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tonyrey
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If God doesn’t exist evil doesn’t exist!
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danserr
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Perplexity,
I wanted to send a quick reply before the week gets busy.
I still think you are trying to smuggle in the euthyphro dilemma phrased slightly differently, but let us suppose for the sake of argument that I granted your concerns about “objective” and its definitions. Let us suppose, then that objective means “independent of what persons think or perceive.”
At most, then, it would follow that you have an objection to basing moral duties in God, not moral values. This is because moral values are not based on what God thinks or perceives, but on his nature. God’s nature (as a greatest conceivable being) is the paradigm of moral goodness. Moral duties are identified with his commands.
So at most you could question whether moral duties based in God are subjective, but moral values are not based in what God thinks or perceives, but in his nature.
So it seems you have no reason at least to deny that objective moral values may be based in God.
I wonder, though, about moral duties. It seems that since moral duties are necessary expressions of God’s nature, that with his nature as (maybe) their ultimate grounding, your concern may not even hold for moral duties.
Regardless, it does seem like a properly formulated divine command theory of ethics basing moral values, not in God’s thought or perception, but in his nature answers your objection. Given this, you are without reason to doubt whether objective moral values may be based in God.
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danserr
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I wonder if you might be interested in reading CS Lewis’s Essay, “The Weight of Glory” contained in a book by the same name.
As for marriage and heaven, the reason there is no marriage in heaven is that there is something better, not that heaven is lacking. By way of example, I’ve heard it compared to an child who wants to go on enjoying playing in the mud because he cannot understand what is meant by the offer of a holiday by the sea.
Rather than think your desires "being normal, healed etc) will never be fulfilled, why not simply adopt the one belief system that says they will? Those eastern religions were always regions of pessimism, I don’t see that that is a desirable thing. Why not instead adopt the only religion that tells you that the world is a fallen place, but there is the real hope that it will be put right in the end?
More still, it is the only religion with a God who felt all the anguish that people have suffered. Chesterton remarked something like, “let the atheists themselves choose a God, they will find only one who uttered their feelings of emptiness and isolation.” It is the only religion where God himself, for an instant, seemed to be an atheist, when as Jesus, hung on a cross, he cried, “my God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” A moment when God felt abandoned by God.
We don’t want see see life as a tragedy, neither the Buddist idea that life is all suffering and we need to accept that and that is the end of the story, nor Sartre’s (or Camus’s?) resignation to the “sick nausea of existence” are going to work. We need the world put right, the wrongs and sufferings made right, and because of the crucifixion and Resurrection, we have good reasons for hoping for such an end.
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Flyingg
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Right! Its better to choose as words: pain, suffering, causing harm, because evil does not exist.
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Perplexity
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danserr:
I agree that if "objective means “independent of what persons think or perceive.”, then ‘at most it’d follow that there are no objective moral duties on this form of theism’.
But, my understanding of objective is different. As I’ve defined it in the posts on this thread, it simply means: “independent of persons.” So, it’s precisely because your theism would have moral values and duties rooted in God’s essential character, or thereby entailed, that I’d say they aren’t objective.
I agree that if "objective means “independent of what persons think or perceive.”, then ‘at most it’d follow that there are no objective moral duties on this form of theism’.
But, my understanding of objective is different. As I’ve defined it in the posts on this thread, it simply means: “independent of persons.” So, it’s precisely because your theism would have moral values and duties rooted in God’s essential character, or thereby entailed, that I’d say they aren’t objective.
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Daedelus76
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Mud can be fun, why judge the child’s desires? It’s this authoritarian mindset I don’t approve of. You may find the sea better than mud but that doesn’t mean the sea is absolutely better for everyone. And why is a marriageless paradise where we all worship some Mesopotamian mythological character with burning, stenchy incense a better vision?
But that’s just it… you are saying my desires won’t be fulfilled. I have very specific, concrete desires that can’t be bartered away with something abstract like a beatific vision. You’re just saying my desires are no good and I should accept your desires as my own. No, it doesn’t work that way . Your religious vision is no better than Buddhism’s.
Wrong, classical Christian theology says that God is impassive and cannot suffer. Jesus only suffered in his humanity, his divine nature was not hurt at all. Jesus suffering doesn’t matter to much to me, it is not my own suffering and its totalitarian to suggest somehow I should emotionally connect with Christ’s suffering and find this satisfactory so that somehow I can overlook the God behind it all’s incomprehensibility/absurdity. The Cross is a smokescreen for religion and its nefarious agendas of manipulation and control.
