Raf

Success!

There is actually no appreciable difference between the harm-benefit analysis I'm articulating and basic morality driven by human empathy. In other words, Nathan, I see no areas of disagreement between your comments and mine, save yours are more succinct. Mine are more geared toward addressing the presumption that god is a prerequisite for "objective moral values." That is, yours is an argument. Mine is a counterargument. Counterarguments take longer

Using harm-benefit as an objective standard against which we can measure an action and determine whether that action is "good" or "evil" does NOT result in universal results, because we are human and each of us will value different things as part of our overall calculation. On the after life thread, the question was raised about euthanasia and abortion. Euthanasia causes a very serious harm: death. It also causes a very serious benefit: it prevents later suffering. So is it right or wrong? Well, who's making the decision? I would contend, and I'm sure many would agree, that the person doing the dying gets the determining vote. But you want that vote to be based on fact, not just speculation. I'm 55. My best years are behind me. So, what, I kill myself now? If I were to think that way in the absence of a medical diagnosis foreshadowing pain and suffering, you would probably want me to reconsider. I have a family to care for. Hm, the insurance money would come in handy, TBH. But my presence would be much more valuable than money. Lots to weigh. If I decided to take my life anyway, you would probably judge me to have been morally wrong to do so. But if my sister, whose final months of ALS were painful to watch, decided to ask for a medically assisted suicide, how could anyone deny her that right? Abortion. I can think of a million reasons abortion would be morally acceptable. All involve terminating the life of a baby. In some cases the baby would have died anyway, or lived a short and painful life. I can't imagine interfering. But where do I draw the line? And why do I get to draw it? A pro-lifer draws the line elsewhere. And one need not be religious to be a pro-lifer. If you value the life of the fetus/unborn child over the mother carrying it, you will say abortion is always wrong. If you say the mother has the right to decide whether she is willing to puther body through pregnancy, you will be pro-choice. Honest people will disagree. And we will spend the rest of humanity struggling with this question. Because I cannot be forced to surrender my bodily autonomy to save someone else's life. Is it different if that someone is a baby in your uterus? I'm not raising this to invite a political discussion but to demonstrate that there are limits to our capacity to reach agreement.

Maybe I should not have split the threads. But I honestly thought "what happens after we die" was a different enough question that it deserved its own thread. So, we clearly agree that there is no post-life punishment for euthanasia (nor is there a post-life reward for sticking out the suffering). Not long ago I learned an actor friend of mine took his life in a "no way am I going to suffer the way my disease prescribes" manner. The thought is terrifying to me, precisely because I don't believe ending this life ushers us into the next. I think it was Ricky Gervais who said "People think atheists have nothing to live for. They have it backwards. Atheists have nothing to DIE for. We have everything to live for." Because this is our one shot at life, so make it flipping count! If you're looking at those issues from THIS side of the final curtain, the question of whether these acts are moral becomes a little murkier. But as far as post-death accounting: there is none. We agree on that.

One more word and you'd have had it, George.

I submit that would be an oxymoron. The standard is objective. The value you place on it is subjective. A person is 6 ft tall. That is objective. If you're a horse jockey that person is too tall. That is a value. If you're a basketball player that person is too short. That is a value. Same six feet. But for one group he's too tall, and for the other group he's too short. Same six feet.

This is not what I am trying to say. Thank you for giving me the chance to clarify. I am choosing my words and their order very carefully: To the Christian, Christianity (the Bible, God's Word) is the standard for objective moral values. To the Jew, I could make a similar comment but it would be presumptuous, so I am only doing so for the sake of argument: Judaism is the standard for objective moral values. To the Muslim, Islam, the Quran, is the standard for objective moral values. This atheist (we don't all agree) rejects the premise of "objective moral values" as an oxymoron. Moral values are subjective by definition, which is why you can't get two societies to agree on abortion, the death penalty, gay rights, etc I believe, "oversimply," that an analysis of harm:benefit forms an objective standard for moral values. Note the placement of "objective," because it is crucial: the STANDARD can be objective even though the values themselves are not. Actions are not good or evil until they are deemed to be good or evil by someone committing, affected by, observing or merely hypothesizing the action. "Thou shalt not kill." Therefore, all soldiers are evil. No, it's thou shalt not murder. Oh that's different. No it's not. It's the same act. The only difference is, you ran the latter act through a subjective filter because you recognize that not all killing is the same. Blah blah blah. Atheists do not believe our morality is objective. We believe all morality is subjective. We also believe that the (oversimplified) harm-benefit analysis standard produces subjectively superior results compared to the standard of scripture, Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Which is not to say the scriptures contain no good. There's lots of good. Some great! There's just some not-so-good, too. Harm-benefit can duplicate the good but it cannot duplicate the bad unless it is ignored.

What happens when you die v. Are these actions right or wrong. Very different questions, and neither answer depends on the other.

Did that adequately answer your question? We would you care to post a rebuttal?

I don't mean to be snide, but it's not universal until everyone agrees, and I don't think we can get EVERYONE to agree on ANYTHING. So we can get widespread agreement on, say, "murder is wrong." But rape? No, humanity grew into that one. For a long time, women were considered property, and so the rules against rape reflected the belief it was a crime against the property owner: her husband or father. I think we would be hard pressed to find anyone who believes Jennifer Love Hewitt is less attractive than Sandra Bernhard. But that doesn't make her OBJECTIVELY more beautiful because no matter how you slice it, beauty is a matter of taste, opinion. I'm saying morality is like that: even if one were to find a universally accepted moral tenet, that would not make it objective.

Define universal

Great, NOW he asks the morality questions. I can't win. If there's no eternal soul, there's no afterlife consequence to those actions for the person who commits them.

How much time should we give him? 22 minutes?

Started a new thread. This chat has nothing to do with morality.

It doesn't. I mean, really, that's the thread. Hitler and Mother Theresa and VPW share the same fate as good people. (That was mean, I know, but the point is the same). One of the criticisms of atheism that resonates is its lack of cosmic justice in the afterlife. People who get away with things in life never have to answer for them. People who did good are not rewarded. Life just ENDS. Most of us have no trouble conceptualizing this for any other animal. Ever step on a bug, accidentally or on purpose, and wonder what happened to its eternal soul? Of course not. It's a bug. Whatever it was that kept it alive is no longer operational. It has ceased to be. It's a stiff. But somehow we think differently of humans and the animals humans love. Pets don't die anymore. Have you noticed that? They "cross the rainbow bridge" now. And people? Well, forget about that. Your soul will not only survive your body's death, but it will be judged and you're getting paid! Well, no. I understand the Bible teaches body, soul and spirit. And I understand TWI worked its tail off distinguishing between soul and spirit to make them mean different things. But here's the thing: Soul is an imaginary concept. It's the name we give to our consciousness to allow us to perceive our bodies dispassionately, but in strictly real terms, there's no such thing as a soul. You have a brain. It works. When it stops working, it stops. All your senses will cease. Whatever "you" are, as a conscious personality, simply ceases to be. You will not be aware of the passage of time because there will BE no YOU to be aware of the passage of time. It's almost impossible to fathom, but there is no evidence to the contrary except that which falls in the category of wishful thinking. I know, it sucks. "You have no hope!" I was told, as if imaginary hope were ANY DIFFERENT from recognizing we get one life each, and there's no epilogue or sequel when it's over. On the bright side, I won't have to listen to hymns on an endless loop for literally ever.

