium. Enough gravitational mass and a star forms. The star in turn makes elements up to Iron. Elements past iron can’t be made until the star explodes in a supernova. This describes merely the way the elements are/were created, and there is order. It is not random. Everything we see flows from this self-ordering system, including life itself. Look up “emergent properties” and you’ll see the math describing it.
If you’re religious then maybe you ascribe self ordering to the design of your god; maybe you impute the purpose of the universe is to create you.
And maybe that’s even correct. It could well be that the entire purpose of the universe is to create life.
>> You see the order. Fine. How do you explain it?
Physics… This describes merely the way the elements are/were created, and there is order. It is not random. Everything we see flows from this self-ordering system, including life itself. Look up “emergent properties” and you’ll see the math describing it.
I ask how you explained the order, and your response is, there is order. We agree there is order. The question is, why? Physicals, gravity doesn’t explain living cells, though it may be a necessary condition. If you have discovered the “self-ordering system” that necessitated the existence of life, you should publish a paper on it, because you would be the first.
Let’s try it from a different angle: your office is messy, you go to lunch, you come back, and your office is tidy. Do you take the facts as they appear — apparently, offices tidy themselves up — or do you presume the existence of an intelligent agent who 1) understands what tidiness means, 2) judged your office to be untidy, and 3) ordered it for you.
> If you’re religious then maybe you ascribe self ordering to the design of your god; maybe you impute the purpose of the universe is to create you.
Or maybe not. God may have a zillion purposes but He has let us in on maybe a handful of them.
> And maybe that’s even correct. It could well be that the entire purpose of the universe is to create life.
Is the universe conscious? Does it have its own purposes? Did the painting paint itself?
Why do you Christians always use overblown pulpit language to make a religious point? Why use the passive “One idea which I used to hold” when “I used to think” would do? Or “makes perfect sense to most of my Christian brethren” instead of “to us.” Why’re you excluding women? Why doesn’t it make sense to ALL your brothers? Is there dissent in the ranks? You betcha!
So much for style; now, as to content: Before writing this haletosic panegyric did you walk in the other man’s shoes? Did you test the notion that the atheists could be right? It could be that morality, like God, is a man-made construct evolved over time to ensure the continuity of our species. It could be that we recognized that there’s safety in numbers (E Pluribus Unum!) and codified those rules that enhances our chances of still being here tomorrow. We probably dropped some on the way; some, like circumcision, are still with us and some are still there because they work; the most socially aware tenet, known as the ‘Golden Rule’, is NOT Christian in origin. And some, like something stuck to my shoe, are difficult to get rid of. One thing is sure, though, Moses didn’t get them from above, neither historically or geographically.
Be a Mensch instead of a kowtowing, Divine boot-licking, subjugated believer. Your religiosity stands in the way of your becoming a contributor to the growth of man. After all, if “God” is your answer to every questions, there’s no need to ask anything, is there?
And I say unto you, yeah, verily – ’nuff said.
“After all, if “God” is your answer to every questions, there’s no need to ask anything, is there?”
The advance of science was mostly due to the decline in the influence of religion, which sought truth and meaning by ‘looking in’ to see what God [Allah], or more specifically what the myriad of those who claim to speak for God [or Allah], had to say, and its replacement by’ looking out’, deriving knowledge and authority from observation, contemplation, experimentation and exploration. Among the first men of this enlightened school of thought were Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Saint Thomas Aquinas, among the first men to imagine a secular world, a world without God [or Allah], or more specifically what the myriad of those who claim to speak for God [or Allah], directing everything and giving meaning to everything. Secularism is not the same as atheism, of course, both Grosseteste (later a Bishop) and Aquinas (later a saint) were priests. Enlightened Priests, who played a major role in helping Europe escape the suffocating medieval view that the world can only have meaning in relation to God [or Allah] or more specifically in relation to what the myriad of those who claim to speak for God [or Allah] say.
are you smarter than this guy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyxUwaq00Rc
stop kicking against the goads
Yes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ari4CbVm9f4
Not only I, but most of the people I know (incl. my 15y old grandson) are smarter than this pretentious prick. I’ve seen him debate before and this is his way of getting his own back. Listen to him again without your pious earphones on and see if you don’t recognize that the ‘deadly blows’ he thinks he’s dealing science aren’t more applicable to HIS arguments.
Why, in America, is it unheard of to be both a conservative and an atheist. After all, atheism is the older of the two and has the street-cred of demanding reason and proof. Shouldn’t we rather build on those elements unique to us rather than performing those tricks some ‘trainer,’ who claims he knows what god wants, has taught us.
Because atheists don’t meekly regurgetate religious rhetoric and appear to have found flaws in the religion argument which made them reject god and all that. the pious, who didn’t recognize the absurdity of the same arguments but swallowed them hook, line and sinker, feel exposed. God forbid, they say to themselves, maybe we were too quick to bow the knee, too gullible and too credulous.
It would be quite funny if the religious weren’t also encouraged to be nasty to all who don’t believe as they do (just read the comments to this blog!); such a shame that they are too dumb to recognize that they’re in thrall to a totalitarian system with jihadist leanings.
Here endeth THAT lesson.
Just one question. If God doesn’t exist why are there atheists? Also if God doesn’t exist why the use of the blasphemous words “God forbid”?
> It could be that morality, like God, is a man-made construct evolved over time to ensure the continuity of our species.
That might explain the “is” but cannot explain the “ought”.
It’s perfectly plausible to posit a naturalistic morality that is a product of some sort of evolution. It’s plausible as well to propose that such a naturalistic morality does not exist outside of men’s minds — to state it in even more materialist terms, morality would then be a mere product of the chemicals and electrons that comprise our brains. In other words, an illusion, that something upon which we bestow grandeur and authority is nothing more than a mindset — a mere instinct put there by impersonal processes for survival of the species.
Fine. It is perfectly plausible.
Here’s what it’s not: authoritative.
For a moral code to work, it must be accepted as authoritative. Even the people who do wrong have to understand they’re doing wrong. For a person to accept something as authoritative, he must feel like it’s bigger than he is. It’s more important than he is. It’s higher than he is. It’s more permanent, less ephemeral, than he is. For many, that implies a God from whom the moral code flows. An eternal God. An absolute God.
Because if morality is not eternal and absolute, it loses its authority.
If you accuse me of doing some grievous wrong, any rational response — that is, one devoid of any irrational baggage that I carry, including the notion of God — would have to be, uh, excuse me… but by what authority do you indict my actions? Your brain chemistry doesn’t like what my brain chemistry made me do? So what? You wouldn’t be brandishing those outmoded concepts of moral behavior at me, would you? Look, that’s fine and dandy for the rubes. But I can see the man behind the curtain, and he isn’t a man at all, or a god, but just a set of behavioral instincts bestowed upon me by an impersonal evolutionary process. I’m happy for the notions of morality they induce in *others* — after all, I want *them* to be constrained — but don’t wave your silly little illusions at me. I see through the whole thing. Why should your concepts of morality bind *me* in any way, shape or form?
Morality then is reduced to mere practicality. In general, it is practical to go along to get along. Even sociopaths find it easier to feign moral impulses, at least when others are watching. A naturalist morality makes it rational to be a sociopath.
A naturalist morality can explain why (most) people do embrace a moral code. It cannot explain why any given individual should.
I hope your music is better than the pompous utterances you deposited here, my dear Trombone.As an atheist I have to say that I don’t give a shit (that’s not too technical for you, is it?) where morals come from, as long as we have some.
What sticks in my craw is that you pitiable pious pedants claim that morals are a proof of god – what utter nonsense! What next? Your shoes are wet? Another proof of god ’cause only God can create rain or a unirinary tract infection? Or was that a tree ….? Or yet another miracle?
Oh, I get it. You’re just mad that someone could possibly believe that God exists, and when we make a case as to why we might believe that, it angers you. It angers you even more when someone makes the case eloquently, so instead of even trying to rebut the argument you resort to the common tactic of ad hominem.
Well, if your design was to get us to stop believing in God, it didn’t work.
We’re not angry at you for thinking god exists, we’re angry because the certainty of your belief breeds an arrogance that drives you to attempt to codify christian dogma. Think drugs and homosexuality are immoral? Don’t partake. But don’t throw out some useless lines from a heavily edited and poorly written book as proof of your righteousness. When christians begin to practice their religion in peace without knocking on my door or supporting more socially conservative laws, I’ll tone it down. Until then, you all can cram it up your sanctimonious asses.
P.S. I am not a homosexual drug user, but don’t care if someone is. I don’t feel the need to attempt to save their souls cuz the sky wizard told me to.
> Until then, you all can cram it up your sanctimonious asses.
Pardon me, but weren’t we just discussing arrogance?
Chides someone for using overblown rhetoric.
Uses overblown rhetoric.
“Can there be right and wrong without God?”
If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God.
How about: He has written His Law on our hearts, so we know instinctively, albeit imperfectly, that certain things are good and certain things are evil.
To those searching for truth – not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction – faith in fiction is a damnable false hope. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk.
I’m afraid you are on the slow train to reality
God and “religion” are tow different things – don’t be lazy have a real look
Even “scientists” don’t believe that anymore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyxUwaq00Rc
THIS IS THE COOLEST THING I HAVE READ in a long time!!! Even the comments were incredible and it is so nice seeing Americans agreeing on anything- or at least disagreeing (generally) agreeably. I am not smart enough to really understand even half the stuff expressed here but I know value when I see it because it is valuable. And America needs to have more valued conversations like the ones taking place both in the article and in the replies. Again thank you Mr. Hudson, you have ended my night of insomnia in a most pleasant way! This site rocks!!!!!!!!
I hate to break it to you, Philip, but you need to raise your standards a little. Or, as the good Reverend Sharpton would have it, “Much.”
What an amazing attempt to square the circle! It would be hard to imagine a point of view more alien to the Christianity of the New Testament than the utterly egoistic doctrine of Objectivism. The celebrated rant at the end of Atlas Shrugged is nothing if not a denial of the virtue of agape. It is a paeon to the glories of selfishness. How evangelical!
By the way, claiming that atheists or non-Christians can’t have an “absolute” morality, does not imply that believers in a creator god can have an absolute morality either; for even if there is a God, there is no logical imperative to accept his commandments. Of course if there is a cosmic boss who will punish me for killing the wrong people (or not killing the right people), I have a reason to do as he says. But there are already many, many reasons why killing is a bad idea. If, as many a believer insists, the ordinary arguments against murder don’t add up to an objective morality, why should one more argument change things? There’s a serious logical problem with the whole notion of “absolute” ethics.
Fortunately, you don’t need to assert that there is a single, unambiguous standard of right and wrong to believe that it is possible to meaningfully reason about what to do. Which is a good thing since such a standard is not in evidence as witness the fact that different societies, all facing the same basic realities, have never agreed on one. Indeed, the various Christians don’t even agree among themselves.
Religious versions of ethics reflect a profound vanity on the part of believers. It’s not enough for them that we can come up with mostly reliable guidelines for living as self-respecting animals on a small planet. Morality has to be tarted up as some sort of evidence of an exalted destiny. It wasn’t just the talking snake who promised “you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.” Preachers do it all the time. Vanity.
Arrrgh! I can’t believe I am about to agree with a post by JH. But seriously, the circular and tortured reasoning in this article is remarkable but also expected whenever someone tries to prove the un-prove-able or establish a claim that theirs is the one true “truth” among the many “truths” held by people in the world. It is an exercise more worthy of a leftist blog where you can find similar attempts in support of collectivism, the Global Warming movement, the absolute priority of environmentalism over the needs of humans, and other favorite “religions” of the left.
But back to the subject: I actually find it creepy and unsettling that perhaps the sole reason that some other person is not killing me or stealing my stuff is because they believe that some book written centuries ago and interpreted over and over again by often unsavory characters throughout history is telling them not to. I’ll take my chances with those who have come by this understanding naturally, have developed empathy for living beings and who realize that in obeying these basic principles of morality, we all get to live a better life.
“In a world without God, there is no obvious difference between good and evil. There is no way to prove that murder is wrong if there is no Creator who decrees “Thou shalt not murder.’’ It certainly cannot be proved wrong by reason alone. One might reason instead — as Lenin and Stalin and Mao reasoned — that there is nothing wrong with murdering human beings by the millions if doing so advances the Marxist cause.”
“Religion is the opium of the masses… There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
And we all know that Marx’s philosophy helped free the masses from the control of religion.
I hear that North Korea is a great place to visit.
Yeah, the “trusted” dollar bill is doing great these days too.
Which is why Ben Franklin warned he was giving America a “republic, if you can keep it” and James Madison further warned that the concept of America can only thrive “amongst a virtuous people”, to paraphrase both.
Whom do you think has more reverence amongst today’s Progressive thinkers, Karl Marx or Ben Franklin and James Madison? Once you answer that question honestly you’ll know why our dollar has become so debased.
Though I would still take it over the hermit kingdom’s money anyday.
As I sit in Yerushalayim watching my grandchildren eat the strawberries I just brought home from Machane Yehuda , chattering away in Hebrew, and playing in the sun, I have to laugh a little bit at this discussion. Here we are – living proof of The Almighty, and some still dispute both His Laws and His Chosen.
There really are none so blind as those that will not see.
Amen. G-d bless you, the children and Jerusalem.
And may The Almighty Bless you, your family and congregation with His Divine LIght from Yerushalayim.
Funny. I was thinking the same thing yesterday, but from a different vantage point – in this case, the biological sense. One, totipotent zygote with the ability not only to provide the entire blueprint for a living being, but the ability to build it too.
I can’t offhand think of a clearer indicator of something clearly of design and creation. And still they deny the most obvious, never seeing the forest for the trees.
Life really comes down to a series of simple choices, Menachem. Yet these choices are so profound, they impact every second of our existence, our reason, our purpose. Do we believe in the goodness and sovereignty of man? Or do we believe in the goodness and sovereignty of an Almighty God?
Frankly, my fellow man has given me very little to believe in his wisdom. Indeed, there really are none so blind as those that will not see.
Tex, My friend as always you ask the most profound questions and in doing so you answer them. Permit me to answer each as best I can-
” Do we believe in the Goodness of Man? ”
Yes. Because despite the evil that pervades so much of the world the small acts of Goodness must never be denied. The selfless and charitable deeds of countless individuals, the acts of bravery and honor in the darkest of places, elevates and sustains the world. We have no right to deny them.
” Do we believe in the sovereignty of man? ” Yes. Because that is the great challenge of the gift of Free Will. We have been given sovereignty in order to perfect the world.
” Or do we believe in the goodness and sovereignty of an Almighty God? ”
Goodness? I think The Almighty is beyond ” goodness ” as we understand it. Is goodness one of the attributes of G-d? Are His works the expression of Goodness? Is there a profound difference between Goodness and Righteousness? Yes.
” Frankly, my fellow man has given me very little to believe in his wisdom.”
“Raishis Chachmah Yiras Hashem, The Beginning of Wisdom is the Fear of Hashem.” (Proverbs 1:7)
Have we lost the Fear of G-d? As a world community I think so. That is why we are where we are.
Yet here we two sit, separated by thousands of miles, each Worshipping The Almighty in his own way , yet we are more alike than dissimilar. In our hearts we want the same thing- that is the hope of all humanity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZC92hql7gE
Exactly, your existence is a miracle in and of itself. Yah bless and protect you and the little ones…
The problem reduces to a choice of standards. All questions of right and wrong — the pole terms of all moral argument — rely upon an underpinning standard. But the choice of standard is itself arbitrary.
The two standards that have most often been offered for consideration are:
– 1. Divine will;
– 2. Racial survival.
The former requires that one accept certain propositions on faith. The latter, strangely enough, also requires an act of faith, but in a different set of propositions: i.e., that racial survival is intrinsically right and must be promoted as a moral absolute.
There are persons who accept neither premise. Here are a few for your consideration.
As a religious Catholic, I accept the premise that God has commanded us to hew to certain moral strictures (the Ten Commandments) — but as an intelligent man, I can easily see how those strictures promote racial survival and flourishing, and that an atheist would be able to reach them from that alternate premise.
Perhaps there’s no need to argue over it.
The latter, strangely enough, also requires an act of faith, but in a different set of propositions: i.e., that racial survival is intrinsically right and must be promoted as a moral absolute.
Except that this doesn’t involve faith. Simple observation suffices. The mission of all living things is to keep living. Things reproduce because they must. Morals and ethics in a sentient species is based on the notions of species survival. Paleolithic peoples in remote locations of earth who have no concept of the christian god still have taboos re incest, tend to eschew wanton murder, and so on, all of which are behaviours relating to survival of the tribe. And since living things strive to live and reproduce… I’m not sure why this subject needs to be more complicated than this.
You missed the point — or perhaps you misread this sentence:
It’s one thing to observe that a particular set of behaviors leads to the flourishing of a race. It’s quite another to say that those behaviors are intrinsically, morally right. There’s no way to reach the second proposition from the first one, except by assertion — i.e., by an act of faith.
Morality is about “should” and “should not,” rather than “is” and “is not.” C.S. Lewis was most trenchant on the gulf between them: “You cannot derive an ought from an is.” (From The Abolition of Man)
Consider: If you were confronted by a PETA member with the question:
…how would you answer? Would you be able to work the concept of a moral standard into your response in any other way than by bald assertion?
Every moral standard, no matter its substance or who proclaims it, constitutes a demand for faith, whether in one’s own proclamation or in someone (or Someone) else’s doctrines. That’s the nature of the thing:
You wrote:
…which is at least half false. I haven’t reproduced, nor will I. Many other persons of my acquaintance haven’t reproduced, and some never will. The only inference anyone can draw from that is that our germ plasm won’t be represented in succeeding generations. That’s not a statement with moral weight. It certainly doesn’t bear on our “mission.”
But this business of “mission” deserves extended treatment. Just as “meaning” requires an intelligent interpreter, a “mission” requires some intelligent, purposeful agency to choose it. Who chooses one’s mission — one’s purpose in existing? Don’t know about you, Bubba, but I consider that my prerogative — and it’s wholly disconnected from any progeny I might have produced. If you invest blind biological processes with the privilege of defining your “mission,” all I can say is that I’d rather put my trust in an advisor of greater intelligence. I refuse to regard myself merely as my DNA’s machine for replicating itself.
Yes, they who survive and flourish get to write the history textbooks, but there’s quite a chasm between that observation of practical efficacy at achieving a goal and the promotion of the means involved to the estate of intrinsic moral righteousness. The only escape from the need for an act of faith is to dismiss the concept of morality as inconsequential and unnecessary…which leads directly to the ultimately Amoral Moral Standard: MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.
And with that, we come to the ultimate confounder for those who dismiss moral standards and their roots in faith: Imagine that you possess the power to resurrect the dead, at least temporarily. Imagine further that, purely out of curiosity, you were to resurrect Adolf Hitler, so you could pose him this question:
…and Hitler were to answer:
How would you attempt to refute him?
Take your time.
…which is at least half false. I haven’t reproduced, nor will I.
You’re misapplying scale and not getting what I was saying. My fault. Nature and physics gives examples re what I was trying to get at. When you turn on a light by flipping the switch, you can rely that the light turns on; the aggregate average behaviours of the electrons results in current flow.
When mankind made electronic silicon circuits ever smaller, there came a point when at certain sizes current flow was no longer a reliable thing. While the average electron could be relied upon to to an average thing, individual ones did things that were not. It was realised that basic descriptors like “Ohm’s Law” were actually rules of thumb, i.e. they described an average electron behaviour as opposed to predicting the behaviour of an individual. At a macro scale Ohm’s Law is useful; at a micro scale the best you can do is apply statistics and hope that any individual will fit within a norm.
The basics of what we see re physics also manifests itself in biology (it’s the natural world, after all) so of course there will always be deviations at the level of individuals (micro scale) while the aggregate behaviour (macro scale) remains.
So if you look at what I wrote and think that from one vantage point (macro), the purpose of a species is to survive. When you change the vantage point to view individuals (micro), these may or may not exhibit the same characteristics of the group. The point here is that the macro trajectory isn’t viewable from the perspective of any given individual.
> So if you look at what I wrote and think that from one vantage point (macro), the purpose of a species is to survive. When you change the vantage point to view individuals (micro), these may or may not exhibit the same characteristics of the group. The point here is that the macro trajectory isn’t viewable from the perspective of any given individual.
Why assume the species has any purpose at all? Even to survive?
If we’re always supposed to take the simplest explanation that can be demonstrated, then I would propose there are no purposes at all. To ascribe purpose to this process would be to anthropomorphize an abstraction. There is no decision-making entity called “the species” and “the species” has zero knowledge, zero consciousness, and zero control. It is not trying to survive at all. It does, or it doesn’t.
I see this particular argument a lot in atheist circles. It’s their way of touching God without having to say, “Euwww!” We don’t believe in God at all because there is no tangible evidence. But we believe in something called “life” or “the species” and impart motives to it.
You can’t have it both ways, sorry. If there is no intelligence behind it all, then there is no purpose.
Why assume the species has any purpose at all? Even to survive?
If there are enough individuals to create a species it has survived by definition, thus “it lives to survive” is a tautology. It’s still true though. I thought this was already well known to all? A species has no purpose if you limit definition to mean intelligent intent. And then again this might not be quite true. Check out James Lovelock and his Gaia theory. He could very well be wrong, but if he’s correct one could just as easily conclude proof of god. (One of the problems with claiming liberals are always wrong is that if they are right the ramifications may not be what they think…)
>> Why assume the species has any purpose at all? Even to survive?
> If there are enough individuals to create a species it has survived by definition, thus “it lives to survive” is a tautology.
Well, you’re right about one thing: “survival of the fittest” is a tautology, since we define “the fittest” as those who survive.
But I never questioned whether individual living things purpose themselves to survive; that seems obvious. The question was whether this thing, this abstraction called “the species”, has any such purpose?
Why do, for want of a better label, scientific atheists reject God, but then cannot wait to turn around and anthropomorphize an abstraction? A “species” is an abstraction; it represents a group consisting of individual living things which share a given set of taxonomical and genetic features and configurations. It’s an abstraction, but we sit around and ascribe purposes and motives to it.
Considered scientifically and philosophically, you can make a case one way or the other for God’s existence. But I’m pretty sure there is no such thing as a “species” hanging around in the ether, who looks down on his member hyenas or hydrangeas, dictating his purposes to individual members.
So let’s quit talking like it. The species has no purpose. If we’re going to believe in only the things we can observe and measure, then let’s start with abolishing any rhetoric that ascribes purpose to anything abstract.
I twist my Mind this way and that, desperate to deny the existence of my own Soul, to not feel the agony I have put myself in with my Cleverness and Sophistry.
I am a sad, sad person.
Pity me.
Well said, Walter.
Science, btw, holds that life only can come from life, hence the honest practitioners of it can’t answer the question as to where “grapes come from” in an an absolute sense either.
What truly keeps me believing in a Creator is the thought what exactly stops us from acting on all our selfish impules? We by nature are selfish. So what does stop us from killing, stealing, adultery, etc? This thought may not overwhelm academia, but it truly makes me realize that someone else is in control and I believe that to be God. Yet some do exaclty that. They kill without guilt and affect us all in some manner. But for most of us, we stop and think things through.
Well, Slyfox, see if this helps.
God didn’t create morals. They stand in diametric opposition to that which he actually claims to have given you – free will. You see the problem, don’t you – giving you both would make you psychotic and He’s not like that,is He? With free will as his gift to you, you get to make the choices. So, d’you go out there and rape, murder, maim etc etc? Of course you don’t, unless you really are crazy. So why don’t you?
