"Why Believe in God" ad campaign

[flippyshark]

Morality has to be universal? I'm not so sure of that. It seems to me more like an ever-shifting consensus. Anyhow, our most formidable enemies right now are quite committed to the God of Abraham (even if they call him Allah), but their version of monotheism sure isn't pointing them to a morality that benefits their own people, or anyone else for that matter. I'm willing to admit it's possible that WE societies have taken tolerance to a level that endangers their own best interests.

And yes, rights are something conferred upon us by other people. We may say that they are part of natural law, or God given, or whatever, but, sure seems like a human invention to me. (A human invention I am all for, by the way.) This is easily demonstrated by the fact that we have all seen rights taken away, by humans from other humans. (Really recently, in fact!) The molecules couldn't do a thing about it. It will be up to humans to give those rights back.

Hey, let's not go crediting the Judeo-Christian deity for the ethic of reciprocity. It's much older than Yahweh.

[David E]

Originally Posted by flippyshark

Morality has to be universal? I'm not so sure of that. It seems to me more like an ever-shifting consensus.

By using the word “universal” I mean absolute (vs. relative) morality, that is, if stealing is wrong, it applies to everyone, like I tried to explain in my reply to Prudence. By universal, I don’t mean built-in biologically to all humans; we have already discussed and agreed somewhat about how people can be fundamentally different. Maybe you are talking about what i called Situational Ethics, which is how to apply that morality in difference circumstances.

I agree with your comments about Oprah, but unfortunately it’s not just her audience; many educated intelligent people, especially academics and artists, cling to this same idealistic notion that people are naturally good and the same. (I should write something soon about secular vs. religious dogma.)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by David E

By using the word “universal” I mean absolute (vs. relative) morality, that is, if stealing is wrong, it applies to everyone, like I tried to explain in my reply to Prudence. By universal, I don’t mean built-in biologically to all humans;

And here's what's pretty alien to me. If you don't believe in god, where does your definition of this supposed universal morality come from?

And to answer your jury analogy, a jury is relevant and meaningful within the context of the system that created it. It's a product of a society that agreed to those rules, and so it makes perfect sense to enforce those rules. But that doesn't mean those rules are universal truths.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

And here's what's pretty alien to me. If you don't believe in god, where does your definition of this supposed universal morality come from?

Let me be more explicit than that. "It came from my religious upbringing" isn't what I'm looking for. Because that doesn't answer the question. It explains why you believe in it, but it doesn't answer the question of where it 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.

But you don't believe in god. So this "universal" definition of good and bad is not, afterall, universal. You'd LIKE it to be universal because you feel like it works pretty well, but it simply isn't, unless you believe in god (and even then, if you believe in god and think his word is universal, then his word doesn't match your definition of the universal good, but that's another story).

And so the genesis must have been human. There must have been enough people who WANTED the idea that not negatively affecting others is good to be universally held. So religion was created to explain and reenforce that desire. And despite the fact that Darwin has given us a far simpler and sustainable explanation for that, people are reluctant to accept it because relgion "has worked so far", ignoring all of the ways religion certainly hasn't worked.

Sigh, I bet I'm really pissing off some religious people reading this thread.

[flippyshark]

You may be pissing others off, but you're delighting the heck out of me.

Anyhow, David E., looking back at your first post within this thread, I notice that you say your thoughts about this issue were spurred by comments from Don Wildmon, who you say you know nothing about. Well, I sure do. He's the founder of the very right-wing American Family Association (originally known as the National Federation for Decency.) He started the ball rolling on the boycotting of Disney (for allowing gay days, the horror!), led the charge on the protests of The Last Temptation of Christ, has campaigned steadily against gay rights, abortion rights, Blockbuster Video (for carrying NC-17 titles), you get the picture. He's got a major ideological axe to grind when he says that society functions better with religion. It's a big power grab for him and his ilk. (His son Timothy runs the organization these days, and is cut from much the same cloth.) I know this has no bearing on the merits of the argumjent in and of itself, but you are the first agnostic I've ever heard propose it. (On the other hand, I've very often heard it from religious apologists, whose views I spend a surprising amount of time examining.)

