Why Secular Morality is Superior

[fr0d0]

There is solid philosophy on secular morality, sure. That doesn't change its flawed nature as we've established. Your refusal to address that simple point is revealing.

You seem to deny that John and I accept the human ethical sense. Yet it is what Christianity acknowledges and calls the God spot. That instinct which enables us to reason God.

So you admit your ignorance on the reasoning for God. You make an accusation from ignorance then.

Begin to think about how a god might be logically possible. Any thought you couldn't dismiss you have you keep as plausible. If you can discount any at any time, then you can discount them.

As I've said/related many times, and is commonly available, is that a creator who is the first cause is pure actuality. It cannot be impure: be preceded by anything, or it wouldn't be first cause. It couldn't resist actuality or creation wouldn't begin. What creates we call good, and what resists creation we call bad. It has to be all good or it would defeat itself and not exist. So we can safely assume that it is all good.

The human judge always makes judgement with limited knowledge. He can never know if he is right. That's how judgements are overturned. So a human judge is just to the best of his limited ability.
So a judges attempt at morality is always unknown. He tries to be moral to the best of his abilities. But he could be completely wrong. His judgements could be immoral.
Remember we're not blaming the poor judge for his flaws. We're making a judgement on the action. The same as you're judging God.

Yet God cannot be wrong in his judgements, which is the angle the bible takes, as that would be illogical. Contradictory to the basic understanding of God as we can simply deduce using logic. The bible is consistent on this. It has to be.

If you accept Jesus you don't have your slate wiped clean with men. Only God. To God you are acknowledging your bad stuff and claiming his sacrifice for you to wipe it out. Good actions are meaningless if you don't mean it. That's why they aren't a free pass to heaven. You need to address the problem, not just act like you do.

[DeistPaladin]

Frodo, your post is so disconnected with our exchange I'm not sure where to begin exactly or how to even make sense of it.

For example, "we" haven't "established" any flawed nature of secular morality. You can't "reason" any god, much less your own (even as a deist, I confess that my concepts of God are instinctive and not rational). We've been all over why honest mistakes are not matters of morality, a point I can't seem to communicate successfully to you. The Bible DOES say that Yahweh got some things wrong (specifically, in Genesis where he "repents" of creating humans just before the flood and then kind of repents after the flood where he promises never to do it again).

Hopefully, John V will do a better job when he picks up the banner again.

[John V]

Your position is illogical. If god's omniscience means that our every thought and action are predetermined, then we're not autonomous beings with any rights at all. No one calls Stephen King evil because his characters suffer.

Your concept of god is illogical. If god already knows that we will do something at the age of 30 or 40 that is so bad that he is justified killing us, as he did to tons of little ones in the OT, as babies, where are we free to decide to act differently?

God knows everything, right?

So he knows what you are going to do on next Friday morning. He knows it for a fact. And he's known it before he even created humanity.

So go ahead and decide to do something differently. You can't. God knew you were going to do that 13.7 billion years ago.

No free will. Nothing you have ever done was something that surprised god ever. He knew you were going to do that exact thing at that exact moment 13.7 billion years ago.

Are you starting to understand the problem? When you say my view of your fictional god is jacked, this should be a light bulb popping up in your head, that I'm just pointing out the logical conclusions of this god concept that are completely illogical.

Resolve those retarded logical conclusions to yourself, make sense of it, and then come back to us and debate.

You want to know something? No Christian has EVER resolved those things and come back to debate with any atheist anywhere.

Why?

Because they fucking became an atheist trying to resolve them.

You are compartmentalizing. Read up on it. All Christians do this. Heck, all theists do this. You are holding mutually incompatible concepts in your head at the same time.

You're not following my argument.

I haven't contested that god's omniscience precludes free will. That argument can be made in a number of ways, and is how this discussion usually goes. But I haven't done that. I'm granting you that omniscience precludes free will for this discussion.

My question is, who/what has a right not to suffer?

