Religion vs Atheism Book 2

[Rorshach]

 

What Seli said.  In particular, the final paragraph.

Which confirms what I've been arguing beyond any doubt.

Applying the logic used by you and Lord Mord in practical terns, at the Rosrhach & Lord Mord Private Hospital, during an emergency admission for a mother with serious complications of pregnancy, the woman would die before the attending medical staff could get through their first philosophical debate about which values they should apply to the situation.  This is before the chaplain and the resident philosopher and the resident homeopath and the resident psychic even have their input into the argument.

You know what guys?  Philosophical discussion is a good thing.  But if the ideas and values it comes up with cannot be translated into a practical real-world situation that affects every human - not just those that share the same beliefs - then it's probably useless.  Given that you've had plenty of time to come up with something, we have to conclude that there is no such evidence because the notion cannot be translated into a practical situation.

I'll be bowing out, as I said. Especially considering your third paragraph, coupled with my point 5 above. You are simply not worth spending time on. 

[sologdin]

the philosophical debate has always already taken place at the optimal deliberative levels, such as the legislative and judicial.  that's something that needs to occur, no doubt.  there's no need however to engage in the superfluous luxury of redeliberartion at any point (a fortiori at the moment of triage FFS), which redeliberation is more or less a complete waste, ceteris paribus, similar to cool hand luke taking his dirt outta boss kean's ditch &c., unless the redeliberation is merely for private aesthetic purposes in civil society.  

that's all like, yaknow, duh.

[Stubby]

I'll be bowing out, as I said. Especially considering your third paragraph, coupled with my point 5 above. You are simply not worth spending time on. 

Wouldn't it be a shame if doctors - scientists - thought like that about patients? 

[Dr. Pepper]

One of the best things about these threads (aside from Stubby's good work) is that the uber religious, biblical literalist effectively argued why the religious should always allow abortion.  It comes down to wicked babies who need to be murdered.  God said so, after all.  

[Stubby]

Why is the difference several people have tried to explain meticulously so hard to understand? The people who are against abortion are often also against contraceptives and extra-marital sex, where is the lack of consistency? (And even if they were inconsistent that would not automatically invalidate their reasons against abortion. BTW there are of course also people against abortion but pro contraceptives, most Protestants I'd guess.) Such a trad catholic stance may be wrong but it is not based on faulty science or plays science vs. religion. The conflict here is traditional (usually but not necessarily religion-based) morality vs. "modern" secular morality. Those who deny this evade the conflict and try to claim science's authority (which is in some respect similar to the authority of religion or tradition in former times) for a particular ethical position.

If the lives of a mother and her fetus/baby (depending on the stage) are in danger, I do not think anyone today says that per default the life of the baby should be saved first (although this was probably a viable position in Henry VIII. time when a surviving male heir could have been more important than the life of the queen ). So we try to save both, but may have different attitudes how much we will risk to save both or how easily we will abort to reduce the risk for the mother. This mainly depends on how high we value the life of the baby (because the high value of the mother's life is recognized by all parties). So first of all, it has to be recognized that probably everyone finds this a hard, dilemmatic situation.

How could "science" decide that the life of the mother is more valuable (or so far more valuable that even a fairly small risk for the mother should lead to abortion)? This is not a scientific dilemma but a moral one. (This is not to deny that there may be good reasons to deem the mother more valuable, but these are not medical reasons.) Most people (including myself) would probably go for the least risk for the mother. But what if the mother wants to run the risk for the chance to keep the child? Should this decide the issue or be overruled by doctors?

Science will help establishing the risk probabilities but it cannot decide whether to run the risk and maybe save both or abort and more probably save the mother. Again, those who think that questions like these are settled by science, please explain how this should be understood. Which experiment or which mathematical derivation from scientific principles yields the solution to such a dilemma?

 

1&2. When contraception is freely available there are less abortions: Scientific proof.  But religious organisations like the Catholics continue to oppose oppose contraception and abortion. This is yet another example of a specific conflict between religion and science.

3. Interestingly, you have just admitted that there is a conflict.  Which means that all of the last 200+ posts on the topic were unnecessary because you have contradicted the initial statement that sparked the discussion.  It is not, by your own admission, "fundamentally wrongheaded" to suggest that religion is in conflict with science in more areas than creationism and/or cosmology.

