[quote=“MarkD, post:208, topic:44174, full:true”]
I’m not aware of anything that we encounter in nature that we can’t explain naturally, anything we encounter in rationality that we cannot explain rationally.
And that itself is a faith based statement…
How? . . . .
The one in a hundred million of the very rich, billionaires. I am not even a millionaire, not by a long, long way. I’m on a pension.
Ethics we cannot explain in nature, by physical considerations only. It involves the supernatural, God. It is evidence for God.
Well … technically … all Klax’s claim stated was “I’m not aware of …”
It’s kind of hard to take issue with a claim of personal ignorance.
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Whose ethics? Which? How does human social behaviour involve the supernatural?
It’s not a statement of personal ignorance. Of lack on my part. Just as it isn’t in nature.
Reminds me of something my academic adviser once told me. If you want to make good money go into dentistry.
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Of course it is. You stated somethings of which you said you are not aware. If you meant that to imply something positive, it didn’t work in my case.
Ethics is not simple social behavior, nor a product of evolution. Ethics is the result of our spiritual connectedness, which is the very nature of love. Yes, supernatural! This is the reason why we have a conscience. Our conscience is the result of our spiritual connectedness. Owing to our connectedness we can feel for others, and that doesn’t necessarily mean our loved ones. There are countless examples of people who have seen total strangers in some danger and have even risked their own lives to save them.
To give you an example, relatives of mine, like some other Greeks in the second world war, hid Jews in their homes. If they were caught, and some were, the entire family was put before a firing squad and shot dead as an example for others to see. It did not stop the practice. We are talking here risking one’s life and that of their entire family for people they did not know personally. They only knew that the Germans were hell bent on rounding up any Jews in Greece to send them to concentration camps and the gas chambers. How do you explain this? This is not “social behavior”. Furthermore, the Greeks resisted their German oppressors right throughout the war. And it shows that terrorism, seen from the side of the oppressed, is ethical.
Families would get hold of one or two weapon, mostly stolen from Germans, and hide them in their homes in the front room where they could be easily found. Then they powdered up their house for demolition. Once that was done someone from the household, would go to the German camp as a supposed traitor to report the matter. “See that house over there… they are storing weapons, there is going to be a rebellion”. The Germans of course would go and investigate. As soon as the six or eight or ten Germans were in the house they lit the powder keg and the whole house blows up. And we are talking here extended families from grandparents to grandchildren and more. Everyone is killed. How does this work for the oppressed? How is it ethical?
The people were starved and savagely oppressed and harmed by the Germans. My mother said that sometimes their daily rations were a few slices of bread each and a thimble full of oil. Morale was low and it needed to be boosted. So, if the Greeks could run around saying to each other “Hey, we killed six or eight Germans today” or “Wonderful, we killed ten Germans today”, morale is boosted and a whole people survive.
What enables people to do such acts of self sacrifice? Ethics!
A person, who is humane, is connected to other humane people. This is not physical. The person connected feels for another’s pain and suffering and more than that, he or she wants, even needs to help them in whatever way he or she is able to do so. This can only come about because humane people are spiritually connected to each other. This is what empathy is all about. It is a form of love. Love is of God. God is Love. That is why ethics is at the very least evidence for God.
One man’s ethics is another man’s… death. Being humane to the humane is easy. Not moral, except in the biological sense.
Can you explain a bit more. I don’t understand.
One man’s ethics is another man’s death. Do you mean the Greeks killing Germans? The Germans were immoral not the Greeks.
No, it can’t be explained. Killing the immoral isn’t moral. Not even if God does it.
I agree here. However, it is amoral and evolutionarily, we are equipped to do it to survive. It is our forebrain that tells us this is wrong. Wasn’t it Bonhoeffer who reluctantly plotted to sin, as he said, by killing Hitler? It is a struggle about what to do. As a human, I prefer pacifism. However, were someone to attack my family, my empathy would struggle, and I would likely commit violence to protect them (but as a very last resort). Part of me says that so doing parts from Jesus’ teaching. That is a deep struggle for me. How do you resolve that?
What do you think Jesus would have done if He saw someone attacking His mother? Or a child? Or a crippled beggar? I mean, what did He do when gangsters took over the temple? Twice? Appeal to their better natures while wringing His helpless hands?
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So, I would agree that punishment is corrective, not vindictive. Is that where you would go? Thanks.
The prime aim is to save the victims as quickly and completely as possible. Punishment, retribution is incidental to using necessary force. Jesus didn’t cleanse the temple by scourging the extortioners of course, He attacked their ill gotten piles of money and drove out their thick skinned beasts. They would have followed.
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It’s been said that those who are abused, abuse. Would you say that that colored the vision of OT writers in describing God as vindictive? Would you think that they colored God as they themselves and their neighbors were–a reflection of a very hard environment? Yet, I know they had images of God as a mother and father.
Enns would say the same in “The Bible Tells Me So.” I incline toward that. Christ was, as He said, a better revelation.
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It is perhaps true that those who abuse, abuse. But the potrayal of the OT God as vindictive and harsh and judgmental and so on…while Jesus is “a better revelation”…is a bit stereotypical. The God of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) speaks as much in terms of mercy, love, compassion, patience – in describing His dealings with or feelings for humans—as Jesus spoke (in His own time) of judgment, the coming wrath, and so forth. “I and the Father are One,” He said — meaning, OK, don’t want to open that can of worms. But my point is that the God of the OT is the God of the NT. To use a human example (and thus an imperfect one), children see their parents as loving (when they buy their child the toy they always wanted) and harsh (when they forbid eating a gallon of ice cream in a single meal, playing with someone who is a bad influence, or skipping your homework )…the problem here, in most cases, is that the child’s perception is skewed (in favor of the gallon of ice cream and against homework) due to immaturity or the prejudices of their perspective. This very well could be the case with our views on the God of the OT versus the God of the NT.
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