It appears that my goading got Vinny to at least try to answer my question. Good job, Vinny!
Unfortunately, Vinny, you're among the more obnoxiously arrogant Fundies who've shown up on this board. "Trouncing" and "spanking"? LOL!
Cutting through the foam around Vinny's mouth, let's get to the crumbs of food:
: Alan F says:...."All the massive bullshit aside from these apologist guys, neither Perry nor Vinny can answer the simple but basic question (which I've posted before for many years) of: where did the Christian God get his morals? In the face of such complete lack of response from Perry, Vinny and the rest of the Fundy community, an intelligent but skeptical person has but one choice: these fundamentalists have no answers to extremely pertinent questions, and they know it, and that's why they don't answer. Conclusion? Christian Fundamentalists of the Evangelical variety are no different in principle from the admittedly braindead and cult-minded Jehovah's Witnesses.
: . . . Can you show me where you posed this question to ME? . . .
I didn't say you did. I said that you can't answer the question, not that you didn't try. I did, however, pose a similar question to Perry, along with other relevant challenges.
: Where did God get His Morals? Simple, He didn't get them from anybody or any place; HE'S ALWAYS HAD THEM. Nothing difficult about that at all.
I see. So God has always had the same set of morals, and these have not changed.
An answer to a question I did not pose, but relevant to the overall problem at hand:
: Who made God? Simple, nobody and no thing made God; HE'S ALWAYS EXISTED.
Let's keep this in mind for later.
: Nothing difficult about that at all.
LOL! Not when you apply it to your particular god.
: The Supreme Being ALWAYS existed, was ALWAYS the superlative example in Love, Justice, Wisdom and Power, which make up His very Being. Morality, "the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior" became an issue only after He Created the angelic forces and human beings with free will, with the mental capacity to recognize these differences as well as by giving them a conscience. The basic MORAL PRINCIPLES however, just like love, justice, wisdom and power have ALWAYS been always been part of the Grand Creator's very Being.
: He did not "get it" from anywhere or anyone. It has always been a part of Who He is.
Having established the unchangeableness of God's morals, Vinny quickly contradicts himself.
: Being the Intelligent Designer, responsible for the creation of the Universe, the Earth and all life thereon, he is also the rightful "DECIDER", who has the legal right to determine what is good and bad, what is right and wrong and what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior from HIS Creation. He would be our rightful owner, EARNING the right to decide moral behavior.
Clearly, deciding on what is moral and what is not is quite the opposite from always having the same moral standards. We see in the Bible statements that God does not change, and we see examples of changing moral standards. Which is it, Vinny?
I know, of course, that my statements are going to bring forth a copious flow of foam from your mouth, so I'm going to challenge you with the same question that Perry did not answer.
Perry started a thread some days ago containing an article critiquing "naturalism" ( http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/134161/2389661/post.ashx#2389661 Re: Interesting Critique of Naturalism 11-May-07 22:48 ). I commented:
The interesting thing about the ethics supposedly practiced by Christians is that it is just as arbitrary as the author of the above article argues naturalistically derived ethics is. Arbitrary you say? How can that be?
Christians supposedly get their ethics from God, or more accurately, from the Bible, which they claim is authored by the Christian God in one way or another. But this God can arbitrarily decide that some action is morally good and another is morally bad. Why? Because God is, well, God -- an all powerful, all beneficient, all wise being. Thus, an action can be good one day and bad the next, if God changes his mind. The Bible contains examples of its God doing this.
If this God decides that torturing babies for fun is good, then Christians must necessarily accede that it is good -- even if it is naturaly repugnant to them.
Now, some Christian might argue that God's ethical standards are not arbitrary, but are dictated by what everyone would agree are good ethics and moral standards. But that argument inescapably leads to the conclusion that a set of good ethical/moral standards exists apart from God. Where, then, do such standards come from? From the same sort of naturalism that the author of the above essay is arguing against.
Christians who claim that God's standards are not arbitrary are hard pressed to answer simple questions like, "If God said that torturing babies for fun is good, would you torture babies?"
Let's see how this actually works with our Christian apologist Perry.
Perry, if God said that it's fun to torture babies, and morally right to do so, and it was pleasing to him for you to do it, would you?
Ok, Vinny, I'm hereby posing the same question to you:
Vinny, if God said that it's fun to torture babies, and morally right to do so, and it was pleasing to him for you to do it, would you?
: Now Alan F, no hiding and no running, I have answered your question, please answer MY QUESTIONS now.
: Atheism is The belief that there is NO God at all. Where are YOUR comments then, answering my many issues presented on that subject? My arguments are sure up there, all over many threads. Where are YOURS then?
I'm a busy man and don't have time or the interest to comment on more than tiny fraction of what's posted to this board. Your arguments are common and have already been debunked on a host of other forums.
: 1- Alan F, how does life evolve from lifeless matter? Please tell us.
No one knows. Science is still in its infancy in this regard.
Your attempt at argument falls into the realm of what is called "the argument from personal incredulity". It goes like this: "I can't imagine how this thing can be true. Therefore it isn't." You say, "I can't imagine how life evolved from lifeless matter. Therefore it didn't." I say, "I can't imagine how the Christian God has always existed, Therefore he doesn't." Who is on firmer logical ground?
: 2- Alan F, how does it feel believing that a red corvette simply could arrive all on its own since universe, life and earth (all far more complex) all arrived on their own with no intelligence involved?
I don't know, since I don't believe that red corvettes arrive on their own. But you're comparing apples and oranges here. No one I'm aware of claims that the universe arrived, like your red corvette, in one fell swoop. Rather, the universe evolved in steps over a long period of time.
Now you tell me: how does it feel believing that a God sufficiently complex to design a complex universe arrived on its own?
: 3- Alan F, if its true that all these things just happened on their own, why cannot the same science and technology which sends folks to the moon, create ANY LIFE (even the simplest of living things) from non-living matter today? Or put life back where it ONCE WAS?
What a stupid question. "If they can send men to the moon, why can't they cure the common cold?"
Simple: the technology is not yet advanced enough.
Your question is like some churchman challenging Isaac Newton: "If your 'gravity' and not God holds the moon in place, then how come you can't go to the moon and prove it?"
Duh.
: 4- Alan F, what about the universal fact of life PRINCIPLE that EVERY BEGINNING MUST HAVE A CAUSE CAUSE? What does THAT do for atheism?
That principle is a result of our everyday observations combined with what we call "common sense". But everyday observations do not necessarily apply always and everywhere. The predictions of quantum mechanics are a good example.
It's possible (given our complete lack of knowledge on the subject) that some sort of macro-cosmic universe exists that is infinite in macro-cosmic time and space. In this super-universe, our local 'universe' is an infinitesimal fraction. Given infinite time and space, anything can happen. We just happen to be in one 'universe' where 'we just happened'.
You object to such special pleading? Hypocrite! You pose the same answer when your question is turned upon your God. You engage in special pleading: "God had no beginning!"
The simple fact is that when special pleading is disallowed as a valid form of argumentation, you're on the same ground you establish for atheists when it comes to questions of ultimate origins: you don't actually know anything.
Reference to the Bible does you no good. The Bible is full of false claims. Most of the supposed Messianic prophecies can be shown to be nothing more than misapplications of OT statements by NT writers. I don't think you want to go there.
: 5- Alan F, what does it say to YOU when people such as Einstein, Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel, Kelvin, Max Planck, and thousands of others scientists, philosophers, leaders such as Ghandi, MLK, every single President elected and many other successful people as well as BILLIONS of others believe in a Supreme Intelligent Designer and REJECT ATHEISM OUTRIGHT.
Einstein did not believe in such a designer. He said he believed in "Spinoza's god". I won't try to explain that to you.
As for the rest, some lived in a time and place when it was unthinkable not to be a Christian. Others got religion as children and stuck with it.
So what?
By far the majority of science researchers today put no stock in religion of any kind. Does that somehow cancel out the fact that others do? Of course not. The beliefs of anyone are irrelevant to the questions being discussed here. You're simply too ignorant to know that arguments such as you've posed are old hat, and have been debunked too often to recount.
AlanF
