(February 25, 2015 at 6:54 pm)rasetsu Wrote:

(February 25, 2015 at 3:17 pm)Ignorant Wrote: I don't remember saying that (can you point to it?), because that is a silly thing to say on an atheist forum. I do remember saying this:

"IF god IS the thing that, once obtained, completely fulfills our humanity, then he is goodness itself, and therefore, God is good. But only IF."
- Pg. 14, Post #138, linked above

I believe you meant Pg 9, Post #85, HERE

You are right. Thanks for catching that!

(February 26, 2015 at 2:48 am)aemorrow Wrote: I think personally, that the God of the bible is good, using the Platonian definition. I also believe that the God of the bible is beyond good in a way that I don't understand so I would have to plead agnostic in that sense, but the God that I understand from the bible is at least Platonian good.

Please supply this "Platonian" definition of good. I've tried to look it up and come up empty.

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(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?

Your god is no author of morality, considering his bloody hands.

@Rob

This one is spot on with what we're talking about. Very funny.

(February 25, 2015 at 11:39 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: Because the nature of this conversation is about varying degrees of a commonly used sentiment, such as "good", it's important to be particular with the words used to describe each degree that separates them. Sounds confusing but consider how you might rank things that are good on a scale of 1-10. 1 being a buy one get one half-off coupon on hemorrhoid ointment, a 10 being the highest example of things that qualify as the word. But what is the ultimate standard by which all things are determined to be "good". Just as a shadow of a person shares the characteristics of human shape, it is not human. And so on a scale of 1-10 with regard to human-ness, a shadow could rank somewhere on the list, but it would be lower than a reflection since a reflection shares more of the human-like qualities. 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!

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good

Thanks, that is easier for me to follow. I'll read that link and see if it resonates with me.

Essentially this seems to be a roundabout way of saying that God is good because we define him that way. Why don't we imagine an ultimate standard of evil and call that God? That would be more consistent with the Bible narratives in many cases.

God is good, good is god.

Meaningless tautology.

Nothing to do with wellbeing of humans.

Would you like to address what I wrote ignorant?

(February 26, 2015 at 10:13 am)watchamadoodle Wrote:

(February 25, 2015 at 11:39 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: Because the nature of this conversation is about varying degrees of a commonly used sentiment, such as "good", it's important to be particular with the words used . . .

Essentially this seems to be a roundabout way of saying that God is good because we define him that way.

I assure you that it is not the round-about way that you suspect. Speaking about goodness in this way does not even demonstrate that there is, in fact, some single thing which IS goodness itself. All it means is that goodness is understood as that aspect of things which humans judge to be satisfying of particular human hungers/appetites/desires (e.g. the hungers for food, survival, reproduction, community, justice, love, etc.). It is strictly about goodness.

Human experience shows us that nothing in this universe seems to sate all of our desires. This means that everything in this universe is only good under one or more aspects (i.e. every object/thing is only "partially" good when considered "in itself"). So either goodness, i.e. something that is good under any and every aspect, exists "somewhere", or it doesn't.

First, "Goodness itself" must be shown, if possible, to exist. Then, it would have to be shown that "goodness itself" and "god" can be rationally said to be the same thing. Necessarily, that would require either that it can be shown that god is the thing that satisfies all human desire. Seeing as that would require a great deal of work, common agreement on terms and concepts, and a lengthy exchange with a high chance of misunderstanding, I wouldn't hold your breath while waiting for it to come!

(February 26, 2015 at 12:58 pm)Ignorant Wrote: I assure you that it is not the round-about way that you suspect. Speaking about goodness in this way does not even demonstrate that there is, in fact, some single thing which IS goodness itself. All it means is that goodness is understood as that aspect of things which humans judge to be satisfying of particular human hungers/appetites/desires (e.g. the hungers for food, survival, reproduction, community, justice, love, etc.). It is strictly about goodness.

Human experience shows us that nothing in this universe seems to sate all of our desires. This means that everything in this universe is only good under one or more aspects (i.e. every object/thing is only "partially" good when considered "in itself"). So either goodness, i.e. something that is good under any and every aspect, exists "somewhere", or it doesn't.

