Why does my God allow children to die? Is he evil?

[AmbiguousGuy]

1. God is still the objective source for any possible moral truth even if no one on earth had any idea what they were. In the same way the Pluto existed objectively before anyone was aware of it.

So God is of no use to us in moral matters... as many of us have been trying to help you understand all along.

I mean, unless you want to accept some Ayatollah as the Moral Mouthpiece for God, you have no way to know what God thinks about this or that moral question.

2. His morality cannot be judged by created or evolved people because they have no criteria which supersede him.

How could people judge God's morality? They can't even know what it is.

I hated divine command theory because it seemed to conveniently but it is so true I had to adopt it.

Yeah, I hated the idea that God had chosen me to explain His Moral Will to everyone on earth... but I had to accept it.

If you want to know what God really thinks, you are welcome to ask me.

In summary God's moral code is as absolute and objective as anything possibly could be.

So long as I am the interpreter of God's moral code -- and not you -- then I agree with you. Everyone really should bow before me when I explain the Moral Will of God.

 

[1robin]

A consistent theme we read in the posts of conservative Christians in this thread and elsewhere is the alleged role of evolutionary theory as a facilitator of racist and fascist ideologies. If this were indeed the case, it would seem anomalous to say the least that the world's most ardent racists have also been among the most outspoken critics of evolution:

I can say "enslave everyone, God wills it" but what I can't do is show that to be true from God's word. I can say enslave nature because evolution justifies it and you cannot show any objective facts in evolution that prove that wrong. I would not draw any certainties between racists adoption or rejection of evolution in general. Racists can hate evolution for other reasons, they can even adopt it for other reasons. I would not even know how to check into that to an extent a reliable conclusion could be justified. This is some kind of false test that is so ambiguous as to be meaningless. The issue is can racism be justified by evolution and or by Christianity. I say yes to the former and emphatically no to the latter.

We might also note that in the USA evolution has made least headway in the states which most strongly opposed desegregation.

Since I live in a state that is famous for that I will comment. The democrats in this state at the time were two things. Outwardly religious and racists to a great extent. They opposed evolution of religious grounds not racial grounds. It makes no sense that anyone would oppose evolution because of a desire to consider nature unequal. Evolution literally makes every aspect of nature unequal. Racism is the worst possible motivation imaginable to oppose evolution. It's like opposing math because you hate numbers.

Why, if evolutionary theory does indeed underpin racism, have racists persistently rejected it and opposed its teaching in their schools?

I do not think they have in general. You need far more stats to develop that. I do think fundamental people are more prone to being racists and religious. When I say religious I do not mean born again Christians. The more fundamental, prideful, and traditional a group is the more likely it is to resist racial change and changes as shocking and unproven as that we are simply primates. I think your getting an association confused with a cause.

(PS: purists may rightly say this is off-topic; but this thread has wandered so far in its 290 pages that my conscience is untroubled by the digression.)

I am not saying so. I only wish relevant and applicable issues be discussed no matter what type.

The point here is whether evolution an or Christianity can reasonably be used to justify racism. I think the answer is about as clear as possible and your associations are only unnecessarily clouding things. If I was to be tasked with defending racism evolution would be my sole source, if attacking it the bible would be my sole source.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Morality is not true because picked a selection of actions from a list and pronounced them good. God did not choose morality God is morality, he is the locus of moral truth. Moral truths are part of his eternal nature and mot selected from some external source. In the same way that circles are objective properties of circles and 90 degree angles of squares. Moral truths are an inherent component of an omnipotent and eternal being. At no time, no place, and to no one have they not been true. If that is not objective then the term has no meaning.

Now if God did not exists morality can only be relative, subjective, and ambiguous, it can literally be anything. But with God no fact is more absolute, transcendent, and objective. This Euthyphro dilemma is flawed form it's premise onward.



Well hat did not take long. Within a paragraph of insisting on only a morally ontological point the non-theist will launch into pure epistemology. It is like an unstoppable force. I will not bite but I will at least explain why for this first time.

