Are Morals Relevant?

[yeshuaslavejeff]

No one is able to earn any part of their salvation.

Whoever believes , trusting in the Son, has life;
whoever does not believe in the Son, has not life.

 

[cvanwey]

You have to love truth more than you love yourself.

Salvation only comes when we surrender to God, as until that point we dwell in the carnal and the carnal is mortal by definition.

If I'm honest with myself, my truth tells me the resurrection claim is false. So in my eyes, according to you, if I 'love truth', then I guess I'm on the right path?

So which other claimed Gods might I seek 'truth' from then?

As stated in my OP, if I seek to do good, but do not accept a resurrection claim, do I go to heaven or hell? If I go to hell, this kind of tells me that 'morals' become irrelevant, as belief was the deciding factor :-(

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

I don't see how "this perceived authority says it's wrong" provides any kind of actual justification for moral values.

When you say that you require justification for a moral judgement, I expect to hear an actual reasoned argument explaining why something is moral or immoral.

"x says so", is not such an argument.

X is the immutable Holy perfect standard by which any moral argument is settled.

 

[cvanwey]

No, I'm pointing out that if you are moral because it makes a better society for you...if you can get away with being immoral and draw benefits from it you will.

It seems to me that morals are dictated by consequences. Believers appeal to the consequences of their God. Non-believers must appeal to the consequences of society.

Believers fear the consequences of retaliation, via the cosmic eye in the sky, when not doing 'good'. Non-believers fear the consequences of retaliation, via their peers and society, when not doing 'good.'

Since no specific God has been demonstrated, to my knowledge, secular morality is the only 'truthful' and proven moral system.

 

[cvanwey]

No

X is the immutable Holy perfect standard by which any moral argument is settled.

You only have two items to demonstrate, making this statement:

1) Demonstrate that your believed God actually exists - (claims of a resurrection do not appear to provide sufficient evidence, from my estimation).
2) Since human minds are acknowledged to be flawed, how are the human minds to actually evaluate and conclude that this claimed deity is 'perfect'?

 

[cvanwey]

No one is able to earn any part of their salvation.

Whoever believes , trusting in the Son, has life;
whoever does not believe in the Son, has not life.

So then morals are irrelevant? What's the point of even discussing morals then?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

So then morals are irrelevant? What's the point of even discussing morals then?

Who said there was any point to it ? Not me.

Without the Son, morals won't help anyone. Certainly won't save them from certain doom.

 

[Inkfingers]

Believers fear the consequences of retaliation, via the cosmic eye in the sky, when not doing 'good'. Non-believers fear the consequences of retaliation, via their peers and society, when not doing 'good.'

Actually believers are believers out of love. Fear wakes them, but love keeps them.

Coming to Christ requires a dying of the old self.

 

[cvanwey]

I think you're an intelligent person and already know the answers and framing the questions in jest. I also think you're attempting to ignore my previous post. Let me put it another way, IF God does not exist, the word "good" is not relevant, not in any meaningful sense, might be a personal convention, a way of contrasting one behavior as opposed to another, but there would be no absolute unchanging measure outside of one's own existence. Among other things your questions assume you are good enough simply by comparing yourself to a limited subset of others (look see I am a better person than these hypocritical Christians), and you have to assume an absolute unchanging standard to do this.

If you want specific answers, I recommend going to the source and reading what the Scripture have to say about nonbelievers, unbelief, even doubt. Here again, I think you already have and know, but framing the questions in an irreverent haughty manner (fry), but I suppose it should be expected when one does not believe. Sorry but just calling them as I see them, maybe I am wrong about the attitude, if so I apologize. I do think you're an intelligent person.

I'm glad to hear what you 'think.' But I'm being straight up honest. I do not accept a resurrection claim, based upon lack of evidence. I studied it for quite a while....

'Good', 'bad', 'right', 'wrong', 'best', 'worst, are all subjective terms by definition.

Morals are subjective. Even under theism. What is 'good' for a Muslim, may not be 'good' for a Jew.

Until you can demonstrate that a resurrection actually happened to me, my truth tells me you are telling me to read a book, written by humans, 1,000's of years ago. You are then telling me to pretend that these written words are 'objective' moral absolutes. When in fact, they are subjective opinions, just like everyone elses.

So thank you for the ad hominem attack, I think?

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

You only have two items to demonstrate, making this statement:

1) Demonstrate that your believed God actually exists - (claims of a resurrection do not appear to provide sufficient evidence, from my estimation).

