Morality

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Turn it around: if God mandates what is moral, why does morality differ so much depending on time, place, and circumstance? Tribes in Papua-New Guinea clearly don’t have the same moral strictures regarding murder that you and I do. Stealing medicine for a desperately ill child clearly doesn’t carry the same moral burden as kidnapping.

It strikes me that if God is the source of morality and wants people to behave according to his moral strictures, he could easily have imparted the same innate moral sense to everyone who has ever lived. 

Boru

Supposedly he did.  "14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:  15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;" -- Romans 2:14-15.  Which leads to the next bad faith argument that these people who do not follow the law of God do so because they are in rebellion against God for loving sin too much.

Hey Kingpin, got any more shitty arguments that have been dragged through the mud so many times there ain't a clean spot on them?  All you're doing is demonstrating that you are an ignorant and stupid man.

Reminds me of the old chestnut about the primitive tribesman and the missionary. 

The tribesman says, ‘So, if I believe what you’ve told me about this Jesus fellow, I’ll go to Heaven, but if I don’t believe, I’ll go to hell?’

‘That’s right,’ beams the missionary.

‘But what if you hadn’t told me about him - would I go to hell?’

‘Oh, no,’ says the missionary. ‘God in his mercy would understand and forgive your ignorance and you would go to heaven.’

The tribesman grips his spear a little tighter and says through gritted teeth, ‘Then WHY did you tell me about him?’

Boru

[emjay]

Yeah, @Kingpin, I have to say, though we used to get on alright, and I have fond memories of you from before, I'm thinking that was probably mostly in an 'off-topic' context, because I really don't respect the way you're going about this little crusade here. You seem little different than EoA except more polite. Basically as soon as someone starts strawmanning me, and presuming to tell me what I believe, such as saying I'm only an atheist because I want to sin or because I want to be my own god, etc, then I lose respect for them and have no further interest in talking to them.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's probably the worst way for a moralizing theist to respond to descriptive subjectivism. Declaring all of morality competing opinions, and then castigating people for supposedly wanting to be their own gods? Would that be bad, or just bad in someone's opinion?

[Paleophyte]

The point I was trying to make is I see a LOT of atheists making moral judgments against theistic Gods and some go as far as saying that is WHY there cannot be a God.  But how can one justify that judgment as matter of fact if morality as a whole is subjective to self and society?  It cannot be fact if it's relative and subjective.  So making moral judgment about God as factual wrong is to borrow from theistic morality to deny theism.  Seems odd.

That's likely because you're only ever hearing it brought up by an atheist after we've been told that god is the source of all morality/morality is proof of god/if we're moral then we're all secretly believers/that we're incapable of being decent human beings without belief. Round about that turn in the conversation we tend to start bringing up those uncomfortable little truths about how your oh-so-moral god doesn't appear to have a single moral that can't be found outside of turn of the millennium Israel or Rome. Doesn't it bother you at all that the source of your morality couldn't seem to manage a single explicit commandment against rape, slavery, or genocide?

As for my morality subjective to God, what's the problem?  So what if it is?  He is the creator of all things, I'm perfectly fine being subjective to Him.  All this tells me is that you want to be your own God.

No. I'd be a really terrible god.

I believe morality is rooted in God's nature and we are made in the image of God, thus morality is engrained in our being, knowing right from wrong.

The problem there being that god doesn't seem to know right from wrong. See how this conversation comes up?

[arewethereyet]

I can't talk morality with someone who plays the Hitler card.

Once again, I was hoping for better.

[brewer]

[Astreja]

Morality is intersubjective. If you do something that violates the moral standards of a community, the community will react negatively. Depending on what you did and on the community's way of dealing with violations this could get you ostracized, physically exiled, imprisoned or killed.

If a community's moral code creates a dangerous environment (e.g. no law against murder), the resulting chaos will drive people away. Communities that are stable over the long term tend to have protective codes (do not steal, do not kill, and so on) and chaotic communities tend to be short-lived. Thus, there is a bias towards orderly communities with similar moral codes.

Christianity does not own this process. No religion does. It's simply an expression of the desire of individuals to live in safe, stable environments.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Morals are the things that allow you to live with yourself. Ethics are the things that allow you to live with other people."

[Angrboda]

Semantics is what makes living with you unlivable.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

FWIW, I consider myself a moral man. Not because I do what the Bible says I must do to be moral, but because I don't. No rape, no incest, no pillaging, no enslaving women, no killing disobedient children with rocks.

Boru