... I'm not creating the dilemma - the 'dilemma' exists. You merely side-step it with sophistry and ad-hominem arguments.
Furthermore, you are misrepresenting things. Your argument isn't that God is the authority over (the arbiter of) goodness, but that he is inherently good in and of himself, by dint of being God. The question raised is also not what you claim - it is not that 'God cannot be good and decide what is good': we all do that in our day to day lives (i.e. we make normative judgements, whilst hopefully living up to those same expectations).

The question is: it is said 'God is good', but what do we mean by that? Is God good by merely being God, in which case what is morality? Or is he good in reference to some value external of himself.
Let's put it like this: Why is God good? Because he is just, merciful, kind, etc. But what makes these things good? Are they good in themselves? If God were lacking in one or all of these qualities, would he still be good? Indeed, if he were, would those qualities still be good?
As I said, it's a foundation of modern ethical thought, not, as you decree, a false problem it is more comfortable to misrepresent than to understand.

In short, it's all very well for you to blindly insist that God is good, but what criteria are you using to determine this 'goodness'?

No, you were talking about how they didn't have a humanist ethic, which indeed they did not. But that wasn't what I claimed. I said to direct your attention to them as an example of how the mutual aid instinct has been constituted in human societies throughout history. I don't get how you could not understand that. Are you doing so deliberately?

What you asked was this:[quote who="Leauki"]

 

Can you name one of those human tribes that follows such an approach and was able better to combat anything?
[/quote]It was said all humans, and this is true. The point is not the moral they held, but what ethical enquiry says about them.
So: within nature there is an observable instinct towards aiding fellow creatures. This instinct exists within humans also. We can see these instincts being enacted through social conventions in human society throughout history. We can (says the ethical naturalist) describe our construction of moral codes, in the forms of social conventions, traditions, laws, and religious edicts, as eminations of this instinct. A better understanding of this instinct also allows us to better describe a moral system which will treat people with more justice and which has a normative force all of its own.
Now, notice the distinction between ethical enquiry and moral rules, which you have resolutely failed to make previously.

I was never saying that previous societies had a better way of understanding ethics (though we still read and analyse Aristotle today), nor that they had a more moral way of living. That you should think I was when I spoke of Kropotkin's naturalism says disturbing things about your analytical ability. Instead, I said that ethical naturalists (and there is a passage within Blackburn's 'How to be an ethical anti-realist' which suggests the following is also commensurate with ethical non-cognitivism) saw the building blocks of human morality within historical human (and animal) behaviour. From this comes our conceptions of justice and all those other moral institutions. Simple.

 

 

As for the so-called dilemma, it is true that it is not a dilemma - in that that word has personal connotations. Tellingly, you were the first to use such a phrase.
But it is not true that the problem is beneath you, nor other religious persons - when such issues are brought before seminars and symposia on ethics (more often the former, those attending the latter tend to have moved on to more complex or at least more abstract matters) religious attendees have to resolve the issue just as their non-religious counterparts do. It has nothing to do with specific conceptions of God. 'God' is abstracted here. It is a question of saying that if 'God' is 'Good', then what does 'Good' constitute, and what criteria is 'Goodness' based on? Saying you concieve of God in a certain way (and it is just you, don't generalise to all religious people) is just another ad hominem attempt to make the question irrelevant to you. It isn't. I know for a fact it is still a problem presented to students and occuring in books and articles in peer-reviewed journals. In such situations it is never dismissed by saying 'nuh-uh, doesn't apply to me.'
If, in mathematics, the problem is given "X2-3=7, solve for X" you cannot simply argue that you have a different, special conception of the term 'X' and therefore don't have to try to ascertain its meaning.

really? Didn't God lay the Jewish law down with Moses on Mt. Sinai?  I'm speaking of the Ten Commandments which were but an expression of the natural law which God has written on evey man's heart and which every man can know if he listens to the voice of reason and conscience.

The Ten Commandments apply to all men for all time and for this reason God wrote them on stone to signify they are durable and to last for all ages.

 

posts 358

I tend to agree. Wasn't it Pascal who said, there are two classes of men, those who are afraid to find God and those who are afraid to lose Him?

Atheism is a sin against the First Commandment.

Incorrect: science has many origins, from Grecian thought, ancient Chinese mathematics and so on. Even a rudimentary knowledge of the history of science shows this (Servants of Nature, by Pyenson and Sheets-Pyenson, is quite a good synthesis). Falling back on theological tracts is not proof that that theology actually 'created' science, just that the individual author sought to co-opt it. Most Christian scientists were well aware of the Athenian roots of their 'natural philosophy.' When aristotelian categories and the concept of a 'golden age of knowledge' were called into question by the advance of science and widening remit of its inquiry, Christian scholars were forced to scramble for explanations. Meanwhile Bacon, admittedly a somewhat religious man, rebuilt (almost literally) the method of scientific enquiry on empiricist grounds, a method which is now totally divorced from the introspective and speculative nature of theological study and the laughable farce of 'Christian Science', a doctrine with no more empirical or practical credibility than homeopathy - the two use similar methods to determine the root cause of illness, that is: pure theory. (So long as I'm referencing, see Ben Golacre's recent Bad Science.)

