One more question about god and morality

[revots33]

This question stems from siegfriedandroy's recent post about athiests and morality. Many theists think that god is the source of all morality in the universe. Basically, that without god, murder is no better/worse than giving a homeless guy a thousand bucks. C.S, Lewis used this argument in Mere Christianity - he argued that humans wouldn't automatically sense that murder was "wrong", without some absolute moral authority to give us that knowledge (god).

But how do theists explain the cultural differences in what is considered "moral"? Some cultures, for example, think female genital mutilation is not immoral. Others think it is perfectly moral to kill their daughter or wife (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/182/story_18214_1.html) if they "shame" them. There are countless other examples of cultural differences in moral behavior, large and small.

So, if there is one god, and he is the one responsible for the human race's innate sense of morality, why these differences? How can one culture recoil in horror at something another culture treats as routine and perfectly moral?

[Prodigy54321]

in Mere Christianity Lewis acknowledges that it doen't always seem that people have the same morality, but he says that it actually boils down to the same basic morality...

he gives examples like..

a person may steal something from another person...the theif is caught...

the theif will never argue that it is right to steal anything you want, he may come up with excuses for why his theft is justified in some way, but never that stealing isn't wrong, because eventhe theif knows that stealing is wrong...

he talks about how different curlures have different ideas about how many wives a person can take..he says that all cultures still know that it is wrong to just take any wife they want..

likewise, people don't argue that murder for no reason is just fine, they come up with justifications.

there were more examples and explainations that I can't remember.

I'm sure Lewis would argue that although it may seem like differrent moralities, they are actually the same basic moralities, that god gave them....

unfortunately for him, there are much better explanations for this..but they dn't involve a god.

[siegfriedandroy]

[ QUOTE ]
This question stems from siegfriedandroy's recent post about athiests and morality. Many theists think that god is the source of all morality in the universe. Basically, that without god, murder is no better/worse than giving a homeless guy a thousand bucks. C.S, Lewis used this argument in Mere Christianity - he argued that humans wouldn't automatically sense that murder was "wrong", without some absolute moral authority to give us that knowledge (god).

But how do theists explain the cultural differences in what is considered "moral"? Some cultures, for example, think female genital mutilation is not immoral. Others think it is perfectly moral to kill their daughter or wife (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/182/story_18214_1.html) if they "shame" them. There are countless other examples of cultural differences in moral behavior, large and small.

So, if there is one god, and he is the one responsible for the human race's innate sense of morality, why these differences? How can one culture recoil in horror at something another culture treats as routine and perfectly moral?

[/ QUOTE ]

hey revots. just found your thread. as for cs lewis' argument, id argue (of course), that if God didn't exist, it's not that humans wouldn't 'sense that murder was 'wrong'', but that indeed murder is not 'wrong'. instead, there is no such thing as 'wrong' or 'right'. these are only words used subjectively to express one's (conditioned) opinion about a given matter. but 'right and wrong' do not now exist, at least not in the same way lewis believed they do.

[siegfriedandroy]

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[ QUOTE ]
This question stems from siegfriedandroy's recent post about athiests and morality. Many theists think that god is the source of all morality in the universe. Basically, that without god, murder is no better/worse than giving a homeless guy a thousand bucks. C.S, Lewis used this argument in Mere Christianity - he argued that humans wouldn't automatically sense that murder was "wrong", without some absolute moral authority to give us that knowledge (god).

But how do theists explain the cultural differences in what is considered "moral"? Some cultures, for example, think female genital mutilation is not immoral. Others think it is perfectly moral to kill their daughter or wife (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/182/story_18214_1.html) if they "shame" them. There are countless other examples of cultural differences in moral behavior, large and small.

So, if there is one god, and he is the one responsible for the human race's innate sense of morality, why these differences? How can one culture recoil in horror at something another culture treats as routine and perfectly moral?

[/ QUOTE ]

hey revots. just found your thread. as for cs lewis' argument, id argue (of course), that if God didn't exist, it's not that humans wouldn't 'sense that murder was 'wrong'', but that indeed murder is not 'wrong'. instead, there is no such thing as 'wrong' or 'right'. these are only words used subjectively to express one's (conditioned) opinion about a given matter. but 'right and wrong' do not now exist, at least not in the same way lewis believed they do.

[/ QUOTE ]



as for your argument about the vast differences between the morality of different cultures, (what i believe to be) the Christian answer is that all have distorted and failed in keeping God's moral dictates. we all know that Hitler was 'evil'. yet even those who knew (given culture) abuse and refuse to live by God's decrees. they know it is wrong to kill, yet their wicked culture still decides to kill, and to accept this, despite their innate knowledge that their behaviour is not RIGHT.

[CaseS87]

again i will bring up the subject of extraterrestrial life. would a civilization from another planet have to abide by the same moral laws god has set for human beings? if god has set specific moral values for each species which has comparable intelligence and consciousness as human beings, what would happen if 2 of these species met? which moral guideline would "play?"

