What is your take?

dermdoc said:

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I believe the atonement and God's Grace extend to everybody. So even non believers can benefit.

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I believe you are correct. I also think that Jesus knew that his flock would recognize their shepherd's voice and go to him wherein those not of his flock would ignore him.

As with the wheat and the tares, Jesus will come to harvest his followers and the rest, possibly, will be burned and destroyed as implied in the Bible.

Rocag said:

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Only Christians define what is good and what is bad based on what Christianity teaches and even then you can have countless different interpretations based on the allegedly objective standard. As a non-Christian, I see absolutely no reason to include other people's religious beliefs in my own personal moral outlook.

In my opinion, the core of morality is empathy. If you can't imagine yourself in someone else's shoes you're probably not going to treat them well.

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Fundamentally, Christianity teaches its adherents to follow Christ rather than the world or themselves. As believers in Christ, we put our faith in him and follow (hopefully) his instructions. Non-believers create their own morality and follow the world and/or themselves.

Depends on how you define goodness. The bible teaches there is not one who is good apart from God.

Now can a non-believer be "good" in the sense that they are law-abiding, responsible, generous, etc. Absolutely.

Frok said:

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Depends on how you define goodness. The bible teaches there is not one who is good apart from God.

Now can a non-believer be "good" in the sense that they are law-abiding, responsible, generous, etc. Absolutely.

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My definition of "good" is that which is pleasing to God. My definition of "bad" is that which goes against God's wishes.

Therefore, I believe, one that does NOT recognize nor submit themselves to God is NOT "good". Those that recognize and submit to God by living a life that is pleasing to him are "good".

Of course. I think everyone deep down believes this. But it also depends on what your definition of "good" is.

I think the vast majority of people are generally good. There are good Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists. There are bad ones in all groups too.

larry culpepper said:

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Of course. I think everyone deep down believes this. But it also depends on what your definition of "good" is.

I think the vast majority of people are generally good. There are good Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists. There are bad ones in all groups too.

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I disagree. The vast majority of people, including myself especially, are wretched.

To use the label Good and Evil assumes a standard in which these can be measured.

God's definition and standard of good is way higher than mine or way higher than possible for me to achieve. I agree with his standard which exposes my need for forgiveness, reconciliation, and mercy.

Example:
I may think John Doe is a good person from what I see. I however do not see what he wrestles with in his mind and what he does in secret where as God can.

When someone thinks they are a good person I would challenge them to write every thought they have about every person they interact with and display those publicly and daily for a while and share those thought with them. How lustful, mean, resentful, hateful, selfish, prideful, cruel are we actually? We often are oblivious to this until this is exposed.

Goodness, without a god, is simply what we subjectively desire of people around us. Yes, we can have that without god.

Texaggie7nine said:

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Goodness, without a god, is simply what we subjectively desire of people around us. Yes, we can have that without god.

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How is that different from having a subjective view of what is objectively good?

kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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Goodness, without a god, is simply what we subjectively desire of people around us. Yes, we can have that without god.

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How is that different from having a subjective view of what is objectively good?

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Because if there exist an objectively good, then regardless of what your subjective opinion of what it is, it still exists as a fact separately.

According to all major monotheistic religions, God is good. Not only is God good, one of His features is the He is the platonic ideal of goodness. Every other thing that is good is good to the extent that it matches up with God. Similar to how everything that is yellow is yellow because it matches some perfect platonic ideal of yellow. In this context, it doesn't make any sense to say someone is good without God. If God is goodness, than any good act or thought is a reflection of God, or participation with His essential nature.

Texaggie7nine said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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Goodness, without a god, is simply what we subjectively desire of people around us. Yes, we can have that without god.

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How is that different from having a subjective view of what is objectively good?

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Because if there exist an objectively good, then regardless of what your subjective opinion of what it is, it still exists as a fact separately.

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fair enough, but I don't see the difference in a practical sense if those objective facts are inaccessible to us.

