Sources of Ethics and Morality

[there buster]

I actually have made some statements.

I believe that C.S. Lewis has the clearest exposition about the transcendence of moral values, and has set it forth in "The Abolition of Man."

The "Tao" which consists of the moral insights common to all cultures.

[cardw]

I actually have made some statements.

I believe that C.S. Lewis has the clearest exposition about the transcendence of moral values, and has set it forth in "The Abolition of Man."

The "Tao" which consists of the moral insights common to all cultures.

Well that is a start, but even C.S. Lewis admits that he doesn't exactly know what this is. This is also highly subjective and as I have been saying all along, without an objective universal morality, which I don't believe exists, all you have is preference. This may be a more sophisticated preference because it references a deeper emotional connection than desires, but all the same it is emotionally based, rather than rationally based. It also doesn't require a god to exist. It may be a collective consciousness or an awareness that has evolved over many thousands of years or something else.

The "Tao" is also a direct reference to the Tao, a collection of writings referencing this illusive awareness. This has little connection to Christianity other than C.S. Lewis' use of the word.

While I'm not apposed to blending the insights of different religions, within the context of the discussion with those who take the Bible literally, references to the Tao would be considered heretical.

This awareness of the "Tao" may all be well and good, but one has to come up with specific moral concepts and those are going to be subject to rational evaluation. Because, why have morals in the first place? And unless you have a rational evaluation of the application of morality, you have no basis to determine whether one is better than the other. And we certainly have many claims of superior morality by various groups. And to do that evaluation you have to have a goal or purpose for morals.

Now when I take the experience I have with people who have participated in violence and have been the victims of violence, I have a hard time seeing that morality has anything to do with the ordering of every man, women, child, and animal killed by a so called "chosen" people. And I think that you would have a hard time defending that on any basis other than an apparent physical survival. Now I can present a number of reasons why the ordering of genocide is counter productive to the individuals participating in it. And I think that those who have access to the "Tao" would also find genocide unpalatable.

This is reflected in the statement made by the founders of the United States that said, "We find these truths to be self evident" in reference to all men being equal. If we accept this to be true morally then genocide would not be treating all men as individually equal. It would be passing sentence on a whole race without any court of law and children would hardly be considered responsible for the actions of their parents in most moral systems of law. And the killing of animals just seems plain cruel.

So, if you are defending the actions of this god, I find no nothing in the "Tao" to defend those "morals."

[there buster]

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Now I can present a number of reasons why the ordering of genocide is counter productive to the individuals participating in it. And I think that those who have access to the "Tao" would also find genocide unpalatable.

This is reflected in the statement made by the founders of the United States that said, "We find these truths to be self evident" in reference to all men being equal. If we accept this to be true morally then genocide would not be treating all men as individually equal. It would be passing sentence on a whole race without any court of law and children would hardly be considered responsible for the actions of their parents in most moral systems of law. And the killing of animals just seems plain cruel.

So, if you are defending the actions of this god, I find no nothing in the "Tao" to defend those "morals."

Well, now, there you go again. Since you claim there are no moral frameworks, you have no basis to condemn genocide, or anything else. Condemnation presupposes a moral framework that has been violated.

You can't have it both ways. Either you have a moral framework that you rely on, and thus make such statements, or you deny their existence, and have no basis to condemn anything.

[cardw]

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Now I can present a number of reasons why the ordering of genocide is counter productive to the individuals participating in it. And I think that those who have access to the "Tao" would also find genocide unpalatable.

This is reflected in the statement made by the founders of the United States that said, "We find these truths to be self evident" in reference to all men being equal. If we accept this to be true morally then genocide would not be treating all men as individually equal. It would be passing sentence on a whole race without any court of law and children would hardly be considered responsible for the actions of their parents in most moral systems of law. And the killing of animals just seems plain cruel.

So, if you are defending the actions of this god, I find no nothing in the "Tao" to defend those "morals."

Well, now, there you go again. Since you claim there are no moral frameworks, you have no basis to condemn genocide, or anything else. Condemnation presupposes a moral framework that has been violated.

You can't have it both ways. Either you have a moral framework that you rely on, and thus make such statements, or you deny their existence, and have no basis to condemn anything.

Do you actually read my posts?

You seem unable to understand the concept of <if, then>.

The word I used was REASONS not morals. I certainly can condemn genocide through a rational process. My appeal is to reason based on goals determined by subjective states of being that may be not that much different than what you are referring to as the "Tao." But the "Tao" is neither god nor morality, if by morals you mean laws handed down in writing by a god.

In regards to genocide I might ask you if you would prefer that the world had living conditions like they are in Darfur or in the United States?