Okay, why not, I'll bite, setting aside the burden of proof of defining "good" without a basis outside of self...anyway, so this is an integrated cumulative approach:

From a Classical apologetic standpoint:

Norman Geisler states:

• "Truth about reality is knowable.
• The opposite of true is false.
• It is true that the theistic God exists.
• If God exists, then miracles are possible.
• Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God (i.e., as an act of God to confirm a word from God).
• The New Testament is historically reliable.
• The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.
• Jesus' claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by:
  • a. His fulfillment of many prophecies about Himself;
  • b. His sinless and miraculous life;
  • c. His prediction and accomplishment of His resurrection.
• Therefore, Jesus is God.
• Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches is true.
• Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God.
• Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false)."

A modern version of Aselm's ontological argument:

• The existence of a necessary Being must be either (a) a necessary existence, (b) an impossible existence, or (c) a possible but not necessary existence.
• But the existence of a necessary Being is not an impossible existence because (so far as we can see) there is nothing contradictory about this concept.
• Nor is the existence of a necessary Being a possible but not necessary existence, since this would be a self-contradictory claim.
• Therefore, the existence of a necessary Being is a necessary existence.
• Therefore, a necessary Being necessarily exists.

William Lane Craig's simple version of the cosmological argument:

• Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
• The universe began to exist.
• Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Norman Geisler's version of the cosmological argument:

1. Some limited, changing being(s) exist(s).
2. The present existence of every limited, changing being is caused by another.
3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes of being.
4. Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present existence of these beings.
5. The first Cause must be infinite, necessary, eternal, simple, unchangeable, and one.
6. This first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

From an Evidentialist Apologetic standpoint:

Here is a chart using what is known as the anthropic principal:

Cosmic and Geological Evidence of Design

Gary Habbermas's historical argument:

• Jesus was publicly executed and died on a Roman cross.
• Jesus was buried in a tomb.
• Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty the Sunday after his burial.
• Jesus’ followers had no basis for hoping that he would be raised from the dead.
• Women friends of Jesus had experiences of seeing Jesus alive from the dead.
• Jesus’ apostles had experiences of seeing Jesus alive from the dead.
• The first Christians proclaimed in Jerusalem just weeks after Jesus’ death that he had literally risen from the dead.
• Paul, a persecutor of the Christians, converted to faith in Christ after an experience of seeing Jesus alive from the dead.

From a Reformed Apologetic standpoint:

"Apologetics in the modern period has been dominated by the concern to provide reasons, whether in the form of proof or evidence, for belief in the existence of God. Increasingly in modern philosophy the assumption became more and more prevalent that the burden of proof was on the theist to show good reasons for believing in God, not on the nontheist to show good reasons for disbelieving in God. This assumption reached its classic formulation in Antony Flew’s often discussed article “The Presumption of Atheism.” The Reformed apologist seeks to end this trend, and even to turn the tables around. Greg Bahnsen offers a particularly forceful rebuttal to the atheist presumption:

"The issue of the burden of proof is often misconstrued. If we are arguing over something whose existence or nonexistence has no bearing on the intelligibility of our experience and reasoning (say, unicorns), then understandably the burden of proof rests on those who affirm its existence; without evidence, such things should be dismissed as figments of their imagination. But the existence of God is not on this order. God’s existence would have tremendous bearing on the possibility of man knowing anything at all, having self-conscious intelligence, properly interpreting his experiences, or making his reasoning intelligible—even making sense out of what we call “imagination.” In this special case, the burden of proof in the argument between a theist and an antitheist would shift to the person denying God’s existence, since the possibility and intelligibility of that very debate is directly affected by the position taken."

One important Reformed apologist who focuses on removing the burden of proof from the theist (though not on transferring the burden of proof to the nontheist, as Bahnsen urges) is Alvin Plantinga. His most famous contention is that the Christian (or other theist) is warranted in believing in God’s existence whether or not he can offer supporting arguments or evidences for his belief. As Plantinga puts it, belief in God is properly basic. We introduced his position in chapter 12. Here we will consider this particular idea in more depth, since it is often misunderstood. In what follows, we will be summarizing many of the key points in Plantinga’s paper “Reason and Belief in God” in Faith and Rationality.

According to Plantinga, a belief is basic if a person holds it without basing it on some other belief, that is, if it is not inferred from other beliefs. A belief is properly basic if the person holding it is in some significant way warranted in doing so. Several important implications of Plantinga’s notion of basicality need to be understood.

