Let me rephrase what I said. From a strictly logical point of view, Christian
morality is entirely subjective *unless* God's existence can be proven.
Since God's existence has not been logically proven, this means that, again
from a strictly logical perspective, there is nothing that makes Christian
morality any more objectively compelling than materialist philosophy. Now,
that doesn't mean that Christian morality doesn't work or doesn't do good.
As Bill pointed out, if one truly believes in one's heart that God exists,
then the rest follows naturally. But even in this case, one can believe (and
many have believed) in a God who, for example, doesn't value the lives of
non-Christians, or Communists, or Jews, or Muslims. And this can lead to all
sorts of problems.
>I agree with Russ that Christian morality can be distorted to justify moral
>evil. It's happened. That of course doesn't invalidate the moral system.
Of course not. I never meant to imply that it did.
>Back to the first point. Russ asks us to establish the existence of the
>God of the Bible (or at least he has claimned that His existence cannot be
>established). This is a fair challenge from a human point of view, but God
>is a Person and has His own rules about how His existence is to be known.
Meaning that God's existence cannot be logically proven (as we humans define
logic) and the foundation for Jim's argument goes out the window.
>Normally it is He who takes the initiative in revealing Himself to people.
>So we are somewhat limited in what we can do. What I can do, Russ, is to
>pray that He will reveal Himself to you. And I'm doing that.
If He does, in a way that I cannot rationally deny, then that will change
everything.
_____________________________________________________________
| Russell Stewart |
| http://www.rt66.com/diamond/ |
|_____________________________________________________________|
| Albuquerque, New Mexico | diamond@rt66.com |
|_____________________________|_______________________________|
2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2.