Is morality objective or subjective?

[Will Bouwman]

Child abuse is not charged to God's account, but to man's. What God gave the child is life. What man gave him/her is evil.

It's amazing how people want to pretend that all the good they do is their own, but all the evil is God's fault. But that's not how it works. We've been given life and freedom; and if we use them to abuse others, then from God, judgment comes against us, and justice to them.

As a victim of child abuse, and an atheist, what form will my justice take?

[henry quirk]

As a victim of child abuse, and an atheist, what form will my justice take?

If you're right and there is no God: you'll have to work that one out yourself, here.

If you're wrong, and there is a God (specifically the Christian God): the abuser will get his, there (which, of course, doesn't mean you can't or ought not seek justice here).

If you're wrong, and there is a God (specifically, mine): you best get to makin' the crapsack pay, here & now (cuz my God is a hands-off fella [and I don't think He provided an afterlife]).

So, to be on the safe side: go get the abuser today and feed him his nuts...or don't.

[Iwannaplato]

Child trafficking isn't usually done by the family, but that's possible.

I was thinking of incest/pedophilia in-family.

However, this is what free will is: it means that people have the choice to do good, or they have the choice to do evil. And evil doesn't "play fair": it takes victims. It does cruel and horrible things. That's one of the features that reminds us constantly that it IS evil.

Child abuse is not charged to God's account, but to man's. What God gave the child is life. What man gave him/her is evil.

God put child A in an apartment with a pedophile who already raped child A's older sisters. God put child B in an apartment with decent parents who had zero proclivities in that direction.

It's amazing how people want to pretend that all the good they do is their own, but all the evil is God's fault.

Did I say anything at all that indicated I do that? Where did this come from?

I am responding to this:

Why would it be? God gave them every good thing they have. It was men/women who did them evil.

Imagine you had a family member who put her children in a daycare and it turns out later that the director of the daycare put your family member's children in a room with someone the director knew had been a pedophile a number of times. Imagine then the director when confronted after her child is abused says: Yes, humans have free will. I couldn't know what that teacher would do.

I am not blaming God for everything. I am pointing out that your model is limited. And of course also with inborn disseases, natural disasters that cause incredible suffering and so on. Or did humans make the world?

But that's not how it works. We've been given life and freedom; and if we use them to abuse others, then from God, judgment comes against us, and justice to them.

It's as if I am excusing the perpetrators of crimes. I am pointing out that there's a problem with your model that all the evil that happens comes from other humans:

Of course habits of all kinds - denying anger included - can be a problem.

That's just anger, and anger can be warranted. One should be angry when one sees evil, for example; but one should also act, if one can. Another thing about anger is that it's also usually temporary and focused. But rage, I would say, is not that: it's a more abiding state of mind.

Well not in its definition. But OK, so now I know you're talking about long standing angers. Or as I mentioned that there can be problems when we get habitual emotions/attitudes.

So, then anger can be OK. Anger can be justified.

It's a disposition toward the world, really: and that's what you see in Gary -- not focused anger for a moment, and with a positive action, but bitterness, venom, unhappiness, resentment, and world-hatred.

It's not working for him. But we so often find ourselves drawn to lazy evil, rather than to the hard work of making better choices and making our lives better. That's when rage comes in to power our inertia, our circling of the drain, our cycle of hatred and ingratitude. And there's no getting out of that by way of more rage.

Not ultimately, but it can be a part of a process.

That's what I'm telling Gary to do: to stop raging and get busy making something of himself. It's his only positive move, no matter what justification he feels he has.

I don't know enough about his situation to make such a judgment.

You don't need to. You can see that what he's doing is not working for him. It doesn't take much common sense to realize he should try something very different, if he wants a different result.

But you can see how he reacts to being told what he should do, also. Let me switch from talking about him, since I don't know him. Let's say there is a person X - and this is not code for Gary because I think there are many possibilities for someone who is angry and bitter. Your response is stop raging and make something of yourself. What if that person could continue to rage but also start to allow other reactions to come forward. What if it's not the right time to 'make something of himself' but what a good psychologist or friend would do would just keep asking 'you came to me, what are you hoping for'? Or what if that friend or psychologist said 'Let's REALLY express this.' and encouraged him to get out of the words - which can make things seem very permanent, and instead expressed this rage in sounds and with full body expression. Hitting a pillow with a wiffle ball bat, for example, which creates a lovely satisfying explosion sound and depression is often a lot about powerlessness and even that mere sound can give a sense of something shifting.

