This is probably as good time as any for me at least to step out of the endless and debatably useful war-zone we've been having over 89 pages now. I would presume like me you take a moment or two to ponder the utility of rehashing these arguments versus reading the Bible, or indeed just general study. Wouldn't it be funny if we're all just arguing but within each of us we're all wondering why we're doing this?
So if there's any highly specific questions or observations re. Calvinism on this thread at least I'll keep an eye out for @-mentions, but otherwise I might suggest the horse has been properly flogged and double-flogged.
As for the new and weird turn the thread has taken regarding your Rule of Conscience, I can offer some final thoughts based on some of your latest replies (I suspect there might be further development on this topic so if tempted I might weigh in there too).
On to the ROC:
Let me get this straight - is it righteous to TRY TO DO EVIL?
Because that's all the rule of conscience is addressing.
It is never righteous to do evil by definition. Evil can be defined as something like "that which is not righteous". Still floating in the air is HOW we discern righteous from non-righteous, but I suspect we'll get to that.
If you're saying that ROC is really just "Good is what you believe is good, and evil is what you believe is evil" (or maybe "A man's knowledge of good and evil dictate his righteousness of action") then I wouldn't disagree, although we're importantly leaving out HOW he came to his moral position. You've earlier stated that if I subjectively decide that killing cats is good then it's good (I guess you mean at least "for me"?).
Recall that the whole reason this ROC discussion came about was because I was claiming that God and his word are needed to establish moral foundations. You claimed that they aren't, ROC is enough. So it seems to me that again you're skirting the deep problem of moral definition in much the same way that atheists do: you presume good and evil are so fundamentally implicit that they can be assumed. They cannot.
In some of your later postings I see you making progress by bringing up Abraham's lack of objective moral definition. For example:
Effectively it's the same because Abraham had no epistemologically objective knowledge that the Voice came from God. Fact is he had to make a moral decision. And the only way to make sense of it is the rule of conscience. He did what he felt certain about.
This is good and I believe gets closer to the heart of the issue, backing you into the corner that atheists have to defend. In precisely the same way that you're saying that Abram only had a voice to go on, atheists would claim the same for the Bible. Let's all sing along now: "The Bible is just a subjective book written by man to manipulate the gullible". The atheist would claim that even if Abram did hear a voice it was more likely a figment of his imagination than God. In fact there would be no evidence that the atheist would accept. Wasn't it Dawkins, when asked if he would believe if God appeared in the sky with big golden letters spelling "Richard I am God" and answered to the effect of "No, I would still presume my senses were failing me"?
The atheist accepts no objective basis for moral claims. All is ultimately subjective, although they'll point limply at natural morality or utilitarianism. But ultimately their systems will boil down to "He who is strongest makes the rules". They can still call things "good" or "evil" but there is no objective foundation. You, yourself a brother in Christ but clinging to ROC, were willing to admit that killing cats or even ethnic populations is not evil in a mere 500 words or so of gentle prodding. How would non-believers fare with ROC as their North Star?
I submit that a Christian has a far easier claim to moral objectivity: we believe in a sovereign God, and go on believing. He told us that the Bible is his Word -
that is the serpent-staff planted before subjective morality. If the Word is true, then so are the commandments, and they undergird our legal systems and declarations of human rights. If the Word is true, then so was the voice of God to Abram, and so was Abram's belief. If the Word is true, then so is killing cats or ethnic populations, regardless of my subjective desires or knowledge.
We know what it looks like when we remove the Christian cornerstone of objective morality. Throughout ancient history right into the Roman Empire it was normal and accepted to simply discard unwanted newborns on garbage heaps to die. Did the fruits of Greco-Roman philosophy and ethics lead those civilizations away from this practice? No. But the early Christians were known, with some humorous derision, as the people that go around collecting and raising those little garbage babies.
The deepest and most ironic delusion - and this applies to atheists as well as proponents of any kind of subjective moral system like ROC - is that they fail to understand how much they already accept the cornerstone of objective morality, to the point where they believe that it's not even there. But I presume not you - I presume you are a good Christian, a good and moral member of our civilization who doesn't kill cats or ethnic populations and, if faced with either of these injustices would fight against them.
