Above, you seem to be confusing two important questions: “do objective morals exist?” and (if there are objective morals) how does one know what that objectively “good” behaviour is? I agree with @Vinnie that if there are no objective morals, it ultimately comes down to a just a clash of opinions between people (or cultures) over what is “good”, and it’s simply a numbers or power game over which “morality” will win out in a given context. You say above that you feel OK with subjectivity…because your personal “indignation at the horrors of history” remains intact. But the Nazis felt perfectly fine and content with their own cultural view of morality, didn’t they? And if everything is fundamentally subjective, we have no inherent right to claim they are wrong and to fight for justice . Only to whine that we personally don’t like what they did.
The second question–what is the objective morality? Is one where Christians do need wisdom and humility. Presumably we Christians will strive to pattern our ethics after Jesus’s teachings and example. At least Jesus provides a physical and concrete template, a divine/human-in-action to imitate, and not just a vague perception of what an invisible God “wants us to do”. You correctly point out that each of us may be influenced by personal biases and our surrounding culture when interpreting “scripture”. This is why it is important to read and interpret Jesus in close community with other believers, so that we have multiple voices to counteract a potential personal bias, and (just as importantly) a community to hold us accountable to living out Jesus’s challenging morality. We need to let Jesus’s teaching and example challenge the ethical messaging of secular culture (if it doesn’t challenge our ambient, secular viewpoints we’re probably reading Jesus wrong!) That’s not to say that every moral opinion of non-believers is wrong, but a Christian needs to be conscious and proactive in judging a behaviour against the template of Jesus. Will a community of believers get Jesus’s morality perfectly correct? Probably not. But its a process of iteration and of continual learning and discipleship which should converge on some objective principles.
Finally, you seem to throw in another objection:
But Christian morality is meant for Christians and not for “all the rest of humanity”. We can not expect non-believers to live by Jesus’s self-sacrificial and non-violent ethics. Whenever Christians are tempted to legislate or enforce their own morality over unbelievers, they are entirely misplaced and should be stopped from doing so. This isn’t an argument against holding to a concept of objective morality, though.
From everything you have said thus far, you sure give the impression that you would.
What’s the difference?
Was that the case for the Amalekites? People were commanded by God to kill everyone, from men to women to children to even the farm animals. There was no mention of surrender.
I don’t deny a God who brings judgment. I think sin should be punished and one of the only ways I can truly make sense of reality is knowing in the end that God will do that. Life is disgusting otherwise in my opinion. So many people and children are abused and hurt by people. So many people just draw the short end of the stick. Without God I can’t dispense with the idea that reality is utterly absurd. It is a universe I do not want to live in. The problem of evil, lack of justice and unredressed wrongs (in this life) is part of what brought me back into the fold. Oddly enough, the problem of evil, the biggest thorn in my intellectual and emotional side as a Christian, is ultimately what caused my walls to come tumbling down. The alternative is far worse!
The biggest issue I have with the temple is not all the Jews were evil. Gospel hyperbole not withstanding. It was passover. I’m guessing pilgrims were coming and there were hundreds of thousands of people there to celebrate and worship God. Some innocents had fled as Rome was destroying Galilee. The judgment of God using Rome is done unilaterally. Everyone is being slaughtered. Every Jew and visitor to the temple was not evil and didn’t deserve that. Women, children, babies in Galilee. Some Roman soldiers possibly with no malice in their heart are leaving widows behind. God is slaughtering the wicked with the righteous. I think that is the bigger issue for me.
If the Temple was filled with a bunch of child-rapists… I’m not shedding any tears over it. Good job Rome! At least I am not going to question the love of God on account of serial rapists being punished.
But I again quote Abraham in Genesis 18… shall not the Lord of all the earth do what is right and not sweot away the righteous with the wicked? This is full blown scripture. a conversation between God and THE quintessential patriarch. It is easier for me to understand Mark as casting this as God’s judgment as he is in a persecuted community and there is a bit of “warfare propaganda” in his account. “The Jews” were evil type thinking it just too naive and simplistic for me. My response is which Jews and when? What about the one’s serving God? Christians routinely think God destroyed the temple because the Jews (through Rome) crucified Jesus. The Jews didn’t crucify Jesus. A very small number (of the possible 1 million Jews alive at the time) were involved in. this. Unilateral judgment on the whole people based on the actions of a few is beneath the God who lowered himself and died on the cross for us. Forget “forget them, they know not what they do,” God slaughtered them and even many not involved! That is the problem. I have no issue with sin being punished.