First, "Goodness itself" must be shown, if possible, to exist. Then, it would have to be shown that "goodness itself" and "god" can be rationally said to be the same thing. Necessarily, that would require either that it can be shown that god is the thing that satisfies all human desire. Seeing as that would require a great deal of work, common agreement on terms and concepts, and a lengthy exchange with a high chance of misunderstanding, I wouldn't hold your breath while waiting for it to come!

For one god by definition is Amoral meaning he can and has in the bible done more bad than good so no god isn't good god is evil.

(February 26, 2015 at 3:35 am)robvalue Wrote: 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.

Do Christians claim that murder is wrong... because God just made it that way? Was God "free" to create a world in which murder would have been a virtuous act?

In my opinion, you are right to be confounded by Christians who claim that view. So, if you care to know, there are Christians who offer a very different understanding of goodness, morality, and freedom in human action. If you'd like a book, a good start (though it is very dense) is Servais Pinckaers's The Sources of Christian Ethics. It is a philosophical, historical, and theological description of the Christian ethical tradition.

Quote: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.

Well, if that first question is an honest one, then I hope you will seriously consider that the answer is not simple to explain why Christians don't know what exactly they are saying. The answer is a very complex history of philosophical and theological developments that even got carried away into political developments. It would be too simple to point to a single event, but a good start is the historical development that resulted in the divergence of the Catholic philosophical tradition into two subsisting traditions: realism (with several slightly different descriptions) represented principally by Thomism, and the Nominalism of William of Occam (a Franciscan monk/priest). The former speaks about the goodness of things being determined by WHAT those things are. Nominalism speaks about the goodness of things being determined by the free-will (liberum arbitrium, lat.) of God alone. That is a very simplistic description, but hopefully you can see which school corresponds to the Christians you disdain so much. Most Christians today are nominalists and voluntarists (i.e. the will has primacy over the intellect and acts in absolute "freedom from" the intellect). They know the will of God and that things are the way they are simply because that's the way God wanted them... there is no real rhyme or reason to it.

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

Have you ever wondered where they get their criteria with which to filter? It is almost as if they have this mysterious filter that is rational and helps promote justice and charity in society... but they have no idea where it came from (because, as you are claiming, it isn't in the bible). It is as if they are trying to "conserve" what is left of this ancient artifact of Christian morality, but all they have left are disconnected pieces with no one to make rational sense of them all.

What if that "whole" which the pieces at one time made up existed before them, but then something happened that discarded large portions of it? It might be worth looking into.

Quote: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.

I agree. Most of those things seem very simple to judge correctly. You might even say that those things are "objectively" (i.e. considered in themselves) never good. Well, you have started to enumerate a morality that is both subjective and objective, and you have barely scratched the surface of Aristotle's ethics =)

Quote:Subjective morality works, on the whole, and it's really good

With rational people sure it does. You won't find me denying that.

(February 25, 2015 at 3:17 pm)Ignorant Wrote:

(February 23, 2015 at 1:57 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: My conception of goodness is pretty simple -- treat others the way I'd like to be treated, add to the general weal, and leave the world a better place than I find it.

This contradicts your god's opinions in certain instances, which isn't a problem for me insofar as I understand that your god is a figment of your imagination.

Where it comes from? Empathy. Look it up, if you need more information. Also, email your god the link, because he clearly doesn't get it.

Hey Parker's Tan, so your conception of goodness is an imperative to act in a way that you would like others to act toward you?

Yes.

(February 25, 2015 at 3:17 pm)Ignorant Wrote: Does every person agree about how they think other people should act towards them?

I think people of sound mind do. Do you want to be kicked in the face? No? Then don't do it to me.

The Christian god behaves in a manner inconsistent with his own "Word", which is why I find your version of morality utterly unconvincing.

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(February 25, 2015 at 5:31 pm)Godschild Wrote: Species to species transitions have never been observed, if it were so the whole world would be abuzz. I do not have to use anything for a rebuttal, the burden of proof is in your court.

I'm going to post this not because I think you'll read it -- I know you won't, because you're not interested in facts -- but so that others reading this thread will understand that you're simply lying right here.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scie...ervations/

(February 26, 2015 at 2:04 am)Godschild Wrote: The burden of proof belongs to you, you say you do not have to disprove something you do not believe exist, but you will dodge the same responsibility you place upon me. Double standards do not fly with me, so get busy showing me the geologic column exist the same world wide and that no fossils are found out of place or stop your whining.

