Faith is Feelings

[Astreja]

Almighty God does not need apologists on His behalf.

Since you simply can't shut up about your "Almighty God," do you actually believe that your god is "almighty"? It sure doesn't look like it to me.

Personally, I suspect that your faith has been on shaky ground ever since you discovered that non-believers exist, and you're just whistling in the graveyard where your belief will one day be interred.

[The Grand Nudger]

Thank you for the offer. I was more interested in asking the few Christians here what they thought.

You may have already noticed this...but the christians we get here at af aren't exactly all there.

[zwanzig]

You may have already noticed this...but the christians we get here at af aren't exactly all there.

Hm, yeah, the examples lately have been disappointing. But I remember when I first signed up, there were a couple of more grounded ones who were willing to engage in discussion. I wasn't looking for like, this HUGE weigh in from theists, but I do remember there were a couple who hang about here.

Ah, well. They'll likely show up again in a more softball thread.

[LadyForCamus]

That is true. I have seen a lot of apologetics regarding the nature of God and the sacrifice of Christ that involve ignoring crucial evidence of his nature or reframing a "might makes right" ethics to be the best option.

Almighty God does not need apologists on His behalf.  We will all come to discover, one way or another, that there is only one God and that He is sovereign over all because He made all things, natural and supernatural, etc (John 1:3, Colossians 1:6), and that He is in fact merciful, selfless, faithful, good, true and just. All things notwithstanding, He declares that He will have the final say.  "...Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” - Hebrews 3:15

A subjective non-understanding of a person's ways does not make said ways in fact wrong.  

A word, if you care to read, on God's sovereignty and righteousness - 

"I am the Lord, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things." - Isaiah 45:5-7

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts." - Isaiah 55:8-9

"He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." - Deuteronomy 32:4

Well, aren’t you cute.

[LadyForCamus]

I was thinking about it recently, trying to section out why certain people join certain religions or believe in certain Gods. And I was thinking about the personal morality people accept and define for themselves.

Why join one religion versus another? I think it's because you personally don't agree with those other religions definition of God and morality. What if they were true? Is truth only the commandments you would reasonably tolerate from a God? Even within your own accepted religion, there are things that "God" could ask you to do that you would tell him "no" instead of obeying. If God pulled an Abraham and Isaac on you, would you do as he asked and kill your child? 

 If you said "yes" to that question...that's a different discussion. But if you said no, how can faith be defined as anything other than your own subjective morality? 

Would it change things if God himself came down and told you to do stuff directly? Could you trust a supernatural being that asked you to do something that you felt was morally wrong? What proof would you need to know that this supernatural visitor was God and not something evil?

Perceiving God directly through the 5 senses would only result in a debate on the issue. 

Scenario:  If a physical entity with the appearance of personhood were to materialize on the White House lawn and while saying “I’m God” (loud enough that it was recorded) levitated a foot above the ground, would that constitute proof that God is not hidden? As the Secret Service approached, this entity asked one agent to place his hand on the entity’s shoulder which the agent did, thus making the entity disappear. Later, in the briefing, the agent said the shoulder garment felt ‘velvety’, anything else you noticed? ‘Yes, as we approached this thing, there was an aroma of fruit, the closer we got the more pungent it became, much like orange blossoms’.

So, if tangible detection is off the table, what’s left? Any other method you suggest is going to be equally debatable, no?

[The Grand Nudger]

The story of abraham and his son is instructive without the need to hear from any of those guys. It's not a story about an evil god, it's a story about virtuous people. Uniting people into a moral community is the business of a religion. In this case, asserting the virtues of sacrifice, obedience, and filial duty. The performative brinksmanship of the god in the narrative is just a convenient setup for those assertions.

What do you think of those assertions to moral truth? Are they virtuous attributes?
(even more specifically to your question - do you believe that there are faithful people who might take them to be moral truths?)

[zwanzig]

The story of abraham and his son is instructive without the need to hear from any of those guys. It's not a story about an evil god, it's a story about virtuous people. Uniting people into a moral community is the business of a religion. In this case, asserting the virtues of sacrifice, obedience, and filial duty. The performative brinksmanship of the god in the narrative is just a convenient setup for those assertions.

What do you think of those assertions to moral truth? Are they virtuous attributes?
(even more specifically to your question - do you believe that there are faithful people who might take them to be moral truths?)

I wasn't referring to the story in a specific sense but as a tongue in cheek example of a boundary to obedience. What if God told you to kill your child(with no expectation that an angel would stop you)? That is my question. Is it something a theist could just trust and do? Could they trust in God that much that they might assume they would be stopped? Could they trust that whatever their God commanded them to do was automatically right? Or is a God that would tell you to kill someone called into question merely for demanding such a thing of you, when he is supposedly powerful enough to do it himself? If killing your kid is a "no", my question then is "why?" What disagreement do you have with being commanded to do something hard and distasteful? If he's all powerful and perfectly good, what is the problem? What couldn't you justify with "God told me to"?

The actual story of Abraham and Isaac has nothing to do with this topic, so, it's allegorical origins aren't relevant. Sorry for the casual language of my post making it confusing.

I said it in my OP but my thesis is, I don't think theists have thought very hard about their beliefs. Those who said, "Most people believe what their fathers believed or follow the religious traditions they were raised in" are reiterating my point in a different way. That belief is flimsy and devotion and sacrifice to a religion is only tolerated because of "I like this" and could be abandoned/replaced if there was a big enough "I don't like that." I'm not calling into question their morals so much as I'm proposing God and religious commands are nothing more than a reflection of the believers' own feelings.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's pretty common to find a religious person that very much enjoys something that their religion insists is bad, or wouldn't do a thing that their religion insists is good or that they should do. - this alone rules out subjectivity as the frame of moral reference to that person with respect to their faith.

Insisting that a moral system is a product of the beliefs of our fathers or..broadly, our culture, is to insist that the moral system is relative. So that's just one way that any given faith can be something other than subjective with respect to it's moral underpinnings. They may also contain objective moral assertions as another way to be something other than subjective.

We, all of us...religious, irreligious, god believers and atheists have a tendency to communicate our moral intuitions as though we took them to be true.

[HappySkeptic]

The story of abraham and his son is instructive without the need to hear from any of those guys.  It's not a story about an evil god, it's a story about virtuous people.  Uniting people into a moral community is the business of a religion.  In this case, asserting the virtues of sacrifice, obedience, and filial duty.  The performative brinksmanship of the god in the narrative is just a convenient setup for those assertions.

What do you think of those assertions to moral truth?  Are they virtuous attributes?
(even more specifically to your question - do you believe that there are faithful people who might take them to be moral truths?)

Sacrifice, obedience and duty can all be good or bad depending on context.  In the context of serving a god -- mostly bad.

[The Grand Nudger]

Things that are good and things that lead to good outcomes are not interchangeable. We can do good in a bad cause, or bad in a good cause...presumably.

Are you familiar with the notion that those attributes are virtuous, and of people who believe that statement of virtue is a moral fact, though?