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Do you believe that good and evil exist?
The answer to this question separates Judeo-Christian values from secular values.
Let me offer the clearest possible example: murder.
Is murder wrong? Is it evil? Nearly everyone would answer yes. But now I’ll pose a much
harder question: How do you know?
..snip....
Because murder hurts people.
Starting with the murdered one. The ripple effect extends from there.
Do you believe that good and evil exist?
The answer to this question separates Judeo-Christian values from secular values.
Your Judeo-Christian values are secular (the father of secularism was a Christian), Christianity is a syncretic religion based on Judaism and Hellenism.
Your Christian values existed before Christianity, and were applied to everyone. Christians applied them
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
Let me offer the clearest possible example: murder.
Is murder wrong? Is it evil? Nearly everyone would answer yes. But now I’ll pose a much
harder question: How do you know?
I am sure that you think that murder is wrong. But how do you know?
If I asked you how you know that that the earth is round, you would show me photographs
from outer space, or offer me measurable data. But what photographs could you show, what
measurements could you provide, that prove that murder or rape or theft is wrong?
The fact is...you can’t. There are scientific facts, but without God there are no moral facts.
In a secular world, there can only be opinions about morality. They may be personal opinions
or society’s opinion. But only opinions. Every atheist philosopher I have read or debated on
this subject has acknowledged that if there is no God, there is no objective morality.
Objective morality is irrelevant to the existence of God, as they would exist regardless of whether a god existed or not, being objective. It is not possible for a god to crate objective morality, as any morality created by a god would be subjective.
Well done, you have just argued your god can not exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
Judeo-Christian values are predicated on the existence of a God of morality. In other words,
only if there is a God who says murder is wrong, is murder wrong. Otherwise, all morality is
opinion.
False dichotomy, there are other options.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
The entire Western world – what we call Western Civilization – is based on this understanding.
No, the philosophy of morality (which existed before Christianity) is free of theology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
Now, let me make two things clear.
First, this doesn’t mean that if you don’t believe in God, you can’t be a good person. There are
plenty of kind and moral individuals who don’t believe in God and Judeo-Christian values. But
the existence of these good people has nothing – nothing – to do with the question of whether
good and evil really exist if there is no God.
Second, there have been plenty of people who believed in God who were not good people;
indeed, more than a few have been evil – and have even committed evil in God’s name. The
existence of God doesn’t ensure people will do good. I wish it did. The existence of God only
ensures that good and evil objectively exist and are not merely opinions.
See above false dichotomy and admitting your god can not exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
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Spam?
Repeated bad argument snipped.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
It is not a coincidence that the rejection of Judeo-Christian values in the Western world – by
Nazism and Communism – led to the murder of all these innocent people.
Nazis attacked the Jews based on Martin Luther's religious beliefs that they killed Jesus. Part of the Nazi ideology was religion.
And communism did not lead to murder, power mad dictators did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
It is also not a coincidence that the first societies in the world to abolish slavery – an institution
that existed in every known society in human history – were Western societies rooted in
Judeo-Christian values. And so were the first societies to affirm universal human rights; to
emancipate women; and to proclaim the value of liberty.
They also did NOT fight against slavery (which is supported in both the New and Old Testaments) and female emancipation for almost 2000 years. The fight against slavery and emancipation was rational and secular, the religion of the people making the arguments is irrelevant as their hair color or what pants they wore on Tuesdays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
Today, the rejection of Judeo-Christian values and moral absolutes has led to a world of moral
confusion.
In the New York Times, in March 2015, a professor of philosophy confirmed this.
He wrote: “What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children
that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun? Would you be surprised? I was.”
The professor then added: “The overwhelming majority of college freshmen view moral claims
as mere opinions.”
A problem with bad education, not secularism.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
So, then, whatever you believe about God or religion, here is a fact:
Without a God who is the source of morality, morality is just a matter of opinion. So, if you
want a good world, the death of Judeo-Christian values should frighten you.
There is a reason the US law system is NOT based on the Bible, that is because much of the 'morality' in the Bible is something to be afraid of. Paine and Adams based their work on Greek philosophy and secular philosophers, including atheists.
Morals, including a prohibition against killing each other, as well as stealing from each other, are societal values that have existed among humans since long before the first religions developed. These values help insure the growth of societies. They aren't going anywhere.
