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20 Nov 18
@lemonjello saidI agree with you that we can leave the Bible out of this.
@sonshipI love the quote the Bible. But this is more of a philosophical argument rather than one about the teaching of Christ and the apostles.
It is about the source of our real and legitimate convictions of what is really good for us to do. And to whom are the moral duties to be good rather than evil owed.
I agree with you that we can leave the B ...[text shortened]... !!” is something the satisfaction of which is owed to the parent who will punish you if you disobey.
I can Think of One person that really needs to read this.
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21 Nov 18
7 edits
I agree with you that we can leave the Bible out of this. It is irrelevant to the opening argument. To see that the moral argument for God's existence is a bad argument, all we need are some Euthyphro-like considerations and some working notion of objectivity.
An answer has been given to the Euthyphro delimma objection.
Christian philosophers have shown that it is not a delimma.
As to the rest, I think you have a failed understanding of duty. Moral duties could only be owed to the receivers of one's morally relevant actions.
So far I don't see how this shows I don't understand.
There is no other reading of it that could make sense. What could possibly explain your having moral duties owed to some sky fairy, as opposed to being owed to the actual entities that stand to be benefitted or harmed by your actions? Please provide some considerations.
When it comes to to WHOM are the duties owed, I think you would go with what is more likely.
Between Humpty Dumpty and God, (as a Someone for whom a greater cannot be imagined,) I think the better answer is God. The same would go for your Sky Fairy.
Your quip may be good for a little cynical chuckle. But when you seriously consider what kind of final moral governor there could be, I have to be more realistic and less sarcastic.
A maximal great Moral Being who has authority to conduct a final judgment.
Such a concept is not easily lampooned away as you seem to imply.
Again, it seems clear that your religious outlook is essentially childish and developmentally stunted.
You've said this before I think.
Well, I think the most basic things of our existence are easily grasped.
Take for example AIR. If only Phd.s in chemistry were allowed to breath because they ALONE had the education to know all the essential chemistry of the molecular reactions which allow us to breath, that would be quite an ELITEST world where most of us would be too immature to live.
So your appeal to maturity I find to be hopelessly elitist to the point of terrible snobbery.
But the conscience of people is something most ages of people can grasp.
My conscience knows this is right and takes no arguments.
Or my conscience knows that this other is wrong and takes no arguments.
The child's conscience on some things simply knows what it knows.
At a certain age many believe that was put into man by God and we are watched and finally accountable to God.
You may regard that as childish. But it may be a sense that you have learned to suppress imagining that no one knows what is really going on in your mischief making.
Whether that sense is childish may have to wait for the final moments just before your death. When you realize that you are about to step into the unknown with many legitimate wrong doings on your conscience - the dirt you have done which you deemed you got away with, to someone else's hurt.
Maybe like many just before they die, will rethink the "childishness" of realizing a final accounting for your life might await you by God.
I don't guarantee it. But the "childish" notion that God knows everything about you could rise up in your heart moments before you step into the unknown realm of your death.
Besides, compared to a God who is eternal and uncreated, we would all be virtually "children" in terms of longevity.
You are just like the child who thinks “Stop hitting your sister!!!” is something the satisfaction of which is owed to the parent who will punish you if you disobey.
I am the person who believes the thought that the scales of justice will ever be in imbalance is as unlikely as we created ourselves.
Me personally? I am the person who things no one is getting away with anything --- period.
However, as a Christian I believe there is Justification, Redemption, and Forgiveness.
Those are matters of my faith.
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@sonship
Correcting typo:
Me personally? I am the person who [thinks] no one is getting away with anything --- period.
However, as a Christian I believe there is Justification, Redemption, and Forgiveness.
Those are matters of my faith.
William Lane Craig v Erik Wielenberg | "God & Morality" | NC State - Feb 2018
Erik Wielenberg will argue for absolute morality yet without God as its foundation. His concept is of what he calls "Godless Normative Realism."
@dj2becker saidDo you have an actual argument for this? Even supposing such a being exists, just possessing the property of having created the universe would not imply that all moral obligation is ultimately owed to this being. If you are trying to imply otherwise, that's just you sucking at logic.
There is obviously no moral obligation towards an imaginary sky fairy. But towards the Creator of the universe? The buck has to stop somewhere...
Duties owned by anyone requires
a bound that holds people accountable, if there isn't really a bound that binds us
than nothing can really be claimed "should be" done.
Even if true, what does this have to do with the subject of God? There might as well just be independent objective facts of the matter (not dependent on God or anyone else) that establishes such accountability.
Benefits and considerations
are not measures of strength of arguments towards accountability. I can look at
any benefit in an agreement and move towards obligating myself towards keeping
my word in the agreement, but if I see my position change by not being
accountable to what I said, does that release me? Why would I even feel the need
to look for a reason to be released from an agreement if I want out, I get out,
reasons only have to be given if there is something required. If there isn't
anything really binding me to keep my word for success, why then should I if I
can get away with it?
Why should you feed your kids if you could get away with chaining them in the basement, starving them to death, and disposing of their bodies in an acid bath? The fact, hypothetically, that a person could shirk accountability would not somehow mean that such accountability is not legitimate. If you consider what makes you accountable for your kids’ health, it has nothing to do with the subject of God. Do you need a refresher on those considerations? The good news is that it is very likely that your theorizing here about moral accountability and God is just some post-hoc garbage that does not align with your everyday dealings with your kids. If you really think and live your life under the guiding principle that you are accountable for your kids’ welfare only insofar as there is some God somewhere who would ultimately squash you for negligence in that area, then you are seriously morally handicapped; probably you should seek help in that case.
Yet again, what I see in these discussion is that the theist's claim that God is required for objective morality (or moral obligations or accountability or whatever-else-have-you) has nothing to do with reason or objectivity. It has to do with irrational feverish passions or failure in perspective, regarding one of a few things or some combination thereof. You are demonstrating one here. To wit, the theist just doesn't like the idea that a person could get away scot-free for some moral failing. This leads in to either the fallacious reasoning that God exists because the alternative of no ultimate retributive justice is intolerable; or to the fallacious reasoning that morality somehow does not really exist in the first place. The former is just textbook appeal to consequences; the latter tends to be incoherent or else just perverts the notion of morality.
27 Nov 18
An answer has been given to the Euthyphro delimma objection.
Christian philosophers have shown that it is not a delimma.
Really? Which Christian philosophers? Please provide names and references.
If you have a Christian philosophical solution to the Euthyphro dilemma, then you should simply present it. The last time I recall we discussed it, you presented a shoddy version of restricted theological voluntarism that you lifted from Moreland and Craig. That version did not resolve the dilemma.
When it comes to to WHOM are the duties owed, I think you would go with what is more likely.
Between Humpty Dumpty and God, (as a Someone for whom a greater cannot be imagined,) I think the better answer is God. The same would go for your Sky Fairy.
Neither is a good answer; both are unsatisfactory. As I already said, the only satisfactory answer is that moral duties are owed (proximately and ultimately) to the members of the normative community in which you inhabit. Again, they are the actual moral patients that stand as the receivers of your morally relevant actions. You know, those conscious entities around you that you have good reasons to think exist and can be impacted for better or worse by your moral actitvity. Neither God (or other sky fairies) nor Humpty Dumpty qualify.
You may regard that as childish
What I regard in this context as childish (as I have already explained in detail in previous threads) are your patterns of moral deliberation and theoretical explications thereof.
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27 Nov 18
As I already said, the only satisfactory answer is that moral duties are owed (proximately and ultimately) to the members of the normative community in which you inhabit. Again, they are the actual moral patients that stand as the receivers of your morally relevant actions. You know, those conscious entities around you that you have good reasons to think exist and can be impacted for better or worse by your moral actitvity.
It is ambiguous sometimes what the scope of that "community" is. It is not definite what constitutes the boundaries of the "community". Is is defined by the limits of the town? is it described as the limits of the state? Does the community always end at the shore line or the national boundary?
Hitler's Germany constituted a "community" But it was also a sub part of a larger "community". And the larger "community" found the morality of the Third Reich to be intolerably immoral.
Secondly the effect of one's doing as to consequences requires knowledge which is finite. Only God could know the ultimate ripples of effect my decisions would make in the largest sense. What impact my action may have on the fabric of the whole world and whole history would only be known by one transcendent over all the world and over history.
So the moral duties you relate, I agree, have practical application. We could live by such realizations in society. But with these limitations some justice will not be meted out. And if you want to admit that some people will just get away with some things and others will not be rewarded for some things. I suppose that system works somewhat.
But I think that leads to a limited moral obligations in which many actions will escape the justice due them because they slipped through the cracks of human limited awareness. Society will miss many things. Society will make mistakes because of human error. And how wide is the scope of "society" anyway?
As to childishness - I think we can mistake simplicity from naivete at times.
When I first read of a last judgment and ultimate judgement by God over every human being who has ever lived in Revelation it did seem fantastical, maybe like a comic book. Latter I gave up the feeling of naivete for the awesome realization of realism. A LAST judgment is a last judgement. And only God could conduct that.
Besides that would be the largest and most ultimate scope of community - everyone who has ever existed.
If you know of some definite rebuttals after the fact towards quotations of Moreland or Craig, I'll look at them.
I'd rather do it that way because I don't recall precise details of my quoting either one of them.
27 Nov 18
@sonship saidI am kind of curious to see the argument.
@sonship
Correcting typo:
Me personally? I am the person who [thinks] no one is getting away with anything --- period.
However, as a Christian I believe there is Justification, Redemption, and Forgiveness.
Those are matters of my faith.
William Lane Craig v Erik Wielenberg | "God & Morality" | NC State - Feb 2018
Erik Wielenber ...[text shortened]... f what he calls "Godless Normative Realism."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHhmuqBW6Dw
But, ultimately, it will be an utterly incomplete system when it comes to morality.
Fr. Seraphim Rose really summarized the whole thing best in his book entitled Nihilism. Atheism always results in a sort of pragmatic utilitarianism because it defaults to simply doing what seems to be best by the numbers and developing some managerial ethos for the nation.
