Religion vs Atheism Book 2

[TerraPrime]

The slaying of all life - not just mankind - apart from the bare minimum for preserving life (at least as far the authors were concerned) is indeed a big deal, and it's treated as such in the text, though obviously not enough to your own modern moral satisfaction. It's perhaps worth asking why the character of God did it, and why the authors felt compelled to include such a story in the first place. Simply dismissing God as a "mass murderer" seems to stem more from your self-admitted anti-Abrahamic bias then from any critical reading of the text. (Are you even looking to hold a conversation in good faith or are you just looking to self-righteously stand on a soapbox to rant some more against the Abrahamic God?) That said, I do not agree with the morality of the text, but I am intrigued by the scenario it sought to convey: namely a world so irreparably consumed by the pollution of evil, chaos, and violence and the threat of the created world's return to its uncreated, primordial state. So if God is just, does God let this evil and corruption flourish and the descent into decay and ruin continue? Would God then be on trial for that failure too if God did nothing? So what should the solution for this scenario have been? I am not suggesting that this is the best case scenario, but I am certainly curious now as to what you see as the solution for such a cosmologically destructive scenario. 

*I* think the story is tremendously revealing of God's character. I was only responding to Altherion's oddball interpretation/justification in the context of debating God's morality.

 

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

*I* think the story is tremendously revealing of God's character. I was only responding to Altherion's oddball interpretation/justification in the context of debating God's morality.

Yes, but you say nothing of your own solution to this biblical scenario of irreversible world corruption. God gave humanity dominion over the earth and rested. When God looked back, the "real" metaphysical forces of evil, sin, and violence irreparably corrupted and polluted the created world. What does one do? How does one fix it? Stand back, do nothing, and let it fall further to ruin? So what about your own character? 

I would agree that most liberal Christian theologians would likely not consider Altherion's interpretation "good theology," at least as far as humans attempting to rationalize the divine or a good divine being worth worshiping, but he does have a point. Many authors assert in the biblical texts that God's perspective is not human, as humans - as we are told - have far more limitations of senses and cognition than God. 

[Altherion]

Bullshit. If we accept your argument, we'd also have to accept that earthly murders aren't really murder either, since when  someone is "murdering"  someone else,  they're actually just hastening that person's transition  to the afterlife, and this transition lacks the properties that make death terrible (irreversibility and uncertainty). Essentially you're committing theists to the moral nihilism you've attributed to phyicalists, you've just arrived there by different means. 

Is your hypothetical murderer capable of bringing the victim back to life? If not, then the change is irreversible. Does the hypothetical murderer know exactly what is in store for the victim? If not, then the uncertainty is there. Omnipotent and omniscient entities play by different rules, but such behavior is contingent on their abilities.

[IamMe90]

Yes, but you say nothing of your own solution to this biblical scenario of irreversible world corruption. God gave humanity dominion over the earth and rested. When God looked back, the "real" metaphysical forces of evil, sin, and violence irreparably corrupted and polluted the created world. What does one do? How does one fixit? 

I don't understand the question. If God is omnipotent, there doesn't need to be an explanation. He can just fix it. 

[Altherion]

Could you please explain that part, because I don't understand. At all.

Morality is used to create a better world for everyone. Why do we good deeds? Because we want to. Because we have empathy and feel sorry for other people. Because we have a deeply rooted feeling of right and wrong, of justice, and because we feel bad when we hear about cruelty or wrongdoings.

For morality to be meaningless, all the things that the moral laws are there to protect, all the things people care about, have to be meaningless too. And I guess they are, if you define meaning from an absolute, divine perspective. If, however, you regard meaning as something we create ourselves and attach to things, then morality is just as relevant as in the divine case.

In a physicalist universe, the answer to "Why do we do good deeds?" is not any of the ones you mentioned, it is because we have no choice in the matter whatsoever. All of the things you mentioned (empathy, wanting to do something, sympathy, right and wrong) are illusory -- human beings are part of the universe and must perforce obey the same rules as everything else. You can believe that you feel all of those things and even act on them, but this is just an indication of the fact that you do not realize the truth. In reality, everything you think and do is completely controlled by the laws of nature and you are no more moral than any other object in the universe.

[Stubby]

The slaying of all life - not just mankind - apart from the bare minimum for preserving life (at least as far the authors were concerned) is indeed a big deal, and it's treated as such in the text, though obviously not enough to your own modern moral satisfaction. It's perhaps worth asking why the character of God did it, and why the authors felt compelled to include such a story in the first place. Simply dismissing God as a "mass murderer" seems to stem more from your self-admitted anti-Abrahamic bias then from any critical reading of the text. (Are you even looking to hold a conversation in good faith or are you just looking to self-righteously stand on a soapbox to rant some more against the Abrahamic God?) That said, I do not agree with the morality of the text, but I am intrigued by the scenario it sought to convey: namely a world so irreparably consumed by the pollution of evil, chaos, and violence and the threat of the created world's return to its uncreated, primordial state. So if God is just, does God let this evil and corruption flourish and the descent into decay and ruin continue? Would God then be on trial for that failure too if God did nothing? So what should the solution for this scenario have been? I am not suggesting that this is the best case scenario, but I am certainly curious now as to what you see as the solution for such a cosmologically destructive scenario. 

With no regard for people who have had no chance to hear the words of this god? (Like native Australians, Polynesians, Native Americans etc etc)

With no regard for the animal and plant life?

With no regard for the infrastructure put together to help life continue in harsh conditions - also put in place by this god?

The flood myth is in no way justifiable as 'moral' by any sensible standard.  This is because an entity with the alleged power to create a whole universe should have been able to make all the "evil and corruption" go away with a snap of it's fingers.  That is the "solution for this cosmologically destructive scenario".  Either this entity didn't care about all of the things it destroyed in the flood or it wanted to see everything destroyed. So it is either 'not loving' or massively evil.

There is no apologetic answer to this dilemma.  The ark story is no kind of reasonable morality play.

[eupfhoria]

I want the people saying things like "why doesn't the fossil record contain the remains of every species that ever existed, or at least all the so-called [and logically absurd as a concept] transition fossils?" to do me a favor:

Over the next few weeks, save up some leftover bones/bone fragments from your meals of poultry and fish (beef and pork would be cheating for this experiment). Now take those and form them into a few groups: one to leave on the ground in your backyard, and the others to bury at various depths, or the same depth, depending on the number of variables you want to introduce. The differences in soil/sediment are already a pretty big variable to take into account so I suspect depths won't matter. Now start taking notes at regular intervals (say, every other week) on the general things you observe on the groups of bones. Do you think you will notice them decomposing? Will you even be able to find some of the buried ones? Now extrapolate this information onto the vast stretches of geologic time represented by the fossil record, the shifting of sediment and rock formations, floods, fires, faulting and subduction, volcanic activity, scavengers before the bones are even buried, the list goes on. 

The idea that the fossil record would be a 1:1 representation of life through Earth's past is pure foolishness, I don't know how else to say it

[IamMe90]

 In a physicalist universe, the answer to "Why do we do good deeds?" is not any of the ones you mentioned, it is because we have no choice in the matter whatsoever. All of the things you mentioned (empathy, wanting to do something, sympathy, right and wrong) are illusory -- human beings are part of the universe and must perforce obey the same rules as everything else. You can believe that you feel all of those things and even act on them, but this is just an indication of the fact that you do not realize the truth. In reality, everything you think and do is completely controlled by the laws of nature and you are no more moral than any other object in the universe.

All that we have to infer from physicalism is that morality is a physical phenomenon, subject to laws and causality -  not that it doesn't exist. It seems clear to me that morality does exist,  although our understanding of it may be very flawed at a fundamental level (specifically wrt the roles choice and free will play). It seems to me that your reductionist account of morality and physicalism is fairly pointless, though. 

Regarding your earlier post, I misread what you were saying, so I'll leave that alone. 

[TrueMetis]

Unless He actually does change, I don't see the arbitrariness.

That he can change and doesn't is just as arbitrary as him changing. Arbitrary isn't want you do but why you do it. And an all powerful god? Everything it does is arbitrary.

Definitions of arbitrary

1.

subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion:

an arbitrary decision.

2.

decided by a judge or arbiter rather than by a law or statute.

3.

having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical:

an arbitrary government.

4.

capricious; unreasonable; unsupported:

an arbitrary demand for payment.

5.

Mathematics. undetermined; not assigned a specific value:

an arbitrary constant.

 

The biblical god, whether choosing to change or not certainly conforms to 1 and 3. Most would argue god is judge of all so fits 2, and I consider it 4. The only definition that doesn't fit is 5.

 

Now, I may read you wrong, but according to your logic, everything that could in theory change is arbitrary. That would, among other things, apply to laws. So laws, then are arbitrary by this argument. Not just in how they are applied (which may be arbitrary), but by their very nature.

You read me wrong, again arbitrary is not what happens, but why it happens. Though some legal systems are very arbitrary.

Also, I think that you confuse literalists and non-literalists in your second paragraph. Non-literalists will not argue that every Biblical story is true, but that they are the product of men, inspired by God. As such, there is no need to take as literal the God presented in the OT. The lens for reading the OT instead becomes God made man - Jesus.

Literalists would struggle more, I think, with the differing accounts of God in the OT.

Nope, what I'm saying is literalists have no room to interpret their god as unchanging, but even non-literalists would have trouble justifying that position given the difference between the OT and NT, because it might not be literal it's still the word of god. And the word of god changed massively.

[TrueMetis]

Is your hypothetical murderer capable of bringing the victim back to life? If not, then the change is irreversible. Does the hypothetical murderer know exactly what is in store for the victim? If not, then the uncertainty is there. Omnipotent and omniscient entities play by different rules, but such behavior is contingent on their abilities.

Why the fuck does this matter? Most people this god supposedly kills don't come back, so for them it doesn't matter that their murderer could have brought them back. That just makes it worse.

Right, rules where it doesn't have to kill anyone, but does for shits and giggles.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

 

I don't understand the question. If God is omnipotent, there doesn't need to be an explanation. He can just fix it. 

That's a non-textual presumption, and it's not necessarily a viewpoint held by the authors. The authors may have held God to be "all powerful" in a broad sense, but likely not in the theological sense influenced by Hellenistic Platonism and notions of divine perfection. 

With no regard for people who have had no chance to hear the words of this god? (Like native Australians, Polynesians, Native Americans etc etc)

With no regard for the animal and plant life?

With no regard for the infrastructure put together to help life continue in harsh conditions - also put in place by this god?

The flood myth is in no way justifiable as 'moral' by any sensible standard.  This is because an entity with the alleged power to create a whole universe should have been able to make all the "evil and corruption" go away with a snap of it's fingers.  That is the "solution for this cosmologically destructive scenario".  Either this entity didn't care about all of the things it destroyed in the flood or it wanted to see everything destroyed. So it is either 'not loving' or massively evil.

There is no apologetic answer to this dilemma.  The ark story is no kind of reasonable morality play.

Stubby, why do you presume that this story exists as a morality play? Aren't you presuming that there was no regard?And why are you inserting random Australians, Polynesians, and Native Americans appearing in this story? Can you name Noah's nationality? Why are you presuming that God did not speak to these other people? So isn't that a gap in the text? An assumption? Why do you presume that God has the power to make all the evil and corruption go away with a snap of its fingers? It's not as if God snapped creation into existence all at once, did he? Have we seen how these things are erased? You would need biblical textual evidence for that. Have any? Or are you projecting non-textual assumptions on the text? 

Stubby you are putting a lot of things in the text that are simply not there. That's both ahistorical and atextual. It strikes me as an intellectually dishonest (or at least lazy) reading of the text in which you have already formed the conclusion, simply begging the question, so to speak. It's the sort of thing that most literature teachers would probably deduct serious points from their students for if they read it in a paper. So how about we work with the text and not what you pull out of your ass? 

 

[Stubby]

Stubby, why do you presume that this story exists as a morality play? Aren't you presuming that there was no regard?And why are you inserting random Australians, Polynesians, and Native Americans appearing in this story? Can you name Noah's nationality? Why are you presuming that God did not speak to these other people? Why do you presume that God has the power to make all the evil and corruption go away with a snap of its fingers? Isn't that a gap in the text? An assumption? Have we seen how these things are erased? You would need biblical textual evidence for that. Have any? Or are you projecting non-textual assumptions on the text? 

Stubby you are putting a lot of things in the text that are simply not there. That's both ahistorical and atextual. It strikes me as an intellectually dishonest (or at least lazy) reading of the text in which you have already formed the conclusion, simply begging the question, so to speak. It's the sort of thing that most literature teachers would probably deduct serious points from their students for if they read it in a paper. So how about we work with the text and not what you pull out of your ass? 

1. Because it is taught to kids.  Preschoolers, generally.  With pretty picture books showing lots of furry critters getting onto a boat.  Like this picture, with the two gay lions.

2. Well, yes.  There is no mention of any "regard" in the story.

3. I am inserting "random" other folks into the story because the entire world is said to have been affected by the flood.  Those people, who are going about their own lives without any preachers to tell them about god, all get killed too. If the killing of these people was justified because god spoke to them surely it would have been in the book god wrote to self-justify it's actions?

4. If this being has the power to create the universe and everything in it, then it should have the power to unmake anything in it, like evil and corruption.  If it cannot do so, then it is not the all-powerful being it is alleged to be.  If it can and won't do so, it is not all-loving.  The remaining questions in that first paragraph are just dodges.  Those of us arguing all of those things are pointing out where the lack of logic in the texts takes us. Of course, I'm not going to pull every biblical reference about god's alleged power "out of my arse", but I'll start with just one:

Luke 1:37:

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

I'm sure you will find some way to tell me that this is irrelevant.

5. Let's examine what I have allegedly "pulled out of my arse" shall we?  Again, these are not the only examples, lest I be accused of selectively quoting.

Genesis 7: 21-23

And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

Here we have textual proof that god killed everything, even those living things that had no fucking idea about it's existence.

Jeremiah 32:46

For thus saith the LORD; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them.

Here we have textual proof that this god caused evil to come to a group of people in a different scenario within the bible, and saying he could take it way.  (Here is god being a standover man, btw, in just the same way as two hoods might do to a shopkeeper - smash up his store and then promise to protect him from them if he pays them enough).

If it were true in that scenario, why not assume that it could have been true in the ark scenario?  Please explain why I have pulled this out of my arse if you can.  I'm guessing it will be along the lines of "because theology" and/or "because context" and'or "because god".

And I notice that you, like Daemrion and Altherion before you, ignore the issues about god wantonly killing all of the animal and plant life as well for no good reason that I can see.  All in the name of "morals according to god".  Fuck that noise.

[karaddin]

Allegorical atrocities, natch. ;-)

 

But yes, I agree. If I actually believed that the Abrahamic God exists, for real, I would kill a few babies just to be sure I would end up in hell. Holy shit, what a royal douchebag He is. I wouldn't cross the street to piss on Him if He's on fire, let alone spend eternity with Him.

Or maybe in the Monkey Paw twisted way, my hell *is* to spend eternity with Him!! lol

Hell is God sternly judging you every time you have a lustful thought about a man, and you can't not see his disapproving face - there is no looking away!

 

The last sentence being as it may, I'm not sure why you are putting it in reply to my post. I fully agree with you that you have morals as do the overwhelming majority of both atheists and religious believers (truly amoral people are rare; I'm not sure if there are any at all). I also agree that the morals and ethics have evolved over centuries (again, this is true regardless of whether one is an atheist or not). My point was merely that if you are right about physicalism, then all of this is meaningless because all morality (religious or atheist) relies on some things being right and some things being wrong... but in a physicalist world, there is no right and there is no wrong -- there are only the laws of nature.

