| Subject: The moral kind |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 07/23/02 9:12pm
In reply to:
Biff
's message, "But what kind of morals?" on 07/23/02 6:59pm
>>The fundamentalist Christian attitude towards morality
>>is that without the Word of God which informs us of
>>God himself, we would be some depraved society in
>>which no sort of moral code would apply; chaos would
>>ensue. However, it is generally known that the
>>Christian God was essentially "off the scene" for a
>>number of years.
>
>I don't think this is necessarily true. I assume
>you're refferring here to the period between the flood
>of Noah and the call of Abraham. During this time,
>people were very spiritually aware, and while they may
>not have recognized the "Christian God" by name, they
>still had knowledge of the existence of a supreme
>being.
Your argument here seems to be that people could/did tap into the Christian God via other venues which ultimately ended up with the Christian God's morals being implemented. My question to you is why I couldn't make a simalar argument for Allah? Perhaps they didn't recognize "Allah" by name, but had knowledge of a sumpreme being? What about those crazy greeks which was more what I was thinking when I mentioned "before the Christian God came on the scene" with the many Gods they worshipped? Do they all point back at the Christian God? Why not Allah?
I'm inclined to think that they even
>communicated with him regularly. You'll note that when
>God called Abraham (or Abram, as was his name at the
>time), Abram did not respond with shock as in "Who's
>speaking? Am I going nuts?" He simply did as he was
>told.
True enough, but then, you have to realize when you write a book you can make the characters say whatever you wish so long as it is consistant. If Abraham had replied with "Who the hell is this?" it might lead christians to question the same thing when it is God they think they hear.
>
>True. And again, the Hammurabi Code came about in a
>society that had an awareness of God, even though they
>may not have recognized him by the name we associate
>today.
Again, what about Allah or the Greek Gods? Doesn't this argument fit equally well in those arenas?
>
>Yes, and when we have the benefit of living in a
>relatively moral society, it seems reasonable to
>assume that humans would naturally develop this
>knowledge and that the majority would live by it. But
>I would argue that because we live in a moral society,
>our perspective is skewed.
Our perspective may be skewed, however, are you suggesting that socities can function without something like moral-like-codes?
>
>This is an interesting discussion in that neither
>perspective is provable. There is presumably no one on
>earth who does not live in a society of some sort.
>Thus, it is not possible to put together a group of
>people who have no concept of society or morality on a
>deserted island and observe what develops.
That's true, but what we can do is look back in time to other societies that began to flourish and compare and contrast what morality they agreed upon, and where they differed. (as an aside morality for ancient people's and even today is widely diversified which serves as more evidence that moral like codes come about that are not things that the Christian God might agree with).
>
>But I submit that even if a new society were to
>develop rules of order, there's no reason to believe
>those rules would be fair or just. If, for example, a
>society were formed by neo-Nazis, you might be treated
>well as long as you were white Anglo-Saxon. If a
>society were formed by masogenists, women would likely
>be held as subjects, and so on.
I think you are assuming that the rules that the Neo-Nazis formulated are not fair or just. In your masogenestic example, you assume that women not being subjugated is morally right. In both of these examples, you seem to be looking through a lens which holds democratic ideals and systems of egalatarian thought to be sacred and morally "right". Perhaps they are, perhaps they aren't, that's another discussion entirely. My argument is they will exist regardless of the Christian God, be they fair, unfair, just, unjust, sadistic or masochistic.
In fact, I think the
>more logical route for a society to develop would be
>for the strong members of the group to dominate the
>weak.
I don't disagree with you here. The majority of people I know want to survive and will enforce any measure necessary to ensure that they survive.
>
>The fact that we are able to live in a moral society,
>and that that society has been built on Christian
>values is testament to the justice of the Bible. Yes,
>there have been unjust acts committed in the name of
>Christianity, but an examination of the Bible shows
>that it does not support those acts. The society that
>we have built is much closer to what the Bible intends.
Again, I'm not convinced that the socities in which we live are "morally superior" to anything that has happened before or any other society. The fact of the matter is, if you had been an Aztech chances are throwing down the sacrifically pure person down the stairs of a pyramid and eating them would probably be something you wouldn't object to--it would be part of the moral code of your society-- killing is okay as long as it is the pure sacrifice. Along these same lines, Christianity has a similar idea about Jesus. Not necessarily that it was okay to kill Jesus, but that Jesus choosing to die was morally "right" to save other people.
Finally, it isn't hard to justify any contradictory act with Bible scripture. Some verses indicate one thing, some another. It's just a matter of how you mix and match verses, what you choose to ignore, and what you choose to hold dear as to what perception and philosophy it is you wish to hold concerning the Bible.
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