Why would God include carnivory, parasitism, and disease in creation?

[tonyrey]

Your diatribe is irrelevant to the fact that many individuals - regardless of what they claim to believe or disbelieve - choose to ignore the interests of others because they believe their crimes will be undetected.

Non sequitur. Their power to choose what to believe and how to act is itself powerful evidence that they have a rational rather than an accidental origin.

1. The first Christians were a persecuted minority.

So Christian apologists like to claim.

The historical evidence is that the first Christian community was a minority in a hostile Jewish province of the Roman empire which turned out to be far more hostile.

Even if this is the case, the Christian majority certainly got its own back, and much more, in later centuries.

The Christian majority does not reflect Christian teaching.

2. The vast majority of Christians have not been converted by political coercion and physical force.

Even if we accept that, it’s fair to say that by now, the vast majority of Christians have been brought up from birth to believe in Christian teaching, so they had just as little choice in the matter as if they had been forced or coerced.

The fact that many Christians renounce their faith when they grow up shows that it does not make sense to say they have no choice. Would you bring up children in a moral vacuum?

Does your lack of experience entail the falsity of all the accounts of others?

Of course not, but if such “proofs” were to be had, I would surely have been a prime candidate to receive them.

Don’t you think you are exaggerating your own importance?

It doesn’t take a stretch of imagination to put encounters with dead people down to wishful thinking and delusion.

It doesn’t take a stretch of imagination to put down belief in the total extinction of the dead to wishful thinking and delusion. It does relieve you of all unpleasant obligations…

The reduction of the mind to the brain obviously deprives it of power because then it cannot control itself! All its activity is determined by its environment.

You have an entirely different conception of ‘power’ than that which is demonstrated by the reality of human interaction with the world. Brains - and by extension, minds - are, fundamentally, information processors and experience synthesisers. They don’t need to be causally independent, adrift from their environments, in order to have the power to be so.

Indeed not because they are causally dependent in every respect on their environment - exactly like powerless computing machines which have no mind or will of their own.

I have pointed out more than once that all life is valuable but not all life is equally valuable. To extend empathy to other species does not justify, nor would it be accepted in a court of law, the sacrifice of a person for an animal…

Yet sacrificing a person - whether directly through means of murder, or indirectly through the means of a life of abject subservience - for the sake of an imaginary being is entirely acceptable?

In addition to a futile attempt to evade the point (To extend empathy to other species does not justify the sacrifice of a person for an animal ** - nor would it be accepted in a court of law**) you falsely attribute murder, slavery or virtual slavery to belief in God while blithely ignoring the millions of atrocities committed in atheist regimes like those of Stalin and Mao.

If you are prepared to sacrifice a human being for the sake of your pet it is highly unlikely you would sacrifice yourself for anyone - thereby revealing the real reason for your antipathy to Jesus and His teaching.

 

[Gaber]

I reject it as well. Too many people adopt this fallacy of: “that which feels good is good, and that which feels bad is bad”.

Well the truth hurts; does this make the truth evil? To a hedonist; yes!

How in the name of what;s holy does it follow from the probabiluity, or more, of an evolutonary necessity for predation a matter of “that which feels good is good, and that which feels bad is bad???” And how do you leap from that to hedonist feeling truth as hurt? The quantity and kind of assumptions behind these is phantastic!!!

 

[Gaber]

Non sequitur. Their power to choose what to believe and how to act is itself powerful evidence that they have a rational rather than an accidental origin.

Not necessarily; not by any means.

The historical evidence is that the first Christian community was a minority in a hostile Jewish province of the Roman empire which turned out to be far more hostile.

Perhaps at first. But by the time of the third century there had been some changes made, and the “christians” took a rather aggressive jihadist type attitude towards any not of that faith. In other words, as a folk teaching, it had already deteriorated.

The Christian majority does not reflect Christian teaching.

Wich is? If you erased all the extrapolations made by the Church and were left only with the few words attributed to Jesus as Teaching, what would you actually believe? What would be your practice?

The fact that many Christians renounce their faith when they grow up shows that it does not make sense to say they have no choice. Would you bring up children in a moral vacuum?

No one is brought up in a moral vacuum. It might just be different thatn your personal perscriotion. And some of those whom you might consider to have been brought up in such a condition are among the most moral people I know, and they are atheists.

~~

It doesn’t take a stretch of imagination to put down belief in the total extinction of the dead to wishful thinking and delusion. It does relieve you of all unpleasant obligations…

Wow. If my moral obligations were a factor of what I thought might be an aafterlife, I’d be bonkerts in short order from calculations. So much so I couldn’t be enough in the moment to make any actually usefull assesment of what to do. And how does even that makeobligations necessarily unpleasant? And what do you mean by the daed? Those whom Jesus instructed to bury the dead, who were not themselves awake? As i said, there is something amis in the current official understanding of Jesus teaching, as far as I can see.

In addition to a futile attempt to evade the point (To extend empathy to other species does not justify the sacrifice of a person for an animal ** - nor would it be accepted in a court of law**) you falsely attribute murder, slavery or virtual slavery to belief in God while blithely ignoring the millions of atrocities committed in atheist regimes like those of Stalin and Mao.

Or Hitler, who touted religion as a necessity.

The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavour to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of to-day~AH

Ad then there were the actual Christians. Religin ond good are not necessarily congruent, and neither is atheism and evil.

 

[JDaniel]

Why would God design some animals to painfully kill and eat others? Why would he design animals to live inside and on other animals and leech their nutrients until they die slowly and painfully? Why would he create killer viruses and bacteria that cause so much death and pain?

