Is the Golden Rule a Foundational Moral Principle or A Rule of Thumb?

[Peter_Plato]

You just said again. Canaanites killed babies so they needed to be utterly destroyed. The Israelites have to kill babies (and everyone else) so they don’t end up killing babies like the Canaanites.

This entire mess is possible given the nature of evil under some scenarios. If evil choices or extended patterns of choices create important or relevant epigenetic change, or create an “entrenched” condition in human beings, which is consistent with concepts like original sin then the above might hold. Again this is arguing that explanations are possible without concluding which one is most plausible.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Why would he need to “make the rules” if the players were “entirely made by him?”

If the players were entirely determined by God to be a certain way or to “play” a certain way, then rules would be superfluous.

Your question assumes something about the nature of the players that I am claiming is not true. The rules are the means by which the players are made. Moral beings are self-determining which is why the responsibility becomes taken on by them. Rules form the moral nature of the players.

Free will is merely glossed over by your remarks. Which is why your questions reveal a self-contradiction. Rules would NOT be necessary if the players were pre-programmed. So God didn’t “make” the players in the morally relevant way implied by your questions. We are self-determining in terms of choices and behaviour.

When our self-determination leads to corruption, God may be well within his rights to intervene, at his discretion, not ours. We do not have the purview to see when that intervention is necessary.

Meltzerboy position is that we can not fully grasp the depth of God’s love, this is what brings us pain.

If a radio is designed that can only pick up two stations in the broad band of possible stations is it the radio’s fault or the designers? Beating on the radio won’t make receive more stations. Even if the radio “wants” to receive more it can’t. It’s limited. Designed that way.

 

[PRmerger]

Meltzerboy position is that we can not fully grasp the depth of God’s love, this is what brings us pain.

If a radio is designed that can only pick up two stations in the broad band of possible stations is it the radio’s fault or the designers? Beating on the radio won’t make receive more stations. Even if the radio “wants” to receive more it can’t. It’s limited. Designed that way.

Except that the Catholic position is that we were designed to receive 100000000 channels, but the first user broke our receiver and now we only pick up 2 channels.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

This entire mess is possible given the nature of evil under some scenarios. If evil choices or extended patterns of choices create important or relevant epigenetic change, or create an “entrenched” condition in human beings, which is consistent with concepts like original sin then the above might hold. Again this is arguing that explanations are possible without concluding which one is most plausible.

And your back to “the people are so Evil, God couldn’t even help them, so He had them destroyed”

You are saying an omnipotent being couldn’t help them.

 

[PRmerger]

And your back to “the people are so Evil, God couldn’t even help them, so He had them destroyed”

You are saying an omnipotent being couldn’t help them.

That’s why we have the Incarnation, Roscoe. That’s how this omnipotent being helped them (us).

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Except that the Catholic position is that we were designed to receive 100000000 channels, but the first user broke our receiver and now we only pick up 2 channels.

“Why do you make me hurt you”

If only we were better, our all loving, all powerful God wouldn’t have to hurt us.

You’re blaming the radio again.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

[SIGN][/SIGN]

That’s why we have the Incarnation, Roscoe. That’s how this omnipotent being helped them (us).

No, in this story he has everyone killed. (In a few stories actually)

 

[Peter_Plato]

Still. Sounds like “why do you make me hurt you?”

You assume, here, that “hurting someone” has absolute moral implications. It is not clear to me that a human understanding of “hurt” is necessarily the de facto one that applies, as is, for God.

For a human being to kill another human being has certain moral repercussions. It signals, as far as human beings are concerned, the end of that human being’s life and earthly existence. All other implications are largely “unknown” to us.

If God exists eternally, is the Creator of all that exists including human life and death, and has omniscience regarding all implications of all our choices, then his view of death, his power over it and his moral responsibilities with regard to it are not the same as ours.

For example, the death of the babies, as far as we know, could have been the means to remove them from an earthly threat to their moral health to a place of rehabilitation. We simply don’t know what the omnipotent God could have done as a consequence of the Israelite actions, so we cannot make any moral conclusions about whether God’s command was licit or not. He is simply not held to the same standards as we are.

By the way, if you are thinking straight, this has absolutely no implications as to whether we should unilaterally go around killing others because “God will look after them.” God’s options are not our determination to make. Our obligation is to follow the moral “rules” because those are the “rules” of the game. We don’t make the choices as to when players are to be taken out of or put into the game. We don’t have that capacity, nor the capacity to question God’s judgement on the issue.

The point is that IF - and that is the crucial if - God really did command the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites, THEN we are in no position to condemn God as having made an immoral judgement. WE are in no position to make THAT determination. Does that imply every or any claim that “God commanded it” is justified? No, that ALL depends upon whether God REALLY did or does command any action. We can’t know that without some additional information from God himself, so we must treat all such claims as not true without absolute proof to the contrary.

In the case of the OT events, the preceding series of miracles provides a reason to qualify or withhold judgement and NOT hastily conclude that the actions or the command were evil and therefore the people and the God behind them also were. We don’t know is all that CAN be said.

 

[Peter_Plato]

And your back to “the people are so Evil, God couldn’t even help them, so He had them destroyed”

You are saying an omnipotent being couldn’t help them.

Free will assumes moral responsibility. The old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” applies here. God has the absolute power and resources to “help,” but with regard to moral agency, it is up to the agent to make use of the help. Grace is freely given in abundance, but the right of refusal is ours.

We can’t be forced or compelled to love or act morally. Even Bradski agrees to that. However, we CAN be obligated to.

God could, I suppose, “help” by just changing the nature of the game from “live hockey” to a tabletop setup where all the players are controlled by knobs. But then the players would not need to know or agree to the rules, would they? In what sense would rules even be required if God sat at both ends of the table and determined every move by twisting knobs and pushing rods?

The problem here, is that you can’t seem to separate out the implications of a “live” game where the players can determine the flow of the game from that of a solitaire game where God just amuses himself by moving plastic players around the table. You keep insisting God is playing THAT kind of game.

In the first instance, players have powers and capacities gifted to them by God, but the autonomy to use these in different ways according to certain rules. In the second, the players are without any inherent powers but are simply moved around the table by God.

You are trying to insist that theists must understand the nature of the game in the same way that atheist materialists constrained to a deterministic world view must. We just don’t accept THAT premise, Roscoe.

Given the presumption that the game is, indeed, a live game, the nature of that kind of game does not mean God would have no authority to pull players out of the game who exhibit an absolute disregard for the game or have shown they are incapable of play because they would rather not use their capacities appropriately. Why should God be morally compelled to make it a tabletop game when he has the option of pulling players? Why ruin it for everyone who appreciates “live action” because of a few deadbeats or thugs?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Except that the Catholic position is that we were designed to receive 100000000 channels, but the first user broke our receiver and now we only pick up 2 channels.

“Why do you make me hurt you”

If only we were better, our all loving, all powerful God wouldn’t have to hurt us.

You’re blaming the radio again.

Not quite, because one of those two stations carries information from the manufacturer on how to repair the radio so that it can pick up the 100000000 channels, but the new user is too enchanted by what’s playing on the other station that s/he doesn’t bother to tune in and get the information, despite the fact that the manufacturer frequently advertises on the station “informing” the user about what is available on the other station.

The user did make a few half hearted attempts to fix the radio, but decided it was too difficult and gave up trying despite the manufacturer"s warning that the fix would not be easy and would require sustained effort because the radio was severely damaged. The user now tunes out the ads whenever they come on.

The radio is not at fault, even though it IS faulty, but the user certainly is (at fault, I mean.)

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

You assume, here, that “hurting someone” has absolute moral implications. It is not clear to me that a human understanding of “hurt” is necessarily the de facto one that applies, as is, for God.

