does morality depend on religion/objective vs subjective morality

[John Cuthber]

I guess the relevant part of that is this question

"God, however, has greater abilities and knowledge than we do, including control over life and death. If God kills someone, he is able to bring them back to life"

and this this "answer"

"God, however, has greater abilities and knowledge than we do, including control over life and death. If God kills someone, he is able to bring them back to life"

 

Fine, except, have you noticed something?

He never does His job in this respect.

 

I can claim that, if I kill someone it's OK because I can bring them back to life.

As long as, in each and every case, when asked to I say "I could reincarnate them, but I choose not to" I'm in exactly the same position as God.

 

Somehow I can't see any court accepting that.

 

More importantly from a scientific point of view, why did you just blindly quote some nonsensical website, rather than actually thinking about what it said?

 

Incidentally, re rule #4

Which Sabbath?

Edited August 10, 2012 by John Cuthber

[Greg H.]

http://www.rationalc..._authority.html

 

 

 

So basically, God is the ultimate moral authority because he said he is? So your proof of an objective morality is a circular argument for a supernatural being that cannot be proven to exist.

 

Now I remember why I stopped commenting in this thread.

[Moontanman]

and strong atheism is ............. ??!!

 

Elshamah (where did you get that user name dude? ) how do i tell you this, I assume you are a smart guy, in some ways smarter than me, i don't even have a web site of my own, you got me beat on that for sure. But this is not a contest in intelligence it's about evidence, you seem to think in absolutes here, if naturalism cannot answer everything it must be false, this is really a mistake on your part. In a moment I'll attempt to show you why. but first let me say this.

 

I support your right to believe in a god, i support your right to believe it only on faith. As long as your belief in god harms no one I say hold on to it if it makes you feel better. I'll argue right there beside you supporting your right to believe, your right to faith in a supernatural higher order of reality. If you live in the USA you have that right for sure and I do support your right to that. I know a great many theists who are good decent people, in fact i would say most are probably by a wide margin, some are annoying as hell but so am I, love to annoy people, in my old age it's the only sport i have left.

 

Where the problem lies is your need to assert your belief as fact, you have every right to your own beliefs, Jesus as portrayed in the new Testament was an amazing man, i won't equivocate and say for his time, he was amazing any way you look at it. He asserted things that brought about tremendous changes in society not the lest of which is the theme of non violence that can be taken from the words ascribed to him, of course a great many people have twisted and used these words to support all sorts of violence and other crimes but that is the nature of humans to take the mantle of authority from others and use it for their own means. To deny this would be stupid.

 

The idea that god is the ultimate moral authority fails on many levels totally independent of things like evolution, the big bang, dark matter, star formation, none of these things, even if we had no understanding of them what so ever they have any bearing on the problem of moral authority.

 

Yes, subjective morals are a consensus of what most people feel is right, to me it's quite easy to show that morals can be based on the logic of doing no harm to others and treating others the way you want to be treated. Respect and empathy are the main tools i use to see how i should treat others... could this idea be used to commit crimes? Of course it could, virtually any system can be perverted to serve the one instead of the many.

 

The place where the idea of objective morality fails is that first of all who is the giver? Which moral code do we go by? There are so many different ideas on this it would be difficult to adequately describe them all and they all come from a god or some god like power.

 

Now if we go with your idea of who God is it's quite easy to show conflicting morals all throughout the Holy book being used as a source of this objective morality. It's also fairly easy to show that these morals are ignored by followers of this god pretty much everywhere they appear to insist we follow this moral code. My conclusion is that this objective moral code handed down by god is no better than any other moral code as far as getting people to follow them. Do you really think homosexuals should be killed? Do disrespectful children need to be killed? Should a girl who is not a virgin on her wedding night be killed? Come on, you know you don't believe that and anyone who tried to follow those objective morals will spend some time thinking about it in jail in our society.

 

A moral code that can change if necessary and that protects the rights of individuals as much as possible is superior, it's what we currently use by the way, and i think that's a good thing because if we settle on one written in stone set of rules what happens if your little corner of religion is not considered a part of this? it happened frequently not all that long ago, various denominations of Protestant Christianity have been demonized by other denominations and persecution due to differences in religion were quite common and deadly. Then of course you have the differences between the Catholics and Protestants, not a pretty history for religion...

 

My point of course is that the idea of objective morality based in religion can be used to justify anything, no moral code is immune to this. I will assert that we as a society are morally superior to earlier societies that were based on the word of some god, this is probably not an absolute truth but I haven't seen any Jews boiled in oil for eating meat on Friday in my life time. No witches burned at the stake lately even in my neck of the woods where fundamentalists quite literally rule. Although there have been some disturbing demands to put gay people in concentration camps based on the morals of your god.

