Introducing a supernatural being into the picture has nothing to do with morality.

All such a being can define is a system of 'might makes right'. By specifying rules which must be obeyed under some threat of punishment for disobedience, and/or promise of reward for obedience. That is not morality.

You have the old dilemma - if God is good, that requires there be an independent standard of 'goodness'. If there is no such 'absolute' standard, adding a God into the system doesn't create one. Any such being could be as likely to be disposed to treat us as his personal playthings as to want us to be 'good', whatever that could mean outside the context of a particular society.

There IS a basic standard:

First, do not cause unnecessary harm or distress to another being. 'Necessary' harm would be things like temporary or lesser pain to treat or cure a disease or injury. Or what may be necessary to restrain an individual from causing such harm to yourself or another.

Second, do not refrain from action which you can reasonably take to spare another from such pain or distress.

This does not require any supernatural being to derive, just the principle of acknowledging that we share a major degree of common feelings with other members of our society, and can make reasonable assumptions about what is likely to be negative or positive to their life experience, such as what causes them pain or distress.

And that a society where the members try to minimize unpleasant or harmful experiences for everybody, and enhance each others quality of life, is likey to be one we would prefer to live in.

Such guidelines are as close as you can get to the basis for an 'absolute' standard of moral/ethical behavior.

None of this requires deep thought, or instruction from a magic being, just the natural empathy and compassion we, as social creatures, evolved to possess.

Hope this helps.

This 'argument from morality' canard is often used to appeal to the emotions as 'evidence' that there must be a 'god'. This has never had any explanatory power, even for the early 'thinkers'. See 'Euthyphro Dilemma'.

This is not evidence for a 'god', at all. Should we ever discover extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe, it will completely topple religion, since all theology is human centric.

The fallacy here with the 'moral argument' is that inter human 'dilemmas' can be measured as a right/wrong dichotomy, and additionally, that they can be measured outside of the thermodynamic system that they are acting in, which is why studying human 'dilemmas' is practically the same as 'economics', and why religion is wholly incapable of grappling with the enormously complex and overlapping outcomes to offer any 'practical' framework that is workable.

Virtually no one has done more to topple this 'argument from morality' canard than Sam Harris.

Do a YouTube search for " sam harris can science answer moral questions " and you'll find dozens of his lectures on not only how science can aid us in understanding which ways to move along the continuum of 'worst possible' - ' best possible'.

Sam Harris' book 'The Moral Landscape' is a great resource as well.

The argument that you'll often here is that 'science' can tell us what 'is' the case, but cannot determine what we 'ought' to be the case. The fallacy that we cannot objectively (without a 'god') determine what we 'ought' to do, is easily proven in any number of ways.

For example, if one's child is gravely ill, we ought to take it to the hospital. Yet, certain people might think they ought to take their child to a homeopath, or worse, that they ought to pray that their 'god' heal the child instead.

The 'objective' thing to do, is take the child to the hospital. The scientific 'evidence' that supports this solution is not even open for debate.

 

Another example that comes to mind is in the movie U-571 when the captain of a submarine must order one of the sailors to swim to his certain death, in the water filled bowels of their damaged submarine in order repair the submarine so that the remainder of the crew survive, not only so they can go home, but to carry out their mission to undermine the enemy and save countless lives.

 

 

 

Yay. A law-giver? If it's just a law on paper, then it is nothing more, than God's subjective opinion. If God's willing to back up that opinion by punishing those who transgress it, then it's still just his subjective opinion, it won't become objective by force.
For the law to become objective, it would have to be included into the very fabric of reality, not some primitive book, written 14 billion years after the beginning of the universe. And there are such laws, like law of action and reaction, (Occam's) law of economy, law of entropy, laws of logic, law way of the least resistance, and so on. There are even laws in nature that govern symmetry, efficient proportions, fractal structure, golden ratio, Fibonacci's set, etc. These laws are objective, because they're observable and testable. If people violate God's commandments for millenia and there is no regular, observable supernatural consequence, then the supernatural law-giver is probably on holiday.

I wouldn't say Germans were less evolved - they were pressed by economic crisis and brainwashed, while other nations not so necessarily. In the older times, it was normal to make a conquest for resources, but that morality should have been already abandoned. 
 

Morality is as good, as much it is accustomed for the greatest good of most people in current circumstances. This is, what makes it good or bad. Morality also demands to improve the circumstances, so that even finer points in morality may be developed. For example, the advent of the Internet.

