A Theist Foundation of Objective Morality

[CWH]

This thread is in response to RAM's "An Atheist Foundation of Objective Morality" with emphasis on Christian Theism and not Atheism. I am putting this onto the floor for discussion.

There is only Two ways to look at Objective Morality from the Christian's point of view:

1. Love God with all your heart soul and might.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

First off: Love your neighbor as yourself is not exactly the same as "Do unto others what you want others to do unto you". The Golden Rule may have it's negative implication and this has been discussed with Me and RAM in some previous posts in this forum e.g. An eye for an eye. rape my wife and I will rape yours etc. Love thy neighbor as yourself is based on love, mercy and kindness. The Golden Rule has a problem, what if someone did something bad on you?....retaliate in return?

Let's discussed.

God Blessings to all.:pray:

[Richard Amiel McGough]

This thread is in response to RAM's "An Atheist Foundation of Objective Morality" with emphasis on Christian Theism and not Atheism. I am putting this onto the floor for discussion.

There is only Two ways to look at Objective Morality from the Christian's point of view:

1. Love God with all your heart soul and might.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

First off: Love your neighbor as yourself is not exactly the same as "Do unto others what you want others to do unto you". The Golden Rule may have it's negative implication and this has been discussed with Me and RAM in some previous posts in this forum e.g. An eye for an eye. rape my wife and I will rape yours etc. Love thy neighbor as yourself is based on love, mercy and kindness. The Golden Rule has a problem, what if someone did something bad on you?....retaliate in return?

Let's discussed.

God Blessings to all.:pray:
Hey there CWH,

Glad you stopped by for a visit. I don't see anything you wrote about "objective morality." Did you forget to mention that?

I think you misunderstand the Golden Rule. Christ expressed it in a couple different ways.
Matthew 22:39 "And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

Matthew 7:12 "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Note that both statements say that the Golden Rule sums up the "Law and the Prophets." Therefore, Christ considered them the same, and so the problems you created by talking about retaliation are obviously a confusion on your part. I have no trouble understanding that both are equivalent. You really shouldn't be obsessed with disputes and arguments over the plain words that Christ spoke since that misses the meaning that he intended. It's especially fallacious when dealing with his highest moral teachings, don't you think? The Bible says:
1 Timothy 6:3 If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, 4 he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, 5 useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself.

I think it would be very interesting if you commented on my article on the atheist foundation of objective morality.

Now as for your "foundation" - I don't see what "loving God" has to do with morality. History is littered with the blood and guts shed by people because of their "love" of their "God." And atheists are certainly not any less moral than theists as you know from our previous discussion (http://www.biblewheel.com/forum/showthread.php?3071-Defending-Misogyny-in-the-Bible&p=49006#post49006), and there is evidence that they are significantly more moral.

Atheists Supply Less Than 1% Of Prison Populations, While Christians Make -Up 75%. (http://current.com/community/92831935_atheists-supply-less-than-1-of-prison-populations-while-christians-make-up-75.htm)

Proof that Atheists are more moral than Christians (http://backyardskeptics.com/wordpress/proof-that-atheists-are-more-moral-than-christians/).

http://www.biblewheel.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=587&d=1346857675

[Chris Stuber]

How about Foundation for Objective Morality

Like I said on facebook... whether you are Theist or Atheist, or whatever label you choose
to wear is a self-imposed barrier, or limitation. If you think you need to wear a label, is nothing
more than window dressing advertisement. It's like the guys in suits, that wear an american flag on their
lapel.. It's making a statement by itself. "Proud American" Prefixing foundation has nothing to morals.

If you narrow the scope of your foundation, you become that much more insignificant in a vast universe.
Is "Objective Morality" a new religion? I don't think they will give tax-exempt status for that one.

It would be much more interest to see where humans derive their morality.

Do you believe morals exist only in mankind? You may think Humans are top of the foodchain, however
that does not make mankind superior to any other species.

Some things are "learned" behavior, others "instinctive" behavior. Morality is
a learned behavior. You have to teach your children moral standards.. it is not an automatic gift
that you are born with.

There is not too much difference between manners and morals. If someone want to make a point
that is a gift from God.. so be it. There 2 things that come to mind..
Humility and Respect

You can look at traits of many species and know we have much in common.

[Chris Stuber]

Atheists Supply Less Than 1% Of Prison Populations, While Christians Make -Up 75%.

Proof that Atheists are more moral than Christians.

A Jail statistic, are they convicted of crime (really don't know) and of what crime (don't know). Because
someone has been to jail does not make the morally good or bad, but that is a judgement for who to decide??

The "proof" from backyardskeptic.com is a poor source on which to base your assertion. I do admit, I dabble
on 2nd rate websites, but I generally do not use such sources as proof of anything. One big problem with
the Internet, is anyone and everyone has a website with erroneous data, and there is nobody to clean up.
I have done much work alongside statisticians, and they will tell you that sample data can be leverages to
reflect most anything you wish to "prove", and behind each statistic there are caveats and footnotes which
most often overlooked. I'll just say, whomever generated that bit of research has no idea of what moral issue
they are referring to, or how a persons moral was derived. They could have just as easily made this an
article of some other unknown variable, and the result would have still been factually incorrect. For example
what moral issue, where did they learn that moral issue.. whether they learned how to steal from the bible,
from their family, or all by themselves... You have no way of attaining strict proof on the topic.

