Recently Matt did a podcast on Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma for Skepticule Extra, aka the “Pauls to the Power of Three Podcast” hosted by Paul Baird, Paul Thompson (“Sinbad”) and Paul S. Jenkins.
You can listen to that podcast here.
Visit Skepticule for more listening options.
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · Paul Baird · Paul Jenkins · Paul Thompson · Skepticule31 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
Today's New Atheists proclaim themselves our culture's party of reason. It is a claim they cannot sustain. Reason is the New Atheists' weakness, not their strength and in fact, the Christian faith is a far better place to look for True Reason. Making their case accessible to the first-time inquirer as well as the serious student, this top-flight team of writers presents a sound defense and a strong introduction to the true reason uniquely found in Christianity.
The book begins by examining foundational philosophical approaches to the Bible as well as the methodological challenges those philosophies create for interpreting the Bible. It then addresses textual and historical challenges and how to deal with them. Finally it looks at ethical, scientific, and theological challenges demonstrating the Bible's moral integrity in relationship to contemporary moral emphases.
Many philosophers have considered the strengths and weaknesses of a virtue-centered approach to moral theory. Much less attention has been given to how such an approach bears on issues in applied ethics. The essays in this volume apply a virtue-centered perspective to a variety of contemporary moral issues.
The challenge of a seemingly genocidal God who commands ruthless warfare has bewildered Bible readers for generations. A range of expert contributors engage in a multidisciplinary approach that considers this issue from a variety of perspectives: biblical, ethical, philosophical and theological.
The nineteen essays here raise classical philosophical questions in fresh ways, address contemporary challenges for the church, and will deepen the thinking of the next generation of apologists. Packed with dynamic topical discussions and informed by the latest scholarship.
While New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others proclaim loudly their rationality, clear thinking, and incontrovertible scientific arguments, others are beginning to wonder how genuinely rational they are. Have they proved anything? Have they argued convincingly? Have they pinpointed any real challenges to the credibility of Christian faith?
Interesting podcast, though I wish the hosts had interacted more, rather than waiting until after Matthew left to discuss their objections.
It was also a real drag to listen to their lame and condescending psycho-babbling analysis and reductionist speculations they pulled out of their hat in their attempt to make sense of theists, all through an apparent implicit and unjustified assumption that it is theists who are the puzzling and abnormal anomaly among the human species and who need to go under the microscope for analysis, and not atheists.
Anyway, thanks for posting.
yes.. it would be nice to have allowed matt the opportunity to respond and interact with their criticisms (ex. stephen law’s “evil god”). do you plan to post a blog response to their criticisms in the near future?
I was very glad to have Matt on as a guest and would happily invite him back to address any issues.
It would be more than likely sometime in the early New Year.
With regards to the ‘condescension’ it might be worth listening to that in the light of the Psychic Sally fall-out. Even when the news broke there were still people expressing a belief in her abilities.
If we show how the three card trick is done and you still play the game then why are we wrong to find that amazing and funny ?
I have not heard the rest of the podcast so at this stage can’t comment. But I do think there is a big difference between a discredited psychic and theistic meta-ethics. the fact they both involve claims about the supernatural, no more puts them on par than the fact that naturalistic ethics and UFO abduction stories both make reference to the natural.
@Matt – from memory Sinbad was commenting about how easy it is to create a faith.
He did indeed start a Poe website and forum which at least two people took to be genuine despite the obvious clues that it was fake.
Even once told that it was a Poe the two did not believe him and wanted the site and forum to continue.
Sinbad’s subsequent commentary is simply an expansion of the Poe point – it’s very difficult to discern between what is a ‘genuine’ faith path and one that simply looks like a genuine faith path. Furthermore his point is that some of the things that faiths do or believe would not be so easily accepted if they weren’t being practiced by a faith.
If that’s psycho-babble then I plead guilty.
🙂
Paul, I am not sure how those observations count against “religious faith” or even “theism”. I am sure one could make similar observations about purely secular ideologies. I suspect if I created a site which say made all kinds of false claims about religion and claimed to be a free thinker site I could in many instances get similar results.
It has happened more than once that I have suspected an “atheist” was a poe, a Christian doing satire of an atheist.
I don’t bring forward my suspicions after one unfortunate time I did when I was “certain” it was a Christian making fun of atheists, but I discovered my suspicions were wrong.
