Where does morality come from?

createdtoworship

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And when it comes to religious faith, I would define it as belief without evidence. Which is certainly NOT the case with me using Maps.
I think you admit to using faith in GPS, as it auto corrects arrival times according to updating conditions (which I admit that it cannot control), but it still requires faith in a device. And secondly I think the pivotal argument for me is my definition of faith.

so since you disagree that faith is just trust, I figure I would quote a dictionary for you.

"Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
‘this restores one's faith in politicians’

faith | Definition of faith in English by Lexico Dictionaries

oxford dictionaries I hear are the best.

the primary definition is how I define faith, it also defines faith as a type of religion, not based on proof.
but that is the secondary definition. The primary definition, the one I am using is the first most primary definition. Of which you would be having faith in a GPS.

lastly if you ask a Christian to define faith, they will almost universally say it's "trust."

Because it's not a belief in something that is faith, it is actually putting your trust in something, and yes it is without solid proof.

but trust in general is without proof as I have verified in my last post.
 
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Kylie

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also here you mention my peer review was not peer review because it was posted to a social media site for scientists not a peer review site, well I fact checked this, and it is was originally from a International Journal of Science and Engineering, which is a peer review organization , their policy for peer review is here: Peer Review & Publication Policy - International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research. So my peer review article of the dangers of cell phone radiation is after 2015, recent, and it is valid. So again my premise was you have faith that using a cell phone will not give you cancer. And that would be accurate. So having faith in God is no different.

And yet you don't give a link to the article on this site.
 
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Kylie

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I think you admit to using faith in GPS, as it auto corrects arrival times according to updating conditions (which I admit that it cannot control), but it still requires faith in a device. And secondly I think the pivotal argument for me is my definition of faith.

My faith in my GPS is based on its proven track record. In other words, I have evidence.

so since you disagree that faith is just trust, I figure I would quote a dictionary for you.

"Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
‘this restores one's faith in politicians’

faith | Definition of faith in English by Lexico Dictionaries

oxford dictionaries I hear are the best.

I will agree that this is ONE definition of faith. But I do not blindly trust my GPS. There have been cases where GPS has lead people to the wrong place, and through impassable roads. I do NOT have complete trust.

the primary definition is how I define faith, it also defines faith as a type of religion, not based on proof.
but that is the secondary definition. The primary definition, the one I am using is the first most primary definition. Of which you would be having faith in a GPS.

lastly if you ask a Christian to define faith, they will almost universally say it's "trust."

If you are reduced to quibbling over the definition of FAITH, perhaps in an attempt to claim that the same definition applies to my faith in my GPS and your faith in God, then you're going to find I am far from convinced.

Because it's not a belief in something that is faith, it is actually putting your trust in something, and yes it is without solid proof.

but trust in general is without proof as I have verified in my last post.

And yet my faith in my GPS is indeed based on evidence, isn't it?
 
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createdtoworship

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And yet you don't give a link to the article on this site.
It said on the top of the peer review where it was from
And yet you don't give a link to the article on this site.
I could not find it, but in searching i found many studies, all of which we summarized in this article:

here is a concluding quote from the bottom:

"
the growing body of scientific evidences indicates some bio-effects and possible adverse health effects of Radio Frequency Radiation (RFR) which merit further investigations.”[20]

The American Cancer Society (ACS) states that “The IARC classification means that there could be some risk associated with cancer, but the evidence is not strong enough to be considered causal and needs to be investigated further. "

a government peer review site:
US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
link below:
Mobile phone use and possible cancer risk: Current perspectives in India


furthermore a study on male mice, found a decrease in sperm count among mice under long term exposure to radiation found in cell phones:

2.45-GHz microwave irradiation adversely affects reproductive function in male mouse, Mus musculus by inducing oxidative and nitrosative stress. - PubMed - NCBI
 
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createdtoworship

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My faith in my GPS is based on its proven track record. In other words, I have evidence.
so you admit that you use faith, so there we have it. That is all I wanted. I have faith Jesus died for my sins based on evidence. Eye witness accounts. See "Cold Case Christianity" - I really liked that book. You should check it out if your really open to the evidence of Christianity.


I will agree that this is ONE definition of faith. But I do not blindly trust my GPS. There have been cases where GPS has lead people to the wrong place, and through impassable roads. I do NOT have complete trust.
Most healthy churches don't teach a blind faith, but incorporate statistical evidence such as prophecy, and other events that legitimize the Biblical account.



If you are reduced to quibbling over the definition of FAITH, perhaps in an attempt to claim that the same definition applies to my faith in my GPS and your faith in God, then you're going to find I am far from convinced.
I don't need to convince you, just have a logical argument for why that is the case.
 