Theists on social media (and this is not directed at anyone on this page UNLESS the shoe fits) tend to think that the atheist failure to account for "objective moral values" constitutes some kind of gotcha. As if rape and murder and genocide are not really wrong unless they are objectively wrong. That's why you may get tired of me pointing out that there is no such thing as objectively wrong. "Aha! Gotcha! So anything goes, because nothing is wrong, nothing is evil!" That is NOT the point. The point is that subjective moral values form an adequate basis to justify labeling intentional actions as good or evil. In fact, subjective moral values form our ONLY basis for condemning evil! But subjective values are just a matter of opinion. What happens when someone disagrees with you? Good question. When someone disagrees with you, the first thing you do is discuss the foundation of your opinion. Values are subjective (is he tall or short?), but the basis for those values are objective (he's 6 feet tall and wants to be a basketball player or a horse jockey). In most cases (not all) an objective analysis will give you what you need to reach your conclusion, IF you can agree on the standard. In a good v. evil analysis, we can check with our harm-suffering/benefit standard. Is someone hurt by this action? Is there a benefit that outweighs the hurt, making it a mere inconvenience rather than actual damage? But if I am using harm/benefit while you are using God's Word, we're going to have lots more disagreement. Example: I believe it is always wrong and has always been wrong to execute someone for crimes other than murder. That is a subjective value. You can't argue with it. It's my opinion. God's Word teaches that at one time it was right to execute someone for gathering wood on the sabbath. I don't think you can make a moral case for the death penalty in that case no matter how hard you try. "It was another time" implies there was a time when this was okay. And here's the crux of my position: If you hold that God is THE OBJECTIVE source of objective morality, you have NO BASIS to question it. None. At all. Zip. You are forced by necessity to accept ALL his actions as inherently moral, all his commands as inherently "holy, just and good." Even when he's ordering genocides, which (according to the Bible) he does multiple times. Go in and kill them all, including the women and babies! Why, that's outra... no, it's holy, just and good. You have NO BASIS to question it. I do. It is unprovoked. It causes avoidable harm and suffering. Now you have to posit things to make it more palatable: Those babies go straight to heaven, so... Stop right there. If a murdered baby goes straight to heaven, give me a good reason not to murder a baby right now. God says not to? Why not? I'm sending the baby straight to heaven! His parents should THANK me! At some point you are forced to concede that it's wrong for a reason other than "God says it's wrong." God didn't say it was wrong for Israelite soldiers to slaughter babies, so objectively speaking, slaughtering babies cannot be deemed to be an objectively immoral, unjust or evil act. It can only be evil under certain circumstances. But God can command the act into moral acceptability and goodness. It may sound like I'm straw-manning the opposing point of view, but I assure you I am not. WLC writes: Let's be clear: According to WLC, the people most wronged by God's command of a genocide were the soldiers who had to carry it out. Did that make you throw up in your mouth a little? I totally understand why WLC had to resort to such a monstrous statement. By declaring God to be the arbiter of right and wrong, and declaring His actions to be holy, just and good by definition, WLC left himself powerless to exercise his judgment to find these commands morally repugnant. He goes further: But THAT is strawmanning the opposing point of view. On naturalism, there IS A basis for making moral value judgments. The fact that there's no such thing as "objective moral values" does not imply in any way that subjective moral values form an inadequate basis on which to condemn evil. The fact is, I can say it's wrong for Yahweh or ANY OTHER GOD to order a genocide, and a theist cannot. That is a fundamental flaw with the notion of objective moral values. Once you recognize that objective moral values do not and cannot exist (they are an oxymoron), only then can you realize that our moral value systems rest on societal consensus, that reaching that consensus requires reason and argument, and that disagreement will form everything from different friend groups to different nations.

jeezdoiknowTHISone

Thank you. If I am less than respectful in responding to your questions, please call me out on it.

You're not understanding me correctly. You are equating "sin" with "wrong." Sin is an offense against God, objectively. God says to do x, and you do Not x. No God = no sin, by definition. It is a logical consequence of God's non-existence. Regardless of whether God and sin exist or not, it is a religious construct, not a social one. There are lots of social constructs governing the evaluation of morality. Sin is not one of them. The question is, can we as humans evaluate an action to be right or wrong, good or evil, in the absence of a God telling us the action is a sin? This is a very difficult question for a believer to explore because it requires you to entertain the hypothetical that there is no god ultimately deciding the answer to the question. Bottom line answer to your question: no, 1 and 2 are not subjective. 1. Is an assertion of fact contingent on the premise that there is no God (a direct response to the first premise cited by the theist). 2. Is a statement of fact regardless of whether one believes in a god. You simply cannot have sin without a god to offend. That makes it a religious construct, not a social one. The challenge is to divorce the concepts of bad and evil, which are subjective evaluations of behavior and conduct, from sin, which is an objective evaluation of whether a particular action violates a set of divine laws or rules. Did that clarify my point or muddy it?