I read it last night, thanks. I like the part on miracles. The part about probability and contingent arguments (yielding what I would call diminishing returns) was interesting but I am not sure how it applies to much of critical scholarship today. Couple theories dependent on earlier parts are definitely low probability wise. The more complex the less likely. I want to pursue that a little further. I was googling Baye’s theorem at work and trying to get a grasp on some things. Some of it is a good starting ground but some of it is dated. Lewis did a good job pointing out the difficulties of selling Gospels that are largely fiction. He did a good job of expressing that there is a lot more certainty in critical scholarship than is often let on. But the same arguments apply equally to conservative scholarship.
Perhaps so - and it could be that those two questions are wickedly (if I may use that word) difficult to tease apart! Harder at least than what any proponents of solidly objective morality have been able to demonstrate convincingly among what I’ve read in this thread anyway.
“Just” a clash of opinions? But not entirely uninformed or individualistic opinions, perhaps?
Yes! And that is just it. Many of them were “fine Christians” or God-fearing, religious people who would have agreed with all of you here about how solidly objective morality is. So the lesson I draw from that is that so-called “objectivity” just does not accomplish all the heavy lifting that so many of you desperately need it to do! It does not rescue you from the inherent subjectivity that you’re at such pains to deny any more than it rescued the Germans running the concentration camps then.
I wish history told a different story, but it just doesn’t.
I’m not that far away from you all (in my view) - I do think that it is dangerous to “untether” ourselves from any concept of objective morality. It’s also just that I think @T_aquaticus raises excellent points about subjectivity which never just goes completely away (and for some, is all there is). And thus far nobody here has been able to make any compelling answer to that - though in fairness I’ve not read absolutely everything above.
Amen to that! But you wouldn’t guess that at all from our scrambling to claim that we’ve got objectivity in our corner. The main (if not whole) point of objectivity - or our claim to have some purchase on it - is that it does apply to everyone! But obviously we also still hope for some “baseline” of morality that is more held in common if we are to successfully have any sort of secular (in the good sense) pluralistic society. I realize that for some (perhaps even here alas!) for which ‘pluralism’ is a dirty word. But I am not one of those, and will strenuously oppose them with every subjective moral fiber I have at my disposal.
For me, the answer to the philosophical question #1 is important because if there is no objective morality, there is no “real” target for everyone to aim at, and so yes… it is fundamentally just a matter of personal opinion then. If that is philosophically true, one has no moral right (or rational basis) to criticize the morality of anyone else’s actions, or to try the Nazis at Nuremberg. Because everyone will of course think that his/her own opinion “is the best informed one”. But so what? If there is no external template to judge the validity of each of those “informed” opinions if they happen to clash, what (except might-makes-right) is there to arbitrate the goodness or evilness between them? It’s just what I like versus what you like.
But the point is not whether a rival also thinks there is objective morality. Let’s assume Nazis also believed objective morality exists. So both sides think there is a “true” target that everyone should be aiming for, and both think they have the philosophical and moral right to criticize those that don’t agree with what they are doing. But then that leads to question #2 —when our viewpoints clash, what is that objective morality for a Christian? Here the mere claim to be “God fearing” and “religious” is NOT the template that determines Christian moral behaviour but rather how closely the behaviour matches the objective template of Jesus’s teaching and example. Can you find an example where Jesus authorized wholesale genocide? I think not… One can state objectively that the Nazis were not behaving as Jesus would have behaved and therefore can be objectively judged as falling short of that fixed moral target.
Yes, God’s objective moral standard will apply to all people but that is not to say that we Christians are called to be the judges, jury and executioner of Christian morality among unbelievers. It is our task (through persuasion and example from the ground up) to win more people to Jesus, such that his ethics may spread more widely through society as a result of voluntary love and a change of hearts, not force and legalism-- coercion.
And, when it comes to running a “safe” society with some pluralistic baseline of morality…athiests also love their children and wish to see them flourish, do they not? So, the common moral sense held by all people is sufficient, I think, to run a “secular” society that Christians can live in, even if they do not always agree with everything that goes on around them. And if there is something we strongly disagree with–we still have the option of speaking truth-to-power, without violently enforcing our viewpoint.
Can we judge God? (Or His morality by our standards)
Just because Scripture assigns (comments) things to God, does that mean he really controlled it? (See the other thread on earthquakes etc)
Clearly if you are going down the inerrant route then what Scripture says goes. And you have explain away god’s anger, and aggression and genocide. But, if Scripture is our journey of understanding then it would make sense for the final view (Love and self sacrifice) to supercede the earlier view (selfish, jealous and vindictive)
IOW our view of Scripture will dictate our response. It is just typical for critics to focus on the negative.
The justification of suffering is the hardest to do, be it justifiable (by any standard) or random.
