The Moral Argument

[quatona]

You do think that objective facts exist, right? Objective moral values exist whether or not all people agree or not. Hitler's opinion was that he was morally right but just because he thought it was morally right doesn't mean it was. We innately know that it was immoral. His opinion doesn't change the objective fact that it was immorally wrong.

Interestingly, you have just spent countless posts on trying to defend that which we "innately know" is wrong.
You guys should make up your mind whether you want to argue that our intuitve feeling about an action is a reason to assume it points to objectivity, or whether you want to discard our intuitions by pointing to our ignorance. You can´t have it both ways.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

There are those who benefit from what we write here in addition to ourselves. Just because five or six people here object does nothing to refute that fact.

In what way do you think they benefit? Many are appalled by your disingenuous conduct.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

They do not have to be about God to be pertinent. They are pertinent because they refute the objection that there are no morally sufficient reasons for killing certain people in certain circumstances. They are pertinent in that if we being finite can affirm there exists morally sufficient reasons for killing people under certain circumstances, then it is not unreasonable to think an omniscient God can have morally sufficient reasons for doing the same.

Couldn't an omniscient and omnipotent deity prevent the situation from ever arising in the first place? Obviously, in the thought experiment, the situation needed to be staged by prior events that the actors may or may not have had any control over. The tracks had to be built, the trolley placed there, and so on... An omniscient being would be able to foresee all that would transpire, and would thus be in a position to prevent it from eventuating. An omnipotent being wouldn't even need to "flip the switch" because he could save all those at risk of being hit by the trolley. Human beings are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and so the trolley problem is morally vexing for us. We lack the resources to be able to save everyone in the less than ideal circumstances presented in the thought experiment. An omniscient and omnipotent deity doesn't face these same obstacles, so your conclusions about what it should do are misplaced.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Taking it back to the Amalekites for a moment.

God loved them. This means that He allowed them to return their love or withhold it.

They chose to pillage, murder, harass, and generally live lives of total disregard for people. They did not love God and God let them live for a long time. He gave them time to change and they could have if they wanted to.

God also loved the people who the Amalekites would raid and rape and pillage from. He loved the children and women who would be raped by the Amalekite warriors, some of which would have been youngsters, trained in war and brutality. He loved the babies who the Amalekites would dash against walks and burn as sacrifices.

God loved the one's committing the evil and those receiving it.

God being Holy, after so long of waiting patiently, decided to defend the helpless and the weak and do what was best for everyone, even the Amalekite children. He ordered them to be cut off from the land of the living like a gangrene limb is cut off to preserve the body entire. It grieved God to do this. He wanted them to repent. But they were not willing.

So what about all the Amalekite babies?

First of all, I doubt there were any babies killed. In fact, later on in Israel's history, we see the nomadic Amalekites still around, a thorn in Israel's side even after Saul attacked them initially. Israel had not utterly destroyed the Amalekites because many of them were still alive. It was customary wartime practice during this period for those about to be attacked to see to it that their non-combatants, babies and the like, were removed from the place of battle to safety. Had any been left alone or abandoned when the Israelites attacked, they were to have been mercifully killed to spare them the manifold ills that would have come upon them from exposure.

God gave these people some 500 years to repent but they were unwilling.

So Yahweh, who is ostensibly omniscient, lacked the foresight to prevent this situation from arising, and then, out of "mercy," decided that it was necessary to command his followers to kill even the innocent infants and children, who were also the victims of their parents' brutality? This ostensibly omnipotent being was powerless to do anything to defend these innocents, so instead he commanded that they be killed? He allowed them to be born into the world, only to be slaughtered because their parents wouldn't repent, which he already anticipated due to his omniscience? After sustaining his followers in the desert with mana from heaven, he had no miracles left that could save these children from slaughter?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

You seem to think that because God commanded the Amalekites to be destroyed that that was something He wanted to happen. That He wanted them to continue in rebellion. The very fact that He gave them 500 years to repent would argue against this.

What significance does this have, given that he already knew what the outcome would be? You portray it as though he was clinging to the hope that they would repent, and that he waited mercifully for them to do so. But if he is omniscient, then he already knew what would happen 500, 1000, 10000, etc. years before that. So why did he wait if he knew that the Amalekites would never repent? If what you say about the Amalekites is true, and they terrorised even their own children, then Yahweh allowed this to continue for 500 years before he decided to act, and even then, his course of action resulted in the loss of innocent life.

He did not want it to happen.

Then why didn't he prevent it from happening? For all his omniscience and omnipotence, he couldn't have prevented it?

Once again, you are associating God permitting something to happen with Him desiring for it to happen. God cannot mind control free moral agents. It is logically impossible just like Him making a round square or a married bachelor is logically impossible.

It is written that he hardened Pharaoh's heart. So he can harden hearts, but he cannot soften them?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

God did not desire to abrogate or nullify their free will.

