Refuting Christians with their Own Bible

[Veritas_Vincit]

Why should anyone care what Jesus said?

[GrandizerII]

Why should anyone care what Jesus said?

The point is that Christians conflate having access to Jesus' teachings in the Scriptures with having access to God's morality, but that if this is the case, then Christians don't actually have clear access to all of God's moral rules, since the Scriptures are pretty poor at covering everything to do with moralit and they're not often clear.

My argument is that they're not in any way in a better position than us when truly knowing what is right or wrong. They end up using the same or similar standards to ours, based on reasoning and rational thinking, cultural/societal norms, and personal experiences.

[Veritas_Vincit]

I agree... I was just trying to take a big step back from this whole discussion to point out that we're basically discussions the finer points of the morality of the magic rainbow Unicorns here.

[purplepurpose]

Atheists take enough morale to survive comfortably. Very few theists go to extreme and strive towards painfull ideals of morale, like Jesus did.

[SteveII]

If divine morals exist, why wouldn't we know them through the teachings of Jesus?

Because they're often vague and unclear, and don't sufficiently cover everything to do with morals.

I disagree. He summed up the law and the prophets with two commandments: 1) love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and 2) your neighbor as yourself. He explained that everyone was your neighbor. Further instruction and detailed examples were given in the other dozens and dozens of chapters. 

Can you give an example of how Jesus' teachings on morality was vague?

[vorlon13]

"Defraud not" listed as one of the 10 commandments.

[GrandizerII]

Because they're often vague and unclear, and don't sufficiently cover everything to do with morals.

I disagree. He summed up the law and the prophets with two commandments: 1) love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and 2) your neighbor as yourself. He explained that everyone was your neighbor. Further instruction and detailed examples were given in the other dozens and dozens of chapters. 

Can you give an example of how Jesus' teachings on morality was vague?

He never said everyone was your neighbor. Samaritans were, after all, still literally neighbors to the Jews. And again, this could've been interpreted as not including slaves because slaves were their own group according to these interpreters. Perhaps the lesson is that who you perceive as an enemy may be the one to show you mercy, so show mercy and love to them as well. But furthermore, even if this applied to slaves, it doesn't mean Jesus was moving them to stop owning slaves.

Examples of vague commandments are the ones listed in your quotes. What does it mean in full details to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, in terms of action, and then love your neighbor as yourself? Does it mean "stop owning slaves"? Then why not say so? Does it mean "polygamy is ok or not"? Why not just make it clear if polygamy is strictly not ok? Is pirating Christian movies ok? When does talking about someone in their absence become gossip? Is abortion really wrong? Or is it wrong that we are not loving the women of this world enough to respect their bodily/reproductive rights? Is smoking sinful? etc.

[robvalue]

Loving god is nothing to do with morality. It's more to do with god's ego and neediness. In fact, the idea of loving god ahead of actual people is a very dangerous and immoral thing to do in my opinion. It's dangerous because you're compromising how you treat others for the benefit of a being which should require absolutely nothing from you, if it even existed.

It comes down to whether something is good because so and so said it is good, or because it's actually moral. In the first case it's circular and meaningless; in the second case, the authority is irrelevant. I figured out morality just fine on my own without having to read it in an ancient book. And it's no surprise that (nice) Christians ignore huge swathes of the supposed morality taught by their own book.

You don't need god for morality. You generally just need reason and empathy, as building blocks.

[SteveII]

But why base morality on the "well-being of conscious creatures"? First what is good/goodness; bad/evil? Harris is redefining the moral words good and evil in nonmoral terms as the well-being of conscious creatures. So when we ask "why is maximizing well-being good?" it is the same as asking "why is maximizing well-being maximizing well-being?". This is question begging and circular.

First of all, I include all of the things you list in your Third point 

Happiness, love, fulfillment, security, companionship, loyalty, creativity, etc.

as subcategories of wellbeing. These are exactly the kinds of things I am talking about. What is good about these things? They are things that enhance our wellbeing. 

The attributes I listed ---all subjective. These things vary with every human being.

Conversely, if morality is just a question of doing whatever your God wants because he will either punish or reward you, then it is a-moral. It's worthless to anyone who doesn't believe in your God, and nothing more than a law system from a fascist dictator for those who do. So I don't agree that Harris is redefining Good and Evil in non-moral terms - quite the contrary, he is elucidating the true value of morality - IE why it is good to be moral and bad/evil to be immoral. Why is something good or bad? Because it has a good or bad impact on oneself and/or others. 

You are defending your moral ontology by attacking what you incorrectly perceive as mine?  

Of course the well-being of conscious creatures is 'good' as in "desirable"--the non-moral definition. The moral definition of 'good' is "that which is morally right; righteousness".  So Harris is claiming that the property of being 'morally good' (that which is morally right; righteousness) is identical with the property of 'well-being'. But his argument (and yours) is really that the property of being 'good' (that which is more desirable) is identical with the property of 'well-being'.  

Second, can rapist, liars and thieves be just as happy as 'good' people? Since their greatest state of 'well-being' conflicts with someone else's all you have is a continuum of well-being and not true 'morals'. What about psychopathic people or even worse, a group of psychopaths? How do you define well-being within that group? Linking well-being with brain states does not get you to anything resembling objective morality.

Hopefully the expanded definition of 'wellbeing' will help to clarify this. You have to evaluate the impact of any given behaviour on everyone affected. It's that simple - yes, the psychopath and the liar and the rapist want to do things that hurt other people - and we know this, so as a society we can take steps to prevent them from doing this. We can evaluate their action and see that if they do what they want, it will have a negative impact on others, therefore it is immoral. Morality isn't simple to work out in every application - but by recognising that what we value is human wellbeing, at least we know what we are trying to figure out. 

You have literally described a subjective process.

Regarding your statement about evaluating morality: "Science is the best approach to this, in fact, it is the only approach worth using" is wrong on many levels. First, science can only tell us what is and not what ought to be. It can describe how we are but not offer an opinion as to what is wrong with how we are. It certainly cannot tell what we ought to do (moral obligations) and therefore obligatory actions for things like the well-being of conscious creatures.

This is why we start from agreeing that we are conscious creatures who prefer health to illness, life to death, and pleasure and enjoyment and love over suffering and misery and despair, etc, and recognise that we all share this planet and have to find a way to live alongside one another. When I say we can use science to approach this I'm not just saying we get a group of bespectacled lab-coat wearing chemists to stir up some wellbeing potion. We use the scientific method. We use reason, we use argument, we use logic and empiricism to evaluation the moral implications of any given situation, and to identify what types of behaviour and what societal rules will best promote the value of 'wellbeing.' 

The scientific method? How do you apply that to happiness, love, fulfillment, security, companionship, loyalty, creativity, etc. Do you take an average? What if these things vary by country or time period? What then? 

Listen, I don't care what you believe. Just don't claim it's objective because you don't want to deal with the implications of believing in subjective morality.

[Veritas_Vincit]

So what is 'good' about righteousness? Why should anyone ultimately care about it?

What is morally right? Is it just what God wants?