Why does science always upstage God?

[LadyForCamus]

Would you go around murdering just because you don't believe in God?  Given that most people don't believe in Jesus, how it is possible that most people don't go around murdering, and every society has rules against it?  Is a god the only possible explanation?

Sure, a society could choose to see the movie "The Purge" as a holy inspiration, and decide that Purges are moral imperatives.  However, the suffering is real, and those with empathy would fight against it.  It doesn't take a belief in God to realize that its a screwed up idea.  In fact, it is a belief in God (or a belief in other extreme ideologies) that allows many to ignore things like empathy and the suffering of others, and do what most of us would consider "evil".

Where do morals come from?  Our common humanity and empathy, and our ability to understand how principles affect future happiness or suffering.  Yes, people disagree on the principles of that last point.  Some thing that dancing is wrong because will arouse unstoppable lecherous desires, while some think that being free with sexuality leads to a happier life.  Different principles, but both ideally have a the aim to reduce suffering and maximize happiness.

You’re being way to flippant and not truly looking at the depth of the world’s depravity. Obviously, there’s the atrocities in China and North Korea. There’s genital mutilation in the Middle East. Cannibals in India. Sex trafficking in America. Slavery in Africa. There’s a tribe in Papua New Guinea where boys are required to perform oral sex on the elders until the boys are old enough ejaculate. Trust me, the world is not full of people who all agree on what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s not true in any sense.

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So, which Christians get to decide what the correct interpretation of the infallible moral word is, and how can we tell if their interpretation is right? Should we be putting gay men to death?

I already granted that there’s not God to start this conversation so that we could fully explore the inconsistency in the atheist moral worldview.

And my point is that even if I grant you that there are ‘inconsistencies’ with secular morality, its a moot point, because your system is equally problematic for the exact same reasons. So, what exactly is the point you’re trying to make?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, not quite equally. Inconsistencies in a religious tradition are incredibly resistant to correction. Not that it matters, if morality is a gods whim. Sometimes subjects whims are inconsistent.

[ayost]

Well, not quite equally. Inconsistencies in a religious tradition are incredibly resistant to correction. Not that it matters, if morality is a gods whim. Sometimes subjects whims are inconsistent.

You assume it’s on a whim. Which is incorrect. Which is why you’re conclusion is incorrect.

[The Grand Nudger]

Is it based on any fact of a matter in question?

Let's use gay sex as an example again. When (or if) your god says that gay sex is bad, is it because your god holds a dim view of gay sex..or....because..if men keep having gay sex, all the pandas will die?

[pocaracas]

Yay!! You finally got the quotes right!!

And that is why they commit suicide.
Like TGN said, killing does involve increasing the amount of suffering and I don't think anyone can have the authority to ascertain if the suffering due to abuse is greater than the suffering due to being killed. That should be left to the criteria of the person in the particular situation.
And, since you like the parallel, it's like abortion. Leave it to the person who is in the particular situation (and I mean the potential mother).

So  an we all see how your morality is completely subjective. There’s so many unknowns and variables and there’s no way to know what provides the most suffering or the least suffering. You’re literally just making it up as you go. This is the opposite of an objective morality. It’s a mish mash of whatever feels right at the time. Which is fine, I just need you to be consistent and commit all the way. In a world where morality is subjective you have no right to complain about anything that anybody does in your worldview. You will complain and you do know right from wrong, but again, I maintain that’s because God has created you in his image and written His law on your heart.

If you want to win the argument just say yes, killing foster kids reduces suffering. At least then you’d be consistent with your own worldview and there’s nothing I could say to it.

Clearly, morality is subjective to the society.
What religious people seem to always forget is that humanity is a social species. It's like you guys can only think in terms of either the individual or the whole of mankind. No middle ground.
What is moral for a particular society can very well not be moral for another society. And that is fine.
This has the curious side effect that, from the point of view of an individual within any society, the societal morality has the appearance of being objective.

The morality you claim to be from god, is nothing more than a series of rules that arose from a particular society.

Abortion should be immoral in a society that values child labor, while it can be moral in a society that understands that overpopulation is close.
Being homosexual can be immoral in a society that needs to grow the work force, while it can be completely moral in a society that can afford to have 5 or 10% of the population go childless. Homosexuality, however, is related to how the brain is wired and cannot be changed, so I think (in my society) forcing a homosexual individual to behave as heterosexual to be an increase of suffering.

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And that is why they commit suicide.
Like TGN said, killing does involve increasing the amount of suffering and I don't think anyone can have the authority to ascertain if the suffering due to abuse is greater than the suffering due to being killed. That should be left to the criteria of the person in the particular situation.
And, since you like the parallel, it's like abortion. Leave it to the person who is in the particular situation (and I mean the potential mother).

I just made a compelling argument, using your worldview, that killing foster kids reduces suffering. All you did is arbitrarily assume that suffering increases to a point my example fails without actually addressing the foundation of the argument, which is that moral system is bankrupt and it doesn’t work. Its arbitrary and inconsistent and it only works when people do what you already agree with.

"very" compelling...  
Maybe I was too simplistic when I presented it. I tend to do that as I assume people to be charitable. You seem not to be, so I've given it a slight update above. Feel free to force me to update it further. In the end, it will still revolve around minimizing suffering, just as I said at the start.
It's not a bankrupt system. It's one that works very well. It's the same one that you apply, even though your version should only apply to a different society. Luckily, the society your morality applies to is not too different from our current western society, so it is still possible to cling to it.

And in your last sentence here, you nearly got it... nearly!
"It only works when people do what you already agree with" - That's pretty much the definition of society.
Of course, in any society, there will be outliers and renegades that need to be put in line with the remainder of society or suffer the consequences.

