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Do Morals Come From God?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
I rather expect that it would be only via specious claims. Theoretically they would have to prove that "god" exists in the first place. If they can do that, I would be willing to listen to their comments about morality originating from such an alleged being.
Dunemeister
Well-Known Member
The argument typically runs like this. Take a fairly uncontroversial moral claim such as R: "Rape is wrong." We say that this is a 'moral' statement. We typically mean by this at least two things. First, we mean that it represents a standard of behavior. The phrase includes some kind of 'ought-ness' (if I can coin an ugly word). That is, the moral claim means something like "You ought not to commit rape."
Of course, there are oughts and then there are oughts. What kind of "ought" is this? Is it a prudential "ought"? That is, is it saying something like "Don't commit rape because, if you do, bad things might happen to you, and it's in your best interests for those bad things not to happen to you"? In other words, R means merely that it's in your best interests to comply with it. It's oughtness, its applicability to you, depends entirely on your own priorities, circumstances, and assessment of your own interests.
If you understand the oughtness this way, you don't really think that R is actually a moral statement. For a statement to be moral, the oughtness needs to be stronger and less dependent on individual circumstances or preferences. That is, it needs to apply to a person even when that person doesn't think so. For instance, Jeffrey Dahmer might have thought that luring, seducing, killing, and then eating a few boys was imprudent as already described. He certainly knew that if he were caught, the law would deal with him severely. Inasmuch as he didn't want to go to jail, he should refrain from that activity or, as he decided, do it carefully. But notoriously, he didn't think that there was anything really morally wrong with what he did, according to interviews with police. Now, there may be such people who regard moral statements as not applying to them, but we generally consider them sociopaths. Almost all people at all times believe that there are at least a few truly moral truths. That is, there are standards of behavior that apply across cultures and times.
IF you believe in such standards, THEN you have to account for BOTH the fact that there are standards of behavior that have this sort of moral force. By virtue of what do these particular standards obtain that kind of force? In other words, how do you deal with the inevitable "Says who?" response of someone who resists the claim that rape is wrong. If your answer is "the state", that begs the question where the state gets the right to proclaim such laws. By virtue of what does the state have the right to impose such laws? If at this point we appeal to might makes right, we've given up on the idea of actual morality. We're back to a prudential law of the jungle.
So if we don't want to devolve to a prudential law of the jungle, and if the legitimacy of the state's power to proclaim such laws is not merely given, we have to wonder where R gets its force from. For we'd actually think it's right even if no state had such a law. Indeed, we'd say that the state SHOULD have such a law.
Ultimately, then, we have to look past humanity to ground the moral force of R. This is where God legitimately fits. We might argue that something else would do, and heck, it just might. But nothing does the trick so well as a personal God. Even better, a personal God who created the world for a particular purpose (or set of purposes) works perfectly, for we can see R as expressing the way the machinery ought to run. (Here the "ought" has the force of "proper functioning", as in "the heart ought to beat 72 times per minute at rest.") That is, intentionality and telos account for the moral force of moral statements quite well, and God provides that intentionality and telos.
This account of course needs a lot of flesh on the bones, but represents the general shape of what I'd take to be an argument that morals come from God.
Of course, there are oughts and then there are oughts. What kind of "ought" is this? Is it a prudential "ought"? That is, is it saying something like "Don't commit rape because, if you do, bad things might happen to you, and it's in your best interests for those bad things not to happen to you"? In other words, R means merely that it's in your best interests to comply with it. It's oughtness, its applicability to you, depends entirely on your own priorities, circumstances, and assessment of your own interests.
If you understand the oughtness this way, you don't really think that R is actually a moral statement. For a statement to be moral, the oughtness needs to be stronger and less dependent on individual circumstances or preferences. That is, it needs to apply to a person even when that person doesn't think so. For instance, Jeffrey Dahmer might have thought that luring, seducing, killing, and then eating a few boys was imprudent as already described. He certainly knew that if he were caught, the law would deal with him severely. Inasmuch as he didn't want to go to jail, he should refrain from that activity or, as he decided, do it carefully. But notoriously, he didn't think that there was anything really morally wrong with what he did, according to interviews with police. Now, there may be such people who regard moral statements as not applying to them, but we generally consider them sociopaths. Almost all people at all times believe that there are at least a few truly moral truths. That is, there are standards of behavior that apply across cultures and times.
