Resolved: For God to have genuine moral authority, S/He must be comprehensible to mortals.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Note: For purposes of this discussion, let's assume that God--by which I mean a supernatural, immortal creator more powerful than the rest of the universe combined--actually exists. We're not assuming that God is omnipotent in the sense of "able to accomplish anything that canbe described in words", because as many have pointed out ere this, that notion is inherently self-contradictory. Nor are we necessarily attributing any sort of "infinity" to this deity; just supreme power and knowledge. If you cannot make that imaginative leap--well, I can't actually prevent you from posting in the thread, but I'm mystified as to why you would bother.

In some branches of Christianity there is a doctrine known as Total Depravity. Briefly, TD means that humans are so spiritually blind and twisted as a result of the Fall of Man that, absent God's grace, we are not only capable of consistently doing good, but in fact lack the capacity to comprehend good. God's white is our black; much, if not all, of what we consider moral and right is in fact unutterably wicked and vile, and we are incapable of understanding why without first surrendering our moral and spiritual autonomy to the Deity.

I say this notion is incoherent. For if Man is incapable of making any reliable judgment, then there is no reason for us to choose God over His Adversary except for fear fo the consequences. In a C.S. Lewis apology I am too lazy to look up, he puts it something like "we might as well obey an omnipotent fiend." I think Lewis is basically correct here. If God exists, and wishes us to follow his moral precepts because of the rightness fo the precepts themselves, then He must create us with the capacity to understand Him and his precepts, at least in part.

Anyone care to argue the contrary?

[AClockworkMelon]

My counter argument:

Your thread title is incomprehensible to me and thus your argument is wrong.

:D

I'm just kidding. You know I agree.

[Revenant Threshold]

If I recall correctly, Lewis sort of partially agrees with you. One of his positions was that knowledge of and direct consideration of a God isn't strictly necessary in order to lead a moral or worthy life; if one acts in a good way, then those acts serve a good God even if they aren't done explicitly or even knowingly in that God's name. So in that sense, I think his answer to the question might well be that we don't have to understand God; understanding and doing what is moral is enough.

Of course, that still leaves half the problem.

[Meatros]

Note: For purposes of this discussion, let's assume that God--by which I mean a supernatural, immortal creator more powerful than the rest of the universe combined--actually exists. We're not assuming that God is omnipotent in the sense of "able to accomplish anything that canbe described in words", because as many have pointed out ere this, that notion is inherently self-contradictory. Nor are we necessarily attributing any sort of "infinity" to this deity; just supreme power and knowledge. If you cannot make that imaginative leap--well, I can't actually prevent you from posting in the thread, but I'm mystified as to why you would bother.

So what does this mean for morality? Does God simply *know* what is moral (ie, morality does not depend on him)? Or is what God decree's is moral (which is necessarily subjective)?

In some branches of Christianity there is a doctrine known as Total Depravity. Briefly, TD means that humans are so spiritually blind and twisted as a result of the Fall of Man that, absent God's grace, we are not only capable of consistently doing good, but in fact lack the capacity to comprehend good. God's white is our black; much, if not all, of what we consider moral and right is in fact unutterably wicked and vile, and we are incapable of understanding why without first surrendering our moral and spiritual autonomy to the Deity.

Is it that we can't comprehend good or that we can do not good? The reason I ask is that because if it's the former, we could *accidentally* do good I suppose...

I say this notion is incoherent. For if Man is incapable of making any reliable judgment, then there is no reason for us to choose God over His Adversary except for fear fo the consequences. In a C.S. Lewis apology I am too lazy to look up, he puts it something like "we might as well obey an omnipotent fiend." I think Lewis is basically correct here. If God exists, and wishes us to follow his moral precepts because of the rightness fo the precepts themselves, then He must create us with the capacity to understand Him and his precepts, at least in part.

Anyone care to argue the contrary?

I agree with your reasoning - although I'd say that if we are TD it would even mess with our fear of consequences. Why would we know it's a *good* think not to be damned?

[Voyager]

I think we can weaken your requirement. Instead of God being totally comprehensible, why not have only that subset of God which interacts with us be comprehensible? No matter how the full god works, if the moral directive we see is inconsistent and self-contradictory, then we have no moral guidance to speak of.
The simple example is God being against murder while at the same time directing some of his people to slaughter their enemies. It doesn't matter if this is explicable in an unknowable god - for us it means we have so many exceptions to rules that we can do as we wish. Now, God could give us detailed rules governing every possibility. ("The road is clear - it is okay to speed" appearing on your windshield in letters of fire) but this has little to do with moral authority or free moral will.

[Skald the Rhymer]

I think we can weaken your requirement. Instead of God being totally comprehensible, why not have only that subset of God which interacts with us be comprehensible?.

