-(Book of Mormon) 1 Nephi 1:19
I get asked this question incredibly frequently, and it is flat out ignorant. Another common question is "How do you know what is good versus what is wrong?" This argument backfires on theists in several ways. First, I am forced to respond, "Are you only moral because of religion?" which is commonly followed by a 'yes.' If people claim that morality comes from religion, then it is completely reasonable to ask them, if there was no religion, would you go around murdering and raping people and stealing things? If there was never such a thing as religion, would all of this suddenly be okay to do, in your mind? Many people will even answer this with a yes! Those are the people who you should worry about, not us atheists. Additionally, what is 'good' and 'righteous' is entirely a subjective matter. There is no clear single set of moral laws which it would be best for all humans to abide by. This is why I may sometimes reference the Bible as "The Big Book of Multiple Choice;" you can gleam any meaning from it to justify anything you want. Slavery? Check. Racism? Check. Genocide? Infanticide? Sexism? Extreme homophobia? Intolerance? Check check check check check. None of the common religious texts are perfect books of morality. In the Quran you can find extreme intolerance, justification for wars and attacks in the name of Allah, eye-for-an-eye law systems, and instructions to cut off the hands of thieves. In their little Sunday school classes, children don't learn about what the Bible says; I know, I went for six years. They learn the nice stories about Noah's ark and Adam and Eve. They hear about how Jesus is so good, and they are taught that the god of the Bible is a kind and loving and forgiving god. They do not learn about God's instructions for holding the ear of a Jewish slave up to a door and boring a hole through it with an aul to mark him as yours, or the way in which he instructs that unruly children are to be taken to the edge of town and stoned (both of these instructions are included in the Torah); Jesus in fact reprimands a man for not doing this. If you feel the religion is a base for morality, you are sorely mistaken. Bring these passages up to anyone and they will say "Oh, but I don't believe in that part. You have to understand the true message of the bible!" And how do you "understand the true message"? You use your own secular morality and judgement. You consider possible actions, weigh the consequences, and decide whether doing such actions would cause more harm than good to yourself and other people. A quote that I particularly like:
I get asked this question incredibly frequently, and it is flat out ignorant. Another common question is "How do you know what is good versus what is wrong?" This argument backfires on theists in several ways. First, I am forced to respond, "Are you only moral because of religion?" which is commonly followed by a 'yes.' If people claim that morality comes from religion, then it is completely reasonable to ask them, if there was no religion, would you go around murdering and raping people and stealing things? If there was never such a thing as religion, would all of this suddenly be okay to do, in your mind? Many people will even answer this with a yes! Those are the people who you should worry about, not us atheists. Additionally, what is 'good' and 'righteous' is entirely a subjective matter. There is no clear single set of moral laws which it would be best for all humans to abide by. This is why I may sometimes reference the Bible as "The Big Book of Multiple Choice;" you can gleam any meaning from it to justify anything you want. Slavery? Check. Racism? Check. Genocide? Infanticide? Sexism? Extreme homophobia? Intolerance? Check check check check check. None of the common religious texts are perfect books of morality. In the Quran you can find extreme intolerance, justification for wars and attacks in the name of Allah, eye-for-an-eye law systems, and instructions to cut off the hands of thieves. In their little Sunday school classes, children don't learn about what the Bible says; I know, I went for six years. They learn the nice stories about Noah's ark and Adam and Eve. They hear about how Jesus is so good, and they are taught that the god of the Bible is a kind and loving and forgiving god. They do not learn about God's instructions for holding the ear of a Jewish slave up to a door and boring a hole through it with an aul to mark him as yours, or the way in which he instructs that unruly children are to be taken to the edge of town and stoned (both of these instructions are included in the Torah); Jesus in fact reprimands a man for not doing this. If you feel the religion is a base for morality, you are sorely mistaken. Bring these passages up to anyone and they will say "Oh, but I don't believe in that part. You have to understand the true message of the bible!" And how do you "understand the true message"? You use your own secular morality and judgement. You consider possible actions, weigh the consequences, and decide whether doing such actions would cause more harm than good to yourself and other people. A quote that I particularly like:
"Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you are told
Religion is doing what you are told, regardless of what is right."
 |
| cartoonstock.com |
But the thing you are missing here is that the reason you believe these things are wrong IS from the Torah. We live in a society based very heavily off of these values, so it seems incomprehensible to you that anyone wouldn't follow them. Look at pre-religious times and there is murdering and pillaging and raping galore. Even look at the Romans - civilized, yes? - and they killed people for entertainment. There IS just one set of ethical values and it is found in the books of the Torah, which everything else is based off of.
