Morality

[Solomon Zorn]

It's all been said before:

Don't rush to the end, I don't get to chew on one very often!

[SGOS]

In addition God's law cannot be objective because it's subjective.  I pretty sure the definition of subjective is something that changes when it is perceived differently in different contexts, and that is how God gives out laws.  Thou shalt not kill... except that sometimes it's OK, specifically when I say it's OK.  Thou shalt not lie [God]... except when converting non believers [Paul].

However, you look at it, it's subjective.  It's simply not objective based on a claim.

[JohnnyB1993]

You're simply stupid.  Go to a daycare sometime, (that is if you're legally allowed to) observe the behavior of children. They take from others without permission, they will steal, they will assault others and if left alone, the strongest or simply the meanest will be the ruler. As parents or guardians we are responsible to teach proper behavior and morals. IF your POS god had any involvement we would still be knuckled draggers, (though it appears some of us still are)

I cannot see how this reply answers my question at all.  If morality is subjective, then it seems far to say that morality derives from somewhere (perhaps from human evolution/thoughts?).  If morality is objective, then it seems fair to say that that morality derives from somewhere.   That is all am asking.  What does your example of the behavior of children prove?  Morality can still be subjective, that is whatever system the children come up with then it would be right.  Or morality can be objective, in which no matter how much the children act in a certain way, there still remains a  true right way for them to behave. 

[Mr.Obvious]

Yes

This is a great question, its cool to see that there are some people who use logic to come up with these rebuttals.  Here's my answer:  God's law never actually changed.  Most scholars argue that the whole point of the Old Testament was to show just how impossible it was for man to follow God's rule.  The unfortunate truth is that no matter how hard humans try, they will never be able to live up to the standard of God.  This would indicate the reason to why Jesus had to come into the world.  However, I am sure your more interested in the laws about slavery, and stoning non-virgin women as seen in the OT.  One possible answer is that God never condoned slavery, but simply 'allowed' these behaviors because they were so hard-driven into the culture of the people of that specific time.   Jesus actually attempts to answer your question in Matthew 19.  Of course Jesus is talking about divorce in this passage but lets take Matthew 19:8 and switch it with 'holding slaves'.  It may read: "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to hold slaves; but from the beginning it has not been this way."

So why is he so inneficiënt; by your own admission? I think 'most scholars' is probably a gross exageration. But fine, let's give you the benefit of the doubt because you're not claiming all scholars that are, have been and will be. This means that what you believe to be perhaps the most important tool to find out what is 'moral' or not in absolute terms is inneficiënt if your God has omnipotence and omniscience. In other words he wants people to misinterpret the Bible and to misjudge what is moral or not. If he didn't, he would have willed it some other way. He would have given us a source to find what is moral and what is not that is undeniable and perfectly clear to all. Screw the medium even, an all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerfull God would have instilled this wisdom in our minds from the get-go and have bypassed a set of guide to morality that would later be used to convince other societies that their view on morality is fundamentally wrong.
He could have instilled in us all the same moral principles, the same values, the same inherrent knowledge that A is moral and B is immoral. But what do we find? These views differ from society to society and individual to individual. So why would he prefer to create humans that are incapable of being morally right on their own and incapable of following the laws he sets out for them, when he could just as easily have made them 'better'. Why would he allow all those who went before the OT to live without his guidance? Why would he give us only the OT for such a long time and purposefully allow those who lived before the NT to draw strenght from his commandments and live in such immoral ways and commit such heinous crimes? Why would he wait for so long before 'blessing' us with the NT? Why would he even then allow so much time and lives to go by before the entire world has even heard of them? Why would he make it so that even now some don't know of Jesus Christ (though a vast minority) and so many have lived and died with a faulty view on morality and lacking the knowledge of the true set of moral guidelines? Why doesn't he make a more persuasive argument so that if you start to think about it, it actually makes sense ? Why do his words fail to persuade someone who isn't indoctrinated this stuff from birth on, even once?
Note that this isn't a question of free will. God must have purposefully designed this world knowing that most people in history wouldn't know what his word on morality and thus the hypothetical 'objective morality' is. He could have created them with free will but a universal inherent knowledge that agrees with all other humans on what is right and what is wrong. To say he couldn't do this or couldn't have foreseen this problem is to disavow your premises. So, in case you believe in hell, your God made his creation and created me and most of my friends here with the knowledge that when you come knocking on this site we wouldn't be convinced by what you're selling. Nor by what others proclaim who hold similar views to yours. He thus created us to burn, knowing in advance that we would and that we would never turn to him before it was too late. If that being spawns 'objective morality' than your 'objective morality' is one I wouldn't want to live by even if it were to exist. Say you are a different breed of Christian and that you believe we will all be saved after we die and that the gates of hell will be empty, then still the question remains as to why all this hassle? Why allow all this hardship? Why create a world which would lead to genocides and holocausts and raping and pillaging and fighting and sociopaths when he could have created a world in which better humans would have known his will and all could and would have followed it by their own choosing? God must have willed evil into existance. He must have chosen to make people suffer at the hands of other people while he could just as easily have prevented it without desecrating humanity's free will.
You can puzzle in the Bible all you want, replacing passages and making up for God's inexcusable incompetence in showing us that objective morality exists and what it is exaclty. You can change words in verses to your hearts content, it makes no difference to me. Be my guest and find solace in your ancient and to me subjectively immoral collection of man-made books. But the moment you tell me that objective morality exists and that this therefore must coincide with your God's will because he is all-loving while he is on top of that all-knowing and all-powerfull, I'll ask you to think of the internal inconcistency of your claims. Because I'm not taking moral advice from someone who decided from the get-go that he'd create psychopaths who would fail his rules and murder, rape and torture other human beings and would then content himself with punishing that psychopath for eternity. It's an inexcusable way to create the world if you could create it any way you wanted and know what to do to make it much better, with your objective morality in mind. Unless, this objective morality is extremely immoral in my subjective opinion.

