[TeamManager]

1. There is evil in this world

2. If there is evil, there must be good

3. If there is good and evil, there must be a moral law on which to judge between good and evil

4. If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver

5. For the theist, this points to God

[chotadipo]

6. For the Atheist, this points to common sense

[dadyamaru]

>1. There is evil in this world
>
>2. If there is evil, there must be good
>
>3. If there is good and evil, there must be a moral law on
>which to judge between good and evil
>
>4. If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver
>
>5. For the theist, this points to God

@Team Manager
What abt me? well i only have this to say

A religious thinker is a contradiction in terms, for whereas religion is the product of faith, thinking is the product of reason.
Faith & reason are in direct contradiction to each other.

[TeamManager]

Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, and let us REASON together," says Yahweh: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.


Heb 11:6 But without FAITH it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

[ATLian]

TM,

your argument is a fallacy, called the "Fallacy of the Excluded Middle" which I'm just too tired to type about now.

There's also a major problem if you say god is the source of all morality, and this problem is known as "Euthyphro's Dilemma". We discussed this issue of god and morality a while back on the post

http://www.mashada.com/forums/index/...0300/index.php

and I argued that god is a terrbile choice as a guide for what is and what isn't moral. Let me repost what I wrote then:
_____________________________________________

I don’t know if you’re into Philosophy, but if you are, go read about “The Euthyphro Dilemma”. It's a discussion between Euthyphro and Socrates which touches on the issue you address above.

In a nutshell, there’s a maxim that goes something like “what is good to god is good, and what is not good to god is not good”, a maxim which Euthyphro strongly believed in, but Socrates didn't. Therefore, Socrates asked Euthyphro “Are morally good acts willed by god because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by god?” This is what is called Euthyphro Dilemma's, which is also expressed in many other ways, like “is the holy approved by the gods because it’s holy, or is it holy because it’s approved?”

The issue this dilemma brings about is it shows that god should NOT be the basis of morality. Let me see if I can explain it without getting too muddled up.

If you argue that “Act X is morally obligatory because god commands it”, then it shows that Act X is good only because god said it was good. If an act is good only because god says it’s good, then it’s impossible to say god is good. That’s because any command he makes, whether good or bad, would be defined as good. This means that if he turned into an “omnipotent fiend” and only did bad things, then even those bad things would still be classified as good. E.g. if he commanded us to hate, instead of love, one another, then hatred would now be right. So the statement "god is good" is a void statement that cannot hold water, and therefore cannot be the basis of our morality.

Also, with this argument, it seems like god's commands are arbitrary and therefore it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that one day god might decree, like Catskill85 says above, that “It is ok to kill and fornicate.” That would change our perception of morality, since it shows that morality, as we know it, is all redundant since it is based on the whims of god, who can change it whenever he wants to suit him and his current purposes. So however you look at this side of the argument, it strongly hints that god is an unsuitable foundation on which to build our morality.

If on the other hand you argue that “god commands Act X because it is morally obligatory”, then you are saying that god’s commands are actually based on what is good independent of him. Which then implies that there is a greater moral standard out there to which god himself must also conform, and that god is but an executor of this law which is superior to him. Therefore, killing and fornicating are immoral in that superior law, and god cannot wake up one day and declare that “It is ok to kill and fornicate”. If that’s the case, then it is redundant to worship god as our moral standard, since there is a greater standard out there to which god subscribes, and to which we should then worship!

TM (and other believers), I’d love to hear what your take on this is. When it comes to your moral values, are those morals right because your god commands them or does your god command them because those morals are right? And PLEASE be objective and don't revert to dogma.

[Eden_2005]

I talked bout that in Christian ethics but we also did fallacy of ignorance where believing x is true/good b/c there is no proof that X is false/bad. Thea arguement the poster based has a name i 4got what it is but its a common arguement thats been discredited b/c there a millions that counter it. Ur gonna get some pretty interestin responses check out Atlians post in depth and the fallacy of ignorance, if uve taken philosophy or any religious class u might have heard of them, theyre really interestin when u read more about it, sad thing is it makes u doubt ALOT.
Eden

[TeamManager]

As usual you say nothing about whether God exists or not, but only if he did, He would do things 'my way'.

Secondly, you dont attempt to explain the measure of what is good and what is evil.

still busy with stone-throwing tactics!

----------------------------------------------------------------------


This brings me to my third and most important point. The Christian has an answer to Euthyphros Dilemma because the Christian God is absolute and transcendent. In addition, it is important to stress that ethical standards are related to Gods character in a much more specific way than many Christians have argued. What I am referring to is the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity is the true source for specifically Christian ethics. The Christian answer to Euthyphro is found in an ethic of love specifically grounded in the fact of Gods triunity.

First, according to Jesus, the very essence of the Christian ethic is found in the two great commandments that summarize the whole law of God.


And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, gTeacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?h And He said to him, geYou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, eYou shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.h (Mat. 22:35-40)
Second, this ethic of love is grounded in two important truths. The first is that God is a God of love. The second is that we have been created in His image. For us to do what is good is to conform to God. In so doing, we fulfill the meaning of our creation and become like God Himself.

Third, God is a Trinity. God is one Being in three eternal Persons. The Father, Son, and Spirit are a society bound in covenantal love. Each gives Himself wholly to the others. And all share in their love for the others — the Father and Son sharing together their love for the Spirit, the Spirit and Son sharing their love for the Father, and the Spirit and the Father sharing their love for the Son — so that the Trinity is a perfect fullness of love. It is clear that in this understanding of God, He could not be other than what He is, not only because it is ontologically inconceivable for God to be other than what He is, but also because of the fact that for the Persons of the Trinity to relate to one another any other way would mean the dissolution of the Trinity itself. The love which God commands is not arbitrary for it is grounded in the ontological and ethical necessities of His own being.

For a man to be ethically right means to do what pleases God. God is one. The Father, Son, and Spirit never disagree about what is good or right. Pleasing a sovereign Creator to whom we are responsible for our whole lives is something quite different from pleasing, or attempting to please, the gods of ancient Greece. All relationships with other persons as well as our stewardship over the non-personal creation are first of all and primarily to be understood in terms of our relationship with God. That is what it means for Him to be an absolute Creator and Lord.

At the same time, relationships with other persons are the second priority. We are to love others as we love ourselves. What that means exactly in the everyday affairs of men is spelled out in the law of Moses. Though the law of Moses was given to ancient Israel for her use in the land of Palestine until the coming of the Messiah, the ethical teachings of that law are still relevant for us today for they show us concretely the meaning of love.

Would Socrates have posed the same kind of questions about this kind of God? He certainly could not have referred to jealousy and strife between the Persons of the Trinity and questioned our ability to know what pleases God, as if what were pleasing to the Father might not be pleasing to the Son. If he understood the Christian notion of God, he would not have asked how God knows what is good. God is love essentially and inescapably. When He commands what is right, we are to do it because it is pleasing to Him. Could He command us to do the opposite of what is loving? Not without ceasing to be Himself, for He is a God who subsists in three Persons who are equally ultimate, powerful, wise, and holy. What is right is what is loving and what is right and loving is what pleases the God of love who cannot be other than what He is. Euthyphros Dilemma does not seem to be relevant. Though we still have questions about defining what is right and loving in a particular situation, the Christian answer is that God has revealed the way of love in His Word.

To return to the example at hand, is rape wrong — caused to be wrong — because God condemned it, or did God condemn rape because rapes wrongness caused Him to condemn it? In part, it is a matter of perspective. First, we know that rape is wrong because God condemned it. If we had no other reason for thinking it wrong, that would be enough, for in the nature of the case, the command of an absolute God is the highest court of appeal. At the same time, it is legitimate for us to ask why God condemns rape. We cannot suspend our obedience to the commandments of God upon our attaining what we consider to be a satisfactory answer, but it is never wrong to ask why and to seek understanding. The simple answer is that rape is violating another person. It contradicts both the basic love commands. It is a sin against God since the other person is created in Gods image. It is also a sin against that person. Not loving a person is failing to treat that person with the honor and respect that Gods law commands.

What about the question, Did Gods command gcauseh rape to be wrong? I think not. Did God condemn rape because it violated some standard of right? Yes. But that standard of right is God Himself. Rape is a contradiction of the kind of love that characterizes the Persons of the Trinity and is therefore also a contradiction of the kind of love that men are commanded to show toward one another.

The Christian answer is that what is right is what is pleasing to God, but what is pleasing to God is not arbitrary, for God is a God of love who cannot be other than what He is. He Himself is the love which He commands us to reflect in our personal relationships. Ethical conformity to God Himself is the essence of Christian ethics. Christ has an answer to Socrates question about the essence of piety, the true definition of what is right: first, to love God with all our being, and second, to love others as we love ourselves. This is the essence of what is good and right, for to do so is to be like God.

Finally, the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity in this regard may be illustrated by considering the problem for those religions and philosophies which conceive of God as a monad, like Judaism, Islam, and many of the modern cults. In this conception, God is one being and one person. No personal plurality in God Himself means that from eternity there is no love, goodness, kindness, or any other essentially ethical quality, for all of these words define how persons relate to one another. For in a monad, there are no personal relationships. If we conceive of God as a monad, there are fundamental problems in understanding how God can be the source of ethics. The notion of a monad existing eternally alone, neither needing or seeking fellowship or love, hardly suffices as an ultimate source for an ethic of love. Indeed, such a conception of God is closer to the notion of an impersonal absolute than it is to the Biblical and Christian belief in God as totally and radically personal.