That's rather what I meant. I don't demand the hypothetical God be ENTIRELY comprehensible to mortals; but if God is so different from us that we cannot possibly fathom the reasoning behind the notion that rape, murder, and theft being considered immoral, then there is no reason other than fear for us to obey God; and, as the Lesser Perfersser opined, "we might as well worship an omnipotent fiend."

[AHunter3]

Sure, I'll ratify your thesis.

"Good", as identified by some external authority (whether it be God or Church or State or Wise Guru), cannot be embraced by me as the Good if I do not comprehend it to be so; otherwise I'm accepting this external authority as the Good-by-proxy, and to believe that doing so is, itself, a good idea means I must make my own assessment of authority's own goodness (and wisdom and so on). Or else punt and accept the claim made by Authority 2 that Authority 1 is good and wise and should be obeyed / believed / followed, and that doesn't get me anywhere because I need a basis for accepting the word of Authority 2.

[Zoe]

I would find a totally comprehensible God to be pretty mundane and earthbound.

And I'm not sure what knowledge of God has to do with morality.

[Skald the Rhymer]

I would find a totally comprehensible God to be pretty mundane and earthbound.


And I believe I specified comprehensible in part.


And I'm not sure what knowledge of God has to do with morality.

And I'm not sure you read the OP.

[cosmosdan]

Within what time frame should we be able to comprehend?


I might suggest that mankinds quest and redefining of things like justice, human rights, equality etc indicates we are on our way to comprehending moreover, are drawn toward that comprehension in such a way that we are constantly, although slowly, improving the human condition.

[Ají de Gallina]

Comprehensible: Yes
Fully comprehensible: Not.
He must show us at least the highlight-reel of what we should do adn some way to get some extra data.
Comprehensible does not mean fully provable by science.

[Voyager]

And I'm not sure what knowledge of God has to do with morality.

I'll try to rephrase it, perhaps incorrectly. (Ever since I read That Hideous Strength C. S. Lewis has been incomprehensible to me.

If morality corresponds to God's wishes, and we don't know or comprehend God, we are unable to act morally in any consistent way. If we ask ourselves before making an ethical decision what God would want us to do, we can come up with justification for both answers. We are thus thrown back to using the ethical sense we learn from society or have inborn.

An analogy. Say you have a calculator which you want to use as a mathematical authority. If you want to know what 4758494504545 / 34343 is, you type it in. If it is comprehensible, that is follows a set of arithmetic rules, it is a good authority. If it is not comprehensible - perhaps it gives a different answer to the problem depending on variables you don't understand - relative humidity, temperature, the Dow Jones, it is not an authority - at least until you learn what the rules are.

[jtgain]

I'll try to rephrase it, perhaps incorrectly. (Ever since I read That Hideous Strength C. S. Lewis has been incomprehensible to me.

If morality corresponds to God's wishes, and we don't know or comprehend God, we are unable to act morally in any consistent way. If we ask ourselves before making an ethical decision what God would want us to do, we can come up with justification for both answers. We are thus thrown back to using the ethical sense we learn from society or have inborn.

An analogy. Say you have a calculator which you want to use as a mathematical authority. If you want to know what 4758494504545 / 34343 is, you type it in. If it is comprehensible, that is follows a set of arithmetic rules, it is a good authority. If it is not comprehensible - perhaps it gives a different answer to the problem depending on variables you don't understand - relative humidity, temperature, the Dow Jones, it is not an authority - at least until you learn what the rules are.

Isn't this the basis of most sects of Christianity?

That for possibly these very reasons, or because of other unknown ones, we will fall short of perfect morality, so we need the sacrifice for these sins that Jesus provided in order to be "complete" or to get into heaven.

While, at the same time, we continually strive to attempt to discern what is right/wrong. Others in this thread simply say that "God wouldn't do it that way" when what they really mean is "If I were God, then I wouldn't do it that way".

Well, you aren't. So, if there is a God that is all knowing and all powerful, he will certainly have a level of understanding that is above our own, no?

[Squink]

Even to the biggest schlub on the planet, or is there some threshold level of human smartness that permits God to be declared comprehensible to us all?

[Grumman]

In some branches of Christianity there is a doctrine known as Total Depravity. Briefly, TD means that humans are so spiritually blind and twisted as a result of the Fall of Man that, absent God's grace, we are not only capable of consistently doing good, but in fact lack the capacity to comprehend good. God's white is our black; much, if not all, of what we consider moral and right is in fact unutterably wicked and vile, and we are incapable of understanding why without first surrendering our moral and spiritual autonomy to the Deity.
This sounds like a particularly dangerous form of the Argument from Incredulity. It is an admission that they are incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, incorrectly ascribed to the entire population. If such branches exist, they are apparently filled with sociopaths, only held in check by the desires of their leader.

Total Depravity is not talking about good and evil, but orthodoxy and heresy. The beliefs of God are irrelevant as to whether an act is good or not.