[FortunaMaximus]

Law of Conservation of Information.

[MidGe]

I don't want to repeat what has been said before and make this forum repetitive.

I have on a number of occasions stated and develop the idea, that morality was only possible in an atheist paradigm. The god that is promoted, by most theists/believers, as far as I am concerned, is an immoral monstrosity.

Please do a search on the topic before posting about something that has been done o death. If yo are bringing in a new angle. I unreservedly apologize in advance. In that case, I am missing the point! /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[madnak]

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'right and wrong' do not now exist, at least not in the same way lewis believed they do.

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"Not in the same way Lewis believed they do" is a far cry from "not at all."

[samsonh]

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I have on a number of occasions stated and develop the idea, that morality was only possible in an atheist paradigm. The god that is promoted, by most theists/believers, as far as I am concerned, is an immoral monstrosity.


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I agree Midge but I have never been able to explain my position to my theist friends. Have their been previous posts on this? If so could you point the way /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[jogsxyz]

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again i will bring up the subject of extraterrestrial life. would a civilization from another planet have to abide by the same moral laws god has set for human beings? if god has set specific moral values for each species which has comparable intelligence and consciousness as human beings, what would happen if 2 of these species met? which moral guideline would "play?"

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The more advanced species would prevail. Look how much the world has changed in the last fifty years.
The Iraqi army using current weapons would defeat the Nazis of World War II.
The likelihood of two species being equal is remote.

[Skidoo]

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How can one culture recoil in horror at something another culture treats as routine and perfectly moral?

[/ QUOTE ]

The same way the same differences exist between individual people.

[vhawk01]

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This question stems from siegfriedandroy's recent post about athiests and morality. Many theists think that god is the source of all morality in the universe. Basically, that without god, murder is no better/worse than giving a homeless guy a thousand bucks. C.S, Lewis used this argument in Mere Christianity - he argued that humans wouldn't automatically sense that murder was "wrong", without some absolute moral authority to give us that knowledge (god).

But how do theists explain the cultural differences in what is considered "moral"? Some cultures, for example, think female genital mutilation is not immoral. Others think it is perfectly moral to kill their daughter or wife (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/182/story_18214_1.html) if they "shame" them. There are countless other examples of cultural differences in moral behavior, large and small.

So, if there is one god, and he is the one responsible for the human race's innate sense of morality, why these differences? How can one culture recoil in horror at something another culture treats as routine and perfectly moral?

[/ QUOTE ]

hey revots. just found your thread. as for cs lewis' argument, id argue (of course), that if God didn't exist, it's not that humans wouldn't 'sense that murder was 'wrong'', but that indeed murder is not 'wrong'. instead, there is no such thing as 'wrong' or 'right'. these are only words used subjectively to express one's (conditioned) opinion about a given matter. but 'right and wrong' do not now exist, at least not in the same way lewis believed they do.

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Exactly. But people would STILL sense that murder was wrong, whether it actually was or not. Which pretty neatly explains the world as we find it, no?

[madnak]

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Exactly. But people would STILL sense that murder was wrong, whether it actually was or not. Which pretty neatly explains the world as we find it, no?

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The world's morality as we find it fits neatly with what we'd expect from a "tit for tat" social strategy of reciprocal altruism shown to be effective by game theory and also exhibited by the most successful social species.

In fact, so far evolutionary theories of psychology are about the only ones that haven't been falsified, and various striking results of research and history bear it out very nicely. Of course, such results can just be written off as "evil" given that such a hypothesis isn't falsifiable in the first place. Maybe the Milgram experiment is a good indicator for whether someone will go to hell (ah, but then we'd expect religious correlations and...okay, forget logic).

[vhawk01]

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Exactly. But people would STILL sense that murder was wrong, whether it actually was or not. Which pretty neatly explains the world as we find it, no?

[/ QUOTE ]

The world's morality as we find it fits neatly with what we'd expect from a "tit for tat" social strategy of reciprocal altruism shown to be effective by game theory and also exhibited by the most successful social species.

In fact, so far evolutionary theories of psychology are about the only ones that haven't been falsified, and various striking results of research and history bear it out very nicely. Of course, such results can just be written off as "evil" given that such a hypothesis isn't falsifiable in the first place. Maybe the Milgram experiment is a good indicator for whether someone will go to hell (ah, but then we'd expect religious correlations and...okay, forget logic).

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Yes, thats basically what I was saying. I was just trying to demonstrate, in a pithy one-liner, that the idea that if God didn't exist, we would all think murdering was ok or that murder was, in fact, ok, is a type of false dilemma. We certainly would NOT feel that murder was ok, and in fact the issue of whether or not it actually IS (and lets not even get into what the 'is' here would entail) ok is basically irrelevant.