SCRIPTURE: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” –Psalms 53:1. [source]
COMMENTARY: If even a fool can figure it out, I’m not sure what your problem is. But maybe you’ve just never honestly considered why you don’t believe in Odin or Hecate or Zeus or Anansi. Take a moment and figure that out, then see if those same reasons could possibly be applied to your own god. And if you decide that you still believe anyway, take a moment to list the reasons that you do, and then honestly ask yourself if those reasons could be applied to Odin, Hecate, Zeus, or Anansi. These gods weren’t just cute mythology stories to the people who believed in them. They believed just as strongly as you believe in your god. How is it possible that they were so wrong about their gods, but you’re not about your own? You and I are both atheists about thousands of gods worshipped throughout human history. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. But what do I know? I’m just another apostate.
ok so you believe there is no God, right?
Do you believe there is anything immaterial in this world?
Or is everything just material determined by the laws of physics and chemistry?
Here Is a a SHORT list of things that I believe point to a God. I might add that most of these cannot exist in your all material, atheistic world.
Atheism is a self refuting superstition for those who simply do not want there to be a god for one reason or another. That fact I know 100%. Any attempt to prove atheism commits suicide and quickly becomes self refuting.
Free will (to deny it is to use it)
Laws of logic (immaterial, have always existed)
Objective morality
Objective truth
Spirit/soul
Beginning of the material universe
Intelligence in our bodies/cells/etc.
Complexity of life
Design in the universe.
So yes, since I believe these things exist, I know that there is a God and an immaterial aspect to life. Science hinges on it. If the world was not rational, if we were not rational, and the scientist didn’t have a free will mind to execute the experiment, we could not even trust science.
Congratulations. You’re the first person in the world to prove the existence of a god using the God of the Gaps argument.
While you are waiting to collect your prize from the Nobel committee, maybe you can tell me which of the gods is the one responsible for filling in the gaps. Due to your arguments I’m renouncing my atheism today and looking for a god to worship. I’m leaning toward Hecate, but maybe you have a better feel for which I should worship?
Which god is up to you. All I am saying is that atheism cannot be true. It literally destroys all the tools needed to try to prove it. It’s a self defeating worldview
Haha. Atheism isn’t something that needs to be proved.
But seriously. What are you going to do with the prize money?
How is atheism not something that needs to be proven? It seems like you are avoiding responsibility. Please don’t tell me you merely lack a belief… Your #states there is no God.
Atheism is the rejection of the proposal of a god. The hashtag #thereisnogod was used because the scripture I quoted was “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no god.”
I have a personal belief that there is no god. It is not something I can prove nor something that I care to prove. But if proving something is a requirement to accept a belief, in your opinion, then by your own argument you cannot accept the existence of any god that has not been proven.
If instead we talk about the probability of the existence of god, then I am happier to make a claim that the existence of a god is improbable.
However, if you want a more concrete claim than that, I will state that the god proposed in the Bible is a logical impossibility and can be disproven logically, though you seem to have issue with me using Christianity’s own claims against it, calling that arguing from a worldview I don’t agree with.
B, do you believe that Zeus exists?
No, Zeus is a created god made up of the material universe. The god I believe is the creator and sustainer of all material .
The question is actually irrelevant. We are talking about whether God exists or not. To discuss how I communicate with him presupposes his existence, the very thing we are discussing. Many things are interesting that we can talk about, but it doesn’t make it relevant.
Let’s stick to evidence for or against a divine being
B, in the middle of our discussion of evidence for the existence of God you say “I know God exists through my relationship with him.”, it must be relevant in your own opinion.
I thought that by definition material eyes can not see something immaterial, material ears can not hear something immaterial etc.
I can’t imagine what channels of communication can be used by human to get in touch with an immaterial being.
Please explain, how do you communicate with God, through which means?
You also clearly don’t understand the god of the gaps problem. All the evidence points me to a god. It is not lack of evidence that forces me to insert god, but it’s the opposite. The evidence points me to an immaterial, uncaused first cause aka a god or supernatural being.
B, by “evidence” you mean the list you have posted above?
