Regarding the video I have to ask: fine tuned for life and mind … or … simply fine for life and mind? Of course what would really be surprising would be for a life form such as ourselves to have evolved without living in such a Goldilocks universe. Seems more fittingly parsimonious and modest to simply note that the conditions are suitable for what we required to exist, without assuming all else was determined for the sake of our development. I hope I’m not being a wet blanket here. Does anyone else get the feeling that viewing the entire universe as but the yolk sack for our development seem just a might too self satisfied?
No argument with you there Mark. Although as a Christian the particular place God puts us is markedly higher than we even comprehend - this is not something that emerges from a sense of self-importance but as recorded in Scripture.
Nevertheless, we could safely assume an infinite God would have infinite reasons for anything he does, most of which we would be beyond our comprehension or relevance.
This is something I’m currently trying to figure out for myself. After a couple weeks of downward spiral in February, the only things that stopped the free fall in my mind were the things atheism can’t answer. I think the strongest to me personally are existence and morality. The infinite regress problem in addition to the prevailing belief our universe had a beginning certainly demands a cause. It’s easy to get in a loop about why a god doesn’t get a “necessary being” pass. I don’t know how to fully explain it so much as just say that is the kind of god Christians believe in. I’ve heard Aristotelian ideas of cause and effect are irrelevant now that we understand the world of quantum physics. The kind of Schrodinger’s cat of how two things can be true at once on that scale seems to get out of the problem. A simultaneous cause and effect can happen (e.g. a chemical reaction) but that kind of assumes a scientist poured two chemicals together. I’ve also heard from atheists that it’s obvious we exist in an inhabitable universe since the odds approach 100% that any being able to observe the universe would already exist in one that was hospitable to life or else they wouldn’t be there in the first place (assuming infinite universes). This sounds compelling but as the response goes “if a prisoner is in a firing squad and survives after 20 soldiers shoot simultaneously his first thought is not ‘obviously I can still observe this situation because if I were dead I wouldn’t have any consciousness at all.’ That is not the response any sane person would have because it doesn’t answer the ‘why’ such a coincidence occurred.”
There are several ways to defend a subjective morality like cultural or utilitarian arguments. There are some troubling stories in the OT, but a simple “by what basis?” can always be offered to an atheist who poses a criticism on moral grounds. Divine command theory is not the answer but it lies in the character of God. Instead of things that God says “becoming” good God would only do or command things consistent with His character. I think you are correct in your observation about a common sense of morality. Someone can always argue “killing is wrong because we would go extinct otherwise” but it just falls short in my opinion. If everyone on earth decides killing is ok, what atheist can claim they are wrong?
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Evidence is irrelevant. Absolutely irrelevant. Apart from looking out the window at your back yard: it’s average. Cosmically. Not just for our universe. For eternal infinity. Rationality isn’t speculation; there is no comparison. This is an exercise in remorseless, Occamic, parsimonious logic. Everything else is lust.
This is why the cosmological constant is what it is, what it has to be. Not Susskind’s 1, 2 ,3, 4.
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Plato has informed my approach. Things either actively or passively transmit change/motion. The ultimate cause of motion must be an active (ie wilful) transmitter, or it in turn has a cause of its motion.
Puzzling. Not sure who you are addressing … perhaps the original poster? But I don’t understand why you think an atheist is unable to condemn spurious, unjustified killing. First of all what we condemn or condone is not first and foremost a matter of exercising reason. As Jonathoh Haidt says in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: Intuition Comes First, Reasoning Second. That is the heading for the first part of his book on morality, a book that was strongly recommended to me by @Randy and others which I was finally able to pick up at my local library yesterday. Randy, you were right and so I’m passing on your recommendation to @SkovandOfMitaze though I suspect he is familiar with it.
In order to condemn or commend an act we do not consult any moral decision-tree or conduct some moral calculus. We simply intuit it immediately and then try to justify it to others (perhaps). Even if the Bible were thought to contain God’s marching orders for moral human interaction, it would still only come in at the justificatory second step, not at the primary step of recognizing moral value. That is simply the way we are wired.
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Aye MarkD, it’s essential reading. The only scientific criticism of it is that he invokes group selection. How theists think that they demonstrate superior morality is beyond me.
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Probably the very intention to make the case of ones moral superiority is already a step in the wrong direction.