For a human being to kill another human being has certain moral repercussions. It signals, as far as human beings are concerned, the end of that human being’s life and earthly existence. All other implications are largely “unknown” to us.

If God exists eternally, is the Creator of all that exists including human life and death, and has omniscience regarding all implications of all our choices, then his view of death, his power over it and his moral responsibilities with regard to it are not the same as ours.

For example, the death of the babies, as far as we know, could have been the means to remove them from an earthly threat to their moral health to a place of rehabilitation. We simply don’t know what the omnipotent God could have done as a consequence of the Israelite actions, so we cannot make any moral conclusions about whether God’s command was licit or not. He is simply not held to the same standards as we are.

By the way, if you are thinking straight, this has absolutely no implications as to whether we should unilaterally go around killing others because “God will look after them.” God’s options are not our determination to make. Our obligation is to follow the moral “rules” because those are the “rules” of the game. We don’t make the choices as to when players are to be taken out of or put into the game. We don’t have that capacity, nor the capacity to question God’s judgement on the issue.

The point is that IF - and that is the crucial if - God really did command the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites, THEN we are in no position to condemn God as having made an immoral judgement. WE are in no position to make THAT determination. Does that imply every or any claim that “God commanded it” is justified? No, that ALL depends upon whether God REALLY did or does command any action. We can’t know that without some additional information from God himself, so we must treat all such claims as not true without absolute proof to the contrary.

In the case of the OT events, the preceding series of miracles provides a reason to qualify or withhold judgement and NOT hastily conclude that the actions or the command were evil and therefore the people and the God behind them also were. We don’t know is all that CAN be said.

Of course it has moral implications.

If perfect knowledge of God’s Love is the ultimate good, a privation of that knowledge would be evil. It seems to be the basic notion of Hell. It is us that cause the pain. We separate from God. It causes us pain. We are being immoral. We are not aligning to God’s will.

Special pleading for God’s morality only gets you so far. It still seems ham handed that the only way to save people is to kill them. The only way to fix the radio is to smash it.

It’s not simply that they died. We all die. It was that they were order to be killed by other humans. God has the power to destroy them without using other humans.

To insulate our selves from judgement we only have to claim divine order and say that miracles support our claim. Never mind that neither are verifiable. We are not to be judged.

So any religious practice no matter how vile can’t be brought to task? What were the Israelites doing judging the Canaanites? Or who are we to judge the aforementioned Aztecs?

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Free will assumes moral responsibility. The old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” applies here. God has the absolute power and resources to “help,” but with regard to moral agency, it is up to the agent to make use of the help. Grace is freely given in abundance, but the right of refusal is ours.

We can’t be forced or compelled to love or act morally. Even Bradski agrees to that. However, we CAN be obligated to.

God could, I suppose, “help” by just changing the nature of the game from “live hockey” to a tabletop setup where all the players are controlled by knobs. But then the players would not need to know or agree to the rules, would they? In what sense would rules even be required if God sat at both ends of the table and determined every move by twisting knobs and pushing rods?

The problem here, is that you can’t seem to separate out the implications of a “live” game where the players can determine the flow of the game from that of a solitaire game where God just amuses himself by moving plastic players around the table. You keep insisting God is playing THAT kind of game.

In the first instance, players have powers and capacities gifted to them by God, but the autonomy to use these in different ways according to certain rules. In the second, the players are without any inherent powers but are simply moved around the table by God.

You are trying to insist that theists must understand the nature of the game in the same way that atheist materialists constrained to a deterministic world view must. We just don’t accept THAT premise, Roscoe.

Given the presumption that the game is, indeed, a live game, the nature of that kind of game does not mean God would have no authority to pull players out of the game who exhibit an absolute disregard for the game or have shown they are incapable of play because they would rather not use their capacities appropriately. Why should God be morally compelled to make it a tabletop game when he has the option of pulling players? Why ruin it for everyone who appreciates “live action” because of a few deadbeats or thugs?