1. God is still the objective source for any possible moral truth even if no one on earth had any idea what they were. In the same way the Pluto existed objectively before anyone was aware of it.
2. His morality cannot be judged by created or evolved people because they have no criteria which supersede him. I hated divine command theory because it seemed to conveniently but it is so true I had to adopt it. If a God exists whatever he did is by necessity right. He is the judge, we have no standards possible to condemn him objectively. I think Allah stinks but I can only say we are not compatible. I have no basis available to declare him wrong. You will I am sure insist otherwise based on emotion but you cannot supply a single meaningful methodology by which you could condemn any omnipotent beings actions objective because they do not exist anymore than round squares.
3. If you think the Jews (specifically their God given laws) wrong then you MUST have a higher standard by which you can judge them. Human intuition and opinion (especially non-God given) is so obviously corrupt and insufficient as to not have any application at all. Whether God is right or wrong can not be determined by human preference and reason.
4. God's perfect moral character is not defined by Levitical law. Levitical law in many cases is said to be the direct result of human weakness and rebellion. For instance divorce and servitude are hated by God but passively allowed as cultural necessities. I have written extensively on both, for example it laws concerning servitude (applying slavery with it's 19th century baggage is not valid) were the most benevolent of any known ANE code.


In summary God's moral code is as absolute and objective as anything possibly could be. There exists no criteria by which to judge the author of moral criteria and truth. The epistemological issues concerning individual Jews do not condemn God and at best are a pale reflection of his moral perfection. Even if you could find some actual deficiency with God based morals there are infinitely more without God as a foundation. A theist has everything available to him that you do plus the possibility of a God given conscience and objective foundations. It is a vast net gain in every category.

First of all, I'm not a "non-theist". Notice the purple of my username and the name of my religion. Now don't call me an atheist again unless I say I am. At least get basic facts correct, which I know is a very hard thing for you but you can try.

You're just doing all you can to avoid the fact that you have no evidence for any of your claims outside of a book of mythology that was written centuries ago. There is no morality that is not man-made. If there was an objective morality, it would be easy for us to agree on it because it would be evident for all to see as it would be fact based. However, that's not true. What you call "objective morality" is just the moral code that you subjectively agree on that you've distilled from an ancient book of mythology.

Now your idea that your god is moral truth itself is silly, since the stories about your god have it acting in the most abhorrent ways. (Actually it's not "your idea" since you're just ripping off William Lane Craig's garbage.) Apparently you think it's fine and dandy to kill babies since your god had no problems doing so. He didn't have a problem with genocide and slavery, either. This is what you want to call the "locus of moral truth"? I say that's the behavior of a psychopathic narcissistic tyrant. If someone believed that, we'd think they were horrible monsters. But because your god behaves like that in your myths, you give it a pass?

I can judge your god just like I can judge a fictional character in a novel. There are stories about him, right? So that means he has a personality and behavior that I can judge. Your god isn't exempt. From what we do know about your god based on the stories about it, we can safely say that secular morality is much better than theistic morality. Thank the gods that our laws aren't completely based on some "holy book". I'd much prefer not to live in a genocidal theocratic dictatorship.

 

[1robin]

So God is of no use to us in moral matters... as many of us have been trying to help you understand all along.

I mean, unless you want to accept some Ayatollah as the Moral Mouthpiece for God, you have no way to know what God thinks about this or that moral question.

You have every qualifications necessary for modern US journalism. The willingness and even the desire to misrepresent, misapply, and mischaracterize any statement for the apparent purpose of antagonism and exasperation. You know very well my statement concerned what was still true even at the most remote extreme. Why did you take the very end of the possible spectrum and equate it to a norm? I said even if no one on earth was aware of it God is still the only source of objective moral truth. Of course we can and are aware of it and that is one of histories greatest themes. So your norm isn't a norm, nor applicable, reasonable, or productive. I won't bother with it further.