This along with other things just go to show that many atheists have shown themselves to be quite capable of being pretty ridiculous people embodying the absolute worst and most humorous stereotypes there are of atheists, even to the point of being beyond belief.
@ Triscuits
http://www.masskids.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=161&Itemid=165
This along with other things just go to show that many theists have shown themselves to be quite capable of being pretty ridiculous people embodying the absolute worst and most unhumorous stereotypes there are of theists, even to the point of being beyond belief.
@Triscuits
dont worry atheists have shown themselves to be neither ridiculous nor humorous
http://www.haivenu-vietnam.com/des-cambodia-killing-fields.htm
@ Jeremy
First, the premise that Nazism and Communism were “atheist” ideologies makes sense only within a religiocentric worldview that divides political systems into those that are based on Judaeo-Christian ideology and those that are not. In fact, 20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judaeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems. They were based on the ideas of Hitler and Marx, not David Hume and Bertrand Russell, and the horrors they inflicted are no more a vindication of Judeao-Christianity than they are of astrology or alchemy or Scientology.
Second, Nazism and Fascism were not atheistic in the first place. Hitler thought he was carrying out a divine plan. Nazism received extensive support from many German churches, and no opposition from the Vatican. Fascism happily coexisted with Catholicism in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Croatia.
Third, according to the most recent compendium of history’s worst atrocities, Matthew White’s Great Big Book of Horrible Things (Norton, 2011), religions have been responsible for 13 of the 100 worst mass killings in history, resulting in 47 million deaths. Communism has been responsible for 6 mass killings and 67 million deaths. If defenders of religion want to crow, “We were only responsible for 47 million murders—Communism was worse!”, they are welcome to do so, but it is not an impressive argument.
Fourth, many religious massacres took place in centuries in which the world’s population was far smaller. Crusaders, for example, killed 1 million people in world of 400 million, for a genocide rate that exceeds that of the Nazi Holocaust. The death toll from the Thirty Years War was proportionally double that of World War I and in the range of World War II in Europe.
When it comes to the history of violence, the significant distinction is not one between theistic and atheistic regimes. It’s the one between regimes that were based on demonizing, utopian ideologies (including Marxism, Nazism, and militant religions) and secular liberal democracies that are based on the ideal of human rights.
I present data from the political scientist Rudolph Rummel showing that democracies are vastly less murderous than alternative forms of government.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/qa-with-steven-pinker/
Thought that might touch a nerve, just goes to show that perhaps it is not accurate to judge an idea by the behaviour of the worst of those who claim to espouse it.
If it is valid to damn all religion [as though it is in some way homogenous and any example is representative of all] then it is equally valid to do the same with other philosophies or worild views or political stances. Cant have it both ways Paul, if its valid to taint me with violence because of an uneducated mob who got sucked in to crusading [ and we wont discuss the Islamic conquests that got halfway up Spain and across to Poland ] then its equally valid to taint you with the mass murder of Pol Pots regime, or maybe the racism and class prejudice of the eugenics movement of the early/mid 20C.
If religion is bad because some Christian Scientists [ neither Christian nor scientist by the way ] then atheism is equally bad because of Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung.
I think i must mention that modern liberal democracy developed in countries where Christianity was the dominant world view and underlying philosophy. Why is that? do you think it might be that Christianity espoused equality, individual worth, human rights etc, that it expects the world to be rational and discoverable because a rational God made it so.
“secular liberal democracies that are based on the ideal of human rights.” I repeat i cant help but notice that these have only ever developed in a Christian context .
Further some one is being a bit selective in their stats. Chinese communism is resposible for the death/dissappearance of between 60-100 million of its own citizens all by itself. Stalins time in power saw 20 million dissappear for political reasons [ not counting the WW2 dead ].
“When it comes to the history of violence, the significant distinction is not one between theistic and atheistic regimes. It’s the one between regimes that were based on demonizing, utopian ideologies (including Marxism, Nazism, and militant religions)”
Finally i actually agree. Though i think it proves a point i have tried to make many times before. People will use whatever excuse they can, whatever suits them, whatever they can twist to their purpose, to achieve their ends.
