[civil] Whose utility is divine morality trying to maximize?

[loinburger]

Secular morality usually has the (stated) purpose of maximizing utility for mankind. There's disagreement as to how to do this, e.g. by creating a Libertarian utopia, or by creating a Socialist utopia, or by creating an industrialized Soviet Union, or by creating a Rwanda without any Tutsis in it, or whatever, but the stated purpose is still the same.

The question is whose utility divine morality is trying to maximize - sometimes divine morality has overlap with secular morality and has some obvious benefit for (some subset of) mankind, but other times God will command something that doesn't seem to have any obvious benefit for anybody e.g. "kill your son Isaac" or "cut off the tip of your penis" or whatever. Are these commands primarily intended to benefit mankind (or at least God's chosen subset of mankind), or are they primarily intended to benefit God in some tangible or abstruse way, or third option? As a concrete example, given the command that God's chosen people shouldn't wear clothes made of both wool and linen, is God issuing this command because mixed fabrics cause cancer and so the chosen people will benefit by not wearing mixed fabrics, or is God issuing this command because he arbitrarily dislikes mixed fabrics, or whatever?

[Bereta_Eder]

I just think some guy sat down and started thinking and maybe he was gifted or very sensitive and smart (or just pyscho) and said I'm going to benefit those villagers because I love my fellow man.
So he started thinking about what would benefit cells from not anarchistically multiplying and he said: not wearing mixed fabrics.
So he said in a thunderous voice, don't wear mixed fabrics god doesn't want you to, so the villagers stopped and he was happy if a bit mischeavous.


Now, I don't think that a sane intelligent man can actually believe that there is a god while thinking up commandments.

[Bereta_Eder]

But then he needed to form his homeys/gang and have easily recognizable handshakes so he said: god told me to tell you to cut your willies (or something), so that we all belong and be happy not wearing fixed fabrics.
And things evolved from there

[Elok]

Broadly speaking (and only for myself/my understanding of my religion) both God and Man, though we aren't really utilitarians. We also don't much care about the mixed fiber thing, or anything else from the OT that can't be rephrased as a metaphor for Jesus somehow. Some of the things we do are ultimately arbitrary, and exist solely to remind us that we were called to be apart, a la circumcision; others are imposed as a form of discipline, like fasting. It's not that eating meat on a Friday will give us heart disease or anything, it's a reminder that our bellies do not control us, plus a form of sacrifice.

[giblets]

masochistic humans

[loinburger]

Broadly speaking (and only for myself/my understanding of my religion) both God and Man, though we aren't really utilitarians. We also don't much care about the mixed fiber thing, or anything else from the OT that can't be rephrased as a metaphor for Jesus somehow. Some of the things we do are ultimately arbitrary, and exist solely to remind us that we were called to be apart, a la circumcision; others are imposed as a form of discipline, like fasting. It's not that eating meat on a Friday will give us heart disease or anything, it's a reminder that our bellies do not control us, plus a form of sacrifice.

The reason this came up today is because there are several conservative religious radio stations in my area, and today on one of them I heard somebody say that God was going to destroy America because people are getting gay married. I've heard this sort of thing before, but this is the first time that it didn't just go in one ear and out the other, and it left me a bit mystified. I've sometimes heard people say that they oppose gay marriage because e.g. it will destroy the fabric of the family or whatever, and while I disagree with them I can understand their logical process: gay marriage will harm humanity, therefore gay marriage is immoral. But what this guy seemed to be saying was that God disliked gay marriage for some arbitrary reason and so he was going to destroy both the people who were getting gay married (and their supporters) as well as the people who opposed gay marriage but were in the same geographic region as the sinners, and that's weird. Also it reminded me of this Oglaf strip that I have censored so that I could post it in this thread.

[giblets]

It's perfectly consistent with how some people interpret the story about Sodom and Gomorrah. If you disobey God he will **** you up.

[loinburger]

It makes sense to obey a destructive God, but what I'm wondering is if they believe that God has some justification for issuing the commands that he issues (and if so then what is that justification, e.g. "gay sex causes damage to your soul" or "gay sex is gross" or whatever), or if they believe that God's commands are completely arbitrary ("I'm bored, might as well issue some more commandments"), or something in between.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Are gay hating Christians majority or minority in the US? Over here they largely just don't give a tiny.

[loinburger]

My assumption is that gay hating Christians are a minority, but I have no idea how you'd even construct a halfway objective poll on that.

In my admittedly limited experience there are a lot of people whose kneejerk reaction to anything related to gay sex is one of revulsion, but who really don't give a **** about gay sex. Analogously, if you were to ask me "what is your opinion on felching" then I'd say "yeck" which might give the impression that I am morally opposed to felching when in reality I really don't give a ****.

[giblets]

It makes sense to obey a destructive God, but what I'm wondering is if they believe that God has some justification for issuing the commands that he issues (and if so then what is that justification, e.g. "gay sex causes damage to your soul" or "gay sex is gross" or whatever), or if they believe that God's commands are completely arbitrary ("I'm bored, might as well issue some more commandments"), or something in between.

God's ways are mysterious. You shouldn't question God's motives, that's disrespectful.

[loinburger]

"Abraham, I want you to kill your son."
"Why?"
"Just because."
"Okay, works for me."

[Sava]

i just ate a hot dog

[Sava]

my mistake:

a cheddar brat

[Jon Miller]

I think that you are considering the wrong question or the wrong framework.

For those of you who are Christian, it is valuable to remember what Jesus said (Mark 12):
30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The Bible is a story of the relationship between God and man (in specific settings, Israel (approximately 3000 years ago) for the Old Testament and through the revelation of Jesus Christ (approximately 2000 years ago) is the New Testament). So for the specific case of mixed fabrics one should consider how it might have effected the relationship between God and man or between men. Most of the Old Testament at least is about the relationships between men (a lot of it is about how badly men treat each other and how they shouldn’t do that).

So what is considered here is relationships, the subject is relationships and not individuals (either God or men). What is possibly ‘maximised’ is relationships.

Sometimes I think I have a very clear analogy to physics or mathematics but it is not coming to my mind now (and I never properly wrote it down). Basically instead of considering the set of benefits for each member in the set of mankind (or the sets of mankind + God), consider the space of possible sets of functions between the sets of mankind + God. What actions on the part of each member of the set of mankind (+ God) will maximise this space of possible sets of relationships (or functions) between the set of mankind (+ God)?

JM
(edit: also obviously the Bible is told from the perspective of man, which is more valuable for us as men but also a bit problematic because we are such big screw ups.)