"Why Believe in God" ad campaign

[David E]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

...but it doesn't answer the question of where it [morality] comes from if you think it exists. If you got it from religion, where did religion get it? And the only end to that questioning is god.

Yes! Otherwise, the choices are: "Chairman Mao", or "whatever you think is right". And I argue that the consequences of these are not good at all.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

But you don't believe in god. So this "universal" definition of good and bad is not, afterall, universal

The teaching of it must be transmitted through culture, but the morality that we teach has to be applicable to everyone. We are getting tripped up on the word universal, I think. Weren't you arguing for instinctual morality (5 guys on a bridge)? I have always been saying it's cultural, otherwise how do you get societies where human sacrifice was mandated by law and others where it's not? (Here is an example of a practice that was deemed right for some to engage in, but not others.)

As for not believing in God, I try to but have a hard time often. Remember I agreed with Voltaire that if God did not exist, man would have to invent him to avoid the situation you point out that I just quoted above. As long as this thread has gotten, I have not even touched on the most powerful arguments for why someone should at least try to believe in a good God with and an afterlife with accountability . (Separate thread sometime).

Let me explain why what I am advocating is totally consistent with logic and the Scientific Method: To try to bring a way of working with things that are not understood, we often postulate an answer that we can’t prove, and the logic that follows works until we find new information we can adjust for. Even then, the older way is still practical on some level. All the innovations of the renaissance worked under Newtonian mechanics; and even after Einstein, a sextant still works. So how is the postulation of God useful even though it can’t be proved? Science and secularism do not have answers for the mysteries of Time and Existence. I don’t even think we are capable of understanding them no matter what is discovered. (I am wondering if you agree with just that?). One thing we can observe in nature is that there are different levels of capability to understand. My dog can’t understand how I make light appear where I go when I come home. It still happens according to the laws of nature. My dog suffers when I leave her a the vet overnight; I don’t have a way to explain that I will be back for her, and that it will be alright. Likewise, God might have a similar relationship to humans, and God might be limited or part of a hierarchy with more levels. We may not have the ability to know or understand those things, and we may be tasked to work with what we do understand.

At the worst, it attempts to explain mysteries that the secular cannot; and at best it can be a great source of something that no human can be happy without: meaning.