Seperating The Dogma from the Truth!

Zombrex

ISAW wrote:

not at all. You might note i am asking questions not making claims.

Apologies I assumed you were attempting to put forward a point with the questions themselves.

ISAW wrote:

Whay or who defines what "morals" are?

Humans.

ISAW wrote:

Now you can't say it is done by people as they go along because the example I gave would be violated i.e. the NAZIS in the absence of a written law wouldnt be doing wrong until people decided it as they went along.

That is how it works. You can't decide something before you have decided it.

Are you asking how can the Nazis be held responsible for the holocaust if they at the time were not told it was the wrong thing to do by some authority because people had not decided it was wrong yet?

Ignorance is bliss, that kinda thing?

ISAW wrote:

Are you suggesting there are universal ideas which we can regard as "principles" even though they might not even be written down?

Remove the "universal" bit and you have it. And the written down bit, because it is irrelivent.

Morality is not universal or seperate from human culture. But then I never understood why it had to be to be taken seriously.

ISAW wrote:

Okay now I just wrote that down but suppose a holocaust happened and there was nothing written as a law against it. Are you saying that tghere is a general principle which even though not written down could be stated in terms like "one should not inflict suffering on a race of people because you don't like them"?

Amoung some people, and I'm pretty sure they did write it down. Whether Hitler read it or not is a different matter.

ISAW wrote:

So the human race is the source of this unwritten "moral" law?

The human race is the source of all human culture, including morality.

ISAW wrote:

But i am asking in the absence of positive law what is the source of what is considered "right" or "wrong"

The same as if there is positive law, human morality

ISAW wrote:

I am attempting by dialog to lead you to a position which is at odds with positive law.

You aren't doing a very good job ....

ISAW wrote:

You just stated that law is based on morality. morality being something which is prior to and from which positive law and jurisprudence flows. This "morality" may come from god or may come from a humanist source that isnt important for the argument - just that it is emenating from something other than what people come together and write down as law i.e. the spirit of the law.

How is this at odds with positive (ie man made) law?

ISAW wrote:

Now tell me - what is your definition of "natural law"?

Laws that some believe are present in nature and trancend human decision making and positive law, ie laws that are inherent as part of reality. I personally don't believe in natural law applied to morality, but a lot of people do, especially theists.

ISAW wrote:

I neverstated it was acceptable nor moral. I stated that one can not make a retroactive penalty for something which was not illegal at the time it occured.

Did someone suggest we do? Scofflaw, shame on you!

ISAW wrote:

so the holocaust is only wrong after you decide it?

Yes, obviously. I would hardly decide it wrong before I make a decision on it. Morality does not exist outside of your judgements of morality.

ISAW wrote:

In fact law would argue that something can be wrong in spite of any view you may or may not have on it.

That is true, the judgement of many can be forced to override the judgement of the few or the one. I'm sure a bank robber might not think what he did was wrong.

ISAW wrote:

Again more philosophy of universals. "disgusting" is a matter of personal taste. If you are trying to say that a effect cannot preceed a cause that is a different issue.

I'm not, I'm saying you cannot view something as disgusting until you have actually decided it is disgusting.

Morality is not a thing in nature. It is a judgement of a thing in nature. In the analogy of your dinner the thing is the dinner, the judgement is that it is disgusting. The judgement does not exist except in your mind as a classification of the thing.

The same is true of morality. Morality is a judgement of something in the world around us. The judgement does not exist externally to your mind.

I'm sure people who believe in God disagree, though then "your mind" simply switches to "Gods mind"

ISAW wrote:

Of course the effect of a slaty taste in my mouth cant preceed the tasting of food but it is a FACT that the food had a large amount of salt in it whether or not I taste it and deem it to be salty. there is a difference between a universal wrong like killing people just because you dont like them and deciding which level of parts per million salt in food is required to define food as "disgustingly salty".

I don't see a difference

It is a fact that people got killed in the holocaust. It is a judgement that this was morally wrong. The judgement does not exist externaly to those who made the judgement, but the dead people certainly do.

ISAW wrote:

I asked what jurisprudence is based on. whether it is God or Humanity you admitted it flows from a source which is superior and prior to written Law. This removes your "causality trap".

How exactly does it do that...?

ISAW wrote:

So the point you have yourself arrived at is one of Natural Law.

No, I already stated I don't believe in natural law, nor have I arrived at natural law as the source of morality.

ISAW wrote:

So you believe in Natural Law then!

Morality is not natural law, at least not as far as I'm concerned. Natural law is supposed to exist external to human judgement. My definition of morality clearly doesn't.

Maybe we are having two different definitions of "natural law" here.

ISAW wrote:

Personal judgement isnt enough. It must be informed. even for a judge.

Its ok, my judgements are informed

ISAW wrote:

It now appears you believe in natural law.

Only if you define "natural law" as simply moral judgements. But that isn't how I understand the term. For a start moral judgements can be very different depending on the person, where is natural law is supposed to exist inherent in nature, external to all human judgement. Christians would say that this is the law of God.

wolfsbane

Just to clarify the Biblical position on God's omnisience:
JimiTime said:

We are not pre-destined. God does not have our lives plotted out, so I hope that clarifies things.

For that to be true, there would be no prophecy in Scripture, yet it is packed with foretelling of events.

This whole thing is best illustrated by the case of predestination:
Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Did someone suggest we do? Scofflaw, shame on you!

Ah well. In the case of genocide, I find it entirely justified. I think if I engineered and released a virus that killed quarter of the world's population, it would be fairly reasonable to define a specific crime and apply it to me retroactively.

If you do not make something like genocide a crime, it is impossible to try people for complicity in genocide. If you find that, say, a government minister has been involved in planning the logistical capability for mass murder, but there is no such crime on the books, you would need to prove his knowing complicity in the murder of specific individuals.

In the case of my putative attempt to release a fatal virus, it would be important that my associates be implicated - it would not do if they got 2-3 years for "unsafely handling toxic substances" or "release of genetically modified organisms without a permit", would it?

Clearly, the moral reasoning involved does not attach to administrative crimes, and the law can be recognised as a fit-up law if it is never used again. The crime of genocide remains on the law books.

To bring up another case - what of child abuse? Not grey-area abuse, but the commercial creation of kiddie porn. If we had no such statute, because no-one admitted it happened, would you wish to see it applied retroactively?

cordially,
Scofflaw

gosimeon

My taking on the OP's points and on the Bible in particular is:

The Bible cannot be taken literally. Just compare the God of the OT to the God of the NT. They is no comparison. Many of the stories in the OT seem to be a way of a tribe of men attempting to figure things out with extremely limited knowledge. They credited God with everything. When something bad happened it was God's wish. When something great happened God had put His lessings upon them - that's the way they thought. The God of the OT is a vengeful one. This God is con compatable with jesus Christ for so many reasons.

Personally - I have faith in Jesus. I think that the accounts of his deeds and actions are trustworthy (mostly) and that the message he delivered is the true message of our creator - Love, no vengefulness. Jesus represented the New Covenent, a new path for people to follow. Treating books such as Lev. and Gen. as absolute Gospel truth is not only ridiculous, but also totally undermines Christianity. Christianity is about the truth. To be frank, not everything in the Bible as it is today is the truth. Therefore the Bible is not an absolute guide to God and his words, especially not the OT.

If you believe in the Trinity, then explain how one year God orders prostitutes to be killed and then in the NT Jesus (God, if you believe in the Trinity) offers a comforting hand to a prostitute and speaks of the laws concerning her as a distant thing, something far from his heart and certianly not his word.