What is Morality?

[CaptainFritz28]

Which is an opinion based on your faith in the existence of the Christian God (and of that God's authority which makes the Bible an unassailable source of perfect truth). None of the rest of us can change your faith/belief, so why even bother to start this thread and ask the question of morality to the rest of us to which you have already decided on an unassailable answer that seems to deem that all other possible answers are wrong?

Don't be so arrogant. You have an ultimate standard as well, and are biased towards it. So do I. So does Jamie, Bert, Crazy A, and all the rest. The fact that each of us believe we are right does not mean we should not try to determine what morality is. Of course I think I'm right - why else would I believe what I do? It is a question to be asked for the sake of discussion.

I'm not trying to be arrogant. I'm genuinely curious as to why you want to have the discussion.

It came up in a different thread, and we decided it needed it's own, so I started this one. Sorry, I misunderstood the meaning of your other post.

[Jamiet99uk]

But we can explain where the author of the book came from.

The characters in the book are not be able to.

If you wrote a computer program with sentient ai in it, and made certain rules in that program, the ai would not be able to understand how you bypass the rules, except that you can because you are the creator of them.

Nor could the AI conceive of a wider existence.

We can.

[Jamiet99uk]

On the subject of morality:

Why did God invent Satan?

[Jamiet99uk]

Why, in particular, did God set the trap of original sin?

Obviously God set Adam and Eve a capricious test, and pretended not to witness the outcome. What a charlatan the Bible makes God out to be!

[CaptainFritz28]

But we can explain where the author of the book came from.

The characters in the book are not be able to.

If you wrote a computer program with sentient ai in it, and made certain rules in that program, the ai would not be able to understand how you bypass the rules, except that you can because you are the creator of them.

Nor could the AI conceive of a wider existence.

We can.

Let's say that you write into the program that the ai can conceive of existence outside of the program. Does the ai understand it? No. Can the ai conceive it? Yes. That's a silly argument against it.

[CaptainFritz28]

I'm copy-pasting this here for the benefit of those who don't look at the politics sub-forum:

A parent brings a child into the world knowing full well that there will be hardship, that their child will disobey them, and that punishment will be necessary. They know that there may be harm done to many people because of their child. And yet, are they unjust and unloving for having a child? Of course not!

If a parent punishes their child for disobeying them, and does not allow them to grow up a spoiled brat but corrects their wrongs with discipline, are they unjust? Are the parents unloving and cruel if that child gets cancer at 60 years old, since the parents knew that that might be a result of their having a child?

No. On the contrary, a parent who does not punish their child, and who lets them do whatever they please without consequence is considered an unloving and poor parent.
If a parent does not allow their child free will but controls their every action, never allowing them to make a decision contrary to the parent's, they are considered cruel and unjust.
Is it the parent's fault that the child disobeys them? Is it the parent's fault that the child does not submit to their every command? No! If the parent does not spoil their child, but disciplines them when they disobey and allows them free will, the fault lies to the child when they cause mayhem against the parent's advice.

God knew we would mess up. And yet, to force us to conform to every command of His would be far more cruel than punishing us when we disobey Him. Giving us the free will to obey or deny Him is the most loving thing possible. Punishing us when we disobey Him is the most just thing possible. Providing forgiveness and mercy at NO COST to us, but only sacrifice of His own is the most loving, gracious, and merciful thing He could do! When a parent sacrifices themself for their child's sake, they are considered heroes! Why must we deny this same title to God?
Sure, He created us knowing there would be sin, knowing that there would be consequences of sin, and knowing that free will would lead to many denying and disobeying Him. But it is not His fault that we choose to do so.

The fact that God gives us free will, forgives us when we disobey Him, and sacrificed Himself for our sake is not cruel, nor unjust or unloving. It is quite the opposite.

[CaptainFritz28]

Why, in particular, did God set the trap of original sin?

Obviously God set Adam and Eve a capricious test, and pretended not to witness the outcome. What a charlatan the Bible makes God out to be!

