Belief in god is necessary for being good.
Those that think so have a lower income, less education, tend to the political right and are older than those who do not.
The Global God Divide
45% think it is necessary to have faith in a God in order to be moral.
Have you noticed the number of God posts rising again? I predict that they will increase as we approach the US election. Uncertainty will send the previously comfortable scurrying back to their religion for solace. The lack of philosophical care in their rigour speaks for itself.
The Global God Divide
45% think it is necessary to have faith in a God in order to be moral.
Have you noticed the number of God posts rising again? I predict that they will increase as we approach the US election. Uncertainty will send the previously comfortable scurrying back to their religion for solace. The lack of philosophical care in their rigour speaks for itself.
Comments (794)
"Right-wing" has become a pejorative term. Oh! What great times do we live in...
It has always been pejorative if you're on the left. But there does seem to be a crisis of progressivism, which ironically has lead to conservatism having nowhere to go but into the abyss of the reactionary and authoritarian.
As the progressives have lost their vision for the future, and turned into managers of the status quo, the conservatives have been forced to either loose all distinctiveness or turn ever more sharply towards the past. And hence, being right wing is becoming more and more a pejorative.
Another 45% think it is necessary to be a registered Democrat, or believe in the myth of white privilege, in order to be moral.
Politics... :roll:
To be moral, you don't have to be anything, except moral,
The REAL progressives are the ones that are sick and tired of the two-party status quo and looking for and voting for alternatives. It can be lonely being a progressive in 2020.
Actually, when someone says he believes in this or that god, he just says that, by his own will, he decided to belong to this or that religious group/system.
Obviously, all in the group, he joined, will see in him a good person (as they see themselves).
I mean, being good is just a man-made notion.
For example, if one kills an enemy of his group, he is not only good... he becomes a hero.
At the same time, on the side of his victim, he is seen as a real evil person... a killer.
Poor Joe cant afford a lawyer when the cops harass him, so he prays. He cant afford a decent diet or preventative healthcare, so he prays. His children are recruited by gang members and there's nothing he can do about it, so he prays. His wife has become a fentanyl addict and she sells her body on the street, so he prays.
Religion is opium. Opium is medicine for those in pain.
Yes, this is why Paganism had to exist before medicine.
:up: :up: :up:
Yes, this is exactly what every living thing does while being guided by the instructions embedded in it already by its maker (the intelligent energy/will behind the existence of our universe).
Doubtless there are those who think so, have a lower income, less education, are older and yet tend to the the political left.
They are just not as common.
Also, Caesar (equivalent to the today's powerful rich families that run a ruling system) instructs his followers and soldiers to be morale and obedient with him; otherwise he has to punish them. And he also instructs them that they have the right to murder and even torture his enemies who oppose his will.
Now you know how the men in charge of any religion around the around were able to imagine the best image to describe their supernatural kings/gods while playing the legitimate representatives/stewards of their supernatural Caesar.
The demographic that's of this view, those who "...have a lower income, less education...", as is evident, belong to the segment of society traditionally viewed as the weak. The weak, for obvious reasons, are the ones deprived of justice at every turn - their powerlessness preventing them from claiming, and/or defending against the infringement of, their basic rights. For the weak, this world, in its current form, is incapable of providing justice to them. For this reason and this reason alone, the weak tend to believe in a god for god is, at least in theory, the perfect judge who'll never allow/tolerate injustice.
Now that I think of it, the powerful too need god if not to shield them from injustice to at least ensure that their privileged status is protected/preserved beyond the grave.
Quite a generalisation. Is this based on facts and if so can you share where you elicited these facts?
In my humble opinion belief in God is helpful for some in being good. There are non believers who appear morally good people and it is irritating when those people are targeted by believers as the group that will enter Hell with their teeth gnashing etc simply because of their unbelief in God.
If you are not taught about being good why would you believe you are not good.
'Good' is the stumbling block here. If we define it carefully, chances are that a moral/ethical structure can be established without reference to a supreme entity. There's quite a literature extant.
Regards, stay safe 'n well. Remember the Big 3: masks. hand washing and social distancing.
Yes, also in these days, one is seen good by his ruling system (anywhere on earth) if he believes in the 'worldwide' propaganda concerning the world's flu of this year as being a pandemic; after all it killed about 1 of 10,000 so far.
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The lack of understanding of religion on all the philosophy forums is pretty remarkable.
A socialist utopia would have considerable merit, but it won't change the human condition which is the source of religion.
Religion has thrived in all times and places. What we should learn from that is that religion doesn't arise from particular cultural circumstances. Those circumstances shape the form a particular religion will take, but they are not the source of religion. Thus, changing those circumstances will not end religion.
Bringing religion to an end would require understanding the fundamental human need which gives rise to religion and then providing, at massive scale, some manner of meeting that need which users find more effective than religion.
We have a choice. We can follow 3 simple rules and reduce the spread of the virus and go about our lives almost as normal, or we can ignore the rules and increase the spread of the virus and then deal with lockdowns because there is not enough room in our jails to isolate those who do not follow the rules from those of us who do. I have a strong preference for everyone following the rules that will make this period of time a lot less painful and give me my liberty to be with family and other people important to me. We were so close to a return to normal and the college kids returned to town and ruined everything.
In my book, people who are not considerate of others are not good people.
In a word, the need is meaning and people best find this for themselves. The necessary cultural shift would be towards the pursuit of meaning rather than materialistic goals and tribal solidarity.
I disagree. To be moral a person must be well informed. A moral is a matter of cause and effect and a person who does not understand cause and effect can not make a moral choice. We used to read folk tales that are moral stories to children and then ask them what is the moral of the story. The answer is a matter of cause and effect.
Religion unfortunately has not prepared anyone to know God (Logos, universal law) nor to make choice choices. It came about before science and the mythology is not compatable with science, resulting in obeying religious books, but not making morally correct decisions. For example Jesus told us not to worry about washing hands, and boy was that misinformation!
What do you mean, if? Abraham? Moses?
True dat.
So how does a person go about finding meaning? We just meditate or what?
Another way to phrase it is, people believe you need justice and/or law and order ie. belief in very real consequences for one's harmful actions to avoid harm that is not conducive to a diverse and free society. And is it not?
If a person has no belief in God, he can act morally. Yet, morality that is not grounded in principle is relativistic, and a matter of caprice.
So, for such a person to base his morality on principle is quite irrational.
Why would basing morality on principle be quite irrational without God?
How is a principle determined? If it is the word of God then that is a for sure the right thing. If it is just what an individual thinks, how can we be sure it is the right thought?
You can have a principle defined on whatever you wish. But it's up to you to stick to it, you follow it because you allege it to be important, but without a repercussion for not following it, said principle could quickly lose the value it once had if times ever get tough.
As an example, it makes rational sense to avoid striking or harming someone from another group, due to them finding out and/or retaliating. But any and all strict reason not to do so disappears if you determine for yourself you could "get away with it" undetected. It's a form of "absolute accountability", justice is I mean. Right gets rewarded and wrong gets punished. Nothing wrong with that. Especially today.
The root of it is identity, right?
...see the research cited in the link immediately after the piece you quoted, in the opening post.
Being taught that you will be punished if you do not do what you are told is not being taught to be good.
Personally I do not believe a God has spoken with people and if he did they would not understand him any more than back in the day people could have understood Einstein and the theory of relativity. I think anyone knowing the word of God is no more than wishful thinking. My opinion is based in part on reading of many primitive ideas of a god and being chosen people. What is for sure is if a person succeeds with a god story and convinces people he is god's special messenger, most people will believe whatever this person says, is the word of god. The point is people pay attention when they believe something comes from a god, but if it is just a human talking, why would anyone pay attention?
What humans say is capricious. It may sound good today but not tomorrow. It is much harder to lead people into a war if only a human says this is necessary. However, if they are convinced going to war is the will of God, they will do their very best to do the will of God.
That's a lot of people.
What I find interesting is that they tend to die more in countries with mad right-leaning irrational leaders.
Curious.
People believe being moral is about punishing the wicked? That would go along with the lack of education bit...
Again, being taught that you will be punished if you do not do what you are told is not being taught to be good.
So for you, and unfortunately for so many others, the choice is between god and relativism. As if the entire body of ethical thought never happened! And again, isn't that just ignorance?
All civilizations were born from original religious outbreaks. There has never been a “secular civilization”. A long time since the foundation of civilizations, nothing prevents some values and symbols from being separated abstractly from their origins and, in practice, becoming relatively independent educational forces.
I say “relatively” because, whatever the case may be, its prestige and ultimately its meaning will remain indebted to the religious tradition and will not survive long when it disappears from the surrounding society.
All “secular morals” are just an excerpt from previous religious moral codes
This cut can be effective for certain groups within a civilization that, in the end, remains religious, but, if this fund is suppressed, the cut is meaningless. The secular Europe’s inability to defend itself against Muslim cultural occupation is the most obvious example.
The present state of affairs in countries that have detached more fully from their Judeo-Christian roots is demonstrating with the utmost evidence that the so-called “lay civilization” never existed and cannot exist.
It lasted only a few decades, it never succeeded in completely eradicating the religion from public life, despite all the repressive devices it used against it, and in the end, its brief existence was only an interface between two religious civilizations: dying Christian Europe and nascent Islamic Europe.
Humboldt’s opinion is based on a double error, or rather, on a convergence of errors that give the impression of confirming themselves as truths. On the one hand, he makes a logical deduction from the general meanings of the terms and, seeing that the generic concept of morality does not imply any reference to God, he applies to the world of facts the conclusion that one thing does not depend on the other.
This is an addiction to abstractism: inferring facts from reasoning instead of reasoning based on facts. On the other hand, however, he observes that around him there are atheistic individuals “of high and substantial morality”, and believes that with this he obtained empirical proof of his deduction.
What he doesn’t even realize is that their morality is only good because their conduct schematically — and externally — coincides with what the principles of religion demand, that is, that the very possibility of good lay conduct was created and sedimented by a long religious tradition whose moral rules, once absorbed in the body of society, began to function more or less automatically.
In short, only the abstract man — or the heir more or less unaware of religious traditions — can have a moral without God. The first is a logical fiction, the second is an appearance that covers the reality of its own origins.
Taking them as realities, and even more so as universal and unconditioned realities, is a primary philosophical error, which shows little ability to analyze the experience.
Not me. Never heard of her.
Most. Going to church can allow one to pretend one is not morally responsible. Belief in a religion is handing your own moral responsibility over to others.
"No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee."
John Donne.
Regards, stay safe 'n well.
We can't sum up anything as large as religion in a word, but ok, that's a place to start.
It's clear that many people look to religion to provide meaning, some story about our relationship with reality. So let's keep digging..
Instead of arguing about which story is better we might ask, what is a story? A story is a collection of symbols, abstract concepts in our mind, which strive to point to the reality of our human situation.
Why do we seek such stories? What is the need which causes us to go looking for stories? Yes, we want meaning. But why? Why do we seek meanings?
Keep digging...
I personally read it (based on my various experiences in life and my personal observations on the ground for many decades):
people who are not considerate of what their ruling system asks them to believe and do are not good people in the eyes of 'the system's people'.
I am sorry for not being able to give you all the necessary evidences of what I said (claimed, in your view) because I would need to write a thick book (if not many books) and I am far from being a good writer in any language.
But, what you said: "people who are not considerate of others are not good people." is also totally right if it is not about something from which the ruling system (the powerful high class) gets profits, usually not seen/noticed by most ordinary people.
Anyway, I am not here to convince anyone about anything. We are all given intelligent brains, so every one knows what is good and bad for him (and for the ones who trust him) more than anyone else.
For example, did anyone here hear that knowing how to control/paralyse (temporarily and permanently) the body's immunity was one of the greatest discoveries in medicine a few decades ago?
Without this discovery, transplanting live organs would fail always, as it was clearly revealed in the 70's. Doctors found out that the original immunity system of the patient has to attack and destroy the new (stranger) planted organ. But the peoples around the world heard of this as AIDS besides all the fairy tales about it which were created, and updated year after year, for adults.
Unfortunately, those who know the truth behind the worldwide propaganda of AIDS, other than certain men on power, are the few professional surgeons only who transplant successfully life organs by applying the discovered technique before their operations. Soon after an operation, they apply the reverse technique and revive the immunity system of their patient which sees the new organ as if it were original.
In brief, what was planned to happen after attacking the people's economy, almost in all countries in the world, in the name of flu/cold virus (sorry, this year I have to call it, corona virus) is much worse than what is happening now. So I think the only thing the powerless ordinary good persons, anywhere on earth, can do is to wish each other be safe (as you did already).
You too, thank you.
You may like reading this:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/462404
Well, I witnessed certain years in which the flu killed in my country not less than 1 of 100 while about half the population (50%) were affected by it. But, in these years, no system/organization, local or abroad, saw it even an epidemic. This year with 1 of 10,000 is called a pandemic!!!
By the way, in these years, I had to stay in bed with high fever for not less than 10 days (usually 1 to 3 days) before my brain was able to synthesise the proper ant-virus in my blood.
This year (I am 71), it took me 3 days to recover but with moderate fever, so I didn't have to be in bed all the day.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/462404
You seem to suggest that you have answers to your four questions but for some weird reason aren't saying.
Don't worry, I promise no one will make fun of your answers.
The method to my madness is to encourage readers to do some of the thinking involved for themselves. But ok, here's a clue.
People seek food (ie. meaning) because they want food. Why do they want food?
Sorry, I personally have no reason to judge anyone. I just live with others the way they are.
But I also understand that most people in the world have no choice but to be guided by their instincts only. So, to me in the least, they have the right to judge me the way they like.
For example, many decades ago and during my military service (for about 2 years), someone liked to send me to prison for a month in the desert. On the same day he accused me of something I had no idea of, the accusation was dropped. But, by curiosity, I asked him about the reason for which he did that to me. His reply was simply:
"You treat all around you here in good ways. Such attitude is not supposed to exist in a military environment. So I liked to teach you this, though in a hard way".
How could I judge him for seeing my goodness wrong? He simply did what his instincts told him it was the right thing to do.
I see what you're saying. In medieval times warlords paid attention to their moral standing in the eyes of their soldiers because if the soldiers became convinced God had abandoned them, the will to fight would wane. The soldiers would fear that they might be fighting against God and so dooming themselves to hell.
So if nothing else, God can be a very powerful aspect of the human psyche.
I think if you had something worthwhile to say that you would be able to articulate it succinctly and without further tedium.
That's an odd thing to assume. Maybe he doesn't want to throw his pearls in the wrong direction.
If you're actually interested in the subject you'll do more than sit on your fat ass waiting for me to type something you can reject. :-) We're done, waste of time.
Good and evil. What is each, and by what criterion is each determined?
For someone that believes in God (a believer), there is an eternal structure to existence (sometimes referred to as essences). The believer relates to his existence in the same way a player relates to his game: there are rules, there is a right way to play, and hypothetically, there is a potentially perfect way.
For the believer, the very nature of existence imposes an absolute good upon him at the metaphysical level, hence there is an imminent and inevitable morality to which he is fundamentally subjected - there is a definitive ought. Hence the believer's morality is absolute, there are many wrongs, but only only one right. If the believer desires to think and act rightly, he will base his decisions on principle
There is another type of believer who believes that God relates to each individual on a personal level, and in that capacity stands as judge for each individual. Such a believer has a personal stake in the ethical, and an even greater reason to stand on principle.
On the other hand we have the nonbeliever, who has no necessary ethical obligation imposed on him. There is no proof, nor any reason to think that there is some eternal structure to existence, thus there is no external source by which the ethical could be imposed. Additionally, the nonbeliever does not believe in God, thus there is no internal source to compel his morality. The nonbeliever lacks the transfigured judge which is lurking over the shoulder of the believer at all times.
As far as morality is concerned for the nonbeliever, the rules can come from any source, internal or external, it does not matter. Any morality can be rationalized and justified, hence the nonbeliever only has access to relative morality.
In addition to this, the judgement of an individual can be reduced to mere appearance, because thinking or acting only become morally relevant under inspection. Whatever the nonbeliever can get away with is fair game. This is to say: no two individuals ever receive fair or equitable judgment...completely rendering "justice" into a relativistic notion.
Wonder what the signs of that would be? What kind of character does a person like that have?
When it come to morality, both the believer and nonbeliever are deluding themselves. Only the delusion of the believer is, internally speaking, more coherent. Both are using morality as a coping mechanism that innately harbors hidden contradiction.
Is it odd? Maybe it seems that way because you don't know him as well as I do.
He can keep his damnable pearls. This pig ain't interested.
I don't see the contradiction for the believer. Is it that he has created God in his own image?
I haven't talked to him.
Both believer and nonbeliever have the same internal moral intuitions. Their justifications (after the fact) differ, merely.
On the right track, but not all believers create their God in their own image, for many, God is completely alien, and their knowledge of God is suspended as it were. They still believe, but with a power that is derided by the unbeliever - what is called blind faith.
Now there is no contradiction for the believer, but to other classes of believers, and to all nonbelievers, the contradiction always arises.
And before the fact too. I assume the fact you refer to is the ethical decision. I would say that the nonbeliever is more likely to justify a posterior, while the believer a priori, hence the believer is more likely to base his morality on principle.
Take Muslim women for example. They cover their faces because it is the right thing to do. They wake up every day, and the desicion to cover their faces is made, every day. Now take the US citizen. They cover their faces because it is the right thing to do. But a year ago, no one ever contemplated that covering one's face would be the right thing to do. And every day, most people wake up and wonder if "they" will say uncovering your face is "ok", every day...almost.
You see?
Yes, the believer is more likely to believe that they are moral beings due to their affiliation with ultimate authority, but that is an unfortunate illusion because it stifles moral development.
Believers must be kept dependent so the development of virtue is never seriously pursued. Sinners are forgiven, and in so doing kept dependent on a forgiver.
The development of virtue leads to independence. The nonbeliever may base their development on principles.
It is a "delusion", not illusion. And you are incorrect! It actually cultivates moral development.
To be good, followers, supporters, citizens and patriots obey the rules of a civil/political formal system.
But it is also usual that one is ready to obey both kinds of a ruling system... to be on the safe side :)
By the way, a typical atheist sees that it is enough for him to obey one ruling system only :)
The nonbeliever may indeed base their moral development on principles. But those principles themselves are baseless and unprincipled. For the nonbeliever, moral principle can only be sourced from within as personal opinion, which renders morality a matter of subjectivity and nullifies a universal application - hence the nonbeliever is the epitome of relativistic. Even if it is adopted from an external source (viz. State law or church authority), the nonbeliever always apprehends and mediates it into a charge of personal opinion.
The nonbeliever lacks belief, that is a quality of conviction which is unparalleled in relation to the believer
You said it well :up:
I must amend this to say: "believers obey [their conviction of] the rules of a religious formal system [which is generally, but not always, the source of their principles].
While this amateur armchair speculation is very cute, I will refer you to the article in the OP - on which this thread is about - which demonstrably shows otherwise. Religion dies when people live (well). The correlation is inverse, and healthy.
What is the definition of religion, according to the article? I must have read way way way too fast
Yeah. I searched. No definition. But it is an excellent compilation of statistics, and as everyone knows, I am a statistics guy
Well, as a statistics guy, I must remark that that is rather unscientific. For starters, by what criterion do we determine that the self reports of "people who say they believe in God" counts as the religious. Without a definition with a reasonably justified criteria, I must declare philosophical anarchy.
In your turn, you amended it well :up:
If religion helps people be good, fine and dandy. If it doesn't, try something else.
Quoting Banno
So, wisdom does not necessarily grow with age. It seems like conservative religion seeks out and sucks in the disadvantaged (seeking and sucking being active processes). People living in capitalist cultures are subjected to a lot of messages about who they are vis a vis what they consume. Religion is a commodity so naturally some religions are more suitable to X demographic than others. Dignified mainstream Protestantism (Episcopalians, Lutherans), for instance, meet the needs of a richer better educated demographic better than low-brow Baptists. The low-brow Baptists provide iron clad certainty in a world full of ambiguity. Richer, better educated people have greater tolerance for, and more means to clarify ambiguity.
Fundamentalist religion has a natural affinity for conservative / right wing politics, just as liberal religion has a natural affinity for liberal politics.
A good philosophy professor answers every question with another question, drawing the listener in to their own investigation. A not so good philosophy student demands to know what to memorize for the test.
Someone who is sincerely interested in a topic will already be involved in their own investigation, as evidenced by them already having something to say. If a person isn't interested in a topic, ok, no problem, their valid choice. But then why waste a lot of words on them about a topic they're not actually interested in? A wiser choice would be to simply bow out, ideally with a bit more class than I usually manage. :-)
Religion has thrived in every time and place, at least since the invention of agriculture, and likely in less organized forms before that. Ignoring this well established fact in favor of ideological wishful thinking is not such great philosophy.
I've already agreed that changing cultural circumstances can edit the forms that religions take. So, for example, as a society becomes wealthier and more educated the more dogmatic childlike religions may give way to more sophisticated forms of religion. For example, in our times many people report that they are "spiritual but not religious".
A quick story. When I was young I happened to become close with some VERY rich people who lived nearby. The oldest son of the family, the heir apparent, become a life long drug addict. Our entire society is extremely wealthy compared to earlier times, and our culture is loaded with too many personal problems to begin to list.
So long as such deeply personal problems exist some people are going to turn for help to communities with thousands of years of experience in welcoming the troubled. And some people will look elsewhere of course, as has always been the case.
If religion was a creature we would have to say that it's long and persistent survival suggests that it is very well adapted to it's environment. The reason religion persists is because that environment, the human mind, has not changed substantially in many thousands of years.
Religion arises from the inherently divisive nature of thought itself. Unless and until the nature of thought is somehow fundamentally changed, until we evolve in to something that we wouldn't recognize as human, religion will be with us in some form or another.
Yep, sounds good.
Feel free anytime. You're asking a lot of good questions. I'm interested.
Quoting Hippyhead
This is where the action is, in my typoholic opinion. And, it may interest you, this can be a basis for offering a valid critique of a great deal of religion, especially the parts that annoy you the most.
Thought operates by dividing a single unified reality in to conceptual parts.
1) We are then able to rearrange the conceptual parts in our minds to create visions of reality which don't yet exist. This is the source of our creative genius as a species.
2) The very same process of division creates the human experience of being divided from reality, our peers, and divided within our own minds as well. As example, consider the phrase "I am thinking X", with "I" presumed to be one thing, while "X" is presumed to be another.
This process of division, which is built in to what we all are made of psychologically, creates an experience of reality as being divided between "me" and "everything else", with "me" being very very small, and "everything else" being very very big. This perception gives rise to fear, which is the source of most human problems, which in turn is the source of religion.
A great deal of religion attempts to heal this division with ideologies made of thought, the very thing which is causing the experience of division. Oops!! Thus we see phenomena like Christianity, a religion explicitly about bringing people together in peace, which then divides in to a thousand sects which come in to conflict with each other.
And then we see ideological atheism arise in response, which at it's best also seeks to bring peace, but attempts to do by becoming just another one of the divided sects in conflict with other sects.
And then we see this poster arise, who attempts to seek peace by going to war with ideological atheism. :-)
And so, whatever philosophy one prefers, the conflict goes on and on and on. And it keeps going on and on and on in every time and place because the entire process is being driven by the divisive nature of what we're all made of, thought.
A reminder. Perhaps the most productive thing a philosopher can do is shift some focus from the content of thought to the nature of thought. Because that's where all the content of thought comes from.
What a surprise!!! I'm shocked! Who knew this could happen??? :-)
Undeniably true, but then what doesn’t arise from this creator of worlds, oh wise one?
I guess if someone wants a quick straight answer, fishing reddit for an expert would work. If you find one, they're usually generous and they'll load you up with sources you never would have found on your own.
Here, we're mostly just chatting.
Does it matter which notion of God a person finds believable? How about logos and science, does that work? I think logos comes with abolute truth, but there is no holy book for it.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
What if a person is not a believer in a humanized God such as Zeus or the God of Abraham? Might this person also have principles and be virtuous?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Does democracy, reasoning, and science work as the base for decisions on principle?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I hold a moral is a matter of cause and effect, so it is not exactly up to the individual alone. Our judgment must include the effect of what we say or do and the more expanded our consciousness is the better our judgment will be. Our consideration of right and wrong, need include everyone's understanding of it, not just our own.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
That is a lovely thought. Therefore, blindly following Hitler would not be moral because blindly obeying authority does involve thinking about it. People, who obey without thought, are being reactionary and may do horribly immoral things, even if they believe it is the will of God, right?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Not true at all, because if the action is not right the effect will be harmful. That is how we determine if something is right or wrong by the effect, and sacrificing animals, offering the gods human hearts, rituals and prayers will not change the effect of what we have done.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I have a problem with that notion! The consequences of our actions will be the same no matter who takes the action. Hum, are we judging the action or the person taking the action?
I think the unpleasant problem of which you speak is what democracy is about. We all have a voice. Granted no one is going to pay much attention to me so I have nothing like the power of Trump, but enough ants can eat an elephant. I am planting seeds of thought and I will not be remembered but some of those seeds of thought may sprout and grow and reproduce. That is democracy, rule by reason, not rule by authority over the people.
It is the purpose of humans to think and they will manifest what they think about. It is our duty to the universe to think and speak and move humanity to a greater concsiousness, if we are recognized as a person of authority and power or not. We are part of something much bigger than ourselves.
Chardin said God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man. This is not a miracle working God with supernatural powers tending to human affairs, blessing some and punishing others. It is universal law and our growing consciousness of it, which in turn manisfest it on earth. We are all a part of this and as we have seen, a powerless child or a powerless Black man can become an international voice for what is good when the time is right.
Religion is a vague idea. It seems to be predominantly defined through the nonbelievers examination of antiquated paradigms, many of which command massive followings. Of course, this does not add any clarity to what in the hell religion actually is. The are myriad paradigms for belief, and the so called systems which are commonly identified as religion have irreconcilable disparities in their doctrines. So what is that common thing that makes something religious, and another thing not religious? It is the capacity for doubt in the believer; that is, if a person does not test his belief with a necessary measure of doubt and examine it through an established criterion in order to determine its viability as actual knowledge, then that belief can be said to be religious.
In religion, the essential component is the individual believer's personal belief. As soon as one begins to relate his belief to another person, or to compare it with other beliefs, he is departing the religious and entering upon aesthetic matters. Religious belief that is made external to the believer (including all doctrine), is more art and poetry than science or knowledge. Of course art and poetry have a power that elludes scientific understanding - this is the way in which art speaks personally to the individual spectator, and leaves a unique and meaningful imprint upon his psyche.
Now, to answer you question, I don't think it matters which notion is believed, there is no reason why a person's beliief in science, logos &c. cannot be religious in the same way a person's belief in Jesus or Allah is. And there is no requirement in religion to draw one's belief from a doctrine.
Yes, principles are rationally justified for any believer whose belief is religious in nature. The key is that religious belief is a conviction, impossible to change by any other notion or reasoning. This is to say, religious belief is self sustaining and absolute, the rules are set and moral principle is rationally justified to say the least
You said well in case the end purpose of one's existence is to serve life in the world as all other non-human living things are created for this same purpose while they are guided by their natural instincts (the preprogramed instructions which are embedded in them by the Creator).
You may wonder now what end purpose could be... other than the one of serving life.
Answering this question is not easy because it depends on one's nature of which he is created.
As a man of reason and science, I am sure that life on earth or elsewhere cannot exist forever, much like our mortal living bodies. So, if the main/crucial reason for which life on earth was created is just to let it progress (move humanity to a greater consciousness), it will result to 'nothing' at the end of times as if the Creator decided to play a game then shut it off... to start another one perhaps :)
I can't go on without talking off topic. It is better to explore, on a separate thread, what the other end purpose could be.
If one's belief in these things is properly dogmatic, then it is a religious belief, and there is a rational justification for basing one's morality on principle.
For the nonbeliever, this does not hold because he lacks the requisite level of dogmatism. The nonbeliever needs proof, and the proof can only be acquired after the fact. This is because the belief of the nonbeliever is only based in factual knowledge. In a world where factual knowledge determines what should or should not be believed, we are left with a high degree of uncertainty --- all knowledge becomes merely an approximation of actual truth, and the ability to predict the outcome of a decision is a matter of probability at best.
I disagree. For a person who bases his morality on principle, it must be universal. If we include everyone's understanding of morality as relevant, we are left with relativistic morality, and principled morality becomes irrational.
Furthermore, the believer is being judged for his morality at each and every moment of decisiveness, whereas the nonbeliever is only being judged when under inspection by a relevant authority. So for the believer, his ethical existence is much more important to himself at a critically personal level, because in the end, no matter what anyone does, he is responsible for himself.
Yes, a believer may be reactionary, and may do horribly immoral things because he believes it is the will of god, but to him it would be the right thing to do, and there would be no question about it - this would be an example of the teleological suspension of the ethical. Without this teleological suspension, to behave immorally as such would be self-condemnation for the believer.
But, the nonbeliever may also be reactionary, and may do horribly immoral things because he thinks it is the right thing based on what he knows. He may think it is the right thing to do at the time, and later come to realize that it was the wrong thing to do, or maybe not. It really doesn't matter either way, right and wrong are fluid, and simply a matter of perception. Ultimately, all that matter is how other people (especially others with authority) percieve one's ethical decisions. The Nazi's thought they were doing the right thing, and none of it was compelled by a belief in God.
Quoting Athena
I'm not saying all nonbelievers try to get away with shit, I'm saying if one does get away with shit, there will be no greater consequences for him. If getting away with something is thought to be the right thing to do, and it is done, then it does not matter the slightest if it harms another. Of course, if the perpetrator gets caught, then it probably won't seem so right to him anymore. Hence the relativism of morality for the nonbeliever.
Even if the consequences of an action (example: stealing) will be the the same despite the particular player involved, for the nonbeliever, anyone who steals cannot and will not be judged the same in every case. For the believer, there is one standard by which everyone is measured, and the judgement that he incurrs, his personal judgment that he can never avoid, is of the utmost importance to himself.
Kahill Gibran says we speak when we are not at ease with our thoughts, and I feel uneasy with what you said. I do not believe in a designer of our existence. Saying our purpose is thinking is because that is what we do, and a bird flies and a horse runs. But my understanding of this is more quantum physics than a religion beginning with a designer. It happens by chance and fills a nitch that isn't already full, or that which is in that nitch can not win the competion for a place in life and becomes extinct. It is after the fact that we can see purpose. While horses proved to be very useful to humans, I don't think they are a neccessary part of life and domestic animals are more the creation of humans than a god. Unfortunately humans can destroy life on this planet and I don't think a God is in control but the rules of universe do control cause and effect. Humans are capable of understanding the rules and can increase or destroy life or change things to suit the human pupose. For sure we are not made of mud and we did not begin in an Eden.
As for our finite reality. I have heard some ancients believed the day would come when there is more life on earth than what the earth can support. I am not sure the planet will survive us as anything but another sterile rock floating in space. However, I am not sure about conscious and other dimemsions.
Ouch, ouch that thought hurts! Our own limited consciousness is not the whole of reality! If we do wrong, the harm is done if we know about it or not and sooner of later the wrong will be our problem or children's children's problem (Socrates). Slavery is a good example of that rule. Some people were so sure a God gave them the right to own slaves that they fought a war to protect their right to own slaves. And boy do we have a problem today!
Lying is another example. Most of us get away with a lie or two, but this destroys trust, and once trust is destroyed, a lot more goes wrong. Or worse a person's lies can result in the deaths of millions of people. Our wrongs affect others and can even impact life in a big way. How many people died because the tobbacco industry lied? What is the affect of the oil industry lying about the consequences of extracting and burning oil? A limited consciousness that leaves a person to believe s/he can away with lying is a terrible thing.
I don't think you answered the question. What is being judged, the person or the act?
Well, words have whatever meaning we assign them. But, to address your question, as a start I would offer that religion is about our relationship with reality, whereas other methodologies such as science concern themselves with facts about reality.
Your answer to your question was...
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
First, discussion of religion can be greatly improved on philosophy forums if we can get past the extremely common assumption that religion is almost exclusively about belief, ideological assertions.
Next, it seems to me that, generally speaking, there is considerable more acceptance of doubt in religious communities than is typically demonstrated by atheists and philosophers.
A reminder, all religious people are not fundamentalist Baptists or Jehovah's Witnesses.
As one example, the Catholic saint Mother Teresa spoke honestly about the deep doubts that she experienced. I don't see that happening too often with atheist philosophers.
BTW, in case it matters, I'm not religious.
Ok, sorry, not really meaning offense or trying to start a food fight, nothing personal intended, but this is just rubbish.
That was beautifully said, and so is the notion of cause and effect (morality) that strong, when it is understood. I have lost one of my most precious books that had serval sayings about the importance of responsibility and I regret I don't remember them, but they in line with the notion of karma. If we fail to be fully responsible for our actions, we loose the opportunity that the responsibility gave us.
"Responsibility educates." Wendell Philips
A nation led by a person who does not take responsibility but blames others, is a nation in trouble, and unfortunately, citizens of the US have not been prepared for democracy since the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and is now a nation in big trouble. Since the National Defense Act instead of preparing everyone for independent thinking, they were prepared to rely on authority because this is the fastest way to advance technology. The act ended education for good moral judgment and left moral training to the church. Now the leader of the US shares much in common with a past leader of Germany and so do the citizens share much in common with those who followed that leader. Now I am arguing, no, we do not get away with our wrongs. I am hoping people understand what I am saying about responsibility,
Jesus is not going to save us any more than he saved the Germans, and thinking we can get away with our wrongs is just wrong!
Can I weigh in here? Religion is based on mythology not facts that have been validated. Morality based on cause and effect is akin to science and facts that can be validated. It is not absolute because our individual and shared consciousness is limited, and what we hold to be true changes as we expand our consciousness to be inclusive of all others and the planet we live on. To believe one can know absolute truth and that there is one source of that truth, is just wrong, and those who believe that are absolutely dangerous. Be careful of the conviction! Being a convict of what one thinks is a problem.
Okay, let us address dogma and authority.
What does one study to be a religious authority?
What does one study to understand reality?
I think science and the liberal arts give us much better moral judgment than the God of Abraham religions. I think it is my responsibility to be my own authority on truth. Not because I know much of anything but because it is my responsibility to get and judge information the best I can and assume responsibility for every action I take. Democracy is self government and it is everyone's responsibility to serach for truth. This is totally different from relying on authority above the people.
This issue of authority is a screaming problem right now and lives are on the line.
Of course!
Quoting Athena
That's ONE of the things that religion is based on. Here's an example...
Jesus suggested things like "love your neighbor like yourself". That's not a mythology, that's a practical suggestion which one can experiment with and come to one's own conclusions based on one's own experience.
Quoting Athena
Generally agree, and would add that such phenomena are not limited to the religious.
Again nicely said and I am particularly delighted that you touched on the matter of authority. I am sorry everyone, I can not stop thinking of political matters and all the people who have not done the studying required for good judgment and gladly depend on their ministers to tell them how to vote, or basing their vote on one issue ignoring all the rest. These are "good people", but their actions and lack of action could lead to terrible things.
As for "do unto others", that is said in every religion and believing only one religion has God's truth is not a good thing. To know God's truth, universal law, may require learning of all religions and as the Romans did, declaring what is shared in common is what a law should be based on. I believe there are many universal truths and our laws should be based on them. However, I believe democracy is the best way to manage this, not authority over the people, because the consciousness of a few in a ruling class will not be as good as our shared consciousness, achieved through argumentation and rule by reason as opposed to authority over the people.
Ok, but nobody has to believe in that advice as a matter of faith. Everyone can try it for themselves, do their own experiment, come to their own conclusion. And THAT process is what really drives religion more so than belief.
This is not complicated, except to philosophers. Everyone has experienced love in their life, and everyone has experienced hate. Some people very rationally conclude that they like love better than hate, and so they gravitate towards communities where like minded people are discussing love.
They can't join an atheist philosophy forum to discuss love, because that conversation doesn't happen here. So they go where such conversations are happening.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/search?Search=Love&expand=yes&child=&forums=&or=Relevance&discenc=&mem=&tag=&pg=1&date=All&titles=1&Checkboxes%5B%5D=titles&Checkboxes%5B%5D=WithReplies&or=Relevance&user=&disc=&Checkboxes%5B%5D=child
How do you see the US being punished for its wrongs?
What makes you think everyone has experienced love? I would say for practical reasons and as a result of dysfunctional families, many choose power over love.
Perhaps a thread to discuss love is appropriate? What would being an atheist have to do with discussing love? That atheist do not discuss love is such a strange notion I feel confused. I have reread what you said a few times because I find it hard to belief you said that.
I feel like Alice in Wonderland. I am not understanding why you ask that question.
Moral is a matter of cause and effect. We are not being punished. We are experiencing the effect of what have done.
Looks like plenty has been said of love. If anyone wants to discuss love we can pull up a past discussion or maybe start a new one? I have a concern that religious people hold false beliefs, such as thinking they are more loving, or more moral, or more protected, or are saved and the rest of us are not.
I would rather be respected than loved. I also think a notion of family duty is very important. Or there are all the flavors of love. We love our parents, spouse, children, and neighbor differently. How a good Christian can vote for Trump is beyond me. There are so many reasons to not vote for him, and separating children from their families one of them. I ended a long term relationship with a Christian friend. She thought Trump is a wonderful father to our country. That combination of religion and politics was intolerable to me! However, I am not sure Jesus thought we were equal either. He was a Jew and that is a tribal religion. The God of Abraham was not a God to everyone, so maybe Jesus would be okay with protecting those on this side of the border and keeping it closed to those not born here? I don't know, does Trump really believe there is a God greater than himself? Is he good?
I hope my political concerns are acceptable because really we need to talk about what we believe and how we act on what we believe. Does believing in a God make anyone good? Are those who do not believe in God bad?
This is an ancient perspective that usually sees evil as a matter of acting against nature. The effect is a loss of vitality.
A drawback of this view (for some) is that it means that if the sinner does "get away with it" as you put it, then it couldnt have been evil in the first place.
In fact, with this 'cause-and-effect-morality', one comes to understand what was good or bad in retrospect, by seeing who came to bad ends.
A sibling outlook is a feature of a Christian story about a Jew who was robbed and beaten. His fellow Jews saw him and walked on by. They assumed he must have done something wrong to end up that way. The Good Samaritan comes along and makes no such judgment. The Samaritan has a less materialistic moral perspective.
Morality is more complicated and conflicted than it looks at first glance. For us, its a fusion of several different cultural views.
This is not a good thing.
Saying that your country's response to a different virus was poor is not an argument in favour of your government acting poorly on Covid.
What you miss in this analysis is that the religious person still has to choose. They are not in a different position to the non-religious in that regard. So if the choice of a non-believer is in some way arbitrary, so is the choice of the believer.
You cannot avoid responsibility for your moral choices by blaming god.
Why isn't this equally true of the believer? They also have a choice, to believe or no. But in their case they pretend that they hand the responsibility over to someone else.
The argument you present here reeks of special pleading.
Self-serving crap. Pews set out their method clearly. They know what they are doing.
2+2+4. There is no evil in the equation. What happens is the consequence of the action and there is no evil in the equation. However, if we know we are doing wrong, that weakens us the same as believing we are virtuous makes us strong. That is just the psychological effect of our thoughts, no evil force in the equation.
For sure, cause and effect morality, as well as religious morality, means learning from parents, teachers, friends, experience. It would be an unusual person who gets through life without regrets. If we are lucky, before we get into trouble we learn from reading, or learn from listening to our elders or when our peers are mature we can learn from them, we can even learn from the bad example of others. For sure because we are not born with this knowledge it is challenging to be a human. An advantage of cause and effect morality is the ability to have good judgment for today. That does come from holy books written in ancient times.
Very importantly, the person who does wrong does not get away with it. Where did I say we can get away with doing wrong? The person may not be unaware of the action causing harm, and in that case, the person will repeat the wrong, until made aware of the wrong. In some cases, the wrong will be the result of subconscious distress or it may be a bad habit that is very difficult to break, so more is needed than just knowing eating than cookie will mean gaining weight, or whatever is unwanted. The point is we pay a price for our wrongs if we are aware of that or not and a wrong such as slavery may not enter the wrongdoers' consciousness for 3 generations but sooner or later the wrong will enter our conscioness and we will have to pay the price.
Declaring God wants us to go to war with "those people", and entering the war believing we are doing the will of God, will have bad consequences. It is our children and their children who have to pay for our wrongs. Believing in a God, does not prevent us from doing wrong. It is developed moral judgment that prevents wrongs.
Liberal education is education for good moral judgment and it results in a much higher morality and has done far more for humanity than religion. Our life span has doubled and in the US few die of starvation, and if they stopped listening to their preachers and Trump, they would stop spreading a deadly virus! Life long liberal education is far superior to being dependent and as a child who must be rewarded or punished to do the right thing.
Praying to this God to feed the starving people, or shelter the homeless will not get the job done because He did not build Noah's ark and He does not send birds to feed straving people. It is our responsibility. We have advanced civilization by accepting our responsibility to do so.
I am afraid "believers" hold many false ideas.
This is a great example. For the nonbeliever, that which makes trust inherently right is that one can list reasons. But one can list reasons for lying as well. Then we must go to the reasons to see what they say. Ultimately, for the nonbeliever, there can be nothing inherently right or wrong, it all hinges on reason. Then we can go even further and list reasons for our reasons. In ethical argument between two nonbelievers (one who is truthful, and one who is a liar), concessions and exceptions will be made on each side for the rightness of truthfulness and lying - hence the relativism of morality for the nonbeliever.
This also highlights the character of dogmatism, that the believer needs no reason for his morality - it is a self-evident truth as far as he is concerned. I think this is what pisses off nonbelievers most about believers.
Quoting Athena
People got rich during their own lifetimes, from tobacco and oil, I'm sure they thought it was the right thing to do. And, I agree that a person who believes he can away with lying is, indeed, a terrible person. But I doubt such a person, one who sincerely holds to that morality, thinks so.
This is a great example. For the nonbeliever, that which makes trust inherently right is that one can list reasons. But one can list reasons for lying as well. Then we must go to the reasons to see what they say. Ultimately, for the nonbeliever, there can be nothing inherently right or wrong, it all hinges on reason. Then we can go even further and list reasons for our reasons. In ethical argument between two nonbelievers (one who is truthful, and one who is a liar), concessions and exceptions will be made on each side for the rightness of truthfulness and lying - hence the relativism of morality for the nonbeliever.
This also highlights the character of dogmatism, that the believer needs no reason for his morality - it is a self-evident truth as far as he is concerned. I think this is what pisses off nonbelievers most about believers.
Quoting Athena
People got rich during their own lifetimes, from tobacco and oil, I'm sure they thought it was the right thing to do. And, I agree that a person who believes he can away with lying is, indeed, a terrible person. But I doubt such a person, one who sincerely holds to that morality, thinks so.
For the believer, ethical judgement falls upon both. The decision and the person are inseparable. An ethical decision is a matter of will, it cannot be accidental or unintended, hence the decision cannot be taken back or done over.
The only recourse from a wrong decision is tied into his individual eschatology, that is why concepts like forgiveness, sacrifice, repentance &c. are so important to believers.
For the nonbeliever. It is only the act that is judged. Even reputations are built upon cummulative acts, so that one with a bad reputation has it merely on account of perpetrating acts which disagree with other people. In contrast, each moment of ethical decisiveness is vital to the believer's repututaion, but not with other people, rather, with himself and his eternal judge, for one wrong decision could potentially result in eternal damnation.
Hope I answered it better.
So we'd better do a good job assigning that meaning.
I agree more or less. I might say: religion pertains to a direct relation to existence and is quite simple sounding, and the non-religious pertains to an interpretation or abstraction of reality and it gives us an indirect relation to existence.
Quoting Hippyhead
I understand religion to be about many things - there is no question that religion is multifaceted.
Perhaps you could enlighten me. What is more fundamental to religion than belief?
Religious communities often doubt sound science. Is that what you mean?
I would say philosophy begins with doubt. And nobody has done philosophy without first doubting.
And, from the athiests I've conversed with, I would call them some of most skeptical people to ever walk the earth.
And about Mother Teresa, she may have doubted, and doubted deeply, but she was a believer (according to the accounts). Take Steven Hawking, a known athiest, he had beliefs about things, but he wasn't a believer.
No, it doesn't matter.
No worries, you're all good. But you are only telling me your subjective preference. Why is it the case that religious belief is not impossible to change by any other notion or reasoning? I would say that is the very thing that separates religious belief (of the believer), from the nonreligious belief (of the nonbeliever). How is this not the case? I'm curious.
Good. I wonder...of an authority that lays down a principle as inconvertably true, would that authority have the authority to convert said principle into something else? Or would the incontrovertability of the principle trump the authority? I wonder. There seems to be a disparity between authority and principle, one must needs outweigh the other.
I don't know.
I don't know.
[/quote]I think science and the liberal arts give us much better moral judgment than the God of Abraham religions... Democracy is self government and it is everyone's responsibility to serach for truth. This is totally different from relying on authority above the people.
This issue of authority is a screaming problem right now and lives are on the line.[/quote]
I think both give us shit for morality. And democracy is a system for the weak and inferior - it's a a game for ignorant mobs, as evince by the 2020 presidential election.
But I like that you are working on becoming your own authority. Keep it up.
I don't think you understood me, maybe I didn't explain it clearly enough. I forgot about your intellectual handicap, let me dumb it down for your. The choice of the believer IS arbitrary for the nonbeliever, but for the believer the choice is of vital interest, because it affects his place in eternity, a thing he believes in. For a nonbeliever, his choice is arbitrary in the sense of its triviality, afterall, his decision is only pertinent to the context to which it relates, it has no relevance beyond that. This means the believer actually believes he will be held responsible for every decision, whereas the nonbeliever believes he will be held responsible only for the decisions that hold weight in relation to a particular context.
I didn't say it wasn't true of the believer. Did I?
Whenever I plead to you it is special, and it is special because it reeks for you.
Special Pleading
"...but not when it hurts my position."
....moral principle can only be sourced from within as personal opinion, except for the opinion that god told me what to do...
Oh no! Little banno is upset. Somebody get him his bottle before he starts whining.
Woody Allen made a movie called Crimes and Misdemeanors in which a guy has his girlfriend murdered, but never experiences any adverse consequences.
Do you reject this plot? Or would the murder be ok in this case?
So a personal insult is an improvement on special pleading in your moral system.
Nice, that. Shows its power.
A delusion is a brick wall...
You are kinda getting off topic. There's no reason liberals can't be the most moral people ever. I personally think all those ideologies like liberalism, conservatism &c. are antiquated shit. fit for inferiors and clods. But I could be wrong, it's a terrible tragedy.
I strongly disagree
That's obvious, they're believers! Lol
Huh? Are you saying something? Rubbish
Personal insult? I wasn't personally insulted.
And you haven't demonstrated evidence of special pleading in the case you specify. You have merely made an allegation. Where specifically is the special pleading?
I predict you will not answer, but keep whining about your inability to comprehend.
When your stranded on the lowest tier of philosophical acumen, everything becomes a brick wall.
I think morality is a massive engine of emotion. Take away the absolutes and things get sketchy.
By the criterion of the nonbeliever, it is ok. By the criterion of the believer, it isn't. Keep 8n mind, this is an extremely simplistic answer
I have a thing for silent, forgotten victims. I dont guess it's really a matter of morality, though. Actually I dont know what it is.
I would not disagree, whether religious or not, morality is definitely a matter of passion. Whether it goes one way or the other depends on the reason versus faith.
And that is the key distinction. The believer believes in something absolute, absolutely. Whereas the nonbeliever believer doesn't.
:up:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/463717
If nothing else, its definitely cool. And being reasonless, we can ask if you believe it to be an incontrovertible truth or not? If so, I would call such a belief "religious in nature", but not necessarily religious as such, that is, holding such a belief will not make you a believer.
For the unbeliever, true. For the believer, not true. There are definitely things that separate the believer and the nonbeliever. One of those things is that morality comes from god.
I think it has to do with love. As if: when we light candles for George Floyd, can we light one for all the others who have been forgotten? Like that.
Who's George Floyd?
Infinite candles is a very poetic concept, but I think each person should light a candle to "his-self", the greatest tragedy one will ever experience.
And "love" is entirely metaphysical. That is in contrast to "blasting some pussy" and "making an army" yo! One more distinction....the metaphysical is only for the believer. For the nonbeliever, the metaphysical is only words we use for various reasons.
A famous victim.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Isnt that a metaphysical statement?
You'll have to explain what you mean by "metaphysical statement".
I would definitely call it a statement about the metaphysical, even a claim about one actor's relation to the metaphysical.
Not that famous. I know who James Brown is. Wait he's not a victim, nevermind
(Reginald Denny is the funniest victim, no offense to any victims)
Even if a moral law were indisputably laid down by the good lord, it would remain open for people to choose to obey or not.
So no, the choice is yours, regardless of there being or not being a god.
You are the source of your ethical decisions.
First of all, "good lord" is the greatest of contradictions, such a thing is less likely than a hexahedronical sphere.
The believer believes that he has only one viable choice, even though he recognizes that there is more than one choice (many wrongs, but one right). It is paradoxical in that the believer chooses, even though he has no choice. But on deeper examination, the right "choice" of the believer becomes indisputable for him. Nothing can tell against it, no reason can be considered, morality to the believer is eternal law.
The "choice" of the nonbeliever, can be explained better, and to me or you it definitely makes more sense from a practical standpoint, like doing things together. And as we know nothing is more stubborn or divisive than religious conviction, and rightly so. But none of that matters to the believer.
Cheers. You take care, now. Bye.
Only when I'm with my lady...cheers matey!
If you're making claims about the metaphysical, does that show you're a believer?
Making metaphysical claims does not show that one is a believer. Strictly speaking, there is no actual way to show (to prove) that one is in fact a true believer. Even claiming oneself to be a believer, or practicing religious ritual, does not show that one holds actual religious belief.
This is because everyone else has only indirect access to that person's belief via his actions and words. Only the believer himself can know, with any certainty, whether he is truly religious since he is the only person with direct access to his own belief.
As for religion/theism (much of which I also disapprove of), I believe that if it wasn't religion/theism, a different form of fanaticism or extremist belief system would take its problematic place. One might look at Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge concept of the righteous society as a scary example of this.
Having said that, however, I can see how there could be no greater perceived justification for or the-end-justifies-the-means motivator of inhumane/immoral behavior than ‘the Almighty has willed it!’
Not sure that's an irony these days. One of secular humanism's primary drawcards is as a place to find morality given the continued demonstrations of immorality by believers and churches.
So has "liberal" which is left-wing.
Birds these days must have a tough time when flying. They use both wings.
yet many find it too easy, and that's why they practice it left right and centre.
In relation to what?
And God, if the dude is religious. But God ain't tellin' no one.
Knowing whether Christianity makes better people or not is hard to decide on because atheists will judge their friends more carefully than a Christian
https://www.salon.com/2021/06/05/how-the-new-atheists-merged-with-the-far-right-a-story-of-intellectual-grift-and-abject-surrender/
Nice polemic by Torres who remains an atheist despite some prominent celebrity atheists having political views he dislikes.
For a while after the New Atheist fad started, I kept track of reviews of their books. I should explain I’m not a specifically theistic person, not biblically-oriented or church-going (although I’m certainly not atheist either). Regardless, I felt all their books were egregiously mistaken in their depiction of what religions mean. Anyway - it’s become clear now, about 15 years later, that the New Atheism was nothing particularly new or noteworthy.
Overall the best summing-up reviews were these:
Lonely Atheists of the Global Village, Michael Novak
The God Genome, Leon Wieseltier’s review of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell.
Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching, Terry Eagleton’s hilariously acerbic review of The God Delusion, the review which got me into forums (having signed up to the long dead Dawkins forum to debate it.)
I think the best atheists never have to bother dismissing God, because they’re simply doing other things. As Einstein said, ‘atheists are those who still feel the weight of their chains’.
I didn't follow them closely but I think they were almost entirely right for the most part in their dedication to debunking and going after fundamentalisms. This fundamentalist mindset remains a serious problem for the world and these not so new atheist polemicists have done some fine work in this space. They have not been intending to provide academic philosophical dissertations on the nuances of theism, just good and basic ammunition against nasty, hating, often violent theists and the more banal reasons for accepting theism as reasonable.
Let's face it no one is going after Christians like academic David Bentley Hart... for a start he's a progressive non literalist and a sophisticated theological thinker (also a part-time, anti-atheist polemicist). No one is going to shun their child for being gay because of Hart's form of Christianity. No one is going to vote for a Presidential candidate because Hart says they should.
I think the alleged New Atheists were brash and strident and unacademic and pithy and polemical and for the most part they got their pitch right.
Wonder where they learned that.
Anyway - not going to carry this onwards. I’ve given my refs, I’ll leave it there.
//not all fundamentalists are religious.
Now you see, that's not accurate is it? Heading into straw man land, even. You only have to talk to support workers at Recovering form Religion to know that many fundamentalists (Southern Baptists, JW's, etc) do leave the faith, often after hearing arguments from people like New Atheists. No one is not worth the time.
In the 90’s, there was a Dinosaurs in Genesis billboard on a route I used to drive regularly. I was amused to learn that that guy, Ken Ham, had to re-locate to Kentucky to get an audience. Sure wasn’t going to get one in Sydney.
But this is a philosophy forum, and the New Atheists have poor understanding of philosophy generally, and philosophy of religion in particular. I could go through it all line by line, but life’s too short.