Arrive on somewhere like North Sentinel Island, where you are almost guaranteed of being murdered, like that Christian missionary was a couple of years ago.
Murder is used to protect this very small, and insulated society.
The Indian government won't charge anyone with murder from this island.
And neither should God.
None of us can impose our moral, ethical or religious values on such people.
Murder in general is counterproductive, but in some instances it has to be looked at in perspective .
Do you believe that good and evil exist?
The answer to this question separates Judeo-Christian values from secular values.
Let me offer the clearest possible example: murder.
Is murder wrong? Is it evil? Nearly everyone would answer yes. But now I’ll pose a much
harder question: How do you know?
I am sure that you think that murder is wrong. But how do you know?
Concepts of good and evil are human inventions. They do not exist independently of humans (to the best of our knowledge - there is of course a lot we still don't understand about non-human animals).
Every human society has developed codes of ethics and morals, although not every individual in those societies adheres to the cultural norms of the given society. Different societies emphasize different things in their codes of ethics, but there is tremendous overlap between the moral values in different societies. One area of overlap shared among almost all societies is the idea that doing deliberate harm to someone who has not wronged you is morally wrong (at least harming someone within your societies in-group - not all societies through history have cared so much about harming people in the out-group).
Just because someone doesn't believe there is an outside agent (such as a God) who is the arbiter of good and evil, that does not mean they don't believe that some things are right and some things are wrong. In fact, even if there was an omniscient god, people would still have their own moral intuitions regardless. I would find many of the things that the God of the Bible commands morally repugnant even if I believed he was real - and indeed, it is the difficulty reconciling their own moral intuitions with the dual Biblical teachings that God is both all-good and has committed and commanded to commit massacres that has turned many modern people away from religion.
Your question is not exactly the same, but it is a bit like asking the following:
Do you believe that some foods are delicious and others aren't?
Is ice-cream delicious? Nearly everyone would answer yes. But now I’ll pose a much
harder question: How do you know?
I am sure that you think that ice cream is delicious. But how do you know?
In the same way that I would know that I find ice cream delicious because my taste buds tell me so, I find something morally wrong because my moral intuitions tell me so. Now, of course behaviours that we find morally right or wrong are far more consequential that whether something tastes good or bad. Therefore questioning your moral intuitions and coming to a societal consensus around what is right and what is wrong is far more important that considering what is 'good' and 'bad' in other realms.
Sure murder is selfish in nature, where many are killed and not killed for food ........ There are a very large portion of societies which prefer to get away from murder unless it is them that is to be killed. Which is basically selfish
I would just like to clarify that the original post is not my words, nor do I even agree with the message it sends. That was a transcript copied from a video made by the right-wing propaganda organization called PragerU, titled "If God Isn't Real, Murder Isn't Wrong", and narrated by the founder of PragerU, Dennis Prager. Personally, I think that was one of the dumbest things I've read in my life, and it seems many others agree, since it has one of the highest dislike ratios out of any videos published by the propaganda organization. I posted it here because I wanted to know what people thought of it without realizing it came from PragerU. Thanks.
Moderator's edit: Original post deleted and replaced with link:
Please do not post entire articles like this again, regardless of what your intention may be. Instead post links (even if that defeats your purpose of wanting "to know what people thought of it without realizing it came from PragerU"). Violation of copyright law is against City-Data's terms of service.
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 01-21-2021 at 10:37 AM..
That's fair comment. I was of course referring to what was written in the OT or should I say, the way it was written?
As I was writing I was thinking about tribal societies. Having come from Rural Africa I have a fair idea of tribal culture (but by no means definitive) and killing someone was somewhat par for the course. Life was cheap!
Anyway, what you wrote makes sense.
Oh yes, the blood on the sheets proof of a young brides virginity - many women do not bleed. That could be a problem but of course the bowl of sheep or chicken blood handily kept for the occasion would come in useful.
Yes. Ralph Kirk's ...sorry, I mean Kieran Keating's...argument at least shows the mores of a society that was pretty standard for the time. Which is what it was, but what it is not is the word of a loving and wise god that is aware of what ethics would be today, much less what they are going to be in the future when we will probably be regarded as incredibly primitive and with little understanding of ourselves and our animal instincts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes
Your Judeo-Christian values are secular (the father of secularism was a Christian), Christianity is a syncretic religion based on Judaism and Hellenism.