Christ taught ‘love thy neighbour’, all the people doing the things you complain about are doing so in direct disobedience. Marx, Lenin, Mao taught the neccesity for violent revolution……
I accept that even genuine Christians are often not good adverts let alone all those for whom it is just a convenient label but if you are going to reject Christ, at least do so honestly by examining what He taught not by throwing up excuses about how other people behave.
as for democracies being less muderous that bastion of secular liberal democracy the USA has aborted over 40 million of its most vunerable most defenceless children since 1973.
you might like to read up on the Green Revolution in India, the trading practices of Trans-national corporations etc. Modern secular liberal democracies are perpetrating the same levels of violence, exploitation and colonisation that people have always done—they are just using different tools. An Indian peasant dies just the same if he cant save seed to grow next years crop as if he was shot by a British Imperialist soldier. The West’s lifestyle [ that includes you Paul] is dependant on the exploitation of the worlds resources and consuming a vastly disproportionate share of them. Whats that saying, “the poor exist to provide for the rich”.
@ Jeremy
Far from touching a nerve, what your post did is show how little you understood of my comment.
I used the example of parents who due to their religious beliefs, chose to ignore the rational approach of allowing around seventy of their sick children to be treated by medical science. This was to contrast with Triscuits comment “That many atheists have shown themselves to be quite capable of being pretty ridiculous people embodying the absolute worst and most humorous stereotypes there are of atheists, even to the point of being beyond belief”.
In response, you use the example of the Khmer Rouge in reply.
If you had wanted to make a valid comparison, you needed to find atheistic parents who chose to ignore irrational religious faith healers and instead used modern medical science to care for their children’s ailments. I doubt that this would have been too hard to achieve!
Hence the reason why I responded with Steven Pinkers comments to give a realistic comparison to your Cambodian one. In fact his comment quite clearly accepts the violence and killing caused under so called atheistic regimes.
As far as where Pinker got his stats from, he states that:
“For wars large and small, and other kinds of armed conflict since 1946, we have the Uppsala Conflict Data Project/Human Security Report Project and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo. For larger wars since 1816, I used datasets from the Correlates of War Project. Some historians and political scientists (such as Pitirim Sorokin, Quincy Wright, Peter Brecke, and Jack Levy) have tried to quantify war deaths in earlier periods, and “atrocitologists” such as Matthew White and Rudolph Rummel have done so for genocides, deliberate famines, and other kinds of mass violence”.
Your claims regarding the rise of secular liberal democracies having risen from christian roots only gets you so far. I could equally argue about the importance and influence of the Greeks and Romans on this process.
Examples such as the abolition of slavery had a lot to do with christian politicians such as William Wilberforce, but I can equally offer the example of John Newton, an 18th century clergyman, who composed the hymn “Amazing Grace”, who was a slaver of some prominence and found no difficulty coming to terms with the fact that, as the “Dictionary of National Biography” has it, “He was praying above deck while his human cargo was in abject misery below”. Thus cleansed of any moral ambiguity, slaving could be an exceptional profitable business.
Or the even stronger example of James Riley, who was the master of the American trading brig the “Commerce”. In 1815 the vessel was wrecked on the west african coast near cape Bojador. He and his crew were captured and used as slaves by sahara nomads. He managed to get a note to the British consul in Essaouira. The consul paid off the captors to free him and the four other crewmen.
Once he had recovered Riley returned home and promptly wrote a book about his ordeal, “An Authentic Narrative of The Loss of The American Brig Commerce” it was published in 1817 and sold more than a million copies and because it presented for the first time the perfect inverse to the story of african slavery with which all Americans were familiar, it became an influential book as well, remaining in print until 1859.
No less a figure than the young Abraham Lincoln read it and publicly stated its importance. Riley himself campaigned vigorously both for the abolition of slavery and for the settling of freed slaves in the newly created Liberia
Perhaps, it was the humanistic empathy that Lincoln could relate to when faced with the harsh realities of slavery described so graphically by another member of his own ethnicity, rather than the many thousands in the US of a different one to his?
Also, if your “Rational god” was behind the rise of human rights, why do christians in particular, have such a hard time accepting the human rights of the gay and lesbian community? In fact, using your logic, christians should be supporting such causes given that you argue that “Your god” underpins the foundation of modern secular liberal democracies.
As to your comments concerning abortion, that again comes down to perspective. Some fundamentalist christians appear to claim that the second an egg is fertilised, that that is by their definition a human being. Obviously, not everyone would agree on that one.
Next you make comments concerning the effect of the west on other nations.
On this I do agree with you, hence the reason why we as a family attempt to recycle, support fair-trade companies and products, etc, etc.
This though, has nothing to do with religious belief or lack of it. It relates to rational thinking, that the planet contains finite resources, so we should be using and protecting them more carefully and with regard to other human beings, we should be attempting to make everyones existence better.
In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would say that you were endorsing Sam Harris’s argument from “the Moral Landscape”
“He was praying above deck while his human cargo was in abject misery below”. Thus cleansed of any moral ambiguity, slaving could be an exceptional profitable business.”
John Newtons Christianity led him directly to repudiate the slave trade, admittedly it took some time [ which he admitted with shame ] , but who manages to deal with all their cultural baggage all at once. How do you know that in 100 years times things you thought of as normal parts of life will not be looked at as morally repugnant? Who achieves moral perfection instantly? and who dares to be arrogant enough to condemn some one for not doing so?
‘with regard to other human beings, we should be attempting to make everyones existence better.’
This is a moral position not a rational one, the Trans-nationals are making purely rational decisions concerning trading and economics.
I agree with your position but how do you justify it. I know how and why i agree but cannot see a rational reason for you to think so. Rationally it suits the west to exploit the rest of the world and keep them poor, otherwise we may have to trim our lifestyles by 3/4 to let the africans etc live at all. Our whole western economic system is predicated on consumption, growth in demand, resource exploitation. How is it remotely rational to so thoroughly disadvantage ourselves etc for people so unrelated , so far away and if they all died in poverty would actually enhance our own ability to survive. [Survival of the fittest and all that.] Lets face it we dont want South Americans cutting down rain forest, Indians or Chinese driving cars or using oil, Africans industrialising and polluting the world further.
“I could equally argue about the importance and influence of the Greeks and Romans on this process. ”
You could try, but reading Plato’s ‘Republic’ would leave you in no doubt that there is little relationship between that idea of democracy and ours. Technically which country is the largest democracy [ more so than ancient Greece or Rome ever were ] in the world today? care to guess?
Last on the subject of sexual orientation/preference. Given the rather large continuum along which this seems to occur , why raise the issue of gay and lesbian rights?, there are lots of alternative orientations/preferences that it is not yet fashionable to defend. What about them. Should they also have ‘rights’ enshrined in law?
In a purely naturalistic sense surely any orientation that does not lead to successful reproduction is undesireable. Or are we back to a moral question of how people ‘ought’ to be treated?
“I used the example of parents who due to their religious beliefs, chose to ignore the rational approach of allowing around seventy of their sick children to be treated by medical science. ”
And i used Pol Pot etc to show that the absence of religious beliefs doesnt make things any better nor does it make people more rational. Though of course Stalin and Mao were completely pragmatic and rational. Power comes from the end of a gun, and get rid of opposition before it can become effective.
And i mentioned the eugenics movement to provide an example of atheist rational scientific thought that came up with some with some truly nasty ideas concerning sterilising / aborting blacks and lower classes.
@ Jeremy
So, when you use Wilberforce and his christian convictions in the abolishment of slavery, as you have in the past, that’s ok, but when I use a couple of examples, of which there are more, that it is not such a black and white situation, that is somehow arrogant!
The fact that you choose not to even comment on the impact of a possible humanist motivation in the whole debate is very telling, but not really surprising.
However, I do agree with your comment concerning hindsight. I’m virtually certain that in a hundred years people will look back on the insane influence of some religious beliefs and their followers and view them as morally repugnant for sure, as we already do when considering such abhorrent religious practices such as burning witches and stoning, although unfortunately some religions still do endorse stoning at present.
I can’t agree with your comment that transnationals are making purely rational decisions, because if through their actions they were to undermine human life on this planet, through pollution and eradication of resources, then in fact they are acting in an irrational way.
Luckily, some companies, governments and people are taking this seriously enough to encourage more sustainable practices that are already starting to make a difference.
With regard to the rights of those with alternative sexual orientation, I used this as it appears to cause huge problems for christians, yet all they are asking for are the same human rights that hetrosexuals take for granted.
