Post by drakim on Dec 12, 2009 12:17:45 GMT -5
okay, gonna try your style of replying.
You have yet to show proof of this. The text you cited deals with IF a man beats his slave.
Come on, are you really gonna argue THIS line of reasoning? Is the Biblical view of morality really like that? Thou shall not murder. Oh wait, I ment, When Thou hast murdered then...
It just seems like such a strange way of doing things, not at all in tune with the rest of Christianity.
This was a time where everyone was expected to be a 'Christian'. It doesn't mean they even practiced the religion or were even followers of Christ.
But it was the victor that wrote history, and decided what the true view of Christianity would be. If the south of America had a crushing victory, and later on you were born and raised there, there is a great chance that you'd be arguing that even modern slavery is completely biblical.
This creates a situation where no matter what the outcome, you can paint it as a victory for Christianity. Us true Christians showed those slave owners that their slavery was wrong. Us true Christians showed those revolutionaries that slavery is biblical.
Either way, I am left facing the argument "Those other guys weren't true Christians".
Show me a verse where the Bible commands the keeping of slaves.
Show me a verse where the Bible allows divorce for any other reason than adultery, and a verse where homosexual marriage is not to be allowed alongside regular marriage.
There are many Christian issues where there are no specific verses as clear as the ten Commandments. You have to interpret a bunch of verses and make a case. But this is extremetely dangerous, because the Bible is such a large book, and contains so many vague and old verses that you can build a case for ANYTHING. The priests and pastors of the south weren't ashamed of the Bible, telling people to listen to them instead of reading the Bible on their own. They truly thought that the Bible made the case for their position that white people could keep black people as slaves.
I live in Thailand. Buddhism creates classes of people.
Opps, sorry, I wasn't being very specific there. What I meant to say was that Buddhist teachings does not, not Buddhism itself. As you may know, Buddhism is very different depending on where in the world you look, because Buddhism has a tendency to absorb whatever culture that surrounds it into itself.
It's kinda like Christianity, Conservatism and the Republican party in the US. These things are not the one and the same, they have melted together in the US.
There is no part of Buddhist teachings that talks about human classes (from what I know of it it seems to be completely to the contrary, but I'm no expert), these are merely societal factors. For the same reason, I would never accuse Christianity of being a gun-nut religion, or capitalistic.
I think everyone would need to recognize that some people have authority over others. But the Christian argument is that this does not make persons in authority more valuable than those under authority. God sees value in each individual.
But God seeing value in each individual doesn't change the situations we are talking about. I can well imagine a southern white supremacist pastor during the civil war saying that although God loves black people equally much and that they too are offered salvation, this does not change that white people are their masters in this world.
I am merely pointing out with this argument that the case against modern slavery in the Bible is not rock solid. It only works if you are already against modern slavery from the start. Nobody, not even a hardcore Christian, would be convinced of the argument if they already had the idea that modern slavery is okay. The arguments depends on too vague and irrelevant verses to that context.
He could have. But was there benefit in the keeping of "slaves"? My argument is that there was mutual benefit for both the owner and the slave. The owner has men to do work, the slaves have a home and food. If they are treated unjustly, according to the laws we looked at, they would go free.
Except when the slave was beaten to death, as you yourself talked about as an possibility. Even if the master gets punished afterwards, it can't reverse what has already happened. Revenge does not bring back the dead.
If you get killed, all bets are off. It doesn't matter what system, what ideals, what values you are following. It doesn't matter if slavery as a whole back then was mutual to both parties. Those beaten to death by their owners, not able to resist, are victims of that system, and were not treated justly. My personal morality (I'll address this later) cannot let me accept a system where 95% are okay at the cost of 5% others, even if the system overall is effective. Everybody deserves a chance.
Atheism is still bound by logical reasoning, was my point. That got a little out of hand, haha.
No it's not. You could be utterly insane and you'd still be an atheist if you didn't believe in God. Atheism isn't a stance, it's a category. You are either an theist, or not a theist, and if you are a theist, there are different flavours like Christianity and Islam. Atheism is simply those who are not theists. As I mentioned, it litteraly translates into "without theism". Non-Republican is not a political stance. If you ask "What does Non-Republicans think about this issue?" then you'll run into problems, because Socialists, Democrats, Independants, and Tea Partyists are all Non-Republicans and have different opinions on issues.
You can ask me questions as a Humanist, which has a creed. You can ask me questions as a moral relativists, which is a philosophy. You can ask me questions as an evolutionist, which is a branch of science. But you can't ask me questions as an atheist, because atheism means nothing in this context. It's empty. No creeds, no teachings, no rules, no laws, no special days to observe. I am simply unable to answer you if you do that.
No. Can you give me an example of a nation where killing in self-defense will get you punished? This rather supports my idea of objective truth, because in both cases the killing of innocent life is prohibited.
This doesn't really address the issue, but I guess I could have picked a more controversial issue. In one country, music piracy is wrong. In another, there is no law against downloading music. How do you recognize these two laws?
To me, the answer is simple. You don't. If you are in one country you can't download music and if you are in another country you can.
You may be thinking "But then, other issues, like genocide and rape, is only bad because your current culture says so?"
I think part of the problem we have in communicate about this issue is that you think of morals and laws as the same. It's so obvious to me that morals aren't universal, that they are personalized for each and every human, just like values, or heck, flavours. You can just as well ask me "so if flavours don't follow absolutes then how can you say chocolate is better than vanilla? somebody else might think differently!". I suppose so but why do I have to care what taste somebody else has? When evaluating taste, I use my own likes and dislikes when it comes to flavour. When evaluating a situation in my life I also use my own moral values. It doesn't matter if somebody else has different moral values any-more than that somebody has a different taste than me.
We aren't a society run by morals, but rather, laws. Laws are what determines on how we act when somebody murders, not our morals. (Laws are based on our collective morals to a degree, but that's a talk for another time I think)
I do however, have a question for you here. you don't think like me on this issue. You think you get your morals from God, though the Bible, rather than having your own. Can you with accuracy tell me exactly what God's stance is on music piracy? Am I allowed to send a song to a stranger that only I payed for? Am I allowed to share music with my family that I have payed for? Or do I have to sit in a room by myself and listen?
I'm guessing you wouldn't be so foolish as to say that you do know God's mind a 100% when it comes to this issue, since the Bible does not address this very modern issue other than "thou shall not steal", which does not define exactly what stealing is.
If you are still with me thus far, then there is an important point I wish to raise. Your morals aren't those of God, but rather, a reflection, a copy. You have seen what you think are God's morals and copied them onto yourself. Isn't this obvious from that you don't know how to act in a situation? That means you don't have the absolute true moral to follow, rather, an incomplete copy you have made for yourself, which is most likely not 100% accurate on even a single issue. How would this be diffrent from a relative morality?
(If you answered different than I predicted above then sorry for the projection. It would just take 3 posts back and fourth or so to make this point if I went the regular way)
That's what I wanted to get to. How can you claim that that your opinion of 'slavery is bad' is superior.
I can't, but but I never claimed that my opinion needs to be superior, any-more than a country needs to prove that their laws are superior before enforcing them.
I don't get why you have such a strong idea that in a relative morality universe, you need to establish your relative morality as superior before you can act upon it.
We can't play ball here if you're not willing to step up to the plate. I feel like you're hiding from the questions behind these definitions. Ok, so how can an atheist arrive at being a humanist?
Hm, societal norms. And before you ask, no, we don't have to respect the societal norms of others. We can condem Nazis even if we don't have a God above us to tell us the Nazis are wrong.
Well, I'm trying to make the point that, as an atheist, your argument that slavery is bad is only your opinion, which you already conceded. Within your own reasoning, you don't really have any grounds to say one opinion is better than another opinion.
No, I'm trying to argue the exact opposite. you don't NEED any grounds to act upon your morality. To say so would crush the very thing that relative morality means. It's simply incorrect to say that "if morality is relative and everybody has their own, then one must absolutely prove the superiority of ones own morality before one can use it". It's just not how it works.
The Nazis acted in a way that is horrible according to our morality, and we acted upon our morality and stopped them. We didn't need divine acceptance to do that. And even if you jump in and say "you can't say it was absolutely right to invade the Nazis", that doesn't mean it's automatically absolutely wrong either. It works both ways.
So is slavery only bad because a law says it is wrong? In other words, if the law said slavery was to be done in every household, would that be 'good'?
Uhm, I really need us two to stop using the words 'bad' and 'good' without more context. Can you rephrase this question using words like 'universally bad' or which word you feel fits the most? The debate becomes very easy to mess up when vague words are used. Bad can mean both relative or absolute depending on the context. "This ice cream tastes bad" and the like.
Unfortunately, that's not an answer. My question is simply: Can you explain how one arrives at value in atheism? As an atheist, I hope you can answer this one. I acknowledge that you aren't speaking for all atheists. But you are AN atheist. You can give me your belief.
We all have a different roles. You are a Christian, but you might also be a father, or a brother, or an American.
Can you tell me how you arrive at value as a father? No, you can't, because fatherhood alone does not offer that. It would be the Christian aspect of your life that offers that, so my question wouldn't work.
In the same way, I am an atheist, which only means I've not accepted the theory of theism. I have however, accepted humanism and science. Those are positive things with rules and creeds, which you can ask questions about.
As for your contradiction, you dodged my question by appealing to the fact that success isn't what dictates if an action is good and bad. Then only a few lines later you are appealing to that very claim. Seems like a contradiction to me.
I'm of the opinion that I never appealed to that very claim. You asked WHY something was in the way it was. Why did this rock land here? Why did you spell that word wrong?
I explained why. Evolution resulted in X and Y which favors Z which goes on....
You confused this for a question on how something SHOULD be rather than why something is. Why should we care about suffering? Why should we help each other?
You are mixing these two types of questions up and thus there becomes a contradiction.
If you want we could try again. Ask me the original question again, and be clear on whether you are asking WHY something is like it is today, or why we SHOULD do something. Asking why we are moral and asking why we should be moral are two entirely different questions.
You have yet to show proof of this. The text you cited deals with IF a man beats his slave.
Come on, are you really gonna argue THIS line of reasoning? Is the Biblical view of morality really like that? Thou shall not murder. Oh wait, I ment, When Thou hast murdered then...
It just seems like such a strange way of doing things, not at all in tune with the rest of Christianity.
This was a time where everyone was expected to be a 'Christian'. It doesn't mean they even practiced the religion or were even followers of Christ.
But it was the victor that wrote history, and decided what the true view of Christianity would be. If the south of America had a crushing victory, and later on you were born and raised there, there is a great chance that you'd be arguing that even modern slavery is completely biblical.
This creates a situation where no matter what the outcome, you can paint it as a victory for Christianity. Us true Christians showed those slave owners that their slavery was wrong. Us true Christians showed those revolutionaries that slavery is biblical.
Either way, I am left facing the argument "Those other guys weren't true Christians".
Show me a verse where the Bible commands the keeping of slaves.
Show me a verse where the Bible allows divorce for any other reason than adultery, and a verse where homosexual marriage is not to be allowed alongside regular marriage.
There are many Christian issues where there are no specific verses as clear as the ten Commandments. You have to interpret a bunch of verses and make a case. But this is extremetely dangerous, because the Bible is such a large book, and contains so many vague and old verses that you can build a case for ANYTHING. The priests and pastors of the south weren't ashamed of the Bible, telling people to listen to them instead of reading the Bible on their own. They truly thought that the Bible made the case for their position that white people could keep black people as slaves.
I live in Thailand. Buddhism creates classes of people.
Opps, sorry, I wasn't being very specific there. What I meant to say was that Buddhist teachings does not, not Buddhism itself. As you may know, Buddhism is very different depending on where in the world you look, because Buddhism has a tendency to absorb whatever culture that surrounds it into itself.
It's kinda like Christianity, Conservatism and the Republican party in the US. These things are not the one and the same, they have melted together in the US.