[Der Trihs]

I agree. If God's motives and morality are as incomprehensible as some believers claim, then there's no real difference between following God and following Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth. You're following something you can't understand, something that is entirely alien to you, and has equally alien goals. In order for something to have moral authority, it needs to be possible to know if its moral or not.

[Voyager]

Isn't this the basis of most sects of Christianity?

That for possibly these very reasons, or because of other unknown ones, we will fall short of perfect morality, so we need the sacrifice for these sins that Jesus provided in order to be "complete" or to get into heaven.

While, at the same time, we continually strive to attempt to discern what is right/wrong. Others in this thread simply say that "God wouldn't do it that way" when what they really mean is "If I were God, then I wouldn't do it that way".

Well, you aren't. So, if there is a God that is all knowing and all powerful, he will certainly have a level of understanding that is above our own, no?

If God made us so that we could never be perfect, then God has no right to condemn us for it. If God made us so that we can avoid sin, but doesn't tell us what sin is, he also cannot condemn us.

This has nothing to do with how we would design the world. And the guy who designed the calculator has an understanding above those who try to use it. That doesn't make it a good calculator, and that doesn't make the Christian world in any way moral or even reasonable.

[Voyager]

This sounds like a particularly dangerous form of the Argument from Incredulity. It is an admission that they are incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, incorrectly ascribed to the entire population. If such branches exist, they are apparently filled with sociopaths, only held in check by the desires of their leader.

If various sets of believers disagree if a certain action is good or evil, how is anyone expected to always be able to distinguish this? Don't confuse being able to solve the easy ethical problems with always being able to figure out what is right.

[Rhythmdvl]

Is this a form of: is an act pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love an act because it's pious? Or wasn't there a philosopher who approached the internal/external question of morality/ethics by positing classes of knowers and super-knowers?

If The Good stems from God--and one accepts that as part of the premise--then I'm not sure comphensibility must be a factor, total or not.

We just had a kid. The Dudeling is less than a year old, so isn't much to him yet. But shortly, he will be at a stage where he is responsive and toddling about. All of his moral guidance will come from us. At this stage, he will have no intuitive sense of right/wrong and will lack the capacity to understand the rules we're setting out. All he will be able to comprehend is the reaction (emotional and otherwise) that comes from his parents. The Dudeling has an awareness, has a burgeoning concept of self and self-determination, but is so limited in capacity as to warrant rote following of our 'rules'.

Isn't the theistic argument that despite our pretenses at sophistication we cannot truly comprehend our part or interaction with the universe? I believe much of this line of thought transcends traditional religion and is somewhat conceptually shared by Buddhism and other eastern thought traditions.

That we have a sense of morality down here does not make total comprehension a requirement. That all secular moral laws can be derived from purely secular sources suggests the capacity to appreciate the wider picture of morality; it doesn't supplant it. So basic rules such as don't kill, don't steal, etc. don't need to be divinely comprehensible--they can be in accord with divine will, but not necessarily stem from it.

But then there are the absurd-seeming theological laws. Don't bugger thy neighbor. WTF is up with that? Some people like doing that. There is absolutely no ifs ands or butts (heh) about it; from a secular, rational viewpoint, there is no morality involved. Yet following a rule stemming from faith does not require understanding it; just the faith that this particular source of morality has established the morality of an act. Just as I don't expect the Dudeling to understand every rule we set out for the time being, it is rational to match faith with trust and follow the guidance of what you understand to be the divine lawgiver.

[Grumman]

If various sets of believers disagree if a certain action is good or evil, how is anyone expected to always be able to distinguish this?
By looking at what harm the action causes, not consulting with fictional characters.

[Rhythmdvl]

By looking at what harm the action causes, not consulting with fictional characters.Don't fight the hypothetical. Read the first line of the OP.

[Grumman]

Don't fight the hypothetical. Read the first line of the OP.
It applies just as well if God really did exist: God's definitions of good and evil are only valid as long as they agree with the real world definitions. If God says that a non-evil act is evil, or that an evil act is not evil, then God is wrong.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Don't fight the hypothetical. Read the first line of the OP.

I don't think that was quite fighting the hypothetical. The OP is only granting the existence of a creator God, not the truth of any particular scripture or myth.

[Rhythmdvl]

It applies just as well if God really did exist: God's definitions of good and evil are only valid as long as they agree with the real world definitions. If God says that a non-evil act is evil, or that an evil act is not evil, then God is wrong.

That's the assertion the OP is asking about.

If God's definitions don't align with "real world" definitions, if they're incomprehensible to you, why is it wrong?

A two-year-old or the clinically insane do not understand the moral implications of their act. Accountability aside (i.e., the absurd notions of putting two-year-olds and the insane in jail, or damning someone to hell for chanting the wrong slogan), does a patently immoral act become amoral or moral merely because the child/psychopath does not know why the acts are wrong? Those of us in the God-like position of comprehending the why of a moral rule do not change our opinion of the morality of an act, and just as strongly expect those who don't to adhere to the rule.


ETA:
I don't think that was quite fighting the hypothetical. The OP is only granting the existence of a creator God, not the truth of any particular scripture or myth.You began with the premise that god exists; he referred to fictional characters. It's the existence/fictionality that bucks against the OP, not whether or not the assumed-to-exist deity is right or wrong.

[Blaster Master]

Note: For purposes of this discussion, let's assume that God--by which I mean a supernatural, immortal creator more powerful than the rest of the universe combined--actually exists. We're not assuming that God is omnipotent in the sense of "able to accomplish anything that canbe described in words", because as many have pointed out ere this, that notion is inherently self-contradictory. Nor are we necessarily attributing any sort of "infinity" to this deity; just supreme power and knowledge. If you cannot make that imaginative leap--well, I can't actually prevent you from posting in the thread, but I'm mystified as to why you would bother.

In some branches of Christianity there is a doctrine known as Total Depravity. Briefly, TD means that humans are so spiritually blind and twisted as a result of the Fall of Man that, absent God's grace, we are not only capable of consistently doing good, but in fact lack the capacity to comprehend good. God's white is our black; much, if not all, of what we consider moral and right is in fact unutterably wicked and vile, and we are incapable of understanding why without first surrendering our moral and spiritual autonomy to the Deity.

I say this notion is incoherent. For if Man is incapable of making any reliable judgment, then there is no reason for us to choose God over His Adversary except for fear fo the consequences. In a C.S. Lewis apology I am too lazy to look up, he puts it something like "we might as well obey an omnipotent fiend." I think Lewis is basically correct here. If God exists, and wishes us to follow his moral precepts because of the rightness fo the precepts themselves, then He must create us with the capacity to understand Him and his precepts, at least in part.

I do not subscribe to the doctrine of TD, however, it seems as though your argument is self-contradictory to me. To argue simultaneously that God has supreme knowledge (though not necessarily assuming omniscience) and that he cannot have moral superiority because we cannot comprehend him seems... off. If he has superior knowledge, then it seems simultaneously possible that he is both incomprehensible and knows more about morality than us.

I saw this example in one of the posts, but it was pretty much what I was going to say anyway, but using a young child in comparison to his parents is exactly a counter-example to your argument. Relative to the child, the parent has supreme knowledge and much of that is not comprehensible to him, and yet he is also a moral authority.


So what does this mean for morality? Does God simply *know* what is moral (ie, morality does not depend on him)? Or is what God decree's is moral (which is necessarily subjective)?

I want to comment on this because I think this is actually a general non-theistic view of morality that causes a lot of confusion. Basically, to me, this question doesn't make sense. That is, it makes an assumption that there is some sort of ordinal relationship between morality and God. What we have to keep in mind is that, as the creator, then from our perspective both have always existed and are inseparable. Thus, to say that God simply knows what is moral or that he decreed morality just doesn't make sense.

[Der Trihs]

I do not subscribe to the doctrine of TD, however, it seems as though your argument is self-contradictory to me. To argue simultaneously that God has supreme knowledge (though not necessarily assuming omniscience) and that he cannot have moral superiority because we cannot comprehend him seems... off. If he has superior knowledge, then it seems simultaneously possible that he is both incomprehensible and knows more about morality than us.The point being made is that his "superior knowledge" doesn't matter if we can't tell if he IS moral or not. Presumably Satan and Cthulhu also would have superior knowledge and are also both beyond our comprehension as well. How do we decide which of the three is actually moral if we can't understand any of them?

I saw this example in one of the posts, but it was pretty much what I was going to say anyway, but using a young child in comparison to his parents is exactly a counter-example to your argument. Relative to the child, the parent has supreme knowledge and much of that is not comprehensible to him, and yet he is also a moral authority.No, the parent is supposed to be a moral authority - but quite often is nothing of the kind. The child cannot tell if the parent is actually moral or not. That example just underlines the problems with using something you don't understand as a moral guide.

I want to comment on this because I think this is actually a general non-theistic view of morality that causes a lot of confusion. Basically, to me, this question doesn't make sense. That is, it makes an assumption that there is some sort of ordinal relationship between morality and God. What we have to keep in mind is that, as the creator, then from our perspective both have always existed and are inseparable. Thus, to say that God simply knows what is moral or that he decreed morality just doesn't make sense.If I understand what you are saying, then you are missing the point; how do we know that God is moral at all if we don't understand him?

[Voyager]

It applies just as well if God really did exist: God's definitions of good and evil are only valid as long as they agree with the real world definitions. If God says that a non-evil act is evil, or that an evil act is not evil, then God is wrong.

True. Immoral gods are not good moral guides. If you believe in Zeus, the do not commit adultery rule goes right out the window. But if, for the purpose of the discussion, we posit that morality comes from god, then we're screwed because we don't know God's definition of good and evil except in very limited cases. mostly having to deal with sheep. And no matter what we choose some clown is going to wave scriptures around and tell us we're wrong.

