Another interesting theological point:
Take the 10 commanments. Are they ‘just’ God’s opinion, or do they describe a morality that transcends Him? My big’n is when God tells us not to kill, and then goes on to order wars, massacres, and the like.
Perhaps the answer to C.S. Lewis’s question is, “All of the above.”
Well, first you have to get 'em right. The commandment in question is not against killing, but properly translated forbids murder – or unjustified killing. Thus, war in the name of God would be okay.
But in answer to your larger question, do they describe a bigger morality? Well, that depends on which commandment. Obviously, the one about obeying only this particular “god” doesn’t transcend belief in that one god. But the ones against murder, stealing, and stuff like that – yes, those do transcend belief. For example, pretty much all atheists would agree that it is immoral to murder, steal, etc.
Didn’t we just go over all of this in the Morality debate?
—The commandment in question is not against killing, but properly translated forbids murder – or unjustified killing.—
So it’s a tautology? Killing is wrong except when it’s not?
I don’t think the mistranslation camp has a lot to go on other than hot air. The Commandment doesn’t read, “Thou shalt not kill except when ordered by your Lord God.”
Well, there are laws against murder in this country to, but we don’t punish soldiers who kill enemies in war, or people who kill in self defense, or people who execute prisoners.
To those people who think the commandment should be translated “Don’t kill” instead of “Don’t murder”, why do you think that?
Re: the OP:
I think the really interesting question that you may be asking here is, assuming a Christian theological worldview, what gives morality validity? Did God pick some random things that He decided would be immoral, or was there something inherent in those things that made them immoral (or, were they immoral independant of God thinking so)?
I can’t remember which of Plato’s dialogues askes this question, but it’s along the lines of the “can God make a rock so heavy He can’t move it (or a burrito so big He can’t eat it)”.
The question presented by the OP was discussed recently (and extensively) in this thread: Morality…where do you think it comes from?
My short answer (and I’m an atheist) is that what we call morality derives from an inherent sense of empathy which is a natural part of the human makeup. I believe we possess this empathy because it is a handy trait for creatures which evolved as social beings. The character trait of empathy helps us to get along (and thrive) in a social setting.
In other words, we have within us a sense of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I think religions tap into this pre-existing empathy, and use it as the primary building block for more elaborate, formalized “moral” codes.
—I think religions tap into this pre-existing empathy, and use it as the primary building block for more elaborate, formalized “moral” codes.—
Like “no dancing” or “all the firstborn are mine!”
I don’t think the Golden Rule is the only formulation of our “universal grammar” of fairness and empathy. I like “Do not unto others as you would not have done unto you,” and I definately would like it to be taken more abstractly than litterally (I like chocolate! You must be force-fed chocolate, despite hating it!).
—I can’t remember which of Plato’s dialogues askes this question, but it’s along the lines of the “can God make a rock so heavy He can’t move it (or a burrito so big He can’t eat it)”.—
It’s not exactly like that question. It’s not being suggested that a god itself has contradictory charateristics, but is rather an inherent problem with grounding morality in general. If someone simply “decides” what is or is not moral, then who cares what they decide? If they don’t decide, then who cares about them?
Yes, excellent starting point.
If we posit that there are natural laws of human social conduct such that to fail to live in accordance with this rule tends to cause you to be a miserable person, whereas to live in accordance with it makes happiness possible, we can say that this is a law akin to the law of gravity. We do not conceptualize the law of gravity as God saying “Do not step over the side of an abyss where there is no support or I shall strike you down and kill you”, it’s just cause and effect.
If, on the other hand, we argue that it makes no meaningful difference in your happiness if you do or do not live in accordance with this rule, things are less straightforward but my interpretation is that this means that there is no God and no meaning to “right” vs “wrong”.
One could counterargue that there is an ineffectual God–that one “should” do unto others as you’d have them do unto you even though it won’t make you happier if you do and won’t make you unhappy if you mistreat and abuse others and so on–although it is difficult to explain why one “should”. One could counterargue that the problem lies with the sense that we have within us that tells us we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us–that there is a “right” vs “wrong” in the world and/or a God, but the rules are different than what our heart tells us is how things ought to be–but because of the centrality of what we feel, this isn’t a satisfying resolution either. If the real rules of human conduct are such that you will be happiest in life if you grab what you can and snarl at the others, it is only with difficulty or dark irony that we can embrace this rule and call it morality, or enshrine it as the law of God.
Sigh I went through this with someone else on these boards not to long ago, but here goes again…
The verse in question says lo tirtzach. Translated, this means “do not murder.” Had “do not kill” been the meaning, the words used would have been lo taharog.
In any event, there are many places where the Torah specifies the death penalty for various crimes (including murder). Don’t you think it’s a bit odd for the Torah to say “don’t kill under any circumstances” and then turn around in the next chapter and command capital punishment for various crimes?