Until he did.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

He wanted to preserve their freedom while simultaneously executing judgment on them after giving them 500 years to get their act straight. So He ordered them to be killed and those who for all their lives were subject to their barbarous machinations rejoiced along with Israel for having taken vengeance on them for the evil they did and were intent on doing.

We don't desire to have to subject cancer to radiation, or to cut a gangrene limb off that will surely kill the person from whom it is cut. But we do it for a greater good.

But we are human, lacking in perfect knowledge and often poorly equipped to work through the problems we face. According to you, Yahweh is omniscient and omnipotent. He doesn't need to irradiate healthy tissue in the process of treating cancer. He could simply destroy the cancer in its totality without sacrificing a single cell of healthy tissue. He could foresee the cancer arising and prevent it entirely by destroying the very first cancerous cell.

 

[quatona]

The objective moral value "free will" expires after 500 years. Collectively, for entire populations.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Do you understand?

Stop treating people like idiots. Everyone understands what you are saying.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

So if anyone here thinks that the Bangladeshi Al-Qaeda were wrong regardless of what anyone says when they killed an atheist activist because he was an atheist, then you affirm premise two of the moral argument.

I most certainly affirm they were.

Premise two? Which definition of "objective moral values and duties" are you using now? Your first definition rendered premise two a tautology. Your second definition entailed that morality was independent of personal deities, which led to a conclusion you obviously didn't like. And your third definition raised questions you've yet to answer. So which definition are you using now?

 

[quatona]

You are begging the question that moral values and duties are subjective. You cannot object to premise 2 of the moral argument by begging the question for its contradictory.

Subjective moral opinions exist, demonstrably.
As soon as you can demonstrate that there is an objective morality, we can add that to the list of existing moralities.

 

[quatona]

So if anyone here thinks that the Bangladeshi Al-Qaeda were wrong regardless of what anyone says when they killed an atheist activist because he was an atheist, then you affirm premise two of the moral argument.

I most certainly affirm they were.

Another person affirms that they were right regardless of what anyone thinks.
I suggest you and the other guy appealing to a supposedly beyond-human morality sort these things out among yourselves. As soon as you have produced a working epistemology for determining "beyond-human morality", come back to us - and then we will have a basis for discussing who of you two got it right.

 

[anonymous person]

Do you want me to post the definition of "subjective" for you? When you ask me what I think...you're by definition asking for my subjective opinion.

If that is the case then anytime anyone asks you anything, whether they are asking you what 2 and 2 is or what your favorite meal is, they are by definition asking you for your subjective opinion.

Obviously you're wrong. For the one who asks you what 2 and 2 is, is asking you for something for which there is only one objectively true answer.

It's absurd to think that just because you are asked a question that therefore that question is not made true by an independent feature of reality, but by whatever your opinion is.

Obviously if someone asks you what the capital of Idaho is, or who the 30th president of the United States was, you cannot say, "well since you are asking me, there is no true answer to the question."

Likewise, simply stating that I am asking you your subjective opinion about a certain act being good or bad, right or wrong, begs the question that such an act being bad or good is determined by one's subjective preference.

I asked you if chopping an atheist into pieces because he is an atheist was objectively wrong.

I am not asking you for your opinion or what you feel. I am asking you if there is a feature of reality that exists independently of human opinion and preference that makes the proposition, "chopping atheists into pieces with a machete because they are atheists is wrong." objectively true.

I can prove it to you objectively. Then I would go about doing just that...the very thing that you can't seem to do with objective morals.

Once again the confusion is evident. 2 and 2 being four is not made objectively true by your being able to show it is true. It is made true because the proposition's truth bearer refers to an independently existing feature of reality not dependent on human opinion or perception.

The proposition 2 and 2 is 4 would be true even if no one knew how to add the two numbers together.

 

[quatona]

If that is the case then anytime anyone asks you anything, whether they are asking you what 2 and 2 is or what your favorite meal is, they are by definition asking you for your subjective opinion.

If someone asks me what I think (which was the operational term here) 2+2 is, they are asking me for my subjective opinion.

On another note: Even if I believed in objective morality, upon your admission that it can´t be conclusively known, I can reasonably assume that you just ask me for my subjective opinion on the matter, and intellectual honesty would prompt you to file it as such.

It's absurd to think that just because you are asked a question that therefore that question is not made true by an independent feature of reality, but by whatever your opinion is.

That´s why nobody said anything to that effect.

Likewise, simply stating that I am asking you your subjective opinion about a certain act being good or bad, right or wrong, begs the question that such an act being bad or good is determined by one's subjective preference.

Since your task is to prove that an "objective (independent of human opinion) morality" exists to persons who don´t believe that such exists, you have no reason to confuse their opinion with a moral truth claim, to begin with.

I asked you if chopping an atheist into pieces because he is an atheist was objectively wrong.