A trap is something which you have not been warned of, nor do you know the consequences of. God clearly told Adam the rules and outcome of breaking the rules. It was not a trap. Unless committing grand theft and receiving a prison sentence for it is a trap, too?

[Crazy Anglican]

But we can explain where the author of the book came from.

I think you’re doubling down on something that operates on an equivocation. The analogy is clear. The author is something not part of the plot line of the book, therefore it doesn’t make sense to ask who wrote the author. Yes, the author in this case had a birth (we have a perspective that the characters in the book don’t have since we are on the level of the author not the characters). It simply doesn’t make sense for the characters to ask “who wrote the author?”.

Similarly, if God is outside of time as it’s creator then he doesn’t have to have a creation point within the timeline he himself created. If there are other factors in which He himself was created or not; it really isn’t something that affects us within our time (that He created).

The equivocation is that you’re insisting the characters are on the level of the author, and they clearly are not. Just like the AI isn’t the programmer. Any analogy to illustrate any concept would break down if you insist on inserting false values.

God = author; humans = characters

To say “We can conceive of …” Is to fundamentally change the analogy to.

God = author; humans= other authors who can conceive of the author’s birth

It doesn’t show that the analogy breaks down; it merely asserts different values without any basis for it.


It’s basically why “Well who created God?” Doesn’t immediately have people abandoning their religion in droves and never has. It’s a flawed argument.


A being that exists outside of our time doesn’t have to abide by the rules of our time, by definition. It isn’t an assertion that such a being exists, it only points out that the challenge doesn’t really do much.

[Crazy Anglican]

On the subject of morality:

Why did God invent Satan?

God created Lucifer.

Lucifer created Satan by rebelling against God.

[Jamiet99uk]

On the subject of morality:

Why did God invent Satan?

God created Lucifer.

Lucifer created Satan by rebelling against God.

But God knew that would happen, therefore Satan was part of God's design.

[Crazy Anglican]

On the subject of morality:

Why did God invent Satan?

God created Lucifer.

Lucifer created Satan by rebelling against God.

But God knew that would happen, therefore Satan was part of God's design.

and you're assuming that God only knows one possible future (the one you know) an all knowing God knows all possible futures because he's all knowing. The fact that Lucifer chose to rebel is not God's fault simply because God didn't force his submission.

[Crazy Anglican]

Again this is just a variation of the argument jbg cited earlier. Here is the answer to it. I just cut and pasted it from earlier in the thread.

It borders on a strawman? There are implicit limitations on God's knowledge, power, and love presented in it. For instance,

1) Maybe God knows all possible futures and always has. If He knows the paths of all possible choices that seems a bit more all knowing than the God that you presented who only knows the path that we chose?

2) God in His omnipotence has made a universe quite finely tuned to allow life, but still makes eternity the aim. It even makes room for Neil DeGrasse Tyson's, "No this is a universe that is actively trying to kill us."

3) God allows free will so that we can grow and our existence here have meaning even if it means that some will reject Him. Like any good suitor, who wants to be chosen, He will accept no as an answer.

[mOctave]

And then there is the problem that the accepted Bible was written by men around the year 180 AD, when Christ died in around the year 30 AD, and his apostles may have made it to year 90 AD. The earlier versions of the bible, some of which were probably written by eye witnesses, were destroyed by the Church during its purges of people, thoughts, and books.

Not sure where you're getting 180 AD from here. Seems like most sources agree that the New Testament was written anywhere from 33-80 AD, and definitely complete by the end of the first century Anno Domini. You're going to have to provide a lot of evidence for your claims here.

I'm not sure about "most sources." It's certainly church tradition that the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the books that bear their names, but in reality the books were probably just inspired by the apostles' oral tradition.

From Wikipedia, although I'm sure you could find it elsewhere as well:

According to early church tradition, originating with Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD), the gospel was written by Matthew the companion of Jesus, but this presents numerous problems. Most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by a male Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and nontraditional Jewish values and who was familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.

Most critical scholars reject the early church tradition linking the gospel to John Mark, who was a companion of Saint Peter, and it is now generally agreed that it was written anonymously for a gentile audience, probably in Rome, sometime shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.

Most modern scholars agree that the main sources used for Luke were a), the Gospel of Mark, b), a hypothetical sayings collection called the Q source, and c), material found in no other gospels, often referred to as the L (for Luke) source. The author is anonymous; the traditional view that Luke the Evangelist was the companion of Paul is still occasionally put forward, but the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters. The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.

John reached its final form around AD 90–110, although it contains signs of origins dating back to AD 70 and possibly even earlier. Like the three other gospels, it is anonymous, although it identifies an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" as the source of its traditions. It most likely arose within a "Johannine community", and – as it is closely related in style and content to the three Johannine epistles – most scholars treat the four books, along with the Book of Revelation, as a single corpus of Johannine literature, albeit not from the same author.

You may also want to refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon#Christian_canons.

Overall, I'm not sure where the 180 AD came from either, but it seems like a decent rough estimate. Some scholars also claim that the gospels were written even later, while the church continues to stick to its traditions.

[mOctave]

The trouble here is that Biblical love can be interpreted. There are enough seeming contradictions in the Bible that they can't all be factually true. Many of them are figures of speech, but which ones? I doubt God wants us all to buy swords, but what if he does? Obviously, a lot of what Jesus says goes against some of the stricter Old Testament traditions and beliefs. Does that mean that there are other traditions or beliefs that don't matter anymore? If so, which ones?

It is fairly clear what is a figure of speech and what is not. Sure, there is some basic logic to be put to it, as with any reading, and sure, historical context is incredibly important. Some of the things written in the Old Testament are written specifically to the Hebrews; for example, the book of Leviticus is written to the Levites.
What specifically are you referring to that Jesus said which "goes against" the Old Testament?

Primarily genocide vs Jesus' love toward non-Jews. The Old Testament is very focused on establishing Israel and then Judah as elevated above all other nations because of their unfailing belief in God as well as their ability to trace their ancestry back to Abraham, while the New Testament is very focused on all nations being blessed through Judah. Between the two Testaments, God goes from an awesome and fearful inconceivable power who the Israelites cannot possibly look at and live to a loving father with whom we are all able to communicate easily.

And no, it isn't fairly clear what is a figure of speech and what is not, since the Bible was written between two and four thousand years ago for a people with a completely different culture than us. Did you know what the "abomination of desolation" was the first time you read that passage? I bet not. But the Jews living in Jerusalem at the time probably would have. It's foolish to presume that we can understand the Bible in exactly the same way that the people alive when it was written could have, or that our own understanding of it is perfect.

The interpretive part here is in which of these three is most important. Some people would argue that all wars are wrong because even by waging a just war you indirectly hurt innocent people. The Bible provides these guidelines, but doesn't deal very well with the edge cases.

And here is where we need discernment, which comes from the Holy Spirit, prayer, and fellowship/reasoning with other believers.

Right. So the Bible alone doesn't provide all of morality, it's just part of a toolset provided by God for determining morality.

No. All of this is determined simply by reading the Bible and being CaptainFritz. Everyone presumes different things. If reading the Bible was all it took, then why did we have Crusades? Obviously, the religious (and secular) leadership in Europe was fallible and may not have been acting in accord to their Bible-centric morality, but what about the common people? Lots of them had read (or been read) these passages from the Bible, but they saw nothing wrong with going to war anyways.

People who pretend to be teaching the Bible saying things that are not Biblically accurate does not mean that the Bible itself is not a good standard. I might say that the Constitution allows me to stop rig any election I want, and to someone who is illiterate I can point to whatever part of the Constitution I want and say it is proving me right, and they might well nigh believe me. You must remember that the common people at the time of the Crusades could not read. Just because people lie doesn't make the Bible false.

The Bible may be a good standard, yes, but my point is that it's not enough. Just like we need some basic understanding of history and legality to make proper use of a constitution, we need trustworthy people to lead religious organizations. The common people couldn't read, and that's the problem: they had the Bible, but because it was completely controlled by the church, it gave them no moral guidance. It wasn't any failing of the Bible's that caused the Crusades, necessarily, but the Bible also failed to show the immorality of the Crusades to the people who most relied on its guidance: the peasantry.

