My views on objective morality

[bennyboy]

CL, let me talk about the morality of free will. A rapist has the free will to rape a child. You console yourself, perhaps, with the knowledge that he will eventually be held account by God for his actions. But what of the child? The child, you may say, will be rewarded with an eternity in heaven-- though he/she hasn't done anything particularly worth of reward.

It seems to me that God's version of free will shows a willingness on his part to let innocents suffer in order to give sinners enough rope to hang themselves. And they do so by their own nature, which was anyway established by God. It seems to me that if such a God is real, only a bad person would do anything but openly rebel against him.

You shouldn't be preaching the gospel. You should be burning it. Because YOU seem to me like a good person.

[Whateverist]

What? Animals kill their babies all the time. Lions especially, come to mind.

Yep, sometimes you got to do the tough thing instead of what your heart tells you.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

What? Animals kill their babies all the time. Lions especially, come to mind.

No, CL, they don't kill their own offspring - they defend them to their own death. Those which do not have socially-evolved genes may kill the cubs of others, because they present an obstacle to them sowing their own genes with the mother.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

If they don't want to be clothed, then that's fine. It's about helping people in need, not making them do something they don't wanna do.

But making them do what they don't wanna do is, and has been what missionaries have always done in practice.

[Ryantology]

The objective truth about objective morality: It is a term people apply to their own morals in order to create the illusion that their own morals are superior to anyone else's. Otherwise, it is a term without meaning or value.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

He is God, so killing babies would be whatever He made it be. But in the world we live in, and the God I know/believe in defines goodness as loving your neighbor as yourself, treating others the way you want to be treated, feeding the hungry, giving drink the to thirsty, clothing the naked, etc... things like that. That is what He has established to be goodness. If killing babies was good, then the word "good" would literally have an entirely different meaning

Do you read what you type?

Is it not a fact that some babies die which do not die by the fault of any living person?  This either means that God is not good, God is not powerful enough to save babies, or God does not in fact share your definition of goodness.  Are you going to tell us that little dead babies are going to live out eternity as angels?  If so, with what personality?  What will replace the egoes which they never had the chance to develop?

Clothing the naked?  The Bible specifically tells Jesus followers not to worry about clothes, because they will be clothed by God.  So look at the freezing poor.  Where are the clothes that God promised?

I don't care much that you don't believe in the Bible.  But if you think God is both powerful and good, then there is a world full of evidence which contradicts you.  Or, to be blunt, you are more interested in maintaining your happy beliefs than in embracing reality.  Nothing but your imagination supports your Pollyanna world view.

Too bad Catholics don't follow their bibles

[Mystic]

He is God, so killing babies would be whatever He made it be. But in the world we live in, and the God I know/believe in defines goodness as loving your neighbor as yourself, treating others the way you want to be treated, feeding the hungry, giving drink the to thirsty, clothing the naked, etc... things like that. That is what He has established to be goodness. If killing babies was good, then the word "good" would literally have an entirely different meaning, considering it directly contradicts the very way good has been defined by God. Also, God (the one I believe to be real) is love. If He wanted us to torture babies, He would be a completely different entity than the God I would have thought existed.

Okay, I think we're actually getting somewhere here (which is more than I can say for most online discussions), so I hope you bear with me - especially since this is going to be a bit long. What you're defending is known as the Divine Command Theory, and you may not realize this, but plenty of Christians have rejected this theory (in fact, the Catholic Church officially accepts natural law theory, which strictly speaking is incompatible with DCT). 

To begin with, it's important to realize that discussing what makes something morally good is not the same thing as discussing what the four letters g, o, o, d, in that order, happen to mean in our language. I say this because you stated that if God said torturing babies was good, "good" would mean something else.  I'm not concerned with how else the word might be have been used - I'm talking about the concept of goodness. IOW, if you say that what we should do is by definition whatever God says we should do, then in a world where God says "thou shalt torture babies", we should torture babies. It would be good, on this understanding of what makes something good, to torture babies - and "good" would mean the same thing - that is, it would denote that which we should do.

