Toaster strudel alliance takes on drugs, atheists and liberalism

[Darkstar]

Jesus says - seek and you will find. There is no absolute way to know the will of God or be a Christian. God's will changes over time.

Why would the will of an all powerful being change? Are moral rules just subjects of his whim, then? I think this points to him not being an absolute moral authority because he chanes his mind.

But if you seek God, you will find him.

Only if we do some True A/S/King™. Just ask Drich...

The New Testament of the Bible is a good place to law, but it is not intended to be a moral absolute that replaces God. God is the ground of being and the ground of morality. The two are related. God can be the ground of morality because God is the ground of being. When God created the universe, morality was created at the same time.

So...the bible doesn't establish absolute moral law, but god does? Where does god exist outside the bible? It isn't like I can just ask him...

The bible forbids drunkenness (1 Cor 6) which has been interpreted through church tradition to include drug abuse and reason says that cocaine is more dangerous than other drugs so it is reasonable to believe that cocaine use is sinful.

Fair enough.

But you aren't defending this through logic. Killing is wrong because we live in a teleological universe in which everything bears the stamp of God and cries out to us through empathy, society, law and culture that it is wrong to take a human life, not just because someone happens to reason about it but because the human spirit demands it.

I keep using the word logic casually, don't I? Okay, I mean reason, with respect to empathy. Humans aren't machines; they don't function on raw logic and shouldn't be expected to. Simple empathy is enough to understand why killing is generally immoral, but a defense by reason (i.e. avoiding societal degredation) is also possible. Empathy and a basic understanding of right and wrong is innate; you don't need to read the bible. Some people say that this understanding was written on our hearts by god, and while I disagree, they do at least acknowledge it. For less obvious moral issues, we may need to use reason to determine to possible harms and benefits of an action (to yourself and others).

Humans don't value their lives unless thay have religion? The more you know...

But many people believe just that. That does not make the argument self refuting, it may not help the people to survive. For someone that has much to say about logic, you rely on conversational reasoning much more than you rely on philosophy. I don't say that to insult you, but what you consider logic is really not much different from theology, it does not presuppose less. To pressupose that human life is valuable because of an unknown cause does not pressupose less than pressuposing that it is valuable because God created it.

The cause isn't unknown, it is rather explicit: because we decided it is. We decided this because we value our own lives (mostly) and would want others to value them as well. We have empathy for the suffering of others because we can understand what it we be like if we were in their position. We would not want to die, and therefore we feel empathy for others and do not want them to die either.

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Let's say they see themselves as the end of the actions. Same result. If they are living in society, they don't want it to become a free for all (well, most people don't) and so still would want to preserve peace. If they are living outside of society...well...that's kind of hard. As for revolutionaries, they still want a society, just a new one. The US constitution gives the citizens the right to overthrow the government if it becomes seriously oppressive.

You are acknowledging the crux of my actions, that atheist ethics are basically pressupositions. That is fine if there are some things that they don't know through reason, I would say that that is a mark of wisdom to realize that reason and logic can't accomplish all things. But it is fallacious to claim that a pressuposition like "Let's say they see themselves as then end of their actions" is more logical because it has a much smaller and more subjective aim.

It is a common debate trick to simply make the most modest claim possible and then claim that whatever you are arguing against is irrational because it involves more assumptions or pressupositions than your arguement. The reality is that making an extremely small claim that is easier to believe does not make an argument more valid or the propositions invovled more true, although they may appear more true.[/quote]
I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about. I was only explaining how even a selfish person would have a motivation to follow the golden rule if they knew others would follow it only if they did.

I already did, if you were reading my post. Humans agree on rights as a social contract. It is to everyone's benefit to respect each others' rights and in return have them respect yours.

