Why do you believe in God

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DentArthurDent: What you are referring to is not morality but merely social norms. If morality is whatever behavior society mandates, then some pretty sick things can be considered moral.

I am not a cultural relativist, so you can just stop marching down that road. As I said, my moral code I arrived at after years of thought. It has changed over time; I think it has become more strict. The closest philosophy to my own would be Utilitarianism. I have my own variant of Utilitarianism, if you'd like to think of it that way.

The things one believes to be moral are heavily influenced by their culture. Whether these ideals are objectively moral is another issue entirely. Please stop combining these two ideas. I haven't touched on what is objectively moral yet today, I've really only been talking about morality as a social concept, and the origins of morality.

Yeah, Divine Command Theory needs defending. First, yeah, you have to prove God. You have to prove God exists, and you have to prove he exists within the parameters you say he exists in. Second, you would have to show that people derive their morality from this deity. Clearly, there are plenty of moral atheists. If Divine Command Theory were correct, non-Christians (I say Christian as I know you are Christian and I assume we're all talking about the Christian god) would be immoral. This is clearly not true, so Divine Command Theory blows itself out of the water.

But why is Utilitarianism moral? (I was guessing we'd arrive at some variant of Utilitarianism sooner rather than later)


But I was only referring to objective morality. If we both agree that social constructs are not adequate definitions of morality, then there is no longer any need to take them into consideration whatsoever. Which leaves us, currently, with exactly squat in the way of morality. You will attempt to justify utilitarianism, and I will attempt to justify divine command theory.


No I don't. I only have to prove that such beliefs are self-consistent, not that the premises themselves are true. My main point was that morality is impossible to establish outside a theistic framework. If we're operating outside a theistic framework (ie I am unable or unwilling to prove the existence of God or prove what His attributes are) then I simply say that you are not able to establish an objective basis for morality that I *must* accept. The onus of proof is much more on you than on me.


Sure, if people follow the morality prescribed by God, they are moral, if not, they are immoral. Atheists can follow a socially proscribed set of rules that help groups run more smoothly, but this is not morality. You are following some implied definition of morality that is not shared in your assertion that "Clearly, there are plenty of moral atheists." No, not clearly, since we have yet to agree on what constitutes morality at all. Making such a claim in the midst of an attempt to *define* morality is utter BS, as you are basically begging the question. But in any case, the viability of Divine Command Theory is not what's at stake here, since even if you could refute it you would only have disproved the last remaining tenable moral theory rather than proving whatever view you hold to, and then we are left with nihilism.

I don't know what time it is where you are, but it's quarter to 2 here. I am way too tired to go over my entire philosophy tonight. But, I don't really have to to disprove your point. You said that it is impossible to have morality outside theism. Utilitarianism disproves that.

Really, you'd have to prove that your morality is the only path in order for your argument to make any sense. I was kind of hoping we wouldn't get so far down into this discussion that we question morality so much that we can't agree that there are moral non-Christians. I was working with a pretty basic definition of morality, but if you want to get nitty gritty, you define it. Maybe I'll argue your definition if I'm not too tired and I disagree.

Yeah, I do think social constructs of morality are bogus, so at least there we're in agreement.

No, you have to prove your argument is valid and sound. I'm not buying an argument if the premises are questionable. You're the one trying to prove the more difficult conclusion. Your entire argument hinges on the existence of God, which I'm sure you'll agree is non-falsifiable.

Disproving your theory without supplying one of my own does not automatically leave us with nihilism, it leaves us unsure.

We're in the same time zone, but my circadian rhythms are way off. No, utilitarianism does not disprove my claim unless you are able to prove utilitarianism to be true, and also to be morality.


Since we're talking about objective morality, any morality is logically the only path.


Not without agreeing upon a definition of morality that can apply to non-Christians. Such is nonsensical.


You were using a term that was being debated without a definition of how you were using it, which would seem dishonest. I already did define it: morality is whatever God approves. If there is no God (I assume you are an atheist) then God obviously is not approving or disapproving of anything, which means there is no morality.


What makes utilitarianism so different?