First, a belief may be basic for a person at one time but not at another. For example, a person who believes that a man committed a murder on the basis of a detective’s investigative report might come to hold that belief as basic after viewing a tape of the incident. Likewise, a person who believes in God on the basis of rational arguments for God’s existence might later come to hold that belief as basic after having a religious experience (as happened to Plantinga).

Second, a belief may be properly basic for one person but not for another. For example, a person who witnessed a murder may hold as a basic belief that the defendant committed the murder (simply because he saw it happen), while a person on the jury who agreed would not be able to hold that belief as basic. Likewise, one person might believe that Jesus rose from the dead based on the testimony of the apostles in the New Testament, while the apostles themselves held that belief as basic because they saw and touched the risen Jesus.

Third, the fact that a belief is basic for someone does not mean it is groundless. For example, a person’s belief that he sees a tree is basic because it is not inferred from other beliefs; but it is not groundless, because it is grounded in his immediate experience of seeing the tree. Likewise, a person who holds as a basic belief that God exists might do so because he had a religious experience; that experience, then, would be the ground of the belief. Plantinga insists that belief in God can be properly basic for him without being groundless (78-82).

Fourth, Plantinga’s claim that belief in God can be properly basic does not imply that just any belief can be basic. This is what he calls “the Great Pumpkin objection”: “What about the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween? Could I properly take that as basic?” (74). Plantinga’s answer is no, because that belief would have nothing to ground it, and there is no reason why anyone should consider such a belief basic (74-78).

Fifth, the idea that a belief is properly basic is to be distinguished from two other concepts. To say that a belief is basic is not a statement about the degree of confidence or certainty with which it is held. The firmness with which a person holds a certain belief is not directly related to whether that belief is basic for him. One may hold different basic beliefs with varying degrees of firmness—for example, being more confident that 2 + 3 = 5 than that one had eggs for breakfast this morning. One may even be more confident of some nonbasic beliefs than of some basic beliefs—for example, being more confident that 21 x 21 = 441, a belief held from computing it using other math facts, than that one had eggs for breakfast last Saturday (49-50).

Sixth, it is possible to abandon beliefs that one held as basic beliefs, even as properly basic. Any argument or information that removes the ground for acceptance of a belief is called a defeater. A person who sees what looks exactly like a bowl of fruit on a table may hold as a basic belief that he sees a bowl of fruit. Later, if a trusted friend informs him that the bowl contained imitation fruit made of plastic, he will likely abandon his belief, even though it was properly basic. In this case the trusted friend’s testimony constitutes a defeater. The person who holds a basic belief that God exists is not thereby closed to evidences or reasons that might be raised against it. Such evidences or reasons “constitute potential defeaters for justification in theistic belief,” and they will become real defeaters for the person who is made aware of the arguments but has nothing with which to “defeat the defeaters.” According to Plantinga, “Various forms of theistic apologetics serve this function (among others)” (84). Plantinga, then, is supportive of apologetics, both negative (answering defeaters) and positive (offering positive arguments)." - from "Faith Has Its Reasons" by Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman

From a Fideist Apologetic standpoint:

Donald Bloesch states:

"What Christians have is not self-certainty but “soul-certainty” (Forsyth), or even better, God-certainty. It is not the fact of our experience but the fact which we experience that shapes and determines Christian faith (Forsyth). . . . What Forsyth says is quite sound: “We have not two certitudes about these supreme matters, produced by authority and experience, but one, produced by authority in experience; not a certitude produced by authority and then corroborated by experience, but one produced by an authority active only in experience, and especially the corporate experience of a Church.”

Finally an example how different approaches work together:

2) Since human minds are acknowledged to be flawed, how are the human minds to actually evaluate and conclude that this claimed deity is 'perfect'?

Yes, in technical terms, it is a Revelational epistemology.

 

[cvanwey]

Who said there was any point to it ? Not me.

Without the Son, morals won't help anyone. Certainly won't save them from certain doom.

Why follow the 10 commandments then? Say I follow all of them, in accordance with the OT, but think a resurrection never happened, based upon lack in evidence. So basically, I'm an Orthodox Jew. Heaven or hell?

 

[cvanwey]

I'm pointing out how ordinary people, not psychopaths, commit mass atrocities.

I could recommend you listen to Jordan Peterson's lecture on how most people think they would have been Schindler but most of us would have been the camp guards...