Perhaps, most of Person X's rage has a large verbal content and he has never allowed the rage to fully express.

I've done this. I've expressed rage until heartbreak came or grief or an underlying fear I didn't want to face and as horrible as the rage was, this fear was even scarier. Or a feeling about someone I love I don't want to look at, etc.

Another person might need to do something else.

But your reaction is that this person needs to stop raging and make somthing of themself. Period.

And you're not this person's friend, you're not a professional, you don't see him in a face to face situation, but you are sure enough to tell him this in unqualified terms and when he doesn't listen, start to talk to others about how he likes being where he is.

I can be pretty harsh with people here. Much harsher than you are.

But with someone so obviously in pain, at times almost announcing suicidal tendencies, to run in cocksure, make pronouncements and judgments, seems callous. I don't think this is your intention, but it doesn't seem compassionate to me.

I also think you may have judgments of emotions and their expression that limit the possible ways one might move forward when on is in pain.

...if I were his friend or family member perhaps on some occasion I might express anger at the way he treats himself, an anger coming from...you're mistreating someone I care about: you.

Well and good. But that's only negative advice, meaning, "Stop doing what you're doing," but not "start doing X." Gary needs a better alternative. So what would you suggest he should start doing instead?

Sigh. I wasn't laying out all my reactions. I was pointing out that I don't have a nicey nice rule. That's all.

I disagree. I'm not accusing you of indulging his illness or failing to be compassionate. I'm pointing out that compassion -- genuine compassion -- is goal-driven, not merely feeling-produced. If one is truly compassionate, one may have to challenge, contradict, confront, intervene, or even arrest a foolish and self-destructive course of action: it may be abrupt, oppositional, blunt or even rudeand shocking, if that's what it takes to wake up the person who's on a self-destructive course. And the kind of "compassion" that stops short of confronting is often no more than a soppy sentimentality without any mercy in it at all.

I made it clear that I am down for that kind of thing. Further I didn't criticize you for any of the things you say here.

So let us both opt for the compassion that is not afraid to say what needs to be said, right?

So, gossiping in front of him to others about how he likes is pain. Telling him he in particular has no excuse for his feelings, when in fact you don't think anyone is justified in expressing the feelings he has.

And if that seems to abrupt, then maybe abruptness is what is needed. Gary's seeking the soppy, unhelpful kind of empathy -- pity, really -- and it's doing him absolutely no good at all.

Is he? You could be right, I haven't read the posts you are reacting to.

Well, then, you don't have the whole picture.

IC, you don't have the whole picture. You know this person through the posts he writes in a philosophy forum. You can't see his body language. You don't know that state of his body or brain. You don't know what he has or has not gone through, since he has shared what he remembers that he wants to share and not others things. He may even be off on what he thinks sucked in his life. You don't know this guy.

I've been talking with Gary a long while...not just now, but for years, here. He keeps doing the same things...raging, seeking pity, hating anybody who challenges him, whining when he can't get his way, complaining his life is awful...but never changing it.

That was my impression of much of what he does here. If that's the full picture, then I have that. But that's not the full picture. And it doesn't make me think the specific things I pointed out (rather than all the abruptness stuff you mentioned that I did not criticize) were somehow compassionate. You assumed I mean it should be nice and supportive in some feely passive way. Nah.

It isn't mercy to indulge that.

OK, this is getting tiring.
I never said you're not indulging him.

And you did not ONCE respond to the actual behaviors on your part I mentioned. Instead you responded to criticisms I did not make, framing me as having a position of what you should have done that I didn't have.

As far as I can tell this is a habit with you. I don't think you're conscious of it, but you strike me as very evasive, squirting out a bunch of stuff that is filled with assumptions, rather than actually dealing with what I write.

You came off rather smarmy in relation to GC and that's neither abrupt nor compassionate. You might want to consider that your rage comes out in little passive aggressive squirts and avoidance.

Here's my intervention, as you put it for you. Go back through our posts. Notice how much I have to work get answers to specific questions. Notice how you put my pointing this out ON ME. Notice how you create positions for me and then attack them. Notice the assumptions you make about what I must mean.

That all strikes me as evasive and evasive to avoid cognitive dissonance. It may be working just fine for you but as a Christian, you might want to consider how unpleasant this BS can be for other people interacting with you.

And then consider that what you actually did in relation to GC might be much more of a mix between genuinely trying to help and being judgmental in ways that are not even meant to help, whatever you tell yourself when this is pointed out.

I'll leave this here.

