God and morality

[Immanuel Can]

If you say so, it must be so. You're God, IC. Everything you say is true.

I don't ask you to believe that, or anything like it. I just ask you to think. If that's too much for you, well, I don't know what you're doing here.

I see. So people who don't just nod their heads and agree with everything you say don't "think".

No, you don't see. I never said that, Gary, nor anything like it. How about we just go with things I DO say, rather than things you try to make up?

[Gary Childress]

I don't ask you to believe that, or anything like it. I just ask you to think. If that's too much for you, well, I don't know what you're doing here.

I see. So people who don't just nod their heads and agree with everything you say don't "think".

No, you don't see. I never said that, Gary, nor anything like it. How about we just go with things I DO say, rather than things you try to make up?

So you see no need to provide demonstrable proof when you say to me, "You have no grounds for morality; so whatever he does, it cannot possibly be immoral for you. Thus, you aren't on any moral grounds yourself, are you?" Simply saying so makes it so?

[Immanuel Can]

I see. So people who don't just nod their heads and agree with everything you say don't "think".

No, you don't see. I never said that, Gary, nor anything like it. How about we just go with things I DO say, rather than things you try to make up?

So you see no need to provide demonstrable proof

I've proved it over, and over, and over again -- every single time I offer the chance to some secularist to ground even ONE ethical axiom or moral requirement, and they can't. And you've watched it.

So far, the evidence is 100% conclusive. You can't get better evidence than that.

[Gary Childress]

No, you don't see. I never said that, Gary, nor anything like it. How about we just go with things I DO say, rather than things you try to make up?

So you see no need to provide demonstrable proof

I've proved it over, and over, and over again -- every single time I offer the chance to some secularist to ground even ONE ethical axiom or moral requirement, and they can't. And you've watched it.

So far, the evidence is 100% conclusive. You can't get better evidence than that.

So if I say that I'm not aware of a ground for secular morality, I CAN'T leave the possibility open that there could be a ground for secular morality that hasn't been discovered by either of us yet.

[Immanuel Can]

So you see no need to provide demonstrable proof

I've proved it over, and over, and over again -- every single time I offer the chance to some secularist to ground even ONE ethical axiom or moral requirement, and they can't. And you've watched it.

So far, the evidence is 100% conclusive. You can't get better evidence than that.

So if I say that I'm not aware of a ground for secular morality, I CAN'T leave the possibility open that there could be a ground for secular morality that hasn't been discovered by either of us yet.

Hey, I always leave the door open for that. But the record's still 100% so far. If you can do it, go right ahead. If you can't, you've run your own experiment...and failed it too.

[Gary Childress]

I've proved it over, and over, and over again -- every single time I offer the chance to some secularist to ground even ONE ethical axiom or moral requirement, and they can't. And you've watched it.

So far, the evidence is 100% conclusive. You can't get better evidence than that.

So if I say that I'm not aware of a ground for secular morality, I CAN'T leave the possibility open that there could be a ground for secular morality that hasn't been discovered by either of us yet.

Hey, I always leave the door open for that. But the record's still 100% so far. If you can do it, go right ahead. If you can't, you've run your own experiment...and failed it too.

I'm not an ideologue. I don't deny that atheists may have a ground for morality. I don't affirm it either. I'm cautious over such things. However, if you'd rather be cock sure, then suit yourself. But count me out.

[Immanuel Can]

So if I say that I'm not aware of a ground for secular morality, I CAN'T leave the possibility open that there could be a ground for secular morality that hasn't been discovered by either of us yet.

Hey, I always leave the door open for that. But the record's still 100% so far. If you can do it, go right ahead. If you can't, you've run your own experiment...and failed it too.

I'm not an ideologue. I don't deny that atheists may have a ground for morality. I don't affirm it either. I'm cautious over such things. However, if you'd rather be cock sure, then suit yourself. But count me out.

