We have laws that send people who murder to jail. I don't think you'd argue the main reason you don't murder people is to avoid jail.

Consequences existing does not mean the only or even primary motivation is to avoid the consequence.

I believe it is possible to have rational logical morality without gods. There is Universally Preferable Behavior. This is an excellent book written by Stefan Molyneaux on this very subject. I would also argue that what passes for religious morality is a false morality because it is inconsistent and has no real principles. For example we are told by religion do not murder yet soldiers do so and are given medals and praised, we are told do not steal yet our governments steal from us thru taxation and manipulation of the currency and we are told this is moral. There is no consistent logical way to say person A must do x but person b must never do x. Moral values must be universal. What is good for one must be good for all. Conversely what is bad for one must be bad for all. Moral beliefs must apply to everyone otherwise they are no better than opinions.

(November 15, 2013 at 2:36 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Like Ryanology, the subsequent replies of MitchBenn and DT reflect a childish and superficial literalism about the nature of God as presented in the deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps this will clear it up. God represents the highest good, or in neo-Platonic terms, “The Good”. Willing and doing good, because it is good, moves you toward the ultimate good, or God.

Translation: I am going to try extremely hard to make this sound exactly the opposite of what it says while trying my hardest to pretend that there's no contradiction between what the Bible says and what I'm saying.

Quote:To do otherwise is to do what is good for the sake of some gain or benefit: to protect your reputation, avoid the sting of conscience, and/or fear of the law. To the extent that these consequences preserve civil order and cultivate ethical habits, there is some natural benefit to them. When you grasp that these incentives follow from Divine Providence, you bring your will into alignment with the will of the Lord, thereby uniting yourself with Him. This is not a “good boy” pat on the head for doing a chore, but rather the satisfaction of being in harmony with the One you love. That is Heaven. Conversely, when you do not align your will with that of the Lord, you move away from Him. Since the Lord is Divine Love and Wisdom, doing so moves you into the darkness of falsity and the cold comfort of self-love, which is Hell.

It has to take a lot of effort to be this full of shit. You're going to ignore the blatant offers of reward and threats of punishment which appeal to primal fears (death and mental/physical torment) and pretend that they're just metaphors for dealing with the giant, dumb, unplanned and undirected material universe full of neutral dangers, while insisting out of the other side of your mouth that the universe is actually a meticulously-planned creation overseen by a god who has control over everything. You want to have a universe which operates according to a god's will while pretending that all the bad things in that universe are some inexplicably unintended consequence which only the victims could possibly be to blame for. Ever consider a career in public relations?

You compare it to playing with fire and being burned, as if fire decides whether or not to burn you based upon whether or not you worship it and listen to what it tells you to do.

Quote:If you want to quibble, you could argue that the satisfaction I describe is a “reward” for obedience rather than a “consequence” of it. I think there is a difference, but one in which reasonable people can disagree.

If this was the case, then there would be no need to describe the rewards and the punishments so frequently. God would simply tell people to do good and to avoid evil and promise nothing at all in return. No rewards. No consequences. Then, after death, he could hand out whatever results he wants, knowing that, if anybody did what they did for selfish reasons, it can't possibly be because God did anything to instigate their self-interest in either direction. You simply can't say God doesn't instigate self-interest in the Bible. I could give you a hundred examples with no effort.

(November 15, 2013 at 2:36 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Like Ryanology, the subsequent replies of MitchBenn and DT reflect a childish and superficial literalism about the nature of God as presented in the deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps this will clear it up. God represents the highest good, or in neo-Platonic terms, “The Good”. Willing and doing good, because it is good, moves you toward the ultimate good, or God.

Sorry, you can keep claiming that God is good because he's good, but actions speak louder than words. If he created such a place called Hell, then he is not "ultimate good." According to your religion, God created everything, including Hell, and then set up the system where unless people worship him and kiss his ass, he sends them there to be tortured for eternity. Tell me how that makes God the good guy?