How could people judge God's morality? They can't even know what it is.

I see we have a claim to knowledge. Proof is now your burden. Good luck.

Yeah, I hated the idea that God had chosen me to explain His Moral Will to everyone on earth... but I had to accept it.

This feigned sincerity is extremely unattractive.

If you want to know what God really thinks, you are welcome to ask me.

If I had any clue or hint you might know I would. get nailed to a cross and come back and then I may re-evaluate that.

So long as I am the interpreter of God's moral code -- and not you -- then I agree with you. Everyone really should bow before me when I explain the Moral Will of God.

This arrogance and insincerity is getting close to my leaving you to it again for a while.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

This arrogance and insincerity is getting close to my leaving you to it again for a while.

He's mocking you, so you're really calling yourself "arrogant" and "insincere". :biglaugh:

 

[1robin]

First of all, I'm not a "non-theist". Notice the purple of my username and the name of my religion. Now don't call me an atheist again unless I say I am. At least get basic facts correct, which I know is a very hard thing for you but you can try.

Well Ica n see right off there is no truth to the adage that a lack of relationship with our creator causes an inherent hostility at all. No generalized frustration with relativity apparent here. I will be more than happy to admit mistakes when pointed out. You will find demanding things, making insults, and personal commentaries will not have any effect on me other than to terminate the discussion. I will ignore this as my faith requires and refer to you by the strange title you have in your description but I would not make it a habit and expect a continued debate.

You're just doing all you can to avoid the fact that you have no evidence for any of your claims outside of a book of mythology that was written centuries ago. There is no morality that is not man-made. If there was an objective morality, it would be easy for us to agree on it because it would be evident for all to see as it would be fact based. However, that's not true. What you call "objective morality" is just the moral code that you subjectively agree on that you've distilled from an ancient book of mythology.

My claims do not depend on evidence (of which there are mountains of anyway) no figure in ancient history is as textually attested as Christ, no text is even in the same textual reliability realm as the bible of any type in ancient history. I have all the evidence I could possibly desire but need none of it here. My claim is a propositional deduction. If X then Y. If an objective moral standard exists then God exists (or some similar being). If God exists objective moral standards exist. There is no necessity for evidence concerning a logical deduction from what is necessarily true of concepts. I have no idea what would motivate a person to prefer to hold with a being that he most theological authoritative text in human history has loosing everything and being destroyed but if Satan exists as the supreme being my claims would be true of him. I imagine his morality would be what most would call insanity and change constantly but if he was the moral author of the universe he would be right. Fortunately there is no evidence he is right nor supreme and so that would be a wasted argument. Again if a optimal being exist objective morals exist.

Now your idea that your god is moral truth itself is silly, since the stories about your god have it acting in the most abhorrent ways. (Actually it's not "your idea" since you're just ripping off William Lane Craig's garbage.) Apparently you think it's fine and dandy to kill babies since your god had no problems doing so. He didn't have a problem with genocide and slavery, either. This is what you want to call the "locus of moral truth"? I say that's the behavior of a psychopathic narcissistic tyrant. If someone believed that, we'd think they were horrible monsters. But because your god behaves like that in your myths, you give it a pass?

I would expect if the bible was correct a Satanist to consider God's moral bad. It is kind of an inherent necessity. However this is really irrelevant since as a flawed creation as we all are and not the moral author of the universe your views by necessity cannot be used to judge God objectively. At best a human can deny a God's compatibility with his own corrupt sense of morality. I can say for example that Allah and Satan are not compatible with my morality built since I am not God and not eh arbiter of moral truth if they exist I can't say they are objectively wrong. Have you ever studied ethics, divine command, and moral theory? You seem to not be understanding what is involved here. Your opinion about the being more associated with love and goodness than any other in history has no meaningful relevance to anything involved in determining moral ontological issues. I do not have to show your claims faulty because they have no impact.

