yay plato

[Joveia]

I think with debates about morality come from, it's important to look at what would make morality 'objective' as opposed to 'subjective'. How is morality any more objective if a God exists? Why should God's existence matter at all to the 'objectiveness' of morality?

I think if this situation was the case then morality would be 'objective' in a powerful way: suppose that humans are made to be perfectly loving towards each other and relate to one another in an 'ideal' way. So it's impossible to really live out your nature without relating to others in an 'ideal' way. That way, even though doing evil can make people happy, no one can really be themselves - who they really are - without relating to others in a moral way. This situation would make morality 'objective' in an interesting and very potent way.

So suppose that God made humans to be 'love' like God is love (but then things went off the rails), sort of like above. Then morality would be objective for humans in a very powerful way. But the dilemma isn't resolved, because God could have made our nature different.

I think it is resolved if goodness is whatever God decides, but God is restricted to only one decision about what goodness is (of course, our highest moral ideals). Because God's decision about goodness must follow whatever God's nature is, and His nature generates only one possible choice for what goodness is; 1 Cor 13:4-8.

And then God passes that nature on to humans so we can independently agree with God because our nature is loving as well.

 

[Catherineanne]

could you do me a favor and define spiritual truth so that i understand better?

Fair enough. Genesis says God created the world in six days.

This is true. God certainly created the world, and he expained it to Moses (or whoever) as comprising six stages. These six stages do not define the limits of God's ability to create, nor the mechanisms by which he worked, but rather they illustrate the limits of Moses' ability to understand.

What is not true, therefore, is to extrapolate from the story of creation and say that God started on Sunday, finished on Friday night and then spent the Sabbath doing whatever he does on the Sabbath.

The Bible is far better at defining the limits of mankind's ability to understand God, than at actually defining God. It does talk about God, in other words, but it says a lot more about us.

Did God create the world in six actual days; 24 hours each? No. Is that the only way we could get our heads around creation at the time? Yes.

 

[Catherineanne]

But the dilemma isn't resolved, because God could have made our nature different.

It is tempting to think that this is the case, but there are also constraints involved, and the main constraint is God's choice to allow us free will.

Once that constraint is included, then much else necessarily follows. I am not sure why God thought it better to have mankind with free will and the ability to behave in the most appalling ways, but he did.

 

[kidsagainstkows]

i dont think that existence of god plays any part in the question of the objectivity of morals. i just happen to think that they are relative. you will find many fellow atheists who disagree with me. i dont really want to bring up a free will argument here as it just isnt the topic for it but i did make a post about free will in heaven like a week or two back if you wanna post over there.

catherine: so basically what your saying is that all of the stories are dumbed down in order for the people of the time to understand. first i have a of question

1 why? even if it made no sense to those bronze age people it would be pretty impressive now if God explained in detail the formation of the universe.

and with respect to your last post, what good does that spiritual truth get you? what conclusions can you draw from it that you couldnt from other sources?

oh and heres an article that we says we could feed 9 billion people by 2050. we have just under 7 billion people worldwide now.

Andrew Gunther: We Can Feed the World Sustainably, Humanely

 

[ebia]

ebia: im not saying that we dont have work to do, just not as much work as we did 2000 years ago.

Seems to me we have just as much work to do as we did, we've just shifted the furnature around a bit.

everyone in civilized society thinks that slavery is wrong. slavery happens in spite of this but not because of this.

You chose to talk practice so lets not move the goal-posts.

and im not sure you grasp how bad the crusades were. christians came just as close to wiping muslims of the map as the nazis came to jews. and the big news, we stopped that in six years, the crusades lasted about 400 years.

On and off. Hitler, Stalin and Rwanda killed how many in how short a time - and how many more of those will we have in the next 300? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrors that worse than anybody's previous vision of hell.

first world countries do feed most of the world. i dont know about Australia but the US grain industry feeds something like 60% by itself.