(November 15, 2013 at 4:43 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote: Sorry, you can keep claiming that God is good because he's good, but actions speak louder than words. If he created such a place called Hell, then he is not "ultimate good." According to your religion, God created everything, including Hell, and then set up the system where unless people worship him and kiss his ass, he sends them there to be tortured for eternity. Tell me how that makes God the good guy?

God is good because God says God is good. Things are bad because God says they are bad. It's despotism. They wouldn't even bother coming up with justifications if we didn't dispute the idea, because robots don't require a reason to do what they are told.

I personally do not murder people to avoid jail. Murder is a sin, born of self-righteous anger. I make every effort to live a life of charity, following the example of our Lord. For criminal, however, it is much easier to take the wallet of a dead man than from a living one. I imagine for some petty criminals, threat of more severe punishment deters more serious crimes. But a criminal psychologist would know more than me about that.

Wally, you say that one can have motivations other than cost/benefit. From a purely materialistic perspective, what possible motivation could you have to choose rightly independent of the desire for personal gain or to avoid physical harm and/or psychological pain? I know some consider conscience an evolved moral sense. To me, that stops short of solving the problem and by doing so undermines the very concept of morality, because it replaces moral deliberation with animal instinct.

Ryanology, I am certain you can brainlessly quote many divine promises for the righteous and threats of punishment for the wicked. You insist on using the same wooden approach for interpreting the Holy Scriptures as the fundamentalists you revile. As such, your critique does not touch my explanation. I invite you to question your literalism so that you may hear the Lord’s love reaching out to you from within the Word.

DT, until you stop trying to shoe-horn God into your childish concept of a old bearded tyrannt, you too will miss out on the Lord's message of Love.

(November 15, 2013 at 12:03 pm)wallym Wrote: 1) I think what it's about, is that we have a conclusion that we'd like to believe about the nature of our existence, and God is the only answer that leads to the conclusion we want. Not just in morality, but meaning, and not being finite. I'm sure there are some "You're no the boss of me" cards to be played, but the idea of God having some legit authority is pretty reasonable compared to being nice cause nice is nice.

Eh, no. I made a thread in the philosophy forums a month or so back title something like "Argument Against Divine Purpose", so I don't want to rehash everything here. Firstly, you essentially ignore what Genkaus said, which is that offering up God doesn't help with establishing moral realism, nor would his existence entail it being the case. Theists like to offer this up - never with any actual justification - without actually thinking about why it is useless. God is a subject if he exists. God does things based on his set of values, which he didn't choose. And talking about morality as being 'objectively true' has always seemed to be a misnomer to me.

Quote:3) The funny thing about my personal 'living the way I want', is I'd prefer to believe in God. It's clearly the better way to go. The comfort of an eternal happy existence, and everybody should be nice to eachother. It's not a mistake it's so popular. It's better (minus it not being true).

Even if you were still a Catholic, you'd be living the way you want. If you chose to abide by God's will (as best you could determine it, in any case), that's still you choosing to do so, because it seems to conform to at least some of your values (sense of worth, continued life after death, a father always there for you, etc.). Again, this is just a value judgement being made.

Quote:The reason I bring that up, is that I'm not reverse engineering how to live anymore based on what I wish the world was. I'm trying to do so based on my new 'objective' foundation which is, I'm guessing, mostly biological.

Since morality is about how you ought to act, of course a biological component is going to be crucial. How agents are will affect one's treatment of them. If you were an immortal, impenetrable being, you could expect moral considerations regarding you to be substantially different from a regular person.

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(November 15, 2013 at 2:36 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Like Ryanology, the subsequent replies of MitchBenn and DT reflect a childish and superficial literalism about the nature of God as presented in the deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps this will clear it up. God represents the highest good, or in neo-Platonic terms, “The Good”. Willing and doing good, because it is good, moves you toward the ultimate good, or God.

As I noted in a recent thread of mine (which you responded to), if you take that position that God is "the Good", then you can no longer use greater good theodicies like Plantinga's Free will Defense, nor can you really explain why God did anything at all, at least not in terms of producing a greater good. Because only God is good under that neo-Platonic view. So taking on that view just exposes more flesh in your belief system.