You don’t, because evolution has taught you that you are always at risk from predators, be they animal or human, who’ll eat you as soon as look at you in order to safeguard their survival. What you also learn, if not from the beginning in the primeval swamp, then soon thereafter, is that there’s safety in numbers – you’ll see evidence of it everywhere: herrings, impalas, swallows, tribes, nations to name but a few. All of them get along well together in their group because they have created patterns of interactive behavior that all agree to (knowingly or instinctively). Each such community has learnt that this interdependent lifestyle offers them the best scenario for the group’s continuity – erudite people speak of morals and moral behavior; that’s okay – it doesn’t matter what you call it as long as you have it.
Just be aware, though, of Laplace’s answer to Napoleon when asked by the Emperor why God didn’t feature in Laplace’s orrery, which was, “I have no need for that hypothesis, Sire.” And I, when talking about morals, don’t have room for him, either.
I agree with you. We are able to know that acting on our instinctive impulses would be wrong, selfish and ultimately harm others more than help ourselves. It would have been much, much easier had we remained in innocence like the animals or like children who don’t know or understand what they do, but we chose to have the knowledge. And we have freewill, so we can do great good or unspeakable evil depending on how we choose to act or not on our selfish impulses.
Of course morality exists without god.
An immoral act is simply an action that one would not want done to them. The fact that there are so many such that are held in common is the basis of the first ideas of law.
The morality of the Divine works in the same fashion, but man must understand that it is not the same in specifics. And that is important. There is no morality of murder for a being that cannot be killed. That morality is a human one.
Indeed, Christ said, “Treat others the way you would like to be treated,” and this has been dubbed, “The Golden Rule.” Of course, there is one unstated premise behind the Golden Rule, and that is that the actor in question responds normally to stimuli. A perverse man may well enjoy being on the receiving end of actions that most people would find loathsome, and the suicidal may place no more value on the lives of others than they place on their own, as many mass-shooters demonstrate. Even without moral problems, many people with Asperger’s Syndrome or similar conditions give offense to others out of genuine ignorance because they would not be offended by someone else acting the same way around them. Does that mean the Golden Rule is defective? By no means! It only means that the Golden Rule can’t be taken in a vacuum. The Golden Rule cannot perfectly inform behavior without first assenting to Christ’s worldview.
Your motto should be:
BEFORE OPENING MOUTH, CHECK FACTS!!!
The Golden Rule is much, much older than Jesus, you dolt. Why, a simple look in Wikipedia would have prevented you from looking like a prize wally! It’s an indication that the creators of the bible plagiarized all the best folk tales and urban legends known at the time and put their own exclusive copyright on them leading uneducated rubes like you up a garden path.
I don’t see where mythbuster claimed that Jesus “invented” the so-called Golden Rule, but there is no doubt that Jesus expanded the understanding of the rule from Old Testament (the external life)to New Testament (the internal life)applications. For example, Old Testament: Do not commit adultery. New Testament: Do not lust. The outer to the inner. So the “Golden Rule” was just as applicable in the Old Testament (the Law given approx 1500-1400BC) as in the New.
But I suspect you don’t really care because your purpose is to throw poo at people and thus expose yourself as a rude, snotty kind of person.
You sound like you are arguing circularly. I was watching the Universe and the scientists being interview couldn’t help but acknowledge that the universe shows signs of order, yet they immediately caught themselves and backed off saying things like, “that doesn’t mean it’s an old man in the sky.” That’s the oldest canard in the atheist’s playbook; making a straw man image that it is no way representative of Biblical descriptions, and mocking it as though they are legitimately punching holes in Christian eschatology.
If you say you can’t have morality without a creator, or say because of creation there is a natural order, I fail to understand the difference. It sounds like a semantic way of avoiding an argument with an atheist.
Amazing how so many are inspired by the deep thinkers commonly known as God-like philosophers who have NO record of making any known society better. These are the supposed superior intellects who go about speaking over and around everybody of the common state of mind — and well represented on PJM.
Then there was a person called Jesus. One of the greatest things about Jesus was his ability to speak to the common masses of people — not over and around the common or the intellectual people.
For the true believers of God, the world and its people, should not be seen as vastly, philosophically complex. He difines everything in common terms and then simply give His people ten simple commandements by which all should strive to live up to in their individual and collective lives.
For the truly non believers, its not so simple! They are in large part, the prideful arrogant intellectuals who are always in deep philosophical thought trying to surpplant the simplicity of Gods word and the origins of mankind and their environments. They write and speak above and around the common man God created, striving to be seen and considered as the intellectual elite posing deep complex questions and then of course — answers them in a like manner.
Doesn’t take any of those deep thinking intellectuals writings for one too have a good understanding of the problems facing man and his environment. God explains it all in rather simple terms of; if you do this or that — the consequence(s) will be this or that!
Since this is generally, a far right extremist site, dealing primarily with politics and government, how does God fit in to it? Theres penty said about it in the Bible. Generally speaking, all are to be subjects of a governing authority. The U.S. Constitution agrees! The Bible speaks to a King. The U.S. Constitution disagrees! The Bible speaks to laws to enforce obedience. The U.S. Constitution agrees! The Bible speaks to taxation. The U.S. Constitution agrees! The Bible speaks to the King writing a copy of the book of the law for himself from the original that was to be kept by the priests, the Levites. The U.S. Constitution disagrees with anything beyond the ‘common’ laws! Theres a longer list for which the constitution agrees that are generally not in contention of debate.
The general authority of the government and its laws are to nurture and take care of the people and separate the law breakers. This seems to be where all the dissention among some come about. One side is bent on the people taking care of themselves as best they can and the other side seeks the government to assist in taking care of the people who can’t take care of themselves. One side is prideful and arrogant and the other side is compassionate and thoughtful of mankind and their societal environment.
Where the balance is to be I don’t know! But I like to believe the example and teachingss of Jesus would offer guidance to the balance.
The vile, prideful and arrogant interactions between citizens is not the answer to solving any problems!
A far right, extremist site. Code for not progressive like Zeke….
At least I’m not brainwashed and radicalized and still have the ability too think and reason independently.
Right, right … you speak truth, everyone else speaks lies.
Maybe remember some numbers like — you speak on behalf of maybe 20% at best of the 112M voters of one political party of which only about 54% vote. Another example is so small it can only be estimated as a minute fraction of the 300M adults 18 years of age and older (2010 census). Your acceptance polling is only slightly above that of congress. Just some reality to ponder!
Really, I find you the most uncreative, Chatty Cathy in the room, pull the string each response a boiler plated, garden variety KKKos type of response.
I don’t find you have a critical thinking skill in the entire repertoire…
But you keep patting yourself on the back, and I’ll see if Roger Simon can round up a trophy or ribbon for you to wear.
Walter, You rock my world! You just gave a sermon with an explanation that is so thoughtful, and with such fabulous reasoning. Rock on!
“…and some still dispute both His Laws and His Chosen.”
So, Mr. Yakov, God picks certain people and not others? He’s in the real estate game too, correct? Certain lands for certain folks? Good thing there’s a 2,000-year-old text that sorts all this out.
Yes, Joseph, He does. God knows His faithful ones from eternity, and He did promise the children of Israel a homeland. In the fullness of time, His own Son took on human flesh as a Jew, and by His death and resurrection, the faithful of Israel was redeemed, and not only Israel, but the Gentiles, too, are ransomed by His death. Therefore all Gentiles who are baptized into His death are grafted into Israel, and all who fall away from the Faith are cut off from Israel. Thus there is no Gentile or Jew in Christ, but because of God’s promise, we know there shall come a day when all of the sons and daughters of Jacob shall believe on the Messiah and be saved, together with a great multitude of Gentiles. Alas, the Day of the Lord is great and terrible, and many will perish in the fiery crucible; among them shall be 2/3 of the Israelites, but the remnant shall be saved to the last man, woman and child.
” So, Mr. Yakov, God picks certain people and not others? ” The picking was mutual.
” He’s in the real estate game too, correct? ” He created the world so I guess the answer is yes.
” Certain lands for certain folks? ” If you are asking if The Land of Israel belongs to The Jews becasue G-d gave it us us as an everlasting heritage the answer is yes.