But back to the point, if circumstances change for the worse, morality must change accordingly. It may not be as comfortable as in good old times, but we wouldn't survive or succeed in war that demands radical actions against the threat, with "laissez-faire" morality of peace. 
The greatest good for most people is the priority, selecting a persecuted group of people (or the nature itself) or specially empowered group, that is a typical sign of bad morality.

Who says the Holocaust is evil? Does there have to be a Who, in Who's subjective opinion the Holocaust is evil, and by imposing his supernatural will on us, the Holocaust becomes objectively evil?
Nature is a system. We can objectively see, if the system works and how well its parts cooperate. We perceive this subjectively emotionally and through moral feeling, but even if we don't, conflict, destruction, peace and prosperity are objective events and values, meaningful to everyone factually or potentially affected. 

 

That's not exactly true.

All religious believers believe they have a soul, but such things as vegetation, insects, animals and all inanimate objects don't. Therefore to allow religion to continue after any such extraterrestrial life is found (or finds us) Religion have devised this wonderful idea that they are not one of gods children (ie without soul) so therefore they are for our enjoyment, or generally for humans to do as they wish with. Plus they were planted there already by god for us to begin with; again to test our faith. There is no bearing on if they are more intelligent than humans or not; all this according to our new religion keeping up with society as per normal.

 

Morals!

There's one good thing about getting older, and that is that you start seeing how society and religion consistently change to suit the present.

It was morally ok for criminals to be nailed to a cross in the first century, and also quite common.

Although this was obviously an extremely cruel death, generally everyone accepted this mainly because it WAS a deterrent and they also removed the criminal without jail time. A win win for morals and society at the time.

So here we are in the 21st century with some countries and states still allowing (a quicker) capital punishment, or otherwise the offender is locked up behind cement for years on end. This again is fully accepted morally in society at this time.

So which is it? Is it morally bad to have slaves, at that time? Or is it morally bad to bomb countries killing innocent people (collateral damage)? No one seems to mind terribly much when we presently do this. ie I can't possibly count the mountain of online posts saying bomb Iraq over recent years.

So quite obviously 'morals' are subjective. They depend on the society you live in, and the year in which you do. They can also differ through ethnicity, religious beliefs and even your age. Therefore the past moral beliefs do NOT have any relevance to the present, except as history of how we got here.

 

?

Wait a minute. If that is true (of which it quite obviously is, even 'Ashley' agrees that yesterdays morals are not todays; then the same MUST hold true for the Bible and really anything that Jesus said.

Yes back in the year 0, ALL of those things that Jesus said were good, they were so good that eventually they were taken down in a Bible. This is not to say that he was the son of God, nor that some 'Supernatural law giver' has spoken and informed us of a never ending moralistic standpoint, unless every year its updated of course.

But the Bible is NEVER updated (since the second testament) Therefore it holds NO morals to our modern scientific and technical era. Where are the passages that say 'Ye shall rocket to space, land on moon and find water there (the basis of all sustaining life)' Jesus must have missed that passage? Strange though, since its extremely important!

 

The Bibles morals (whoever recited the words) is not relevant to 2000 year later present days, and therefore should not be followed.

Thanks 'Ashley' for clearing this up.

were not universal and were only adopted by cultures after being invaded and/or conquered. You can even point to different denominations of the religion itself, to show that even the religion can't decide what morals are objective.
But your best argument can only come if you've never believed in a god. This is the one time we get to use this argument against theists, though they try using it on us constantly: Personal experience and knowledge. Fact is, no matter how many times a theist says you know what objective morals are, you can validly call them a liar. I NEVER had a solid idea of right and wrong as a young child, and went through much hardship and embarrassment figuring it out. I molded my own ethics, partially based on societies views, but largely ignoring society as irrelevant, and have found aspects of my morality to be rare at best, unique at worst. Regardless, those morals are MINE. Noone elses. Someone might share 1, 2, or 50 morals with me, but NOONE shares them all.
If morality were objective,

Thanks Vastet

 

Now can you please divide your post number by 3 to get the real count of your posts?

Or better yet, instead of posting 3 posts in a row (you know with me getting 3 emails !!!) Maybe you could use PARAGRAPHS and then just post once?

No?

