The Official God FAQ

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Elok
That's why you shouldn't be the one who "always" steals the other's wallet. You should only steal wallets from unpopular people, or at least people who don't have guns or friends with guns. Or steal their wallets when somebody suspicious-looking is passing by to take the blame. Whatever circumstances dictate. There's not a strict dichotomy between Angel and Devil here. Very few, if any, people are entirely moral. Very few, if any, are entirely immoral, and those that come closest tend to be punished severely. The extremely moral rarely fare much better. The rest of us get by somewhere in between, and my challenge to you is, why shouldn't we? Even those of us who are skating a bit closer to the devil side of the equation, and doing better for it?

I think the only thing I'd disagree with there (assuming you're not giving sincere advice to wallet-snatchers, which of course you aren't) are the terms 'Angel' and 'Devil', which for me are metaphors for right and wrong.

[Cort Haus]

The question I would put to theists, is whether their attempts to live a moral existence is driven by the fear of being watched and being judged (with a nasty outcome if they fall short), or whether they would do the same if they had no Belief?

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Elok
Nothing amoral is divine IMO. It's when you segregate the two that you run into problems.

It's my belief that a true moral system can only come from a divine source, but divinity doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with morality. To me, this means that if there is no moral system defined by a supernatural entity, there is no moral system at all.

And if we're going to let morality go until we understand the supernatural, civilization will collapse long before we've even started to understand.

Civilization will only collapse if we have no rules to govern human behavior. I have a fairly complex system derived from my philosophical musings that is designed to facilitate the goal of understanding the supernatural.

Once that goal (universal omniscience) is reached, those rules can be discarded in favor of whatever is discovered.

[Zanarkand]

And since no one is commenting my post, I assume I have enlightened you all. Delightful, delightful.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Zanarkand
And since no one is commenting my post, I assume I have enlightened you all. Delightful, delightful.

:sigh:

Actually, I stopped reading when I got to "Nice FAQ, Cybershy."

However, I have now read your post in its profoundly dull and unenlightening entirety and the first question I'd like to ask is whether you consider the Bible to be fallible?

Welcome to Apolyton, btw.

[Cort Haus]

The second question is to ask you whether you can disprove the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
The question I would put to theists, is whether their attempts to live a moral existence is driven by the fear of being watched and being judged (with a nasty outcome if they fall short), or whether they would do the same if they had no Belief?

And my counterquestion: if you act in a certain way to fulfill your own compulsions, without providing a good explanation for them, does that make you better than the silly people who make up an explanation? And if so, in what sense? What makes anything better or worse than anything else? What is "moral?"

WRT Angel and Devil, I meant those terms to mean "absolutely 100% good" and "pure, unadulterated evil." Two things we have a hard time believing in since we rarely see them. Not literal angels and devils, no.

[Zanarkand]

I'm sorry you found my post dull, Cort, but that's more or less what I expected people to think when they have already decided for themselves that God doesn't exist.
Anywho, to answer the first question: No, I don't consider the Bible as fallible, because even though the Bible was written by man (which I am sure would be your next argument), I believe that the writers were guided by something we christians call the Holy Spirit, which I'm sure you've heard of. What it basically means, is that God made sure that nothing that was incorrect was written down.

Then to the second question: No, I can't. And I'm not planning on it. Maybe they exist, who knows..it would have been great fun. But personally I prefer to spend my energy on what I believe in, and not the things I don't believe in. That would be a waste of time..

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Elok
And my counterquestion: if you act in a certain way to fulfill your own compulsions, without providing a good explanation for them, does that make you better than the silly people who make up an explanation? And if so, in what sense? What makes anything better or worse than anything else? What is "moral?"

I seem to have missed your answer. However, I admit that I would have an opinion on the person who only declined to steal my wallet because there was a policeman standing there, compared to the person who did not wish to steal my wallet at all.

If there was always a policeman standing next to him, I might let him stay the night in my home, but I would certainly question the strength and quality of his morality.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I see morality as a set of social game-rules. Imperfect, incomplete, ambiguous, confusing, relative and contradictory - but I believe our societies to be more moral in many important respects than they were in the past 200, 100, even 50 years ago. I think that's progress of sorts.

I'm not saying absolute morality is a lie, in fact I was saying it was a hypothetical perfection. If it was historically absolute and perfect, it could perhaps be evidence for a (moral) God.

Between you, me, Lorizael and Zanarkand (BTW, why does an apparently Christian person have a name from a transparently Gnostic video game?), this thread is going to be veeeery cluttered soon.

Anyway, what you just said sounds self-contradictory to me: morality is ambiguous, but we're more moral than we were? How can you know A is B if you don't know what B is? And how can you say B is good?

We all believe in absolute morality as I think of it, though perhaps there's a better term; I mean morality as an unqualified, final rule. For any given situation, ideally the most moral action is the one we ought to take. If through human weakness we take a less moral action, that might be understandable, but the absolute moral stance is that we ought to choose morally. We may have different ideas about what the moral thing to do is, but nobody that I know of uses "morality" to mean "what you should do provided there's not more than a million bucks in it, you're not too hungry, tired or horny and there's nothing new on TV." At least, I hope I don't know anyone like that.

I'm not using it to refer to deontological ethics (morality as a set of plain rules), which I don't really subscribe to. My perspective is more virtue ethics.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Lorizael
It's my belief that a true moral system can only come from a divine source, but divinity doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with morality. To me, this means that if there is no moral system defined by a supernatural entity, there is no moral system at all.

Civilization will only collapse if we have no rules to govern human behavior. I have a fairly complex system derived from my philosophical musings that is designed to facilitate the goal of understanding the supernatural.

Once that goal (universal omniscience) is reached, those rules can be discarded in favor of whatever is discovered.

...I'm really not sure what you're getting at here. Are you arguing with me, or not? Sorry for the brief answers, but I'm juggling arguments and I don't understand yours very well.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Elok
BTW, why does an apparently Christian person have a
name from a transparently Gnostic video game

You should have seen what he called himself on the forum I first met him on. Which was before he became a Christian btw.

[Zanarkand]

BTW, why does an apparently Christian person have a name from a transparently Gnostic video game?

Oh, I just thought it was a great game. Sadly, I never got to finish it.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Zanarkand
I believe that the writers were guided by something we christians call the Holy Spirit, which I'm sure you've heard of. What it basically means, is that God made sure that nothing that was incorrect was written down.

Just out of curiosity - what about all the other scripts that also was written by guidance by god ? I mean that through human existence god has dictated lots of holy books with very different concepts and all of them inspired/directed by an unfallible god. Why don't you think that one of these scriptures are the real truth ?

Oh, and btw

[Elok]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I seem to have missed your answer. However, I admit that I would have an opinion on the person who only declined to steal my wallet because there was a policeman standing there, compared to the person who did not wish to steal my wallet at all.

If there was always a policeman standing next to him, I might let him stay the night in my home, but I would certainly question the strength and quality of his morality.

Yes, but is there some reason why he shouldn't want your wallet? Money is useful stuff, you know. Is there a logical reason why he shouldn't if there's no cop and you're half his size? These questions are my answer. Is wanting to do something for no good reason superior to wanting to do something out of self-interest of some kind? And if so, in what way are you superior? Logically? Idunno, the guy with a sound reason trumps the guy with no reason in my book. Ethically? It's ethics/morals under discussion in the first place. You can't appeal to the accused as his own judge.

I feel that you're begging the question here, assuming that you ought to be moral because, well, you ought to be moral. That's not an answer. No offense, but it's kind of a cop-out.