Is there any meaning in life without God?

Originally posted by Nemesio
How is it, then, that humankind is 'made in God's image?' If humankind is, at its essence,
evil, then God would have created something 'in His image' that was evil.

Why would God do this? Why would God make something that was essentially evil, only
to say, 'deny your nature and turn to Me?'

It's an absurd argument. To maintain that huma ...[text shortened]... ssentially evil is to say that God created us essentially evil.

This is untenable.

Nemesio

We were made in His image. Until after the Fall. Heaven is simply us reverting back to how we were meant to be.

Originally posted by Darfius
We were made in His image. Until after the Fall. Heaven is simply us reverting back to how we were meant to be.

Are you saying that we are no longer made in His image? What is your Biblical evidence
for this change in our Image (by which I assume we mean 'essential nature'😉?

Originally posted by Darfius
We were made in His image. Until after the Fall. Heaven is simply us reverting back to how we were meant to be.

I really hope intelligent squid-like beings are found on a planet orbiting a distant sun, I really do ...

Originally posted by KneverKnight
I really hope intelligent squid-like beings are found on a planet orbiting a distant sun, I really do ...

If they don't have Jesus, it doesn't matter.

Originally posted by Nemesio
If they don't have Jesus, it doesn't matter.

*snark* Good chimp.

Originally posted by Darfius
We were made in His image. Until after the Fall. Heaven is simply us reverting back to how we were meant to be.

This post disappeared for some reason but I'll try it again:

I'll ask you the same question I asked Lucifershammer; do you believe that the story of the Garden of Eden is literally true or is metaphorical? If you believe that it is literally true, then you are committed to a belief that there was a tree which gave off fruit which if you ate you obtained the knowledge of good and evil and that God got mad at and cursed all snakes because a snake told Eve to eat from it. Please, oh please, don't tell me that you believe that these are actual facts and not an illustrative story similar to the parables Jesus told many times.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Erm., right and wrong change with society, a few hundred years ago it was reasonable, and more or less legal, behaviour to kill people in duals over honour. Theft can only occur in a society which has private property. There was a time when obsequiousness was admired as a virtue. What is right and wrong changes. The difficulty I have is that it's ra ...[text shortened]... ng that it's innate or learned?

On the main question:
Why does life have to have a meaning?

Right and wrong don't change with society. People's beliefs about what is right and wrong change with society. It was
not morally permissible to own slaves two hundred years ago, despite many people erroneously believing that owning slaves was permissible. To claim that right and wrong actually changes with society commits you to the absurd conclusion that moral progress is impossible, that a society's moral outlook cannot become morally better, but merely change.

Originally posted by Coletti
no1marauder: Do you concede that knowing something is wrong makes people less likely to do it or not?

Coletti: Not

Bbarr: Wow! Really? I don't think that no1 is claiming that this is a necessary truth, only that for mos ...[text shortened]... , or aroma therapy? Maybe you just need to lighten up a little.

Nobody is claiming that knowledge of good and evil determine our choices. No1 and I are merely claiming that knowledge of good and evil influence our choices generally, and in particular that knowing that some act is wrong more often than not influences one's choice in the direction of not engaging in that act. If I know that keeping the wallet I find in the street is wrong, then it follows that I believe that keeping the wallet is wrong (because to know that P is necessarily to justifiedly and truly believe that P). But if I believe that keeping the wallet is wrong, then I am thereby motivated not to keep the wallet. I am not claiming that this motivation will always outweigh other considerations. For instance, if my family is hungry then I very well may keep the wallet. I can't see how you can plausibly deny this line of reasoning. After all, if I know that some claim is irrational, I am thereby motivated not to believe it. So why isn't the same thing true when I believe that some act is immoral?

Originally posted by bbarr
Right and wrong don't change with society. People's beliefs about what is right and wrong change with society. It was
not morally permissible to own slaves two hundred years ago, despite many people erroneously believing that owning sla ...[text shortened]... s moral outlook cannot become morally better, but merely change.

Right and wrong don't change with society. People's beliefs about what is right and wrong change with society. It was not morally permissible to own slaves two hundred years ago, despite many people erroneously believing that owning slaves was permissible.

Bennett,

If there is a difference between what is morally permissible, and what people (whether the majority of a given culture or otherwise) think (believe) is morally permissible, then who decides what is morally permissible (and for whom)? Is an objective morality something that some societies (or individuals) discover and others do not? If so, is such discovery a matter of societies (or individuals) becoming more rational? Or is it a matter of other issues (e.g., personal material well-being) over-riding the clear moral principles, and perhaps engendering a kind of subconscious denial about true moral principles?