They were just a rehash of Comte's tired positivism. Their pitch was wrong in the sense that it was an ineffective caricature. I am not against caricatures. They have a role to play when well crafted and effective in a "truer than truth" kind of way. But a contempt-drooling caricature is rarely effective. Not a single Muslim fundamentalist, or Jewish or Christian for that matter, was ever deterred or convinced by their pro domo arguments. On the contrary, I suspect that their aggressive form of no-godism put off quite a few well-meaning folks among their audience.
More importantly, there are political consequences to the death of the god(s): the French revolutionary terror, Stalin, Hitler, are reminders that men need ethics and that historically their ethics was derived from religion. So once religion is dead (at least for the West, it is), whence come ethics?
Clue: certainly not from constant bashing of religion. More from learning a thing or two from religion.
No one has time. I know that basic atheist arguments have helped a lot of people so I don't think we can write these guys off, even if you and others think the work is beneath you intellectually. I think of it as a reasonable starting point if someone wants to explore further. Most of it is just footnotes to Russell's Why I am Not A Christian from the late 1920's. Gave a lot of people their start in ideas.
I personally wouldn't give a toss about belief systems but certain theists keep trying to change laws and politics to suit their unfounded beliefs and I don't much care for this.
He agreed with some of Dawkins' thoughts on the unfortunate consequences that have resulted from religious belief, but he was unhappy with the evolutionary biologist's approach to dealing with believers and said he agreed with those who found Dawkins' approach "embarrassing".[/quote]
Quoting Olivier5
That’s the salient point. When I did interact on the Dawkins forum, I asked them, OK what do you have to replace it? Evolutionary biology? What are the implications of that? Even Dawkins, when asked, agrees that Darwinian principles are a terrible basis for any kind of morals philosophy. (When I saw him acknowledge that on a TV debate my respect for him went up a notch.)
The unfortunate fact in Western culture is that much of the best of ‘pagan philosophy’ was incorporated into Christian theology by the Greek-speaking, early Christian theologians. So the rejection of Christianity often amounts, in effect, to the rejection of many elements of traditional philosophy along with it. Replaced with a vague acceptance that ‘whatever helps us exist’ comprises some kind of moral compass.
The arguments presented are actually pretty much those of Bertrand Russell as I stated above.
Quoting Olivier5
Untrue. If you talk to the counsellors at Recovering From Religion many people actually come to them via abusive fundamentalism because of Dawkins and Co's arguments. I've met a number of people who were fundamentalists and de-converted following exposure to Hitchens, Harris and co, amongst other things.
Quoting Olivier5
Nonsense. This has been addressed in other threads. Religion's consequences: witch-trials, shunning of gay people, anti-semitism, pogroms, Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of men of learning, slavery and numerous wars. The Nazi's had significant support from Christians and even had 'God with Us' on army belt buckles.
Dawkins has made many different comments on ethics over the years. He generally does not recommend Darwinism when it comes to ethics. Usually a simple minded utilitarianism.
The point is what religious ethical system do you recommend and why?
Religious ethics are generally based on subjective interpretations made by the believer or upon the views of particular sect/school. Hence the often hateful sectarian divisions and many schisms and isms. There's not a problem faced by secular ethics that religious ethics doesn't share.
How do people come to agreement about matters like capital punishment, abortion, gun ownership, the role of women, gay rights, human rights, etc? Religions disagree about these matters very much. Many advocate nasty prejudicial world views. Looks to me that our primary tool is reason to sort this one out.
I'm not sure they ever had a vision for the future except improving their own bank balance. Liberalism was started by the commercial classes that wanted more profit for themselves and less for the clergy and aristocracy.
But one implies the other. The morality that is implicit in Darwinian theory is always best described by what Herbert Spencer says - 'survival of the fittest'. How can it be anything other than utilitarian? (I know that phrase wasn't in the first edition of OoS but Darwin approved it and it was in later editions.)
Quoting Tom Storm
I recommend that individuals deeply scrutinise that question and try and come to the best possible decision.
Quoting Tom Storm
With great difficulty, and in the full knowledge that not everyone can be right.
Quoting Tom Storm
'Unfounded' according to what criterion? That no double-blind, peer-reviewed papers exist on them? Don't fall for positivism, that only what can be validated according to scientific criteria ought to be considered real.
Of course it is a painful truth that religious delusions exist, and that there are religious believers who are profoundly and tragically mistaken in their beliefs. But as the critics of the new atheists point out, many of the greatest crimes against humanity of the twentieth century were committed by atheists.
Only if you derive an ought from an is.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm talking about Bible believing literalist Christians and infallible word of God Koran believing Muslims. Plenty of evidence that their beliefs are unfounded. Mere archeology will do for that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well the Christians were responsible for the crimes of a dozen or more centuries or so before that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sensible. But as soon as someone responds via a guru or a pastor or a mullah the trouble begins.
But for the most part we agree. Except that silly stuff about the hyperuranion... :joke:
God has nothing to do with morals, its only the religous teachings of morals that were made by humans.
I call post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Even if God exists it has no meaning to how we or any other living thing lives.
Interesting observation. I suppose one could say something similar about al-F?r?b?, Avicenna and Maimonides, two Muslims and one Jew among many many others who built upon Aristotle and Plato within their own religious framework. Note that the Greek philosophers were often monotheist, at least in the way they wrote about God, so their incorporation into a monotheist faith is not particularly problematic from that standpoint.
It was clear to me right from the beginning that these media-branded "New Atheists" are mostly polemical irreligionists (or militant secularists) who were occasionally amusing, rarely insightful, outrageously rhetorical, theologically shallow sophists (hucksters?). Dennett knew better, shamefully tongue-in-cheek exploited the Islamophobic anti-fundie moment, mostly I think, to pump sales of his philosophical back-catalogue, which was disappointingly crass. FTG. Hitchens remained true to form: a sing-for-his-supper contrarian performer and master phrase-turner with a singular wit (I do miss him).
Stenger, though, was the only one of them who rose to the occasion with masterful philosophical critiques of religious theism and woo-of-the-gaps misuses of science (& pseudo-scientific abuses) informed by contemporary physics which was his day job. I owe my giant step up from weak atheism to strong atheism almost two decades ago to Stenger's pre-2000 (pre-"New Atheism") essays and books. (My current antitheist atheism is also Stengerian too.) Btw, he (the particle physicist emeritus) was the only one of that 'angry gang of anti-religion hustlers' to wholeheartedly embrace the "New Atheist" branding.
Another godless troubadour from the naughty aughts who I grew to esteem for his intellectual care and humility, as well as his eminently witty charm, was the late great, physician comedian and stage director Jonathan Miller. His six-part documentary "A Rough History of Disbelief" has none of that hustling, facile, whiff of "New Atheism" and so I recommend it to those less inclined to read arguments for / against theism whenever it's appropriate to do so. (For instance, my devoutly and principled Catholic mother actually appreciated Miller's presentation, and for the first time in 30 years (then, a decade ago) told me Miller's documentary showed her that my disbelief was not arbitrary as she'd thought)
I do not defend "New Atheism" or decry its partisans' unfortunate lapses into bloviating sophistry; like @Tom Storm, I note that in some quarters here in America as a social phenomenon, or movement, it has been of positive use to many young people struggling to free themselves of toxic, blinkered, religious upbringing and dogmatic ignorance of contemporary science, ethics, cultural and cosmopolity. I, for one, don't mind "believers" and "woo woo-thumpers" strawmanning me with the poorly thought-through arguments made by Harris, Dawkins or Hitchens; I always give back as least as good as I get in these running "god skirmishes", and the notional exercises are often worth the laughs.
That's news to me, and I would like to read some testimonials if you know of any.
Quoting Tom Storm
That's a tangent. My point is rather that, now that "God is dead", we need a secular form (or several) of ethics. This point is not nonsense. It is essential to our civilization's survival. And it has zilch to do with a comparison between the crimes committed by atheists vs those committed by religious folks.
The rejection of the judeo-christian tradition by the Nazis is what allowed them to do what they did. I am not rooting for a return of the inquisition, just flagging that during the 20th century the freedom from religious tradition afforded by Marx and Nietzsche, combined with the immense powers generated by science and technology lead to both positive and negative consequences.
We have yet to learn how to use our new powers, before we blow ourselves off this planet misusing them. A new ethics is what we need. It needs to be rooted in some respect for the human person. In some respect for life, including non-human life. And no materialist philosophy will ever explain to you why a bee, a flower, or a child are inherently far more worthy of love and respect than any machine, however sophisticated.
Scentistic category error, Wayf. C'mon, even you know better ...
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't see how you can argue that when the Nazi's drew on centuries of Christianity's antisemitism even Martin Luther's well known fulminations against Jews. Not to mention a 99% Christian nation supported Hitler. Of course, anti-communism and nationalism played a role too.
From Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform:
The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good."
Quoting Olivier5
GOTT MIT UNS on the belt buckles of the Wehrmacht forces convincingly suggests otherwise. And Austro-Bavaria, which was the heartland of Nazism – was then, as it still is today, conservatively Catholic – and contributed a very great share of its sons brothers & fathers to the Nazi cause. Considered in historical context, fascism means nothing if not right-wing Catholicism (e.g. Franco's Falange, Mussolini's Fasci, Greek National Union, Belgian Christus Rex, etc). Let's forget the several centuries old bloody legacy of the very "judeo-christian" Holy Inquisition, antisemitic pogroms, forced conversions, slave trade ... all with the blessing and instigation of Holy Mother Church for "the greater glory of Our Lord". Deus fuckin' volt.
Centuries during which the Church was more often than not trying to protect Jews from the greed of the powerful and the prejudice of the masses.
So, since China is in majority atheist and their people support a ruthless and racist dictatorship, it reflects poorly on atheism?
Just because warmongers often brandish religious reasons does not mean they are motivated by religion. The Nazis used Martin Luther to rally the masses, instrumentally, like they used Darwin or Wagner. It does not follow that their ideology was inherently Lutheran, Darwinian or Wagnerian.
Are you sure this detail was introduced by the Nazis? It could just as well be a pre-existing German tradition.
Edit (from Wiki):
Luke Barnes vs Victor Stenger for those interested.
:rofl:
Of course it was an existing Prussian tradition from the 1800s.
"Imperial Germany had come via war and political intrigue to creation in 1871 after a successful Prussian conflict with France. Like all other countries involved in the conflict, they believed that God was on their side, hence “Gott Mit Uns” (“God is with us”) stamped on the belt buckle of every Prussian (but not German) infantryman. Prussia was the biggest state of this Empire and had a majority of people who were rather militant Protestants"
http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/religion/gott-mit-uns/
My point remains that it is harder to imagine, plan and implement the murder of millions of people on an industrial scale -- e.g. the Holocaust -- within a traditional Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim) context than it is to do so within a secular context.
Blessed are the Cheesemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"My honour is called expensive", direct translation. They assimilated some things from the Jews whom they aimed to eradicate: they bought Ehre (honour) wholesale, and sold it retail. Unfortunately for Hitler, the wholesale price was high when the SS bought theirs, so they could not get rid of it at a profit. Hence, total economic, military and moral collapse of the Third Reich.
Why? Law in an orderly country like the USA takes care of the lost religious ethics.
In communist countries the ethic dictates of religion were uprooted. There was a lot of fornication throughout the land. Abortions were legalized. Divorces became easy to get. Theft was rampant, almost to the tune of being a national sport.
Interestingly, lying was not encouraged, and so was not murder. Greed was curtailed much more stringently than in the most religious countries. Charity and the binding up of the broken was de-privatized and put in the hand of the state.
So in retrospect, they enforced about the same number of so-called "christian" ethics there as they freed up from needing to heed to; and they were the negative imprint of the Western, American model. In America people don't cheat on their spouses, and single people refrain from being overly promiscuous. They don't steal, and they don't commit fetus murders. But post partum murder rate is 14 times that of what it used to be in Hungary in communist time. Charity is almost non-existent in the USA, when it comes to healing the sick. Everyone lies in America, from the last one-man self-employed businessman, to the largest insurance companies, to the organized media big time, and since Nixon, the presidents don't shy away from it either.
So don't give me that fucking bullshit that god is needed for morality. America is fucking goddamned christian, and their jails are more full of criminals (immorally acting people) than jails in any other country.
Fucking Christian God-enforced goddamned morals... my ass.
2) God is your conscience
3) you need God to good
There are good people in the world.
For instance, to justify the need for the rule of law, its importance and value.
It depends on how you define "God". If we take God to be the supreme Good, then being good is acting in harmony with God.
But I agree that the thread may be a straw man. With the US election approaching, there may have been a decision to take up political activism and have a go at the opposition. And whether activism can answer a philosophical question is doubtful. Or, as you say, silly.
If God is a form of universal consciousness, then the higher ideas or ideals of man are expressions of the mind of God.
Anything that involves words can be dismissed as "word games" if that's what you want to do. That includes philosophy, ethics, law, politics, and everything else.
As you may be aware, this is a question that philosophy has aimed to answer for a very long time and the debate is still ongoing. Meantime, people are free to hold what beliefs they like, as you say.
From the article cited in the OP, to which scant attention has been paid:
(Note the outlier on the far right - which country is that? No surprise. )
Being taught that you will be punished if you do not do what you are told is not being taught to be good.
If this thread has any point, it is that this is a lesson taught by economic growth.
Yes, the potential for mass murder was always there, and remains. The question is how we guard against it in modern secular societies. I believe this takes a bedrock of common values that need to be held as normatively good, and treated as such. The fact that we cannot or rather will not rely on religion to ground those societal values has profound consequences, some obviously positive (like, freedom of conscience; we can have sex with a lot more folks etc.) and others more problematic, like the inability to ground human rights in gods' will anymore. Human rights were historically introduced as god-given and therefore sacred in both the French Déclaration des droits de l'homme and in the American Bill of rights. You can't do this anymore. You can't say in a secular framework: "Human life is sacred", although it is still said of course, including by secularists. And the reason it is still said, is that we modern secularists miss a sense of the sacred to ground our values.
Unfortunately God doesn’t say how to act, people say how to act, and people aren’t God (supreme Good).
I haven't been around long enough to say. However, the answer to the thread title is, in my estimation, a definitive "No."
I know some folks who believe in god who I think are good and some who I think are bad. Same with folks who don't believe in god. Same with agnostics.
For believers, I think a fault lies in a mistaken belief, by some, that god somehow holds a special place in his heart for human beings. LOL! That's where the bad starts and keeps on a runnin'. Come to think of it, a similar belief holds true for atheists and agnostics. People thinking "we're all that" is the genesis of bad.
I think we have paid attention.
However, if countries with higher GDP per capita are less likely to tie belief in God to morality, this would appear to confirm the position of theists, viz., that the wealthier people are, the more they are inclined to believe in material possessions and less in God.
Otherwise put, man cannot have two masters, it’s either God or Mammon (Matthew 6:24). And the rich often go for the latter. The article seems to support this.
To be good -> To believe in God
Sorry to disappoint you but it looks like you're wrong because the contrapositive, To not believe in God -> To be bad, is false.
What is of greater concern, what is a bigger problem, is the converse, To believe in God -> To be good, is false.
If hell - the worst possible situation one can possibly imagine and multiply it by infinity - is no deterrent and if heaven - best-case scenario again times infinity - is no incentive, I'm at a loss as to what can keep us on the straight and narrow.
Also,
[quote=Steven Weinberg]With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.[/quote]
You might be right there. But why would they attack anyone in the first place? Are they dumb or malicious? Or perhaps both?
Nice try. I'll go one more but we need to move on.
Your point was that Nazi's were only possible because they removed the Judeo Christian tradition from culture? Clearly wrong.
Gott Mitt Uns - one small example of the Judeo-Christian tradition was not removed from uniforms. The Nazi's cheerfully changed the look of most things but kept this?
My mentioning 99% of Germany as Christian goes to the point that the Nazi's emerged from this tradition and remained overwhelmingly popular. I see you overlook the Nazi's Positive Christianity an official part of their thinking and attraction.
Christians protecting Jews? Some yes, but this doesn't change the Christian roots of anti-semitism - the Jews as Christ killers.
Martin Luther's work On the Jews and their Lies recommends the following:
to burn down Jewish synagogues and schools and warn people against them
to refuse to let Jews own houses among Christians
to take away Jewish religious writings
to forbid rabbis from preaching
to offer no protection to Jews on highways
for usury to be prohibited and for all Jews' silver and gold to be removed, put aside for safekeeping, and given back to Jews who truly convert
to give young, strong Jews flail, axe, spade, and spindle, and let them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow
You can see in this the makings of Kristallnacht and the forced labor camps, no? And no I am not saying Nazism is Lutheran. You seem to miss my point. I am saying that the ethos of the Nazi's draws source material in the Christian tradition you believe they removed. No, they took and intensified the worst of it.
At no point would I argue that all Christians are anti-Semitic or that all Christians supported Hitler. But that's not what's needed to support my point.
Sorry, it's in the Declaration of Independence -
[I]We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.[/i]
Yes, there were some links there but I think that the Jews were despised for different reasons by different groups:
1. For Christians, they were guilty of killing Jesus.
2. For Marx and his followers they were guilty of being bourgeois money-lovers.
3. For the Nazis they were guilty of (1) supporting Bolshevism and (2) of being an alien race.
The Nazis' argument (2) went back to the 1800s and before.
See also Marx's critique of German Jews that later appears in Nazi propaganda.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
That' s exactly wrong.
True, people aren't God. But people say that God gave them the laws according to which they act.
See, for example, the Law of Hammurabi (1792 - 1750 BC):
"Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi
That is not my point. I am rather saying that the Nazis themselves removed the judeo-christian tradition from their own (personal) thinking, and even hated it. They hardened their own hearts against their religious upbringing. They could not possibly remove Christianity from the German culture at large. But they started by trying to arianize Jesus. At issue here was the obvious fact that Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Paul, Petter and all the first followers of Jesus were Jews, which would imply they were, you know, bad folks, so some pronazi theologians started to pretend that Jesus was in fact a good Arian (persecuted by them Juden, as one would expect). They tried to put a Nazi spin on the whole JC drama, in short. Not the first nor the last one to do that; religious myths are eternally being reshaped and retold to suit new purpose and the historical data on Jesus is meagre and vague enough that one can brand him a stoic, a socialist, a feminist, whatever one likes, so why not a Nazi after all. And yes, Luther's disgusting writings on Jews helped them Nazis. But the final solution was not inspired by religion. It was inspired by an ideology that was resolutely modern and secular, a form of social Darwinism.
Correct. And the social Darwinists the Nazis learned from were none other than Marx and Engels who believed that their generation had to go under to make place for a new type of Socialist Man.
Marx and Engels also believed that the Slavs were an inferior, reactionary race that had to be wiped out in a revolutionary world war ....
:ok:
I don't think I'm any more confused than yourself.
Marx and Engels were social Darwinists and definitely advocated the extermination of Slavic nations, for example. See "The Magyar Struggle", etc.
https://historum.com/threads/friedrich-engels-slavophobia.181776/
This later became a central plank in the Nazi program.
Not do what?
Engels' article was in Marx's newspaper. And Marx himself said similar things about his generation having to go down to make room for those who were fit for the new socialist world order.
"The revolution, which finds here not its end, but its organizational beginning, is no short-lived revolution. The present generation is like the Jews whom Moses led through the wilderness. It not only has a new world to conquer, it must go under in order to make room for the men who are able to cope with a new world"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch03.htm
Engels wrote:
“Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done. Never before has so grandiose an attempt been made to demonstrate historical evolution in Nature, and certainly never to such good effect” - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marx-Engels Collected Works [MECW], vol. 40, 441.
Marx wrote:
“Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle… “
MECW, vol. 41: 246–47
So, Marx and Engels:
1. Used Darwinism as "the basis for their class struggle".
2. They believed in a new type of man that "could cope with the new socialist world order".
3. And they believed that Slavic nations had to be eliminated.
All three elements are later found in Nazi ideology.
How very convenient. :wink:
How does it work? Water is made of molecules, yes? So, in order for water to exist, some molecules need to exist. And if some water does indeed exist, then some molecules exist. Likewise, for moral norms and values to exist, God needs to exist (why? Because moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of God). And if moral norms and values do exist, God exists.
But like most, you are profoundly confused about these matters and make an elementary mistake. And that mistake is to have confused a concept with what it is the concept of. Humans - most of them - have the concept of morality. That does not mean that morality is a concept. Morality itself is that which answers to the concept. But like I say, there's a subtlety of mind needed to recognize this that few here possess.
Quoting Bartricks
This implies God to be a psyche, for prescriptions and values pertain to psyches alone. They, for example, do not pertain to Aristotelian notions of a final cause as an unmoved mover nor to Neoplatonist notions of “the One”, neither of which were deemed to be psyches (and thereby to prescribe things and to hold values).
This one supreme psyche termed “God”, then, would hold these prescriptions and values due to him/her/it being under the sway of a metaphysical good that is not of God’s creation - toward which God aspires and conforms - or, else, this supreme psyche, “God” would create prescriptions and values of the Good in a fully purposeless manner - such that they are the products of a senseless caprice which can hold no reason for manifesting in one manner rather than another.
If the former, God is not the creator of the Good - i.e., of goodness proper - but is a servant/subject of it as are all other lesser beings. There then is no reason to believe in God in order to believe in the Good, for the Good is not contingent upon God. (Here tentatively granting there being such a supreme psyche which is labeled “God”)
If the latter, God is the creator of that which is the Good, even to the extent of the Good being that which pleases God. For the sake of argument, here assuming that God being the creator of that which pleases God is not, of itself, logically incoherent … God’s creation of the Good, and of prescriptions and values regarding the Good, has then occurred for no reason, no motive, and no purpose: for these would all necessitate the correctitude of an a priori, uncreated Good toward which God aspires and conforms, and thereby intends, in the creations God brings about. In this second scenario, then, when overlooking its logical incoherencies, what was metaphysically good yesterday could be unadulterated evil tomorrow, or vice versa; bringing about a metaphysical moral relativism pivoted on the caprice of a superlatively amoral despot whose dictums are literally irrational. Here, then, there must be God in order for the Good to be.
So - if no major mistakes of reasoning have been done on my part - how does one go about demonstrating the verity of the Good being contingent upon God, rather than the Good not being contingent upon God?
Buddhists don’t agree. They nevertheless hold a moral code based on transcendence, i.e. liberation from rebirth in sa?s?ra.
:up:
Quoting Olivier5
I do agree with this, and often try to make this point, but it’s usually rejected. I was reading in Pierre Hadot that the notion of the sanctity of the individual was also found in the Stoics. But I agree with your broader point that if the sacred is rejected as a category then human life looses that dimension.
In any case, the point seems clear to me that absent any conception of a summum bonum, an ultimate end or good, then the only moral philosophy can be some form of utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number. I suppose you could appeal to something like eudomonia - but even in Aristotelian ethics, whilst not explicitly theistic, you still find the conception that the ‘highest good’ entails contemplation of the first principles. ‘ Contemplation is that activity in which nous intuits and delights in first principles.’
This claim is taken upon faith and faith alone. Some people have moral norms and values despite not believing in God. I personally do not believe that the God of Abraham makes much sense at all given today's knowledge. Back in the day, sure...
God did it.
If one wishes to exalt their own moral values above others' then attributing their existence to some supernatural being is one way to convince others; although I find such claims to be presupposing exactly what needs argued for.
You know what we find when we look at codified rules of behaviour?
People writing those rules based upon individual particular circumstances. I've yet to see any evidence whatsoever that leads me to believe that some supernatural divine entity such as the one described in JudeoChristian or Islamic circles has somehow intervened in some set of circumstances of another.
The problem of evil. The euthyphro problem. Occam's razor.
The holy trinity.
[quote=Fyodor Doestevsky (Brothers Karamazov)]If there is no God, everything is permitted.[/quote]
Doestevsky's words seem to square with the title of the OP which is "Belief in god is necessary for being good".
As far as I can tell, Doestevesky is spot on. A thorough survey of the philosophy of ethics reveals a stark and disturbing truth viz. no existent moral theory that's made a clean break from theism manages to draw a clear boundary between that which is moral (good, mandatory) and immoral (bad, prohibited). Instead what they give us is only rough guidelines in ethics which land up making nothing compulsory (good) or forbidden (bad) and everything is, more or less, permitted (amoral from a certain perspective) depending on the situation of course. A case in point is killing. For argument's sake let's contextualize killing in utilitarianism (most happiness for the most people). As per utilitarianism, I shouldn't kill a defenseless child but I can off a man who tries to detonate a bomb in a crowded mall. See? Not killing isn't mandatory, nor is killing prohibited, and that makes killing permissible, exactly what Doestevsky is asserting in the quote above.
Consider now a theistic morality grounded in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. Such a morality would, by token of such wisdom, goodness and power, make a clear distinction beween good (mandatory) and bad (prohibited). There wouldn't, rather shouldn't, be special cases that would require us to relax, or make some concessions in re, the moral laws that (we believe) God decreed. Killing, for example, would always be evil and not killing, similarly, would be good in all situations.
Thus, If God doesn't exist, everything is permitted [amoral or fuzzy boundary between good and bad]. The proof is right under our noses in the form of moral paradoxes e.g. murderer asking for your friend's whereabouts (Kantian ethics), hanging an innocent man to prevent a bloody riot (Utilitarianism).
This then leads us to the gist of Doestoevsky's quote. There's another situation in which everything is permitted, morally speaking, and that's when the axioms/postulates of our moral theory (those that have distanced from theism) are mutually inconsistent or if together they constitute a contradiction. By ex falso quodlibet, everything is permitted. To cut to the chase, Doestoevsky is saying the absence of God is logically equivalent to an inconsistent moral theory that's atheistic and, from the preceding paragraphs, he's hit the nail on the head, right? And if one really wants to push the envelope, Doestoevsky is claiming that atheism is a contradiction!
That's what neo-Marxists usually say when they are reminded of their prophet's own words. Very predictable.
Correct. Historically, laws or rules of proper conduct have always been said to have been given to mankind by God. This goes as far back as the earliest written records, like the Law of Hammurabi (1792 - 1750 BC):
"Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi
The same applies to the Law of Moses, etc.
The idea that laws are not given by God is a modern belief or unexamined superstition that is contradicted by history.
Both are a matter of perspective, nothing more. In a nutshell, that which supports or strengthens my position or belief system is good, that which weakens is bad. Change position and that which makes up good or evil also changes. All things are permissible and all things are prohibited, depending on the reference point.
God has no bearing on the matter, unless of course one's behaviour is being attributed to the demands of an invisible and unprovable being, in which case there are other, possibly more pressing, problems to deal with.
I think the point Banno was trying to make is that those who think that belief in God is necessary for being good are poor, ignorant, and right-wing.
Quoting Banno
But this actually supports the view that the richer you are, the more you believe in material possessions and less in God. Or as the Bible puts it, you can't serve two masters, you must choose between God and Mammon (Money). The rich tend to choose the latter and Banno's article seems to confirm this.
