(September 2, 2013 at 3:06 am)Minimalist Wrote: The god who ordered mass murder in Canaan? That moral motherfucker?
Yep. When arguing for absolute morals, the big issue is that most (if not all) gods do not follow those morals. The way theists try to get around this is by claiming that the morals are absolute or objective for humans, but not for god. But in many cases god orders humans to commit the acts in question, when we know it would be trivial for god to do it himself and spare mankind from having to do what is immoral.
In either case, if it's moral for god to commit a certain act, or order a human to commit that act, then the act is not intrinsically immoral. Therefore, slaughtering a young girl's family and forcibly taking the girl as a wife is not an immoral act in itself (Numbers 31:17,18). Kidnapping young women and making them wives is also not an intrinsically immoral act (Judges 21:20-23). Invading a weaker nation and forcing its inhabitants into slavery? Not immoral (Deuteronomy 20:10,11).
How can there be a "moral argument" for such a morally ambiguous creature?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
