What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Longhorn]

Rest assured, I do not mean to control anyone. People can do as they please. I have certain moral beliefs, and I try to follow them. This is a personal decision, but people can do what they want. :

Not the way your church looks at it, unfortunately. Of course *you* don't want to control people. The church does, and it has interest in it.

[abaris]

Rest assured, I do not mean to control anyone.

I wasn't adressing you as a person, but the church - religion in general. For me it's on the same lines as creating junkies. The only difference being that the drugs are conditions so impossible to keep that everyone has to break them at some time. And now they have to go back to their dealer to get forgiveness. That's what I meant by controlling people. The controller is the concept of sin, reduced to the most basic human urges so that failure is inevitable.

[The Grand Nudger]

It suits her just fine...Neim, clearly...... she's been telling us how well it suits her this entire time.  You've simply misread her.

In the same way that my dodgy and violent past suits and suited me just fine, despite my being a "grab a beer and chill with me" kind of guy. We're complicated creatures, after all.

[Catholic_Lady]

Was it moral, then, to kill a person for pulling out of his brothers wife?  Was a story about a god killing a man for pulling out of his brothers wife moral, then?  Has god ever, literally or allegorically, done anything "bad"?  I can claim it, I will continue to claim it, I will continue to demonstrate it, and you -have- been contradicting yourself.

I've already answered this. ;-)

No to all, except "had God ever allegorically done anything bad." Well, if it's an allegorically written story, then God didn't actually do it.

Disagreements of opinion only apply to matters of opinion.  You and are are having a disagreement over fact.  I'm unlikely to let it go, given the nature of your interactions thusfar on these boards.

I'm sorry if my interactions have not been satisfactory to you. I admit I'm not always so good at putting thoughts into words, or at writing in general. That and I type slow.

[Pyrrho]

Rob... for a catholic marriage is much more than a social contract.
It is also on of their most cherished sacraments.
And you can never break a sacrament... that's why Henry VIII decided to dissociate himself from the catholics and start the church of England... remember?

Sure But whatever it means to them, it is not stopping them having sex before marriage, on the whole, unless I'm misunderstanding the data. So it's not affecting their sexual activity in general, whatever else it may mean to people.

I suppose those people are not True Catholics™ that break it?

That is absolutely hilarious. I want to break god's laws, so I make a new religion. God goes, "Fair enough".

You are being unfair to Henry VIII with that remark, as the situation was more complex than you are making it appear.


For a start, Catherine of Aragon had previously been married to Henry VIII's brother Arthur for several months, and:

Marriage to Arthur's brother depended on the Pope granting a dispensation because canon law forbade men to marry their brother's widow[citation needed]. Catherine testified that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated as, also according to canon law, a marriage was not valid until consummated.[24][25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Aragon


It is likely false that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated (though, of course, there were no witnesses to prove this), and so she likely ought never have been allowed to marry Henry VIII in the first place.

And consider:

 Certainly, by 1527 he had convinced himself that in marrying Catherine, his brother's wife, he had acted contrary to Leviticus 20:21,[nb 2] an impediment the Pope had never had (he now believed) the authority to dispense with. It was this argument Henry took to Pope Clement VII in 1527 in the hope of having his marriage to Catherine annulled, forgoing at least one less openly defiant line of attack.[60] 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England


The case is not simply that Henry VIII wanted to get rid of his wife (though he clearly did); there is good reason to believe that his original marriage to Catherine of Aragon was not in accordance with the recognized principles of marriage of the time.

Worth mentioning is the penalty for marrying your brother's wife in Leviticus 20:

21 And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless.


Keep in mind, at that time, it is sons who count, not daughters, and Catherine did not give Henry any sons (who survived; were their deaths a punishment from God?), which Henry seems to have interpreted as a punishment from God, as specified in Leviticus 20, for having married his brother's widow.

So there are theological reasons for Henry to say that he was not properly married to Catherine, which Henry did not make up, but were a part of the Catholic religion.  Indeed, Henry had been a very devout Catholic:

Henry himself, at least in the early part of his reign, was a devout and well-informed Catholic to the extent that his 1521 publication Assertio Septem Sacramentorum ("Defence of the Seven Sacraments") earned him the title of Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith) from Pope Leo X.[61] The work represented a staunch defence of papal supremacy, albeit one couched in somewhat contingent terms.[61] 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England


So, it is not simply a man wanting an annulment and just making stuff up to suit him.  Rather, it is that he had a problem of not having any male heirs, and the religion of the time gave a reason for that.  So he did not just "make a new religion," but rather objected to the fact that the pope did not seem to be properly following the Catholic religion.

Of course, there were political reasons why the pope did not grant the annulment, which you can read more on that if you are interested in the subject.  But suffice it to say that the Spanish king had a great deal of influence over the pope at that time, and Catherine was Spanish royalty.  That, of course, also at least partly explains why the original dispensation for the marriage had been given in the first place.

[SteelCurtain]

Sure I can. Many things change over time. I do not believe morality is one of them. Nothing contradictory about that.

But you said that morality was one of them, in so many words. The entire point that Rhythm was responding to was your idea that things in Onan's time made it and okay idea for him to be put to death and for the people of that time to write about it. You have a remarkable ability to distance yourself from the things you literally just said.

Also, why is it that you chose not to respond to the second part of my post?

[Catholic_Lady]

If you believe the story about Onan in the OT was written word for word, literally as it happened, then yes, you are correct about the last sentence there. As I said, I believe the OT was written allegorically. I believe the point of this story was to teach that contraception is immoral, and that's an important point. But I do not believe God literally "killed" Onan, or that a man named Onan even existed. I cannot speak for those who think otherwise, though.

Whether there was an Onan or not, the interpretation of Onan by the church has always puzzled me.  It's been used to justify both prohibiting contraception (your interpretation) and also masturbation.  But both readings torture the actual story.

Jewish law required if a man died childless, his living brother must marry and have sex with his sister-in-law until she produced a son, and that the son must be raised as the heir of the dead brother:

5 When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, 6 and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. 7 But if the man has no desire to marry his brother’s widow, then his brother’s widow shall go up to the elders at the gate and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’ 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, ‘I have no desire to marry her’, 9 then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, ‘This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’ 10 Throughout Israel his family shall be known as ‘the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.’

Deuteronomy 25:5-10 NRSVACE

Judah had two sons Er and Onan.  When god killed Er for wickedness, Judah told Onan to perform his duty to Er's wife by marrying her and raising thier first born child as Er's.  

It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and settled near a certain Adullamite whose name was Hirah. 2 There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua; he married her and went in to her. 3 She conceived and bore a son; and he named him Er. 4 Again she conceived and bore a son whom she named Onan. 5 Yet again she bore a son, and she named him Shelah. She[a] was in Chezib when she bore him. 6 Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn; her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. 8 Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother.’ 9 But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. 10 What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.

Genesis 38:1-12 NRSVACE


Onan spilled his seed because he did not want to give his child to his dead brother Er.  God was displeased and killed Onan.  Now, we know for certain that avoiding his duty to give a child to his brother was displeasing to god, because it was a violation of the law.  How do you get from there to declaring the method by which he broke the law to be bad under all circumstances.  If that were the case, you'd expect there to be a law in Deuteronomy prohibiting birth control. 

The Christian interpretations of this story are like reading a tale about how a man used a hunting rifle to kill his brother and was then hung, as a moral story about why we shouldn't shoot rifles.

^Yes, and what you say above it the interpretation the protestants use.

The thing is though, that even if Catholics interpreted the story like the protestants, we'd still have the same beliefs about contraception/masturbation. The story of Onan is not the reason why we believe what we do about those 2 issues. I have already written about the reason for contraception, and Onan was in no part of it. It's just kind of like "oh, and here's an example." But we don't base our moral views on it solely on it.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've already answered this. ;-)

No to all, except "had God ever allegorically done anything bad." Well, if it's an allegorically written story, then God didn't actually do it. 

Which doesn't rescue the moral status of the story, or the god described in the story...do you understand? God never did any of the "good shit" either, but that doesn;t stop you from believing that god is good on the basis of it having never happened.  Be consistent.  

I'm sorry if my interactions have not been satisfactory to you. I admit I'm not always so good at putting thoughts into words, or at writing in general. That and I type slow.

No, not "unsatisfactory", stop it.  You have been plainly and repeatedly contradictory....which to be completely honest, isn't what irritates me at all.  I hold contradictory things to be morally true myself.  The difference...is that I'll own up to that without reservation.

Oh, Onanism isn't the reason, btw, the displeasure of god at the act as expressed in the narrative isn't the basis for your moral condemnation?....hmn, have you checked the catechism or catholic answers.....on that one?

[Catholic_Lady]

I do not believe morality is one of them.

But morality does change. People back then, at Judea, found it perfectly all right and moral to stone people to death for extramarital sex. They also held slaves and felt morally justified in doing so. The irony even goes further, since in the 19th century, when the slave issue became virulent, both slave owners and abolishionists took their arguments from the bible.

Morality is always changing and hopefully to a more enlightened state than what was all right and considered moral 2000 years ago. If we as a society would still follow the moral code of these people, we would have a pretty dark time.

They did find it moral. They were wrong. It was never moral. Jesus stopped the stoning of an adulteress precisely because it was immoral, even though at the time it was about to happen it was socially accepted and normal.

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But do you think it's objectively immoral to torture a child just for the hell of it? There are plenty of people out there who get off on that. If a culture was ok with this act, wouldn't you say that they are wrong?

Lol, sure, enslaving is better than neglecting and allowing to die, but wouldn't you say it's still objectively wrong? What about for the many societies who enslaved people by stealing them from their homes and not by "rescuing" them from the battle ground? They most certainly had no problem with that. To them, it was normal and not immoral at all.

Rape also applies.

I can't tell you what is universal or objective because between the two of us we can only agree on what we both think.  So if I think something is wrong and you think something is wrong, we still haven't revealed what is believed to be right or wrong by the other people on earth who have existed all throughout history. 
 As I said previously, I can see circumstances outside of my own experiences in life that would make child torture and slavery the right thing to do.
Definitely in the past it was seen as the right thing to do to put a child through lots of pain and hardship to enable him to cope better with the harsh reality of living, rituals and passages into manhood were quite torturous.
I wouldn't torture or enslave a child or rape anyone but I might do if I was in a different place and time in history.

I guess on that we will have to agree to disagree.

I believe torturing a child for fun, kidnapping and raping a woman, and ripping people from their homes to enslave them never was or has been moral, regardless what society thought.

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Trust me, I do many things that are wrong. I am not a perfect person, and would never pretend to be.

Never said you were. Just saying this closed minded fear of everything different bullshit doesn't suit someone as seemingly kind as you.

I'm sorry you feel that way Neim. But just because you and I disagree on morality does not make me close minded, neither does it mean I'm afraid of your different opinions. I respect your opinions. But I have my own. That is all.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yes, but listen carefully. I never said nothing is subjective. I said morality is not subjective. Since there is nothing immoral with the way people spoke, wrote, and told stories back then, you can't claim that I am contradicting myself.

He doesn't need to claim that when your unspoken premise is that morality was different back then. You impeach your own argument with your own words.