Also, what is the division between what you call 'science' and 'true science'? Would I be corrct in assuming the latter is only practiced by Christians?

Yes, many early scientists believed they were 'studying God's work.' This doesn't detract from the sheer fact that their findings caused no end of trouble for religious thought. Originally man was above nature, but then it appears he is fact part of natural systems. The Great Chain of Being is discredited, the earth is no longer there for man to exploit. The age of the earth is supposed to be ascertainable through biblical study, but then geologists find interesting discrepencies and, to cap it all, the sun is discovered to be a nuclear reactor, rather than a burning ball of fuel.
Religion may not be inherently opposed to science, but its job as an interpretation of the workings of the universe has been consistently eroded by scientific advances (God of the gaps, etc. etc.).
Your argument to the contrary has no facts behind it, merely rambling, quasi-fanatical polemic.

Lula posts:

Actually, I think it's the work of anti-Christians obsessed by what Father Wasmann in "The Problem of Evolution" calls "an absolute theophobia, a dread of the Creator" and consequently of God's Church.

MN ONE

Granted. Perhaps I should have been more clear. I was speaking of science as an organized, sustained enterprise "that arose only once in human history. And where did it arise? In Europe, in the civilization then called Christendom." And why did modern science develop here and nowhere else? Pope Benedict argued it was due to Christianity's emphasis on the importance of reason."  Dinesh Souza, "What's So Great About Christianity", in his chapter entitled, Christianity and Reason: The Theological Roots of Science.

Not so fast....

Robert Jastrow commented on the Bib Bang theory which holds that the universe began in a colossal explosion appears to be expanding--thus invalidating the Steady State theory of the universe--and he believed therefore that it must have had a beginning. But some scientists are loathe to concede the possibility of a First Cause at work in the universe. Like every one else these scientists have human biases which color their judgment:

From Jastrows, "Have Astronomers found God": "Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind--supposedly a very objective mind--when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out the sceintist behaves the way the rest of us dowhen our belief are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases....

I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon that cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; it the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the universe and every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause.

Einstein wrote, "the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation." This religious faith of the sceintist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be tramatized. As usual, when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications; in science this is known as "refusing to speculate"--or trivializing the origin of the world by calling it the big bang as if the universe were a firecracker.

Now, we would like to pursue the enquiry further back in time, but the barrier to progress seems insurmountable. It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement or another theory. At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of Creation.

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak, and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

I disagree with your conclusions.

Science is identified with physical science ie astronomy, botany, chemistry, geology, zoology and the like. Science deals with ascertained facts, which it compiles, classifies, and attempts to explain by some working hypothesis that may or may not be true. The Chruch has no quarrel with the proved facts of science, which she accepts on the authority of various specialists.

The Chruch was not sent "to teach all nations" the distance between the earth and the sun, the action of acids, or the composition of rocks. In the name of science however, she warns us not to accept erroneous guesses (and I'll get to that later) of some scientists as positive facts. St.Augustine warns us, "ought not to make rash assertions or to assert what is not known as known."

If dissension arises, St.Agustine advises the theologian, "Whatever scientists demonstrate to be true, we must prove to be reconciled with our Scriptures, and whatever they assert contrary to those Scriptures, we must either prove to be false or we must, without the slightest hesitation, believe to be true. ....The Holy Ghost did not intend to teach men the essential nature of the things of the visible universe, things in no way profitable to salvation."

The Church far from hindering the pursuits of science fosters and promotes them in many ways. She acknowledges the freedom of science to use their own principles and methods. The Chruch isn't afraid of fresh discoveries for we have faith in the Creator of all phenomena.  

 

Lula:

"Here's a thought....the conflict isn't between science and religion or science and God or science and the Church...the conflict is of the true scientist with the sciolist, the pretender, who has a little scientific knowledge, and seeks to refute the unchangeable laws of God as they apply to religion and morality."

And how many humans have the hubris to claim that they understand such things, and then use their alleged understanding to justify hatred and oppression of entire classes of people?

Religion, when you get right down to it, is a human institution. Whether it's established  as inspired by a divine being or by people who believe in a non-existent divine being, it's still driven by humans. Humans who have agendas and prejudices. Who love, hate, and fear various aspects of humanity and the world. I find it difficult to believe that any of these humans have a special line to a god (in the case of Christianity) who claims to have a personal relationship with everyone who comes to him.

I find it difficult to believe that a sprawling church* driven by numerous political and social agendas can ethically and morally insert itself between people and their relation with god, and dictate to them what the unchangeable laws of god are, especially when these unchangeable laws are so frequently used as a weapon against entire swaths of the population.

