(February 25, 2015 at 1:50 am)Godschild Wrote:

(February 24, 2015 at 10:19 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: There is precious little of truth in that collection of iron age myths you cling to in hopes of surviving the death you so fear.

Absolutely no understanding of any tested, verifiable models of reality and yet you go on and on about the ignorance of others.

Your ignorance would be astounding if it weren't self inflicted. That it is, while astonishing, is also incredibly sad.

Why is this kinda' crap all you ever offer to a discussion, if this is the extent of your best stay away.

GC

Just calling them as I see them. If you don't like your willful ignorance being called out, do something to fix it.

@Ignorant, I've spent some time pondering your definition of "good", and it still leaves me confused. You say goodness is subjective, but you also say we can be wrong about our perception of goodness (like Hitler). You also say that goodness is for the sake of other goodness, and I'm not sure what purpose that serves in your definition. Then you throw God in at the end and say if he satisfies all our desires then he is goodness itself. What does "goodness itself" mean? I thought Christians believed that God was a person.

So I give up. No more questions.

(February 25, 2015 at 11:39 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: He's saying that if an equal standard to goodness DID exist, then we might just call that "God".

Why should god be considered the ultimate good? Satan liberated Adam and Eve, but apparently lost the war and the tyrant is now in power. The OT does nothing to contradict that idea, but rather enforces it throughout. If the bible is 'history', his-story is always written by the winner and not necessarily the good guy.

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(February 26, 2015 at 2:04 am)Godschild Wrote: If evolution was real why do we still have the so called living fossils and all other life forms have evolved into different animals, heck they haven't even changed.

Animals and plants do not change into other lifeforms. Mutations that do not hinder survival are passed on in the genes and if they become dominate, they can steer a group to a new group that can survive better or in a different climate or just look or smell different and put off the original species. Evolution does not kill off the original species. Nature does that. Other than survival of the fittest, there is no reason to expect the original species to die off. They did not magically change.

(February 25, 2015 at 10:37 pm)watchamadoodle Wrote: @Ignorant, I've spent some time pondering your definition of "good", and it still leaves me confused. You say goodness is subjective, but you also say we can be wrong about our perception of goodness (like Hitler). You also say that goodness is for the sake of other goodness, and I'm not sure what purpose that serves in your definition. Then you throw God in at the end and say if he satisfies all our desires then he is goodness itself. What does "goodness itself" mean? I thought Christians believed that God was a person.

So I give up. No more questions.

Your confusion is due to a few things, I suspect:

1) I do not mean the same thing by the words "subjective" and "relative" as in the common way most people use those terms. Subjective means that the judgment is made by a subject, a judge, an observer. Goodness is "subjective" in that it requires a subject to judge it according to his own experience. Goodness is "objective" (i.e. either truly good or else only apparently good) according to a given thing's ACTUAL capacity to satisfy the human desire for which that thing is sought.

A person may "subjectively" judge that dirt will satisfy his or her hunger for the sake of nourishment and growth. That person is wrong in judging that particular object's (i.e. dirt's) ability to provide for nourishment and growth ("objectively"), and perhaps partially correct about satisfying hunger (e.g. the space occupied by the dirt in the stomach might actually sate the hunger).

2) As far as goods for the sake of other goods is merely a part of the fuller picture. The reality is that particular actions do not occur in a vacuum. Everything we do is ordered toward the obtaining of other, future goods which are also subject to judgment. Only when those goods are sought in the correct "order" can you call actions "good". E.g. Sleep is good. Being awake is good. Deciding to take a nap after only crossing a busy street half-way is not good. Always being awake is not good. Those goods must be done in the proper "order".

3) The last, conditional statement about God was merely to show how he would relate to goodness in such a way that a person could assert that "God is good". Being a conditional statement, and not a proof, I was merely pointing to the implications for my description of goodness for any such future argument.

4) Christians don't say that God is a person. Christians say that God is three persons.

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(February 25, 2015 at 11:39 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: And a human would not be on the scale of human-ness, but THE standard by which all humanly things might be measured. He's saying that if an equal standard to goodness DID exist, then we might just call that "God". But it's not necessarily true that such a thing does. Make sense? It's some old Plato stuff. Here's some more info. Hope that helped!