Now, the question I'm asking is, do you accept that torturing babies (keeping in mind that it would still cause pain and suffering) would be good in such a world? From what you've said so far, it seems your answer is (fortunately) no! 

But now, the reason you're claiming that it would not be good, it seems, is that you're saying God is a loving being who would never want to see babies tortured. But (and this is the part people often fail to understand) if that's the case, then what you are claiming is that God is good because he is a loving being. If God were different and wanted us to torture babies, then he would not be good! But do you see what you're really saying here? Good is no longer whatever God says just because he's God and what he says goes - good is what a loving being believes is good. It is only because God has a good nature that his commands are good. And this is incompatible with the DCT - and with your initial claim. Good is limited to what a loving being regards as good - it cannot be just anything that God (whether he is loving or not) might want.

And here's the clincher: if what you really mean by "good" is what a loving being would agree is good, then I as an atheist do not need to believe there is a God in order to agree with your understanding of it. Good, in this case, depends on what is loving, what is caring and considerate of others, and so on, and thus does not depend on the existence of a being to make a declaration that this or that is good. To put it another way, good is what a loving being would want irrespective of whether this loving being exists. The right thing to do is necessarily limited by the sort of action it is - by whether or not it causes suffering, for example - and an atheist can see that without having to believe that there is a creator who informed human beings about morality.

I hope that makes it clear why the DCT is just wrong, but I'll happily discuss this further (if you're not already really tired of this by now!). And BTW, I wrote a bit more about all this in Ch. 5 of my book The Truth about God (by Franz Kiekeben), in case you're interested.

You know the same premise "it cannot  be possible in any possible world where torturing a being forever for no crime it has done is good or not evil"  was denied, by the Atheists here, because I used in an argument to prove that morality is eternal.

I can link you to those posts if you don't believe me.

The argument is that if God cannot create morality from nothing (without it already existing), then neither can evolution, as God can create evolution. 

The following has spoilers from Starcraft heart of the swarm:

---

If you played the game you know that the planet where the primal zerg evolved to kill one another for their essences and to evolve and become stronger. That's their way.

Hypothetically, why wouldn't killing one another and fighting one another to make the race stronger, not be the moral thing?

---

From what I understand it's not that goodness exists independent of God neither does it exist on the whims of God, but rather God himself is that morality, that standard, and God is not arbitrary nor does he will on whim but rather wills according to ultimate greatness which is not abitrary.

The thing is if God cannot create morality without it already always existing, the same is true of evolution which he can create and can create everything that evolution can create. So there is a problem with saying God cannot but evolution can.

Therefore the way I see it is that morality always existed. Now morality takes vision, comprehension, a perception. This shows that an eternal perception of it always existed. This is only possible with a living being. 

The Greatest greatness cannot be but a living reality. That perception of ultimate greatness and moral perfection is knowledge of itself, and witnessing and testimony to it's absolute living reality.

[LadyForCamus]

Okay, I think we're actually getting somewhere here (which is more than I can say for most online discussions), so I hope you bear with me - especially since this is going to be a bit long. What you're defending is known as the Divine Command Theory, and you may not realize this, but plenty of Christians have rejected this theory (in fact, the Catholic Church officially accepts natural law theory, which strictly speaking is incompatible with DCT). 

To begin with, it's important to realize that discussing what makes something morally good is not the same thing as discussing what the four letters g, o, o, d, in that order, happen to mean in our language. I say this because you stated that if God said torturing babies was good, "good" would mean something else.  I'm not concerned with how else the word might be have been used - I'm talking about the concept of goodness. IOW, if you say that what we should do is by definition whatever God says we should do, then in a world where God says "thou shalt torture babies", we should torture babies. It would be good, on this understanding of what makes something good, to torture babies - and "good" would mean the same thing - that is, it would denote that which we should do.

