Both. Though I’m not sure where you are going here…
So you’re saying there are things that are inherently morally good?
If that’s true then they are good independent of God.
God is a superfluous variable.
There are moral absolutes, though many don’t accept that truth in this life.
I asked many liberals before, why is it wrong to murder? Do people have a right to life or not? If not, then why do we punish people who murder? If we do have a right to life,where does it come from and why doesn’t it apply to the unborn?
Only a moral absolute, given by God can consistently answer all those questions. Feel free though to jump through numerous, man made hoops to provide alternate explanations.
Not all humans believe it is wrong to murder.
You just said God loves things that are morally good.
That is…morally good things are inherently morally good…they don’t need to be defined by a deity.
If this is true, then positing a deity to explain moral absolutes is unnecessary.
If you fall back on the idea that moral absolutes must be defined by God in order to be morally good…well that’s Divine Command Theory, fraught with its own issues (i.e exterminating the Amalekites including their babies and livestock now becomes a morally good act). Morality then is based on the whim of the deity.
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I’ve put forth this very idea many times here. I’ve tried that question to issues in several of my own threads. If morality is a man made concept, based on the here and now, then we have no basis to judge past societies/civilizations as wrong. No justification for condemning slavery or the Holocaust. Not everyone or every society agrees with ours. No inherent morality, no rights… Nothing but might makes right.
No, just your complete misunderstanding of who God is, what’s the relationship between man and God, what’s God trying to accomplish and why, and the purpose of the Bible in all of it…
We can judge past societies any number of ways. We can judge them by American moral standards of today. We can’t judge them by moral standards of predominant morality if that era. We can judge them by what we think should be universal moral standards that would be considered timeless. But we still decide whatever yardstick to use.
And according to YOU, our yardstick is morally superior…
Sounds like a dictatorship to me. I’ll bet 60 million aborted fetuses would disagree with the current views of our enlightened, man made morality.
It’s not a misunderstanding at all.
It’s simple logic.
If there is a moral absolute, it just is.
It doesn’t need to be defined by any deity.
Explain to me how it could be otherwise.
If a moral absolute didnt exist, would you murder?
If moral absolutes didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be called murder would it? Don’t you have to presuppose that people have a right to life to condemn someone from depriving them of it?
I can’t put aside my societal aversion to the idea of deliberately taking someone’s life, let alone my Christian aversion, but yet, other societies had no such aversion. That’s what happens when man puts aside God…
Please enumerate those societies, past or present, that had no rule of law prohibiting murder - the killing of one private individual by another.
You seem to be confusing “murder” with governmental killings. The Christian Inquisition had its murders, just as Russia had its slaughters done by soldiers on innocents - but that was not the general populace going around killing anyone who looked at them funny - and then not being punished by judicial authority - which you apparently believe happened all the time.
You seem to think that the philosophy of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” only came about when Moses commanded it, yet that philosophy would occur to any intelligent humans living in any kind of a group.
Looking at it from a “ruler’s” point of view - back in ancient times there weren’t that many people on the planet, or in a village. So a ruler couldn’t have his people just go around killing each other like Wild West gunfighter - where one man, presumably Christian, calls another a liar, and that was sufficient excuse for a gunfight and the fastest gun wins and no charges would be filed…
Have you ever heard of the Code of Hammurabi?
Hammurabi - Wikipedia (copyright free, so should be okay to post here)
Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. Unlike earlier Sumerian law codes, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu, which had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, the Law of Hammurabi was one of the first law codes to place greater emphasis on the physical punishment of the perpetrator.
This is an interesting article on justice in ancient Athens (pre-God of the Old or New Testaments). If one person murdered another, it was the victim’s family that sought revenge. (So a murderer would have to think twice before killing someone lest his viictim’s family come a calling.
At first it would be paid with wergild (ie money) - because of the Athenian’s religion and belief that souls lived on…but that is punishment of a kind.
Then laws evolved, as humans evolved - and remember - pre-Old Testament.