4&5&7. Firstly, as an anecdotal observation, there was a poster on this very forum only a couple of years ago who claimed just that.  This poster also claimed that rape victims should be jailed until the baby was delivered.  Secondly, this organisation claims (in an article written only 2 years ago) that there is "not ever" a situation in which abortion can save the life of the mother.  This is the specific quote:

The abortion procedure is not – ever – necessary to save the life of a mother.

Given the content of the discussion, this clearly false. And the basis for this organisation's claim? A statement written by the Association of Pro-Life Physicians.  And this was the comment they made:

Most of what passes as a therapeutic, or medically-necessary abortion, is not necessary at all to save the mother’s life. (Emphasis mine)

The scientists used the word "most".  The pro-life author of the article misrepresented that scientific term as "never".  Again, a clear example of a conflict between science and religion.  If you doubt that the publishers of this article are "religious" then read their "about" link.

Compare this with the comments made in this publication from the Center for Reproductive Rights.  I commend the publication to you, as it it is littered with examples of clear conflicts between religion and science on this issue.  This is a summary of just one such example:

Haydee, a woman from the Philippines, was diagnosed with a grave medical condition as a result of her first pregnancy. During her second pregnancy, she suffered a stroke and her health deteriorated quickly. A doctor recognized the imminent threat that this second pregnancy posed to her life, and performed a safe abortion. Although she tried to prevent subsequent pregnancies, Haydee was unable to access medically appropriate and affordable contraceptives and became pregnant again. Despite the fact that Haydee needed an abortion to save her own life, the doctor she consulted prioritized the life of the fetus and refused to provide the necessary abortion “because it is the taking of a life.” Fearing for her life, Haydee self-induced an abortion and experienced serious complications and weeks of heavy bleeding as a result. When she sought emergency care at a hospital, a doctor told her, “[t]hat is a sin. You killed your own child.” The medical staff proceeded to verbally abuse her, and threatened to report her to national authorities, despite the risk that continued pregnancy had posed to her life and health.

Yet another example of a woman treated deplorably due to the conflict between science and religion.

Oh yeah, before anyone jumps in to misrepresent my analysis by saying that this is only one more example (as was done in the earlier thread) I stress that I have taken only one of numerous examples in this document alone.

Given the position you adopt, you may wish to know that the dilemma you suggest still exists has been dealt with by numerous ethical bodies over the years, just as sologdin suggested above.  You can found a well-referenced section in the CfRR document I have linked you, which notes that each of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the  Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women have determined that a mother's rights take precedence over prenatal life. In that section, it is made abundantly clear that that these positions were predominantly adopted on the scientific evidence.  Every attempt by religious organisations to amend these determinations has been rejected.

One of the cases analysed and taken into account by CEDAW was LC v Peru.  Here is the summary:

In the case of L.C. v. Peru, the CEDAW Committee found that the government had violated a pregnant girl’s rights by prioritizing the fetus over her health by postponing an essential surgery until the girl was no longer pregnant. The girl’s continued pregnancy posed a substantial risk to her physical and mental health, and the CEDAW Committee held that the denial of a therapeutic abortion and the delay in providing the surgery constituted gender-based discrimination and violated her rights to health and freedom from discrimination. The CEDAW Committee has further expressed concern that women’s rights to life and health may be violated by restrictive abortion laws.  

6. The same document clearly explains this (non) issue. Consider this comment:

Efforts to promote recognition of a right to life before birth frequently try to capitalize on the lack of moral or ethical consensus on when human life begins, often seeking to codify a single religious or other ideological viewpoint on this question. In many instances, these attempts have deliberately distorted scientific evidence around the progression of a woman’s pregnancy.

I would like you prove that this is not a conflict between science and religion, by using evidence like I have.

So far, everyone who has supported your initial comment has refused to do so and instead stood by philosophical positions that have no practical application.  Maybe you can retrospectively justify your assertion with evidence.  If you can't, it would solve yet another round of hand waving to try and come up with some way to criticise "new atheists" without evidence if you just admit that you were (at the least) being just a little but hyperbolic.