ReplyDeleteSo, given that, you will not deny the values that you uphold are the same base values present in the Torah. However you bring up the point of the seemingly cruel or harsh punishments also found in it. First I just want to point out that you should always read the commentaries as that is just as much a part of it as the text itself, especially as you are reading a translated version. Next, you think these punishments are cruel. Why? Because they violate what you feel are your basic moral values. But where did those values come from? This same place! These things are put as exceptions to the base rules mentioned - as an example of one of the ones that makes "sense", you are allowed to kill someone who is chasing after someone else to kill them. This doesn't seem like too bad of a rule, right? You'd follow it? So given that you have already accepted the base values, and you accept some of the exceptions, you probably should accept them all, even the ones that don't make intuitive sense to you and seem to be cruel or unjust. Assume God knows what he's doing.
No, it's not. The murder and pillaging and raping makes up 40% of the Torah, like the multiple cases where your god orders the invasion of a city and the murder of all of the non-virgins. And there is plenty of murder and rape today. You have the religious zealots, bombing buildings and abortion clinics and raping little boys. Additionally, look at Japan. This is the most secular nation, and they have the LOWEST rape rates in the world. We have very high rates here in the US. Similar benefits to a lack of religion can be seen in other secular countries. Yes I do agree with some values in the Torah. I also agree with some values in the Chronicles of Narnia. Correlation does not in way way imply causation, and if you think it does then you are simply wrong. Just because some of these tenants are right does not in any way assert that all of them are. The Code of Hammurabi says not to steal things, but that doesn't mean I base my moral values off of it. I say to myself, "Hey, I don't want to be killed. I don't want to get my stuff taken." Then I surround myself with people who also don't want to be killed or have our stuff taken, and we agree not to kill each other or take each other's stuff. And YES! The Torah and the Bible contradict themselves! Thank you for agreeing with my point! These books can't even agree with themselves, and that's why it's a big book of multiple choice. You can choose to believe whichever side you want. And this has othing to do with translations. The books shared between the Torah and the Bible very blatantly give instructions about slavery and owning other people, how long you can keep them for, and how yu are ordered to kill disobedient children! Your god rewards a group of people because they shoved a javelin through the stomachs of an interracial couple. This is not an issue of translation, this is what the books say. I'm not going to assume that this god knows what he is doing when he sends two bears to maul 42 children because they made fun of Elijah being bald. It's absurd and immoral, and I don't say that it's immoral because of something the Torah or the Bible taught me. I say it's immoral because it's wrong to do, simple as that.
ReplyDeleteHum, dum, dum, time to type this answer again. Curse this malfunctioning blog website! I had such a good extended soccer metaphor too, lets see if I can recreate it.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, "I say it's immoral because it's wrong to do, simple as that." It's not that simple. When you say "wrong", clearly you are drawing a hard line between "right" and "wrong". This line is drawn by a set of criteria, rules if you will, that you use to judge each action. So two points here: first, how is that rule set was created? second: how does your personal rule set differ and compare to others?
The answer to the first is "It's just something I know. It's a part of who I am." This means that, during your formative years, the combination of things that you interacted with made that a part of your mind. Maybe your mother's praise when you washed yourself made you think highly of hygiene; maybe your dead pet made you think negatively of death; maybe your schoolteacher lectured your preschool class about stealing. The combination of everything that has happened in your life so far (genetics isn't really relevant) makes you who you are today and makes your opinions the way they are. In other words, society has shaped you into the person who you now are. And as I stated earlier, we live in a society influenced heavily by Torah values, so it makes sense that these are the ones that you agree with, even if you don't realize it.
Next, say it was the case that these things were immoral because they were simply "wrong". Now this wrong is, of course, "wrong" only according to your rules. Perhaps not mine. Perhaps not anyone's. So answer this: Do you feel that your morals and values should be applied to everyone's behavior? If so, what gives you the right to claim that your morals are more right than mine? If not, how can you justify punishing anyone who is just living as best they can by their own set of morals, even if the things they do seem horrid to you?
One other thing - a word on the seeming conflicts with in the Torah. I'm sure you could go on for hours quoting passages you think are unfair, and though I can guess at some, I won't necessarily be able to figure out the reason behind all of them myself. Allow me to just repeat what I have already said - let God do what He does best. You not agreeing with it is no reason for it not to be the right thing to do. Ready for the soccer metaphor? In soccer, you can sum up the basic idea of the game with a few simple statements: "Kick the ball into the goal of the other team while keeping it away from you own. Keep the ball in bounds and do do not use your hands." (In hindsight, the second statement isn't really necessary. Not using hands is implied by "kick" and I've enjoyed many a boundaryless soccer game myself.) Now, according to that definition, one almost anyone would agree to be the very basis of soccer, you cannot use your hands - unless of course you are the goalie. Or its a throw in. Or the ref considers it "accidental" (not in pros, but whatev). And if there is a handball, it results in a free kick. Unless of course it's inside the 18', in which case it's a much harsher penalty kick. Although these exceptions are not really necessary to have a fun game of soccer, and in fact directly conflict with the base rules, they are used because they improve the game. You may not like the Offsides rule - you may think its unfair and makes the game less fun - but there's no reason to reject the entire game of soccer because you happen to dislike that one rule. Furthermore, there is no reason to suggest that "soccer doesn't make sense because it just said not to use your hands and then right after it says the goalie can use their hands." Hopefully that makes sense, it sounded better the first time :P
I was taught some of these things, and yes they agree with the Torah. I was also taught many things that strictly disagree with the Torah, like the whole silly thing about slavery being bad. Just because some things I was taught agree with the Torah does not imply that I should accept anything the Torah commands without further investigation. Murder is wrong to me. Hopefully, murder is wrong to you to. Moral's are inherently subjective. No I do not feel everyone should be forced to adhere to my set of morals, nor do I assert that my morals are above the morals of all other. I'm not a psychology major, but I can justify this by simply imagining a world in which all people acted based off of this moral system, and then judge whether the outcome happens to be beneficial or not. If everyone ends up dead, then that would not be good. Therefore, I claim that murder is bad (the actual punishment is enforced when multiple people support the opinion). There are plenty of mentally challenged people out there; in Florida and eleven year-old girl was raped in the street by a mentally challenged patient. He believed what he was doing was completely moral, but yes, I do feel justified in saying he deserves to be punished. Additionally, you are committing the fallacy of an argument from ignorance. Just because you cannot understand how to determine right from wrong without referencing a Bronze Age book, does not mean that others without that handicap are unable to do so.