[Immanuel Can]

As a victim of child abuse, and an atheist, what form will my justice take?

I'm deeply sorry for your experience. That's horrible. And sadly, there's nothing that can be done to reclaim the loss, if there is no more than this life. It's one and done, so the past cannot be resolved.

But I don't think that's how it is, actually, so I would give you the Biblical answer. The justice that's coming takes the form of God's perfect justice. And He alone is able to judge the guilty and deliver fit sentence, and to rescue and reward those who have suffered evil at their hands.

So if there's a resolution to that tragedy, it's in eternity. On this Earth, manifestly, evildoers often get away with things, and seem to die quietly in their beds, untroubled by the abundant evil they've caused. But the Great Judgment will deliver a different answer.

That's why it doesn't make sense to be angry with God: He is not the perpetrator. He's the only hope of justice and healing for the abused.

[Immanuel Can]

God put child A in an apartment with a pedophile who already raped child A's older sisters. God put child B in an apartment with decent parents who had zero proclivities in that direction.

No, He did not. He allowed people to procreate, without sterilizing those who were evil. And it's a good thing He did, because compared to His standard, there aren't any who are righteous by their own doing (Romans 3: 10 -- "There is none righteous, not even one."), so there would be no human race if He had.

The people who decided what conditions they would set for the children were the parents. It is they who will answer to a holy God for what they did, too. We all have to own our moral freedom; we are all going to answer for it, as John Locke so wisely said.

It's amazing how people want to pretend that all the good they do is their own, but all the evil is God's fault.

Did I say anything at all that indicated I do that? Where did this come from?

Well, yes, I think you did. You sailed right past the actual perpetrators of the abuse, and blamed God instead, did you not?

And of course also with inborn disseases, natural disasters that cause incredible suffering and so on. Or did humans make the world?

That's a different conception of evil, of course, but your question is good.

Susan Neiman, in her book "Evil In Modern Thought," sagely observes that there are two things to which we attribute the term "evil": and she calls them "human evils" and "natural evils." In the case of the former, there's a human doer: such things are most obviously the responsibility of the perp. Any question about whether or not God should permit it, is usually responded to in terms of human freedom. The second evil, though, are evils in which there is no perp: earthquakes, hurricanes, cancer, and so on.

Now, it's true the distinction is not pure. For example, cancer can be caused by dietary choices. But I think the distinction is helpful. And I think she's smart not to group the two together merely under the heading "evil," because that fails to recognize the difference. But your first concern seems to be human evils, and then you shift into natural evils. Let's treat them as somewhat different problems, shall we?

Or should we? Let me try out a postulate on you: that human freedom would be just as impossible in a world devoid of natural evils as it would be in a world devoid of the possibility of human evils.

Ask more, if you care, or leave it there, if you decide you don't.

I am pointing out that there's a problem with your model that all the evil that happens comes from other humans:

I didn't say it did, did I? In fact, I'm recognizing the distinction you want, just as Neiman is.

Of course habits of all kinds - denying anger included - can be a problem.

That's just anger, and anger can be warranted. One should be angry when one sees evil, for example; but one should also act, if one can. Another thing about anger is that it's also usually temporary and focused. But rage, I would say, is not that: it's a more abiding state of mind.

Well not in its definition. But OK, so now I know you're talking about long standing angers. Or as I mentioned that there can be problems when we get habitual emotions/attitudes.

Well, rage is usually associated with adjectives like "simmering" or "impotent," both of which suggest a longer-term disposition toward the world, rather than merely a flash of temporary (and perhaps warranted) anger.

So, then anger can be OK. Anger can be justified.

Yes. God Himself is "angry" against evil...but one should probably prefer the term "wrathful," because "anger" suggests a temporary and emotional state, just as "rage" suggests a prolonged feeling of incapacity or impotence. Obviously, neither describes the settled disposition of and all-powerful God to deal with all evil with absolute thoroughness and justice: so the preferred term would be "wrath."

But suffice to say, God is not winking at evil. And He is not going to be passive in the presence of injustice. Everything has its time: human freedom has its time, and divine accountability has its time. The time for wrath is not yet. But those who have been abused, or have been victimized by some awful exercise of the moral freedom of others would be right to be aggrieved if God did not eventually judge and clear the tables.

It's a disposition toward the world, really: and that's what you see in Gary -- not focused anger for a moment, and with a positive action, but bitterness, venom, unhappiness, resentment, and world-hatred.

