quote:Glenn, my post actually wasn't aimed at you at all.
No, I knew that, it's just that it made me suddenly realize that the dialog between Lisa and me wasn't occurring in a vacuum, and that throwing barbs at Lisa might hit another target.
quote:*shrug* I also don't think they're terribly worth getting worked up over.
Good to know. Lisa gets worked up easily, and for whatever reason, I was in a snarky mood.
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KOM: They were asked repeatedly by newspapers, reporters and anti mormon organizations about their account of that experience. edit: as in after they left the church.
Why should I pass judgment on their characters? I can't say I know all the motivating factors that prompted their decision. I could certainly speculate but what good does that do? They could have had good reasons or terrible reasons for making the choices they did. Two of them ended up rejoining the church so take that for what you will.
quote:Glenn, my post actually wasn't aimed at you at all.
No, I knew that, it's just that it made me suddenly realize that the dialog between Lisa and me wasn't occurring in a vacuum, and that throwing barbs at Lisa might hit another target.
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Because one is a judgment about behavior, which is observable and verifiable.
The other is a judgment based on unknowables-- things like moral maturity and internal commitment.
See, this was why I asked the question of you that I did previously. It seemed like your logic was running into a direction where you were going come to the conclusion that moral maturity is inherently unknowable.
Is that true, are you saying that moral maturity is inherently unknowable? Or is it just moral *immaturity* that is unknowable and that moral *maturity* is still identifiable?
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: There is also a strong argument to made in Mormonism that the prophet cannot apostatize. Or rather God would not pick somebody who was going to fall in the first place. It would be hard to separate the church from the doctrine but I do know people who do it.
That's circular, though. In any case it just requires you to believe that the prophet wasn't chosen in the first place, if you see what I mean.
quote:They were asked repeatedly by newspapers, reporters and anti mormon organizations about their account of that experience. edit: as in after they left the church.
And what did they say? Links, please.
quote:Why should I pass judgment on their characters?
Because the question was, given a man convinced by some tangible evidence of the existence of the Christian god, would he still be able to rebel against the moral strictures of that god? Let's try to think what are the possible scenarios:
1. The witnesses are deliberately lying in support of Smith.
2. The witnesses are convinced of the existence of the golden plates and through that of a god, but believe that Smith is no longer in communion with that god.
3. The witnesses are convinced of the god, but find themselves unable to follow its morality and therefore rebel against Smith.
The first case is uninteresting for this purpose. We are trying to determine if a man, convinced of the existence of a god with power to punish, can then deliberately rebel against that god. (As opposed to yielding to temptation, of course - I think all Christian churches recognise such a distinction.) If the men aren't convinced in the first place, then their subsequent behaviour is of no interest to us.
The judgement of character would be evidence for deciding between cases 2 and 3. Presumably, people who thought Smith out of grace, but still believed in his god, would behave well by their lights and ours, while people deliberately rebelling against an unbearable god would behave badly. So, to support your contention that people with knowledge of a god's existence can still rebel against it - again this is distinct from merely yielding to temptation knowing that it's wrong - you need to show that your witnesses
a) Believed Smith's god existed b) Found its morality unbearable, and that is why they went apostate.
Supporting evidence for b) would be bad behaviour on their part after the split.
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KOM: I'll get to your points probably tomorrow, I have to stop distracting myself away from this research paper. Or if other hatrackers cover the points I would have made I'll say anything I think they missed.
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Come to think of it, we have evidence of the opposite pattern on Hatrack: To wit, Lisa finds the rules of her god a bit annoying, if I understand her correctly, but she nevertheless obeys because she is convinced that her god exists.
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Where I on the other hand, when I was younger and went to church, couldn't reconcile the idea of a loving God with one who would make church so boring and force me to miss sleeping in and watching TV on my weekend. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I can't believe that the last half of this thread has been debating the merits of Squicky's straw man assertion.
I can't believe we've been so enraged by it we were blind to what it was.
And another thing, morals don't exist because God does. 2 Nephi 2 establishes that without right and wrong, without "free will," God does not exist. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Oh, wait, he would exist, he would just cease to be God.
Yes, Mormons believe in a very strange God. And our Savior is equally strange. He atones for all sin but saves only those who sincerely desire it. It is strange because the desire and choice must come from me.
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Personally, I believe God is the source of good. Everyone is free to choose how to behave, but He sets the definition.