ReplyDeleteYour soccer analogy was cute but flawed, and resulted in a bad straw man argument. You constructed an analogy that was flawed, proved something with the analogy, and then assumed that it holds true for the original case. You started your analogy by saying “In soccer, you can sum up the basic idea of the game with a few simple statements: ‘Kick the ball into the goal of the other team while keeping it away from you own. Keep the ball in bounds and do not use your hands.’” This does not accurately reflect what has been done with the holy texts, however. A more proper analogy would consist of being given a full rulebook with ever rule ever put into the game in the history of soccer, and then being asked to summarize it. What you may consider to be most important might not be what seems most important to other people. Your analogy made sense, but it was irrelevant and flawed.
Where did my earlier response go...?
ReplyDeleteA few comments (numbered for easier response):
1) "the actual punishment is enforced when multiple people support the opinion" - see your post of a few days ago. The one regarding lemmings. Having power or the support of the public does not make your opinion correct or your punishment justified.
2) "This does not accurately reflect...summarize it" Clearly you missed the point of my analogy. All you really need for a moral society is the ten commandments; all you really need for a fun game of soccer is those rules. Anyone observing a society with only those ten commandments in place would almost certainly classify it as moral, and anyone viewing a game of soccer played with only those rules would almost certainly classify it as soccer. Everything else just improves on it. Where is the irrelevance and flaws? (not saying there aren't any, just more specifically)
3) "Just because you...unable to do so" - I could easily give you my personal opinion on morals. That doesn't make it correct. "Moral's are inherently subjective", and I, just as you do, do not "feel everyone should be forced to adhere to my set of morals, nor do I assert that my morals are above the morals of all others". Therefore, to make moral decisions, I turn to one whose morals ARE above all others - God.
4) "Florida...punished" - You will need to explain further why you "do not feel everyone should be forced to adhere to my [your] set of morals" and yet in that instance you "do feel justified in saying he deserves to be punished" although he "believed what he was doing was completely moral." I eagerly await your explanation.
5) "I can justify this by simply imagining a world in which all people acted based off of this moral system, and then judge whether the outcome happens to be beneficial or not" - I don't know the term for this, but it is undoubtedly not valid. Firstly, "beneficial". How can you judge what is beneficial in the long run? Candy brings more pleasure than vegetables, but that doesn't mean we should eat candy all the time. Now you aren't just deciding on a minor aspect of health, but people's entire lives. And there is sometimes more to life than pure happiness. If you want to reach as high as you can, you're going to need to walk downhill on your way to climb Mount Everest. True, if "everyone ends up dead", you can be fairly certain that that is not an optimal outcome, but now you are slippery sloping. If you follow the Torah to the letter, everyone will not end up dead. How do I know? It has been recorded that the Jews did this and did not all end up dead. However, you may feel some people have been given unnecessary pain. Again, what gives you the right to say that pain is good? You do not know what will happen in the long run. In fact, how do you know that the "world" you imagine will be accurate at all? Maybe with your moral code, everybody WILL end up dead, you just can't comprehend the complexities that lead up to that conclusion with your limited human intellect. Nobody can. That's why we follow God.
1. No, I am not claiming that all punishments of the law are correct. I am saying that popular vote gets control of what is implemented but not what is moral. It is obvious that these do not always agree. That should be obvious, sorry I did not word myself clearly enough.
ReplyDelete2. That is entirely wrong on two counts. Number one, a society that only adheres to those rules, such as the societies present in Exodus, are extreme endorsers of slavery, sexism, and polygamy, to name a few. Number two, you again are not targeting the issue of from where to select those morals. You pick an arbitrary spot to gleam your set of basic morals from, and describe it as if it was a complete summary of the ideas presented in the entire book. You personally are Jewish, and therefore you follow specific laws which govern precisely what you can and can't eat. How do you reason that God's word is so perfect that he dictated exactly what you can and can't eat, but that he got it wrong when he said that slavery is okay and that unruly children must be stoned? Why do you obey one specific rule but not another?