[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.

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by David E

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.

I don't know, I have no problem accepting the fact that some things are just unknowable to me, or that the only meaning my life has, is that which I attribute to it.

[David E]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

I don't know, I have no problem accepting the fact that some things are just unknowable to me, or that the only meaning my life has, is that which I attribute to it.

In my case I feel the same. But you and I have been pretty lucky. For millions, this is not the case. This is a good segue to a new thread I am starting about similar bus ads in Britain, and a more common and obvious argument for God.

I think this thread has been pretty much played out, I feel like I am repeating too much. Euro, I would still like your response to the anarchist question and whether you agree about the existence of secular dogma.

[flippyshark]

Originally Posted by David E

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.

Those are hardly the only choices. (anarcho-syndicalism, benevolent despotism, Ayn Randian objectivism, the list goes on.)

In any case, "whatever you think is right" is misleading. We are all accountable to both our own moral consciences (those of us that have 'em, of course) and the prevailing social order we live in. So far, no society I'm aware of has been built around just "whatever each individual thinks is right."

Any social group large enough to need a system of government is going to outlaw the big ticket items like murder and theft - it's a total no-brainer as to why. Heck, even a population without a formal code of laws is going to end up shunning or eliminating the thieves and murderers in its ranks. No god needed, though one or more may be invoked. (Theft and murder by those in charge is another matter of course. Those are control mechanisms, and we already know that they can be invoked to further both religious and non-religious ideologies.)

You rightly abhor the cruel dictatorships that have renounced God, but then you also declared the peaceful secular systems as inferior, apparently for being ill-equipped to defend themselves and others. I'm not sure I buy that as an inevitability. In any case, you have admitted now that the US is a secular government, so, hooray. Belief is up to the individual conscience, as it jolly well should be. (The old "every state determines its official religion" model has lapsed - and thank goodness it has. A free market in regards to belief is the only way to go - government neither endorses nor prevents, so long as believers don't infringe on others. This works for you, right?)

Anyhow, you've tipped your hand. You're a theist, or at least you are committed to the presuppositions of a theistic worldview. It's no shame, but you sound as though you are only barely on the agnostic spectrum, and don't really want to be there. (No offense intended if this isn't accurate.)

Voltaire favored the deistic god of the Enlightenment - a being who set up the laws of nature and got them going, then retreated to some impossibly remote distance, completely and utterly uninvolved with human affairs. Voltaire had nothing but disdain for church dogma and the wielding thereof. His famous quote doesn't necessarily have to be read as an endorsement of the god idea. It could as easily be a shrug of resignation. ("Such is the way of man") Had Voltaire lived long enough to learn of Darwin and natural selection, it is quite possible that he would have abandoned his deistic god and gone atheist.

GD said it well - if there isn't a god, our formal systems of law and morality must have human origins. (And to whatever extent our moral tendencies are biological, they have pre-human origins as well - of course, homo sapiens have reached a point where we can overcome the brutal "red in tooth and claw" imperatives of the natural world. It's a gradual process, of course) If that is the case, embracing superstition simply because it feels right hardly seems like any way to progress.

On the other hand, if in fact there is a theistic god, one who has moral preferences and will be handing out some form of cosmic justice in the hereafter, this being has not bothered to make itself known in uncertain terms. (Mythical stories of Shamash handing the moral law to Hammurabi, Yahweh giving the lowdown to Moses, etc, are fascinating historically, but obviously human in origin, no longer practiced, and incompatible with modern mores.) There is no single divine story that clearly stands out above the others, except where either individuals prefer it, or power structures declare and enforce it - add to that the fact that the vast majority simply take on the god beliefs they were born to. If I find myself in front of a deity after I die, I will join Bertrand Russell in asking, "Why did you hide?"

Sorry for this rambly post. This discussion is messy and multi-limbed, and I'm not a very organized thinker. I hope the other participants are having fun also.

[€uroMeinke]

To be sure the existence of God(s) would be a much easier sell if he/she/they actually showed up now and then - I find their absence telling.