I used to think as you do up until a couple years ago. Then I started doing a lot of thinking--I had started reading about Islam and was considering how I thought it was a brutal and unjust religion, and I realized that if I told anyone that they would counter by asking me how it was much different from some parts of the OT. That kicked off about a year of thinking and reading and talking to various people. The upshot is summarized in this post:
Unfortunately the background I came from is pretty fundamentalist, so I was taught that the Bible including OT was inspired and that God really did speak to various prophets. In the past year or so I've been trying to reconcile that with the sketchy morality depicted in the OT. There seem to be two different ideas of morality among Christians (although a lot of times they coexist in the mind of a person even though they're contradictory. . .) The first is that morality is derived from the nature of God, and God is immutable, thus morality is absolute and never changes. Therefore it ought to be always wrong to murder an innocent, yet God is said to have told Joshua to eradicate the Canaanites down to the babies.The second idea of morality is that our moral laws are just made up by God (possibly completely arbitrarily) and that God is not bound to those rules at all and can change them at any time. I think this is an attempt to detour around the problem of God ordering acts that we would all say are evil. At the same time they say that God is Good, not because we can look at his actions and judge them as being good (God is said to be beyond human understanding and judging his actions is presumptuous), but because God says of himself that he is good. I find this very distasteful because it renders God completely incomprehensible and untrustworthy. Perhaps God really has a personality more like Satan, has handed us moral laws to follow just to play with us, and is telling us that he is good while planning a surprise for those who choose to follow him into the afterlife. . .
So from my point of view either the Judeo-Christian God exists but is too incompetent to transmit his will to his followers, or he exists but is possibly really evil or completely amoral and definitely untrustworthy, or he does not exist and the Bible comes about from human beings gradually building onto a framework of myth. My fundamentalist background makes me unwilling to accept the first, the second I really hope is not true and I wouldn't want to serve that God anyway, and the third I find the most reasonable conclusion, unfortunately.
I had always been taught to think that morality was based upon absolutes, but so many times those absolutes ended up being so relative! Infanticide is wrong--unless you're in Joshua's army and it's a Canaanite baby. Incest is wrong--unless you're one of Adam and Eve's kids. I began wondering, if these things can be wrong according to God at one time and right according to God at another, does that mean that there is anything inherently wrong about them that we should feel such indignation towards them? Rather it seemed to me that we should enact God's prescribed punishment for whatever infraction was currently upon God's prohibited actions list in a dispassionate way. So you killed your newborn--you must be executed, but we won't be angry that you killed the baby, but that you violated God's law in doing so! The action of infanticide itself would have no more moral significance than the action of wearing a blue shirt, supposing God had declared the color blue to be prohibited on pain of death.
The whole thing became very distasteful to me. Once I had come to the conclusion above--that morality is not inherent, but what God says it is at the time, that God's character may not be "good" according to our judgment at all as a result, and that God most likely did not exist--I decided I had to work out a more internally consistent sense of morality.
I based this upon the principle that no person is inherently more valuable than any other person. I have a tendency to value myself more highly than you, but intellectually I realize that is a baseless preference. From this principle I draw the conclusion that each person should do as they like unless in doing so they harm another person. If the harm is sufficient, that justifies others stepping in.
I do not see that Mary Cheney is harming anyone by having a long-term monogamous relationship with her partner, nor by having a baby. Therefore I see no reason for myself or others to condemn her.
Out of the frying pan into the fire.
Are you saying that Joshua exterminating the Canaanite babies is merely distasteful to you or that there really is something inherently wrong with it? If it's merely distasteful to you then I like chocolate ice cream. If you think that Joshua exterminating the Canaanites was brutal, unjust and immoral then you are contradicting your own thesis that morality is not inherent. If it's just a matter of personal preference then your moral approbation makes no sense.
I based this upon the principle that no person is inherently more valuable than any other person. I have a tendency to value myself more highly than you, but intellectually I realize that is a baseless preference. From this principle I draw the conclusion that each person should do as they like unless in doing so they harm another person. If the harm is sufficient, that justifies others stepping in.
How do accidental concatenations of atoms in a purposeless universe of necessity or chance produce "right" and wrong"? How does an impersonal universe produce something, anything, "wrong" with itself? What do physical forces know of "harm", and "value"? Where did you get your measuring stick from? If you are no more a product of the brute forces of the universe, by what standard do you judge those processes that made you, and how can you rely on the very processes that tell you that something is "wrong" with them? Given atheist presuppositions, complaining about "harm" as if there were some a priori moral rule in place makes about as much sense as moral condemnation of the moon for orbiting the earth. What are you comparing the universe with when you assume that some feature of it is "unjust"?
If you took your atheism seriously not only would you have no basis for condemnation of Mary Cheney's actions, you would have no basis for condemnation of those who condemn her actions either.