So far, B, you’ve said:
* I don’t understand free will, therefore God
* I don’t understand the laws of logic. therefore God
* I don’t understand objective morality, therefore God
* I don’t understand objective truth, therefore God
* I don’t understand the spirit/soul, therefore God
* I don’t understand the beginning of the material universe, therefore God
* I don’t understand intelligence in our bodies/cells/etc, therefore God
* I don’t understand the complexity of life, therefore life
* I don’t understand design in the universe, therefore God
You haven’t cited any evidence of a god, and most certainly not the particular God of the Bible.
But you are (presumably, maybe not?) atheistic about every other god ever worshipped by humanity, so is it your position that atheism works for 99.999% of gods?
I don’t think B meant that he or she doesn’t understand all these things, most probably he or she meant that all these things are immaterial.
I didn’t say I don’t understand those areas. I simply say that they exist.
Enough with the Nobel Prize, these are very common arguments.
Yes. Thanks. That they are immaterial, and I believe they exist. I’ve tried to avoid this because I know it carries no weight to an unbeliever (and will probably make you roll your eyes if not even laugh) but I know God exists through my relationship with him. My other arguments do not 100% prove anything
If you understand them, then you obviously know that they don’t prove or point to the existence of God. You are correct that these arguments are very common. There is even a name to them: the God of the Gaps argument.
In the old days, the following also used to be on the list:
* the sun moving across the sky
* disease
* natural disasters (interestingly, still sometimes referred to as “acts of god”)
* weather
* pregnancy
Now that we understand these things, though, we no longer attribute them to god. In fact, never in the entire history of the world have we investigated something that we didn’t understand and came upon “god” as the answer for how it works. Is it your opinion that as we investigate the items on your list that “god” will come up as the answer to those questions?
I know that my mother exists because of my relationship with her. I call her on the telephone, and she answers. I ask her a question, and she gives me her opinion. I invite her to lunch, and we enjoy each other’s company. How do you “know” that your god exists through a relationship with it? Are you saying you have its telephone number? What does your relationship look like if your god is immaterial?
I am very happy you and your mother have a relationship and enjoy each other’s company. That’s super special! I will just suggest your mom is more than just material flying around this universe dictated by the laws of chemistry and physics. I believe your moms life actually has more value to it than stardust. I also think the conversation you two enjoy is thoughtful and not predetermined reactions of neurons firing in your heads, but an honest relationship built on love.
Apostate–it’s truely not worth continuing the discussion. I will be the first to admit I have probably been the one keeping it going up to this point. We continue to misunderstand each other. I truly wish the best for you!
B, you have to answer apostate’s questions please.
It is frustrating when questions are not answered.
How does your relationship with God functions if God is immaterial?
B, have I understood you correctly?
Do you mean to concede that your arguments from existence of these things on your list which you suppose are immaterial, that all these arguments are inconsistent and we are moving on to examining your relationship with God?
Do answer this because I still see many logical contradictions in the arguments from this list.
I do not actually have to answer it, because I do not take her questions as genuine anymore. Also, it’s not fair to say just because it was asked it has to be answered. I can fling out many questions to you but expecting you to answer every one exhaustively is just not realistic
Haven’t you agreed to my suggestions on the bottom of this page on how not to talk past each other, how to engage in meaningful dialogue and how to keep this conversation coherent by answering questions, not jumping from one line of thought to another too often and not poking fun at each other?
I do find the question “how similar your relationship with God is to apostate’s relationship with her or his mother?” To ba a very meaningful, deep question, very relevant to this discussion.
Please do answer it, it’s very interesting too.
I did agree to your statements…. One being staying on topic, but if that is not valid still, here are some for you.
What happened to the body of Jesus in your opinion?
What in your opinion caused the beginning of the material universe?
How do you account for immaterial things like the laws of logic?
Please, B, do not let this discussion disintegrate, I really want to understand the way you think and to at least try to find some common ground, and please be fair, it was you, not Apostate, who switched topics from your list to your relationship with God.
Apostate didn’t fire a volley of questions unrelated to each other at you.
You went in that direction on your own initiative and Apostate reasonably pointed out that immaterial being can not be contacted the way you can contact a person.
Please do explain how your relationship with immaterial God works, how do you communicate?
It’s a fascinating question. I can not even imagine such communication.
Apostate, please refrain from sarcasm, it doesn’t do much good here.
Let’s try to see into each other’s ways of thinking.
It is really very interesting.