[Voyager]

Is this a form of: is an act pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love an act because it's pious? Or wasn't there a philosopher who approached the internal/external question of morality/ethics by positing classes of knowers and super-knowers?

If The Good stems from God--and one accepts that as part of the premise--then I'm not sure comphensibility must be a factor, total or not.

But the problem is that we don't know if the gods love an act or not. All the gods I know are silent on violent video games.

We just had a kid. The Dudeling is less than a year old, so isn't much to him yet. But shortly, he will be at a stage where he is responsive and toddling about. All of his moral guidance will come from us. At this stage, he will have no intuitive sense of right/wrong and will lack the capacity to understand the rules we're setting out. All he will be able to comprehend is the reaction (emotional and otherwise) that comes from his parents. The Dudeling has an awareness, has a burgeoning concept of self and self-determination, but is so limited in capacity as to warrant rote following of our 'rules'.

Right, and you are giving him constant feedback, and will be doing so for the next 20 years (and more.) Your feedback will suit the current situation, and you will make exceptions to and refine the simple rules as time goes on. Do you think you'd be as effective if you give one set of rules now and never speak to him again?

That we have a sense of morality down here does not make total comprehension a requirement. That all secular moral laws can be derived from purely secular sources suggests the capacity to appreciate the wider picture of morality; it doesn't supplant it. So basic rules such as don't kill, don't steal, etc. don't need to be divinely comprehensible--they can be in accord with divine will, but not necessarily stem from it.

Don't kill - except in self defense and in time of war and maybe to prevent harm to another. Don't steal - unless your child is starving. We clearly have an inborn sense of morality we can see in other primates, and we have a culturally ingrained sense we got from the evolution of our society. That just gives a broad outline of what most of us think is right, which is what we'd predict from a secular origin of morals. All all-knowing god can be more precise - but he hasn't been, which is yet another reason not to believe in his existence.

[Voyager]

I don't think that was quite fighting the hypothetical. The OP is only granting the existence of a creator God, not the truth of any particular scripture or myth.

True, but there isn't much of a discussion if the god doesn't pretend to be a moral authority, and is just powerful.

[Voyager]

I saw this example in one of the posts, but it was pretty much what I was going to say anyway, but using a young child in comparison to his parents is exactly a counter-example to your argument. Relative to the child, the parent has supreme knowledge and much of that is not comprehensible to him, and yet he is also a moral authority.

You are assuming a good parent here. Parents have what seems like moral authority from power. What if the child goes to the baby sitter and learns some other type (say the parent is teaching bigotry and the sitter tries to teach equality.) And, as all parents know, our moral authority evaporates over time, and we move from god to mentor and adviser.

Now, if you want to say God's moral authority comes from power alone, fine. But notice how in the case of almost every religion the development of ethics over time (analogous to the experience a child gets outside the home) have resulted in revisions to the supposedly perfect moral code of the religion. Various explanations are given: we weren't ready for the new code, we always really meant the new morals, but the old ones were misinterpreted) but the fact is that if God has a perfect and complete moral code, he sure hasn't shared it with us.


I want to comment on this because I think this is actually a general non-theistic view of morality that causes a lot of confusion. Basically, to me, this question doesn't make sense. That is, it makes an assumption that there is some sort of ordinal relationship between morality and God. What we have to keep in mind is that, as the creator, then from our perspective both have always existed and are inseparable. Thus, to say that God simply knows what is moral or that he decreed morality just doesn't make sense.

I don't understand your objection. Does God simply have the ability to read some complete moral code which is inherent in the universe - in which case he is bound by it and not actually God. Or does he make up morals, and arbitrarily impose them upon us by his power, in which case they are arbitrary and no more moral than the legal code of a dictatorship. This argument of course comes from Bertrand Russell.

[Bryan Ekers]

All's I can say is that I have no intention of accepting a moral authority that hasn't proven itself worthy of the title (and the first step would be a mere demonstration of existence), though I recognize that my thoughts on the matter might change after a drug-, fever- or concussion-induced epiphanic moment.

[Damuri Ajashi]

If he has superior knowledge, then it seems simultaneously possible that he is both incomprehensible and knows more about morality than us.

He could also be mistaken and subject to learned biases.

I saw this example in one of the posts, but it was pretty much what I was going to say anyway, but using a young child in comparison to his parents is exactly a counter-example to your argument. Relative to the child, the parent has supreme knowledge and much of that is not comprehensible to him, and yet he is also a moral authority.

My dad's admonishment not to steal was insdistinguishable from the admonishment not to date outside my race. It took a while before I was able to figure out that the first one made sense and the second one only made sense if you grew up in the 1950's.

Thus, to say that God simply knows what is moral or that he decreed morality just doesn't make sense.

You would have to assume God's moral perfection for a lot of this stuff to make sense.