Much of the world population lives at near starvation while the countries that control the world's economic system keep themselves rich and then pat themselves on the back for giving handouts that mitigate some of the worst disasters. We buy chocolate and ignore the fact that almost half the necessary cocoa is grown by young boy slaves dragged from Mali to Cote d'Ivory. The US and EU virtually control things in such a way that it's hard for Australian farmers even to operate in the world food market, let alone 3rd World producers. For less than Americans alone spend on their pets or their makeup everybody in the world could be given access to safe drinking water, yet millions die for lack of it.

And then there is global warming.

You want to believe we've made ethical progress feel free, but much of the world doesn't buy that anymore. I'm certainly not going to take it as self-evident.

 

[kidsagainstkows]

people who are slaves now most likely would have been slaves 200 years ago. many of today's free people would have been slaves 200 years ago. therefore since there are less slaves now then there were (relative to pop.) we have improved.

lets say i made a goal to hit ten free throws in a row. first time i hit 3, next time i hit 6. just because im not up to ten yet doesnt mean that i havnt improved in practice.

tyranical dictators need to be wiped of the face of the earth i agree, and i agree that the a-bomb was a catastrophic event (and we have ones 1,000 times that strong now). that said its not that we are worse as a people now then we were then (i personally think we are better), however people now have resources they didnt have back then. could we possibly have a midnight scenario in the future? sure, but we do all we can to stop the threat. if vlad or kahn or george III had the tech then you bet your britches they would have used it.

the way that the US economic system works is this. if you want something you have to pay for it. if that wasnt the case then the company would go out of business and not be able to provide goods and services to anyone. and they should pat themselves on the back for all of the free product that they give in order to help those in need.

and again global warming sucks but were working on it. we are alot more eco-friendly now than we were in the 1860s when the industrial rev started.

you seem to act as though if there are any problems at all then we havnt made any progress. we may never totally stamp out dictators or slavery but that doesnt mean that we wont continue to make progress.

 

[ebia]

you seem to act as though if there are any problems at all then we havnt made any progress.

No. But I look at the horrors of the last 100 years, and the situation of most of the world's population now, and I'm at all convinced we've made overall progress. Sure, if you pick your indicators you can find whatever, but overall - it doesn't look like it to me. Interesting though it is to explore the issue of slavery, its that overall picture we're interested in so I won't pursue the details of one issue.

 

[kidsagainstkows]

alot of that is because of modern day reporting, we know more stuff that goes on now than we used to even if it is equally or less prevalent. violent crimes have steadily gone down in the US for the past 20 years or so but people keep saying that we are in fact more violent only because they hear more of the stories.

anyway i have to go to work now so ill pop back here in about 9 or 10 hours and i look forward to all posts.

 

[drich0150]

Therefore, God's morality must always be superior to mine, and yours, and indeed the sum total of every other person's morality.

To put it simply, What I am saying is "This greater Morality" is not Morality at all. It is Referred to as God's Righteousness. God's Righteousness is above and beyond simple morality, because morality as we know it is based on a sliding scale. This is true even in the church, (the usage of alcohol, the keeping of certain day holy and various disputable matters) God's Righteousness is a never changing standard that is not subject to popular culture (secular or with in the church.)

This is why I said God is not Moral as we know it. Because God's "Morality" Does not change and our idea of what morality is ever changing. This quality of God is outlined in scripture, and it is not referred to as morality, it referred to as God's righteousness.

 

[drich0150]

thanks for the replies all

drich: firstly we do not "know" that morals are completely subjective. certainly could be some objective list of correct and incorrect actions for any given situation. but i actually happen to agree with you on this point, just have a knee jerk reaction to the word "know"

I would suggest that we do "Know" if we "Know" The bible to be the word of God.

similarly i could say that forcing marriage upon a twelve year old (age of adulthood for a Jewish woman) and then sodomizing her is a completely immoral and heinous action.

Sodomizing virgins nor married women wasn't apart of that text. and whether the woman is a 12 year old Jew or Midianite the point was they saw equal treatment under "moral" law of the time. I'm not claiming that life was easy for any of them by today's standards, just that they were not subjected to anything that the general population of Judea was.

 

[Key]

Sodomizing virgins nor married women wasn't apart of that text.

Just to clear this up, there was no mandate to sodomize anyone, at any time in that entire chapter. As I see it, sodomy being involved in the taking the virgins as wives would be counterproductive to the procreation and expansion of their family.

Just saying.

 

[razeontherock]

im not reading the hebrew bible but what i cut and pasted is kjv so its a pretty literal interpretation (as opposed to looser ones such as niv and *shudder* the message).

The correct word here is "translation," not interpretation. Interpretation is what happens when you take the pure unadulterated word of the (again)


ONE GOD


and impose upon it your own wishes, which in this case is the vile notion that He condoned, supported, or possibly even commanded (?) the idea that has poisoned your mind, that it refers to "child rape."

Since you're asking about how to understand what the Bible says, it would behoove you to apply some critical thought to what you posted that I quoted, above. Throw some facts in with it and you might get dangerous

The KJV was an absolutely amazing work for it's day, taking the brightest and the best of minds that had spent their whole lives not only learning the original languages, but specifically as it pertains to Scripture. Then when they were all brought together, they were instructed to perform an impossibility: for each Hebrew word in the original text, come up with ONE English word that somehow conveys the original essence.

Usually, that can not be done. So you wind up with countless questions that will never be answered satisfactorily until you dig deeper than what the KJV (or any one version) contains.

Every translation has it's weakness(es), but also it's strengths. You will understand far more from comparing many different translations of a passage placed in it's larger context than you ever will by sticking to just one, even if that one is the KJV; which I still love for it's beautiful, lofty poetry, although that makes it nigh impossible to apply in the trenches. If you must slam the NIV, realize the worst that can be said about it even by it's staunchest opponents is it's "nearly inspired." That's not so bad, and still quite helpful. If you shudder at the Message, you must be completely unaware of what it IS, and how it was written. Further, ALL translations agree in essence re: anything we might actually DO, rather than just arguing about how many angels fit on the head of a pin like you're doing at the beginning of this thread.

So, have you yet:

1) placed the Numbers 31 passage in it's larger context in a sincere effort to understand the Spiritual Truth it conveys? (Haven't read all the pages since, but something tells me that ball was dropped and you've been 'all over the map' instead. Hopefully I'm wrong)

2) Removed the concept of 'the gods' from this discussion, recognizing it blurs any answers for you beyond recognition?

 

[razeontherock]

I would suggest that we do "Know" if we "Know" The bible to be the word of God.

I think this is very germane to the discussion. If you're going to bring the Bible into it, you have to determine for yourself if it is or is not the word of G-d and at least maintain that frame of reference for the purposes of this discussion. If the OP holds it to be man's erroneous viewpoint, grasping at straws to make meaning out of what is meaningless, that's his choice; but in that case I posit it would be better left out of the discussion of subjective vs objective morality. Or at least those stories that aren't understood to the level of the meaning in the original language(s) of the names of people and places, their history, and how it fits into G-d's plan both leading up to and away from the flood as well as Israel's future.