And this is bad?
Poor people are bad?
People with less edication are bad?
People who tend to the political right are bad?
People who are older than those who do not not believe "Belief in god is necessary for being good" are bad?
Oh, and what is "good"?
But then, the end justifies the means and we know that leads to the trampling of human rights. Utilitarianism alone does not suffice. We do need to work toward general welfare, but not at the cost of individual oppression. E.g. the police can't summarily kill an individual without due process, even if his death would make millions of other folks happy.
The solution to our moral and political qualms are never to be found in ONE principle alone, like "work for the greater good". There's always several principles to be considered, including inalienable rights of the individual which society cannot trample on, such as habeas corpus, but also the rights of future generations and hence the moral imperative of environmental sustainability. The basic human Darwinian drive to compete with one's neighbour has also to be acknowledged and room left for it through an ethic of fair and open competition (e.g. in business, sport or science). Utilitarianism is just too simplistic and one-dimensional to work.
Maybe neo-Marxism and Stalinism?
I think that was the general idea. The question is whether anyone can actually prove this to be the case.
The claim that morality requires God (which is demonstrably true) is not equivalent to the claim that belief in God is necessary for moral behaviour. Indeed, they are so obviously not equivalent that I think anyone who regularly conflates them is a total berk.
My house is made of wood. That claim is not equivalent to the claim that entering my house requires believing in wood. Were I to claim that my house is made of wood, would you respond 'but many people have managed to enter your house without believing in wood!'?
Or if I claimed water is made of molecules, would you reply 'but many people drink water without believing in molecules!'?
1. Marx and Engels developed their historic theory in the 1840's, inspired mostly by recent or contemporary political events: the American and French revolutions, the 1848 revolutions and the like, much before they ever heard of Darwin who published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Marx then simply recognized an objective and obvious similarity between his views of history and Darwin's view of evolution. I don't see what's wrong with that.
2. Yes of course. That's the basic idea: man can and must evolve.
3. I don't think so. Engels was commenting à chaud, in a polemical manner. I don't see Marx planning the final extermination of all Slavs in any of those quotes and links you posted.
There are many other things the Nazis borrowed from the Marxists: the idea of a mass party and ideology, the idea of revolutionary violence as a natural means for progress, the very idea of history having a meaningful direction, etc. etc.
Nazism was a twisted, sad copy, a nationalist plagiarism of Marxism, done by paranoid murderers.
:sad: When it comes to being good, one's IQ is a hindrance! Buddhism is about pure compassion come hell or high water! Can't think/reason your way out of that one, can you? Just saying...
First, let's be clear what 'arbitrary' means. It means 'without reason'.
Now note that moral norms and values are but a subset of the prescriptions and values of Reason.
Now note that Reason must be a mind, for only minds can issue prescriptions or value things.
Now note that Reason, being a mind, will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and thus will be God.
Now note that it is not possible for the prescriptions and values of this mind to be arbitrary, given that arbitrary means 'without reason' and these are the precise opposite, for they are the prescriptions and values of none other than Reason herself!
Adam, Eve, The Serpent, The Tree Of Knowledge, Original Sin. You do the math.
Don't mistake the sign for the referent.
Maybe it's needed, but to no avail. America is the most Christian nation and it has the largest jail population in the known world, both in absolute numbers and in relative numbers. Obviously morality is ineffective in satisfying the need you envision its existence is justified for.
2) is false. Ergo, 3 is false. 1) is true, and so is the conclusion.
Thanks for the advice! :up:
Of course you don't. Marx was incapable of planning his own household let alone anything else. That doesn't mean that he didn't express the idea or that his idea didn't turn up in Nazi ideology.
Quoting Olivier5
That was exactly what I was saying. But you seem to have forgotten the concentration camps copied by Hitler from Marxists like Lenin and Stalin.
Gulag - Wikipedia
:smile: :ok:
Well then, you should be able to find a quote where he expresses the idea.
Quoting Apollodorus
Concentration camps have been used by many others including the US. The real Nazi innovation was the death camps, the factories of death.
Excellent point. It's a form of bigotry.
If you start calling God your conscience instead of fighting a phantom you could proclaim belief in God and atheism at the same time!
And read Critique of Practical Reason
You're right. And neither does morality.
I actually agree with the notion that ethics need to be developed for an atheistic world. And I deny that ethics ever worked very well anywhere in any society. It is a soft rule, you have a choice of accepting of its teachings for what you want to accept, and not accept and make your own those ethical values that are generally forbidden to you... the entire ethical system never worked. (When I said here "you", I meant the general you, not you personally.)
So my point is that being ethical is very noble, but useless. Nobody listens to you who does not want to. And there is no mechanism to replace it.
We are stuck being a species that has high ethical values and expectations, and hardly any specimen of our species (or speciwomen) heed to them.
Absolutely not. Theists, Christians should speak that they abandoned their belief and think god is just a figment of imagination.
What audacity! You should make yourself to comply with your own wishes, not expect others to go to your crazy ideas.
Much less than you think. There was a relgion-related mass murder in Canada yesterday. A devout white Christian boy murdered four Muslims, for his own conscience called him to do that. Palestinians and Jews in the middle east are killing each other although their DNA and race and even smell is indistinguishable from the other's.
No, my friend, atheists don't harm the religious, and the religious don't harm the atheists. It is the religious that are in war with the religious and atheists that are in war with atheists.
A very brief look at our inherited beliefs:
Many ancient poets/lawgivers claim gods rather than themselves as the authority for what they say; and appeal to revelation rather than reason.
In Judaism adherence to the Law is a matter of choice.
According to Paul, man is powerless against sin. Morality (a term he never used) necessitates not only divinity but belief, acceptance, and faith because man must be saved from sin.
One reason more highly educated people may reject this is that a liberal education is at its best a liberating education. An escape from Plato's cave. Plato replaces the stories of the gods with stories or the just, beautiful, and good. But Christianity then takes what is fundamentally a story that rejects revelation in favor of reason and turns it into a story of revealed truth.
Going further it attempts to reconcile reason and revelation, thereby making reason the handmaiden of revelation. The struggle between the claims of "Athens and Jerusalem", that is, reason and revelation, continue to this day.
That has advantages though: it makes ethics more fluid and evolutionary.
You are saying that Reason has reasons for Her reasoning which are themselves the self-contained creations of Reason alone as omnipotent arbitrator of these reasons. But then, if Reason is not Herself subject to reasons that are not of Reason’s creation, none of Reason’s reasons for reasoning will be based on non-arbitrary reasons, for all of Reason’s reasons will be arbitrated by Reason alone, thereby being fully arbitrary reasons without exception.
In summation, either Reason is subject to uncreated reasons that Reason Herself aspires to (in which case Reason/God does not create the Good/right/correct as reason for Her own actions) or all of Reasons’ omnipotently created reasons, including that of the Good/right/correct, are themselves created without reason by Reason and, hence, are irrationally created (in which case Reason/God creates the Good/right/correct in manners not subject to anything good, anything right, or anything correct – but instead, as you say, in manners that are fully without reason).
In short, you’re arguing for Reason Herself being fully irrational in all that She creates.
You should be able to read the quotes I have already provided.
Marx wrote:
"The revolution, which finds here not its end, but its organizational beginning, is no short-lived revolution. The present generation is like the Jews whom Moses led through the wilderness. It not only has a new world to conquer, it must go under in order to make room for the men who are able to cope with a new world"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch03.htm
Engels wrote:
“… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution” (234) […] “the Germans and Magyars have assumed the historical initiative. They represent the revolution … The Southern Slavs represent the counter-revolution (236) […] “The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too. Is a step forward” (238).
- “The Magyar Struggle”, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 13 Jan. 1849
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 227 – 238.
Engels was Marx's close friend and collaborator and was writing in Marx's paper Neue Rheinische Zeitung. As publisher of his own paper, Marx obviously agreed with what he was publishing.
Marx and Engels' idea of Germans making a united front with the Hungarians and others against the Slavs and exterminating the Slavs, appears virtually word-by-word in Nazi ideology.
Quoting Olivier5
Sure. However, you forget that concentration camps for political prisoners were used by Marxists like Lenin and Stalin long before the Nazis. You also forget the Red Terror launched by Lenin to exterminate "counterrevolutionaries". And you forget the millions that died under Lenin and Stalin before Hitler even came to power. You condemn one form of mass murder and genocide and condone another.
Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin - Wikipedia
True, that is an advantage. At the same time that it's a disadvantage, inasmuch as you can't rely on anyone else to follow the same ethics as you do.
I am sorry, but you really make cake. Your control comes across as that of a man who has no insight, foresight and has no ability to empathize.
BTW: To be clear, my own stance is that the Good, which encapsulates the right and the correct, is an uncreated metaphysical facet of the world: not created by a monotheistic deity (be this God renamed Reason or otherwise), not by a plurality of gods, and certainly not by corporeal beings such as ourselves.
Any reason held is held with the Good in mind; this, minimally, with one's appraisals of what is good for one's own self.
... kind of thing.
If you remember your Bible, the Hebrews in question were not exterminated. Simply they couldn't reach the promised land for some absurd unworthiness reason. The next generation did, according to the myth. What Marx is saying here is that, although he and many others had placed high hopes in the 1848 revolutions across Europe, these revolutions all failed; hence his generation won't see the promised land, but the next generation will, as it will be better prepared and educated and thus more "worthy".
Quoting Apollodorus quoting Engels
As I said, this is from a very polemic text written right after the brutal suppression of popular revolutions in Vienna, Budapest and Paris. It is an unfortunate polemical statement. It's very different from Hitler's "scientific racism".
Indeed. The best you can do is ally yourself politically, maritally or otherwise with some who do share enough of your values, in the hope of promoting them.
But the murder of millions of e.g. non-JCI Africans, Indigenous Americans & Austrialians, Indians, and Chinese by "traditional JCI" conquistadors, slavers or colonizing settlers at the behest and with the backing of "traditional JCI" empires and nations for the last millennium (since the Crusades) is, of course, "too hard to imagine" as well. :shade:
Last time I checked, secular also includes "traditional JCI contexts". I'll concede Mao's Cultural Revolution was a mass atrocity on an unpresidented scale prosecuted by "godless communists" that mass-produced corpses in near-industrial fashion. Soviets were in bed with the Russian Orthodox Church just as the Nazis (& other fascist regimes) were in bed with the Roman Catholic Church. And let's not forget Roman Catholic King Leopold's 19th century "holocaust" of millions in the Congo which was surely "planned and implemented" in a traditional JCI context.
History shows that true words have rarely, if ever, been spoken:
[quote=Steven Weinberg]With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.[/quote]
No one said they were. But if you remember your Bible many thousands died. This is what Marx was talking about. And, like Engels, he expected many to be killed as a result of the revolution the two of them were promoting.
Quoting Olivier5
Unfortunate or not, it was made, it was racist, and advocated the physical "extirpation of entire nations". It's the same ideology. The only difference is that Marx and Engels had no means of implementing their ideology whereas Hitler did. And before him, Lenin and Stalin.
Besides, Hitler didn't exterminate the Slavs either. In fact, he changed his policy from extermination to Aryanization.
I didn't. Stop being so confrontational. Just because I didn't mention the moon's of Jupiter either doesn't mean I FORGOT them.
The concentration camp is a very old idea. Neither Lenin nor Stalin invented it. Remember the US deportation of the Navajo in 1864 (the Long Walk of the Navajo). There are other examples throughout history.
Why yes. So your point is?
Quoting Apollodorus
Marx achieved far more than Hitler. You can say what you want of Stalin but the USSR was a country of peasants in 1917, and it won the space race less than 50 years later, while also winning the second world war in the meantime... So communism did work for them, in a way that Nazism did not.
Yes, I agree. Not only for the general peace and well-being of the parties involved, but also so that you can join forces with those who have the same aim.
Unfortunately when you ally yourself in a marriage, values are important, but so are a lot of other things, too many to mention here, and some of them are unattainable in combination with some others, or it's just fate that does not align you with an ally who is not all lies, so I am saying I've an old man, and still single, because I was wise enough (or chicken enough) in my twenties to fear the horrible burden of being trapped-- ether for me, or for my spouse.
I more and more realize that a good marriage is not so much sex and love and giving and taking, but more like looking out for each other, watching each other's backs. This necessitates the compatibility along with the differences that complement each other. My present gf and I have totally different attributes. She's sociable, I am more introspective. She charms people and gets along with everyone, even when not in friendly terms -- for instance, when she needs to return a merchandize, or get a refund for a trip -- and she gets her will done, while I fix things around the house easily, and know the difference between postmodernism and logical positivism. On top of this, I constantly crack jokes she does not like, and she still smiles and closes one eye to them, while she speaks trivial stuff and I listen intently and make big eyes at what she says, and agree with her all the time. For the two of us it's a small price to pay for the benefits we give and take, and we mutually revel in the joy of the exchange.
I reckon that those who commit suicide after perpetrating mass shootings generally (?) do not believe in an afterlife. And, if no afterlife, why should so doing be egregious to the person in question? I likewise reckon that a good sum of the greed-is-good gurus among the economic elite also lack belief in an afterlife of any sort (despite their public pronouncements) and hold the same roundabout motives for prioritizing maximum financial profit for themselves in this life over the global community’s wellbeing (as in the repercussions upon future generations of the global warming and the planets 6th mass extinction currently unfolding, in significant part due to a pyramid-scheme global economy founded on the axioms of unlimited resources and infinite expansion). In cases such as these, lack of spirituality becomes detrimental to the actions of the individual relative to the community at large. On a different note, I’ve come across self-proclaimed “formerly bad” persons who’ve become good on grounds of “having found Jesus”. And they were indeed amiable to myself and the community for the time period I knew them—this despite my not having been spiritual at the time and our debates into these matters.
IMO, it's neither religion nor lack of religion that is the culprit. People can use either perspective to give more power to themselves in actualizing the goals which they seek. As two examples of the latter, either that of increased personal autocracy and control over all other or, else, that of an equality (siblinghood, or however else one may term it) of intrinsic worth between themselves and all who surround. One can use the same religion (such as Christianity) for either end, just as one can use irreligious physical facts (such as those regarding biological evolution) in the same ways.
Complementarity of skills is a good thing in a couple. But there need to be some common ground on values I believe.
You must know the saying: Marriage is like a besieged city: those who are out want to get in, and those who are in want to get out....
Huh. Plato's ethics? Virtue Ethics? Stoicism? Confucianism? Buddhism?
If you hold the "Big Daddy" view of God, your moral point of view is inherently childish, selfish and fearful--what won't you do to avoid a good spanking? What would you do if there was no spanker, or if spanking took a holiday, so to speak?
https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/10/04/
pseudoscientific hatred.
To associate the Nazis with the Catholic Church as a whole is simplistic and even a blatant denial of history. The CC was persecuted by the Nazis much more and offered more resistance to Nazism than Protestant churches.
Yeah, religion...or ideology.
You're just proving my point really. IMO it's better to be a "peasant" than to be dead. So we'll have to disagree on that one.
Besides, during the forty years of wilderness Marx was talking about, many Hebrews died, some killed by other Hebrews, others killed by God’s plagues, etc.
Exodus 32:
"26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."
God killed many more of them for disobedience through plagues, etc.
"35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made …"
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=KJV
This is what Marx and Engels were talking about: the reactionaries or counterrevolutionaries will be killed.
Engels’ definition of revolution was “the most authoritarian thing that exists; it is the act, whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon; and the victorious party must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries” - Engels, F., “On Authority”, 1874, MEW, Band. 18, s. 308.
And he advocated the “extirpation of entire reactionary nations” which you seem to agree with:
“The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too. Is a step forward” (238).
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 227 – 238.
Your own view is easily refuted. 'The good', whatever that may be, is not a mind on your view else your view is just my view differently expressed. But that is sufficient to sink it, for if 'the good' is not a mind how the hell does it issue imperatives and value things?
Also, even if it could - and it can't- how, exactly, would its imperatives not be arbitrary given you are so insistent that if it was a mind they would be?? Hard to fathom why what emanates from a platonic form would not be arbitrary whereas what emanates from a mind is. And no good you insisting that what emanates from the good can't possibly be arbitrary given this is the good we are talking about, for that was my point in respect of Reason. Perhaps you will accept it now that you see you must make the same point about your own view
Oh! My bad for replying, then.
You asked me to explain why God's prescriptions and values would not be arbitrary.
I did that. God is Reason and Reason's prescriptions and values are the opposite of arbitrary for arbitrary means without reason.
You then repeated your criticism as if the problem was that I hadn't understood it.
I then asked you how exactly anything Reason does can be arbitrary, given what arbitrary means.
You then asked me to define Reason (Reason is the source of all reasons). And then you told me your own view. A view that, as well as being bonkers, would be subject to the same arbitrariness charge you levied at mine. I asked you to explain how prescriptions that emanate from a platonic form are less arbitrary than those that emanate from a mind. You haven't answered yet
Click ignore dude, you’re wasting your time trying to discuss anything with Bartricks. Check his post history, he isn’t capable of having a discussion please ignore him so he will go away.
Okay. We differ on well-documented facts so there's nothing more to discuss. In the main you've conceded my point that it is, in fact, imaginable for mass murder of millions to have happened in "traditional JCI contexts", which suffices for me.
In the context of my dispute with Olivier5, my point is that "traditional JCI contexts" have not precluded or prevented wholesale slaughter, ethnic cleansing, slavery or genocide by mobilized "believers" and their kings, emperors & führers. I'm not claiming that religion causes mass atrocities, etc, though, throughout history the world over, religious authorities have excused – rationalized – politically-driven mass murders, and still do. Killing "in the name of God" (or "destiny") is, IMO, a greater evil than killing in the name of the State alone (e.g. USSR, PRC, Khmer Rouge, NK) because in the latter case the killers know (and accept via indoctrination) that they sacrifice their guilt-less consciences to "the glory and defense" of the State, in contrast to those "doing God's will" and who thereby "believe" they are absolved of all guilt ("sin") for mass murdering those demonized (dehumanized) as "enemies of God's people" ("infidels").
Lol, I know it can be entertaining. Guilty of it myself at times. It’s just going to take forever for him to go away if each of us play with him. :lol:
:grin:
The problem is some seem to imagine that ideology is somehow "better" than religion. Which of course isn't the case. There are lots of ideologies that are just as bad if not worse than religion. Any system that is too dogmatic tends to lead to more problems than it solves.
Not really. That's what I'm saying. Even scientific disciplines may develop their own ideologies and the same applies to all systems of thought. Obviously, even more so to political systems. But some seem to think that just because their system isn't religious, this somehow makes it automatically "better". In reality, a lot of human knowledge is based on belief, religious or otherwise.
Any evidence for that or is it just personal opinion?
Comprehension, on the other hand, and non-superficial reading skills, are very good to have on a philosophy website. What you said here I covered in the first one or two sentences in the same post that you are critiquing. I wish, I wish, I wish people would take themselves seriously. I've given up all hope to be myself taken seriously by others, but to besmirch their own reputation is a sad story to see.
I know, right. And sometimes some people act as if others are stating such things even though they haven't...
Jeesh.
Some folk, huh?
Trees, mice, birds, inanimate objects, many directly perceptible things, celestial bodies, causality...
Off the top of my head.
All the trees and mice I have known have been heavily into Ayn Rand.
Hmmm. Something just dawned on me...
Given the breadth of differences between societal, familial, and/or cultural mores in addition to the fact that so many of them are in direct contradiction with others'...
If moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of God, then God is one confused, mixed up, contradictory, incoherent motherfucker...
Ya know?
:meh:
There are already far too many such ideologues.
It's one thing for a person to accept the proposition that a God exists. It's quite another to accept that he exists AND is not a mixed up motherfucker... :razz:
I was just taking that line of thinking to it's logical conclusion...
:wink:
Do interests in hobbies music science poetry gardening philosophy count as belief in material possessions?
Quoting creativesoul
Do you think those of us who believe morality requires God would disagree with that? Do you think it presents some kind of a challenge to the view that morality requires God? Or were you just saying stuff?
I was not critiquing anything, mind you.
Facile anti Catholic hatred aside, it is a fact that the Catholic Church resisted Nazism to a greater degree than any other Christian denomination.
It is also a historical fact that the Nazis tried to arianize the Jesus story. They made of Jesus a Viking, and called it "positive Christianity" as opposed to the traditional forms of Christianity. What do you think them darn papists thought of this splendid idea?
This must be why in Anno Domini 1998 His Holiness the fucking the Pope issued an official apology for the role Catholics had played in and during the Shoah:
http://tech.mit.edu/V118/N13/bvatican.13w.html
It looks like @!80 is up to his usual tricks, which isn't surprising.
However, the way I see it, the apology was not "for not having done anything to stop the Holocaust" but rather "for failing to take more decisive action". Not for not doing anything, but for not having done more.
They can do. Depends on the hobbies music science poetry gardening philosophy. If they have a materialist content, which they tend to do, then yes.
Nobody did much to try and stop the Holocaust. Even the people in the known and able to do something impactful, like the allied, did very little to try and stop it. So why single out the CC now, if not because of some old anti-catholic prejudice?
Correct. And being a Nation of Islam supporter doesn't improve things either.
BTW you said that Marx achieved “far more than Hitler”.
Quoting Olivier5
However, Marx never achieved anything personally, did he? His only “achievements” were through Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and other dictators and mass murderers.
Of course communism worked for the Communist Party and the whole parasitic class of Marxist ideologists. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for the millions who died from starvation under Stalin or Mao.
And it isn’t true that the Soviets “won the space race”. The truth is that they managed to kidnap more German engineers and scientists and steal more German technology than the Americans and the British.
Operation Osoaviakhim – Wikipedia
It’s a well-know fact that the Soviet Union lived on stolen technology into the 1980s when Reagan stopped that (as well as cutting off financial assistance) after which the regime simply collapsed.
Marx has been the most impactful philosopher of all times, if one excludes Jesus from the race. He inspired millions of people to do things that were nearly unthinkable before him, including a lot of good things too. My experience with people from the ex USSR is that many of the old folks miss the "Soyuz" (Union) and speak fondly of it. You can read the same tone in some Russian novelists, who express well the fear but also the pride that was involved in being a citizen of such a vast and powerful empire as the USSR.
That Marx was wrong on so many points is of course a problem, precisely because he was so impactful. So communism ultimately failed. But as a social experiment it was demonstrably more effective than nazism, which was a total, utter failure. And a great deal of social democracy -- which still survives in Europe -- is about merging a bit of capitalism with a bit of communism. This too is Marx' heritage although he did not expect it.
He may have been "impactful" due to the massive propaganda by Engels and many others and, as I said, through the actions of his disciples like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
However, Marxist political theory has long been exposed as deliberately ambiguous, inconsistent, and nonsensical. This is the true reason behind communism's abject failure. Marx was a fraud.
"The inconsistency allegations have been a prominent feature of Marxian economics and the debate surrounding it since the 1970s.[1] Andrew Kliman argues that since internally inconsistent theories cannot possibly be right, this undermines Marx's critique of political economy and current-day research based upon it as well as the correction of Marx's alleged inconsistencies.[62]
Critics who have alleged that Marx has been proved internally inconsistent include former and current Marxian and/or Sraffian economists, such as Paul Sweezy,[63] Nobuo Okishio,[64] Ian Steedman,[65] John Roemer,[66] Gary Mongiovi[67] and David Laibman,[68] who propose that the field be grounded in their correct versions of Marxian economics instead of in Marx's critique of political economy in the original form in which he presented and developed it in Capital.[69]
According to Leszek Ko?akowski, the laws of dialectics at the very base of Marxism are fundamentally flawed: some are "truisms with no specific Marxist content", others "philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by scientific means", yet others just "nonsense". Some Marxist "laws" are vague and can be interpreted differently, but these interpretations generally fall into one of the aforementioned categories of flaws as well.[82]"
Criticism of Marxism – Wikipedia
Frederic L. Bender, “The Ambiguities of Marx’s concepts of ‘proletarian dictatorship’ and ‘transition to communism’”
Richard Adamiack, '"The Withering Away of the State": A Reconsideration'
That's usually how people are impactful: by convincing other people to act.
Quoting Apollodorus
I disagree. I think he was genuine and correct on many issues, like his analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism and the shameless exploitation of workers. His prescription for the future were ill-founded and did fail, ultimately, but not before having done a lot of good things. Relax and drink your vodka.
Also, IMO it's better to be a "peasant" than to be dead.
Besides, during the forty years of wilderness Marx was talking about, many Hebrews died, some killed by other Hebrews, others killed by God’s plagues, etc.
Exodus 32:
"26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."
God killed many more of them for disobedience through plagues, etc.
"35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made …"
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=KJV
This is what Marx and Engels were talking about: the reactionaries or counterrevolutionaries will be killed.
Engels’ definition of revolution was “the most authoritarian thing that exists; it is the act, whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon; and the victorious party must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries” - Engels, F., “On Authority”, 1874, MEW, Band. 18, s. 308.
And he advocated the “extirpation of entire reactionary nations” which you seem to agree with:
“The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too. Is a step forward” (238).
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 227 – 238.
Marx's true objective was to seize power. That's why he financed the purchase of arms for an insurrection in Belgium and called on the Communist League to seize power in 1850. Which is why the League was closed down and its members (except Marx who was hiding in England) arrested by the German police.
You are repeating yourself.
I would rather be a farmer under Stalin than a Jew under Hitler.
I don't see any difference. Millions of farmers under Stalin died from starvation, forced labor, or were simply killed.
Plus, it is clear from Marx and Engels' statements that it was their intention to seize power for themselves.
“If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed […] To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party [the democrats], whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition”
Marx & Engels, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, May 1850
Saying that a line of reasoning lacks in an aspect IS critiquing. And critiquing is okay. But not when the alleged missing piece is in the original. That is invalid critiquing.
I am no longer upset, but I do ask you that in the future you read my posts, whether I left it now, in the past or in the future, carefully, from beginning to end, and that you respond when you understood all parts of it. Thanks.
You're one of the most decent respondents to my posts, along with fooloso4, (there may be others whose monikers don't stand out for me at the moment; my apologies for ommitting them in this list here) and I appreciate it, and I value your contribution. This is why I ask of you to do this.
Well, that's you I guess. What about being a black slave in the antebellum South? Would you like that better than being a Jew under Hitler, or a farmer under Stalin?
IMO that's a rhetorical question that has nothing to do with anything.
If quoting Marx and Engels is "insulting" to them or to you, then that only proves my point, thank you. As for your "suspicion", it has nothing to do with anything either.
Sancta Mater Ecclesia did what it has always done, more or less successfully (e.g., the Reformation), for so long. That is, what was considered appropriate morally to the extent that didn't endanger its survival as a powerful institution, relatively content with its place and perception of itself as the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Yes, that would come close to a fair historical judgement in my view.
lol Very funny. I think you're talking about yourself. Other than that, if you think that quoting Marx and Engels is a "lie", then you should take issue with the original authors.