Whenever I run with the Christian hypothesis, it's not long before I hit a brick wall.

[JohnnyB1993]

You are asking if, in a world where the subjective morality of people tell them that a given action is morally right, it is therefore objectively right.  I have already stated that there is no objective right or wrong from an extra-human point of view. There is only our subjective understanding. So, it is still not "Right" in either sense. Not in the subjective sense because the morality I have evolved, tells me it's wrong, and not in the objective sense, because the objective sense doesn't exist.
Do you finally understand my answer?

I am not talking about a simple instinct, but a value system that is part instinct, part parenting, part social example, part social pressure, part reading, and a lot of personal experience.

I think I do.  You clearly explain that in the hypothetical world, all those who think that the Holocaust is right would in fact be wrong.  It would not be right in the subjective sense because the morality you have evolved tells you its wrong.  My only issue is that what do you have to offer to give credible reason to belief YOUR subjective morality?  Is it your evolved sensibility due to part instinct, parenting, reading, and a lot of personal experience.  I do not see how these are good factors to determine good morals.  If someone grew up with the parenting, social pressure, and personal experience that it was ok to lie and steal things, then by that person's subjective morality they would in essence be right.  I think it is clear to see that people's subjective morals around the world contradict each other.  How do we come to determine then which subjective morality is the best?

[JohnnyB1993]

It's mathematically impossible to know everything.

I assume you are saying that it is mathematically impossible for 'God' to know everything.  Sorry if I misquote you.  However, if I did not then can you please give me a reason to why it would be impossible for God to know everything? 

[the_antithesis]

Do you assume your God is All-powerfull, All-knowing and All-loving?

Yes

Why?

[stromboli]

doesn't matter. The base issue is the validity of your beliefs. If we can find them invalid or flawed, everything else is pointless. And you keep making hypothetical situations. Show us in the real world where an objective morality has ever been applied and agreed upon by all cultures. Answer: it hasn't

You can't base a real moral code, objective or otherwise, on an assumption, which is all reilgious belief really is.

[Mike Cl]

Morality comes from human society.  Each society decides what is moral and what is not.  The only source of that is people.  And the majority of the people within a group determine what a moral value is.  For each society, no matter how big or small, one can find a different set of morals.  And even within societies, there is a huge array of thoughts about what a moral value is.  In the USA, we have a constitution that attempted to define what our moral values should be in a legal way.  That morals are not static or constant, the amendment system was included with the constitution so that it could change with the society.  The static part of the constitution is that it establishes the law and that law is to be applied equally (in theory).

So, what a moral value is takes  human thought and consideration.  It is not easy to reach common ground.  It takes effort.  There are those who want that struggle to be eliminated or turned over to a higher power.  That is usually some 'holy' scripture in which the word of god is delivered.  But none of them are clear nor universally accepted, even among believers.  Ironically, there is no universal accepted moral values within that group, either.  If there was some agreement, there would not  be 10,000 different baptist sects, for example.

And so we are left with the fact that moral values change with the years and groups.  It has always been so and will always be so.  People will make up the morals of whatever group they belong.

[PickelledEggs]

[Johan]

I do not see how these are good factors to determine good morals.  If someone grew up with the parenting, social pressure, and personal experience that it was ok to lie and steal things, then by that person's subjective morality they would in essence be right.