The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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According to all major monotheistic religions, God is good. Not only is God good, one of His features is the He is the platonic ideal of goodness. Every other thing that is good is good to the extent that it matches up with God. Similar to how everything that is yellow is yellow because it matches some perfect platonic ideal of yellow. In this context, it doesn't make any sense to say someone is good without God. If God is goodness, than any good act or thought is a reflection of God, or participation with His essential nature.

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It's more about structuring what the society of the time sees as good, or more over what certain moral leaders of the time see as good, and solidifying that definition into myth as to propagate that standard as a norm across society.

Texaggie7nine said:

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The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.

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If there truly is a cosmic universal objective good, then do we know enough, or, are we in a position, to justify that final statement above.

M1Buckeye said:

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Rocag said:

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Only Christians define what is good and what is bad based on what Christianity teaches and even then you can have countless different interpretations based on the allegedly objective standard. As a non-Christian, I see absolutely no reason to include other people's religious beliefs in my own personal moral outlook.

In my opinion, the core of morality is empathy. If you can't imagine yourself in someone else's shoes you're probably not going to treat them well.

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Fundamentally, Christianity teaches its adherents to follow Christ rather than the world or themselves. As believers in Christ, we put our faith in him and follow (hopefully) his instructions. Non-believers create their own morality and follow the world and/or themselves.

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Pretty sure organized religion creates its own morality as well. For example, slavery was practiced for hundreds of years by Christians because it was acceptable in the societies they lived in (just using Christianity as an example as that is what the OP discussed...the same idea can be applied to other religions).

That means that if you follow Christ, rather than the world, one of two things must be true:
1.) You believe something like slavery is "good", because it was accepted, practiced, and tolerated by Christians.
2.) You accept that the standard of "good" changes due to societal dictates, which means that Christians follow the world and what they, personally, find acceptable as "good"

kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.

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If there truly is a cosmic universal objective good, then do we know enough, or, are we in a position, to justify that final statement above.

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Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.

Rocag said:

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Only Christians define what is good and what is bad based on what Christianity teaches and even then you can have countless different interpretations based on the allegedly objective standard. As a non-Christian, I see absolutely no reason to include other people's religious beliefs in my own personal moral outlook.

In my opinion, the core of morality is empathy. If you can't imagine yourself in someone else's shoes you're probably not going to treat them well.

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This was Kant's perspective. It kicked off his life's work into stripping religion from morality. He revealed absolute morality for the nonreligious.

And the funny part is his morality and your comment about empathy seem to capture what Jesus is all about.

This is the face of the modern secular west by the way. Not seeing just how deep Christianity has permeated into cultural bedrock that those who define morality for themselves ape off of Christianity, but with no authority to move beyond, "these are opinions - everyone gets to define right and wrong for themselves." If we were to run up against an isolated culture that participated in temple human sacrifices there are no tools to condemn them. They are doing right by their own culture. There is no authority to say what they do is right or wrong- it would just be your opinion.

Unless there was a universal morality out there.

Gaius Rufus said:

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M1Buckeye said:

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Rocag said:

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Only Christians define what is good and what is bad based on what Christianity teaches and even then you can have countless different interpretations based on the allegedly objective standard. As a non-Christian, I see absolutely no reason to include other people's religious beliefs in my own personal moral outlook.

In my opinion, the core of morality is empathy. If you can't imagine yourself in someone else's shoes you're probably not going to treat them well.

---

Fundamentally, Christianity teaches its adherents to follow Christ rather than the world or themselves. As believers in Christ, we put our faith in him and follow (hopefully) his instructions. Non-believers create their own morality and follow the world and/or themselves.

---

Pretty sure organized religion creates its own morality as well. For example, slavery was practiced for hundreds of years by Christians because it was acceptable in the societies they lived in (just using Christianity as an example as that is what the OP discussed...the same idea can be applied to other religions).

That means that if you follow Christ, rather than the world, one of two things must be true:
1.) You believe something like slavery is "good", because it was accepted, practiced, and tolerated by Christians.
2.) You accept that the standard of "good" changes due to societal dictates, which means that Christians follow the world and what they, personally, find acceptable as "good"

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Neither of these are true.