Positive claims entail the burden of proof, and "the geologic column does not exist," is a positive claim. Are you seriously telling me you've been here for as long as you have and you don't understand such a basic concept of argumentation?

GC Wrote:It's your belief and the responsibility falls upon you to prove what you say, by the way that is quite common knowledge, to those who search.

My responsibility is to demonstrate evolution, not to prove your claims about fossils and layers wrong. Come on, man; what's with this desperate scrabbling?

GC Wrote:I do not see why those sediments couldn't of occurred either before or after the flood. I'm not familiar with that particular place, what I do know about floods of great enormity they do not lay down equal layers of sediment and the strip other areas clean so there is little to no sediment.

The layers in question go back too far, with uninterrupted periods that preclude flood conditions, to allow for a flood with humans involved.

GC Wrote:This better for you, the fossil record doesn't even suggest evolution.

Yes, it does.

Quote:If you put together all my statements you would notice that I deny each of your points, seems to me I was taking in all you presented. Evolution has never and never will be proven, why do you wish to go against many of the leading evolutionary scientist that have stated it's not be proven. They're part of your bunch why do you not know this.

Probably because you're pulling it out of your ass? If you have the quotes I'll happily look at them, but what you can't do is make these assertions and then get all evasive when you're asked to point me in the right direction. It makes it seem as though you're hiding something.

GC Wrote:Far more than any 200, I don't even know where you got that number.

The TalkOrigins index; can you point me to a source you're using for the number?

Quote: It's like this, you call fossils in the wrong layers for evolutionary science insignificant, does that mean you are fine with dismissing things that do not add up to keep alive this delusional fantasy. When fossils that are millions of years different from the other fossils and locked into the same so called geologic strata insignificant, I mean really, whats up with that.

I'm not dismissing anything, there was a quite obvious explanation contained within the link I provided. But my larger point was that the number of fossils out of order are dwarfed by the number of fossils in order: if you're going to use the former as evidence, I'm equally allowed to use the latter. You're ignoring this point because your own argument is much stronger evidence for my position than it is for yours, unless you're special pleading.

Are you just dismissing all the other fossils?

Quote:Surely you can do better than this, and as I said above 200 isn't even close.

Well shit, point me in the right direction then. Don't just make assertions and then blame everyone else for not having exactly the same information you have.

GC Wrote:There is no proof, how many times am I going to have to say this. Natural selection is not evolution and has never been shown to lead to a change from one animal to another.

You assert there is no proof, but your baseless dismissals aren't an argument. If we're going to do that, I could just say evolution is a fact and that's that; it's childish.

As to your other sentence, you don't get to redefine what evolution is and then say that because your strawman isn't real, actual evolution isn't real. Here is what evolution actually is.

GC Wrote:I did not say it was a conspiracy against me, I said it was the only way evolutionary science could keep evolution alive after Christian scientist pinned down evolutionary scientist on macro evolution.

And do you understand that both of those points- the species one and the macro-evolution one- are factually incorrect due to the timing? The former predates evolution entirely, and the latter was a distinction that gradually fell out of favor and does not describe what you claim it describes?

Quote:That was called sub-species, if I'm not mistaken.

You are.

GC Wrote:Evolution was being presented before then and so were long ages and yes my answer was to evolution, you made that very clear.

So, you're saying that evolutionary theory existed before evolutionary theory was proposed?

GC Wrote:I used species in my reply for your benefit, and they are still frogs, they will always be frogs. They will not evolve into another kind of animal. For evolution to be realistic some animals will have to become totally different ones, that has never been demonstrated, proven or otherwise.

Look, you can either discuss what evolution actually is, or you can make up your fantasies about it, but you can't expect me to go along with the latter, if that's what you want to do.

Quote: 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.

Ah, now this is an interesting question, and living fossils are rad. However, you're still a little wrong here: living fossils do change, it's just that their basic morphology has not needed to change for an extended period of time, either due to a lack of predation or an ideal environment, that sort of thing. Nothing exists that would naturally select for a different morphology, and so in essence they remain the same. This process is called evolutionary stasis, but if you say they haven't changed at all, you're overstressing your case.

Quote:I'm keeping track, and I've yet to see the first bit of proof from you that evolution has ever occurred, not natural selection, a change of one animal into a totally different one.

Again, I'm not required to prove the wrong definition of evolution. I'm required to prove the right definition of evolution, and I did that in my first post.