by whereami 161 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Genesis does kind of answer the question of can a person be moral without God and where did the morals of people that don't believe in The/A God come from?
We are all created in the image o f God and as such, we all have an inherant knowledge or right and wrong, of what is and what ought to be.
Kill innocent millions to save billions?
Reminds me of Ortiga, the communist military general who surrounded a Nicaraguan village and lined up 20 males for collusion with government forces. A Canadian news reporter pled with the general to spare the men. He agreed if the reporter would kill one of the men in the lineup himself.
The women of the town began pleading with the reporter to kill the old toothless man at the end of the line.
Should the Canadian kill one to save 19 other... younger, stronger, husbands and sons?
Absolute morality is about the means justifying the ends while for most the ends tend to justify the means.
Thanks for answering all my questions Mad Sweeney.
Was it moral to kill millions of unborn children decade after decade? How about all those "girl" babies in China? What about that second child that the saline solution missed and the doctor smothered with the placenta. Was killing one moral, but the other 5 minutes later, immoral?
<<Um, no, those acts are not moral.>>
Are you saying that women don't have rights over their bodies? Why is it moral to kill innocent millions in Hiroshima, but not moral to kill innocent millions in their "mother's" womb?
<<I just want to repeat my challenge to those who reject morality without god. Please tell me a moral statement that isn't predicated on the well being of conscious creatures.>>
Perhaps you mean self-conscious?....Or are you a vegetarian?
No one is saying that people don't have morals. It's just that there are no such things as absolutes, (beyond personal morality) without God. People without God have no objective standard outside of themselves i.e. their personal biases/preferences to determine the value of anything and to come to moral decisions. To decide that man is the measure of value is somewhat akin to saying the earth is the center of the universe because I live here. To some Atheists, it's perfectly moral to kill an unborn child...for whatever personal reason they have to devalue the person within the womb. .i.e wrong sex, wrong color, inconvenience etc. To others; you have to have a good reason to terminate a life in the womb, but those reasons vary from person to person.
good one cofty! Never heard the question posed that way before.
It was in Sam harris's "the moral landscape", as I am sure Cofty would have pointed out.
If I recall Sam used "well being" instead of "good" since good is "different things to different people", or soemthing to that effect.
We are all created in the image o f God and as such, we all have an inherant knowledge or right and wrong, of what is and what ought to be.
This is plainly obviously wrong on so many levels. If we all had an inherent knowledge of right and wrong, we wouldn't disagree on it so fundementally. The vikings didn't feel guilty about raping and pillaging, radical muslims throw acid in the faces of school girls without remorse, the crusaders tortured thousands in the name of god, and they all thought that their "inherant knowledge of right and wrong" was guiding them to do so. In the civil war era, the bible was used to both condemn and justify slavery depending on the side of the debate. Today, it's used to both condemn and justify intolerance of gays depending on which side of the fence you're on. Morality is defined by the culture it belongs to, there is no "inherent" sense of it. You can't even get people to agree on whether or not it's right to kill people. At best you can get the majority of people to agree that it shoudn't be done indescriminately. That's the inherent morality of god instilled? You probably shouldn't kill people indescriminately? Powerful stuff god, thanks for that one. We definately wouldn't have figured that one out.
Trying to justify it only leaves you with some kind of tautology at best, and a lame platitude at worst. "We all have a sense of right and wrong, except the one's who don't." or "we all have a correct moral sense, but some get it wrong." or even more lamely "we have a moral sense inside of us, but we have trouble listening to it."
Objective means it's the same regardless of the observer, or one making the measurement. Morality is not objective by any standard. And simply claiming that the implications of that are terrifying does not some how make it less true. Yes, tomorrow eating babies could totally be moral. At the drop of the societal hat, raping can be justified. Hell, god's people slaughtered infants by the thousands and celebrated it, they took women from neighboring nations and forced them into "marriage". We are always on the razors edge of agreeing that something terribly harmful to people is moral, and that is scary. But the world doesn't need a philosophy that says "reality looks pretty damn scary, let's believe in something more pleasant." It needs a philosophy that recognizes our perilous circumstances and works damn hard to make our existence work. No, we don't have an objective morality that's just going to guide us to do the right thing. We have to work hard, educate ourselves, consult lessons from history, meditate on our lives, and if we are lucky we may fuck over the people of the world less than the generation before us. What isn't going to help is assuming that because we are filled with magic, our decisions will work out for the best, if only we listen to the ineffable unicorn living in our heart. That's lazy and daft.
