The atheists best argument?

[Cheiron]

That you are not totally knowing does not mean you are totally unknowing. You could know and help prevent child abuse if only you willed to do so. Isn’t that exactly what you demand of our God?

I expect God to be, at a minimum, as moral as ordinary human beings. I hold God to the same standard as humans: If you know a crime is about to happen or is happening, you’ll have to report it to the police. People and gods who fail this test act immorally and even criminally.

Your excuse is similar to the marketer who tells his superiors, “If I could just find the customers, I’d tell them about the product.” He is no marketer at all and should be summarily fired. The job is to find the customers.

It isn’t my job to find child abusers. I’m not part of the police force. To follow your analogy: You’re blaming a marketer for failing to find customers for a company he doesn’t work for. Also, we’re talking about crime and not about selling a product.

Here’s your chance to either join, volunteer and/or donate to prevent child abuse:
ispcan.org/. Perhaps God sent us you to help prevent child abuse.

This is not about me; this is about what God can do. Yet even a simple phone call to the police station is too much to ask of a supposedly omnipotent God. To point the finger at me and what I have done is to completely miss the point and, worse, to deflect the issue. Sinnce you have avoided the fact that God breaches criminal law, I will ask you directly:

1. Do you agree God has a moral duty to report a crime that is about to happen and 2) that His failure to do so is a crime in itself and should lead to punishment for Him?

 

[Wesrock]

God does not have a moral duty to report a crime to the proper authorities or to prevent a crime.

 

[goout]

God does not have a moral duty to report a crime to the proper authorities or to prevent a crime.

And there is confusion about what morality is.

Morality deals with the evaluation of human acts.
God is not a human being (Christ takes human nature but is a divine person),
so the moral equation does not even apply to God.
And this does not mean that God is immoral. God is not moral or immoral, he is simply God.
This is like demanding reasons why a ham sandwich is not a bowling ball. One is not the other by nature.

The evaluation of human acts is based on some standard outside the human being.
For a person of faith, that standard or truth is God, who is goodness itself.

God cannot commit evil. He simply allows us to freely choose him, or to reject him.
Our rejection of Goodness allow sin and death to have their time.

This is really very simple. If you forced a person to love you and choose you, that wouldn’t be love.

 

[Cheiron]

God does not have a moral duty to report a crime to the proper authorities or to prevent a crime.

When you hold God to a lower moral standard than humans or when you hold God to no moral standard at all, then it becomes more and more meaningless to say that God is good.

 

[goout]

When you hold God to a lower moral standard than humans or when you hold God to no moral standard at all, then it becomes more and more meaningless to say that God is good.

It’s meaningless to say that God is held to a moral standard.

That would make something other than God into a god.
Would be an odd position for one who does not believe in God.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I expect God to be, at a minimum, as moral as ordinary human beings. I hold God to the same standard as humans: If you know a crime is about to happen or is happening, you’ll have to report it to the police. People and gods who fail this test act immorally and even criminally.

It isn’t my job to find child abusers. I’m not part of the police force. To follow your analogy: You’re blaming a marketer for failing to find customers for a company he doesn’t work for. Also, we’re talking about crime and not about selling a product.

This is not about me; this is about what God can do. Yet even a simple phone call to the police station is too much to ask of a supposedly omnipotent God. To point the finger at me and what I have done is to completely miss the point and, worse, to deflect the issue. Sinnce you have avoided the fact that God breaches criminal law, I will ask you directly:

1. Do you agree God has a moral duty to report a crime that is about to happen and 2) that His failure to do so is a crime in itself and should lead to punishment for Him?

Your thinking is simplistic and is, therefore, way off base.

Speaking of where moral duties derive: these presume and depend entirely upon the capacities of the moral agent in question.

Suppose the one who sees the crime knows for certain, due to supernatural foresight, that the perpetrator will be arrested and will die in the jail cell as the result of a series of unfortunate events surrounding some unknown health condition, but foresees, with just as great a certainty, that not being arrested will end up with the perpetrator being properly diagnosed and his life saved. And, say, just for good measure, at that point the police will have tracked him down and arrest him.

So, would this person with supernatural foresight, have the same obligation to report the crime as any other ordinary citizen?

I would say no because this individual does not have the limitations that dictate the presumed moral obligations to those who lack this kind of future seeing. Now God has complete knowledge of all future events and outcomes and all interior motives/desires of individuals. The standards which dictate God’s “obligations” regarding what he does or does not do are not the same as those which guide limited beings such as ourselves.

God has complete knowledge and power to direct future events towards good outcomes which you and I completely lack. We are, therefore, obligated in a completely different way.

God cannot dictate the will of an agent endowed with free will. What a free agent wills cannot be forced or determined by God – that would, logically speaking, nullify and contradict the very possibility of free will. For human beings to be free and autonomous moral agents, we must be capable of initiating novel causal sequences by willed decisions on relevant moral matters. God cannot dictate those decisions to us without denying us our free will. He must, therefore, accommodate the decisions made by free-willed agents within the entire moral universe that he creates and sustains.

God need not act as we do because he has complete access to all future events and outcomes, and, therefore, may foresee that permitting or amending certain events today may lead to outcomes far better than what we determine are necessary or obligatory.

That does not mean, however, that we can do anything we want with impunity because the moral consistency of our actions will ultimately assist God and make his long-term providential determinations much easier. In a general sense, we ought to act morally because it is the right thing for us and it better supports the general tendency towards the “good” over the long haul.

 

[goout]

That does not mean, however, that we can do anything we want with impunity because the moral consistency of our actions will ultimately assist God and make his long-term providential determinations much easier. In a general sense, we ought to act morally because it is the right thing for us and it better supports the general tendency towards the “good” over the long haul.

This seems to be contradictory to the rest of your post. You seem to be asserting that human actions affect God’s potency and omniscience.

 

[Wesrock]

When you hold God to a lower moral standard than humans or when you hold God to no moral standard at all, then it becomes more and more meaningless to say that God is good.

When you can’t break from the mindset that God is just a human person with magical powers, any discussion is ultimately meaningless as we’re talking about different things. Not to mention that any statement about God’s goodness is only analogous and puts us at risk of anthropomorphisms. And even on that front we have to be clear about what goodness is, such as the fullness of being, where evil is ultimately a deprivation of being, and that any discussion on moral goodness flows out of this and is not prior to it. And following that how what it means for God to be good has a similar quality but is different from what it means for a human being to be good (in form or in morals) and how that is similar but different to what it means for a triangle to be good, which is similar but different to what it means for food to be good (in taste or in matters of reference to its impact on human nutrition). And that a being’s essence determines what is good and proper to it.

In short, no, it’s hardly meaningless to call God good.

 

[Cheiron]

It’s meaningless to say that God is held to a moral standard.

That would make something other than God into a god.
Would be an odd position for one who does not believe in God.

So if I hold God to a moral standard, that makes morality a god?

When you can’t break from the mindset that God is just a human person with magical powers, any discussion is ultimately meaningless as we’re talking about different things. Not to mention that any statement about God’s goodness is only analogous and puts us at risk of anthropomorphisms. And even on that front we have to be clear about what goodness is, such as the fullness of being, where evil is ultimately a deprivation of being, and that any discussion on moral goodness flows out of this and is not prior to it.

I have no idea what “fullness of being” is and how that’s synonymous with goodness.

And following that how what it means for God to be good has a similar quality but is different from what it means for a human being to be good (in form or in morals) and how that is similar but different to what it means for a triangle to be good, which is similar but different to what it means for food to be good (in taste or in matters of reference to its impact on human nutrition). And that a being’s essence determines what is good and proper to it.

In short, no, it’s hardly meaningless to call God good.

You’re trying to broaden the discussion by saying that good can also reference taste. Sure, but the implicit agreement in this thread is that we’re talking about “good” in reference to morality. Food or triangle’s can’t be morally good (nor evil). They don’t have intentions nor can they make decisions.

Also, I thought Catholics believed that God is morally good, omniscient and has the ability to intervene. That’s the foundation upon which I make my argument. If you want to counter my argument, then you’ll have to say that God does not know where children are being abused and/or that He doesn’t have the power to make a phone call to the police. Those God-concepts have problems of their own, but at least God won’t get in trouble with the law anymore.

 

[goout]

So if I hold God to a moral standard, that makes morality a god?

There are two problems with what you are saying, even aside from religious arguments.
“If I hold God…” If you stop and think about this for a second, you are making a claim that seems to be problematic.

“…moral standard…” . As was stated before, God is not subject to moral standards.

Morality is… the evaluation of human acts, subject to some standard other than the human being.

 

[Wesrock]

God does know when children are being abused. The issue is that you’re treating God as simply some supernatural person or individual or creature at best, or a magical human at worst. Both are grossly inaccurate understandings of God, and have no bearing on God as transcending all being itself, not as a being but God as Being. Many philosophers fear the anthropomorphic potentials of even stating this and won’t affirm God as being or even existing, only saying that God is not non-being and that God does not not exist, so as to emphasize the otherness or transendental nature of God as opposed to all existing creatures.

Any postive description of God is at best analogous. Taste being good and a human being good probably have more in common than man being good and God being good.

As to goodness as being, not yet understanding is not proof against. It will require further study.

 

[Wesrock]

And saying God is the source of good is different than saying God is morally good. Not sure I’m discounting the latter, but it’s flawed if you take what it is to be a good human and say that’s what it takes to be a good God.