IF you believe in such standards, THEN you have to account for BOTH the fact that there are standards of behavior that have this sort of moral force. By virtue of what do these particular standards obtain that kind of force? In other words, how do you deal with the inevitable "Says who?" response of someone who resists the claim that rape is wrong. If your answer is "the state", that begs the question where the state gets the right to proclaim such laws. By virtue of what does the state have the right to impose such laws? If at this point we appeal to might makes right, we've given up on the idea of actual morality. We're back to a prudential law of the jungle.
So if we don't want to devolve to a prudential law of the jungle, and if the legitimacy of the state's power to proclaim such laws is not merely given, we have to wonder where R gets its force from. For we'd actually think it's right even if no state had such a law. Indeed, we'd say that the state SHOULD have such a law.
Ultimately, then, we have to look past humanity to ground the moral force of R. This is where God legitimately fits. We might argue that something else would do, and heck, it just might. But nothing does the trick so well as a personal God. Even better, a personal God who created the world for a particular purpose (or set of purposes) works perfectly, for we can see R as expressing the way the machinery ought to run. (Here the "ought" has the force of "proper functioning", as in "the heart ought to beat 72 times per minute at rest.") That is, intentionality and telos account for the moral force of moral statements quite well, and God provides that intentionality and telos.
This account of course needs a lot of flesh on the bones, but represents the general shape of what I'd take to be an argument that morals come from God.
Kcnorwood
Well-Known Member
I don't think anyone can prove that but they can say that they believe that, which of course are two different things. Like I've said all along it's your parents job to teach thier kids such things.
Morals couldn't just come from God. Atheists have morals. In fact, I have known atheists who have more morals than some of the theists I have known.
I was taught in my anthropology class about how in a tribal way of life that all the people in a society was needed so that everyone would be able to eat. So things such as murder, rape, etc. are less prevalent. (They got this from studying the Bushmen of Africa). Since we all lived once in a tribal situation in our ancestry, then these things would have been passed down from that. In a society like ours, we need each other less, so there are more murders, etc.
Some moral laws come from God, however.
I was taught in my anthropology class about how in a tribal way of life that all the people in a society was needed so that everyone would be able to eat. So things such as murder, rape, etc. are less prevalent. (They got this from studying the Bushmen of Africa). Since we all lived once in a tribal situation in our ancestry, then these things would have been passed down from that. In a society like ours, we need each other less, so there are more murders, etc.
Some moral laws come from God, however.
darkendless
Guardian of Asgaard
They cant prove anything, societies morals were just coined by religion and have evolved slightly over time.
Mr Spinkles
Mr
Many people seem to think that we need to accept a particular religious dogma in order to be moral. Otherwise, it is argued, all morals are relative, rendering us incapable of doing the right thing. Therefore, we must simply have faith that the commandments espoused by holy scriptures or ancient men claiming to speak on behalf of the Creator of the Universe are good, moral commands, even if they seem cruel, unjust, and arbitrary.
In my opinion, morality does not have to be determined by divine authority; nor does that make morality merely subjective.
Morality/ethics, defined as the construction of principles which increase individual and collective happiness and decrease suffering, is an objective enterprise. It is objective because certain courses of action are objectively better at reducing suffering and increasing happiness than others, in spite of the fact that morality varies among cultures.
Defining morality/ethics in this way captures the existence of culturally-transcendent intuitions of right and wrong which are fundamental to human beings as social animals. (For an example of a culturally-transcendent moral intuition, wiki the 'Trolley problem'.) Such a definition also allows us to take a more "scientific" approach to ethics (quotes emphasized): it allows rational, informed, sane scholars to come to a consensus on general principles (e.g. human rights are good, cocaine is bad, the Golden Rule is good) which increase individual/collective happiness, while allowing for exceptions to be made in special circumstances and alterations as knowledge increases.
I would add that such a definition does not deny that human beings have a fundamental dark side as well. While most of us agree stealing is wrong, if we were starving, most of us would give in to the temptation to steal, cheat, or murder in order to feed ourselves. Part of the enterprise of ethics, then, is to provide people with the basic necessities of life so they are not put in these impossible situations, and to rationally set up legal and social institutions which make it disadvantageous to be immoral and advantageous to be moral. There is also probably a part of us all that would derive happiness from inflicting harm on those we perceive as the "other" (the other tribe, the other race, etc.) This is an artifact of our evolutionary heritage, and it is not difficult to see why we will be happier if we restrict this impulse (e.g. through education and culture).
