Christians: bad for society.

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Here is a link that disproves this. (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=8449)

And another

Subject: The Euthyphro Dilemma Once More (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=6087)

A good supposition of the argument is this quote:

'By analogy think of some audio recording’s being “high fidelity.” Whether or not a symphony recording is high fidelity is determined by its approximation to the sound of a live orchestra. The sound of the live orchestra does not exhibit fidelity to anything else; it just is the standard'




It does if it entails a moral question: for instance for rape to be objectively wrong; there must be no possible exceptions to it. Thus it entails that it is a moral wrong in all possible worlds.



The argument that there is a chair in this room has no moral value and thus it only has to exist in that room. If however it did have moral value and it was wrong for chairs to be in rooms. It would have to be true regardless of situation and time.



Wielenberg is engaging in a form of logic that begs the question of God. As a demonstration of how this is so consider this. Wienlenber is arguing that objective moral values exist, but are not routed in God. Essentially he is talking about a universal force that exists apart from space and time with the capacity to define the moral nature of the universe. What he is describing is God; he is just not calling it that; thus he is begging the question.



You are arguing that Christians are bad for society. I have discussed why this would have to be objectively so in order to meet the needs of your supposition. If however you wish to argue that 'I think Christianity is bad for society in a subjective sense' as Sand did; I would be engaging your argument in a different way.



Well for starters it is not always good to water grass. And it is an issue of morality, since you are arguing about society and how peoples views affect it in a negative way. Call it whatever you want; that is still a value statement.

Once again, quite correct. There are no Moral Facts, only moral opinions. No specific moral code flows from the physical laws of the cosmos.

ruveyn

91, am I somewhat correct in thinking that your conception of god involves something like a pantheistic personification of the laws of the universe, those being combined with the emotions we generally consider good: love, benevolence, etc?

In that case, complexity can arise from simplicity (at least according to Steven Hawking, the laws make the arising almost inevitable).

if christianity didn't exist, we'd be 1000 years more advanced AT LEAST

if christianity didn't exist we'd probably have deluded ourselves with something else. then again, i suppose it's possible that we could have become obsessed with reality and the sciences that can explain it instead of unreality and the theologies that don't (but pretend to anyway).

though it would be nice to have genetically perfect pigs already.

AG, you forgot to mention one major thing... What about all the Christian groups who are against stem cells?... Stem cells which could help people with Parkinsons, diabetics, and tons of others. Their stupid religious dogma is essentially keeping people sick.

And the R. C. Church is against condoms which will help slow the spread of sexually transmitted disease.

Without disease and destruction the Church would have little comfort to offer their "sheep".

ruveyn

They are against embryonic stem cell research, not stem cells that can be harvested in other ways without destroying a human embryo. That is a lot different than your blanket statement.

No it really doesn't. It only addresses one criticism, and it only addresses that criticism poorly by presupposing something known as "pure mind", a quality that does not exist in psychology, neurology, or cognitive science, all of which have found that the notion of a mind requires a mental structure to organize thought, process data, and so many other tasks, and that the possible kinds of minds can be relatively different, y'know, such as with Aspies.


The problem is that if you can't suppose the simplicity of God, which I attacked, then you can't bypass Morriston's modified Euthyphro. If you can't bypass the modified Euthyphro, then your attempt at theistic ethics failed.

I am not sure Craig's use of ultimate really works, either, as the best justification for it is just that it really is a brute fact(as ultimacy doesn't seem to reduce to anything other than that given Agrippa's Trilemma, which is on wiki if you want to look it up). But... the issue is that if arbitrary brute facts can be invoked, then atheist moralities have no problems either. Finally, talking about "greatest being" as Craig does, would entail a much more complicated ethical stand than provided, as the notion of God promoted actually being the greatest possible being would tend to require comparison between other possibilities. We still, deep down, have an arbitrariness covered up with fictitious coverings, that are presumed as better than other possibilities, but not REALLY actually better.


Actually.... why does it? Given that these worlds are not interconnected, it is not illogical to claim that it could be objectively true in world X, that rape is wrong, and objectively true in world Y that rape is right. Now, it may be proven illogical given further probings into the nature of ethics, but that's a different issue, as all I am saying is that on the face of it, there is no contradiction.


Nope, objective morality doesn't mean situation invariant, or even time invariant. It means observor invariant. Now, I suppose the question here is really what "situation variant" means.


Umm..... no.

God is defined as having a large set of properties. If Erik isn't invoking a large number of these properties, he is not invoking God. Especially since most of those properties are NECESSARY for the concept of God if we have the doctrine of divine simplicity.


I really don't care. You're the one who is invoking all of the moral argumentation. All I've really used was moral language, without even bothering with committing to ethical realism or anti-realism.


Well, no, but that's not relevant.

It easily could not be a matter of morality. I am, as I have been, non-committal to anything outside of the original scope of the OP. I don't care about these side issues. These side issues don't really fundamentally alter the concern involved here.

As for "value statement", I suppose we can argue this. I would suppose a question is whether one can take values as granted on certain topics or not. Taking a value as granted still is compatible with moral anti-realism. That being said, I still don't actually care about your discussion.

Actually, I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of things. Even including the efforts to suppress Plan B, the post-sex birth control pill, which is often needed for rape victims.

They are also for extremely harsh punishments against rapists. While we understand what the suffering must be for the woman, is the child from that rape a criminal or is he or she just an innocent. Someone that rapes someone in my opinion should be locked up for life. If he or she (yes women can rape men/boys) is wealthy, then their wealth should go to paying for the psychiatric help the victim needs and for child support of any child born from this. I would also encourage adoptions.

if it's part of god's plan for a woman to give birth to the child of her rapist, does that make god a premeditated accessory to rape?

No. This is a reductio ad absurdam for such beliefs.

ruveyn

i will admit to this fallacy in my joke if you can prove that He either did not know (not part of his plan) or, knowing, intervened to stop the rape.

This presumes the existence of god, a premise that is not supported by any empirical evidence I have access to.

ruveyn

you are correct, of course.