There is no part of Buddhist teachings that talks about human classes (from what I know of it it seems to be completely to the contrary, but I'm no expert), these are merely societal factors. For the same reason, I would never accuse Christianity of being a gun-nut religion, or capitalistic.
I think everyone would need to recognize that some people have authority over others. But the Christian argument is that this does not make persons in authority more valuable than those under authority. God sees value in each individual.
But God seeing value in each individual doesn't change the situations we are talking about. I can well imagine a southern white supremacist pastor during the civil war saying that although God loves black people equally much and that they too are offered salvation, this does not change that white people are their masters in this world.
I am merely pointing out with this argument that the case against modern slavery in the Bible is not rock solid. It only works if you are already against modern slavery from the start. Nobody, not even a hardcore Christian, would be convinced of the argument if they already had the idea that modern slavery is okay. The arguments depends on too vague and irrelevant verses to that context.
He could have. But was there benefit in the keeping of "slaves"? My argument is that there was mutual benefit for both the owner and the slave. The owner has men to do work, the slaves have a home and food. If they are treated unjustly, according to the laws we looked at, they would go free.
Except when the slave was beaten to death, as you yourself talked about as an possibility. Even if the master gets punished afterwards, it can't reverse what has already happened. Revenge does not bring back the dead.
If you get killed, all bets are off. It doesn't matter what system, what ideals, what values you are following. It doesn't matter if slavery as a whole back then was mutual to both parties. Those beaten to death by their owners, not able to resist, are victims of that system, and were not treated justly. My personal morality (I'll address this later) cannot let me accept a system where 95% are okay at the cost of 5% others, even if the system overall is effective. Everybody deserves a chance.
Atheism is still bound by logical reasoning, was my point. That got a little out of hand, haha.
No it's not. You could be utterly insane and you'd still be an atheist if you didn't believe in God. Atheism isn't a stance, it's a category. You are either an theist, or not a theist, and if you are a theist, there are different flavours like Christianity and Islam. Atheism is simply those who are not theists. As I mentioned, it litteraly translates into "without theism". Non-Republican is not a political stance. If you ask "What does Non-Republicans think about this issue?" then you'll run into problems, because Socialists, Democrats, Independants, and Tea Partyists are all Non-Republicans and have different opinions on issues.
You can ask me questions as a Humanist, which has a creed. You can ask me questions as a moral relativists, which is a philosophy. You can ask me questions as an evolutionist, which is a branch of science. But you can't ask me questions as an atheist, because atheism means nothing in this context. It's empty. No creeds, no teachings, no rules, no laws, no special days to observe. I am simply unable to answer you if you do that.
No. Can you give me an example of a nation where killing in self-defense will get you punished? This rather supports my idea of objective truth, because in both cases the killing of innocent life is prohibited.
This doesn't really address the issue, but I guess I could have picked a more controversial issue. In one country, music piracy is wrong. In another, there is no law against downloading music. How do you recognize these two laws?
To me, the answer is simple. You don't. If you are in one country you can't download music and if you are in another country you can.
You may be thinking "But then, other issues, like genocide and rape, is only bad because your current culture says so?"
I think part of the problem we have in communicate about this issue is that you think of morals and laws as the same. It's so obvious to me that morals aren't universal, that they are personalized for each and every human, just like values, or heck, flavours. You can just as well ask me "so if flavours don't follow absolutes then how can you say chocolate is better than vanilla? somebody else might think differently!". I suppose so but why do I have to care what taste somebody else has? When evaluating taste, I use my own likes and dislikes when it comes to flavour. When evaluating a situation in my life I also use my own moral values. It doesn't matter if somebody else has different moral values any-more than that somebody has a different taste than me.
We aren't a society run by morals, but rather, laws. Laws are what determines on how we act when somebody murders, not our morals. (Laws are based on our collective morals to a degree, but that's a talk for another time I think)
I do however, have a question for you here. you don't think like me on this issue. You think you get your morals from God, though the Bible, rather than having your own. Can you with accuracy tell me exactly what God's stance is on music piracy? Am I allowed to send a song to a stranger that only I payed for? Am I allowed to share music with my family that I have payed for? Or do I have to sit in a room by myself and listen?