I just put her book on my Kindle… I’ll look into it. I am not a former evangelical. I dabbled in theism a while after years of agnosticism, only to realize that the concept of God and theistic religion has, on a deep level, some serious political and cultural consequences that don’t necessarily square with compassion. For one thing it constantly invaldating of our own sentiments and experiences, inducing guilt and shame where none should exist.
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JDaniel
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Daedelus:
And here you are denying and defying your own proclamation.
They shouldn’t, if that is their purpose.
Actually, He is not selecting just you; that’s everyone’s task in life. God wants religious unity, but, we got free will instead.
I cannot convince you of anything, much less an Eternal Paradise (without a gaggle of virgins
). I cannot conceive of a paradise that does not include my departed ex-wife, either. When she passed, I immediately thought that I would be able to see her again in the next life. But, alas, that probably won’t happen. The Church tells us that what we will have will be so far superior to anything earthly that we could imagine, that we will miss nothing. Look at Hubble photos of various places in the universe. They are overwhelmingly beautiful. Look out a the sky and nature on a great day. It is overwhelmingly beautiful. God’s Heaven is to be infinitely more beautiful and captivating than either of those, or anything else we could insert in place of them.Well, it certainly can be, and sometimes is, a place of suffering. But not all pleasures are “torments,” in my opinion.
Yes you do.
I think the exact opposite. People who think like that need to read, and re-read, T.S. Elliot’s “Sweeney” poems. I don’t think that he had a disability, but he was certainly able to capture the mind-set and innocence of those that did!
By the way, I just remembered the book below that I am recommending. Quite amazing. It’s a true story of a guy who had it all. Then, suddenly, a blood vessel in his brain burst (hence the name). From then on, his life greatly changed. I am fortunate to have met him and to be one of his friends.
God bless,
jd
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ThinkingSapien
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I plan to complete her book during a long flight later this week. Though the things that she said that immediately came to mind from what you were saying was something from a set of videos that she had uploaded to YouTube. There were 4 videos that talked about Yahweh’s Emotions. I would find the exact video and time marker but the connection I am on right now throttles down traffic to YouTube.
Personally I found it difficult to maintain being a Christian and reconcile it against knowing that I had in part “inherited” Christianity from ancestors that , to summarize, had the choice to convert or die. It’s not an argument against Christianity but was certainly something that partially motivated further thought and evaluation on my position. I’ve asked friends and family for their thoughts about it. Just seems to be something that’s not open for discussion among those that are still Christians.
Wow, that really brings back some memories. Reminds me of the Churches I’ve been too that taught it was a sin for females to wear pants or for guys to have long hair (I used to have long hair) among other things. I had a friend in college whose family was part of a Holiness church that had held onto many of the more misogynistic teachings of the old testament. She secretly owned makeup, hair products, and a pair of pants and seemed to swing between enjoying having them and feeling guilty about it. I didn’t understand some of the conflicts she was experiencing and I tried asking about them. But if she gave me the information it might constitute teaching and her denomination interpreted “I suffer not a woman to teach” as being like a commandment. I had to find an ex-Holiness member to get further insight on what was going on.
I want to throw out a positive too. Some of the Churches that I’ve attended have had a seemingly healthier set of views and what seems to be a positive impact on their local community. The experience I described above isn’t representational of all churches (but it was relevant to your comment, I think). Though I am making the evaluation of their positives based more on what I’ve seen of their collective actions than on their collective beliefs.
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JDaniel
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Daedelus76
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I will concede that I’m persuaded that I don’t think a hypothetical Creator could be both absolutely evil and omnipotent. However, it’s difficult for me to see how goodness and omnipotence are evidenced by the state of affairs in the world.
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cap76
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Revelation 21.4, ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’
John 3.12, ‘If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’
2 Peter 3.13, 'According to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Revelation 4:11, ‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.’
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jochoa
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My friend, I am familiar with how difficult it can be to see how goodness and omnipotence are evidenced by the state of affairs in the world. Please consider the following to help you see the goodness and omnipotence.
Jesus Christ is God, and He came down from Heaven to tell and show us how to achieve the greatest state of peace, happiness, energy, and wisdom, which are the four things every single action of every single human is driven by. The answer lies in the Scripture defining the Greatest Commandments and His Crucifixion: Always be and spread the means to be patient and kind and motivated for God with all your body and with all your spirit and with all your thoughts and with all your will towards God, others and the self, so that society and yourself may experience unbreakable peace, limitless happiness, and unstoppable energy.
