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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 08/07/2012 : 00:17:29 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
. . .
It's turtles all the way down, still. |
Ah, the very phrase I was trying to recall for the Dings! |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 08/07/2012 : 02:38:04 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
If God decides his own nature, then God can change his nature at any time and morality exists at his whim. If God's nature is fixed and immutable, then who made God that way? It's turtles all the way down, still. |
No one said god decides his nature, his nature is his nature, there's nothing he/it or any other being can do about it. And, this god is supposed to be eternal as well, so there's no infinite regress.
Sure, there's no independence for the god in this area, but it would be logically impossible to remove the logical equivalence, and inability to accomplish logical impossible tasks doesn't threaten god's omnipotence. Just as they don't have a problem when god cannot create a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it.
| And that conclusion would be true even if God can decide to change false goods into true goods, in which case, might makes right. |
But god can't do that. There's no decision being made by this god with respect to what is good.
| In which case, God is merely a reporter of what is sinful and what isn't, and he's not the ultimate arbiter of goodness. |
So what? Here, god can't arbitrate goodness anymore than a circle can arbitrate circleness. God is logically equivalent to goodness. |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
| Edited by - Machi4velli on 08/07/2012 02:38:28 |
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ThorGoLucky
Snuggle Wolf
USA
1486 Posts |
Posted - 08/07/2012 : 06:38:02 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by On fire for Christ
... I am not asserting that morality is given by God...
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God doesn't bother communicating, or if it does it tells select people different things. Morality is shaped by communities, society and culture, and then that determines what's touted, ignored and interpreted in ancient scriptures. Most Christians today would be burned for their heresy by Christians of yore and their moral standards. |
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alienist
Skeptic Friend
USA
210 Posts |
Posted - 08/07/2012 : 15:59:58 [Permalink]
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So how do people know what God wants? The catholic church refuses to have women priests but other christian religions have women religious leaders. Who is right? A Muslim will have different ideas of what
God wants and even then it depends the sect of Islam. Jews also have different ideas of what God says. So who is right? Each religion believes strongly they know what God wants.
So how do you know what God wants? And don't say the bible. Because the bible does not address issues like IVF, nuclear weapons, universal health care, etc |
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well! - Joe Ancis |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 08/07/2012 : 21:56:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by alienist
So how do people know what God wants? The catholic church refuses to have women priests but other christian religions have women religious leaders. Who is right? A Muslim will have different ideas of what
God wants and even then it depends the sect of Islam. Jews also have different ideas of what God says. So who is right? Each religion believes strongly they know what God wants. |
Religions disagree. I suppose they all think they're right (or more realistically, think their position seems most right with the limited information available to them).
| So how do you know what God wants? And don't say the bible. Because the bible does not address issues like IVF, nuclear weapons, universal health care, etc |
Not that every religious person thinks the Bible has anything to do with some of those topics, but they suppose biblical principles imply things with respect to all sorts of things not explicitly addressed. We're capable of reasoning.
The axioms of Euclidean geometry don't explicitly address the relationship between the sides of a right triangle, but the Pythagorean theorem nevertheless can be shown by reasoning from them. |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 08/07/2012 : 21:58:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Machi4velli
No one said god decides his nature, his nature is his nature, there's nothing he/it or any other being can do about it. |
Then he doesn't choose what's good or evil, that is determined by something else. God is nothing more than a reporter of morality. And so his being "supreme" or any of the other superlatives OffC mentioned are irrelevant. Morality doesn't "come from" God, he just happens to report it accurately (if incompletely).| And, this god is supposed to be eternal as well, so there's no infinite regress. |
No, the "eternal" argument is just special pleading.
Besides, the idea that morality just springs from God is as much of a hole in Christian theology as is the mass of the electron is for the Standard Model of physics. The Standard Model is considered to be "incomplete" because the masses of various particles can't be derived from other properties of the universe, but instead have only been measured.
So if we can "measure" morality as presented by God, but not figure out what it should be from God's other properties, then Christians are depending upon "magic" morality just as much as physicists depend upon a "magic number" for electron mass. It's nowhere close to satisfying, and no scientist would consider "the mass is what it is" at all a good answer.| Sure, there's no independence for the god in this area, but it would be logically impossible to remove the logical equivalence, and inability to accomplish logical impossible tasks doesn't threaten god's omnipotence. Just as they don't have a problem when god cannot create a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it. |
The problem is that either good is chosen by God or it isn't. You are arguing that he doesn't choose it, it just is. But then murder isn't evil because God declares it such, it's evil because it's evil and not even God can say otherwise. How is this not tautological? So the problem with Aquinas' argument the first premise isn't at all specific, and once you ask "why?" for any specific sin, it becomes an "it is what it is" premise and the rest of the argument can be ignored as superfluous.
Actually, the problem with the argument is two-fold: if lying really isn't a sin, then the whole argument falls apart. If God can tell us that something is sinful when it really isn't (including lying), then the conclusion may still hold, but God's Word becomes entirely unreliable. So, "lying is a sin" is an unstated premise and nothing about the Bible or the religion can prove that it's true.But god can't do that.Why not? If God had the ability to change murder from "bad" to "good" tomorrow, it wouldn't violate Aquinas' argument at all. It would just mean that all of a sudden, murder would stop being a sin and God could smite at will while still being sin-free.| There's no decision being made by this god with respect to what is good. |
Then who/what has determined good and evil and why?[quote]So what? Here, god can't arbitrate goodness anymore than a circle can arbitrate circleness. |
But we know precisely what determines circleness: we do, through mathematical definitions.[quote]God is logically equivalent to goodness. |
But that alone still doesn't resolve the dilemma. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict
2830 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2012 : 07:29:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by alienist
So how do people know what God wants? |
Exactly which God are you referring to? There are polytheistic religions which have numerous deities, each as worthy of worship as the others. Deities that are very much believed to exist AND are prayed to for favors and blessings. Then there are monotheistic religions which worship their "One True God Alone" and there are more that one of them which have big differences between themselves. They can't all be right! In that is a clue to your question. Either they are all right or they all can't be right. What is truth? Unless "The Truth" can be different for different people there are some very mistaken people out there. The catholic church refuses to have women priests but other christian religions have women religious leaders. Who is right? A Muslim will have different ideas of what
God wants and even then it depends the sect of Islam. Jews also have different ideas of what God says. So who is right? Each religion believes strongly they know what God wants. |
In reality it's individual people who believe they know what "their" God wants. Like OFFC, he "KNOWS" what God wants. Isn't it interesting how Gods take on the likes and dislikes of their individual worshipers? What does that tell you?
So how do you know what God wants? And don't say the bible. Because the bible does not address issues like IVF, nuclear weapons, universal health care, etc
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Only deluded people can truly "know" what their delusional God wants because they created Him. |
There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2012 : 09:44:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Machi4velli
No one said god decides his nature, his nature is his nature, there's nothing he/it or any other being can do about it. |
Then he doesn't choose what's good or evil, that is determined by something else. God is nothing more than a reporter of morality. |
That's simply not true if we're to suppose the logical equivalence. If god is only a reporter of morality, we would need to suppose the good could exist independently of god (i.e. good implies the preference of the gods in Euthyphro). However, equivalence makes this impossible.
I think the logical equivalence is convenient for their purposes and unsupported (stemming from the lack of existence proofs for the definitions of good and god), but it does make Euthyphro a false dilemma if accepted.
| And so his being "supreme" or any of the other superlatives OffC mentioned are irrelevant. Morality doesn't "come from" God, he just happens to report it accurately (if incompletely). |
Well, if this god is equivalent to goodness, and nothing else is (or else it'd also be equivalent to both), that seems worthy of superlatives.
| And, this god is supposed to be eternal as well, so there's no infinite regress. |
No, the "eternal" argument is just special pleading. |
It's only special pleading if you look at it in isolation. This question is being addressed by theologians after they think they have proven an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent god exists. I don't think they've done that, but it's a different question. I'm really only defending the position that Christians are not arguing might makes right.
Besides, the idea that morality just springs from God is as much of a hole in Christian theology as is the mass of the electron is for the Standard Model of physics. The Standard Model is considered to be "incomplete" because the masses of various particles can't be derived from other properties of the universe, but instead have only been measured.
So if we can "measure" morality as presented by God, but not figure out what it should be from God's other properties, then Christians are depending upon "magic" morality just as much as physicists depend upon a "magic number" for electron mass. It's nowhere close to satisfying, and no scientist would consider "the mass is what it is" at all a good answer. |
I believe they do think morality can be deduced from god's properties (though if I'm conceiving Godel's incompleteness right, you could build undecidable moral questions, obviously something they would have been unaware of).
Of course scientists couldn't accept such a thing, but science isn't deductive. There's no available way to prove two things are logically equivalent outside their mathematical models because they can only treat the natural phenomena on which they're focusing as an open system.
| Sure, there's no independence for the god in this area, but it would be logically impossible to remove the logical equivalence, and inability to accomplish logical impossible tasks doesn't threaten god's omnipotence. Just as they don't have a problem when god cannot create a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it. |
The problem is that either good is chosen by God or it isn't. |
It's binary, yes, but Euthyphro makes a stronger statement than that, it's:
1) if the gods preferences imply the good, then the good is arbitrary fiat of the gods
2) if the good implies gods preferences, then the good is independent of the gods
Now if the gods cannot choose the good, the next question is whether it can even exist independently of the gods, which they argue is not a settled question as the dilemma supposes, and it certainly isn't if we're to accept equivalence.
| You are arguing that he doesn't choose it, it just is. But then murder isn't evil because God declares it such, it's evil because it's evil and not even God can say otherwise. How is this not tautological? So the problem with Aquinas' argument the first premise isn't at all specific, and once you ask "why?" for any specific sin, it becomes an "it is what it is" premise and the rest of the argument can be ignored as superfluous. |
It is tautological, but if you've established the good-god equivalence elsewhere (that one implies the other and vice versa), which is what they think they've done, that doesn't matter.
| Actually, the problem with the argument is two-fold: if lying really isn't a sin, then the whole argument falls apart. If God can tell us that something is sinful when it really isn't (including lying), then the conclusion may still hold, but God's Word becomes entirely unreliable. So, "lying is a sin" is an unstated premise and nothing about the Bible or the religion can prove that it's true. |
Some of the proofs they think they have for god's existence is proof of the existence of an omnipotent/omniscient/eternal being independent of scripture though, so it's not actually predicated on scripture or anything god is supposed to have told anyone (ontological arguments, for example).
| Why not? If God had the ability to change murder from "bad" to "good" tomorrow, it wouldn't violate Aquinas' argument at all. It would just mean that all of a sudden, murder would stop being a sin and God could smite at will while still being sin-free. |
They argue god doesn't have the ability. Changing the good would imply changing god itself, which would make it no longer god.
All I'm defending is the idea that the Christians are not arguing might makes right, and if they define god this way, then I don't think they are. |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2012 : 11:30:08 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Machi4velli
That's simply not true if we're to suppose the logical equivalence. If god is only a reporter of morality, we would need to suppose the good could exist independently of god (i.e. good implies the preference of the gods in Euthyphro). However, equivalence makes this impossible. |
Wait. Aquinas' argument doesn't support the equivalence that God is good, but only that God can only do good. There's an important distinction to be made between something's essence and its activities. Aquinas' argument only demonstrates that God absolutely knows what's good and bad and can only perform good acts, not that God is the logical equivalent of the abstract quality of goodness.| Some of the proofs they think they have for god's existence is proof of the existence of an omnipotent/omniscient/eternal being independent of scripture though, so it's not actually predicated on scripture or anything god is supposed to have told anyone (ontological arguments, for example). |
Unfortunately for them, every alleged proof I've seen is junk.| All I'm defending is the idea that the Christians are not arguing might makes right, and if they define god this way, then I don't think they are. |
I don't think many of them define god that way. I don't think OffC was. And I know that another of "our" Christians, Bill scott, thinks that because god created us, whatever he says goes (definitely a might-makes-right argument). |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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alienist
Skeptic Friend
USA
210 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2012 : 13:57:46 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by alienist
So how do people know what God wants? The catholic church refuses to have women priests but other christian religions have women religious leaders. Who is right? A Muslim will have different ideas of what
God wants and even then it depends the sect of Islam. Jews also have different ideas of what God says. So who is right? Each religion believes strongly they know what God wants.
So how do you know what God wants? And don't say the bible. Because the bible does not address issues like IVF, nuclear weapons, universal health care, etc
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My point was to challenge the idea that morality comes from God.
people really don't know what God wants because there are so many different intepretations and beliefs. So if people don't really know what God wants (or he doesn't exist) then people really can't base their morality on god.
I would trust "morality" more from a person who has thought about it and continues to think about what is best than someone who relies on god |
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well! - Joe Ancis |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2012 : 13:58:56 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Is it that you don't understand the mindset of a religious person or that you do, but choose to just ignore it? |
I think we understand the mindset of religious people better than they understand themselves, frankly. Remember, most non-theists were raised to be believers.
This is why these comparisons only work for outsiders disdainfully looking in on something they cannot understand.
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Oh, we understand that you have various rationales. But we also understand why those rationales aren't valid, whereas you do not. The failure of comprehension is on your end.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2012 : 14:12:37 [Permalink]
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Yes, the Aquinas argument was a separate point meant to address the argument that the victims are submitting to abuse, but it can't actually be abuse. I didn't make that very clear with my formatting.
I didn't present their argument for the equivalence (mostly because I don't know what it is). I would be surprised if they don't hold with the definitions they use. Those will be where I disagree.
I agree their ontological proofs don't work, but if they're arguing from the perspective that they do work, and so I think they rather justifiably can be said to not be arguing might makes right. I really don't think, however, they're so lightweight they can be easily dismissed as junk.
Honestly, I think a lot of modern religious folks have taken the absolute cop out of relying on faith. There's just no point in arguing with the suspension of rationality being a valid tactic. At least the theologians tried to arrive there by reason and logic. |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 12:56:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Machi4velli
Yes, the Aquinas argument was a separate point meant to address the argument that the victims are submitting to abuse, but it can't actually be abuse. |
Ah, well, unfortunately the victims of abuse sometimes make the same sorts of excuses for their abusers. In other words, I think the centuries of mental gymnastics that have gone into forming arguments that conclude whatever god does is necessarily good are merely similar apologetics to excuse their abuser's abuse, just on a much larger scale. When someone claims that for merely being human he is deserving of a torturous hell for eternity and that God would send him there out of love, we know we're dealing with someone with incredibly low (if not pathologically low) self-esteem, to say the least.| I really don't think, however, they're so lightweight they can be easily dismissed as junk. |
Every one of them has one or more gaping holes in its logic that aren't very difficult to spot. That's what I meant by "junk." |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 16:37:07 [Permalink]
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Assuming the primacy of modern Western morality in any objective sense is as far as I can tell just as unsupported as theologians' arguments. That god seems like a needy tyrant to us is irrelevant to the validity of the morality preached without assuming this or making up our convenient definitions of the good like the theologians have.
There aren't gaping holes the logic of some ontological arguments (like Leibniz/Godel), the problem is bad axioms, which is what we can attack without any unsupported assumptions.
Otherwise, it's too easy for Christians to wiggle out of the charge of arguing might makes right in this way. |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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AyameTan
New Member
Japan
36 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 22:25:43 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by the_ignored
| This is not a relationship between two human beings |
So the fuck what? Are you saying that if a human acted like biblegod allegedly acts, that it would then be wrong? Are you really saying that the morality of actions just depends on who is doing them?
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Apparently so. Which makes morality, to OFFC, completely arbitrary and meaningless. If someone killed god, he would be obligated to worship such a being. |
"Tatti hitori no inochi wo sukuu mono wa zensekai wo sukuu." |
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Accurate representation of xianity or not?