Interesting view.
There were three sons of a man. One was an atheist, the other, a theist. The third one was God.
The atheist and the theist both were ethical. This was so because god existed.
The theist believed in the god, and was moral.
The atheist obviously did not believe in god, but was moral.
These two boys were moral, while one believed in god, the other, did not.
---------------------------
So far so good.
---------------------------
There was a second man, with two sons. One was theist, the other, an atheist, the third, god.
Both the theist and the atheist were immoral.
---------------------------
Third version:
There was a man with two sons. There was no god in their family or in their world.
Both sons were ethical.
---------------------------
Fourth version:
No god, both sons were immoral.
------------------------------------------------
The way I see it, each of the four possibilities are probable, and the probability distribution curve among them is very likely a level curve at 25% for each scenario.
This, addressed to Appoloshit, is my precise feeling for him. Except you, Tim Wood, expressed it so much more nicely than how I will put it here.
Apollofuck is appalling in his slimy stupid non-reason. I seldom hate people on this site, but him I hate. Even 3017Amen is likeable, I like him, despite his being stupider than a doorknob. But he is honest, he gives his heart, and he is a good man. This Appoloklunt is nothing but stupidity dress'd in women's clothes. Or his posts can be likened to "How I suck shit on a philosophy website."
God knows, (figure of speech) we are not all geniuses here, and almost all of us lack a basic grounding in knowledge. But if philosophical skill is a building, and fooloso4 is on the top floor on this website, then I'm on the second floor, and Appolosuckmeoff is in the sub-sub-sub-sub basement, and his attitude is so deep down in the bowels of earth, that he is at danger of breaking through to the magmatic core.
I am just appalled that the moderators tolerate Appolodurfus around here.
Well, your genius definitely surpasses everyone else's here. It must be terribly frustrating for you, so I understand.
You mean a guitar to play, flower seeds and a garden, a book to read, ...?
...ah, the perfect weekend...
Anything that distracts from God, religion or spiritual things.
If you use your guitar etc. for religious purposes, e.g., to play religious songs, then it would be a different story.
Ultimately, it depends on your attitude and on the way material objects influence the way you relate to God and to spiritual matters.
Apollodorus has nothing to offer.
From the guidlines:
Why is he still here?
I commend to you all the flag, at the bottom of each of Apollodorus' posts. It draws the attention of the mods to something they ought ameliorate.
Why would you conclude that?
What kind of immaterial content would they have?
Quoting Apollodorus
I've been exposed to guitar masses, and suspect attendance at them is mandatory in hell. But what is it that renders religious songs immaterial?
Sorry, but if they're immaterial because they refer to immaterial things, I wonder then what immaterial things may be. Things which are not material?
No idea. The word I actually used was "materialist" not "material".
Quoting Apollodorus
It was my reply to @jorndoe's question:
Quoting jorndoe
The "materialist content" of interests was what I was talking about.
This sums up the poverty of Apo's position. As if guitar playing and flowers were not spiritual.
He'd have everyone reading scripture and praying. The very obverse of spirituality. Monkish subservience, chaste obedience. Adherence to his one true doctrine.
Of course, he cannot see the obsequious degeneracy of his own doctrine.
Actually, that's your statement, not mine.
My position is that it depends on the meaning you give to objects and the purpose for which you use them. You can use a knife to cut bread or kill someone.
Incidentally, the same is true of flowers or plants in general. Plants or plant extracts can be used for medicinal purposes in small doses or to kill someone in larger doses or quantities, etc.
IMO that isn't "doctrine", it's fact.
Not at all. I very rarely read scripture. Maybe you do, seeing that you are so knowledgeable on the subject.
Ah, I see. The materialist content of interests in music, poetry, science and gardening, then. So, if I'm interested in the music of Brahms because I enjoy it, or in the poetry of Wallace Stevens because I enjoy it, does my interest in them have a materialist content?
I don't know you, so I can't tell. As I said, it depends:
Quoting Apollodorus
If something has a materialist meaning to you personally or has the effect of making you more materialist-minded, etc., then I suppose you could say that it has a materialist meaning, content or effect for you.
By the way, you don't need to be religious to see it that way. A person may be into making money or accumulating material possessions and another one can be more interested in culture, moral values or interpersonal .relationships. You can look on "God" as an universal principle of goodness or justice, etc., etc. But people who have a phobia against religion will still accuse you of being an "evangelist" or whatever.
It seems there's been a slight confusion. Entirely my fault. Apologies.
There are two roles God fulfills viz. 1) legisilator (maker of laws) and 2) judge (punishment of moral offenses). What Dostoevsky means by "if there is no God, everything is permitted" has more to do with God's function as a legislator than a judge. I'm not in any way saying that God as judge doesn't have an effect on the conduct of the faithful - it does, Hell is an effective deterrent just as prison and capital punishment are.
To elaborate, God would, being an authority/expert on morality, issue moral decrees that are crystal clear. What do I mean by "...moral decrees that are crystal clear"? One only has to take a look at atheistic moral theories, those which you mention above and others, to come to the realization that they're all less than perfect, meaning a particular action can, on certain occasions, be good and in a different situation, the exact same action can be bad. Put simply, our conduct is morally ambiguous insofar as moral ambiguity means good in one case but bad in another.
God, on the other hsnd, can be understood as the personification of perfect morality and, by that token, will smoothen out all the wrinkles - moral paradoxes that are part and parcel of current atheistic ethics - and what this should achieve is a code of morals that draws a clear boundary between what's good and what's bad.
Basically, atheistic moral theories are missing definitive answers to moral questions. An act is sometimes good and at other times bad which implies that all acts are neither obligatory (good) nor prohibited (bad). In short, everything is permitted, you just have to know the right situation for a particular action. Compare this particularly unsatisfactory state of affairs with divine morality - God's moral decrees would consist of a list of absolute dos and don'ts that are universal (applies to everyone and at all times) i.e. it'll be able neatly categorize actions as either definitely good or certainly bad, no grey areas.
Do I hold belief in God and God to be the same? Er, no, because I'm not incredibly dumb. One is a belief. The other is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person. Big difference.
Note too that if belief in God and God are one and the same, what exactly is the content of the belief? A belief that a belief? A belief that a belief that what?
And note as well that if belief in God and God are one and the same, then God exists even by your own lights, for presumably you accept that some people believe in God.
And then you'd have to think there are lots of Gods. But that makes no sense, given that there can only be one omnipotent being.
This is why good reasoners don't confuse beliefs with their objects.
The same thing is true for religious morality which varies according to the denomination, church, preacher/Iman, and varies with the subjective preferences of individual believers. We have no way of knowing what a higher consciousness thinks our moral choices should be so why make the claim it provides a foundation?
You can't refute an argument with a sarcastic tone of voice, to paraphrase David Lewis.
You're barking up the wrong tree. That there are different Gods, one or many for every culture, is irrlevant. God or gods, in whichever culture fae/they are found in, represnt the idea of a perfect moral authority - an infallible creator of mora laws - and that's what the issue is all about? All atheistic moral theories - utilitarianism, Kantian - aim to be God-like when it comes to moral codification i.e. the idea is to enable a clear distinction between good and bad in every case without ambiguity. You know, no doubt, that extant moral theories are considered inadequate precisely because they can't do that.
I totally understand this but the gods represent an unattainable notion of perfect moral authority even if true, because no one can demonstrate what they want.
I'm just skipping past the assumption and going to the practical consequences of the idea. All the believer can argue to justify your premise is a series of claims which cannot be demonstrated:
1- I know which God is true
2- I know this God is the source of moral authority
3- I know what this God wants from us regarding moral behavior.
In practical terms there is no difference between an atheist and the believer - they still have to decide what is morally acceptable based on personal preference or personal 'interpretation'.
Incidentally we can't even demonstrate point 2, that moral authority comes from any kind of God - the evidence for this is unavailable.
That's an entirely different question. God may not exist but we know now what God is - the ultimate moral theory that enables us to assert, without an iota of doubt, black is black and white is white!
Yes it is, so you don't need address that. What about my key point? No one can know what God wants so morality is still dependent on argument. Theism does not offer any certainty over atheism. All positions come down to arguing a case for one particular moral view or another.
You're missing the point but the fault is entirely mine. Apologies. It's not about what God wants, it's about what we expect from God.
To pretend that a quote says X when it says Y, is a lie.
To post the same quotes several time, when once suffices, is the behavior of a mindless troll.
Grow some.
The existence of a God is simply our expectations in re a perfect moral authority (one who knows his stuff) being met. A perfect moral authority would be able to, in a manner of speaking, see through the haze that enshrouds the moral universe and identify every person, action, speech, and thought as either good or bad with the category uncertain/ambiguous/possibly both good and bad being the null set. I don't understand your objections since you know that atheistic moral theories like utilitarianism lack universal endorsement precisely because human actions are morally ambiguous in them.
Believers making moral choices based on God are in no better position than atheists. All they have is the idea that a perfect being might exist and that their moral choices might be pleasing to God.
But I have flogged this a lot so maybe I will put it away for now. Thanks TMF.
OMG! And I've been flogging it too. :sad: Will stop now. G'day! Have fun!
What does omnipotence mean? It means 'able to do anything'.
Does that involve being able to be morally perfect? Yes.
So, an omnipotent being can be morally perfect.
Again: omnipotence involves being able to do anything.
Not some things and not others. Anything.
Is being morally perfect a thing? Yes.
So can an omnipotent being be morally perfect?
Yes.
It's like reasoning with a child.
God can do anything.
Child: can God do X?
Yes. He can do anything.
Child: can God do Y?
Yes. He can do anything.
Cild: what about S? Can he do S?
Yes. He can do anything.
Compared to that, being omnipotent and omni-benevolent in the face of ubiquitous evil is a doddle.
But more tellingly, if he thinks square circles are possible, Bart will not be in a position to consider your reasoned arguments.
(@tim wood)
Omnipotence and omnibenevolence are obviously compatible, as I just explained. Omnipotence involves being able to do anything......which includes being able to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent at the same time.
Furthermore, omnipotence positively implies omnibenevolence. For an omnipotent being has control over the moral law (they wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise). And thus they can make anything good, just by valuing it. And as they're omnipotent, they not going to disvalue any aspect of themselves, are they? For they can change themselves in whatever way they want. Thus, we can conclude that an omnipotent being will fully value how she is, whatever that may be. And as an omnipotent being's valuing activity constitutively determines what has moral value, she will be maximally good - that is, she will approve of herself fully.
"But, but, but, thermodynamics - thermodynamics. There can't be an omnipotent being who is also omnibenevolent, becaus thermodynamics. Thermos. Dynamic ones. They fly around and kill omnipotent beings the instance they try and be omnibenevolent too. So there!"
That's exactly what I'm saying. You're pretending that Engels didn't write that world war and the disappearance of entire "reactionary" peoples is a "step forward".
Quoting Olivier5
You gave no indication that you had noticed the quote, so I thought that posting it once may not have been sufficient. Plus, you seem to have a tendency of repeating yourself. You mentioned the word "lie" several times when once would have sufficed.
Correct. If an agent is essentially omnipotent then it is impossible for that agent to be non-omnipotent in any regard.
I commented on them repeatedly.
If all you are trying to do is piss off random people on the interwebs, you're doing okay. Not great but okay.
If you are trying to learn something, you're not doing what it takes.
Neither are you if you keep denying the sources. I simply posted the quotes to demonstrate how people have different conceptions of what is good. For some people the "extirpation" or "disappearance from the face of the earth" of entire peoples in a world war is a "step forward", and for others it isn't. Some think revolution or insurrection is a good thing and others think it's a bad thing, etc.
Plus, you've already admitted that communism was a failure but are still maintaining that communism "was better than Nazism" as if that was a valid comparison. It's like saying that murderer A is better than murderer B because A murdered fewer people than B.
IMO the point is not to measure one evil against another evil but to measure both evils against what is generally accepted as good. If you choose to think otherwise, then that's fine by me. I don't care.
So God is essentially omnipotent in the way in which a bachelor is essentially unmarried. The person who is a bachelor is capable of having a wife, but he would not be a bachelor were he to exercise that ability. That makes him no less a bachelor. Likewise, the person of God is capable of divesting himself of omnipotence, but he would no longer be God if he did so. That makes him no less God.
God 'is' what he is, but he does not 'have' to be or do anything. This is why he can be said to be the source of his own existence.
This said, my conclusion is that a central command economy is unsustainable over the long term, but that so too is capitalism, as rightly pointed out by Marx and others.
Thus the greatest value of communism, historically, resided not in proposing a viable long term alternative, but in pushing capitalist economies towards greater fairness and consideration of workers rights and interests, for fear of a communist revolution. We can see that clearly now that communism is dead: western economies have become far more unequal and thus less sustainable and solidary since the fall of the iron curtain.
I8 I'll
Well, I read R H S Crossman's Plato Today that was read by Popper who said it was similar to his own views. Toward the end of his book, Crossman presents his views on why Plato failed to establish the ideal state he was talking about in the Republic.
The main difficulty is that there is a seemingly insurmountable disconnect between what political theory would like to do and what is achievable in practice. Ironically, the same happened with the Fabian Socialism that Crossman (who was a Fabian) was advocating, hence the Fabians' subsequent introduction of the "Third Way" concept that was later implemented by Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, and which was another failure.
In the case of Marx, his political theory doesn't really hold water and his much-publicized Capital says absolutely nothing about what is supposed to replace capitalism. So, ultimately, while political theorists of all shades are squabbling over what the ideal political system should be and do, the forces that really drive the economy, the corporate elites, carry on running (and to some extent ruining) the world as they please.
Unfortunately, this isn't going to change any time soon if ever. If we can't change things, at least we ought to be honest about the facts and not pretend that neo-Marxists or neo-liberals or whoever have all the answers when they clearly don't.
Yes, communism did put some pressure on capitalism but at what cost and to what end result? Communist pressure on capitalism was the argument of the Fabians who presented themselves as a compromise between communism and capitalism, but because social and economic projects proposed by Fabianism involve huge public expenses, capitalism eventually won.
You don't seem to know what omnibenevolence involves.
I'm just trying to figure out what you feel is or is not materialist or materialistic when it comes to interest in such things as music, poetry, science, gardening and, say, the arts.
If I listen to Brahm's First Symphony, for example, and don't think about God or the spiritual as I do so, but admire and enjoy the skill with which it's composed, the skill of the musicians playing it, and the sound of it, is it appropriate to describe what I feel or think as materialist or materialistic? I would say no, but there is no question--as far as I'm concerned--that my admiration and enjoyment is sensual in that my senses are gratified and that what causes that gratification is material--instruments are being played, sound waves/vibrations are created. Paintings are material, so are poems, so are flowers; so are we as we experience them.
Nobody disputes that music, poetry, etc. can be enjoyable and even beneficial. However, the way I see it, it's a question of balance. A person may enjoy listening to Classical music whilst another may be dying of starvation. Materialist concerns are alright as long as they don't deflect attention from other concerns, e.g., from the moral or ethical sphere such as social or economic justice.
If you see God as some universal principle of goodness, justice, etc., i.e., of things that are of value to the individual and to society, then anything that diverts attention from that is detrimental.
Besides, it's not always possible for a religion to change you to a good person. You need to be in that certain state to be so. It's not mainly religion that changes you. It's mainly how your percieve and experience it.
that's what I think.
Quoting Apollodorus
That seems gratuitous and angry. People try to find solutions to their problems. Should one get pissed about that?
Plus who said we can't change things?
That's what I'm trying to say, I only gave Marx as an example because he is held by some (including those who never read him) to be some kind of economic genius and a panacea to economic problems when in fact in Capital he tends to describe more than prescribe. And because we had already mentioned him in the discussion. If it isn't Marxism, it's Keynesianism or some other -ism. They're ALL the same, just theory.
I'm not angry at all. It may sound that way when I'm typing fast while doing other things at the same time. People do have a life outside this forum. So, I wouldn't read too much into it. Anyway, you have a great day.
And that too is theory...
Your own definition says "perfect or unlimited goodness"
Quoting tim wood
Why do you insist on the "unlimited" bit and forget about "perfect"?
Plus, there is no law that says that "unlimited" must be taken in the absolute sense of the word. If God is in control of his own benevolence then it is for him to decide how to implement it. If it is "perfect" or "unlimited" from his perspective then it doesn't matter how people see it.
Edit. In other words, "unlimited benevolence" means unlimited by anyone else. God may still limit his own benevolence as he pleases. And even "evil" may count as benevolence if it is in the service of a greater good.
Ergo, no problem.
Now, once more, show that omnipotence and omnibenevolence are incompatible. That is, show that it is not possible for a being to be both at once. Show that a being who, by definition, can do anything at all cannot be omnibenevolent at the same time. Good luck!
And note: omnibenevolent means being fully good. It does not mean 'incapable of being bad'. (Indeed, if a someone is good of necessity - that is, if they are incapable of doing anything other than the right and the good - then they will be less good than someone who was capable of doing otherwise and didn't).
An all good being is good all the time. They don't have to be. They just are.
An all powerful being is capable of being powerful all the time. They don't have to be (if at any point they had to be, then they would not be omnipotent). They just are.
You don't understand these attributes. You seem to think that being all powerful involves being incapable of not being. Not it doesn't. And/or you think that if you're capable of doing something, then at some point you must do it (no, that obviously doesn't follow).
So, being all-powerful means being able to do anything. That doesn't mean you're doing everything you're capable of, does it? It means being 'able' to do things. I am able to throw the mug in front of me through the window. That doesn't mean I'm doing it. I'm not. It doesn't mean I'll ever do it. I'm fairly sure I won't. I am capable of doing it, nonetheless.
An omnipotent being is capable of doing anything. THat includes being omnibenevolent. Obviously. And thus there is no incompatibility between these attributes. Even a 5 year old can understand this but, it seems, not you.
Being omnibenevolent means being fully good. Being fully good formally just involves being fully approved of by Reason. And as Reason is God, it means being fully approved of by God. And as God is omnipotent and so is capable of adjusting himself were any aspect of him to displease him, then we can conclude - once more - that the person of Reason fully approves of himself and is thus fully good.
Two arguments (i keep giving them). One showing that omnipotence is compatible with omnibenevolence. And the other showing that an omnipotent being will also be omnibenevolent.
Now this is all very simple and straightforward. It isn't rocket science. It's obvious.
I'm left a physicalist when I hear Brahms's First, an acosmist when I hear his Fourth. I think there's something about that E minor first movement that awakens my numinosity gland and suppresses my physicalist gland.
You're not following, are you? There's no 'necessity' to anything if an omnipotent being exists, for an omnipotent being can do anything. Thus no truth is necessarily true, for the omnipotent being has the power to falsify it.
Now, the problem of evil. Would an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being create anything evil? I don't think it is reasonable to think so. As they're omnipotent, they can do anything, and thus they are capable of not creating anything evil. And as they're omnibenevolent, it is reasonable - given our understanding of what morally goodness in us involves - to suppose that they will not want to create anything evil. And thus they won't. So they haven't.
You have trouble understanding the implications of things. They. Haven't. Created. Anything. Evil.
I know it isn't "your definition” but it was the definition that you yourself decided to choose. Are you retracting it now?
Edit. You need to start from the fact that God is omnipotent which implies absolute power and freedom of will which means he can do as he pleases irrespective of what humans think of it.
As for "unlimited", etc., see my previous post.
From what I see you've already lost the argument, though I'm not surprised that you aren't perspicacious enough to realize it or man enough to admit it.
Your problem stems from the fact that you choose to ignore the other side's arguments which essentially means that you're talking to yourself. If that’s what you want, fine. End of the story.
But if you're serious about having a discussion then you need to consider the counter-arguments to your claims. So, it’s your choice.
Anyway, from a theistic point of view, God isn’t a charity organization. His job is to govern the universe and keep the human race and other creatures under control, not to be nice to people. He manifests his love for humans by creating them, providing for them and rewarding them according to their actions, like a good father. That's why in Christianity and other religions he is called “Father”.
If suffering is your problem, it is no proof of absence of benevolence. As I said, it may serve a greater good, it may be punishment for previous transgressions, it may serve to make souls better beings, etc., etc. Souls need to have some freedom of choice and assume responsibility for their actions, otherwise there would be no justice and without justice there would be no benevolence.
No, I don't mean 'subject to reason'. Christ. Reason with a capital R refers to the source of all the imperatives of Reason and all normative reasons.
We are subject to Reason, meaning that Reason's imperatives are directed at us.
Look, this is all a bit above your intellectual pay grade, isn't it? Reason is the source of reasons. But he is not subject to reasons, unless he addresses himself (which would be weird).
Anyway, here's the argument that proves God.
1. Imperatives of Reason exist
2. All existent imperatives have an existent mind that issues them.
3. Therefore, the existent imperatives of Reason have an existent mind that is issuing them
4. The existent mind whose imperatives are imperatives of Reason will be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent (God)
5. Therefore, God exists.
Here's what follows from that:
1. God would not suffer innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. God exists (see above).
3. Therefore, God has not suffered innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
4. Tim is living in ignorance in a dangerous world
5. Therefore Tim is not innocent.
Tim deserves to be here - deserves to be living in ignorance in a dangerous world. God doesn't love us Timmy, sorry. Hates us. Couldn't give much of a rat's bum what happens to us. But how - how can a good person hate Timmy? It's a puzzler.
It's a prison matey. And the punishment is not to be cared about by the omnipotent being, but to be subject to the company of others like yourself. Like me! Welcome to prison Earth: you're doing a life sentence!
Letting us have world wars with millions killed, trash the planet, and cause mass extinctions of “other creatures” is God’s way of controlling us? It’s all part of The Plan, you say? Seems like a really shitty plan.
As already stated:
Quoting Apollodorus
As for genocides, etc., it was humans who did it, not God.
The world may be "imperfect" in the eyes of some people, but it isn't for them to decide. Plus you can always create your own if you don't like it.
You said “His job is to govern the universe and keep the human race and other creatures under control, not to be nice to people.”
If he’s controlling us then history is being made according to God’s plan. I’m just saying that it appears to be a really really shitty plan.
He doesn't need to control us stricto sensu, he only needs to keep us under control (in the same way riot police might control a mob) so we don't disturb too much the order of the world he created. If we do, then we get punished for it. People are beginning to learn the lesson, they are kinder to one another, they care more about animals and the environment, etc. It's a slow process, but we're getting there. So his plan seems to be working.
Anyway, it is just a logical consideration or explanation from a theistic perspective. Nothing to get upset about.
Correct. Omnipotence comes first. Everything else flows and follows from that. They can't accept omnipotence and then twist and turn it to suit their own agenda because it is just illogical and a waste of time.
Each year over 3 million children die from hunger and undernutrition. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates. Climate change will significantly 'disturb the order of the world'.
Indeed none of this seems to upset you or your God.
Evil is a quality of people more than acts. Plus there are subtleties that a blank 'evil' won't acknowledge.
Now stop asking tedious questions like a lobotomized Socrates.
Is 3 a tulip or the gulf of Mexico?
While you think over that one, here's another. A good person is offered the choice of creating one of two worlds: A or B. They must create one. A is a just world. B is not. They create B. Why? And to make it harder, note that both contain the same number of lives and the same quantity of free decisions. Why did they choose B over A?
3 is the current number of gods. There's always one god who thinks the other two are against her, so they can't agree on anything. That's why the world is so fucked up. The prophecy has it that a fourth god will come at the end of days to straighten things up.
May the Fourth be with you.
All this to say that there is no evidence that the number of gods is equal to 1. Could be 2, 3, 4, a dozen, a million, or 0. There could be 3.75 gods for all we know. So the title of the thread should be "Belief in god(s) is necessary for being good."
This was certainly the opinion of many classical authors. One of the reasons for the hatred of Jews and later Christians in the Greek and Roman world was that they were seen as atheists. Why, they rejected so many gods and would not even show a representation of their own god. The gall! So these oriental atheists had to be bad people. They could not be trusted since they did not believe in the classical gods.
Similarly, for a modern Christian, a modern atheist who does not believe in the classical Christian concept of God may be seen as untrustworthy. But in actual fact, the atheist does believe in some version of the greater good, or progress, or simply remorse avoidance, something different from the Christian god but that nevertheless pulls him other towards being a better person even when he or she could get away from it.
I've already discussed that with Olivier5 (see my quotes from Marx and Engels, etc.) but you must have been on some other planet or state of mind and missed it. Not my fault.
Anyway, you've lost the argument and are now trying to change the subject. You aren't going to get very far with it.
God is omnipotent. Omnipotent means having infinite power and freedom of will, knowledge and action.
God is also omnibenevolent which means having perfect or unlimited benevolence.
However, God’s omnibenevolence is governed by his omnipotence, i.e., his infinite power and freedom of will.
Therefore, although God’s omnibenevolence is theoretically “unlimited”, it can be limited in its practical application as and when God sees fit, without this affecting his omnibenevolence in any significant way.
By analogy, a billionaire who has a billion bucks in his bank account but only uses some of that, does not cease to be a billionaire.
God’s benevolence manifests itself in his creation of an ordered universe in which human life is possible. Human life in general is good. Suffering is mostly the result of actions performed by humans and other creatures, not by God. There is some suffering, but on the whole, life is a happy experience. Suffering is an exception and its impact too insignificant to affect God’s universal benevolence.
Moreover, suffering may serve a greater good and, therefore, represent a manifestation of benevolence. For example, it may be punishment for previous transgressions and serve to uphold the principle of justice; it may serve to make souls better beings and thus enhance the goodness of the universe, etc., etc.
Everything is a matter of perspective. If you stubbornly stick to your own perspective and refuse to consider other people's views, then you're not discussing anything, you're just talking to yourself. Which you are free to do on your own.
It’s true, the number, quality and dynamic of deities has always been changing and likely will continue to do so in the future.
Personally I believe that everyone has a “god/ gods” in a loose sense and everyone “worships”. It is simply those things - the number, quality and dynamic that changes.
It is what the term “god” - that most glorious and desired and loved thing really is/ means for each person that is important to clarify: for some it’s money, for some it’s another person (their spouse perhaps) for others it’s authority or recognition or success or their dream home etc. It can be material or it can be a metaphysical feeling or sense or state of being or experience.
But no one - absolutely no one - is without their own personal god, something they cherish more than all else. For some, that which is revered is simply the knowledge of their own free will to die. Some people worship the state of non- existence, they “idealise” it if they don’t find anything of worth or satisfaction in life.
Correct. Some people worship pop stars, political leaders or ideologies. Some worship themselves or expect to be worshiped. Yet they get upset when others worship God or gods. We live in a strange world, or what?
Not quite equal numbers of Protestants and Catholics, but close enough.
That's about 19 on a street with 20 people.
Think about that for a moment.
• Religion in Nazi Germany (Wikipedia)
• Antisemitism in Christianity (Wikipedia)
Quoting Banno
They're wrong.
