Christians and Their Homework!

[stretch3172]

You made the claim; I'm asking you to justify it. You can't claim that two things are the same and then attack the idea without justification. What if what I find online about the FSM contradicts the presuppositions in your head about the FSM you don't believe in? What if your concept of the FSM differs from the Christian God in such a way that certain deductive and inductive arguments favor one over the other? Things are rarely quite as simple as they seem.

The FSM is a version of Russell's Teapot. A response to "You can not prove there is no god!" "You can not prove there is not a tea pot in orbit on the other side of the sun". 

Currently, The Church of the FSM is a parody of religion and funny as hell.

Ah ok cool. At least I was somewhat close!

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"A good person is one that attempts to increase human well being through their own actions."

What about "increasing human well-being" makes it "good"? This is a real question because if there is no real, objective moral standard, then that's an entirely unfounded presupposition on which a great deal of your view of ethics rests.

Perhaps the answer (or part of it) is in the question itself ("increasing human well-being"). I could ask you something similar: What about "God adhering to some moral standard" makes the moral standard "good" (or "real" and "objective")?

"it is also clear that murdering someone does NOT promote human well being."

There are a million possible hypothetical scenarios in which murder could indeed promote human well being, especially when you consider well-being both qualitatively and quantitatively. While you are correct that such cases can be very rare, the fundamental issue remains. For instance, if you could somehow save a whole room full of dying patients with the organs of one innocent, healthy patient, should you? If not, why? It seems that your ethical philosophy is ultimately subjective because the very concept of "well being" is subjective. There is no real underlying reason to say that anything is right or wrong except the ones we invent for ourselves.

I personally wouldn't, basically because it doesn't feel right for me to intentionally kill a healthy human being (though it is a dilemma, and me not killing the healthy patient would mean letting a whole room of patients die when I could've saved them). Anyhow, how would you solve such a dilemma given your view? Does the standard God adhere to provide a clear solution to this dilemma? And is the solution clearly given to you?

For your first question, there are two possible answers: (1) the standard is good because God adheres to it, or (2) God adheres to it because it is good. This is the famous "Euthryphro question" as given by Plato. There are good arguments for either case, but the main point is that said moral standard is in fact good, and as such we should hold to it. 

This fits well into your second question. I would agree with your decision for the simple reason that outright murder is forbidden by God (cf. Rom 13:9). I would consider the consequence of the other patients' deaths as a horrible, unintentional effect from my correct decision to avoid committing murder.

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*My bold*

But to use the possibility that there is more to reality than our sensory/cognitive arrays can sift out .. to justify believing in just one outlandish thing in particular out of all the outlandish things people have ever believed.  That seems like some pretty reckless believing, no disrespect intended.  Then to decide -with your still limited sensory/cognitive arrays- that a particular book carries an important message from that very outlandish thing, complete with marching orders for how to live your life.  Boy, for a guy as smart as you that must be difficult to swallow.

You're absolutely right. That argument is meant only to convey the idea that belief in an entity such as the Christian God is feasible, not to show why Christianity is superior to any other spiritual system. To do that, we need more specific arguments. Unfortunately, I don't have time to lay out the ones I hold to at the moment, but I personally think certain versions of medieval cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments do a pretty good job of showing not only that a God exists, but that this God must also have certain specific attributes (i.e. intelligence, power, a will, etc.), which makes Him quite different from most other spiritual entities. From there, we would have to turn to even more specific arguments for the authority of Scripture to justify Christianity against other belief systems. It gets incredibly complicated, but it's a fun topic nevertheless.