As for your three questions,-
I don’t know what happened to the body of Jesus,
there are some solid theories in physics on the beginning of the Universe which are too complex to bring up here,
Laws of logic are the way we, humans have learned to avoid contradictions in our thinking, I can not comprehend how existence of these laws can be considered as evidence for there being God, I can’t see any connection here.
Do tell us please, how do you communicate with God, through which means?
Although I understand, it really isn’t worth my time writing something so long explaining it to you. If you already reject the supernatural, there is no point explaining to you how I interact with the supernatural.
Why explain something you already deny? It’s a waste of time
It might be interesting for you to research the facts around the death, burial, and empty tomb and make your own decision.
I too have heard many theories, but none that are solid. All theories I have heard start with material, which is clearly illogical if material came into existence from nothing.
We have learned the laws of logic. Does that mean humans created the laws of logic?
B, let’s continue here the discussion we’ve started in “Train up a child” post.
We’ve been talking about objective morality, one of the items on the list you’ve posted above.
1. Please explain this,- how do you logically connect the question of existence of objective morality with a question of existence of God?
These seem to me to be two independent, unconnected questions.
2. When I paraphrased your statements as “We want there to be an objective morality therefore God exists.” you said that this expresses your views accurately. The emphasis here is on “want”.
The structure of this statement is ” We want something therefore it exists “.
Do you see that the logic of this statement is broken?
That existence of anything doesn’t follow out of our wishes for anything?
The logical structure of this statement can only be categorized as Wishful Thinking. Do you agree?
3. Do you have any evidence for the existence of objective morality in the real world?
I did give examples of evidence which suggest that in fact objective morality doesn’t exist. There seem to me to be lots more of these examples, I could compile quite a list if you’d like.
Please answer these questions by number,- 1,2,3. I will be able to follow your thoughts more clearly this way.
Thanks.
Sorry I am not responding as you requested. It’s simply to clarify your view…
The way I read it, I am assuming your view is that there is no such thing as objective morality. Is that correct?
I really appreciate your tone and seriousness to engage. We might want to move to email down the road
Thanks B,
Yes, it seems to me that you and justanotherapostate are talking past each other, not really engaging in constructive dialogue.
I don’t mind continuing our discussion here, it could be interesting for other visitors to this site, we don’t have to switch to email.
Yes, I as I said I don’t see any evidence for the existence of objective morality and many facts are the evidence to the contrary.
But even if it did exist the question number one is very important here.
Do answer it please.
It’s really hard for me to imagine how you conclude that God exists out of premise of existence of laws of logic which of course do exist.
Thanks. I appreciate your honesty that objective morality does not exist. My only problem is when people post things that use morality as a support for their position even when they believe it does not exist. In my mind that is (for lack of a better term) skitsofrenic. I understand now that you do not take that position.
I believe objective morality because (I believe) we are made in God’s image. This does not mean we look like God, but that we have a spirit, mind, logic, reason, emotions, etc. God also gave us a conscious to know what right and wrong are. The good that we know is given to us by God and embedded in our soul if you will. As a result, morality transcends human beings, is rooted in God, is not based on human opinion, and will not evolve or change. For example, killing innocent people has always been wrong, is currently wrong, and we will never evolve down the road to where doing so is ever right.
Let me be the first to admit, I am NOT the most articulate with this view AT ALL. If you truly want to know how Christians ground objective morality, I can give your links to articles or podcasts if you are truly interested.
Please do answer my three questions.
Your logic is becoming circular.
You’ve started with the premise of existence of objective morality which in your opinion leads us to conclude that God exists, but now you say that proof of existence of objective morality is based on existence of God and us being made in His image.
Do you see the circle?
Please do answer when you see a question mark, the discussion gets frustrating if questions are left unanswered..
Objective meaning not based on individual opinion. Time, place, and people groups, do not affect it. Let me know what might else need to be defined… Good question!
Gotcha. My view is that objective morality exists, therefore an objective moral law giver must exist, otherwise it’s a matter of opinion.
I’m guessing this is where we are stuck George. I believe objective morality exists and you do not. That is something I can agree to disagree on.
For now you have only defined what “objective” is NOT based on.
What IS it based on?
How do we judge if certain moral statement is objectively wrong?
Gods Nature is the standard of good. We are made in his image (sorry for the theology) meaning we instinctively and intuitively know the difference between right and wrong because he made us, unlike other living creatures in his image.