We have addressed these issues before, but I did so in a way that was confrontational and not constructive. I hope to reverse that this time and do so in a way that addresses the issue from an angle I'm not sure we covered directly last time. One of the criticisms we (who do not believe in gods/God) face is that in the absence of God, we have no foundation for objective morality. I'll allow Christian apologist William Lane Craig to frame the issue. Objective moral values do exist, and we can justify the existence of such values because God exists. Objective moral values cannot exist unless God does. Now, I am oversimplifying his point and I invite you to read his work on this for yourself, but I do so with a cautionary note: I believe Craig (I will abbreviate to WLC to avoid confusion with that other Craig of our common experience) uses a LOT of words to obscure the fact that his argument is ultimately circular. That is, one has to presume objective moral values exist in the first place and you must assume there is a causative relationship between those values and the existence of a God in order to reach the conclusion that God provides the foundation for objective moral values. As I will demonstrate in either this post or a future one, the problem with the assumption that God is the foundation of objective moral values is, it leaves us with no mechanism to evaluate the morality of the actions committed by or ordered by that God. Of necessity, anything that God says or does has to be morally good, even if we know they're not. For the unbeliever, this is a serious problem, because we need to evaluate the moral value system of multiple gods who disagree with each other, with each religion telling us we have no right to question the morality of their God. We cannot question Allah or Jesus or Yahweh. A Christian sure can evaluate Allah, but only against Christianity. And the Muslim has no responsibility to accept a Christian's criticism because to the Muslim, the Christian is using a false moral foundation. Simply put, Christians believe Yahweh/Jesus is/are always right, and if your morality conflicts with theirs, you are wrong and better get with the program. Muslims think Allah/Muhammad are always right and if your morality conflicts with theirs, you are wrong and better get with the program. The problem is, they cannot BOTH be right, and there can't simply be no way to evaluate the morality of a god's actions or orders. The problem is in the premise. The problem with the whole construct lies right at the beginning, with the premise that objective moral values exist. They don't. Repeat, objective moral values do not exist. In fact, if you think about it, objective moral values are oxymoronic. We need to first distinguish between types of values. Some values are objective. Say, measurements. Five feet is taller than three feet. Six feet is taller than two feet. But is six feet objectively "tall"? Well, it can be. It can also not be. If you're a horse jockey, six feet is real tall. Perhaps prohibitively so. However, if you're a basketball player, six feet is tiny. Same six feet. Tall against one standard, short against another. The objective value is feet and inches. Or centimeters, for anyone reading on the rest of the planet. So when we talk about values, we can't assume we're talking about something objective, especially when human evaluation against ANOTHER standard comes into play. And THAT is the problem with morality. Morality is an attempt at a coherent system of value judgements, but such judgments are subjective BY DEFINITION. One cannot say an action is objectively moral, objectively right or wrong, anymore than one can say something is audibly green or chromatically loud. Actions merely ARE. They do not become moral or immoral, right or wrong, good or evil until they are measured against something else. What does this mean? On social media, a believer writes: "If atheism were true sin wouldn’t be real. It would be a social construct. So really if you murdered, raped or genocide a village, then that wouldn’t be wrong. So even your worst evils aren’t evil if atheism is true." But this believer is mistaken. Badly. The first mistake is to assume that subjective morality is somehow inadequate to evaluate the goodness or evil of an action. Not only is subjective morality adequate to the task, it is the ONLY tool we have to accomplish the task! That's hard for people to process because it requires saying things like "rape is not objectively wrong; murder is not objectively wrong; genocide is not objectively wrong." Here's the thing, though: "Not objectively wrong" is not a synonym for "right, acceptable, good," or even "neutral." Good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral are all subjective value judgments. Always. (This doesn't change just because one subjugates his own moral value system for God's and calls it "objective." God's moral value system is HIS subjective value system, and all people are entitled to evaluate it to decide whether it is adequate. Rape is not objectively wrong. But it is subjectively wrong and that is an adequate basis to condemn it. Murder is not objectively wrong. But it is subjectively wrong and that is an adequate basis to condemn it. Genocide is not objectively wrong. But it is subjectively wrong and that is an adequate basis to condemn it. On what basis does one evaluate the rightness or wrongness of an action? Well, I submit you hold it against a standard that IS objective. While it is not written in stone, one can build a predictable and useful subjective value system around the premise that all actions have the potential of helping people or hurting them, contributing to our benefit or contributing to suffering. If you commit an act that contributes to the greater good without exacerbating suffering, we can generally evaluate your action to be "good" or at least "neutral." And we can test that standard against any other. Ditch the parts that don't work and improve the parts that do. This is what humanity has always done. It is why slavery was tolerated for centuries. It is why punishment for criminal activity has become less barbaric over time. It is why we look back at a movie like Reefer Madness as a virtual comedy rather than a solemn warning. It is why Amos and Andy were hilarious in their day and offensive now. Our morality evolves. Biblical morality does not. Quranic morality does not. Objective morality cannot change, by definition, because if it's objectively moral in 2025 then it must have been objectively moral in 2025 BC. If you argue "but it was a different time," then you concede, of necessity, that morality changes when times change, which is the OPPOSITE of "these actions are objectively wrong." This is how I answered the social media Christian (I will repeat his post so you don't have to scroll back up for it: "If atheism were true, sin wouldn’t be real. It would be a social construct. So really if you murdered, raped or genocide a village, then that wouldn’t be wrong. So even your worst evils aren’t evil if atheism is true." My reply: 1. Sin is not real. 2. It is a religious construct. 3. Rape, murder and genocide are wrong, which is a SUBJECTIVE determination with a rational basis in the amount of avoidable and unnecessary harm that is caused. 4. Evil is a subjective value judgment, so as long as there are people, those acts will contribute to avoidable human suffering therefore determined subjectively to be evil. 5. Subjective morality is an adequate basis to condemn evil. 6. Objective morality is an oxymoron. It does not and CAN not exist. Stopping here to allow others to weigh in and ask questions.