Your hollow argument that appears to imply that we need to ensure reproduction of humans appears somewhat flawed given the issues associated with over-population, yet another aspect of sustainable living that we have yet to get to grips with as well.
Finally, either you still don’t get the error of your comparing religiously motivated negligent parents to Pol Pot, or you don’t want to. However, I’ve already replied with an adequate comparison in the form of Pinker’s comparison, so I wont labour the point.
It wasnt your use of less than black and white examples that smacks of arrogance rather the potential accusation that John Newton took time to learn and understand and that this is somehow a fault or valid criticism of religion.
Most people take time to learn, few overcome their backgrounds, thinking differently than your peer group is especially hard. You have already provided the example of Germany.
I did not imply that we need to ensure human repro, merely commented that in a purely naturalist evolutionary sense non-reproductive genotypes werent providing any adaptive advantage, or are you suggesting that homosexuality is natures ways of selecting against some genetic strains.
On the subject of ‘human rights’, that too is a moral question about the way things ‘ought’ to be. Is there a way things ‘ought’ to be? why? says who? and so what?
Objectively are there really such things as human rights? or is that just a delusion we like to fool ourselves with. Certainly they are pretty much a modern western phenomenon. Most of history would think they were bunkum. Most of the world doesnt really recognize them now. Civilizations rise and fall, ours will go the same way as all others, why think our pet obscessions will have any currency in the future.
And with regard to Pinker, i still think he is a shelter ivory tower academic who would recognise violence if he cam upon it. His total and complete lack of understanding that the tools of violence have simply changed suggests a lack of real world knowledge.. I suggest you read ‘The Violence of the Green Revolution” by Vandana Shiva and possibly ‘No Logo’ by Naomi Klein
that should have said ‘wouldnt recognise violence’
On the subject of James Riley, he experienced life as a slave so perhaps the reality of shared experience and a resulting ability to empathise rather than any atheist, theist or humanist philosophically based motivations provided him with some light. As for Abe Lincoln, yes he is recorded as claiming Rileys book was very influential in his political thinking along with the Bible and Pilgrims Progress !!
@ Jeremy
The use of John Newton was to show that there were a large number of christians who were more than happy with the “Slave Trade” at the same time as other christians were hugely committed to overturning it, regardless of any later change to their perspective. In fact your comment about him taking time to learn and understand that in fact the trade was wrong, would appear to show an application of subjective morality rather than objective.
The use of James Riley and his firsthand experience as a “Slave” was to illustrate the possible empathy that other human beings felt for him and his fellow crewmates when they read the account in his subsequent book. My point being that you do not need to be religiously motivated to care about another human beings treatment, especially when they are of a similar ethnicity to yourself, which would appear to be the more important aspect.
WRT homosexuality, regardless of why they genetically are predisposed as they are, it doesn’t change the fact that your supposed christian morality, such as “The Golden Rule” and “Love Thy Neighbour” would appear to give them the same respect as hetrosexuals.
As far as our civilizations future is concerned, we may rise, we may fall. However, I could say the same of religion too.
The Golden Rule” and “Love Thy Neighbour” would appear to give them the same respect as hetrosexuals.
absolutely couldnt agree more, and to murderers, child rapists, extortionists, thiefs, drunk drivers, paedophiles even atheists who deny God.
You are confusing loving some one and treating them as human with condoning their behaviour.And just so we are clear i do not condone the behaviour of the likes of Westboro Baptist Church.
@ Jeremy
Given the era and area that Lincoln lived in, I’d be very surprised if he didn’t have a religious leanings, especially as his electorate would have been religious as well.
WRT James Riley, as you say, he experienced life as a slave so perhaps the reality of that shared experience and a resulting ability to empathise may have provided him with a better understanding and appreciation of what the slaves in the US were going through.
Seems a very naturalitic even humanistic perspective rather than a religious one, such as that held by Benjamin Palmer, who was born in Charleston in 1818 and became one of the preeminent Christian preachers of the antebellum era. He served as Moderator of the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. – the highest elected position in that body – and wrote several works on theology which, according to the Southern Presbyterian Review, are still in print.