Now, the question I'm asking is, do you accept that torturing babies (keeping in mind that it would still cause pain and suffering) would be good in such a world? From what you've said so far, it seems your answer is (fortunately) no! 

But now, the reason you're claiming that it would not be good, it seems, is that you're saying God is a loving being who would never want to see babies tortured. But (and this is the part people often fail to understand) if that's the case, then what you are claiming is that God is good because he is a loving being. If God were different and wanted us to torture babies, then he would not be good! But do you see what you're really saying here? Good is no longer whatever God says just because he's God and what he says goes - good is what a loving being believes is good. It is only because God has a good nature that his commands are good. And this is incompatible with the DCT - and with your initial claim. Good is limited to what a loving being regards as good - it cannot be just anything that God (whether he is loving or not) might want.

And here's the clincher: if what you really mean by "good" is what a loving being would agree is good, then I as an atheist do not need to believe there is a God in order to agree with your understanding of it. Good, in this case, depends on what is loving, what is caring and considerate of others, and so on, and thus does not depend on the existence of a being to make a declaration that this or that is good. To put it another way, good is what a loving being would want irrespective of whether this loving being exists. The right thing to do is necessarily limited by the sort of action it is - by whether or not it causes suffering, for example - and an atheist can see that without having to believe that there is a creator who informed human beings about morality.

I hope that makes it clear why the DCT is just wrong, but I'll happily discuss this further (if you're not already really tired of this by now!). And BTW, I wrote a bit more about all this in Ch. 5 of my book The Truth about God (by Franz Kiekeben), in case you're interested.

You know the same premise "can it be possible in any possible world where torturing a being forever for no crime it has done is good or not evil" is possible was denied, by the Atheists here, because I used in an argument to prove that morality is eternal.

I can link you to those posts if you don't believe me.

The argument is that if God cannot create morality from nothing (without it already existing), then neither can evolution, as God can create evolution. 

The following has spoilers from Starcraft heart of the swarm:

---

If you played the game you know that the planet where the primal zerg evolved to kill one another for their essences and to evolve and become stronger. That's their way.

Hypothetically, why wouldn't killing one another and fighting one another to make the race stronger, not be the moral thing?

---

From what I understand it's not that goodness exists independent of God neither does it exist on the whims of God, but rather God himself is that morality, that standard, and God is not arbitrary nor does he will on whim but rather wills according to ultimate greatness which is not abitrary.

The thing is if God cannot create morality without it already always existing, the same is true of evolution which he can create and can create everything that evolution can create. So there is a problem with saying God cannot but evolution can.

Therefore the way I see it is that morality always existed. Now morality takes vision, comprehension, a perception. This shows that an eternal perception of it always existed. This is only possible with a living being. 

The Greatest greatness cannot but a living reality. That perception of ultimate greatness and moral perfection is knowledge of itself, and witnessing and testimony to it's absolute living reality.

Oh, my god mystic, please stop with that shit! We've been over this 100 times on this forum for fuck's sake.

[bennyboy]

Too bad Catholics don't follow their bibles

Too bad God doesn't fit their definitions of goodness, as well.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

From what I understand it's not that goodness exists independent of God neither does it exist on the whims of God, but rather God himself is that morality, that standard, and God is not arbitrary nor does he will on whim but rather wills according to ultimate greatness which is not abitrary.

The thing is if God cannot create morality without it already always existing, the same is true of evolution which he can create and can create everything that evolution can create. So there is a problem with saying God cannot but evolution can.

Therefore the way I see it is that morality always existed. Now morality takes vision, comprehension, a perception. This shows that an eternal perception of it always existed. This is only possible with a living being. 

The Greatest greatness cannot be but a living reality. That perception of ultimate greatness and moral perfection is knowledge of itself, and witnessing and testimony to it's absolute living reality.

Morality is not eternal - human morality, to be specific, did not exist prior to the evolution of humanity, and it will cease to exist when we are all gone. Your god wasn't there when evolution began because he exists strictly within the heads of his believers, and there weren't any believers around then.