Now recognizing that you are struggling with accepting the Christian God of Catholicism because of what has happened in your life, I encourage you to recognize the following:
You can only be as peaceful as you are patient.
You can only be as happy as you are kind.
You can only be as energetic as you are motivated.
Therefore, start your journey in growing in patience, kindness, and motivation by being kind in thought by…
- stop thinking about understanding God’s Being or the Cause of the Universe, until you have a strong understanding of Jesus, the Son, because no matter what, since we came into existence, we will always require faith to accept what happened before the first thing.
- thinking more positively. Instead of thinking about how there are major natural disasters, and countries at war, think about how you and I are friends. Think about how there are many people here at CAF, who have spent hours pondering your questions in efforts to help you find greater peace with this world. Think about how amazingly kind humanity has treated us in that we are able to communicate across miles and miles of land and water instantaneously. Think about how cool it is that we are able to learn and share ideas with others who think like us. I personally do not have nearby relatives, who enjoy this quality of discussion.
- think more optimistically. Since you have to have Faith, why not believe in Jesus Christ? You already have the desires of peace and happiness, so recognize that you are being called to be more patient and kind to society and yourself, than what society has treated you, all so that you might be the person to change the course of the world. For if you are only going to be as patient and kind to society as society is to you, what reward is there in that?
If you are interested in further steps I have interpreted from Grace, please ask and I will gladly share.
Until then my friend, it was an honor and pleasure discussing with you. I grew tremendously in perspective, consideration, and faith from consideration of your questions. And for all your time and consideration, I thank you!
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Daedelus76
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I will definitely look into it. I’m really interested in the subject of how God is portrayed and how this influences Christians political and social ideals. I never really realized the power of imagery until I studied and immersed myself in eastern Christianity. It was only then I realized how dangerous Christianity can be, because the imagery can override genuine intellectual inquiry and thinking about the consequences of our actions. Christian piety and worship has some potent symbols that genuinely do appeal to people but these are manipulated as tools by a hierarchy that is “the blind leading the blind”, completely indifferent to the holes you and I, or our non-Christian neighbors walk into.
True, Christianity may even be worse than Islam in this respect in terms of conversion via the sword. In my own case some of my ancestors (Native Americans) were converted based on BS promises about what was in the Bible (that the Bible was a technology book of white men). When we take John Loftus outsider challenge to Christianity, you start to realize alot of Christian beliefs are no better than Hindu or Buddhist beliefs in terms of credibility.
Fundamentalist or Holiness churches are the extreme end of it, but that attitude is present in almost every Christian denomination/church. I think Christian sexual ethics are an area where there is especially alot of useless shame, and this goes beyond just the fundamentalist Protestant denominations.
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danserr
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On your understanding of objective, that might be true; but since I am the one proposing the argument, then I would say that the burden/privilege is on me to define the terms as I am using them. If my understanding of the terms is possible/coherent, then I don’t think you can object to the argument on those grounds.
Since we agree then, that on the view that “objective” means independent of what persons think or perceive avoids your concerns, then it seems fair of me to base an argument on this.
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danserr
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I guess there may not be much more I can say to you. You have made the decision for mockery and scorn rather than really trying to understand the issue. You don’t seem to have understood much of what I said. To suggest that Christianity has an agenda of manipulation and control or that is spread by violence more than Islam (or even substantially) is simply absurd. And your understanding of heaven is based on a crude caricature. No educated Christian seriously thinks we are going to sit around on clouds and play golden harps.
I still advise you to correct this by looking into CS Lewis’s, essay, The Weight of Glory, and/or NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking heaven and the resurrection.
As for Christianity’s supposed “dangerous influence”, Christianity tells people they all have value, because they are loved by Love, who suffered and died for them, and promise the renewal (resurrection) of the entire world. It then tells people they are commanded to contribute to this in the present world. I suppose this can be dangerous. It certainly was to many tyrants who tried to either take control of the Church or eliminate it.
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MindOverMatter2
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Why have you given yourself the name of an evil computer?
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Perplexity
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Fair play, I’ll concede that under your understanding of objective, the argument succeeds. That’s not to say I concede the argument though, since I don’t accept that understanding.