When he died in 1902, a Christian magazine, The Interior, eulogized that “Dr. Palmer served God and his generation as a symbol of the immutability of the great essentials of our religion” and praised “his faithful witness to Jesus Christ in the word of his preaching”, which “gave him such power… as few of the Lord’s ambassadors have ever wielded in any age of the church”.
But Palmer was known for one other thing as well. In November 1860, just days after Abraham Lincoln’s election, he gave a famous sermon at his church in South Carolina. In that sermon, he said that “I have never intermeddled with political questions,” but that he was compelled to speak on politics because “we are in the most fearful and perilous crisis which has occurred in our history as a nation”. Since Palmer was the representative of “a class whose opinions in such a controversy are of cardinal importance”, namely the clergy, he felt that it was now his obligation to speak out.
And what vital message did he have to impart? (Here comes the good bit!)
A nation often has a character as well defined and intense as that of an individual…. this individuality of character alone makes any people truly historic, competent to work out its specific mission, and to become a factor in the world’s progress. The particular trust assigned to such a people becomes the pledge of the divine protection; and their fidelity to it determines the fate by which it is finally overtaken… If then the South is such a people, what, at this juncture, is their providential trust? I answer, that it is to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing.
Palmer argued that enslaving black men and women wasn’t just the South’s divine mission, but that it was doing them a kindness, since “their character fits them for dependence and servitude”, and that if liberated, they would be helpless, would soon “relapse into their primitive barbarism” and die of starvation or anarchy. But most of all, he was convinced that God was on the South’s side in this struggle, since after all, slavery was “recognized and sanctioned in the scriptures of God”.
Without, therefore, determining the question of duty for future generations, I simply say that for us as now situated, the duty is plain of conserving and transmitting the system of slavery, with the freest scope for its natural development and extension… My own conviction is, that we should at once lift ourselves, intelligently, to the highest moral ground and proclaim to all the world that we hold this trust from God, and in its occupancy we are prepared to stand or fall as God may appoint. If the critical moment has arrived at which the great issue is joined, let us say that, in the sight of all perils, we will stand by our trust; and God be with the right!
And if God was on the side of the slaveholders, then what motivated the abolitionists? Well, Palmer had the answer to that one too:
…in this great struggle, we defend the cause of God and religion. The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic. The demon which erected its throne upon the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which abolished the Sabbath and worshipped reason in the person of a harlot, yet survives to work other horrors, of which those of the French Revolution are but the type. Among a people so generally religious as the American, a disguise must be worn; but it is the same old threadbare disguise of the advocacy of human rights. From a thousand Jacobin clubs here, as in France, the decree has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and law.
…This spirit of atheism, which knows no God who tolerates evil, no Bible which sanctions law, and no conscience that can be bound by oaths and covenants, has selected us for its victims, and slavery for its issue. Its banner-cry rings out already upon the air — “liberty, equality, fraternity,” which simply interpreted mean bondage, confiscation and massacre.
Speaking on behalf of the modern atheist movement, let me just say: Thanks, Dr. Palmer! I realize you meant that passage as a polemical insult against your adversaries, not as an actual description of their beliefs – but if you want to give us atheists the credit for abolishing slavery, I’m happy to accept it.
My point being that you do not need to be religiously motivated to care about another human beings treatment, especially when they are of a similar ethnicity to yourself,
are you quite sure you meant to say that, because i would have thought the defining characteristic of Wilberforce and Riley and Lincoln is that they managed to care about the care of other human beings who were not of the same ethnicity [black people in fact who were by many if not most regarded as lesser species]. They transcended their cultural norms.
‘an application of subjective morality rather than objective.’
i’m missing your point, i do believe that there is an objective morality, learning to apply it is always going to be a subjective experience, that wont change the truth.
The only way learning to apply morality wouldnt be subjective would be if that morality was both imposed and enforced upon you [ie no freedom], but if thats the case , then your actions arent moral , they are simply constrained by external force.
@ Jeremy
Further to my last comment, I see this pattern repeated throughout history: every social or political reform movement is demonized by the religious conservatives of its day as sinful, heretical, atheist – and then when the good guys win out and the cause is triumphant, the believers of the next generation claim that it was a religious movement all along. (This is exactly what happened with the U.S. Constitution, to name another example, and there are others.)
Whatever the evil of the day, religion almost always plays a major role in justifying it.
