by towerwatchman 99 Replies latest watchtower bible
No that didn't help at all. I gave up proof-texting years ago.
But I did suggest we don't get distracted with a debate about the conflicting versions of the so-called ten commandments. I'm much more interested in discussing your assertions about the need for god to root objective morality.
To Cofty
Ask any Rabbi, and he will explain it to you. There are no conflicting version of the Ten Commandments, I would double check the credibility of the source.
As to objective moral values and God, it is simple. In order for anything to be objective it has to be outside of the box, cannot be part of the equation. So any source of objective moral values has to be transcendent, and the only one that can be transcendent is God. Be it YHWH, Krishna, Buddha or Allah. As to which is the true God is for another day.
In order for anything to be objective it has to be outside of the box, cannot be part of the equation. So any source of objective moral values has to be transcendent, and the only one that can be transcendent is God.
Towerwatchman are you not able to see the falsity of your statement? Only you are determining that a source of moral values has to be "trancendent". Without discussing the subject of morality in any depth here may I direct you to Nietzsche who comes close in my mind in simplifying the matter by calling morality "custom", Untranscendent, tribal custom, the feelings of the herd.
Come back down to Earth, your empty shoes are still here! You have been taken in by the holy hyperbole and believed the baseless flummery which is virtually the whole of the NT. It is destroying your objectivity .
Half banana
Not 'moral values' but 'objective' moral values.
Nietzsche said if God does not exist everything is permissible.
Nietzsche points out the dilemma, “If God is dead we now have to come up with the definition of what it means to be human, what is the meaning of good or evil.” Values become a matter of personal taste. When we do away with God we do away with the definition of good.
Personally I have not done away with God, there is simply insufficient evidence for this phantom so it never enters any argument of mine. Compassion and fellow feeling need no external force to impose it on to humanity, it comes from within.
Nietzsche was right however in saying that with the cultural death of God we have to determine our own human values and that is what is being done. Look how much better the world is (outside of religious sectarian wars) how we are living longer, eating better food, curing once incurable diseases, enjoying better education and communication........... and all through applying science and reason to the tangible, measurable world.
Nietzsche said if God does not exist everything is permissible. - TWM
Actually he didn't. It is a line wrongly attributed to one of the characters in the book "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Of course it isn't true. If god is the ultimate source of morality then anything is permissible. Morals becomes a matter of divine fiat. When god says that slavery and infanticide are morally good, who can argue?
Are you familiar with The Euthyphro Dilemma?
If on the other hand we base morals on an objective foundation like the well-being of conscious creatures then we have a basis to judge actions that doesn't depend on personal preference or subjective opinion.
to half banana
Look how much better the world is (outside of religious sectarian wars).
I agree that Christianity at times had a very dark past such as the Inquisition and the Crusades. But may I ask, did you hold Atheism to the same standard as you hold Christianity to conclude that Christianity is the wrong choice?
Atheism argues that the abolishment of violence and tyranny can be achieved by getting rid of what ultimately causes it, faith in God. This claim could hold water during the nineteenth century because atheism had not yet held the power and influence once held by religion. This now changed. The innocence that atheism once had now does not exist. In the twentieth century atheism took power, and proved just as oppressive, fallible, and corrupt as any belief system that had gone before it. Stalin’s death squads were just as murderous as their religious antecedents. Some of these men thought that religion would just die off naturally in the face of compelling, intellectual argument with moral vision. Unfortunately this idea has the tendency to encourage those that don’t budge to change their belief at the physical level and history proves it. Some of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century were committed by regimes that espoused atheism. Stalin killed approx 20 million, Hitler killed approx 11 million, Mao’s Cultural Revolution killed approx. 30 million, and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge killed approx. 2 million about 26% of the population. More people were killed in the name of atheism in the past century than in the name of Christianity during its entire history.
Could the real truth be that there is something about human nature that makes it capable of being inspired by what it believes to be right to do both wonderful and appalling things? The real problem is extremism, whether religious, antireligious, or political. Belief in God can be abused, and we need to be very clear, in the first place, that this abuse happens, and in the second, that it needs to be confronted. But abuse of an ideal does not negate its validity. The difference between Christianity and Atheism is that the atrocities committed by Atheism is a natural outworking of that worldview, and to the contrary, the atrocities committed by Christians go completely against the teachings of Jesus. Do not judge a movement by its followers but by it originator. Judge Christianity by Jesus, do you find any flaw in Him or what He said. Judge Islam by Muhammad; or atheism by its founders and decide whose example you would follow.
how we are living longer, eating better food, curing once incurable diseases, enjoying better education and communication........... and all through applying science and reason to the tangible, measurable world.
This has nothing to do with religion. The scientist who are responsible for such advances were either Theist, Agnostic or Atheist. Belief or disbelief in a supreme being is irrelevant.
To Cofty
The Euthyphro Dilemma
Euthyphro dilemma, named after a character in one of Plato's dialogues. It basically goes like this,
o Is something good because God wills it?
o Or does God will something because it is good?
If you say that something is good because God wills it, then what is good becomes arbitrary. God could have willed that hatred is good and then we should have been morally obligated to hate one another. Some moral values, at least, seem to be necessary.
But if you say that God will something because it is good, then what is good or bad is independent of God. In that case, moral values and duties exist independent of God, which contradicts premise one.
Answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma
o We do not need to refute either of the two horns of this dilemma because the dilemma it presents is a false. There is a third alternative, namely God wills something because He is good. What I mean by that? I mean that God’s own nature is the standard of goodness, His commandments to us are expressions of His nature.
o So moral values are not independent of God because God's character defines what is good. His nature His moral standards define good and bad.
o The morally good or bad is determined by God's nature,
o The morally right and wrong is determined by God's will.
o God wills something because God is good, if something is right because God wills it.
towerwatchman
at least Plato didn't think we could come to know that level of goodness therefore he left the Euthyphro dilemma as an open invitation to debate the issues. But you claim to know what goodness is via the moral commandments of God. But these commandments are limited by their historical embedding in the politics and social understandings of the era in which they were written down. So you are not really revealing to us something holy and therefore eternal because that morality is not beyond criticism.
There is a third alternative, namely God wills something because He is good. - TWM
You haven't solved the dilemma at all. You have chosen Divine Command Theory and called it a third option.
When god commands slavery and infanticide is that because those things are morally good or are we forced to call them good because god commands them?