” Good thing there’s a 2,000-year-old text that sorts all this out. ”
Actually The Bible is almost 4000 years old.
Strictly speaking, though, the Torah says that the Promised Land belongs exclusively to God, and that the Israelites are but tenants on it. For this reason, they were warned that infidelity would bring upon them slaughter and exile, and three times it did: at the hands of the Assyrians, at the hands of the Babylonians, and at the hands of the Romans.
יד. וַיהֹוָה אָמַר אֶל אַבְרָם אַחֲרֵי הִפָּרֶד לוֹט מֵעִמּוֹ שָׂא נָא עֵינֶיךָ וּרְאֵה מִן הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה שָׁם צָפֹנָה וָנֶגְבָּה וָקֵדְמָה וָיָמָּה:
15. For all the land that you see I will give to you and to your seed to eternity. טו. כִּי אֶת כָּל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַתָּה רֹאֶה לְךָ אֶתְּנֶנָּה וּלְזַרְעֲךָ עַד עוֹלָם:
16. And I will make your seed like the dust of the earth, so that if a man will be able to count the dust of the earth, so will your seed be counted. טז. וְשַׂמְתִּי אֶת זַרְעֲךָ כַּעֲפַר הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר | אִם יוּכַל אִישׁ לִמְנוֹת אֶת עֲפַר הָאָרֶץ גַּם זַרְעֲךָ יִמָּנֶה:
17. Rise, walk in the land, to its length and to its breadth, for I will give it to you.” יז. קוּם הִתְהַלֵּךְ בָּאָרֶץ לְאָרְכָּהּ וּלְרָחְבָּהּ כִּי לְךָ אֶתְּנֶנָּה:
Mr. Hudson, you should read Arthur Allen Leff’s Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law – it fills in some of the gaps in your argument above.
We’ve wrestled with this basic question for a very long time and one thing seems apparent. If there is a loving god, he has created things so that there is no scientific/rational proof of his existence. We accept him on faith.
Are there other possibilities for the origin of our moral sense? Sure. Perhaps its an evolutionary advantage. Without this sense of right and wrong, it might not be possible for intelligent, self-aware animals to form cohesive social groups. Other social animals don’t have this – might makes right for herd animals. But perhaps that would not be enough to hold a social group together once you toss in intelligence.
In either case, you’re not going to find the answer here. That’s why it’s called faith.
Correction on the date: Isaiah spoke only a few hundred years before the scientific proof that the Earth was round, as the Greeks proved the Earth was round c. 200 BC through observations of lunar eclipses, reasoning that only a round Earth could cast a round shadow on the Moon.
You’re referring not to proof of roundness but to calc by erastosthenes of the circumference in egyptian stadia, corrsponding to roughly 39 km, i.e. within a couple of percent of actual. The remarkable thing about this experiment wasn’t proof of roundness, which was well known, but that it was clever enough to resolve arguments about the size. Clearly when the experiment is designed to deduce size, the shape is already known.
Maybe people are bogging down in the specifics to much and not paying enough attention to the intent/overall point.
As an example, the folks of the Buddhist persuation could simply use the term “religion” if “God” is too “Christian” for you.
The eight-fold path might not be christian but it is “relgious.”
I only mention it because many of our atheist bethren consider religion ITSELF to be a mistake. They draw little if any distinction between them.
Buddhists seem to do well as true atheists, rather than the egotistical poseurs going by that title here.
How does the idea of God do anything more than what the natural consequences might be? How can we do better than a love and respect for the world around us, and the beings in it?
People seem to use the words for their own rather than what would be taken as Godly ends. It is blasphemy, but seems to go part and parcel with revealed religion. Hatred and bloodshed too are their fruit. I love how much they fear conversion. The point is simply that there is no object standards for beliefs except their fruits, which makes ideas of God or the supernatural irrelevant.
Paying attention to what is going, very Lutheran or Calvinist, then acting in serve it with a loving heart is better than seeking Divine Afflatus (flatulence?).
I would highly recommend reading C.S. Lewis’ essay series “The Abolition of Man” (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm#1). Lewis examines the idea of morality based on “objective principles,” and his conclusion is that there is no basis for morality constructed on “objective principles” since there is no objective support for placing any principle above another – all men are subject to numerous impulses and inclinations, and there is no “objective” way to choose between them. Any choice between them must be in reference to a system of value which is not objective, and the case for “objective value” breaks down.
Alas, the topic is bigger than all our efforts to discuss it, as I will soon demonstrate, alas, but I believe that this issue relates directly to some of the things I wrote recently about “God-given rights:” Natural, “God-given, or political rights interweave with “whose morality is it?”
God = something larger than we are, something larger than our own individual rights. Morality does not mean much unless it is within a community and it is possible that it (and the concept of God) developed as man became a social, speaking, conscious, new somehow transcendant animal/not animal.
In the past, a King was substituted for God; now it is in the voting done in a democratic republic and the tradition which has developed in the past votes of that republic and the way it has chosen to define and redefine itself. There is a conservative impulse (or trick) here to say that because the Founders invoked God, that God actually “gave” God-given rights the Founders found. I’ll give the imperfect Founders more credit than God, although they may have been listening to a new God, an Enlightenment God, an American God, which spoke to them, just as an Abolitionist God spoke to Garrison and Brown.
But just as that God was different from the God of the Middle Ages, one might posit that a post slavery, post New Deal God, might be a tad different as well. And apparently God has changed for BOTH sides. The God of the right is now offended by liberals, whereas before he used to be offended by evil mankind in general.
Where and what God was before he spoke to Abram in the desert, and how he was establishing/communicating what good was and what evil was at the time is a question one could ask. Abraham came out of the Sumerian tradition, but had a monotheistic vision that separated him from his polytheistic brethren.
Many years and a lot of Judeo-Christian history later, the Founders perceived (new) human rights and “chose” to call them God-given. Natural rights or human rights is what they are, but such terms do not work as well, rhetorically. I cannot recall many of these “God-given” rights which are enumerated in the Constitution and the Amendments as being particularly or consistently Biblical.
Or do the Ten Commandments posit human rights by implication? One has the right not to have things done to him or herself which the Ten Commandments forbid? It works for not killing, but is it a God-given right not to have your neighbor covet your stuff? Jesus softens it and preaches loving thy neighbor (one would assume, even if he is a liberal). Is this loving the neighbor what Christians see as the “God-given rights” or some other rights? If so, these rights were pretty much lost from the time of Jesus up until the Enlightenment.
Doesn’t God, especially the Old Testament one, see human rights as basically a stiff-necked, most likely fallen, evil thing, which is likely to get the fiery serpents sent into the humans’ midst? Isn’t the idea to give up your human INDIVIDUALITY to do what God says? What do rights have to do with it?
Didn’t the rights finally come from men perceiving a need for freedom and then having them SAY they were God-given, because that was the rhetorical coin of the realm, as Jefferson and Lincoln knew so well. Use King James language and cadence and it carries a lot more weight. They did not do this because they were (particularly) duplicitous, but simply because they knew it worked. Four score and ten years ago…etc. I suppose that one could argue that a new God came to Lincoln about the time of Antetiem. There had to be some power out there to make this mass slaughter somehow worthwhile.
If God works for you to make you a better person, then God bless you, but if He works to make you peevish about his name not being mentioned in government speech, then I guess he is a useful God to club someone over the head with, always a handy thing.
Supposedly, God never changes, humans change. The evidence is that BOTH change, and thank…somebody, often, if not exclusively, for the better.
A lot more is needed to tackle the communitarian vs the individualistic nature of rights, morality, and God. A lot of the talk here speaks against the communitarian vision of SOCIETY, but then, what is a society, if not individuals interacting?
But for the moment, Son of Man, that is my heap of broken images.
There is nothing new under the sun, man is still hopelessly sinful yet still made in God’s image, and God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
I love Ecclesiastes, but I am not quit prepared to say that there is NOTHING new under the sun.