The whole of the Old Testament is rife with Divine intervention. The Christian Religion was founded by an act of Divine intervention. To say the only recourse was to destroy them is bizarre. “Sorry, couldn’t be helped.” It undercuts every other act of divine intervention.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Not quite, because one of those two stations carries information from the manufacturer on how to repair the radio so that it can pick up the 100000000 channels, but the new user is too enchanted by what’s playing on the other station that s/he doesn’t bother to tune in and get the information, despite the fact that the manufacturer frequently advertises on the station “informing” the user about what is available on the other station.

The user did make a few half hearted attempts to fix the radio, but decided it was too difficult and gave up trying despite the manufacturer"s warning that the fix would not be easy and would require sustained effort because the radio was severely damaged. The user now tunes out the ads whenever they come on.

The radio is not at fault, even though it IS faulty, but the user certainly is (at fault, I mean.)

You are changing the metaphor by inserting a user.

Regardless, the radio isn’t returned to it’s original state. If that was the case we’d all be back in the Garden of Eden, living in perfect grace. Are you claiming that we can achieve the state of grace of Adam and live as he lived, here now? Not in an afterlife, but now. That would be the state of the original radio.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So any religious practice no matter how vile can’t be brought to task? What were the Israelites doing judging the Canaanites? Or who are we to judge the aforementioned Aztecs?

Obviously, you are missing the entire point here. No one is justifying the right of one human group to judge another. (Although I don’t see that claim as necessarily a wrong one.) The claim is that if God was behind the command then this is NOT the case of one human group judging another, but of God himself doing so and ordering a sentence in line with the judgement.

By the way, are you claiming moral agents do not have a right to judge the actions of others? That no moral agent has the right to judge the practice of human sacrifice as wrong just because the Aztecs practiced it? The implication is that if a substantively large group endorses a behaviour, that endorsement is sufficient to make the behaviour morally right?

Take that one up with Bradski. I am sure he doesn’t agree with you. At least, he has been arguing that general agreement is not sufficient to make something “morally right.”

Your three questions, by the way, entail an incoherent POV.

You said:
”1) So any religious practice no matter how vile can’t be brought to task? 2) What were the Israelites doing judging the Canaanites?”

1. implies we do have a right to judge religious practices but 2) implies we don’t.

Which is it?

Perhaps you need to stop participating in this discussion until you hold a consistently coherent POV.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You are changing the metaphor by inserting a user.

No I didn’t, PR did.

Except that the Catholic position is that we were designed to receive 100000000 channels, but the first user broke our receiver and now we only pick up 2 channels.

In any case, not having a “user” simply endorses a materialistic and causal world view, which makes the entire metaphor useless since God would have a right to dismantle the radio at his discretion. The radio would not, then, be an autonomous agent but merely a mechanistic device and no moral obligations regarding its maintenance would even apply. You loaded the metaphor at the front end by leaving out the user to begin with. What use would the radio be to itself if “someone” listening to it wasn’t part of the metaphor to begin with?

Regardless, the radio isn’t returned to it’s original state. If that was the case we’d all be back in the Garden of Eden, living in perfect grace. Are you claiming that we can achieve the state of grace of Adam and live as he lived, here now? Not in an afterlife, but now. That would be the state of the original radio.

Basically, that is what sanctity is. Notice “can” is the operative word, not “will” or “have.” And there is no commitment to “we’d all be” because that dependents wholly on individual choices and action, not a collective “we,” although it would be much easier if the collective “we” was involved - hence, the need for the Church.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Obviously, you are missing the entire point here. No one is justifying the right of one human group to judge another. (Although I don’t see that claim as necessarily a wrong one.) The claim is that if God was behind the command then this is NOT the case of one human group judging another, but of God himself doing so and ordering a sentence in line with the judgement.