If we are considering well being of the majority, then absolute biblical morality would prove incredibly beneficial. You know, no STDs, no unwanted pregnancies; no divorce based on infidelity, alcoholism; non-provision.....and the pain and sorrow that go with these things etc.
The problem doesn't seem to be the beneficial nature of much of biblical morality; only that individuals, Atheist or otherwise, don't have the power or desire to live it...much less to obey the first commandment.
Morality (from the Latinmoralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. The adjectivemoral is synonymous with "good" or "right." Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles - That is how wikipedia defines it
So now the question is how do we determine whether a decision/action is good or bad? and does it apply to all humans? perhaps even animals?. Everyday we bear witness to acts which are quite disturbing, but to others its just good. Ask yourself how one can justify terrorism, or abortion, or incest, or wars, u name it. But yet still others look upon such actions with satisfaction and you wonder if something is wrong with them.
Who determines if something is right or wrong?good or bad, how come animals have a strick parttern of morality and yet humans are divided about issues every single day, what we consider good today might turn out to be wrong tomorrow and vice versa. There was a time when people frowned upon acts of abortion, and today we accept it, there was a time when people despised the just the thought of homosexuality, and yet today people welcome it whole heartedly, Slavery No?. Does all this seem justifiable? did our morality evolve? if it did what is the assurance that tomow it not be right to hold up a gun to another person's head in broad daylight and have nothing to worry about or.
Is someone really accountabe for what we are experiencing now, pulling the strings from behind the scene? could there be something out there? something we cant comprehend as humans? outside of our natural world?
If we came here not by our own means or by evolution as some beleive then its not far fetched to think that we are being influened by things we dont see, like spirits, demons, gods, u name it, and if we really are then there is got to be something they also consider as morally good or bad right?
Sometimes you wonder if factors like religion came about because some men thought of it as their way of taking charge, but the you go deeper and you realize things are very different, after all show me a religion which holds no connection to a higher form of being. And its obvious all religions are centered on one thing - God, though there be different means by which all these religions claim to lead to that very God.
So did God impose our morality?. did He set the standards of what is right and wrong?. I find it hard to believe that same God is responsible for our various divisions concerning morality. What if there are beings who reject those God's standards? could they be attributed to why there has been no cinsistence in our partern of morals. Cos all the animals i have known from the time i was a child till now still hold those same animal morals, they do the same over and over without change.
I really want to go on but i am quite worn out now, i being a christian believe that our broad sense of morality is a privlledge we enjoy as humans because of our freewill, i mean are not animals made to follow a specific parttern and live by specific morals? Some may argue about freewill, but dont forget that there is free will if you have a choice, the fact that there are consequencies dont not mean we dont have free will.
Suppose there are 2 people, and one of them chooses to smoke but the other does not, at the end of the day there are consequanceis for both of their actions which they exercised because of their free will. And the outcome is quite predictable for those 2 right?
@ vanderhoven
This is only true if you pick the parts of biblical morality that you like. And furthermore complete 100% adherence to most ethical systems would render a fantastic world (especially if everybody is in agreement when being selective). If the entire world adhered to bhuddist morality (or an idealized version of it), the results would be incredibly beneficial, just like if everybody followed an idealized version of christian morality.
What you're implying by saying the world would be better if everyone adhered to biblical morality is that some moral systems champion STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and infedelity. But there are no shortage of ethical system that seek to minimize those things, not just the one from the bible. What you're describing is the lack of obedience to any thought out ethical system, and just playing it by ear instead. It's a false dichotomy to say that it's either biblical morality, or STDs, divorce and alcoholism, as if those are the only two possibilities.