[Damuri Ajashi]

If I understand what you are saying, then you are missing the point; how do we know that God is moral at all if we don't understand him?

Well, we understand him a little bit don't we?

If you believe the bible, God gave us free will. I think the knowledge of good and evil is the inevitable result of free will regardless of whether or not we ate from teh tree of knowledge (which oddly enough only gives knowledge of good and evil, you would think something like transporter technology would be more useful). In any event, our ability to differentiate between good and evil is what I would call morality and while you can argue that God's sense of morality is more developed than ours or operates on a more macro scale than ours it is hard to say that God's morality is as alien to us as Cthuhlu. After all, we both eat from the same tree.

[Der Trihs]

In any event, our ability to differentiate between good and evil is what I would call morality and while you can argue that God's sense of morality is more developed than ours or operates on a more macro scale than ours it is hard to say that God's morality is as alien to us as Cthuhlu. Except that believers often do claim that God's morality is totally alien to ours, as the OP points out.

[Damuri Ajashi]

But the problem is that we don't know if the gods love an act or not. All the gods I know are silent on violent video games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_War_(video_game)

Don't kill - except in self defense and in time of war and maybe to prevent harm to another. Don't steal - unless your child is starving. We clearly have an inborn sense of morality we can see in other primates, and we have a culturally ingrained sense we got from the evolution of our society. That just gives a broad outline of what most of us think is right, which is what we'd predict from a secular origin of morals. All all-knowing god can be more precise - but he hasn't been, which is yet another reason not to believe in his existence.

How much of that is learned. Even primates have societies with rules. The whole don't steal unless you child is starving isn't even particularly universal except in recent history.

But if you do beleive in an innate morality, where does that morality come from? Is it genetic?

[Skald the Rhymer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_War_(video_game)



How much of that is learned. Even primates have societies with rules. The whole don't steal unless you child is starving isn't even particularly universal except in recent history.

But if you do beleive in an innate morality, where does that morality come from? Is it genetic?

Rhymer Rule 18-f requires me to point out that humans are primates no less than rhesus monkeys. Hell, we're no less apes than chimpanzees.

[Damuri Ajashi]

Except that believers often do claim that God's morality is totally alien to ours, as the OP points out.

I don't think that is what they are saying, certainly the commandments (at least most of them) are consistent with our own sense of morality. The alien morality issue most frequently comes up when we have to explain why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people. That is when we start saying "we do not understand because we are incapable of understanding"

I can explain away a lot of this stuff with the exercise of free will and with God's greater purpose but if we can understand why murder is wrong then why can't we understand why children must die of childhood diseases. Is it teaching us a lesson that we would not be able to learn if we knew it was a lesson? I don't have an easy answer to that one. The implication is either that God is not as omniscient or omnipotent as some people believe or that he is indeed so alien to us that we are obeying him only because we fear him and we believe that we have some idea of how to make him happy

[Voyager]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_War_(video_game)

My video game mastery ended with the Atari 2600.


How much of that is learned. Even primates have societies with rules. The whole don't steal unless you child is starving isn't even particularly universal except in recent history.

But if you do beleive in an innate morality, where does that morality come from? Is it genetic?
As I think I said in another response, some is genetic and some is social. Besides (other) primates, evidence for a genetic basis is the variation in innate morality we see in the population. There are people who have no trouble committing acts which most of us would never do. If some sort of God had imbued us with morality, why the variation? Our secular society knows not to judge insane sociopaths the same as sane people - we have to protect ourselves from them, but no amount of moral education seems to help them.

[Blaster Master]

The point being made is that his "superior knowledge" doesn't matter if we can't tell if he IS moral or not. Presumably Satan and Cthulhu also would have superior knowledge and are also both beyond our comprehension as well. How do we decide which of the three is actually moral if we can't understand any of them?

Running on this, sure, all three would be beyond our comprehension, but I don't think that means that we're unable to make any sort of meaningful judgment about them and their moralities. That is like saying that we are unable to grasp the true nature of infinity, therefore, we cannot do any mathematics which involve infinities. And yet, we can.

The fundamental difference is that the "moralities" of Satan are fundamentally inconsistent with observable and derivable moralities. For instance, I would consider murder to be a fairly straightforward derivable morality, and yet this stance is in opposition to him, thus it is fair to reject his principles.

No, the parent is supposed to be a moral authority - but quite often is nothing of the kind. The child cannot tell if the parent is actually moral or not. That example just underlines the problems with using something you don't understand as a moral guide.

And this is, IMO, one of the fundamental flaws that most parents make. A child may not understand the full implications of a particular moral decision, but a child is usually capable of understanding it at some level. Parents who use "because I said so" are utterly failing in that responsibility.

If I understand what you are saying, then you are missing the point; how do we know that God is moral at all if we don't understand him?