Indeed they would. And history is full of examples of this. Take slavery for instance. Slavery was considered morally right and acceptable for centuries. in fact there is a certain ancient book which says a bit about slavery and what one should and should not do when it comes to human slaves. And though I'm certainly no expert, I don't believe it says anywhere in that book that owning and keeping slaves is something that should never be done under any circumstances. That book? The bible. Perhaps you've heard of it.

So if you're going to try to argue that true morality can only exist if god exists, then you've got some explaining to do. Because either slavery is moral or your all knowing infallible god made a mistake when he put his words in a little book called the bible.

I think it is clear to see that people's subjective morals around the world contradict each other.  How do we come to determine then which subjective morality is the best?

The exact same way we've always done it. By each of us individually figuring out what works for us. Whether that be via our upbringing and experience or via some completely fictitious stories written by ancient goat herders and attributed to a fictitious supernatural being. Keep in mind that there was a time when the bible didn't yet exist and no one on this planet knew who jesus was. And yet people still managed to survive and thrive for countless generations until then. Societies rose and fell then as they continued to do after.

[JohnnyB1993]

So why is he so inneficiënt; by your own admission? I think 'most scholars' is probably a gross exageration. But fine, let's give you the benefit of the doubt because you're not claiming all scholars that are, have been and will be. This means that what you believe to be perhaps the most important tool to find out what is 'moral' or not in absolute terms is inneficiënt if your God has omnipotence and omniscience. In other words he wants people to misinterpret the Bible and to misjudge what is moral or not. If he didn't, he would have willed it some other way. He would have given us a source to find what is moral and what is not that is undeniable and perfectly clear to all. Screw the medium even, an all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerfull God would have instilled this wisdom in our minds from the get-go and have bypassed a set of guide to morality that would later be used to convince other societies that their view on morality is fundamentally wrong.

He could have instilled in us all the same moral principles, the same values, the same inherrent knowledge that A is moral and B is immoral. But what do we find? These views differ from society to society and individual to individual. So why would he prefer to create humans that are incapable of being morally right on their own and incapable of following the laws he sets out for them, when he could just as easily have made them 'better'. Why would he allow all those who went before the OT to live without his guidance? Why would he give us only the OT for such a long time and purposefully allow those who lived before the NT to draw strenght from his commandments and live in such immoral ways and commit such heinous crimes? Why would he wait for so long before 'blessing' us with the NT? Why would he even then allow so much time and lives to go by before the entire world has even heard of them? Why would he make it so that even now some don't know of Jesus Christ (though a vast minority) and so many have lived and died with a faulty view on morality and lacking the knowledge of the true set of moral guidelines? Why doesn't he make a more persuasive argument so that if you start to think about it, it actually makes sense ? Why do his words fail to persuade someone who isn't indoctrinated this stuff from birth on, even once?

Note that this isn't a question of free will. God must have purposefully designed this world knowing that most people in history wouldn't know what his word on morality and thus the hypothetical 'objective morality' is. He could have created them with free will but a universal inherent knowledge that agrees with all other humans on what is right and what is wrong. To say he couldn't do this or couldn't have foreseen this problem is to disavow your premises. So, in case you believe in hell, your God made his creation and created me and most of my friends here with the knowledge that when you come knocking on this site we wouldn't be convinced by what you're selling. Nor by what others proclaim who hold similar views to yours. He thus created us to burn, knowing in advance that we would and that we would never turn to him before it was too late. If that being spawns 'objective morality' than your 'objective morality' is one I wouldn't want to live by even if it were to exist. Say you are a different breed of Christian and that you believe we will all be saved after we die and that the gates of hell will be empty, then still the question remains as to why all this hassle? Why allow all this hardship? Why create a world which would lead to genocides and holocausts and raping and pillaging and fighting and sociopaths when he could have created a world in which better humans would have known his will and all could and would have followed it by their own choosing? God must have willed evil into existance. He must have chosen to make people suffer at the hands of other people while he could just as easily have prevented it without desecrating humanity's free will.
You can puzzle in the Bible all you want, replacing passages and making up for God's inexcusable incompetence in showing us that objective morality exists and what it is exaclty. You can change words in verses to your hearts content, it makes no difference to me. Be my guest and find solace in your ancient and to me subjectively immoral collection of man-made books. But the moment you tell me that objective morality exists and that this therefore must coincide with your God's will because he is all-loving while he is on top of that all-knowing and all-powerfull, I'll ask you to think of the internal inconcistency of your claims. Because I'm not taking moral advice from someone who decided from the get-go that he'd create psychopaths who would fail his rules and murder, rape and torture other human beings and would then content himself with punishing that psychopath for eternity. It's an inexcusable way to create the world if you could create it any way you wanted and know what to do to make it much better, with your objective morality in mind. Unless, this objective morality is extremely immoral in my subjective opinion.

