What is sin?

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Awe, Kimmio, you just made my point for me! Atheists can be moral from your Christian perspective, not a materialistic perspective; and because you are not a strict materialist there is no reason why "this makes my faith less strong."
 
The "deafening silence" to your question is, as I and other have pointed out, due to it being moot. Most of us don't feel powerful and happy as a result of harming others, so the question doesn't bear on our lives.
 
But as I have repeatedly pointed out, social consensus (your phrase, "what most of us feel") is irrelevant to the question under discussion--what makes right actions right--just as it is irrelevant to the question of whether God exists. The deafening silence just got even louder.
 
Perhaps you need a more relevant question. For example, what gives you, personally, the authority to assign a source of universal morality?

I am still waiting for a reply to my earlier response. Post #205, I believe it was. Your deafening silence to that counterpoint is informative.
 
i think i can see *some* of what Berserk is trying to get at here (but i am still hesitant to write anything regarding his views because i don't know what they are -- thus, the ask for clarification of his terms earlier)

what he is writing aboot, to make an analogy, we have words. words are used to communicate. words have usages. words by themselves are meaningless -- they gain their meaning (and more usages) as they are used by human beings over time.

(those vids i posted above were an attempt to show a good argument from an atheist in regards to what i thought he was yakking aboot)

and he is calling these behaviours that happen over time 'morals' (which, i think, is a descriptive term and not a real object itself)

and yes, there have been societies, cultures, peoples who have had different morals than us. Romans did not value our modern conception of love; they had different virtues and different nonvirtues. European Knights valued murder. and so forth

now, if what Berserk is trying to get at here is a form of 'the atheist worldview doesn't have a fundamental rocksolid worldview that can guide everyone and doesn't protect against anarchy & nihilism', i'll agree with that -- atheism isn't a thing. it's just a rejection of a supernatural g_d.

or if what Berserk is trying to get at here is 'g_d' as the term for a set of behaviours that we all can globally follow without question (because they are true because they are true), i can totally get behind that

i wonder if Berserk is trying to argue Presuppositional Apologetics or the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of g_d?

other things: i think there are challenges to his notion that nature does not care. there are also challenges to reality itself being dead and unintelligent.

there is really no such thing as materialism (in the sense of a worldview that covers all aspects of reality equally well)--from the idea of a bridge comes an actual bridge and emergent properties -- water is a completely different substance than hydrogen & oxygen--the quantum mechanics notion of information, an immaterial property, is physical -- and energy is action so :p

whew...or something like that
 
Azdgari said:
Perhaps you need a more relevant question. For example, what gives you, personally, the authority to assign a source of universal morality?
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Universal Human Rights will have to be made Law, I think, with all that implies (the actual power to back it up, etc)
 
Inannawhimsey said:
Universal Human Rights will have to be made Law, I think, with all that implies (the actual power to back it up, etc)
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Those might be called universal, but they're a very human tool. Being imposed universally wouldn't make them any more or less right - just more widely enforced. Unless might makes right, anyway.
 
Azdgari said:
Those might be called universal, but they're a very human tool. Being imposed universally wouldn't make them any more or less right - just more widely enforced. Unless might makes right, anyway.
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i agree - i wrote that to try to grok more of what Berserk is getting at

Really, i think the only objective aspect of reality are the philosophical absolutes...everything else is some version of subjective
 
Even those philosophical absolutes tend to carry human assumptions. For example, for the law of identity to be meaningful requires that objects be discretely labelled, and that these labels are objective. That's a handy assumption in most cases, but ignores our own role in categorizing reality.
 
Azdgari said:
Even those philosophical absolutes tend to carry human assumptions. For example, for the law of identity to be meaningful requires that objects be discretely labelled, and that these labels are objective. That's a handy assumption in most cases, but ignores our own role in categorizing reality.
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but of course --we humans can't ever take our stink off of whatever it is...

we're just that way :whistle:
 
Studmuffin said:
Awe, Kimmio, you just made my point for me! Atheists can be moral from your Christian perspective, not a materialistic perspective; and because you are not a strict materialist there is no reason why "this makes my faith less strong."
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Actually no. The article makes the point that empathy is needed for human survival and their science confirms this. And I agree. I always did. I just hadn't read about the science behind it.
 
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What I've been arguing us a standard philosophical defense of emotivism--the view that moral rules express no more than individual or social approval. For example, as a basis for what is "right," act or rule utilitariansm both focus on some sort of calculation of the optimal balance of pleasure over pain (or a variation of this). No such theory has a way of making the case that a dissenting individual is morally obligated by play by utilitarian roles rather than her own rules. Societies can't function effectively without sanctions for lawbreakers. But the lawbreaker who asks why he should play by society's moral rules can only be sanctioned by the threat of punishment if he is caught. But this is a pragmatic, not a moral consideration, and fails to address the question of a criminal who is clever enough to elude detection or conviction. Sooner or later, the atheist materialist must presume philosophical absolutes as a basis for eliminating the arbitrary nature of moral claims. But in doing so, she is making a claim with even less basis than theism. At least, the core idea of theism is meaningful, even if it is false. Not so, morality with no ultimate grounding.

Put more personally, if I didn't believe in a loving God to whom I'm accountable, I would live only for self and for those few that I loved. Being moral would merely be a matter of convenience to serve those I love and gain their approval. But I wouldn't pretend to be potentially good for doing so. In short, God or reincarnational karma has a basis for morality than atheism does not. For those who want to believe in goodness in a meaningful (nonarbitrary) way, this is a benefit of believing in a loving God, though hardly evidence that such a God exists.
 
That is crap. You believe that there are no atheists who feel for others on a broader scale, let's say, victims of wars and disasters? Strangers abroad that they'll never meet. That's totally untrue, your assertion, and I could give you several examples. You can really only speak for yourself, you cannot make that claim about everybody.

You said something interesting..if you didn't believe in a loving God to whom you're accountable, you would live for yourself and the few that you loved...being moral would merely be a matter of convenience...but you wouldn't pretend to be potentially good for doing so. Does that mean you're able to pretend to be potentially good now that you claim the title of Christian/ believer?:confused:
 
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Berserk, if you're not going to address my counterpoint in post #205, then just say so. So far, what I'm seeing is a lot of wishy-washy avoidance and it's very telling. You don't really have an argument for a link between belief in gods and meta-ethics, you just have some prejudice and an axe to grind against atheists.
 
I was thinking..."was I any more or less of a moral being before I believed in God?" The answer is no. I still had a moral conscience. I still empathized with suffering in the world. I made mistakes then and still do. What happened was...God tapped me on the shoulder, woke me up, allegorically speaking, and pointed me to where I was falling short...by the measure that I already possessed. I didn't have to believe that it came from God in order to possess it. It was already there whether I'd received that tap on the shoulder or not. Belief in God didn't give me morality. Belief opened me up to understanding God...to awareness/ affirmation that there is a God. I realized I was already a Christian waiting to happen. I wasn't more or less moral, I just started seeing things through different eyes. I didn't care about people more or less. I'm not better or worse.
 
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And, furthermore...studmuffin, science's discovery that we need empathy for survival of humanity does not conflict with what Jesus taught about love and compassion. He didn't teach it so we would possess it. He taught us to use what we already possess in our hearts and minds, for the good of one another...given that I believe that, and I also agree with the science behind it...I don't believe it's morally right to judge a compassionate atheist, or anyone, by their belief in God or not. It's that false piety and judgmentalism that is a strike against Christianity...one of the top reasons non Christians don't like Christians is that they perceive Christians as judgmental.
 
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