If we see God and Jesus as kind of a magnetic force toward the good, then we can say that this (never-changing?) force works on men AS THEY ARE in each succeeding generation. For Abraham, it convinces him that he does not need to sacrifice his son, it convinces David that he can stand against Goliath, but assumedly it is not what convinces him to have his Hallelujah broken with Bathsheba. It is not hard for us (or is it just me?) to understand the God that Garrison and Brown were hearing, but what were the Southerners hearing when they thumbed their Bibles and found the justification for slavery? Are anti-abortionists also hearing God when they hear the voices of the dead foetuses crying out? It does not seem so to me, but maybe I am as blind as those southerners were, and one day the scales will fall from my eyes.
The most hopeful thing to do, vis a vis there being a beneficent God, is to affirm the he was the force behind the positive things, and that properly understood, he never really did want human sacrifice or slavery and that those who said they were serving God by engaging in such things were misguided or duplicitous. Not everyone who cries “God, God” is apparently in touch with same, but some are, and the world overall, I think, is a better place for it.
Dwight – Just had a discussion on the phone and was ask a question I have no answer for. Do you happen to know how many times the Christian ‘Bible’ has been reinterpreted? I supose from the orthodox origin.
Zeke,(The real one??)
“Re-interpreted” is such a general word, that the answer would have to be many millions of times, especially since it is in the Jewish tradition to argue and discuss endlessly since long before the birth of Jesus and something which would later be called Christianity. After Luther, the Protestants claimed (more or less) that there was an individual encounter between a person, the Scriptures, and Christ. Once you get a community of believers “where two or three are gathered together in My name” then you have assertions of shared and disputed doctrine. In my youth, it seemed that local small Protestant churches like the ones my father preached in, were often splitting and reforming, often over personality differences or new people who wanted to lead, as much as doctrinal differences. Since I often cross swords with fundamentalists (some in my own extended family) who are asserting the literal truth of the text, down to the last jot and tittle, I have developed an allergy to absolutist assertions, but it IS a powerful tradition and a powerful text.
I am in the Jefferson camp, a picker and a chooser of the valuable parts, and try to merge the old text into new meanings but at least I know that I am. I find that even the most ardent believers prefer some aspects of the message to others. The selfless love and sacrifice of Jesus’ teachings is so difficult for humans to follow, maybe especially those who are “conservative, practical and political” that one tends to focus on other things humans feel more natural with such as eschewing at least on vice, smiting the enemy, or convincing a fellow human being that your way is better than the way they are following. We can probably all identify with that one, but I think that the path of human progress, and Jesus real contribution follows the agape/love piece. Of course, that does not to me make the need for a 12 gauge (or choose your weapon of choice) to go away, or to disband our military, but if one has all the firepower in the world and “hath not love,” what is the point?
Transgression of the Commandments against covetousness is not a transgression against human beings, but rather against God alone. The Torah gives crime victims recourse to proportional punishments: the injured are entitled to compensation for the cost of their treatment and lost wages, those who cripple shall be crippled likewise, a woman who was seduced into sex had a right to marry her seducer and could never be divorced, victims of theft were entitled to multiple restitution from the thief (under pain of indentured servitude, but never death, if he is unable to pay), rape, adultery and kidnapping were punishable by death, and the death penalty was automatic for murder, but those guilty of manslaughter had recourse to cities of refuge, to which they had to remain in exile until the death of the high priest, but if anyone dared take revenge against him in a city of refuge, the avenger would be guilty of murder.
Naturally, the Torah also names religious crimes, just as nations have laws against treason, sedition, and espionage, which are likewise crimes against the country and government, not against a human being. For those whose crime consisted only of evil thoughts, the penalty was purely religious and social, and the courts were forbidden to harm the slightest hair on his head, nor seize the smallest piece of his property. If he wished to be reconciled to God, he himself would confess his sins to a priest and bring with him an animal to offer as a sacrifice to expiate his guilt, and in sorrow and penitence, he would hand the animal over to be sacrificed on the altar, and God would forgive the penitent man.
If a man makes a statement in a forest, and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
Why would a woman be in the forest? Clearly knowing her place, she should be in the kitchen.
She was with a bunch of other women gathering, duh!
God is all that is within and beyond our ken. Morality is either within our ken, or not, or both. Regardless, morality is ‘of God’. The concept that there is no God is ‘of God’.
I am moral because I want to be moral and believe it is right. Me, you, our friends, our ideological enemies, etc., are all ‘of God’. If you Christian soldiers are willing to fight Communism and Islam, I would be proud to join your ranks and/or support you in your fight. If you conservative soldiers are willing to fight for our Constitution and oppose the recklessness that pervades our government, I would be proud to join your ranks and/or support you in your fight.
“I am moral because I want to be moral and believe it is right. Me, you, our friends, our ideological enemies, etc.,…”
Is not what you profess, that of what you were taught and conditioned by man –those closest you to as a child? I doubt you were born with ANY pre-existing knowledge of whatever particular version religion and values you were taught and condition by as a child.
I have literally, (no not really), been to church a day in my life. Other than the occasional wedding or funeral. I inherited that from my parents. Which some would say have the largest effect on my moral bearing as a person. I also believe if you have gone to church between the ages of 5 and 15, you have drank the kool-aid. It is too late! Even if you say you are an atheist now – you really are not.
I am however willing to cede the fact that america at least, is 80% believers. Therefore it is only logical that the morals/ethics/thinking of the 80% affects the other 20% of society as a whole. I don’t think that is challenged in a meaningful way.
I ask my believing friends to realise…their is no old man upstairs keeping track of billions of souls, or humans to judge what is in their hearts – it is ridiculous. When you die, the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out!!! That is it, finito!!
And you can’t prove me wrong. But then, I always remember the final words of my catholic office mate when we debate the issue, ” that it why they call it FAITH”.
I don’t have a problem with that.
what is right and wrong? radical islam thinks treating women like garbage is right, and last time I checked christianity has claimed it was right while doing insane horrible acts throughout history. Simply try and help people everyday. I dont need some version of reality created by ignorant superstitious goat herders who wiped thier rears with thier hands, that was written thousands of years ago, to be good to my fellow man. Just simply help others the best you can and drop this dangerous delusion that is religion. It was just something you were taught as a child, if you were told that a pink hippo lived in the rocks you would believe that just as much as you do “god”. and atheists, please shut up too, for the truth is that no one knows anything, and good and evil are variable things, and if you want to be “good” then just be it and drop the damned pretense.
No, morality and immorality both exist and are defined in relationship to each other. What do you mean, morality is a “thing”, and immorality is not a “thing”?
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/152021/conservatives-remain-largest-ideological-group.aspx
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http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2010/10/05/new-poll-major-crossover-between-tea-party-and-conservative-christians.aspx
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http://www.pewforum.org/politics-and-elections/tea-party-and-religion.aspx
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So…conservatives are the largest block of voters.
Which leaves an unanswered question …or two or three.
Why did all those previous conservative voters move to the center and call themselves ‘Independents’?
If they’d only stuck around and done things your way, eh?
Of course, if those useless, worthless libertarians would quit wasting their votes, you might win more of the big elections and the big police decisions, wouldn’t you?.
It’s all their fault…and voter fraud, of course. It’s the MSm and the educational instituions and political corruption, and…it’s always everyone’s fault but your own.
Nope, SoCon, it’s not as easy an answer as alla that. Think it over…look in the mirror…and begin to ask yourself some very hard questions.
There’s a reason why you’re not winning elections and why you’re not winning those elections with huge and unassailable margins. (I heard that. Nope, that won’t work, either. That’s just an excuse, and you know it.)
Might wanna get that splinter outta yer eye. It’ll be easier to see things, if’n ya do that, first.
The author of the artiocle posted above illustrates my point for me. As does PJMedia for publishing it on a politically oriented website.
But you can’t see that.
That’s my point.
You are blind, but you claim that you can see.
You don’t know anything at all about morality.
Protecting your own freedom is one thing. That’s a moral behavior. Using, or threatening to use, the force of government in order to coerce others to live as you want them to live …is immoral behavior. Which is what you’re doing, or trying to do. Other people don’t like that idea. Not at all.