It doesn't take a lot of reasoning power to determine that conditions in Darfur are terrible. You don't need morality to make that determination. In fact most people living in Darfur wouldn't even question whether living conditions there were good or bad. And it doesn't take a lot of brains to connect the policies of genocide to the current conditions there.

[cardw]

[there buster]

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I certainly can condemn genocide through a rational process.

Actually, you cannot. You can make a case that it's effective or ineffective, pleasant or unpleasant. You can say you personally abhor it. But without an external standard of right and wrong with which to compare it, you cannot condemn it.

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In regards to genocide I might ask you if you would prefer that the world had living conditions like they are in Darfur or in the United States?

My preferences have no moral authority. I might prefer whiskey to water. I might enjoy sadism. I might prefer lima beans to brussels sprouts. But my preference does not make them right or wrong, morally superior or morally inferior.

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conditions in Darfur are terrible.

Conditions in the dust bowl (my mother lived through that period) were terrible. It didn't take any brains at all to know conditions were terrible. But that didn't make them right or wrong.

Conditions in boot camp are terrible. Sometimes people die going through boot camp. I prefer not to be in boot camp. By your reasoning, boot camp is wrong.

Even in extreme cases, your reasoning cannot condemn anything. You may personally deplore it, but, that's just your preference. Why should anyone care about your preference?

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But the "Tao" is neither god nor morality, if by morals you mean laws handed down in writing by a god.

But I did not say that morals were laws handed down in writing by a god. The ABolition of Man makes no appeal to any god.

[cardw]

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Actually, you cannot. You can make a case that it's effective or ineffective, pleasant or unpleasant. You can say you personally abhor it. But without an external standard of right and wrong with which to compare it, you cannot condemn it.

And yet you have demonstrated no external standard yourself. I say it doesn't exist. That's my point. I have to repeat myself again that my moral decisions in this case are based on the starting point that genocide is both ineffective and cruel. This is the subjective assumption which a rational moral framework can be built.

There is no universal law that can determine all cases. That is what I believe you are indirectly referencing. This is a myth and yet by being critical of my decisions you are suggesting that it does. And if you don't believe this external standard exists then morality itself, as I have said, does not exist.

You have failed to even demonstrate a universal external standard that addresses every moral decision. The "Tao" is not it. If it is, it has no expression in the language of laws. I have only seen a subjective expression of it.

And I can condemn it because I personally abhor it. I can also reference a collective of people who abhor it and condemn it. I can appeal to your empathy and condemn it. This is all we have as humans, other than the application of force. And the application of force is not a moral imperative.

ITS SUBJECTIVE. There is no objective morality based on some mythical external standard. Nothing has meaning other than what we give it. It is simply how we define the origin of moral authority. I think you have heard of the expression, "Crimes against humanity." This is a collective agreement that certain acts are so horrible that they are considered crimes against humanity. This has no external standard by which it is referenced. It is a subjective feeling that a group of PEOPLE have agreed on.

Your definition of moral is a myth. If it is not, then post these universal moral standards we can use as a reference.

[Dr. Shane]

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But without an external standard of right and wrong with which to compare it, you cannot condemn it.

Ichabod, you are making a lot of good points. Seems like you have a reservoir of material for your next book. I packaged up your last book and sent it off to an unbelieving friend as soon as I finished reading myself. Our church is now in the process of renovating an abandoned building to being a cafe-style meeting place for Bible and/or 12-step groups. Your book is what gave us the idea.

[Taylor]

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I certainly can condemn genocide through a rational process.

Actually, you cannot. You can make a case that it's effective or ineffective, pleasant or unpleasant. You can say you personally abhor it. But without an external standard of right and wrong with which to compare it, you cannot condemn it.

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In regards to genocide I might ask you if you would prefer that the world had living conditions like they are in Darfur or in the United States?

My preferences have no moral authority. I might prefer whiskey to water. I might enjoy sadism. I might prefer lima beans to brussels sprouts. But my preference does not make them right or wrong, morally superior or morally inferior.

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conditions in Darfur are terrible.

Conditions in the dust bowl (my mother lived through that period) were terrible. It didn't take any brains at all to know conditions were terrible. But that didn't make them right or wrong.

Conditions in boot camp are terrible. Sometimes people die going through boot camp. I prefer not to be in boot camp. By your reasoning, boot camp is wrong.

Even in extreme cases, your reasoning cannot condemn anything. You may personally deplore it, but, that's just your preference. Why should anyone care about your preference?

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But the "Tao" is neither god nor morality, if by morals you mean laws handed down in writing by a god.

But I did not say that morals were laws handed down in writing by a god. The ABolition of Man makes no appeal to any god.

Amen Ichabod...great points! I couldn't agree more.

[cardw]

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But I did not say that morals were laws handed down in writing by a god. The ABolition of Man makes no appeal to any god.

