I'm talking about the Christian god, by the way. Please keep this discussion civilised and sophisticated, thank you. I'm very curious as to what you all think.
This question doesn't make much sense. What do you mean above humans? You mean better than humans? And are you referring to his laws that we can understand, or assuming we won't understand most of them, or assuming that we are judging god's morals as they pertain to our own rationality? There's a lot of variables that need to be included for this discussion to go somewhere.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
If we're limiting this to the Christian God, the answer would be that his morality is perfect - which humans aren't - but that, presumably, his morals are understandable to humans. At least as they apply to this plane of existence. That's basically what the Bible is.
As psmith said, there's some disambiguation that needs to take place, but that's my answer to what I see as the likeliest interpretation of your question.
No, but I'm not Christian. I was approaching the question hypothetically, as a Christian might answer it.
Just as a Christian might respond to your most recent question by saying that there's context to a lot of Biblical stories that you're leaving out by stating your question in such blunt terms. I personally wouldn't try to run philosophical circles to find an acceptable moral justification for every story in the Bible, but it's certainly possible to do, especially with stories that are more metaphoric than literal (depends on the section of the Bible, and the particular sect doing the interpreting).
You sure make a convincing imitation of a Christian , then.
Christians can make attempts at justifying God's actions but in the process they'll end up looking bad.
I'll ask you to put on your Christian thinking hat again and answer this:
You said that killing children ( it's actually babies ) is not morally perfect, but already stated that god is morally perfect. So thus forth killing babies is morally right. How do Christians justify this?
It's either morally perfect, thus anyone that kills babies is so too.
Everyone justifies actions, you're just excluding the religious.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
There are a couple ways around this that maintain their beliefs. One would be to say that you're creating a false dichotomy. With the prospect of heaven - which the babies undoubtedly enter upon death - we could say that it's no great evil for God to kill them as part of His plan.
Another would be to look into the story itself you're referring to. I'm versed in the Bible, but hardly an expert, so I don't know the exact story you're alluding to here. But it's likely that it's from the Old Testament, given the killing shenanigans. The God of the New Testament isn't quite so volatile, on average. And, depending on the Christian sect, chances are decent that they see this story as metaphoric, not literal. Therefore, the "moral" could be about obedience to God, or faith in His judgement, or any number of things. The justification would be that you're missing the point of the story, and taking it out of context. For example, to many (most?) Christians, Noah's Ark is a story about the dangers of turning from God; not about God killing most of the population of Earth, which they (rightly) understand didn't literally happen.
You could take this one step further and bring in historical setting. God's Word is perfect, but Man's interpretation of that Word isn't. And that includes the scribes of the Bible, whose culture would have accepted a lot more as moral than we might today. So many stories should be viewed through the cultural prism of the time they were written. There's a reason "Biblical Scholar" is a career. This stuff is rarely simple.
I'm an atheist, btw. But I enjoy wearing other hats. I don't think we can truly be secure in our beliefs until we actually understand other opinions. And it also helps when discussing ideas, because if I disagree with another's viewpoint, it won't be for superficial reasons. Too many people believe reasonable things for ridiculous reasons, or dismiss ridiculous ideas for shallow, inadequate reasons.
Take a closer look at your argument. Where discussing if God's moral is above humans. Would it be ethical or morally right to kill children? If I recall they go to Limbo if they die without being baptised. But even if they didn't go to Limbo , they still have to go through pain and suffering in order to die.
In any other scenario, this would be considered torture and murder. On par with the holocaust atrocities.
Regardless, though. Even if they did get a spot on Earth after Armageddon, that would still go against your desired outcome.
If those new born children get a free pass then what of the people that have to struggle and maintain their faith for years. Is it morally right to let them cut in line while the rest wait in line? I don't think that's very moral.
And some Christians believe that god is not Jesus and some do. And some believe that the virgin Mary was god. And some believe that Jesus didn't exist, etc. You get the point?
I'm debating based on what is meant to be literal and what is not. And for the most part what is metaphoric isn't hard to tell apart.
In such a case at best based on implications, you concede that god is not omnipotent because he can't adequately express his message or can't choose a more adequate scribe.
At worse for you concede that god is man made.
But let's take a look at the first part, if the word of god isn't adequately passed on to humans than that either limits God's power or he intentionally makes it hard to understand. In such a case he's ( like said before) not omnipotent or he likes to leave humans suffer.
Which proves that god isn't morally superior now humans.
Your argument lost all credibility towards the end of that paragraph.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
You could make an argument that morals don't need to be about suffering, we live in a society that is sh_t scared of pain. Should we undermine all creation to pain, so pain rules us forever, because we are scared of it?
Human morals don't really sound like all that to be honest.
Morals as WE know it? God is not a very good person. Good people don't manipulate others, kill vast amounts of people, nuke cities with meteorites and kill innocents for merely look back(Lot's wife), and all that jazz. But if I point this out people will say I am bashing religion.
So you see the excuse here is that he's God and thus is on a higher level and can totally have some higher view of morals or what right and wrong is and all that stuff.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
That's not an excuse, that's what the atheists use as justification to denounce god. Saying God isn't a good personal from your perspective has very little meaning.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
It's always a little weird debating with someone that you actually agree with. But I enjoy playing a challenging devil's advocate (or God's advocate, in this case).
Nor do I. I don't necessarily have a concrete answer to this; I think you make a valid point. Limbo is a bit of a murky territory, though, literally and figuratively. I can assure you that you could talk to a LOT of priests from various sects and they'd tell you that the babies were heaven-bound. They'd also likely disagree that there's anything wrong with "cutting the line." They'd probably frame tests of faith and having to maintain that faith for years as a great privilege, not a burden or unfair treatment.
See, this is kind of the point though, isn't it? Those who believe the entire Bible is literal have deeper issues with their critical thinking. For the rest, it's easy to pass off atrocity as either metaphoric, or part of the Old Testament that was overwritten by Jesus's teachings.
A decent point, and I'd agree. Were I a deity and I was in charge of damning souls for eternity, I'd be sure to be a bit more clear.
But the response is that for morality to mean anything for humans, we have to be given some element of choice. If belief in God required no faith, it would strip that belief of its power.
...
The point isn't which of our arguments are right/wrong. The point is, hopefully you can see how slippery these debates become, and how hard it is to pin down hypocrisy when such an ingrained system of justification exists not just on an individual level but an institutional one as well. Usually I prefer to come at religious worldviews from a bit more empirical angle. Trying to argue the Bible's veracity and morality becomes incredibly murky in a hurry.
One of my personal heroes, Penn Jillette, is fond of saying that the quickest way to leave Christianity and/or become an atheist is to really sit down and read the Bible. Iirc, he claims he reads it once a year. It's an amusing line, one which I'm in general agreement with, so I do think you have something with your line of thinking. It's just hard to convince Christians of that.
You know thinking about it I agree with you on this. My perspective does have very little meaning. So lets say I can't judge God, I say that is fair. So we can't say he is good or bad. So I guess all I can do is list his "accomplishments" from the bible.
The list would include murder on a scale higher then any human being has ever wrought.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Funny enough yeah I love Penn too. Penn and Tell Bullsh*t was an awesome show. I had a similar experience as him in terms of how you turn someone into an atheist. I didn't specifically choose to sit down and read the bible though, it was forced upon me due to being forced to go to Catholic School as a kid and in high school. We had the religion class with the bible readings and you'd be assigned a certain passage and then you'd have to read it out loud and in class and discuss, etc, etc. Every year it would be different parts of the bible.
Then you have the stations of the cross thing we'd do in church where they'd put up the big images and force the kids to go around to each one, etc. Every 2 years the school had a "Passion Play" which was basically just what it sounds like, a play about Jesus and him being crucified and all that. To which again...we were not given a choice and were forced to do this.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Last edited by Surtur on Aug 25th, 2015 at 04:39 PM
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