I was disputing the ordinality of morality and God as to whether there is some universal morality that God must obey or whether it is something that he simply decrees. Neither of these possibilities makes sense to me because ordinality is a meaningless concept in that context.



You are assuming a good parent here. Parents have what seems like moral authority from power. What if the child goes to the baby sitter and learns some other type (say the parent is teaching bigotry and the sitter tries to teach equality.) And, as all parents know, our moral authority evaporates over time, and we move from god to mentor and adviser.

This feeds back into what I said above... I think it is the responsibility of a moral authority not just to ensure that one knows what the rules are, but has some understanding of why they are that way. A parent who says "stealing is wrong, because I said so" hasn't done anything to teach morality. Because, in the end, morality doesn't live like that. To me, morality isn't about a series of absolute rules, but a set of examples on some curve of high dimensionality that allows us to derive the model and apply it to a multitude of situations.


I think there's also a further assumption that a God of supreme knowledge would necessarily be far beyond even the most knowledgable human. If we are able to derive a reasonable approximation of morality, then his knowledge would provide him with the ability to model it to a greater degree of accuracy. To carry this to your example, the only reason God would, say, support bigotry would be either he doesn't know better (which violates one of the premises of the OP) or he knows and is deliberately deceitful, but then is unable to fulfill his obligation other than relying on appealling to his superiority.

Now, if you want to say God's moral authority comes from power alone, fine. But notice how in the case of almost every religion the development of ethics over time (analogous to the experience a child gets outside the home) have resulted in revisions to the supposedly perfect moral code of the religion. Various explanations are given: we weren't ready for the new code, we always really meant the new morals, but the old ones were misinterpreted) but the fact is that if God has a perfect and complete moral code, he sure hasn't shared it with us.

I disagree, and I think this comes down to a fundamental difference in how we view morality. I don't believe the moral code has changed at all but rather our ability to understand it has grown, just like a growing child. For instance, I imagine most parents would tell a 2-year-old that stealing is wrong, but when the kid grows a little older, that same parent may reveal some intricacies that it's not necessarily wrong if one is stealing to feed a hungry family. The underlying rule didn't change here, but the level of the child's ability to understand, and thus the ability of the moral authority to explain the rule, is improved, and thus the underlying model of the child is improved.

I think many of the rules of religion have followed similar patterns. The 10 commands, being among the most famous, is an early example of some very broad rules of thumb that are a reasonable approximation for the ability of that culture to understand within the context of their lives. That our model of morality has changed since then, given our vast increase in knowledge, is expected. In fact, to argue otherwise is like arguing that the fundamental nature of the universe changed at some point between Newton and Einstein. Simply because our understanding has changed does not mean the underlying true nature is any different.

I don't understand your objection. Does God simply have the ability to read some complete moral code which is inherent in the universe - in which case he is bound by it and not actually God. Or does he make up morals, and arbitrarily impose them upon us by his power, in which case they are arbitrary and no more moral than the legal code of a dictatorship. This argument of course comes from Bertrand Russell.

Neither. This is exactly what I was arguing against, is that this dichomoty is nonsensical.

My dad's admonishment not to steal was insdistinguishable from the admonishment not to date outside my race. It took a while before I was able to figure out that the first one made sense and the second one only made sense if you grew up in the 1950's.

This, I think, reenforces my point above that our ability to understand morality is not static. In this case, you later derived a morality that was inconsistent with his, so you were correct to reject him as a moral authority.


You would have to assume God's moral perfection for a lot of this stuff to make sense.

On an assumption of omniscience and omnipotence, yes. In fact, in my view, I have trouble seeing it effectively possibly that omnimax could be anything but. In this case, though, we don't have those as assumptions. However, from supreme knowledge, I do think it's fair to infer that he would also have a superior understanding of morality. Of course, one can argue, that one can have a superior understanding of morality and still choose not to abide. However, saying that superior knowledge means we are unable to detect that choice seems dubious to me.

[Damuri Ajashi]

My video game mastery ended with the Atari 2600.

mastery? Pffft!

As I think I said in another response, some is genetic and some is social. Besides (other) primates, evidence for a genetic basis is the variation in innate morality we see in the population. There are people who have no trouble committing acts which most of us would never do. If some sort of God had imbued us with morality, why the variation? Our secular society knows not to judge insane sociopaths the same as sane people - we have to protect ourselves from them, but no amount of moral education seems to help them.

They are evil or insane. I have not seen any evidence that morality (as opposed to empathy) can be inate.

[Voyager]

They are evil or insane. I have not seen any evidence that morality (as opposed to empathy) can be inate.

They are evil because they do evil things, the definition of which is under discussion. Both a mad killer and an Aztec priest cuts out the hearts from living people, but one is condemned as a monster and the other has a high social position. Is the act inherently evil, or is it evil in context. And before you condemn too much, think of what a person in a purely vegetarian culture would say about us.