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Daedelus76
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I will look into the Lewis but I have read some of NT Wright and in general I don’t understand his views relationship to my objections. Wrights future existence of the earth doesn’t include things that I personally value. It is about renewal of the earth on the terms of his hierarchical religion; the Revelation to St. John the Divine and Christian piety has worship the central act of activity for all eternity, because worship is the highest good that the theocrats of religion can envision, the only thing they give real value to in the end. Ordinary life is completely excluded from eternity. So I’ll repeat, what exactly is so great about worshipping God for eternity?
Now, if recreating the earth is what this is really about (and not worshiping an anthropomorphic bronze age autocrat) then why do Christians invariably support conservative politics? Why in a suppossedly Christian nation like the United States have I sat around waiting on an administrative hearing from a judge for a year when I have medical bills piling up around me from dealing with urinary tract troubles, mental health problems, and recently, a brain tumor, all things that my doctors agree are disabling? Why is this not an isolated incident (I have known others that have waited longer). Christianity is simply a failure at cultivating moral progress, that’s what all this tells me. Your platitudes about creating a new earth are worthless, empty, and hollow. Love cannot mean anything you want it to mean anymore than two and two can make five.
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danserr
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I told you already. The reason you cannot understand the greatness of heaven is that it is so great as to be beyond our current imagination. We are in the position of children playing in the mud, when God plans for us to enjoy a holiday by the sea. Or alternately, a child on being told that sex was a great physical pleasure might ask if it included eating chocolates. The child cannot understand sex, he can understand chocolate. We are in the position of that child. We understand sex, but we cannot understand the greatness of heaven. (St. Paul, who knew something about suffering, said- I reckon the sufferings of the present life are not to be compared to the glory that awaits us).
First of all, they are not platitudes. The are principles for which men have suffered and died. They were the principles that led the English Evangelicals to abolish the slave trade, that led a Pope to give witness that helped cause the fall of the Soviet Union, that led a South African Archbishop to peacefully end apartheid, that caused early Christians to run toward plague victims when everyone else (pagan doctors included) ran the other way. Those principles led the early Church to oppose the early practice of infanticide, which in some places resulted in the death of 50% of infant girls, and the same principles led a dozen illiterate fisherman to convert the Roman empire. Christianity has certainly done very much for moral progress. If Christians often fall short of their principles, this doesn’t prove the principles are wrong or that Christianity is a failure. It only proves that Christians are sinful and fallible like everyone else; this is not a surprise. NT Wright said, “Jesus taught his followers a prayer that included them asking God for forgiveness, he obviously thought they needed it and would go on needing it.”
As to your concerns about politics. If a doctor gives you a prescription and you do not take it, then it is vain to complain that the doctor or the medicine is useless. The US is not a Christian nation. We have an official religion and it is not Christianity, but secularism. The current state of affairs testifies to the failure of secularism, not Christianity. As for supporting conservative policies, there may be good reasons for supporting either party, but some Christians take seriously the deaths of 4,000 unborn children per day. Under secularism (as under pagan Rome), this practice has returned and with it a diminished value of human life; many Christians, reasonably, think it important to oppose this practice.
Hope for the new creation and heaven is not simply a platitude also because of the Resurrection, which shows that such a thing really can and will happen.
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JDaniel
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Danserr:
I wonder if we’re not looking at this all wrong. Consider how the angels fell. According to a Thomistic cosmogony, there are three (to five) levels of Heaven. The Vision is at the topmost level. The earth resides at the bottommost level. The angelic level(s), in between.
It is thought that some angels exist in the Vision level, while others exist in the middle level. Satan and his group were thrown down from the middle level to the earthly level - unfortunately, with us! The question is, "Why is there a ‘middle level?’ Why are some of the angels in that middle level instead of in the top level? The Theologians of angelology thought that the vision of God is just way too much for them to handle, that they needed more time. (Angels are said to have a duration of their own.) Besides, they must come to God of their own accord. Like us, they have Free Will.
So, perhaps - just perhaps - we were put here to see, that is, to get a preview of (in a lesser way, of course), the Vision level. So that we are not lost to Him, as those thousands of fallen angels were, perhaps we are here to get used to, in a way, as much of the aspects of the Vision as possible. We are told that those who suffer, suffer for a reason. Perhaps they are ‘weaker’ than the rest and, by their suffering, will derive a strengthened desire for the Vision such that they will easily shake loose any residue they might have held that would otherwise surface upon the thought of seeing God’s face. While the rest, those who are privileged to see the God-provided beauties of the universe and the earth, will calmly expect His beauty and not be chagrined at all. Perhaps this is why there is suffering. Does this make any sense? Is this scenario possible?
God bless,
jd
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