Why does God not stop the evil?

[Davian]

Some things are better not being dignified with a response. If all you've got is strawmen, I don't need to weigh in on that.

That you cannot falsify my statement does not make it a strawman.

 

[seeking Christ]

Missing the point is an artform around here

 

[Davian]

Missing the point is an artform around here

And you missed the point I was making, but I wouldn't call it art.

 

[Tiberius]

No. You actually read all that and missed it demonstrating dominion being given to man?

Nope.

What I saw is dominion being given to Man right at the beginning, and then later on God comes in and does plenty of stuff.

So don't expect me to believe that God does nothing because man has dominion. If that were true, God wouldn't have done anything at all on earth after the point where he gives man dominion, and that was right at the beginning of the Bible!

 

[Tiberius]

Some things are better not being dignified with a response. If all you've got is strawmen, I don't need to weigh in on that.

How exactly is "The problem of evil is solved if God doesn't exist" a strawman?

 

[Dave Ellis]

No. You actually read all that and missed it demonstrating dominion being given to man?

If you see a man about to torture someone in his own house, and you had the ability to stop it, would you step in and stop it... or would you refrain because that man has dominion in his own house?

If you chose to let it happen, I would call you immoral. Same goes for God.

And besides, it's clear man does not have full dominion over the earth.... that is if you believe the Bible, and specifically the Noah's Flood story.

 

[Loudmouth]

Apparently I'm a Prophet:

Yes, you predicted that you would avoid posts that refute your arguments.

 

[KCfromNC]

None of this answered my question.

By what testing procedure can I determine if something is OBJECTIVELY wrong?

But you don't understand. He deeply and intuitively feels that morality must be objective. Obviously that means it is. After all, our random feelings are well known to be an accurate way to gain information about reality. That's why medicine doesn't need double-blind testing, and instead just relies on the feelings of the people involved. It's why your computer wasn't created through rigorous application of models developed through extensive testing, it was just based on the feelings of the engineers involved. And it's why there's no need for safety standards in construction, since we can just trust the that feelings of the people doing the work will always lead to a correct decision.

Why are you being so difficult?

 

[Elioenai26]

But if you are right and there is an objective morality,

The above should be more accurately phrased as:

"But if you are right and there are objective moral values and duties..."

Using the term "morality" without a specifier or qualifier is very broad and vague and can have a number of different connotations.

then it must apply to ALL morality.

This idea is based on a vague and ambiguous usage of the term "morality". As I have stated earlier, the term "morality" can have several different meanings depending on the context.

What you mean to imply is that if objective values and duties do exist, then these specific values and duties must apply to all people.

In this context you are speaking of NORMATIVE or PRESCRIPTIVE morality.

So lets use the example of whether it is right to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family. If you are right, you shouldn't need to appeal to extremes, should you?

And stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's starving family is not an extreme example? LOL ok...

Extreme example or not, people are obligated to protect, preserve, and respect the lives of others that are under their care. This is true for all people, at all places, at all times, regardless of their opinion on whether or not its obligatory. I am sure you will agree with what I just said.

So answer me this. Is it objectively wrong to steal a loaf of bread so your starving family can eat?

Considering that people have a moral duty or obligation to protect, preserve, and respect the lives of others that are under their care, a man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family in this exceptional scenario, would not be viewed in the same way as a man who steals another man's car so he can take a joyride. In the former case, the man is doing something which would be considered justifiable. In the latter, the man is doing something clearly wrong.

In order to prove this point, lets say the two men are apprehended by the police after doing what they did.

The first man's case is brought before a judge and the circumstances are considered. The judge would more than likely be lenient on the man who stole the bread and may even dismiss the charge of stealing altogether because of the extinuating circumstances i.e starving children and wife.

However, the man who stole the other man's car to go joyriding in is obviously going to receive some type of penalization for his crime. He can stand up there and say:

"Your honor, since right and wrong are determined only by individual opinion, then you can say I was wrong all you want, that's your opinion and you are more than entitled to it. However, I say I was right. And since there is no such thing as an objective moral duty, then I must be allowed to go free because I cannot be guilty of breaking an objective moral law if the law does not even exist. Yes your honor I am perfectly aware that you may have a different view than I do, and I am tolerant of your view. I respect it. However, you must respect my view and be tolerant of me just as I am of you. In light of this your honor, I would appreciate it if you would let me walk out of here today, without any penalization, for afterall, your honor, why should I be penalized for doing what was right?"

Tiberius, clearly the judge would not be convinced by this plea from a relativistic view of morality. The man would probably be reprimanded for that ridiculous speech and then penalized for his crimes.

To say that objective moral values and duties exist, is to say that some acts are obligatory independent of individual opinion or preference.

This broadly is moral realism. The opposing view is moral anti-realism.

I have informed you earlier, that a distinction must be made between moral absolutism and moral universalism/objectivism. Both are subsets of moral realism, but they are not the same.

To say that stealing is always wrong regardless of context is to adhere to moral absolutism. I am NOT A MORAL ABSOLUTIST. I am a moral objectivist.