I can judge your god just like I can judge a fictional character in a novel. There are stories about him, right? So that means he has a personality and behavior that I can judge. Your god isn't exempt. From what we do know about your god based on the stories about it, we can safely say that secular morality is much better than theistic morality. Thank the gods that our laws aren't completely based on some "holy book". I'd much prefer not to live in a genocidal theocratic dictatorship.

No you can't. A fictional character in a novel is normally not the moral foundation of reality and the arbiter of all moral truth. It is not whether you are rational, insane, good, bad, indifferent or coherent. It is that your moral opinions have no relevance. It is an infinitely greater disparity than an ant questioning Newton about calculus. You completely lack a standard by which God is bound because it does not and cannot exist and God remain God. God is the highest court possible and if he is God his judgments have no judge and even if they did we would not be it. We can only accept or reject we cannot approve or condemn, there is no sufficient frame or reference to allow it.

I do not think you are getting this so let me give an example.

If God said it is right and good to destroy all life in the universe on what basis can Frankenstein PROVE he was wrong? Keep in mind I am not suggesting he would. In fact he created all life and has saved all human lives if they are willing to accept it. I created a hyperbolic absurdity to illustrate the complete impotence you have to allow condemnation of God on any basis. Good luck, I can't make it any easier.

 

[1robin]

He's mocking you, so you're really calling yourself "arrogant" and "insincere". :biglaugh:

I know him quite a bit better than you, judging by this forum so your judgment here is no more relevant than in the other post. This was also a meaningless waste of your and what is infinitely worse, my time. Try and stick to the subject and our discussions please.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

He's mocking you, so you're really calling yourself "arrogant" and "insincere". :biglaugh:

I'm not mocking. I'm mirroring.

And I'm not fat. I'm stout.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

You have every qualifications necessary for modern US journalism. The willingness and even the desire to misrepresent, misapply, and mischaracterize any statement for the apparent purpose of antagonism and exasperation.

My. You Christians so enjoy demonstrating the love of Jesus in your interactions with others.

You know very well my statement concerned what was still true even at the most remote extreme.

Actually I have no idea what you are talking about. You use language in ways which are unfamiliar to me.

Why did you take the very end of the possible spectrum and equate it to a norm?

Yeah. Unfamiliar ways.

I said even if no one on earth was aware of it God is still the only source of objective moral truth.

May I make the same small suggestion which I've made to you in the past? English punctuation is really easy to learn. If you are going to come here and fight over truth using written English, you could improve your performance immeasurably by picking up a copy of The Elements of Style... a thin book which covers so much.

Your sentence above screams for a simple comma between 'it' and 'God'. Without that comma, a reader trips. Seriously. Without the comma, I am forced to go back and re-read, trying to figure out what you might be saying.

Here's a simple rule: When you begin a sentence with 'if, when, even if' and other such conditionals, you will always need a comma at the end of the clause.

If it rains, I will get wet.
When she kisses me, my legs go wobbly.
After playing with the dog, I wash my hands.

Can't you please love us enough to review the more basic rules of grammar, 1robin? Trust me when I say that the exercise will also help your thinking. We can only think as well as we can write.

(The preceding was brought to you by the Prophet AG, speaking Absolute Truth on behalf of God Himself.)

If I had any clue or hint you might know I would.

See what I mean? It's an incoherent sentence. One's first impluse is to pause after 'hint', but upon closer study, I'm guessing that you mean the comma after 'know'.

If I had a clue or hint, you might know I would.
If I had a clue or hint you might know, I would.

See? I am ambiguous on purpose. Please don't be ambiguous accidentally.

That's an actual breach of God's Moral Law.

 

[johnhanks]

I made the distinction, I am certainly not ignoring it. Going way back to the Greeks and the Roman's (mallum in se / prohibitum concepts) morality has two components but one more associated with the term that the other. It can mean actions against a human derived ethical system. This is all that is available without God and is insufficient for justice and truth. The other is it's classic interpretation concerning acts against objective good or evil. This is what people think of when morality is mentioned most of the time and only available if God exists. I can get extremely technical and semantic about the two if you want but since I thought you understood the difference I was hoping to avoid doing so.