Especially when so much interpretation of these unchangeable laws is based on interpreting words that have been translated over and over again, repeatedly, with words taking on a different context over time (Leauki's already gone over this with you in the discussion about the flood and Noah's ark on his blog) and, again, political and social agendas driving some of the biblical translations.

How can any flawed human pretend to be able to derive moral and religious absolutes from such a subjective source?

* And it isn't a sprawling church, it's many churches, each with their own interpretations and beliefs that are all presented as the unchangeable laws of god.

Almighty God has told mankind very clearly why He created man, what is the destiny, and what man must do in order to attain that destiny. He sent the Old Testament prophets to teach man His will and after that He sent His own Divine Son, Himself, God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, and Christ sent the Catholic Church..a Chruch still teaching with the infallible authority of God in our very midst. It doesn't get any better than this on this side of Heaven.

As to flawed, all religious people, including the Pope, sin. But they do not call vice virtue. They know they sin. Sins don't dispense people from the duty to pay due honor to God through practice of religion. Tax-payers are drunkards, but that doesn't exempt them from paying their taxes. If some are hypocrites that's not due to the teachings of the Chruch. Blame them, not the religion or the Church. they must give up what is evil, not what is good their religious practice through the Church.  

And how can you rightfully claim that the church is infalliable when the words that it relies on to communicate the message have changed over time? That the various translations have themselves been shaped by identifiable human agendas?

Are you aware that the Catholic Church does not condemn evolution?

 

Believing in a jealous God is like having an imaginary friend, who doesn't like you.

 

 

Here's what I would ask to those who consider themselves Christian: Why Christianity?  Why not Islam or Judiasm?  Why is Christianity more correct in its view of God than these other two?

Ahhh, theologians, so quick to ignore history.
Christianity promotes reason, eh? Indeed, the emphasis on reason did help science evolve into a vibrant intellectual pursuit. But look at why your precious religion promotes reason: Aristotle, Democritus, Plato. A rich intellectual history raped by the Christian founders to co-opt a legitimate philosophy. The fact they weren't Christian was swept neatly under the carpet. As for Christianity accepting truth - the Atomist philosophers were rejected, ignored, for centuries, despite their physical philosophies corresponding more neatly with with Modern and Early Modern natural philosophy/sciences than the Christian-mysticism endorsed sypathetic magic, bloodletting and alchemy that endured in the interim.
So yeah, Christianity promoted reason, but only because it had been established by an external source that Reason was a positive, progressive intellectual framework.

As for the idea that 'true science' is somehow whatever is commensurate with religion, whilst flase science is driven by 'materialist' ideology, you are aware that so far your sources for true science are... driven by an ideology which compells them to construct a place for a god within their knowledge base. No matter that doing so is irrelevent, and introduces another cause where one is not needed. Basically, science works by finding simple causes, not by crowbaring in extra steps in the processes described. Your quotes do just this ('the big bang happened but I want it to be cuased by God so I will claim that is what happened). No real scientist was ever upset by the theory of the big bang, opposed only by valiant Christian scientists who campaigned for this 'truth' (whereby God's first work was revealed) to be accepted - to claim so is the mere revisionist history of the modern fanatic.

 

And no, the Church wasn't sent (wasn't sent at all) to teach the world about physical sciences, but religon's role was to explain our place in the world, and when science managed to begin doing this, explaining natural phenomena and acts previously though unnatural or miraculous (e.g. defects at birth not a violation of natural law, but in fact the actual workings of certain other natural laws). Then, religion slowly pulled back its position, fighting an admirable rear-guard action as it pretended nothing was changing (the end result is you and your bizarre ahistorical conclusions) becoming a mere 'moral guide' (ha!) but even this has since been questioned, as more sensible explanations for the source of our ethical sense emerge (Kant, Spinoza, Bentham, Hume, etc.; see also Blackburn's Being Good).

I don't believe that.

I believe G-d gave a single copy of the Torah (first part of the "Old Testament") to the Jewish people. "Humanity" has nothing to do with that. I believe G-d gave other peoples other laws.

 

It's still done by hand. Every synagogue has a hand-written copy of the Torah scrolls.

 

That's why we have rabbis and judges who interpret the laws and judge accordingly.

 

I have found several examples of that happening.

1. "like a lion" became "he pierced".

2. "the land" became "the whole planet".

3. "a young woman" became "a virgin".

The Hebrew text is in many strategic places quite different from the English and German translations I read. And for me only the Hebrew/Aramaic text is authoritative and even then it is only authoritative for Jews.

 

The implication is that the Rabbis and judges can do that, interpret things in a biased manner. Seriously, simple concept.
Look at Justice Eady, the judge all too ready to indulge 'libel tourism' when the rest of his profession find it distasteful and unconstitutional - judges (and Rabbis - all holy men) are just as flawed, if not more so because of the inflated effects of their actions caused by their high social position.