Quote:I think you said that it would be evil, and destroy many lives to give false advice. If you presuppose both that god exists and that he is the ultimate moral authority (neither of which can be supported) then you might be right. But you can't demonstrate them. What you are doing, then, is even worse. You are taking subjective morals and claiming they are objective. Slavery? It's fine, it's in the bible, after all! Genocide? Well if they're filthy non-belivers, sure! Do you really want to use the bible as a moral authority?
These are widely covered issues that have been written about and covered over and over again by Christians. For the sake of brevity, I would not engage you here.
Quote:Really? Are you telling me that you can't logically defend the immorality of murder?
You must pressuposed that human life is universally valuable, which you cannot defend with logic. Logic is just a tool to test if certain propositions are true. You cannot prove that human life is valuable, you can only presuppose it.
Quote:That is pure moral relativism, something I do not subscribe to. There are arguments for and against basically every system of morality ever designed (and there is more than one that does not invoke god). Whether they are powerful or not in your opinion probably only depends on if they are for or against your position. Morality is a lot more complex than you might think.
You said that you do not subscribe to it, but you havn't shown why it doesn't follow from your worldview.
Quote:Let's say that, for the sake of argument god exists and he is the ultimate moral authority. So, now what? Which god? Which morals? (Jesus contradicts some of the OT laws) Is there a need for interpretation? Here's something to think about: god never said "thou shalt not abuse cocaine", therefore it is not immoral to do so. How would you respond to this?
Jesus says - seek and you will find. There is no absolute way to know the will of God or be a Christian. God's will changes over time. But if you seek God, you will find him. The New Testament of the Bible is a good place to law, but it is not intended to be a moral absolute that replaces God. God is the ground of being and the ground of morality. The two are related. God can be the ground of morality because God is the ground of being. When God created the universe, morality was created at the same time.
The bible forbids drunkenness (1 Cor 6) which has been interpreted through church tradition to include drug abuse and reason says that cocaine is more dangerous than other drugs so it is reasonable to believe that cocaine use is sinful. Perhaps you had a tooth operation and you were going to be given cocaine (it is legal for some purposes), if you were concerned about it, you could pray and ask God to show you in the scriptures whether it is acceptable, and God would. Ultimately, God has the final authority to direct people, but God will agree with the New Testament and use that, at least in this particular period of the grace of God.
Quote:Ending racial segregation was also extremely controvesial. If you can defend a moral "rule" through reason (respecting empathy) it can be demonstrated as good. Killing isn't wrong simply because god says so...or do you think that is the only reason? (I admit that this response is an incomplete argument. This post is so long already, though, so...)
But you aren't defending this through logic.Killing is wrong because we live in a teleological universe in which everything bears the stamp of God and cries out to us through empathy, society, law and culture that it is wrong to take a human life, not just because someone happens to reason about it but because the human spirit demands it.
Quote:Humans don't value their lives unless thay have religion? The more you know...
I would argue this in the same way I argue for human rights. If someone claims human life has no value, then they must concede that their own life has no value, and is liable to be abruptly taken in the same way they kill others. These dictators devalued human life because it was convenient for them; had they been on the recieving end, I doubt they would have just laid down and died so easily.
But many people believe just that. That does not make the argument self refuting, it may not help the people to survive. For someone that has much to say about logic, you rely on conversational reasoning much more than you rely on philosophy. I don't say that to insult you, but what you consider logic is really not much different from theology, it does not presuppose less. To pressupose that human life is valuable because of an unknown cause does not pressupose less than pressuposing that it is valuable because God created it.
Quote:I made this mistake twice, it seems. I confused validity with soundness. It appears your argument is valid, even if not necessarily sound.
I appreciate your humble spirit.
I always like debating with you because you seem like a throughly decent person, unafraid to admit when he is wrong.Quote:Let's say they see themselves as the end of the actions. Same result. If they are living in society, they don't want it to become a free for all (well, most people don't) and so still would want to preserve peace. If they are living outside of society...well...that's kind of hard. As for revolutionaries, they still want a society, just a new one. The US constitution gives the citizens the right to overthrow the government if it becomes seriously oppressive.
You are acknowledging the crux of my actions, that atheist ethics are basically pressupositions. That is fine if there are some things that they don't know through reason, I would say that that is a mark of wisdom to realize that reason and logic can't accomplish all things. But it is fallacious to claim that a pressuposition like "Let's say they see themselves as then end of their actions" is more logical because it has a much smaller and more subjective aim.
It is a common debate trick to simply make the most modest claim possible and then claim that whatever you are arguing against is irrational because it involves more assumptions or pressupositions than your arguement. The reality is that making an extremely small claim that is easier to believe does not make an argument more valid or the propositions invovled more true, although they may appear more true.
Quote:I already did, if you were reading my post. Humans agree on rights as a social contract. It is to everyone's benefit to respect each others' rights and in return have them respect yours.
Do human rights come from the people that write the contract? What if someone wants to make a new contract? How is this more logically defensible, I do not see anywhere were it is self evident that "Humans agree on rights as a social contract". It is almost like you are making human governments take the place of God as the origin of morality, typical for liberals, and you are saying that it is more reasonable to pressupose that human governments should take the place of God instead of God because you can see governments. It may be that it is easier to believe in the reality of the government laws but that does not make the more "logically defensible". I saw another poster on this board quote Blacks Law Dictionary as if it gave an ethical defense.
Liberals have their faith, it is in the government, that is their God and they aren't going to budge. Their faith is very strong.
Quote:Yeah, you're right (at least about that last part). Just curious, but what authority am I appealing to?
You are appealing to the authority of liberal philosophical thinkers. The way that you use the word logic actually means exactly the opposite of the word: when you say logic, you mean "an argument from authority from a liberal thinker". Actually, what logic is is a flow of self evident propositions using deductive logic that garentee the certainty of a conclusion (I suppose there could be other kinds of logic like inductive logic too). Logic does not mean the same thing as liberalism.
Quote:Raw logic is indeed closer to mathematics than anything else. I should have said "reason" or something else that was a tad more generic. You continue to argue that these rules are good because god knows what he's talking about. However, there are some of gods laws that aren't considered moral anymore. Also, you continue to presuppose god's existance, something I do not do. I ahve heard many arguments for god, but none of them were strong, as you claim that strog arguments exist. (No arguments from ignorance, please) Putting that aside, I still argue that one can defend morality's existence apart from god. You can defend the idea that killing is generally wrong without saying "because god said so"...right?
Reason is not incompatible with theology. Some forms of logic and epistemology are basically imcompatible with theology.
I would say the arguments for God's existence are more things that point toward a God or show how a concept of God solves many problems versus proving in the same way that you measure layers of rock in the grand canyon that God exists. The proof comes when you seek God on his own terms.
I am not an expert in natural theology, the branch of theology concern with showing how God exists from nature. I could not say whether God's existence can be "proven" or not, for someone that has not prior experience.
Faith is not really the same as logic and it isn't really the same as reason, it isn't blind faith. The way that faith works is that you see how something could be true, and you start to follow it on its own terms. And then, when you are serious, God reveals himself to you. It is not irrational, I would argue some parts of faith are based on rational considerations (such as the many good arguments for God's existence) and some are based on non-rational considerations (such as wanting a world in which there is morality and love and wanting to be close to God).
A lot of learning about theology comes down to wanting to learn about God from God, and H'Shem will teach you if you are willing to listen to H'Shem and submit to H'Shem's holiness.
Quote:I would argue the exact opposite. And for the same reasons you do. People can take theology and claim they know everything whilst knowing nothing of value. When you say "real spirituality" do you mean self-delusion? This would be a serious question if I didn't already knw the answer. It is just that some memebers here were theists for decades and sought god, but never found him. Drich always argued that they did something wrong, but refused to specify as to what it was. I await your "logical" defense of Christianity...or maybe not, these posts are becoming enormous...
Spirituality is not a delusion. You will see miracles. You will see powerful displays of the glory of God. I have seen so many revelations.
I await a logical defense of a rationalistic approach to learning that today, in the world of string theory, quantumn mechanics, post-modern approaches to seeing the world and Kantian critiques of reason, seems a little bit like it is stuck in the 17th century.
Daniel Dennet said about the relationship of philosophy to other subjects "philosophy is a tool for generating hypothesis that can be checked with other sciences." Obviously Dennett is an atheist, but I would tend to agree with him. Reason alone is a good tool for self deception, pride and authoritarianism.
A logical defense of Christianity would be hundreds of pages. You could consult someone like Thomas Aquinas, Alaisdair MacGraph, Alvin Plantiga, the neo-Thomist thinkers, William Lane Craig (who is a good apologist despite the character assasinsation attempts of atheists).
I posted a long list of theistic arguments in another thread, there are so many of them. Many of the most brilliant people in history have believed that Christianity was a reasonable belief system.
