Now that is one heck of a twist but I find the first three words to be a false statement and certainly one that cannot be demonstrated.
Vinnie
Now that is one heck of a twist but I find the first three words to be a false statement and certainly one that cannot be demonstrated.
I wonder if I can tell Jesus that when I die. Since morality is purely subjective, I had no logical reason to actually believe you were correct on a number of teachings and disregarded them.
Vinnie
As long as we keep trying to discuss ALL aspects of denominational differences,
instead of focusing on Theistic Evolution vs. Theistic Creationism - - we have be
EXTRA tolerant …. not less so.
G.Brooks
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You’ve made your view plain throughout this thread.
I wonder, too, since you haven’t managed to identify “objective morality.” You’ve made some real attempts, but you haven’t succeeded.
Often you’ve relied on subjective terms to claim morality is objective. Unfortunately, the ifs that support the thens provide a subjective foundation that you reject.
It’s possible to say there’s an objective basis for subjective morality. Even when the evidence you won’t ackowledge demonstrates the likelihood. Do that, if you must, but understanding that your arguments are for you alone.
There are many things some of us just have to take by faith.
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Abortion isn’t a denominational difference. The central issue is whether that is an unborn human or a clump of cells lacking human rights. If the former is true abortion is murdering a human. If the latter is correct it is not. I find it highly disturbing to reduce that to a denominational issue. Is this relevant to the morality discussion going here? Since even many Christians here think morality is subjective, is that why such an issue can be safely trivialized on this Christian forum? Obviously it’s outside the scope of this forum to discuss whether it is or is not wrong, and there is a time and place for everything, but it’s certainly far more important an issue than the age of the earth or whether or not we evolved.
Vinnie
1 Like
Au contraire. There are many differences in Theist opinion.
The Old Testament, for example, applies a fine for causing a miscarriage…. rather than a life for a life.
So …. the more we wander from the work of Evolution, the more trouble we trigger for ourselves.
G.Brooks
2 Likes
I agree. This is also why it was effectively abolished with the rise of Christianity, even though it had been a common practice in pagan traditions.
The Old Testament, for example, commands that a rebellious son be stoned to death
Deuteronomy 21:18-21
“If someone has a stubborn and rebellious sonwho does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.”
So, to be honest, I wouldn’t put much stock in it—especially considering we have the commands from God in the flesh Himself and His apostles.
Otherwise, if we’re to take the fact that causing a miscarriage was punishable by a fine in the Old Testament as evidence of the moral subjectivity of the evil/justifiability of abortion, then by the same logic, we would also have to say that stoning a rebellious son to death might be a moral option—something God could demand of us in certain situations and something which would be considered good in His eyes. Frankly, I think that would be absurd.
That is just one aspect of a wider question: when is it acceptable to end the life of a human?
Practically all societies have some exception to the general rule: do not murder.
In some societies, abortion is forbidden but death sentence is ok.
In other societies, the rules are the opposite: abortion is possible but death sentence is forbidden.
In most societies, war is an acceptable exception as it is considered ok to kill an attacking enemy. Also law enforcement may be an exception in the sense that violent attackers are stopped with those means that are available - in USA that means killing armed criminals that try to shoot, here (Finland) it means use of non-lethal methods that may sometimes accidentally kill (for example, a shot targeted to a leg - the basic rule of Finnish police is that they never shoot to kill, not even terrorists).
I would say that the general question may be difficult to solve. At least in the sense that there are various solutions that are partly in conflict with the alternatives chosen by some other societies.
2 Likes
Not true. I’d say the majority of people believe in actual right and wrong. I know the people I talk to do. The few non-Christians and handful of eclectic Christians here on this forum are hardly mainstream. Biologos is a very useful website for Christians but this forum in particular is hardly a bastion of orthodoxy or representative of main stream Christian ideology. It’s an internet melting pot with a small number of diverse voices.
Perhaps you could be more specific?
What are you taking by faith in response to my specific question? What Jesus says is objectively true? Or that we should listen to Jesus even though he is just giving us his subjective preferences?