Empathy is a building block of morality. Like I said, detailed moral rules are certainly not genetic, just general principles, of which empathy is one. Same problem - if the Golden Rule (an expression of empathy) was so important, God could have built it in to everyone.

[Voyager]

This feeds back into what I said above... I think it is the responsibility of a moral authority not just to ensure that one knows what the rules are, but has some understanding of why they are that way. A parent who says "stealing is wrong, because I said so" hasn't done anything to teach morality. Because, in the end, morality doesn't live like that. To me, morality isn't about a series of absolute rules, but a set of examples on some curve of high dimensionality that allows us to derive the model and apply it to a multitude of situations.

So, you expect justification for moral rules. So do I, but this makes them basically secular. There is a big difference between God as a super ethics professor who is better at explaining things to us and God as the arbiter of morality. I don't know if Skald would consider the ethics prof god as a genuine arbiter of morality or not.
I also have to add that none of the gods we have seen to a really good job of explaining of justifying morality.
If you define morality as a curve, I'd say that the order of that curve is so great that it is hard to distinguish it from randomly plotted points. Did God create the curve from scratch, or is he fitting it to some pre-established data points. If the former, why didn't he make it simpler, if the latter, where does the evaluation of these points as good or bad come from?

I think there's also a further assumption that a God of supreme knowledge would necessarily be far beyond even the most knowledgable human. If we are able to derive a reasonable approximation of morality, then his knowledge would provide him with the ability to model it to a greater degree of accuracy. To carry this to your example, the only reason God would, say, support bigotry would be either he doesn't know better (which violates one of the premises of the OP) or he knows and is deliberately deceitful, but then is unable to fulfill his obligation other than relying on appealling to his superiority.


Here you are assuming that bigotry is bad - not an unreasonable assumption, but one which is fundamentally atheistic. Not atheistic in the sense that only atheists are not bigots, but atheistic in a sense that bigotry is bad without reference to god, and that if a god seemed to be a bigot, it must be from deceit. If God truly sets or interprets morality, how do you know that bigotry isn't moral under some specific interpretations of the curve?

I disagree, and I think this comes down to a fundamental difference in how we view morality. I don't believe the moral code has changed at all but rather our ability to understand it has grown, just like a growing child. For instance, I imagine most parents would tell a 2-year-old that stealing is wrong, but when the kid grows a little older, that same parent may reveal some intricacies that it's not necessarily wrong if one is stealing to feed a hungry family. The underlying rule didn't change here, but the level of the child's ability to understand, and thus the ability of the moral authority to explain the rule, is improved, and thus the underlying model of the child is improved.

I think many of the rules of religion have followed similar patterns. The 10 commands, being among the most famous, is an early example of some very broad rules of thumb that are a reasonable approximation for the ability of that culture to understand within the context of their lives. That our model of morality has changed since then, given our vast increase in knowledge, is expected. In fact, to argue otherwise is like arguing that the fundamental nature of the universe changed at some point between Newton and Einstein. Simply because our understanding has changed does not mean the underlying true nature is any different.

Do you have evidence that our fundamental ability to understand morality has grown?
The 10 Commandments, to use my calculator analogy again, are like arithmetic with numbers <= 10. The calculator may get them all right, but that doesn't prove arithmetic with bigger numbers is correct.
Plus, while most Christians only know the 10 Commandments, the number of actual moral instructions in that part of the Bible, and their complexity, would make your head spin. I was not brought up Orthodox, but I do know the rituals are extremely complex, and all based on morality, in the sense of being God's commands. The writers of the Mishna and the Talmud would be quite insulted by you saying they didn't understand the complexities of morality - I rather suspect that if they were around today they'd kick all our butts in GD. No, I reject that we are like growing children in this regard.


Neither. This is exactly what I was arguing against, is that this dichomoty is nonsensical.

It appears to me that you are arguing for the first position. Call it a complex morality curve, call it a pre-existing moral code, same thing.

[Meatros]

I want to comment on this because I think this is actually a general non-theistic view of morality that causes a lot of confusion. Basically, to me, this question doesn't make sense. That is, it makes an assumption that there is some sort of ordinal relationship between morality and God. What we have to keep in mind is that, as the creator, then from our perspective both have always existed and are inseparable. Thus, to say that God simply knows what is moral or that he decreed morality just doesn't make sense.

I'm not sure what you mean here - why are they inseparable? Further you don't seem to be addressing the basics of the question, what is the ontological relation of morality with God?

You state later:

I was disputing the ordinality of morality and God as to whether there is some universal morality that God must obey or whether it is something that he simply decrees. Neither of these possibilities makes sense to me because ordinality is a meaningless concept in that context.

Which, to me, seems that you are rejecting both horns of the Euthyrpho (sp?) dilemma. That's fine, of course, but exactly what are you suggesting? You can't simply reject them without explaining the solution, if you want to say that objective morality somehow depends on God's existence.

Are you going the route of "morality springs from God's nature"?