More pointless conversations on morality

[titan_tim]

My contention with your post is that it was a misrepresentation of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement presented in Scripture. I cannot assert a biblically orthodox position that differs from your strawman without citing the Bible. Honestly, I would not have responded if the strawman was not presented. I don't have much problem with anyone disagreeing with the Bible as long as they do not misrepresent it. I have no power to convince you of its truthfulness. I can merely present the gospel as it is presented in Scripture. It's not unlike the parable of the sower in Matt. 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20, and Luke 8:4-15.

I'm not misrepresenting substitutionary atonement, I'm rejecting its moral validity. Your position is simple. You believe god is both a victim and a judge and chooses to absorb punishment itself. That doesn't make it any more just in any human sense. Voluntary or not, its still injustice when the guilty aren't held accountable and someone else takes their place. Saying it's in the bible doesn’t make the concept moral. If it would be immoral in ANY human justice system, it doesn’t magically become moral when a god does it.

You're conflating the temporal and eternal. Why is eternal mercy necessarily immoral when the unrighteousness has been punished, satisfying justice?

This is textbook special pleading. You can't use an unevidenced eternal realm as a way to sidestep real world moral analysis. Until you provide evidence for the eternal, all we have to go on is the temporal and our own justice system. For the record, I never said mercy is immoral. I’m saying punishing the innocent and not the guilty is.

In your view of substitutionary atonement, does the transgressor compel God to suffer punishment in their place? It seems as though that is your position and I'd like to know why you assert that this is the biblically orthodox position. In my studies, this is not the case, and I presented why.

If the guilty compels a god to suffer in their place is irrelevant. If the act of substitution itself is unjust, coerced or not, then it’s immoral.

Looking back at all those crucifixion reenactments, I don't recall jesus happily dragging that cross up the mountain to be killed. That was 100% coerced. Even if it WERE voluntary, as I previously said, that doesn't make it just and moral.

Yes, I agree that your hypothetical is immoral. It ought to be obvious that you are drawing a false equivalence. A truer equivalence would be that the victim would offer to forgive and atone for the transgression committed against them, without any compulsion from the transgressor. Would that be immoral? If so, who is being immoral; the transgressor or the victim? Apologetics means providing a defense. You are using apologetics to defend your own position. Everyone arguing opposing positions engages in apologetics. This is the nature of argumentation.
I thought it was a useful parallel to your hypothetical regarding the injustice of substitutionary atonement in the temporal sense to show that you may not consistently hold to the assertions of your hypothetical. In both hypotheticals, the one suffering for the transgression is compelled by another to do so. They also present the fallacious idea that the 3rd party can provide propitiation for the iniquities of the transgressor. The referenced articles and Scripture passages already address this. I assumed that reiteration would be redundant.

You’re trying to say that moral inconsistency in secular views somehow makes substitutionary atonement more reasonable. But that’s a deflection, not a justification for an innocent person being tortured to satisfy the wrath of a god.

Again, you are conflating the eternal and temporal. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement addresses eternal atonement. Why do you believe that antinomianism is the necessary consequence of my position? Is this not already addressed in Romans 6?

And again, special pleading. You keep citing Romans, but your scriptures have authority. I’m evaluating your doctrine morally, not biblically.

I agree that morality predates any religion. Remember, the Christian assertion is that God always existed and that He defines morality.

Right, this is where you say "god imprints morality on your heart", since there's no direct conversation of what is moral between humans and the god. Utter nonsense.

What is the situation that requires us to do the least amount of harm and do as much good as possible? What do you mean by "harm" and "good"?

These aren't vague terms. We all know that harm is pain, suffering, oppression, etc. Good is well-being, fairness, excelling, etc. But I think we can both agree that it's bad to punish someone who didn't commit a crime. If you don't, then that's a problem.

We have outgrown the bible in terms of morality. Slavery isn't legal. A raped girl isn't forced to marry their rapist. We aren't allowed to beat our slaves as long as they survive a few days. Women are allowed to teach. A static set of rules in a 2000 year old book doesn't allow for updating. We as a people have long moved past it, while keeping the morality we knew before it was ever written.

 

[titan_tim]

Your claim to objectivity seems to rest on the subjective experiences of suffering and societal cooperation. Are suffering and societal cooperation not dependent on human preferences and emotions? If so, how can they be considered objective?

Suffering and pain isn't subjective. The emotions we show towards injustices or suffering is merely how we react. No different from how our five senses can interpret our physical world, our emotions interpret morality. If there were a species of intelligent beings who were devoid of emotion, they'd come to the same conclusions of well-being through objective morality.

This poses a problem for us to have any sort of coherent discussion on the topic. Do you agree or disagree with defining objective morality as universal and independent of preferences determined by the context of culture, time, and geographical location. If you disagree, how do you define objectivity so that it avoids relativism?

If there truly is an objective morality, it would have to be species based. If there were a species where to procreate, one of their own had to die in order to give birth to three more, their objective morality would be different to ours. Our own morality is there to further the growth of our own species and limit the amount of suffering.

Whether or not you feel the need, the burden is yours as you made the positive assertion. You are undermining your position by refusing to address the necessity of appealing to a higher standard to justify your claim.

You'll have to remind me of the specific positive assertion I gave previously. I usually don't outright deny the possibility of a god figure, as it's impossible to prove a negative.

Euthyphro's dilemma claims that God must either be arbitrary, therefore not necessarily good by nature, which subversively presupposes a moral standard external of Him, or there must be an external moral standard which even God appeals to. This is a false dilemma because both options presuppose a moral standard external of God. The Christian worldview affirms that God is not arbitrary in His commands, His nature is, by definition, good, and that His commands are not based upon any standard that is independent of Him. Morality is grounded in God’s eternal, unchanging, and perfectly good nature, which is the ultimate standard for goodness.

Why should I accept the presuppositions of a dilemma that misrepresents the nature of God and ignores, rather than engages with, the assertions of the Christian worldview? The dilemma only works when one assumes an unbiblical view of God and is unaware that it essentially frames the dilemma as choosing between a moral standard that is independent of God and a moral standard that is independent of God. I’m not even sure that can constitute as a dilemma because the “choices” to choose from are equivalent. Plato framed the dilemma so that he could reach his desired conclusion, morality/holiness/piety is independent of the pantheon.

If you're saying that This deity's nature is "good", then we have to have some independent notion of goodness to compare that nature to. If you're going through interpretations of "good" through scripture, that creates more problems with contradictions and makes it subjective.

If you're saying that the deity IS goodness, then that's just a circular tautology. God is good because god is good. We still need a concept of goodness where we can make that judgement. If not, calling god good is pointless.

In the end, the dilemma still stands. It's still arbitrary or it's independent of that god.

How does this disprove Christianity? Disagreements among Christians do not undermine the truth of Christianity any more than disagreements among scientists undermine the validity of science. Christianity has been combatting heterodoxy since the 1st Century, as the New Testament epistles clearly demonstrate. For the claim that such disagreements disprove Christianity would mean that any disagreement on any subject necessitates rejection of that very subject. For example, there is a long history of disagreement regarding the implementation of legislation. Does the fact of this disagreement disprove all legislation? The logic just does not follow.

It doesn't disprove Christianity. It just shows that it's wholly unreliable as a vessel of truth. You can I can have our disagreements on the mysteries of the universe, and that's to be expected. For Christians themselves to have a manual to guide them to the truth and STILL not be able to come to a conclusion just further shows that everything from that source is subjective.

I assert that the Bible is consistent. I'm not going to guess at the passages you are referring to. I can offer that I’ve found that supposed inconsistencies are from a lack of considering context (prescriptive vs descriptive passages), anachronistic misinterpretation, and the negligence of proper hermeneutics. It seems as though you have already decided that such responses I would give for each example will not be sufficient. You're already rooted in your desired conclusion. Rather than go through the effort of examining all of the passages that you have in mind in vain, let's go a bit deeper.