The arguments here seem to have got tangled up in subjective/objective rather than ay sort of definition of morality. Sodom and Gomorah are basically accused of homosexuality… um, er, do we stand by Biblical morality? modern morality? or claim to know God’s morality?
I am pretty sure that the traditional view is Homosexuality. They each wanted a go, but they also expected consent. There is no need to muddy the waters with nonconsent which would be a different morality question.
Even now the church is divided over same sex relationships. The Bible is very clear on the subject so we are forced to decide between Biblical standards and modern social acceptance.
Land possession? Isn’t the Gazza strip basically a Biblical argument?
The difference being what is considered acceptable and what is not, Those threr are still basically taboo, or at least frowned upon.
The point I am making is that there are Biblical standards that are linked directly to God. If you do not believe in God, do those standards disappear? And/ or are those standards God’s standards?
There are some who claim that because Esau’s offering was refused and he was a farmer, and Jacob the hunter’s was accepted that we should therefor eat meat… Admittedly that misunderstands why Esau was refused but it is symptomatic of how some people treat the Bible.
We were at a Bible study and we read this story and the idea of homosexuality came up and my response was are you sure the sin wasn’t gang rape?
Akward silence. I mean let’s see, we have same sex relations and gang rape. Which one someone claims the story is about tells me more about them than the Biblical narrative. How do you miss rape and go right to homosexual relations?
Isaiah 1 doesn’t seem to mention homosexuality either. As for Ezekiel, I’d say gang rape qualifies as being inhospitable to guests.
I enjoyed reading his book! (Well, enjoyed… I found it to be stimulating. You get my point haha.) During the conquest Yahweh used the Israelites to execute his wrath. Just like he later used the Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans.
Now we Christians follow Paul’s advice:
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
(Romans 12:18-21)
I think you mixed up the story of Cain and Abel and the one about Esau and Jacob.
Cain was a farmer, Abel a shepherd (Genesis 4). Esau was a hunter, Jacob a man who dwelt in tents (Genesis 25). But I get your point.
What the text says (or rather, what it doesn’t say) seems to explain why God did not accept Cain’s sacrifice: Cain brought “an offering of the fruit of the ground”. Abel brought “[an offering] of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat”. That is, Abel offered the best he had. Cain did not.
But yes, some people interpret it like “God wanted a bloody sacrifice”…
Ezekiel 16:50 mentions “to’evah”, an abomination. Which seems to be a reference to Leviticus 18:22. But yes, the main focus of the Hebrew Bible is on the inhospitality of the cities’ inhabitants. Within Second Temple literature and the New Testament the focus changes.
Apologies, was only half concentrating. Esau and Jacob were also farmer and hunter but the offering was by Cain And Abel, And your explanation for the acceptance is, of course correct… Thanks
People might not explicitly claim this, but whenever any of us are arguing morality with someone and we appeal to our grounding in [insert religious conviction here and your favorite chapter and verses for why it must be so], we aren’t doing all that just so we can conclude “…and this is my opinion!”. No. No. We’re aiming to convince that we have access to the 100% objective standard. What I’m hearing nearly all of you claiming here is that if I have to say “this is just my (or our) opinion” - then I’ve given away the game and have nothing of any real morality any more (according to many of you here.) Let me know if I misrepresent how you’re thinking there. It’s what I’m hearing. Which is you pretty much wishing the ‘subjectivity’ bogeyman out of the room when regarding anything important. And again - I’m with you in much of this - there’s a lot of important stuff that I would love to have and keep firm footing on too!
Good point - and well-stated. I wonder if this is one of those cases where we can say … “well, there is philosophy … and then there’s real life.” (Which is an objection I don’t entirely buy myself since philosophy in ivory towers has a way of percolating into real life.) But even with that objection in mind, I have two different standards for how I treat a question like free-will. In my philosophical mind, I’m perfectly well aware of my 100% inability to prove to anybody that I have free will or that it even exists at all. But on the other hand, (here’s the “but in real life!” bit) I will live in the 100% conviction (certainty) that I absolutely do have free will, and will live as if I do even though it’s beyond me or anybody to show how.
My lack of philosophical rigor in that is obviously not any important part of my foundation for thinking that I need to be responsible for my choices. In the same way, atheists and non-believers seem perfectly happy to be convicted that some things are and will always be wrong, even if they don’t have a satisfactory (to them) philosophical component that shores all of that up with a ribbon and bow. So maybe this is me conceding to you that yes - I am at least behaving as if I do have access to some sort of absolute objectivity - or maybe more that “it exists” as you said, even if my access to it is limited or distorted.
maybe more later … getting in small posts as I can here.
Next you’ll tell me Lot’s daughters would have consented in their place…