It seems to me that an objective morality requires either (1) some extra-human authority (e.g., God) or (2) some (evolutionary?) aspect of human consciousness that naturally (rationally?) identifies such morality. The latter seems, on my reading, to be a Kantian view. My unease with Kant has always been that he seemed to present the elements of his “Copernican Revolution” as beyond question: either empirically or rationally, since they are part of the very consciousness that perceives empirical evidence, or that reasons, such that the whole thing becomes purely axiomatic—if you accept the axiomatic base (intuitively? because of desirable outcomes?), you can move on from there (e.g., your fine exposition of the categorical imperative, based on full reflectivity and rationality); if not, then… ? {Nietzsche had two critiques of Kant on this score: 1) that he simply replaced God with a philosophical “quasi-divine” (i.e., non-questionable) authority, and 2) that Kant’s schema really represented the limit of human understanding—either, say of time and space, or of morality—and not necessarily what is really “the truth.” In respect to the second case, I think Nietzsche in general, perhaps, borrowed more from Kant that he was wont to admit.}

I am uncomfortable with pure moral skepticism, but I am also uncomfortable with “non-questionable” (in the strict sense) authority, whether divine or “natural” (unless it seems sufficiently self-evident, regardless of whether the outcomes are “congenial” or not).

Could you flesh this out a bit?

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]Right and wrong don't change with society. People's beliefs about what is right and wrong change with society. It was not morally permissible to own slaves two hundred years ago, despite many people erroneously believing that owning slaves was permissible.

Bennett,

If there is a difference between what is morally permissible, and what p ...[text shortened]... gardless of whether the outcomes are “congenial” or not).

Could you flesh this out a bit?
[/b]

Hello vistesd,

Each of us must decide what type of person we ought to be, what constitutes a life worth living, how we ought to act, etc. The answer to the question “who decides?” is “you decide”. But, of course, you may decide correctly or incorrectly. Now you will ask, “what determines whether my decision is correct or incorrect?”. The answer to this is “the way the world is determines whether your decision is correct or incorrect.” Now you will ask, “What is it about the world that will determine the correctness of my decision?”. This is where we start doing ethical theory.

Some individuals think more clearly about what they ought to do then other individuals, just as some individuals think more clearly about what they ought to believe than other individuals. This may or may not be a matter of becoming more rational, depending on what you think practical and theoretical rationality consists in.

I am not sure how an extra-human authority could make it the case that something is objectively morally correct (By fiat? How so?). An authority could certainly promise to punish those that violate certain commands and reward those who tow the line, but if this was the whole story then moral reasons would be nothing over and above reasons of self-interest (which is a Hobbesian view of morality). I am not sure how evolutionary considerations would ground an objective morality, though considerations of our nature as humans (e.g., what makes us joyful, or suffer, or love, or act aggressively, what we need to flourish, what can bring about our deaths, etc.) will certainly be relevant in answering substantive moral questions. I have no idea what you are claiming about Kant.

…he seemed to present the elements of his “Copernican Revolution” as beyond question: either empirically or rationally, since they are part of the very consciousness that perceives empirical evidence…

This makes no sense to me. How can elements of the Copernican Revolution be parts of consciousness? I don’t know what you are saying is axiomatic in Kant (principles of practical rationality, perhaps?). I have no idea what role you are suggesting that the pursuit of desirable outcomes has in Kant. He explicitly rejects the claim that consequences are morally relevant. Have you read Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals?

I am not sure how seriously Kant needs to take Nietzsche’s criticisms. I would need to hear the arguments Nietzsche provides, to tell if he is interpreting Kant correctly.

I don’t know what you are talking about when you make claims about “non-questionable” authority and morality. Who said moral claims weren’t questionable? I was merely claiming that moral truths aren’t truths about what people or societies believe (similarly, logical claims aren’t claims about what people believe to be good inferences, and logical truths are true regardless of what people believe about logic.)

Originally posted by bbarr
Hello vistesd,

Each of us must decide what type of person we ought to be, what constitutes a life worth living, how we ought to act, etc. The answer to the question “who decides?” is “you decide”. But, of course, you may decide correctly ...[text shortened]... truths are true regardless of what people believe about logic.)

Hi Bennett,

Thanks for responding to my questions.

I have no idea what you are claiming about Kant…How can elements of the Copernican Revolution be parts of consciousness?