I do not doubt that there are small issues that we can disagree on, but I believe that only one thing needs to be objectively wrong to prove objective morality exists. We may disagree on things the government does or how wealth is distributed, but on the majors, like life , rape, etc. I believe it’s very clear the difference between right and wrong.
I still don’t see how you arrive from premise of existence of objective morality (even if it does exist) to the existence of God. Do explain your logic of that conclusion, how does it follow from that premise.
And I don’t quite grasp what you mean by ” objective morality “.
I thought that “objective” is just something agreed on by everyone but you say it is something else.
Please explain what it is in your terminology.
Okay, by “objective” you mean “intuitively known by every person without exception”?
#3–i believe if only one objective truth has to exist in order for objective morality to exist.
Torturing people for fun is objectively wrong in my opinion. It is currently wrong, has always been wrong, and will always be wrong. Thoughts?
Start with question number one please.
Sorry, just read your post after I posted mine! I’ll get back to you in a bit, I’ll have to sit down at my computer with some time to reply to all 3.
We have to define “objective ” here please.
Do you define something as objectively wrong by time or by population?
I mean Is something objectively wrong if it has always been and will always be considered wrong? Or if all the people without exception consider it wrong?
Or both, all people at all times?
Dear B and justanotherapostate,
May I suggest some ways for you guys to avoid talking past each other and to engage in a more constructive dialogue?
– do answer each other’s questions.
– don’t jump from one topic to another too much.
– don’t be too ironic, don’t try to ridicule each other, it doesn’t help.
I hope this doesn’t offend any of you, I do mean well for both of you.
agree
You are correct, George. I allowed my frustrations to change the way I interacted with him, and you are correct that my behavior only served to exacerbate the problem. My apologies, B. I will do better.
Dear B, dear Apostate,
Please let’s take a pose, regroup and restructure our discussion.
It looked for a while like it fell apart completely and I felt sad to see it disintegrate. But today I see that it still can be salvaged, that there is still some willingness to talk, it’s a relief for me. Thank you.
B, please don’t be too touchy, Apostate has cooled down and apologized, and we can talk more coherently now, I believe there will be no more ridicule.
B, do not be discouraged by me supposing that God doesn’t exist, it just seems to me to be the most plausible state of affairs in the real world.
My views of the world are open to change but only if there is sufficient evidence for a change, I wouldn’t change them on a whim.
The fact that my current views aren’t same as yours actually makes the discussion worthwhile and to me fascinating, if we didn’t differ there wouldn’t be much to talk about.
As we stand at the moment the conversation has branched out into a few still unresolved topics, let’s list them and discuss them one by one, without jumping.
I would be interested in discussing any of the following,
– objective morality,
– the nature of communication channels between humans and God, the most mysterious and interesting topic for me.
– Apostate’s original post on the question of why you don’t believe in, let’s say Shiva the creator and sustainer of the Universe, Vishnu and Krishna but do believe in Jesus, God the Father and Holy Ghost.
B, it’s your call, what shall we talk about? Pick a topic.
You can even suggest some other one.
The only thing I ask you very much to please do is to answer my questions wherever you see a question mark. I do get badly frustrated when questions are left hanging unanswered. I promise that my questions will be on topic, relevant, logical, productive.
Thanks. Let’s restart.
-I think we agree to disagree on objective morality.
-still don’t think it’s a topic of necessity.
-I first believed in Jesus because the evidence surrounding him and the ressurection.
I do not think I have to defend why I don’t believe in other deities. When someone is guilty of a crime, you don’t have to explain why you think others did not do it, simply why the person guilty is guilty.
B, I meant to ask you to pick one topic for farther discussion, I didn’t mean to keep talking on few subjects at once, that would be too chaotic.
Let’s continue on objective morality then, please at least give me a definition,
What is it?
How in practice can we make a distinction between objective and subjective morality?
Hey George,
This is my first time responding to you from an actual computer rather than my iphone and damn, it is so much easier to see what is going on lol.
I will do my best to respond to your two questions, but I honestly would rather move to something else. I feel like we have exhausted this topic for the most part.
OBJECTIVE MORALITY- something that is wrong, regardless of time, place, people group, etc. It has always been wrong and will never be right. It is rooted in something deeper than our individual opinion.
ex. Torturing babies for fun is objectively wrong. It has always been wrong, is currently wrong, and will never be ok no matter how much we evolve as human beings.