Moral awareness, and becoming an autonomous moral agent, isn't particularly related to theism.
Haha exactly. It is a strange world full of heavy opinion and popular belief which isn’t inherently correct just because it’s “popular”. It was popular belief that disease was caused by bad smells (miasma theory) in the past but it simply wasn’t true.
I don’t understand the arrogance of group thinking. The whole “there’s more of us that believe X therefore Y must be incorrect” because supposedly many minds are better than one mind.
The irony being that all scientific and tech advancements started off with merely a handful of proponents that persisted that it was correct/fact despite being rejected by the majority. Even today with scientific method applied correctly, skepticism is very hard to overcome.
But I think people ought to critically evaluate for themselves and not rely on bias and prejudice nor the “status quo” alone.
I think at most one can be agnostic - they do not yet know what they wish to pursue, worship or place as the object or goal of their purpose or the means by which they understand the nature of reality. But to say one is atheist? Atheist towards what precisely? Everyone has different beliefs, opinions and nuances towards the same “god/gods” both in a religious context and in a more metaphorically life pursuit sense.
One cannot deny outright a non exhaustive ongoing debate which has the potential to be improved refined and redefined.
And children suffer and die from cancer, without having had a chance to live. :(
Doesn't seem like reality is where people see their gods.
What about yours, @Apollodorus?
That's exactly my position. We can't know for certain that there is no God/s. An honest and objective person should at least accept the possibility of the existence of God in the same way theists should consider the possibility of God's non-existence.
As I said, the funny thing is we’ve got “pop idols”, “sex goddesses”, “screen or movie goddesses”, we “worship money”, etc., etc. But if you worship God, especially the Christian one, then you are a criminal and outcast or mentally deranged. Even speaking of God as an universal principle of goodness, justice, etc. attracts scorn and hostility which is rather strange. My take is that the reason may be psychological as much as political.
The same word does not mean the same god/gods. From Salman Rushdie:
The Enchantress of Florence
They're my favorites among the symphonies, but I've never thought of them quite that way. I prefer his chamber music, generally--chamber music in general, I suppose--but that doesn't make me a minimalist, I believe. Quietist, perhaps.
I'll remind myself that people are starving the next time I listen to Brahms. That should quash that naughty materialist enjoyment. If that doesn't work, I think I still have an old rosary lying around somewhere, and listening to a symphony will have more than enough time to recite all Five Sorrowful Mysteries.
That's exactly what I'm saying. If you don't even know basic things like that, then how can you possibly know that God isn't omnibenevolent or that you are more omnibenevolent than God? It seems rather doubtful to me.
Quoting tim wood
It was a hypothesis that theists could use to rebut the atheists' hypothesis that God isn't omnibenevolent. That's all.
You're having a "discussion" without a definition of anything and now you're openly declaring that you don't know the meaning of "is". As, I said, there is no point discussing this.
Now that's a great idea. Banno will be beyond himself with delight to hear of your solemn resolution.
Since you brought up resolution, I'll throw in the Act of Contrition as well, and resolve to sin nor more.
The discussion has reached a critical juncture. Only a few questions and details remain:
Is the Battleship USS New Jersey omnibenevolent? Is it God? Of course we cannot know that it is not, so let's just say it is. God materialized once before and legend has it he was God's son, and, in defiance of logic, God himself. But logic is logos and logos was there at the beginning, and so, we can now be certain that the Battleship is God and God's son, Christened from the beginning.
A Holy Trinity, God, the Son, and the Battleship USS New Jersey. But there is another Trinity. So, a double Trinity, a Sextuple.
It is to be hoped that Banno and the others will be sufficiently impressed to follow your exemplary example. As for myself, I shall endeavor to start at once and without unnecessary delays.
As you can see, I told you what my understanding was. But you professed ignorance and retorted with the rhetorical question as to what the English word "is" was.
Besides, you have failed to explain how you know that God is not omnibenevolent or why you think you are more omnibenevolent than God. If you don't answer people's questions, then how do you intend to have a discussion?
This is why I suggested to just let it be seeing that you have lost the argument anyway.
Now once more, let's see how good your moral imagination is. Why did the good person choose B and not A?
When someone creates a god ex excremento the best we can do is try to avoid stepping in it.
I know. Sometimes I don't follow my own advice, but when I don't I end up smelling like the shit I am trying to clean up.
That's exactly what I'm trying to explain to you. You either don't know or you're not paying attention to your own statements. Otherwise, why would you ask me what the English word "is" is?
And if you aren't paying attention to your own statements, how are you going to pay attention to other people's statements and have a discussion with them? It doesn't make sense.
Besides, since you've already lost the argument, there is no point. However, just out of curiosity, how do you know that God isn't omnibenevolent and that you are more omnibenevolent than him? Why is this so difficult to answer?
You're ignoring the obvious fact that believers hold the scriptures to be revelatory of what God wants and my be certain in their faith. Certainty is nothing more than a state of mind.
I love Brahms, sorry I was just trying to be humorous there with the gland comment, given people's need to parse experiences into categories. Both symphonies work just the same way on me to be honest. You've gotta love that violin concerto too, no?
lol How can I destroy a "discussion" that never existed? You have provided no definition of terms, no proper arguments, you totally ignored the other side's counter-arguments, you claimed to be more omnibenevolent than God without explaining how you know that, you professed ignorance, and you claimed to be unable to understand the very simple English word "is".
Even a three-year old could have told you from the start that you have no chance in a million of winning this debate. You should have demonstrated some decency and honesty and conceded defeat from the start instead of wasting people's (and your own) time.
I concur. Brahms isn't bad at all if you know how to listen with the proper attitude. But I tend to prefer Vivaldi followed by Gregorian chants. After which I like to immerse myself in the book Capital by one Karl Marx. After ten years I'm still at page 2. But it has the singular advantage of putting me to sleep rather fast.
I think that's the idea. Great book though. Would highly recommend it, honestly.
Of course they are.
That's exactly what I'm saying. I asked you about your terms and your claims but you claimed not to know, you produced a dodgy definition of something, and you asked some incoherent questions about the English word "is" when you could have just googled it instead. If that isn't a rhetorical question intended to deflect attention from the fact that you've lost the argument, I don't know what is.
Anyways, just for future reference, I think you should try and present your arguments more forcefully, otherwise people might get the impression that you aren't taking your own arguments seriously. And if you don't take your own arguments seriously, why should anyone else, no?
1) make an argument. -check. (Do I need to define my terms? I figured they, were cut and dry.)
2) because humans have a relentless compulsion to think in terms of good and evil, and it's easy to justify one's own morality if one can affiliate it with some absolute criterion.
But the qualities of God surpass all human understanding, and ideas like omnipotence/omni-benevolence are weak attempts at comprehending the paradoxical and ineffable nature of God - it is merely humans projecting their own concepts of causation and morality onto something beyond their grasp. It is here, where the intellect fails, that faith becomes relevant for the believer. I would argue that until a religiously inclined person has resigned himself to pure faith, he is not a true believer, but a pagan.
Is morality not a human construct? I've never seen evidence of its existence in nature, independent of human judgment. Perhaps you can enlighten me by pointing out something moral that is not based on a human jugdment. Then I might be able to see how morality is not a human construct. Until then, morality is clearly and irrevocably a human construct, as any intellect capable of thinking about it for more than five minutes would and should realize.
I was fortunate, having been raised by an ultra-religious mother amongst her ultra-religious family (grandpa was a preacher at one point, for just one example), and having been embarrassingly indigent for almost all of the time before I got my first job (thanks Pizza Hut), there was nearly every possible contributing factor in place for me to follow suit; and yet, here I am, decades later with a well-developed synthesis of atheism and agnosticism. Now, I'm not saying that organized religion is appealing to stupid people because they dread having to search for answers to philosophical, abstract, and complex problems and issues on their own, but I'm not not saying that either.
Just deleted a paragraph. I recognize that my loquacious comment here is veering off into monologue territory.
Yes. Morality is not a human construct. Some things are. My house, my trousers, my money. And some things aren't. Morality being one.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Jeez, why oh why don't they teach philosophy in schools?? You probably know another language and some algebra, but no philosophy, right? Unbelievable. Ethics is, by its very nature, the most important topic possible, yet they don't teach it in schools, with the result that it is only a tiny philosophical elite who know that morality is not a human construct (and we've known it for thousands of years). The rest of you are fated by your ghastly over-confidence and ignorance to spend the rest of your lives convinced - utterly convinced - that morality is a human construct on the basis of incompetent reasoning. I'd feel sorry for you if ignorance wasn't such a cozy blanket.
Now I will enlighten you if you want, for I have gobs and gobs of expertise and I can assure you you're wrong about pretty much everything where morality is concerned. But it will be very unpleasant for you - you do realize this?
Quoting Bartricks
No argument, no justification, bare assertion.
Quoting Bartricks
"You dumb, me smart, I know" takes up 87% of the post, still nothing shown, topically content-free (184 wasted words).
Anyway, carry on, never mind me, nothing to see here.
I've got an argument and if you go through my comments you'll find it. But like I say, you're too ignorant and confident to be worth arguing with. I'm confident and not ignorant - it's an important difference.
I can handle evil people doing evil things. It is the good people doing evil things that breaks my lil ole hart.
Hurt? yes, some people say they care, others pretend to care, and a few probably do actually care, who knows. Yet, harm does not equate to evil without some decent rhetoric and a dash of bullshit. However, I never said morality was unimportant, and I'm not down with the notion that it is "unimportant", I'm simply approaching the topic extemporaneously.
I believe that human beings have every justification to identify and condemn those so called evils which are destructive towards relatively peaceful and harmonious coexistences between them. However, morality is still a human construct. At the level of the religious, there is, as Kierkegaard pointed out, a teleological suspension of the ethical, for no other reason than that the demands of one's faith are unconcerned with the humanly constucted ethical sphere of existence (nevertheless, I admit is a critical and infinitely important component of being human).
Yes, but that still doesn't make evil absolute, objectively speaking, outside of the confines of my mind. For myself, I have the capacity to make anything absolute, whosoever has the authority to stop me? But to others, my "absolutes" will likely appear as complete bullshit (like most of what is posted on this forum :blush: ), because I, the subject who determines my own absolutes, I have no authority over the relativism of objectivity.
You must not believe in eternal forms, correct? I, personally, don't not believe in eternal forms. Therfore, if eternal forms is the case, and we can demonstrate its absolute certainty, then we should have no problem agreeing that morality is absolute. Good and evil would then be absolutely identifiable by every adquately eqiupped moral agent, with no disagreement, just like a table or house can correctly be identified by a child to its teacher, with no disagreement. I can accept that position. Unfortunately, when I look, I cannot see evidence of that in the world. Perhaps you have some examples to show me what I'm missing.
Quoting Bartricks
You've been alive for thousands of years?...cool!
Who is this ill-fated and overlyconfident ignorant "you" that you refer to? I thought I heard some whisperings of this group on a you tube clip of Fox News, but I paid it no mind. Are they the ones responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic?
Seriously! Who doesn't like cozy blankets?
I agree that ethics is the most important topic possible, but I'm usually wrong, as you are so eloquently illustrating. After all you are the expert. By the way, I've been looking for an expert for the longest time, someone to teach me the truth... now that I have found you, I am very excited about what I'm about to learn about from you. Plus, I really don't realize how unpleasant it will be for me, so I am all in. You seem like you possess some knowledge that no one else possesses, and I mustneeds hear it pronto. Chop chop, no time to dilly-dally missy!
This is a great point. I would add, that for the religiously inclined, moral awareness and the concept of becoming an autonomous moral agent is a prerequisite for religion and observing the demands of one's faith, but the connection ends there. Religion and morality are as comparable as ethics and art - and philosophy weaves its way through all three.
What would it take for evil to be legitimately described as "absolute", in your opinion?
Reason is the controlling force of the universe. You either have good reasoning or you don't. The consequences of bad reasoning are bad. That just is the way it is and not understanding that is an error in logic.
What is evil? Is the plague evil or the will of God? Are the Mongols evil or did God send them to punish us? Why are the Muslims winning wars with Christians? Quick determine what the evil is and what we must do to avoid the wrath of God or we are all doomed.
But the whole point of religion is having faith that one knows the will of God and is protected by this God as long as one does not do something that needs to be punished. Reason has nothing to do with it. Unless we want to say believing the people with the strongest god win wars and if we want protection we must worship that god and please that god and hope that god accepts us as his/her people, is good reasoning.
Daniel Kahneman's explanation of fast and slow thinking is essential here. If what we believe is true is not the result of slow thinking, it has a high chance of being a false belief. https://www.shortform.com/summary/thinking-fast-and-slow-summary-daniel-kahneman?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz5Ll3p2S8QIVtzytBh3FiwbSEAAYASAAEgJj1_D_BwE
I already asked what is evil? Now I need to ask what is your question because I would love to give answering it a shot. I suspect the argument you are having is the result of not knowing the difference between fast and slow thinking.
It would be nice if when we reply to a post we attack the thought not the person, and reply with arguments that are comprehensive to anyone and do not require knowing what was said in the previous post. That would be, "you said this ___________ and I disagree because ___________. What matters is not how much a person knows, but how well a person presents an argument. In your mundane life, you may be a brain surgeon or astrophysicist but that does not help us here in an argument of what we must know to have good judgment.
Ah, thanks to the organization of this forum, I think I found your question.
An unquestioned presupposition is fast thinking. This can lead to holding a false belief, such as believing the quest for knowledge is a sin for which a god punished all of humanity by denying them the Garden of Eden. A belief associated with a powerful demon that lies to us and causes us to go against the will of God. This belief, unfortunately, has terrible political consequences as we have just experienced because of Covid. A time when we need to rely on science instead of a book written before we had much understanding of science and believed in supernatural forces of good and evil. Science has done more to end evil than that book.
I don't think you are the only one who is confused by this thread. However, it all becomes clear if you consider the political agenda behind it.
As for "non-believers", I think they are a kind of people who believe in all sorts of things but deny the right of others to hold their own beliefs.
Wow, you are very emotional, aren't you? Believing something that is not true does not make a person a liar. At least I never considered calling religious people liars, but I suppose if we are not superstitious we could think those who are superstitious are liars. However, I don't think calling people liars will ever come to any good. I am strongly against calling people liars. Some forums have a rule against name-calling. It sure does not promote good reasoning.
I think "emotional" is the wrong word. More like "psycho" IMO.
And it isn't about religion either. They just hate being contradicted no matter what you say. Above all, they hate losing an argument because it forces them to acknowledge their intellectual limitations. The best you can do is just let them bark at themselves, which they enjoy doing anyway.
The claim was made that "the right of others to hold their own beliefs" is being denied. This is simply not true. The accusation is made here and elsewhere whenever the accuser's own views are challenged and cannot be adequately defended. As if to question with these views is to deny the right to hold them.
I won't speculate as to whether the accusations of persecution are actually believed or are merely rhetorical, but I think it should be viewed in light of the repeated claim here and elsewhere of having won the argument. It has not, the argument has been evaded and this is just another evasive tactic.
I am right anyway. I don't need your approval to know that.
But the way I see it, your problem is this:
1. You insist on winning the argument when it is obvious even to an infant that there is not even half a chance in a million of doing that.
2. You refuse to accept the other side's answers, in which case you might as well talk to yourself or write your own answers.
Incidentally, I never said that I "won". There is nothing to "win" and even if there was, I couldn't care less about "winning".
All I'm saying is that you lost the argument in the sense that you failed to prove your case and you've got no chance of realistically ever winning an argument like that. If you believe otherwise, you are free to do so.
Yes, I deny the right of others to have their own beliefs because wrong reasoning can have bad consequences.
:lol: A drier coin receptor is not working. One of my good neighbors said she will pray for it and tells me that works every time. I am okay with testing that belief. That test is not as bad as ministers telling their flocks to trust in God and not science when Covid is taking people's lives. I much rather test that belief with something that does not kill people. One Oregon church that attempted to sue our governor and force an end to the shutdown, is associated with at least 74 cases of Covid. What did those people do to not warrant God's protection? What about all the people who got Covid because someone spread it in the community? How many people vote, risking the lives of others is okay and what happens is the will of God, not human stupidity? How about global warming because of human behavior, is that something we can ignore as we pray our home will not go up in flames this summer?
What is the lie? Would you please put what you are talking about in your post? If you want to talk about a lie, you need to say what that lie is.
That reminds me of a friend of mine who every time she loses or misplaces something she prays to St Anthony (or whoever) and next day she surely finds it.
But you are perfectly right. I don't believe in blind belief in anything. Religious leaders need to remember that they are just priests not saints or prophets and either (a) stay out of politics or (b) if they do get involved in politics or public life then they have a duty to inform themselves of the facts and not imagine that if they know the scriptures they know everything.
Fanaticism and lack of judgement is as bad in religion as it is in politics and all areas of life. And atheists can be as fanatical as theists even though they may not admit it or even not be aware of it.
Oh yes, I clearly see evidence of the argument being evaded.
And I am someone who denies others the right to believe what they believe because wrong thinking can lead to very bad things. With Covid and global warming and making matters worse by believing a god protects us and takes care of us, like a father takes care of children, is not okay! It as wrong as bleeding people to death, believing that is how to cure them of what ails them.
The greatest cause of "evil" is ignorance and we must not tolerate it.
It would be absolute if it existed independently and not in relation to other things. As I told barstick, if something like eternal forms could be proven, then the concept of absolute evil would be definitely viable.
For example?
USSR and Napolean come to mind
From Wikipedia:
Looks like he may have known how to effectively use religion. No wonder he was successful.
USSR in any case. And Maoist China.
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia
p2. Some moral principles contradict others
C1. God's prescriptions for behaviour are self contradictory
I also have an uncanny ability to find missing things, however, I do not pray to a saint of god for help. I also do not consider myself to be an atheist. I just find the religious writings unbelievable. I have attempted to know many religions/philosophies and I see the same basic truths in all of them. I also have always had spiritual experiences even possible experience with those who have crossed over. I love logos, reason, the ruling force of the universe and firmly believe things will go well when we have the right reasoning and do not go well when we do not have right reasoning. We are part of something much larger than ourselves.
However, there was a time when everyone was a god/ goddess' favorite and arguing that one has the only true god and telling stories such as the Garden of Eden story and believing it is literally true, sets off my alarm bells, and all my arguments against that idea.
Me too. My usual technique is to mentally trace back all my actions to the very moment where I "lost" the object in question. But once or twice when I just couldn't locate what I was looking for, I saw the object and its whereabouts in a dream and next morning when I looked it was there.
To me, religious writings do have a cultural value. But they can also have a moral value and sometimes you can even find spiritual truths in them. It may be the Platonist influence but when I read, for example, "I am the Light of the World" (John 8:12), it immediately reminds me of Plato and Plotinus' allegory of the sun and its comparison with the intelligence that illumines the world.
Plato and other ancient philosophers used myths to illustrate certain points they were making and I believe that some religious texts are doing the same. Different people draw different teachings from them according to their own level of maturity and understanding. As long as they don't get any crazy ideas or don't turn to fanaticism, I don't have a problem with that.
If there's any truth to that it's far worse than any religious fanaticism I've ever heard of.
Seemed to be entirely motivated by a grab for power/control.
It wasn't just Christians. Remember that Marxism aimed to wipe out the "bourgeoisie" or middle class.
Marxism believed in class struggle:
“The history of all societies is the history of class struggle”
Preamble, Communist Manifesto
Marxism also believed in revolution as the liberation of one class, representing the whole of society, from another “criminal” class, representing an obstacle or “stumbling-block” to be eliminated:
“For the revolution of a nation, and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society to coincide, for one estate to be acknowledged as the estate of the whole society, all the defects of society must conversely be concentrated in another class, a particular estate must be the estate of the general stumbling-block, the incorporation of the general limitation, a particular social sphere must be recognized as the notorious crime of the whole of society, so that liberation from that sphere appears as general self-liberation. For one estate to be par excellence the estate of liberation, another estate must conversely be the obvious estate of oppression.”
Introduction, Criticism of the Hegelian Theory of Right
In Russia, the middle class were about 10 million.
In 1918, Grigory Zinoviev, who was a leading Central Committee ideologist, wrote in the paper Severnaya Kommuna:
"To dispose of our enemies, we will have to create our own socialist terror. For this we will have to train 90 million out of the 100 million Russians and have them all on our side. We have nothing to say to the other 10 million; we'll have to get rid of them" (G. Legget, The Cheka: Lenin's Secret Police).
The Cheka : Lenin’s Political Police - Internet Archive
I think it was in the first census after the revolution that it was found that 10 million were missing and further millions were discovered with the de-Stalinization program after WWII and after the collapse of the USSR, when archival materials were declassified in 1991.
Between 1825 and 1910 the imperial (Christian) government executed 3,932 people for political crimes.
Stalin executed 681,692 people for "anti-Soviet activities" (that could be absolutely anything) in just one year (1937-1938). Multiply that by a couple of decades and you get the idea. And that's just a moderate estimate. Some historians have much higher figures. And even higher for Maoist China.
Great Purge - Wikipedia
Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin
USSR--Genocide and Mass Murder (hawaii.edu)
Quoting Apollodorus
To begin to assess this we need to look at who some of those sources are. "Some sources" according to the Wiki article this statement is taken from turns out to be two sources: James L. Nelson and Todd M. Johnson. Neither of them are experts on Soviet history. The problem is that these "sources" do not explain where the numbers come from. Why is it that only "some", meaning two, sources make these claims?
Everything exists in relation to other things, though.
Faith is the basis of all religiousness, I agree. Yet, to relate oneself to God intellectually, such as presuming to know God's will, is directly and utterly opposed to faith. Why, you might ask? You already said it: "Reason has nothing to do with it." You know it - the powers of reason pertain exclusively to the intellect.
Quoting Athena
Mr. Kahneman sounds awefully Lockean. If I could speak with him, I would explain to him that not everything exists in the mind.
And he is not the last person that knew how to effectively use religion to achieve success in the world.
You know, I might go so far as to argue: that to be successful in the world, it is best to avoid being religious, but to use religion to one's advantage whenever possible.
Definitely Mao. He might be the greatest genocidal maniac to ever take a shit. I think he took shits.
Everyone must believe some things on faith, for if every belief has to be arrived at via reasoned reflection, then we will be on an infinite regress.
So faith is not the preserve of religions. Everyone has to have some faith beliefs.
But although to believe something on faith is not to have reasoned to it (though one might do that too, of course), reason has everything to do with it. For there can still be a reason to hold a belief even if one is not holding that belief for that reason. And so one can believe X on faith, and one's belief that X can be an item of knowledge. That is, it can be justified, for it can be a belief that you have reason to hold, even though you are unaware of that reason. (It is no requirement on justification that one must always be aware of what justifies one's belief - for that will set us off on the regress again).
Thus faith is - must be - a source of knowledge. Everyone must acknowledge that, or else sink in a quagmire of radical scepticism.
But the idea that faith is 'required' for religion is absurd. For what one can know by faith one can, in principle, uncover by reason too. After all, to know a proposition is for the proposition to be justified - that is, for there to be a reason to believe it. And reasons to believe things are what our reason - our faculty - uncovers. Thus if X can be known by faith, it can be known by ratiocination too.
I say this as someone who is not religious and has no faith in God (I believe God exists, but on rational grounds).
If there are no absolutes in existence, then that statement is correct. But I'm not so sure that there are no absolutes in existence. Even on this thread, I have been arguing that there is no absolute good, but even then, I am only saying that about the good in the moral sense in which humans use it. I don't know whether or not good exists absolutely in some other sense.
Quoting Bartricks
“We cannot arrive at every belief via reasoned reflection but beliefs we have arrived at not by reasoned reflection (but by faith) can be arrived at by reasoned reflection”.
Maybe some reasoned reflection is due.
I'll concede to everything you said about belief/faith in an intellectual sense, but I am talking about faith in the strict religious sense. And in that light, you don't have a clue my little puss-puss.
In the strict religious sense, Faith does not know shit, it does not understand shit, and it is completely content to wallow in absolute ignorance of shit. Faith stops at faith, unlike reason, which goes infinitely farther than faith. In fact, any and all acts of reason necessarily negate faith. Yes faith is negated by reason, do you understand what that means?
Quoting Bartricks
Which is to say “we cannot arrive at every belief via reasoned reflection”. Let the set of all beliefs be U, and the ones we arrived at by reflection R. Additionally let the set of beliefs you arrive at by faith be F.
1- Not all x in U are R.
Quoting Bartricks
Thus:
2- For all x if x is not R, and is U, then it is F. (In other words, if it’s an unreasoned belief it’s faith)
Quoting Bartricks
3- For all x if x is F, it can also be R.
Combine 2 and 3 and you get: It is possible that all U are R. Which is a direct contradiction of the first premise.
Or to dumb it down a bit:
If every belief is either reasoned to, or believed on faith, and every faith can be reasoned to, then every belief can be reasoned to. Which contradicts your first statement.
With so many straight-thinkers here, you'd think it would be top of the list.
Perhaps a new thread, @Fooloso4? It's a short dialogue...
Faith is a requirement in religion because followers need to be dependent on their authority figures (those who tell the followers what to believe).
I think Bart is the only one who doesn’t. And most people are too tired to point it out.
There's no point to attempting rational discussion with such a one.
It’s a very simple contradiction. I wouldn’t go so far as to talk to my food to confirm it but I think any sentient being would’ve seen it by now.
I never implied "go right and left" which in our case would mean to believe in something based on faith AND reason. That makes no sense. But leave it up to you to not understand a point made against your position regardless of the degree to which it is formalized and carefully articulated.
Okay. I appreciate you asking.
There are obviously some here who are very much like Euthyphro. I am sure that they will stay true to form. What that means in the end will be given some attention.
Glad the joke was noticed.
I mentioned that in my very first post here to Bartricks. It ended with this...
The problem of evil. The Euthyphro problem. Occam's razor.
The holy trinity.
No matey, you're just confused. The word 'faith' has several different meanings. Delineate them.
But someone who has faith that God exists can also know that God exists. For the mere fact they did not arrive at it via reasoned reflection does not preclude their belief from being one they are justified in believing. It is sufficient for a belief to be justified that Reason approves of you having it.
And like I say, that's not special pleading as everyone must agree - on pain of radical scepticism - that we are justified in some of our beliefs without having to be aware of their justification. (Otherwise we are set off on a regress in which no belief can ever be justified as we would have to be justified in our belief in its justification and so on.
But trivial... Science or the economy are not absolute either by this definition, and neither is the coffee that I'm drinking right now. If nothing is absolute, if all is relative, why care for the absolute? It says nothing to say: "morality is not absolute" when nothing is absolute.
This Euthyphro is commonly misrepresented; as its central question being "Is something pious because it is beloved by God or is it beloved by God because it is pious?" The actual question is "Is something pious because it is beloved of the gods, or is it beloved of the gods because it is pious?". What is forgotten is that the Greek gods were quite capable of disagreement, and that is the problem. That something should be pious because it is beloved of (a single omniscient) God and beloved of God because it is pious presents no contradiction, inconsistency or paradox.