Poseidon:

By the way, the obvious answer is that God created an explicate order wherein nothing is wasted or requires annihilation. All things are recycled. As we near the time of our demise, and due to occasional aberrations, that system starts its countdowns. Now, you could say, well, why did He not just make a perfect system? Need I answer that? Or, will someone take this baton from me?

God bless,
jd

 

[Benedict]

Go and read what St. Thomas Aquinas has to say about Good and Evil in “Summa Theologiae” And about Creation and Original Sin. Then come back in a few months having thought about this and many of the questions/biases here could be quickly resolved.

I am not trying to be funny or dodge the issue. I too had many of these same questions/notions until I began to see the necessity of joining my Faith with Reason.

None of this is easy, but study can help you figure it out.

Try this website for free access to all St. Thomas Aquinas’ major writings in English:

dhspriory.org/thomas/

PS–if your Philosophy is rusty you’re going to also need to look at Summa Contra Gentiles.

 

[JDaniel]

Go and read what St. Thomas Aquinas has to say about Good and Evil in “Summa Theologiae” And about Creation and Original Sin. Then come back in a few months having thought about this and many of the questions/biases here could be quickly resolved.

I am not trying to be funny or dodge the issue. I too had many of these same questions/notions until I began to see the necessity of joining my Faith with Reason.

None of this is easy, but study can help you figure it out.

Try this website for free access to all St. Thomas Aquinas’ major writings in English:

dhspriory.org/thomas/

PS–if your Philosophy is rusty you’re going to also need to look at Summa Contra Gentiles.

Benedict:

Welcome. I see that you are new to CAF. That is why you probably don’t know how to make your responses to the person you want them made to. But, you’ll learn fast enough!

Now, were the above comments made to me? Or, am I being a tad egotistical?

God bless,
jd

 

[Bradski]

We make individual decisions without Him but on the basis of the moral laws He has given us.

When you say ‘the moral laws He has given us’ it would appear that you’re including me. If I make a moral decision that is counter to yours, who is to say that mine is the correct interpretation of His laws and your is not? You’ve already agreed that you could be wrong.

God is not guiding our individual decisions: He has given us the freedom to decide specific cases for ourselves.

Again, what is the difference between a decision you make and a decision I make. What is it about me being an atheist that prevents me from making ‘correct’ moral decisions? How do we know which is the correct moral decision? It can’t be one on which you would necessarily agree because you might be wrong in that particular case.

I often know I’m right. For example, I am absolutely sure torturing a person is always unjustified.

I’m sure I could propose a situation where inflicting some minor discomfort to someone to save the life of millions would be morally correct.

I suggested that you have to convince me that you are right on any matter without reference to any divine authority.

Not all decisions - as I have just illustrated.

But you haven’t illustrated anything. You only said that you are ‘sure’ that torturing a person is always unjustified. Why are you sure? You have to be able to explain why without reference to the divine (because you are making independent decisions). If torturing someone caused them no pain at all, then it wouldn’t be wrong. It’s causing pain that’s the problem and it I’m pretty certain that you wouldn’t want to do it for the same reason as me. We feel empathy for fellow human beings.

That is an arbitrary decision if you have no further reason. It is certainly not a rational basis for categorical imperatives.

If empathy is not rational, then could you give me another reason? Isn’t empathy God-given? Isn’t this part of the moral laws that you believe He’s given us? You haven’t been very specific about what these laws actually are. It can’t be scripture because that’s open to interpretation.

“uncountable agonising deaths” is a gross exaggeration in the context of normal life spans.

There have been “uncountable agonising deaths in the animal world” in any one life span. If you think of the entire fauna of the planet over the last few billions of years, then it is literally uncountable.
The singling out one extreme (of creatures not subject to predation) does not underline the truth of the general rule. It’s only a requirement to kill and eat other animals to live because you say that the system has been designed that way. You are saying that God thinks it better for creatures to be eaten alive rather than having them dying of old age or suffering injury.
How does that tie in with life before medical science managed to help the suffering when people died in agony of the most trivial aliments (roughly 99% of the time we have been on this planet). Would it have been better if they were left out in the open to be killed by wild animals rather than die a lingering death?

Everyone who creates and designs a complex system is constrained by the purposes for which it is intended.

If you design something, it is obviously constrained by its purpose. Not much point in making something that doesn’t work. But you’re surely not suggesting that God was in any way constrained in the way in which it was designed and the manner in which it works. Why wasn’t the planet designed with just us and plants? No suffering there.
There are countless animals dying in agony as you read this and their suffering serves no purpose at all. If you had designed it that way, then you’d be labelled a sadist.

Fantasy is not a sound basis for argument unless it is supported by a feasible blueprint.

What, you want me to give you the plans for a redesign of the cosmos so there’s no suffering? Hey, I didn’t screw up in the first place. It was the other guy.

Your anthropocentric view of reality overlooks the intrinsic value, beauty and fulfilment of all the other forms of life.

You don’t get to see the value, beauty and fulfilment (?) of extinct life. What is the purpose of evolutionary dead ends?

 

[tonyrey]

When you say ‘the moral laws He has given us’ it would appear that you’re including me.]

It was a response to:

So how do we get to the point where a Christian can say that morality comes from God?

If you reject the teaching of Christ you are far more likely to be mistaken but Christians are not infallible in their application of His principles to individual cases.

Again, what is the difference between a decision you make and a decision I make. What is it about me being an atheist that prevents me from making ‘correct’ moral decisions? How do we know which is the correct moral decision?

