My curiousity is about how faith drives behavior. We can distinguish three types.
Behavior that only affects you. You go to church, you pray in your closet, whatever.
Behavior that affects others, that is in line with your pre-existing morality. You donate to charity, etc.
Behavior that stretches your morality - killing your son, doing a Phelps.
Now, I contend the first two are no problem. Faith may drive you to do good deeds, but other things not involving faith drive me. The third one is the kicker. You seem to have defined god in a way that he will never ask you to do anything you think is bad, since anyone asking this is not god by definition, but a mistranslation. The Abraham and Isaac story is exactly opposed to this. Here, Abraham is asked to do evil, as a test of his faith and obedience (and the faith is in trust, not existence, since he had plenty of evidence in the existence of god, and did not believe by faith.) God of course comes through in the end, but if Abraham said that it couldn’t be God asking him to do that, he would have failed the test. An existent god defines morality based on his terms, not yours. A god who exists inside your head, as a thought/image, can define morality based on your terms. For those who are not sociopathic, this morality is “good.”
If the God who speaks to you has nothing to do with the Biblical god, well and good. If he does, then it is at least possible he’ll tell you to do something beyond the bounds of your morality, because there is Biblical precedent. If you choose not to believe in those parts of the Bible that threaten your morality, you have the same problem - you are filtering what is given as God’s word based on your internal morality.
I’m not implying that your internal morality has to be made up from scratch. Even if it is based on sound ethical principles, using it as a filter implies that god is constrained by ethics, and is not the source of morality.
The reason I care is that this is my beef with religion. If it is okay to act on the basis of faith, without the solid constraints of ethics and rationality, it gives sociopaths a pass to be evil. Do you think Fred Phelps has less faith than you do? That he believes in god less fervently? I think his warped sense of morality finds support in faith the same way your good morals do. I can reject his hatred since it is based on no possible ethical standard, and I can require him to prove the existence of a god that commands such hatred - which he can’t do. I think that this is a stronger position than rejecting him since you consider this portion of Scripture more reliable than this other, or because you are convinced that no God would order that type of hatred.
(I will, for the nonce, set aside my specific personal position and respond generally; I cannot respond from the perspective of someone who has a scripturally-based religion, let alone a Biblical one, so trying to do so will be futile.)
Why should I not be able to do both? I see no reason that a belief that Phelps’s actions are a part of no conceivable ethical standard is incompatible with a belief that they are theologically unsound.
(Though personally I have no reason to require him to prove the existence of his god; whether or not the thing exists beyond the confines of his skull, he has provided ample evidence that it’s inside his skull. It doesn’t have to exist for him to base his actions on it, after all. I will leave the people who think he’s stolen their god to reclaim it from him in whatever way they see fit; I’ll focus on the actions and doing what I can to either prevent manifestations of hatred or heal those who are wounded by them. What’s in his head is a matter of complete irrelevance to me; I’ll deal with what’s out of his head, where I can actually make a difference to people who aren’t pond scum. (No offense to pond scum intended.))
The question of whether God is constrained by morality is in fact an open one for moral theologians today. There is Biblical evidence for both sides: “Shall the God of justice be unjust?” Some have even taken that story (about Abraham pleading for Sodom) to argue that Abraham would not have failed the test had he objected on faithful (i.e., moral) grounds to the command. There is nothing in the story to indicate what outcome God hoped for. God blesses Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, but he does not praise him for it. I think it is perfectly in keeping with the story itself and the tenor of Hebrew Scripture overall to suggest that God was actually somewhat disapointed and was letting Abe down easy!
I also think your question presumes that God-as-source-of-morality means “it’s right because God said so.” But what about God as the metaphysical ground of morality (analogous to the God-as-metaphysical-ground-of-Being of some modern theologians)? If God’s being rather than God’s command is the basis of morality, then believing something is morally good is identical with believing God wills it. Both religious and secular moral systems can challenge our moral presuppostions, but this eliminates the problem of setting God’s will against morality This leads me to a moral/psychological interpretation of the Binding of Isaac: Follwing a moral code consistently often demands extreme sacrifices of us. The willingness to make those sacrifices, even of ourselves and what we value most, for the sake of what’s right is commendable. At times, we may even feel called to commit evil for the sake of a higher good. Although we should always do what is morally right, no matter what, we should be careful in such cases, and listen twice. Morality will never call on us to destroy the innocent. There is always a better way, though we may only see it if we are truely committed to what is right.
::sigh:: Why is it I can answer everyone’s objections to religion but my own?
Thanks, rivulus. My problem is that I find Christianity fits (at least some of) my aesthetic judgements almost perfectly, but I don’t think the way it uses those as the basis of objective judgements is legitimate. Essentially, I agree with those who say that the sense of being in relationship does not imply a reciprocal conciousness with which I relate, and I haven’t had a strong enough experience of relatedness to convince me otherwise. (Of course I recognize that a strong conviction of relatedness would not logically imply the existance of God any more than a weak one does, but it would nevertheless be more compelling.)