Amen Ichabod...great points! I couldn't agree more.

Well if you couldn't agree more then you are agreeing that we don't need God or the Bible to be moral.

That makes my point just as well, whether or not you agree on the an alternate source of morality.

[fccool]

If there is no external standards, then morality is preferred, even by someone who makes a claim for external standards. If this is in fact the case, then why do you make the argument that would persuade one to your standard of morality, which does not derive from external standard... yet you make it a standard to hold that there is not standard. Don't you see a contradiction there?

I understand your point that a set of morals (by dictionary definition of it) does not have to be derived from God. There are many ways to manufacture morality. State and peer enforcement is one of them. Even criminals have their codes of conduct, which still would conform to a dictionary definition of morality:

descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,

1. some other group, such as a religion, or

2. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or behavior of rational persons

So, as I said... a criminals can have a moral code... I.E. don't steal from your own, don't rat people out. Does it constitute their behavior as moral? I think that you would agree that it would not be.

So, if you go by your initial premise, then determining the sense of morals without absolute standards becomes and overwhelming task philosophically. As Tolstoy noted facetiously: "If God does not exist, He aught to be invented".

To derive a set of morals you would have to come up with a standard of what is good. Without a notion of good you can't derive sense of moral. Without a standard, the notion of good becomes rather pragmatic idea of "What's good for me." I will not steal because I don't want to be caught and punched in a face when caught."

A more extreme example... Hitler did what was good in eyes of Germany. Therefore the moral code of Germany revolved around the ideas of Nazi morality.

You can reason out the best way to live life and avoid religious concepts ... as did Soviets and French did. Soviets and French ideology stated that man is naturally good and does not need "divine direction" to survive. Such societies need the initiation of mass force against people to make sure that their idea of morality prevails (which goes for any government in the world), which in itself ends up to be immoral based on its own premise... initiation of force is immoral.

But in then end, there's about 15 pages of this discussion, yet in the end the points you are making are ironic.

From previous discussions you point out that you don't believe in God, yet you call God inconsistent. How can you believe something to be inconsistent if it does not exist (at least in your mind).

In this discussion you propose that you don't have to derive morality from Bible or God's law, yet on the same track... if you believe that God does not exist, then this morality IS man made and does not need a further validation (in your mind).

Instead you are going on a quest to prove to a theist that God does not exist by means of telling that you don't have to derive morality from God. It is akin trying to prove to alchemist non-existence of the "Midas Hand" by telling him that you can do more productive things with modern chemistry.

So why not stick to proving the original premise - there is no God? Or, perhaps you have changed your mind?

[cardw]

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So why not stick to proving the original premise - there is no God? Or, perhaps you have changed your mind?

The context is the claim of the god described in the Bible. I am an atheist in terms of that god.

I am agnostic in terms of theism because the human mind is simply not capable of describing or knowing God. I would say that the Tao is the best examination of the experience of this unknown, but that is simply from a personal preference and is absolutely unprovable.

The Theist in whatever form they express it, whether its from a belief in the Biblical description or a God in general, claims to know that there is a god. In this context the suggestion that there are morals is claimed to indicate there is a God. As we have examined the source of morality, it is clear that morality is not proof of a God.

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So, if you go by your initial premise, then determining the sense of morals without absolute standards becomes and overwhelming task philosophically. As Tolstoy noted facetiously: "If God does not exist, He aught to be invented".

And God is invented over and over throughout history. It has been claimed over and over that God is the ruler themselves or God appointed them. The purpose of this has been to build such a societal reference with mixed results. The difference in American Democracy has been to reduce the power of violence to establish morality and increase the power of intellect to have more influence on the evolution of moral principles. The freedom of speech and its power to appeal to people's reason and emotions has more power than ever before.

I don't believe that people are evil. They may have an instinct for self preservation, but I don't believe that is bad in itself. In think the idea that we need to protect individual happiness over the goals of the state is an admirable ideal. We have been a part of a vast societal experiment. Democracy has evolved and may reach an end to its ability to sustain itself, but the inherent ability of it to be self modifying has demonstrated many innovations that would not have occurred under forms of authoritarian rule.

And just because the philosophy is difficult, I don't believe we should reduce morality to what the Bible says unless we want to duplicate Iron age thinking.

The implication has been that people who believe in god have a stronger basis for morality than those who do not. All I'm saying is that morality is a preference for everyone and just because one claims to believe in god doesn't make that higher ground.

I admit that mine is preference, theists don't admit that. And all this smoke and mirrors about external reality is a Red Herring.

[fccool]

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I would say that the Tao is the best examination of the experience of this unknown, but that is simply from a personal preference and is absolutely unprovable.