One individual’s moral opinions are unlikely to be superior to the accumulated wisdom and experience of Christianity and other religions. No one is infallible but it doesn’t follow that all moral opinions are equally likely to be true.

I often know I’m right. For example, I am absolutely sure torturing a person is always unjustified.

I’m sure I could propose a situation where inflicting some minor discomfort to someone to save the life of millions would be morally correct.

Your qualification “minor” undermines your objection!

You only said that you are ‘sure’ that torturing a person is always unjustified. You have to be able to explain why without reference to the divine (because you are making independent decisions). If torturing someone caused them no pain at all, then it wouldn’t be wrong. It’s causing pain that’s the problem and it I’m pretty certain that you wouldn’t want to do it for the same reason as me. We feel empathy for fellow human beings.

The sentiment of empathy is often overcome by self-interest.

If empathy is not rational, then could you give me another reason? Isn’t empathy God-given? Isn’t this part of the moral laws that you believe He’s given us? You haven’t been very specific about what these laws actually are.

The only rational basis for rejecting torture lies in the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity which are derived from the teaching of Jesus that we are all children of the same Father.

There have been “uncountable agonising deaths in the animal world” in any one life span. If you think of the entire fauna of the planet over the last few billions of years, then it is literally uncountable.

I am referring to the life span of individuals which are normally far longer than the duration of their death. Do you believe the value of their lives is outweighed by their painful deaths? If so you must be a hedonist…

The singling out one extreme (of creatures not subject to predation) does not underline the truth of the general rule.

It’s only a requirement to kill and eat other animals to live because you say that the system has been designed that way. You are saying that God thinks it better for creatures to be eaten alive rather than having them dying of old age or suffering injury.

Most animals are killed before they are eaten and their deaths are much swifter than dying of old age or suffering injury. The objection to being eaten alive is sentimental rather than rational - typical of a person who lives in an artficial man-made environment divorced from the reality of nature in which pets are often treated far better than people.

How does that tie in with life before medical science managed to help the suffering when people died in agony of the most trivial aliments (roughly 99% of the time we have been on this planet). Would it have been better if they were left out in the open to be killed by wild animals rather than die a lingering death?

Can you explain how cave men could have swiftly developed modern medical science?

Everyone who creates and designs a complex system is constrained by the purposes for which it is intended.

If you design something, it is obviously constrained by its purpose. Not much point in making something that doesn’t work. But you’re surely not suggesting that God was in any way constrained in the way in which it was designed and the manner in which it works.

God works through the laws of nature not by direct commands.

Why wasn’t the planet designed with just us and plants? No suffering there.

Humanity probably suffers far more than any other form of life if we are to judge by history and events in the world today.
If only we and plants existed you would complain that nature lacks richness and variety…

There are countless animals dying in agony as you read this and their suffering serves no purpose at all. If you had designed it that way, then you’d be labelled a sadist.

1. Do you agree with Schopenhauer that it would be better if life had never existed on this planet?
2. Do you believe the value of animals’ lives is outweighed by their deaths? If so you must be a hedonist…

Fantasy is not a sound basis for argument unless it is supported by a feasible blueprint.

What, you want me to give you the plans for a redesign of the cosmos so there’s no suffering? Hey, I didn’t screw up in the first place. It was the other guy.

You are the one who is implying that the cosmos could be devoid of suffering. That assertion is worthless unless it is justified.

Your anthropocentric view of reality overlooks the intrinsic value, beauty and fulfilment of all the other forms of life.

You don’t get to see the value, beauty and fulfilment (?) of extinct life.

Do you utterly reject the value, beauty and fulfilment of the lives of animals which have become extinct?

What is the purpose of evolutionary dead ends?

They have no purpose!

1. Do evolutionary dead ends render **all **life valueless?
2. Does value depend on immortality?
3. Does the occurrence of purposeless events imply that** all **events are purposeless?

 

[Gaber]

Go and read what St. Thomas Aquinas has to say about Good and Evil in “Summa Theologiae” And about Creation and Original Sin. Then come back in a few months having thought about this and many of the questions/biases here could be quickly resolved.

I am not trying to be funny or dodge the issue. I too had many of these same questions/notions until I began to see the necessity of joining my Faith with Reason.

None of this is easy, but study can help you figure it out.

…

That is partially well and good, as it would acquaint ne with a particular paradigm regarding the question. But while it might be internally valid, especially to one of faith, a few months constituting not only study but habituation, is it necessarily completely true? Why did he want to burn all his works, near his last days, and after a profound insight during Mass? I submit that in the same way that reason and intellect works up to a point, the final leap in such understanding is intuitive Grace, So “figure it out” is an intermediary step, imho, perhaps like a zen koan, until the mind has to give up as it cannot devide things any finer, or cannot find anything to devide. Why do you think the mind is called "the adversary and personalized as Satan? It is the devider, working by contrast, distinction, and division. God is not divided against or within Himself, hence cannot be known by arguments and figuring.

Utimately, imho, religion is but a way of figuring until you know better by grace, but in the mean time, the work is neccesary, even if it is non-religiously orientated. It is always more a question of exhausting the mind so it can be seen past than of the contents of consideration.

 

[Sair]

1. Does value depend on immortality?

You have answered this question yourself on several occasions - with a resounding “yes”.

 

[Gaber]

If you reject the teaching of Christ you are far more likely to be mistaken but Christians are not infallible in their application of His principles to individual cases

 

[Sair]

Non sequitur. Their power to choose what to believe and how to act is itself powerful evidence that they have a rational rather than an accidental origin.

