If God exists....

[PWD]

I beg to differ. 'That which is moral is always that which God says' is definately an actionable, and absolute, moral structure. You can disagree with it (free will, imperfect observation/knowledge, etc.) but that doesn't make it any less absolute.

God fails his own morality test is also an absolute. He is therefore not the source of morality. Oh look, the two absolutes are eating each other.

[Ovinomancer]

We are as soon as the bible is truth.



He's using god's own word to judge him.



I must've misplaced them under the cowards whose best contribution is that slavish nipple-suckling and desperately hoping to stay under the radar is the only rational path here regardless of the truth of the powerful bully.

And that's a failure of understanding. You view it as capitulating to a bully. By what, leading a good life following the teachings of Christ? Damn, that's a mean bully. Or is it being forced to believe in God that's the bully part? Well, you know he exists, kinda hard not to believe in Him. So really, the capitulation part is just accepting that he is God, and good, and all that, right? Well, if the OP premise is held, I now KNOW this to be true. Any problems with God are going to be coginitive dissonance at that point -- me knowing my interpretation and feelings are objectively wrong, because the truth is that God is right, and just, and good.

You're clinging to your judgements that you use to dismiss God, to dismiss the worship of God, and to feel justified in doing so. And, I'll freely admit, in the absence of knowledge they're damn good and persuasive arguments. They don't hold water in the face of knowledge to the contrary, though.

God fails his own morality test is also an absolute. He is therefore not the source of morality. Oh look, the two absolutes are eating each other.

How do he fail? Because He's 'said' different things at different times? Are you saying that absolute morality can't have conditional clauses, or is something that is fully understandable to humans, or, to put it in the context of God, is just His will at the moment? If God is the absolute source of morality, then He is moral. Period. Arguing otherwise is arguing against fact (again, in this context where we know God exists and is the source of morality).

This is a narrow set of arguments. So much so that I find the actual topic a touch trite. Of course knowledge such prompt rational persons to follow. The premise isn't very enlightening. I'm more interested in the forceful statements from people that (nomially) accept the premise of the thread and then answer irrationally. It seems that most of the reasoning is ignoring the nomially accepted premises of the thread. Ideology seems to be rather inflexible.

[Bagpuss]

I beg to differ. 'That which is moral is always that which God says' is definately an actionable, and absolute, moral structure.

It's not really absolute if his will changes from one minute to the next.

[nail bunny]

Ah, but that's mathematically unsound.

Of course it is, I'm too lazy to study the Bible to determine the accurate numbers... not even looking at the numbers we could never actually know (like how many good people were destroyed in the Flood versus the one good man saved).

You've constructed a limited set of options and assigned weightings to them to make them fit your rationale, not the other way round.

Not quite, though I admit it does look that way.

I took what I considered the most likely options (if you can come up with more please do) and then weighed them identically to save myself time. When I first conceived of "using stastics" to make my (humorous) argument in my mind they were a 50/50 split. When I started typing them in I realized "Follow God" had three possible outcomes to "Reject God" two outcomes.

Plug in only a 5% chance that God would change the rules in that precise manner, and your rationale should therefore change drastically, no?

Of course it would.


Or maybe not. Honestly, I see the sun in the sky most days, I still don't believe it. I'm not saying it's some astounding miracle when I see it or my life is changed every time... what I'm saying is I don't buy the "scientific" explanation anymore than I do the religious one. And I do still have "Wow, that sun up there is so damn cool" moments (about random different things, it's not always the sun).

Thus I'm lead to the conclusion that even when with faced "absolute truth" I'm not likely to believe it.

Comic book morality is your argument? I'm not sure what to say to that.

I was quoting mutherfucking Voltaire and Luke, bitch best recognize!

There's a whole thread around here with a bunch of people doing exactly that. Oddly, most of them are on your side of the argument.

Which one is this? Point it out to me....

[PWD]

And that's a failure of understanding. You view it as capitulating to a bully. By what, leading a good life following the teachings of Christ? Damn, that's a mean bully.

Sacrifice your son lately?

Been turned into a pillar of salt?

Told that no matter how good you are you're going to hell unless you have faith?

Told that your newborn is going to hell if he dies before he can be baptised?

Fuck your "good" god.

How do he fail? Because He's 'said' different things at different times? Are you saying that absolute morality can't have conditional clauses, or is something that is fully understandable to humans, or, to put it in the context of God, is just His will at the moment? If God is the absolute source of morality, then He is moral. Period. Arguing otherwise is arguing against fact (again, in this context where we know God exists and is the source of morality).

Bullshit. If god lays out the rules of morality and then breaks them, god is immoral. Worse, he's knowingly immoral on a level humans could never approach since not only does he understand the rules, he fucking made them.

This is a narrow set of arguments. So much so that I find the actual topic a touch trite. Of course knowledge such prompt rational persons to follow. The premise isn't very enlightening. I'm more interested in the forceful statements from people that (nomially) accept the premise of the thread and then answer irrationally. It seems that most of the reasoning is ignoring the nomially accepted premises of the thread. Ideology seems to be rather inflexible.

Hilarious from the person who has yet to accept the premise of the thread, which encompasses more than you think. IF the bible is truth THEN god's misdeeds in the bible are truth. Therefore god is unworthy of even his own respect let alone our worship.

[Ovinomancer]

It's not really absolute from one minute to the next.

ab·so·lute   /ˈæbsəˌlut, ˌæbsəˈlut/ Show Spelled[ab-suh-loot, ab-suh-loot] Show IPA
adjective
1. free from imperfection; complete; perfect: absolute liberty.

2. not mixed or adulterated; pure: absolute alcohol.

3. complete; outright: an absolute lie; an absolute denial.

4. free from restriction or limitation; not limited in any way: absolute command; absolute freedom.

5. unrestrained or unlimited by a constitution, counterbalancing group, etc., in the exercise of governmental power, especially when arbitrary or despotic: an absolute monarch.

6. viewed independently; not comparative or relative; ultimate; intrinsic: absolute knowledge.

7. positive; certain: absolute in opinion; absolute evidence.

8. Grammar .
a. relatively independent syntactically. The construction It being Sunday in It being Sunday, the family went to church is an absolute construction.
b. (of a usually transitive verb) used without an object, as the verb give in The charity asked him to give.
c. (of an adjective) having its noun understood, not expressed, as poor in The poor are always with us.
d. characterizing the phonological form of a word or phrase occurring by itself, not influenced by surrounding forms, as not in is not (as opposed to isn't ), or will in they will (as opposed to they'll ). Compare sandhi.

9. Physics .
a. independent of arbitrary standards or of particular properties of substances or systems: absolute humidity.
b. pertaining to a system of units, as the centimeter-gram-second system, based on some primary units, especially units of length, mass, and time.
c. pertaining to a measurement based on an absolute zero or unit: absolute temperature.

10. Education . noting or pertaining to the scale of a grading system based on an individual's performance considered as representing his or her knowledge of a given subject regardless of the performance of others in a group: The math department marks on an absolute scale. Compare curve ( def. 10 ) .

11. Climatology . noting or pertaining to the highest or lowest value of a meteorological quantity recorded during a given, usually long, period of time: absolute maximum temperature.

12. Mathematics . (of an inequality) indicating that the expression is true for all values of the variable, as x 2 + 1 > 0 for all real numbers x; unconditional. Compare conditional ( def. 6 ) .

13. Computers . machine-specific and requiring no translation ( opposed to symbolic): absolute coding; absolute address. COLLAPSE
noun

14. something that is not dependent upon external conditions for existence or for its specific nature, size, etc. ( opposed to relative).

15. the absolute,
a. something that is free from any restriction or condition.
b. something that is independent of some or all relations.
c. something that is perfect or complete.
d. (in Hegelianism) the world process operating in accordance with the absolute idea.

I don't follow your argument.

[Bagpuss]

I don't follow your argument.

Which meaning of absolute are you using?

Because it certainly seems imperfect and mixed, ah you mean arbitrary or despotic, yes then I suppose God's moral code could be classed as absolute.

[Ovinomancer]

Which meaning of absolute are you using?

Because it certainly seems imperfect and mixed, ah you mean arbitrary or despotic, yes then I suppose God's moral code could be classed as absolute.

There's no defintion in there that says 'can't change'. Let's check wiki's definition of moral absolutism:

Moral absolutism is an ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of other contexts such as their consequences or the intentions behind them.