Universalism holds merely that what is right or wrong is independent of custom or opinion (as opposed to moral relativism), but not necessarily that what is right or wrong is independent of context or consequences (as in absolutism).

 

[Elioenai26]

But you don't understand. He deeply and intuitively feels that morality must be objective. Obviously that means it is.

I intuitively know beyond a reasonable doubt, that raping children is wrong independent of what people's opinions are about it.

If you cannot agree with that statement, then you are a moral nihilist and or sociopathic.

You have to disagree with it if you want to be true to your moral relativism.

See how ridiculous moral relativism is when viewed that way.

Now you know why the vast majority of philosophers adhere to some form of moral realism.

Its simple really. Nothing hard at all about it.

 

[HCrossth2012]

Peace

He sure wants to and does, in us First, if we let him.

God bless

 

[Elioenai26]

If by objective you mean there's some grand cosmic law that determines genocide is wrong, then due to the fact I don't believe a grand cosmic law exists, the answer is no.

However, we can use reason, empathy and experience to see the effects of genocide on people, and societies. We can then use that reason to determine genocide is a horrible action in all circumstances and must not be tolerated.

It seems to me that you are affirming premise (2) of the moral argument i.e. that objective moral values and duties do exist, but like Davian and Sam Harris, you believe they can be explained without appealing to God. Is this correct?

Seeing as how some Biblical cultures embraced it, I'd have to say the evidence points to no. Of course the answer to your question has little to nothing to do with whether or not any particular person in this thread considers it wrong in their subjective opinion.

I am confident that when pressed, anyone here would say that it is their view or their opinion that genocide is wrong. The only one who could not say this would be a sincere moral nihilist.

I do not think anyone here is a moral nihilist either.

And I am most certainly glad to know that men and women here view the killing of people just because they are members of a certain race is wrong. I agree.

However, you and everyone else here who has defended moral relativism , specifically ethical subjectivism is under the impression that saying:

"It is my subjective opinion that (x) is wrong."

Is essentially the same as saying:

"It is my subjective opinion that (x) is tasty."

Are these two propositions essentially the same?

No.

In prop. (1) x is an act i.e genocide. In prop. (2) x is a food i.e vanilla ice cream. This is not the only difference. The more fundamental difference comes at the end of props. (1) and (2). Notice in (1) the word wrong is used. In (2) the word tasty is used. Clearly, these two words have fundamentally different connotations. Wrong is a term that denotes moral obligation in normative or prescriptive moral discussions. It is the same as saying should not, or ought not. The term is inherently evaluative in nature. Tasty however, is used to denote in this context, the personal preference of a certain food as being delightful to eat.

To demonstrate the fundamental difference, let's say we try to take the word vanilla ice cream and place it in prop. (1) to see if the sentence will make sense.

*(1) "It is my subjective opinion that ice cream is wrong."

This clearly is nonsensical. How can ice cream be wrong? Lets look at the second and see what it says:

*(2) "It is my subjective opinion that genocide is tasty."

Again this clearly makes no sense.

So from the above it is clear that saying: "It is my subjective opinion that genocide is wrong." Is fundamentally DIFFERENT than saying: "It is my subjective opinion that ice cream is tasty."

The tastiness of ice cream is without controversy, a matter of personal preference. You may like vanilla, I may like chocolate. Since they are matters purely of personal preference, the truth of such propositions are determined soley by the subject. i.e subjective.

However the truthfulness of the prop. "It is my subjective opinion that genocide is wrong." cannot be determined solely by the subjective opinion of the person making the statement. Guess why? Because if that is what determined the truthfulness of the prop. then the prop. would be true, regardless of what the prop. said. We can see why this simply cannot be true for one glaring reason. Let us change one word in the prop. and see the conclusion that we MUST ACCEPT AS TRUE if we are to maintain that the truthfulness of a prop. is determined soley by the subject i.e. subjectively:

**(1) "It is my subjective opinion that genocide is right."

Notice the change of one word, from wrong to right in the prop. This changes the meaning of the prop. substantially, but if the truth of a prop. is determined solely by the subject making the statement, then the statement is true because it was made by the subject making the statement!

But clearly this is not correct. For not only do we intuitively know that killing people because they are say...black is not right, but we also have the existence of two contradictory statements that must be true at the same time. This violates the Law of Non-contradiction and therefore ethical subjectivism is therefore clearly false.

Another defeator of ethical subjectivism would be the statement:

"Ethical subjectivism is immoral and therefore one should not use it as an ethical view."

Since the truth value of a prop. is determined by the subject making the statement, then the above statement is by definition, true! If it is true, then ethical subjectivism is no longer a valid ethical view.

I am saying that normal human beings are empathetic.

I agree.

It is an ability that we all have (except those who are mentally handicapped). We are able to put ourselves in other people's shoes using empathy. Along with our ability to use logic and reason, this allows us to determine which of our actions will cause pain or distress in others. We know from our own experiences what causes us pain and disress.

I absolutely agree with you.

And I must ask you to clarify here.

Are you saying that humans should be empathetic regardless of what their opinion is about other human beings' welfare? I believe they should. Do you?

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.

It is your position that moral values and duties are not objective but subjective or subject to the person correct?