Which makes absolutely no difference to the failure of the argument from morality for any theism, which argues that we need a god to tell us what’s right, or coerce us into doing what’s right, at least. I’m not sure how you interpret “accidental origin”, but, actually, the fact that human minds operate within the causal web of the reality revealed by science is more evidence that such minds arose through natural means than through a zap from a supernatural magic-man.

The historical evidence is that the first Christian community was a minority in a hostile Jewish province of the Roman empire which turned out to be far more hostile.

And the first Christians were derided as atheists by the ruling Roman religionists. Interesting, don’t you think? There’s certainly a different spin that can be put on the quarrelling Christian sects that existed in the 1st century CE. It’s not a foregone conclusion that there was one unified Christian body that was the subject of deliberate efforts on the part of the Roman authorities to stamp out this new, “revolutionary” faith. And in any case, you are evading the point about the subsequent Christian majority getting its own back on anyone who didn’t conform to Christian dogma.

The Christian majority does not reflect Christian teaching.

Maybe that’s an issue to be taken up with those who advocate for the effectiveness of Christian faith and its supposed effect upon human behaviour.

The fact that many Christians renounce their faith when they grow up shows that it does not make sense to say they have no choice. Would you bring up children in a moral vacuum?

The fact that so many people choose to renounce their faith should be a pointer to something amiss in this supposed repository of truth.

Don’t you think you are exaggerating your own importance?

Not at all. Maybe I’m just exaggerating my youthful credulity. But in any case, why wouldn’t a genuinely good god choose to reward a faithful adherent with something more than fairy stories?

It doesn’t take a stretch of imagination to put down belief in the total extinction of the dead to wishful thinking and delusion. It does relieve you of all unpleasant obligations…

Except, maybe, those unpleasant responsibilities that arise from our 80-odd years (if we’re lucky) of life.

Indeed not because they are causally dependent in every respect on their environment - exactly like powerless computing machines which have no mind or will of their own.

How does a contra-causal entity, which you apparently want the human mind to be, even operate in a causally-dependent universe?

In addition to a futile attempt to evade the point (To extend empathy to other species does not justify the sacrifice of a person for an animal ** - nor would it be accepted in a court of law**) you falsely attribute murder, slavery or virtual slavery to belief in God while blithely ignoring the millions of atrocities committed in atheist regimes like those of Stalin and Mao.

You are referring, no doubt, to the dubious ethical trial of rescuing a human infant or a dog from a burning building. Given the very narrow set of circumstances in which this would be a real choice, I would act according to what I believed to be the best course of action at the time - assuming I had little time for deliberation. If that meant saving the being that meant more to me in real terms, the entity that was more sentient, rather than the entity that would earn me the adulation of anthropocentric human society, then so be it. I have not been in such a situation, so your exaggerated spin is worthless. And you have determinedly not answered the charge of human sacrifice to imaginary entities, around which Christianity centres.

As for the fallacy that the regimes of Stalin and Mao were atheistic, well, the fact of the matter is that they had far different agendas to that of philosophical atheists - agendas not motivated by a disbelief in gods, but by an exaggerated belief in their own glory and a desire for ultimate power over their fellow humans.

If you are prepared to sacrifice a human being for the sake of your pet it is highly unlikely you would sacrifice yourself for anyone - thereby revealing the real reason for your antipathy to Jesus and His teaching.

Right. Why is sacrificing myself for a dog, for example, to be considered worse than sacrificing myself for a human baby? Any neurological study would indicate that the former was more sentient, more capable of suffering than the latter. And yet you blithely accuse me of anthropocentrism! I’d love to see what you’d make of the “selfishness” of a parent who saved their own child in preference to another’s.

 

[Bradski]

If you say we reject the teachings of Jesus, we are more likely to be mistaken in moral judgements. But who says I reject what Jesus taught? He seemed to have a pretty good idea on how we should live our lives. I was brought up a Christian and I still hold to the values that I was taught then. I don’t lose my moral compass just because I realised later in life that I didn’t believe in God. I don’t then simply reject everything that I have accepted as morally correct.

You cannot claim morality (as you’d describe it) as a purely Christian construct. You don’t have to be a believer in any god to be a moral person. Morality is something (as you have said on more than one occasion) that we have to work out independently. I’d pretty much guarantee that you and I would agree on practically all moral points. The ones on which we’d perhaps disagree would the ones that are specifically based on scripture, such as homosexuality, or ones that have been developed by the Catholic Church, such as contraception.

As you say: ‘One individual’s moral opinions are unlikely to be superior to the accumulated wisdom and experience of Christianity and other religions’. I’d agree there. And it’s very honest of you to include other religions. But I don’t stop at simply religions. I read and listen and discuss matters with those whose opinion I value before I come to any decisions on matters involving morality. I don’t simply pull them out of my butt.

So I’m including Christian teachings in my decision making process. How does my being an atheist make my moral judgements less valid than yours?

The sentiment of empathy is often overcome by self-interest.

Very true. But if it’s not the basis for morality (love thy neighbour as thyself), then what is?

The only rational basis for rejecting torture lies in the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity which are derived from the teaching of Jesus that we are all children of the same Father.

You’re implying that my belief that torture is immoral, simply because I’m an atheist, is irrational. I don’t believe that we’re all children of the same father, but I do believe we’re all part of the same family and that everyone should be treated as I would like to be treated. You cannot claim these moral axioms as your own simply because they are Christian. They belong to a lot of other schools of thought as well and to many religions. They are universal. If you want to say they are God-given, then I have no problem with that. We would just have to agree to disagree.

The objection to being eaten alive is sentimental rather than rational

Well call me sentimental if you like, but personally I’ll go with dying of old age.