You are still referring to a different distinction, that between ethics and morals. I was referring to a more fundamental distinction - between morality as a property of human brains that leads them to make right/wrong distinctions, and morality as the specific actions prescribed or proscribed by a given society. If an analogy helps, it's like the distinction between the human propensity to devise competitive sports, and the codified laws of cricket.

It never fails. If you will review you will find no matter how emphatically I make the ontological nature of my claims and resist the epistemological aspect I only get back the latter. You just can't stop it. They are two distinct issues. The fact most people apprehend an objective moral realm is great evidence there is one. Just as getting 2 + 2 wrong does not invalidate objective mathematics getting morals wrong does not discount moral truth. If everyone perceived that Pluto existed but 20% thought it square the worst possible conclusion is that it does not exist. Epistemology has no application or effect on foundations. If God exists moral truths exist even if everyone did the opposite.

If.

It is not my opinion it is his own words.

We are talking about the words of a man to whom sincerity and conviction were alien concepts, and intellectual inquiry an effete irrelevance.

Just like evolution Hitler used religion as an excuse to do as he wished.

Precisely.

 

[1robin]

My. You Christians so enjoy demonstrating the love of Jesus in your interactions with others.

Sure do that is why we are the most generous demographic on earth and so many hospitals and public school systems exist. We are also called to tell the truth and this is where my comments come in.

Actually I have no idea what you are talking about. You use language in ways which are unfamiliar to me.

Then there is no point to a debate is there since you cannot understand me or misrepresent me when you can?

 

[johnhanks]

Racists can hate evolution for other reasons, they can even adopt it for other reasons. I would not even know how to check into that to an extent a reliable conclusion could be justified. This is some kind of false test that is so ambiguous as to be meaningless. The issue is can racism be justified by evolution and or by Christianity. I say yes to the former and emphatically no to the latter.

The fact remains that if evolutionary theory provides a justification for racism we should see a positive correlation between prevalence of racist views and acceptance of evolution. In fact the correlation we see is overwhelmingly negative.

It makes no sense that anyone would oppose evolution because of a desire to consider nature unequal. Evolution literally makes every aspect of nature unequal.

Evolution also shows that all humans share a recent common ancestor - anathema to the racist. And how, exactly, does evolution create inequalities in nature? Differential mortality and natality would be facts of life even if the theory of evolution had never been proposed.

I think your getting an association confused with a cause.

Correlation and causation can be difficult to unpick, I agree; but it remains the case that if you are right and the ToE justifies a racist worldview, the vigorous opposition to evolution in apartheid South Africa and organisations like the KKK is anomalous to say the least.

If I was to be tasked with defending racism evolution would be my sole source, if attacking it the bible would be my sole source.

Then you are more blinkered than I had imagined. Evolutionary theory is as far from the essentialist, typological thinking that characterises racism as it is possible to get. The "righteous us - evil them" rhetoric of the Old Testament, on the other hand...

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Sure do that is why we are the most generous demographic on earth and so many hospitals and public school systems exist. We are also called to tell the truth and this is where my comments come in.

Lots of people try to excuse their personal insults by calling them 'truth.' I consider that behavior to be a sign of a rather primitive morality.

Then there is no point to a debate is there since you cannot understand me or misrepresent me when you can?

I don't think of myself as debating you most of the time. (That would require you to engage my arguments in a relevant way.) No, I'm just just shining a light on the false information and confused argumentation which some posters write here.

Often unintelligibly.

 

[Falvlun]

God did not make all the rules. God is the rule in many cases. God did not chose to make murder wrong, the fact murder is wrong is a property of his nature. God did not invent morality, he is the locus of morality. He chose the purpose for creation but that purpose came with necessities. For example love cannot be love without freewill any more than a square can have curved sides.

When I came into this discussion speaking of the rules that God created, I wasn't talking about morality.

