Argument on CARM answering several threads where the Bible was called "evil" and God was called "evil." Of course they were totally beyond listening to any sort of argument. So I began to try a strategy of playing their own ethical axioms off against their criticisms of the Bible. I boiled it down to an arguemnt that they could not present me with their own ethical systems that defined what makes something good or evil without dipping into the repository of Chrsitian memories. That is without turning to the very source they call "evil."
In the original thread only one person even ventured an ethical system, which was Socratic. No one else even tried to answer the question.

this is the follow up thread there I hold their feet to the fire over this problem.


In the discussion about morality, only one atheist even tried to come up with a meta ethical theory and he never answered my questions about it. So without any idea of what you are talking about, why one thing is good and another isn't, you blithely go on your way declaring the bible evil and God is no good and all his actions are evil. But you can't tell mew that means or why?


I suggest this is a prime proof that atheism is just an ideology. you are just repeating things the atheist opinion leaders tell you to think, you "free thinkers" (LOL) "Bible baaaaaaad" So you repeat it, but have no idea what it really means.

Most of them express a set of values, which would be the beginning of an ethical system. Those values center around not hurting people. But that is certainly so very contradictory. Examples of Christ's teachings to help people and love and not hurt them, many atheists express indignation, one even refused to accept forgiveness (although that person was a wiccana and not an atheist--I've seen atheists say similar things).

so your values are helping and not hurting but when one sees that this actually comes form the Chrsitian value system that used to animate western culture, then you express indignation.

Just one more sense in which atheism proves to be philosophically contradictory and bankrupt.


They came down to a contradiction in that in this therad many tried alluding to social values in society and asserting that we can secularize the values of Western cutlure. But I point out that those values largely come frmo the bible which they say is evil.

so they want to replaces the values of an "evil" set of teachings with values dervied from that set of teachings.


W.Riley says:

One human lives in a time and place were slavery is immoral: = A.
Another human lives a time and place were slavery is moral: = B.
I live in the in the same time and place as A and believe that slavery is immoral and that there is no objective(universal) moral standard.
Which one is more moral? A or B.
Since, I am the one answering the question, the correct answer is A. This argument is subjective, based upon my belief that there is no objective moral standard, my relation to A and B and my own belief.
Kind of like stating, I think anyone who likes to drink ice tea should be shot, admitting that taste in drinks is a subjective measure. So it becomes clear that I can criticize subjective. Since I have no proof of an objective moral standard and a subjective can be criticized, I insist that A is more moral.

Do you have any evidence of an objective moral standard?

Meta:

your answer doesn't support your contention. You can't be both a realtivist and an objectivity at the same time. you cant' say moralitiy is relative ot the culture and then say culture X is immoral.

come on their culture back then understood that stuff. that was moral from their point of view. fi it's relative than that means its relative to the point of view. you can't complain about that.

you call yourself relativist but think like an objective morality guy.

Graffit:

but this doesn't answer why there were people who thought slavery was wrong and the lived in a time and place where it was right...where did that idea come from, how did they come to that conclusion when common consensus was opposite from their personal feelings. Why were they the ones who changed society...seems like the strong would have stopped the weak in this situation.

Meta: of course it's very easy to prove that the underground rail and the Abolition movment road got their anti-slavery values from the Bible. They have thousands of sermons about it where they appeal to the Bible for anti-slavery sentiment. The sourther slave owners did too but they had a vested interest in reading it that way. The Abolitionists just read it their way becasue they believed that's what it reallys said. All they got out of their stand was pain and hardship.


Peirs answered by Emuse:

Quote:
Originally Posted by piers View Post
If I rape one of your family members because I think that is the right thing to do. Am I wrong?
A moral position judges an action irrespective of who carries that action out. Any action that you don't want to be on the receiving end of you call "wrong" and you cannot want to be raped by definition so must consider that action wrong.

If you then consider it "right" for you to do it then you end up calling the same action both right and wrong and end up contradicting your own moral system. This is one area where moral conflict comes from ... when we want to do something to someone else that we wouldn't done to ourselves.

Meta: Where is he getting that answer? Anyone recognize what he's talking about. A little thing called "The Golden Rule?" Where's that from?

Phrontist says:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
they can't show why their approbations and disapprobations matter

Phrontist
To whom should they matter? To an atheist, they matter to us - which for us, also answers why they matter. We made 'em up based on what we are and our common experience. That's why they're relevant and address our lives.

What you mean is that they don't matter in an ultimate sense, which is fine with me, because I don't believe there IS an ultimate sense in which they CAN matter - because there's no God, therefore no ultimate perspective.

I'm happy to have human morality, by and for humans. And the recognition that we do it ourselves can only improve things - we can afford to be flexible and change when we need to. You know the old joke "doc, it hurts when I do this" "well, don't do it!" - if you think God told you to do it, you're not allowed to stop doing it!

Of course they dont' really matter is my original argument. That you can't replace the repository of Western ethical ferment, which is largely informed by the Bible, with anything meaningful that would not be relative and discorded when your whims suggest it. So here he as much as admits, "yes, that's right I don't care."

But then of cousre one must wonder what exactly is being said when they say the Bible is evil? that seems pretty meaningless since ethical standard are just relative and discordable and have no ultimate meaning.

they are really just saying "boo, I don't like the Bible, booo Bible."


Alexhansen

As far as our morals go, we get ours from the same places everyone else gets theirs; society's rules, parents/family and ourselves.

which means, the Bible! Because it's common knowledge that Bible is a major soruce for Western culture. I said you can't do this without dipping into the repository of Chrsitian memories and there it is.



HRG

this is the prize comment. My old freind and sparing partner Hans (HRG) says:

"Good" and "bad" are words of human language, just like "yellow" or "courageous". Thus it is our use in context which defines their meaning.

ahaha Groovy. If good and bad are meaningless terms that we just use for our own amuzement then what difference does it make to say "The Bible is evil?"

Aren't really just confirming my whole point that they have no clear meaning to this statement?