It does? The existence of the Bible, even if it is only a collective hallucination, is objective. Everything else requires a certain starting set of axioms. With your axioms, you can easily prove it to be true. With mine, maybe not. With some atheists', it is obviously objectively false.

What the Bible says is true. People may say all they want about it, but that doesn't change what's actually in the Bible and what is actually true.

I can agree that the Bible is truth. That doesn't necessary mean it is factually true in the way we think about the world today. Was the world really created in six days, or over the course of millions of years? Does it matter? For all we know, the Biblical story of creation is meant to be allegorical to describe how everything came from God but wasn't created in an instant. That would fit with the literary tradition of the Psalms and all the later works leading up to the New Testament. Job probably wasn't a real man, and his story probably wasn't Jewish in origin, but that doesn't mean that we can't learn something from his story.

To this, a fundamentalist Christian might argue that of course the world was created in six days, and the scientists are being lead astray; that of course Job was a real Jewish man and that the historians just couldn't understand the works of God. At the same time, a hardcore atheist would take these inconsistencies as proof that God couldn't possibly be real, since based on present-day observable evidence both these stories are factually inaccurate. That's what I mean about axioms.

How different is this perspective from, say, a murderer refusing to stop killing people because they haven't seen anything on TV that told them that murder was bad?

The difference is that the Bible does not condone murder, and that TV is not an ultimate standard of morality.

But what if the murderer thought that TV was an ultimate standard of morality and it was telling him to commit murder? And please don't just say, "he'd be wrong." I think we all know that he would be wrong. But the point is, we all might be, unless you are the reincarnation of Jesus and we just don't know it yet.

Ah, so you should love thine enemies and also commit mass genocide? There are several places in the Bible where this command is present, such as with the Canaanites (who didn't really do too much to Israel to deserve it, if I remember correctly). Maybe God had a bigger purpose in mind than love would have provided for, but this is still a contradiction.

These were specific instances of commands directly to the Israelites. Just because God told the Israelites to attack Jericho doesn't mean I should go to Jericho and start killing the inhabitants.

I never said you should. I was simply pointing out that this is still not an act of love.

This is also your opinion. I'm sure you have good reason to believe that the Bible is ultimate moral truth, but so far all the logic I've seen you use is circular: the Bible tells you to love people, therefore love is moral. Then, because love is good and the Bible agrees with you, the Bible is a perfect source of morality.

No, it is not my opinion; it's true whether I want it to be or not. Yes, it is circular. Any ultimate standard is circular, and everyone has an ultimate standard. If you don't think you do, then your ultimate standard is likely yourself, which is also circular.

Fair point, although it's also an excuse that we could all just use to accept our own ultimate source of morality and reject all others.

1. The Bible.

Nope. I see several axioms that you're using:
1. You are a thinking being capable of using reason to arrive at an accurate answer.
2. You exist in a universe that behaves more or less as you perceive it to.
3. Said universe was created by a being called God.
4. Everything God says or does is right.
5. The Bible exists and was written by God through human hands.
6. God deserves our worship.
7. The Bible has remained mostly unchanged since it was written.
8. The Bible has a single valid interpretation.

I could go on and on, but that's probably enough for now.

2. Well, if we look at a good few of the prophesies of the Old Testament, and then compare them to what happened, we can see that quite a few prophecies made about historical events (the specifics of the falls of empires and cities, the name of a king who would overthrow an empire, the fact that a king would go mentally ill in a specific way at a specific time, etc.) came true, sometimes centuries after the prophecy itself. These are instances of specific prophesy coming true precisely as they were foretold. The odds of them being true are astronomical, and point to divine guidance. Now then, if the prophets can be trusted to be under the influence of God, and they prophesied of a Messiah, then we should look for that Messiah. We should also look at what law they followed, what God they believed in, etc. That is the justification for the Old Testament being ultimate moral truth; because it came from God. As for the New Testament, the Gospels are a fulfillment of prophesy from the Old Testament, which prophesied Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The rest of the New Testament was written by the witnesses to that, as well as others who were faced with direct visions of God.