Here is my quote:

God made those rules. Nobody and nothing constrained God into making it a rule that the sin of two people MUST bring death and suffering. God chose that. He also, incidentally, chose for the punishment for the sins of two people to extend to all of humanity and life on Earth. He also decided that Satan could have dominion over the Earth for now, as you say. Nobody forced God to do this. He chose it. Kinda strange, huh?

I don't think that banishing all of humanity from the Garden of Eden, and cursing the Earth for all of humanity, is a logical (or moral) necessity in response to the disobedience of two people. Banishment and cursing wasn't necessary at all. Christians tend to like parent metaphors for God. Parents generally do not curse and banish their children with their first act of defiance. Nor do they extend the punishment to their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, etc.

Some other rules?
Making it impossible for humans to repay their mistakes.

Considering a normal person just as bad as Hitler.

Making the punishment for imperfection infinite (and depending upon your version, infinitely cruel.)

Expecting perfection in the first place. We are not God, so why does he expect us to act like we are?

Giving Satan dominion over the Earth.

Giving humans a sinful nature, rather than a neutral one.

Giving us free-will, but with-holding crucial information that would allow us to make an informed decision.

All of these were choices. They are not simply "Murder is bad." And there really is no logical leap from "Murder is bad" or "Humans must have free-will" to "Therefore, I will curse all of humanity."

 

[Falvlun]

Did Adam have free-will?

Yes.

He lived in the Garden of Eden. No suffering. Adam also knew God. He was able to talk to God. This did not curtail his ability to choose, did it?

No, I never suggested it did. I do not understand the point. He could have reclaimed faithful or he could have messed up. he did the latter. Also the Adam story may very well be an analogy or partially so. For stories before the historical period I do not draw concrete conclusions about context.

The point was that Adam lived in a state essentially devoid of suffering. It is often claimed that suffering is necessary for free-will.

Thus, the Garden of Eden could have been a template of a suffering-free-world in which free-will is still possible. This is something that many Christian apologeticists claim is impossible.

Even if you take this allegorically (no real Adam or Garden of Eden) you are still left with one of two choices:
1. The world started out without suffering. If so, then it is possible to have free-will without suffering.

2. The world started out with suffering (because free-will requires it). However, if you choose 2, then this means that humans (and their sins) are not responsible for the suffering in the world, and that would be a pretty big blow to a main theme in Christianity, as well as PoE apologetics.

 

[SkepticThinker]

That was not really a challenge. I see none here. It is an obvious advantage to have the truth even if some ignore it than to forever be guessing at it because it does not exist objectively. It is a net good to know that murder is wrong even if others choose to disregard it. For one thing people with moral clarity can resist with sufficient justifications of those who do ignore the truth. People disagree about historical events. Does this mean that either no history is true or the historical truth is irrelevant? Are you suggesting that only concepts with perfect agreement are based on truth or can be? What is the point here.

The point is that your belief that your god wrote morality on our hearts doesn't make much sense and doesn't match with what we observe in reality.

If only the bible is used by an alien species they would expect to find a common core to human morality and an inconsistent adherence to it. That is exactly what they would find. I do not claim this fact is all that convincing as a faith argument just that it is another factor that is perfectly consistent with it. Are you merely saying it is not that persuasive?

Huh?

It hasn't. On general people are the same everywhere you go. As a Navy vet I have been around enough to know. IOW murder, stealing, rape, etc.. are almost universally condemned. That reminds me of something.

I just explained how it has.

For some bizarre reasons you said anything that occurred in nature justified human's practicing it. What about forced copulation as it exists in many species?

You should probably go re-read that.

People being given a conscience will almost always agree that murder is wrong, being also selfish and flawed they will disagree about what killings are justifiable. This is exactly what the bible predicts. This a very generalized parallel.

Wow, the Bible predicts something that's easily observable: That some people will do the right thing and some won't. Amazing. Or not so much.