God works through the laws of nature not by direct commands.
Humanity probably suffers far more than any other form of life if we are to judge by history and events in the world today. If only we and plants existed you would complain that nature lacks richness and variety…

But God has set the laws Himself. He knows the result of those laws. He is omniscient. He knows the suffering that will be caused even as He sets up the laws. It doesn’t have to be that way. You cannot say that if only us and plants existed then we’d complain about the lack of variety. That makes no sense as we wouldn’t know what we were missing.

Do you utterly reject the value, beauty and fulfilment of the lives of animals which have become extinct?

That’s a valid point. But there are a lot of people who make a decision that they won’t have children because they think this world is too ugly a place into which you could bring a child. If I lived 100,000 years ago, in a state of nature and I had the choice, then I would do the same. I wouldn’t bring a child into the world knowing that its life was going to be ‘poor, nasty, brutish and short’. That’s as close to Schopenhauer that I’m likely to get.

And that’s really my point. If you want to call that hedonism, then your definition of the word is different to mine.

Does value depend on immortality?

You believe in life everlasting. You tell me.

Does the occurrence of purposeless events imply that all events are purposeless?

In individual cases? No. Ultimately? Yes. Which is about the shortest answer you can get to the most difficult of questions…

 

[tonyrey]

… I was brought up a Christian and I still hold to the values that I was taught then. I don’t lose my moral compass just because I realised later in life that I didn’t believe in God. I don’t then simply reject everything that I have accepted as morally correct.]

Acceptance of the moral teaching of Jesus implies that He was not misguided nor deluded in His claim to be the Messiah.

You cannot claim morality (as you’d describe it) as a purely Christian construct…The ones on which we’d perhaps disagree would the ones that are specifically based on scripture, such as homosexuality, or ones that have been developed by the Catholic Church, such as contraception.

Physical homosexuality and contraception are also proscribed by other faiths and individuals without a religion.

… How does my being an atheist make my moral judgements less valid than yours?

It doesn’t - given that you accept the moral teaching of Jesus.

The sentiment of empathy is often overcome by self-interest.

Very true. But if it’s not the basis for morality (love thy neighbour as thyself), then what is?

Love is not solely empathetic but also rational and voluntary.

You’re implying that my belief that torture is immoral, simply because I’m an atheist, is irrational. I don’t believe that we’re all children of the same father, but I do believe we’re all part of the same family and that everyone should be treated as I would like to be treated.

To believe we’re all part of the same family implies that we’re not freaks of nature which exist for no reason or purpose and are linked **solely **by an accident of birth.

You cannot claim these moral axioms as your own simply because they are Christian. They belong to a lot of other schools of thought as well and to many religions. They are universal…

Why are they universal? Religions are based on belief that existence is rational rather than absurd.

Well call me sentimental if you like, but personally I’ll go with dying of old age.

Living with the infirmities of old age for many years is far worse than a swift death.
BTW Predators normally kill before they eat.

But God has set the laws Himself. He knows the result of those laws. He is omniscient. He knows the suffering that will be caused even as He sets up the laws. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Can you justify that belief?

You cannot say that if only us and plants existed then we’d complain about the lack of variety. That makes no sense as we wouldn’t know what we were missing.

The fact that you can imagine a world composed only of persons and plants demonstrates that we could imagine a world with far more richness and variety. I think many animal lovers would disagree with you - especially when they have no one to love them. If you were in their situation I’m sure you would produce that very objection in an animal-less world. Would you find plants sufficient company?

Do you utterly reject the value, beauty and fulfilment of the lives of animals which have become extinct?

That’s a valid point… If I lived 100,000 years ago, in a state of nature and I had the choice, then I would do the same. I wouldn’t bring a child into the world knowing that its life was going to be ‘poor, nasty, brutish and short’…

Your speculation about what you would have done as a caveman is based on your modern upbringing and intellectual environment! The point is whether you would opt out now and advise everyone else to do the same.

Does value depend on immortality?

You believe in life everlasting. You tell me.

You implied that extinction renders life valueless.

Does the occurrence of purposeless events imply that all events are purposeless?

In individual cases? No. Ultimately? Yes. Which is about the shortest answer you can get to the most difficult of questions…

Is that a rational argument?!

 

[Gaber]

Acceptance of the moral teaching of Jesus implies that He was not misguided nor deluded in His claim to be the Messiah.

To me they were “oral” teachings only at a superficial level. In my opinion His teaching was about something deeper and underlying, such that understanih what that was, there would not need to be thoughts about what is moral and what is not. The Great Commandments point to this for me, as well as some other statements of His. But those statements and precepts, in essence, were not necessarily unique to Him.

And how was it, again, that He claimed to be "the Messiah?

Physical homosexuality and contraception are also proscribed by other faiths and individuals without a religion.

So was, eg, being Jewish or Christian or Muslim, or being ethnic, by law or custom at different times and places. Does that make those wrong?

It doesn’t - given that you accept the moral teaching of Jesus.

But functionally you could interpret what you call moral behavior on somone else’s part as being based on Jesus’ teaching when that was no even remotely the case. What distinction would you make there, and why? Would God, in the anthropomorphic limitations most place on Him, make those distinctions? How do you know?

Love is not solely empathetic but also rational and voluntary.

Those are diescriptors you place on love, which love doesn’t know. It just acts.

To believe we’re all part of the same family implies that we’re not freaks of nature which exist for no reason or purpose and are linked **solely **by an accident of birth.

But some of use were “accidents” and some of us are “freaks of nature” and were are related genomically. Nthing is implied save tha we are here and try to explain that with the most remarkable rationalizations!

Why are they universal? Religions are based on belief that existence is rational rather than absurd…

Tt is your rational for the existaence of religions. There is a more profound reason pointed to by the idea that we are all made in God’s image and likeness. Interpretations of original revelations tend to occlude that, sometimes greatly.

Living with the infirmities of old age for many years is far worse than a swift death.
BTW Predators normally kill before they eat.

Yes, like my tabby cat. And yes, we seem to have, distinct from other cultures, a mania for painfully and unnecessarily prolonging the suffering of our elderly. I’ve witnessed that. It is as if the medical proffesion considers natural death as an isult to its abilities.

> The fact that you can imagine a world composed only of persons and plants demonstrates that we could imagine a world with far more richness and variety....



No. Not many can think in fact, and imagination seems, especially among leaders, to be in short order. Hitler, btw, said "It is great luck for leaders that men don't think." Applies in many areas, yes? :)

 

> I think many animal lovers would disagree with you - especially when they have no one to love them. If you were in their situation I'm sure you would produce that very objection in an animal-less world. Would you find plants sufficient company? :)



I know some horticulturalist who might! LOL!



> Your speculation about what you would have done as a caveman is based on your modern upbringing and intellectual environment! The point is whether you would opt out **now** and advise everyone else to do the same.



Yep.



> You implied that extinction renders life valueless. ;)



Depends on what you mean by extinction. That is not finely enoght teased out.


> Is that a rational argument?! 



It has shades of one; I've seen worse adamantly adhered to as "truth."

 

[Sair]

As you say: ‘One individual’s moral opinions are unlikely to be superior to the accumulated wisdom and experience of Christianity and other religions’. I’d agree there. And it’s very honest of you to include other religions. But I don’t stop at simply religions. I read and listen and discuss matters with those whose opinion I value before I come to any decisions on matters involving morality. I don’t simply pull them out of my butt.

You’re implying that my belief that torture is immoral, simply because I’m an atheist, is irrational. I don’t believe that we’re all children of the same father, but I do believe we’re all part of the same family and that everyone should be treated as I would like to be treated. You cannot claim these moral axioms as your own simply because they are Christian. They belong to a lot of other schools of thought as well and to many religions. They are universal. If you want to say they are God-given, then I have no problem with that. We would just have to agree to disagree.

At the risk of turning this into a forbidden discussion about atheism, I would say that in this, you are like any philosophically-minded non-believer. The fact that our innate sociability - our need to bond with our fellow humans and our reliance upon them for our well-being - is a motivating factor for moral judgements should not be in any doubt.

We have the ability (some prefer to say because of a god’s intervention, whilst some of us consider the better explanation to be millions of years of evolution as a highly intelligent, social species) to see the correspondence between ourselves and others like us - even others not quite so much like us, but with recognisably similar preferences. This is empathy, and it is at the root of all our interpersonal moral judgements.

If people fail to consider others, it is a failure of empathy, not a lack of religious teaching (or coercion) that is to blame. Consider that most of the historical failures of empathy in human societies - such as genocide (lauded in the Old Testament, I should add); class, sexual or racial segregation; and slavery (which even Jesus apparently failed to condemn) - have been a result of deliberate attempts to categorise the oppressed and abused as in some respect fundamentally different from the oppressors and abusers. Sometimes these anti-empathetic attitudes have been deeply entrenched in societies. Religions, if we take history into account, have done little or nothing to correct such failures, and have even tended to encourage a failure of empathy when it could be seen as a matter of religious dogma (such as the Crusades, witch-hunts, forced conversions, persecution of Jews, oppression of women and racial minorities, etc.)

I think it was the character of Atticus Finch in *To Kill a Mockingbird *who said (and I may be paraphrasing slightly), “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” You’d be hard-pressed, I think, to find wiser words in any religious scriptures. Some of us follow this kind of advice just because we see its inherent goodness and its real effects upon our relationships with others, not because we believe we are under divine command to do so.

Well call me sentimental if you like, but personally I’ll go with dying of old age.

As does any rational individual! It is the practical goal of all living entities to stay alive as long as possible, whether this is backed up by conscious reflection or not. I’ll quote a beautifully understated yet thoroughly incisive phrase from David Attenborough in his wonderful Trials of Life documentary - “Being animals and not plants, we can only feed on other living organisms, and by and large, other living organisms don’t welcome that.” When you consider the mechanisms that even plants have evolved to make themselves less vulnerable to predation, I hardly think it can be claimed that a preference (conscious or otherwise) for not being eaten is purely sentimental.

But God has set the laws Himself. He knows the result of those laws. He is omniscient. He knows the suffering that will be caused even as He sets up the laws. It doesn’t have to be that way. You cannot say that if only us and plants existed then we’d complain about the lack of variety. That makes no sense as we wouldn’t know what we were missing.

A good point, and one that has yet to be satisfactorily answered by any theist, despite weird, highly counterintuitive claims that suffering is somehow not bad (by its very definition) and that god’s ultimate design trumps any merely mortal sentient experience, when the latter is all we know. And just as an aside, there seems little doubt that in a world populated only by vegetation and humans, plants would still have evolved such measures as thorns, stingers, poisons and revolting flavours to deter ravenous humans. They would probably also have evolved interesting means to take advantage of our utility as pollinators, in the absence of other animals…

And that’s really my point. If you want to call that hedonism, then your definition of the word is different to mine.

The definition of hedonism - that pleasure is the ultimate arbiter of the moral life - is not in doubt. Only the definition of pleasure, the forms of pleasure, and the recognition of the hedonistic paradox - that an excess of pleasure (of certain kinds) inevitably leads to pain - seem to have been ignored in the use of the term as if it were a pejorative.

 

[punkforchrist]

Serious:

But the axioms are not logically “necessary”. Some set of axioms may describe reality better, other set axioms may have been selected for their “fun” value. Mathematics is a complicated mental game, but of course some parts of it have a lot of practical use.

This is another area where we differ, as you probably predicted. I see mathematical axioms as being as absolute as the laws of logic, e.g. laws of non-contradiction, identity and excluded middle.

Certainly. But since I do not accept the absolute nature of a moral code, it seems to be futile to continue. I have a good reason for rejecting the notion of “absolute” moral code. Ethics (morality), which is the fourth part of philosophy deals with “ought to” questions, like: “If I want to achieve X, given circumstances of Y, I ought to do Z”. Obviously the “Z” is contingent (dependent) on “X” and “Y”. It is extremely naive to think that there is a “Z” which is applicable for all “X”-s and “Y”-s, or even for particular “X” and all “Y”-s… Mathematically speaking we deal with a function with 2 independent variables (X and Y) and one dependent variable (Z). In other words Z = f(X, Y). What the “absolute morality” would suggest that this function is either a flat surface (one Z for all X-s and Y-s) or does not dependent of “Y”, that is Z = f(X), which is ridiculous.

But how does dependence in any way suggest that absolutism is false? If X is dependent on Y, and Y is necessary, then X could conceivably be necessary as well.

Guilty as charged. Metaphysics is simple: “what exists?” Look around, and you will see what exists. Epistemology is a tad more interesting: “how do we know it?”, or how do we gain knowldege about the reality? In principle it is also simple: look around, intuit some inferences, set up a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and if the test works out, accept the hypothesis provisionally, if the test does not work out, discard or modify the hypothesis…

Without metaphysics, there is no epistemology. In order to have knowledge of some object, that object must exist and have certain qualities.

There are parts of existence when this method is inapplicable:

1. the abstract sciences. Of course the abstract sciences do not deal with “reality”, they deal with the abstractions of reality.

1. history. But again, history does not deal with reality, since the past does not exist.

1. aesthetics. Which also does not deal with reality, it deals with our reflections of reality.

1. ethics. And ethics deals with reality in an oblique way, it does not deal with what exists, it deals with “how should we behave” or “how should we react to reality”.

Obviously, I disagree with you about each of these areas. Let’s think about history, for example. You take a strong presentist view of the past, and that’s fine. However, we can still talk about a presently existing oak tree’s former state as an acorn. Is it meaningful to discuss the nature of the acorn, what its actuality was and how its potentiality was actualized by its coming-to-be an oak tree? Of course.

 

[Serious]

This is another area where we differ, as you probably predicted. I see mathematical axioms as being as absolute as the laws of logic, e.g. laws of non-contradiction, identity and excluded middle.

Then you are wrong. Any abstract system comes from an arbitrarily selected axioms, which may or may not be “useful”. Are the rules of chess “logically necessary”? Of course not. Math is just a wonderfully complicated mental exercise, which happens to have a lot of everyday uses. Euclides presented his axioms and postulates. The fifth postulate was a subject of controversy for ages. It turned out that it is not “necessary”, and now we have several different kinds of geometries. So much for the “necessity” of axioms.

But how does dependence in any way suggest that absolutism is false? If X is dependent on Y, and Y is necessary, then X could conceivably be necessary as well.

Sure. But here we spaeak of "if I wish to achieve “X”, then I ought to do “Y”. Observe: “IF I want…”. If indicates a conditional.

Without metaphysics, there is no epistemology. In order to have knowledge of some object, that object must exist and have certain qualities.

Of course. I did not deny that. I deny that there is anything interesting about it.

Obviously, I disagree with you about each of these areas. Let’s think about history, for example. You take a strong presentist view of the past, and that’s fine. However, we can still talk about a presently existing oak tree’s former state as an acorn. Is it meaningful to discuss the nature of the acorn, what its actuality was and how its potentiality was actualized by its coming-to-be an oak tree? Of course.

You can speak only of vague generalities, and of those only if there is a deterministic line of events. Sure you can say that the oak tree was an acorn (unless God performed a miracle, and magically used a catfish to grow that oak tree - which I can rule out, but you cannot!). But can you tell the details? From which oak tree did that acorn come from? Where did it hit the ground when it dropped? What was its precise color? Can you give a menu which Caesar ate on that fateful Ides of March? If and when there were several, independent witnesses for an event, which they happened to describe in certain detail, then we have SOME vague idea of what transpired there.

How can you disagree with what I said about the abstract sciences, or ethics or aesthetics … is beyond me.

 

[tonyrey]

To me they were “oral” teachings only at a superficial level. In my opinion His teaching was about something deeper and underlying, such that understanih what that was, there would not need to be thoughts about what is moral and what is not. The Great Commandments point to this for me, as well as some other statements of His. But those statements and precepts, in essence, were not necessarily unique to Him.

And how was it, again, that He claimed to be "the Messiah?

So was, eg, being Jewish or Christian or Muslim, or being ethnic, by law or custom at different times and places. Does that make those wrong?

But functionally you could interpret what you call moral behavior on somone else’s part as being based on Jesus’ teaching when that was no even remotely the case. What distinction would you make there, and why? Would God, in the anthropomorphic limitations most place on Him, make those distinctions? How do you know?

Those are diescriptors you place on love, which love doesn’t know. It just acts.