Everyone claims to be moral, but when it comes down to it atrocities are committed by the masses not simply the few.

But if they all earnestly repent to Jesus Christ before death, heaven becomes their final destination, right? So are morals relevant?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Why follow the 10 commandments then? Say I follow all of them, in accordance with the OT, but think a resurrection never happened, based upon lack in evidence. So basically, I'm an Orthodox Jew. Heaven or hell?

Go ahead, do what you want.
Yahweh's Word won't change. Unbelief results in perishing forever.

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

I'm glad to hear what you 'think.' But I'm being straight up honest. I do not accept a resurrection claim, based upon lack of evidence. I studied it for quite a while....

'Good', 'bad', 'right', 'wrong', 'best', 'worst, are all subjective terms by definition.

Morals are subjective. Even under theism. What is 'good' for a Muslim, may not be 'good' for a Jew.

Until you can demonstrate that a resurrection actually happened to me, my truth tells me you are telling me to read a book, written by humans, 1,000's of years ago. You are then telling me to pretend that these written words are 'objective' moral absolutes. When in fact, they are subjective opinions, just like everyone elses.

So thank you for the ad hominem attack, I think?

Sorry but proving the resurrection, has more to do with proving that the God that exists is the God of Christianity, rather than simply proving an objective moral standard. The moral argument is just as effective for followers of Judaism as it is for Christianity. I would argue it is not effective for followers of Islam, because "The Quran describes Allah as the best deceiver there is, a liar who is not above using the same evil and wicked schemes of his opponents." Obviously a supreme deceiver cannot be trusted, but that's overlooking the fact that Islam came after Judaism and is loosely based on it some time afterwards. It's also overlooking that their prophet Muhammad could neither read nor write (and the circumstances surrounding that).

 

[Inkfingers]

But if they all earnestly repent to Jesus Christ before death, heaven becomes their final destination, right? So are morals relevant?

It has to be loving God more than they love themselves (otherwise they are not seeking FIRST the kingdom of heaven)...

 

[cvanwey]

William Lane Craig's simple version of the cosmological argument:

• Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
• The universe began to exist.
• Therefore, the universe has a cause.

I'm randomly picking the shortest one, because you sent too much info, (most likely to shut me up)

But by William Craig's account, this would also be true:

- Material pushed will then move
- The universe is material, and is moving
- Therefore, the universe was pushed

My point is, words have multiple meanings and definitions. Using a simple malformed analogy does not lead to 'proof' of a god.

***************

My point is, I do not accept the resurrection claim. The Bible does not prove the Bible any more than a science book proves the same science book. Or, a history book proves the same history book.

So I will ask the question from the OP again...

If I cannot accept a resurrection claim, based upon poor evidence, but Jesus Christ is actually for real, is there ANY other way to reach heaven???? Now mind you... I'm honest in my claimed epistemology. I truly feel the resurrection evidence is lacking... But fear a possible hell.

What does one do? I cannot make myself believe, without my own just cause.

 

[cvanwey]

It has to be loving God more than they love themselves (otherwise they are not seeking FIRST the kingdom of heaven)...

I don't want to straw man you... But I stated they truly repent, prior to their death. Wouldn't they still go to heaven, under the Biblical standard?

 

[cvanwey]

Sorry but proving the resurrection, has more to do with proving that the God that exists is the God of Christianity, rather than simply proving an objective moral standard.

Okay, let's even go with this statement. Outside the Bible, how might one know a resurrection happened?

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

My point is, I do not accept the resurrection claim. The Bible does not prove the Bible any more than a science book proves the same science book. Or, a history book proves the same history book.

So I will ask the question from the OP again...

If I cannot accept a resurrection claim, based upon poor evidence, but Jesus Christ is actually for real, is there ANY other way to reach heaven???? Now mind you... I'm honest in my claimed epistemology. I truly feel the resurrection evidence is lacking... But fear a possible hell.

What does one do? I cannot make myself believe, without my own just cause.

Maybe one day you'll recognize the circularity of your skepticism, and the futility (for any of us) of making knowledge claims without an absolute standard of truth. Jesus is the way, the TRUTH...and the life. I hope and pray the Father draws you, I do not believe it is by random coincidence you're posting on a Christian forum asking these questions.

 

[cvanwey]

Actually believers are believers out of love. Fear wakes them, but love keeps them.

Coming to Christ requires a dying of the old self.

Do you believe in death bed conversions?