Of course, this is one person's opinion. There is a rich and voluminous tradition of philosophy, from Aristotle to Hume to Kant, which addresses ethics. On the other hand, appeals to divine authority are little help to us, particularly when they constrain our moral reasoning to one particular, unalterable strand of Bronze-Age myth.
Such closed-mindedness leads to what I believe to be indefensible moral claims: that, at one time, it was immoral NOT to collectively throw stones at adulterers or gays until they are dead; that everyone--even selfless, compassionate, good people--who disagrees that certain historical events (e.g. the Resurrection) occurred will be cast into eternal fire, and that this constitutes the ultimate expression of "love"; that we are forgiven for our misdeeds by a human sacrifice which occurred thousands of years ago in an obscure part of the world, rather than by admitting our wrongs and seeking forgiveness from the people whom we have wronged in this life.
Such closed-mindedness is further, in my opinion, the only way to explain the immoral (but tragically well-intentioned) behavior of the pious men and women who stoned adulterers and burned witches; or those who today are more concerned with the well-being of a blastocyst (a cluster of 100 cells from which embryonic stem cells are derived) than the well-being of every burn victim or child in need of an organ transplant; or those who were outraged when the lightning rod was invented, or who today deny their children a blood transfusion or encourage AIDS - riddled Africa not to use condoms, for fear of interfering with what they imagine to be God's plan.
_______
The above was adapted from an essay I wrote for a class
In my opinion, morality does not have to be determined by divine authority; nor does that make morality merely subjective.
Morality/ethics, defined as the construction of principles which increase individual and collective happiness and decrease suffering, is an objective enterprise. It is objective because certain courses of action are objectively better at reducing suffering and increasing happiness than others, in spite of the fact that morality varies among cultures.
Defining morality/ethics in this way captures the existence of culturally-transcendent intuitions of right and wrong which are fundamental to human beings as social animals. (For an example of a culturally-transcendent moral intuition, wiki the 'Trolley problem'.) Such a definition also allows us to take a more "scientific" approach to ethics (quotes emphasized): it allows rational, informed, sane scholars to come to a consensus on general principles (e.g. human rights are good, cocaine is bad, the Golden Rule is good) which increase individual/collective happiness, while allowing for exceptions to be made in special circumstances and alterations as knowledge increases.
I would add that such a definition does not deny that human beings have a fundamental dark side as well. While most of us agree stealing is wrong, if we were starving, most of us would give in to the temptation to steal, cheat, or murder in order to feed ourselves. Part of the enterprise of ethics, then, is to provide people with the basic necessities of life so they are not put in these impossible situations, and to rationally set up legal and social institutions which make it disadvantageous to be immoral and advantageous to be moral. There is also probably a part of us all that would derive happiness from inflicting harm on those we perceive as the "other" (the other tribe, the other race, etc.) This is an artifact of our evolutionary heritage, and it is not difficult to see why we will be happier if we restrict this impulse (e.g. through education and culture).
Of course, this is one person's opinion. There is a rich and voluminous tradition of philosophy, from Aristotle to Hume to Kant, which addresses ethics. On the other hand, appeals to divine authority are little help to us, particularly when they constrain our moral reasoning to one particular, unalterable strand of Bronze-Age myth.
Such closed-mindedness leads to what I believe to be indefensible moral claims: that, at one time, it was immoral NOT to collectively throw stones at adulterers or gays until they are dead; that everyone--even selfless, compassionate, good people--who disagrees that certain historical events (e.g. the Resurrection) occurred will be cast into eternal fire, and that this constitutes the ultimate expression of "love"; that we are forgiven for our misdeeds by a human sacrifice which occurred thousands of years ago in an obscure part of the world, rather than by admitting our wrongs and seeking forgiveness from the people whom we have wronged in this life.
Such closed-mindedness is further, in my opinion, the only way to explain the immoral (but tragically well-intentioned) behavior of the pious men and women who stoned adulterers and burned witches; or those who today are more concerned with the well-being of a blastocyst (a cluster of 100 cells from which embryonic stem cells are derived) than the well-being of every burn victim or child in need of an organ transplant; or those who were outraged when the lightning rod was invented, or who today deny their children a blood transfusion or encourage AIDS - riddled Africa not to use condoms, for fear of interfering with what they imagine to be God's plan.
_______
The above was adapted from an essay I wrote for a class
Dunemeister
Well-Known Member
That's a different issue. The issue in this thread is what makes a moral statement moral, and is it possible to account for morality apart from God. Atheists may have morals, but I'd argue that it's not possible to account for morality from a naturalistic point of view.
mohammed_beiruti
Active Member
television has a manual helping you to use it.
human also has a manual helping you to avoid damaging it and to use it in right way.
The creator said , don't kill . don't lie , don't steal , don't commit adultery....etc
is there a reason for putting this manual which has these instruction?
does the television know better than engineer ?:sad:
darkendless
Guardian of Asgaard
Did the creator say that or did people say it? How did the creator say such a thing when these morals likely existed before Islam?
The television isn't smarter than engineers, the people on it may be though, im an engineer (almost)
cardero
Citizen Mod
Yes but would use a manual from a 1968 Zenith 24" television if you possessed a 2008 36" Sony High Definition television?
If you wanted to be updated and informed on the latest news, would you read today's paper or one printed and published from 1858?
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Mr Spinkles
Mr
That's a good distinction. As far as your argument that it's not possible to account for morality from a naturalistic point of view, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the following items:Dunemeister said:
- Psychopathy - the psychological temperament associated with people who see nothing wrong with murder, rape, etc., is strongly correlated with physical defects of the brain ( Sabbatini, RME: The Psychopath's Brain. Tormented Souls, Diseased Brains )
- The ethics that cross all human cultures are ones such as disgust of incest, which has obvious evolutionary/genetic advantages
- Many social mammals, especially chimps and our other close cousins, exhibit a sense of fairness, justice, loyalty, etc. that we associate with ethical behavior (e.g. one chimp will risk its life to save another drowning chimp)
- Recent studies on such brain structures as mirror neurons indicate that we tend to experience things that we infer other people to be having
mohammed_beiruti
Active Member
Do you mean that the creator creat the creatures, then the creatures made thier manual?
but the same people on earth are various in thier ethics,
some people consider that killing thier children as a sacrifice for gods is a good thing!, others consider it not.
are all people agreeing on the same ethics?
read surah 55 (Allah) Most Gracious 1-4
1. ((Allah)) Most Gracious!
2. It is He Who has taught the Qur'an.
3. He has created man:
4. He has taught him speech (and intelligence).
pay attention for the sequence of verses!
Question : engineer create a television first then put a manual(diagram), or put a manual(diagram) then create his television?
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mohammed_beiruti
Active Member
Our Lord said in Qura'an surah 30:30 The Romans
30 So set thy purpose (O Muhammad) for religion as a man by nature upright - the nature (framed) of Allah, in which He hath created man. There is no altering (the laws of) Allah's creation. That is the right religion, but most men know not -
there is no update or altrering on human creation
cardero
Citizen Mod
But there is an updating and altering of human behavior. You may correct me if I am mistaken but you seem to believe that morality has been written on the hearts of men but you fail to recognize that human nature (creation) does not allow us to take our hearts out to reference it.
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Rolling_Stone
Well-Known Member
Why should they have to? This seems to me to be a restatement of the Euthyphro dilemma which can be shown to presuppose a finite god and therefore irrelevant to the concept of an infinite God.
mohammed_beiruti
Active Member
Our Lord said in surah 4:118-119 the woman
118. God did curse him("satan"), but he said: "I will take of Thy servants a portion Marked off;
119. "I will mislead them, and I will create in them false desires; I will order them to slit the ears of cattle, and to deface the (fair) nature created by God." Whoever, forsaking God, takes satan for a friend, hath of a surety suffered a loss that is manifest.
The behavior could be changed by the humans but the law remain the same no updating, no altering .
satan want us to update and change our behaviors, and order us to do things against our pure nature
example:
presume that you brought a child, and you made him drink "whiskey" , what is the expression would apear on his face ?
would he say Yum Yum? or Yaaaaaaaaaaakh:sad4:
did you undersatnd what i mean ?