The more I look, the more I'm finding these Frankenstein theologies...

Quote:To do otherwise is to do what is good for the sake of some gain or benefit: to protect your reputation, avoid the sting of conscience, and/or fear of the law. To the extent that these consequences preserve civil order and cultivate ethical habits, there is some natural benefit to them. When you grasp that these incentives follow from Divine Providence, you bring your will into alignment with the will of the Lord, thereby uniting yourself with Him. This is not a “good boy” pat on the head for doing a chore, but rather the satisfaction of being in harmony with the One you love. That is Heaven. Conversely, when you do not align your will with that of the Lord, you move away from Him. Since the Lord is Divine Love and Wisdom, doing so moves you into the darkness of falsity and the cold comfort of self-love, which is Hell.

Way to contradict yourself. You don't do anything that doesn't have some basis in your values (go on, try it). This is just as true for God as it is for you. If you bring your will into alignment with "the Good", you don't do so in a vacuum; you have certain values that incline you to do so. Further, the satisfaction of being in harminy with it is itself doing something for a gain: the satisfaction.

Quote:If you want to quibble, you could argue that the satisfaction I describe is a “reward” for obedience rather than a “consequence” of it. I think there is a difference, but one in which reasonable people can disagree.

And if it is reasonable to take either side of this, why are you using it as support for your view?

(November 15, 2013 at 2:36 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Like Ryanology, the subsequent replies of MitchBenn and DT reflect a childish and superficial literalism about the nature of God as presented in the deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures.

Condescension; the last resort of the intellectually bankrupt.

(November 15, 2013 at 6:35 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: ...if you take that position that God is "the Good", then you can no longer use greater good theodicies like Plantinga's Free will Defense, nor can you really explain why God did anything at all, at least not in terms of producing a greater good. Because only God is good under that neo-Platonic view.

I'm not very familiar with Plantinga's work. Swedenborg explains God's nature as a Creator well in "Divine Love & Wisdom." Divine love expresses itself as an unconditional gift, similar to the Thomist conception of primal matter as a propensity to be.

(November 15, 2013 at 6:35 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: You don't do anything that doesn't have some basis in your values...you have certain values that incline you to do so....This is just as true for God as it is for you.

I agree completely. Your love is your life. What you love is what you seek above all other things. The righteous love the Lord and their neighbors. The wicked love themselves and the world. God is love itself which gives unconditionally.

(November 15, 2013 at 6:35 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Further, the satisfaction of being in harmony with it is itself doing something for a gain: the satisfaction.

Now, you are quibbling. The point is like this. You do not give gifts to make another person feel good, not yourself. That doing so also makes you feel good is a consequence of your actions, not the motivation for your actions.

(November 15, 2013 at 6:35 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: And if it is reasonable to take either side of this, why are you using it as support for your view?

Because I keep an open mind as I listen to your opinion.

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(November 15, 2013 at 6:46 pm)MitchBenn Wrote: Condescension; the last resort of the intellectually bankrupt.

I call them like I see them. Closed-minded fundamentalist bigots.

(November 15, 2013 at 9:53 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: I'm not very familiar with Plantinga's work. Swedenborg explains God's nature as a Creator well in "Divine Love & Wisdom." Divine love expresses itself as an unconditional gift, similar to the Thomist conception of primal matter as a propensity to be.

Cool.

Quote:Now, you are quibbling. The point is like this. You do not give gifts to make another person feel good, not yourself. That doing so also makes you feel good is a consequence of your actions, not the motivation for your actions.

You do so because you value making other people happy (usually). My point is we don't do things in a vacuum. Our ends are at best a means to please our inclinations to do what we value. I don't see anything wrong with that, it's just how things would have to be for agents, it seems.

Quote:Because I keep an open mind as I listen to your opinion.

You misunderstood me I think. What I mean is that if, to you, each side of this just as reasonable as the other, how can it be used to support another view? Since the opposing side is just as reasonable to you, it would seem you would also have to affirm that it doesn't support your other view. o.o