 

Now i ask you, would you rather live in a society that allows you to hold your beliefs, in fact gives you the right to do so, or would you rather live in a society that takes rights away from anyone who disagrees with the rules given in your bible? Will you be the first person to step up and kill a homosexual? Are you willing to kill based on the demands of your god? if your neighbor cuts his grass on Sunday are you going to get your shotgun out and kill him as he mows his grass? Are you really willing to enforce such rules of behavior? if not you are closer to being in my camp than you think...

 

Believe what you want, profess your beliefs, you have a right to them but you do not have a right to your own facts...

[john5746]

I dunno, at best you can argue a concept of god is needed, since we know there isn't any invisible force keeping us from doing bad things.

 

if the concept is what keeps us somewhat moral and this concept is constantly hijacked by humans, then humans are really the ones running the show.

[John Cuthber]

I dunno, at best you can argue a concept of god is needed, since we know there isn't any invisible force keeping us from doing bad things.

 

if the concept is what keeps us somewhat moral and this concept is constantly hijacked by humans, then humans are really the ones running the show.

"if the concept is what keeps us somewhat moral"

It isn't.

We decided, for example, to ignore the idea that God had told us that it was moral to offer your under-age virgin daughters to a group of gay men as a sexual partner in order to (so to speak) save your own arse (technically, that of two house guests).

We collectively made that decision in spite of God, rather than because of Him.

 

 

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019:4-9;&version=KJV;

 

I don't know anyone who would admit that they think that the bible gives good advice on this.

[mooeypoo]

 

Do you disagree with the 10 commandments in Ex.20 ?

 

That's not answering the question asked; you were asked to prove that your moral standards are "correct" and to "Prove that your morals are moral."

 

Even if we all agree about the 10 commandments, that doesn't make them moral; do you suggest morality is simply voted for by the majority? I assume (and hope) you do not, in which case asking us if we disagree (or agree) with them is irrelevant to proving them as moral ethical system.

 

That said, there are two versions of the ten commandments. The commandments themselves are more or less the same, but it's worth noting that there ARE variations between then (a nice comparison table can be seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Two_texts_with_numbering_schemes)

 

And finally, do tell, which ten commandments are we to agree on? The ones that state clearly thou shall not work in the sabbath, or the one saying clearly "thou shall not make any graven image" ? Both are later expanded upon, by the way. Graven image clearly includes any and all graven images regardless of intent or purpose (which puts the depiction of the cross - especially one that includes a crusified man on it - no the other side of this moral law) and the rules about "respecting the sabbath" are clearly emphasized as having a day off not only for yourself, but for your animals and slaves. If this is our moral compass, it seems only extremely religious jews are moral.

 

Then again, you need to tell us why this list, out of this archaic book written over 2000 years ago, is representing morality, when the book it is written in has extreme examples of quite radical evil done by people who are supposedly representing good. There are laws in this book that might have had some shred of logic 2000+ years ago but only because of the way cultural biases went.

 

A woman who was raped must marry her rapist. ( Deuteronomy 22:28-29)

While 2000+ years ago, this *might* be excused for cultural reasons -- the raped woman would have likely been cast aside and be left husband-less, which in those times meant poverty and death -- it is quite hard to claim this is "the moral behavior" today.

 

That's only one example, out of many. God murders all first-born children in Egypt just to "harden pharaoh's heart" (Exodus 7). Both the murder of innocent little children (whatever order of birth they may have) *and* doing so to purposefully make Pharaoh resist and fight so God can show his might are incredibly cruel. Should we judge these as moral?

(The chapter is here, if you wish to review it: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0207.htm)

 

And there are more examples, if you really insist, we can go in depth into the morality (or lack thereof) of the bible. But that's not the topic of this argument.

 

If you claim the 10 commandments are moral (or the source of morality) then you need to explain why. If your reasoning why is that it is given by God and/or written in the holy bible, then you have a problem by mere existence of the abundance of immoral acts and decrees in the bible. We can't follow something half way, and we definitely can't just "Accept" this is moral just because some people might agree on the loose terms of this particular chunk of text and this particular iteration.

 

You were asked to prove it, and this isn't a theology forum; you need to do better, and provide evidence of why you claim this is a better moral strategy than any other. Your evidence can come from literature, psychology, sociology, physics, evolution, biology, and whatever else you think fits, but they have to be properly cited, properly backed up by logical arguments and properly explained.

 

"Do you disagree with the 10 commandments" is not proof of anything regardless of the answer to the question.

 

~mooey

[Elshamah]

That's not answering the question asked; you were asked to prove that your moral standards are "correct" and to "Prove that your morals are moral."

 

Even if we all agree about the 10 commandments, that doesn't make them moral; do you suggest morality is simply voted for by the majority? I assume (and hope) you do not, in which case asking us if we disagree (or agree) with them is irrelevant to proving them as moral ethical system.

 

That said, there are two versions of the ten commandments. The commandments themselves are more or less the same, but it's worth noting that there ARE variations between then (a nice comparison table can be seen here http://en.wikipedia....mbering_schemes)

 

And finally, do tell, which ten commandments are we to agree on? The ones that state clearly thou shall not work in the sabbath, or the one saying clearly "thou shall not make any graven image" ? Both are later expanded upon, by the way. Graven image clearly includes any and all graven images regardless of intent or purpose (which puts the depiction of the cross - especially one that includes a crusified man on it - no the other side of this moral law) and the rules about "respecting the sabbath" are clearly emphasized as having a day off not only for yourself, but for your animals and slaves. If this is our moral compass, it seems only extremely religious jews are moral.

 

Then again, you need to tell us why this list, out of this archaic book written over 2000 years ago, is representing morality, when the book it is written in has extreme examples of quite radical evil done by people who are supposedly representing good. There are laws in this book that might have had some shred of logic 2000+ years ago but only because of the way cultural biases went.

 

A woman who was raped must marry her rapist. ( Deuteronomy 22:28-29)

While 2000+ years ago, this *might* be excused for cultural reasons -- the raped woman would have likely been cast aside and be left husband-less, which in those times meant poverty and death -- it is quite hard to claim this is "the moral behavior" today.

 

That's only one example, out of many. God murders all first-born children in Egypt just to "harden pharaoh's heart" (Exodus 7). Both the murder of innocent little children (whatever order of birth they may have) *and* doing so to purposefully make Pharaoh resist and fight so God can show his might are incredibly cruel. Should we judge these as moral?

(The chapter is here, if you wish to review it: http://www.mechon-ma...p/pt/pt0207.htm)

 

And there are more examples, if you really insist, we can go in depth into the morality (or lack thereof) of the bible. But that's not the topic of this argument.

 

If you claim the 10 commandments are moral (or the source of morality) then you need to explain why. If your reasoning why is that it is given by God and/or written in the holy bible, then you have a problem by mere existence of the abundance of immoral acts and decrees in the bible. We can't follow something half way, and we definitely can't just "Accept" this is moral just because some people might agree on the loose terms of this particular chunk of text and this particular iteration.

 

You were asked to prove it, and this isn't a theology forum; you need to do better, and provide evidence of why you claim this is a better moral strategy than any other. Your evidence can come from literature, psychology, sociology, physics, evolution, biology, and whatever else you think fits, but they have to be properly cited, properly backed up by logical arguments and properly explained.

 

"Do you disagree with the 10 commandments" is not proof of anything regardless of the answer to the question.

 

~mooey

 

The answer is from two websites :

 

Why should the Bible be our source for morality?

 

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-morality.html

 

http://www.equip.org/articles/sabbath-keeping-and-the-new-covenant/

 

 

 

[John Cuthber]

I realise that you won't bother to answer this but I will post it (again) anyway.

We don't get our morality from the bible.

If we did then you would offer your under-age virgin daughters to a group of gay men as sexual partners in order to (so to speak) save your own arse (technically, that of two house guests).

 

Would you consider that moral?

 

If you wouldn't then you plainly don't get your morality from the bible.

 

(and if you would then you are seriously deranged).

 

Lest be clear about this

The bible is morally wrong in promoting that sort of activity (as well as many other similar abhorrent acts.)

Even if you don't accept the arguments for absolute morality that have been put forward (an you have yet to come up with a good reason to reject them)

Then it's not consistent with the teaching that you should do unto others as you would have other do unto you.

 

Go you get this?

The bible is wrong and inconsistent.

[mooeypoo]

The answer is from two websites :

 

Why should the Bible be our source for morality?

 

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-morality.html

 

http://www.equip.org/articles/sabbath-keeping-and-the-new-covenant/

This isn't a bibliography database site, Elshamah, it's a discussion forum. We can all post links back and forth, but the point is to discuss the meaning of things and describe the logic of your opinions. You may use links to support your assertions, but don't be rude as to simplify my entire post (and other questions) and send us to someone else's text. Especially when it doesn't answer the original question.

 

This thread discusses whether or not morality depends on religion/objective or whether it is subjetive. We're not here to go read blog posts. We're here to discuss. Obviously, your answer is not obvious or everyone would go by it, and everyone do not. Get off your horse, and participate in a decent discussion please.

 

We could all just post links for you to RD forums or rational morality sites; these theories are not our own invention and they are supported by quite a number of philosophers. And yet, if each side was to post links, then we might as well go to Google to discuss our opinions.

 

You were posed with several (not just one, and not as simple as you tried make it) questions -- by me, and others -- and you should have the decency to relate to them.

Your evasion to send me to external "why the bible" answers is not answering the subtle points I (and others) raised.

 

This isn't your blog, Elshamah. You don't make up the rules and you don't get to choose who to answer and where to steer the discussion to.

 

~mooey