It's not working for him. But we so often find ourselves drawn to lazy evil, rather than to the hard work of making better choices and making our lives better. That's when rage comes in to power our inertia, our circling of the drain, our cycle of hatred and ingratitude. And there's no getting out of that by way of more rage.

Not ultimately, but it can be a part of a process.

If it is, then "rage" would be a futile stage we need to get past, not a healthy stage we need to cultivate.

I've done this. I've expressed rage until heartbreak came or grief or an underlying fear I didn't want to face and as horrible as the rage was, this fear was even scarier.

Well, that's the thing about rage: it's a sort of "substitute" for a better reaction, often because we DON'T want to face reality. And let's face it: it's easier to rage and grow resentful than to face the truth and have to admit that part of the misery one is facing could be one's own doing. That's painful. Rage makes that seem unnecessary, and so can be, in an odd way, comforting. But comfort is not what somebody needs when they are refusing to face reality, or to take responsibility for their own choices or role in a bad situation.

And one thing for sure: it's never productive. Again, one has to get past the rage, because the rage is actually infantile. Nobody does it more often, or more graphically, than two-year-olds.

But your reaction is that this person needs to stop raging and make somthing of themself.

Yes, they do. The rage, all by itself, will produce no good at all. Only if it is translated into an intelligent and purposeful response will any good come out of it.

And you're not this person's friend, you're not a professional, you don't see him in a face to face situation, but you are sure enough to tell him this in unqualified terms and when he doesn't listen, start to talk to others about how he likes being where he is.

I don't have to be. It doesn't require more information, or psychoanalysis, or involvement to know what common sense makes sensible. Common sense will tell anybody exactly the same thing: Gary's bitterness, hatred, resentment and nihilistic hatred of life is getting him nothing good.

I don't think this is your intention, but it doesn't seem compassionate to me.

It is. Gary's had plenty of pity, and enough sympathy even from me (as you say, you're not privy to our long-standing conversations, and I don't tell you to go back and read them all...it would take you a long time). But Gary needs a change. And maybe nobody's had the courage, or cared enough, to tell him he's gone savagely wrong, and is now eating himself. To tell him to stop is the only compassionate thing to do.

So let us both opt for the compassion that is not afraid to say what needs to be said, right?

So, gossiping in front of him to others about how he likes is pain.

Who's "gossipping"? Gary WANTS to air this. Go back and check. You can't get him to STOP talking about it, and talking right here, in public. He's constantly going on about how sad his life is, and how much he hates God, and doing his darndest to provoke me with insults directed toward God. I don't take most of them, and I refuse to be offended, even when he blasphemes; but he fires out no shortage of such things. This guy wants to talk about it, and right here.

As for my advice, all that I have said I told him to his face. And it was after he issued the many evident provocations and inquiries to get me to do so. If the fact that he did so in public troubles you, then take it up with Gary; but nothing we're talking about here is being done in the dark.

Now, I've tried him on the private message board; he doesn't respond, for some reason. That's up to him. But if he's going to be provocative and issue defiances against God, does he want me to remain quiet? You be the judge. Go back and check to see if what I'm saying is true.

You could be right, I haven't read the posts you are reacting to.

Well, perhaps you're only channelling your own first impression, then, which is fair enough. But there's more to this story than you know, then.

And you did not ONCE respond to the actual behaviors on your part I mentioned.

Well, to be frank, I found that the characterizations weren't apt. I had no reason to respond to them, since they were off base. There's no point in spending time running down a side trail that's not even factually right.

Again, you could go back and see where Gary's been on this, and what we've talked about already -- which is all a result of stuff Gary himself has volunteered, nothing I've induced him say. Gary likes get as much pity as he can here, which is why he exposes all his personal stuff to everybody. But it's a toxic bit of behaviour, and I think his future happiness depends on him finding a much more productive strategy for dealing with his personal rage. Venting it here is not doing him any good. That much must be quite clear to you.

So I think a compassionate response is to tell Gary, "Make some changes." If you've got what you think is better advice for him, go ahead. If you don't, then you've got nothing to offer him, I suppose. However, to cut him off from the sort of exhortation that actually stands to make his life better, well, that's certainly somewhat less than what most people would understand as "compassion."

[Dontaskme]

That's why it doesn't make sense to be angry with God:

[Lacewing]

God put child A in an apartment with a pedophile who already raped child A's older sisters. God put child B in an apartment with decent parents who had zero proclivities in that direction.

No, He did not. He allowed people to procreate, without sterilizing those who were evil.

The people who decided what conditions they would set for the children were the parents. It is they who will answer to a holy God for what they did, too.

