timeimmortal

You know, I am constantly amused by the way that atheists just seem to land on my doorstep. I realize that I tend to be pretty vocal in my criticisms of that particular philosophical conjecture/quasi-religion, but nevertheless I am still amused and the intermittent train of individuals who feel the need to stop in and say something.

I mean, really: if I am just a deluded theist, why not leave me to my delusions? Of what profit is it to debate with me, when the subject of debate is something that any atheist will state doesn’t even exist (i.e. a deity)? Why do atheists waste so much breath on the denial of this God in whom they most certainly do not believe, and whose existence they very readily deny. Why deny it at all? If, as Joel asserts, religious folks are akin to schizophrenics claiming that the dogs are talking to them, why bother to tell us that the dog’s voice isn’t real? Arguably, we can’t help it (being deluded) and probably won’t listen anyhow (being mentally ill).

For whatever reason, though, the poor dears feel the need to comment. Providing illustration to this observation, Nicholas had something else he wanted to add regarding my last response to him.

Let’s keep it simple: the old technology of signposts. We come to a fork in the road. One way leads to Edmonton, the other to Calgary. The signpost says right for Calgary. (And let’s also suppose that no local yobs are in the habit of turning signposts round.) Is it right for Calgary because the signpost says so? Or does the signpost point right because that’s the way to Calgary?

That, of course, is what Plato was getting at in your least favourite of the dialogues, Euthyphro. Is (for example) feeding the hungry good only because one or more gods are alleged to have said so, or are there reasons why feeding the hungry is good? If there are reasons, then we don’t need any gods as a basis for our moral choices. Note that this argument says nothing about the existence of one or many gods. It just says that the alleged guidance of one or more gods cannot be a moral basis for moral choices.

Moreover, the god YHWH was, in my opinion, according to the alleged records of its moral guidance, frequently grossly immoral. And many of the recorded sayings of Jesus are, in my opinion, also misleading moral guidance. Joseph Hoffman, for example, puts all that much better than I can. See http://www.spinozaslens.com/libet/articles/hoffmann_lettinggoofjesus.htm.

Nicholas demonstrates a very careless inattention, given his invocation of the tired Euthyphro argument. It was a good argument back in its day, when the dominant religion of the day was polytheistic and the notion of the love of the gods for what is “moral” was substantially more subjective given that different gods in the Greek Pantheon loved different things, often in ways which were contradictory. Euthyphro is more or less irrelevant in a monotheistic framework in which the internal contradictions of the Pantheon, on which the dilemma is so focused and dependent, simply do not exist.

Moreover, Nicholas is careless, O Reader, because he evidently didn’t bother to check and see if I’d had anything to say about Euthyphro buried in the archives. As it turns out, I’ve had a fair bit to say about the subject (see here and here, especially — moreover, see this and this by author Theodore Beale), and can confidently say that I’m not particularly worried at its implications to both my faith and my worldview.

The central question of the Euthyphro dilemma is, of course, Morality: is X moral because the gods love/command it, or to the gods love/command X because it is moral? Socrates had a field day with this. And to be fair, it kind of works within the context of the Pantheon (although, as Theodore Beale demonstrates at the above links, it can also be assailed and discredited purely from within that context), given that someone like Hera would be apt to love — and view as moral — different things than someone like Hades would. That’s fine.

Within the Christian context, however, the solution to the dilemma is a bit simpler: “yes.” Is something moral because God loves/commands it? Certainly. Does God love/command something because it is moral? Definitely. This works, principally, because God is the creator of all things (unlike, if memory serves, the various members of the Pantheon) — as the sole author of the whole of the Universe, God has created morality itself, and separated what is moral from what is not. This is both built into the fabric of creation and recorded as instructions, because humanity — empowered with free will — has need of both formal and natural revelation in coming to terms with, and in fostering its understanding of, God’s plan. That is why when we are taught, in the Bible, that marriage is the moral context for the use of the gift of sexuality, natural law and evidence from the world bear that conclusion out. There is a unity between what is taught and what is seen. God has both called us to moral living and made all the Universe in such a way that the living which He calls us to is moral.

To answer Nicholas more directly, however:

• Calgary is to the right.
• It is good to feed the hungry.

I trust the Reader notes what is going on? Nicholas is trying to sidetrack the discussion with dodges and pseudo-justifications, and in fact these are irrelevant. It is good to feed the hungry, plain and simple. Yes, Jesus commanded it, and obviously He did so because it was good. But equally, God (one in being with Christ in the Trinity) made humanity to be a social animal that values community and the well-being of members of the community; it is within our nature to care about the well-being of others. And so, both from within and without, what is moral is to feed the hungry.

As to the morality of God, I am not going to engage Nicholas in any substantive fashion, because we will end up talking past each other. I will agree that in the Old Testament there are a lot of times where we — merely human — might look askance at the recorded acts and commands of God and wonder at their correctness. Equally, however, we must remember that God does not see things as we do, and that if there is any truth to the “alleged records of its moral guidance” then there is also no chance at all that we mere humans will have any hope of comprehending the ways and means of the Almighty. Personally, I’m thankful for that, O Reader. For if God saw humanity as we humans tend to see it, I submit that He’d send us all into the pit of Hell with nary a second thought.

God is love, as Pope Benedict XVI recently reminded us in his encyclical Deus caritas est. And that is the first category we must employ when looking at the actions of God in Scripture. We may not be able to understand a particular action as one of love, of course, but whose shortcoming is that? God’s? Or ours?

Nicholas is, of course, welcome to dismiss as questionable the moral teachings of Jesus. Curiously, though, he simply states this as a matter of fact, providing no examples. I suspect that is because it is hard to argue that there exists any superior moral standpoint to “love your enemies.”

Finally, while the Hoffman article was interesting, it was also uncompelling (as, I have found, are most things that argue from the perspective of Jesus not being a historical figure). The fact that people doubt that Jesus was real doesn’t come as any surprise to me, given that a quarter of Britons think Churchill was a myth. I’d be willing to bet that over on this side of the Pond, more than a few people share that same thinking. And that should be instructive to us: large swathes of our society have relegated to the category of mythical a man whose accomplishments and shortcomings are well-documented, and who walked this Earth a mere sixty or so years ago. That people are weak-minded enough to similarly doubt the factual existence of historical figures that lived a thousand years ago, or two thousand, comes as no surprise, and is in fact to be expected.

~ by Kenneth on April 21, 2008.