So, if a moral wasnt absolute you wouldnt murder, yes?
People have murdered in the name of God for 1000s of years
Yes they have.
John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Was that her fault too?
After years of having a personal relationship with The Lord and personally witnessing all of the incredible events that I have through that relationship, I could care less what anyone thinks regarding my intelligence. What ever the measurement someone would use to judge this, is truly ignorant of The Truth and The Truth will set you free of prideful ignorance. It is my prayer that all seek, find, know and come to Love The Lord.
Ah oh ya I forgot only your God is right my bad
Could God have stopped Hinckley from shooting Reagan. Sent a heart attack at just the right moment?
A loving parent - a loving father - will not stand by when they see their child drowning in a pool, or starving because they’ve they’ve had their lunch money stolen by bullies every day for a week. The father will step in and rescue his child.
Mind you - a father may say, “You gambled away your lunch money so you can go hungry for the rest of the day”. I wouldn’t have a quarrel with that, might teach the kid a lesson.
But should a kid be punished because his lunch money is stolen every day? (IE, for something he has no control over?)
It’s amazing how you can be so close and yet so far.
Did you know that one of the objections that the grammarian Greek philosophers raised against the contention that men could learn Sophia, or that particular wisdom whereby a man could know for sure what it means to be Man – which was advanced by the Sophists – was that you could not know for sure that the souls of men were immortal.
Now, the likes of Socrates offered what they thought to be strong arguments that human souls persisted, but a strong argument is not knowing for sure.
As a consequence, if one could not know that they would say how could one really know what it is to be Man?
Now, it goes without saying that the grammarians, whose teaching of virtue could be learned by rote, were successful at replicating themselves where the Sophists who used rhetoric as their vehicle to try to teach virtue had great difficulty … and frankly rhetoric isn’t the best vehicle to teach wisdom.
These two methodologies to teach excellence / virtue / wisdom are not the only forms. Other have used parables, riddles, law, stories … all sorts of things have been used to try to teach wisdom.
But among the Greeks it was rhetoric or grammar, both using argumentation of course, just differently.
Now, I would be remiss to ignore that the grammarians did infact use rhetoric, and in The Phaedrus (for example) we see that Socrates as presented was a master of rhetoric and that he used it rather ruthlessly.
So, let’s roll forward a few centuries shall we?
When Paul spoke to the assembled elites of Athens at the Areopagus this was the set up: he had been preaching in the city and some had heard him, saying: “You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” Acts 17:20
So then Paul proclaimed to them, using their own religion as a starting point, the Gospel. And he was able to speak uninterrupted UNTIL it became clear that he was teaching the resurrection of the dead.
Please recall exactly whom Paul was addressing: these were the disciples of the grammarians, the educated people who understood every objection against the Sophist (who, btw, the grammarians despised which is why they posthumously abused their memory and why we have the term “sophistry”) that had been raised.
So what is teaching the resurrection of the dead other that teaching that one could know for sure that the souls of men were immortal?
Of course most there mocked just as Acts reports! They must have been chuckling among themselves to find a living, breathing Sopist in their midst.
But some from their number, once Paul had been laughed off the stage (maybe literally by some) would want to know more … also as reported by Acts.
Here’s the thing: you may reject Acts, the Gospel and even the Greek accounts given by the grammarians about the Sophists, just as you may likewise reject koans or parables or wisdom literature from all across human experience … but here Acts is in fact spot on about how we should expect that the disciples of the grammarians would have acted under such circumstances. And that makes the account itself more believable … not less.
So you ask why should I believe and you and others maintain proof hasn’t been given … but the truth really is you don’t accept the proofs that have been offered, or maybe you just will not accept them. But they are there … they may not be what your likely naturalist philosophy demands, they may be legal or historical or whatever, they may require you to accept a different sort of evidences than it seems you’ve been willing to accept.
And, like most of the disciples of the Greek philosophers that Paul spoke to … well you are simply not in a unique situation. As Solomon said, nothing new under the sun.