Does a character in a book have a right not to suffer? Sounds ridiculous, right? However, you appear to be using omniscience to reduce us to nothing more than characters in a very complex story.

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By nature, religions do these things. Even the Amish, your example, are highly controlling of their followers. Pointing out some unusual anomalous examples really doesn't refute my point about the general nature of religion.

You haven’t established that these are anomalous. Your point is a bare assertion. You’ve done nothing to support it, and I’ve shown counter-examples.

Did you miss the part about "victimless crimes" and "useless activities promoted as virtues"?

No, I missed the point where you showed that such features are inferior. Must an action have a victim to be immoral? For instance, public nudity causes no intrinsic harm to others, yet most societies consider it immoral.

The fact is that the Bible goes beyond GOdWillsIt and gives the same explanation for morality that you gave yourself. This refutes your point that religion does not offer explanations for morality.

I never said that. I said "GodWillsIt" is useless to understand morality. If you agree, let's move on.

You said: “Saying, for example, that slavery is wrong because it violates the rights of others and we would not wish to be treated this way is far more elucidating than "cause big daddy in sky says so".”

The implication was clearly that religion offers no other explanation than god wills it. Otherwise, what was your point with this statement?

So your god evaluates our moral actions as a judge does and therefore morality exists outside of your god and therefore your god is not necessary to determine what is moral or what morality is?

A king can be a judge and not be bound by an external moral code. While judges in our time generally apply law they didn’t create, that is not a necessary condition for judgment.

How so?

You do the same thing as those you criticize, but don’t criticize yourself.

So you disagree? If so, your twisted sense of morality is noted.

Your opinion is again noted. You don’t seem to have much beside opinion and bare assertion.

Denial and defense is a symptom of the battered wife syndrome. I stand by my analogy.

It’s clearly wrong. In this analogy, the spouse isn’t battered, and the battered party isn’t a spouse.

I'm highly skeptical of your claim that sex slavery openly exists in Western Society and "nothing is being done about it" but let that go.

I’m not letting it go. Here’s a link to the article I mentioned
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germ...02533.html

My point was never that secular morals have created a perfect paradise where no one ever commits crimes anymore and no one ever wrongs another anymore. Yes, crimes still do happen. Yes, we're not perfect. Yes, bad people still do bad things. Completely beside the point.

My point is that secular morals have evolved to where we say that slavery, rape and genocide are bad. Our own country no longer defends the institution of slavery on a political level like factions of it did 150 some-odd years ago. We've stopped evaluating whether or not these practices are morally defensible. We're now at the stage of struggling to stamp them out.

Not much of a struggle in Germany.

Compare this to the Bible with all its genocide at the orders of your god,

Again, god is judge. Capital punishment is not murder.

rape at the orders of your god

Where?

and rules that regulate the practice of slavery.

Regulation is a step in the right direction. Jesus said plainly that the law contained compromise due to the hardness of Israel’s heart.

Special pleading? How so? Am I now responsible for defending every non-religious ideology?

As you just said “secular” in the OP, for now, yes, you are responsible for that. I noted some time ago that you were overly broad in just saying religious and secular and suggested you limit your scope.

My Tu Quoque reference was over your claim that "oh yeah, well, other destructive ideologies are bad too, so it's all a wash". The abuses of other bad ideologies, which I don't partake in, do not justify the abuses of religion.

No, they don’t, but they refute your claim that secular morality is superior to religious morality.

You're using the same Reducto Ad Absurdum tactic that you've used elsewhere in this debate. My claim that secular morality is superior to religious-based morality should not be taken to mean that every non-religious ideology that has ever existed has been perfect or that there have never been any bad non-religious people.

As noted, you set the scope, and I even suggested that you limit it. You didn’t. It’s poor form to now blame me for your own error.

What the hell are you talking about?

I’m talking about your charge that religion could lead to the killing of someone in order to prevent their corrupting others, and noting that secular morality can do the same thing.

It's a classic ad hominem. You're attacking the person and not the argument or the findings.

Where did I attack the person?

[ideologue08]

Frodo, your post is so disconnected with our exchange I'm not sure where to begin exactly or how to even make sense of it.

For example, "we" haven't "established" any flawed nature of secular morality. You can't "reason" any god, much less your own (even as a deist, I confess that my concepts of God are instinctive and not rational). We've been all over why honest mistakes are not matters of morality, a point I can't seem to communicate successfully to you. The Bible DOES say that Yahweh got some things wrong (specifically, in Genesis where he "repents" of creating humans just before the flood and then kind of repents after the flood where he promises never to do it again).

Hopefully, John V will do a better job when he picks up the banner again.

Say what? You're a deist would you mind telling me why you believe in God? I always thought you atheist je suis très intéressé

[Rahul]

You're not following my argument.

I haven't contested that god's omniscience precludes free will. That argument can be made in a number of ways, and is how this discussion usually goes. But I haven't done that. I'm granting you that omniscience precludes free will for this discussion.

My question is, who/what has a right not to suffer?

Does a character in a book have a right not to suffer? Sounds ridiculous, right? However, you appear to be using omniscience to reduce us to nothing more than characters in a very complex story.

Take the blood of one of those characters and wipe it on my face. Until you do that your talking point is absurd.

[Cato]

My question is, who/what has a right not to suffer?

The history of our species indicates that suffering at the hands of nature and each other has been part and parcel to our continued survival; therefore, I would find it difficult to argue for a right not to suffer. That said, history also shows that our species continues to provide means to alleviate the suffering so there can be no claim that we must suffer. Insert Epicurean paradox here.

[John V]

Take the blood of one of those characters and wipe it on my face. Until you do that your talking point is absurd.

Who/what has a right not to suffer, and why? Until you answer this, your argument is a fail.

[Rahul]

Who/what has a right not to suffer, and why? Until you answer this, your argument is a fail.

Something that is alive has a right not to suffer. The entire human civilization has made rules in their respective nations relating to both us and non human animals around this concept.

Why would you think an imaginary character in a book is applicable to this conversation? Is it because you believe in a fictional god thing? It's just a natural mental leap for you? This is so retarded that I'm having difficulty realizing I'm really debating this with another human.

[John V]

Something that is alive has a right not to suffer. The entire human civilization has made rules in their respective nations relating to both us and non human animals around this concept.

Why would you think an imaginary character in a book is applicable to this conversation? Is it because you believe in a fictional god thing? It's just a natural mental leap for you? This is so retarded that I'm having difficulty realizing I'm really debating this with another human.

If our every thought and action was written by God, then we are not autonomous beings and have no rights.

[fr0d0]

Frodo, your post is so disconnected with our exchange I'm not sure where to begin exactly or how to even make sense of it.

For example, "we" haven't "established" any flawed nature of secular morality. You can't "reason" any god, much less your own (even as a deist, I confess that my concepts of God are instinctive and not rational). We've been all over why honest mistakes are not matters of morality, a point I can't seem to communicate successfully to you. The Bible DOES say that Yahweh got some things wrong (specifically, in Genesis where he "repents" of creating humans just before the flood and then kind of repents after the flood where he promises never to do it again).

I'm addressing your points directly but you don't get it. Yet again with the ad Homs.

You haven't attempted to challenge the flaws pointed out in secular morality. These points are irrefutable. You cannot of course.

You don't speak to me with your imaginary beliefs. My beliefs are entirely logically based. Must I really keep saying to you that there cannot be proof either way. This is what constitutes Christian belief through faith.

The bible DOESN'T say that God got things wrong. Your warped interpretation does. Please be accurate in your language.

Suffice to say, you have provided zero in the way if criticism of the Christian position on Divine morality. Indeed Christians don't recognise anything you've said to bear any relation to Christianity. This seems consistent with all I've read you say on the subject.

I know you don't want to confront it. But challenges to your suggestions are successful if you don't manage to refute anything.