Ethical subjectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:

1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
2. Some such propositions are true.
3. Those propositions are about the attitudes of people.[1]

I just want to be clear on this. I want to be clear that you are an ethical subjectivist. If you are, I will refer you to the above argument as to why your view when taken to its logical conclusion violates the law of noncontradiction and is therefore necessarily false.

Remember when first he came here and kept asserting that atheists don´t exist?

I said that no one actually lives as an atheist. A person can lack belief in gods or God and still inadvertently live and act as if God exists by adhering to a view of reality which would only be possible if God were to indeed exist.


I apologize gentlemen, I have been swamped as of late and am trying to respond as best I can.

I will have to answer these replies in a sporadic manner while I finish up my article on why meta-ethical relativism is not a tenable meta-ethic.

 

[quatona]

It is your position that moral values and duties are not objective but subjective or subject to the person correct?

In a rough estimation I must have spent more than 100 posts telling you what my position is in this matter - many of them very detailed, very exhaustive, very explanatory, very long posts. I have been very patient with you and your repetitive questions. It´s not like we need to pretend that we have to start from scratch.

 

[quatona]

I said that no one actually lives as an atheist.

No, that´s not what you said back then, liar.

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

Morals didn't exist, until we figured out we got along better with, than without.

God's didn't even exist, until we needed them to explain that which we did not understand (e.g. morals).

 

[Elioenai26]

Morals didn't exist, until we figured out we got along better with, than without.

As an atheist, this view of yours is consistent with a naturalistic explanation of reality.

It is referred to broadly as the socio-biological evolutionary explanation for moral values and duties, i.e that our concept of morality is a by-product of evolutionary processes which aid in our survival and reproduction. Michael Ruse sums it up well in his work. This explanation for moral ontology is a common one used by atheists. Several people here including you espouse this view.

It is also a view which affirms the veracity of premise (1) of the moral argument:

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Since on atheism, there is no transcendant and Ultimate Moral Law Giver, there simply is no good reason to think that certain moral behaviors are wrong in the objective sense. Hence, most atheists are moral relativists.

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

As an atheist, this view of yours is consistent with a naturalistic explanation of reality.

It is referred to broadly as the socio-biological evolutionary explanation for moral values and duties, i.e that our concept of morality is a by-product of evolutionary processes which aid in our survival and reproduction. Michael Ruse sums it up well in his work. This explanation for moral ontology is a common one used by atheists. Several people here including you espouse this view.

It is also a view which affirms the veracity of premise (1) of the moral argument:

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Since on atheism, there is no transcendant and Ultimate Moral Law Giver, there simply is no good reason to think that certain moral behaviors are wrong in the objective sense. Hence, most atheists are moral relativists.

You stated previously that you do not believe slavery to be moral, this too, makes you a moral relativist.

 

[Elioenai26]

You stated previously that you do not believe slavery to be moral,

I am aware of the post you are referring to. Please, for the sake of discussion, supply my exact quote and the post it was in response to please.

Never mind, I have it here:

"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.

this too, makes you a moral relativist.

Your reasoning for saying that is? How do you get moral relativism out of me saying that I do not advocate slave trading? When I say I do not advocate slave trading, I am saying that trading in people as if they were pieces of property for one's own personal benefit at the expense of the liberty of another is objectively wrong. This makes me a moral objectivist, not a relativist.

 

[Dave Ellis]

It seems to me that you are affirming premise (2) of the moral argument i.e. that objective moral values and duties do exist, but like Davian and Sam Harris, you believe they can be explained without appealing to God. Is this correct?

No, you completely missed the part where I explained how I came to my conclusion.

We can reason, and therefore we can see the actions that genocide has had on people and cultures. We have seen the pain inflicted and the destruction caused.

We can also see in the end that genocide helps nobody, not even the people who commit the genocide.

In short, there are plenty of negative consequences of genocide. Likewise, there is not a single good consequence. We can then definitively say using reason and logic that Genocide is a horrendous act, and is to be avoided at all cost.

There's nothing objective at all with that, that conclusion is reached through purely subjective means. And like any other question, anybody looking at the evidence and correct logic, will reach the same conclusion.

Just because a belief is shared by many, or all does not make it objective. You seem to miss the point that opinions reached through subjective means can be widely, and in many cases unanimously accepted.

In order to name something objective, you must demonstrate the objective set of laws, and by who or what they were created by. Simply strongly holding an opinion something is wrong, does not offer evidence towards the subjective or objective nature of anything.

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

I am aware of the post you are referring to. Please, for the sake of discussion, supply my exact quote and the post it was in response to please.

Never mind, I have it here:

"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.



Your reasoning for saying that is? How do you get moral relativism out of me saying that I do not advocate slave trading? When I say I do not advocate slave trading, I am saying that trading in people as if they were pieces of property for one's own personal benefit at the expense of the liberty of another is objectively wrong. This makes me a moral objectivist, not a relativist.

Because at one point in time, the god described in the OT allowed for and encouraged it. You no longer hold this to be moral. You have allowed your moral to change along with social consciousness, independent of your objective standard, and relative to current beliefs of morality.