I'm more concerned with punishment in secular matters. God's standards are impossibly high so all I can do is my best. He'll forgive me. The police will write me a ticket even if I missed the reduced speed sign.
With God, I'm more worried about trying to hit His standards. I've got one coworker I'd love to put in her place when she directs one of her little passive-aggressive snits at me. I don't because of that passage about how anyone can be nice to folks that are nice to them first. You're not proving anything unless you're nice to the people who are actively mean to you.
I'm not sure where that falls on the maturity scale. I'm not up to doing it out of love for all humans, so I'm definitely short of where I consider mature. However, I'm doing something I don't want because it's the right thing even though I won't get anything for it. So it's not where I'd rank immature, either.
I certainly wouldn't bother if I didn't believe in God, but I'm pretty sure I'd have a different scale for my morality then.
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How do you feel about people who take anti-depressants? Or people who go to a psychologist? Are they morally immature because they're using an external source as a sounding board/behavior check?
:shakes head:
quote:What if kmboots said something like "I'm not really all that committed to Good" or "you know, sometimes I really enjoy killing a complete stranger in the most painful way possible" or even "I'm good, but I have to admit that I wouldn't be if I didn't think I'd go to Hell if I weren't."
Would you really not question her commitment to Good at that point?
Two of your three examples would never be said by sane people; one of those hinges on an action which I've explicitly stated is capable of being accurately judged.
The third ("I'm good 'cause I don't wanna go to Hell,") isn't what I agree with doctrinally, but as I've indicated, I cannot judge someone's moral maturity.
None of those examples are pertinent to the original quotation which I took exception with:
quote:I've made the point before that I believe that the main reason why many theists seem to think that people without an external moral judge would behave poorly is because these theists lack this internal commitment and haven't developed mature morality.
The assumption is that needing (or saying you need) an external impetus to "do good" is an indication of immature morality and a lack of commitment to behave correctly.
It's not any better when it's said by Squicky than when it's implied by Romney. They're both making the same mistake-- judging people on terms that they have no capability of seeing.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Come to think of it, we have evidence of the opposite pattern on Hatrack: To wit, Lisa finds the rules of her god a bit annoying, if I understand her correctly, but she nevertheless obeys because she is convinced that her god exists.
quote:How do you feel about people who take anti-depressants? Or people who go to a psychologist? Are they morally immature because they're using an external source as a sounding board/behavior check?
Again, you're not quite getting the point. It's not the use of a "sounding board" that's the problem -- although, as an atheist, I personally reject the idea that anyone out there is successfully using God as a "sounding board," either -- but rather the implied source of the impulse.
quote:The assumption is that needing (or saying you need) an external impetus to "do good" is an indication of immature morality and a lack of commitment to behave correctly.
Yes. That's pretty much the definition of "immature morality."
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I don't think that anyone can accurately make that judgment about another person (or group of people).
I think that thinking one can make that judgment short-circuits conversations about morality because it instills a false sense of knowledge.
I wasn't missing the point-- I was making an analogy that you don't agree with. I understand your point well enough.
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quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: Personally, I believe God is the source of good. Everyone is free to choose how to behave, but He sets the definition.
- - - emphasis added - - -
I personally find this wrong on so many levels ...
To start, this is the most probable source of the vast majority of the intolerance in the world, in all Human history.
posted
Yeah, if that sentence read 'God is a source of good' I wouldn't have a problem with it.
There's a mound of evidence against it the way it's written now (depending, of course, on how you want to quantify 'good').
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The idea is perfectly sound, but only with some caveats.
For me goodness transcends God, as he himself has committed himself to the path of righteousness and obeys it's precepts. But as his creation we are totally reliant on him to reveal to us what goodness is. Were God to have completely cut off humanity from Himself at the beginning, we would have all sunk into darkness and killed each other off.
So yes in a sense God is the source of all that is good for us as without him we would fail to find goodness.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Where did you define "goodness?"
Intolerance is not necessarily evil.
I didn't define "goodness", I quoted AvidReader talking about "good".
I agree that intolerance is not "necessarily evil". I'm just saying that the level of intolerance that comes out from that particular definition should be avoided.
quote:Originally posted by pooka: I can't believe that the last half of this thread has been debating the merits of Squicky's straw man assertion.
To be honest, I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding the "enragement" in the first place.
Bear with me for a second here because this is going to sound weird. See as you mentioned on page 7, "it is a tenet of Mormonism that we become as little children." Furthermore, when I was doing an analysis of Mitt Romney's speech I noticed that there was an unusually prominent line along the lines of "We believe that all humans are the children of God."
Now, I do not know if this feature is especially pronounced in Mormonism, but it seems that this is just an extension of the theme that many Christians have of God as a father figure.
This submissive imagery reminds me of places that I'm sure someone else could detail more clearly, but really quickly I'm thinking of things like the phrase "The Kingdom of God" (even after one dies, one is not yet mature as God, it is not a "Republic of God" or a "Democracy of God") and the imagery of priests as shepherds and churchgoers as sheep.
So forget that Squickly deemed some portion of theists as morally immature. It seems like Christians are intent on calling everyone children, period, which is pretty much the first definition of immature.
Therefore the response should not be "Hey! We're not morally immature!" instead it should "Yeah, we're all immature, period. We said so ourselves. But do not presume that you're *more* mature"
i.e. the anger is not that someone called you immature, morally or otherwise, many people including Mitt Romney call you immature with no anger. Instead, it would seem that the anger is that Squickly as an outsider said it with (and this is the important part) the presumption that someone other than God is more mature, namely himself.
Edit to add: not "you" specifically, but the particular theists that he targeted obviously
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We believe that we are literally the spirit children of God. It isn't a metaphor or imagery. He is literally our Father in Heaven.
"Immature" is much, much too pejorative and (worse) inaccurate to describe our spiritual development and our relationship with our heavenly father.
I think Squicky does believe that he's more mature than most of the people he speaks pejoratively of. That's cute.
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I'm an atheist. I pretty much have to think that its a metaphor or imagery. The alternative is that you're all literally children of nothing
But seriously, is the only issue really the pejorative and its associated connotations? Would it have been any better if he had switched words? That instead of "immature" if he had said "child-like" or "childish" in keeping with metaphor?
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It depends. When used in the same context (as a contrast the morality of those who do not believe in God or whatever), it would still be wrong.
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I want to make sure it's understood-- my problem with Squicky's statement has nothing to do with belief or non-belief.
It has to do with the idea that he can know something about someone's character that is essentially unknowable.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Here's the quote from AvidReader:
quote:God is the source of good. Everyone is free to choose how to behave, but He sets the definition.
I don't see how this ideology necessarily leads to the bad kind of intolerance.
(Note: I won’t forget that AvidReader stated a personal belief.)
The way I see it, defining “good” as being produced only by one specific divinity, is the main problem. (I also think it is circular logic).
We won’t be able to agree if that divinity really exists, and therefore I’ll believe I can be good regardless of that existence, while AvidReader wouldn’t.
If I show that I can be “good” even if I don’t believe in the existence of that divinity, the response would be that “the divinity influences me even if I reject it” or that “my good deeds are a step toward that divinity, even if I don’t realise it”, therefore diminishing my free will. (I find that paradoxical). So whatever I do, I have to admit that I’m wrong about something: either I do “evil” (when I don’t do “good”), or I’m wrong about the existence of the deity (when I do that “good”).
This “justifies” the righteousness of the one who “knows and accepts that deity” which in turn “justifies” the intolerance not only toward the “evil doers” but also toward those that don’t accept that they can’t be “good” while rejecting the (existence of the) divinity.
Another problem with the definition is the fact that when I find a stance where the “acts” of that divinity, as they are reported, contradicts the definition of “good” (that comes from that same divinity), AvidReader says: no, that’s not inconsistent, it’s because the divinity defines “good” and can therefore do it even while saying otherwise. As someone who doesn’t believe in that deity, I see all this is just as a way of “justifying” inconsistent interpretation of facts (not forgetting that not believing in those facts would eliminate the inconsistency, yet I’m not the one believing in them).
I won’t forget the egocentrism that one has to espouse in order to be able to declare to be in possession of the “right interpretation” of the word of a deity, while we as Humans have just a certain “volume” at the scale of the Universe.
Remember, it’s the way I see it, and that’s how I understand the way the most of the intolerance in the Human history was, and still is, “justified”.
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: It has to do with the idea that he can know something about someone's character that is essentially unknowable.
I'm coming into this kind of late, but I think it's only unknowable if you're talking about absolute knowledge. Based on a person's actions and statements, you can 'know' to at least a moderate degree of certainty.
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quote:Were God to have completely cut off humanity from Himself at the beginning, we would have all sunk into darkness and killed each other off.