I believe objective morality is self-evident.
SUBJECTIVE MORALITY- morality based on the subject/person. Not grounded or rooted in anything other than individual human opinion. With subjective morality, it comes down to my opinion versus yours whether something is right or wrong.
How would you define them? Or where would you differ with my thoughts?
Would you mind rephrasing the question,”How is practice can we make a distinction between objective and subjective morality?” I was starting give my thoughts but want to make sure I am clear what you are asking.
Thanks.
rephrasing the question,- “When someone judges something to be wrong how do we recognize if the judgement is subjective or objective?”
B, here is how I understand your definition,- “Something is objectively wrong if and only if every person who has ever lived considers it wrong”
Have I understood you correctly?
Do you agree with such definition?
We recognize it to be wrong because they are self evident. We lock up people or put them in psych wards if they deny the most self evident moral truths.
They are self evident and I would add to my definition that they will never, ever, ever change or evolve in the future because they are not grounded in the individual mind.
My understanding is that you do not believe in objective morality.
Is it safe to say that you cannot guarantee that what is wrong today will always be wrong?
B, I can not answer the question whether I believe in objective morality until I understand your definition of it and how in practice to distinguish between things objectively and subjectively wrong. For now I’m trying to understand your definitions and I still can not grasp the jist of the distinction between things wrong subjectively and things wrong objectively.
Your example of torturing babies doesn’t help, it is wrong to torture babies in both senses of the wrongness, objective and subjective.
1. Being self evident is not a good criteria because every thing which I consider wrong feels to me to be self evident. I can not think of even one example of something that I would consider wrong and at the same time not self evidently wrong. How can I tell the difference in practice between things you would call objectively wrong and subjectively wrong?
2. Please give me examples of things you think are wrong objectively but at the same time not wrong subjectively.
3. Please also give counterexamples of things wrong subjectively and not wrong objectively.
Please do answer by number,- 1,2,3.
Thank you.
As for your question about the future, I would say I don’t know.
It is not very practical as a criteria anyway.
If two people disagree on whether something will be wrong in the future there is no way we can figure out who of them is correct.
We also have to keep in mind that whatever we consider wrong in daily life is almost never just a quirk of someone’s opinion.
Morality is a social construct, an agreement of most of the people in society.
This is a very important point.
Hey George–Good questions…
1. Being self evident is not a good criteria because every thing which I consider wrong feels to me to be self evident. I can not think of even one example of something that I would consider wrong and at the same time not self evidently wrong. How can I tell the difference in practice between things you would call objectively wrong and subjectively wrong?
——I do not know that you can. For example (and this might not be real strong as I am just winging this for the sake of time)
I drive a white car. That is an objective fact because my car is white. However, I personally feel (subjectively) that it is white at the same time. I do not think it is a problem for them both to be felt. The reason I think it gets sticky with morality is because morality is immaterial, so in some sense it is probably impossible to prove that objective morality exists, because it is not something we can see or touch to confirm.The question is whether or not it ultimately boils down to your matter of opinion or if there is something binding and transcendent that we are aware of. I think this is where our worldviews differ. I believe the book of Romans, where it outlines that God has written morality on all of our hearts so we are without any excuse for our poor actions regardless of who you are. Obviously our worldviews differ on the view of the Bible, but I just threw it out there because it is part of my belief and you seem willing to hear it even though you don’t agree.
2. Please give me examples of things you think are wrong objectively but at the same time not wrong subjectively.
—–I really do not think I can. I guess (and will need to think about it more) you can say if it is wrong objectively it’s naturally going to be wrong subjectively.
—– I think we are getting too tied up with the objective vs. subjective. My point and I think you would agree is that without God, objective morality simply does not exist and morality would be more of a social construct like you mentioned. I believe that is the same view as Sam Harris and co.
3. Please also give counterexamples of things wrong subjectively and not wrong objectively.
Please do answer by number,- 1,2,3.
——(I will have to revisit this)
As for your question about the future, I would say I don’t know.
It is not very practical as a criteria anyway.