1) There are two levels of ethical claims. Descriptive ethics is where you look around at the world and say, whatever the world does is an endorsement of good and evil. These are critiques of moral actions, but they don't reflect on moral statements themselves. Example: Society punishes those who steal - so stealing is bad. Only 1% of the world steal, so society clearly thinks stealing is bad and doesn't do it. These are strong indictments about how people DO act, but says very little about how they SHOULD act. Right and wrong, at best, are simple actions of the majority.

Normative ethics is where you look around and say, regardless of how people do act what can we uncover about how we should? Hume has a good line that no matter how many descriptive claims you make about the world, they don't add up to a normative claim. "An Aught Cannot Be Derived From an Is." Normative claims have to have an appeal from somewhere beyond the actions of this world. A higher standard who has the authority to make moral decisions. These don't have to be religions, but religions are certainly part of it. Consequentialism, Kantianism, and Virtue Ethics are three of many secular frameworks to examine the world's moral conundrums through.

Christian morality is absolutely about normative ethics. What should be done is still immutably right and wrong whether or not its own adherents follow it. Of course, christians not doing the right thing leads to bad outcomes, but it doesn't change the immutability of what Jesus/God tells us about what we should do.

So Christians in periods throughout time had slaves and wrongly participated. Other Christians were also huge pillars in tearing down slavery. Neither change the normative ethic of letting a man have his own free will and God commands the release of slaves as Jews were slaves that He freed.

2) Good does not change across society. God is good. Any goodness in humanity is by reflecting God's image in our actions of love, forgiveness, and following his commandments. This is how absolute moralities work.

Also, if you can follow the first section of this post, you are ahead of about half of the engineering ethics students I taught during grad school.

Texaggie7nine said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.

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If there truly is a cosmic universal objective good, then do we know enough, or, are we in a position, to justify that final statement above.

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Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.

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Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?

kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.

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If there truly is a cosmic universal objective good, then do we know enough, or, are we in a position, to justify that final statement above.

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Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.

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Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?

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Even if there were no further universes or realities beyond that of whatever god that "created" this one. Within that reality, the "good" assigned to this one by that god would be subjective to them. What makes them "right"?

Texaggie7nine said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.

---

If there truly is a cosmic universal objective good, then do we know enough, or, are we in a position, to justify that final statement above.

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Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.

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Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?

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Even if there were no further universes or realities beyond that of whatever god that "created" this one. Within that reality, the "good" assigned to this one by that god would be subjective to them. What makes them "right"?

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The power to enforce its subjective version of 'right'?

one MEEN Ag said:

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Gaius Rufus said:

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M1Buckeye said:

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Rocag said:

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Only Christians define what is good and what is bad based on what Christianity teaches and even then you can have countless different interpretations based on the allegedly objective standard. As a non-Christian, I see absolutely no reason to include other people's religious beliefs in my own personal moral outlook.

In my opinion, the core of morality is empathy. If you can't imagine yourself in someone else's shoes you're probably not going to treat them well.

---

Fundamentally, Christianity teaches its adherents to follow Christ rather than the world or themselves. As believers in Christ, we put our faith in him and follow (hopefully) his instructions. Non-believers create their own morality and follow the world and/or themselves.

---

Pretty sure organized religion creates its own morality as well. For example, slavery was practiced for hundreds of years by Christians because it was acceptable in the societies they lived in (just using Christianity as an example as that is what the OP discussed...the same idea can be applied to other religions).

That means that if you follow Christ, rather than the world, one of two things must be true:
1.) You believe something like slavery is "good", because it was accepted, practiced, and tolerated by Christians.
2.) You accept that the standard of "good" changes due to societal dictates, which means that Christians follow the world and what they, personally, find acceptable as "good"

---

Neither of these are true.

1) There are two levels of ethical claims. Descriptive ethics is where you look around at the world and say, whatever the world does is an endorsement of good and evil. These are critiques of moral actions, but they don't reflect on moral statements themselves. Example: Society punishes those who steal - so stealing is bad. Only 1% of the world steal, so society clearly thinks stealing is bad and doesn't do it. These are strong indictments about how people DO act, but says very little about how they SHOULD act. Right and wrong, at best, are simple actions of the majority.