Thanks for helping out! This is certainly Platonic, but it isn't exactly my position. The "standard" of goodness is any given thing's ACTUAL ability to satisfy the desires of a human being. There is no single object that we encounter in our universe that satisfies all of these desires, but some objects satisfy, either more or less, particular desires individually and sometimes collectively. We must, therefore, try and obtain goods at the right times and in the right ways which actually satisfy the desires which cause us to seek them in the first place. My position, therefore, while similar to Plato, accepts Aristotle's contribution to his teacher's position, as well as the development of Thomas Aquinas, with a working development that I am currently trying to workout for myself so I can understand it in today's terminology. That said...

IF there were some thing that, when we encountered it, was considered good from every possible view/aspect, and upon obtaining it we found that it satisfied all of our desires, that would be, at the very least, the human good. Admittedly, my quick conditional statement went the extra steps and called that human good, God, but it wasn't being proposed as an actual proof. Thanks again!

(February 21, 2015 at 9:33 pm)Nope Wrote: The god of the bible is a sociopath. I am curious if Christians can explain why their god is good without resorting to "Because the bible says"

I don't mean to be offensive in any way, but logically speaking, if a sociopath is someone who goes against morality and God is supposed to author the moral code, how can God be a sociopath?


What is "good" and who gets to decide?

(February 26, 2015 at 2:57 am)aemorrow Wrote: I don't mean to be offensive in any way, but logically speaking, if a sociopath is someone who goes against morality and God is supposed to author the moral code, how can God be a sociopath?
What is "good" and who gets to decide?

No one gets to just decide. I don't just run around saying I'm going to define good as punching people in the face and have people say yeah Sam we'll do that! There just are goals people generally action to produce. Also Christian theism doesn't have monopoly on moral theories. There are secular theories that theist philosophers support like utilitarianism, virtue ethics, deontology, natural rights, etc.

If one being gets to decide what is good, and that's it, then that is not morality at all. Especially since that being is not part of the group affected by the actions being judged. His judgements in no way guarantee whether actions are harmful or helpful to humans. So he could be an evil malicious tyrant. Which he is, he spells it out in detail in the bible.

So how can we know whether his judgements are actually good or bad? We use our own standard. All christians do this, they just claim that they don't. It's why most christians say slavery is wrong even though the bible condones it. They wouldn't stone their kids to death for being unruly, even though the bible says to. They wouldn't force a rape victim to marry the rapist, even though the bible says so. Like atheists, they have a conscience. An inner voice that guides them. It's not magic, it's part of everyone (except sociopaths). It's a product of evolution and environment, on a very basic level. Cooperation is a helpful trait.

How come christians are ignoring these, and so much more of the bible? Because they know these things are wrong. Wrong as in harmful, not wrong as in some uninvolved third party handing out random judgements. Of course they then justify this to themselves with ridiculous contorted arguments as to why most of the bible doesn't actually say what it says and why it no longer applies. But these are after-the-fact rationalizations, which is why they are always such terrible arguments.

But if christians were honest for one second, they would see that they are simply using their own idea of what is good to filter out what the bible says (or what any person presuming to speak as an authority for God says. You wouldn't kill your family because your fucking priest tells you to. Why's that?) What christians do though, is to use divine righteousness as a shield for their prejudices when they happen to line up with what the bible says. God hates homosexuals. I don't have to explain why I hate homosexuals, because God hates them. You're getting confirmation for your previously held beliefs from an imaginary, irrelevant third party.

If christians didn't do this filtering, they would be very soon dead or in jail.

Subjective morality is never going to be perfect. Everyone's judgement is going to be slightly different. Or perhaps a lot different. But as a society, we come to agree on many things naturally. Murder, theft, assault, rape... in most civilised societies, we agree these are wrong, without having to learn this from ancient books.

The finer details we deal with ourselves, by looking at each situation and evaluating it carefully. Just because our judgements don't all work out the same, and just because they aren't perfect, doesn't mean they are worthless. That is the false dichotomy that I highly suspect theists want to impose here and is where I suspect you are trying to drive this argument, ignorant. The world is not black and white. Things are not just either perfect or useless.

Subjective morality works, on the whole, and it's really good. God given morality does not work, because as I said above, theists filter it anyway.

You want to know what happens when theists stop almost entirely filtering their book? Take a look at Muslim theocracies and ISIS.

I rest my case.

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@TRS: You are right, technically by imprisonment you're not affecting free will, just restricting what that free will can accomplish. And as I've said a million times, you can have free will and just good options, if an all powerful being wishes it. Hence the other false dichotomy you referred to. And indeed, free will and accountability are different; but intertwined in such a way as to be inseparable.