 

Lol, no that'll be ok

Maybe remove the post count number under member's names

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Yah, I think it was 97 when I hit him with the banzooka. The mass deletion tool works great for those idiots. Also, the post count is helpful for them because if it is not zero, then I know that I have more work to do.

The god of the bible has inconsistent morals at best. The holocaust perpetrated by this god are far way and beyond the holocaust of WWII. He murdered all but 8 people in the noah's flood. He commanded the Jews after the Exodus to go and commit genocide against many of the tribes in palestine. He couldn't do it himself, does he get off on watching his children slaughter entire cities? Oh, and sometimes he told his chosen to keep the virgin women (what a kind god. Wouldn't you think horny dudes would hear that from their god?. he didn't say save the virgin men.). Women were considered property and the bible perpetuated slavery. No condemnation. This god is not moral. If we had a leader that behaved like him our human morals will tell us he is evil. But believers have a fairy tale and will tolerate such immoral behavior. Their history shows that. The whole Jesus dying on the cross is so grotesque. God  sacrificed himself to himself to appease himself then will burn nearly all those in hell he supposedly did it for. Really bad morals and not rational. 

 

Good luck, but he has an agenda and probably will just dish out all the old crap. There are many great posts here that will show you just how irrational religion is. I have learn so much. It is well worth your time to read the many posts that address such lunacy. 

I'd ask a simple question:

How do you know what the so-called 'objective' morals of the so-called 'objective moral law-giver' are, other than going by your own subjective interpretation of a man-made book?

The idea of an 'objective moral law-giver' is a complete red herring. It doesn't put the theist on any better footing than the atheist.

Here's another question, if they try to say, "Well, at least it proves there must be a god!":

How do you know that god's objective morality isn't just: "Anything goes, fuckers! Deal with it!"?

Maybe the 'objective morality' is 'objectively' pure anarchy! How can the theist tell the difference? They can't!

I will say it's not all that often I have so much to say that I have to multi-post. Maybe one day Sony will update the browser some.

Just want to point out that evolution does 'meander' to varying extents, depending on levels of selection pressure on a species. "Meandering" is called 'genetic drift' in biology.

It also repeats, maybe not exactly, to the last gene, but it is called "convergent" evolution, when very similar forms evolve to live in similar environments in widely separated geographic regions.

It can arguably 'advance' when adapting to a new ecological niche, but you are pretty much right on this one. Sometimes it goes backward, losing capabilities and anatomical features not needed in an environment, such as cave-dwelling critters largely losing sight and features needed to cope with varying temperature and weather.

Sorry for the absence, guys. Thank you for your replies, and I conveyed some of them to him, and he swerved them like he was playing verbal dodgeball. Oh well.

I then went on to assert the Bible is a repugnant and morally corrupt book, and he said stuff was lost and changed in translation. (Which begs the question, then how do we know that its truly God's word then?)

From bees to wolves to cattle to humans and the hundreds of other social species similar "moral" behavior is seen in all of them. Some times different, greater or lesser degrees of expression, but in all cases recognizable. Our heads let us do it better where it is the form of social behaviour strongely expressed in our species. But the reason we care is because of our species behavior not because it is better. Excessively violent chimps are driven out of a group. We may have trials and juries and all kinds of complex stuff around it but we do the same thing but not as effectively as driving out never to be seen again other than the death penalty.

If you think about it a while you will see what I am talking about.

 

In fact god as love is an idea which only became dominant after governments kicked the priests back into their churches. Even so the churches have been on every side of every war down to current wars of the US against people who were not responsible for 9/11. Sure you can google an exception here and there but no love thine enemy crap from the mainstream of any religion.

You NEVER judge a religion or its god by what it is out of power but only by what it does when in power. Do we judge Judaism by its advocacy of minority rights outside of Israel where it benefits or by its KKK nature inside Israel? Do I even have to ask the question? The official claim is a jewish state allows Jews to be themselves. QED

There is no love in this god any place is either Testament. There is only the word. There is no expression of love.

I know, God so loved the world that he sent his son on a suicide mission. Bullshit.

Godwin's law that the first person to mention Hitler loses also applies to the first person who mentions holocaust. Forget it.

 

Oh too bad. It is good for you to keep learning though. Science is the best explanation we have. No primitive desert tribe is going to do better. The obvious advantages that science has given to us in the past hundred or so years is astounding. Religion in charge? We call that the dark ages, it had 1500 years and really what did it add.

So what is that guys gpa?