RE: [asa] Dawkins new book - objective

Bernie:

You need to be more clear as to what "morals come from God" means.

When you say morals, what do you mean? Do you mean the notion of "ought"
as opposed to "is"? Do you mean man's sense of ougtness? What else?

You need to say clearly what "without the need of God" means.

Does that mean

1) that God doesn't exist
2) without God's explicit and unambiguous direction
3) without God being involved

Perhaps there are other understandings

It seems to me that are many problems here. We need to address what it is
to act morally and to distinguish it perhaps from acting "morally
correct." The first could be a procedure or attitude, the second might be
regarded as comparison with some standard (absolute or relative).

It seems to me that to require of any "morality" that it be unambiguously
applied is asking too much. Isn't something like this a component of
law. In their case, they rely heavily on case law. Even here it is
clearly not unambiguous.

The question I would ask is this:

Suppose that in every situation there is a right way to act and a wrong
way. This is something like asking whether God is ever confused as to
what the right thing to do is. Suppose someone, given what he knows of
this absolute standard, provided say in the Ten Commandments, case law,
etc., considers the matter long and seriously and yet acts wrongly. Has
this person sinned?

I say yes.

bill

  On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, Dehler, Bernie wrote:

> There are two positions I'm hearing:
>
> 1. Morals come from God.
>
> 2. Morals can be deduced without the need for God.
>
> If #1 is true, it would seem reasonable to me that God would also provide a way to discover these morals. But on tricky issues (euthanasia and suicide on the battle field (King Saul's case), for example), there seems to be no absolute answer. Born-again Christians have different opinions. So it is apparent that if God does give morals, he gave no sure means for his followers to discover them... and I'm talking about the 'true believers' and not those 'Christian' in name only.
>
> If #2 is true, then you'd expect different answers because people have different levels of maturity, emotional intelligence, and intellect.
>
> If someone things that God's morals could be discovered clearly, it would be good to pick an example (like euthanasia or battle suicide), and work from the bottom-up to follow the train of thought. But I haven't seen anyone with the willingness to try that. And I think that George agrees that the moral answers can't be clearly discovered, based on his paper covering the euthanasia example, after all is considered, concluding that the final outcome is ultimately a personal decision.
>
> ...Bernie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Murray Hogg
> Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 8:47 AM
> To: ASA
> Subject: Re: [asa] Dawkins new book - objective
>
> And people read the Bible differently, so why should agreement amongst Christians be expected?
>
> Dehler, Bernie wrote:
>> "It just seems so worthless to say that morals are grounded in reason, then when atheists get together they can't agree on what the correct moral position is."
>>
>> That is because people reason differently, so why shouldn't it be expected???
>>
>> ...Bernie
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Murray Hogg
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 8:21 AM
>> To: ASA
>> Subject: Re: [asa] Dawkins new book - objective
>>
>> Dehler, Bernie wrote:
>>> It just seems so worthless to say that morals are grounded in God, then when Godly people get together they can't agree on what the correct moral position is. Euthanasia was the last specific issue I talked to George about.
>>>
>>> ,,,Bernie
>>
>> To which the obvious response...
>>
>> It just seems so worthless to say that morals are grounded in reason, then when atheists get together they can't agree on what the correct moral position is.
>>
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Received on Thu Oct 29 09:15:20 2009