Soul Winner wrote: » Well no, the fact that He can do what He likes is a fact independent of whether I agree with it or not, either that or He doesn't have all power and hence doesn't exist.
Soul Winner wrote: » I can disagree with you that the car is red but the atoms which are there are reflecting the light that is there and it is what it is whether I agree or not. That is what objective truth is. Things are either true or they are not true. Our perception of them doesn't even come into it.
Soul Winner wrote: » If God is the originator of this universe then He is the source of all truth, so what He says is what defines truth.
Soul Winner wrote: » If He doesn't exist then truth is whatever we want it to be and whatever works for us.
Soul Winner wrote: » If God is the originator of this universe then He is the source of all truth, so what He says is what defines truth. If He doesn't exist then truth is whatever we want it to be and whatever works for us.
Sam Vimes wrote: » So if god didn't exist I could define the truth as "I am able to fly" then proceed to jump off a building and fly around could I?
chozometroid wrote: » Actually, yes, that would be correct.
Sam Vimes wrote: » Seriously?
iUseVi wrote: » I knew someone would say it. I almost posted "you are walking into a trap Sam...." PS. Where's my cow?
liamw wrote: » I wish God didn't exist. That would be amazing
Wicknight wrote: » Yes, sorry should have been clearly ... what I mean was the idea that it is ok that he do what he likes with us and the universe because he created us is a subjective moral opinion of yours, one that I actually disagree with.
Wicknight wrote: » That is the point. The way wave lengths are reflect off the surface of the car is a property of the car and of light. It exists as a self contained property of these things. The only things that have to exist are the car and light Which is why God's judgement on something being moral or immoral is subjective, because it is an external judgement on something.
Wicknight wrote: » It does not exist as a property of the thing itself. It is an external judgement on that thing.
Wicknight wrote: » Again that is irrelevant (and doesn't actually make sense, since truth does not have a "source").
Wicknight wrote: » The judgement is a property of the judge, not the thing he is judging. It is his opinion and as such is subjective. It would not exist if he didn't exist. And you can have more than one judge and thus more than one judgement.
Wicknight wrote: » No truth is something that is true. Truth doesn't have a source nor is it dependent on something. It is a self contained concept based on logic. God is irrelevant to this.
Malty_T wrote: » The other thing I wanted to say is that objective morality doesn't necessarily have to mean that everyone is aware of the same moral laws. It merely means that such moral laws exist independent of whether the person is aware of them or not.
Sam Vimes wrote: » Yeah religious people say that a lot but if people aren't necessarily aware of these laws it means that people can mistakenly think their subjective moral opinion is objectively moral, people can be fooled into thinking that someone else's subjective moral opinion is objectively moral and that people can deny that someone else's actual objective moral opinion is objectively moral when it suits them or when they honestly think otherwise. So if objective moral laws exist but people aren't necessarily aware of them, why do they matter? How is a world that contains only subjective morality any different to a world where objective moral laws exist that people aren't necessarily aware of?
Soul Winner wrote: » My opnion is subjective, but the trueness or not of God creating the universe is not dependant on my opinion.
Soul Winner wrote: » That only applies to any created being's perception of the things not the originator's perception. The properties of the light photons and atoms are all properties of His origination and are dependent on His sustenance.
Soul Winner wrote: » Who is it that says that truth doesn't have a source? Why should we beleive that that staement is true?
Soul Winner wrote: » If one of his judgments was 'shooting kids in the head is wrong', would that cease to be a true judgement when the judge dies?
Soul Winner wrote: » If truth really doesn't have a source then the truth of the statement (truth has no source) also has no source, if it is just true because it is true then that means that objective truth exists no matter what.
Soul Winner wrote: » So if God exists then that is an objective truth
Soul Winner wrote: » and if He exists then He is the source of all truth which would make the statement (truth has no source) false.