[TerraPrime]

It's been a while since I've done school science and biology, but I thought evolutionary theory states that everything evolved from a single-celled organism.

Yet, this does not seem to weaken your conviction that you understand the current state of biological sciences on evolution, which spawns multiple sub-fields of research together generating a monumental pile of evidence, enough to discredit the validity thereof. Faith is indeed a formidable weapon.

If people want to discuss evolution and speciation, let's move to another thread. I don't really consider it relevant to faith or religion, except in the tangential sense that it invalidates some types of faith-based creationists.

[Altherion]

This means that you can justify someone's actions, disregarding scientific fact, even if those actions harm others, "because religion".  Truly, this is where your logic takes you.  So think about whether your logic is sound, please.

It means nothing of the sort. I am not justifying anyone's actions -- I'm merely pointing out that science makes no statement about them. People can disregard scientific facts for a variety of reasons. Religion is one of them. Avarice is another (see, for example, the story of the energy companies and climate change or the defensive maneuvers of the tobacco industry) and there are others still. Science says nothing about any such actions beyond predicting their consequences.

To determine whether these consequences make the actions worthwhile we need a moral framework. Religion offers a description of the world coupled to morality and ethics, but science can only replace the first of these -- the morality and ethics must come from elsewhere.

Science says the patient is the woman.

WTF? Science says nothing of the sort. Please stop trying to make science into some kind of pseudo-religion that not only makes moral judgements, but also evaluates professional relationships between human beings.

[Stubby]

It means nothing of the sort. I am not justifying anyone's actions -- I'm merely pointing out that science makes no statement about them. People can disregard scientific facts for a variety of reasons. Religion is one of them. Avarice is another (see, for example, the story of the energy companies and climate change or the defensive maneuvers of the tobacco industry) and there are others still. Science says nothing about any such actions beyond predicting their consequences.

To determine whether these consequences make the actions worthwhile we need a moral framework. Religion offers a description of the world coupled to morality and ethics, but science can only replace the first of these -- the morality and ethics must come from elsewhere.

WTF? Science says nothing of the sort. Please stop trying to make science into some kind of pseudo-religion that not only makes moral judgements, but also evaluates professional relationships between human beings.

1. Agreed.  I have already clearly stated that above.

2. Which means it is in conflict with science.

3. For a fine example of religious "morality", read Daemrion's posts above about why it was OK for the god of the bible to kill just about every child on the planet in one go.

4. It actually does.  Go read the post I addressed to Jo498 earlier today and you will see that it says exactly that.

5. I am not.  You are actually doing the opposite.  You are trying to elevate religion to status that allows it to make shit up and compete with science.

Now please go read my response to Jo498 above.

[Mladen]

 

...snip...

I say all this as a churchgoing Orthodox Christian.

As an Orthodox Christian too, I have to say that many of these debates sometimes seem so strange for me. To be honest, as a scientist and a religious person, I never thought very deeply of the conflict. Perhaps that is because the relationship my surrounding has with the church and questions of religion is significantly different than seeing it through the prism of strawman argument.

I would agree with Stubby, the opposite opinions between religion and church don't exist solely on creationism/evolution level, it goes much deeper. Are they fundamentally incompatible? Nah... Only if you make them. The abortion has always been very complicated and sensitive issue for me. The thing is that I do see a fetus as a living thing. But I would also put the life of mother as priority. And then we have the right of choice, which is above everything in my book. So, even though religion is against it, my issue, as a religious person, were never religion, but the fact what science has taught me. Perhaps I am a bad believer, someone might even say so... Others would call me hypocrite, but I have made my peace by believing in all science has to offer me, plus all the beautiful things religion can offer to one. And when they are in contrition, I always believe I am smart enough, with enough experience and of age, to ask my consciousness what is good and what is bad.

Perhaps I don't think too deeply about it, but heck, it makes an easier life

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Risto,

I agree that a fetus is a living human and that the rights of the fetus and the mother are in conflict.  What ultimately flipped me from Anti-abortion rights to Pro-abortion rights was the question of women's bodily autonomy.  Both my children were born at home because that was my wife's preference.  A case came up some time ago that hinged upon whether a woman had the right to refuse a Cesarian section in delivery of a baby.  If the fetus' life is paramount then, hypothetically, a woman would have no choice in the matter of whether to attempt a vaginal birth or a C-Section it would be the physican's call not the mother's.  I believe it should be the mother's call, not the physicians, to remain logically consistent I changed my position on Abortion rights as well as both issues are tied to women's bodily autonomy.