I was surprised to learn that Bullinger is not held in particularly high regard among Bible scholars today. But then I can't imagine any literalist/dispensationalist would be.

Cool. Not curious enough to buy it though. Not at that price. Anyone else recall examples from previous study or publication?

I got to wondering if there is a collection of these somewhere. Wouldn't that be handy? The most famous, of course, is agape as "the love of God in the renewed mind in manifestation." I can confidently say these many years later that this definition of that one word is pretty much made up out of whole cloth. It seems to be a concerted effort to work the words "renewed mind" and "manifestation" into a word that implies neither. BUT that doesn't make it necessarily a bad definition. I just think it needs to be thought out more. There were some verses where that translation makes no damn sense. Like when God so loved the world. Did he renew his mind? I mean come on. Explore. What were some of the others? I've long since discarded my TWI books, but I would be interested in exploring some of the others and analyzing whether they were accurate or self-serving. Post em if you've got em.

Thank you for acknowledging that the thread has veered away from its original topic so much that it is no longer even in the right forum.

I would like to request some caution here: the topic of this thread is questioning TWI doctrine, but if we start getting into arguments for and against the reality of claimed supernatural experience, I am concerned the discussion will no longer be "About the Way" and would instead fall rightly under "Matters of Faith." I'm trying to head this off now because I don't want people to come back later and say "why did you let so and so atheist say this and not let the Christian say that?"