Paragraph 1:  'In other words he wants people to misinterpret the Bible and to misjudge what is moral or not.'  I took this as an important saying from the first paragraph.  If one tried to take in the entire Bible as a whole, then I do not think you would come to the conclusion that God wants people to misinterpret the Bible.  I would say that slavery is intrinsically wrong and I also think that God believes that slavery is intrinsically wrong.  How can this be?  I have already said that God allowed slavery in the OT because God decides to work with people depending on the culture context that they are born in.  Slavery was a very big thing in ancient times, so God allowed it to occur.  I cannot tell you why God allowed this act for some hundred years.  I do not know.  I do know that in the New Covenant God has supposedly established a new set of living with humans.  This new set of living is one that should have humans to try and conform more towards the true will of God.  No longer holding slaves would surely be one of them.  So it is the final covenant in the NT that Jesus gives to people which one should focus more on than the old laws from the OT. 
Paragraph 2: 'Why do his words fail to persuade someone who isn't indoctrinated this stuff from birth on, even once?'- This is sort of the point that I was trying to get at with slavery.  In the OT days, if God just directly gave people His true will 'though shall not have slaves' then perhaps the majority of people would not be persuaded and so would not follow Him.  If God really does exist, then would everyone be immediately persuaded by God's word upon hearing it?  Probably not, it would take time to understand what God is actually getting at.  One would have to try and be in a relationship with God, but relationships take time so no one would immediately on spot convert to theism upon hearing God's word (maybe).  But anyways....  To address your points in your second paragraph, why would God create us with the ability to not follow His laws?  This is where I am going to mention love, and perhaps you'll roll your eyes upon reading this, but just here me out.  Life is NOT about following God's law 100%, but about loving God with all your heart.  Many theists disagree with this notion, but I understand that your not a theist.  So, God wants to have a relationship with you, He wants us to love Him. Ok who cares then right?  Well, would you agree that love is much better if it is chosen rather than forced?  Is it not better to have your parents chose to love you for just who you are, rather than you forcing them to love you through some means?  And quickly, about your mention on the NT.  I don't know.  Sorry, I just have tons of speculation.  I do think that God reveals Himself one way or another to everyone at some point in their lives.  But again this is speculation.  Anyways, never think that someone walks into Hell 'blindfolded', its just not true.
Paragraph 3:   If you were God, and wanted to create the universe and humans.  How would you do it differently than the God of the Bible?

[Solomon Zorn]

...My only issue is that what do you have to offer to give credible reason to belief YOUR subjective morality?

I'm not, at the moment, trying to convince you that my particular set of morals is the one you should believe. My morality is generally humanistic. I don't usually codify it. But the Golden Rule comes as close as anything to expressing it in a teachable form.

How do we come to determine then which subjective morality is the best?

That is a matter of conscience. "Best" is subjective.

Subjective morality isn't as scary as it might sound. As I have said before, the vast majority of people have a very similar morality. They wont rob you or kill you. They are just humans who have learned how to get along with other humans.

The problem often comes when some extreme ideology gets into their heads, and overrides their nature in favor of some higher calling. Then they can be persuaded to do things that they wouldn't normally do, in the name of a religion, or a political cause.

[Solomon Zorn]

How do we come to determine then which subjective morality is the best?

Think about this one, Johnny: How would we determine what objective morality is best, except through the same subjective criteria?

[Mr.Obvious]