It’s actually an argument that abortion advocates use to defend abortion. As a side note, she’s not a potential mother, she’s a mother and if she gets and abortion she’s just the mother of a dead baby.

Typically, the names of humanity's development go like so:
- Prior to conception: egg and sperm
- Just after conception: zygote
- During the trip to the uterus: blastocyst
- After implantation in the uterus: still blastocyst for a few days, then embryo
- 8 weeks after fertilization: fetus
- After birth: baby
- After 1 or 2 years old: child
- After 10 years old: teenager
- After 18 or 21 years old: adult
- After 60 or 65: senior citizen
- After death: corpse


If you were to ask me for my very subjective opinion, I'd say that aborting an embryo or anything prior to that is so far removed from killing a baby that I'm fine with. At the fetal stage, things become more iffy and more on a case by case basis that gets more stringent as the pregnancy progresses, with fetal viability becoming the cutoff point where only medical reasons can intervene.

In my opinion, a more compelling argument than the “arbitrary levels of unmeasurable suffering” is the idea that an immoral action is any action that, should everyone do that action all of the time, would bring an end to humanity.

Of course, the person who says that has to admit homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion are immoral. Obviously, since no one is a neutral truth seeker, their political views will override their need for consistency and they will violate their own moral system and say those things aren’t immoral.

But, should that person be consistent, I would be compelled by that argument.

I'd say that your "more compelling argument" is utter nonsense mostly because it goes against human nature.
It's an unrealistic standpoint that ignores the societal bit... but it's not unexpected from someone such as yourself.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think this is probably why ayost believes atheism has a worldview like flubber. Not realizing that atheists disagree on pretty much everything but whether or not they believe in gods - and essentially turning us all into one monolithic person - he'll find himself arguing with realists, subjectivists, relativists, and nihilists in mere reality. Must be frustrating..but then..there's an easy fix to that. Correcting that initial mistake. Perhaps realizing, even, that his moral worldview and some specific atheists moral worldview (just as one example) might not actually be different at all.

It's pretty clear that he wants his god to get morality right. For morality to be a thing that can be gotten right. A set of true facts about some act x, and not some society y, or person y. OTOH, he feels compelled to tell other people who believe exactly this that their worldview is bankrupt..because it must be...they're atheists! Spend post after post insisting that morality is subjective confronted with a realist..only to then argue (with you) that it isn't.

Interestingly enough, particularly with respect to cultural relativism - how society informs our moral thinking - it may be that some people who argue against moral realism, because there's no god..are actually being informed by their society and agreeing with their society, their very god believing society. A society that might have told them that, without a god, there can be no moral realism, for example.

[Fake Messiah]

So  an we all see how your morality is completely subjective. There’s so many unknowns and variables and there’s no way to know what provides the most suffering or the least suffering. You’re literally just making it up as you go. This is the opposite of an objective morality. It’s a mish mash of whatever feels right at the time. Which is fine, I just need you to be consistent and commit all the way. In a world where morality is subjective you have no right to complain about anything that anybody does in your worldview. You will complain and you do know right from wrong, but again, I maintain that’s because God has created you in his image and written His law on your heart.

If you want to win the argument just say yes, killing foster kids reduces suffering. At least then you’d be consistent with your own worldview and there’s nothing I could say to it.

Clearly, morality is subjective to the society.
What religious people seem to always forget is that humanity is a social species. It's like you guys can only think in terms of either the individual or the whole of mankind. No middle ground.
What is moral for a particular society can very well not be moral for another society. And that is fine.
This has the curious side effect that, from the point of view of an individual within any society, the societal morality has the appearance of being objective.

Morality is something that changes with the needs of the people and comes with compassion - like the abolition of slavery. Morality should be democratic.

While when it comes to Christianity, morality is supposed to be unchanged from what some men wrote thousands of years ago in the Bible and claimed to have heard it from God. Which clearly does not work.

[The Grand Nudger]

IDK. Take something in your mind that you're convinced is immoral. If a majority voted -for- it..would anything about it's moral nature change so far as you can tell? I feel pretty confident that this has happened at some point about some thing in your life. That a bunch of folks decided on a uniquely bad idea, and their deciding so didn't actually convince you that it wasn't a uniquely bad idea.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The trouble with expecting to Abrahamic god to ‘get morality right’ is twofold:

-If God freely determines what constitutes moral behaviour, then morality is arbitrary and God can change it on a whim. Since we can do that ourselves, God serves no ultimate moral purpose.

-If morality emanates from God due to his intrinsically moral nature, he’s doing a rotten job of leading by example. How can we be expected to follow the moral precepts of a god who, according to those same precepts, behaves immorally?

Boru

[pocaracas]

IDK.  Take something in your mind that you're convinced is immoral.  If a majority voted -for- it..would anything about it's moral nature change so far as you can tell?  I feel pretty confident that this has happened at some point about some thing in your life.  That a bunch of folks decided on a uniquely bad idea, and their deciding so didn't actually convince you that it wasn't a uniquely bad idea.

*cough* Brexit *cough*

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Clearly, morality is subjective to the society.
What religious people seem to always forget is that humanity is a social species. It's like you guys can only think in terms of either the individual or the whole of mankind. No middle ground.
What is moral for a particular society can very well not be moral for another society. And that is fine.
This has the curious side effect that, from the point of view of an individual within any society, the societal morality has the appearance of being objective.

Morality is something that changes with the needs of the people and comes with compassion - like the abolition of slavery. Morality should be democratic.

While when it comes to Christianity, morality is supposed to be unchanged from what some men wrote thousands of years ago in the Bible and claimed to have heard it from God. Which clearly does not work.

I don't know if democratic is the best way to go. I'd say organically, which shows how slow it does change.