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Ken-1122

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so you admit that you use faith, so there we have it. That is all I wanted.
When he said he had a proven track record concerning his GPS, why did you make the leap that he had faith? Faith does not equal a proven track record.
 
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Kylie

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It said on the top of the peer review where it was from

You did not give a link to your original article on any peer reviewed website.

I could not find it, but in searching i found many studies, all of which we summarized in this article:

here is a concluding quote from the bottom:

"
the growing body of scientific evidences indicates some bio-effects and possible adverse health effects of Radio Frequency Radiation (RFR) which merit further investigations.”[20]

The American Cancer Society (ACS) states that “The IARC classification means that there could be some risk associated with cancer, but the evidence is not strong enough to be considered causal and needs to be investigated further. "

a government peer review site:
US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
link below:
Mobile phone use and possible cancer risk: Current perspectives in India


furthermore a study on male mice, found a decrease in sperm count among mice under long term exposure to radiation found in cell phones:

2.45-GHz microwave irradiation adversely affects reproductive function in male mouse, Mus musculus by inducing oxidative and nitrosative stress. - PubMed - NCBI

So you can't find the article on any peer reviewed website and the ones you can find say that there is not enough evidence to conclude that there is a causal relationship between mobile phones and cancer.

You need to learn to choose your battles better, because this is one that you aren't winning.
 
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Kylie

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so you admit that you use faith, so there we have it. That is all I wanted. I have faith Jesus died for my sins based on evidence. Eye witness accounts. See "Cold Case Christianity" - I really liked that book. You should check it out if your really open to the evidence of Christianity.

Oh, for crying out loud, I have been as clear as I possibly can be that my faith that my GPS works is DIFFERENT to your faith in God! Why do you refuse to grasp this very simple point?

Most healthy churches don't teach a blind faith, but incorporate statistical evidence such as prophecy, and other events that legitimize the Biblical account.

lol, I've never seen any such evidence from anyone.

I don't need to convince you, just have a logical argument for why that is the case.

Of course, if you actually HAD a logical argument for God, you would convince me.
 
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Clizby WampusCat

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Is the only way to defeat flat earthism to convince all flat earthers that the earth is round? Or is it just enough to defeat their arguments that it is flat, even if they refuse to accept otherwise?
That is different. Flat earther's have a belief that can be falsified. Most atheists have no belief in a god and are making no claims. Believers have no falsifiable claims yet to be able to convince an atheist god exists. And as I pointed out your god won't allow you to convince everyone of the gospel anyway.
 
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Clizby WampusCat

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Do you trust it? If yes, then you are having faith in it. The number one definition of faith is trust.
Not according to the bible.

Dictionary.com
noun
noun: faith
  1. 1.
    complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
    "this restores one's faith in politicians"
    synonyms: trust, belief, confidence, conviction, credence, reliance, dependence; More

    antonyms: mistrust
  2. 2.
    strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
    synonyms: religion, church, sect, denomination, persuasion, religious persuasion, religious belief, belief, code of belief, ideology, creed, teaching, dogma, doctrine
    "she gave her life for her faith"
    • a system of religious belief.
      plural noun: faiths
      "the Christian faith"
    • a strongly held belief or theory.
      "the faith that life will expand until it fills the universe"
How Christians use faith and how your bible defines faith more fits the second definition.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Heb 11:1.

Faith is assurance in something simply because you hope for it and are sure of things you cannot see. This can be used to believe anything. I hope that Bigfoot is real and I am confident it exists even though I have never seen one. This is from gotquestions.org about faith:

"Thankfully, the Bible contains a clear definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Simply put, the biblical definition of faith is “trusting in something you cannot explicitly prove.”

The bible also says without faith (or belief without sufficient evidence) you cannot please god or be saved. Why do so many Christians then try to prove that god exists?
 
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quatona

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So again my premise was you have faith that using a cell phone will not give you cancer. And that would be accurate. So having faith in God is no different.
Well, the existence of cell phones is not in dispute, I hope. Thus "having faith (in the existence of) God" and "having faith that cell phone will not give you cancer" are two different things. False equivocation.
 
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FredVB

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It would come down to God explaining what no God does not explain. That is logical basis to believe there is God. That God is good the way we can understand it, loving, and caring for us, is faith, with trusting what is believed to be revelation for it, though that doesn't have to be blind faith, when there are many evidences for what is believed to be that making it distinct. That there is God as necessarily existing is still the explanation for what otherwise is impossible to explain.
 
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FredVB

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We indeed cannot say anthing at all that will get any others who do not want to conclude that there is God to see that there really is God, though there is great order existing, everything of the universe would be very fine-tuned for its physical constants such as the gravitational constant to be just right for any life to be possible in a viable universe coming from a big bang, we are here presuming we can know from what we find what real truth of reality is, we have no physical explanation for any of the nonphysical things we believe in such as real love, real value, real justice, without God, and we who will see it say that God explains all the universe with us in it and they don't have anything at all to explain the universe coming into being, when it certainly did have a beginning, and there is something then which is necessary existence, which would explain the universe with us in it coming to be. Even if they don't want to acknowledge God to be that, they have no logic against there being something that is necessary being, whether it be Brahma, Quetzacoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Ptah, Azathoth, or anything else, known or unknown, that is not itself something brought into existence by anything else, but is existing necessarily. But we can believe what we see has abundant evidence.
 
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Tinker Grey

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We indeed cannot say anthing at all that will get any others who do not want to conclude that there is God to see that there really is God, though there is great order existing, everything of the universe would be very fine-tuned for its physical constants such as the gravitational constant to be just right for any life to be possible in a viable universe coming from a big bang, we are here presuming we can know from what we find what real truth of reality is, we have no physical explanation for any of the nonphysical things we believe in such as real love, real value, real justice, without God, and we who will see it say that God explains all the universe with us in it and they don't have anything at all to explain the universe coming into being, when it certainly did have a beginning, and there is something then which is necessary existence, which would explain the universe with us in it coming to be. Even if they don't want to acknowledge God to be that, they have no logic against there being something that is necessary being, whether it be Brahma, Quetzacoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Ptah, Azathoth, or anything else, known or unknown, that is not itself something brought into existence by anything else, but is existing necessarily. But we can believe what we see has abundant evidence.
Dude, have you never been taught how to write a sentence! (The 1st sentence is 223 words.)
 
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stevil

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We indeed cannot say anthing at all that will get any others who do not want to conclude that there is God to see that there really is God, though there is great order existing, everything of the universe would be very fine-tuned for its physical constants such as the gravitational constant to be just right for any life to be possible in a viable universe coming from a big bang, we are here presuming we can know from what we find what real truth of reality is, we have no physical explanation for any of the nonphysical things we believe in such as real love, real value, real justice, without God, and we who will see it say that God explains all the universe with us in it and they don't have anything at all to explain the universe coming into being, when it certainly did have a beginning, and there is something then which is necessary existence, which would explain the universe with us in it coming to be. Even if they don't want to acknowledge God to be that, they have no logic against there being something that is necessary being, whether it be Brahma, Quetzacoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Ptah, Azathoth, or anything else, known or unknown, that is not itself something brought into existence by anything else, but is existing necessarily. But we can believe what we see has abundant evidence.
You use "god" as a default place holder for the unknown. This is god of the gaps, god of the ever shrinking gaps. A god that gets smaller and smaller with each scientific discovery.
You are not presenting evidence for a god, but are appealing to lack of evidence for something else as being "evidence" for a god of some sort.

Most atheists are comfortable in the position of "unknown".
For example, why does the moon always have the same side facing earth as it orbits the earth?
It would be an incredible feat of coincidence to have its rotation exactly match its orbit so that it always presents the same side exactly facing the earth. It is almost impossible to think this would be a coincidence, it is so finely tuned that god must have done it.
But then scientists discover the gravity concept of being "tidaly locked". Oh so, its not a coincidence, Oh we can explain it with the natural forces, shrugs.

So, before humans understood the concept of tidal locking, should they have assumed "god did it" or should they just have said "it is unknown why this happens"?

If you don't currently have a scientific explanation for something, should you just conclude that "god did it"?
You do know that science is a method of discovery. If we already knew everything, we wouldn't need to do science. If our answer to everything is "god did it" then we wouldn't bother with scientific discovery, we wouldn't learn anything, we wouldn't discover stuff, we wouldn't advance.
We would look at stuff and say "wow, god did it". It seems to me to be very intellectually lazy, and would stagnate us as a species. We would become (and stay) the most ignorant "intelligent" life in the universe. But at least we would believe in god, right?
 
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stevevw

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I have another very important question to ask of everyone.

I am a firm believer in God and believe that morality is certainly derived from Him and Him alone... that being said, however, I'm wondering how a person would debate this with someone like an Atheist? Atheists do not believe in God, so telling them that morality comes from God would probably not be all that convincing.

If morality comes from God and God only, then there would obviously be no other answer to tell anyone who was asking since the truth is objective and not just some kind of malleable or subjective reality. But, even still, how would someone discuss this point with an Atheist who clearly does not believe in God and seems highly unlikely to cave in to the idea?
Humans intuitively know that certain things are right and wrong through their conscience regardless of relative circumstances unless they have a mental disorder and are incapable of thinking rationally. People may come up with examples of how morals only apply to themselves but when they are wronged they will usually protest as though there are universal morals.