Paragraph 1:  'In other words he wants people to misinterpret the Bible and to misjudge what is moral or not.'  I took this as an important saying from the first paragraph.  If one tried to take in the entire Bible as a whole, then I do not think you would come to the conclusion that God wants people to misinterpret the Bible.  I would say that slavery is intrinsically wrong and I also think that God believes that slavery is intrinsically wrong.  How can this be?  I have already said that God allowed slavery in the OT because God decides to work with people depending on the culture context that they are born in.  Slavery was a very big thing in ancient times, so God allowed it to occur.  I cannot tell you why God allowed this act for some hundred years.  I do not know.  I do know that in the New Covenant God has supposedly established a new set of living with humans.  This new set of living is one that should have humans to try and conform more towards the true will of God.  No longer holding slaves would surely be one of them.  So it is the final covenant in the NT that Jesus gives to people which one should focus more on than the old laws from the OT. 
Paragraph 2: 'Why do his words fail to persuade someone who isn't indoctrinated this stuff from birth on, even once?'- This is sort of the point that I was trying to get at with slavery.  In the OT days, if God just directly gave people His true will 'though shall not have slaves' then perhaps the majority of people would not be persuaded and so would not follow Him.  If God really does exist, then would everyone be immediately persuaded by God's word upon hearing it?  Probably not, it would take time to understand what God is actually getting at.  One would have to try and be in a relationship with God, but relationships take time so no one would immediately on spot convert to theism upon hearing God's word (maybe).  But anyways....  To address your points in your second paragraph, why would God create us with the ability to not follow His laws?  This is where I am going to mention love, and perhaps you'll roll your eyes upon reading this, but just here me out.  Life is NOT about following God's law 100%, but about loving God with all your heart.  Many theists disagree with this notion, but I understand that your not a theist.  So, God wants to have a relationship with you, He wants us to love Him. Ok who cares then right?  Well, would you agree that love is much better if it is chosen rather than forced?  Is it not better to have your parents chose to love you for just who you are, rather than you forcing them to love you through some means?  And quickly, about your mention on the NT.  I don't know.  Sorry, I just have tons of speculation.  I do think that God reveals Himself one way or another to everyone at some point in their lives.  But again this is speculation.  Anyways, never think that someone walks into Hell 'blindfolded', its just not true.
Paragraph 3:   If you were God, and wanted to create the universe and humans.  How would you do it differently than the God of the Bible?

So now your God is not omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent?

It seems to me you don't understand the ramifications of your hypothesis. God could have chosen to create a world in which better people would have lived. In which rape, murder, torture, war, peadofilia, diseases, ... never occured. He could have created this without violating our free will. But he chose to create the world in such a way that these things would occur. To say he didn't means saying that something happened outside of his will. That's impossible for the omnipotent en omniscient creator. His inability to make the bible such a clear and indesputable moral guideline, therefore, is by his choosing. He chose not to make it a universally clear and known text. He must've been able to make it one, or he's not omnipotent. And he knew that by making it in this way there would be those that remained inconvinced, or he's not omniscient. Which mean he purposefully chose the Creation in which people would not be convinced by his words, while he could have made one in which everyone chose freely to accept and follow his rules and acknowledge his existance and love him. But he chose not to. So somehow his set of omnibenevolence means creating sheep that he knows will be lost.

And we agree that people don't walk into hell blindfolded, but I suspect we differ on the reasons why this is so. In your case; sorry but millions of Indians, Africans, Asians, Australians, Europeans, ... never heard of Jesus Christ or Yahweh or your supposed 'objective set of morality' in their lifetimes. So unless you advocate that the split-second before someone dies God stops time and has a one-on-one chitchat, I don't know how you could think that. And even if you believe in the last-second-one-on-one there is as much credit to that idea as there is to the Easter Bunny.

And yes. I'm not omnibenevolent, but if I were omniscient and omnipresent I'd like to think I could come up with a world which didn't violate free will, allowed it's creatures to love me should they choose so and that didn't include leukemia, cancer, overpopulation, ecological disasters, sociopaths, rapists, pedophiles, aids, malaria, serial-killers, wars, torturers, sexism, racism, false religions, vulcanic eruptions, alzheimers, parkinsons, and many more on a long-ass list. And if I couldn't avoid these making these without violating my creations' free will I would either not be omniscient, omnipotent or certainly not omnibenevolent.

And yes, I would prefer it if my parents  wanted me to love them from my own choosing rather than being manipulated or forced into it. But tell you what. If my parents are obviously good people, which they coincidentaly are, I'll do so. But I won't love them from my own choosing if they knowingly allow my brother to rape and murder. I won't love them if they sit by and whatch him close the door before performing his horrible act and simply say; I'll let you do this but hear us when you do we'll punish you afterward! And I certainly wouldn't love them if they'd given him ambigious teachings on wether or not it's okay to rape or murder beforehand. And most definitely not if they created him in such a way that they knew he'd rape and murder later on in his life.
I wouldn't love my parents either if they had the ability to create me in such a way, for example through scientific procedures, that they could plan out my entire personality beforehand and then punished me for being me. If my parents chose to engineer me in such a way that I would not accept them as my parents and would never love them and they feel that gives them the right to torture me for eternity (perhaps again through scientific advances if immortality were possible); I could still not love them. And I wouldn't if I could. I find it immoral if you create something you know you'll make suffer for eternity because you purposefully designed it to be flawed and knew full well it wouldn't live by your rules or acknowledge your existance. And if that kind of morality which advocates such a system is the hypothetical 'objective morality' you speak of, than my subjective morality says it stinks. And you'll just have to excuse me for trying to be a better person than your God.