The irony is, what you’ve been doing is exactly what your own saviour condemned.
But, you can’t see that.
(*chuckle*)
The idea that Ayn Rand is an example of “absolute, objective, and secular” morality shows the person really hasn’t given the subject much thought. Rand was none of those and her philosophy was naught but a massive case of egomania.
The mere fact that atheists exist and have a morality distinct from god shows the lie that morality requires god.
And that doesn’t even begin to get into the (still) unanswered Euthyphro dilemma (“Is something good because god does it or does god do it because it is good?”) that foisting morality onto god requires.
Morality is a “thing”, and immorality is not a “thing”? Both exist and are defined in relationship to one another; if “God” made “Good”, “he” made Evil”, too. “Whose Immorality is This Anyway?”
Why do you marvel at this? Light is a thing, and darkness is not. Darkness is the absence of light. Likewise, sin is not a thing, but rather an absence of righteousness.
I see it this way: morality is the active force–immorality is just the absense of morality, just as darkness is not a force–just the absense of light.
I’m sure someone else could put it better.
I think you guys missed Turner’s point. Perhaps he was too subtle.
The concept of good has absolutely no meaning unless evil exists. Without evil, good cannot have a definition.
Meanwhile your examples are devoid of meaning. On the surface perhaps they make sense to you, but if you spend more than 3 seconds looking, not so much. What you would call darkness isn’t an abstract notion; it is a lack of photons, yet notice that photons in and of themselves are unchanged. Darkness is a physical concept, not abstract.
Where it concerns abstract concepts like morals or good vs evil etc you have to have an operating opposite to be able to define them; there is no condition of lack of photons. Evil isn’t a lack of goodness. It DEFINES goodness.
Now I realise you christians are taught from a source that apparently freely mixes inappropriate comparisons between physical phenomenae and abstract concepts and considers them deeply moving, is it really necessary to regale us here with that which a reasonably motivated 3rd grader could shoot down?
Turner is and was and remains correct. Learn to read.
Turner offered a short comment–I offered a short comment back. I CAN read. Sheesh! For some reason you like to pick on me.
To address the matter at hand: Is a gun maker guilty of murder because someone uses his gun to murder? Hey! It’s called free choice! God created freedom of action as a good thing, yet evil can arise from that good thing. God is not the direct author of evil; he created the potential for evil when he created free creatures. True love is never coersive. He loves us but we can reject that love. Can’t get any simpler than that. Even a third grader understands that.
We must also ask ourselves, what are the consequences of bad behavior. If there’s a God, there’s a judge. If there’s no God then there’s no judge and no judgment in the afterlife. The human heart craves justice for a reason.
Bingo. And why does the human heart crave other things too, like beauty, symmetry, and kindness?
It would be hard to be objective when it comes to morality issue. And when subjective, it is equally not easy to be rational. How many global conflicts and crimes against humanity involve leaders/people who are not deeply religious?
Better avoid confusing morality with religion. (vzc1943, mtd1943)
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.”
Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=222&division=div1
If moraltity is from God, as God is the source of all morality, then it is a false morality, for the same reason that a morality of Man would also be false. For a morality from God, is choosen, by God, and what is choosen today, could be struck out tommorow, same as it could be if the the source would be Man.
I think Christians have misinterpreted the word of God. God is not the SOURCE of morality, but the greatest AUTHORITY on morality. Who has more experience, with right or wrong, then God? Therefore, God is the teacher, Man the learner, but God is not the source, same as Man is not the source.
Therfore, the religious have no claim, as to being more moral than anyone else. It certainly explains, how it was that athiests, and agnostics, were the ones to first learn, that burning people alive at the stake, was wrong. The religious had no problem with that, I remember.
I do not blema the religious overmuch, they had their reasons. Indeed, they had their MORALITY, which told them, that execution of the wicked was MORAL, and therfore approved by God.
So, perhaps the religious here, could explain that, since they are so moral and all.
It seems, Gods grace is like sunshine, it shines on the wicked and the moral alike.
Babies know the difference between good and evil at six months, study reveals
There ya go! Just pop them babies out and leave them be — well, maybe feed them once in awhile because they apparently aren’t hardwired to feed themselves or change them poopy diapers.
Obama Wants 100,000 American Students to Study in Communist China January 24, 2013
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-wants-100000-american-students-study-communist-china
“The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists–and if it did exist,it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the ase is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same)”
____Ludwig Wittgenstein
Deleting my posts. How typically christian of you. Dish it on heavy, then use the excuse of “abusive language” to edit when you receive it back the same. I’m called a sinning troglodyte and condemned to hell, but a single curse word makes my post abusive. Charlatans.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and disagree with the the author.
The idea that life has value is not divine but rather instinctual. It follows that since most people value their own lives they would want to protect their life by creating/having a society that also values their life. If you have a society where life means little then your own life is less secure as someone may take it on a whim without reprecussion. Imagine a world where you could take the life of someone for cutting you off, because they insulted you, you didn’t get that raise/promotion, etc. and suffer absolutely no consequences aside from maybe blood on your clothes. Additionally, a culture that places little value on their own lives will soon fall to another culture that does since the society that places value upon life will have greater cooperation and cohesion than one that does not. Even cultues that place little value upon the lives of “the other” place value on the lives of their own, Islam is a good example of this type of culture. This is a logical progression that arises from the instinct of self preservation, it’s a “what works” progression as the cultures/societies that placed zero value on life have died out.
As far as placing value on life being of divine origin goes that is all too easily rebutted. That is a faith based conclusion rather than one of logic.
Sure, one doesn’t have to believe in God to accept objective laws of reality: morality, logic, physics, information.
@Soldier76 wrote, “‘Are the commands of god moral because he commands them, or because he is god and would only command moral things?’ The former would indicate that if morality exists because god says it’s good, then he could command you to murder and it would be moral. The latter would indicate that a morality exists outside of and above god and he commands actions from a set of established precepts. If so, his whole existence is subservient to an even higher power….”
This “paradox” is an example of assuming the proof, that morality is independent of God, Who claims ultimate authority.
Consider the first question: “Are the commands of god moral because he commands them?” The God of the Bible claims to be the creator of life and re-creator of life. So His command to kill — not even considering the necessity of it — and His ability to resurrect the person would be a zero-sum matter.
One has to assume God is lying to conclude the command is a net detriment, or “wicked.” As One Who claims the ability to “hit the reset button” and One Who said He set all thing in motion orderly, then correct behavior — morality — is part of that order.
Now, the second question: “Are the commands of god moral because he is god and would only command moral things?” This also assumes God lied about being the creator of reality. If He were such a creator, then laws of correct behavior would mirror God’s pronouncements for how behavior in that reality is most profitable long-term.
One doesn’t have to believe in God to recognize the lasting benefit of objective morality, just as one doesn’t have to believe to use the other laws of reality, which are recognized to best describe reality across a universal scale. But to deny a transcendent, intelligent source for these laws, that established reality to allow for their universal applicability (see Gödel’s theorem), is to leave one appealing to illogical “miracles” such as order is a fundamental substrate to nature.
A good article.
Morality and Ethics. They are concepts and principles that hold families, communities and nations together. As we know men and women make mistakes, are flawed, commit hypocrisy, or violate the trust of others. The argument to remain moral or be ethical comes down to consequences. Now are their immediate consequences for stealing $20 without getting caught. Yes. While you hurt or violated another person by thieft even without getting caught immediately that damage to our limited understanding is not obvious to us most of the time.
When the theift is discovered the individual violated might or might not notice. There is a chain of unintended consequences that will effect you, the theif later. $20 is a petty crime, so small compared to the vastness of the universe. Or even an individual who has vast wealth that had many $20 dollar bills in that wallet. So what? If a person is clever enough, fast enough physically or gained the ability by trust, genius or some mean to have access to the wallet without severe consequence why not take advantage?
It comes down to the ultimate question for mankind?
When I die will I live again? Will I be me? Do I have a future when this mortal life is over?
If the answer is no and I steal $20 which no one discovers ever then I die later without repaying or correcting what I did is there an eternal consequence for me for my thieft?
No. I was $20 richer because I was smart enough to seize an opportunity when it presented itself. No one saw me, it was a small amount, it may have hurt someone, but it wasn’t me. Now that I am dead what does it matter. There are zero consequences for me now since there is no life after death.
But what if I was wrong. What if there is life after death? If I am an eternal, immortal being after this life what are the consequences of my thieft? THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
One of the ten commandments. Also by my thieft it shows I love money more than God or my fellow man. By stealing $20 I have proven I will not follow the principles and laws of God. It was just $20. He is God! Why does He care or it matter that I took such a small amount of money?
I am dead. How can I pay it back? I can’t. Even still whether the damage is great or small there is no way to get back lost opportunities or damaging consequences. What if only good things happened because of the thieft? Am I justified still for stealing $20? No.
Why? God can not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. Why? Because God is just. If he did allow sin, by stealing $20 even in this smallest of degrees, He would no longer be just and cease to be God. Since God will not cease to be God and will be Just then our smallest transgression stealing has eternal consequence.
That is why the existance of God in morality matters. If he does not then lying, stealing, adultery and even murder have no consequences beyond this life. If I am smart enough, lucky enough or fortunate to not get caught by authories in this life then die later in the vastness of billions of years on an insignificant blue speck in space what does it matter? It wouldn’t.
If there is a God, it does matter. So as you look at that $20 bill peaking out of that wallet are you going to trade your soul fir $20?
I have no idea if gods exist or not, and really don’t see how his existence is necessary to allow you and I to tell the difference between good and evil. As a child the adults around me taught me a simple rule for living a good and fruitful life and one that I have to the best of my nature tried to follow.
Do unto others as you would have them due unto you.
Have a nice day.
yeah….. and colonial imperialism works that way too….XDDD………
If there is a God, then God may establish a moral structure and enforce it. This is the case regardless of whether any human accepts the moral code or not. In this case, there is a moral code, and it is both objective and (if God so asserts) universal.
However, any moral code created by humans is subjective and local. This is provable simply by dissent. If I disagree with your code it is subjective (since we disagree). Enforcement is just a power struggle.
However, if I disagree with God’s moral code, I can’t win. Even if 100% of the human race disagreed, God would still win.
Mr. Hudson,
“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things contained in the law, these, although, not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them (Romans 2:14,15).”
this verse says that man, who does not have the law. Know right from wrong because God gave them a conscience. How does this fact, in your opinion, work within your original argument?
There was right and wrong long before any fictitious god said anything. Morality came from animals that lived in groups for survival long before humans were here. It is much easier to survive in groups, and as a member of any group you acted in the best interest of that group or you were scolded or even killed. Dont let your ability to form complex thoughts cause you to be confused. For that is the biggest problem of human animal. Remember in the complexity of thought you fly right by the answers you seek…..because they are simple. Everything man knows all started by the most simple thoughts and observations.
Dwight – Thanks for your response to my question way up yonder. Always enjoy reading what you write.
I know that with every church division and church faction of Christianty they all have their own individual doctrines. However, what I was asked I believe, was how many time the Bible itself has been interpreted and rewritten I supose, in an effort to dumb down the ‘language’ each time as more understandable to the common lay person. Their contention was, that each time its done, it is done so, injecting individual church doctrines into the ‘meanings’ of much of the scriptures and notes. I know that the bible I mostly use, handed down from my great grandfather from Germany, is remarkably different in many respects from say the KJV or NIV or…….
The ‘real’ Zeke
I know a fair amount about the KJV, not much about the others. I know that some think that Wicki is dominated by Commies (or the NRA) but I’m sure that one can learn a lot about the translations here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations I haven’t had time to check it yet, but I know that the most interesting LOCAL translation of the Bible took place back in the 1600′s, when the Rev. John Eliot translated the Bible into Algonquin. Local Indians were given a 5500 acre tract of land, supposedly forever theirs, called Ponkapoag Plantation. They and the Indians on ten or so other such enclaves were referred to a “Praying Indians.” Then King Phillip’s War came in 1675 and things went all to hell.
Thanks Dwight! Durn, you’d sure be a great addition to our morning coffee groups! Betting you could handle the two old country preaches — one a Southern Baptist (87) and one a United Methodist (84). Me, I’m mostly in charge of old war stories and what the depression like and how we transformed the dust bowl desert of NW Oklahoma back into productive farms, etc.
Morality is rooted in the animal kingdom long before humans came along. Religion would have you believe they hold the patton on morality, simply not the case.
Morality built without God was a project of the old Logical Positivists. Max Weber wrote 90 years ago that only a few university professors and the big babies in newspaper editorial offices still believed in the project. He continued that in light of Nietzsche’s anhilating critique of Rationalism, no thinking person believes that Reason can fomr “values”. The key word is “values”. For values are niether “Good” nor “Evil”. Weber tried to understand how religion can form “Values”. Unfortunateyl, his sociology of religion, while worthy, failed in its task.
But, even Max Weber (a self professed religious agnostic) saw the danger of a society that tries to inspire its people the kind of piety, belief, and action that in former times was in the realm of religion. His term theodicy describes the kind of sentiments and belief that traditionally came from religion. In Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the West through most of the 20th Century, secularism has attempted to take the place of religion. This, of course is at the heart of Fascism. Weber’s warnings fell on deaf ears. Today, social workers, activists, government workers try to instill a reverence for “community” (ie, a secular version of a religious parish) and the government in general. It’s failure is not only obvious, but repulsive as well. Niether Nietzsche nor Weber, nor Heidegger could get to the heart of religious belief. Nietzsche believed, at its heart, religious instinct comes from a deep well within our ID. Weber uses the greek word for “Grace” (Charis) to describe religious belief. It can also be translated as Joy. Niether deep abiding Grace or Joy can be bestowed from government social workers or political operatives. Words like “Community” and “Faith Based” are a thin veneer for something that goes much deeper and which transcends the material world.
“Can there be right and wrong without God?”
Yes, there is right and wrong without God. The universe as we know it has progressed from simple to complex over 13 billion years, culminating in human life. Therefore, we objectively label actions that promote or destroy human life good and evil respectively, all without any more subjective a foundation and arbitrary definition than the choice of what image of “God” to believe in. That’s at least as objective and evidence based as any religious definition of morality.
Hi,
You are still making a leap of faith in presuming the value of life.
It is, after all, just another arrangement of stuff.
You are assuming a validity of something.
If we think of time/space and all the events and matter in it as being without direction or design, ie, it all happened by chance – a random event in a random universe – (“it just happened” – which is the underlying assumption of most rational thought in the modern secular west) then there are two problems.
The first is that if it is the case that any order that exists, such as life, occurred spontaneously in randomness, then one is actually accepting that it is not order but simply another random set of events that have occurred by chance, and because we live in this fleeting breath of time, we perceive the sequence of events as order. When in fact, according to this thinking, they are part of the pure randomness of eternity.
However. Then the second problem is encountered. Pure chance, randomness as we perceive it, tends to dissipation. Which ultimately leads to evenness throughout.
A drop of ink in a glass of water tends to dissipate throughout the water. Ink dispersed in a glass of water does not randomly come together as a drop of ink. Or even several drops of ink.
Pure randomness would tend to evenness as all its apparent parts, as all of it, merged with every other part. It would therefore become one unified existence in which there were no differences.
Pure randomness would lead to absolute nothingness as everything would blend with everything else until there was no difference, no potential.
All that we see, experience, know, touch and feel, including our perception of those happenings, is based on difference, potential, separation. All structure in every realm is based on difference such as positive and negative, electrons and protons, attraction, rejection. And all difference implies order because without order, if everything was purely random, there would be complete evenness, which would, in our experience at least, be nothing.
Everything would have subsumed into everything else. In fact that is not really correct because it would not have occurred in the first place.
Random events tend to dispersion. And dispersion tends to complete evenness – stasis. Total silent nothing.
Is that, perhaps, what exists?
I do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, by the way.