I see that you prefer religious observations of Tao over Bible. From what I've learned about Tao in the past... it's very paradoxical in it's teachings, and it intentionally constructs these paradoxes as veil of wisdom. The more ambiguous you can be, the more wise you would seem because no-one can understand you, thus your internal Tao (way) can not be told neither perceived. So why chase the wind with a net? After all, if Tao is forgotten... the kindness and morality arise, if Tao is remembered, the great pretense begins.

I always understood tao to be more of a diversion from critical thinking. A single phrase could have multiple meanings and the meaning of it is what you make it out to be. The deeper and more ambiguous the meaning, the more respected you will be as a teacher. Chinese make a caricature of it from time to time, if you are into kung fu films.

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The implication has been that people who believe in god have a stronger basis for morality than those who do not. All I'm saying is that morality is a preference for everyone and just because one claims to believe in god doesn't make that higher ground. I admit that mine is preference, theists don't admit that. And all this smoke and mirrors about external reality is a Red Herring.

It's far from implications of reality, but implications from belief in a reality. You believe in a different reality, so the implications are different in your case, and you admit that your reality is a preference, just like mine is likewise a preference... or like I would like to describe it better ... an educated guess. Likewise, yours is an educated guess.

But it does not mean that implications of my belief have to include your view of reality. If these do not mix, how would you propose to explain your reality based on mine, or mine based on yours? Don't you see the futility of such an attempt?

I think that a mistake many Christians make while speaking to an atheist is

1) Making out the Christianity to be a romantic love with not underlying reason.

2) Referring to a Bible to pull proof for their beliefs, which ends up to be a circular reasoning of "I believe Bible to be true because it says so".

And I understand that the above two makes it seem less logical than you would prefer to be. And this was my case for the most part of my life. I like to hold to logic and reason.

Yet I admit that I do many things I don't understand, and I would like to understand them better, instead of clinching to a world view that claims to be absolutely correct.

I have no illusions about the possibility of my view being incorrect. That's why I constantly re-evaluate and ask important questions. I celebrate being proven wrong. What about you? Have you considered being wrong?

[there buster]

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The ABolition of Man makes no appeal to any god.

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Amen Ichabod...great points! I couldn't agree more.

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Well if you couldn't agree more then you are agreeing that we don't need God or the Bible to be moral.

That makes my point just as well, whether or not you agree on the an alternate source of morality.

Conclusion jumping is not an Olympic sport because anyone can do it-- and you just did.

Suppose I say, "The reason we don't float off into space is gravity, and gravity exists outside ourselves--we didn't invent it or cause it."

You reply, "See that proves we don't need God to stick to the Earth."

But I said nothing about the source of gravity. I did not appeal to God as the inventor/creator of gravity. That does not in any way indicate that God is not the source.

"The Tao" is out there. All cultures recognize the validity of at least portions of it. This common moral base underlies all human expressions of morality and ethics. Where it came from is another question, one that I did not address. No, I do not agree that we do not need God to be moral.

[cardw]

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Conclusion jumping is not an Olympic sport because anyone can do it-- and you just did.

Suppose I say, "The reason we don't float off into space is gravity, and gravity exists outside ourselves--we didn't invent it or cause it."

You reply, "See that proves we don't need God to stick to the Earth."

The difference is that gravity is much more directly observable than the idea of morality. I can drop something in the same situation and it will do the same thing every time. It is able to be reproduced by everyone. Morality has no such test. So your comparison is irrelevant.

When you can produce a moral reference that can be observed like gravity then you may have a point. Otherwise this universal moral reference is still a myth. And I'm not talking about some grand triumphal overview. I'm talking about specifics that can be tested like gravity.

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"The Tao" is out there. All cultures recognize the validity of at least portions of it.

Well, then if you are appealing to all cultures then you are appealing to numbers. Numbers of people don't make it moral under your definition of moral.

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"The Tao" is out there. All cultures recognize the validity of at least portions of it. This common moral base underlies all human expressions of morality and ethics. Where it came from is another question, one that I did not address. No, I do not agree that we do not need God to be moral.

Ok, what gives you the right to impose your interpretation of "The Tao" over mine? What gives you the right to condemn my views?

[there buster]

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Morality has no such test. So your comparison is irrelevant.

Straw man. No analogy is exact--then it wouldn't be an analogy. And gravity is not so obvious as your 21st century understanding believes it to be. Try dropping a helium filled balloon.

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When you can produce a moral reference that can be observed like gravity then you may have a point.

Observation depends upon the sensitivity of the instrument. We cannot 'see' electrons, but they exist.

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He will have no notion that there are two ways of being immune to such an advertisement—that it falls equally flat on those who are above it and those who are below it, on the man of real sensibility and on the mere trousered ape who has never been able to conceive the Atlantic as anything more than so many million tons of cold salt water.