 

[kidsagainstkows]

raze: i read the bible (new king james) about three years ago (ok i skipped some begats but can you really blame me?). back then i was still a christian and reading the bible was one of the first steps in my deconversion. i do understand the story of Jericho in context. basically it was a fortified town that they walked around to make the walls fall then they murdered everyone (except the virgin girls of course). they did this because the Caanans (and a bunch of others) were in the "Promised Land" that God said was for the jews.

and im pretty sure that i was using the word interpretation correctly, we know exactly what the OT words used were (well sort of every single copy of every single book was a bit different, but its the best you can expect when theres one guy reading and 100 guys copying everything down as fast as they can).

there is a spectrum of interpretation throughout modern translation. these go for strict literal interp (where all the words are copied down exactly i.e. KJV, NKJV) to a more loose interp (where the ideas remain the same but the words to convey are different i.e. the *shudder* message).

and of course i know what the message is for i had a study bible similar to it in high school. its to trick kids into reading the bible and thinking its cool, well that and to make money.

oh and i only used the Gods phrase because thats what Plato did (him being a Pagan and all) but i think most people get the translation into the Abrahamic faiths as well.

and this isnt on topic but can we at least agree that it could be interpreted that the #31 chapter could be translated to mean that and that Exodus 21 at the very least speaks of slavery in a necessary if not favorable light.

 

[Lukaris]

raze: i read the bible (new king james) about three years ago (ok i skipped some begats but can you really blame me?). back then i was still a christian and reading the bible was one of the first steps in my deconversion. i do understand the story of Jericho in context. basically it was a fortified town that they walked around to make the walls fall then they murdered everyone (except the virgin girls of course). they did this because the Caanans (and a bunch of others) were in the "Promised Land" that God said was for the jews.

and im pretty sure that i was using the word interpretation correctly, we know exactly what the OT words used were (well sort of every single copy of every single book was a bit different, but its the best you can expect when theres one guy reading and 100 guys copying everything down as fast as they can).

there is a spectrum of interpretation throughout modern translation. these go for strict literal interp (where all the words are copied down exactly i.e. KJV, NKJV) to a more loose interp (where the ideas remain the same but the words to convey are different i.e. the *shudder* message).

and of course i know what the message is for i had a study bible similar to it in high school. its to trick kids into reading the bible and thinking its cool, well that and to make money.

oh and i only used the Gods phrase because thats what Plato did (him being a Pagan and all) but i think most people get the translation into the Abrahamic faiths as well.

and this isnt on topic but can we at least agree that it could be interpreted that the #31 chapter could be translated to mean that and that Exodus 21 at the very least speaks of slavery in a necessary if not favorable light.

I just came across the thread briefly & have little time t post but you may want to consider the perspective of a 2nd century Platonic philospoher Justin Martyr who became a Christian & still admired Plato but knew Jesus Christ as Lord and savior. CHURCH FATHERS: Hortatory Address to the Greeks (Justin Martyr) (scroll down).

 

[kidsagainstkows]

i vaguely know of Martyr (well i know he was killed for the christian faith hence the term martyr) and i take it at face value that he probably was fond of Plato's work. i also happen to have a different faith then Plato and am fond of his work. i know you didnt have much time to read the full post (there was a huge side track in the middle about biblical interp that you wouldnt want to read anyway) but let me know what YOU think with regards to Plato's question.

thanks and i look forward to your and the communities future posts

 

[ebia]

and of course i know what the message is for i had a study bible similar to it in high school. its to trick kids into reading the bible and thinking its cool, well that and to make money.

You obviously don't know The Message or Eugene Peterson as well as you think you do, because his interest wasn't (and isn't) in making money and The Message was written for adults.

 

[razeontherock]

and this isnt on topic but can we at least agree that it could be interpreted that the #31 chapter could be translated to mean that and that Exodus 21 at the very least speaks of slavery in a necessary if not favorable light.

Actually this is very on topic since you're the OP and you raised the issue.

You can call red green but that doesn't make it so.

Ex 21 does speak of slavery, but I don't see a comment from you on the subject I can really agree with. That's why I raised the point that you're trying to understand, but not availing yourself of the tools to do so.

Why does The Message make you shudder? To follow your reasoning, anything other than the original language should make you shudder; it is, after all, using different words to convey the same idea. And when you say you "read something similar in HS," no, I don't think you did. There really is nothing similar in the English language, at least not that I'm aware of.

Are you familiar with the Amplified Bible?