Theists disagree on things? We all know that. This doesn’t address what I said though. We don’t discuss abortion here because of the rules. But it’s not a denominational quibble like a Baptist church splitting because they disagree over which color carpet to install.
We aren’t here because we take the OT literally. It treats women and children as property of men, along with their farm animals (food and beasts of burden). Here is an example of women listed along side oxen and donkeys.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Right from the renowned Ten Commandments. Should we also support misogyny and maybe even reinstate slavery again? Can someone round up a few African Americans and make them their slaves and just say this is a “denominational difference” to their Christian neighbors who have the subjective preference that slavery is bad? Then you can come here and say “it’s the age of the earth that is important” let’s not fuss over denomination issues like slavery. We can use the same Arguments Christians in the South did in the 1800s to Biblically justify their position. We even have the NT for amps. For you to make the statement you did would indicate which side of the abortion debate you fall on because it certainly does not show any partiality towards the other one.
Vinnie
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I know you are aware of the logical disconnect between my statement and your response.
There is no point.
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But there is a point to pronouncing things incorrect on a discussion forum without really stating why?
Vinnie
I wholeheartedly agree and, to be honest, the OT, if taken at face value and not read in the light of the Gospel and the NT, would be one of the strongest arguments for atheism.
Brilliant!
It is what I initially asked for.
I asked you for the contents of your claimed objective moral standard pertaining to several topics:
I didn’t ask whether or not they were moral, or how the standard should be applied or in what circumstances, or even what the objective oral standard meant. I asked you what it said.
You had nothing.
But will you say anything about the contents of the objective moral standard you claim to have access to? I doubt it.
[reads rest of post]
Nothing relevant.
Your views on what constitutes human essence and what is the purpose of sex are both subjective, hence it is only subjectively immoral.
You claim to have access to a moral standard that is “as objective as physical law”. But you are also incapable of describing any of its contents on any subject. Your claim is false.
You think human sex being oriented towards reproduction is subjective opinion? I guess we are truly done then. It seems to me that in order to be an atheist one has to detach themselves completely from reality on a number of issues.
Mostly. I don’t want to swing too far in the opposite direction. The age of the earth and evolution are extremely important questions insofar as they are hurdles to the Gospel. George is correct to promote those issues but his flippant treatment of abortion was objectionable since it’s both a question of whether or not a human is being murdered and also a question of bodily autonomy for women.
Vinnie
1 Like
I would say these are more perceived hurdles than genuine ones. By contrast, when something arises that truly challenges a materialist or reductionist understanding of the world—such as the hard problem of consciousness, or the fact that the universe appears to have had a beginning and to be finely tuned for life—we often see the emergence of convenient yet unproven theories, like the multiverse. The only real purpose of such theories is to eliminate any need for a Creator and to extend the logic of natural selection to the universe itself. After all, if an infinite number of universes exist, each with different parameters, it would not be surprising that we simply happen to inhabit one of the “right” ones by chance.
Reflecting on these issues makes me realize just how deeply the world hates God and loathes the Creator. To the point that it wants to destroy any need for Him and any evidence of Him. This should not surprise us when we consider who the prince of this world is.
John 14:30: “I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me”
John 12:31: “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.”
1 John 5:19: “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”
This is a fun rabbit hole to jump down to. But I’ll first say I generally agree with you on the principle that even if we did have access to statements of objective morality, all statements of objective morality are subject to our interpretation. Now that doesn’t mean that we necessarily have no starting place for objective morality, and I believe in that claim because of Christianity’s belief in the Incarnation. This still comes with caveats. If we believe that the Divine came to earth to show humanity how to properly live, then you can certainly argue that this gave us access to a sense of objective morality, if the mouthpiece of the Truth was actually Divine. A big however, and a free concession I give you is both the limitation of our human interpretation of Jesus’ words and the language that Jesus used himself. Jesus speaking Aramaic necessarily puts limitations of objective moral truth statements due to the barrier between God’s original message and human language. We simply can’t remove subjective interpretation even if we believe in objective morality because Jesus’ intention of speaking on objective moral truths is limited on the use of a specific human language even if one could argue that some truths/messages are self-evident enough to get at the heart of what the Divine commanded. Idk why Christians should be afraid of our morality being “subjective interpretations” because we’ve been arguing for over 2000 years on certain theological positions. Ultimately though, on any particular topic,I believe there is an ultimate true position that exists, I just don’t think we are granted 100% certainty of our positions’s truthfulness. Thus I could comfortably say you can make subjective claims on what objective truths the Divine witness was giving to us, understanding that there was an objective moral claim within Jesus’ teaching but we are subjectively interpretating that. It doesn’t bother me to say that we don’t have unadulterated access to those claims because I think that’s an admission of our finitude and the gap between creation and Creator.
