Must moral law be divinely inspired?

[Megenoita]

Hey guys,

What you all are not considering in the progression of this conversation is the self-manifestation of said Presence. Yes, the universal moral law (treat others as you want to be treated, et al) screams of a God. Once you get to that plateau, to say that since this is so, that must mean that this Greater Being transcends any religion is fallacious. Consider this--if there were one Being from whom all false religions derived, would they not all bear a semblence of the true "religion"?

There is something unique among religions in the world. There is something that stands out, a belief system that is far different than any other. There is one moral code that differs from the others in crucial points where it seems similar to the others from a distance (which is as close as any of you have gotten), but from an intimate examination, it is amazingly lucent that it is unique, and the truth. I speak of the writings that come together to form what is known as the Bible. No, not Catholicism. Not Protestantism. If you are a scholar of the Bible, you know that you can scarcely find a church in the world that is teaching the Bible rightly from the pulpit. And so men such as yourselves continue to be deceived by what is Christianity because what is presented to you is a "religion" like others, and what composes the Bible is something entirely different.

It is the Bible that conveys that God has set the idea of eternity in man's heart, yet not so that man will find out the works of God (Ecclesiastes). It is the Bible which states that the moral code which is embedded in man is from ONE God (Romans 2). It is the stories of Genesis which confirm this.

In my search for the Creator (I always saw the need for a Creator when I considered nature), I considered all known religions, and was baffled by the possibilities. Was God above all these religions? Part of them all? Was one right and the rest wrong? I was led astray, to nowhere (to everywhere), and puzzled. But upon reading the Bible in its entirety, I discovered the source from which all other religions originate. I saw a God that Christianity hardly knew, a God more divisive to the world and powerful than I had ever heard of, and a God that no man would make up. This God of the Bible was living for his own glory, and created man to glorify himself. Man is pictured as an evil sinner in the Bible, desperately needing to be saved from himself. Man cannot save himself, nor can he come to God himself or through his reason. Who wants to believe this? Who was this Jesus Christ, Son of God, central to His Being? But alas, the Bible documents the start of all other religions including evolution (2 Peter), secular humanism (Romans 1), atheism (Psalm 14), and agnosticism (I Corinthians 1-2). It describes in detail the reason for moral absolutes being universal, how man seeks to be moral to work his way to whatever higher place he sees fit in his mind, though there be only one which cannot be earned. It also describes why all men seek to worship something greater than themselves (just watch how people talk about David S. on this forum, or how we elevate actors and athletes in America and around the world). All the answers to all philosophical questions, I have found in the Bible, though the God of the Bible is foreign to nearly all religious men.

The Apostle Paul is a surprisingly philosophical man who explains many of these things in the 14 books of the Bible which document him. I would encourage you to read his writings and the book of Acts.

To assume that God has not manifested Himself to us in a way that we can know is, at this current time for you, willful ignorance--you cannot say that you have searched. One famous quote that people like to say is, "Seek and you will find". Have you sought? Be careful of what makes sense to you and the conclusions you see fit considering that you haven't even read the Bible that after thousands o f years, no one has been able to refute. Be careful that your own reasoning doesn't preclude what you desire to find. "Sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

When you've finally conceded (in this post modern society!) that there are absolute morals, will you stop there and conclude that they end in man, or that the God in whom they end is not desiring of our obedience of them to worship Him in ONE particular way? If you are going to seek, by all means, seek! But seek all the way, and with the realization that what makes sense to you may not be the way that the truth is.

M

[CrisBrown]

Hi JPolin,

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If one believes in the malaise and decadence of Western civilization (as my professor does), then moral relativists and deconstructionists are some of the prime villains. By disintegrating and delegitimizing traditional rubrics of moral authority, they have caused people to lose a sense of objective right and wrong and thus to live in a hedonistic and irresponsible way that will lead to the decay of Western civilization.

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Ahhhh ... to the heart of the matter. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Okay, first, your professor's argument is self-supporting. He asserts the existence of a problem: Western society is suffering from malaise and decadence. He then tells you how dire the consequences are: the decay of Western civilization. He's even considerate enough to tell you who to blame: those moral relativists and deconstructionists and other "modern" thinkers. If you asked him, I bet he could even supply the solution: that all should return to the arms of mother church, renounce modern-relativist-decadent thought, and once again submit to the will of God.

Next time you see him, ask him for his opinions on Christian Reconstructionism or Dominionism. I'm willing to bet they'll be positive.

Then ask him to prove his diagnosis of decadence and malaise in contemporary Western society (he can't), and his alleged consequences (he can't except by failed analogy), and his case against the blameworthy (again, he can't).

After he's done making an idiot of himself, make a note that the primary purpose of higher education is to teach you to think critically, and that professors don't are just as subject to faulty opinions as anyone else.

Cris

[JPolin]

[ QUOTE ]
Ahhhh ... to the heart of the matter. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Okay, first, your professor's argument is self-supporting. He asserts the existence of a problem: Western society is suffering from malaise and decadence. He then tells you how dire the consequences are: the decay of Western civilization. He's even considerate enough to tell you who to blame: those moral relativists and deconstructionists and other "modern" thinkers. If you asked him, I bet he could even supply the solution: that all should return to the arms of mother church, renounce modern-relativist-decadent thought, and once again submit to the will of God.

Next time you see him, ask him for his opinions on Christian Reconstructionism or Dominionism. I'm willing to bet they'll be positive.

Then ask him to prove his diagnosis of decadence and malaise in contemporary Western society (he can't), and his alleged consequences (he can't except by failed analogy), and his case against the blameworthy (again, he can't).

After he's done making an idiot of himself, make a note that the primary purpose of higher education is to teach you to think critically, and that professors don't are just as subject to faulty opinions as anyone else.

Cris

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Indeed, you are correct in your assumptions about my professor. Like you, I am skeptical of his solutions to the problems he identifies. I find an intriguing historical parallel within St. Augustine's City of God, where he expends considerable effort successfully defending Christianity from the Pagan allegation that it caused Rome's decay. The cry of today's Christian Reconstructionists seems very similar to the cry of the Pagans in the 4th and 5th century A.D.

I was a little taken aback by your somewhat patronizing tone [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] I didn't need the help of any professor to see the havoc that moral relativism has wreaked. While I am not particularly knowledgable about morality and religion, I am much more expert with matters of foreign policy and domestic politics.

I didn't really want to go here, but if you examine the positions of relativsts/post-modernists concerning international affairs, you will see that they occupy the most extreme position on the radical left. Unfortunately, I spent four years up close and personal with these so-called "academics" when I was at Columbia. Their dogmatism, arrogance, and intellectual authoritarianism strongly contradicts their liberal rhetoric of tolerance, peace and what not.

In practical terms, the pontificating of these relativists and post-modernists has led to anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and a paucity of honest debate within the intelligentsia. There are many serious problems in the world, and to see many of our brightest minds engaged in an intellectual fantasy world instead of real, concrete problems is a tremendous tragedy.

[CrisBrown]

Hi J.Polin,

The problem with Christian Reconstructionism/Dominionism is that it seeks a return to a pre-Enlightenment mindset where knowledge had to be vetted by ecclesiastical authority. One need only look to the atrocities of the Crusades, or those of contemporary radical Islam, for examples the dangers of subordinating fact and reason to faith. Theocracy is the most dangerous form of government ever devised.

While moral absolutes are comforting, alas, it seems we humans do best when we muddle along as best we can, relying on reason tempered by kindness.

Cris

[maurile]

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Am I right to assume that moral/natural law necessitates a divine presense?

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No.

An objective morality cannot come from any kind of god.

Morality is objective if a given moral claim is true or false without regard to whether anybody agrees with it. Morality is subjective if it's a matter of mere personal preference.

Math, for example, is objective because "2 + 2 = 4" is true whether or not you agree. But taste is subjective because "tomatoes are yummier than carrots" is merely a statement of preference.

If we say that morality is whatever God wants it to be, that's every bit as subjective as if we say that morality is whatever you want, or whatever Comrade Stalin wants, or whatever the majority wants -- subjective because, in that case, morality is merely a matter of God's personal preference.

Is there any objective reason why God's preference should matter more than mine? If we say that God's preference matters more than mine because of X, well, that means that moral claims are ultimately determined by X rather than by by God's whim.

(And note that X must be independent of God. If X is simply "because God wants it that way," then we're left with the claim that God's preferences matter most because that's what God prefers. Not only is that circular, but it doesn't uniquely apply to God. Stalin would prefer his preferences to matter most as well.)

So whatever the independent justification is for saying that God's preferences matter more than mine do, it's that justifying principle -- not God's whim -- that ultmately determines the truth or falsity of moral claims. In an objective moral theory, a moral dictator is at best a middleman and at worst a fraud.

The overall conclusion is that objective moral theory is equally reasonable for theists and atheists.

[CrisBrown]

Hi maurile,

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So whatever the independent justification is for saying that God's preferences matter more than mine do, it's that justifying principle -- not God's whim -- that ultmately determines the truth or falsity of moral claims. In an objective moral theory, a moral dictator is at best a middleman and at worst a fraud.

The overall conclusion is that objective moral theory is equally reasonable for theists and atheists.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is very true, and it's ironic that it took a trained theologian, Immanuel Kant, to divorce moral imperatives from religious teaching.

Kant's Categorical Imperative (in every situation, let each man act as he would if his action were the rule for all other men in that situation) expresses a fundamental principle that appears in nearly all of the world's major religions. But Kant did not ground the C.I. in the Bible. Rather, he chose to ground it in pure reason.

The C.I. is also one of the core principles of all advanced legal systems. John Rawls and other jurispdudential theorists express it in the phrase "like cases should be treated alike," an idea that goes all the way back to the Code of Hammurabi.

So yes, it is possible to assert an objective moral code which is not rooted in religion. But such a code is not likely to conform to the desires of Dominionists, precisely because it does derive from religious belief. It asserts a primary of reason which is antithetical to Dominionism.

Cris

[pc in NM]

[ QUOTE ]
If there is no objective moral law, what compulsion is there for people to behave in a way conducive to a good society? On what basis can murder, theft, and various other crims be classified as wrong? If one places these matters in human hands, how does one prevent law from degenerating into a justification of, "because I said so?"

I think these questions suggest the necessity of a transcendental basis for moral law.

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Just because it would be a nicer or simpler or what-have-you world if something were the case in no way demonstrates, or even "suggests", "necessity". You're merely addressing preference.

And, quite frankly, history amply demonstrates that much law has in fact been based upon no more than "because I said so".

One of the primary methods of resolving legal disputes is by appeal to "precedent". What I am maintaining is that such a methodology is what's primarily available to us in moral reasoning - that is, to start from mutual agreement on a moral postion, and to reason to related, "consistent", or analagous positions. I really think that most humans, in relevantly similar circumstances, share many values in common. But none of us have any grounds to claim "certainty" in the realm of morality, especially at the systemic level. And, BTW, that's also why moral reasoning is so often insufficient, and we resort to force, be it police, military, or what-have-you. And, in fact, whan one cites "moral law" to justify imposition of ANY value onto another, that is really just a special case of "because I (or, we) said so"....

[Joe826]

Nice thoughts. Your analysis would be accurate if God were just any other guy, like you or me. However, the orthodox belief is that God is the creator/inventor of all things and so he assigns to them an order of his choosing. If this is the case then thou shalt not murder is just as objectively true as 2 + 2 = 4. If God exists as christians portray him, then he defines all relations -- logical and otherwise.

In answer to the actual question, the answer most certainly has to be yes. Kant proved nothing, since his catagorical imperative was still based on notions which could ultimately be viewed as subjective. In order to have an objective moral system, there has to be an objective standard by which to judge rules.

[maurile]

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Nice thoughts. Your analysis would be accurate if God were just any other guy, like you or me.

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So who says that the creator's preferences matter more than mine? If the creator made that rule, it's circular and empty. It's no different from my own pronouncement that my preferences are the ones that matter. "What I say goes because I say so." If, on the other hand, the rule favoring the creator's preferences over mine didn't come from the creator, then evidently creators don't get to make the rules.

Either way, objective moral rules cannot come from a moral dictator.

(For you fans of Greek philosphy, this is known as the Euthyphro Dilemma. Socrates asked: "Is something good because God says so, or does God say a thing is good because it is?" If the former -- if God's preference for something is what makes it good -- then morality is empty and the claim that "God is good" is a vacuous tautology that says nothing more than "God wants what God wants." It's content-free. If the latter -- if God prefers something because it is good -- then it was already good before God stated his preference, and the standard for what is good exists independent of God.)

Christians who believe that moral rules come from God therefore believe in a subjective morality.

An example of an objective morality would be John Stuart Mill's "greatest good for the greatest number" -- which, not coincidentally, is non-theistic.

So to say that morality can't be objective unless it is divinely inspired is patenty absurd.

[kalooki45]

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An example of an objective morality would be John Stuart Mill's "greatest good for the greatest number"

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In what sense would Mills be more objective? Because HE determines what is good, as opposed to God?
That would seem to me to be the ULTIMATE subjectivity.

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So who says that the creator's preferences matter more than mine? If the creator made that rule, it's circular and empty.

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I think you aren't taking into account what God says about Himself. He didn't "make" the rules---He IS the rules.

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if God prefers something because it is good -- then it was already good before God stated his preference, and the standard for what is good exists independent of God.)


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Nothing, in Judeo-Christian theology, pre-dates God. He is the beginning of all things. To say that anything existed before Him or apart from Him is a non-starter.