Atheist Discussion Topic: How did you determine your deity is the moral one instead of the devil?

[Russell_SA]

Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist, who reads a huge compilation of ancient literature with several different genres as though CNN was reporting it live in 2017. What you do is textbook fundamentalism and straw man.

Show us the triumph of reason please. Make some reasoned replies to actual belief.

We are applying the same moral culpability to your deity as anyone else that comes into our lives and wants a relationship with us. Don’t tell us that the moral evils documented in your texts about your deity are some form of metaphors and we are all too ignorant to understand how you are able to square that circle for yourselves. That will never fly with us. No it means what it says. This is really starting to reek of the idea that all the good of the deity is clear and easily spelled out while all the evils are misinterpretations, poetic license, abstract understandings that only people who have studied the language and culture can understand. Nope, not good enough. Stockhoms syndrome

 

[Russell_SA]

You’re thinking in human bound terms because you are 1) human and 2) as an atheist you have a certain philosophical starting point that limits possibilities (and please don’t misunderstand me, those limits are understandable, I’m not trying to bash your perspective, it just may be why is feels so foreign). The reason I say this is that the words and phrases you are using show a certain bias in perspective. For example, the phrase, “those qualities are applied” still shows you are thinking of these things, such as “love” as a qualities, a reactive quality. What I, and I believe others, have presented is that God, as God, as I AM, as self-existent, doesn’t require application of said qualities, He “just” is. Those words that we use, such as lovely or loving, reflect such things as a measuring stick by which we humans compare things. So, the phrase, “is God more or less loving than Paul” has no actual application as God is Love, something we could (and would) never say about Paul.

I understand what you are trying to communicate but it still doesn’t come across as any different than an assertion. It’s like pointing at an immoral person on trial and the defense is keeps stating that, no she’s the embodiment of Love. It’s her nature to be the identity of Love. The defense can keep claiming that all they want about their defendant, but as a jury member, I still have to conclude otherwise based on the documented evidence about that person’s character. Those identities will always be viewed as descriptive conclusions about someone’s documented actions. Those descriptors don’t make any sense to us because that is how we use those words. If you want to try this again, you’ll have to use a language we would understand. We don’t use that vocabulary in the way you are.

 

[Peter_J]

I understand what you are trying to communicate but it still doesn’t come across as any different than an assertion.

Little confused here … why shouldn’t Kliska make an assertion?

 

[Kliska]

It’s like pointing at an immoral person on trial and the defense is keeps stating that, no she’s the embodiment of Love.

Ah, I didn’t realize we weren’t actually having the conversation you claimed we were. I have no interest in engaging with you in putting God on trial *the way you are here.
*
Prayers,
K

 

[Kliska]

Little confused here … why shouldn’t Kliska make an assertion?

Wow, that list would be really long.

 

[Contarini]

We are applying the same moral culpability to your deity as anyone else that comes into our lives and wants a relationship with us. Don’t tell us that the moral evils documented in your texts about your deity are some form of metaphors and we are all too ignorant to understand how you are able to square that circle for yourselves. That will never fly with us.

Then why bother talking to Christians at all?

If you are determined simply to ignore how we actually interpret our sacred texts and tell us how we are supposed to interpret them, then you aren’t talking to us, just at us, and you would do better to go practice your golf swing or whatever other activity you might enjoy.

No it means what it says.

Oh don’t give me that silly cliche. The phrase means nothing. It implies that you already know what the text “says.”

I get that you don’t buy the whole “sacred book” business in the first place. Fine. So for you, the Bible is just a bunch of ancient texts about what people believed about their “deity.” What we believe today, as orthodox Christians, has very little to do with what you mean by “what the Bible says.” It has everything to do with what we think the Bible says, but since you dismiss our hermeneutics there’s no point talking about the Bible, is there? Why not just leave the Bible alone and take seriously what we believe, even if you think it isn’t “supported by the Bible.” We really don’t care about whether you or any other atheist thinks our beliefs are “Biblical.”

This is really starting to reek of the idea that all the good of the deity is clear and easily spelled out while all the evils are misinterpretations, poetic license, abstract understandings that only people who have studied the language and culture can understand. Nope, not good enough. Stockhoms syndrome

In other words, you’re not interested in rational analysis of either ancient texts or Christian belief. You want to use your own poorly informed reading of the ancient texts in order to bludgeon believers.