P.S. I still ultimately believe God has given us enough moral truth statements for people to live moral lives and it’s another topic of whether its entirely necessary to have full access to the objective moral claims. For whatever reason, God believes its sufficient to not correct us and have us learn over time. And maybe we do have all we need and it’s just left to us to figure how it all comes together.
-Liam
2 Likes
I’ve added the context from @Vinnie’s post that he dishonestly omitted to include:
No, I think human sex having a ‘unitive purpose’ is subjective opinion. That is the claim of yours that I quoted and to which I was responding, not what you have misleadingly substituted in its place.
We certainly are done. You’ve debased yourself to the point of expunging and misrepresenting your own posts. No further response is needed.
Since God necessarily exists and the natural end of reason is to know God, all hurdles are perceived. Since the Cross is the cornerstone, foundational axis or center of the universe, I think we Christians have a duty to follow Jesus in the great commission (Matt 28:18-20), be prepared as to Peter (1 Peter 3:15) tells us, and listen to Matthew in how he fames the parable of the Lost Sheep (differently from Luke):
“For Matthew, the parable is about the church’s responsibility to care, doctrinally, for its members, who may be deceived by false claims. The allegory is stronger here: it is the sheep who is “deceived.”” AJ Levine
I think we need a healthy understanding of the purpose and limitations of apologetic discourse and what people believe is not a simple matter of looking at evidence and analyzing it objectively. The process actually works in the opposite fashion many times. Our beliefs often frame how we understand new evidence and as I noted above, morality is especially troubling since our beliefs there have direct consequence in regards to how we understand our character, actions and way of life.
I agree to a large extent. I think at the highest level of science there might be some valid reasons for some reservations and a multiverse. Inflation might lead to a multiverse (though even Guth said it is not infinite into the past so that doesn’t circumvent a beginning) and the laws of physics do seem to break down at a certain point so can we say anything about what might have happened “before” this? I think we are at an impasse and even if we may be convinced of a genuine beginning, I can see why others would want to hold out. Science is subject to change as new evidence comes along. I find metaphysical arguments for God much stronger.
I find the constants of the universe looks designed and would include this as an evidence for God but I think this is one of weaker arguments. The cosmological argument establishes God’s existence and whether or not there is a multiverse (whatever that even means) does not change this.
On the internet, less informed skeptics naturally gravitate to these things and offer contrived excused justifying their rejection of God. The real issue is the mechanistic image of God that has corrupted our image of God. This image is why some people place God into gaps that are sometimes filled by science.
We are sinners. I am like Adam. My first response is to hide from God even though I know it makes no sense whatsoever. I think some of us modern Christians are plagued with “Disney princess syndrome”. We read the story of all these screwups ins the Old Testament and think, look how bad these people were. God just saved them from Egypt. Look at those idiots in the wilderness not obeying God and building a golden calf already! I would never do that! We identify with the heroes, or those saved by God. But sometimes I think we are the Pharisees in the story. When reading about all these fallible human sinners in scripture, their story to a large extent is our story.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
“But law came in, so that the trespass might increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,”
Vinnie
2 Likes
Or I missed the bold. Either way, you go back on ignore and this is the last response I will ever send your way (I’m sure you won’t miss much).
It was demonstrated in this topic that morality is absolutely objective insofar as final teleology is correct. Your claim that sex is not unitive is risible. Have a nice life.
Vinnie
I made no such claim.