But some of use were “accidents” and some of us are “freaks of nature” and were are related genomically. Nthing is implied save tha we are here and try to explain that with the most remarkable rationalizations!
Tt is your rational for the existaence of religions. There is a more profound reason pointed to by the idea that we are all made in God’s image and likeness. Interpretations of original revelations tend to occlude that, sometimes greatly.

Yes, like my tabby cat. And yes, we seem to have, distinct from other cultures, a mania for painfully and unnecessarily prolonging the suffering of our elderly. I’ve witnessed that. It is as if the medical proffesion considers natural death as an isult to its abilities.

No. Not many can think in fact, and imagination seems, especially among leaders, to be in short order. Hitler, btw, said "It is great luck for leaders that men don't think." Applies in many areas, yes? :)

 I know some horticulturalist who might! LOL!

Yep.

Depends on what you mean by extinction. That is not finely enoght teased out.
It has shades of one; I've seen worse adamantly adhered to as "truth."

I’m sorry I can’t conduct long discussions on a thread with more than two persons at a time as I have to answer posts on other threads as well and unfortunately I don’t have an unlimited amount of time for the forum. My replies to Bradski will probably deal with most of your points anyway.

 

[tonyrey]

Which makes absolutely no difference to the failure of the argument from morality for any theism, which argues that we need a god to tell us what’s right, or coerce us into doing what’s right, at least.

Morality certainly cannot be based solely on human opinions - including criminals’.

I’m not sure how you interpret “accidental origin”, but, actually, the fact that human minds operate within the causal web of the reality revealed by science is more evidence that such minds arose through natural means than through a zap from a supernatural magic-man.

Human minds transcend the reality revealed by science. A zap from a natural source such as atomic particles is a hopelessly inadequate explanation which lacks even the hint of a mechanism for consciousness.

…And in any case, you are evading the point about the subsequent Christian majority getting its own back on anyone who didn’t conform to Christian dogma.

That is a common failing of most men and women - from which the enemies of religion are not immune.

Maybe that’s an issue to be taken up with those who advocate for the effectiveness of Christian faith and its supposed effect upon human behaviour.

Is modern civilisation based on the non-beliefs of enemies of religion like yourself?

The fact that so many people choose to renounce their faith should be a pointer to something amiss in this supposed repository of truth.

Only for those who blind themselves to the large number of conversions to Christianity…

But in any case, why wouldn’t a genuinely good god choose to reward a faithful adherent with something more than fairy stories?

Those who despise and reject religious beliefs belligerently are the last to receive signs.

Except, maybe, those unpleasant responsibilities that arise from our 80-odd years (if we’re lucky) of life.

Unpleasant responsibilities which are strictly limited in number by your rejection of any moral authority other than yourself…

How does a contra-causal entity, which you apparently want the human mind to be, even operate in a causally-dependent universe?

The assumption that will-power is a fiction implies that you are a cog in a machine, the unreliable thoughts and decisions of which are caused by inanimate objects.

You are referring, no doubt, to the dubious ethical trial of rescuing a human infant or a dog from a burning building…

Your diatribe is unnecessary because I am referring to the authentic ethical trial we discussed on another thread - and at the end of this post.

And you have determinedly not answered the charge of human sacrifice to imaginary entities, around which Christianity centres.

I have already done so on yet another thread:

"Jesus was not compelled to die as a scapegoat at the command of the Father: His death was not imposed on him against His will but resulted from His own free decision. The apparent subordination of Jesus to the Father is due to the relation of His human to divine nature.

He allowed Himself to be executed unjustly because He knew someone had to break out of the vicious spiral of evil in which men react to hatred with hatred and to violence with violence. He refused to be contaminated by the vices of others and in spite of severe provocation He remained true to his principles of love and forgiveness. He did not compromise Himself in any way but retained His self-control in the face of injustice, suffering and death. Neither fear nor doubt nor pride made him abandon His self-appointed task of liberating us from our weakness and blindness. To forgive one’s executioners is undeniable proof of self-mastery.

The purpose of His mission was to enable us to escape not from pain and death but from selfishness and cowardice. He became a man in order to uplift humanity without interfering with our freedom. Our individual guilt cannot be erased but our addiction to ourselves can be cured by His example. His execution was caused by a combination of human vices and weaknesses: pride, ignorance, cruelty, callousness, selfishness, apathy, hypocrisy, self-righteousness and the lust for power. He provided the model on which we can base our lives and discover true freedom through unselfish love.

He apparently failed in His mission yet He has changed the history of mankind because His example and teaching are the basis of modern civilisation with its principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. He infused His vitality into our moribund race without infringing divine justice or human freedom by a simple but sublime solution: by intervening from within as a man. We are still subject to temptation, responsible for our decisions and accountable for our conduct but we are no longer trapped in the prison erected by our egoism and isolation from others. We can choose to be spiritually united to everyone if we follow His example and believe in the power of unselfish love."

As for the fallacy that the regimes of Stalin and Mao were atheistic, well, the fact of the matter is that they had far different agendas to that of philosophical atheists - agendas not motivated by a disbelief in gods, but by an exaggerated belief in their own glory and a desire for ultimate power over their fellow humans.

Both were Marxists, i.e. dialectical materialists.

Why is sacrificing myself for a dog, for example, to be considered worse than sacrificing myself for a human baby? Any neurological study would indicate that the former was more sentient, more capable of suffering than the latter…I’d love to see what you’d make of the “selfishness” of a parent who saved their own child in preference to another’s.

The comparison of the sacrifice of a child for another child with the sacrifice of a child for a dog reveals a rejection of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.