BigMike wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 6:11 pm
That's an interesting perspective. So, do you believe that morality is solely determined by God's laws and principles, or is there any room for human reasoning and interpretation?
Of course. Once we have the basic precepts, we still have to use good judgment in figuring out how to apply them to real-world situations.
One may know, for example, that it's wrong to murder. But it takes some wisdom to figure out how that injunction applies in particular cases. Are, for example, the killing of enemy combattants, unborn children, criminals, and so on cases of violation of that principle, or allowable under it?
But the problem is that Atheism has no resources at all for adjudicating such things, or informing human judgment. It doesn't even imply that in any objective way, murder itself, even the clear case, is ever truly wrong. Nothing is, because Atheism as a creed contains no moral information of any kind. It just denies that such information is even possible.
So on Christianity, or rather on Judaism, we might say, we know that murder is wrong -- even though we still have to work out the details of what that entails. But on Atheism, we have no information at all.
Let's say we witness a heinous act like an elderly grandfather sexually assaulting his young granddaughter. If we don't have the ability to comprehend God's purposes, does that mean we should just stand by and do nothing,...
I don't see why you would think that, since God has already told us the moral status of such actions, and what our duty with regard to them is. That's violence, at least, or maybe fornication (you didn't specify), or incest...all roundly condemned by the first five books of the Bible.
I see what you're saying, but my point is more about the broader issue of determining right and wrong in situations where there may not be clear guidance from religious texts.
I trust the above makes sense of that.
In the case of the heinous act I mentioned, it's clear that it's wrong based on the moral principles outlined in the Bible. But what about other situations where there may not be a clear-cut answer? How do we navigate those gray areas without a complete understanding of God's intentions?
That's actually a very sensible and good question. And I think it's the right one.
Even in the case of "murder," we have some gray areas to navigate. So the information in the Law has to be supplemented somehow. But how?
The answer is in having not just what's called "the letter of the law," (meaning, only exactly the words it uses to form the precept), but also what's called "the spirit of the law," which includes much more than that. Jesus spoke of this in the famous Sermon on the Mount, how that it's not enough to simply not kill people, but it's also wrong to have a (so-to-speak) homicidal hatred toward them. And how it's not just enough not to have committed adultery, but that the precept also implies the larger principle that one should not even be indulging those kinds of affections.
The point is that the Law is much more than just a set of individual precepts: it implies a much more complete moral attitude, of which the individual precepts are but the first indicator. And in order to capture the whole moral law, one needs not only the principle behind the precept, but also the personal help of God to get the moral equation right. So there's a dynamic, divine element in proper moral reflection, as well.
It's important to have some kind of moral compass to guide our actions, regardless of whether or not we can fully comprehend God's purposes.
This is the fundamental problem with Atheism that I'm pointing out, and with which the defenders of Atheism also seem to agree: Atheism does not imply any moral judgments.
That means that Atheism has nothing to offer the "moral compass" of which you speak. It can't offer us anything to inform us of what we should do in any moral dilemma, no matter how serious that dilemma may be.
And how bad is that? Just as bad as you suggest.
Firstly, I'd like to clarify that being an atheist does not mean that a person has no moral compass.
You don't have to. I already said that. What it means is that whatever moral compass they pick up, they'll get no information for it from Atheism.
Atheists base their moral values on empathy, compassion, reason, and human well-being, rather than on the authority of a deity.
Actually, they don't. Some do, arbitrarily; but clearly most do not.
We can see that from the fact that avowedly Atheist regimes have been, by orders of magnitude, the most homicidal regimes in history, killing over 140 million in the last century alone. If their moral compasses were in good shape, how do we explain that?
But let's suppose we say they do. Well, Atheism itself says nothing about "empathy," "compassion," "human well-being" or even "reason." All it says is, "No gods." So there's nothing in Atheism itself to help an empathetic Atheist to know he ought to be empathetic. And there's nothing in Atheism stopping a homicidal one from being homicidal.
Furthermore, just because someone believes in God doesn't necessarily mean that they have a clear understanding of what is right and wrong.
Very true.
It's one thing to know "a" moral law, another to know "THE" Moral Law. But even then, there's a big difference between knowing about something and actually doing it. And there's a difference as well between knowing what the Law says, and being empowered to follow it.
This is why the answer to how people have to become moral is complex: it's not just by reading the Law...that makes nobody good. It's not merely by agreeing to the Law. It's not even by trying to fulfill or keep the Law, because we all fail. It's only by having the right Law, the priniciples it implies, and the power to obey them that a person can become genuinely moral. And that latter is one of the main distinctive of Christianity. Many other systems just assume that human beings have the personal strength to make themselves good; Christianity does not assume that. Rather, Christianity assumes that, short of divine aid, none of us is going to be successful, morally speaking, and all of us will be culpable for having failed.
In the case of the heinous act I mentioned earlier, regardless of our beliefs or lack thereof, it's our responsibility as human beings to take action and protect the innocent. We don't need a divine directive to know that assaulting a child is morally wrong and that we have a duty to intervene and seek justice for the victim.
And yet, we do.
There are countries where child rape, forced "marriages," and even sex slavery are condoned, and cultures in which children are routinely abused. In a place like Somalia, for example, they hold 13-year-old girls down and forcibly slice up their genitalia...often without anaesthetic...in the name of ritual "purity." Those people believe they are doing the right thing. Sometimes, even the girl who is being mutilated believes it, because she has been told it will make her valuable to men, and she won't be if they don't do it.
You and I know that's ghastly. But HOW do we know? That's the question. And why don't the Somalis know it immediately, if these things are just instinctive to all people? How can they believe they're doing the right thing?
And then, there are the notorious purges and gulags of Communism, all performed in the name of "the common good." Are all the Communists simply more evil and stupid than we are? Or are they somehow not aware that you can't abuse and kill individuals in the name of the collective? Why don't they know?
Ultimately, it's up to each individual to determine their own moral values and act accordingly, regardless of whether they believe in a god or not.
You mean like Hitler, Stalin and Mao did? Or did you mean that their moral values are somehow "bad"? And how does Atheism speak into their cases? Does it tell us that they were wrong? Does it indict their choices? Does it condemn them, in some way? Or not?
