What does objective morality do?

[Emperor Norton II]

Ah, David poses the question that Norman Kretzmann tries to reconcile and fails... because if morality IS objective, it applies to god, and any action ordered by God (rape, murder, looting, etc) is thus moral. If morality is subjective, we have no way of knowing whether or not God decides to change morality. Before you write this off, consider all of the Jews who never heard the word of God over Christs's lifetime...

 

[stranger]

... After all, aren't we given the choice as to whether to obey those laws or not? ...

Not according to God:
Romans 9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: {fitted: or, made up}
23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory


As Saul Smilansky underlines e.g. http://philo.haifa.ac.il/faculty_pages/smilansky/Free_Will_two_radical_proposals.htm
the common notion of free-will is demonstrably illusory, albeit a cultural necessity .... but God explained predetermination a long time earlier:

Ephesians 1:11 .... being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
:30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

 

[CSMR]

One can't deny choice altogether. Choice is not the same as free will. We can choose to obey some laws - we can choose not to steal, or to give to the poor for instance. This does not imply that our choices are not determined - our nature makes us choose one way or the other. We cannot choose to obey the fundamental law of love of God however because this is prior to choice.

 

[Randall McNally]

One can't deny choice altogether. Choice is not the same as free will. We can choose to obey some laws - we can choose not to steal, or to give to the poor for instance. This does not imply that our choices are not determined - our nature makes us choose one way or the other. We cannot choose to obey the fundamental law of love of God however because this is prior to choice.

Please explain atheism, then, in light of your concluding sentence.

 

[stranger]

Please explain atheism, then

Romans 9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: {fitted: or, made up}
23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,

 

[Randall McNally]

Romans 9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: {fitted: or, made up}
23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,

Sorry, not working for me.

 

[seebs]

Let us assume that objective morality exists. There are a set of rules/laws that are true. It actually is evil to murder, and so on.

What then? Why would this make any difference to human behaviour? After all, aren't we given the choice as to whether to obey those laws or not? If we can disobey these laws just as easily as we can disobey any human made laws what is it that objective morality actually does?

Be true.

What is it that mathematics does? It describes the world. It's just that morality, by its nature, describes not what is, but what should be. This makes it harder to observe.

 

[stranger]

What is it that mathematics does? It describes the world. It's just that morality, by its nature, describes not what is, but what should be. This makes it harder to observe

Mathematics indeed provides models, but it is conditional on acceptance of certain things [axioms] on faith alone ... is that faith really any easier to accept, really any more reliable? [very clearly there can be no reason to think so, but some do think so]

to say that it describes the world, then, doesn't even show that what we regard as the world is not an illusion [say that the 'true' reality is and has never not been the spirit... one cannot in any way exclude this by reason or observation... what then, by looking for inconsistency ? ... Mathematics at its foundations has irreswolvable paradoxes (such as Godels' incompleteness prroof),so it actually fails that test]

We are lefr then not even knowing what 'should be' as we have only our 'arbitrary' conditional [even cultural] moralities and they have no absolute values whatever...

Thus it comes back to faith, for me it is faith in 'love', not because I know love, but because it nows me and I 'feel' it is the only thing that has any [absolute] meaning even though that is beyond me to touch as yet or to express in words...

This then the deep meaning of the 'antichrist', that which is in place of God, it is simply the relative, the very image of the world ... thus we see religions [many] forming images of God for many to worship [and e.g. claim 'salvation' in relation too for comfort] but God has said ,first of all, that we should have no image of God ...

Thus we are left with the painful experience of Christ's return, the terrible day of the Lord when so many hear the dread words of Jesus to those crying out his name [christians] ... depart from me, workers of iniquity.... and the reason why? simply that one does not know the absolute unless God gives that knowledge, one cannot engineer it by manipulating the words of scripture to say what one wants to hear [soothsaying, as all-too-common in religion throughout the ages and no less so today]...

Quite simply God has actually said the 144,000 that He simply WILL redeem first and the redempton of countless many follows AFTER {Rev 7:9-10] , thus the recemption of almost all men is AFTER death [for sin] and it is resurrection to the body that saves most men [brought in first at and by the deaeh of Jesus] by wiping out our sins in death and the opportunity thus to live in love through having no sin after resurrection and having the whole truth of God [at alst] through the spirit of truth poured out [at last] on all flesh ...

So what does it mean that God is love, could it mean anything but that there is no favouritism in the redemption of the few first, that in order to be love, God inevitably redeems the whole creation [even the created Lucifer/Satan after he too has died for his sins {in fact died twice, having rejected the first opportunity along with a few others, dying a second death for continued sin]

What then if the un disprovable is true [unlike the paradoxical apparent 'reality'] , what then if faith delivers the rather surprisingly apparent truth taht 'life' and 'conciousness' in 'time' as we know it is merely like a dream, a thought in God's mind about what it would be like not to behave as God does [one thing God cannot do, but he could imagine, 'create' us to as-it-were enact the 'proof' of the absolute nothingness of unlovingness [the ways of the world as-it-were] .... curiously then this view is more plausible than the (paradoxical) 'theory' of material reality that most accept almost without question... more importantly perhaps it explains the difference between the spirit and the 'material wor;d', how they can interact without having a thing in common [the noumenal and the phenomenal resolved separate completely and yet interacting , as many simply cannot find a way to understand] ...

So for all that we may consider that we are able to recognise 'good' and 'evi', we cannot do 'good' because we do not know how to 'be God' without the spirit of truth [as for instance was poured out without measure on Jesus]

We understand then the patience of saints to have to endure time that the 'dream' should fulfill its function and demonstrate completely the emptiness of mankind's actions in the world...

Ecc 1:2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Ecc 1:3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?