I also don't find my faith in conflict with my ongoing interest in science.

[Lord Mord]

 Stubby,

Wow, you finally get it.

Religion says there were two lives at stake and science said one. viz conflict.

Okay, this makes sense to me.

I was reading the conflict as one of morality, and thereby assigning to you, as I now suppose, a position you probably do not hold.  What I now believe you mean, is that religion offers certain remarks as "facts", which facts are contradicted by scientific evidence, and even by overwhelming consensus in many cases.  If that's true, the only way to disprove you would be to offer all or nearly all of the facts which the various religions purport and show that science has upheld them, which of course is ludicrous.

Anyway, thank you for being, in the main, patient, and at nearly all times, quite thorough.  Also, sorry for missing the point for so long.

[Kyoshi]

Firstly, DAEMRION scares me...a whole lot. I'm sacred of ISIS and their ideology; and it reads scarily similar to yours.

A few things currently confusing me, Daemrion, from one of your posts (first page of this thread) it seems as though mere acknowledgement of a god automatically guarantees one entry into heaven, an afterlife; it also seems that renouncing the existence of such a god automatically guarantees non-afterlife, absolutely nothing, the end. It seems contradictory to my understanding of one of the driving forces behind Christianity, which is that sinners and non-believers go to hell (thus guaranteeing us a hellish afterlife of our own). I don't know if you're adjusting the dogma as you go about the thread or if its written somewhere in the bible in unambiguous terms. I'll also search for it and post as soon as I can.

Re: Jesus -- I don't think the question is whether Jesus existed; in my understanding, it is about whether he was divine (which I don't think he was). As someone already said, using the existence of Jesus as proof of his divinity is the same as using the existence of a guy named Peter Parker as proof of Spiderman.

Re: Creation -- See now, when I was still in primary school and we were basically tortured into Christianity with fear of going to hell and other such things, I started to wonder a few basic things. I'm black. On a scale of President Obama to Seal (the singer), I'd say I'm very close to Seal. The conundrum I faced was this: this god they speak of, he apparently created everything in the world (it was never the universe; I believe religion has had to evolve in this regard), so god created everything. And when he was done, he made man in his own image. But the dude grew lonely and he made a wife for the dude. The dude and his wife populated the Earth.* Then where did I, a black child, come from? Where did my parents? Or, was a god actually a black guy? In other words: what is the image of god? This was the first time I think I started to have atheist inclinations. In my naive mind (yes Daemrion, even us arrogant atheists can be quite humble sometimes) it logically followed that god could not have created me (Or maybe the guy writing Genesis simply forgot to mention that every continent had its own version of Adam).

The reason I bring this up is because you treat your faith the same way my teachers did, you assert biblical scriptures as truth and nothing less. An example is your assertion that god created everything--which is a "truth" I reject since I am not of his supposedly-mid-eastern-though-often-depicted-as-Europeanish image.

And please trust me when I say this: atheists are more complex than the amoral, arrogant idiots you seem to believe we are.

Also, I'm still unclear on this inherent wickedness of children. I consider myself moral and I don't think what god did in the bible is cool. You can't just go around wiping out children (or justifying it) and then claiming moral superiority afterwards.

___________________________________________

*Did they? I'll try to search for it in the Bible.

[Mladen]

Risto,

I agree that a fetus is a living human and that the rights of the fetus and the mother are in conflict.  What ultimately flipped me from Anti-abortion rights to Pro-abortion rights was the question of women's bodily autonomy.  Both my children were born at home because that was my wife's preference.  A case came up some time ago that hinged upon whether a woman had the right to refuse a Cesarian section in delivery of a baby.  If the fetus' life is paramount then, hypothetically, a woman would have no choice in the matter of whether to attempt a vaginal birth or a C-Section it would be the physican's call not the mother's.  I believe it should be the mother's call, not the physicians, to remain logically consistent I changed my position on Abortion rights as well as both issues are tied to women's bodily autonomy.