Assert all you want, but the inconsistencies are easily found.
-Light was created before the sun, which is inconsistent with reality.
-In Matthew 27 and Acts 1 they have conflicting ideas of the fate of Judas. In one, he returned the silver and hung himself. In another, he purchased land and then "burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out".
-Noah at one point is told to take two of every animal onto the ark, but in another passage he's told to take seven pairs of clean animals and two of the unclean animals.

There are many MANY inconsistencies, and more than likely due to the stitching together of books who had different versions of the stories. Once again showing that it isn't a reliable source.

I believe that we may agree that consistency is a necessity for a claim to be true. On what basis does your worldview account for and justify this necessity of truth’s consistency?

Yes, truth needs to be consistent, but that doesn't come from outside reality. That worldview consistency is how reality is. It's not something you invent. It's something you discover through experience and reason. It's the same for objective moral truths. It's all grounded in the social experiences of our species which have helped us flourish. They existed before any religions existed, and are still being fine-tuned to this day.

The issue is that we are functioning based on antithetical and incompatible worldviews. Your worldview assumes that the God of the Bible does not exist, while my worldview assumes that He does exist. This means that we fundamentally differ in how we interpret evidence. For me, the very fact that I can reason and interpret evidence is proof of God’s existence. Your worldview, on the other hand, seems to take these wonderful faculties for granted without offering any foundation or justification for them.

Sure, we have different starting points. That just means we have to justify each of them. I can explain reasoning and morality naturally, without invoking a deity whereas you assert a god to explain something which we already know naturally.
"I think, therefore I am." still makes perfect sense on its own. "I think, therefore God" introduces an unnecessary middleman.

 

[Mythrandir]

Admittedly, I take issue with the title of the thread. If your position is that discussing morality is pointless, then I need not engage any further. Though I may continue to respond to your moral assertions in other threads that I come across while lurking.

Suffering and pain isn't subjective. The emotions we show towards injustices or suffering is merely how we react. No different from how our five senses can interpret our physical world, our emotions interpret morality. If there were a species of intelligent beings who were devoid of emotion, they'd come to the same conclusions of well-being through objective morality.

If there truly is an objective morality, it would have to be species based. If there were a species where to procreate, one of their own had to die in order to give birth to three more, their objective morality would be different to ours. Our own morality is there to further the growth of our own species and limit the amount of suffering.

You'll have to remind me of the specific positive assertion I gave previously. I usually don't outright deny the possibility of a god figure, as it's impossible to prove a negative.

So far, you have only demonstrated a framework for subjective morality. By grounding morality in subjective experience, especially suffering and pain, you make it contingent on perception, which varies from person to person and society to society. For example, not all people experience the same degree of suffering and pain while kneeling. Those with knee replacements will experience more suffering and pain than those without knee replacements. Even among those with knee replacements or those without, they do not experience the same degree of suffering and pain while kneeling. Examples like this are why it is correct to state that suffering and pain are indeed subjective. An objective standard must transcend human experience, or else it is merely a relative standard.

I think I can conclude that we do not agree on the definition of objective morality. Objective morality necessarily transcends beyond experience or else it is relative. Your usage of the term is merely rhetorical rather than definitional.

If you're saying that This deity's nature is "good", then we have to have some independent notion of goodness to compare that nature to. If you're going through interpretations of "good" through scripture, that creates more problems with contradictions and makes it subjective.

If you're saying that the deity IS goodness, then that's just a circular tautology. God is good because god is good. We still need a concept of goodness where we can make that judgement. If not, calling god good is pointless.

In the end, the dilemma still stands. It's still arbitrary or it's independent of that god.

Is it circular tautology to say that bachelors are unmarried males because, definitionally, unmarried males are bachelors? In the same manner that unmarried males are bachelors by definition, good is God’s nature by definition. His commands proceed from His definitionally good nature, therefore they are not arbitrary. The ultimate standard has no higher standard to appeal to. It must appeal to itself. In my framework, that is God. In your framework, that is subjective experience.