Normative ethics is where you look around and say, regardless of how people do act what can we uncover about how we should? Hume has a good line that no matter how many descriptive claims you make about the world, they don't add up to a normative claim. "An Aught Cannot Be Derived From an Is." Normative claims have to have an appeal from somewhere beyond the actions of this world. A higher standard who has the authority to make moral decisions. These don't have to be religions, but religions are certainly part of it. Consequentialism, Kantianism, and Virtue Ethics are three of many secular frameworks to examine the world's moral conundrums through.

Christian morality is absolutely about normative ethics. What should be done is still immutably right and wrong whether or not its own adherents follow it. Of course, christians not doing the right thing leads to bad outcomes, but it doesn't change the immutability of what Jesus/God tells us about what we should do.

So Christians in periods throughout time had slaves and wrongly participated. Other Christians were also huge pillars in tearing down slavery. Neither change the normative ethic of letting a man have his own free will and God commands the release of slaves as Jews were slaves that He freed.

2) Good does not change across society. God is good. Any goodness in humanity is by reflecting God's image in our actions of love, forgiveness, and following his commandments. This is how absolute moralities work.

Also, if you can follow the first section of this post, you are ahead of about half of the engineering ethics students I taught during grad school.

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Can you point to a quote from Jesus condemning slavery, please?

Can you give your opinion on Ephesians 6:5-8, please?

How do we define and understand anything objectively without an uncaused cause of the universe?

kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.

---

If there truly is a cosmic universal objective good, then do we know enough, or, are we in a position, to justify that final statement above.

---

Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.

---

Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?

---

Even if there were no further universes or realities beyond that of whatever god that "created" this one. Within that reality, the "good" assigned to this one by that god would be subjective to them. What makes them "right"?

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The power to enforce its subjective version of 'right'?

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It makes it right for this universe or reality, not theirs. Same as if I created a video game. In that game, the rules I set are the objective right ones, however it is completely subjective in this reality that those rules were right for that game.

First you have to put in context. Paul is addressing the people of Ephesus who like most places in the world have a master / servant system. He is not condoning anything here just the addressing the people of the time and the positions in which they are in. Its not the brutal slavery that existed in America.

The message he is getting across to the servant or slave depending on the translation, is to do your work with sincerity and love. Do not try and deceive your master.

It also helps to read Ephesians 6-9 where he addresses the masters.


ETA: If you are pondering Paul's motive in these writings, I would consider the prestige he gave up in the Jewish society to become a persecuted messenger of Christ.

Just an old clay pot, fill me with the spirit and I still sin even when I know better as the spirit is strong but the flesh is weak.

Mercy on me my God, Christ is my redeemer on that I pray.

To your first question about Jesus condemning slavery, I would offer this from Matthew 22.

36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

I don't think 19th century slavery falls in the Love your neighbor as yourself category.

barnyard1996 said:

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First you have to put in context. Paul is addressing the people of Ephesus who like most places in the world have a master / servant system. He is not condoning anything here just the addressing the people of the time and the positions in which they are in. Its not the brutal slavery that existed in America.

The message he is getting across to the servant or slave depending on the translation, is to do your work with sincerity and love. Do not try and deceive your master.

It also helps to read Ephesians 6-9 where he addresses the masters.


ETA: If you are pondering Paul's motive in these writings, I would consider the prestige he gave up in the Jewish society to become a persecuted messenger of Christ.

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First, it sounds like you are trying to say that just because slavery wasn't "as" violent in the first century (debatable) that there is something that is ok with it.

It also sounds like a pretty modern interpretation since physical punishment and sexual abuse of slaves was incredibly common in Ancient Rome.

But just to back up, are you saying that Paul wasn't actually talking about slavery when he literally says "tell slaves to be submissive to their masters"?

If that is the case, and if Christian morality is "absolutely about normative ethics" as one MEEN Ag stated, then there should be a statement from Jesus, or one of his apostles, that unequivocally says that slavery is immutably wrong.

To note, there are many instances in the Bible where specific actions are condemned, to include murder, kidnapping, lying, and whoring…but nothing condemning owning slaves (that I could find).