What is your take?
dermdoc said:
I believe the atonement and God's Grace extend to everybody. So even non believers can benefit.
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.Rocag said:
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.
My definition of "good" is that which is pleasing to God. My definition of "bad" is that which goes against God's wishes.Frok said:
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.
larry culpepper said:
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.
Texaggie7nine said:
Goodness, without a god, is simply what we subjectively desire of people around us. Yes, we can have that without god.
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.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said:
Goodness, without a god, is simply what we subjectively desire of people around us. Yes, we can have that without god.
How is that different from having a subjective view of what is objectively good?
Texaggie7nine said: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.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said:
Goodness, without a god, is simply what we subjectively desire of people around us. Yes, we can have that without god.
How is that different from having a subjective view of what is objectively good?
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.ramblin_ag02 said:
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:
The only difference would be that of being truly objectively good or only subjectively good. One isn't necessarily better than the other.
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).M1Buckeye said: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.Rocag said:
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.
Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said:
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.
This was Kant's perspective. It kicked off his life's work into stripping religion from morality. He revealed absolute morality for the nonreligious.Rocag said:
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.
Neither of these are true.Gaius Rufus said: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).M1Buckeye said: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.Rocag said:
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.
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"
Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?Texaggie7nine said:Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said:
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.
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"?kurt vonnegut said:Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?Texaggie7nine said:Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said:
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.
one MEEN Ag said:This was Kant's perspective. It kicked off his life's work into stripping religion from morality. He revealed absolute morality for the nonreligious.Rocag said:
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.
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.
Texaggie7nine said: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"?kurt vonnegut said:Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?Texaggie7nine said:Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said:
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.
one MEEN Ag said:Neither of these are true.Gaius Rufus said: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).M1Buckeye said: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.Rocag said:
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.
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"
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.
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.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said: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"?kurt vonnegut said:Well, then what about the creator of those realities and universes? Turtles all the way down?Texaggie7nine said:Well if a reality exists outside our known universe, even the objective good of our creator would ultimately be a subjective position.kurt vonnegut said:Texaggie7nine said:
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.
The power to enforce its subjective version of 'right'?
barnyard1996 said:
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.