Van Tillian/Clarkian Presuppositional Apologetics.

[DeistPaladin]

Euthyphro’s dilemma- well played kind sir. I am afraid it creates a false dilemma for the Christian though. God’s nature is wholly good, so God only appeals to His own nature and character as to what is righteous.

This is a classic case of "begging the question". You've defined (declared) that your god's nature is wholly good and then used this unfounded assumption to justify your beliefs that the god you've declared to be good is necessary for a standard measurement of good to exist. Actually, this is a double-beg since you also assume that objective standards of morality exist but that's another issue for another thread.

It seems like when Christians are presented with a dilemma, their instinct is to either blame the devil or babble nonsensically and hope it becomes philosophy gold.

Well it depends on whether we are talking about an absolute morality that is commanded by God which flows from His wholly good nature or if we are talking about covenantal morality which is set up by God as an agreement between man and Himself.

With the former, we have a classic case of circular reasoning. You've declared Yahweh's commands are wholly good. The reason you "know" this is because Yahweh is wholly good. And a wholly good god couldn't issue anything other than wholly good commands so since his commands are wholly good, we know that Yahweh is wholly good. The circular logic is dizzying.

Certain laws are designed specifically for the creature, such as not passing judgment upon one another; does God have to also abide by this rule? Absolutely not. So it is inappropriate for people to accuse God of breaking laws that were designed for His creatures not for Him. It would be like a child chastising his parents for staying up past his bedtime. It just makes no sense.

So it seems from your line of thinking, no command by your god could ever be evil. Anything can be justified with the rationalization that it's for our own good in ways we can't understand. And if you can't (or won't) judge the morality of the god you serve, how can you be sure you aren't unwittingly serving the devil?

You are falsely assuming that God sets any of His children on fire for not loving Him. He justly punishes his creatures (not children) for rebelling against Him, ...

So he doesn't set his children on fire for not loving him but justly sets them on fire for not loving him. Glad we cleared that up.

Part of the problem is this liberal and relatively new view that we are all God’s children. The Bible is very clear that we are all God’s creatures (Romans 9) but only His chosen people are adopted as His children (Ephesians).

Agreed. Yahweh is a bloodthirsty sadistic tantrum throwing tyrant. Modern liberal Christianity has more to do with modernity and idealism than scripture.

Whoa, wait a minute, so it would be morally acceptable?

I didn't say that. I said the OT did. I said there are modern examples of religious societies that think so. Religion has a way of condoning inhuman behavior. Do not presume that when I point out what the OT condones that I believe it's OK (often quite to the contrary).

if there actually was rape condoned in scripture (never seen any proof of this)

Numbers 31:14-18 offers an account of Moses' admonishments to slay all the males and non-virgin females and take the virgin females as sex slaves.

Deuteronomy 20:13-16 Outlines the rules for war in which you can take a cities virgin women as sex slaves (after mercilessly killing all the males of the captured city).

Judges 12 describes the capture of virgin girls from Jabesh-Gilead for the purpose of forced marriage and sex slavery. The rest are killed. When there aren't enough virgins to go around, women from Shiloh are captured for the same purpose.

Deuteronomy 21:11-14 offers the instructions for how to properly rape your sex slaves. Certain "niceties" apply. You must give her six months to mourn her family that you slaughtered, following Yahweh's rules for war. Then you can rape her. If you don't enjoy raping her, you can't sell her. You must let her go.

Rape was outlawed in Hebrew societies

Only if the victim was married or betrothed to another man (she was his property). If the victim was an unbetrothed virgin, the attacker would be forced to pay a fine to the father (she was his property until being married off) and then he would marry her. Boy, I bet that made her feel better (sarcasm).

just like it is in the New Convenant.

Chapter and verse?

But to your question, what makes them wrong is that very sense of empathy and the social contract I mention earlier. I would not want to be raped. I trust you would not either. So how can we not understand the pain of one who is? How can we morally allow one person to endure what we would not want for ourselves?

Where do you get this notion of don’t do unto others as you would not have done to you? Seems completely arbritery to me. So if the
Marques De Sade
wanted to be sexually assaulted it was completely acceptable for him to sexually assault others? I can see this view on morality causing all sorts of problems.
Judge: “Sir would you want someone to shoot you?”
Defendant: “No sir, but this man was breaking into my house!”
Judge: “I am sorry son; if you didn’t want to be shot you should not have shot the intruder in your house.”

Your examples are so silly as to qualify as examples of "appeal to ridicule".

Besides, if we are just animals...

Rational animals, not just animals. We form communities and so morality, empathy and codes of conduct are what has enabled us to survive.

So you are using a Biblical concept, transcendental morality, to argue against the God of the Bible.

I still fail to grasp why you feel the Bible has a copyright on morality.

This is to not even touch the issue of how you feel a book that provides instructions on how to massacre cities, beat your slaves or rape your captured virgins as a book that offers any kind of morality modern society would be comfortable with.

You are also making a circular logic here, trying to using a logical statement (it works, therefore we should continue to use it) to justify logic.

What part of preference do you not understand? You are the one who has used the word "should", not me. If you wish to eschew science and rational thinking, I'm sure the Amish could use another member of their community.

If superstitions work then are we justified in using them?

In what way do you feel they are demonstrated to work?

Science would be impossible in a world not created by God because there would be no justification for the principle of induction.

Again, I fail to understand why you feel I need to justify my use of logic.

So it’s kind of ironic you would glorify science and then bash the very system that makes it possible.

Christianity has never made science possible. The Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent modern age could only happen because Christianity's power was sufficiently weakened. From heliocentrism to evolution, progress was made not because of but in spite of Christianity.

No I didn’t, it does, just not from Nature’s God (whatever that is even supposed to mean).

Prove that our conscience must come from the Christian god. I've seen only assertions so far.

I have, still does not answer my question. He still had to use his senses to tell himself his senses were not reliable. Circularity?

Nope. As the movie demonstrated, he saw and spoke with people who weren't there. It was confusing for him to know true sensory input from false. However, he was able to deduce inconsistencies in some sensory input (the girl never got older) and had a majority of other sensory inputs telling him which ones were wrong (real people in his life).

Could he be absolutely certain? No. He was deducing which realities were more likely to be true given the weight of evidence.

Solipsism is technically true and stupid to live by. I can guess that you don't live by it. When you are on the 10th floor of a building, you most likely choose to navigate the stair way or use the elevator rather than walk out the window wondering if all this reality was really real. If you are trying to argue using solipsism, you are a hypocrite and a sophist.

I just have a worldview that can give justification for believing in logic and rationality. You do not.

Your "justification" is nothing more than GodWillsIt. You don't even provide chapter and verse as I requested.

Frankly, I've never met a Christian who didn't see their god as a reflection of themselves and their own desires and prejudices. "God" always seems to want whatever they want and hate whatever they hate. Therefore, I strongly suspect that your "justification" is nothing more than your imagination giving you permission to do as you will.

I'm lost on the point of why I need to offer any further justification than "I'm going with what's proven to work" but I'm going to let that argument rest until someone can explain why this reason is insufficient.

I am sorry, but this whole post is one big red herring,

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.





A "red herring" is an irrelevant topic introduced as to divert attention from the topic being discussed. However, we are discussing your attempts to accuse atheists of "borrowing" from Christianity when it is you who are borrowing in order to attack.

I never said we should not use science and should not be rational, I simply said that you cannot give sufficient reason for them given your worldview.

Ah, so you are accusing me of using a "strawman", not a red herring. It's not true but you should get your terms straight when you use them. If you're going to bandy around terms for logical fallacies, you lose credibility if you don't use the terms properly.

This is a claim you have proven to be correct thus far. You equating rational thought with nothing more than personal preference is actually quite disturbing, but I have a Biblical obligation to be rational so maybe that Is why it rubs me the wrong way.

I have yet to see chapter and verse to justify how you fell that obligation to be rational. It's not a strawman to point out that faith is not a call to reason but a rejection of reason. Again, it is belief not only without reason but against all reason, on the basis of someone or some book's say so.