——Why not? I know that something like hurting people for fun will never be right. It will never change, evolve, or society will never come to an agreement on it, regardless of the benefit is has on their society. If something is objectively wrong it can never change. God will (in my view) continue to instill every heart with the knowledge of right and wrong. Now obviously if objective morality does not exist, we do not know what the future may hold as the human species and brain evolves.
If two people disagree on whether something will be wrong in the future there is no way we can figure out who of them is correct.
We also have to keep in mind that whatever we consider wrong in daily life is almost never just a quirk of someone’s opinion.
Morality is a social construct, an agreement of most of the people in society.
This is a very important point.
——– I agree that morality would be a social construct if I did not believe in the existence of God. Morality being a social construct could be a very dangerous thing. Who’s construct do we follow? Why?
Please do not feel pressured to answer all the questions because some of them are just interesting to think about.
Who makes the agreement? What are the conditions? Is it just what is best for the human species? Is it what is best for a certain class of citizens?
I can think of several things that I would say are immoral regardless of the social construct. Some day we might not want to keep the elderly around because they are expensive to keep alive, needy, and do not contribute to society. Just because something is best for the group does not make it right.
The same could be said for the disabled, barren, poor, etc. No contribution to society while damaging the earth of it’s resources and costing money is very detrimental. We protect all civil rights because every human life has value.
Lastly, I truly think we are nearly the end this topic. I think we can agree that without God, morality would be a social construct. My view is that God placed the moral law on our hearts, and your view is that morality is agreed upon by human beings.
How about we discuss something else. I would love to visit the resurrection… The book of Corinthians is very clear about it… if Jesus did not rise, then Christianity would be dead and people are to be pitied for believing it. I am not sure how familiar you are with the Bible, but to visit this site I am assuming you have some experience with it or with Mormonism. Just in case you don’t, you can check it out. I believe it is 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection of Christ is what Christianity hangs out, so I think it is probably the most important aspect to discuss because without it I would not be a Christian.
Not sure if I will be back this afternoon, but if not I hope you have a great and relaxing Sunday.
B, thank you very much, I appreciate your willingness to talk.
It seams to me that not only you can not prove the existence of objective morality, you can not even give it a definition or site any examples of it.
There are deep reasons for this inability,- in reality morality is a combination of each person’s opinions and societal norms, agreements, traditions, establishments, social interactions and communications etc., some aspects of it are perceived as objective and other aspects as subjective. It’s not that there are two separate moralities, one objective and one subjective, it is that there is one rather complicated morality which has two sides, objective and subjective, like one coin has two sides.
The facts that moral norms change with time, vary from society to society or even within different subcultures in the same society are evidence for it being a social construct. Social strife, conflict and struggle around certain moral issues, debates, power games, propaganda and contra propaganda, agreement and disagreement around some moral opinions are all evidence for this process in which social moral codes are being established and reestablished.
These social constructs are formed in a very complex way as society is composed of many independently acting (and reacting to each other’s actions) individuals, groups, organizations, tribes, clans, churches, subcultures etc., each with it’s own agendas and goals. The morality is a result of these countless interactions and reactions to interactions and reactions to reactions etc. This is a general sense in which your questions listed above should be answered.
It looks like it has nothing to do with God whatsoever.
Even Mormonism, a social organization which is supposedly led by God, managed by God on daily basis through His directives to the president and apostles, even this church is splitting into many splinter churches because of disagreements about some moral issues. If God did place moral law into each person’s heart than at the very least He would have put the same moral law into each mormon’s heart and mormons wouldn’t differ from each other on the questions of let’s say moral wrongness of polygamy and the church wouldn’t be splitting and dividing from time to time, all members of the church would stick to Brigham and wouldn’t follow James J. Strang. Nobody would join Warren Jeffs’ splinter church if God’s law was in his or her heart. These differences and these splits of the church are evidence against your statement of there being God’s laws in each persons heart.
The fact that there are some people who do enjoy torturing other people for fun, even torturing children for fun is evidence that at least in the hearts of these particular people there is no law placed by God which would prohibit that.
B, I sincerely hope the following wouldn’t offend you, I do not mean to be disrespectful or belittling,-
it seams that your personal feeling that your moral opinions come from God placing laws into your heart is just a curiosity of the way an interface between your consciousness and subconsciousness works. Just a quirk of your upbringing, your social background and cultural baggage you carry. It’s just the way in which your consciousness perceives your subconscious moral leanings (which are internalized social norms plus basic qualities of human psyche). I for example perceive my subconscious moral leanings (which I think are for the most part similar to yours) as my intuition, that’s the interface I’ve got, most probably because I was not brought up in any church.