3. What gives you evidence that your god's morals are above the morals of my invisible pink unicorn? My unicorn said all the same things as your god did in the commandments, but my unicorn also said that slavery was wrong and that all people, men and women, are equal. Now explain why you don't listen to me, but I should listen to you. While doing this, be careful not to invoke argumentum ad populum or special pleading, because I'll end up just ignoring you.
4. I feel he deserves to be punished because there is a clear negative outcome to people molesting other people, especially children. I would not want it done to me either. Despite this, I do not feel that my opinion alone should decide what becomes of his life. The girls parents likely think he deserves to die, while his parents may think he didn't know any better and is therefore blameless. It is because morality is a subjective matter that the opinions of others are important. Argumentum ad populum is a fallacy when you use the claims of many as prove that a demonstrable thing, an objective fact, is true or false. When dealing with subjective matters, it is important to include the opinions of others because there is not a single moral book as you claim. Nowhere in your ten commandments does it say not to rape young children (your god actually endorses it in a couple situations). Be careful, because you are setting yourself up for a failed argument in this area, and this is a sincere warning. You posit that the ten commandments are what's important, and that specific rules are not necessarily needed. You then ask how I can feel that child molestation is immoral. You are not allowed to accept a premise in the situations when it helps you and then deny it later on. Make a claim, understand its implications, and either stay with the claim or change your viewpoint, admitting an error in logic or interpretation.
5. Does your Torah say to limit how much candy you eat? And that method of determining morals is not logically valid, there is no way of coming up with morals that will not be subjective. It is not valid, but I don't posit it as a truth claim. I don't claim that my morals are perfect and everyone should adhere to them, and therefore I openly admit that at least one premise in my chain of logic is likely either erroneous or subjective and therefore inadequately justified. However, I do what I think is morally right to do, and the only way I can do so is by weighing the options in a subjective manner. Your Mt. Everest analogy sounds more like something intended to say sometimes things get worse before they get better, which has nothing to do with morals. Even if that is not the right interpretation, your analogy seems random and unrelated. I don't know that what I imagine will be perfectly true; if I thought this way I would be in Vegas. Maybe I completely misunderstand everything that is happening in the world around me. This is why there IS merit to multiple people agreeing on something subjective. If I'm delusional, I will be locked away in an asylum. Regardless of what actually is occurring, however, I can only ever do good as far as I know good to be true. This is my secular morality, and while it may agree with the Torah, my life is not based of of your book's values. There is secular morality, even if you refuse to admit it. Is it moral to post the word "spam" on someone's wall 900 times? I would say no, but I can guarantee your book doesn't include an interpretation of Facebook's Terms and Conditions. By now, religion has seeped into absolutely everyone's mind. Some of its tenants have been passed down through the generations, and fortunately some of them have been rejected. It is absurd to assume your religion came up with the concept of not killing each other, though. The Torah is not perfect, and should not be regarded as such. This is from my subjective moral viewpoint, as I assert that slavery, sexism, child-stoning, genocide, infanticide, and racial targeting are immoral. It is my opinion that these are immoral. Do you not find it a bit pompous that you claim that you know what is right better than anyone else who doesn't agree with you because you read a book?
ReplyDeleteYou kind of spread your arguments across multiple #s in responding to mine, so I'll try to isolate each argument as best I can.
ReplyDelete1. (2) Regarding my metaphor: It was a metaphor. Not meant to actually prove anything, meant only to hopefully help you gain some insight into the way I have been interpreting the Torah. I hoped by making that comparison it would help you see why I can accept some of the rules in the Torah while still disagreeing with them. You're right, I'm not a perfect Jew; sometimes I cannot bring myself to do what the Torah says even though I accept it as being correct. Sometimes my desire for a big juicy steak overwhelms my self control; sometimes my Americanized sense of morals does the same.
2. (1&4&~5) Regarding subjective morals as rules: Do you really believe, with your purely subjective set of values, that a society run according to the morals of the people in power is the right way to do things? Hitler was in power in Germany, and according to his morals, killing millions of people was okay. Luckily, he was not in power over the world, and so the rest of the world called his behavior unethical by THEIR standards and took him out of power. But if those in power over the rest of the world had had a different set of ethics as well? What would have stopped him from continuing?
In summary, of this post and several prior: I posit that a world with purely subjective morals cannot be an ethical one. There must be a global set of morals that everybody is held accountable for equally. If there were not, the only possibilities are that everybody is held to their own moral standards OR that everybody is held to the moral standards of someone else. If everyone is held only to their own moral standards, those with lower standards that others - e.g. the rapist you mentioned - would be nonpunishable for their deeds. If everybody is held to the moral standards of someone else, it must be determined who that someone else is. If THAT person, then, has lower standards - e.g. Hitler - he and everyone who follows his standards is nonpunishable for their deeds. Therefore, there must be a global standard that everyone is morally obligated to meet.
Is there a flaw in this logic? The proof above is a purely secular one, God is not involved at all.
3. (3&5) Regarding the pink unicorn and my pompousness: As seen above, a global moral standard is necessary. However, you make a valid point here - I cannot prove that your opinion of what those standards should be or your pink unicorn's opinion of what those standards should be is any more or less valid than those found in the Torah. Ideally, the way to test this is to simulate a society in which everyone adheres to each set of rules and see what happens. Unfortunately this is impossible, so I would say that there is basically no way to prove it. However, if the writer of the Torah happened to be an omniscient omnipresent all-powerful being, I would, then, feel justified in saying that those standards are more relevant than those yours or your unicorn's. The issue here is one of God's existence and His status as writer of the Torah, which is a separate issue from the one at hand.
On a side note, "The Torah is not perfect" is an unprovable claim and in response to "there is no way of coming up with morals that will not be subjective", I am suggesting that the Torah provides just such a set of moral values.
1. My point is that you are claiming that the god of the Torah is perfect in morality and thus what he says is inherently moral, yet you will flat out agree to the immorality of certain aspects of it. How is this not contradictory?
ReplyDelete2. Do I believe that it will always be morally right, or do I believe that this is the best/most effective method? I certainly do not assert that the result of this will always be moral, but I do believe that this happens to be the best we can do. Regarding Hitler: if those in power agreed with him, obviously he would have continued. If that is what you posit, I must ask you to then define ethical. Your next sentence asserts that there exists a single set of morals which applies to everyone. You then create a false dichotomy by saying that either everyone must be held responsible for their own morals or responsible for someone else's morals. There are other options as well, such as being held responsible for the moral code as determined by the people you share a world with, and there are other possibilities as well. They are the people who are influenced by your actions, and therefore their opinions should matter in how you live your life. This is my position on subjective morality, and it is an intense topic of discussion in philosophy, so I would like to kind of end this portion of the debate, because it is, quite honestly, irrelavent at the point we have extrapolated this to. Additionally, if such a set of perfect moral principle was shown to necessarily exist, it would in no way affirm your claim that your god's morals align with this perfect set. . If you wish, you can read my above post as, "How can anyone be moral as defined by the majority of the population without religion?" If you wish to assume that there exists a specific set of moral laws, then you can claim this is so. Seeing as how you do not use the Torah to define all of your morals, and neither do most people, my post aligns itself with how atheists can be moral *as morality is defined to most people* even if we do not agree with your imaginary friend. Most people do not exactly obey the doctrines of their specific religious texts, and therefore they are using their own secular morality the same way I am, whether or not they admit it.
3. Not seen above, a global moral standard may be *preferred*, but in no way has it been shown to be necessary. Your next claim is just as valid as me saying that if my unicorn is omniscient and omnipotent, then he is more relavent than your god. It's a non-argument. Different people would define perfect in different ways, and no matter how I define it you are going to deny that perfection requires that. Regardless, I will make a brief attempt. First, I suggest that a perfect document would contain no errors, and there are innumberable errors in it, historical and scientific; it doesn't even agree with itself as there are countless contradictions. I also don't see why a perfect document would be so unclear as to allow opposite intentions to be derived from it, though this is an argument from ignorance and therefore I acknowledge that it is not in and of itself a valid premise. Your argument that the Torah provides this set of values ends up being based on the premise that a god exists, and this is a completely invalid premise.
1) I have not "flat out agree[d] to the immorality" of any of it. In a perfect world, everyone would follow the Torah exactly. I acknowledge the moral values in the Torah yet I do not always follow them. This is wrong. I am aware of this. Virtually nobody lives up to their moral standards.
ReplyDelete2) There is no false dichotomy. Either you come up with your own morals or you don't. Following the morals of the people you shared a world with would be the latter. In that particular scenario, you realize that the people you share a world with change over time - therefore, moral values change over time, and in fifty years the people you share a world with may accept murder as being moral. Would that make it okay? Being moral as defined by the majority of the population seems like a good thing right now because the morals of the majority of the population that you interact with right now happen to agree with yours, but there is no guarantee that this is true globally, or will still be true in the future.
3) By 'necessary' I meant 'necessary for a completely moral society throughout human history'. As for the rest of that paragraph: Yes, if you can prove your unicorn's omnipotence and God's lack thereof, I will agree that its word is more relevant, yes. That is why this question has become one of God's existence and should be discussed elsewhere. If that is disproved, than I will agree that morals should be defined by the "next best thing", beliefs of society as a whole or whatever.
1. In a perfect world, all components of the world are perfect. You claim that a perfect world is based off of the morals of the Torah. Do you believe slavery and corporal punishment for children are perfect? This is a necessary conclusion of your proposal.