For the Christian, then, saying that God is Himself the source of ethics is not simply philosophical speculation about where one can find absolute standards. It is confession of faith in the Father, Son, and Spirit who love one another from eternity. No doubt this is a position that we hold by faith based upon revelation in Holy Scripture. Though Christians believe that no other faith offers the kind of transcendent ground and eternal meaning for ethics that Christianity does, we did not come to believe in the Triune God because He answers our philosophical needs. We were drawn by the Holy Spirit to the Father because He loved the world and sent His Son to die for our sins and rise again to give life to those who believe.


http://www.berith.org/essays/martin_rape/06.html

[ATLian]

TM,

I'll ignore your comments and focus on what you pasted instead. Did you really read what you posted, or did you just Google and paste the first Christian-themed dismissal of Euthyphro's Dilemma you came across? Your post tries to claim that there is no dilemma, but it instead proves why there is a dilemma, and it strengthens my points above. I'll just touch on one statement in the article:


>For a man to be ethically right means to do what pleases God.

Look at this verse where god issues an explicit command to the Israelites:

1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, CHILDREN AND INFANTS, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

TM, lets assume that you were in that army, and you came across a room where a mother had hidden her infant son and daughter and their infant cousin to save them from death. You'd have two choices:

1) To break god's laws and commandment by giving them something to eat, covering them up warmly and letting them live

2) To do what was ethically right and pleasing to your god by plunging your spear 5 times into the 4-week-old girl's heart, then bashing her 2-year-old brother's head into a pulp with your club and finally decapitating their 15-month-old cousin's head with your sword.

Which of these two choices would you have taken? If you took Option (1) god would have been extremely pissed off at you. Those Option (1)s who chickened out and refused to kill the infants would be sinners, but those Option (2)s with the blood of 100 infants would be heroes for obeying god's commands and wishes to the iota.

Going back to more genocide, there was a time god commanded the Israelites to wipe out the Midianites (just like the Amalekites above), including the infants, children and women. This time the soldiers just couldn't get around to killing little infants and innocent children, so they chose Option (1), therefore doing what was immoral and unethical in god's eyes. Instead of clubbing little babies to death, the soldiers captured them all as hostages.

God of course was livid at being disobeyed, and he unleashed a plague on the Israelites that killed many innocent Israelites women and children who weren't even in the war. Then he re-ordered the Israelites to go back to those hostages and "Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the WOMEN CHILDREN, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

In a nutshell, instead of looking at those happy innocent Midianite infants and letting them live, he was furious that genocide wasn't carried out. So he made them carry out the genocide again, but his thirst for blood cooled a bit and he told them they could kill everyone BUT keep for themselves the virgin girls for rape, carnal desires and other purposes. WTF?

Common sense dictates that there is NO WAY any system that is for hacking and spearing infants to death, and leaving the virgin girls alive for your carnal desires, can be moral, regardless of who the source for this morality is. No way! If your source of morality claims that it is moral, then it goes without saying that your source is clearly not moral.

One final question TM (and to the other active Christians like Kemi, Americanized, Pebbles, etc): Would you have been an active participant in killing the Amalekite infants, and would you have been one of the ones who were insisting on killing the Midianite infants? Would you have been pissed off when your fellow soldiers took the Midianite children as hostages? After god told your army to wipe out all but the virgins, would you have gone back and killed more infants, then taken home for yourself the best looking virgin girls you could find? Would you have been totally at ease and justified with yourself because you did what your god commanded you, and what you know to be right and moral in your god's eyes?

TM, I hope you can now see where Euthyphro's Dilemma comes in, not to mention why god is a terrible source for you morality!

[ATLian]

>I talked bout that in Christian ethics but we also did
>fallacy of ignorance where believing x is true/good b/c there
>is no proof that X is false/bad. Thea arguement the poster
>based has a name i 4got what it is but its a common arguement
>thats been discredited b/c there a millions that counter it.

Eden,

many of these arguments contain many fallacies, so it's hard to pin it them down to just one fallacy. TM's argument above is a Fallacy of Ignorance like you mentioned, plus it's a Fallacy of the Excluded Middle, like I mentioned, but it's also a Fallacy of False Dilemma, it's a Non Sequitur, it's a Fallacy of Hasty Generalization, etc. I know the fallacies, but I can never remember which is which since they are so damn many, so I normally check up on Wikipedia to remind me what they are called.



>the fallacy of ignorance, if uve
>taken philosophy or any religious class u might have heard of
>them, theyre really interestin when u read more about it, sad
>thing is it makes u doubt ALOT.

Why is it SAD if something makes you doubt a lot? I'd think you'd want to only believe in something you have total faith and trust in, and therefore you'd want to explore any avenue that might seem to discredit what you believe in?

[KEMINOKANA]

Atlian,

To answer your question, yes, I would have killed them without any second thoughts. Infact, if I had a huge boiling pot, I would have thrown all of them in there and let them boil to death.

Why? Because before God's eyes, those were evil beings and needed to be dealt with accordingly. Furthermore, I dont know why you keep whining about those people, your turn is coming. Read Revelations well and you'll have a taste of the pain you will go through in hell if you continue flexing your puny muscles against God. I commend your courage though. Some of the things you say I'd die of guilt if I ever even thought about them.