If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out...

[iKotomi]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

People that argue that morality is subjective have to realize that that is an opinion not a fact. If there exists a universal standard of right and wrong, theoretically, an action can be either in accordance to or in violation of the universal law, aka, an objective measure. One possible way for such a universal law to exist is the existence of some God.

This for the most part is absolutely unprovable, but if God existed and if he had a universal measure, for example a set of rules like the 10 commandments, then morality is in fact objective and not subjective. This is why religions tend to insist that you are all bad people doomed to eternal suffering if you don't use your get out of jail free card.

Once you have the premise of a universal measure, there are ways to set up objective means to determining what is immoral. This is pretty much the premise of Kant's Categorical Imperative, which while creating a system of determining immorality through reason, had the necessity of some sort of god given universal law to justify that this reason based morality is actually valid.

I guess the main gist is that, if god exists, which you can't prove or disprove, then morality can in fact be objective. Though I haven't read Kant in a while, so it is probable that one can construct an argument that the Categorical Imperative applies without the necessity for the existence of god.

 

[Felix007]

apologies if this was already stated..

ah, i love this sort of thing. this is a simple competence vs. performance issue as found in linguistics.

acting moral, whatever that means for wherever you happen to find yourself, is really just altering your intrinsic morality to fit some particular situation that your intrinsic morality is somehow incompatible with. you're essentially bending yourself to the will of some kind of consensus. under this consensus-based approach, i find it unlikely that anyone in, say, Canada would object to someone altering or suspending their morality wherein they believe that killing Canadians is, as Wilfred Brimly would say, "the right thing to do".

but anyway, whether or not you judge it ("being moral only because you're afraid of repercussion") to be immoral would depend on your own sense of morality. ;)

Certainly, I'm not arguing that morality is objective, and every person has a different definition of what makes something moral. It's likely a mix between personal judgment and consensus opinion (as an example, try to find someone that finds murdering infants moral), hence the idea of a Moral Zeitgeist.

It's hard to list too many more examples without merely delving into an ad populum argument.

Edit:

This for the most part is absolutely unprovable, but if God existed and if he had a universal measure, for example a set of rules like the 10 commandments, then morality is in fact objective and not subjective. This is why religions tend to insist that you are all bad people doomed to eternal suffering if you don't use your get out of jail free card.

Does that not make God's morality entirely arbitrary? God could say that slavery is just, and you would be required to follow after it.

While I haven't read up on Kant for a while either, I was under the assumption his premises were based entirely on a God enforcing objective morality? I may be incorrect, it's something I haven't looked at in quite some time.

 

[LKV]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

i read an article a while ago where someone theorized that morality might be innate, and that there are universal components to human morality along the lines of there being universal components to human language. i don't remember the details of the paper, but i can try to dig it up if anyone is interested. it might provide some arguments towards a soft objective morality or some such thing.

edit: the guy's name is John Mikhail

 

[JetSetDizzy]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

Wow this thread is totally serious. Thread title had me fooled lol. I completely beleive in God. If everything is just randomly here by coincidence then there's no point in doing anything, because it doesn't matter. I would certainly find it hard to care about my life, other than just enjoying myself as much as possible before i cease to exist?
I also think that its hard to understand free will with an all knowing God (just because he knows whats going to happen doesnt mean it was forced on you?), but its even harder to understand it without God. Surely your reaction to any given situation is purley based on your genetic dispositions and you enviormental stimuli up to that point if you have no soul and are just some coincidence of chemistry. It could probably be boiled down to a science of a million little causes for each effect.

 

[smilingsaint]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

this was an unusual thread title, it faked me out at first.

i am curious though, can anyone in this thread provide an argument that god, zues, allah or whoever is more likely to exist than santa claus or the tooth fairy?

as a side note, has anyone noticed the staggering disparity in the quality or arguments (and posts) on this subject between those supporting religion and those opposing it? some these supporting arguments are barely a step above "i know you are, but what am i".