??
There is, it seems, a need...
I think that's a good point which illustrates the fact that it's all a matter of perspective.
That's why on one view God can be omnipotent and omnibenevolent without contradiction and on another he can't.
So, it's a matter of choosing which view to adopt which tends to be more a personal choice than a matter of logic or philosophy.
Yes. Oddities sometimes attract my attention.
You wrote:
Significantly, your claim is about faith in relation to religion. It’s as though you cannot separate the concepts of religion and God. I will attempt to help you with that.
Imagine that on some lazy afternoon you’re performing your most popular tricks at the local pub and **SHABANG** a giant Rastafarian woman materializes in the barstool next to you. All the other bar patrons are like, “Wow, good trick, Bartricks!” You’re dumbfounded, of course, not knowing what’s going on. You timidly say hello to the giant woman. She explains that she is God and just dropped in for a pint of Guinness. Everyone being skeptical of her claim, she proceeds to perform various acts that convince even the most skeptical of her claim.
You then ask her, “So all that stuff in the Bible is true?”
“No, that’s all bullcrap, man. I created the universe to grow ganja.”, she confided.
Religion?
As for your thought experiment- I have no idea what it is supposed to illustrate.
It may be a reference to that BLM leader who wants to replace men with women, whites with blacks, and capitalism with communism. In which case our God problem may need some reformulating to keep pace with the times ....
You believe in a God that is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipresent... the creator of all things.
Correct?
:brow:
I am sceptical that they are the creator of all things. They could be if they so wished - they can do anything and thus can retrospectively make it the case that they created everything- but I don't think they actually created everything. Indeed they say as much.
From what or whom have you acquired such belief(s)? I'm curious to the source from which you learned about an omni-mind(God)?
Nobody has yet refuted the argument or said anything to raise even the slightest doubt about any of its premises. And as I am the most committed follower of reason I have ever met, I draw the conclusion and believe in God.
So, no faith. One can know by faith, but I have none in God. I believe in God because i listened to her.
Could you set out this argument?
But here it is:
1. Imperatives of Reason exist
2. An existent imperative has an existent mind that is issuing it
3. Therefore the existent imperatives of Reason have an existent mind that is issuing them
4. The imperatives of Reason have a single source
5. Therefore there is an existent mind whose imperatives are imperatives of Reason
I'm asking to see the argument you refer to. Set it out for me. If not, there's no way to understand what it is that you're talking about. Of course, I do not believe in such a mind(God), and I too have employed reason(critical thinking) as a means to arrive at my denial. Bertrand Russel is one of many from whom I've learned to think about the topic(belief in the God of Abraham).
Earlier, more in line with the OP, you claimed that all moral principles are prescriptions of God, or words to that effect. I'd also like to see an argument where that is the logical conclusion, if you could be so kind to oblige.
4 assumes what is in contention. Do you agree?
Note that one could agree with 4 and yet not think the source is a mind. Plato called it 'the Good'; Kant just called it Reason and didn't go further.
So no, 4 clearly does not express what is at issue. It expresses an independently plausible self evident truth recognized throughout the history of reflection.
Note too that by the time we get to 4, all objectivist metanormative theories are out for the count. So we are not in Kansas anymore.
The claim that the imperatives of Reason have a single source is the matter of contention. You assume that that is true, which is what we do with premisses. I'm questioning that premiss. Do you have an argument where that premiss is a conclusion, rather than a premiss?
If you think 4 is false just say that and raise a doubt about it.
And yes, I have numerous arguments for it. Why do you think it is false?
Is God necessary for being good? That's the matter under contention.
If being good requires following imperatives of Reason, then claiming that all imperatives of Reason have a single source(God) as a premiss assumes exactly what needs argued for.
Do you have an argument in which 4 is not assumed, but rather is the logical conclusion?
You may think 4 is false. But it most certainly does not assert that God exists. As I have just said, it is widely affirmed by those who do not believe the source is God.
This is a circular argument:
1.p
2.q
3.therefore p
For the matter under contention is p.
This is not:.
1. P
2.q
3. Therefore p and q.
My argument has a conclusion that is extracted from the premises, but is not asserted in any one of them. We need to be clear about this.
And I take it you have no argument against 4, you just don't see any reason to think it is true, yes? Or do you think there is positive evidence of its falsity?
Please reread my last post and directly address it.
Quoting Bartricks
There are two different claims you've made here that interest me. The matter of contention is exactly whether or not God is necessary for moral behaviour(being good). The second claim quoted in isolation above is what needs argued for. You made it in earlier in this thread. It is what garnered my attention.
The argument you've offered today, which is also quoted above, assumes exactly what's in question regarding the claim that moral norms and values are the prescriptions and values of God, where God is the single source assumed in 4.
4 assumes exactly what needs argued for. You need to provide an argument for 4, as a conclusion, rather than as a premiss.
I presented you with the argument. You then said that it begs the question because premise 4 asserts what is under contention. That is manifestly false as I have explained several times now.
I'm not changing the goalposts. I'm correcting your misunderstanding of what I'm asking for. It's clear now, after a bit of confusion. No blame to be placed.
To be clear...
You've claimed that you arrived at your beliefs via reasoned conclusions. I'm just asking you to show the argument which logically leads to the claim about all moral norms and values being prescriptions and values of God. 4 assumes it. I'm looking for that as a conclusion, as a means to confirm your earlier claims that you've arrived at your belief in this matter via reasoned conclusions. Show me.
1. There is no logical requirement to believe in a "God that is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipresent... the creator of all things" in order to discuss God.
2. The OP is not about God but about the belief that "belief in God is necessary for being good".
Sure to both of those claims, however Bartricks has claimed that God is necessary for moral behaviour(for being good). His line of reasoning is what's under scrutiny here.
The issue under contention is E.
Here's how I've reasoned
All As are Bs.
All As are Cs.
Therefore all As are Bs and Cs.
An A that is a B and a C is an E.
Therefore all As are Es
And what you are doing is saying 'all As are Cs just assumes As are Es' over and over again.
No, matey, it doesn't.
Now, answer this question or stop wasting my time: do you have a positive argument against 4? That is, do you have a valid argument that has the negation of 4 as a conclusion?
I have lots for 4. Lots. Do you have any against it?
Well, if you agree that there is no logical requirement to believe in a "God that is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipresent... the creator of all things" in order to discuss God, indeed, you are doing that yourself, then why do you feel there is a need to ask that question?
That was an aside based upon Bartricks' participation here. I was curious to his belief in/of God.
The substantive matter is the claim he made about all moral norms and prescriptions being morals and prescriptions of God.
One thing at a time. Yes, I would argue against 4 based upon empirical evidence to the contrary. However, that is not my interest here. My interest is in confirming whether or not you've arrived at logical conclusions for the earlier claim you made...
Again...
Quoting creativesoul
The argument presented today does not suffice. 4 assumes exactly what's in contention. Show me an argument that arrives at that claim via logical conclusion.
That is the matter under contention.
Are all moral norms and values imperatives of Reason?
So, what you are saying is that your question was unnecessary.
It was not relevant to the current contention. Hence, I've not pursued it or revisited it except to answer your questions about it.
OK. I was just curious. I thought you may have felt it was relevant for some reason. It's good to know that it wasn't.
You in a cafe:
What would you like, sir?
A chicken pie please.
Here you go.
This is a chicken pie. I ordered a pint of beer.
No sir, you ordered a chicken pie.
I said 'a chicken pie please'
Yes. That's ordering a chicken pie. You say those words.
But I wanted a pint of beer.
Okay, but you said you wanted a chicken pie.
A chicken pie isn't a pint of beer.
Yes. But you ordered a chicken pie.
I can't drink a chicken pie.
Are all moral norms and values imperatives of Reason?
And Reason is God. That's what the argument demonstrated.
It's relevant in discussions involving the God of Abraham. Bartricks doesn't claim such a God, I suppose. So... no sense in pursuing those lines of thought here...
Quoting Bartricks
Well, I'm asking what you are arguing here.
Are all moral norms imperatives of Reason?
Shall I help you understand it?
Those moral norms that are imperatives are imperatives of Reason.
Those moral norms that are not imperatives but something else - urgings or recommendations, perhaps - are the urgings or recommendations of Reason.
This isn't hard.
Perhaps it best to start over...
Do you have an argument for the claim quoted above?
But you just said that discussion of God does not require belief in God. Indeed, you yourself seem to be discussing God without actually believing in God. Or have I misunderstood you?
There are arguments against the God of Abraham that do not apply to other beliefs in/of God. Hence, my question informed me that those arguments may not be applicable to Bartricks. It's not mysterious. Fairly simple really.
Waiter: yes, you can't drink chicken pie. The point is that you ordered chicken pie, not a pint of beer
Let's start over.
Ok. What would you like?
A chicken pie.
Er, are you sure? You sure you don't want a pint of beer?
Chicken pie!!
Well, er, I just brought you one - it's in front of you.
But I wanted a pint of beer.
It wasn't mysterious before, but I think it is beginning to become mysterious now.
A question can't inform you. An answer can.
Irrelevant quibbling...
One more try...
Do you have an argument in which the above claim is a logical conclusion?
Your failure to offer it voluntarily after our exchange here today is not a good sign.
I don't think it's irrelevant at all. You yourself said it was relevant:
Quoting creativesoul
After which you said:
Quoting creativesoul
1. Questions don't inform, answers do.
2. If "those arguments may not be applicable to Bartricks", this suggests that you are still not informed, despite your question.
:up:
Okay. So either you will not or cannot support that claim by arguing for it as a conclusion. Neither is acceptable here. The claim assumes exactly what's in question, whether or not God is necessary for being good. In addition, Im forced to conclude that you have not reached your beliefs via reasoned conclusions, as you said earlier. Rather, you assume exactly what needs argued for, as can be seen below in two contradictory but otherwise logically equal(valid) arguments...
If it is the case that all moral norms and values are prescriptions and values of God, and being good requires following moral norms and prescriptions, then God is necessary for being good.
If it is not the case that all moral norms and values are prescriptions and values of God, and being good requires following moral norms and prescriptions, then God is not necessary for being good.
Have you demonstrated that this is not the case? I don't think you have.
Why single? But you and creative are trying to figure that bit out so I won’t double down on this for now.
The problem is what is an “imperative of reason”? Reason isn’t a set of imperatives. “Eat your dinner” that’s an imperative, a command. “A cannot be true and false in the same sense at the same time” is not an imperative. It doesn’t tell anyone to do anything. It’s called a law of reason. And it’s not so much issued by minds as discovered by them (but that’s a whole other topic).
“Follow the laws of reason” (colloquially, “be reasonable”) now that’s an imperative, one I suggest to you at that. I don’t remember God telling me that one though. I think I’d remember if God commanded me to do something. Hell, I remember different people telling me to follow or thwart the “imperative to follow reason” at different times. People. Not God.
So, you are using your personal lack of remembrance as an argument for the non-occurence of an event witnessed by others?
He is an inspired fellow. You know what "Anand" and "Haqq" means, don't you?
I'm afraid you are wrong here. It's central to the discussion. Bart's obfuscation is the reason this thread is interminable.
He's a wind-bag - yes.
That's what I meant. You won't stop him just like you can't stop the wind ....
Why aren’t you religious?
I’ll quote you again for the third time:
We may need no more faith in God than chatting with them at the local pub. They may be as plainly real as anyone or anything else. No “faith” required. Religion, on the other hand, is a different matter.
Good to have you involved again. There's a dearth of folk with some background in philosophy at present. Together with a few folk who have too much time and yet no capacity, crowding the site with nonsense.
Hope that your foray into real life was productive.
I prefer his poetry to Bart's poetry. it scans better - and makes just as much sense (maybe more).
And faith isn't necessary to be religious. Perhaps this claim confuses you and sounds like it might contradict my claim not to be religious - it would sound like that to the dumb. There are people of faith who are religious and there are people who believe in God on rational grounds who are religious, and some may have started out one kind and become the other. But me? I believe in God on rational ground and I am not religious.
Thanks.
I'm quite pleased with progress in real life. Looking forward to retirement.
:wink:
“Witnessed by others”? Who? Who here claimed that God came down and told them “be reasonable”? Just Bart. Makes me think he’s just crazy.
Did God come down and tell you to be reasonable?
And no, I’m using my lack of remembrance as an argument for the non occurrence of an event that Bart claims happened to me. I don’t remember God telling me to be reasonable. In fact I don’t remember God telling me anything. And I would remember if he did. Just another area where Bart’s system is confused. When exactly did God tell all of us to be reasonable? No one seems to remember it.
You mean this one?
Quoting Bartricks
That argument is not an example which has "all moral norms and values are prescriptions and values of God" as a logical conclusion. That's what I asked for.
The sheer number of falsehoods stated by you about what I've said here is astounding. Those false accusations seem to be increasing as time goes on. No surprise really.
I recall such straight thinkers in my introductory logic classes. I don't wish to use the term as a pejorative, but its an almost autistic approach to argument: "a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterised by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behaviour".
Are you going around again?
That argument proves God. It proves God because the mind in 5 is God. I don't have to show that for it to be true (you think otherwise, but that'sbecause you learnt to reason from russell brand). I can show it. But I don't have to. It proves God regardless of whether I take the trouble to explain to you why that mind will have the omni properties.
Yeah, that seems to be the go to response just before being drectly faced with a problem in the reasoning. There's probably not much left to discuss on that matter.
Euthyphro poses yet another problem for divine command notions, of which Bartricks seems to be arguing along such llines of persuasion....
I asked why you aren’t religious. Perhaps you’re too dumb to answer.
So any imperative that is issued by a single mind is an imperative of reason? So “Do a backflip after eating 2 Burger King whoppers” is an imperative of reason? I’m pretty sure I’m the only mind so far who has issued it since it’s so ridiculous and specific. Guess that makes it an imperative of reason…
But just to be clear, imperatives of reason have nothing to do with reason (law of non contradiction, etc) and everything to do with the number of minds issuing an imperative? If that that number is 1 it is an imperative “of reason” otherwise it’s just a good ol command.
And additionally, that which issues the imperatives of reason is later found to be omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient. Guess since I just issued one I’m all 3 then! Wow I can feel the power already!
Cmon Bart. You can do better than that. Can you at least give an example of an imperative of reason?
Nah. I asked, and later clarified what I was asking for. An argument meeting that criterion has not yet been put forth. So, I've not much else to say regarding that...
You keep asking what an imperative of reason is - why? The argument shows you.
Are you, perhaps, trying to deny that there are any, but just using the wrong words to do it?
Or are you asking me to provide you with the content of one?
There are many historical examples of people claiming to have been told by God what to do. Prophet Mohammad was one of them. But it goes back to Hammurabi (1792 - 1750 BC) and many others:
“Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice.”
Hammurabi – Wikipedia
It wasn’t clear from your post who you were referring to. I thought it was a general statement, hence I wanted to clarify that.
If it wasn't clear already. Yes. That's what "Give an example" means by the way.
What's an example of an imperative of reason?
Fair enough. However, theoretically, at least, it is not entirely inconceivable that God has told some people what constitutes right conduct in the past and possibly still does.
Edit. Your statement "and neither are most people I know" suggests that some people you know do.
You don’t need to presume what I think in order to answer what I asked. That you can’t answer suggests that you don’t understand the subject matter well enough to formulate an answer beyond I’m not religious because I’m not religious.
Are you making reference to the meaning of Euthyphro's name?
I am just about done. I added some things to tie in some things beyond the text, but I think it better to leave them for further discussion.
And you have memory of God conveying this to you? You sure it wasn't your teacher or parent or something?
And you think the mind that issues this imperative, is omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omnipresent? What happens when I issue it to someone? Do I become a triple omni God?
Mind reelaborating why the mind that issues the imperative "If a proposition is true do not believe that it is also false" is omnipotent first? Because clearly I can issue that proposition without becoming or being omnipotent. How come?
I take it you accept that this is indeed an imperative of Reason and thus you accept that premise 1 is true.
You are now changing the topic and wondering how we learn about the existence of these imperatives, yes? And you are thinking, with all the sophistication of a child, that if they are imperatives of God, then you must have met God on a cloud when he told you these things, right?
You have a faculty of reason - in your case an extremely ropey one - and it is via that faculty that you gain an awareness of these imperatives.
You do not have to know that it is God who is issuing them. That is as unbelievably stupid as thinking that water is not made of tiny molecules because you just drank some water and you don't recall drinking any molecules.
Maybe I can answer for you. You’re not religious because you have no faith in any religious doctrine or religious authorities that you know of.
That seems to be a reasonable statement. Lots of things happen to us without our being aware of the causes. What if God tells us what is right and wrong without letting us know that he does so?
One of my favourite quotes is from Bertrand Russell: never trust a stupid man's report of what a clever man has said.
I was guessing, not reporting… oh, okay.
I could do with less "straight thinkers". Euthyphro says that he is laughed at. This type is laughable but unfortunately it does not deter them. For them any attention is preferable to being ignored, but I prefer to ignore them.
I think it is fair to say that Russell would agree that just as one should not trust a stupid man's report of what a clever man has said, one should not trust a stupid man's guess about the matter either. (I can't remember, but I don't think the next line in the relevant passage was "But as for guessing..."
I'm asking for clarifications so far.
Quoting Bartricks
Ah so I didn't hear them or take the input in through any sensory channels but my faculty of reason detected a command to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time.... somehow.
Can you name any other "command issuing faculties" that we have? Does your faculty of sight tell you to stare at pretty girls/guys? Doubtful. Faculties don't issue imperatives. That can't be right. Try again.
You can't just brush it up to "We have a faculty that detected it". When talking about imperatives, every imperative must be a command, by someone, to someone, to do something. That's the definiton, you need those 3 components at least an issuer, a receiver, and an order. That command is heard, seen, or heck, telepathically communicated if you like. Point is you must receive some input. I'm asking if you have memory of receiving such an input. You don't seem to. I don't either. Neither did most people receive input by a divine being to act a certain way.
Quoting Bartricks
Right but I must at least remember getting issued them. Again, for something to be an imperative it must have been issued by someone and received by another. However the only times I've ever been told to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time were all issued by non-omnipotent perfectly ordinary people. So I don't see the need to suggest that these imperatives were somehow issued by some divine entity.
Quoting Bartricks
But in this case there was no sign. There was no sound or sight imparted by any divine mind commanding you to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time. Go back through memory lane and you'll find every time someone told you to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time, it was always a particular person. Never some undetected God.
But regardless, let's assume I accept everything you said so far. So far we have a mind that issues (somehow without providing any detectible input) a command to all humans to not believe propositions to be true and false at the same time. Let's call this mind X. Mind showing how mind X is omnipotent for having issued a command to mankind to behave a certain way?
It's a good policy. I don't know if history records the success of Euthyphro's case against his father. I wonder if it went for page after page, with folk taking it in turns to make the same points against him, without his even being able to recognise them?
You apparently rely heavily on authority figures like Russell so perhaps you’re a good candidate for religiosity and not so inclined to think for yourself.
More on that soon.
Done.
Yes, that's what possessing a faculty of reason involves. Having one gives one some awareness - in your case, scant and very foggy awareness - of reasons to do and believe things, including imperatives to do and believe things. That's why it is called our 'faculty of reason'. Stupid people have a poorly operating one; clever people are well-operating one.
This is all very basic stuff that isn't seriously in dispute. It is also irrelevant, as you need to refute the proof I gave.
Quoting khaled
Er, why? Is that what your reason tells you - does your reason give you the impression that it is an imperative of Reason that if you are aware of an imperative, you must remember someone having issued the imperative to you? Weird. Like I say, your faculty is really ropey.
For example, my argument proves that imperatives of Reason are the imperatives of God. Now, to your mind this means that we have to be aware that they are imperatives of God and must remember encountering God and God telling us them. That's just bonkers. That is, like I say, as stupid as thinking that if someone demonstrates that water is made of tiny molecules, then you can refute them by just saying "no, water is NOT made of tiny molecules, because I am not aware it is. If it was made of tiny molecules I'd have to be aware of it. Indeed, someone would have had to show me each molecule and I'd have to see them gradually becoming a bit of water. I don't remember seeing any molecules coming out the tap last time I turned it on; I don't remember seeing any molecules in the river or the lake." That's you - that's how you reason. It's terrible.
The evidence that imperatives of Reason are imperatives of God is.....the argument. The proof. Not 'the fact you remember meeting God and him issuing imperatives to you'. Jeez. What is the point in arguing with people like you - I'm charitably assuming that you're actively going out of your way to misunderstand everything.
I agree with you that religious belief is a matter of choice, not something which can be rationally justified or refuted.Amazingly many theists (of which I am not one, incidentally) don't want to admit that religious belief is not rationally justifiable, just as many atheists (of which I am not one either) don't want to admit that religious belief is not rationally refutable.
So if I contrive some silly religion no one can rationally refute it?
Ah careful. Reasons to believe things =/= Imperatives to believe things. As I already said, faculties don't give imperatives. This is the part that's beyond dispute. Does your sense of sight itself tell you to do something? No that's ridiculous.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes. Precisely. If someone commanded me to do something I must remember someone having commanded me to do something. Or else I have no evidence that someone commanded me to do something. This isn't a very revolutionary idea. I struggle to see how you can not understand. I may not remember who the someone was, but I must remember being ordered to do something by someone, in order to have evidence that I'm being ordered to do something by someone....
I don't like your wording though. "Does your reason give you the impression that it is an imperative of reason" if all you mean is "Does it reasonably seem to you that" then sure. But it just seems like a very long winded way of saying it.
Does your reason NOT tell you this? Give one example of an imperative that was issued to you that you don't remember having been issued to you. Stupid question. If you're to have any reason it was issued to you, you must at least remember it...
Quoting Bartricks
Not exactly "encountering and telling" but any sort of contact. Please give an example of an imperative from some mind A to mind B that mind B receives without any sensory input. You can't. Because it makes no sense. For something to be an imperative someone must convey to someone to do something. No such conveying has taken place between your mind and the mind of God. It has always been between you and your teacher, or you and your parent, telling you to behave this or that way. Not contact with God. Anyone would remember that.
Quoting Bartricks
A terrible example considering that everything I observe is consistent with water being tiny molecules so I would have no argument to refute the claim. However what you're claiming is different. You're claiming that there is a mind X that issued a command to all humans to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time. First off, I disagree such a mind exists from a historical perspective, it just has NOT been the case that such a mind has made any contact with me or anyone I know.
But you don't seem to understand that this is a serious critique. You seem to be fine with having "Imperatives" that aren't actually issued from one mind to another by means of some input. You are somehow fine with "faculties" issuing imperatives. Just a result of hazy stupid definitons. And you can't give a single example of an imperative issued from one mind to another without some means of input. Because it makes no sense.
But fine, let's take that to be true. Let's say there IS in fact a mind X that told everyone not to believe something to be true and false at the same time (despite the fact that no one remembers this AND that you need some form of contact for an imperative to be issued so we SHOULD remember it). And let's take it that this mind is NOT a particular human such as a teacher or parent. Ok, what makes that mind X omnipotent. Please explain.
You skirted away from it last time but as I said: EVEN IF we give that a certain mind X has issued the command to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time, you have no way to go from that to omnipotence. If you do, show it.
As a simple example: If someone had a large enough speaker, they could tell everyone in the world to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time. Would that make the speaker owner omnipotent? No. Not at all.
Quoting Bartricks
So far we can grant that mind X exists. No where have you shown that that mind X is a triple omni God. Even in the argument you quoted above you didn't show it, you just stopped at "proving" that mind X exists.
Quoting khaled
Show me saying that faculties issue imperatives.
OUr faculty of reason is the faculty by means of which we gain an awareness of reasons to do and believe things, including imperatives of Reason. That is not - if one understands English - the same as saying that our faculty of reason issues the instruction.
Now, you reason really badly. I have provided a proof that Reason is God. Either challenge a premise or go away.
Quoting khaled
Quoting Bartricks
False. All you've provided on this thread is this:
Quoting Bartricks
You have provided proof that there is a mind X that told us to not believe a proposition to be true and false at the same time. Note, it is false for reasons outlined above, in addition to others outlined by Creativesoul, namely that you have no proof it's a single mind but let's assume it is. Now. Prove this mind is that of God. Let's start with omnipotence. Show that the mind that told you not to believe something to be true and false at the same time is omnipotent.
Challenge a premise in my argument or go away.
Ok so all you have here is a "proof" that some mind X told all of humanity to be reasonable (except you demonstrably). And the proof is flawed in 2 ways. It assumes it's one mind for no reason. And it does not address how such an imperative couldn've been issued without anyone remembering it.
You then go on to use your toilet paper proof and add to it that this mind X is a triple omni God. And yet you cannot show why this is when asked.
Cheers. Time to get that ignore list browser extension.
Again with the comprehension skills. I can, it's easy. But I don't see the point, given that you'll rewrite everything I say and say "so you think this - that's stupid" and then I'll just have tediously to tell you that's not what I said. Like this.
It would depend on whether there could be empirical evidence that might be used to refute it, or whether it was logically contradictory.
God is made of cheese.
Christianity began with Christians killing Christians because they disagreed with each other and for most of our history they have been killing each other until science and democracy changed that.
An atheist is more apt to trust science, so there is an understanding of why wearing masks and keeping distance and washing hands is important, or understanding what we are doing that is destroying life on the planet. We can be as unwilling to allow others the liberty of believing the wrong thing as a Christian. False beliefs that spread disease and destroy our planet are not something we can tolerate.
Protestants began with the belief that science would reveal God's truth and had they stayed with that belief, the God issue would not be as important as it is today. Reason, is the controlling force of the universe, logos, is about discovering the reason for why things are as they are, or science bringing us to God's truth. All people have attempted to know God's truth because our survival depends on it. They just did not have the scientific method of knowing truth. But when science began exposing the things said in the bible that we should not believe, Protestants turn against science. Protestants depended on a literal interpretation of the Bible and that is disastrous. They wanted to correct Catholicism by interpreting the Bible literally and they backed their way into a corner they can not get out of off.
How we interpret the Bible depends largely on our education. Liberal education prepared everyone to think abstractly and this makes mythology, stories, parables, not literally God's truth. A god did not make a man of mud and a woman from his rib. Christians who interpret the Bible literally have trouble with science, and education for technology dropped education for abstract thinking and we are in a mess now! Interpreting the Bible literally pits people against science and that works against our survival, turning those who rely on science firmly against religious folks. Who is the liar? Science and Satan or the religious community that denies science?
If God were immaterial we would not now of Gods existence because God would be completely undetectable.
And here is the problem. I think Jews interpret the Bible more abstractly than Christians. It is the literal interpretation of the Bible that gets people into trouble.