Who protects the children that parents/adults don't?

What choice do the children have?

[Immanuel Can]

Who protects the children that parents/adults don't?

Often, nobody does. The government sure can't...it doesn't do anything very well.

What choice do the children have?

Children don't have many choices. They don't get to choose their bedtime, their own diet, whether or not to be educated, what behaviours are socially acceptable, what colour their skin is, what athletic potential they have, their height, their weight, their location of birth, their families, their family income, their health...

In fact, children have fewer choices than all adults. That's why they're the responsibility of adults -- primarily of those who brought them into the world, but also of other caretakers, such as relative, neighbours, teachers, coaches, and so on.

All the more reason to guarantee that these adults are doing what they're supposed to be doing, and not exploiting children.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Lacewing asks: Who protects the children that parents/adults don't?

Immanuel, did you not get what she was actually asking? How could you have missed it?

In a “God world” those abandoned children would be watched over and protected by God himself or his transcendental agents, the angels.

[iambiguous]

So far from being some kind of a slam-dunk argument, as VA seems to imagine, it's like something put together by somebody who skipped most of Logic 101. But hey, if it impresses VA, then it impresses VA. It shouldn't impress anybody else.

How about this...

IC focuses in on proof that the Christian God does in fact exist by noting examples of Logic 101 here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... SjDNeMaRoX

Scientific and historical logic/evidence that may well convince some of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...to come around to Jesus Christ.

Well, you know, if he actually does have any interest at all in...saving souls?

[Harbal]

Who protects the children that parents/adults don't?

Often, nobody does. The government sure can't...it doesn't do anything very well.

What choice do the children have?

Children don't have many choices. They don't get to choose their bedtime, their own diet, whether or not to be educated, what behaviours are socially acceptable, what colour their skin is, what athletic potential they have, their height, their weight, their location of birth, their families, their family income, their health...

The religion they are taught, if they are unlucky enough to be born into a culture that requires it, or have parents that are misguided enough to insist on it. Not the cruellest form of child abuse, but one of the most calculated and hardest to overcome.

[iambiguous]

But you'll still have no justification for anger at God, then; you've made your life exactly what you intended it to be.

Indeed, and only fools would feel justified in being angry at God for these...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

...ghastly, cataclysmic tragedies.

And I suspect that is what prompted Rabbi Harold Kushner to suggest that while the God of Abraham is indeed loving, just and merciful, He created a planet [ours] that got beyond His control. I mean, who knows, maybe He got better and better at being God and created other planets more in sync with what we would imagine a loving, just and merciful Creator to be.

[Gary Childress]

Who protects the children that parents/adults don't?

Often, nobody does. The government sure can't...it doesn't do anything very well.

Clearly, revenge is the only thing God can do for victims. It's obvious that God doesn't prevent harm, because there is plenty of harm done to people.

Revenge is not what I want. I want peace and restoration. Ideally, sanity would be nice. Revenge doesn't do squat for me. Judgment of a person in an afterlife for something they did to me in this life doesn't do squat for me either. Heck, it's a well-known pattern that people who hurt others often got their start as victims themselves anyway. Hardened criminals usually come from troubled families, who came from troubled families, who came from troubled families... Your "Leave it to Beaver" world of tranquility and harmony doesn't exist for everyone. It's a friggen story made up by wealthy, sheltered screenwriters and producers who think if they sugarcoat life, everything will be fine.

Revenge against fallible human wrongdoers who also suffered doesn't cut it IC. Peace and harmony do and when I read the news about World War 3 or the possible extinction of life on Earth due to environmental destruction from 7.5 billion humans trying to live on a single planet, that doesn't do my sanity any good either. My own psychoses usually involve apocalyptic themes too. Screw God and the broom he flew in on.

Take your fraudulent "God" and go worship him yourself. You may be happy but you don't live in reality. Ignorance is bliss.

[Immanuel Can]

The religion they are taught, if they are unlucky enough to be born into a culture that requires it, or have parents that are misguided enough to insist on it. Not the cruellest form of child abuse, but one of the most calculated and hardest to overcome.

Actually, you and I can sort of agree on that.

To raise a child in a false ideology is a form of child abuse. And to raise a child with no concept of a loving God at all is surely the cruelest such form of abuse, since it stands not only to harm them in this life, but forever.

And yes, I think it can be hard to overcome that sort of indoctrination.

But not impossible. Salvation is real. So there's still hope.

[Gary Childress]

This is our world, IC. It's the world GOD created according to you and your stupid book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY