That’s very strange. Shouldn’t we draw inferences about the gods’ morality from their behavior? If YHWH really is responsible for the things in the OT, the conclusion should not be, “oh, I guess genocide is good, because God is identical to goodness, and he’s got quite the thing for it.” Rather, the conclusion is obviously that god is NOT identical to goodness, or even particularly well acquainted with it.
Whatever happened to “by their fruits shall ye know them”? If a god does evil things, then that god is evil. Redefining “good” to fit whatever evil needs to be accommodated deprives “good” of all meaning. And of course it’s a Twilight Zone episode: “It’s a Good Life.”
I disagree. God has defined himself saying to Moses that his name is « I am who I am », meaning God exists independently of anything else and is the source of all that exists, including goodness. IOW, God is the standard for goodness. Jesus doubled down on this idea when he said no one is good except God alone (Luke 18:18-19).
I really invite you to watch the whole video at 51 for you will see why you are misinterpreting the violent passages in the Bible that make you think God does evil things.
I’m sure you know this already, but the atheists will tell you no one has grounds for objective morality. Hello Euthyphro. [ETA: JH already brought this up, so just ignore me! ;-)]
As an agnostic I’m open to the idea of objective morality, but it just doesn’t seem to exist in the real world.
Does it mean the same thing when Popeye says it? I see no justification for your reading of the sentence, and I see not the slightest clue that it refers to all that exists or to goodness. That’s really reaching. Nor is Jesus’s statement any better. You’re just throwing out random bible passages that don’t support your argument, and you certainly haven’t addressed mine.
The thread is split to Side Convo, so no moderation delay. PLEASE no accusing others of faulty morality. Discussing justifications for morality is OK, but try not to make it personal.
Of course we do. The existence of our moral faculties is a fact of our nature. Where they ultimately come from, or whether they reflect any objective moral truth, in no way impacts either their presence, or their function as a ground on which we draw our moral judgements.
But, of course, since I think that “objective” morality is a meaningless notion, I don’t actually care. I state, without fear of any meaningful or effective rebuttal, that genocide is wrong.
What I don’t get is the nihilistic approach you have. Nothing is good or bad in and of itself? No moral values in any meaningful sense exist at all in the relations between beings? Morality is instead this ridiculous obedience-play in which there are decrees which may not be questioned? I find that kind of moral nihilism abhorrent.
As I said, I watched about half of it, and it appeared to be wordy garbage, which shed no light on any such thing. I always regret opening people’s video links when people decline to explain themselves and expect me to wade through an hour of vacuous prattling. This is just one more to add to the long list of regrets. If you have a point, I would suggest that you make it. If, as it appears, you have none, you should not cite a video presentation to cover your nakedness.
Okay, let me explain.
In the Bible, Israel often symbolizes the individual soul or the collective human spirit desiring communion with God, while its enemies such as the Canaanites, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, etc…represent the forces of evil that seek to thwart that union. So the violent passages within the Bible where God commands Israel to decimate everybody among its enemies should be interpreted metaphorically as a call by God to fight the force of evil all the way down. If you will, they are poetic representations of the spiritual battle one has to fight in order to live in communion with God.
That doesn’t sound terribly plausible, especially when it arises without break from context in the middle of an account purporting to be historical and having, without the aid of metaphor, a fairly clear purpose of showing the exalted status of the chosen people and the divine nature of their right to the land they inhabit.
But, what if it were? The analogy which the believer is to take from it is, then, that one should “fight the force of evil,” whatever that is, with the same determination and passion with which one would mass-murder other people for the purpose of stealing their land. I’m not sure that makes it better. It may even make it worse. It assigns virtue, by use of this analogy, to genocide.
And so how is the moral problem solved? Praising genocide as a helpful metaphor for something else is not nice. Imagine a German politician saying, “we need to fight poverty with the same forcefulness with which we once fought the Jews!” Would that come across well?
And it may be “poetic,” in the most charitable sense of that helpfully ambiguous word; but even the Vogons write poetry.
Which would make it subjective. God defining himself to be something is a subjective act performed by God. I hereby define myself to be X is to state a subjective opinion. No property of the person stating this definition makes it non-subjective. God might be stronger, wiser, and older than everyone else, that wouldn’t make his opinion of himself be anything but that.
So, to be clear: Are you saying all of those stories are completely fictitious, that the events recounted there never happened, and the people depicted never existed? That seems problematic, since Jesus supposedly was an actual, real person and his ancestry is claimed to have arisen from these people. How can fictitious characters beget a real, live person?
In any event, if you are correct, your god is a piss-poor allegorist. I can think of hundreds of allegories for the personal battle against evil that don’t involve the “good guys” committing war atrocities.
Like many religious apologists, you seem unaware of the numerous ways people have understood morality and ethics over the ages, many of which rely in no way on the existence of a god.
This play list provides a useful overview of the major positions in moral philosophy:
