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Junior Member (Idle past 5282 days) Posts: 13 From: Detroit, MI Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Is God Evil? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
Murder is generally considered an 'unrighteous killing'. But on what basis can God killing be deemed unrighteous: he's only taking back something that; a) belongs to him
German purity and the lives of the Jews that refused to leave the Reich belonged to Hitler and the German Volk.
b) he's promised he'll take back Hitler promised he'd solve the Jewish problem.
Surely you have no objection to God doing what he likes with his own property Yes - I have objections to anybody doing what they like with their own (claimed) property when it comes into contention with other rights and freedoms of other beings. If you want to torture your dog, or your child or detonate your nuclear bomb...I'm going to object. Iano - your argument must devolve into: What God does defines what is right (or is by defition right), therefore you can't say it is evil. This can be said of any person or being, making the argument simply a case of special pleading. Is Yahweh evil? I think that anybody who kills 15,000 people who have the gall to complain about how harsh they have been is pretty much up there with the worst of them. The only moral system in which it is not evil is the one where whatever Yahweh does is good. Agreed?
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
Where did you get the idea that anything belongs to anyone ultimately. I mean, mankind deciding ownership of this or that doesn't alter God's ultimate ownership of it. That being the case - then your attempt to enable us to understand by saying "Surely you have no objection to God doing what he likes with his own property" is silly. But let's think of two possibilities: 1. God does not exist/is not the only owner in reality.In which case - I object to some of the things that owners do with their property. 2. God exists and is the ultimate owner.In which case - I object to some of the things that the only owner might do with its property. The first thing to say is that God takes everyones life. In the sense that there isn't anyone who dies without Gods say so (explicit or implicit)...The second thing to say is that this life on earth isn't the main event. So - at the heart of things - murder is not morally wrong? God willed the death - life isn't the main event and 'even if a person ends up in eternal torment, this isn't a bad thing'.
The fourth thing to say is things aren't always as they seem. Suffering would be generally considered a bad thing - no one likes pain and we've whole industries dedicated to assuaging same (whether the pain is emotional, psychological, physical or spiritual). But pain is a way of telling us that there is something wrong. Pain is something that cuts through the noise and gets our attention. Pain is used by God to tell us that there is something seriously wrong with us (there is, we're lost sinners as born). Either suffering is going to get our attention and wake us up to the true, eternal resolution of suffering (God). Or it's not - in which case our problems have only begun. This is the kind of rationalisation madmen make before they commit an atrocity, don't you think?
I think that anybody who kills 15,000 people who have the gall to complain about how harsh they have been is pretty much up there with the worst of them.
I'm not sure what case you're referring to here Mod. quote: Numbers 16:41-49, shortened for clarity.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined:
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Could you explain further what's silly about this? You were trying to explain to us why God gets to do what he wants by explaining that one can do what one likes with ones property. I disagreed, and suggested that one can't do what one likes with ones property, with examples. You denied that anybody can own property. So the concept of property and ownership seems a bit silly to bring up.
Your objection took the form of an attempt to usurp/dilute Gods understandable rights (as undoubted owner) with bootstrap rights plucked from where I don't know Not at all. You made that bit up. I was just pointing out that your analogy of property rights doesn't make sense. Using our temporal morality - one is free to do as one pleases to the ends of pursuing life and happiness (and importantly, property (or estate), according to Locke) as long as so doing doesn't impinge on those same rights as held by others. The point being raised is that Yahweh went massively against this principle, which we call evil.
This is often seen in peoples applying Gods command that we not kill each other - to God. If you understood that your God-given rights viz-a-viz other men had nothing to do with your God-given rights before God (which are limited) then many aspects of your argument could be laid aside. Remember when I said that "your argument must devolve into: What God does defines what is right (or is by defition right), therefore you can't say it is evil. This can be said of any person or being, ". Which it clearly has.
Understood. Now my question is: what basis for your objection? I hope that is now clear. The rights to enjoy one's property is coming into conflict with the rights of others to live. By that simplified explanation (I hope I don't have to regurgitate all of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau etc etc just to explain the basis of the objection) God is wicked. Obviously if you define God as being without sin, then the entire point is moot. You think that someone that kills others is morally right by virtue of its entity, and I don't.
God permitting people to sin doesn't mean God approves of sin. But no one dies unless God permits it: whether by sinful murder or righteous flooding. So why is murder bad? Not why is it a sin. But why should I have a problem with murderers? They have done God's will, and the person has not been terminated, only their body, and they carry on. So what's problematic about murder?
It's the same kind of rationalisation that has people with sore teeth go to the dentist. I can see you're not up for discussion this morning.. Well - it's one thing to say 'My tooth hurts, I don't like that but now I'll get a professional to look at it to avoid getting an infection and dying' and its another thing to say "I'll kill 15,000 people which they will find painful. But that pain will wake other people up! It will show other people that they have strayed. So that they might wake up and see the true path!" The latter is the kind of thing Mohammad Atta may have said, or anybody else to justify a terrible crime. By equating humanity to a single corpus - you can justify 'cutting out the cancer' or 'amputating a gangeronous limb' or 'purifying the Volk' with this kind of reasoning.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined:
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If you have a sense of doing what you like with what you consider your element of propriety of an object then you should get the point (even if, at the end of the day, God actually owns everything) I get the point - but I disagree. Let us consider reality without a god in which a scientist creates a fully sentient android. I would argue that although the scientist has legal rights of ownership over the android, he doesn't have the moral right to torture or kill the android. Likewise, I do not think that Yahweh has moral rights to kill humans.
He kills men for their sin and punishes them for their sin. And died himself for sin and was punished for sin. How so massively against this principle? Their right to life conflicts with his property rights, and he asserts property rights over their right to life, thus impinging on the principle of being free to do as one pleases to the ends of pursuing life and happiness (and importantly, property (or estate), according to Locke) as long as so doing doesn't impinge on those same rights as held by others.
The current example we are dealing with is whether it is good that we can do what we like with our goods (within the confines of our propriety) - as mentioned above. If we're agreed with that principle then God can do whatever he likes and that is (due to total propriety in his case) good. Then the answer is no, as per the android example in the atheist universe. So there exists a disharmony between our beliefs about good and evil and what you think god's beliefs about good and evil are.
If our life is Gods property then how do you arrive at the notion that we have a right to life? It is my view that all humans having a right to life is good. Any entity which views things differently than this is at best amoral. If it acts in such a way as to deny what I see as a right to life, then that entity is evil.
Murder is bad for us to do for the reasons you've already given: God-devolved morality governing human behaviour - which Locke/Rousseau/Hobbe seem to agree with. OK - so it isn't inherently immoral. God is fine with murder?
It's not Gods will that a person be murdered anymore than it is a mothers will that her son become a junkie. A mother does not permit her son to become a junkie. You said that God had to give his say so before someone dies, even the murdered. Seems to me then, that God could withhold his consent if he so willed it. Which seems to be equivalent to every person who is murdered dying as per God's will. And I said that if a murderer has carried something out which was God's will (the person dying), why is murder considered immoral?
You'll have heard of the thief on the cross. Facing death is one way in which people are brought face to face with their decision for/against God. We might suppose some of those 15,000 became believers. They almost certainly became believers since they were presumably in Heaven or Hell at that point - given God's wrath I'd suppose the latter.
And if there were none righteous amongst the 15,000 - but God assembled those 15,000 naysayers in one place and one time to serve a secondary purpose (outside the primary purpose of personal punishment and judgement on each)? That is what I thought you were initially proposing: that God killed them as a warning to others. Actually - in the story God was going to kill everyone because of a general 'murmuring' amongst the people, but Moses and Aaron placated him (and not for the first time one or the other of them had to stay God's hand from a rampant massacre).
I think you're applying the limitations of men and what they can possible achieve with the the boundless possibilities of God and what he can achieve. I'm not. I'm just saying that you are making the same excuses for God's violent actions as men make for the same actions. It sounds like you are the one applying the limitations of men on the boundless possibilities of God. You are also the one using manmade concepts such as propriety and ownership to justify god's violence. If your position was: What God did was righteous. We might not know why it was righteous, but ours is not to reason why. I'd not be arguing with you and you would be being consistent with the concept of not applying mankinds limitations on god. I'm simply saying that by the standards we judge other humans (and even other animals) God would be judged as evil. Your counter seems to be that human's morality might be able to square with God being good by trying to invoke divine universal property rights. My counter is that human morality also says that where a conflict of rights exists then there might be a moral problem and I think depriving 15,000 people of a right to life for no reason other than 'I am allowed to under my property rights and I didn't like something they did' is definitely in the immoral territory.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined:
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Here you've separated the 'creator' from the 'moral agent' (let's call that moral agent: society) and unintentionally skewed things. So let's unskew things by supposing society to have created a fully sentient android.. Supposing for a moment that this android was promised that certain consequences would follow his own free decisions. Would society have a moral right to impose due consequences attaching to the androids free decisions? Including the inflicting of punishment and removal of life? This is a different argument that doesn't require worrying about androids or property rights. You might as well ask does society have the right to impose penalties on its members. The answer is yes. The question is, what is the limit of those penalties that society can morally (from our point of view) go to. I suggest complaining about society would not be a justifiable reason to enact a death penalty - and threatening to kill potentially hundreds of thousands and actually killing tens of thousands in retaliation of that 'crime' is an immoral act.
We'll have seen by now whether you'll have permitted your androids to decide to wreak havoc on earth or whether you'll feel morally authorised to ..er..curb their behaviour. Self defence is an entirely different kettle of fish. If they were 'wreaking havoc' on a planet that was in a different galaxy and they presented no threat to us in any way...and by 'wreaking havoc' that means 'complaining when 200 of them were executed by us for inciting a rebellion against our rule which had seen them spend years upon years on a desolate rock face with nothing but hope of a promise fulfilled'.
Fair enough. But I was enquiring into how you suppose someone elses property: supplied and sustained by them to you - under condition, is a right of yours? If I may, you sound like a tenent who quits paying the rent compiaining about your landlords taking you to court to seek your eviction. I don't think my life is someone else's property. To quote Locke: " every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his".
Morality devolved from God - which states murder wrong cannot be something God is fine with?? Is that a question? I was just saying that since there are no negative side effects of murder - why does God want us not to do it?
What's of interest, like I say, is whether we can align what we (by consensus) think is good-in-principle with what God thinks good Indeed - and I'm basically arguing that we can't.
A mother does not permit her son to become a junkie.
She does permit as soon as she cuts loose the apron strings I'd hardly call that permission. It is more a case of being resigned to the fact. You brought this permission up in a 'God gives us life and then takes it away' context. A mother does not have this kind of control over her children: a point I think you were trying to make in your ownership argument.
So when one person is murdered by another, God isn't willing it actively (necessarily) but he permits the murderer his own wills expression. According to you, murder has no negative consequences - possibly has some positive consequences - and it does not go against God's will. Yes?
One such area is proprietry and I think the sense we have instilled in us regarding that area works well enough when considering God, the owner and us (arguably excluding our will but including our earthly life), the possession. Right - but according to our understanding of property rights, there limits to what we are allowed to do with our own property. Yes?
Hopefully you'll have explained further on where this right to life comes from. It comes from us. We mutually agree each of us has a right to life. Anything you do with your property needs to respect other people's right to life. That is what we think is good. When you do something with your property that causes loss of life, on the whole we think that bad. We agree there are exceptions. Being angry at someone for complaining about a series of executions does not qualify as an exception in our moral sphere.
God evicting a tenent who won't pay the due rent invokes proprietry rights you might agree with. As would his removing a person from a building which is about to fall down. I understand. And what I am saying is that this view is not in accord with our morality. We don't see people as merely 'hiring' their life and that it can be taken away for not paying 'rent'. If Hitler claimed that jewish physical bodies owed their existence to the labour of the German folk and he was evicting the jews from their bodies...I'd still regard him killing them all as immoral - even if he was right. If God's attitude is that I am merely renting this body at his pleasure - then I consider God to have an immoral position. If he acts as if this was true, I'd regard God's disregard for human life as immoral. Your argument seems to require that the state of being biologically alive has no value and that taking that state away from somebody is not depriving them of something. Either that, or you want to argue that being deprived of that value is suitable punishment for the crimes they committed. I disagree with that.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
The android might be sentient but its not a human being and isn't a 'member' of the moral agency involved in setting up the parameters for it's behaviour and enforcing transgressions of same. Once the android has to interact with other humans it becomes a member of society.
Do you remember the point I made about saying 'I just touched' a white hot substance and the inappropriateness of complaining about the burns received? Yes. Are you suggesting that god is an amoral agent like a white hot substance? God is kind of like the Boxing Day Tsunami - a dangerous but mindless killer who it would be ludicrous to blame morally? I suspect not. You seem to think the correct response to complaining about God is for God to kill the complainer. If you touch something that is hot, you get burned. You pick a fight with Tyson, you get beaten up. You complain about God, he kills you. The one act leads to the other. What I am suggesting is that if God is a moral agent capable of making decisions - then killing people for complaining is an immoral act just like Tyson would be being immoral if he beat an eight stone weakling up for disagreeing with him. I refer you once again to the bloody tyrants defense: "Look what you made me do,", says God, "I'm a reasonable guy, I did all these things for you - but that wasn't good enough for you. I have a lot of responsibility and when one my children misbehaves I have to chastise them.". As if this line of reasoning justifies killing those that disagree with you. Not so much Father God as Godfather: And I see them both as immoral.
I'm not sure your getting the wrathful aspect of Gods character Mod. Perhaps you've lulled by the "come to friendly Jesus" brigade and have forgotten why it is he came.. Eh? I'm talking about God killing lots of people because he gets angry at them complaining about his blood thirstiness, about how God is morally wicked for his disproportionate reactionary violence...and you counter with the hypothesis that I think God is too friendly? Is God worse than I had thought? How does that support your position? Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
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