C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Nevertheless, I can give you an example of an observable behavior that confirms the existence of morality outside of any individual.

You condemn genocide. Nearly everyone does. They may quibble about the definition, but they condemn it. And everyone condemns something.

And that condemnation is an appeal to an external morality. We don't say genocide is 'unpleasant,' or we 'prefer not to.' We say it is wrong. Not wrong like a mistaken arithmetic problem, wrong as in evil-- opposed to moral goodness.

If this were mere opinion, it would carry little weight. It is the sense that it is morally wrong that makes it condemnation, rather than disagreement.

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Well, then if you are appealing to all cultures then you are appealing to numbers. Numbers of people don't make it moral under your definition of moral.

No, I did not say a majority, or any other numerical concept. The point is that morality transcends culture. If the Chinese and ancient Babylonians and Aztecs and Ethiopians all recognize this "Tao" this moral order, then it is not produced by any one of them. And if cultures so disparate share moral values, then there must be something transcendent about them.

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Ok, what gives you the right to impose your interpretation of "The Tao" over mine? What gives you the right to condemn my views?

Here comes that moral confusion again. On the one hand, you ask "what gives [me] the right" which is itself a moral appeal. Rights are rights because they spring from moral rectitude, and violating the rights of another (which is implied in your question) is wrong.

But I'm not interpreting the Tao. I haven't tried to delineate all of its provisions, and what they mean. I simply claim that it exists.

At the same time, you ask "what gives [me] the right" (same moral appeal) to "condemn" your views. But I have not. I have not declared your views to be evil, only mistaken. Your views are, I assert, both illogical and contrary to reality. They might or might not be evil, but I have made no such claim.

Oh, and I could never condemn your views without reference to a moral standard they violated.

[Taylor]

Excellent Response Ichabod.

[cardw]

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Straw man. No analogy is exact--then it wouldn't be an analogy. And gravity is not so obvious as your 21st century understanding believes it to be. Try dropping a helium filled balloon.

It is not a straw man. It is simply not a fair analogy. We know why a helium filled ballon doesn't drop. And we can reproduce that as well. There are rational frameworks we can reference. There is no such framework for so called morality.

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And that condemnation is an appeal to an external morality. We don't say genocide is 'unpleasant,' or we 'prefer not to.' We say it is wrong. Not wrong like a mistaken arithmetic problem, wrong as in evil-- opposed to moral goodness.

If this were mere opinion, it would carry little weight. It is the sense that it is morally wrong that makes it condemnation, rather than disagreement.

Semantics. We might call it wrong, but there is no way to prove that wrong exists other than by definition. And this definition is by people.

Your argument breaks down as soon as we ask why it is wrong. You will have any number of answers to that question.

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If this were mere opinion, it would carry little weight. It is the sense that it is morally wrong that makes it condemnation, rather than disagreement.

There is no basis to this conclusion. It can carry weight if everyone agrees that genocide is harmful. Things become moral because the concepts reach a state where there are enough people aware of its wisdom to become universal. We can see this happen with the civil rights movement and the abolition of slavery. The Bible certainly doesn't condemn slavery and supports it in others and yet our civilization came to a point where it was considered morally wrong to support slavery.

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No, I did not say a majority, or any other numerical concept.

Hmmm...Then what does this statement appeal to if not to numbers?

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You condemn genocide. Nearly everyone does.

The reason genocide doesn't work is because as soon as one group chooses to use violence to solve their problems they open themselves up to being the victims of violence themselves. And that is very unpleasant. It can be demonstrated that negotiation provides a much better situation for both sides. If calling it wrong moves people to stop doing it, so much the better. This is a rational process that doesn't need some mythical morality. Everyone condemns it because we can observe the centuries long fights that still continue today. Many of them can trace their beginnings to the bible.

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Observation depends upon the sensitivity of the instrument. We cannot 'see' electrons, but they exist.

This is just as silly as your gravity analogy. We can't see air but we know it exists. Morality isn't a substance out there we can manipulate, isolate, and test. You have no rational basis for morality other than "most people" agree that certain things are immoral. But these people agree for a reasons that can be explored.

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At the same time, you ask "what gives [me] the right" (same moral appeal) to "condemn" your views. But I have not. I have not declared your views to be evil, only mistaken. Your views are, I assert, both illogical and contrary to reality. They might or might not be evil, but I have made no such claim.

Again, semantics. You are basically saying that since morality is defined then it must exist. Evil is just as hard to examine. I think it is far more effective to explore rational explanations than to assign things to evil, god, or breaking some mythical moral law we make up.

You may be more logical within the assumptions that you have made, but I am talking past your assumptions and asserting that your assumptions are simply preference. You prefer to have morality exist, so you define it even though you can't see it.