That's not proof, just strong evidence. Perhaps there is divine guidance, or perhaps the Old Testament Jews made up their prophesies after the fact. Also, what about all the false prophets? Maybe all the prophesies only came true because any that didn't were considered to be the work of false prophets? There's so many things we can't know that this in itself isn't proof, just a compelling argument in favour.

Secondly, the law they followed isn't much like the law we have today. Sure, there's a lot that is still valid, such as some of what is said about justice, but there is also a lot that makes no sense in today's world. For example, take Leviticus 19:19, which reads "You shall not put on cloth from a mixture of two kinds of material." When was the last time you wore a cloth that wasn't a mixture?

I've already addressed the witnesses part in my last comment, so I won't do so again.

3. Yes. Morality would still exist, and the standards of the Bible would still be truth, but we would not have access to them in written form. Truth is truth, regardless of the Bible's existence. The Bible is simply God's form of communication of that truth to us.

And now we get to the root of it all... the Bible isn't the ultimate source of morality, it's God's way to provide that in a format to us. So in reality, you're taking your moral guidance from God, but using the Bible as an aid to help you do so.

[CaptainFritz28]

On the subject of morality:

Why did God invent Satan?

God created Lucifer.

Lucifer created Satan by rebelling against God.

But God knew that would happen, therefore Satan was part of God's design.

Jamie, your argument here essentially comes down to advocating against free will. You are saying that God knew there would be sin and that Lucifer and Adam would choose to sin, so He just shouldn't have given them the option.

And yet, to love, one must have the ability to hate. To do good, one must have the ability to do evil. To be righteous, one must have the ability to sin. Free will is the most loving thing God could give us, because He gave us the ability to love.
(Not to mention God's sacrifice for us so that we may be forgiven of sin and held righteous in the eyes of God.)

[CaptainFritz28]

And then there is the problem that the accepted Bible was written by men around the year 180 AD, when Christ died in around the year 30 AD, and his apostles may have made it to year 90 AD. The earlier versions of the bible, some of which were probably written by eye witnesses, were destroyed by the Church during its purges of people, thoughts, and books.

Not sure where you're getting 180 AD from here. Seems like most sources agree that the New Testament was written anywhere from 33-80 AD, and definitely complete by the end of the first century Anno Domini. You're going to have to provide a lot of evidence for your claims here.

I'm not sure about "most sources." It's certainly church tradition that the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the books that bear their names, but in reality the books were probably just inspired by the apostles' oral tradition.

From Wikipedia, although I'm sure you could find it elsewhere as well:

According to early church tradition, originating with Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD), the gospel was written by Matthew the companion of Jesus, but this presents numerous problems. Most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by a male Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and nontraditional Jewish values and who was familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.

Most critical scholars reject the early church tradition linking the gospel to John Mark, who was a companion of Saint Peter, and it is now generally agreed that it was written anonymously for a gentile audience, probably in Rome, sometime shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.

Most modern scholars agree that the main sources used for Luke were a), the Gospel of Mark, b), a hypothetical sayings collection called the Q source, and c), material found in no other gospels, often referred to as the L (for Luke) source. The author is anonymous; the traditional view that Luke the Evangelist was the companion of Paul is still occasionally put forward, but the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters. The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.

John reached its final form around AD 90–110, although it contains signs of origins dating back to AD 70 and possibly even earlier. Like the three other gospels, it is anonymous, although it identifies an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" as the source of its traditions. It most likely arose within a "Johannine community", and – as it is closely related in style and content to the three Johannine epistles – most scholars treat the four books, along with the Book of Revelation, as a single corpus of Johannine literature, albeit not from the same author.

You may also want to refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon#Christian_canons.

Overall, I'm not sure where the 180 AD came from either, but it seems like a decent rough estimate. Some scholars also claim that the gospels were written even later, while the church continues to stick to its traditions.