Yes, in certain sense morality is immaterial (social agreements between people are not something material), now tell me how, by which logical steps do you go from the fact that it is immaterial to the fact that God exists? There are many immaterial things in the world,- the car is material and it’s motion is immaterial, the candle is material and it’s burning is immaterial, the computer is material and it’s computations are immaterial, people are material and arrangements and agreements between them are immaterial. All these things have nothing to do with existence of God, do they?
Please show the logical steps you took from that premise to that conclusion.
The fact that there are some people who do enjoy torturing other people for fun, even torturing children for fun is evidence that at least in the hearts of these particular people there is no law placed by God which would prohibit that.
—-I disagree with this statement. We lock these people up because we KNOW that it is wrong. We do not let them off and blame it on their DNA or social upbringing or baggage, yet we still hold them to a moral standard regardless of their history.
Not to be rude, but I really am done with this topic. Here is the summary of my side…
1. Moral laws require moral law givers
2. There is a moral law
3. Therefore there is a moral law giver.
I understand that we differ on #2 and #3, and I am good with that.
Even Mormonism, a social organization which is supposedly led by God, managed by God on daily basis through His directives to the president and apostles, even this church is splitting into many splinter churches because of disagreements about some moral issues. If God did place moral law into each person’s heart than at the very least He would have put the same moral law into each mormon’s heart and mormons wouldn’t differ from each other on the questions of let’s say moral wrongness of polygamy and the church wouldn’t be splitting and dividing from time to time, all members of the church would stick to Brigham and wouldn’t follow James J. Strang. Nobody would join Warren Jeffs’ splinter church if God’s law was in his or her heart. These differences and these splits of the church are evidence against your statement of there being God’s laws in each persons heart.
—- It should how fallen humans are.
—- I am sure they can all agree upon some very basic moral laws
—–I am not LDS.
B, I sincerely hope the following wouldn’t offend you, I do not mean to be disrespectful or belittling,-
it seams that your personal feeling that your moral opinions come from God placing laws into your heart is just a curiosity of the way an interface between your consciousness and subconsciousness works. Just a quirk of your upbringing, your social background and cultural baggage you carry. It’s just the way in which your consciousness perceives your subconscious moral leanings (which are internalized social norms plus basic qualities of human psyche). I for example perceive my subconscious moral leanings (which I think are for the most part similar to yours) as my intuition, that’s the interface I’ve got, most probably because I was not brought up in any church.
— Like you, I was not raised in a church.
— Personal feelings? Although I understand why you say this, it assumes my feelings are that I want there to be a God. Life would actually be much easier in some respects if I did not believe in the super natural and His existence. I would have stayed home this morning for example, and would have saved myself a few bucks as well.
Yes, in certain sense morality is immaterial (social agreements between people are not something material), now tell me how, by which logical steps do you go from the fact that it is immaterial to the fact that God exists? There are many immaterial things in the world,- the car is material and it’s motion is immaterial, the candle is material and it’s burning is immaterial, the computer is material and it’s computations are immaterial, people are material and arrangements and agreements between them are immaterial. All these things have nothing to do with existence of God, do they?
Please show the logical steps you took from that premise to that conclusion.
Again I would simple state my summary from above.
1. Moral laws require moral law givers
2. There is a moral law
3. Therefore there is a moral law giver.
I understand that we differ on #2 and #3, and I am good with that. I personally believe that the Christian Worldview is the best reasoning for all of reality I see around me. Morality is simply one piece to the large puzzle that makes a cumulative case for my view.
I have enjoyed our conversation regarding this topic. Let me know if you want to kick around the resurrection or not, otherwise I truly wish you all the best!
B, we still haven’t reached any common ground at all on this topic and you want to drop it already?
The disturbing thing is that we are starting to talk past each other,- I say ” if someone tortures for fun this someone has no God’s law in his heart “, you respond ” we lock him up “, but the fact that we lock him up doesn’t say anything about his heart, you haven’t responded to the point. This is talking past each other.
Please address my point.
My whole post above is a description of how moral laws are being established in societies through social interaction and in response you say ” Moral laws require moral law giver “, this is talking past each other, you did not respond to the point I was making.
