Why does God not stop the evil?

[FrenchyBearpaw]

If you are a moral relativist, which I gather you are, then your view prohibits you from making meaningful statements regarding moral obligation i.e. statements regarding whether an action is right and wrong.

Unless you advocate honor killings, and slavery, then your morals are relative also. You can't have it both ways, tiger.

 

[Elioenai26]

Interesting! So it is relative to the god you are referring to.

That is correct.

If a person is convinced enough in what they perceived to be a command to murder their family and think a god has told them to do it, then they would consider themselves obligated to do so.

This is self-evident I think.

If they perceive that it was an obligation for them to murder their family, then they would feel obligated to do so.

I can think of an innumerable number of "gods" that one could appeal to as a reason to commit an innumerable number of acts. These "gods" would be what they perceived to be the one commanding them to do act (x).

Surely you have heard of people in court using as a defense the phrase: "god told me to do it." No?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

That is correct.

If a person is convinced enough in what they perceived to be a command to murder their family and think a god has told them to do it, then they would consider themselves obligated to do so.

This is self-evident I think.

So you are, in fact, a relativist.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Right now I want you to answer the question I asked you. It was quite simple I think.

Is genocide objectively wrong?

I have already answered this question.

 

[Elioenai26]

Unless you advocate honor killings, and slavery, then your morals are relative also. You can't have it both ways, tiger.

I do not advocate honor killings or slave trading.

I will also ask you to respectfully address me by my name.

 

[Elioenai26]

So you are, in fact, a relativist.

Not at all.

 

[Elioenai26]

I have already answered this question.

Where?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Not at all.

You said that morality is relative to the god a person is referring to. Theist A may refer to Yahweh for his morality and theist B may refer to another god for his morality. Your morality is relative to the deity you believe in and what you believe they command. It would seem that you are relativist of some sort.

Where?

Here, among other places.

 

[Elioenai26]

You said that morality is relative to the god a person is referring to. Theist A may refer to Yahweh for his morality and theist B may refer to another god for his morality. Your morality is relative to the deity you believe in and what you believe they command. It would seem that you are relativist of some sort.

That has nothing to do with whether or not objective moral values or duties exist, which is the essential question regarding whether moral relativism or moral realism is true.

That simply is to say that if I am a Christian, I am going to believe it is right to pray for my enemies.

If I am a Muslim, I am going to believe it is right to blow them up.

This is just one example.

 

[Elioenai26]

Here, among other places.

Ok good. You believe in objective moral values and duties then. This means you are a moral realist.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

That has nothing to do with whether or not objective moral values or duties exist.

That simply is to say that if I am a Christian, I am going to believe it is right to pray for my enemies.

If I am a Muslim, I am going to believe it is right to blow them up.

This is just one example.

Exactly: relativism.

Ok good. You believe in objective moral values and duties then. This means you are a moral realist.

Moral subjectivists can still make moral claims, and they still do.

 

[Davian]

Speaking to the Christians in Corinth, many of which had been engaged in gross and wicked sin prior to hearing the gospel and accepting Christ, the Apostle Paul by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit writes:

9Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,10nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.11Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Bold mine.

Strange. Nothing about schoolchildren in there.

Do you agree that genocide is objectively wrong?

So you demand that I answer your question on what I consider objectively wrong prior to you explaining what you mean by objectively wrong? Brilliant.

As I cannot do that, I would ask you, did I not make make myself clear on matters of this sort here?

If you will answer that question in the affirmative, then I will answer your question. If not, then neither will I answer your question.

Your evasion of my questions provide all the answers I expect of someone that has painted themselves into a corner.

Govern yourself accordingly.

So, what is objectively wrong with genocide, if it is not going to preclude one from entering this hypothetical heaven of yours?

 

[Davian]

Trying to define your way out of the corner you have painted yourself into?

Moral nihilism and moral relativism are fundamentally the same. ...

Another of your unsubstantiated quips, as you call them.

Again, you are incorrect, and your arguments fail on that point. You don't get to prescribe definitions, lol.