That’s because the unknown will of an unseen deity can be appealed to as a means of sanctifying any injustice, whereas a morality based on human rights and equality isn’t nearly so flexible and accomodating.
Small wonder, then, that the preachers have always seen atheists lurking in every corner of the opposition.
As even back then, preachers like Benjamin Palmer must have known that ceasing our reliance on the alleged will of God, and unleashing reason as a source of morality, could only lead to the rise and growth of atheism. The only difference is that he refused to admit that was a good thing!
And as they say, now the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t get him back in, no matter how hard you try!!!
@Paul, good point with Palmer, suggest you look up the original full title of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
@ Jeremy
“My point being that you do not need to be religiously motivated to care about another human beings treatment, especially when they are of a similar ethnicity to yourself”
Yes I did mean to say that. As Lincoln and others could now see slavery through the eyes of someone who they could relate to more easily, namely Riley, who was of a similar ethnicity to themselves. Once they then understood how that experience must have felt through his description in his book, they were then able to better understand what the black slaves must have been feeling all this time.
To use a literary quote:
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Spoken by Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
@ Jeremy
Not sure if you’re NZ or not, but I need to go to bed, even if I am on school holidays.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the discussion and if I may reciprocate on the book recommend, I’ve just finished “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, although you may have already read it as it has been out for quite a few years.
‘Whatever the evil of the day, religion almost always plays a major role in justifying it.
That’s because the unknown will of an unseen deity can be appealed to as a means of sanctifying any injustice, whereas a morality based on human rights and equality isn’t nearly so flexible and accomodating. ‘
You are right, in fact the Jewish leaders of the day organised to kill Jesus.
However as i have said before you have one really big problem as an atheist. What you complain about is totally normal human behaviour and you cant blame God.
Religion is a normal human behaviour, atheism is the aberration. Science as the source of all truth is just a different version of God in our own image, so even atheism isnt really, it just has ourselves as God.
So what you are saying is that humans have always tried to justify doing what they wanted to do. Not much of a revelation Paul
‘human rights and equality’ as i have said before, modern, western ideas that are blips on history and even the current world stage .
Ideas that come from Christianity [ even as it is imperfectly practiced ], but thats another religion, why would you pay attention to any of its ideas?
Missapplied a morality based on human rights and equality is not so accommodating. Rhubarb, all you have to do is define your opponents as less than human. Jews, Africans, Aborigines etc.
I always enjoy Malcolm Gladwell.
@ Jeremy
I understand your perspective WRT an atheist has no right to blame god or gods for bad human behaviour, in whatever form it takes.
Personally, I see atheism purely as a position that asserts no god or gods exist. Nothing more. So, far from being the end of the conversation, it is merely the start.
We then as human beings have to decide where we go from there. This of course then offers the huge variety of perspectives that we see being discussed every day on M&M.
Obviously, religious perspectives such as that held by christians, muslims, etc are more than entitled to contribute to the debate, but I believe you shouldn’t be able to appeal to your perspectives being “Divine Commands” and such, as they are merely examples of attempts by humans to make sense of their world.
No doubt, aspects such as “The Golden Rule” may be seen as having more validity, where as the desire to deny women equal treatment, as Muslims would tend to argue may be seen as invalid.
What I feel is that the broader the debate the better. We do this with political points of view all the time, but for some reason, some religious perspectives deny the same appraisal of their perspectives as they see them as being “Divine”, etc.
So, I don’t see Science as a new version of god, just a very effective way of discerning what is actually real, as opposed to what we either think or want things to be.
I also completely agree that your argument about missapplied morality or Science, such as the examples you gave are hugely dangerous.
I’ve said it before, I’ve been an educator for over twenty years and father for over twelve. I have no desire to see a return to the kind of regimes motivated either by religious belief or non-belief that we’ve discussed.
On a related note, have you read “On Equilibrium” by the Canadian Philosopher John Ralston Saul? Again it’s been out some time so you may have already done so.
On a further, but related note, are you also aware of the new Interfaith Dialogue being proposed by the Labour party? It would appear to mimic a similar initiative to the one that was held in the UK. Use this link to find out more: http://www.suawilliamsio.co.nz/?p=1419
Jeremy, you are ignorant. The “Jewish Leaders of the day” did not “organize to kill Jesus.” He was killed by the Romans.