ReplyDelete2. Now you are changing your argument. What you said was that either you are held responsible for your own morals or you are held responsible for the morals of someone else. Now you are saying that either you *come up with* them or you don't. This changes "held responsible for" to "come up with." Also, you initially said "either your morals or someone else's," which *is* a false dichotomy. Now you've changed it to "either you come up with your own morals or you don't," which is obvious, either yes or no. There was a false dichotomy, until you changed your claim in two ways. Then you spend the rest of the paragraph making the fallacies of a straw man argument and a slippery slope. First you say that if morals are determined by the majority of the population, then in the future people will think murder is perfectly moral and good. This claim is completely unsupported and is a rather obvious slippery slope. Even if you could show it to be true, however, you would still have done nothing but show that morality cannot be determined by the majority of the population. You have done nothing to increase the validity of your own claim. I suggested that as an alternative to your false dichotomy, and that was extremely clear in context. You then spent your time refuting my claim instead of supporting your own. You constructed a straw man, then tore it down.
3. Now you've resorted to saying "disprove my god or I'm right" which shows a misunderstanding of the burden of proof. You've made the claim that the Torah provides a perfect objective set of morals. You made the claim, and one of your premises for supporting this claim is that your god exists. You have the burden of proof. I don't need to disprove your god's existence, you have to prove that he does exist, for the same reason you don't have to disprove my unicorn. Look up "burden of proof" if you don't understand it.
1) In the ways defined by the Torah, yes. But while we are on the subject, and since it seems you will never stop pressing this issue, there's a few things I want to mention. First, the Torah does have a separate set of commandments for non-jews, called the Noachide laws. These include mainly only negative commandments - e.g., don't insult God's name and don't be homosexual - and mostly allow non-jews to govern themselves and impose what laws they choose. So you are not obligated to do most of those things you deem so horrible, you can go on life living (mostly) as you think best. If you read through those laws you may find a few to be controversial but none outright immoral.
ReplyDeleteNext, many of these things are not as bad as you make them out to be. In this case, slavery is closer to indentured servitude, slaves are to be treated kindly, and slaves must be released after four years. There is no slavery as we had in America, with the repression, capture, and enforced servitude of another ethnic group. I don't want to be forced to explain away each item that you bring up, as we could keep going all day, but I thought I'd give you this as an example.
Finally, you are misinterpreting the perfect world concept a bit. (This paragraph will be a bit of a non-argument for the covering of bases that should not be regarded or attacked as a proof, merely an opinion that I would like you to see). This world is a perfect world, in that it maximizes the average happiness among all human beings. No other configuration would have been as effective. Keep in mind that that is not provable at all; I am merely explaining to you my beliefs (which I am not even sure are the beliefs of the majority of the Jewish community). The Torah is perfect as far as the way in which it was written helps with this maximization. It is entirely possible that God put some commands in knowing full well they would never be executed, but, since we cannot know that, we can only follow the Torah as best we can.
2) Since you seem to be intent on misinterpreting my statements, let me redefine it one final time: "Either the moral values which an individual is responsible for following (and is to be held accountable for if broken) is determined by the individual themselves or imposed on them by an outside force." While this may appear changed from my earlier statements, rest assured that that statement was my original intention after all, my apologies if it was not phrased adequately. Next - this is not merely an unprovable slippery slope argument; there have been times recorded in history where the majority of humanity was NOT opposed to murder. Also, even now it can be argued that most of humanity is rather apathetic towards it, considering how few countries participated in the Nuremberg trials. Having concluded this, I will even agree that it does not directly advance my overall argument - all I am asking you to agree with with this point is that since clearly holding everyone to their individual moral standards cannot lead to a moral society, it must be an outside set of standards.
3) That point leads me into the point I was trying to make with this argument. The only way to prove that the Torah contains the set of standards that should be imposed upon people is to prove that the morals in the Torah are somehow superior to all the other possible sets of morals proposed by people. One way to do this would be to prove that God, an omnipotent being, authored it. I understand burden of proof, Ryan, and I am ready to prove God's existence at any time, I am just postponing it to a later date, as the "morality without religion" thread is not the best place to do it.
Although at this point, I might as well.
1. You have agreed that it is moral to own humans as property and that it is moral to stone children to death for cursing their parents. I'll say nothing more on that bit. And yes, I am aware of the Noachide laws, and similar things appear in the slavery bit. For example, if you take someone from another city as your slave and he is not Jewish, you may own him till you die, at which point he and any of his children become the property of your children. If they are Jewish, however, then you must offer to set them free after seven years, though you may keep their children if they were born unto one of your female slaves. If he says he wants to stay with you and his family, you are to hold his ear up to a door and bore a hole through it with an aul. I find this moderately controversial.
