What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Catholic_Lady]

No. God is not allegory. And the allegorical parts were in the Old Testament only. The New Testament and the teachings of Christ are absolutely historically real. ...Well, that is what I believe anyway lol.

What the fuckity-fuck?

Are you truly so retarded?

If God gave birth to Jesus and both combine to make the holy spirit, how are they not the same?  How can you logically ignore the old testament when god there is precisely the same in the new testament?

I don't think you understand what I've been saying in regards to God in the OT. It's not that He was different back then. It's that some of the stuff written about Him in the OT is not entirely precise, and the stories are allegorical. For a more accurately portrayal of God, we have Jesus, who is God. So you are correct on that.

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You have to be very careful what exactly you mean by "good" and "moral". Do you mean what is beneficial and least harmful to humans and animals? Or do you mean something someone has arbitrarily labelled as good?

If it's the latter, then it means nothing. It may as well be called blue actions and non-blue actions. The bait and switch is that the word "moral" is used with both these meanings at once, in general, by someone arguing for religious morality.

So which is it? I couldn't care less about the second definition. Only the first. So I'll only discuss the first.

The only way there could be "objective morality" is if there are a set of rules in place about what is moral and what is not, which apply to God, and which God can't change. Where did they come from exactly and why should I care what they say? They are again arbitrary. I can't tell if they are actually moral or not unless I use my brain to analyse their effects. If God steps in and sets what they are, then it's subjective to God, so not objective. And again, I don't care what he thinks. His opinion does not make an action beneficial or harmful, just because he says so.

The simple answer is that our morality comes from evolution. We developed as a cooperative species, on the whole. Those who played nice with others fared better so their genes were more widely spread. Like you say, we "just know" some things are wrong. This is one of the big reasons why. We are generally cooperative and empathetic by selection.

I think religion looks for this absolute, objective morality because it can't stand the idea that it could be a matter of opinion to some degree. Well it's too bad, morality is a matter of opinion. It just happens that there are broad areas where everyone, on the whole, tends to agree. Killing people is a bad idea for society. Hurting each other leads to fighting and isn't productive. And so on. But to decide what is and isn't harmful, you need a judge of some sort. Theists would often like that to be God, but instead, it is us. All of us. There is no consensus, but we agree as best we can.

All the bible represents is an attempt to encode the morality of the day (among other agendas). Clearly you don't just accept the morality in the bible, you find reasons to ignore all the things you find horrific. You say the OT can just be ignored when you feel like it because the writers were getting things wrong, or you appeal to allegory. I don't know how God sending in armies to slaughter town after town could possibly be an allegory, nor most of the horrific things he does. Even Jesus advocates for slavery and does not abolish it.

This is my opinion:

If you look deep inside, you will probably see that what you are doing is filtering what the bible says using your own sense of morality. Sure, you can convince yourself of why you are ignoring the vast majority of it, but the real reason I think is that you know it is wrong. So in the end, you just use what is left, which is your own morality. The book has taught you nothing, it's just God, Jesus and Christianity getting the credit for your morality.

Thank you for your well thought out post.

I am sorry that so many of you are having a hard time with understanding/accepting the notion that the OT is written allegorically, especially when what Jesus teaches is so contradicting to the God that is depicted in the OT.

I feel like I have gotten more flack here for saying the OT is allegorical than I have on the uber fundamentalist Christian forums lol. Which is interesting.

[The Grand Nudger]

You've gotten flack for playing -brinksmanship- with allegory.  You've used it as an excuse, rather than an explanation. The things you feel are morally questionable are allegory. You're about as much of a believer as I am.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hi Parkers Tan. I am not sure what you are referring to. What point am I avoiding?

The point that you yourself are a moral relativist by dint of the fact that actions ascribed to your god would in humans be described as evil -- yet you assert that your god is the font of absolute and objective morality. That is a pretty big contradiction there.

And I actually did address the "evil my god commits" a couple of times now.

Only by saying that you think the Bible got that wrong. That's simply you discarding the parts you don't like, so that you don't have to think any deeper about the matter. You aren't addressing anything with such an approach; you're papering over a contradiction.

Hm, someone else on here already confirmed that that is what they meant...

I was responding to your post; I hadn't seen theirs. You'd do well to read those links anyway. You clearly have a mistaken understanding of both ideas.

I can explain it to you if you want. I do have an answer for it.

I'm all ears ... but if you say that it's because of your faith, that will be circular argumentation and disregarded. "I believe I'm doing right because the god I believe in is right and I'm following his prescripts" is simply moving your bald assertion up a level.

Fair enough. I guess you are right that I can never claim to know what I would be like if I was something that I am not. But I would like to think I'd believe those things were still immoral.

Perhaps. But the fact that other humans in those societies regard their actions as moral rather undercuts your point that morality is not subjective. It is both subjective (dependent on who is making the judgement) and relative (to the circumstances obtaining at the time of the act).

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[Catholic_Lady]

Well, I don't believe "their god" exists. So naturally, I don't believe in the commands of their god to kill people, etc. And of course, you can apply the same doubts to mine. That's all this is, really. Just having our own beliefs and not believing everything else.

-and in a way, that is all that subjective morality is.  So, now that you understand what subjective morality is, and how it is -not- what you thought it was (that everything is "right")....can you see why there isn't much trouble for an atheist here?

You clearly -do- apply those same doubts to your own god.  When god kills the firstborn you think "no, no, god wouldn't do that, that's allegory" - you are not satisfied with the word of god...you've used your own moral sense.  
I do the same thing.

I understand what subjective morality is. I just don't believe that morality itself is subjective.

As for the OT stuff about, it's not my own moral sense. It's what my religion teaches, and it's what Jesus Himself taught.

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Nope, she doesn't get it.

I'm sorry.

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But I don't believe God ever commanded this. This is OT stuff and I have explained how I feel about the OT and how some of these descriptions of God completely contradict Jesus, who I believe is God Himself, made flesh.

That's your "moral filter" in action.  I have one too.  It's why I'm not a catholic.  I applied that filter to the faiths primary fetish.

It is what Christianity teaches.

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But I don't believe God ever commanded this. This is OT stuff and I have explained how I feel about the OT and how some of these descriptions of God completely contradict Jesus, who I believe is God Himself, made flesh.

That's your "moral filter" in action.  I have one too.  It's why I'm not a catholic.  I applied that filter to the faiths primary fetish.

It is what Christianity teaches.

[The Grand Nudger]

I understand what subjective morality is. I just don't believe that morality itself is subjective. 

You clearly didn't when you made your remarks about what it would -mean- if morality were subjective.  Have you had an epiphany, or have we helped?

As for the OT stuff about, it's not my own moral sense. It's what my religion teaches, and it's what Jesus Himself taught.

No, it isn't.  Take a little credit for the work you've done to your own theology.  Your religion isn't a decoder ring either.

[Catholic_Lady]

You don't have that experience either, but I would suggest that you are both equally devout in your beliefs.  It's no advantage, clearly - as you are no more able than they were of demonstrating this objective standard, or this god, or that you aren't mentally ill, or that you appeal to god for your -own- morality rather than applying that filter and then concluding what simply must not be true -about god-.

I didn't mean I have the experience as in I am alive while Jesus was here, just that I am alive after He already came and all His teachings and His life are written down for us to read about. The people in the OT and those who wrote the OT, did not have that. That's all I meant.

[The Grand Nudger]

You don't have that either....... you have stories, and so did they. Do you do what the stories say because the stories say so, or because you think that what the stories say are good? If the stories say something that you don;t think is good (all of that wonderful allegory)..would you do it just because you saw it in the story? To be honest, the shittiest part of the story is the NT, not the OT. How did the NT escape the moral filter you so ruthlessly butcher the OT with?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Lol. It is not "choosing which aspects of my faith to abide." That IS my faith, in its entirety. Can you specify what exactly it is you are referring to? I'm pretty sure I know but I just want to make sure.

I already have done so. If you aren't sure, you're not reading closely. You're asserting that the OT is mistaken about some things so that you don't have to defend the fact that you worship a god who was fine with slavery and even beating slaves who were not up to par; you're wanting to avoid defending the passages where he calls out for the brains of infants to be bashed out upon the rocks simply because of their race. You're wanting to distance yourself from the fact your god is fine with punishments going seven generations deep, meaning that innocent children will suffer as a result of their ancestors, whom they had no way of choosing.

You are cherry-picking your Bible by favoring the NT over the OT because despite your preferences, the god is the same God of Abraham, and in the Old Testament he is clearly a vicious son of a bitch who is unworthy of worship.

That is why you're being so vague and cagey about which parts you accept and which you reject. You've placed your faith in a book that you yourself admit has errors.

You're picking your own morality ("I like the New Testament God, he's a decent guy!") but refusing to acknowledge that your choice is every bit as subjective as anyone else's, because it is admittedly based on interpretation and elision.

[Catholic_Lady]

Precisely. You know something in the bible is wrong, so you assume the people writing it were wrong. Everyone does the same thing with the bible, which is why everyone gets different results. God somehow agrees with everybody, while they don't agree with each other.

With so much of the bible so massively wrong, how can you possibly trust any of it?

Christianity is defined by the New Testament and the teachings of Christ. As Christians we believe that when Jesus came He showed us the truer, more complete way. This isn't about "not believing in the bible." This is about being a Christian as opposed to being Jewish. As an example, the OT said "an eye for an eye"... Jesus specifically referred to that statement and told us the complete opposite. It isn't that "I *chose* the cherry pick the bible", it's that I am Christian and believe in the teachings of Christ even those that contradict the OT... which many of them do.

[Silver]

Christianity is defined by myth. Nothing else.