The dilemma does not stand because it assumes an objective moral standard that is independent of God. The burden of justifying this objective independent standard resides on the one asserting it. All you have done so far is assert a relativistic moral framework grounded in subjective experience while using the term “objective” as mere rhetorical dressing.

It doesn't disprove Christianity. It just shows that it's wholly unreliable as a vessel of truth. You can I can have our disagreements on the mysteries of the universe, and that's to be expected. For Christians themselves to have a manual to guide them to the truth and STILL not be able to come to a conclusion just further shows that everything from that source is subjective.

Subjective? If I interpret a car owners manual differently than another person, does it logically follow that the "source" being interpreted is subjective or the car owner's manual is unreliable? These are unreasonable conclusions as the fault lies in the one interpreting rather than the source being interpreted. The Bible does assert the fallibility of humanity. I would expect disagreement on the interpretation of the Bible based upon the Bible's assertion. Do you assert the infallibility of humanity, and is this why you would expect there to be no disagreement on biblical interpretation?

Assert all you want, but the inconsistencies are easily found.
-Light was created before the sun, which is inconsistent with reality.
-In Matthew 27 and Acts 1 they have conflicting ideas of the fate of Judas. In one, he returned the silver and hung himself. In another, he purchased land and then "burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out".
-Noah at one point is told to take two of every animal onto the ark, but in another passage he's told to take seven pairs of clean animals and two of the unclean animals.

There are many MANY inconsistencies, and more than likely due to the stitching together of books who had different versions of the stories. Once again showing that it isn't a reliable source.

The sun is not the exclusive source of light in the universe. According to the Christian worldview, God can create, even be, a source of light preceding the sun. This is not inconsistent with reality. I’m not sure of the contradiction in Judas’ death account. Closer examination of the passages shows that they are complimentary rather than contradictory. A field was purchased using the silver paid to Judas. He then hanged himself and fell to the ground, and his bowels spilled out. Noah was first generally commanded to conserve both clean and unclean animals. He was then commanded to have seven pairs of each kind of clean animal to allow for the practice of animal sacrifice. This is an addition of detail rather than a contradiction.

It appears you are starting with your conclusion that the Bible is inconsistent. Admittedly, I’m not going to go through any future apparent contradictions that you raise. It would be more beneficial for you to investigate how these are reconciled by Christians for yourself. As I’ve already stated, all of the supposed contradictions that I’ve looked into are resolved with proper hermeneutics accounting for context, literary genre, and original language.

Yes, truth needs to be consistent, but that doesn't come from outside reality. That worldview consistency is how reality is. It's not something you invent. It's something you discover through experience and reason. It's the same for objective moral truths. It's all grounded in the social experiences of our species which have helped us flourish. They existed before any religions existed, and are still being fine-tuned to this day.

I agree that consistency is a necessary precondition for truth within reality. From what you have expressed, your reality is limited to subjective experience. I’m assuming that your metaphysical framework is limited to the material or temporal since your epistemology seems to be limited to empiricism. How does your framework make sense of immaterial things such as the laws of logic? Or abstract concepts such as reason, morality, and truth? They cannot be empirically proven due to their immaterial nature and they universally apply independent of subjective experience.

Sure, we have different starting points. That just means we have to justify each of them. I can explain reasoning and morality naturally, without invoking a deity whereas you assert a god to explain something which we already know naturally.
"I think, therefore I am." still makes perfect sense on its own. "I think, therefore God" introduces an unnecessary middleman.

Yes, we do need to justify each of our starting points. According to you, we know these things naturally because we know them naturally. Is this not another one of those circular tautologies or is the criticism only applicable to my assertions due to your bias against them? I assert that we know them because God provides the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of experience, reason, morality, the uniformity of nature, etc. In my worldview, these are not detached abstractions having no root for their justification as they are in your worldview. God is their justification.

I don’t believe it to be the case that God is an unnecessary middleman because God is the necessary originator of thought and reason. I would frame my position as “God is, therefore I think.” This is where we fundamentally differ. Your metaphysical, epistemological, logical, and ethical framework begins internally within yourself, while mine begins externally with God.