So if there are objective morals then there has to be a moral lawgiver such as God as they have to come from beyond subjective human thinking. As God's nature is all good He is the source of objective good and this is given to us in His moral laws for which we are obligated to follow. If objective morality does not come from God then it has to be explained why something is ultimately right or wrong and why we ought to do good and not do evil? Otherwise, for humans, if there is no objective right and wrong then there is no argument against someone who kills your family or takes your possessions.

So the argument would be

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

The Moral Argument for God's Existence
The Moral Argument for God's Existence - NAMB
 
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Speedwell

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Humans intuitively know that certain things are right and wrong through their conscience regardless of relative circumstances unless they have a mental disorder and are incapable of thinking rationally. People may come up with examples of how morals only apply to themselves but when they are wronged they will usually protest as though there are universal morals.

So if there are objective morals then there has to be a moral lawgiver such as God as they have to come from beyond subjective human thinking. As God's nature is all good He is the source of objective good and this is given to us in His moral laws for which we are obligated to follow. If objective morality does not come from God then it has to be explained why something is ultimately right or wrong and why we ought to do good and not do evil? Otherwise, for humans, if there is no objective right and wrong then there is no argument against someone who kills your family or takes your possessions.

So the argument would be

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

The Moral Argument for God's Existence
The Moral Argument for God's Existence - NAMB
The only difficulty see with that argument is that it creates the false dichotomy that moral precepts either come from God or that they are the product of "subjective human thinking." or even personal whim.
 
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Kylie

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We indeed cannot say anthing at all that will get any others who do not want to conclude that there is God to see that there really is God, though there is great order existing, everything of the universe would be very fine-tuned for its physical constants such as the gravitational constant to be just right for any life to be possible in a viable universe coming from a big bang, we are here presuming we can know from what we find what real truth of reality is, we have no physical explanation for any of the nonphysical things we believe in such as real love, real value, real justice, without God, and we who will see it say that God explains all the universe with us in it and they don't have anything at all to explain the universe coming into being, when it certainly did have a beginning, and there is something then which is necessary existence, which would explain the universe with us in it coming to be. Even if they don't want to acknowledge God to be that, they have no logic against there being something that is necessary being, whether it be Brahma, Quetzacoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Ptah, Azathoth, or anything else, known or unknown, that is not itself something brought into existence by anything else, but is existing necessarily. But we can believe what we see has abundant evidence.

So, the First Cause argument?

That's been debunked.
 
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eleos1954

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You use "god" as a default place holder for the unknown. This is god of the gaps, god of the ever shrinking gaps. A god that gets smaller and smaller with each scientific discovery.
You are not presenting evidence for a god, but are appealing to lack of evidence for something else as being "evidence" for a god of some sort.

Most atheists are comfortable in the position of "unknown".
For example, why does the moon always have the same side facing earth as it orbits the earth?
It would be an incredible feat of coincidence to have its rotation exactly match its orbit so that it always presents the same side exactly facing the earth. It is almost impossible to think this would be a coincidence, it is so finely tuned that god must have done it.
But then scientists discover the gravity concept of being "tidaly locked". Oh so, its not a coincidence, Oh we can explain it with the natural forces, shrugs.

So, before humans understood the concept of tidal locking, should they have assumed "god did it" or should they just have said "it is unknown why this happens"?

If you don't currently have a scientific explanation for something, should you just conclude that "god did it"?
You do know that science is a method of discovery. If we already knew everything, we wouldn't need to do science. If our answer to everything is "god did it" then we wouldn't bother with scientific discovery, we wouldn't learn anything, we wouldn't discover stuff, we wouldn't advance.
We would look at stuff and say "wow, god did it". It seems to me to be very intellectually lazy, and would stagnate us as a species. We would become (and stay) the most ignorant "intelligent" life in the universe. But at least we would believe in god, right?

We would look at stuff and say "wow, god did it". It seems to me to be very intellectually lazy, and would stagnate us as a species.

Not so ... there are many many MANY scientists that believe in creation/God, studying in all areas of science and have and do discover many things ... faith does not preclude nor define ones intelligence nor does it dismiss the curiosity of the how and why.

Also ... in His Word He says we are to observe (study) things ... discover them ... we do endeavor to understand His designs.

The study of science is the same ... the difference is ... one either comes from a point that it was designed and tries to understand the how and why ... or ... one comes from the point of gazillions of happen chances as reasons for the how and why ... and neither has 100% physical proof of either.

The universe is extremely vast and is beyond our ability to study it throughly ... but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't .... of course we should and we do and faith does not exclude that pursuit of understanding.
 
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