Cordially,
ahayes ...
Quoting your post # 616 on this thread:
“I find this very distasteful because it renders God completely incomprehensible and untrustworthy. Perhaps God really has a personality more like Satan, has handed us moral laws to follow just to play with us, and is telling us that he is good while planning a surprise for those who choose to follow him into the afterlife. . .”
Uh ... your statement is a MAJOR no-no and shows how pride and human rationalization has crept into your mind to distort your soul and your thinking process. I would be most willing to suspect, upon further examination, that I think that this conclusion of yours is borne of some personal issues that you have to deal with concerning your Fundamentalist background / upbringing. I’m not saying that it of itself is the cause, only that I think that you have some issues with it (which you acknowledge) that have caused you to become obstinate toward God.
Perhaps these unresolved issues are what cause you to have disdain for God’s Divine Providence. Anger, resentment, and having to submit to the conclusion, as an imperfect human being, of not being able to elicit an all-encompasing answer to life’s injustices, leaves one feeling very ineffectual (I speak from experience myself). God will not bow down to you ... you must bow down to God’s Will. To fail to submit to unconditional faith in God’s Divine Will, will only cause you consternation and agitation (once again, I speak from past and current personal experience ... been there and done that, and unfortunately, still doing it).
To say that “Perhaps God really has a personality more like Satan” is just flat out blasphemy and a telltale byproduct of an evil origin (and I think that, if the truth be told, you know it yourself and said that to elicit a shocked response from those of us who do indeed believe in God ... well, here is your shocked response).
You have to remember that God’s Ways are above our ways ... His Thoughts are above our thoughts. There is no way that we as human beings, with our inherent faults and limited comprehension of the world, could ever even come close to understanding what life / creation is about on a scale of how God indeed does or permits it to be. No way. We can try, but we will never succeed. Our human brains are incapable of it. We are called to reach for perfection, however, we most likely will never achieve true perfection in this lifetime. Our human nature’s tendency to gravitate toward sinfulness and selfishness is what acts as a detriment to achieving it. True perfection will only come as a reward to us in the hereafter, dependent upon how God judges us (and I think how we judge ourselves and take responsibility for our actions).
Reflect back, if you will, to the account of the repentant thief on the Lord’s right side as He agonized upon the Cross at Calvary ... he was remorseful and admitted to Jesus, his crimes and sinful ways, even to the point of proclaiming to Jesus that it would be a just sentence for him to be condemned to Hell. He went on to plead that Jesus, on the Day of Judgement, would only remember him and his confession to Him as they were suffering the pains of crucifixion upon their respective crosses. And what was Jesus’ reply? “TODAY YOU SHALL BE WITH ME IN PARADISE.” Talk about submission and humbling one’s self before God. Amazing! Talk about absolute forgiveness! I pray that God will be as merciful to each one of us on the Day of Judgement, if we only honestly admit to our sinfulness and acknowledge how it has pained Him and our fellow souls on this journey of life. We will all be held accountable for every thought, word, deed, action, and sin that we have ever done. Granted, I myself do not long for that day as I have a ton of actions that I would shrink in horror and shame from to have to take responsibility for before God’s Judgement. I have the tendency to pick the motes out of my brother’s and sister’s eyes, when I have planks in my very own eyes (enough to build a fleet of seafaring ships). But that day will indeed come, like it or not. Will it to fruition or not.
In concluding here, I really don’t care to get into a Free Republic flame war or major debate with you over this, I just want you to know that I think that you need to do a bit of soul searching and reduce your level of pride in yourself. Stop questioning why God permits evil to be done in this world ... evil DOES NOT come from God ... to think so is an obvious deception created by satan to challenge God’s Omniscience. Evil is the product of satan and his minions. The majority of evil is due in part by the will of mankind. Mankind’s will tends to exclude God’s Divine Will from the equation of life. We want answers here and now. Tangible ones. One that we can digest and understand. Ones that are concrete and not amorphous. This is were we are called to FAITH. To believe in what is unseen and of God when our human senses fail to be cognizant of it. Our souls know the truth regardless of how much we try to rationalize our sinful actions. They yearn for “home” ... home with God.
ahayes ... I hope that you take that step toward FAITH and find peace in your soul. I will be praying for you.
Take care and PEACE be with YOU.
Front 242
You raise some logical questions and in a very civil manner. (Thank you.) I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. They do sound contradictory. I just know we think with a mortal mind. We don’t understand Gods mind. I think He does things which appear wrong to bring about a particular result. And God is God. He can change His mind if He wants to. But I believe it is so everything will come together as planned. At any rate, He doesn’t say anything about smoking cigarettes to be wrong either but to hear people tell it, that is a sin worse than murder. He does say that its what you use your body for that is immoral and will condemn you, not what you put in it such as food and drink and probably cigarettes.