I no longer think religion is essential for morality

[Richard_Wright1 (Richard Wright)]

Hello T,

This:

@T_aquaticus

Richard_Wright1:

So, you feel there is a rational explanation for the holocaust.

I never said that, and I don’t appreciate those words being placed in my mouth.

seems to contradict this:

@T_aquaticus

There are many rational explanations for what Hitler did.

Then we have:

@T_aquaticus

What there is a lack of is a rational justification for Hitler’s actions.

What is the difference between a rational explanation and rational justification?

@T_aquaticus

There are many studies on human psychology that reveal how humans can go down this road.

I don’t know how many studies show how a person can get to the point of kidnapping and murdering millions of innocents, many of whom were the best in his pre-war military. The reasons you cite are mainly for the war, not for the holocaust. And we know he wasn’t significantly hurt by Jews, in fact sold paintings to them in his bohemian period.

He was being led down a road, and I think I know by whom.

@T_aquaticus

Then I will state that the God of the Bible is an immoral God at times

And I and others say that a god who sends his son to be tortured and murdered for others’ sins is the definition of moral, and maybe He had to make some hard wartime decisions for the survival of his chosen nation. Your view only has any traction after you reject Jesus. If Jesus of the New Testament is true, then the OT has context.

@T_aquaticus

The Chosen People also made a pagan idol without any outside interference, so it can’t be that either.

Thousands of Isrealites died for that sin, according to Exodus.

@T_aquaticus

God also ordered His people to commit genocide on at least one occasion, including the slaughter of children and women, so I don’t see how God is more moral than those who practice child sacrifice (if that actually happened in the first place).

That’s comparing a wartime act for the survival of a nation of homeless former slaves in the wilderness to people who sacrificed their children to the gods.

@T_aquaticus

The problem that I have is in assuming that whatever God commands is moral because that leads us down a very scary path where we shut off our own sense of morality in the name of obedience.

Or, we can understand that the Hebrews trusted the creator of the universe, who delivered them from slavery, prevented their slaughter and led and fed them in the desert for 40 years. I’m sure they assumed that God knew that the Canaanite nations were about to attack them, resulting in God making difficult decisions. If you want to look at God’s actions then they have to be put into context, like anyone else’s would. From a Christian perspective, this god gave his own son the the world and never went around torturing and murdering for no reason, so we have no cause to consider him anything other than moral.

@T_aquaticus

So the world is good as long as we ignore all of the not good things?

No, the world is essentially good, which most reasonable people would agree with, aside from when people make decisions to introduce bad, which can best be explained by a malevolent force.

@T_aquaticus

If Truman had unlimited power and could have ended WW II without any bloodshed at all, but instead chose to drop two nuclear bombs killing hundreds of thousands of people, would that be moral? Of course not.

A false equivalency and another Hitchens/Dawkinsesque logical fallacy, that God is immoral if He doesn’t stop every act of evil. The biblical god gave us His son to show how much he wants us to change, but men have continued to do evil, especially those that completely untethered themselves from Jesus (Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pot).

@T_aquaticus

In the case of the Chosen People, God could have created a force field around them and safely allowed them to move out into the desert without anyone harming them, so why not do it?

Or God could have just created souls in heaven and not create the universe at all. But God had a purpose for creating this place, and preventing every bad act was not part of the plan, as if it ever could have been. To your point, the Canaanites could have made a deal like the Gibeonites did, with the nation that came out of the opened Red Sea, but that was not in their hearts. Yes, it’s tragic children had to die, but in a sinful world innocents suffer. That’s why Jesus came, to show us the tragedy of sin.

@T_aquaticus

I also take the position that the supernatural could exist, but I have yet to see evidence that it does which is why I don’t have a belief in the supernatural

And we believe that a universe that has no, “scientific” explanation that exhibits intelligence, good and evil along with beauty, order, complexity, morality and justice is evidence of the supernatural.

@T_aquaticus

I think you may have prejudged what my beliefs are.

Well, I wasn’t prejudging you when you tried to convince me that a quantum vacuum was, “nothing” and that a quantum fluctuation might have initiated the Big Bang.