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Aye, also predestination is often just under the surface.
I was thinking that the confession of being sinners that is ubiquitous to Christians everywhere seems to reside all too easily for many along side the belief that, sinners or not, you’re all still head and shoulders above my lot.
I’m not sure what is meant by predestination.
The bizarre, fear deranged belief that they have been chosen for salvation and 97% of humanity is damned by a loving Gard, as demonstrated by them not having said the sinner’s prayer.
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I sort of agree with it. But there are things that I see as being listed as the moral way according to God that makes no sense to me.
I don’t see why many things about sexuality is condemned. In general too eye for an eye makes way more sense to me than turning the cheek. Especially considering often in school environments when a bullied person fights back with the bully , the bullying tends to stop and they somehow will being interacting more respectfully towards each other. It seems it makes the situation better. But Jesus says turn the cheek which has some value but to m seems more like it should be a proverbial truth and not a definite moral truth.
The laws centering around divorce and remarriage also makes no sense to me. As in if someone divorces for a reason besides adultery, such as they just don’t get along, they should remain celibate and single unless they get back together or if it falls
Into the issue of a nonbeliever leavening the believer is free from the bondage.
So I believe what you said is also more in the proverbial truth. As in it’s a common thing, but not set in stone.
I’ve only gotten started and hadn’t come to anything like that yet. When I get there I’ll no doubt be reading it with a very high resolution allegorical filter engaged. 
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I also have no qualms just saying I outright disagree with something.
Like this.
Deuteronomy 22:13-21 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Laws on Morality
13 “If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then turns against her, 14 and charges her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her, and says, ‘I took this woman, but when I came near her, I did not find her a virgin,’ 15 then the girl’s father and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. 16 The girl’s father shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man for a wife, but he turned against her; 17 and behold, he has charged her with shameful deeds, saying, “I did not find your daughter a virgin.” But this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city. 18 So the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him, 19 and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the girl’s father, because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days.
20 “But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin, 21 then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house; thus you shall purge the evil from among you.
It’s one of the stupidest things in the Bible that I’ve read because it’s a false belief that all women will bleed when they lose their virginity and therefore statistically speaking I have to assume this barbaric thought resulted in innocent women being murdered. Sure someone could fall back on well God would have not allowed that to happen… but I could say why does God allow all these other clear things to happen that would be just as easily preventable.
It’s not something that I can just say it’s allegorical lol. I think they 100% believed that and did it.
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I can’t speak for the self-righteous groups of Christians who see no contradiction between the way they behave and what Jesus criticised in the Pharisees. I only know that I can’t call myself a sinner and believe I am inherently better than any other human. I think self-righteous sinners saved by grace is a jarring contradiction.
Secondly, the all-too-oft quoted reasoning that morality only exists if there is a God is demonstrably nonsense. On another forum I take on Christians who make that argument. I argue for Christians, I argue for atheists on that site - depending. I find the more rational atheists on that site inherently and indirectly appeal to a view that if a god exists there should not be injustice, cruelty, etc. I love that about them.
Predestination: Does not abrogate free will. It is that God who is outside of time ‘pre’ (from our perspective)-determines based on choices and actions within time. There’s a whole world of ifs and buts for you in there we could spend pages on, but that’s the essence. The extreme Calvinistic view - to which I don’t subscribe - would remove free will from the equation. (Traditionally the Calvinists and Arminians split on this issue. Not referring to the lovely people whose names mostly end with -yan.)
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This represents my pre-Christian position at age 17. “Well, it just is!” It’s akin to christians who don’t want to look further than a literal translation of Genesis 1-3.
I think both positions potentially rob us of being thrown into wonder. And wonder has a power for transcendence. It draws us deeper into discovering what’s hidden behind the things we assume. And sometimes what’s hidden there is just like those folk tales of the young boy who left his cottage in the woods searching for his fortune and found something else…
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On this we agree. I don’t believe God belief is any hindrance to righteous behavior but neither do I think it confers any advantage.
However, since moral perception is mostly intuitive, it might be that Christian beliefs provide a basis for sufficiently valuing something that can’t be entirely justified by reason. Conceptualizing morality as squaring ones choices and actions with a morally perfect being who sees your own soul better than you do could have that effect.
