RE: Conscience and the Moral Argument as Evidence for the Goodness of God.
June 14, 2023 at 1:08 am
It is true that humans live under moral laws or guidelines. However, every society has its morality, but each is different. What is deemed good in one society is often deemed bad in another; for instance, killing is immoral in most societies (under most but not all circumstances), but head-hunting is or was a valuable and appropriate behavior in some societies. In other words, morality is not absolute or universal, despite what you think, but relative.
So if there is a god, he has either given humanity lots of conflicting moral guidelines or none at all. More likely, humans give themselves moral codes wherever they live because humans are a moral --- that is, a social species.
So if there is a god, he has either given humanity lots of conflicting moral guidelines or none at all. More likely, humans give themselves moral codes wherever they live because humans are a moral --- that is, a social species.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