[cardw]

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I always understood tao to be more of a diversion from critical thinking. A single phrase could have multiple meanings and the meaning of it is what you make it out to be. The deeper and more ambiguous the meaning, the more respected you will be as a teacher. Chinese make a caricature of it from time to time, if you are into kung fu films.

Well, we can certainly characterize Christian beliefs in humorous ways rather easily as well.

The way I read the Tao is that it is an observation of the paradox of life. Many of them have meaning only when I have experienced what they are referring to. And many aspects of life are only understood indirectly because, at least in my experience, when one tries to bring these aspects under rational analysis, they disappear. This is much like when we try to define love. This quest to define love is the source of much humor in sitcoms.

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It's far from implications of reality, but implications from belief in a reality. You believe in a different reality, so the implications are different in your case, and you admit that your reality is a preference, just like mine is likewise a preference... or like I would like to describe it better ... an educated guess. Likewise, yours is an educated guess.

I'm not claiming its even a guess. I am saying that we don't know and anyone who claims to know is lying or self deceived. Each of us creates our own reality because that is all we have. We assume that we have some sort of shared reality, but it isn't reliably so.

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I have no illusions about the possibility of my view being incorrect. That's why I constantly re-evaluate and ask important questions. I celebrate being proven wrong. What about you? Have you considered being wrong?

I know when something is nonsense. I am saying that maybe if we admit that we don't know, then all these arrogant claims of knowing the mind of God and his wishes might go away.

[fccool]

We are not dealing with knowledge here. We are dealing with a belief system. I would not dare to claim to know for sure. Belief is an attempt at truth. While true knowledge if you define it in accordance with epistemological definition of knowledge has to be true.

What you are dealing with in both mine and your cases is a belief. It's not knowledge. You believe and I believe based on certain information, which can not be verified (100%). We are dealing with such faith based belief every day. I would say that most of the things you encounter on day to day bases you derive from a belief (faith) and not absolute knowledge.

You eat your food believing it to be not poisoned. You don't know... it could be. You wake up in the morning and go to your car believing that it is still there, and go to work believing that you still have work. Sure, once you see the car it no longer is a belief but it is knowledge, but don't miss the fact that if your journey to a car takes a lifetime... how would you know? You would not, until you got there.

Would it be a self deception to assume that certain things as I do based on information that I have? Then the entire pursuit of truth is a process of self-deception. You have to make thousands of assumptions before you even begin processing information... both empirically and religiously.

An example of such assumption would be... whatever I'm thinking right now is correct... otherwise there would not be a point for argument? Even if you assume that you are incorrect, you have to paradoxically assume that you are correct about your incorrectness. Therefore you are assuming a standard, which is your world view. Be it a moral, religious, or physical. In that sense YES, you are creating your own reality, but it does not mean that that your idea of reality is an accurate representation of what is really going on.

I guess my point is... how is it that my faith would be inferior to yours?

[there buster]

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There are rational frameworks we can reference. There is no such framework for so called morality.

This is known as begging the question.

YOur position is that morality does not exist, that there are only rational frameworks. Then you condemn morality for lacking a rational framework.

Unfortunately, you do not even understand rationality.

There is a rational axiom that states, "If nothing is self-evident, then nothing can be proved." That is why geometry, for example, begins with postulates--unprovable assumptions. You have a postulate that says morality does not exist. But it is unprovable, in several ways.

If you read the Abolition of Man, you would see that Lewis makes a similar point about morality: "If nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all."

Your rational arguments are similarly mistaken.

Costa Rica, of all the central American countries, has no army. Only a police force. It also has no trouble with an aboriginal underclass. Why? They exterminated the local Indian population. Genocide "worked" for them, and worked well.

In some cases genocide is rational precisely because it would eliminate all opposition. But rational is not moral.

Another problem with your position is that it is impossible to pile up any amount of rational evidence, and come up with an imperative. Reason is indicative, morality imperative.

No amount of "is" can ever produce an "ought."

It is perfectly rational that "one man should die instead of the whole nation." That does not make it moral.

Some of your statements border on the hysterically funny.

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It can carry weight if everyone agrees that genocide is harmful

Then it would have been "immoral" for a German in 1942 who opposed the extermination of the Jews. "Everybody" in the reference group agreed that it was necessary and right.

YOur so-called morality is nothing more than majoritarian tyranny. If the majority of people agree that slavery is OK, then slavery is OK. Why should those in free states impose their will on those in slave states? The majority in MIssissippi agreed that slavery was justified.

Fortunately, Lincoln and others opposed slavery, not because it was irrational, or because the majority opposed it, but because they made a claim to an authority outside of rationality. They claimed it was wrong.

Either one has this outside standard, or one has no reason to declare anything wrong.

