Moral Argument for God

Good! So you concede that without God there can be no objective absolutes such as good and evil or right and wrong. Like music there can only be patterns of behavior that lead to harmony or discord; destruction and suffering or life and pleasure; what is good for the survival and triumph of a species or what is bad for it.So we are back to what I said originally. Right and wrong do not exist objectively and absolutely. They are merely terms that have become associated with positive and negative behavior patterns.So this also means that when we feel guilt for an evil or wrong action we have not sinned against or separated ourselves from some abstract undefinable Unity. We have not done anything that can be proven to be an undefinable absolute wrong... rather this is a natural response designed to keep us on a path that ensures the survival of the species.So this also means that any outrage or sense of injustice we have at someone who supposedly did something "wrong" or "evil" is not a logical "righteous" reaction, but rather emotion, empathy, the built in species survival mechanism taking action and possibly a logical response to our own desires and our knowledge of the consequences of such actions. There is nothing inherently virtuous or meritorious in this preprogrammed sense of justice and righteousness. In fact merit and virtue are like right and wrong, just valuable survival mechanisms rather than valuable spiritual qualities that elevate us above the physical and take us deeper into the Unity which is God.Do you agree?BTW, sorry for misrepresenting you as an atheist. I guess I should say agnostic then?

It evolved somehow....? What does this have to do with what we are debating?

Good I'm glad you agree. This is what I have been saying from the beginning. I guess the problem was that you never believed in as Robin calls it "the mysterious absolute X" in the first place so you had no frame of reference to understand what believers mean when they appeal to a higher spiritual concept of absolute objective right and wrong. When we do so we are not appealing to a specific written out moral code as you seemed to originally think. We are saying that particular moral actions have absolute abstract qualities with spiritual effects. We are not saying that we have completey discovered or understood which action has which particular quality for every action under the sun. Some are easier to judge than others. In my mind it does more than belittle them. It destroys them. That is one big reason why I cannot be an atheist. I would no longer be able to feel empathy or a sense of justice or care about right and wrong because logically there is no reason to do so but for my own desires which mean nothing. And in my mind logic usually overules feeling. I would still be forced to feel these things, but this would be extremely painful to me as it would conflict with my worldview constantly. So why should I put myself through this? Why should I logically deny the depth and reality of what I feel? Why not just believe in God so that my mind and feelings and others around me can coexist in harmony? So I believe. To which I would ask, "so what?" What non-selfish and non-emotional reason is there for me to care? It does if you previously believed them to be "more". If there is nothing real in them, then to me they become nothing. They are like our dreams, just some meaningless thing that we make up in our minds that disappears when we are gone. To which I would ask, "why should I care?", and to which the only response is, "I feel that I should care, and in the long run I might be hurting myself by not caring."

Sure it does. What would be the point of that if we know it is fallacious? I would say, "mysterious". You say it is meaningless because we have none to few concepts or vocabulary words to describe It, but we all have this idea. And the idea is what matters. When we try to describe it we lose it.I'm going to borrow something Ifen showed me once: Yeah, kinda.

That is exactly correct. Well, if this were the ONLY thing I had to go on, then I probably would just be forced to put up with it and be an agnostic. But what I have found in Christianity and recently Buddhism has brought everything together. So because of this and because I trust in some other things, I can have faith in these mysterious absolutes and there is no disconnect between what I feel and what I think.

Gotta go to work... will reply to everyone else's comments later tonight.

I don't quite understand this question. No. It does not provide a justification for the moral code I come up with. It means that the sense I have of right and wrong is actually pointing towards a reality of right and wrong that has true significance rather than an empty arbitrary illusion of right and wrong.And also, this is not the ONLY reason. These statements are not equal. God is an entirely different thing than any of the other things you mention. God is the very core and source of reality, life, truth. I am choosing a way that my emotions can agree with my logical thoughts.

Please see my reply to Robinrohan's reply to your message. Why would this happen? This doesn't change the fact that they were still raised with moral values and still feel empathy and are still smart enough to realize what is best for them in the long run.All it means is that if I were an atheist and I were so inclined to be a murdering raping monster, I would feel no need to justify myself because there is no absolute wrong there to justify. That is ridiculous.It is more like jumping off a cliff. I know that by doing wrong I'm running towards a cliff of separation between myself and God. If I keep running eventually I'll fall off and die. "Dying you shall surely die." "A Branch cannot live apart from the vine..." "The hand cannot say to the foot 'Screw you'"... or something to that effect. And on the other hand, "anyone who does this [good] to the least of these does so to Me."

Nope. I just mean that if one particular thing: action, intent, context, etc.. the whole thing all together... If it's wrong. It is absolutely wrong. Wrong is a quality that this thing has like color or something only on the spiritual level. It causes division or separation from the Oneness... from God.I hope this helps clear up the confusion and helps you understand what I mean by absolute.

Right. We must consider everything. I am not so much interested as far as this debate goes in discovering what actually falls into the categories "right" and "wrong", just in determining whether these categories or qualities exist objectively and absolutely and what implications this has. The Abrahamic covenant and the mosaic law was not intended to be the "absolute" perfect all-encompassing law. It served to reveal the wrong in people's actions as well as to teach the people prophetic concepts that pointed to Christ as well as other things.Jesus said that, the law is no longer for us. We have the Spirit of God which searches out right and wrong much like the Dharma that you speak of.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 07-30-2005 12:52 AM

Thanks for your reply. That's why its always faith. Even if my eyes were opened and I saw a miracle, it would still be faith. Even if I were face to face with God, it would still be faith. Any time we except anything to be absolutely true, it is faith. We can all go up and feel the bark of a tree and accept it to be real, but this is faith that what we are feeling is real. Most of us do the same with right and wrong without even thinking. We just accept it as real because we feel it. There is no logical reason any of it must be real or true because all logic is based on presuppositions that are accepted by faith.Is there anything inherently virtuous or superior about living life without faith? Does it really make sense that in the interest of finding Truth, we should ensure that this will never happen by having faith in no Truth?Neway... I'm rambling off topic now... No, I understand completely where you're coming from, and that's fine. I really have enjoyed your comments here as it seems you are the only one who understands completely what I am saying.

I believe that you are right here. We are like gods in this sense, but if no One Mind exists, of which we are apart, then what are we? We are an illusion. We are many mindless processes serving to create an illusion manufacturing machine. But then there's the question, if no one is there to be decieved, illusion is a meaningless term.My point is that by losing a source of reality you cut your own throat and your own ability to add purpose and meaning as this is a supernatural thing. We must trace meaning and purpose back to a source. If we are the source, we must ask what are we? To which we can come up with a naturalistic answer which begins with no Mind. If there is God as the source, then we can either trace it back to us and view each of us as a gateway into this Mind of God, or take the naturalistic route back to the source of reality which IS the Mind of God.I hope that made sense... gotta go to work.