ReplyDelete"If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever." Exodus 21:2-6
Next, you say that Torah slavery is more like indentured servitude, and that slaves must be treated kindly and must be released after four years. Where are you getting this from? The Torah has this to say about how long you keep non-Jewish slaves:
"However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way." Leviticus 25:44-46
This makes no allusion to the release of slaves. Also, how do you define 'kindly' in the context of the slaves being treated kindly? Exodus 21:20-21 supply that if a master beats his slave to death, then this is murder. If the master beats the slave so hard that only after two days he gets up, then it is okay. So as long as he survives after a couple days, beating the human you own as property is moral. Is this what you posit? Is it kind because they get to rest on the Sabbath?
Okay, comment. If your Torah's morals exist with the goal of trying to maximize the average happiness among the population, why wouldn't the opinions of the population matter? If your goal is to have the average happiness be as high as possible, then this system is inherently dependent on the opinion of the general population. Additionally, I don't agree that a world of values from the Torah would lead to the greatest average happiness. Slaves probably wouldn't be too happy, and the happiness that I get from beating them will not likely balance out with the happiness they lose from being beaten nearly to death. I do see your point with children, however. If they are cursing their parents and acting upset and unhappy, they clearly deserve to die! They should not be given free reign to lower humanity's average happiness. I do think that killing homosexuals doesn't go with this theme, though. Gay people usually seem so happy c:
2. I am not "intent on misinterpreting your statements," you were changing your claim, and I was pointing it out. You say you have examples of times in history where people accepted purposeless murder as moral? Please provide me with a reference, I would like to read about the time period you are referring to. And yes, I will agree that everyone doing just whatever they determine to be right will not lead to a society with maximum happiness. How is that particular conclusion relavent? I never stated that everyone should only do what they deem as moral and neither did you.
ReplyDelete3. Agreed, this does rely upon your god's existence, and your "proof" does not belong on this thread. I'm just pointing out, partially for other reader's, that your conclusion is no more valid than mine about be unicorn until either is proved. And as for the burden of proof, refer back to research. The null hypothesis is always assumed until adequate evidence is supplied to support the alternative hypothesis. There is no burden to "disprove" the alternative hypothesis, your god.
I'd say we are mostly agreed on two and three, and I have stated numerous times that I have no interest in going through each example and explaining it to you. I'm going to give you a brief description now of what most of the explanations will likely consist of, and if you REALLY want to drag the whole thing out, I will.
ReplyDeleteFirst, keep in mind that the people following these laws are Jews. They are responsible for all the other laws in the Torah as well as these slavery laws. Just because the written Torah technically permits, say, beating slaves until they are unconscious for two days, does not mean that anyone actually did. To do so would be a violation of other, equally important laws. The reason that such behaviors which should be forbidden are not expressly prohibited is linked to one of the fundamental beliefs of Judaism, which is God's purpose for creating earth and for maximizing happiness. A quick summary: more happiness can be achieved by earning it than by being simply given it. By having the ability to beat a slave or rape a female slave without breaking a law, they were given a challenge that they needed to overcome in a way that simply forbidding it would not. This leads to a feeling of happiness and accomplishment in the person who has resisted temptation and done the right thing. The thing with the awl and the ear strikes me as no worse than circumcision, especially as the choice of whether or not to have that done to him is purely his.
You're going to need to give me citations on the children so I can compose my arguments as I'm not sure exactly what you are talking about there. A guess at what I will end up saying, though - those children were certainly a special case. You'll notice that God doesn't go around smiting bad kiddies all the time. My guess is either they were the start of a larger rebellion and had they lived, they would have caused far more damage than just insults, or perhaps they would have gone on sinning and received an even lesser reward in the afterlife, or perhaps their death served as a lesson to all the children of Israel and caused twenty subsequent generations of happiness and prosperity. These things are complete guesses, but the point is you cannot always assume that you know God's motives. I can't either - maybe he did kill the kids out of malice and evil - but that doesn't correspond with all of the other facts about him, so I, like most logical people, interpret it differently. Again, note that smiting kids isn't a habit of his, and no Jew to the best of my knowledge has ever said, "Hey, God killed kids for being disrespectful, I can too!"
Examples: Gladiators in Rome, the Nuremberg trials, many early civilizations.
Well number two you've turned into something irrelavent and you've alluded to an event which you then ignored my request for references of, which I don't actually care too much about since, like I said, it's irrelavent. Number three you could say we agreed on, but please acknowledge that I have no obligation to disprove your god; you are making the positive claim, and therefore it has no merit until you can back up up with a logical progression of verifiable premises.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter who is following these laws, as you are claiming that the moral system is perfect and that everyone should be following these laws. You've gone from saying that the Torah provides a perfect moral code to now saying that it contains things that are not moral which are designed to test people. If all good morals come from the Torah, how are you supposed to determine that it is not moral to own humans as property and beat them when your "moral codebook" gives you directions on how to do so?
Well there was always the tale of the two bears that God sent to maul 42 children because they were teasing Elijah for being bald; I don't agree that this is the best way to deal with bullies, but I don't feel like pressing the issue because you'll justify it with "God was trying to teach a lesson" and I don't feel like getting into that debate. As for some children references:
"And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." 2 Kings 2:23-24
"For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." Leviticus 20:9
"And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death." Leviticus 21:17
"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die." Deuteronomy 21:18-21
"Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Psalm 137:9
In order:
-The bears God sent to maul the children
-Children who curse their parents must be put to death, and it is their own fault
-Same as above
-Rebellious children should be taken to the edge of town and stoned by all the men of the city
-This one speaks for itself
Finally, your examples are not of the acceptance of murder as moral; rather they are examples of of the acceptance of killing people as either a punishment or in genocide, both of which are prominent in your holy book.
I think I didn't need to argue number 2 because you accept that as fact already, and the examples I gave at the end of my previous post were examples of times when the majority of humanity seemed to not be opposed to killing. I am not saying that the Holocaust was an example of the majority of humanity being supportive of murder, because that was a small group performing the genocide. But afterwards, when the time came to punish those responsible, barely any countries cared enough to do so. THAT shows humanity's apathy toward murder. In Rome, same thing; all of the citizens of the most civilized nation on the planet looked forward to seeing people brutally murdered. You could perhaps argue that the killing itself was just for whatever crime the prisoners had committed, but you cannot justify how the citizens enjoyed watching the death.
ReplyDeleteMy point with the Noachide laws was only that I assume it is immoral to try to force your moral standards on everybody, and the Torah doesn't try to do that. Any worldwide system you propose may be forced to though. Or maybe not, doesn't really matter. Just a minor point.
There is, as you must see, a huge difference between the negative commandment of "do not beat your slaves so hard that they are down for more than three days" and the positive commandment of "you should beat your slaves so hard that they can't get up for two days when they misbehave."
The Elijah story: this is an example of a mistranslation. The words used to describe the "children" are closer to "young men", and the same words referred to someone - Isaac I think it was - when they were around 29 years old. So these were not innocent kiddies who were just fooling around. These were grown men, likely on their way back from a hunting trip, and the sin of insulting Elijah is certainly not the only one they have committed. The punishment was certainly a just one.
The next two are again not referring to children as lil' tykes - they are using children to mean "sons and daughters of fathers and mothers." A.K.A. everyone. Many Biblical values are present in modern America, but one of those that isn't is respect for one's parents. This, according to the Torah, should be a far larger deal than it currently is. Many laws regarding parental respect may seem far too harsh to you, and that's okay, you were raised in an environment in which not much value was placed upon that particular commandment. That doesn't mean its any less correct.
And the last one is the perfect example of a meaning changing when taken out of context. Read it again. It doesn't say "[he who] dasheth little ones" shall be happy, it says "[he who] dasheth THY little ones" shall be happy. This is not a commandment, but a prediction. He is telling the Babylonians that soon, they would be conquered (by the Persians), and when they were, the invading soldiers would kill their innocents and rejoice in it. God is in no way endorsing the deed.
So you're referring to times when murder seemed to be okay? Like when the people in Numbers are freed from a plague because Phineas thrusts a javelin through the bellies of an interracial couple? Or the countless genocides performed in the Torah? Half of your holy book is tales of war and violence? Not to mention, the is a part of the Bible, and therefore Rome was itself using your book's values as they performed these acts. Additionally, the Nuremburg trials do not in any way show that people of the world don't care about murder. It shows that the political leaders in charge of the countries determined that it wasn't beneficial for them to get involved in it.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I will agree that you shouldn't try to force people to take on your moral standards, but again, this this seems like an ad hoc point you've only just decided on. It's neither relavent to our conversation nor entirely connected to what you've said before. You keep making claims, we debate them, then you change your claim and state that you've proven yourself right. You're repeatedly being very unclear about what your point is.
The fact that your book says "this is how you are and aren't allowed to beat them" instead of "it is wrong to own a human as property" displays that your Torah considers slavery to be morally acceptable.
Okay first, 2Kings was not written by the writers of Isaac, and the specific word the authors of Isaac used do not have a direct correlation to the words in 2Kings. Second, regarding their age, does that fact that they were older make it any more moral for God to send two she-bears to maul them? You say they're probably on their way back from a hunting trip (which I have no idea where you got that from) and have probably sinned before, therefore it was just that they be torn apart by bears. The Torah makes no mention of any specific prior sins. Does this mean that all people who have ever sinned before deserve to be torn apart be bears?
Yes, you are correct, I do not feel that the Torah's laws regarding the punishment-by-death of those who disrespect their parents are moral. You are asserting that if dad curses off grampa, we should take him to the edge of town and everyone in the town should stone him. You say that this is morally just and, if this was practiced everywhere today, the world would be closer to perfect. I consider these things to be immoral, but you're right, that doesn't make it less correct.
Is that so? I have never heard that. Please explain where this interpretation comes from, as in how this verse is connected to the Persian conquest; it sounds interesting.
Man is this a heated internet debate. I feel stupid. Just wanted to say that. Carry on!
ReplyDelete