Do human rights come from the people that write the contract? What if someone wants to make a new contract? How is this more logically defensible, I do not see anywhere were it is self evident that "Humans agree on rights as a social contract". It is almost like you are making human governments take the place of God as the origin of morality, typical for liberals, and you are saying that it is more reasonable to pressupose that human governments should take the place of God instead of God because you can see governments. It may be that it is easier to believe in the reality of the government laws but that does not make the more "logically defensible". I saw another poster on this board quote Blacks Law Dictionary as if it gave an ethical defense.

Liberals have their faith, it is in the government, that is their God and they aren't going to budge. Their faith is very strong.

Anarchy, YEAH!!!!

...no. Umm, I'm just going to point out a few things here:
1. God doesn't protect rights, governments do (in theory).
2. People could try to establish a new society with a new contract, but if it were undesirable, then people wouldn't sign it.
3. Government is by no means the origin of morality.
4. It is not self evident that they agree? Why not take a poll on how many people think human rights are a good idea. Most will probably say they are.
5.The rights are established by the people writing the contract because they are required to protect these rights. (By the way, the constitution says that the rigths to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are self evident. Do you disagree, and if so on what grounds?

Yeah, you're right (at least about that last part). Just curious, but what authority am I appealing to?

You are appealing to the authority of liberal philosophical thinkers. The way that you use the word logic actually means exactly the opposite of the word: when you say logic, you mean "an argument from authority from a liberal thinker". Actually, what logic is is a flow of self evident propositions using deductive logic that garentee the certainty of a conclusion (I suppose there could be other kinds of logic like inductive logic too). Logic does not mean the same thing as liberalism.

What liberal thinkers? Or do you mean the concept of rights in general? I'm trying to argue through reason (not raw logic) the merits of those propositions, rather than appeal to authority by saying something like "Would our founding fathers be wrong?" (assuming you're American, that is)

Reason is not incompatible with theology. Some forms of logic and epistemology are basically imcompatible with theology.

I would say the arguments for God's existence are more things that point toward a God or show how a concept of God solves many problems versus proving in the same way that you measure layers of rock in the grand canyon that God exists. The proof comes when you seek God on his own terms.

I am not an expert in natural theology, the branch of theology concern with showing how God exists from nature. I could not say whether God's existence can be "proven" or not, for someone that has not prior experience.

Faith is not really the same as logic and it isn't really the same as reason, it isn't blind faith. The way that faith works is that you see how something could be true, and you start to follow it on its own terms. And then, when you are serious, God reveals himself to you. It is not irrational, I would argue some parts of faith are based on rational considerations (such as the many good arguments for God's existence) and some are based on non-rational considerations (such as wanting a world in which there is morality and love and wanting to be close to God).

A lot of learning about theology comes down to wanting to learn about God from God, and H'Shem will teach you if you are willing to listen to H'Shem and submit to H'Shem's holiness.

It sounds like basically you interpret something you don't understand to mean god must have made it, rather than presenting any direct evidence for god himself. Am I too far off?

Spirituality is not a delusion. You will see miracles. You will see powerful displays of the glory of God. I have seen so many revelations.

I await a logical defense of a rationalistic approach to learning that today, in the world of string theory, quantumn mechanics, post-modern approaches to seeing the world and Kantian critiques of reason, seems a little bit like it is stuck in the 17th century.

Daniel Dennet said about the relationship of philosophy to other subjects "philosophy is a tool for generating hypothesis that can be checked with other sciences." Obviously Dennett is an atheist, but I would tend to agree with him. Reason alone is a good tool for self deception, pride and authoritarianism.

A logical defense of Christianity would be hundreds of pages. You could consult someone like Thomas Aquinas, Alaisdair MacGraph, Alvin Plantiga, the neo-Thomist thinkers, William Lane Craig (who is a good apologist despite the character assasinsation attempts of atheists).

I posted a long list of theistic arguments in another thread, there are so many of them. Many of the most brilliant people in history have believed that Christianity was a reasonable belief system.

So, what you are saying is basically that without actual science of emperical evidence, philosophical musing won't prove anything? Now, about your evidence for god...it isn't scientific, is it?