I'm not quite sure why you jump from atheist to strict deterministic physicalism, the two don't have to be connected like that.  I don't believe in an absolute right and wrong, I believe in a right and wrong based in what is good for society and the subjective experience of the individuals within that society. Obviously what I feel is good for society and the subjective experience of the individuals is itself subjective, but I don't try pretend otherwise - I know that homophobic bigots think the elimination of homosexuals would be good for society, but that's one case where the minority of individuals within are really trumping what a majority may feel.

From my lack of belief I can either think there is no choice, no free will and everything is set in stone, in which case I can't ever think other than I do at this point in my life anyway and that is that I can't think that way. The alternative is that we have a consciousness which emerges from the physical body which is capable of making meaningful choices about what we do with heavy influence from the meat machine that we are made out of and the cumulative experiences of our lives. Neither of these has to have the slightest thing to do with "God".

[Ramsay Gimp]

 

Here we have textual proof that this god caused evil to come to a group of people in a different scenario within the bible, and saying he could take it way.  (Here is god being a standover man, btw, in just the same way as two hoods might do to a shopkeeper - smash up his store and then promise to protect him from them if he pays them enough).

There's usually a distinction between "evil" and "an evil" though

[Stubby]

There's usually a distinction between "evil" and "an evil" though

Such as?

[Ramsay Gimp]

Never mind, I misread  

[IamMe90]

Hell is God sternly judging you every time you have a lustful thought about a man, and you can't not see his disapproving face - there is no looking away!

I'm not quite sure why you jump from atheist to strict deterministic physicalism, the two don't have to be connected like that.  I don't believe in an absolute right and wrong, I believe in a right and wrong based in what is good for society and the subjective experience of the individuals within that society. Obviously what I feel is good for society and the subjective experience of the individuals is itself subjective, but I don't try pretend otherwise - I know that homophobic bigots think the elimination of homosexuals would be good for society, but that's one case where the minority of individuals within are really trumping what a majority may feel.

From my lack of belief I can either think there is no choice, no free will and everything is set in stone, in which case I can't ever think other than I do at this point in my life anyway and that is that I can't think that way. The alternative is that we have a consciousness which emerges from the physical body which is capable of making meaningful choices about what we do with heavy influence from the meat machine that we are made out of and the cumulative experiences of our lives. Neither of these has to have the slightest thing to do with "God".

He's making the jump because most atheists that have been educated in philosophy are physicalists. Accepting physicalism doesn't really present the kind of problem he's suggesting it does, though. Subjective experience is not easily (it may not even be epistemically possible to be) reduced to the level of particle physics, and it will not affect the way we go about our lives, or the way we live our lives ethically, or the way we experience feelings toward ourselves or others. So as it is, morality being an entirely physical phenomenon really doesn't matter in any significant way at all, IMO.

[Erik of Hazelfield]

In a physicalist universe, the answer to "Why do we do good deeds?" is not any of the ones you mentioned, it is because we have no choice in the matter whatsoever. All of the things you mentioned (empathy, wanting to do something, sympathy, right and wrong) are illusory -- human beings are part of the universe and must perforce obey the same rules as everything else. You can believe that you feel all of those things and even act on them, but this is just an indication of the fact that you do not realize the truth. In reality, everything you think and do is completely controlled by the laws of nature and you are no more moral than any other object in the universe.

All of what you wrote is true, yet nothing of it contradicts anything I wrote.

That the universe has no inherent moral and morals are just a social construct doesn't mean they don't have a place in our world. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Christian apologetics

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I don't understand the question. If God is omnipotent, there doesn't need to be an explanation. He can just fix it. 

IamMe90,

It depends on what you mean by omnipotence.  Can God make even numbers prime?  It would defy logic for God to have that ability.  Not all Theologians agree that is what is ment by "omnipotence".