The reason people disagree about what killings are justifiable is because there isn't always a clear-cut black and white answer, as you seem to think. You have to put some thought into some things, like in the exercises I provided a while back. And we still may not be able to come up with the perfect answer.

And what of the people who don't have a conscience or are incapable of feeling remorse or telling right from wrong? Did your god forget to give write his morality on their hearts?

Almost every culture has a belief in the original good of things and an idea that something went terribly wrong and needs to be rectified to restore moral sanity.

I don't know about that.

Servitude can be moral. Your clapping a label with 20th century baggage onto a practice held in a place 3000 years ago and had radically different circumstances has been dealt with. Let me clarify a bit here. Even though many arrived at another conclusion validated by the bible but motivated by greed truly Christian view is that chattel slavery is objectively wrong. That is why Christians could tell other Christians they were wrong about it. It is because it contains an actual objective standard that what is right can be justified as existing absolutely.

And here we go again where you're trying to justify slavery because god seemed to think it was a-ok in the Bible.

What you're telling me is that there is a context in which slavery is morally right. What's more RELATIVE than that?

With evolution I can easily make a better case for slavery than against it but regardless nothing beyond my or your opinion exists to settle the matter.

No you can't but what does that have to do with it?

But the ways in which we evolved as social creatures give us very good reason to want to help our fellow man; because it's advantageous to not only them but to ourselves to do so.

There are no evolutionary ten commandments backed up by a moral law giver. Even if Christianity was split down the middle with God there does exist a moral truth, without him there is not. With God I can say you or even another Christian is absolutely wrong and have the potentiality of being right in a perfect sense, without him I can disagree but never know who is right because moral right no longer exists as a category of truth.

A bunch of commandments that hardly speak to morality at all or that condemn us for thought crimes. Where are the commandments against raping people, abusing children, and slavery?


What is the morally right thing to do in the following scenario:

There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. Unfortunately, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You do not have the ability to operate the lever in a way that would cause the trolley to derail without loss of life (for example, holding the lever in an intermediate position so that the trolley goes between the two sets of tracks, or pulling the lever after the front wheels pass the switch, but before the rear wheels do). You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?
Trolley problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[SkepticThinker]

Objectivity means to be independent of opinion. It was required of them even if they did not agree if God exists. This is an example of what lacking moral foundations produces. Popular opinion or might makes right. let me quickly point out just a few of the problems.

...

Again, "might makes right" is YOUR belief. With your god being the mightiest and therefore the rightest.

 

[SkepticThinker]

1. God is still the objective source for any possible moral truth even if no one on earth had any idea what they were. In the same way the Pluto existed objectively before anyone was aware of it.
2. His morality cannot be judged by created or evolved people because they have no criteria which supersede him. I hated divine command theory because it seemed to conveniently but it is so true I had to adopt it. If a God exists whatever he did is by necessity right. He is the judge, we have no standards possible to condemn him objectively. I think Allah stinks but I can only say we are not compatible. I have no basis available to declare him wrong. You will I am sure insist otherwise based on emotion but you cannot supply a single meaningful methodology by which you could condemn any omnipotent beings actions objective because they do not exist anymore than round squares.
3. If you think the Jews (specifically their God given laws) wrong then you MUST have a higher standard by which you can judge them. Human intuition and opinion (especially non-God given) is so obviously corrupt and insufficient as to not have any application at all. Whether God is right or wrong can not be determined by human preference and reason.
4. God's perfect moral character is not defined by Levitical law. Levitical law in many cases is said to be the direct result of human weakness and rebellion. For instance divorce and servitude are hated by God but passively allowed as cultural necessities. I have written extensively on both, for example it laws concerning servitude (applying slavery with it's 19th century baggage is not valid) were the most benevolent of any known ANE code.

And you know this, how?

 

[SkepticThinker]

First of all, I'm not a "non-theist". Notice the purple of my username and the name of my religion. Now don't call me an atheist again unless I say I am. At least get basic facts correct, which I know is a very hard thing for you but you can try.

You're just doing all you can to avoid the fact that you have no evidence for any of your claims outside of a book of mythology that was written centuries ago. There is no morality that is not man-made. If there was an objective morality, it would be easy for us to agree on it because it would be evident for all to see as it would be fact based. However, that's not true. What you call "objective morality" is just the moral code that you subjectively agree on that you've distilled from an ancient book of mythology.

Now your idea that your god is moral truth itself is silly, since the stories about your god have it acting in the most abhorrent ways. (Actually it's not "your idea" since you're just ripping off William Lane Craig's garbage.) Apparently you think it's fine and dandy to kill babies since your god had no problems doing so. He didn't have a problem with genocide and slavery, either. This is what you want to call the "locus of moral truth"? I say that's the behavior of a psychopathic narcissistic tyrant. If someone believed that, we'd think they were horrible monsters. But because your god behaves like that in your myths, you give it a pass?

I can judge your god just like I can judge a fictional character in a novel. There are stories about him, right? So that means he has a personality and behavior that I can judge. Your god isn't exempt. From what we do know about your god based on the stories about it, we can safely say that secular morality is much better than theistic morality. Thank the gods that our laws aren't completely based on some "holy book". I'd much prefer not to live in a genocidal theocratic dictatorship.

:clap:clap:clap

 

[1robin]

When I came into this discussion speaking of the rules that God created, I wasn't talking about morality.

A rule God made is by necessity a moral issue.

Here is my quote:


I don't think that banishing all of humanity from the Garden of Eden, and cursing the Earth for all of humanity, is a logical (or moral) necessity in response to the disobedience of two people. Banishment and cursing wasn't necessary at all. Christians tend to like parent metaphors for God. Parents generally do not curse and banish their children with their first act of defiance. Nor do they extend the punishment to their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, etc.

1. I do not know how anyone can know if that story was intended to be literal to begin with.
2. If we rebel we no longer can be in harmony with God and he cannot dwell with us eternally and remain God. God must put an end to rebellion, he cannot allow it to perpetuate forever, that was the first necessity in the road back.
3. I think it is analogous to consequence in general. The worst thing you can do to a kid is not discipline them, the same is true with God. No one would believe sin was wrong if it it did not cause suffering.
4. If God exists the worst possible critic would be those he kicked out of the garden because they had darkened their minds through rebellion. The same as a punished child is about the worst judge of parenting possible.

Some other rules?
Making it impossible for humans to repay their mistakes.

That is a logical necessity. Since our wrongs cause ripple effects we can never even know exactly what can we ever have had to offer to fix this. If you look up substitutionary atonement the issue gets extremely simple and fixed.

Considering a normal person just as bad as Hitler.

This one just is not true to begin with.

Making the punishment for imperfection infinite (and depending upon your version, infinitely cruel.)

That depends on what you think Hell is. I think God gives us lives we do not own, If we use them to deny God we receive that which we wished for. No God. We are obliterated from existence for eternity. This is well supported in scripture if you want an explanation. Exactly what is unjust about that.

Expecting perfection in the first place. We are not God, so why does he expect us to act like we are?

That is not the expectation. God never expects anyone to be perfect. However that is the necessity. This is also why he had to pay the bill and we could not. He emphatically states we will never qualify our selves and must have faith in the only one who could. It is free of charge. What else can you want? Btw I am in a hurry and being very brief if you want explanations just ask. These are complex issues.

Giving Satan dominion over the Earth.

Humanity chose him, we got what we chose.

Giving humans a sinful nature, rather than a neutral one.

He gave us choice, we chose sin.

Giving us free-will, but with-holding crucial information that would allow us to make an informed decision.

He dwelled with us until we evicted him. We chose ignorance and even call it good. He paid the entire cost to remedy even that.

All of these were choices. They are not simply "Murder is bad." And there really is no logical leap from "Murder is bad" or "Humans must have free-will" to "Therefore, I will curse all of humanity."

They are all moral in principle, however it does not matter what we call them. They either are justifiable or not.