My views on objective morality

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Absolute bullshit! The greater an entity, and the closer to perfection he is said to be, the higher the standard which he should be expected to live up to. If humans are held liable for accessory to crimes, then the gods of humans are that much more liable for their complicity in them. The only defense which the Xtian god's followers can offer as an excuse is the absolute bullshit "Free Will" argument, and that's just shameful special pleading, plus  ad hoc garbage.

How does Santa deliver all those toys to all the children in the world in one night? He doesn't, it's absolute bullshit. But if you accept for the sake of argument that he does so you can discuss the implications of the feat, it's a little late to backtrack to 'it's complete bullshit'.

As the Xtians say on accepting Jebus as "yaw lawrd n' Save-yawr", "It's never too late".

Christians don't have to offer adequate excuses for God's inaction. If God is super-good and omniscient and all-powerful and has freewill himself; then his actions or inactions MUST be completely justified by definition and if Christians can't explain how they're justified, it just means God has super good reasons that we can't currently perceive, and might not be equipped to comprehend if we could. The standard Christian answer to the Problem of Evil is that evil exists because without it a greater good could not be achieved or a greater evil would not be prevented. At this point, they have to accept some limitations on God's power, usually starting with not being able to do the impossible (though Drich goes after the super-good part). At this point, their concept of God is reduced (once again) to something unfalsifiable: An omnibenevolent being that knows everything that can be known and can do anything that can be done, that created the universe. He doesn't want there to be any evil, because he's omnibenevolent, so any evil that exists must be because there is a reason why it's not possible to avoid all of it. Presumably God is doing the best he can and things would be a lot worse if not for his efforts. It's a fairy tale, but it's a consistent and unfalsifiable one.

I'm not sure how Christians justify 'omnipotence' for a being that has to rest after a long week of creating everything in the first place.

If the Xtian god's power is limited in any way, then he is not omnipotent. If he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, then he would not allow anything to happen which really and truly displeases him. If Xtians accept limitations on his power, then they contradict their assertion on his omnipotence, which they invariably make, regarding his power. In respect to these conditions, they do engage in special pleading when they fail to hold him culpable for allowing evil things to happen.

The above simply couldn't have been summed up better by Epicurous, whose words apply no differently to Xtians:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

[robvalue]

The big problem is theists generally claim to know an awful lot about God, right up until the point where there's a massive contradiction. Then it's beyond comprehension.

They don't know anything about him, should he exist. It's just silly stories.

[robvalue]

Of course, if I saw a rape happening, I would try and stop it. Whether or not I hold the person accountable is irrelevant to my actions, because the consequences are the same. However, to me morality is not simply the outcome of actions. I find that absurd and it makes morality all but meaningless.

Even if it was about outcomes, maybe someone else wouldn't care about a rape. There's no rules saying what is and isn't acceptable, until someone states them.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Actually, I never really considered CL as having that position. The problem was with what she said, and she did repeat it so that that there could be no mistaking it, page after page after page. She and other Xtians just don't understand the very insensitive implications of what they say when they say that, and that's what I was trying to help point out to her! The problem is supporting a god who has all the power which is possible and impossible, but chooses to do nothing about a crime which he sits by and watches, in that very alley where the crime is happening, and probably beats off to it. When a human does that it's called being an accessory to the crime.

If God prevented all rapes, then we'd never know the evil that was rape. This argument would then be "why does God allow murder?". So then, God prevents all murders, and we never know the evil that was murder. Then the argument would be "why does God allow theft?". So then, God prevents all thefts, and we never know the evil that was theft.

So eventually you get to a point where God is preventing all evil, and humans are incapable of doing evil, which means we are perfect. There are multiple problems with this in terms of Christian doctrine:

1) If we're incapable of doing evil, then you could argue that we don't have free will, but rather limited will. That goes directly against God's plan for us, because he created us to specifically have free will.

2) Accordingly to Christian doctrine, there was a time when there was no murder / rape / theft. It was in the garden of Eden, and humans basically fucked that one up by eating the fruit, and thus losing their innocence and creating our abilities to murder / rape / steal.

3) If God is preventing all evil, then there would be no point in worshiping God, no point in heaven (because we'd practically already be there), etc. The point of life according to the Christian doctrine is that we suffer through it, and if you please God, you get rewarded. Again, this is based on the fact that God wanted us to have free will so we wouldn't be mindless drones, but because we abused our free will to create evil in the world, he came up with this redemption plan.

God isn't just another human, and that's the whole point of the issue - he's supposed to be much, much better - therefore, why shouldn't we hold him to a much higher standard? Really!

Right, and my issue is that God isn't the one doing any raping. Sure, he's not preventing rape, but see my argument above for why him preventing rape would be ultimately pointless. God never wanted us to be mindless drones; he wanted creatures with free will that could make decisions for themselves. Presumably he knew that this would mean that some of them would make evil decisions, but the promise of eternal life was supposed to allow humans to make a choice of whether to do good or bad things.

Just saying "God gave us free will" is about as useful as saying "the man gave me a lollipop after killing my parents". If you can't explain why free will excludes God from responsibility, then it's worthless.

See my argument above.

The more ideas you accept which are loopy, the more those which are horribly twisted make sense. I know them all, having grown up in various churches. It's systematic brainwashing, and it does not effectively let any god off the hook. If we were to never know evil, then we would not be automatons (which would make god guilty of slavery) we would simply live in a world where no evil exists - in other words, there would be no evil just like there are no flying pink unicorns. But the decision, if we are to accept this god, was that god's, and the shitty mess which we're left with is his own.

[Tiberius]

We already have incredibly limited will. I can do almost 0% of the things I could imagine doing. It just so happens that out of this pitiful selection, God choose such options as rape, murder and torture. If he's going to give such a tiny selection, why not make them nice things?

I think you really misunderstand what "will" is. It's the ability to choose between actions. Just because we can't fly doesn't mean we don't have free will; choosing to fly or not isn't a valid choice for humans, because both outcomes are the same (not flying).

The point is, if you have the physical ability to do something, and you can choose whether or not you actually do it, then you have free will.

Let's go over the rape example you gave:

Rape exists because humans have the physical ability to have sex. The free will part comes in when a human chooses to have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex. The Christian argument is that God invented sex (as a means of procreation), but humans invented rape via their free will. God didn't design sex as a means for humans to rape; but sex is abused by humans in that way.

Would you blame a car manufacturer when a human uses their car to purposefully run someone over? No, of course you wouldn't. The car manufacturer designed the car so that people could use it to get from point A to point B quickly. They didn't design it for people to use as a weapon. If someone does use it as a weapon, that's on that person alone, not on the "designer".

The other examples (murder and torture) can be explained in the exact same way. Humans have the ability to die, thus murder is when a human chooses to kill another human. Humans have the ability to feel pain, thus torture is when a human chooses to cause pain to another human. God didn't design murder or torture; he designed the humans that could die and feel pain. The fact that murder and torture can happen has nothing to do with God, and everything to do with free will of humans.

[Tiberius]

If we were to never know evil, then we would not be automatons (which would make god guilty of slavery) we would simply live in a world where no evil exists - in other words, there would be no evil just like there are no flying pink unicorns. But the decision, if we are to accept this god, was that god's, and the shitty mess which we're left with is his own.

Humans that were incapable of doing acts for which they have the physical ability to do are as good as automatons. We would be more robotic than human. We would be like a robot who is given arms for carrying things, but programmed to only use those arms in certain ways. Humans have arms, but nothing in our mind or nature restricts what we can do with them, other than physical restrictions. We can use our arms to help, and we can use our arms to hurt. Robots can only do the former.

Sure, we'd still have free choice to do good things, but being mentally incapable of doing bad things whilst physically able to do them would be a massive restriction, and would destroy free will.

Free will only exists when humans can choose whether to do things for which they have the physical ability to do.

[robvalue]

God is supposed to be all powerful. That is absurd, but if I accept that, then no other analogy is fitting. He could easily make it so that sex is possible, but non consensual sex isn't.

If he can't do that, he's not anything like all powerful.

Other analogies assume limitations.

Now, if you remove the completely stupid "all powerful" part, then arguments could be made in his defense. They'd still not be based on any facts, just made up stuff. But at least it would be possible.

This is what I mean. I let the theist make up whatever bollocks they want, all I ask is keep the story straight.

[Whateverist]

CL is far from the only one to carry around a scientific version of reality and a fantasy version, so that either can be called on. For example, "nature" is referred to, as if it's nothing to do with God. But in the fantasy world there is no "nature", there is God's systems. This is why the alternate version is needed, to excuse the shortcomings of the fantasy world and lay blame somewhere else.

Ah but does subscribing to the science version for empirical purposes constrain anyone from subscribing to other versions for explaining matters of the heart including existential longings? There is an underlying assumption that nothing but science is or should be necessary for any human need. The thought that anything else but science is always only a mistake is itself mistaken. I call that a domain error. Science only applies to the empirical but humans do not fall wholly in the empirical world - in my view.

[robvalue]

Well, this "other world" is made up. So it may be of practical help as a coping mechanism sure, but it's not real. Theists think it is real, in contradiction with observable facts. And the real one is real too, even though they both can't be.

If you can actually learn things reliably, about anything, you're using some version of science. Otherwise, it's bollocks.

But, in some ways, reality is in the eye of the beholder. So it is real, to them. Must be confusing.

[Whateverist]

The big problem is theists generally claim to know an awful lot about God, right up until the point where there's a massive contradiction. Then it's beyond comprehension.

They don't know anything about him, should he exist. It's just silly stories.

It is only silly stories so long as the only possible use of a story is to convey actual history.  But who believes that?