You haven't done anything to demonstrate that it is invalid. (Invalid does not refer to the truth or falsehood of the premises, but rather whether the conclusion would follow if it is assumed that the premises are true) Then you don't have to buy the argument, which means you don't have to accept divine command theory. But you haven't put forward a good case for why utilitarianism can replace it, but merely asserted that it does. The premises being questionable is irrelevant, I only stated that divine command theory is internally consistent, which means it matches with its own premises. It does so. You can attack the premises all you want, but all you're doing is tearing a bigger hole in the concept of morality than is already there.


Well, if we can't find an objective morality, the default would have to be that there is none.

Like ...genocide? "and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." And this wasn't just a once and for all no more Godly ordained genocides, God ordered the utter destruction of many peoples by His people's swords, the people He had supposedly just commanded to not commit murder.

Is infanticide not sick? Is wholesale slaughter not vile? What did the poor animals do to God?? But it's all ok and it's moral all because God told a person to tell everyone else to commit these acts. Yeah, right.

I have only asserted that I subscribe to a variant of Utilitarianism, not that it is the only path. I'm sure you could have a different code of morals that achieves essentially the same thing, even if the rationale is wonky.

Okay, so basically you've defined morality to be whatever God says, and what God says is moral, because God said it? What reason have we to follow God's instruction? Because he is good? If he is defining what is good, then anything he says is good, because he is good, because he said so. If that isn't circular, I don't know what is.

If goodness is defined by God, and God defines himself to be good, then morality is totally circular and worthless. God could declare rape to be moral. By the virtue that God declared it, it is good. Divine Command Theory is entirely arbitrary, which also sort of kills the idea of objective morality in the first place.

I leave you with that, as I am deathly tired. Perhaps I shall return to this forum again later. Good night Orwell, and good day DentArthurDent.

OED
morality

• noun (pl. moralities) 1 principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour. 2 moral behaviour. 3 the extent to which an action is right or wrong. 4 a system of values and moral principles.

So are you trying to tell me that without God we are incapable of sorting out what is right and wrong, again I point to non Abrahamic cultures that have quite succesfully managed this. It is a process of learning and respect, leading to cultural values, it has nothing to do with God other than religions tended to have control of cultures, therefore what the priests had worked out from observation and learning became the morals of the day, some of which I repeat were highly questionable.

As Malsane asked I think Owell you need to define morality.

God is universal, in that every culture has their own ideas about what divinity is.

Ok so what forms/ideals/ degrees/ of morality could humanity not have worked out without hte assistance of God

No, cultures have had all sorts of beliefs, many of them involving gods, but few of them involving the Christian god Yahweh. For instance, the ancient Greeks had an idea about gods, namely, that Yahweh didn't exist, and that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Hermes et al did. Yahweh had no place in the Greek religion.

To say that the Christian god Yahweh is universal to all cultures on account of the fact that other cultures have believed in gods is like saying that the Terminator is universal to all movies, because the Terminator is a character, and all movies involve characters.

I didn't say God or gods. I said divinity.

But you're claiming that the fact that people had ideas about divinity somehow makes your particular god universal. Which is a non-sequiteur, unless by "God" you actually meant "belief in divine beings".

No, not any god in particular, just the universality of the belief in divine beings. Every culture has a notion of divinity. Find me one that doesn't and I'll eat my hat.

once again can you please give examples of morality that can only have been formed with divine assistance

@slowmutant
Your original point was in response to DentArthurDent's claim that non-Abrahamic cultures have been able to discern right and wrong. I take it we can agree now that their ability to do so was not as a result of belief in Yahweh (who they did not believe existed). I assume the point that you were making was that it was not a belief in a specific god that allowed them to do this, but rather a belief in the divine in general i.e. they believed in the existence of at least one god.

However, as a Christian, I assume that you don't believe that most of the gods believed in throughout history (Zeus, Ra, Thor etc) actually exist. Yet the societies that worshipped these gods were still perfectly capable of discerning right and wrong, despite the non-existence of their particular gods. So, presumably, this must mean that it doesn't matter whether the gods from whom moral instructions are purported to have come from actually exist, in order for these instructions to be valid. Hence, this makes gods superfluous to determining right and wrong, as a non-existent god is just as good a source of moral information as an existant one.