I also don't find my faith in conflict with my ongoing interest in science.

The bolded section: Same happened to me. Ultimately, bodily autonomy and right to choose trumped all other arguments for me.

But, in case of fetus-mother debate, it is always good to remember that whenever you have two patients, there is a conflict. That is why in transplantation, a donor and recipient are having two doctors, or when it comes to conjoined twins, two teams. And the logic of medical procedures dictates that mother is always priority. Like in the case of conjoined twins, when sometimes you put all the resources to provide a life for at least one of them, mother's ability to continue life on its own is what gives her priority during emergency (that said, unless mother strictly and consciously express her desire for fetus to be the doctor's priority). At the end, yeah, the choice is on mother. Which is something no religious or scientific belief of mine a doctor can surpass in importance.

[TerraPrime]

A few things currently confusing me, Daemrion, from one of your posts (first page of this thread) it seems as though mere acknowledgement of a god automatically guarantees one entry into heaven, an afterlife; it also seems that renouncing the existence of such a god automatically guarantees non-afterlife, absolutely nothing, the end. It seems contradictory to my understanding of one of the driving forces behind Christianity, which is that sinners and non-believers go to hell (thus guaranteeing us a hellish afterlife of our own). I don't know if you're adjusting the dogma as you go about the thread or if its written somewhere in the bible in unambiguous terms. I'll also search for it and post as soon as I can.

That is just a definition issue. Some Christians now hold that "hell" is a separation from the Divine, not a burning lake of eternal pain. They define "pain"as being denied the light of the Divine. Or, in other words, "nothingness" _is_ hell, according to some. They have many fancy ways of explaining it, but it all boils down to the same retrofitting of modern sensibility into an archaic religion. Or, to use less prejudicial language, some sects of Christianity have evolved their own understanding of what it means to be Christian.

 

Re: Creation -- See now, when I was still in primary school and we were basically tortured into Christianity with fear of going to hell and other such things, I started to wonder a few basic things. I'm black. On a scale of President Obama to Seal (the singer), I'd say I'm very close to Seal. The conundrum I faced was this: this god they speak of, he apparently created everything in the world (it was never the universe; I believe religion has had to evolve in this regard), so god created everything. And when he was done, he made man in his own image. But the dude grew lonely and he made a wife for the dude. The dude and his wife populated the Earth.* Then where did I, a black child, come from? Where did my parents? Or, was a god actually a black guy? In other words: what is the image of god? This was the first time I think I started to have atheist inclinations. In my naive mind (yes Daemrion, even us arrogant atheists can be quite humble sometimes) it logically followed that god could not have created me (Or maybe the guy writing Genesis simply forgot to mention that every continent had its own version of Adam).

That is not too hard to explain actually. Genetic variations are not always expressed. In our scientific understanding, ancestral humans became divergent over long periods of time due to genetic variations resulting from various biological mechanisms (bottleneck effects, founder effects, natural selection, etc.). The fact that there are various human skin tones does not invalidate the creation mythology.

In general, it is not easy to contradict scriptural depictions with science, because religious people have the trump card called "it's God, so He can do anything." Descriptions of impossible events are not seen as counter-evidence of truthfulness of accounts, but rather, they are accepted as canonical proof of divinity.

That said, the genesis portion of the OT that dealt with creation has been studied extensively and scholars now believe that there are two (or is it 3 now) different sources for the story. It is not surprising that there are shortcomings or even contradictions in it. From a believer's point of view, these are minor issues, for the most part, because humans are imperfect vessels to receive divine revelations of truth, so errors creeped in as a result of our flaws in translating the divine message. C'est la vie. The important part of it all is that we are told that God is the creator of our world.

Finally, I would like to point out that cultural appropriation of a Middle-Eastern religion into the white culture is indeed alive and well. On one hand, it is legitimately arguable that God encompasses all, and so depicting Jesus as blond-hair-blue-eye is not a big deal. On the other hand, Jesus was born to Jewish parents in that region, so being blond and blue eyed was most likely impossible. Yet, images have power, especially in religion where emotions and introspections are deliberately elicited. In America, many black churches actually have black-skinned iconography. You can also find other flavors of iconography that fits local customs and traditions across the world. One reason why Christianity is so popular is, imo, the same reason why English is so wide-spread - they are both immensely malleable to accommodate local variations without losing the essence.

Also, I'm still unclear on this inherent wickedness of children. I consider myself moral and I don't think what god did in the bible is cool. You can't just go around wiping out children (or justifying it) and then claiming moral superiority afterwards.

This is entirely consistent with the religious point of view of God being the source of morality. Everything that God does is moral because He defines what morality is, to begin with. Killing all the first-born male children in Egypt in retaliation to the slaughter of Jewish first-borns is moral, because God is vengeful and "just." Yet, the Bible authors told us that Jesus extolled us to turn our other cheek against persecution and forgive people seventy time seven. So, clearly, God is not measured by the same standards of morality that He imposes on us, and that's just as well, since he's a trans-dimensional self-aware sentient entity of supernatural powers. It'd be conceit to assume that God follows the same rules as us mere humans, once you accept that God exists.

That said, reconciling the OT and NT depictions of God is a well-ploughed area of Christian theology. There are many approaches to this, and depending on whom you're speaking to, some of the critiques built on these contradictions really don't mean a whole lot.

[Erik of Hazelfield]

I'd like to discuss morality for a while.

For an atheist, ethics is a complicated subject. You think long and hard about the basis of ethics, should we go with utilitarianism or absolute moral obligations, is it always wrong to kill, stuff like that. In the end you end up with a more or less consistent morality.

For a religious person, it boils down to a simple appeal to auhority: what did God/Jesus/Mohammad/Buddah say?

Except it doesn't, really. Because you still have to cherry-pick your bible quotes in order to not come off as a raging maniac. Some of the Old Testament stuff is really not ethically justifiable.

Which leads me to the next question: can a God really have moral authority over us? If God does something that is really awful, is he still by definition right in doing it? I just don't buy that idea. In the end, isn't God's morality as arbitrary as ours?

[Kyoshi]

I'll definitely say more later. But my rejection of the creation argument is rooted in this: It doesn't make sense to have the entire human race descended from one man and one woman. That's my big issue here. My race factors in without a doubt. But simple logistics is my big issue.

And I think this may bring us back to the argument of science being in conflict with religion. Since god created fully formed humans, is there wiggle room in there for genetic variation, for evolution. Did the people in Africa just randomly get darker because it's all in god's plan? That is, is there anything about creation that actually makes sense?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kyoshi,

Many, if not most, Christian faiths see genesis as allegory, not literal truth.

Heck, Origen in the third century wrote that Genesis had to be allegory:

For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? and again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally. (Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. 4, p. 365)

 

Therefore, the allegorical interpretation of Biblical passages is hardly new to Christianity.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I'll definitely say more later. But my rejection of the creation argument is rooted in this: It doesn't make sense to have the entire human race descended from one man and one woman. That's my big issue here. My race factors in without a doubt. But simple logistics is my big issue.

Don't forget that Eve comes from Adam's rib bone.

That said, I think Scot lays it out correctly. The problem I have with that logic though is how do you decide what should be taken literally verses what is to be seen as an allegory.

[Kyoshi]

Scot, Tywin, 

I accept that. I just have a problem with having to accept it as absolutely truth, the way Daemrion puts it. It's when it's treated as history, accurate history, that I start to have a problem.

[Lord Mord]

 Erik,

Which leads me to the next question: can a God really have moral authority over us? If God does something that is really awful, is he still by definition right in doing it? I just don't buy that idea. In the end, isn't God's morality as arbitrary as ours?

Equally problematic is the fact that you never really know what God's morality is.  If you go with your pastor, it's what your pastor says, not what God says.  If you go from a book, it's what the publisher says, not what God says.  If you go from what you feel inside after asking God about in deep and persistent prayer for weeks, then you're still just going from what you feel, like most of us.

Sure, if we can ever identify the word of God, as such, then there's still big problems of either God's weakness or his arbitrariness.  He's either relatively weak, because he's subject to a bigger universal law of what's good that he is powerless to change -- or else he's arbitrary, because he isn't.  Yet, we'll never really get to that point of objectively identifying what his word is anyway, I think.