Again, why not go do something that might actually amuse and profit somebody instead of wasting everyone’s time, if you’re really determined not to have a serious conversation?

Edwin

 

[Stephen168]

How do catholics square the circle of moral practices their deity calls for while they believe those practices to still be immoral.

As I said before, there is no need for a Catholic to “square the circle” because the circle is a figment of your imagination. Christians do not believe God requires us or as you say “calls for” us to engage in immoral practices.

Slavery in the bible.

Christians have never been required to own slaves. Therefore, it is not what God “calls for” but what YOU believe God “calls for.”

Sorry but don’t tell me that there’s some special hidden meaning about how the deity specifically describes how slavery should be practiced that everyone reading these passages are just too ignorant to understand.

Christian belief does not come wholly from the bible and is not wholly divine command theory. Yes, I am telling you that Christians decide what is Christian morality, not you. And we have never been required to own slaves.

Granting a pass to deities for any action they direct without moral judgment is to make yourself morally bankrupt and allows for any action in the name of this deity to be justified because all they ever claim is that their deity told them to do this.

Atheist do not have a monopoly on reason, any more than anyone else does. However, if you subscribe to the moral system of “just following orders”, then that is a non-sequitur for us.

Divine command theory is the straw man used by the “skeptic/secular humanist/anti-Christian crowd to show how irrational Christians are. Then claiming, they are the ones with science and reason, while Christians are anti-science and have “no reason” for their moral beliefs. That is the straw man you set up in the OP and the one you continue with. After being made aware it is a strawman (post #7), you didn’t even care to ask for clarification because you seem to prefer schooling to learning.

I would recommend a page from Thomas Aquinas; first try to accurately understand the Catholic, or any opponents, position before you attack it. OR just go work on your golf swing.

 

[meltzerboy]

Well, The sort of divine command theory that your proposing does not fit with Catholicism. So the question of whether or not it is immoral is a non sequitur for Catholicism.

Likewise, this kind of divine command theory does not at all fit for Judaism since the latter consists of continuous interpreting, questioning, and debating of the Law as it applies to modern times, as well as its meaning(s) in ancient times.

 

[Peter_J]

RussellSA, have you read C. S. Lewis, particularly his Space Trilogy?

No I haven’t.

That’s alright actually, the part I have in mind doesn’t require familiarity with the whole …

“Look here,” said Ransom, “one wants to be careful about this sort of thing. There are spirits and spirits, you know.”
“Eh?” said Weston. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean a thing might be a spirit and not good for you.”
“But I thought you agreed that Spirit was the good—the end of the whole process? I thought you religious people were all out for spirituality? What is the point of asceticism—fasts and celibacy and all that? Didn’t we agree that God is a spirit? Don’t you worship Him because He is pure spirit?”
“Good heavens, no! We worship Him because He is wise and good. There’s nothing specially fine about simply being a spirit. The Devil is a spirit.”

…

“Guidance. Guidance,” he went on. “Things coming into my head. I’m being prepared all the time. Being made a fit receptacle for it.”
“That ought to be fairly easy,” said Ransom impatiently. “If this Life-Force is something so ambiguous that God and the Devil are equally good portraits of it, I suppose any receptacle is equally fit, and anything you can do is equally an expression of it.”
“There’s such a thing as the main current,” said Weston. “It’s a question of surrendering yourself to that—making yourself the conductor of the live, fiery, central purpose—becoming the very finger with which it reaches forward.”
“But I thought that was the Devil aspect of it, a moment ago “
“That is the fundamental paradox. The thing we are reaching forward to is what you would call God. The reaching forward, the dynamism, is what people like you always call the Devil. The people like me, who do the reaching forward, are always martyrs. You revile us, and by us come to your goal.”
“Does that mean in plainer language that the things the Force wants you to do are what ordinary people call diabolical?”
“My dear Ransom, I wish you would not keep relapsing on to the popular level. The two things are only moments in the single, unique reality. The world leaps forward through great men and greatness always transcends mere moralism. When the leap has been made our ‘diabolism’ as you would call it becomes the morality of the next stage; but while we are making it, we are called criminals, heretics, blasphemers …
“How far does it go? Would you still obey the Life-Force if you found it prompting you to murder me?”
“Yes. “
“Or to sell England to the Germans?”
“Yes.”
“Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?”
“Yes.
“God help you!” said Ransom.