God

Great Debates
61

Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying here. “Evil” is often used, in a religious sense, as a disembodied force that causes people to do bad things. I agree that in a natural world, there isn’t this kind of evil.

But more commonly, “evil” is just a word people use to refer to actions that are on the very bad end of our morality scale. And it’s common for many theists to say that without God, there is no right or wrong, no morality. That seems to be what you’re talking about, so I want to make sure.

Of course there isn’t any absolute morality. The very idea of morality is that it’s fundamentally an opinion. I think it’s wrong to torture babies, and you do too, and so does every other sane person, but that doesn’t make it anything more than an opinion that’s shared by everyone - it’s not absolute.

The theist who argues for absolute morality will then say that if it’s just an opinion, then all opinions are equally valid and you can’t say that it’s immoral to torture babies. This is wrong - I can say that in my opinion it’s immoral to torture babies, and so does pretty much everyone else.

Since morality is an opinion, I don’t even know what an “absolute morality” would even mean. Even if there is a God, that wouldn’t change the situation. He would have his opinion on morality, you have yours, and I have mine. Just because God has the power to torture me forever doesn’t somehow make his opinion absolute. It’s still his opinion.

62

Those who had left Egypt were already punished, because they were not to go into Israel either. The 40 years in the desert was designed to have them die off and be replaced by their children who were not raised in slavery.

Moses called them rebels, which was not a term of affection. However he did not say “God will bring forth water” but said “we will bring forth water” which is my point also. God did not command him to rebuke Israel, but to speak to the rock - so that was the order he broke. Why mention it if it was not important? Why did the rebuke happen right after Moses struck the rock?
So I stand by my interpretation.

63

Why did God single out Moses and Aaron for punishment? God said they both had done wrong. But Aaron hadn’t done anything about the water. If that was the sin, it was Moses alone.

What Moses and Aaron had done was fail to speak up in God’s defense.

64

Ah, that takes me back! I was having a polite after-dinner “creation/evolution” debate with a chap, who thought, somehow, that it would be persuasive to run back to his library, and come back to the living room with big piles of books in his arms, which he dumped disrespectfully at my feet. All it proved to me was that he had a whole lot of books…and that he didn’t have a clue about how intelligent people debate.

As evidenced by some of the more outré Mosaic laws, such as banning fabrics woven from more than one fiber, or banning shrimp cocktails and cheeseburgers. Or cutting off the ends of your boyparts. As cultural traditions, these are pretty much okay; U.S. culture shies at eating horse meat, for no rational reason whatever. But as moral laws based on the fundamental spirit of the cosmos? Hog jowls!

I’d go farther and say that “absolute” morality is logically self-contradictory. There cannot possibly exist rules of behavior which are always right, in any context, in any circumstances. The real world is so incredibly complex, you simply can’t “program the ethical computer” to give the right answer in every case.

Among other things, this is why good people can have disagreements about whether a particular act is good or not.

This is where I have to break with Der Trihs, as much as I admire him in most of what he says. I view religious faith, at its best, as something much akin to a personal preference in flavors. You like vanilla, I like chocolate. How really, really foolish would we sound if we said, “My taste is absolutely correct, and God deems it so, whereas your taste is wicked and sinful?”

People must be free to worship as they please…with the limitation that they not interfere with the right of others to worship, perhaps very differently. (And a number of other limitations stemming from basic civilized laws, like, no sacrificing children, no strangling strangers, no stoning adulterers, and, hey, stop bonging that gigantic bronze gong after ten o’clock at night, eh?)

65

“Furthermore, God must exist because absolute taste exists. If there were no absolute standards of taste set by God himself, then there could be no good or bad taste - all flavors would be equal!”

That’s pretty much the exact equivalent of the proof of God via morality that Christians always use.

66

But religious believers make claims about objective reality, not just matters of personal taste. There’s no contradiction in me liking chocolate and someone else liking strawberry; but a particular god and a particular afterlife either exists, or it doesn’t. If I claim there are no gods, and someone else claim there is and it’s his god, then either one of us is right, or one or both of us is wrong; we can’t both be right.

And faith in general leads to bad decision making.

67

Fuck the idea of god.
How does an intelligent, thinking person have faith in a very old fairy tale.
If you think you are intelligent try questioning your beliefs. I did and realised religion of any sort is cultish bullshit.

68

Bingo. More specifically (according to typical Christian theology), Christ’s sacrifice changed the rules. Different rules apply to those who died after him.

Which does make me wonder about those who hadn’t heard the news, but that’s an old argument too. (Poorly answered, IMHO.)

I think that if there really was a God who wanted us to know something, he’d have planted that knowledge in us or made it available to any who really wanted to know. I’ve always really wanted to know, but haven’t found any answers.

This letting some folks write a book, which we’re all supposed to believe … sorry, I don’t buy it. As Mark Twain put it (in Huck’s voice) “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

See, now, that makes perfect sense to me, except for the fact that nobody answers the phone. Maybe my time hasn’t come, but meanwhile, I’ve been slowly building a whole world view that doesn’t need something of which I have no evidence. But at least this makes some sense. My question is, how can you tell if that it’s real or an illusion? (My best guess: you can’t tell for sure, but you live according to what you believe.)

Thanks

69

You’re welcome to that opinion, but I disagree, considering “evil” to be the ethical antithesis of “good”. That’s a pretty typical definition. You know, the battle between good and evil, etc.

IMHO, “good” can exist without God, if anything can, and so can evil.

I see what you mean, thought I wouldn’t want to trivialize it like that.

People say “what you choose to believe,” but I don’t think I choose to believe, any more than I choose to hate beets and love ice cream. The facts (or flavors) convince me.

But at the end of the day, we live according to beliefs we hold, whether we have sufficient reason to hold them or not. If I believed I’d been in communion with God and that he had a plan for me, I’m sure I’d have doubts, but I’d still live in concert with that belief. Instead, I suspect there is no God, and I’m not certain of that, but I live in concert with it.

I also belief it’s worthwhile to be good (if I can figure out what that means). I don’t have proof of that, but I take it as a matter of faith and move on. I’d like to think I chose that, but I probably just lucked into it.

70

But that’s why I compare it to tastes: it doesn’t matter which of us is right. If you (and I) are right, there is no afterlife; we just “go away” when we die. If J. Random Believer is right, he gets to go to a happy place, and we go to a nasty place. Well… So what? Let him believe what he wishes. How does it harm me?

Now, very clearly, when believers start to regulate non-believers (and unbelievers) on the basis of their “tastes,” then things get ugly. “No, you can’t live in this community; no you can’t go to this school; no, you can’t publish your newspaper.” Those are concrete actions, and must be opposed with all the force we can muster.

But having a belief about my destiny in the nasty place after I’m dead? Pfaugh! Let him hold whatever inane fantasy he wishes. It doesn’t harm me!

Agreed; but when those bad decisions are limited solely to matters of faith…I find myself unable to be much concerned. God is one/ God is three. They can toss that back and forth for the next thousand years, and it has no effect on me.

(Again, if they try to make it have an effect on me, they’re trespassing against me, and I will certainly fight back.)

At its best faith is akin to a matter of personal tastes. Chocolate and vanilla.

The sad fact that, sometimes, believers have failed to maintain themselves at this “best” level of behavior is alarming, but I don’t think it is an universal condemnation.

I do want to regulate some (criminal!) forms of behavior. But I do not want to regulate even the most absurd forms of thought and belief. That leads to censorship and madness.

71

Because he will make decisions based on those baseless beliefs. And many of those bad decisions will affect you. And if he actually takes those beliefs seriously, then he will be highly aggressive about pushing them and forcing them on others; that’s built into the belief system in question. A “live and live” attitude while holding such beliefs as “everyone who doesn’t believe will be tortured forever” requires that the believer in question not take them very seriously.

72

You’re confusing problems with faith and what happens when religions organize and concentrate power.

73

But people make all sorts of decisions on irrational bases, and some of them are going to be harmful. Look at all the resources wasted on golf. Look at all the resources wasted on Nascr racing, or gourmet restaurants, or fashionable clothing…

Irrationality is much of what we are, as a species.

So long as religious irrationality is de-fanged, I don’t see any reason to object to it.

I do agree that I want to live in a world where religious people don’t take their beliefs “very seriously.” (Specifically, a world of religious moderates, but as few extremists and hyper-fundamentalists and hyper-orthodox as may be.) But I also want to live in a world where they are free to engage and indulge in their beliefs.

A comfortable wall of separation of church and state is vital to everyone’s freedom. But a too-vigorous condemnation of religion is, I think, too strong a position to take, and not truly necessary.

74

No; having the religion organized makes it worse, but the believers don’t need to be organized into a church to do plenty of damage. To use an obvious example, they can vote for politicians who pander to their fantasy and make policy according to it.

None of those are irrational in the same sense that religion is irrational. People don’t show up at a NASCAR rally and ooh-and-ah over an empty track while talking about how cool the race is. Except for the occasional Emperor, people don’t walk around naked while thinking they are dressed in the latest fashion.

75

If you remember, Moses couldn’t actually speak very well, and Aaron usually spoke for him - though the Bible has Moses speaking. Anyhow God never seemed to punish one when he could punish two.
The Hebrews were dead men walking. I don’t think God really needed any defending. And I don’t recall him ever commanding Moses to defend him. But, as I said, Moses did insult the doubters.
If God punished us for kvetching, there would be none of us left, after all.

76

Not surprisingly you are taking Christianity and Islam as the norm. The ones whose rules only apply to believers are not nearly as obnoxious. The problem is that the absolutist religions devote resources to converting people, and make up all sorts of horrible things to tell heathen, and so they spread more - which is why obnoxious religions are in the majority.
When I was growing up if some guy told me or my Jewish friends that we should bring our non-Jewish friends to temple to convince them to sign up, we would have looked at him like he was nuts. And our rabbi would also.

77

I put it to a vote.

78

I saw. Well, I won’t campaign there, but here is the first commentary on Numbers 20 that came up in Google.

This is from the second link I found

79

True. The fact that Christianity is the norm where I live certainly helps me tend to treat it as the norm.

Still; even the members of less obnoxious religions will be making faith based decisions that affect outsiders negatively; just fewer of them, and less on purpose. We don’t live in bubbles, isolated from each other.

80

If they left me alone, and did these things without aggression…I’d not only defend their rights, I’d celebrate 'em. (And, yeah, giggle.)

I’d be delighted if organized religion were no worse than this!