Soul Winner wrote: » Is the statement: "The earth exists." true? Answer: Yes Does the earth have a source? Answer: Yes Which means that the true statement: "The earth exists." has a source in reality somewhere, unless you believe that the earth has always existed?
Soul Winner wrote: » My point is that the statement: "Truth has no source." is an oxymoron. If that statement is in fact true then it too has no source in reality, so why should we believe that it is in fact a true statement?
chozometroid wrote: » When God says covetousness, anger, adultery, and stealing are wrong, they are wrong regardless of the morality that society has "decided" to observe. This means that people who know what God's moral law is are able to recognize when society is swaying from the true standard of right and wrong.
chozometroid wrote: » Otherwise, there would be no way to tell if your behavior is truly right or wrong, only that it is the norm of the time and place. This really does result in a world where "anything goes."
Sam Vimes wrote: » There are plenty of ways to tell. One simple example is if somebody thought there was nothing wrong with raping my child I would correct him, possibly with a baseball bat. Human beings are perfectly capable of determining what's "wrong" by finding out what other people will and will not accept being done to them. I don't need to appeal to any authority other than my own to tell someone that I don't want something done to me or my loved ones. If I tell someone not to do something to me and they do it anyway that is "wrong" and they will know because I will fight their attempts to do it. I might lose but them being stronger than me and able to force their will upon me does not make what they're doing "right"
Wicknight wrote: » Objective truth exists no matter what. That is the point. Objective truth is above even God. It exists as properties of ultimately reality, which God merely exists in (assuming he exists which isn't actually that relevant).
Wicknight wrote: » Why is he the "source" of all truth simply because he exists.
Wicknight wrote: » Think of it this way. God cannot be the "source" of the fact "God exists in reality" because that would require God to exist first in order for the statement to be true, which would be an illogical paradox.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » If you believe this then you don't understand the nature attributed to the God of Christianity. Nothing can exist above God because that would make God something other than a God. It would be simpler to say that objective morality is part of God. For the same reason we say he is the source of creation. Because without him there would be nothing - no truth, no creation. With regards to God there was no first, just as there was no before. God never not existed. God simply is and so too the qualities attributed to him.
chozometroid wrote: » But over time, each passing generation may be slightly less offended by the raping of their child (Especially if society continually allows more questionable behavior. Each new generation will start at a point of much greater leniency than the previous one. Imagine after 10-20 generations on this course...), and eventually they will no longer view something that is definitely "wrong" as being wrong. With God setting the standard, we don't have to depend on our flawed "social morality" to tell us what is acceptable.
Malty_T wrote: » I'm going to ask this probe this a little bit, Fanny, how on earth do you actually know these are the properties of God?
Sam Vimes wrote: » No matter what knots a society twists itself into to convince itself that rape is ok, no one wants to be raped. Rape can never become a social norm in the way going to the shops for milk is normal because that will mean that almost all of the population will be having something done to them that they don't want done to them. The only way rape will ever be widely acceptable within a society is if the vast majority of people somehow decide that they kind of like being raped. Do you see that happening?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » If you believe this then you don't understand the nature attributed to the God of Christianity. Nothing can exist above God because that would make God something other than a God. It would be simpler to say that objective morality is part of God.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » For the same reason we say he is the source of creation. Because without him there would be nothing - no truth, no creation.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » What's all this "first" and "exist" business about? Are you attempting to apply a temporal argument to an atemporal being?
Wicknight wrote: » Most Christians I understand believe that God can only do what is logical, ie he cannot make a rock he can't move or he cannot kill himself, or he cannot act in a way other than his own nature. This implies that the rules of logic, including the concepts of true or false, are above even God. You can imagine the same rules of logic exist independently of God. God may not exist but true is still true and false is still fallse. These concepts do not require God to exist, and if he does exist he is as bound by them as anything else in reality.
chozometroid wrote: » I suppose rape, by definition is "unwanted," so it's not the best example. We can replace "rape" with "sex with animals" and it still makes the point.
Quote: Originally Posted by wolfsbane This gets to the heart of the issue. I was not saying - nor was PDN - that atheists do not have reasons for acting morally. Self-interest, achieving desired ends, is a logical reason for such behaviour. Can you see no rational reason to help someone without wanting something in return?
Quote: Originally Posted by wolfsbane What we mean by them having no rational case for moral behaviour is this: they have no rational defence that makes any behaviour immoral as such. It may be rational for one to be kind to his neighbours rather than oppress them (he gets a good feeling and is treated well by them in return). But it may well be rational for another to oppress his neighbours - his superiority in power is such that it is very unlikely to have negative consequences for him, and certain to have several advantages. So he, with his majority colleagues, enslaves the minority and lives high on the hog. He lives in luxury and dies peacefully in his bed. His slaves live miserably and die early from exhaustion. Both behave rationally in their self-interest. This is all great in theory, atheists can have rational reasons for immoral behaviour but christians can't because nothing trumps the argument from authority that is objective morality. It all sounds wonderful and if that's how it worked in practise we'd be living in a utopia but we're clearly not.
To explain it in your terms, humans are sinners by nature so you can say all you want that certain things are objectively wrong but even people who believe in god will go ahead and do them anyway with pretty much the same regularity as non-believers.
Pointing out that there is an objective morality is useless unless you have any more means of making people follow it than I have of making them stop doing things to me that I don't want them to do.
My scenario: I say to someone that I don't want him to do something to me so he should stop. he says that he's powerful enough to prevent reprisals so he does it anyway. Your scenario: You say to someone that you don't want him to do something to you because it's "just wrong" but he has a sinning nature so he does it anyway. Either way the same bad things happen
Quote: Originally Posted by wolfsbane But the lack of rationality I refer to is in the atheist saying either of those men are behaving immorally. They are behaving differently; there is no moral content. There is no morality. Kindness and oppression are alike in the materialist world. You say: "But it may well be rational for another to oppress his neighbours - his superiority in power is such that it is very unlikely to have negative consequences for him, and certain to have several advantages". I will grant you that but there are a few things to consider: No matter how powerful somebody is, the possibility of negative consequences can only ever be "very unlikely", he can never be absolutely sure that there will be no reprisals
The vast majority of people on the planet do not fall into that category. Mostly when people do wrong there might be some brute force element to it but afterwards they have to try to stop people finding out what they did (or at least proving what they did) because no matter how powerful someone is they can't fight the combined force of all the people who refuse to accept those who harm others, ie the vast majority of people on the planet. So oppression and kindness are not alike. One leads to happiness and cooperation for all and the other leads to misery for the victim and constant fear for the perpetrator.
And they only come anywhere close to being alike in the case where someone is either strong enough to fight off everyone else on the planet for his entire life or sneaky enough to make sure no one ever finds out what he did. And as long as humans are sinners, telling somebody that something is wrong it little more effective than telling them there will be reprisals
Sam Vimes wrote: » You've made a very important point here though. Religious people say that without god anything goes but as I've just shown with the rape example that's not true because for an entire society to decide that rape is ok significant numbers of them will have to put their money where their mouth is and submit to being raped.
chozometroid wrote: » God may be the source of "truth" because He is the source of all knowlege. He simply knows "what IS" and is able to actually be "truth" without truth existing above Him.
Sam Vimes wrote: » Anything that we consider immoral is by definition "unwanted", that is except with religious morality where some things that do no harm to anyone are considered immoral such as homosexuality
Wicknight wrote: » But God can't be the "source" of all knowledge because God knows he exists and he exists independently of himself (he just is, he has always just existed.) and thus he got that knowledge, at the very least, from being aware of his own existence, thus the knowledge did not come from himself. Again to say that God is the source of all knowledge is to define "everything" and then define God outside of that set, which is illogical. You could say that God is the source of all knowledge except knowledge of his own existence and the reality he exists in. But it doesn't have quite the same ring as these absolute religious statements you guys are so found of :pac:
