Morality is objective, except when it isn't

[2PhiloVoid]

(shrug)
Okay. If you won't play the game, you've lost it.

If you have an offensive to take against nonbelievers, by all means do so. But as far as I can see, nobody is disputing that the original Euthyphro was not made against the Christian God, so you're kicking at shadows. All we're saying is that the Euthyphro dilemma can easily be applied to the Christian God with a simple question. In order to beat us, you'll have to address that question.

I don't blame you for not wanting to. Several Christians have recently tried to, and none of them were able to. That's why I keep it in my signature with other "questions Christians can't answer." Or, in this case, dare I say...daren't?

And I'm saying that the application of the Euthyphro Dilemma has to FIRST be vetted out and understood conceptually and within its own various levels of context. No one is doing this, but folks then surreptitiously decide to rip the dilemma out of Euthyphro and apply it then to a foreign theistic construct (i.e. Christianity).

There's no methodological justification for doing so thus far other than, "Uh.....well, I can.....so I will."

 

[InterestedAtheist]

And I'm saying that the application of the Euthyphro Dilemma has to FIRST be vetted out and understood conceptually and within its own various levels of context

Why?

No one is doing this, but folks then surreptitiously decide to rip the dilemma out of Euthyphro and apply it then to a foreign theistic construct (i.e. Christianity).

Surreptitiously? Nonsense. We're quite open about what we're doing. Simply asking a Christian a question about God.
And yes, it is a foreign concept being applied to a new environment. Nice to see it's doing so well.

There's no methodological justification for doing so thus far other than, "Uh.....well, I can.....so I will."

Guilty as charged.
I can ask a simple question that rips a Christian's justification for morality into threads, so I will.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Surreptitiously? Nonsense. We're quite open about what we're doing. Simply asking a Christian a question about God.
And yes, it is a foreign concept being applied to a new environment. Nice to see it's doing so well.
Guilty as charged.
I can ask a simple question that rips a Christian's justification for morality into threads, so I will.

I'll say one thing, at least you're honest and upfront about it.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

There's no methodological justification for doing so thus far other than, "Uh.....well, I can.....so I will."

Yup. Philosophical concepts can be applied outside the context in which they were originally composed, and very often are. That is, in fact, what a concept is - a notion that may be applied in any number of contexts, irrespective of time and place.

If your worldview can't cope with that basic, mundane fact of reality, I suggest you abandon it and find a better one.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Yup. Philosophical concepts can be applied outside the context in which they were originally composed, and very often are. That is, in fact, what a concept is - a notion that may be applied in any number of contexts, irrespective of time and place.

Whether you noticed or whether you did not notice, the context of my existing conversation here, which you've plowed into, started in an engagement above with NV. In those posts, I've indicated that I'm referring to specifics rather than generalities. So sure, you're correct, but only on which a level I wasn't addressing since it's too epistemologically, ontologically and axiologically superficial. Generalities won't cut it, so don't push with those.

If your worldview can't cope with that basic, mundane fact of reality, I suggest you abandon it and find a better one.

I promise you, what I'm bringing up here has nothing to do "my worldview." I'm an Existentialist by the way in case you didn't know it. I don't start with the Bible. No, I start with humanity and an awareness of its various attempts (often failing) to harness different epistemological methods by which we then try to pinpoint and analyze the nature of our ontological and axiological notions.

I do more than cope. I get educated.

 

[BNR32FAN]

"It is objectively wrong for X to kill a child."

Christians would normally agree until you point out that God killed hundreds of children in the Old Testament.

"But God knew they would grow up evil" or "But God knew they'd go straight to heaven" or "But God has a divine plan."

There are no "buts" when it comes to objective morality.

"It is objectively wrong for X to kill a child, unless X=God" is subjective morality because the morality of the statement is subject to what X is.

Christians understand that morality must be objective in their worldview because Jesus had to die. It was absolutely required with no exceptions. There was no other way for souls to be saved. This means that Jesus/God is/are subject to morality. But then that means that God committed evil acts by killing children.

The alternative is that morality is subject to God. God can do whatever he wants. That "solves" the child-killing problem, but raises a new problem. If God can do whatever he wants, then why did Jesus die on the cross? He could've just saved us all as an act of will.

Skipping to the end, there's no answer to this issue except to claim that I've presented a false dichotomy. These responses will be automatically ignored unless the third possibility is clearly and thoroughly defined and explained.

Who said it is wrong for God to kill? That seems like your standard not God’s. When God kills a person you have to consider what death is from His perspective. From God’s perspective death is nothing more than the relocation of a spirit from one place to another. That place either being eternal paradise or eternal suffering which is dependent on the individual himself. So death can be either a good thing or a bad thing that all depends on the individual. So in either case when God kills it is not immoral.

 

[BNR32FAN]

I think you mean that God's actions and/or intentions are the moral norm (which would be bad, since he kills children). If I believe a law, or if I create a law for the whole world to follow, I am not that law. If I have 8 cats, I am not the number 8. If I am not my actions; I do my actions. I am not my properties; my properties are descriptive of me.

You have to understand what death is from God’s perspective. Please read post 106

 

[TLK Valentine]

Who said it is wrong for God to kill? That seems like your standard not God’s.

Not being gods ourselves, it's as good a standard as any.

When God kills a person you have to consider what death is from His perspective. From God’s perspective death is nothing more than the relocation of a spirit from one place to another.

But if that is so, then it's true regardless who who kills the person.

That place either being eternal paradise or eternal suffering which is dependent on the individual himself. So death can be either a good thing or a bad thing that all depends on the individual. So in either case when God kills it is not immoral.

Even if God kills the person, knowing they will go to eternal suffering? He has done no wrong?

What makes the final outcome any different if God kills the person (with, for example, a heart attack), or if I kill the person (with, for example, a 9mm Glock)?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Who said it is wrong for God to kill? That seems like your standard not God’s. When God kills a person you have to consider what death is from His perspective. From God’s perspective death is nothing more than the relocation of a spirit from one place to another. That place either being eternal paradise or eternal suffering which is dependent on the individual himself. So death can be either a good thing or a bad thing that all depends on the individual. So in either case when God kills it is not immoral.

So you unequivocally reject objective morality and you accept subjective morality. But then if God can just do whatever he wants, why did Jesus have to die? Why couldn't God just forgive us as an act of will?

 

[BNR32FAN]

So you unequivocally reject objective morality and you accept subjective morality. But then if God can just do whatever he wants, why did Jesus have to die? Why couldn't God just forgive us as an act of will?

No I didn’t reject objective morality at all friend. I simply explained that when God kills it is not immoral. As for why Jesus had to die on the cross, I don’t know.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

I'll say one thing, at least you're honest and upfront about it.

Honest and upfront about asking a question? Thank you.
Why won't you answer it?

 

[TLK Valentine]

No I didn’t reject objective morality at all friend. I simply explained that when God kills it is not immoral.

Why then is it immoral for anyone else to kill?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

No I didn’t reject objective morality at all friend. I simply explained that when God kills it is not immoral. As for why Jesus had to die on the cross, I don’t know.

Hence the title of this thread, "Morality is objective, except when it isn't."

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Why?

I think you already know "why?" Didn't you say that you're an English teacher or something who is working over in China? If you are, I'm SURE you appreciate the finer points about the importance of applying proper Hermeneutics and Exegesis to one's Chaucer or Shakespeare, or even to the safety instructions of modern kitchen appliances and chemical products, probably even more than I do. (Y'know, it's kind of about answering all those pesky information gathering questions when reading a text that our English teachers in grade and jr. high school prodded us to pay attention to---Who, What, When Where, Why and How.)

The same goes for reading, understanding and knowing why and how Plato's Euthyphro argument applies or doesn't apply.

We could even go so far as to say that this principle of human communication holds true (because it does) for reading, understanding and applying concepts we find in the Bible. It'd be kind of a gross instance of non-virtue to ignore contexts involving concepts in a biblical text and then ........ mis-apply them. We also wouldn't want to be guilty of a similar interpretive mishandling of Euthyphro's Dilemma, either.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

I am a teacher, yes. And one of the things I try to teach my students is to answer the question you are being asked, not the question you would like to talk about for your own reasons. My advice to you is to answer the question you are being asked.
You say that you have defeated Euthyphro's Dilemma. Your method of doing so seems to be steadfastly refusing to engage with it.

The same goes for reading, understanding and knowing why and how Plato's Euthyphro argument applies or doesn't apply.

Why?

We could even go so far as to say that this principle of human communication holds true (because it does) for reading, understanding and applying concepts we find in the Bible. It'd be kind of a gross instance of non-virtue to ignore contexts involving concepts in a biblical text and then ........ mis-apply them. We also wouldn't want to be guilty of a similar interpretive mishandling of Euthyphro's Dilemma, either.

But that only makes sense if we are considering whether Euthyphro's Dilemma makes sense in a modern context. We're not doing that at all. What we're doing is taking the dilemma and applying it to the Christian God.
Now, you may say, "But that's not what Plato meant at all!"
And I answer: that's not important in the slightest. In fact, it reminds me of how Creationists try to attack Darwin's motives, methods and ideas. But who cares about them any more? Evolution does not rely on Darwin today. We've gone beyond him. If it turned out that Darwin actually made up every single thing he ever wrote, it would not matter at all to evolutionary biology.

In the same way, if Plato himself were to come back to life and say, "I never meant to criticise the Christian God! You've got it all wrong!" it would make not a whit of difference. If I conceded that I have completely misread and misunderstood what Socrates was saying, it would not be important in the slightest to this argument.

Tell you what: how about we pretend that I made this question up myself? That I woke up one morning and thought, "Does God command something because it is good, or is it good because God commands it?"
Goodness me. I've found a question that completely demolishes Christian ideas about morality. Clever me!

And if you think I'm wrong, then show me why.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I am a teacher, yes. And one of the things I try to teach my students is to answer the question you are being asked, not the question you would like to talk about for your own reasons. My advice to you is to answer the question you are being asked.

Wow! That's not what I used to teach my students.

I guess we can stop there since I'm not going to kow-tow to a more Marxist or thoroughly Marxist line of reasoning (especially not if it turns out to be a more Nietzschean one) being delivered in the guise of "honest inquiry."

NO, we're going to ask questions----all of the hermeneutical questions or as many as we can discern----that apply to the concepts and texts in question, no short-cuts. And if you're not willing to do that, and you want to rig the interlocution process in such a way that you seem to get a pass here on this forum because some of those who oversee this website aren't yet up on the spectrum of positions [or Epistemological Frames, let alone Political ones] by which one can express "speech-acts" of various kinds, then I'm done.

Get it? I'm not going to play your game the way YOU want to. And the great thing is, I don't have to!

I don't. I really don't .

 

[BNR32FAN]

Hence the title of this thread, "Morality is objective, except when it isn't."

No, morality itself is not subjective in this case because of the actual commandment God gave. God never commanded man not to kill He commanded man not to commit murder which is an unlawful killing.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

Wow! That's not what I used to teach my students.

I guess we can stop there since I'm not going to kow-tow to a more Marxist or thoroughly Marxist line of reasoning (especially not if it turns out to be a more Nietzschean one) being delivered in the guise of "honest inquiry."

NO, we're going to ask questions----all of the hermeneutical questions or as many as we can discern----that apply to the concepts and texts in question, no short-cuts. And if you're not willing to do that, and you want to rig the interlocution process in such a way that you seem to get a pass here on this forum because some of those who oversee this website aren't yet up on the spectrum of positions [or Epistemological Frames, let alone Political ones] by which one can express "speech-acts" of various kinds, then I'm done.

Get it? I'm not going to play your game the way YOU want to. And the great thing is, I don't have to!

I don't. I really don't .

Sure, Philo. You're free to do whatever you like. If you don't want to answer the question, don't.
It's a shame. I was interested in seeing how you would destroy Euthyphro's Dilemma. But I guess it remains undestroyed once again.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Sure, Philo. You're free to do whatever you like. If you don't want to answer the question, don't.
It's a shame. I was interested in seeing how you would destroy Euthyphro's Dilemma. But I guess it remains undestroyed once again.

I've already destroyed Euthyphro's Dilemma; and I don't need to destroy whatever post-mock dilemma is surreptitiously lifted and misapplied to Christian Theology. The second of these is a non-issue.

I mean, if you don't want to believe that biblical revelation gives us only a few tidbits about God's nature, tidbits that we can't fully comprehend let alone fully systematize (Kierkegaard would probably be happy for me to say this), and you thereby don't want to believe in a God for which empirically demonstrable meanings can't be had to the levels of "sufficiency" that you individually prefer, then by all means........don't believe.

I can't make you believe. And I give you the freedom to not believe. [You're welcome!]

 

[TLK Valentine]

No, morality itself is not subjective in this case because of the actual commandment God gave. God never commanded man not to kill He commanded man not to commit murder which is an unlawful killing.

Which leads us to "unlawful." Who determines what is or isn't "unlawful"?