What we must accept if we accept materialism

How would God provide an acceptable ground for you?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

How would God let you know what his standard was?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

I have a response to this post at Message 83. It's been waiting around for a few days and it's getting lonely.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Hi randmanI've provided two carefully thought out responses to this post, and you haven't responded to either of them. I may be biased but I'd have thought discussing these issues would be more interesting than taking part in the rather silly 'Top Boffs Don't Believe In God' thread. (But there you are, there's no accounting for taste :rolleyes.This message has been edited by JavaMan, 02-17-2006 07:51 AM

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Unless you've received knowledge about that standard through a personal revelation from God, then you have to accept the word of someone else that a particular moral standard is God's standard. How does that provide the absolute certainty that you require?And even if you do have a personal revelation, would you necessarily abandon your current moral standards if they conflicted with those that God insisted were his absolute standards? What I'm suggesting here is that you have adopted some of your moral standards after a fair bit of deliberation, i.e. you have quite solid grounds for them, so why would you just abandon them without question on the say so of another sentient being?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Yes, and then we'd have no idea what the standard was.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Would that apply just to you or to everybody?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

I don't think you'd find many Christians accepting the position you've adopted in the last couple of posts. If morality were as certain as mathematics, there wouldn't be any more virtue in acting morally than in doing arithmetic.In most Christian theologies a Christian is no more certain in this secular sense than a non-Christian. What makes a Christian different is that, despite these secular uncertainties, he or she makes a leap of faith, accepting God and God's moral order regardless. When they talk about certainty they mean a spiritual certainty not a logical or mathematical certainty. I don't think we're actually that far apart in what we're saying. My disagreement with you is on what provides 'good grounds' for a moral judgement. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't believe in a spiritual ground underlying morality then morality is a practical affair, just the rules we use to live together in society. And because it's a practical affair we can use our reason and experience to make judgements about which rules are better than others. (And what 'better' means in a sentence like the last is precisely what moral philosophies like epicureanism and utilitarianism aim to define).

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

There's nothing to stop you taking that attitude even if there were a logical ground. What you're asking for is not to be given a logical ground for acting in a certain way, but to be compelled to act in that way. What does that have to to with what most people think of as morality?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Thanks for your response. And apologies for my delay. Unfortunately, with two small daughters to entertain I don't
get much time to think or post at the weekend! I certainly don't believe in an inborn conscience. (Very young children, though they're very sweet, certainly don't seem to have a conscience!) It seems to me that we develop a conscience as we grow, initially by mimicry of our parents, later by a more autonomous judgement that takes in other respected arbiters of right and wrong.I think discussions of morality can be a bit misleading, sometimes. The way we talk about it, you'd imagine that we're constantly having to take difficult moral decisions. Maybe I've had a sheltered life, but the real moral dilemmas I've had to face I could count on one hand (or maybe two!). Most of the time, I have a whole lifetime's worth of internalized moral rules to guide me. Sometimes experience forces to me to review these rules, and sometimes I force myself to review them, but it's pretty handy to have them all the same. Without them it would be pretty much impossible to act.I'm going to think a bit more about 'guilt'. I'm not sure offhand how it fits into my view of morality and conscience, except that it provides an internal sanction in addition to the social and legal sanctions that act upon us externally. I beg to differ on this again. Western legal systems have a Romano-Greek rather than a Judaic origin. The only Judaic element that has been retained is the Ten Commandments. I'm not saying this to denigrate the role of Christianity (it's clearly had an influential role, for good and ill), only to put that role into perspective.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

We're going round in circles a bit here. I'm going to take a few days to think before I respond.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible