This view has some problems, as pointed out by Socrates: is what god wants good because god wants it, or does god want what is good because it is good? In the first case, ‘good’ is synonymous with ‘god-wanted’, but then, ‘god wants what is good’ just becomes ‘god wants what is god-wanted’, which is tautologous and does not yield any definition of ‘good’; and in the second case, goodness must be independent of god, and thus, the appeal to god does not tell us anything about goodness.
Further, what god wants ultimately is something up to his whim: what if god wants to eradicate some ethnic group—does it then become good to do so? If you say that god would not want something like that, is it the case that he would not want it because it isn’t good? Then, we’re back to square one. So the appeal to god, IMO, really only kicks the problem up one step of the ladder, but does not, ultimately, fashion any kind of solution.
This line of thought, interestingly enough, also allows one to rethink (or redefine) “God” as “the existence of actual meaning to the notion of right”. In my own mind it is closely allied with “purpose”, as in “it is possible to believe that something is right because it is actually right, and not as an outcome of deterministic causalities such as my location in society and history and so forth causing me to see things that way”.
Note the lack of any reference to God as a “person” (entity, guy, being, however you want to put it). God could be the latter as well as the former but isn’t defined in terms of the latter.
It solves that problem as well. As long as there’s actually good (and not just your notion and my notion thereof, that is God.
Well, but whether there actually is good—meaning an objective notion of right such that whether an act is morally permissible, required, or forbidden has a definite answer in every case—was the question that prompted the appeal to god in the first place, who was supposed to solve the issue by fiat, making certain things good. So now defining god in terms of the notion of absolute good again leads us back to our starting place, as far as I can see.
Of course - she has a nice personality. But I wouldn’t marry her. And I don’t believe in arranged marriages.
I’m all for exploring - and then using my judgment.
Indeed. Catholicism can be considered a bunch of logical propositions linked by “ANDs”. The problem with this - for you - is that when you falsify one of the clauses the whole thing is false.
That the omniscient ruler and creator of the universe can’t give us a consistent set of knowledge and morals is one of the biggest reasons religion is bunk.
What’s really sad is how creationism came about, specifically because of a recognition of this problem. It is a desperate denial of the falsification of a clause which never should have had any relevance in the first place.
What kind of a dunce makes a concrete claim like that, putting everything into the pot, relying on the outcome of just one turn of the cards? “If fewer than eight million people sign up for the ACA in November, then I will foreswear every single one of my liberal political opinions!” “If Jesus doesn’t reappear on March 10, 2012, then the entire Bible is a tissue of lies!”
That kind of linkage is a very weird form of artificial self-inflicted vulnerability.
ok - I can see I’ll get no respect until I tackle the issue of contraception head-on, so I’ll give it a go.
First off, do people have souls? And if so, is it possible that people get their souls when they get their DNA - that is, at conception?
Of course, there’s no way to know if that’s so, but it’s certainly plausible. And if embryos are people - if they even might be people, then how we treat them says something about us. And right now, we treat them like medical waste - or worse, as a source of stem cells. Is it right to use maybe-people as a means to an end? And if the church is right about embryos, might they also be right about contraception?
I don’t think these are crazy questions, and I don’t appreciate the snide attitude I’m getting.
And if Hitler compels other Germans to follow his morality? Does that make it ok?
I think our atheist friends get one very important thing right: the essence of morality is the obligation to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. So if morality exists, it must exist outside the Self. Thus, there must be some external - and therefore objective - standard against which it can be measured.
Judging from your response to Voyager’s quote, I am under the impression that you found fuzzy logic to be a slightly insulting term when I don’t believe it was meant to be.
Yes, Hitler was bad. The system failed. In the course of history, there have been some very bad Popes, too: does that mean that the whole Papal electoral process should be discarded?
If “it isn’t perfect” is a reason for condemning any human institution or system, then we can go back to the caves.
Human-designed morality is better than theologically inspired morality. No one claims it is perfect. It produces monsters and evil and hellish errors. But theological morality does also…and in greater proportion.
Also…take note that we fixed the Hitler problem. It took a bit of doing, but his legacy is one of failure and ignominy. The Catholic Church opposed him…ineffectually (and not uniformly, either.) But it took a more practical approach to defeat Nazism. Prayer accomplished nothing: industrial capacity, everything.
There is extremely limited evidence, in fact I’d say no evidence. Except perhaps for the stories of reincarnation - which don’t match the Christian belief system in any case.
Do animals have souls? If it is even slightly plausible that they do, then we must all become vegetarians if not vegans. Crazy you say? No crazier than people having souls. Why do they have to be associated with consciousness and not personalities?
The problem is that some people want to limit the rights of others on very flimsy evidence. Someone wishing to limit the access of my daughters to contraception and abortion had better have a better argument than “it’s plausible” - or PETA has the same right to limit their access to meat.
I think this discussion is right on target, since it is about how some people think that unproved morality should allow them to influence the actions of others.
It was a joke, son, a joke.
I work in data mining, and know about multi-value logic, so I know fuzzy logic is not really fuzzy. In a sense the Bible being kind of right is a bit like fuzzy logic.
I believe with a perfect faith that the Bible is between 47 and 62% correct. We hear this kind of thing all the time, don’t we?
If people have souls than how is abortion harming them? Abortions would essentially be a shortcut to the afterlife and given the non-existent opportunities for sin in the womb, it’s pretty much a straight ticket to heaven. In this light, being aborted is the greatest thing that can ever happen to you. You’re not only guaranteed entrance to heaven but there’s no waiting around for decades to get there.
I’m not saying this to mock the pro-life movement but this does seem to be the logical next step from their premises.
It’s only the logical next step if you think that people are only souls; that the body is just an overcoat, so to speak, that you discard along the way.
That’s not a mainstream Christian position, though, and I doubt that it’s a position that underpins the atttitudes of many pro-lifers.
I know you were just joshing, but there are at least some interpretations of Christian theology that sin is in the blood, and thus a fetus is already contaminated by sin. So abortion only sends souls to hell!
At least the old-timey Catholics created “limbo” to serve the purpose of the moral punishment fit for dead infants: it isn’t “hell” in the full sense, but it’s still not heaven.
It’s amazing to me how little Christian theology has advanced beyond the age of Dante… It’s even more amazing to me how religious thought can “advance” at all, given that it possesses no intellectual mechanism for it.
lol - I like that.
Do you remember back in college… when The Book would have all these nice simplifying assumptions like frictionless surfaces and whatnot… and then you’d get to the lab and have to contend with various irregularities and a lab partner who spills stuff on your notebook, and the experiment never quite worked out the way it was supposed to?
Well, I kind of regard the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the Textbook of Theoretical Morality. It’s great for ideal situations where people share things and follow the rules and play nice, but it’s difficult to apply to a world full of terrible horrible no good very bad things. I don’t have any real answers; I just do my best.
But I wouldn’t marry her. And I don’t believe in arranged marriages.