You're not getting it. When the evidence is 100% against, and you, yourself have nothing, it's not "cock sure" to discern that so far, there is no case to be made for any other conclusion but that it cannot be done by anybody. It's just realism. Until further notice, and until the test is defeated, if it ever can be, that's just the reasonable assumption.

If 100% of the people who drink something die, you're not being "cock sure" not to drink it yourself, even if there's a thin chance your cup isn't poisoned.

[MikeNovack]

You propose to offer THAT "evidence" to a secular person to convince them that you have "evidence"?

It's the evidence God Himself offers you. If one looks at Christ and remains unconvinced, then the problem...and the consequences...are with the viewer, not the evidence. Being secular is not a justification for being blind to the evidence.

If you believe it is evidence, if you have faith that it is evidence, then it is evidence.

Sorry IC, but being secular IS justification for discounting supposed evidence that is merely based on belief and faith. Please understand, IC, I find nothing wrong with your belief and faith. But I do find something wrong with your (further) belief anything true based on your belief/faith would be evidence for a secularist.

[Immanuel Can]

You propose to offer THAT "evidence" to a secular person to convince them that you have "evidence"?

It's the evidence God Himself offers you. If one looks at Christ and remains unconvinced, then the problem...and the consequences...are with the viewer, not the evidence. Being secular is not a justification for being blind to the evidence.

If you believe it is evidence, if you have faith that it is evidence, then it is evidence.

That's half true. In order to be recognized as evidence by a person, evidence has to be believed. But it is not the believing that makes something evidence; it's the rational relation of the evidence to the reality it indicates.

Sorry IC, but being secular IS justification for discounting supposed evidence that is merely based on belief and faith.

Sorry, Mike; but nobody made this claim. So you're refuting nothing. However, it's false anyway, since "I am secular" is no basis for refusing something that's actual evidence...it's just evidence of willful disbelief. And that's obstinacy.

[Gary Childress]

Hey, I always leave the door open for that. But the record's still 100% so far. If you can do it, go right ahead. If you can't, you've run your own experiment...and failed it too.

I'm not an ideologue. I don't deny that atheists may have a ground for morality. I don't affirm it either. I'm cautious over such things. However, if you'd rather be cock sure, then suit yourself. But count me out.

You're not getting it. When the evidence is 100% against, and you, yourself have nothing, it's not "cock sure" to discern that so far, there is no case to be made for any other conclusion but that nobody can do it. It's just realism. Until further notice, and until the test is defeated, if it ever can be, that's just the reasonable assumption.

If 100% of the people who drink something die, you're not being "cock sure" not to drink it yourself, even if there's a thin chance your cup isn't poisoned.

OK. So that leaves us with the conclusion that without a God there is no morality. Now what if there is no God, or what if the 10 Commandments were concocted by humans fraudulently? Or what if there is a God (an original creator), but God is nothing like what humans have described in the Bible or any other human text. Now what? Under those circumstances, apparently, we are unable to ground our morality because we have no direction from God on what is moral and what is not. That means your morals have no ground, and neither do mine. Is that a good state of affairs to be in? Wouldn't it be preferable that, if there is no God-given morality, we humans can still discern or derive a valid morality?

So what should we do? Do we simply say, "well, murder is no more right or wrong than giving a harmless homeless person who is thirsty and begging a cup of clean water". Now what do we think or do?

[Greatest I am]

That's why he was so confuced. The maxim should be "do onto other before they do some shit unto you."

If I may.

That would be against our instincts that have us default to love, via cooperation, instead of competition and hate.

That is the best survival strategy and your revers is the road to extinction.

Confusion deserves calm reasoned response.

Why would you want the one coning at you thinking in the way you propose?

What is better?

A meeting of the gloves and clean fight, or a sucker punch knock out?

[Greatest I am]

[
And for what we are, we answer to Him.

I hope that does not refer to the genocidal trinity.

I follow the Bible for an answer. It says I know good from evil and are to judge all things and hold to the good.

Moses did the same and rejected Yahweh as a fit God. I agree with him. You?

We need a divine Council to elect a new God before we completely destroy our home.

If the Trinity mass murderer is my judge, he has already shown how unfit he is by putting the good of the few on his narrow path, above the good of the many on the wide road.

Only a full blown immoral misfit would elect Yahweh as a Judge.

[Immanuel Can]

OK. So that leaves us with the conclusion that without a God there is no morality. Now what if there is no God, or what if the 10 Commandments were concocted by humans fraudulently? Or what if there is a God (an original creator), but God is nothing like what humans have described in the Bible or any other human text. Now what? Under those circumstances, apparently, we are unable to ground our morality because we have no direction from God on what is moral and what is not. That means your morals have no ground, and neither do mine.

That's entirely correct. Unless God is who He says He is, there is no basis for any of the morality you and I recognize. And if God were quite a different kind of being, there might be a warrant for a different morality. But secularism, since it has no basis for a morality, can support no kind of morality.

Is that a good state of affairs to be in?

I suggest that that's exactly why secularists keep behaving morally, even though their worldview won't support it. The alternative -- of actually believing secularism and practicing its implications, rather than hypocritically adopting morals that worldview makes impossible to rationalize -- is not functional at all. So hypocrisy is the price secularists pay for their worldview.

Wouldn't it be preferable that, if there is no God-given morality, we humans can still discern or derive a valid morality?

You'll have to show how that could be done. To make a morality "valid," (wrong word: it should be "legitimate") one would have to provide rational justification for it, so one could convince people not to be skeptical of it, and to obey it voluntarily and for good reasons. But that's the very thing secularism can't do.

Now what do we think or do?

Well, the common secular "solution" is to be hypocritical, and to cling to conventional morality without any legitimation strategy at all. (As an aside, I'm thankful for that; because I really wouldn't want to live in a world in which secularists all behaved as if they really believed their own secularism and felt they had to apply it to their morality. That would be a totally nihilistic place, in which only power ruled, just as Nietzsche said.)

But I don't think that really solves the problem, because essentially, the secularist has to believe he's lying to himself. He doesn't believe morality can be legitimated, yet he's still insisting that people should believe in it. And he can never explain his justification in so doing.

[phyllo]

OK. So that leaves us with the conclusion that without a God there is no morality. Now what if there is no God, or what if the 10 Commandments were concocted by humans fraudulently? Or what if there is a God (an original creator), but God is nothing like what humans have described in the Bible or any other human text. Now what? Under those circumstances, apparently, we are unable to ground our morality because we have no direction from God on what is moral and what is not. That means your morals have no ground, and neither do mine. Is that a good state of affairs to be in? Wouldn't it be preferable that, if there is no God-given morality, we humans can still discern or derive a valid morality?

Here is the interesting bit ...

If there is no God or at least not the Christian God, it was still possible to create a morality and to follow that morality for 2 thousand years.

Some guys made it up. Kind of like what secularists do.

It's just a bunch of rules derived from observation of what people like and don't like and what appears to lead to prosperity and what doesn't.

Except those guys attributed it all to God and the secularists don't that.

[Immanuel Can]

Some guys made it up. Kind of like what secularists do.

That's a conclusion with no evidence, of course. But for argument's sake, let's assume that it were true.

How does that allow there to be such a thing as "morality"? How does it save secularism, in regard to legitimizing whatever moral demands a secularist imposes? He's still incapable of grounding even one moral claim. So what it argues for is not that there's anything wrong with Theism...but that there can never be anything "wrong" with anything. Everything is permitted, and there are no such things as moral obligations. Morality itself is a fake.

In other words, I can grant you 100% of the assumption you demand here, and it would not save secularism one iota. And we all have to become Nihilists, because religious moralities are all fakes, and secular moralizing is a fraud. So there are no strategies at all that ground any moral claim. That's just the consequence Nietzsche saw.

Now try and live with that. Try to have a society, or even a personal life, in which we are all "beyond good and evil." See what happens.