Morality Without God?

[neo-x]

The Bible says God committed genocide, so genocide must be moral.

Butterfly, on your take on this, did God himself came down and started killing people?

So to be precise you would have to say that God ordered genocide. Though I always hesitate in using this term because to be honest we do not know for sure whether the way the O.T explains God ordering Israel to war, is real or just implied. Since Israel thought that God was on their side then they obviously would behave as such. This is not to say God never ordered war, he did that much is certain. But what were the details and how it was done is not always that much clearer.

The reason I need to raise this point, because murder, killing and even genocide has to have a purpose, a motive, a benefit, and that also in the human realm. If there is a God, it absolutely evades me why he would order genocide. He lacks motive. Humans on the other hand actually have motive. Unless we think God is like a man, and our image of God is extremely anthropomorphic, I would not just say God committed genocide. I would say it looks that way but we are not sure.

Plus as Spock said, just because the Bible says something, doesn't make it right, right?

Infact I am going to challenge you on this.

If I can not use the Bible as truth, and proof and evidence that what is says is true, then you can not use the Bible as well for the same reasons, you are denying me to use it. If "just because the Bible says so, doesn't make it right" is the rule for me, then it goes for you too.

If you say God committed genocide using the Bible as proof, that the event in question ACTUALLY happened, then I am also free to take events and treat them as FACTUAL, actually happened events, and you would have to concur, events like the Resurrection, hearings, miracles etc and many more things which are written are true and factual, or else I will ask you to provide me with evidence that such an event as the genocide in question, actually happened to begin with.

Are we clear on this? Either you can use the Bible and I can too, else we both CAN NOT use it because just because the Bible says so, doesn't make it true.

[Danieltwotwenty]

If it is so debunked then why not take it up with Craig himself......

Many people with degrees in philosophy have already shown him his errors and he simply ignores them. He is either totally deluded or willfully deceiving his gullible audience.

So why are these things never bought up in debates, it seems that no one has made a public challenge in the debate arena.

It seems a little fishy if he has been debunked but never challenged in a public arena. I call bull

Dan

Your call of "bull" is ridiculous. If you need to appeal to authority you demonstrate that you don't understand the issues being discussed and are unable to make a reasoned judgement yourself. I have proven Craig's errors in this thread in simple terms that anyone with an elementary understanding of philosophy can see and understand. If you can't see Craig's errors for yourself even after they've been explained in detail then you have no warrant to have any position on what he says pro or con because the whole topic is obviously over your head.

Furthermore, these issues HAVE come up in debate! Craig just ignores them. I saw this happen just two nights ago when I watched Oxford professor of philosophy Peter Millican decimate Craig's argument in this 2 hour video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JVRy7bR7zI

I have already stated many times that philosophy is way over my head, I neither care nor want to understand it as I see it as a complete waste of energy.

I will appeal to authority as yes I DO NOT UNDERSTAND OF CARE ABOUT PHILOSOPHY, so I would like to see someone actually call him out on it in a public arena before I make a judgement call on his arguments and until such time I will call bull

I will watch the video when I get some time, Because I am at work and meant to be working.

[Danieltwotwenty]

Nowhere does the Bible say God committed genocide, if you could even call it genocide since a creator has the right to give and take life, only humans are capable of genocide.

If that is true, then there is nowhere in the Bible where the Bible says anything since words will have lost all meaning.

If that is your personal opinion that's fine, I whole heartedly disagree.

God cannot murder/commit genocide/homicide/infanticide/democide/regicide and all the other cide's, God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit, it is an intrinsic feature of being God.


Dan

The issue is that the Bible says the biblegod commanded Israel to commit genocide.

You can't solve this problem with word games.

How is it a word game, God by his very nature is incapable of such a thing, it's like saying God is not all powerful because he can't make a square circle, all it is is an absurdity.

Dan

[Butterfly]

something is correct if the majority says it's correct and if society chooses to enforce that rule.

There is something completely, absolutely, horribly wrong with this statement. In fact to be honest, it's not only, not right, it's not even wrong, it's retarded.

This idea is retarded because it takes no measure on the intellectual level to ascertain whether the majority is correct or not. Just because you legalize something, does not make it anymore moral than you wearing red tights and a cape and believing yourself to be superman.

I am by no means defending what BryanH said, but it makes just as much sence as saying that something is moral because the Bible says it is. The Bible says God committed genocide, so genocide must be moral.

-

Nowhere does the Bible say God committed genocide, if you could even call it genocide since a creator has the right to give and take life, only humans are capable of genocide.

Genocide is "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group". Now whether or not you want to justify God's action is one thing, but the fact of the matter is that the Bible says that God deliberately killed all the people on the planet except for Noah and his family...and that my friend is called GENOCIDE.
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[Danieltwotwenty]

something is correct if the majority says it's correct and if society chooses to enforce that rule.

There is something completely, absolutely, horribly wrong with this statement. In fact to be honest, it's not only, not right, it's not even wrong, it's retarded.

This idea is retarded because it takes no measure on the intellectual level to ascertain whether the majority is correct or not. Just because you legalize something, does not make it anymore moral than you wearing red tights and a cape and believing yourself to be superman.

I am by no means defending what BryanH said, but it makes just as much sence as saying that something is moral because the Bible says it is. The Bible says God committed genocide, so genocide must be moral.

-

Nowhere does the Bible say God committed genocide, if you could even call it genocide since a creator has the right to give and take life, only humans are capable of genocide.

Genocide is "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group". Now whether or not you want to justify God's action is one thing, but the fact of the matter is that the Bible says that God deliberately killed all the people on the planet except for Noah and his family...and that my friend is called GENOCIDE.
-

God does not recognise ethnicity, race. religion, or nations. not genocide.

[Butterfly]

There is something completely, absolutely, horribly wrong with this statement. In fact to be honest, it's not only, not right, it's not even wrong, it's retarded.

This idea is retarded because it takes no measure on the intellectual level to ascertain whether the majority is correct or not. Just because you legalize something, does not make it anymore moral than you wearing red tights and a cape and believing yourself to be superman.

I am by no means defending what BryanH said, but it makes just as much sence as saying that something is moral because the Bible says it is. The Bible says God committed genocide, so genocide must be moral.

-

Nowhere does the Bible say God committed genocide, if you could even call it genocide since a creator has the right to give and take life, only humans are capable of genocide.

Genocide is "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group". Now whether or not you want to justify God's action is one thing, but the fact of the matter is that the Bible says that God deliberately killed all the people on the planet except for Noah and his family...and that my friend is called GENOCIDE.
-

God does not recognise ethnicity, race. religion, or nations. not genocide.

I repeat: it says "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or part, of a national group". The whole human race was a national group.
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[Butterfly]

The Bible says God committed genocide, so genocide must be moral.

Butterfly, on your take on this, did God himself came down and started killing people?

Yes, the Bible says that God caused it to rain for forty days and nights, which flooded the earth, consequently killing all its inhabitants except Noah and his family. The Bible says this was a deliberate action on God's part because of the wickedness of man.
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[Spock]

You can't solve this problem with word games.

How is it a word game, God by his very nature is incapable of such a thing, it's like saying God is not all powerful because he can't make a square circle, all it is is an absurdity.

Dan

Your assertion that God is incapable of commanding genocide is absurd. Genocide is defined as "The deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular ethnic group or nation." But I understand your point. You are saying that it is "justifiable genocide" and you will assert that the Canaanites were so bad they deserved it. That's fine, you can believe whatever you need to justify your belief in the Bible. But that doesn't help me one bit. I was a fundamentalist Christian for 15 years, and things like the genocide, contradictions, errors, and irrationality of Yahweh finally convinced me I was wrong. I think it would help if you understood where I am coming from. Here is how I described myself in my old FAQ:

Are you a Christian? Protestant? Catholic?
Praise God, I am a man saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesian 2:8). I am a non-denominational blood-bought Bible-believing Trinitarian Christian. I believe that the true “faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3) is well stated in the early creeds of the church that Christ founded.

Likewise, here is my testimony about the purpose of my website on the old homepage:

To this end I labour, to glorify the Triune God; to glorify the Father Almighty, Creator of all, to glorify His Son Jesus Christ my Saviour and Hope, and to glorify the Giver of all divine gifts, my Comforter, Guide, Teacher and Friend, God the Holy Spirit. To You be the glory, thrice holy blessed God of Eternity! To You be the glory, now and forevermore. Amen. Amen. Amen.

And here are the thanks I gave to Christ on my old About page:

I remain eternally grateful to my Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe, for shedding His Light upon me and guiding my path – usually without my knowledge – and giving me both the burning desire and the ability to proclaim the neverending wonders of His Holy Word. Oh! The wonders of His Grace! Had He left me to myself, doubtless I’d be dead or wandering aimless and lost through this dark world. Thank you, my Lord!

So, that’s where I was at for most of the last couple decades. How then is it possible that I now reject the faith I once believed with such passion? What changed? The answer is really pretty simple. I was “blinded” by the light I saw in the Bible. Anyone who has entered in to the Bible with believing eyes knows how it can capture the soul. It feels alive. It touches chords that resonate down into the deepest parts of ourselves. It seems to be filled with light everywhere you look: the Gospel message shines with its numinous symbolic elements like the Alpha Omega, the Cross, the Dove, the Death and Resurrection of Christ, and on and on it goes. Who wouldn’t want to believe such a story? Indeed, the believer wonders how anyone could resist such an amazing Gospel message. And beyond all that, I had the overwhelming witness of the Bible Wheel which seemed to confirm everything about the Bible as the very Word of God. All these things blinded me to the “dark side” of the Bible. I simply “overlooked” all the problematic passages, errors, contradictions, and moral abominations that didn’t fit with the amazingly glorious, and blinding, vision of the Bible as “God’s Word.”

So here are three of the primary issues that conspired to finally convince me that the traditional Christian faith is not true:

1) The Doctrine of Hell
I cannot conceive of a good God who would design an eternal evil in which souls suffer eternal conscious torment. This is a central doctrine accepted by the vast majority of Christians. It always bothered me throughout my time as a Christian, but I put it on the “back burner” and didn’t think about it much.

2) The Bible contains many errors, contradictions, logical absurdities, and moral abominations attributed to God.
This point covers a very large class of problems. Many recent threads on my forum deal with them. The most significant to me are the moral abominations attributed to God, such as his command to kill all the men, women, and children of people in Canaan, or the slaughter of all the Midianites except 32,000 virgins that were then distributed to the soldiers (Numbers 31).

3) God does not, as a general rule, answer prayers.
This fact seems incontrovertible and it directly contradicts the central promises of the Bible. It was the “final straw” for me. It has nothing to with any personal prayers that were not answered. The problem is that the promises in the Bible simply are not true.

There were many other issues, such as the general corruption of institutional Christianity (as witnessed by the ongoing cover-up of Ergun Caner’s decade of lies) and the general gullibility and anti-intellectualism of Christians (as witnessed by Harold Camping predicting the end of the world on May 21, 2011 and being given $81,000,000 by his brain-dead followers even after his previous failed date), but this is a pretty good overview. I would be delighted to discuss these points in detail with anyone interested.

I hope that helps you understand the issues I am dealing with.

[Spock]

God does not recognise ethnicity, race. religion, or nations. not genocide.

Have you never read a word of the Bible? God commanded the genocidal destruction of seven NATIONS ....

Deuteronomy 7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; 2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:

[neo-x]

Butterfly » Thu Oct 18, 2012 12:09 pm

neo-x wrote:
The Bible says God committed genocide, so genocide must be moral.


Butterfly, on your take on this, did God himself came down and started killing people?


Yes, the Bible says that God caused it to rain for forty days and nights, which flooded the earth, consequently killing all its inhabitants except Noah and his family. The Bible says this was a deliberate action on God's part because of the wickedness of man.

Not sure, how that makes God perform in action, just that he MADE IT HAPPEN. My point was there is no reason to say God did it like a human would do. You have to see the difference because it is there. Though by this point I am not justifying anything but clearing that your use of terminology is a bit off. If you have to be precise you should say, God ordered it or made it happen, not that he came down like a man and opened the earth and brought out water himself. Because that is not what the text says, do not read into the text what is not there. In the case of Noah God ordered the water to flood, God did not choke anyone with his hands. See the problem is not killing or genocide here but the philosophical problems this hold, how can a timeless being enter time and still be timeless and a lot of tangents that shoot off in all directions.

Now, how about answering the rest of my post?

[Spock]

I have already stated many times that philosophy is way over my head, I neither care nor want to understand it as I see it as a complete waste of energy.

I will appeal to authority as yes I DO NOT UNDERSTAND OF CARE ABOUT PHILOSOPHY, so I would like to see someone actually call him out on it in a public arena before I make a judgement call on his arguments and until such time I will call bull

Now THAT'S a keeper! Thanks! It explains everything.

[Danieltwotwenty]

I have already stated many times that philosophy is way over my head, I neither care nor want to understand it as I see it as a complete waste of energy.

I will appeal to authority as yes I DO NOT UNDERSTAND OF CARE ABOUT PHILOSOPHY, so I would like to see someone actually call him out on it in a public arena before I make a judgement call on his arguments and until such time I will call bull

Now THAT'S a keeper! Thanks! It explains everything.

Keep it, distribute it,read it every night before bed, any money made from the use of this can be donated to compassion international.

[Danieltwotwenty]

God does not recognise ethnicity, race. religion, or nations. not genocide.

Have you never read a word of the Bible? God commanded the genocidal destruction of seven NATIONS ....

Deuteronomy 7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; 2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:

So I don't see your point, God does not recognise nationality hence it is not genocide. God ordered the destruction of some humans who were depraved individuals with no chance of redemption, which the Israelites recognised as certain nationalities.

[Danieltwotwenty]

I repeat: it says "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or part, of a national group". The whole human race was a national group.
-

Since when is Earth recognised as a national group, did we just join the galactic federation.....

Again God doesn't recognise a man made nation, we are eternal souls that belong to him. I still can't see how God can be accused of Genocide, the Israelites maybe but not God, as per definition God does not bow down to man made constructs. Well at least not the God that I know from my readings of the Bible.

[BryanH]

]That doesn't logically follow. Sorry. If OM exist, then it exist outside of man. It's like saying, if math interprets objective reality then students will not need instructors.

You avoided my challenge. You compare math and morality. Math is abstract. Prove that OM is abstract as well.

Completely arbitrary. What is correct one day maybe incorrect the next.

Of course. If people are retarded that can happen. But people are intelligent beings. And some things were correct years, tens of years, thousands of years ago. Now they are not.

At one time the majority of people viewed it as acceptable. So, the question is this. Were abolitionists CORRECT to oppose slavery?

Moral values change over time. History has proven that time and time again. Your point?
The people who wanted to end slavery fought for their goal and managed to enforce that rule on society. Did they make the correct choice? I don't know, but a majority decided to do that. It's like the 1848 revolution from France when democracy was the regime that replaced the old regime. Is democracy correct? Not by far... But you have to understand that each choice made (EACH CHANGE) has advantages and disadvantages.

Since it is so, would you say it is morally equal to fall in line with society versus seeking abolition and that one position has no more moral truth than the other?

Moral values CHANGE when a MINORITY group can convince or FIGHT the majority to change a RULE. If morality is subjective then it can be changed. You simply ignore the possibility of change. Why is that? Is the world black and white for you?

However when we say WRONG, what does that word mean? What does it refer to? If there is no OM, then it is simply a synonym for "not preferred."

I already answered this question, but I will do it again so it's pretty clear:

There are explicit and implicit moral rules.

The one with vanilla and chocolate is an implicit one in your case for which you don't get punished by society if broken.

But if tomorrow there would be a new LAW that says eating chocolate/vanilla is forbidden or else you got to jail, well, then you would have to obey it unless of course you want jail time.

Of course the word "prefer" is present in a subjective morality case, but don't create a confusion and mix "prefer" with "enforced". Those are 2 different issues.

Which of course is contradictory and self-defeating. If there is no objective truth, moral or otherwise, then all opinions are subjective and no basis outside of individual preference.

I am not saying that there is no objective truth. All I am saying that morality is not objective. And to be more exact moral values are not shaped according to individual preference, but by COLLECTIVE individual preference.

That is why your example with torturing children is pointless. You don't have a majority to support you, but you could try to convince a few people of that. Let's see how it works.

You can keep saying people and society do things subjectively. I agree. But, that is not where the core of the issue is addressed. It's meaningless to the discussion, because we both agree.

As I said before and I am going to repeat it. You can't prove that morality exists outside our existence like other examples you offered as physics and maths.
Morality outside our existence is basically POINTLESS because as some of you on this forum said, we(human beings) are the only creation of God (in terms of intelligence). There aren't any aliens out there.

Can you explain me what is the point of OM if we didn't exist? Now really, tell me. I want to hear that.

denial of accountability toward God is what people and Like BryanH and Spock want and desire above all things as they think this is the greatest moral good there is. So much so that they desire push this and force this view upon all humankind at all cost. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Let's say I agree with you, ok? Don't get me wrong. I like your statement. It is very interesting.

But, and this is a big but, I have one question for you: What happens if you leave accountability in the hands of God only? Imagine that and let's see how objective are your fellow human beings.

Try imagining a world without police, courts of law and other enforcing agencies... Want to try that for a few days? Go to a jail and ask them to let you sleep for a week at the maximum security area. And then you can tell the people there that their moral actions are accountable directly to God.

B.W. that's one of the things that bothers me most (not to be interpreted that you directly bother me): you are speaking out of books, but fail to see the reality the surrounds you.

@Byblos, Neo-x

Of course I am consistent with my own opinion, but both of you seem to have not read my posts as you should have.

***A In normal social conditions every person will be closer and 'more' objective to moral values.
***B In special extreme conditions, you will notice that the survival instinct takes over and people can do pretty immoral things just to survive.

War is not considered to be part of normal social conditions. What happened to the jews was indeed very unfortunate, but it wasn't a decision of the majority. You might want to read a few books on history and analyze how that happened.

So I don't see your point, God does not recognise nationality hence it is not genocide. God ordered the destruction of some humans who were depraved individuals with no chance of redemption, which the Israelites recognised as certain nationalities.

Bye bye free choice...

Again God doesn't recognise a man made nations, we are eternal souls that belong to him.

God doesn't recognize man made nations, but he has a personal attachment to the JEWS which are called the CHOSEN PEOPLE. Ok...