 

[Strydersroom]

The key difference between science and religion is that science learns more over time. We get closer and closer to understanding the nature of life and matter; science is extremely adept at learning more. Religious believers, on the other hand, have precisely the same evidence in hand that they did 2,000 years ago (or 60 years ago, if you’re a Scientologist).

So I would say the scientific atheist then has a “better chance” and finding the truth.

 

[Wesrock]

The key difference between science and religion is that science learns more over time. We get closer and closer to understanding the nature of life and matter; science is extremely adept at learning more. Religious believers, on the other hand, have precisely the same evidence in hand that they did 2,000 years ago (or 60 years ago, if you’re a Scientologist).

So I would say the scientific atheist then has a “better chance” and finding the truth.

I don’t see how one opposes the other. The highest end (goal) of humans as rational creatures is the exercise of that reason in seeking truth, and science is one method of such inquiry.

 

[Strydersroom]

I don’t see how one opposes the other. The highest end (goal) of humans as rational creatures is the exercise of that reason in seeking truth, and science is one method of such inquiry.

They’re opposed because Religion already claims to know the truth. Having any doubts or lack of faith would thus seem blasphemous.

 

[Wesrock]

Some truths, perhaps. It certainly doesn’t claim all. There’s no opposition. Scientific inquiry and the empirical method is a very valuable tool in the search for quantifiable truths.

 

[Praedicare]

To me the best argument of atheists and agnostics against the existence of God has always been that He just doesn’t seem to exist. Period. Nothing nuanced or wordy. It’s just a simple observation.

 

[Cheiron]

There are two problems with what you are saying, even aside from religious arguments.
“If I hold God…” If you stop and think about this for a second, you are making a claim that seems to be problematic.

“…moral standard…” . As was stated before, God is not subject to moral standards.

Morality is… the evaluation of human acts, subject to some standard other than the human being.

I disagree about that definition of morality. Morality is about evaluating all decisions, intentions and actions. I don’t agree morality is limited to human beings. More importantly: if God can’t be held to a moral standard, then we can’t say whether God is good or evil. That means the end of this discussion.

God does know when children are being abused. The issue is that you’re treating God as simply some supernatural person or individual or creature at best, or a magical human at worst. Both are grossly inaccurate understandings of God, and have no bearing on God as transcending all being itself, not as a being but God as Being. Many philosophers fear the anthropomorphic potentials of even stating this and won’t affirm God as being or even existing, only saying that God is not non-being and that God does not not exist, so as to emphasize the otherness or transendental nature of God as opposed to all existing creatures.

Any postive description of God is at best analogous. Taste being good and a human being good probably have more in common than man being good and God being good.

I don’t know what it means to “transcend all being itself” or to “not not exist”. It sounds like obscurantism to me. The important thing to me is that you don’t assert God intervenes in the world. Good. That solves the problem. But then I can’t see why you’re a Catholic when Catholics clearly believe that miracles exist.

As to goodness as being, not yet understanding is not proof against. It will require further study.

No, it means you’ll have to make a argument more clearly if we want this conversation to progress.

And saying God is the source of good is different than saying God is morally good. Not sure I’m discounting the latter, but it’s flawed if you take what it is to be a good human and say that’s what it takes to be a good God.

If God is good and the source of good, then you’ll run into the Euthyphro dilemma.

 

[goout]

I disagree about that definition of morality. Morality is about evaluating all decisions, intentions and actions. I don’t agree morality is limited to human beings. More importantly: if God can’t be held to a moral standard, then we can’t say whether God is good or evil. That means the end of this discussion.

There’s one small problem with your definition of morality:
It has no objective standard and so there can be no evaluation. Right?
If you evaluate something, your evaluation is in reference to something else which is true and durable.
If you believe in nothing objectively true and durable, you have no evaluation, you simply have whim, passion, opinion, arbitrariness. And so if this is the case, why would you even object to the abuse of persons if one person desires that abuse?
You have no moral case because you have no reference.

And you say “I don’t agree morality is limited to human beings”.
Then you believe in God.
That contradicts your a-theism. This is seriously puzzling.

Your position assumes you are the moral standard, since there is nothing else to refer it to.
By saying God is held to a standard, you make yourself the holder of that standard (makes you God), which seems to contradict your a-theism.

 

[Wesrock]

I never said God didn’t intervene. I said he has no moral obligation to. I’d say God is a much higher standard than us, but that doesn’t mean acting as a human and then more. And I fail to see how the Euthyphro dilemma comes into play. Please enlighten me.

I may extrapolate on being as good later, but you’re right, discussion is pointless on that front until we’re on the same page, meaning all your objections fall flat as they are about a being I don’t believe to exist. If you are going to continue to object, it may mean simple internet discussion isn’t enough and you’ll have to do further research on your own.