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Again, semantics. You are basically saying that since morality is defined then it must exist. Evil is just as hard to examine. I think it is far more effective to explore rational explanations than to assign things to evil, god, or breaking some mythical moral law we make up.

You may be more logical within the assumptions that you have made, but I am talking past your assumptions and asserting that your assumptions are simply preference. You prefer to have morality exist, so you define it even though you can't see it.

A comprehensively silly statement. All human beings are selfish and willful. We would prefer morality did not exist, so there would be no effective way of opposing our will. Your system does just that. "If everyone agrees" then there is nothing to stand in our way.

[cardw]

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We are not dealing with knowledge here. We are dealing with a belief system. I would not dare to claim to know for sure. Belief is an attempt at truth.

I think we are in agreement here. The context of this original discussion was that god in the Bible does not obey His own laws and yet we are asked to be like God.

Within the context of Biblical morality, the god of the Bible is immoral.

If we are talking about belief then a belief in Biblical morality is not universal morality.

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What you are dealing with in both mine and your cases is a belief. It's not knowledge. You believe and I believe based on certain information, which can not be verified (100%). We are dealing with such faith based belief every day. I would say that most of the things you encounter on day to day bases you derive from a belief (faith) and not absolute knowledge.

And all I'm saying is that no one can claim higher moral ground. No one, not me, not you, not anyone.

Now if we have an ethical goal in mind, such as happiness for everyone possible within the limitation that every person has extreme value, then we can use reason to construct methods to achieve this and then we can evaluate which method is better. The original ethic has an intuitive emotional base because happiness can't be originated by reason, but only by the experience of feeling happiness.

What I see Christians doing is saying that by default the interpretation they have of Biblical morality is better because its from God. And they state that their interpretation of God's goals is better because its from God. I have not experienced this to be true in the sense that when I followed this plan, it did not bring what the Bible claimed it would bring. In fact it brought the opposite. So I really don't care about claims, texts, or definitions. They are all smoke and mirrors because, in my experience, these methods did not produce peace, joy, and freedom. These are supposed to be some of the fruits of the Christian life. I don't see God himself experiencing these in the Bible, so evidently, if we follow Biblical morality, God's own immorality may be creating this lack of peace and replacing it with anger, jealousy, and desires for revenge and punishment.

[cardw]

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Unfortunately, you do not even understand rationality.

There is a rational axiom that states, "If nothing is self-evident, then nothing can be proved." That is why geometry, for example, begins with postulates--unprovable assumptions. You have a postulate that says morality does not exist. But it is unprovable, in several ways.

Well, my point is that you are applying reason to something that is not based on reason.

You talk as if morality doesn't have any goal or that anyone moral has any motivation.

This is why your position breaks down as soon as we ask the question, "Why have morality?"

I have been saying, over and over, that we all begin with a preferencial assumption. I have not said that you take a fundamental position, but you were critical of me pointing out that those who have an assumed Biblical morality of being inconsistent with their own claims. That is they believe in a God who doesn't follow the same moral restrictions he puts on his creatures.

I stated that this inconsistency makes it hard for me to believe that this is a true god since the Bible claims that God is consistent.

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Costa Rica, of all the central American countries, has no army. Only a police force. It also has no trouble with an aboriginal underclass. Why? They exterminated the local Indian population. Genocide "worked" for them, and worked well.

Well if this is the extent of your intelligence then it might seem like it worked. I think we can come up with a more sophisticated analysis of this situation that takes into account other effects of this genocide. Using simplified solutions to attack my positions is really not an honest assessment of what I am saying.

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Then it would have been "immoral" for a German in 1942 who opposed the extermination of the Jews. "Everybody" in the reference group agreed that it was necessary and right.

YOur so-called morality is nothing more than majoritarian tyranny. If the majority of people agree that slavery is OK, then slavery is OK. Why should those in free states impose their will on those in slave states? The majority in MIssissippi agreed that slavery was justified.

Fortunately, Lincoln and others opposed slavery, not because it was irrational, or because the majority opposed it, but because they made a claim to an authority outside of rationality. They claimed it was wrong.

Either one has this outside standard, or one has no reason to declare anything wrong.

Again, since you haven't presented the specifics of this outside standard it continues to be a myth. And I just quoted you appealing to the majority, so if it doesn't work for me, then it doesn't work for you. You have yet to provide any measurable basis for morality other than a particular definition. We have no outside standard that we can evaluate since you haven't given us one.

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A comprehensively silly statement. All human beings are selfish and willful. We would prefer morality did not exist, so there would be no effective way of opposing our will. Your system does just that. "If everyone agrees" then there is nothing to stand in our way.