I would have to wonder though whether, so long as people conceptualize the moral ought as being imposed from above, if it casts them eternally in the role of a child who must mind his parent’s dictates. There is something to be said for endeavoring to become morally perceptive in ones own right directly with no intervening authoritative oughts; not for the sake of uninhibited libertine enjoyment as some fundamentalists seem to assume, but for the sake of moral independence and maturity. Surely anyone who aspires to be an image-bearer should take that step.
Given no expectation of any divine intervention, I do not expect that there will be no injustice or cruelty. I’ve seen enough to know those are out there and sometimes can be provoked in me. But if there is a way we want the world to be we can at least cast our vote with our actions and words so far as we can. But I have no resentment toward any controlling being for giving life such ugly dimensions for I don’t think there was any omnipotent creator who fashioned it that way. We just have to take the good with the bad and work with what we have.
In case you don’t know, while I don’t believe in any gods as beings apart from ourselves I do think there is something about us which has given rise to god belief. That much I think is real and one place that manifests is in the phenomenon of conscience. That is one of many ways in which we are dependent on something not completely in our control. There is no reason an atheist cannot honor and treat as sacred what that is, even without knowing what to call it.
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Though after my statement it often lead me to thinking about thoughts I previously had on the bitter water.
For me it comes down to a few things. I framed it though to conceal many parts of it.
- It’s in scripture and they believed it.
- It’s not scientifically accurate whatsoever.
- God inspired it.
So why would he have inspired that?
Out of all the reasons on why he inspired it this is the one I believe is most plausible.
God has always worked within the frame of mankind. As you stated about slavery. He worked not only with their scientific knowledge but their cultural and societal beliefs as well. Afterall he told moses the laws of divorce was built around their hard hearts. Not actual goodness.
In their culture the death penalty is what was used to kill adulterous people. That was the max sentencing. Not the minimum. Women were not allowed to wander off and the men kept close eyes on them. It would have been fairly difficult for them to get away with it. Especially considering they married at a young age. God would know that the bleeding was not 100% true. The men would not.
So it was not the jealous husband that was allowed to bring out the bedsheet but the girls father. That would mean that there was a very good opportunity for a father to protect their innocent daughters by using blood to protect their daughter. I believe it’s a link to using blood on the door posts and the blood of Jesus to save us.
Same for the bitter water tying it to the flood that washed away evil, and to baptism.
It was a law God gave to intentionally undermine the evil men could take against women.
I was once planning to write a book around, ‘spirituality for an atheist’. Alain de Botton beat me to it, but as much as I enjoy his writing, I found it a little ‘religious’. I don’t think you’d need to read what I was intending to write. I do think an overly materialistic (perhaps not adequate adjective) atheism has led to some throwing out certain… disciplines or spaces that are inherently part of who we are. Applies to many christians too. My book was going to explore those things. The book wasn’t to be christian bait with a big hook stuck inside it, it was entirely sincere.
Couldn’t agree more, Mark. This reflects definitions of levels of moral choice.
Without a shred of (conscious - we’re very tricky) manipulation to arrive there, it’s exactly how I read Christianity - from both Christ and Paul’s positions. In choosing honesty over dishonesty even when with a small lie I could have had a refund, it’s not because someone is leaning over me holding me to account. Because it’s right. It’s because it resonates with the deepest part of who I am that is easily obscured by my own clouds of conflicting need. In one sense, it reflects the Fatherhood of God - but my action doesn’t buy me anything, is not obligation for anything. At my most agnostic point I couldn’t shed this because I knew it was right. So when I included ‘morality’ in my list, this is what sparked it. Even if there was no God, I still believe in and long for justice, mercy, and truth… beyond the spin, manipulation, greed.
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Yes, I was just responding to the OP. I didn’t mean to imply an atheist is incapable of condemning such an act. I was more just using a reductio ad absurdum to point out what I see as a flaw in morality based on cultural consensus.
I think there is some intuition for sure. I guess the question is “Is evolution the best explanation for it?” I just listened to an atheist’s Youtube channel addressing libertarian free will vs determinism. He was arguing for a flaw in the cosmological argument. It went something like "if we have free will, not all things have a cause (since that formulation of the cosmological argument had that language). Or “all things have a cause but we were determined to think that.” It’s an interesting idea. I’ve heard neuroscientists don’t believe it in free will just because of how much actually happens in our brains before a thought emerges.