(September 19, 2013 at 2:43 pm)Zone Wrote: Is killing humans wrong because God says so or does God say killing humans is wrong because it's wrong?
I think you can simplify it with "if god says it is wrong, it is wrong. If god says it is right, it is right. If god takes a particular action, that action is right by default, unless you think you can punish god yourself." I think that what many Christians describe is covered by that. God is above humanity in every way you can imagine. And the rules do not apply to him because he makes the rules. And the first rule of God Club is that the rules don't apply to god.
I think a case can be logically made that god is to us as we are to whichever "lower" life form we want to choose. But I think that it requires that we reject or redefine nearly every descriptive property we would apply to god. Loving. Generous. Concerned. I don't think these apply to god the way we apply them to each other, if we are basing our understanding of god on the principle that might makes right and that a creator has the right to do as he wishes with his creation.
"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