Zev Steinhardt
I think that it’s incorrect to pose it as God “thinking up rules” for us. In the Judeo-Christian worldview (that’s what I take this question to mean–not “where do morals REAAALLLY come from” but “where do the morals in Judeo-Christian theology come from”), you start out with God. That’s it. God is, and then he makes stuff. The thing about God is, he would never do something wrong. So basically morals are “what God would and wouldn’t do in a particular situation.” There is no outside moral authority for God, and no source that he is learning morals from. He just is, and the way he happens to be is, by definition, the model of what a good and moral person should be.
The commandments, etc., are just God trying to explain how to do that to us mere mortals.
Well, we got into this a bit in the other thread. There are morals, and then there are customs. Both can wind up encoded in religion.
“Morals,” in my meaning, are cross-cultural. You find them embodied in similar rules of behavior across all societies. (“Don’t commit murder,” being an example.) I would argue that these true morals are all based, ultimately, upon empathy.
Regarding the universality of the Golden Rule across religious faiths and human societies, look here.
“Customs,” are just cultural habits which are particular to any given society. They are mores, not morals. I would argue that the “no dancing” sort of prohibition has more to do with custom than with morals. True, it is a custom which has been lent (by some) with the authority of religious doctrine, but it is still a custom.
But then, we’re arguing over semantics, I suppose. What are “morals?”
That’s very Rousseauian of you, spoke, but I don’t buy it simply because of the savagery that humans are capable of to each other. IMHO, humans start off Hobbesian but through social conditioning are turned Rousseauian.
I’m not even sure if Hobbesian and Rousseauian are words, but they work. 
As for the whole morality and God thing…it depends on who you ask. There are essentially two main schools of thought on this (at least in the Xian tradition) - the Thomistic tradition and the other one which I can’t remember the name of. The latter posits that the relationship between humans and God is like that of children and parents. Which means that parents don’t necessarily have to follow the same rules that the children do, do to their greater age and whatnot. For instance, little Johnny has to go to bed at 7 even though his folks get to stay up. Essentially, then, human morality is something that we have to follow because God said so, while God doesn’t necessarily have to follow it. Morality is not universal.
Then there’s Thomistic approach, which borrows heavily from Aristotle. This is much more complicated. Basically, morality comes from God because everything comes from God. Those universal “do nots” like murder, theft, etc. are in the realm of natural law, meaning they are ingrained into everyone at birth no matter their religion. No revelation necessary, although, it sometimes helps to remind people at times. Now then, these natural laws are not above God, as nothing is, but rather, are reflections of God’s nature. So it’s not so much as God handing out commandments as it is a reflection of God’s being. Very metaphysical. It’s basically the opinion that the Catholic Church decided it was going to lean towards. I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty of this whole thing, so if you want more info, go read Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.
So yeah, there are your two basic options, both have been in vogue at various times, with Thomas’s being the preferred for the past couple hundred years. But neither one has been set down infallibly as the absolute correct one, so there’s still some debate on the matter.
Lastly, Eonwe, I’m not sure Plato came up with that exact question, especially since he didn’t seem to bother too much with Xian or Jewish philosophy as they weren’t really known that well in Greece at the time.
But the answer to the questino is no, God cannot create a rock so big he couldn’t lift it or whatever other related questions you can come up with. That would be logically impossible, and God is only omnipotent within the realm of the logically possible.
Nah, it’s “spoke-ian,” since I haven’t read Rousseau. My comments are based on my own observations and inferences.
Do humans commit brutal acts? Yes. But then we regard those who commit brutal acts (at least those who commit those acts against members of their own tribe) as defective, don’t we? And we separate them from the gene pool, either by imprisoning them or executing them.
Empathy is the rule, brutality the exception.
(Within one’s own tribe, anyway. Now you can be brutal against someone outside your tribe and get away with it. We call that warfare.)
—Well, we got into this a bit in the other thread. There are morals, and then there are customs.—
This seems to be a distinction that mostly makes things convienient for you, but doesn’t have too many practical applications. The people who think that dancing is immoral would beg to differ with your classification of their values as mere custom. Just because different socieities argue for different morals is not grounds to conclude that all things on which there are differences are thus not legitimate morals.
One related problem with the golden rule is that it’s simple, and doesn’t really help answer the hard questions. I would bet that quite a bit of “evil” done by people is done by people who think they ARE observing the golden rule: they just know better than the other guy what’s good for em.
“O times, o mores!” (can’t remember who said that). It’s interesting though, that our word “morals” derives from a word that means “customs.”
I don’t know if this adds anything at all, but just an interesting side-note considering this and other threads recently on similar issues.
As for the Plato reference, when I get home to my books and such tonight I can give better context for it (which was not at all directly related to the issue at hand. I do believe though, that T. Aquinas, as well as Liebinez later, address this question posed by Plato).
Why do we have to drag God into this? Don’t morals play an effective social role, i.e. not going around killing people doesn’t inspire them to go around killing you, and cooperative societies could form for mutual benefit and species survival?
Well, the OP did specifically mention God, and was raising a “theological point.” I think this is more a religious question than one about the use/functionality of morals, IMO of course.
Not that there aren’t great non-religious questions to be asked about morals, this just doesn’t seem like one of them.
Aye. I for one consider morality neither an absolute nor God’s whim. I’m just curious what those of us who are both independantly moral and religious think.