This is a fallacy. Morality is an aesthic. It has no objective reality. God can’t decide what is good any more than he can decide what is delicious. It’s completely subjective. If I think God is wrong, then God is wrong. End of story. What’s he going to do? “Damn” me? What would that prove?
That’s a very good point; I hadn’t considered it that way. Then the answer to the OP’s question then is, assuming God chooses to act in line with his moral beliefs, that God must have the right moral values, as he himself sets them.
Now, i’m afraid, you’re going to have to prove to me that my (entirely subjective, I admit) moral system is worth less than God’s objective (if he exists) system; why is his reality superior in value to my hallucination? 
all religions are flawed, times change but religion dosnt. untill someone rewrites the bible, id just chose not to listern to any of it. its just too much to read and as we’ve learnt, its not all complete.
Thank you for being honest.
I have no more questions, your Honor.
You understood me correctly. I was putting the god forgetting-clause in there so that you would make the action based on morals, on not because of fear of retribution.
I have another question for you.
You say that your moral values are often wrong. That god’s morals are always right, but you can sometimes not see why.
Then, after which set of moral rules do you live your life? Lets say you see a non-christian person drowning, would you then save him? You might feel that is the morally right thing to do, but this is unimportant, the only important thing is what god thinks. It might be his plan to kill the non-believer. After all the OT several times said that non-believers should die.
The answer I half expect is that you get a feeling that this is what god wants you to do. So I will make a follow-up question to this:
Why are you so sure you can trust this feeling? God hasn’t spoken to you directly, and maybe he hasn’t even given you a proper sign in that situation. And if you study the bible, he speaks quite clearly on the fact that non-christians should die. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13, Deuteronomy 13:13-19, Deuteronomy 17:2-5, etc.) In trying your best to be a good believer, don’t you find it suspicious that this “feeling” is almost always in agreement with your own moral values, and often in direct disagreement with what is written?
hmm, non-christian should instead be “people who don’t believe in this god”. He of course didn’t want the jews dead either.
I’m sorry but someone who has stated they would obey a voice in their head commanding them to do an immoral act deserves every barb and shaft and proves in microcosm why religion is a clear and present danger to the future of humanity, and something n an age where WMD’s can be constructed by individuals, it can no longer afford.
Mayo Speaks!: Let’s say you get a message from God that is so unambiguous that it nearly knocks you on your ass. You are all but Slain in the Spirit by the Essential Clarity of the message delivered unto you. That message is, yes, to kill a whole town of people.
Let’s say that I see you in the act of, say, dumping a potent nerve agent into the town’s water supply. I don’t get any divine hints, I simply swing into action and incapacitate you. For the purposes of the scenario, let’s say you’re unconscious with a broken leg and some nasty bruises; at any rate, you’re down, you’re out, and the mission, like the water, is completely scrubbed.
Were my actions good or evil? I have, after all, knocked out a duly appointed prophet in the course of his duties and prevented a holy plan from coming to fruition. (Remember, God didn’t mention me at all; as far as you’re concerned, I’m not in the plan.) However, I did save a whole town of innocent people and manage to avoid killing you.
That’s clearly untrue. Most believers actually ascribe to God their own set of morals (yes, I know their set of moral is partly determined by their religious beliefs, but only partly). They pick and choose in the scriptures, they decide upon what is literal and what is not, they ignore whatever is convenient to ignore, etc… As a result, religious beliefs change and eventually churches’ doctrine change too. Had christianism never evolved it would be all but dead by now.
We can see this currently with the issue of homosexuality. More and more believers chose to interpret in very novel ways passages of the scriptures whose traditionnal interpretation never had been questionned before (More surprisingly, even non-believers partake in this re-interpretation though it shouldn’t be relevant in any way shape and form to them).
And anyway, scriptures are extremely open to interpretation. Most of the christian beliefs, even on the basis of the scriptures, are essentially arbitrary. If I really wanted to, I could base on the gospels a religious doctrine that would have nothing to do with christianism as we understand it, apart from the name of Jesus-Christ, and that could still be fully supported by appropriate quotations.
And don’t dare eat the cursed fruit of the fig tree, miscreants!
You realize that many non-believers used to be believers hence are familiar with the mindset, don’t you?
I agree with these thoughts. I want to point out that I cannot understand how believers can “pick and choose” at all. If god or jesus didn’t say or do all the things in the bible, why should they have done/said the things that you choose? How can you use any parts of the bible as a guideline? What do you even know about god? If the testaments can tell wrong things, certainly priests who talk about christianity can too.
That’s a valid point.
Well not quite,
Genesis 3
3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid {apparently you can hide from God} themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? {and He won’t know where to look for you}
…
3:11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? {apparently a lot of things are a mystery to God}
CMC fnord!
I didn’t say I would “obey a voice in my head.” I said I would obey an unambiguous, direct command from God. They are two vastly different things.
How would you know the difference?
CMC fnord!
In the absence of clear divine guidance, I have to do what I think is right. So I would save the non-believer. And when I say that I would do what God commands, it’s not out of fear of retribution. It is because I believe that I should try to do what God wants me to do simply because he is God. I’m not trying to get into heaven; I’m trying to do God’s work on Earth. And if I do get into heaven (which I certainly [selfishly] hope to do) all the better.
And I do find it very suspicious that my understanding of God’s communication with me generally agrees qith my own morals. But I attribute this to my inherent human fallibility. I misinterpret God all the time, unfortunately. But someone (Thomas Aquinas?) once said, “I don’t always know how to please God, but I think the mere fact that I try does please Him.” And that’s the only way I know to live my life.
Do you mean “what you think is right”, according to your own morals? If so, why do you have to do this? I know for sure that my own morals are very much in disagreement with gods morals. For example, if we look at this exceedingly long list,
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html. I think there are very few of those passages where my morals agree with gods actions/statements. I suspect that also your own immediate moral feelings about most them, is that they are morally wrong.
My point is, I don’t think you have basis for assuming that god wants you to save the man. Your own morals are not a tool you can use to decide, they are shown to very often be in conflict with god’s. A much better tool for deciding would be reading the scriptures, which in several places state that god wants all unbelievers to die.
Also, I would like to know what you think is “clear divine guidance”?
Quite.
I’d like to offer a rule of thumb.
Voices in your head are always, without exception, a sign of mental illness and shouldn’t be acted upon. Triply so if they are telling you to kill. Same applies to burning bushes and signs read in the flights of birds etc etc.
How do we know that your morals are right and God’s are wrong?
You seem to be positing a definite and valid moral standard. On what is that based, and how do you justify it?
Theists at least can claim that God established a moral standard, sort of how He established the law of gravity. Very much like the computer program example above, where x = 14 because the coder said so. Non-theists don’t have any way to establish the validity of their standard, whatever it is. Thus it tends to wind up in arguments that “God-based morality is arbitrary and wrong because I say so”, which is essentially meaningless.
Regards,
Shodan
Believers pick and choose in various ways. Belief in god isn’t all that different from you establishing your own moral code and ethical guidelines that you live by. Those things may change as you have experiences. You may have a things about yourself you wish improve, such as , being selfish, or judgemental, or too gullible. Whatever it may be. Believers struggle with the same issues. For whatever reason , tradition, emotional need, or some spiritual experience, they choose to believe and then they live with and interpret that belief as information and experiences come their way.
Certain passages in the Bible will resonate within an individual. Someone might be moved by the passage “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me”
or “The truth will set you free” and something in their mind and emotions change and this effects their life and the lives of those around them.
It’s the same process that any human uses to make decisions and judgement calls, and like every human, some of them are good calls and some are not.
What changed for me was realizing I only had to answer to myself in regard to spiritual truth. No person or group of persons could tell me what spiritual truth was {although many like to try} Neither should I let my desire to be a part of a certain group or be accepted by a certain individual be the reason I believe certain things. I had to be willing to examine the evidence and my own heart and decide what I believe and why. I also became more comfortable with things we don’t know. I can move forward based on what I believe right now with the knowledge that as I grow and learn my beliefs will change. My faith is in the spiritual journey not a doctrine.