How do you know this? Wouldn't it be just as possible that we'd develop cooperative relationships which allowed peaceful coexistence so long as resources were sufficient to support the population? I don't see why anarchy and evil would be the default.
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quote:So yes in a sense God is the source of all that is good for us as without him we would fail to find goodness.
Of course, if you believe in god then you can say that god's the source of everything, inasmuch as nothing would exist without his influence. That's a pretty useless stance to take for this discussion, because it leads to someone like me saying that, by your reasoning, god is also the source of all that is evil because without him none of it would exist. Platitudes are great for motivational posters but lousy for discussions.
Unless you're saying not that god is the only source of goodness but rather the only path to discover it, which is just as ridiculous as the original quote. Since it's pretty easy to produce examples of people who found goodness without god.
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quote:Since it's pretty easy to produce examples of people who found goodness without god.
I can imagine a response somewhat along the lines of, "No, God still influenced them, they just weren't aware of it."
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BB, It seemed to me that you were claiming that followers of your religion have it harder than people who don't follow it, and specifically, non-religious people. Is that not accurate?
If so, then I clearly misread you. Sorry about that.
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quote:Were God to have completely cut off humanity from Himself at the beginning, we would have all sunk into darkness and killed each other off.
We've had this discussion before, but I don't know if it was ever resolved. This seems to me to suggest that God must not only bring morality, but perception and the ability to reason as well and that human beings are, by default, programmed to destroy.
It's pretty easy to reason out how being totally, unreservedly evil is going to destroy any chance of living. To a certain extent, that's the basis of the Social Contract. In your postulation, either man without God can't perceive this or is incapable of reasoning that, therefore, in order to serve his own interests, he can't be all kinds of evil.
Also, even if we remove reasoning ability, there is still the matter of him being programmed to destroy. Animals, in general, don't wipe themselves out right away. If man were just an animal, he would have to be differ from all other animals in your proposed situation, in that he actively works towards his species destruction.
Honestly, why would people want to be all evil? Building communities and relationships both feel good and make long-term sense. You'd have to take both these elements away over and above the "Be good" manipulation God put on people in order for your scenario to be true.
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quote:Yes. That's pretty much the definition of "immature morality."
How do you determine who needs an external impetus to do good? Because let's be honest, there's always some external impetus to do good. Respect from the community, your offspring do well, or even you simply feel good about yourself for ethical or religious reasons.
Even the solid atheist with a committment to doing the right thing has an 'external impetus' to cling to that committment.
The discussion then becomes, "Theists who think that those with one less external impetus than they have to do the right thing won't do it are morally immature." Which is a pretty damn silly.
----------------
Mr. Squicky, if you cannot see how labeling people morally immature can be offensive...well, I just don't believe you can't. You're condescending to people with that point of view. Just admit it, and move on! Sheesh! On religious issues, everyone with a conviction that isn't, "Everyone will find God in their own way," (and sometimes even those people) are going to be condescending somewhat, simply as a factor of believing they're right on something extremely important and others are wrong.
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quote:Thankfully, as has been explained by at least 5 people multiple times, this isn't actually addressing what I was saying.
Correct me if I'm wrong-it's been a long thread-but you said that theists who think people without God as a moral factor in their lives either won't be good, or will be less likely to, that those people are morally immature, correct?
If that is, in fact, what you're saying then I do think you're engaging in some mind-reading here, and thus your opinion is pretty invalid. Because you're not in a position to gauge the 'moral maturity' of people you've never met, much less an entire group of people. The issue os so subjective and so varying from person to person, even in a large group, that it's just impossible.
But let's suppose you're right, those people are morally immature, because they need the external prop to behave, and cannot imagine behaving without it (this is what you're hinting at, anyway). So what? You don't have a host of external props to do the right thing? Even if you're right, you're like a 12 year old telling a 9 year old that the 9 year old is so immature.
Unless you do think that you would still hold a committment to doing the right thing even if there were no external motives to do so.
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Which is the same as my first paragraph above. In that scenario, god is the source of all good, all evil, and all everything. All the time.
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quote:I can imagine a response somewhat along the lines of, "No, God still influenced them, they just weren't aware of it."
That's why the free will point is important to bring up. There are plenty of people who found goodness while specifically rejecting God.
---
Earlier, during the productive, respectful part of this conversation, Eowyn answered this with this, which I hope he (she?) has time to come back to:
quote:I didn't actually mean that God was directly playing around with your head. I meant that certain situations, certain sights, may be designed to show you something that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise, and this might influence your decisions down the road. (This can still be called manipulation, but since you're free to draw your own conclusions, it's hopefully not as objectionable)
C3PO rasies another valid point. God may be subtly influencing the effects of your actions, making your good actions better and dampening the effects of your bad decisions.
In the first part, God isn't really making me good at all, as far as I can see. It's kind of manipulative, but not really all that objectionable. However, God isn't actually necessary in any way given that way of looking at it. I have the potential for good in me completely removed from God. If God were absent from the equation, I could still be presented with stimuli (potentially the same stimuli that God would have presented me with anyway) and could chose to be good.
The second falls into much the same problem. If God isn't effecting the nature of my decision making, but instead altering the results in some way, I still contain within myself and absent God, the ability to decide and, in that case, an inclination to be good.
As I can see it, only if God is interfering with how I make decisions can it be said that I need God to be good. (Actually, that's not completely true. There is the possibility that there's a entity who is interfering with my decisions to make me be evil, which God is working to counteract. In that case, I'm most grateful if God to cancel the other out and leave me the heck alone with my base nature.)
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quote:How do you determine who needs an external impetus to do good?
As has been said many, many times by now, by their own statements.
I don't see how it takes mind-reading to hear or read what people say.
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Actually, maybe that is the key here. Are people suggesting that I lack the ability to hear and instead must access people's statements through some sort of telepathy?
If so, let me assure you that I've had my hearing checked and the appartatus was a machine, which would make it impossible for me to read it's mind.
The only psionic power I have is the ability to tell if a given Dunkin Donuts is going to be out of boston creme donughts. It doesn't sound like much, but it once saved the lives of over 2 people and one very cute kitten.
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quote:It has to do with the idea that he can know something about someone's character that is essentially unknowable.
quote:How do you determine who needs an external impetus to do good?
My answer to the second question addresses Scott's complaint in the first: we know only because they said so about themselves. If someone says "I need God to do good," they are saying about themselves that they need an external impetus to do good; if they say everyone needs God to do good, they are making that statement not only about themselves but also about everyone else. By concluding that they need an external impetus to do good, we are at worst taking their statement at face value.
If anything, the statement "we all need God to do good" is an order of magnitude more presumptive (and rude) than Squicky's observation, and yet Scott's spending all his time on the latter instead of the former.
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To be fair, Tom, I don't think Scott has spent time on either. He's too busy spinning fantasies about my mutant mental abilities.
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quote:The discussion then becomes, "Theists who think that those with one less external impetus than they have to do the right thing won't do it are morally immature." Which is a pretty damn silly.
quote:As has been said many, many times by now, by their own statements.
Seeing as how both Tom and Squicky hit the easily-answered portion of my statements, I'll reiterate my core question: how do you know that everyone doesn't need an external impetus? What, just because some people say they don't? Pft.
Even if you, Tom or Squicky, said that you needed no external push, I'd ask, "How do you know that?" You're guessing. You're hoping. I believe that it's important to want to do good without an external impetus, but until a world exists without that, whether anyone would is impossible to gauge.
Which brings us back to the point I was making before: isn't it a little silly to label people who acknowledge their external impetus as morally immature?
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All of this debate over whether or not God is manipulative or absent kind of resolves itself if you have an idea of God that isn't just external.
That potential for good? Some of us call that "God".
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quote:That potential for good? Some of us call that "God".
I call it the light of Christ, and it's in everyone. It's how it is possible to never pray, never feel the spirit, and still come to moral decisions. It's how just about everyone knows that killing is wrong. It's the spark of divinity in us.
Which is why I think that the whole "I'm rejecting God when I make my moral conclusions" is wrong - it's like saying you've decided to live without oxygen.
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But the discussion isn't so much using my definition of God. The definition of "God" that people are arguing about here, is the external, god-in-the-sky-with-superpowers that tends to be pretty common. I feel the need to point that out every so often, but it isn't really helpful.
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quote:I call it the light of Christ, and it's in everyone. It's how it is possible to never pray, never feel the spirit, and still come to moral decisions. It's how just about everyone knows that killing is wrong. It's the spark of divinity in us.
Which is why I think that the whole "I'm rejecting God when I make my moral conclusions" is wrong - it's like saying you've decided to live without oxygen.
All that is fine, as long as you are willing to grant the God violates people's free will.
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boots's version is somewhat different, in that she is supposing an immanent versus a separate entity. However, in that case, there is no case for fallen mankind to start with.
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