Dubious wrote:Correct! “ALL morality is a constraint on behavior”, precisely the point others and myself are trying to make which subsumes ALL societies; whether theistically motivated or not they depend upon those constraints being active.
Immanuel Can wrote:However, there are two different types of constraint: legitimized and unlegitimzed. Theism has the former, and secularism only the latter.
This statement merely amounts to declaring your position which is already well-known. Something being either this or that is not an argument.
Dubious wrote:Please give me an example of how theism “explains in an authoritative and rational way” why, for example, killing is wrong!
Immanuel Can wrote:The word is "murder," and it's very easy to show, actually.
Well that was on-surface simple! Why not show it if it’s so easy?
So when god in the OT commands the Israelites to kill without mercy it’s ONLY killing because god commanded it but if the same were to happen without god’s command, it must be murder. How convenient using any slight difference between killing and murder and leveraging that into a major policy shift between morals sacred and secular
Immanuel Can wrote:Your only objection so far to Theistic morality is merely presumptive: that is, because you presume there is no God, you (in a way that would then be quite right) presume that there is no more warrant for Theistic morality than for secular. However, to presume in this way is to presume the very conclusion you would need in order to make your own case. You haven't proved it, you've just presumed it and then said, "Because it's so, therefore I'm right."
I presume, though
judge is a better word, based on what nature, history and logic tells me; as such, I cannot say, "because it's so, therefore I'm right." I can only go so far as the probability of it being right takes me. This necessitates a modicum of critical thinking which mere acceptance of scripture does not sanction.
You, on the other hand, have no other option but to say “I’m right” since your proof comes from the bible which you accept as the bona fide word of God; being so accepted at face value it follows there exists no other alternative for a believer such as yourself to be right even if you interpretation may differ vastly from other theists.
Unlike you, I haven’t programmed myself to receiving input from any single source. In countless posts you speak of “proof” (as if that were even possible!) in challenging others believing you already have it every time you put hand on the bible! Yet within this universe – only a trifle more important than the bible - truth is more likely to reside within a field of probabilities than anything scriptured on papyrus or goat skin two and three thousand years ago.
Atheism does not require or even desire the kind of certainties theists lay claim to, truth being nothing more than a probability quotient. Your quote, in effect, which you applied to me properly applies to you.
Immanuel Can wrote:If, however, we leave open the possibility that God exists, and take that possibility seriously, then it is not hard to legitimize anything He commands or intends as the information we need on morality. If a Supreme Being said "Do X," or if "X" conforms to His character, then "X" is moral. QED.
If we leave open the possibility that Gods exists then why presume, as you invariably do, that it has to be the god of the bible? To you god exists in no other form than Jesus in the NT and his bad-tempered old man in the OT! Spontaneously from there you derive theistic morality as the only one that’s valid. If this ain’t Faulty Tower logic I don’t know what is!
Dubious wrote:Secular morality has no problem and sees no contradiction in condemning the likes of Hitler...
Immanuel Can wrote:Indeed. BUT at the same time, it denies there can be any real moral basis for preferring to do that, and in fact, makes it impossible to say why one cannot wholeheartedly approve of Hitler and help him pile up the corpses. Secularism has no view on what you MUST do about Hitler.
It has no moral information at all.
If secular morality which so vehemently condemned Hitler had no real moral basis or “moral information” for doing so then explain what else would have caused the outrage to be so universal. If not based on moral motives, what was it?
Your argument, as I see it, amounts to this – no matter how ethical one may be if you don’t believe in god
as expounded in the bible, you aren’t truly human or somewhat divested of humanity since you’re not conscious of that which guides you; in essence morality perceived instinctually as prerequisite to all forms of cooperation and not by the superior mandate of a divine lawgiver whose authority you are required to consciously accept and obey. In other words the ‘statute laws’ of an assumed god preempting the commonsense laws of reason. That which tells us what to do is superior than discovering it for ourselves.
Since god supposedly created all humans, what separates so completely one group from the other?
Assuming both to be equally ethical what makes the theist superior to the atheist and how do you define a “real moral basis” critical in separating the two?
I’m only asking because your statement on Hitler vis-a-vis morality sounds thoroughly paradoxical to me even though it’s logical to you. To make it at least seem coherent requires an explanation of what a “real moral basis” consists of, what makes it “real” in opposition to the simulacrum of one you identify the secular variety to be??
This requires
explanation not simply proclamation...unless you were never serious about theism and only playing word games!