Well, I have not found this to be true. We may immaturely wish that we had no restrictions, but as soon as one suffers the consequences of this lack of self control, many of us come to appreciate boundaries to our behavior and we learn to self apply boundaries through many different processes. This is a process of maturity and requires both emotional support and rational application.

Now if you are going to respond to this honestly don't present some simpleton example. These are very complex processes and to reduce these to some mythical morality is simply being lazy.

[there buster]

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Well if this is the extent of your intelligence

You, sir, will apologize for this breach of common courtesy, or I will not be responsible for the consequences.

[fccool]

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I think we are in agreement here. The context of this original discussion was that god in the Bible does not obey His own laws and yet we are asked to be like God.

Within the context of Biblical morality, the god of the Bible is immoral.

That's where I would disagree with you. Please don't chalk the following example up to oversimplification, because it is fairly simple issue here. The issue at stake is authority. And I hope that you won't disagree with me on that. Authority constitutes authorship. AUTHOR has authority over his works to change them, to modify or rework the creation however he likes. There's nothing immoral about that.

Would you consider it to be immoral for you to have authority over your works? If you write a computer program and you change the parameters, cut several lines of code for optimization, would it be wrong for you to do so? Would you be bound as external individuals by the same rules as program? Would it be immoral to test the performance and the security with a virus?

Why would it be immoral for God to not follow the rules that He created? Can you share with me a couple examples of such immoral behavior on part of God outside of the scope of "optimization" of the world that He has created?

Would you assume for a programmer to have a superior knowledge than a program? So, in terms of a program, the programmer has superior moral standpoint simply because the program is dependent on the author to derive it's rules and function from.

As humans we have limited authority over each other because we don't claim to be the ultimate authors of humanity. Yet, the example of parenthood authority would be a similar issue. Would you consider a parent to be a dictator for making a choice to be born on behalf of the child? How about making the child eat vegetables against his/her will? I guess that would be immoral, right?

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If we are talking about belief then a belief in Biblical morality is not universal morality. And all I'm saying is that no one can claim higher moral ground. No one, not me, not you, not anyone.

Again, I think you need an update on logical fallacies here. You claim that because of A is automatically a B... or because you believe that A the belief is NOT B. I hope you can see a problem with that.

I guess I'll try to explain with a question... I hope you understand. Do you believe your view to be more true (better reflection of truth) than mine?

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Now if we have an ethical goal in mind, such as happiness for everyone possible within the limitation that every person has extreme value, then we can use reason to construct methods to achieve this and then we can evaluate which method is better. The original ethic has an intuitive emotional base because happiness can't be originated by reason, but only by the experience of feeling happiness.

Again, you are running wall with your original premise here. For you to pick and choose via reason a "better" method... is to assume a "superior method"... thus assume a superior morality. Can you see the clash with your original assertion "no one can have a claim to superior morality". Term better would constitute superiority. Can you clarify your solution that would fit your original statement better? I don't see how it is any different than deriving from reason that there is God and 10 commandments constitute a "better", or superior method.

You simply make an illogical claim that because God does not exist and because He "breaks His own rules" thus His morality is not "superior". Again, because of A ... must be B fallacy.

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What I see Christians doing is saying that by default the interpretation they have of Biblical morality is better because its from God. And they state that their interpretation of God's goals is better because its from God. I have not experienced this to be true in the sense that when I followed this plan, it did not bring what the Bible claimed it would bring. In fact it brought the opposite. So I really don't care about claims, texts, or definitions. They are all smoke and mirrors because, in my experience, these methods did not produce peace, joy, and freedom. These are supposed to be some of the fruits of the Christian life. I don't see God himself experiencing these in the Bible, so evidently, if we follow Biblical morality, God's own immorality may be creating this lack of peace and replacing it with anger, jealousy, and desires for revenge and punishment.

Again, because you did not experience it does not make it less or more true. There are many factors that could come into play that prevented you from doing so. It does not automatically invalidate the claims of a belief, just like experience would not automatically validate it.

It's pretty simple. You are making a claim of superior complexity, and accuse others of oversimplification... yet you've yet demonstrate that complexity. I agree that I can't argue with you with text and definitions... because they don't exist in your belief system.

You hold God to be a dictator, yet I don't see God appearing in your life every day dictating what you need and have to do. Perhaps there are people who use guilt tactics to lure you in.. but you don't have to listen to their claims and reasoning.

I don't follow Jesus because He died for me. Neither I do believe in him because He saved me. It was my choice based on assumption of superior method... if you will. Guilt will only damage and subject you to will of men.

I don't blame you for not liking religion very much, because much of it today employs destroying people emotionally and then providing a constant remedy for that emotional wound. It's a no way to go....BUT it does not invalidate the original premise.

I chalk it up to corrupt people, and not "immoral" God.