By the way, are you claiming moral agents do not have a right to judge the actions of others? That no moral agent has the right to judge the practice of human sacrifice as wrong just because the Aztecs practiced it? The implication is that if a substantively large group endorses a behaviour, that endorsement is sufficient to make the behaviour morally right?

Take that one up with Bradski. I am sure he doesn’t agree with you. At least, he has been arguing that general agreement is not sufficient to make something “morally right.”

Your three questions, by the way, entail an incoherent POV.

You said:
”1) So any religious practice no matter how vile can’t be brought to task? 2) What were the Israelites doing judging the Canaanites?”

1. implies we do have a right to judge religious practices but 2) implies we don’t.

Which is it?

Perhaps you need to stop participating in this discussion until you hold a consistently coherent POV.

I’m looking for clarification on your point.

You stated, paraphrased, that we can’t know if a claim for divine degree can be established so we are withhold judgement.

If we are to withhold judgement as you claim, we must also withhold judgement on the Canaanite claim of sacrificing children to appease their deity.

You are the one that seems to be claiming that we can judge one not the other.

 

[Peter_Plato]

The whole of the Old Testament is rife with Divine intervention. The Christian Religion was founded by an act of Divine intervention. To say the only recourse was to destroy them is bizarre. “Sorry, couldn’t be helped.” It undercuts every other act of divine intervention.

No it doesn’t. Go back to the live hockey analogy.

The frequency and extent of intervention in the game would depend entirely on the state of the game. If some thug is out on the ice using a stick to take out people’s eyes, that might allow for “police” intervention, arrest and detention “somewhere else.” However, someone merely tripping another player might involve a spell on the bench or penalty box.

Why is there a need to generalize every instance?

No one is claiming the only recourse ever is to “destroy them,” but rather that in this case at this time it may have been necessary. Only God, with an eternal purview, would be in the appropriate position to make a judgement on that, we certainly wouldn’t be.

 

[Aloysium]

[SIGN][/SIGN]

No, in this story he has everyone killed. (In a few stories actually)

Actually, in all our individual stories including the one about Himself.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

No I didn’t, PR did.

In any case, not having a “user” simply endorses a materialistic and causal world view, which makes the entire metaphor useless since God would have a right to dismantle the radio at his discretion. The radio would not, then, be an autonomous agent but merely a mechanistic device and no moral obligations regarding its maintenance would even apply. You loaded the metaphor at the front end by leaving out the user to begin with. What use would the radio be to itself if “someone” listening to it wasn’t part of the metaphor to begin with?

Basically, that is what sanctity is. Notice “can” is the operative word, not “will” or “have.” And there is no commitment to “we’d all be” because that dependents wholly on individual choices and action, not a collective “we,” although it would be much easier if the collective “we” was involved - hence, the need for the Church.

The claim that pain is caused by lack of reception. We don’t know how much God loves us so we are in pain.

The metaphor was originally, do you blame the radio receiver or the radio designer if the radio can only pick up two stations out of a multitude.

PR claimed Adam Broke the Radio and stated that Jesus fixed it.

If it is fixed it would be in it’s original state. It’s not. It seems we have the promise of the radio working at a later date…if it behaves itself. Blaming the radio for it’s lack of repair.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I’m looking for clarification on your point.

You stated, paraphrased, that we can’t know if a claim for divine degree can be established so we are withhold judgement.

If we are to withhold judgement as you claim, we must also withhold judgement on the Canaanite claim of sacrificing children to appease their deity.

You are the one that seems to be claiming that we can judge one not the other.

Judgement is one thing, how to intervene is entirely different.

The fact that I make a judgement about some behaviour does not by itself, involve any implication about the best way to intervene or whether intervention (by me) is necessary.

That I ought or ought not intervene says nothing about whether God has made a different determination on the matter.

Why would God be obligated to seeing it my way if he has access to a much wider body of evidence and far greater foresight than I do?

What I am claiming is that our judgements and rights regarding intervention are not necessarily identical to God’s. You seem to keep conflating the two as if you have missed that point and its implications entirely.