It would be interesting to hear the opinion of the god of the Bible on it. I am sure he would heartily endorse the Khmer Rouge’s methods, as they are his own, but it’s possible that he would feel they should have chosen a different cause to kill children for.
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In Deuteronomy 20, there’s an implicit list of cities that are to be utterly destroyed–murder all men, women, children, animals etc. (“Do not leave alive anything that breathes.”) But then there are cities that are more distant. If they surrender, then everyone becomes a slave. If they don’t surrender, you starve them out then exterminate the men and take the women and children as slaves… so then I guess the god of the Bible would tut-tut about the wasted slaves if you butcher the children. Gosh, he’s so morally inspiring!
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I always find it a bit funny when YHWH the Ineffable orders the Israelites not only to murder all the people, but all of the ungulates in their possession as well. No rage problems there, no sirree.
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@giltil, what I’m curious to know is, how are we to know this? In what sense has this been relayed to us as an “absolute” moral imperative? Surely if it were absolute, we would know it was absolute, or what would be the meaning of absolute? It seems you would like to say “we all recognize this is so horrible that is should absolutely be wrong”, and then are using the supposed authority of your God to prop up that notion. Or am I missing something? It’s been pointed out above that the Bible hardly gives us explicit instruction on these matters.
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Interesting, for me, I would say that it just didn’t square with reality upon closer examination.
I tend more to think people are just like that. If it wasn’t Christianity it would probably be something else, and there are no shortage of something elses in fact. We all have to work to make things like this stop happening, but I believe there are plenty of Christians who would like the same thing. I hope all of us like-minded people can be in the same boat together and work together with mutual understanding.
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I don’t think it is quite correct to say this demonstrates a difference of opinion over morality. Just because someone does something does not mean he thinks it is moral. People will do things they understand to be immoral because their self-interest outweighs their commitment to moral principles, or because of social pressure, or because they are psychopaths and do not experience dysphoric emotions when doing immoral things.
We could test that hypothesis by imagining how a member of the Khmer Rouge would respond if it was his only children who were being killed. Would he just accept it as a moral act according to his moral code? I somehow doubt it.
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Could you elaborate on how this works?
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that God exists. He is all-powerful, he is all-knowing and he created the universe and everything in it, including us.
He also has very definite ideas about how he wants us to behave, and he will be pleased if we act in accordance with these ideas, and angry or disappointed if we do not. He might even reward or punish us on this basis.
On what grounds can we determine that his wishes regarding our behaviour are objectively moral?
Yes, sadly, I agree. That was in fact my point: Christianity is one of zillions of mind viruses. It’s not unique in its toxicity and/or in its benefits. That means it should be evaluated on either or both of: 1) its net benefits; and 2) its truth claims re existence of gods, reanimation of corpses, etc. It sounds like your unbelief is based mostly on #2. Mine is based mostly on #1, since I never considered #2 to be a dealbreaker (the various truth claims are largely unverifiable).
Discussing #1 with Christians invites gaslighting that can be breathtaking. Discussing #2 gives us voodoo dolls named “Richard Dawkins.”
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I think it is important for Christians to treat atheists well, without resorting to straw men or over generalizations. This goes the other direction. I also think it is important for atheists to treat Christians well, without falling prey to the same mistakes.
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But all unverifiable things aren’t equally believable. I don’t think unverifiability excludes something from the possibility of belief. The believability just isn’t there for me.
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This conversation is reminiscent of many that we had in our humanist community over the past several years. About half of the people in the community, including me, had come to humanism (and to unbelief) from a faith of some kind that was meaningful to them. There were many former evangelicals, but also people from other traditions. But then at least half of the community was made up of people who never believed. Many were raised without faith (or with nominal faith that they considered to be of no consequence), others had rejected faith early on despite being exposed to it. We came to realize that this difference–roughly, former believers interacting with never-believers–was relevant to how we interacted in the community and how we developed programs and ideas. Very roughly speaking, never-believers more commonly related to religion on an intellectual level, talking about believability, evidence, credibility, etc. Former believers more commonly related to religion on a personal and emotional level, talking about betrayal, abandonment, abuse, a “break-up” with god and/or his systems, those kinds of things. It’s not that former believers didn’t care at all about evidence or that they/we even ever found the evidence “convincing.” Nor is it the case that never-believers were oblivious to the harm done by religion, including harm done to members of our community. But the difference was very interesting, and navigating it created challenges that were mostly positive but were occasionally fraught.
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Thank you. I’ve learn something.
And after having dig the issue a bit more, I found this resolution of the Euthyphro dilemma by WLC. Here it is:
It is not the case that something is good because God wills it, nor that God wills something because it is good. Rather, God wills it because he is good.
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Here is a philosopher explaining why that approach fails:
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Yes, that’s a common approach. It makes not even surface sense. If there is no external standard of goodness, how can one know that God is good? Can “good” even have meaning?
To elaborate a bit: You might as well say that God’s nature is potrzebie, and therefore his actions and commands are potrzebie. Does that clarify his nature, actions, or commands in any way?
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While I’m sure that’s true, I do not see any examples of atheists using straw man arguments or over-generalizations here. Perhaps you could point one out so as to help us understand your thinking.
I don’t either, but I think it’s reasonable for Christians to feel annoyed when I (for example) discount their god based on the behavior of other Christians. My argument is not invalidated, at all, by the fact that decent thinking Christians are horrified by the behavior of American evangelicals, but all of us could do with more generosity and patience with each other. And I think, maybe, this is what @swamidass was getting at.
Gods don’t deserve respect, but it’s not that easy to say this while showing respect for our friends who believe.
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There is an external standard of goodness for us humans who are creatures and this standard originates necessarily from the creator. This is what Christians believe, and it is perfectly coherent. Of course, naturalists deny that an external standard of goodness exists. But in this case, they cannot use the existence of evil to argue that God doesn’t exist.
If it were perfectly coherent, you should be able to do more than simply repeat the claim. Why should a standard originate from the creator? What makes goodness good? How do you know God’s nature is good, and what does that mean? Or, to put it another way, how do you know God’s nature is potrzebie, and what does that mean?
You can however use it to argue that a good God doesn’t exist. We do have a standard of goodness; it’s a human word defined in human terms. It has no other meaning than the human meaning. If God is something other than good in human terms, it’s meaningless to say that he’s good.
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Thank you for that. It’s the perfect answer to the claim “atheists have no basis for morality”.
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AND in the event there is no God, it’s even more important that atheists not make these same mistakes. It’s a two wrongs do not make a right situation.