Your conjecture that moral absolutes must be rigid in time isn't a strong argument. The fact that you only have imperfect observation and limited scope of understanding would further question your assertion. The premise is that God exists, and he is the God of the Bible, and all of this is unquestionably true. In that context, God is the moral absolute, and any misunderstanding is a failure of your less perfect being, not Him.

[Turjan]

@Ovi: The introduction of the idea of a moral absolute is born from your personal interpretation of the premise of this thread and not part of the actual premise, so that part of the discussion is pretty much moot.

[WayneLigon]

@Ovi: The introduction of the idea of a moral absolute is born from your personal interpretation of the premise of this thread and not part of the actual premise, so that part of the discussion is pretty much moot.

Well, the OP posits the Bible is literal truth and it's pretty hard to argue that it's isn't saying 'things really are black and white'. Now, if we go with 'the Bible is a collection of parables and teaching stories that are a transcribed oral tradition, so some stuff is naturally going to be contradictory or incomplete etc etc' then the entire premise is changed.

[Turjan]

Well, the OP posits the Bible is literal truth and it's pretty hard to argue that it's isn't saying 'things really are black and white'. Now, if we go with 'the Bible is a collection of parables and teaching stories that are a transcribed oral tradition, so some stuff is naturally going to be contradictory or incomplete etc etc' then the entire premise is changed.

If the bible were concerned more with morals and less with laws, that might be true. Plus, there's the issue of what's black and what's white. And nobody follows those laws, anyway. Many of them went long out of fashion.

Everybody remembers the ten commandments (and pretty much nobody follows them). What about the rest?

[nail bunny]

From what I recall the Bible is very clear about God being the sole arbitor of what is right and what is wrong.*



However that doesn't mean I need to agree with Him.









* Caveat: I don't remember if God ever claimed he was the sole arbitor, or if it were merely those speaking of God. But it is likely He'd make exactly that claim.

[Turjan]

From what I recall the Bible is very clear about God being the sole arbitor of what is right and what is wrong.*

However that doesn't mean I need to agree with Him.

* Caveat: I don't remember if God ever claimed he was the sole arbitor, or if it were merely those speaking of God. But it is likely He'd make exactly that claim.

Sure. But the bible has a very legalistic approach to this, which might have given the impression of "absolute morals". The definitions of moral and law have a large overlap, but the OT is to a large part concerned with many laws that don't really deal with any moral questions in the modern sense. They are just laws. Follow the law, don't question it.

If you really think about it, even the (or better most?) Christian churches still only follow those laws that have a moral component. They didn't have any qualms with exchanging the Sabbath for Sunday, either, as they valued the idea of having a day of rest and observance of god higher than the letter of the commandment. And all those countless laws that are not part of the commandments? Nobody cares.

Regarding your caveat, you probably find something for every claim you have in the bible.

[Atticus_of_Amber]

The athiest/agnostic thread got me wondering...

If God as presented in the Bible (Old & New Testaments) exists, would you a) want to know and b) be willing to follow him even if it meant changing aspects of your lifestyle.

Not really looking for a discussion of whether God exists or not (that's a fine topic for another thread & I'd certainly be willing to participate), rather exploring the hypothetical as presented. So for the question, assume 100% certainty of existence. Do you want to know about it and would you follow him? Explanations for why or why not are great discussion fodder too.

(a) Yes.

(b) Hell no! I'd want to find away to arrest him and put him on trial for genocide, murder, torture, child abuse and other heinous crimes. Barring that, I'd want to find a way to get Seal Team Six to put a bullet in his eye.

If, however, the entirely a-Biblical God of nice, genorous decent mdoern moderate Christianity were to exit (a sort of God-as-Rowan-Williams'-public-face deity), then yes, I might well consdier following Him.

[nail bunny]

If, however, the entirely a-Biblical God of nice, genorous decent mdoern moderate Christianity were to exit (a sort of God-as-Rowan-Atkinson-public-face deity), then yes, I might well consdier following Him.

Yeah I could respect that God.






Seriosuly though - If it turned out there was a God but the writters of the Bible had some seriously off ideas about how things went down, I'd be more than inclined to give Him a muligan and rethink His place in my life.