"Moral nihilism is distinct from moral relativism, which does allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but does not assign any static truth-values to moral statements, and of course moral universalism, which holds moral statements to be objectively true or false."

Moral nihilism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

Is genocide objectively wrong?

According to your god, no.

 

[Freodin]

That is not the correct understanding of objective moral duties.

Since your understanding of objective moral duties is incorrect, the rest of your argument is incorrect or based on a strawman.

How cute!

So what is the correct understanding of objective morals? Do your objective morals prevent you from explaining?

 

[quatona]

I apologize for not being clear.

What I meant to say is that as a moral relativist, your relativism prohibits you from making meaningful statements regarding moral obligation. I.e. statements regarding what is right and what is wrong.

Their relativism prohibits persons from making statements regarding allegedly absolute moral obligation.
Their sujbectivism prohibits persons from making statements regarding allegedly objective moral obligation.

(IOW these people would be inconsistent when making claims which, when you make them, are merely unsupported assertions. Until anyone can demonstrate that objective/absolute morality exists somewhere out there it isn´t much of a loss being unable to make statements that refer to something we don´t have a reason to assume it even exists. Besides, your idea that making such umsustantiated assertions gives you some sort of advantage is strange.)

That´s all, and that´s trivial: After all, these are statements that aren´t meaningful from the pov of relativism/subjectivism, and naturally a subjectivist/objectivist doesn´t intend to make them (which actually was the point you were trying to make).

I´m glad to see you have abandoned your argument that there is no way of behaving consistently as a relativist/subjectivist, and to stating the obvious in an almost tautological way.

 

[quatona]

Another of your unsubstantiated quips, as you call them.

Remember when first he came here and kept asserting that atheists don´t exist?
Defining positions he doesn´t like out of existence seems to be habitual with him.
But what can we say? I´m sure such behaviour is permissible by standards of the objective morality elioenai-style.

 

[Tiberius]

No that's NOT a fact. You, the great and all-knowing Tiberius, are in no position to make any such proclamation. Pardon me while I look behind that curtain ...

I see a man pulling levers. You know what? I don't like suffering either. I suffer more than most, but a few suffer more than I do and still live.

Irrelevant.

Is there suffering in this world? Yes? Does God have the ability to stop it, even if he chooses not to? Yes? Then God is consciously allowing suffering to take place, because if he didn't want to allow it, he would stop it.

Let me give you an anecdote about this. Over the past few days, in the Christian only section there has been someone who sports an Eastern Orthodox icon (EO) posting a lot in one thread. Now they claim to be "pre-denominational," an obvious attempt to appeal to those who identify with being "non-denominational." And yet most from that camp still come across at the end of the day as touting their Church as being "the thing." Not this guy. He actually conveys the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, as though no divisions in the Church ever happened or even matter.

What makes him different? Suffering. He's been through cancer. Don't ever pretend "suffering does not need to exist."

Okay, while I feel sorry for the poor guy, I don't see what his cancer has to do with anything. What has he gained through cancer that he couldn't have gotten from God just giving it to him?

Ok so you look suffering in the face and can't recognize it. You see its value anyway.

Are you actually saying that the decades I spent learning and becoming good at playi9ng a musical instrument are the same type of suffering as someone being eaten alive by cancer, with no hope of anything but a long painful death?

Really?

This is a good working definition of selfishness, as well as immaturity.`Just wait til you stumble onto one for faith - that'll really blow you away!

How in the world is anything I said being selfish?

 

[Tiberius]

Moving the goalposts - the question was killing because someone was a particular race. And that is NOT what you have in your example. (Nor any other)

My goodness, are you really defending your god with this argument? You're claiming that God's okay because he never asked anyone to kill an entire race, but you're perfectly fine with him ordering people to kill all the Babylonians?

REALLY?

Apart from hiding behind childish wordplay, that's just sick.

 

[Tiberius]

Is genocide objectively wrong?

If you can say that it is your position that it is, then I will answer your question. If not, then I will not answer your question.

Well, actually I'm not sure.

How can I determine if something is objectively wrong?