My views on objective morality

[Minimalist]

We grant each other rights.

And take them away.

[Catholic_Lady]

God only condones those things to a person who takes a completely literal interpretation of the OT and completely ignores the teachings of Christ in the New Testament. This is not Catholicism.

Is the thinking that those things are bad so God must not have ordered them and those parts of the Old Testament are just the writings of warlike humans trying to justify their actions by claiming God authorized them?

I don't believe God ever ordered people to do things like the OT stories say He did. But it should be noted that many of those things are still a step up for those times. 

Like how in one OT story, there was a war and God told his people to marry the widows of the enemies who got killed. God told them to allow these women 1 month to mourn, and then to marry them and take good care of them... and if the women later wanted a divorce, they should be granted one. 

...This is one of the more incriminating things in the OT because it's practically rape... forcing someone to marry their enemy with only 1 month to mourn the loss of loved ones. Do I believe this was a moral thing to do? Absolutely not! Do I believe God actually came down from the skies and ordered these people to do that? Nope! But as horrible as this is, it's still a step up for a time when it was totally normal to make sex slaves and/or kill the women of your enemies. 

So I do believe there was a God inspired moral awakening in the people who wrote the OT. Awakening being the key word there. This does not mean what they did was still moral. But it slowly began to awaken a sense of morality, or at least a sense of regard for your fellow human being. We evolved from animals, after all. We had a long way to go, and change wasn't going to happen over night. 

Modern day Christians follow the teachings of Christ in the New Testament, and if you're Catholic, you also have the Church right along with that. You seldom see a Christian open up the Old Testament to find out what the morality of a particular act is.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

And it doesn't trouble you even a little that an all-powerful Being took a couple of thousand years to get people to understand what he was really like?  I'm sorry, but that's a mug's game.  If it isn't God that has changed but only our understanding of him, then generation after generation went about doing the wrong things, and causing immeasurate suffering along the way.  Any reason God couldn't have sorted it out from go?  Think of all the needless pain and misery that could have been averted had the Ten Commandments been replaced with the Beatitudes.

Boru

Well we still don't fully understand. And we never will... at least not until we die and meet Him. But I do think at least overall, it will continue to be a slow, forward moving process as it always has been.   

Do I have a problem with that? No. I'm ok with not understanding why God does certain things the way He does. (goes to show, again, we are still far from fully understanding Him). I'm not God, I can't see the whole universe, I can't see past, present, and future at all once. I'm just one little human living in a tiny part of the universe for a tiny fraction of eternity. And so of course I'm not going to understand all the motivations of someone who knows everything and can see everything. Why should I think I know better? I don't know everything He knows, and I'm ok with that. I'm ok with not being at the top of the totem pole.

That's not precisely what I meant, I'll try again.

Your claim is that Jesus led us to a better, clearer understand of God. My question is: Why couldn't God have made himself understood right from the beginning? Surely a Being with the ability to create the Universe in a trice could have implanted into the minds of his favoured creations, 'Slavery is wrong.' Why didn't he?

Boru

[Thumpalumpacus]

He eviscerates his own argument by citing the acceptance of slavery in his second paragraph.

Is he unaware that the Bible accepts slavery as moral?

[Catholic_Lady]

No. You must have misunderstood me. Subjective morality means there is no concrete right and wrong. What I'm saying is I believe there is a concrete right and wrong and always has been and always will be, but we may not fully agree with it or acknowledge it. Because as the video explains, we believe morality does not come from us, but from a higher law maker who made these laws. You are right, in the future perhaps we will regress in that way and slavery will be more accepted again in all societies. Will that make slavery good? No. Slavery has and always will be evil because it is an objectively, inherently evil act. Because it takes away the inherent right a human being has. That's what I believe.

You are literally defining subjective morality and calling it objective. 

Hmm I don't see how I'm doing that, as I feel I made myself very clear.

[Chas]

Is the thinking that those things are bad so God must not have ordered them and those parts of the Old Testament are just the writings of warlike humans trying to justify their actions by claiming God authorized them?

I don't believe God ever ordered people to do things like the OT stories say He did. But it should be noted that many of those things are still a step up for those times. 

Slaughtering all of the people and all of the animals in a city is a step up?  A step up from what?

Like how in one OT story, there was a war and God told his people to marry the widows of the enemies who got killed. God told them to allow these women 1 month to morn, and then to marry them and take good care of them... and if the women later wanted a divorce, they should be granted one. 

...This is one of the more incriminating things in the OT because it's practically rape... forcing someone to marry their enemy with only 1 month to mourn the loss of loved ones. Do I believe this was a moral thing to do? Absolutely not! Do I believe God actually came down from the skies and ordered these people to do that? Nope! But as horrible as this is, it's still a step up for a time when it was totally normal to make sex slaves and/or kill the women of your enemies. 

Oh, so God ordering people to be a little less murderous is a step up? 

So I do believe there was a God inspired moral awakening in the people who wrote the OT. Awakening being the key word there.

'Awakening' is far too strong a word for the things God orders and condones in the OT.

This does not mean what they did was still moral. But it slowly began to awaken a sense of morality, or at least a sense of regard for your fellow human being. We evolved from animals, after all. We had a long way to go, and change wasn't going to happen over night. 

Sorry, but exactly how does it begin to awaken a sense of morality?  I think you are white-washing the horrors.  No, you are white-washing the horrors.

Modern day Christians follow the teachings of Christ in the New Testament, and if you're Catholic, you also have the Church right along with that. You seldom see a Christian open up the Old Testament to find out what the morality of a particular act is.

Modern day Christians rarely follow the teachings of Christ.  Open your eyes.

[Catholic_Lady]

Well we still don't fully understand. And we never will... at least not until we die and meet Him. But I do think at least overall, it will continue to be a slow, forward moving process as it always has been.   

Do I have a problem with that? No. I'm ok with not understanding why God does certain things the way He does. (goes to show, again, we are still far from fully understanding Him). I'm not God, I can't see the whole universe, I can't see past, present, and future at all once. I'm just one little human living in a tiny part of the universe for a tiny fraction of eternity. And so of course I'm not going to understand all the motivations of someone who knows everything and can see everything. Why should I think I know better? I don't know everything He knows, and I'm ok with that. I'm ok with not being at the top of the totem pole.

That's not precisely what I meant, I'll try again.

Your claim is that Jesus led us to a better, clearer understand of God.  My question is:  Why couldn't God have made himself understood right from the beginning?  Surely a Being with the ability to create the Universe in a trice could have implanted into the minds of his favoured creations, 'Slavery is wrong.'  Why didn't he?

Boru

I don't know why. For whatever reason, He thought 2000 years ago was the right time to make Himself man and point us to the right direction. I'm ok with not knowing all of God's motives.

[Mr.wizard]

That's not precisely what I meant, I'll try again.

Your claim is that Jesus led us to a better, clearer understand of God.  My question is:  Why couldn't God have made himself understood right from the beginning?  Surely a Being with the ability to create the Universe in a trice could have implanted into the minds of his favoured creations, 'Slavery is wrong.'  Why didn't he?

Boru

I don't know why. For whatever reason, He thought 2000 years ago was the right time to make Himself man and point us to the right direction. I'm ok with not knowing all of God's motives.

Well what if you meet god and discover he is pro slavery? Maybe we where on the right path with slavery and messed it up?

[Catholic_Lady]

I don't know why. For whatever reason, He thought 2000 years ago was the right time to make Himself man and point us to the right direction. I'm ok with not knowing all of God's motives.

Well what if you meet god and discover he is pro slavery? Maybe we where on the right path with slavery and messed it up?

Then He'd be a different god... not the one I currently believe in.

[SteelCurtain]

You are literally defining subjective morality and calling it objective. 

Hmm I don't see how I'm doing that, as I feel I made myself very clear.

You are making yourself clear, just not in the way I think you mean to. You saying there is a concrete right and wrong, we just don't know what it is, but at the same time we are moving towards it--that's subjective morality.

Especially if you cannot point to a reason why the direction we are moving is the right one. What if God's original plan was what he laid out in the OT? What if the Catholic Church had it right in the 15th Century?

What if the Catholic Church has it all wrong now, and the ultimate in morality is personal bodily autonomy?

When you define the ultimate objective morality as "I don't know what it is, but I know we're moving towards it"--then you've just cloaked subjective morality with a lot of hand waving.