I'm guessing you wouldn't be so foolish as to say that you do know God's mind a 100% when it comes to this issue, since the Bible does not address this very modern issue other than "thou shall not steal", which does not define exactly what stealing is.
If you are still with me thus far, then there is an important point I wish to raise. Your morals aren't those of God, but rather, a reflection, a copy. You have seen what you think are God's morals and copied them onto yourself. Isn't this obvious from that you don't know how to act in a situation? That means you don't have the absolute true moral to follow, rather, an incomplete copy you have made for yourself, which is most likely not 100% accurate on even a single issue. How would this be diffrent from a relative morality?
(If you answered different than I predicted above then sorry for the projection. It would just take 3 posts back and fourth or so to make this point if I went the regular way)
That's what I wanted to get to. How can you claim that that your opinion of 'slavery is bad' is superior.
I can't, but but I never claimed that my opinion needs to be superior, any-more than a country needs to prove that their laws are superior before enforcing them.
I don't get why you have such a strong idea that in a relative morality universe, you need to establish your relative morality as superior before you can act upon it.
We can't play ball here if you're not willing to step up to the plate. I feel like you're hiding from the questions behind these definitions. Ok, so how can an atheist arrive at being a humanist?
Hm, societal norms. And before you ask, no, we don't have to respect the societal norms of others. We can condem Nazis even if we don't have a God above us to tell us the Nazis are wrong.
Well, I'm trying to make the point that, as an atheist, your argument that slavery is bad is only your opinion, which you already conceded. Within your own reasoning, you don't really have any grounds to say one opinion is better than another opinion.
No, I'm trying to argue the exact opposite. you don't NEED any grounds to act upon your morality. To say so would crush the very thing that relative morality means. It's simply incorrect to say that "if morality is relative and everybody has their own, then one must absolutely prove the superiority of ones own morality before one can use it". It's just not how it works.
The Nazis acted in a way that is horrible according to our morality, and we acted upon our morality and stopped them. We didn't need divine acceptance to do that. And even if you jump in and say "you can't say it was absolutely right to invade the Nazis", that doesn't mean it's automatically absolutely wrong either. It works both ways.
So is slavery only bad because a law says it is wrong? In other words, if the law said slavery was to be done in every household, would that be 'good'?
Uhm, I really need us two to stop using the words 'bad' and 'good' without more context. Can you rephrase this question using words like 'universally bad' or which word you feel fits the most? The debate becomes very easy to mess up when vague words are used. Bad can mean both relative or absolute depending on the context. "This ice cream tastes bad" and the like.
Unfortunately, that's not an answer. My question is simply: Can you explain how one arrives at value in atheism? As an atheist, I hope you can answer this one. I acknowledge that you aren't speaking for all atheists. But you are AN atheist. You can give me your belief.
We all have a different roles. You are a Christian, but you might also be a father, or a brother, or an American.
Can you tell me how you arrive at value as a father? No, you can't, because fatherhood alone does not offer that. It would be the Christian aspect of your life that offers that, so my question wouldn't work.
In the same way, I am an atheist, which only means I've not accepted the theory of theism. I have however, accepted humanism and science. Those are positive things with rules and creeds, which you can ask questions about.
As for your contradiction, you dodged my question by appealing to the fact that success isn't what dictates if an action is good and bad. Then only a few lines later you are appealing to that very claim. Seems like a contradiction to me.
I'm of the opinion that I never appealed to that very claim. You asked WHY something was in the way it was. Why did this rock land here? Why did you spell that word wrong?
I explained why. Evolution resulted in X and Y which favors Z which goes on....
You confused this for a question on how something SHOULD be rather than why something is. Why should we care about suffering? Why should we help each other?
You are mixing these two types of questions up and thus there becomes a contradiction.
If you want we could try again. Ask me the original question again, and be clear on whether you are asking WHY something is like it is today, or why we SHOULD do something. Asking why we are moral and asking why we should be moral are two entirely different questions.