A) Wikipedia is... a source. How accurate it is is dubious, but I'll take it as it is.

B) Each of these quotes place the gospels as written by the end of the first century AD. Long before 180. The Epistles were probably written before the gospels, as the authors had died by around 90 AD, and made their journeys/visitations to the churches much earlier.

[Jamiet99uk]

God created Lucifer.

Lucifer created Satan by rebelling against God.

But God knew that would happen, therefore Satan was part of God's design.

Jamie, your argument here essentially comes down to advocating against free will. You are saying that God knew there would be sin and that Lucifer and Adam would choose to sin, so He just shouldn't have given them the option.

And yet, to love, one must have the ability to hate. To do good, one must have the ability to do evil. To be righteous, one must have the ability to sin. Free will is the most loving thing God could give us, because He gave us the ability to love.
(Not to mention God's sacrifice for us so that we may be forgiven of sin and held righteous in the eyes of God.)

Can we be said to have free will, if God knew, in advance, every choice we would ever make? If you believe God exists, and is omnipotent and omniscient, then all our decisions, from the moment of our conception, are predestined.

[Crazy Anglican]

But God knew that would happen, therefore Satan was part of God's design.

Jamie, your argument here essentially comes down to advocating against free will. You are saying that God knew there would be sin and that Lucifer and Adam would choose to sin, so He just shouldn't have given them the option.

And yet, to love, one must have the ability to hate. To do good, one must have the ability to do evil. To be righteous, one must have the ability to sin. Free will is the most loving thing God could give us, because He gave us the ability to love.
(Not to mention God's sacrifice for us so that we may be forgiven of sin and held righteous in the eyes of God.)

Can we be said to have free will, if God knew, in advance, every choice we would ever make? If you believe God exists, and is omnipotent and omniscient, then all our decisions, from the moment of our conception, are predestined.

Yes. If God knows all possible choices and chooses not to interfere with our decisions, then yes we have free will. Predestination isn't necessary.

[CaptainFritz28]

But God knew that would happen, therefore Satan was part of God's design.

Jamie, your argument here essentially comes down to advocating against free will. You are saying that God knew there would be sin and that Lucifer and Adam would choose to sin, so He just shouldn't have given them the option.

And yet, to love, one must have the ability to hate. To do good, one must have the ability to do evil. To be righteous, one must have the ability to sin. Free will is the most loving thing God could give us, because He gave us the ability to love.
(Not to mention God's sacrifice for us so that we may be forgiven of sin and held righteous in the eyes of God.)

Can we be said to have free will, if God knew, in advance, every choice we would ever make? If you believe God exists, and is omnipotent and omniscient, then all our decisions, from the moment of our conception, are predestined.

Ah, but God is outside of time. He foreknew it all, and yet He still gave us the choice, such that He knows it in the very moment we do it. Unlike ai in a program, we have the ability to disobey the will of our "programmer" and yet that very same programmer knows that we will disobey Him. It is not entirely understandable by us, as we are the creation and not the creator. After all, if we could understand everything about God, we would have to be God ourselves.

[mOctave]

A) Wikipedia is... a source. How accurate it is is dubious, but I'll take it as it is.

Yes, but in this case there were plenty of references, which I removed in the quotes but you can find in the footnotes section of the original page. I'm sure some of those could provide more reliable detail.

B) Each of these quotes place the gospels as written by the end of the first century AD. Long before 180. The Epistles were probably written before the gospels, as the authors had died by around 90 AD, and made their journeys/visitations to the churches much earlier.

Written, yes. Finished, not necessarily. After all, there's a lot of things in the gospels that weren't found in the earliest manuscripts. That's why I figured that 180 AD is a safe estimate: there probably weren't any major changes after that point, and there may have been before then since we don't have any manuscripts from the first century (https://www.bible-researcher.com/papyrus.52.html). Also, 180 AD seems to be around the earliest we still have a complete manuscript from, so that may be where that number came from? As for the Epistles, I 100% agree.

Although this is now going off on a relatively unimportant tangent...