I tell myself that Lilairen is right that
My reasoning is that modern psychology seems to indicate that I don’t exist, at least in the sense that there seems to be no continuous underlying neurological process corresponding to my own sense of conciousness. The “self” appears to be an illusion, but that doesn’t stop us (me at least) from using it as a coherant concept organizing my concepts of experience. I tell myself that as long as God is as “real” as I am, that’s real enough.
While your observation is true, I would think that this interpretation would be pretty scary for most Christians in that it basically implies that the conventional picture of God, where we can read his like and dislikes pretty easily from the Biblical text, is wrong. Your take on God is more complicated, and hence, a lot harder to read (i.e., the message of the Bible is much more ambiguous). I don’t think they’d much like that.
Your experience of most Christians differs from mine. I’ve met very, very few Christians who believe God’s will can be easily discerned. Most are quite adept and dealing with ambiguity and seeing both sides of an issue, particularly WRT the Bible.
Of course, as in politics, the few people who see everything in black and white seem the most publically vocal, but I haven’t met many people like that in real life–certainlt a tiny number compared to the number of Christians I’ve met.
Alan, Lilairenet al.: Great discussion! Alan, I’m not ignoring your question – but I want to let my thoughts ‘gel’ before I respond to your very thoughtful questions. Hope that’s OK!
No! You have to answer right now! Cater to my every whim! You paid good money to answer questions on this message board. How am I supposed to get your money’s worth if you slack off like that???
As a kind of hijack, where do your morals come from? I am not sure that belief in a deity automatically leads to a moral code. I’m sure you have a moral code, and a very good one, but I’m not sure why it would be different from my non-god-based ethical code. Scriptural believers have god’s word, and so don’t have that problem.
They aren’t incompatible. My point is that while you can provide a good theological argument for him being an asshole, he can and does quote scripture saying that god supports his warped point of view. You can’t argue with him on faith, since faith is not rational. You can by building a rational ethical system, but there is that old rationality again. How can you prove his view of god wrong without also proving yours to be just as shaky? The only way is that you know your moral system is better than his (and I agree) but there you go putting your morals above god’s again - or so Phelps would say. (If he could stop foaming at the mouth long enough.)
Hmm. Here are some relevant quotes from Genesis 22, from the Masoretic Text. This is a Jewish translation, from the Bible given to my grandmother after my grandfather died, and so doesn’t have goyisher contamination.
22:12 “for I know that thou art a God-fearing man, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.”
22:16. “because thou hast done this thing … that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars in heaven … and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast harkened to My voice.” Doesn’t sound too negative to me. One could say that the life of the Jewish people from that day comes from Abraham agreeing to sacrifice Isaac. I’d have to find my old prayer books, but I remember this event being at the heart of much of the Yom Kippur service. So, if this was god being disappointed, I’d love to see him happy. We’d all march back to Eden or something. (Note: all discussion hypothetical, as if this really happened.)
I believe you are mixing two cases in the above. If you do not know what God’s will is, but guess, of course you believe that what you consider to be moral to be identical with God’s will. The problem is that with a deistic or an absent god people’s morals diverge, while being convinced that they are doing god’s will, since there is nothing to pull them back to what is really god’s will. An open loop system, as it were, which always go out of control.
If God does make his will known, then it becomes easy. Much of the early Bible contains stories of god providing feedback to those whose morals have become unaligned - sometimes drastic feedback, like the flood or wandering in the desert. As we get more historical the prophets interpret disasters befalling Israel and Judah as the feedback. Falwell tries to pull this today. Sure, as god has gotten farther away some of us chat pleasantly with him, like Tevye. I rather suspect we wouldn’t be quite so chatty if God did appear. (And he didn’t look like George Burns, I mean.)
No morality will never call on us to destroy the innocent - but who is innocent might be in some dispute. In Christianity, no one is, right. (Pagan babies and all that.) Perhaps you have never had the pleasure :rolleyes: to hear a rock-hard fundamentalist justify the Israelites slaughter of women and children of offending tribes. The babies weren’t innocent you see, they would grow up bad and killing them early was really best for them. If God commanded it, who are we to argue, right? The solution seems to be to throw out those parts of the Bible not jibing with one’s view of what God should call for - but you start putting your morality above God’s.
If God defines morality, you have a problem. If morality defines God, then everything is cool.
Not at all. Weak atheism. There might be a god somewhere in the universe, but the case for any god as defined by humans is weak at best to downright disproven (as much as you can disprove anything existential.)