Your Christian values existed before Christianity, and were applied to everyone. Christians applied them
Objective morality is irrelevant to the existence of God, as they would exist regardless of whether a god existed or not, being objective. It is not possible for a god to crate objective morality, as any morality created by a god would be subjective.
Well done, you have just argued your god can not exist.
False dichotomy, there are other options.
No, the philosophy of morality (which existed before Christianity) is free of theology.
See above false dichotomy and admitting your god can not exist.
Spam?
Repeated bad argument snipped.
Nazis attacked the Jews based on Martin Luther's religious beliefs that they killed Jesus. Part of the Nazi ideology was religion.
And communism did not lead to murder, power mad dictators did.
They also did NOT fight against slavery (which is supported in both the New and Old Testaments) and female emancipation for almost 2000 years. The fight against slavery and emancipation was rational and secular, the religion of the people making the arguments is irrelevant as their hair color or what pants they wore on Tuesdays.
A problem with bad education, not secularism.
There is a reason the US law system is NOT based on the Bible, that is because much of the 'morality' in the Bible is something to be afraid of. Paine and Adams based their work on Greek philosophy and secular philosophers, including atheists.
Can't Rep you yet, but by nongod, I luv it here.
The argument from morality collapsed long ago. As was known long before I first posted here, of morals are valid in themselves, God is not needed. If morals are what god says, they are not ethics but diktat. The argument that god's diktat is good because god's nature of Good fails because of the dreadful things the Bible says he did.
What is the difference between killing and murder? God approves (if not orders) one but not the other. That isn't Morality.
The only valid absolute of morality is human well being. First family, then tribe, then nation and now all people, no matter what or whom. Even though it's an ideal rather than a holistic morality. Humanism or secular morality has pushed ahead with this, and the religions have had to play catch - up, where not battling against it. The only case theism has against it is wishing Stalin and Pol Pot on us as poster -boys for atheist evil.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-21-2021 at 07:36 AM..
Arrive on somewhere like North Sentinel Island, where you are almost guaranteed of being murdered, like that Christian missionary was a couple of years ago.
Murder is used to protect this very small, and insulated society.
The Indian government won't charge anyone with murder from this island.
And neither should God.
None of us can impose our moral, ethical or religious values on such people.
Murder in general is counterproductive, but in some instances it has to be looked at in perspective .
From what I read it was a visit by British explorers in the good old days when everyone in the UK was a believer. They took a number of them away as slaves. Even after then, there were some amicable encounters, but it seems that the visitors brought disease with them and the Islanders were smart enough to connect the visit with the plague. The Indian government made the best choice by decreeing insulation and anyone disregarding Human Law and preferring 'God's law' (i.e whatever pops into his head to do) may buck secular authority, but Darwin will get'em in the end .
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kieran Keating
I would just like to clarify that the original post is not my words, nor do I even agree with the message it sends. That was a transcript copied from a video made by the right-wing propaganda organization called PragerU, titled "If God Isn't Real, Murder Isn't Wrong", and narrated by the founder of PragerU, Dennis Prager. Personally, I think that was one of the dumbest things I've read in my life, and it seems many others agree, since it has one of the highest dislike ratios out of any videos published by the propaganda organization. I posted it here because I wanted to know what people thought of it without realizing it came from PragerU. Thanks.
Ok. Clarification noted. And thanks. It seems that the debunk of the 'no morality without a god -morality' has got Out There. Which wasn't the case when I arrived here near 20 years ago bloody hell Argument from Absolute morality was considered an atheism -stumper back then.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-21-2021 at 07:36 AM..
Human ethics are conventions that have been collectively determined to balance individual and collective needs. The term murder refers to an unwarranted intentional killing of another human. As always, there is some disagreement. Some of the more fertile grounds for this disagreement comes in the subjects of abortion, capital punishment, self-defense (particularly as practiced by law enforcement, who are given more latitude than civilians) and military action. But we almost universally agree that you can't just walk up to someone and shoot them dead, kill to satisfy a grievance, or take lives for sport.
Why? It's quite simple. We value our lives, we value the lives of those we love, and we value social stability. That may sound rather transactional, but our ethics and the empathy that tends to underlie them is so rooted.
Now, seeing as there are ancient religious books that state some variation of DON'T KILL PEOPLE* we are presented with a chicken-and-egg question, at least so far as it applies to killing (or stealing, or lying, or other similar common transgressions). Some might argue that but for the Ten Commandments, there would be no way to perceive the wrongness of killing/murdering. How can we be sure that we can develop ethics absent such a guide?
[*These books often exempt their own central figure from this prohibition, even listing myriad examples where said figure kills great numbers of people for no justifiable reason.]
The answer is quite easy. And two-fold.
First, the Bible and similar religious texts are extremely outdated. Society has developed considerably in the millenia since it was created, and embraces a great many concepts not addressed by the Bible because its writers could not imagine such concepts ever even being considered. Freedom of conscience and the freedom to express that conscience through speech, the right to due process, basic virtues of democratic governance and equality regardless of gender or race, the right to be secure in one's person and effects with a compelling state interest to violate that security. Where are those ethics in the Bible? They are not to be found. Yet they exist, and are widely embraced. From where to they come? From centuries of sharing ideas and of debate and of social experimentation. But not from any deity. Oh, I'm sure one can point to vague Biblical platitudes that can be shoehorned into fitting those ideas, just as someone opposed to them could surely assemble a variety of general opposition from your favorite holy text that stand against them. Such is the nature of vagueness; it can be used to support almost anything, even diametrically opposed ideologies. But you'll find no clear biblical commands for basic civil liberties.
Second, the Bible is quite full of prescriptions that are now widely understood to be abhorrent. Slavery, both commanded and tacitly condoned. The subjugation of woman and non-believers. Genocide. Horrific sexual mores. These are variously ignored, creatively 'retranslated', and even upheld now and then by certain individuals who are now quite out of the social mainstream.
A specific look at the Ten Commandments reveals some interesting considerations:
*'Thou shalt have no other gods before me' - Do you think religious freedom is wrong? Do you think believing in Zeus is on par with murder? They both appear on the special DON'T DO THIS! list.
*'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain' - So saying "God damn it!" is also a transgression worthy of being listed alongside murder? Really?
*'Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy' - Again, one who works on Sunday might as well be a murderer, because working on Sunday is enumerated as a taboo with murder?
*Then there are all the 'Don't covet this or that' commandments - Most of the world's economy is built around coveting. Most of us live in dwellings we do not need but simply want, and we came to want then because we experienced those like them, of friends and family or simply which we saw while going about our lives. Most of our clothes, any jewelry that we might wear, nice dinners we have, collectibles, recreational vehicles - borne of coveting. And it's as wrong to want a motorcycle like Bob's as it is to stab Bob in the heart?
Thus, we see that not only have we developed more than a few ethics that God, through the Bible, does not advocate, we have determined that more than a few things that God, through the Bible, does advocate, to be unethical and are not only ignored but are made unlawful.
As an aside, it should also be noted that there is no general positive correlation between belief and ethical behavior, as would be expected were God the only source of ethics.
Arrive on somewhere like North Sentinel Island, where you are almost guaranteed of being murdered, like that Christian missionary was a couple of years ago.
Murder is used to protect this very small, and insulated society.
The Indian government won't charge anyone with murder from this island.
And neither should God.
None of us can impose our moral, ethical or religious values on such people.
Murder in general is counterproductive, but in some instances it has to be looked at in perspective .
Any and all "killing" isn't considered "murder".
The (broad) definition of murder is the "unlawful killing of another human being". The key word is "unlawful".
In other words, there are lawful reasons to kill. For instance, killing someone in self-defense is not "murder". A soldier killing another soldier during wartime is not "murder". The killing of someone accidentally is not "murder".
The Indian government won't charge the locals of North Sentinel Island with "murder". If anything, they'll probably see the people's act of killing (an outsider) as one of self-defense.
We can't look at any and every act of killing as "unlawful" nor as "murder".
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
<snipped>
What is the difference between killing and murder? God approves (if not orders) one but not the other. That isn't Morality.
Actually, it is morality, and I've just explained the difference in part, above.
All laws are not cut-and-dry. All acts of killing are not cut-and-dry.
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Argument from Absolute morality was considered an atheism -stumper back then.