I love it when science proves the truth of what is said in the Bible. Yes, climate change killed the frogs and increased the insects as the Biblical story tells us. Yes, a wall fell down. I have a preacher nephew who became outraged when I sent him the scientific proof of the Bible stories. I thought it would please him, but no! Science destroys the superstitious understanding of the events and that made him furious. He and others like him, see that as Satan's work to destroy faith in God.
Believing a lie is not being good.
Correct. Some passages or concepts may be taken literally, whilst others are to be interpreted allegorically. Jesus himself spoke in parables for this very reason, and he explained how words, symbolized by seeds, have a different effect according to the type of soil (or mind) on which they fall.
The NT characterizes just society as a society ruled by "righteousness, peace, and joy" and the same is found in Platonic and other philosophical texts.
If we start with righteousness which includes right conduct and right thought then misunderstandings and problems are usually avoidable. It is only when reason is suspended and replaced with unreason that problems start.
Religious texts were originally held in the possession of priests who interpreted them for the lay community. Scriptural interpretation was probably later influenced by politics and even the otherwise good bits ended up being distorted. This is why mankind have devised new religious systems every now and then when the old ones no longer served the intended purpose. But political systems can be just as bad or even worse, as can be seen in the case of communism.
If God is taken to be omnipotent, then he would probably find ways of making himself known to mankind.
And the medium is cheese. This is rationally irrefutable.
If you say so.
Perfect cheese, though.
Well, they have to though, don't they? Otherwise the God they worship would be jealous, despotic and bloodthirsty.
Christians, on the other hand, may more easily be literal in their interpretation of the New Testament, but if they are they show themselves to be jealous, despotic and bloodthirsty. The Old Testament God, interpreted literally, is one actual Christians understand quite well.
That's merely an assumption, not a logical truth or an empirically decidable claim.
What did I not delineate when I said, and I quote word for word: Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
???
Perhaps English is not your first language, in that case I can forgive your very apparent selective stupidity.
It is logical to conclude that nothing (no material existence) is undetectable because nothing can't produce sound waves, reflect light, etc. Also, if it's not an empirically decidable claim then it is irrefutable. :smile:
Nicely put.
Curiously I rarely met any literalist Bible believers in the 1970's; we were always taught that the Bible was an allegory and according to Theologian David Bentley Hart, this was a strong tradition for centuries, with literalists being a comparatively new thing. Sounds counterintuitive. These days literal believers are everywhere. I guess the internet makes them a viable worldwide community and emboldens their thinking. I wonder if people head towards the comfort of fundamentalism's certainty when they fear the world, and with science comes little else but continual change.
Bingo with literalists being a comparatively new thing. Education for technology is about being exacting and correct and relying on authority. And I believe you are right about the psychological reason for clinging to fundamentalism. This is so in Afghanistan (fundamentalist Muslims) and the US (fundamentalist Christians) or in Israel (Jew).
One source of information I have says in the US we cling to Christianity or Democrats. :lol: I didn't think I would ever say it but I think the Democratic party has swung too far to the left and here comes your statement that about the problem showing up in politics. I think the democrats are creating an unhealthy reliance of government and Tocqueville wrote of that danger in 1830. Has everyone read "Democracy in America" and the despote Tocqueville said all Christian democracies would become?
Communism is taking care of everyone and isn't that a Christian goal? At the moment taking care of everyone also seems to be a Democratic goal. The Prussian model of bureaucracy makes this possible, and education for technology plus overpopulation makes it necessary. Oh dear, I am afraid my reply is not very philosophical because it is very materialistic. Ideals take form, we are the body of Christ or communism, and the form shapes society. Anyway it can be argued Christianity makes people weak and when they become dependent on the beast, that may not be a good thing?
There is a changing of values of the old testament as the people shift from being nomadic herders, as dependent on God as leaves blowing in the wind, to an agrarian society with private ownership of land and food-producing trees and fields, with increasing wealth that is dependent on individual effort and individual wealth to buy more land (a violation to God!). Later, in some places, this became more cosmopolitan city living.
The God of David is a war God. Now the people are paying taxes and expected to defend their land. These are no longer herders dependent on a God to guide them to water or send birds to feed them.
This was not always so. There was no written of God until after the Hebrews/Jews (?) were taken into captivity by Babylon. And obviously, these people did not accept the changes made with the New Testament, and before there could be a New Testament, the power structure of Rome, had to determine which side of the fight about when Jesus became a god or if he did become a god is the right one? As the religion moved north it was changed by barbarians without an ancient city culture and written word.
Today people seem to think the Bible is the written word of God, with absolutely no knowledge of all the changes in consciousness that the religion has gone through. Not until our bellies were full did God become a loving God instead of a fearsome and punishing God. Notions of evil and demons have also changed and I am rather disappointed that no one has addressed my question "What is evil".
Quoting tim wood
Please, support the notion of Satan and demons if you want to claim Christianity is not a lie. That is how you use the word "lie". The word "myth" might be a better word. The Bible is a mythology that should not be taken literally.
What I meant was that the practice of writing down laws said to have been given by God goes back to Hammurabi (1792 - 1750 BC ) and before:
“Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice.”
Hammurabi – Wikipedia
The Judeans were taken into Babylonian captivity in 597 -581 BC, i.e., many centuries after the Code of Hammurabi.
But I agree that the idea of a loving God in the modern sense is a recent reinterpretation. The original idea was that God is to us like a father. He creates us, supports and protects us, feeds us, and expects "love" i.e., obedience in return.
God was like the pater familias in Greek and Roman society hence he was referred to as "Father" (Zeus Pateras) in the same way children out of respect always addressed their parent as "father", not by his proper name.
Quoting Janus
Quoting praxis
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Yes, Praxis, it is irrefutable, as is its negation. So that is why religious beliefs are a matter of faith, not of logic or empirical investigation.
What is faith though? Faith when given as a reason for believing in something is an empty placeholder for an actual reason. If the person actually had a reason they would just state that reason but they don’t so they say “faith”.
Also, to say something is not a matter of logic or imperial investigation is to admit it is firmly in the realm of fantasy. If someone said they believed in square circles on ”faith” that clear breach of logic puts the notion into fantasy. Things have to make sense, otherwise no one knows what they are talking about and neither do they. It is by definition nonsense.
Indeed so. Faith is more of an excuse you give for believing when you have no good reasons. And the problem is faith has no quality control. You might well have faith in the inferiority of certain cultures or in Islamic fundamentalism. Faith is a chaotic mess.
Now when a theist says, by way of riposte - 'but atheists have faith in all kinds of things, like that planes will fly' - this is not faith. This is a 'reasonable confidence based on empirical evidence' that planes do fly, that there is physics behind them, there are engineers and mechanics and people who are trained to fly them. Unlike God, a plane can be demonstrated and in almost all cases they will fly safely. But, naturally, no one can have absolute certainty in anything.
:100:
I like the way you put that, no quality control. The worst ideas are equally valid.
“Faith” is also used as an expression to say one has reasonable confidence in something and that gets mixed together in theist counter argument.
The other problem with faith is that the single suspension of reason weakens the persons defences against other bad ideas. Once you convince someone fantasy is real its easier to convince them other fantasies are real as well. I had a friend who grew up religious and believed strongly in god and when the internet conspiracy theories started getting stronger I had to watch him succumb to each one until he thought the earth was flat and no longer believed in space. His father was a pastor, he had been trained his whole life to swallow those conspiracy theories. Thats why rather than the simple illogic of faith that might make it a sort of quaint banality like astrology I think faith is an evil for exactly that attack it makes on the faithfuls faculties of reason.
And while Im ranting you wanna know what else drives me nuts? The way the faithful try and disassociate with the other faithful, like the suicide bomber or the zealot who beats each of his kids and himself for original sin are not using the exact same reason. When you choose to indulge yourself with “faith” you are choosing to grant equal footing to all faith based acts. If the defence of your belief is the same as the defence of the belief women should be slaves or someone should drag their kid up a mountain to sacrifice to god then your defence of your belief is garbage. The bar for believing in things has to be higher than that.
End rant.
I think the ill here is not faith but unjustifiable belief. That, I think, is what makes it trivial for an intelligent person to adopt stupid beliefs.
Why is Naomi Wolf spouting anti-vax nonsense? Because she's spent a lifetime with beliefs that can't be reconciled with facts. She wrote a non-fiction book that was notoriously factually incorrect. People with unjustifiable beliefs have to learn contempt for facts, and this contempt leaves them wide open.
Plain and simple why is "Belief in god is necessary for being good" a true statement?
That would be the most obvious lie of Christianity and if there is no reason for believing in Satan and demons that would be another lie in the Bible and Christianity. Deifying Jesus, calling him a God, and tieing him to the God in the Garden of Eden, and Satan, is believing in supernatural powers, and the belief that these supernatural powers affect our lives is another lie. This is about believing in the supernatural and being superstitious or not.
I want to add, this an open discussion and I attempt to be inclusive. It is not a private discussion between 2 people. Sticking the points being made will make this a better process.
What might be very important to this belief system is the belief in God and inheritance. This was not a problem when they were nomadic sheepherders but it became a problem when they settled and became farmers. At this point, the line of inheritance is even more important. This is the problem in Isreal today. There is no justification for Israel without the belief that a God gave land to a set of people, and that this land, including slaves, is rightfully owned through a line of inheritance. Before this, linage established the individual's place in society, not merit hiring. They fought a war with the Greeks because the Greeks had conquered the territory and were assigning jobs by merit instead of lineage.
We might ask why was it ever necessary to sacrifice animals, and how did a person come to holding the position of the official over the sacrifice and why was the temple essential to the sacrificing. There are Zionist Christians and Jews and this is a serious international problem. What we believe really matters.
There is a huge issue with the written word. What Hammusrabl did, did not affect the Celts who were resistant to the written word. Celts and others rejected writing in favor of memorization and passing on stories orally. I forget the whole argument about how writing changed the human psyche, but the change is huge! Our brains function totally differently when we use pictures to cue our memory or rely on "the written word", which can then become THE AUTHORITY. Protestants took this to an extreme. They decided each one of us can be an authority on God's word, and they made the Bible the authority of His word. Totally different from the Catholics who decided trained priest can be authorities on God's word, but not the lay folk. For a Catholic, the pope has authority and power, not the common man and that would be much closer to Judaism and the rabbi by inheritance who interprets the word of God.
Making the individual the authority on God's word set fire to witch-hunting. Ignorant people thinking they are authorities of spiritual truth became a superstitious nightmare and I am not sure how far from this we are today?
Om, om, we have with us ideas of the power of sound and using the vibration of sound to heighten our spiritual connection. We have Quakers who believe God speaks to everyone. Or the Buddist who gets in touch with spirituality by going within. This denies the authority of the written word and belongs in this discussion. What is the source of your spiritual experience? How do you connect with it?
Jews were known for their spells and they show up in Egyptian burials. Our word "spell" comes from the belief that words can have magical power. Do we believe this when we argue "Belief in god is necessary for being good"? Excuse me- how familiar are we with this faith in the word?
You are playing a good game of cat and mouse. Do you believe the Bible is God's word or a nice mythology but truth as a person of science understands truth?
I'm reading a book on divination in antiquity, Divination and Human Nature, by Peter Struck, which considers the views of ancient philosophers regarding that practice. From what I gather so far, philosophers didn't necessarily dispute its efficacy, but rather sought to explain why it was effective. Divination didn't necessarily involve sacrifice, though the study of livers was thought to be significant in determining what was to take place.
The Roman Emperor as Pontifex Maximus performed sacrifices as part of the Roman state religion. There's frieze of Marcus Aurelius doing so that's well known. Sacrifice seems to have been a fairly universal religious practice.
Correct. But even in those cultures where spiritual wisdom and laws were transmitted orally, the knowledge in question was accessible to a limited number of people, such as the priestly class. It was not available to all and sundry.
Quoting Athena
Not necessarily. I suppose different people are good for different reasons. Some are good because they allow their innate goodness to manifest itself; some are good because they acknowledge the importance of following laws, human or divine; and others are good because they fear punishment in this life or the next.
But faith only matters when things don't make sense. Think about how faith commonly comes into play when a person experiences a great misfortune or tragedy, something that cannot be explained (e.g. my baby died of cancer). This is because faith is a subjective condition, similar to love. It only exists in direct relation to the individual - qua. the way the individual relates directly to his own life/existence.
Faith is inexplicable because it is not an object, nor an object of knowledge, and it cannot be translated into objective terms without negating its essence. Any talk or explanation of faith is mere hypothesis and speculation, and a regress into understanding and reason, all one can do is point in its approximate direction. In the end, for the subject, the assumption of faith is as undeniable as the assumption of love.
Love isnt that analogous, love can be investigated and explained. Emotions are intangible sure but that doesnt mean they are as mysterious as you would have me believe.
I know it does little to dull the harshness of what I say to say I mean no offense but your description sounds more analogous to delusion.
You’ve at best described the placeholder word I referenced. “Faith” is indescribable and mysterious and subjective and beyond reason and understanding…well such a diluted word has no real meaning but to hold a place for the good reason (faith is not a good reason to believe in anything at all) that the persons just doesnt have.
And of course none of that matters since regardless of how you describe faith my point still stands: its a garbage reason to believe anything, as was cleverly put by someone else as faith having “no quality control”. You can use it to defend any belief, even awful ones. Thats how feeble faith is as a metric fir believing in anything.
Quoting DingoJones
Yes. You are very rational in saying faith holds the place of good reason. In my opinion, the word love holds the place for an unintelligible condition that is inexplicable, most analogously to how faith holds the place for any condition that is beyond understanding. We can analyze the meaning of the words, but we can never access the actuality of living under such a condition, except subjectively. Perhaps all subjectivity is delusional, yet love and faith are not important to the subject because of how they can be understood, but for their actuality. I guarantee that people will kill for love much faster than they will kill for faith if given the opportunity.
Quoting DingoJones
"No quality control." Now that is the greatest description of faith ive ever heard. Faith is also not quantitative, and for that reason, it is immune from all metrics that might validate any reason for any position. In fact, faith is solely concerned with the qualitative because the actuality of faith qualitatively changes the individual who believes by removing the concern for quality control which makes for "no quality control". Faith is extremely fatalistic and paradoxical despite the moral obligation to observe the demands of ones faith, and the demands of one's faith can often be radical and illogical, which can be of great offense to those of us trying to make sense of things.
I didnt say it holds the place of good reason. I said its a placeholder word for the good reason the person just doesn’t have. Meaning, they do not have a good reason and so they say “faith” instead of a good reason.
You actually didnt address my points at all with that.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Again you miss the point. Not having quality control is a criticism of “faith” for the reasons described but you seem to have ignored that and instead once again resort to describing faith.
Please address my points.
Five Biblical stories are Sumerian stories of multiple gods. It was a goddess who made a man and woman of mud and breathed life into them so they could help a river stay in its banks. One of the goddesses involved was Ninti. Her name translates as both "the lady of the rib" and "the lady who makes live". This play on words does not work in Hebrew so we get Eve a woman made of the man's rib. In cuneiform, the words Eden (Uncultivated plane) and Adam (settlement on the plain) appear. The people who carry this story came from Ur a Sumerian city and they were led by Abraham. It is obvious they researched the Sumerian archives and plagiarized the Sumerian story.
Science tells us humans evolved from the same line as the apes. That is the story I believe and that makes the Biblical story of creation false. Without the Biblical story, there is no need to be saved and I think all our reasoning is greatly improved by science. We were not made special by a God but we are animals.
What do you believe the facts are? If you do not clearly answer that question this is the last time I will acknowledge your posts in this thread.
I find that agreeable.
Quoting Apollodorus
I agree with this too but want to say all people have a mythology about creation with stories that tell them how to behave. They were first told around campfires and they were passed on verbally from one generation to the next. The goal of mythology is to transition youth into adults knowing the tribe's values and stories that unite them. I know of no reason why we should believe one story is more true than another. Philosophers such as Confucius have done the same with reason and without relying on supernatural beings. Why should we judge the Bible as better than the philosophers who laid out the laws (science) a society needs?
That looks like a very interesting book! I love to examine why people believe what they believe. Where and why did the idea originate and where did it travel and how did it blend with the beliefs of others? If is easy to imagine how hunters came to sacrificing imaging a power greater than their own and yes the practice seems to have been pretty universal. I can not imagine how a person would rationalize what the Hebrews were doing was different from what everyone else was doing and only the Hebrew's sacrifices are about a true god. Then the Christian claim that another diety eliminates the need to make sacrifices. :chin:
What you need to "get" is that believers don't see you (or any critical person, whether theist or atheist) as someone with whom to discuss their beliefs. It seems that to them, it's a bit like discussing one's underwear with strangers in the street. Not something a decent person would do.
The countries listed earlier in the graph that are both high in God belief and high in poverty are mostly countries that have a history of colonial exploitation and/or a climate and natural environment poorly suitable for advanced agriculture and industry.
It yet needs to be established that God belief causes or significantly contributes to poverty (and low education). But notably, God belief was typical for colonial exploiters.
I believe that myths can be beautiful and powerful in their simplicity, in the way they convey important truths in metaphorical imagery, and in the way they appeal to our reason, our imagination, and our emotions. They explain and make sense of the world and of human life, they endow everything with meaning and purpose, and they tell us how to conduct ourselves and live our lives in a way that is meaningful and just. Myths and folk stories connect us with the unique history of our people, with what is most valuable in our cultural life, with what is good, beautiful and true in our society. They can be an irreplaceable friend and guide. Even the myths of the Bible can be beautiful and of value when properly understood and applied in our daily lives.
There is beauty, goodness and truth in every story. There is no reason to believe one story is more true than another. But at the end of the day, we choose which story appeals to us most and which seems to have the greatest value to us as an individual and to our nation or race at large. Even what science tells us is just a story, one way of looking at things or of interpreting reality among many. Truth is inexhaustible, no myth or story, be it scientific, religious or otherwise, can ever tell the whole story of humanity, of the universe, of reality and of truth itself.
So, yes. The story of the Bible is not necessarily better than the story of Greek mythology or the story of the philosophers. In essence, they all share common values. Murder, theft, adultery, perjury, etc. were not crimes only in the Law of Moses. They were crimes in Greek, Roman and other cultures, too, and rightly so. But that's where our laws come from, from the myths and stories the wise men and women of old told us to teach us how to live rightly. And it isn't just our laws that come from the history conveyed down the generations through myths. There are other valuable bits of knowledge that are good, beautiful, and true, that can enrich our moral, intellectual and spiritual life and help us turn our gaze toward something higher.
All that is required is to take what is good and discard what is less good or harmful. And this is what we have a reasoning mind for.
It's a question, intended to make you state your case regarding the connection between God belief and poverty.
Don't know about @tim wood specifically, but otherwise I beg to differ.
There are preachers, proselytizers, priests, imams, pujas (and indoctrinators) just about everywhere doing their thing. Often enough they refuse to carry their onus probandi, heck, at times they insist what your epistemic standards have to be. Then they have their faiths interfere in other people's lives, politics, etc.
But, never mind this comment if you're having a 1-1 chat with @tim wood, nothing to see here. :)
He went on to ask me if I took comfort from the fact that Hitler was burning in Hell for all eternity. He almost fell off his box when I said no. I'm not sure which interpretation of 'no' stunned him, but I think it was the idea that I might derive no pleasure from someone being tortured for eternity for their crimes.
Anyway, tl;dr version: even those who say religion is a private matter get in your face about it.
Of course. Religious people will often talk about their beliefs with others (ingroup or outgroup), but not actually discuss them. That's my point. They preach, they teach, but they do not engage in discussion, in dialogue between presumed equals. It's beneath their dignity to discuss their religious beliefs on any other terms but their own.
A mistake people often make when trying to talk to religious people is assuming that what they are having or about to have is an actual conversation, a discussion, a dialogue. It's not.
Surely he wasn't Catholic (because a Catholic isn't supposed to have certainty about who in particular will go to hell or not; although a Catholic still looks forward to God's justice being done, and as such, rejoices at the thought of people burning in hell for all eternity).
This is what makes you an atheist: not taking pleasure in God's justice.
I used to live with a Catholic and we had a conversation about theology, my argument being that the Bible is apparently insufficient. She disagreed so I asked her about the chasm between Revelations and what the church preaches about the afterlife, heaven, hell, etc. She argued that there was no chasm: it may well _seem_ that they contradict, but... Thereafter theology, i.e. stuff not in the Bible necessary to reconcile the Bible with actual beliefs. I more or less gave up trying to make sense if it.
Quoting baker
Well, that and not believing it's real of course.
It was never meant for you to "make sense of it".
What do you know of God's justice? How do you account for the injustice in the world? It is not enough to say that injustice is the work of man, for then God's justice seems indifferent to man's.
You are asking if poverty is bad?
Whatever can be done by syllogism.
God's justice is above man's justice.
Does, in your opinion, God belief make people poor?
You mean like this?
A just God would not allow injustice in the world
There is injustice in the world
Therefore God is not just
Quoting baker
That does not obviate the claim that God is indifferent to man's injustice. If you mean that we cannot understand God's justice then on what basis do you claim that God is just?
The second premise is false, so the conclusion doesn't follow.
On the basis that God is typically defined as just.
But God belief makes them ambitious and makes them strive to improve their material situation.
https://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/29/the-demographic-characteristics-of-religious-typology-groups-2/
Is this a longitudinal study of the same people over the course of their work life?
The results suport the contention that education results in the rejection of religious belief and practice.
There is a whole lot of evidence to the contrary.
Quoting baker
Well, if you want to take that as a matter of faith, then okay, but you can't at the same time make an appeal to logic. It does not follow logically from a definition that something is as defined.
So which is it, a history of being exploited or there is not injustice in the world? Or do you think the exploitation is just?
The same thing happened on the Euthyphro thread. I think it has something to do with an existential vested interest. I am sure that if you are wrong you'll be able to cope, but if they are wrong ...
I will get back to the Straight Thinkers at some stage; the muddle there remains in a state of flux such that I'm in a quandary as to which aspect to address.
Yes, but only because the one true sacrifice has already made, and is reenacted in the sacrament of the Eucharist.
A longitudinal study is relevant because it studies the development of a particular population over a long period of time. A study of development gives more insight than just a static cut through a population at a specific time.
But I'm generally skeptical of studies of religiosity, because the criteria by which religiosity is measured are superficial and not unified.
Quoting Banno
Sure. What I'm interested in is what drives people to education and the pursuit of material wellbeing to begin with. I think religion plays an important role in this. Religion is what gives many people ambition for material pursuits. But once a measure of material wellbeing is achieved, religion tends to take a backseat. A longitudinal study would show this.
And I don't understand why some are so eager to make up their own definitions of "God". Lack of critical ability, lack of insight, or simple self-deception? Or maybe an agenda!
No, you're just measuring everything by your own human standards (instead of by God's) -- that's why you see injustice in the world.
Of course not. But if you're going to talk about God, you need to stick to the definitions actually provided by actual monotheistic religions, otherwise you're just making shit up.
I'm saying that material success depends on a great number of factors, many of which are systemic and outside of an individual's control (e.g. climate, natural resources, history of colonial exploitation). Saying that religion makes people poor, and then providing an example of some banana republic with high God belief is too simplistic. Instead, we'd need to look into the natural givens of a particular country, its historical development, and so on. It's not that God belief is making the people in some banana republic poor; it's more likely that they're poor because of centuries of colonial exploitation, or because they live in a climate that isn't conducive to intense agriculture, and so on.
Your contempt for religion is clouding your ability to think critically.
Christian theologians have been arguing about the definition of God for centuries. Some think that it is a mistake to attempt to define what is beyond human comprehension, that any definition is false.
The issue was whether there is injustice in the world. That question is not about religion.
In other words God is who we want to model. To become like him but knowing full well is unobtainable and we will never be like him.
Right wing extremism is not the way of God because it utilizes the word to judge and condemn others. To oppress and control and force to think there way.
Left wing is guilty of that to, oppressing faith base organization justifying the violation of there civil rights to accommodate another group. The US are more keen to tell Christians how to worship than compared to other faiths.
But anyway
True Christian faith is allowing you to choose the way on your own free-will.
I feel the true enemy is extremism or extreme ideology. Wanting to justify anger and resentment by saying I am right you are wrong, period end of story, stance.
Even truth taken to extreme can become corrupt.
And we are so gun hoe on being right that we are not realizing we are acting on extremist tendencies and hurting people in the process.
Knowing what is the truth is not enough but knowing how to express the truth with compassion and mercy is the way.
gung-ho.
Well, since they're using words, I assume they mean something by those words, and that they aren't just glossolaling or blowing hot air.
(They should really give me credit for assuming that they're making sense!)
Quoting Fooloso4
No. The syllogism from which this originated was about God:
Quoting Fooloso4
You keep switching the goalposts, mixing two discourses.
Do I personally think there is injustice in the world? Of course I do.
Do monotheists think there is injustice in the world? They can't, unless they run into some inconsistency with their definition of "God", or it turns out they worship a demigod.
The syllogism in question was about religion.
Quoting Fooloso4
And if the two of you want to make ad personams, then at least have the decency to consider _all_ of what I say on a topic, instead of just selecting out a few sentences and ridiculing them, beating your chests like gorillaz.
Let's stop debating generalizing atheists and religious people.
We can always tell an asshole apart from a good person despite our philosophical disagreements on morality
Yes, they mean something by there words, but that does not mean that there must be some actual object that corresponds to the words.
Quoting baker
You've lost track of the argument:
Quoting baker
Quoting baker
First, whether or not the second premise is true or false it is a syllogism, and thus demonstrates that God's justice cannot be concluded syllogistically.
Second, if the second premise is false then you are denying that there is injustice in the world. Now, you say:
Quoting baker
So, the second premise is not false after all.
Not my problem. I only go where the syllogism takes me.
No, you keep mixing discourses, mixing the argument prodived by religion with the one provided by you.
God is defined as just to begin with. I'm not going to argue with definitions, for crying out loud.
And what did I say after that? I sed:
Quoting baker
It's one thing to make arguments about religion from the perspective of said religion,
and quite another from one's own personal perspective.
The latter is irrelevant to the validity of the religious argument. Its soundness is another matter (and mostly moot, as far as religious claims go.)
[Edit: if] in response to my question:
Quoting Fooloso4
you had responded that it is not something you know but something you accept as a matter of faith, that would have been the end of it. But instead you attempt to demonstrate that it is something you know syllogistically. And so, it becomes something to be examined by reason not religion,
No, that's backwards.
Terms like "theist" and "atheist" are defined similarly as, say, geometric shapes, ie. "in advance". We learn that, for example, a square is "a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles)". That's how we recognize that the black and white fields on a chess board are squares.
One doesn't derive the meaning of the term "theist" based on generalizing what self-professed Tom Theist, Dick Theist, and Harry Theist have in common, but on an abstract definition that is independent of Tom, Dick, and Harry. And similar for "atheist", "religious", and so on.
Sure.
With the caveat, of course, that I can only asses the validity of religious arguments, not their soundness. The soundness of religious arguments is a grey area to me.