There are, of course, atheist systems that do not follow this, but these also boil down to basically a sort of pragmatic nihilism -- just by their own distinct value system that is different from what we have in the 21st century West.
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Why should you feed your kids if you could get away with chaining them in the basement, starving them to death, and disposing of their bodies in an acid bath?
I hope you are not suggesting that in fact some people have never rationalize themselves into a heinous act ?
Many times in my life I wanted to do wrong so badly that I rationalized it to be the most logical choice.
"Evil reasonings" do proceed from the heart. And that from the heart that knows better many times. It succumbs finally to temptation and self justifies even unimaginable things.
Notice that the mass killer very often also ends his spree of killing by turning the gun on himself. Something somewhere in his heart still realizes that he deserves to DIE for what he has just done.
How did that sense get into him ?
Is it chemicals colliding together ?
Is there an overpowering of bad molecules over good molecules?
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27 Nov 18
LemonJello,
The fact, hypothetically, that a person could shirk accountability would not somehow mean that such accountability is not legitimate.
I think you are saying now what I just said.
I think here we are agreeing.
If you consider what makes you accountable for your kids’ health, it has nothing to do with the subject of God.
It may not have to do with one's belief in God.
But it does have to do with HOW did this sense get into the person?
If you think design is responsible for the function of his kidneys, eyes, heart, pancreas, brain, lungs, penis, testicles, and what-not, it is also plausible and not childish that immaterial aspects of his moral sense are ALSO in him because of design.
My stomach worked even when I was an agnostic unfriendly to Christian theology.
My conscience did also. It had to do with how I was constructed.
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27 Nov 18
LemonJello,
Do you need a refresher on those considerations? The good news is that it is very likely that your theorizing here about moral accountability and God is just some post-hoc garbage
It is also possible that your harsh dismissal of the Moral Argument for God's Existence is just a feel good diminutive slight designed as an argument by humiliation. "Say what is argued is garbage."
This could be also great elitism on your part and display of some sense of academic superiority making consideration of a strong argument beneath your intellect.
Excuse me if I am not too impressed.
Some of your ideas, though, I am seriously contemplating.
That grounding morality in God is "garbage" does nothing for me to establish your view as more legitimate.
And if you have a system of VALUE so that some concepts are morally worthless - garbage, I think it presupposes human dignity. But what basis is there for that exalted view of human worth if a cockroach is just as good as a human being in your atheistic scheme?
I said human dignity is derived from the fact that we are made in the image of God. That's who you are trying to deny yet stealing from a God acknowledgment world view to hold on to human dignity.
If man is not created in the image of a Perfect God then why is he not "garbage" to begin with?
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LemonJello,
that does not align with your everyday dealings with your kids.
The issue for me is, in everyday dealings with kids, what is the source of the human conscience.
If you really think and live your life under the guiding principle that you are accountable for your kids’ welfare only insofar as there is some God somewhere who would ultimately squash you for negligence in that area, then you are seriously morally handicapped; probably you should seek help in that case.
Your caricature of God is coming across. I see nothing more than your sense of ungrateful resentment of God being an authority.
I consider the matter in conjunction with thanksgiving to the way He has designed man. The conscience is a breaking system to prevent free will from pushing us too far into evil.
Now WHY we cannot always live up perfectly TO what our conscience informs --- is another issue. What has gone wrong ? That's an additional argument.
But the presence of a conscience is what I deal with at the moment, and HOW it arrived to exist in men whether they be thiests or not.
Yet again, what I see in these discussion is that the theist's claim that God is required for objective morality (or moral obligations or accountability or whatever-else-have-you) has nothing to do with reason or objectivity. It has to do with irrational feverish passions or failure in perspective, regarding one of a few things or some combination thereof.
Interesting. The feverish passion seemed to be coming from your side to announce to the world that it is "garbage" to believe in a Creator as a source of dignity, who in turn bestowed it upon man.
I thought the feverish passion was displayed by your retorts of "childishness" and "garbage" in the presence of an inadequate grounding for ultimate moral goodness.
You are demonstrating one here. To wit, the theist just doesn't like the idea that a person could get away scot-free for some moral failing. This leads in to either the fallacious reasoning that God exists because the alternative of no ultimate retributive justice is intolerable; or to the fallacious reasoning that morality somehow does not really exist in the first place. The former is just textbook appeal to consequences; the latter tends to be incoherent or else just perverts the notion of morality.
Well let's ask you this. If great maturity and final utmost development of morality was ever expressed in a person who lived on this earth, to whom would you say most clearly manifested that kind of unchildish HIGH moral sense ?
Any names as you review the contributions of the life and words of those who have lived on earth since man existed ?
I think to that person we should consider his or her views on the matter of ultimate standards of goodness and accountability.
So what person in history do you think is most authoritative and mature in that arena ?
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@lemonjello saidDo you have a better argument for moral obligation than the existence of a righteous creator God figure (who not only sees everything we do in secret but also knows the deepest motives of the heart) to whom we should all give account for what we have done?
Do you have an actual argument for this? Even supposing such a being exists, just possessing the property of having created the universe would not imply that all moral obligation is ultimately owed to this being. If you are trying to imply otherwise, that's just you sucking at logic.