Out of your 1,2,3 we do not agree on 1 at all,
and we can not come to common understanding of the nature of 2.
I say “Moral laws are established through social interactions” and explain how it works in real world,
you say “Moral laws require moral law giver” and do not explain yourself at all,
please give at least one example of a moral law where we have any evidence that it was given to us by law giver and please explain the process, how, in which way does moral law giver communicate His laws to us, through which communication channels? Our material eyes can not see His immaterial body, our material ears can not hear His immaterial voice…
Site your evidence, don’t just state your opinions.
If we don’t work out the productive way to talk to each other, if we don’t figure out an effective procedure of addressing each other’s points, changing topics will not help, we will quickly come to the same situation in the new topic and will start to talk past each other and I suspect you will start proclaiming your opinions without backing them up with evidence.
We have come so far, we have outlined our views, may be if we keep pushing forward, don’t flinch in front of these difficulties, make corrections in the structure of the conversation (like necessity to address the points made and necessity to bring in evidence) we can find at least some agreement and common ground?
Let’s try.
B, if you are unable to define objective morality in principal, would it be at all helpful to take a look at concrete examples of different actions and you could tell us how you feel objective morality applies in those cases and thus maybe you could better illustrate your point by concrete example than through abstract logic?
Dear B,
It looks like we’ve lost you to this discussion, it’s a pity.
Go ahead and change the topic than, state your case for the resurrection. I don’t mind talking about it.
I want to suggest couple more guidelines for a more productive dialogues in the future,-
– do make sure to address my points and answer my questions, I promise to do the same to yours and promise that questions and points I make will be relevant and not too numerous.
– if at some point we come to making statements which contradict each other (like “Morality is a social construct” versus “Morality is installed into people’s hearts by God”) each of us must support his claim with evidence, not just “agree to disagree”, that is the least interesting way to handle such cases which just leads nowhere.
Would you agree?
Before we abandon the topic of “Morality and God” I’ll post here some more thoughts about it, you don’t have to address these if you don’t want to.
1. History.
Morality is obviously changing in the course of human history and social development. This change contradicts the opinion that morality is preinstalled into people’s hearts.
Even such nowadays self-evident moral statements as “torture for fun is morally bad” are quite recent.
In medieval and renaissance Europe for example an execution of convicted criminal used to be a form of public entertainment and consisted not of simple and direct killing of the convict but of torture. These public torture sessions would attract crowds of spectators, people would come to watch with their friends and families, with their kids. There are some documented cases of wealthy towns in France buying convicted criminals from less wealthy ones for the purpose of entertaining their citizens. These tortures where excruciatingly cruel (look up “stretching on the rack”, “braking on the wheel”, “quartering” etc.), designed specifically to maximize suffering while keeping the convict alive for as long as possible, not allowing him or her to die too soon and rob spectators of their fun…
History of slavery and abolitionist movement is a very obvious illustration of social processes which bring about a change in moral outlook.
You can see at work such social mechanisms as debates, public lectures, letters to the editors, newspaper campaigns for and against abolition, works of literature and theater advocating change and other works opposing it, political maneuvering, involvement of governments, social strife and power politics of all sorts all the way up to and including war etc. Moral statement “Slavery is bad” was not preinstalled into humans’ hearts, it was arrived at by these social interactions.
2. History of religion.
The God of the Bible gives direct, clearly stated commandments which contradict modern moral outlook, such as to murder your spouse in case of infidelity, to murder people for working on sabbath, to murder someone if he or she shows interest in other religions etc. I can make this list quite long.
Today even followers of this God, christians and jews, find in their hearts strong convictions that these commandment are not morally sound. These convictions came into their hearts through internalizing social constructs of morality. These convictions couldn’t have been installed into their hearts by God who clearly stated that He wanted them to do the opposite.
3. In modern world some people do torture for fun. What has been installed by God into hearts of these people who do it?
4. Retelling of some logical arguments of Plato on this topic,-
If objective morality is given to us by God the next question to ask is this,- How did He choose His moral truths?
If He made choices through Reason then He is redundant, we should follow Reason.
If He didn’t use Reason, if His choices where made at random or on a whim, then why would we want to obey His choices?
These are my thoughts for now. Waiting to hear from you.