I am not asking you for your opinion or what you feel. I am asking you if there is a feature of reality that exists independently of human opinion and preference that makes the proposition, "chopping atheists into pieces with a machete because they are atheists is wrong." objectively true.

This is an unanswerable question to a person who doesn´t believe that moral truths exist independently of human opinion. You can ask it a 1000 times - it remains a question loaded with a premise not agreed upon.

Once again the confusion is evident. 2 and 2 being four is not made objectively true by your being able to show it is true.

That´s why nobody said anything to this effect.

It is made true because the proposition's truth bearer refers to an independently existing feature of reality not dependent on human opinion or perception.

The proposition 2 and 2 is 4 would be true even if no one knew how to add the two numbers together.

This is a particularly bad example. "2+2=4" is an abstraction within a human made convention of signs.
Just saying.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I asked you if chopping an atheist into pieces because he is an atheist was objectively wrong.

I am not asking you for your opinion or what you feel. I am asking you if there is a feature of reality that exists independently of human opinion and preference that makes the proposition, "chopping atheists into pieces with a machete because they are atheists is wrong." objectively true.

What if Yahweh commands you to do it? Is it still wrong?

 

[anonymous person]

So then God's goodness only constrains Him from doing evil, but choosing to not do good, for no reason at all, is not evil in the slightest.

You are equating doing good with creating and while all that God creates is good, God's goodness does not require that He create anything. God creates because He freely wills to and all He does choose to create will be good, but He does not have to create.

God could have created a world in which everyone ends up in Hell with no chance of ending up anywhere else (or even nowhere for that matter). When this all started we were talking about why God had to have all the Amalekite's slaughtered. You said that He had to do it because of it being part of His nature even though He didn't want to. But now it seems as though He could have done nothing and His nature would have been totally fine with that.

Well God cannot let sin go unpunished because He is Holy. Nor can He let ruthless people's evil deeds go unrestrained or unchecked. His nature as a Holy, Righteous, Compassionate God required Him to address the Amalekites. Doing nothing to them would have been contrary to His nature.

So which is it? Can God do nothing when He has the opportunity to do good, or must He do good? If He is simply restrained from doing evil, then why say that His nature is "goodness" and not that there is simply no evil in Him? I thought we were on to something, but you seem to have gone backwards now.

God is good essentially. Since He is good essentially, doing evil is impossible for Him. If God does something such as creating worlds, they will be in conformity with His nature. There is no reason however, to think that there is some "best way" or "best world". God is already infinitely good in the absence of any created thing.

To say that God is good is to say that there is no evil in Him. It is to say the same thing using different words to say it.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Nor can He let ruthless people's evil deeds go unrestrained or unchecked. His nature as a Holy, Righteous, Compassionate God required Him to address the Amalekites. Doing nothing to them would have been contrary to His nature.

He did nothing for 500 years! According to you, he was justified in not intervening out of respect for their free will. Yet you also argue that he was justified in intervening because he cannot allow evil to go unrestrained or unchecked. So which is it, Jeremy? Is he justified in not intervening because he respects their freedom to be cruel, or is he justified in intervening because he cannot tolerate their cruelty?

 

[anonymous person]

But we are human, lacking in perfect knowledge and often poorly equipped to work through the problems we face. According to you, Yahweh is omniscient and omnipotent. He doesn't need to irradiate healthy tissue in the process of treating cancer. He could simply destroy the cancer in its totality without sacrificing a single cell of healthy tissue. He could foresee the cancer arising and prevent it entirely by destroying the very first cancerous cell.

Yahweh is omniscient and omnipotent. He could destroy cancer in its totality without sacrificing a single cell of healthy tissue. In fact, God does heal miraculously as He sees fit.

He also knew cancer would exist before He created the world.

Now if you want me to think that somehow all of this is incompatible with the existence of Yahweh, you will need to formulate some type of argument with some premises and do it in another thread. This thread is about the moral argument, not the problem of evil.

 

[anonymous person]

Raping children is wrong.

1. That proposition is made true because it corresponds to an objective feature of reality independent of human opinion and preference.

2. That proposition is made true because it corresponds to a subjective opinion or preference of human beings.

3. That proposition is neither true nor false.

4. That proposition is meaningless.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Yahweh is omniscient and omnipotent. He could destroy cancer in its totality without sacrificing a single cell of healthy tissue. In fact, God does heal miraculously as He sees fit.

He also knew cancer would exist before He created the world.

Now if you want me to think that somehow all of this is incompatible with the existence of Yahweh, you will need to formulate some type of argument with some premises and do it in another thread. This thread is about the moral argument, not the problem of evil.

So your argument, based on the trolley problem thought experiment, falls apart. It doesn't apply to Yahweh who, given his omniscience and omnipotence, could (1) prevent the situation from ever arising, and (2) could save everyone at risk of being hit by the trolley without ever "flipping a switch."