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tonyrey
Guest
We weren’t the ones who brought up the threat of the “bogeyman”…
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T
tonyrey
Guest
That quotation has already been used on this thread very recently by a person who disagreed with the allegation that Pascal resorted to the threat of a “bogeyman”…
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Christ was neither terrorist nor bogeyman when he said:
“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned.” Mark 16:16
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Vera_Ljuba
Guest
What about a Mafioso who tells you: “obey, and you will be rewarded, or disobey and you will be punished”. Is that a “warning” or a “threat”?
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goout
Guest
You completely misunderstand the nature of the proposition and the values at stake.
This is perhaps the most basic moral evaluation that can be made. To make a moral evaluation we need to first know what the good is that we are oriented towards. Morality always points us to the good.
In Pascal’s wager (moral dilemma) the good at hand is eternal beatitude. We must know what that is before we can make a well reasoned evaluation.
What do you think eternal beatitude is?
Eternal beatitude is not the satisfaction of a contract like reward/punishment.
Eternal beatitude is not a pot o gold or a big fast car, or all the sex you want, or all the food you can eat, or a beautiful healthy body, or the combination of all that.
What do you think it is?
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goout
Guest
That “M” word might be the source of your issue.
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Vera_Ljuba
Guest
I am interested in the principle. There are two options: 1 - “obey and you will be rewarded” and 2 - “disobey and you will be punished.” The actual nature of the reward and the punishment is irrelevant. What are facing here: a “warning” or a “threat”?
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MPat
Guest
Maybe I’d choose the parallels between Gilgamesh and Noah instead… And yes, it might not have been my original point, but, naturally, it is true that Catholic apologists do not exactly spend much time trying to prove that nothing similar to the events described in Epic of Gilgamesh myth ever happened.
I see. Oh, and the quotes are there to emphasise that I am citing that word.
So, if you agree that judgement can end with hell, do you think it is charitable or uncharitable to warn someone who acts in the way that increases probability of going to hell?
I’m afraid God is not bound by any UN document.
For example, preamble says “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms”. God is neither an “individual” nor an “organ of society”.
If that’s “an offer he can’t refuse”, how comes it is refused so often?
Well, we know that the main alternative of going to heaven is um, not very attractive.
That doesn’t have to be what people often imagine - even if going to heaven is simply spending eternity with God and going to hell is just staying away and having a whole eternity and nothing to do, going to hell is undesirable.
Now, of course, there are many variants of the same Pascal’s Wager. It is possible to leave the “wrong atheist” option at “no heaven”. It is possible to change the discussed consequences from “heaven” and “hell” to “has thanked God” and “committed an injustice by failing to thank God”. They are also valid. If you prefer one of them, that’s fine.
Why a “Mafioso” and not a “police officer”?
For that matter, why not “a crime victim, reminding the criminal that police will catch him”?
After all, the ones who make the argument are not going to have the power to send anyone to hell - a point that seems to be forgotten far too often.
So, yes, in our case it is certainly a warning and not a threat.
B
Bradski
Guest
Almost everyone gets this wrong.
We do what we believe to be good and then class that as morality.
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goout
Guest
That describes how we act.
, not what moral evaluation is.Morality, aka moral evaluation, has an objective good as it’s end, and moral belief and act flow from it.
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Vera_Ljuba
Guest
Let it be a police officer. In either case we deal with coercion.Why a “Mafioso” and not a “police officer”?
So the Mafioso gives only a warning, but does not threaten. What a strange choice of words.
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MPat
Guest
Sure, if you say so - you do what you believe to be good and class that as morality.
Of course, it means that you always act “morally” - and that this fact is trivial and not interesting, saying only that you act as you act.
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Himmler, Mao, Pol Pot also acted “morally” in the same way - they did what they did.
Catholics, on the other hand, have morality they can fail to follow (and often do). And that means this morality is not trivial.
And, to go back to the subject, that means having Catholic morality for a guide is likely to be more helpful than having such atheist morality for a guide - since, um, it is not much of a guide (“Act as you act.” is not really advice).
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Vera_Ljuba
Guest
Actually, you CALL something “moral”, IF you agree with it. The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is not the act, it is YOUR ATTITUDE toward the act.That describes how we act.
Morality, aka moral evaluation, has an objective good as it’s end, and moral belief and act flow from it.
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MPat
Guest
So, you didn’t get to the part about “a crime victim, reminding the criminal that police will catch him”?
As, of course, you are reacting to what I didn’t say.
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goout
Guest
Ok then, if you want to define it in your language, let’s use your language.
You misunderstand the principle.
The principle is that pursuing an inestimable good makes all things other than that good a void or lack.
If you want to put a value on the void, the degree of lacking is in relation to the good that is lacking.
So, follow the dots…
You think of threat in terms of the violation of a contract. We are not talking about a contract here.
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goout
Guest
No, something is morally evaluated in reference to the objective good. Something is not good because I say so. It is good because it is. I might call it that, I might not. But in any case good is good. Good is not subject to my opinion, my opinion is subject to good.
Those acts that are not in accord with the good are “evil”, or lacking in the good. Those acts that are pursuant to the good are “good”, or “moral”.
A murdering terrorist who believes he is a a freedom fighter has a warped conscience, one that is not tethered to the good. If his conscience is not well formed, he cannot make sound moral evaluations.
Likewise, and atheist dictator who murders religious people has a warped conscience, a conscience that is rebellious to the good. Or at the very least ignorant of the good.
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tonyrey
Guest
The real questions are how and why we distinguish good from evil…
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Bradski
Guest
As Vera said, you call something moral IF you believe it to be good.That describes how we act.
‘I believe that to be good, I will act accordingly, THEREFORE it is a moral act’.
That has no bearing on whether it could be considered morally correct or not. That needs to be evaluated separately by considering whether the act causes harm or not. Or to what degree it might cause harm. Or, to look at it from the opposite direction, whether the act has overall benefits.
If you are a bad parent, you will tell your child to do something that she’d rather not (or not to do something she rather would) ‘because I say so!’ The child needs a reason and we are obliged to give one. That is, we are obliged to put forward a reasonable argument why she should act in a particular way.
‘You must not do that because X’.
Quite often the child will know the reason anyway. It’s inbuilt. Even very small children display non-learned altruistic behaviour (news.stanford.edu/news/2008/november5/tanner-110508.html). When you give her the reason, she begins to associate what you consider to be moral acts with what she considers to be the right thing to do in any case. Then it’s a case of: ‘Ah, so that’s what we describe as a moral act’. Then she will tell a sibling at some point: ‘You must do this because it’s the moral thing to do’.
What she means is that either she has an inbuilt, evolved tendency to act in a particular way and she has been told that we describe that as moral behaviour or she has been told to act in a certain way which has been described as moral behaviour.
Either way, it’s how we class behaviour that we believe to be good.
Reasonable discussion.
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Vera_Ljuba
Guest
The principle is very simple: “obey and you will be rewarded; disobey and you will be punished” - which is the age old “carrot and stick principle”. What is so difficult to understand here?
There is no UNIVERSAL good. Drought is good for a cactus, abundant rain is good for an impatient. You need to look at reality without the distortion of “whatever is good for the goose is also good for the gander”. Or “one size fits all”.
Well, let’s take an real life example. American soldiers pursue some “bad guys”, and during this process also kill some innocent children - gotta love the euphemism of “collateral damage”. So the parents of these children fight back to get rid of the aggressors. Are they freedom fighters, or terrorists?
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goout
Guest
Nope that’s not it. Sorry.
That’s a fundamentalist caricature of Christian belief.
It’s minimalist. It’s rigid.
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