(May 12, 2023 at 1:25 pm)Kingpin Wrote: 1. If good and evil are subjective than you have no moral basis to deem anything good or evil apart from your own opinion...
...We all affirm there are objective moral truths.
Divine morality is also[i] subjective, so there's no advantage there. I'm content to use intersubjective morality, because it works. You are completely wrong when you say "We all affirm there are objective moral truths." I do [i]not believe that. What I do see is a collection long-established subjective truths that are common to many societies because of their utility.
Quote:I would argue that our mere existence is a miracle. I won't get in to the Cosmological, Teleological debates but suffice to say even the most hardened atheists and contemporary intellectuals of our time like Hawking, Einstein and Dawkins admit that space, time, matter had a beginning and the fine tuning for the possibility of any form of life is incredibly precise. This makes in my mind miracles at least possible.
No, I don't buy that. I don't think that matter/energy began at the Big Bang - if there was a singularity, it was a concentration of preexisting matter/energy. As for fine-tuning, I consider that to be an illusion based on the fact that we exist in a universe with stable physical constants, on a planet (possibly one of billions) with materials suitable for life.
Quote:Is it loving for God to put you in His presence eternally against your will?
No, but subjecting someone to pain for eternity would be even worse. The best-case scenario is what I believe to be the truth: No afterlife at all, just an end to our lives and then insentience.
Quote:I understand this, but the debt cannot be paid. We cannot be good. We cannot do "enough" to be good. Sin as the Bible calls it is a violation of purpose. We have all sinned, not just inherited debt from Adam/Eve. They brought sin in to the world by knowing good/evil, electing to be like God. Be honest, we all want to be God over our own lives. I admit that. Thus it's not inherited, we are guilty ourselves!
I reject this absolutely. I believe that it is possible to be good, and that good actions are of great value to individuals and societies alike.
Because it denies even the possibility of goodness in humans, IMO it makes no sense for Christianity to speak of morality at all.