I have not read Kant directly, only others “on Kant” (really intro-level stuff). It appears I may be radically misinterpreting him. My understanding was, in part, that (according to Kant) we see the world as our mind constructs it (e.g., that time/space are mental “constructs,” and not necessarily how the world really is—and that he followed Hume somewhat with regard to perceptions, but did not take those perceptions so much as empirical “givens,” but mental parameters on how we perceive the world), and also stated that his a priori synthetic principles (and “transcendentals?&rdquo😉 were also not verifiable/falsifiable by reason, since they reflect how we reason, just as they are not verifiable/falsifiable by empiricism since they form our empirical perception as well. That we can have an intuitive understanding of that, but it not subject to any verification/falsification. (I’m trying to shortcut here, and I’m a bit tired, so maybe I’m saying it all wrong—in addition to my lacking a lot of the “technical” terminology.) In the end, that Kant's Categorical Imperative derived from how our mind operates, specifically in terms of reflection and rationality.

My comment about evolution was not clear: I was thinking something along the lines of evolving knowledge, reason, etc.

I am not sure how seriously Kant needs to take Nietzsche’s criticisms. I would need to hear the arguments Nietzsche provides, to tell if he is interpreting Kant correctly.

That would take some work, since Nietzsche seldom tackles any issue systematically, all in one place (I have often thought that someone ought to put together a “Nietzsche concordance” ). Nietzsche was pretty much a normative skeptic, though he did (paradoxically) propound an ethical position: generally, actions either lead to life-enhancement/thriving (his “Will to Power” ) or life decay/diminishment (he saw this as generally contra Schopenhauer’s “Will to Life,” which he saw as pretty much the survival instinct). He generally seems to have seen this from an individualistic point of view. The ubermensch (which I refuse to translate as either superman or overman) is one who lives out that "life-enhancement" fully (Bill Murray in the latter half of "Grounhog Day," where he not only did "good deeds" for people, but read the corpus of Western literature and learned to play the piano--from a Nietzschean point-of-view, even his good deeds flow from his zest for life, rather than from a moral "ought" ).He was also an “epistemic skeptic,” in that a great deal of our knowledge about the world (in his view) consists of our own projections on the world—we don’t understand the world as it is, but as we are. His “perspectivism” was two-fold: 1) that there is no “God’s eye” view of the world (including ourselves in it), but only views from a personal, subjective perspective—and that sets a severe limit on “objective truth”—and, 2) that knowledge is best served by trying to view the world from as many perspectives (“lenses&rdquo😉 as possible, even if they seem contradictory.

That’s a really rough summary, that leaves a lot out.

I don’t know what you are talking about when you make claims about “non-questionable” authority and morality. Who said moral claims weren’t questionable? I was merely claiming that moral truths aren’t truths about what people or societies believe (similarly, logical claims aren’t claims about what people believe to be good inferences, and logical truths are true regardless of what people believe about logic.)

If moral truth is objective, does that not imply that there are objective criteria, potentially available to anyone, for determining what is and is not moral? Or am I reading you wrong here? If I undertake an action that I decide, upon reflection is moral, and you say “No, Steve, that was clearly not moral at all,” and you make that as an objective statement, what is the objective criteria that I, if I am reflective and rational, would be compelled to accept? Is there any such criteria that a reflective, rational person must accept—e.g., if they are not bound by religious/social/cultural beliefs, etc., that prevent them from accepting that criteria? (This, it seems to me, would include the moral argument that I should behave morally.)

Bennett, please don’t spend a lot of time on this. I’m not asking you to be my personal tutor on this stuff. 🙂 I read philosophy—eclectically—for my own interests and enjoyment. I read your stuff on here for the same reasons. (My degrees are in economics, so I do understand building some academic knowledge base—but I am not going back to school, and am unlikely to study that systematically on my own.) With that said, can you recommend something to read—say at a senior undergraduate or beginning graduate level (I can usually wade through at that level; if not, I back up a bit)—that broadly covers the bases (before I tackle Kant, or any other single philosopher directly)? That would be greatly appreciated, and will keep me from clogging up the thread with my questions….

Thanks again.

PS: My comment about God as external “objective” moral authority was merely reflective of much of the discussion that takes place here.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Is there any meaning in life with God?

More than you can imagine.

Originally posted by Darfius
More than you can imagine.

What is the meaning?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
What is the meaning?

When you accept Christ, He enters your life in many ways. He gives you peace, security, wisdom, patience and most importantly, love. I used to think I could love before, but with the love of Christ, very little bothers me. Very little people can do make me forget how much I love them and want them to share in the joy I have. The joy of knowing Him is indescribable, ATY, that's why I sound like a bumbling idiot much of the time when I try. And that's just here on Earth. I literally cannot fathom how wonderful Heaven will be, and when I realize I could never have earned it, but that it is a free gift from God, I am humbled more than I've ever been. And I love that, too! 🙂