Obvious a state law is not God's law, and that is if law means anything at all. A state law
has nothing to do with good or bad, or morality. If I forget to strap my seatbelt, smoke a blunt and violate the law.
Oh I messed up, so sorry. Did I do anything morally wrong, so judge me. Christian or Atheist,
you cannot make a case that a minority in a sample is any more morally correct than the majority.
If this type of statistic could be obtain, it would be.

In the US, the Census Bureau collect superficial statistics from church attendance, and separate statistics
for what the government defines as "Self-Described Religious Identification". That is a list of about a page
that contains a category for "No Religion" and "Other No Religion" which would apply to an non-response
which are convoluted categories for non-response. These stats are 2008 vintage, but within the sample
universe there are 173,402,000 Christians, and 1,621,000 Atheist.

[topsy213]

Whenever we are discussing conscience, I always like to quote philosopher Immanuel Kant who wrote on his tomb-‘there are two things which fill me with awe: the starry heavens above us, and the moral law within us’. Readers can read more about conscience from http://www.worldtransformation.com/conscience/

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Whenever we are discussing conscience, I always like to quote philosopher Immanuel Kant who wrote on his tomb-‘there are two things which fill me with awe: the starry heavens above us, and the moral law within us’. Readers can read more about conscience from http://www.worldtransformation.com/conscience/
Hey there topsy213, :yo:

Welcome to our forum!

:welcome:

I'm glad you gave a link to that site. At first glance, it looks like it has a lot of good insight. I agree with their scientific approach and I very much appreciate their application of Jungian psychology (owning our shadow, etc.) and the application of Yin/Yang, and the discussion of consciousness. Unfortunately, every time I read a page, all I see are many words and great proclamations of some big discovery, but the discovery is never actually stated! For example (from his Good vs. Evil (http://www.worldtransformation.com/good-vs-evil/) page)



So, what is the wonderful, dreamed-of breakthrough biological explanation of the human condition that at last allows us to acknowledge, understand and resolve our historic ‘good vs evil’-conflicted existence?

Certainly, we have invented excuses to justify our species’ seemingly-imperfect competitive, selfish and aggressive behaviour, the main one being that we have savage animal instincts that make us fight and compete for food, shelter, territory and a mate. Of course, this ‘explanation’ put forward by Social Darwinism, Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, Multilevel Selection and Eusociality that basically argues that ‘genes are competitive and selfish and that’s why we are’ can’t be the real explanation for our competitive, selfish and aggressive behaviour. Firstly, it overlooks the fact that our human behaviour involves our unique fully conscious thinking mind. Descriptions like egocentric (http://www.worldtransformation.com/ego/), arrogant, deluded, artificial, hateful, mean, immoral, sinful, alienated, etc, all imply a consciousness-derived, psychological dimension to our behaviour. The real issue—the psychological problem in our thinking minds that we have suffered from—is the issue of our species’ ‘good and evil’/‘yin and yang’-afflicted, less-than-ideal, even ‘fallen’ or corrupted condition. We humans suffer from a consciousness-derived, psychological human condition, not an instinct-derived, stimulus-and-response-driven animal condition—our condition is unique to us fully conscious humans. Secondly, the savage-instincts-in-us excuse overlooks the fact that we humans have altruistic, cooperative, loving moral instincts (http://www.worldtransformation.com/soul/)—what we recognise as our ‘conscience’—and these moral instincts in us are not derived from reciprocity, from situations where you only do something for others in return for a benefit from them, as Evolutionary Psychologists would have us believe. And nor are they derived from warring with other groups of humans as advocates of the theory of Eusociality would have us believe. No, we have an unconditionally selfless, fully altruistic, truly loving, universally-considerate-of-others-not-competitive-with-other-groups, genuinely moral conscience. Our original instinctive state was the opposite of being competitive, selfish and aggressive: it was fully cooperative, selfless and loving. (How we humans acquired unconditionally selfless moral instincts when it would seem that an unconditionally selfless, fully altruistic trait is going to self-eliminate and thus not ever be able to become established in a species is briefly explained in the What is Science? article in The Book of Real Answers to Everything! that this article also appears in (link provided at the end of this article), and more fully explained in Part 8:4 of the freely-available, online book Freedom (link also provided at the end of this article)—however, the point here is that the savage-instincts-in-us excuse is completely inconsistent with the fact that we have moral, not savage, instincts. Charles Darwin recognised the difference in our moral nature when he said that ‘the moral sense affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals’ (The Descent of Man, 1871, p.495).)

So, what is the truthful, human-condition-addressing rather than human-condition ignoring biological explanation of our 'good vs evil'-conflicted behavour? The answer begins with an analysis of consciousness.

See that? He begins and ends with the same question. It would help if he stated the answer somewhere. I looked at other pages, and they were filled with similar claims of an amazing discovery, but I haven't found an actual statement of his thesis. Do you know of a page where he sums things up in a clear and direct way?

Thanks,

Richard