Basically, you can build a model of what the world and universe would be like without a god, and several models of what it would be like with varieties of gods. The actual world seems to come a lot closer to the former situation than the latter The definition and characteristics of god get refined with humanities increasing ethical sophistication. I also can predict what discoveries are likely in a godless world vs. those in a godful world, and the godless ones (like the nonexistence of the Davidic empire) seem to be the ones happening.
Some of these changes have come from moral people, like all the posters in this thread, refusing to accept the old god, and some from the realization that acts supposedly committed by the god did not happen, and some from our globalization, which obsoleted the tribal god which gave rise to ours. I think being Jewish, and raised with a concept of god somewhat closer to the old tribal god than Christians see, has helped. It has often been said that atheists disbelieve in only one more god than theists - actually being Jewish I disbelieved in one more god (the Jesus one) than the majority religion did from the beginning, which I think made it easier.
It probably isn’t terribly different from your non-god-based moral code; my experience is that most of the moral systems possessed by functional people are fairly similar. I would also note that I based my choice of religion in significant part on the basis of whether its particularities were in accord with what I already felt to be moral. (This would be a part of my original post to the thread, a subset of “I was seeking a system whose basic precepts I did not consider obviously false.”)
Non-scriptural religions tend to have a body of lore, passed down either orally or in written form (which is not scriptural, it’s just ‘We wrote this stuff down so we’d remember it properly’), and a set of established practices and techniques. (All of the ones I know well are strongly orthopraxic rather than orthodoxic; correct belief is less of a concern than correct practice. In some cases correct practice is presumed to bring about the necessary correct belief.) That lore generally contains moral advice at varying levels of detail, much of it in the form of advice or example, as well as all the other stuff that’s in a religion – its myths, rituals, riddles that when puzzled through lead to greater understanding, traditions, taboos, and so on.
I am, unfortunately, less familiar with most of the well-established and surviving non-scriptural religions than I would like to be; I am working on correcting this over time (currently focusing primarily on West Africa). Most of my knowledge is of various modern paganisms, including the one which I practice and the one in which I am beginning an apprenticeship in April. (The modern paganisms are mostly either of modern vintage – less than a hundred years or so – or revivals of ancient religions, and thus aren’t terribly well-established as of yet.)
My own moral code is developed from my subconscious interpretation of territory and my strong emotional reactions on matters of consent, leavened with a significant (borderline unhealthy) dislike for living falsely and/or in denial of who I am. I used to be significantly less moral than I am now; I constructed a system that produced a person that I liked better. A formulation that is theologically based would rest on the ancient Egyptian concept of ma’at, which is difficult to describe precisely (at least without making this hijack even more massive than it is); I will content myself with describing it as “that principle of creative order which supports a community and the healthy relationships therein”. (Ma’at is both an elegantly simple concept and an eyebleedingly complicated one.)
But I’m not interested in proving his view of his god wrong. I don’t care. For all I know, he has a god who supports everything that he says, or at least experiences of such a god. If he has such a god, they’re welcome to each other, and can feel ill-done-by all they please.
If I thought that convincing him that his faith is poorly placed would be the most effective way to prevent him from hurting people, I might care to find grounds to challenge him on it; as it is, I believe that doing so will only bolster his apparent belief that the level of direct confrontation about his god that he faces is a measure of his righteousness. (The One I Live With, reading this thread earlier this evening, said something to the effect of “Attacking his faith is giving him too much credit.”)
I consider it most effective to protect those people he would hurt where possible, undermine his capacity to act to harm where possible, and help those people who he has hurt where possible. Challenging the guy’s faith furthers none of these, costs me resources that might be better spent on effectual actions, and is entirely likely to encourage him. My own theological beliefs are no more relevant to him than his are to me; sharing them with him serves no purpose at all.
(As to what those theological beliefs are, as I’m guessing you’d ask if I didn’t specify. The concept in opposition to that concept of ma’at is often partially translated as ‘uncreation’. Not merely destruction (for destruction may be ma’at – consider surgically removing a tumor or demolishing a decrepit building or the renewing effects of a brush fire), but unmaking a thing, causing it to be false in itself. (I find this even harder to articulate than ma’at; I know how isfet manifests most strongly in my life, but that’s a product of what negates me and doesn’t translate well to people with different terrors.) He wishes people to unmake their love, cause it to be false, to negate their relationships until they never were, to become denial; he wishes certain people the same. He has chosen to become a conduit for this uncreation.)
Though I’m not an atheist, I know that weak atheism is an empirically rational position and I generally respect it.
My intent is not to hijack this thread, but I posit that “not at all” is not necessarily the same thing as weak atheism (actually, I should ask you…do you equate “not at all” to “nothing”?) For example, my girlfriend has no theological position, but she’s not an atheist.
Voyager, you may disregard that hijack, I didn’t even recognize that by “not at all” you meant that you don’t mind my asking - when I first read it, I thought “not at all” was saying that you had no theological position. Don’t ask me why I thought that you equated “nothing” to “weak atheism”. I’m tired and obviously not thinking coherently. :smack:
Reason, proof, logical examination, and critical thinking are inadequate tools, by themselves for the creation of faith. (We are, of course dealing here with my own personal and unstated definition of faith. Bear with me.) To experience faith, one must have both an opportunity, and make a choice. The opportunity is to make a final decision about something, a decision to place some matter beyond further intellectual examination. That becomes the choice, and the strength of the decision becomes faith. Logic cannot bring you to that choice. Making the choice is inherently illogical.
Faith is foolish. This is one of the most common of “criticisms” of faith. It performs a logical analysis of the act of making a final decision on the base of necessarily incomplete information. Were the matter of faith a matter of logic, this criticism would be, in fact is entirely valid. But like Mencken’ s rose, though it smells sweet, it won’t make soup. The argument assumes that to avoid being a fool is sufficient reason to ignore what our spirit, our heart tells us. That too is a choice.
A long time ago, on this very forum, I was explaining Christianity and had to interrupt an argumentative direction with the statement that I wasn’t worried about whether I was right or not. The person with whom I was arguing said, “You mean you don’t care about being right? Your philosophy doesn’t have to even be logical, or even true?” “You got it.” I replied, “And you said you didn’t understand Christians!”
Now, of course comes the effect such public expression has on the reputation one has among associates. The fact is that I am not generally an illogical person. I use reason, logic, evidence, critical analysis, and such powerful tools often in my life. They are the most powerful intellectual tools I have in examining the physical universe. But I don’t examine my love for my children. I don’t analyze the suffering of my neighbor. And I don’t go looking for proof of the existence of God.
I understand quite well that many who accept God, and have faith have also a habit of relegating all matters to that same evaluation method. The “one truth” philosophy, I call it. I happen to think that is mostly intellectual sloth, rather than steadfast faith. I am able to examine the universe, and doing so is obviously one of the specific gifts given to me. To deny that responsibility seems to me to be poor stewardship. I expect the physical universe to be comprehensible to me, if I expend the effort. (Well, except quarks, quantum fluctuations, and the inflationary model.) I expect that God will not be comprehensible to me, no matter what effort I expend. So, I put my mind to work on what it can do, and have faith in God.
I think I have gone far enough for a single post. I would like to examine the “what if your faith is wrong” aspect of the question, if others wish to continue the discussion. It is the hardest question of all, both as a matter of logic, and as a matter of faith.
Tris
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.” ~ H. L. Mencken ~
So…guess I’m wrong about the whole “faith is a choice” thing for most people. Still, it appears to be a choice for some people, as evidenced by FriendRob; I also seem to recall a previous thread in which JThunder was adamant in claiming that we all choose our beliefs. I guess whether faith is chosen is immaterial to the definition of faith itself.
I don’t want this to seem like a personal attack at all, but I was thinking about this anecdote last night, and it makes me a little skeevy. Yes, things turned out all right for you. But what about for Joe Brown (hereafter JoeB) in the next cubical over?
He also whispered a prayer to God; like you, he sensed the reply “It’ll be all right.” Like you, he was laid off. But that’s where the similarities end. Although he searched diligently for work, he was unable to find another job that paid even half of what he’d been making, and JoeB sank into a deep depression. His dad got diagnosed with prostate cancer. And his wife, unable to deal with his despondency, moved out.
Your anecdote strengthened your faith in God, it sounds like. Should JoeB’s travails strengthen his faith in God’s nonexistence? More germanely, should JoeB’s traivails strengthen your own faith in God’s nonexistence?
It just seems to me as if your anecdote speaks of a faith based on God giving you cookies instead of noogies. And in this noogie-rich world, this seems a precarious sort of faith to me.
Maybe we can start a new theology based on the words “not at all.” It has some appeal - and if we play our cards right, we could get rich. Look at L R*n…
Lilairen:
Thank you for a fascinating post. I was about to write that you searched for relgions that matched your moral code, but that would be misleading, since it seems you enhanced your moral code based on the results of your search.
I think I understand where you are coming from much better. Is is reasonable to conclude that polytheistic belief systems do not enforce morality like monotheistic ones do, since there is no single god as a source of morality, and various gods may disagree. There are surely some common standards, but not everything. I think I also understand your reaction to Phelps better. In a polytheistic system, his deity, even if existent, doesn’t have any moral sway on non-believers. It’s the tribal god thing, again. Even orthodox Jews don’t consider gentiles who don’t keep the Sabbath as sinners. Christianity (and Islam?) are the one set of rules for everyone, convert or burn types. No offense to Christians, but that is the message I get. It does seem to have been very successful from a marketing perspective.
