(October 9, 2009 at 9:35 am)Eilonnwy Wrote: Another question. Do you think that a parent has the right to destroy a child because this child did not follow the rules of the household?
Well of course not.
(October 9, 2009 at 4:03 pm)amw79 Wrote: You can't realistically call the consequentialism view of morality "self serving," as its implicit meaning is derived from the consequence of the moral act, not the context or belief system held by the committer of the act.
I see what you are saying. And yet the Christian view is no different. In other words, he can do moral acts without being a Christian. The moral value of some act is determined by its correspondence to the nature and will of God, not by whether the person committing the act is Christian or not. Non-Christians are intellectually capable of understanding God's commands and physiologically capable of obeying them. The problem isn't that he can't, but rather that he won't. He could obey God’s law if he desired to do so, he could trust in Christ if he had any love for God. "Man is guilty for the simple reason that, in his sinful rebellion, he refuses to do that which he has the full mental and physical ability to do."
(October 9, 2009 at 4:03 pm)amw79 Wrote: The Christian view of morality ... renders any moral acts commited by a non-Christian as worthless.
No, it denies that those acts are moral at all—the same way that a humanist consequentialism would deny that the acts of a sociopathic serial killer are moral. In either case, the context or belief system held by the committer of the act is irrelevant.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when
called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
(Oscar Wilde)
called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
(Oscar Wilde)