 

[titan_tim]

Admittedly, I take issue with the title of the thread. If your position is that discussing morality is pointless, then I need not engage any further. Though I may continue to respond to your moral assertions in other threads that I come across while lurking.

Just a low brow jape at the reality of the situation. Seeing as you're someone who puts bible passages in their own signature, I'm fairly certain that no matter what I put forward, you'll always reply with 'No, because god'. It's a hard-wired defense mechanism. For me to change my mind to be more in line with your thinking, it wouldn't take a conversation about morality, but more a conversation on the existence of a god in the first place.

So far, you have only demonstrated a framework for subjective morality. By grounding morality in subjective experience, especially suffering and pain, you make it contingent on perception, which varies from person to person and society to society. For example, not all people experience the same degree of suffering and pain while kneeling. Those with knee replacements will experience more suffering and pain than those without knee replacements. Even among those with knee replacements or those without, they do not experience the same degree of suffering and pain while kneeling. Examples like this are why it is correct to state that suffering and pain are indeed subjective. An objective standard must transcend human experience, or else it is merely a relative standard.

I think I can conclude that we do not agree on the definition of objective morality. Objective morality necessarily transcends beyond experience or else it is relative. Your usage of the term is merely rhetorical rather than definitional.

Yes, levels of suffering and pain is subjective, but that's irrelevant as it's not what I've ever argued. I've argued that reducing suffering and pain is objectively morally good. Saying that reducing unwanted suffering is morally good doesn't rest on everyone feeling the same pain. It rests on the fact that suffering, by its nature, is an undesirable state of being.

That moral objectivity has never come from anything transcendent, but from the sentient experience itself. It's objectively true that beings prefer less suffering to more. Therefore, reducing suffering is morally good.

Is it circular tautology to say that bachelors are unmarried males because, definitionally, unmarried males are bachelors?

I get the analogy, but it doesn’t really work. Saying “bachelors are unmarried men” is true by definition.

In the same manner that unmarried males are bachelors by definition, good is God’s nature by definition. His commands proceed from His definitionally good nature, therefore they are not arbitrary. The ultimate standard has no higher standard to appeal to. It must appeal to itself. In my framework, that is God. In your framework, that is subjective experience.

“God is good by definition,” is not the same kind of claim. You’re not finding out that "good" and god are identical, you’re just declaring it. It’s a stipulative definition, not an explanation.

Saying "God is good" doesn't tell us anything meaningful. It's just like saying "God's nature is god's nature". That makes it circular. If you want to say that his nature is good, then you still need to show that it's nature is good rather than evil. I mentioned before to do that, you'd need an independent concept of goodness. If not, and you want to say that anything this god does counts as good just makes it arbitrary.

The dilemma does not stand because it assumes an objective moral standard that is independent of God. The burden of justifying this objective independent standard resides on the one asserting it. All you have done so far is assert a relativistic moral framework grounded in subjective experience while using the term “objective” as mere rhetorical dressing.

In my framework, morality isn't based on personal opinion, but in objective conscious experience. Specifically, the understanding and capacity for well-being and suffering. That's not "Relativistic", it's empirical. We can measure and compare states of well-being. Those facts don't depend on anyone's beliefs, including a deity. My standard is grounded in reality itself. Yours on the other hand is grounded in divine personality, while you call it objective. That makes it contingent on whatever that deity happens to be.

Subjective? If I interpret a car owners manual differently than another person, does it logically follow that the "source" being interpreted is subjective or the car owner's manual is unreliable? These are unreasonable conclusions as the fault lies in the one interpreting rather than the source being interpreted. The Bible does assert the fallibility of humanity. I would expect disagreement on the interpretation of the Bible based upon the Bible's assertion. Do you assert the infallibility of humanity, and is this why you would expect there to be no disagreement on biblical interpretation?

I get the analogy, but it's not perfect. If two people can't agree on how to start the car, we can do a test and find out who is correct. The reliability of the manual can be tested on the car itself.

With the bible, you can't do that. You just have to appeal to more interpretation. Of course humans are fallible, but that doesn't help your case. If this book is divinely inspired to reveal ultimate truth, it MUST be written in a way that us fallible humans can reliably understand. If not, it just makes that deity imperfect for not knowing that would happen.

The sun is not the exclusive source of light in the universe. According to the Christian worldview, God can create, even be, a source of light preceding the sun. This is not inconsistent with reality.

It's not the exclusive source of light in the entire universe, but it's the main source of light for our planet. If it wasn't there, we'd be in the dark. To say that your deity is a source of light is just an assertion, nothing more. To say that's consistent with reality would need a god to test out their ability to beam light out of themselves, which we don't have.

I’m not sure of the contradiction in Judas’ death account. Closer examination of the passages shows that they are complimentary rather than contradictory. A field was purchased using the silver paid to Judas. He then hanged himself and fell to the ground, and his bowels spilled out.

If you want to say that his bowels spilled out in the field due to hanging, that's.... an interpretation..... That doesn't say why one said he bought the land with the silver, the other said he returned the silver.

Noah was first generally commanded to conserve both clean and unclean animals. He was then commanded to have seven pairs of each kind of clean animal to allow for the practice of animal sacrifice. This is an addition of detail rather than a contradiction.

If the second passage were just adding extra detail, you’d expect it to clarify in a way that’s consistent. Something like, “Take two of each, but for clean animals, take seven pairs.” But that’s not how it’s written. They’re presented as separate, self-contained commands, one general and one specific, without any mention that the first is incomplete. It just shows that it was written by different people over centuries. It goes back to the idea that a perfect deity should get these things right the first time.

It appears you are starting with your conclusion that the Bible is inconsistent. Admittedly, I’m not going to go through any future apparent contradictions that you raise. It would be more beneficial for you to investigate how these are reconciled by Christians for yourself. As I’ve already stated, all of the supposed contradictions that I’ve looked into are resolved with proper hermeneutics accounting for context, literary genre, and original language.

I can see why you wouldn't want to. I was just spit-balling ones that I could think of. There are so many others out there with a simple google search.

I agree that consistency is a necessary precondition for truth within reality. From what you have expressed, your reality is limited to subjective experience. I’m assuming that your metaphysical framework is limited to the material or temporal since your epistemology seems to be limited to empiricism. How does your framework make sense of immaterial things such as the laws of logic? Or abstract concepts such as reason, morality, and truth? They cannot be empirically proven due to their immaterial nature and they universally apply independent of subjective experience.

I don't think those "immaterial" in the way that you do. They're abstract, but that doesn't make them outside of reality or supernatural. Things like logic, reason, and morality are discovered properties of conscious and thinking beings operating in a consistent universe. The laws of logic aren't things floating around in metaphysical space. They're descriptions of how reality consistently behaves. Same goes for reason and morality. They're tools created in social species like ours to help us model reality and work together. They are from and describe the consistency of reality. The same consistency you agree is necessary for truth.

The irony is that your position actually removes logic and morality from reality and puts them into a separate "immaterial" form. Mine keeps them in the same reality we experience and test.

Yes, we do need to justify each of our starting points. According to you, we know these things naturally because we know them naturally. Is this not another one of those circular tautologies or is the criticism only applicable to my assertions due to your bias against them? I assert that we know them because God provides the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of experience, reason, morality, the uniformity of nature, etc. In my worldview, these are not detached abstractions having no root for their justification as they are in your worldview. God is their justification.

I don’t believe it to be the case that God is an unnecessary middleman because God is the necessary originator of thought and reason. I would frame my position as “God is, therefore I think.” This is where we fundamentally differ. Your metaphysical, epistemological, logical, and ethical framework begins internally within yourself, while mine begins externally with God.

What I said isn't circular or a tautology. When I say we know things naturally, it's due to processes we can actually study. It's not asserting "We know because we know".

To say that "God provides the necessary preconditions for reason" assumes god to prove god. It's not an explanation, it's a circular presupposition.

My framework starts with the one thing that is self-evident: Conscious experience. Then it builds from there. Yours starts by assuming a deity, then uses that assumption to justify itself.