JimiTime wrote: » As I said to you already, there is only right and wrong. There is no earthly wrong and heavenly wrong. What you are asking, is for me to reduce it down to a level that will appeal to your subjective interpretation of what makes something right or wrong, and then you can then subjectively pick what is and what isn't harm and so on and so forth.
JimiTime wrote: » I would not use the word moral, nor immoral tbh. I can't imagine stoning someone to death and thinking, 'this is so moral isn't it'. I don't have a moral objection to executing someone in principal(a guilty person of course), but I wouldn't describe it as moral. I think justified and regrettable would be the more appropriate term.
JimiTime wrote: » Because we are not living in a geographical nation under God or the Law, but are rather scattered through many nations and living under the Law of Love which Jesus instituted. Israel was put aside from other nations as Gods people through the promise he made to Abraham, and who his Son and our Messiah would come from. As such, evil was to be purged from it was the instruction. Sin being as pervasive and destructive as it is.
JimiTime wrote: » Well, the Israelites, when loyal to God prospered, as per his promise.
JimiTime wrote: » I didn't realise you had the stats from ancient Israel. Please share. Also, could you stipulate if these stats you have are from their times of obedience, or their times of rebellion? Also, are you comparing them to the world in general? Dublin? Ireland? And are you referring to the average Joe, or are we comparing the fate of criminals?
JimiTime wrote: » Also, what do you mean by 'moving away from God'? As far as I can tell, the closer we got to Christianity, the more humane and less harm we cause each other. Of course, we'll never get it right fully.
JimiTime wrote: » On a side note, I would not be so naive as to think that somehow we are more humane in waging war these days. We just see it happen in a much more cunning and deceitful way. Taking a nations resources, poisoning their waters, reaping the rewards of child labour etc etc. We are adept at talking out of both sides of our mouths.
JimiTime wrote: » Ravaging nations, while patting ourselves on the back and thinking we are great and moral. War is brutal! It has never changed in this.
JimiTime wrote: » No, I'm saying it was good for Israel that God fulfilled his promise.
JimiTime wrote: » I would not describe as good, that people reject God, and receive the wages of their shortcomings. Its a shame. Something regrettable.
JimiTime wrote: » Its nuanced I suppose, in that its good that the unrepentant wicked are destroyed
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Thanks for the Asimov tip. I'll check it out. The funny thing, marienbad, is that I had you in mind when I type that post. On a number of occasions I believe that you asked Philologs whether certain social/ moral prescriptions in the Bible would be considered moral today. If you aren't interested in applying contemporary moral standards to the past then why ask the question? Furthermore, how can you admit to being a moral subjectivist (and I assume we both understand the term in the same way and that you accept the label) without pulling the rug out from any notion that you can level a valid moral criticism at people living in other times or other places? They did what they thought was morally correct. You do what you think is morally correct. People in the future will do what they think is morally correct. And all of them might have different notions about what is morally correct. OK, so you think it is immoral to stone someone to death. Great. I'm happy to hear it. However, in a similar vein to my text above, if someone 3,000 years ago considered stoning members of rival tribes, spies, adulterers or whoever else to be both moral and just then what do you say about that? Given their context wherein stoning was considered just how can you say that they were wrong? Indeed, if you existed back then you might well have felt passionately that stoning was an appropriate sentence for X,Y or Z. They lived in different times, under different circumstances and had different values. Similarly, if people in the future look back in horror at some of your moral choices then what? It seems to me that all you have said is that people have or will do stuff that you don't like and vise versa. A particular deed is not wrong in any grand or external sense. It is wrong only for the subject given their situation, and it is therefore possible that somebody opposed to stoning would think that stoning is right given the correct circumstance.
Masteroid wrote: » And there you have the full extent of your argument? Your God would be so pleased at how little you know of your own religion.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Given their context wherein stoning was considered just how can you say that they were wrong? Indeed, if you existed back then you might well have felt passionately that stoning was an appropriate sentence for X,Y or Z. They lived in different times, under different circumstances and had different values.
Zombrex wrote: » Is it wrong for any reason other than God says so? And if it is only good because God says so why does that make it good?
But punishment falls into the realm of morality. Was it moral for the ancient nation of Israel to stone people to death.
why is it not moral now to stone to death people who deceive their husbands.
It is odd that moving away from God has greatly reduced the amount of harm we do to each other, and greatly improved the lives of most people.
For the example the odds of you dying at the hands of another person are significantly less than the odds of an average Israelite.
How often do you hear leaders, particularly in western countries, call on their soldiers to go back to a captured city or country and put everyone to death?
Again do you not find it odd that our standards for how to conduct a war (whether the individual soldiers adhere to them or not) involve a lot better treatment of those we inflict war on than in Israel where they were following the direct instructions of God?
What do you mean "broader sense"? I thought there was just right and wrong. Are you saying that something immoral could be moral local to the Israelites?
marienbad wrote: » I think you have the wrong poster here Fanny ?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » I believe this is called the scatter-gun tactic.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » OK, so you think it is immoral to stone someone to death. Great. I'm happy to hear it.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » However, in a similar vein to my text above, if someone 3,000 years ago considered stoning members of rival tribes, spies, adulterers or whoever else to be both moral and just then what do you say about that?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Given their context wherein stoning was considered just how can you say that they were wrong?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Indeed, if you existed back then you might well have felt passionately that stoning was an appropriate sentence for X,Y or Z.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » They lived in different times, under different circumstances and had different values.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » It seems to me that all you have said is that people have or will do stuff that you don't like and vise versa.
JimiTime wrote: » Ehhhh, that was YOU who did that, NOT me. It is YOU who assumed to know what the Egyptians were like just by reading a biblical account based around giving the story of the Hebrews. I brought your attention to your assumption. Exactly, as it wasn't trying to paint a history of Egypt. Yet YOU used this to assume what the Egyptians were like. I would call that very sketchy on your part. Ok, so now you are trying to move somewhere else to evade from the original poor assumptions you made. So you want to move on from your original, unfounded assumptions onto the reliability of the biblical accounts of the Hebrew enslavement and exodus. Is that where you want to discuss now? On the contrary. You evading the issue of your initial assumptions by taking us off down different rabbit holes does nothing to detract from your initial ill-founded assumptions. It would take a lot of wasted time on my part to attempt to educate you, especially since you believe that you are already educated. Maybe someone else would, but not me. I could imagine it being like trying to hold onto an eel. Assumption - Assumption identified - Not acknowledged but move onto next chapter of the skeptics bible and another 200 questions with no desire to engage with the answers. Rinse and repeat. Think I'd rather stick a needle in my eye.
marienbad wrote: » and another 200 questions with no desire to engage with the answers. Rinse and repeat.
marienbad wrote: » I can only speak for myself Fanny , but I don't think a moral subjectivist really cares about applying contemporary moral standards to the past.
Zombrex wrote: » People are people. If I think it is immoral to stone someone to death I don't see why it would be less immoral 3,000 years ago. The person still suffers the act of the stoning do they not? === To the people in the future, certainly. And to anyone who agreed with them now, yup.
Masteroid wrote: » The reason you cannot fathom the will of God is because you insist on reading what is not there.
The bible is a litttle sketchy on what happened in Egypt
Moses doesn't seem to have left much of a mark on Egyptian history at all. And their ways of war do not appear to include ethnic cleansing so in fact your entire viewpoint of the Jewish-Egyptian relationship is garnered from the bible and is unreported anywhere else.
And your religiously biassed knee-jerk reaction to these facts does nothing to rescue your position.
Furthermore, an honest examination of the text of Genesis from the story of Abraham to the death of Joseph reveals that God seems to routinely put His faith in men who are demonstrably evil. Did you read about how Esau was cheated by his brother and his mother? And for this, God was compelled to bless Jacob. No wages of sin there then. And let's not get into how the progenitors of the Moabites and the Ammonites were conceived. Joseph's brothers don't seem to regret their sin until they are faced with the threat of retribution which doesn't come. And there is no need take confine ourselves to Genesis in order to observe this disturbing pattern. When King David sins, it is a little boy who God makes suffer horribly before finally murdering him which, according to the story, cheers David up immensely. We are talking of people who lived and walked with the most powerful of all Gods and they were still willing to sin. Another theme through the OT is even where the children of God are resigned to being put to death on account of their sins, not one of them, even though God has apparently interacted with them directly, via angels or through dreams, exhibits any concerns about burning for eternity in a lake of fire. Doesn't that give you pause for thought? And how about this, Peregrinus has recently brought up a Levite who throws his concubine to the mob to be gang-raped. Have a look at that story, Judges 19, and please tell me who killed the concubine, who seems not to be important enough to have a name, and what in the story causes you to think you have identified the murderer? What evidence is there to provide a rebuttal to the argument that the near extermination of the House of Benjamin served the Levite's agenda and got him off a murder charge? I'd be more than happy for you to produce evidence in the form of biblical quotes or in the form of other historical documents that are outside of the bible. Remember, Moses set down a law that effectively gave his tribe supremacy over the other tribes and a free ride in the form of tithes. Why would the Benjamites abuse a Levite? Also, as long as fifty shekels are paid to the victim's father, the rape of an unbetrothed virgin can be atoned for providing that someone marries her. I'm not sure where the law stands on concubines that don't have the privilege of a name and who are gang-raped but I imagine that she would be valued less than a daughter.
Peregrinus wrote: » Nevertheless, this isn’t a story primarily or mainly about sexual morality.
Masteroid wrote: » The crowd wanted to know the men 'carnally', do you know what that means? If the angels had been gay then there would have been no problem would there? The word 'carnally' is used and so doesn't need to be inferred as it is a million miles away from being subtle but you infer that wanting to know the men carnally is a metaphor for 'we don't like strangers around here'. Amazing. And the same word is used in the Judges 19 story too. Peregrinus, to know men carnally is not the same as making men feel unwelcome. Why do you think that the word 'carnally' was used?
Peregrinus wrote: » The story ias about the citizens of Sodom. Lot is a plot device, included to counterpoint and underline the evil of Sodom. The evil was not, as you assume, homosexuality; it was inhospitality - a point which becomes very clear when you read the immediately preceding story where the angels visit Abraham, and are hospitably received. Genesis 19 is a very pointed contrast to Genesis 18. The Sodomites are the antithesis of Abraham (who is, of course, the father of the Jewish people, so we know at the outset who's going to be the goodie and who the baddie).
JimiTime wrote: » I was looking forward to be pointed in the right direction, but you didn't:( You instead made a very dubious assumption. Evidently, the hebrews weren't all put to death by Egypt, but it says nothing of other nations. Not only that, but maybe the hebrews would have been, but they accepted peace and servitude rather than death. As for the Exodus, well that was a something of divine intervention, which also tells us that but for Gods intervention at the Red Sea, we could well have seen the death of the Hebrews. Perhaps you could think a bit more before allowing your anti-religious bias form your thinking, and jumping to conclusions? And? Have I argued something different? I think God is more farsighted than mere men tbh. Abraham was told of the inheritance of the promised land, but not yet, as 'the iniquities of the Ammorites was not yet complete'. So it didn't seem that God was merely brushing people aside, but rather judging them. He obviously knew where they were going in terms of wickedness, and did not give them into the hands of Israel until their wickedness had reached their summit. To then have Israelite soldiers have mercy, is a pretty faithless act. Its saying to God, 'we don't trust you'. I can't imagine myself questioning God on judgement day. Well, the will of God will still pay out the wages of sin as promised from the start (death) on those who reject the gift of salvation through the messiah, his son Jesus, at Armageddon. So the will of God is still to keep his promises. If you are asking why Christians aren't conquering the world, well do you really need to ask?
Masteroid wrote: » Really? That is your view? Let me point you in the right direction by telling you that the war doctrine of The Living God represents a development in warfare. If 'it was the way of war back then' then how do explain how men were able to take part in the exodus from Egypt? Evidently genocide wasn't the way of the Egyptians.
Perhaps you believe that the pyramids were built by women?
It is quite clear to anyone who has the slightest grasp of English that Deuteronomy 20:10-15 informs Moses' people that it is God's will that all nations are to be either enslaved by Israel as an alternative to war with them or in the event of the rejection of an offer of slavery, all males are to be put to death and the women and female children are to be part of the spoils of war. And Deuteronomy 20:16-18 prescribes total genocide for the indigenous population of the 'Promised Land'.
Because of what The Living God said to Moses and Samuel, the Jews were actually afraid to show mercy to 'God's enemies'.
And for the record, when did such behaviour stop being according to the will of the God?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » For anyone else out there, my question is why a moral subjectivist would think that a particular contemporary moral standard applies to the past?
JimiTime wrote: » TBH, it sounds brutal to me, but I don't recall it being described as good. Good for Israel in that enemies were delivered into Israels hands etc, but not in a broader sense. Necessary maybe, but good? Israel, when it fell away from Godly worship experienced the same fate, and were only preserved due to a promise by God to retain a remnant, so it seemed that it was the way of war back then. It may have been a stupid thing to keep alive people who refused peace and forced labour in order to fight for their sovereignty. They may have been insidious etc. I don't know the reasons myself, apart from guessing. Anything I could suggest would simply be a maybe this or that.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » This is actually not what I meant. But I was being vague. I was referencing to the deaths of innocent people to prevent a larger catastrophe. I'm sure that many Christians, atheist, Muslims, Jews and so on would have reluctantly consented to sending in crews to Chernobyl or shooting down flight 93. I wasn't talking about psychotics. Rather, I was talking about the moral complexities that your one size fits all generalisation doesn't address. Funny that you have to put "better" in scare quotes. Anyway, happily you aren't under any obligation to answer my questions. For anyone else out there, my question is why a moral subjectivist would think that a particular contemporary moral standard applies to the past? And would the same logic apply to the future? If, for example, in 150 years time humanity exists in a world not unlike that described in Children of Men, a scenario where abortion is considered an unthinkable evil, would that then make the contemporary support and practice for abortion morally wrong?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Funny that you have to put "better" in scare quotes.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Anyway, happily you aren't under any obligation to answer my questions.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » And would the same logic apply to the future? If, for example, in 150 years time humanity exists in a world not unlike that described in Children of Men, a scenario where abortion is considered an unthinkable evil, would that then make the contemporary support and practice for abortion morally wrong?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » The question for me is why you and the other atheists railing against the OT on this thread think that rape, theft, murder, torture and any number of acts are wrong?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » You have said that modern war is more moral (which is a laughable statement) but I'm not sure what this means. Moral by whose standard?
nagirrac wrote: » Really? I think the estimated 150 million people who were slaughtered by regimes that moved away from God since 1917 would disgree with you. There is no history of such state slaughter among nations that held on to their belief in God or at least did not actively try to suppress it. Do you have data to compare say murder rates in ancient Israel with today? Have you not heard of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki? Does Deuteronomy compare? This whole concept of how much more moral we wage war today is bogus. "We" wage war based on how "we" choose to wage war. Who is "we" by the way, Western democracies? Where was the morality in declaring war on Iraq, a war that resulted in the deaths of between 100,000 and 500,000 of its citizens depending on whose numbers you believe, destroying their economy and plunging the country into civil war? Yes, we have bodies like the United Nations and have standards of how war should be conducted, unfortunately they prove to be irrelevant when "we" choose to go to war.
Zombrex wrote: » I'm sure, if you want to get technical. Some Chritians are psychotics who believe it is there job to cleans the world of wicked sinners.
Zombrex wrote: » I really hope you aren't going to ask why is my moral opinion "better" than the moral opinion of an Israelite 3000 years ago, given how much we have discussed the attempting to inject objective morality into a system that is not based on objective morality is a logical fallacy.
Zombrex wrote: » It is odd that moving away from God has greatly reduced the amount of harm we do to each other, and greatly improved the lives of most people. For the example the odds of you dying at the hands of another person are significantly less than the odds of an average Israelite. How often do you hear leaders, particularly in western countries, call on their soldiers to go back to a captured city or country and put everyone to death?
JimiTime wrote: » Yes it is, but of course, the whole issue of morality is not something that can truly be discussed between an objectivist and subjectivist.
JimiTime wrote: » The moral, is the fact that she's deceived her would be husband, so yes, that is still wrong. The punishment is something that applied to the ancient nation of Israel, so no, that punishment would not apply to us here and now.
JimiTime wrote: » There is no 'earthly wrong', there is just right and wrong as anchored by our sovereign source of life. So yes, it is still wrong.
JimiTime wrote: » In some matters. Principally, the concepts of morality haven't changed though, in the context of God. The world has indeed moved away from God, just like the nations of the biblical times were away rom God.
JimiTime wrote: » I would probably say that this is naive but I agree that the word moral and war are probably not best placed together.
JimiTime wrote: » TBH, it sounds brutal to me, but I don't recall it being described as good. Good for Israel in that enemies were delivered into Israels hands etc, but not in a broader sense.
Zombrex wrote: » Is it still wrong to fornicate.
Is it still correct punishment to stone a woman to death on her wedding night if she isn't a virgin?
Is it still wrong (again as in Earthly wrong) to worship the wrong god?
As Kiwi in IE says the concepts of morality, justice and punishment are a million miles away from today.
While it is hard to say modern war is moral, it is easy to say it is hugely more moral than what is described in Deuteronomy.
For example the idea that after a modern army had taken over a city of country they killed all the men woman and children in the city or country would be considered a war crime. These of course still happen, but it has been a long time since anyone argued they were a good thing. In fact prosecuting people responsible is the type of thing we start wars to do. Yet this type of action was routinely described in the Old Testament, and not as something bad that happened as a consequence of war but in fact a good outcome ordered by God.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » This is not true. Some Christians do think that killing is justified, even when this means taking innocent lives.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » The question for me is why you and the other atheists railing against the OT on this thread think that rape, theft, murder, torture and any number of acts are wrong? You have said that modern war is more moral (which is a laughable statement) but I'm not sure what this means. Moral by whose standard?
