Christian Overconfidence

[RabbiKnife]

Would the rape be a wrong action?

[Oscar_Kipling]

Would the rape be a wrong action?

You'd definitely be wronging me because again I very much do not want it! Would you be cool with it if I raped you? and again probably friends family community blah maybe the justice system.

[RabbiKnife]

By what standard do you judge me?  If I do what I want to do who are you to deny me what I want.

[Fenris]

I think the point here is that lacking religion, one can't command good behavior or even suggest it in most circumstances.

[Oscar_Kipling]

By what standard do you judge me?  If I do what I want to do who are you to deny me what I want.

I'm the person with the greatest vested interest, I have skin in the game, i'm the primary and perhaps only who.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I think the point here is that lacking religion, one can't command good behavior or even suggest it in most circumstances.

my point is of course they can, people do it all of the time, what exactly is stopping them? Like if I invoke God they aren't struck by lightening or anything if the offender wants to do it my philosophical stance on metaphysical objective morality is as unlikely to stop them as insisting that I'd rather they didn't.

[Fenris]

my point is of course they can, people do it all of the time, what exactly is stopping them? Like if I invoke God they aren't struck by lightening or anything if the offender wants to do it my philosophical stance on metaphysical objective morality is as unlikely to stop them as insisting that I'd rather they didn't.

Belief in God can compel good behavior. Nothing else can do that. Let's take the example from Exodus 1:

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.

What else could compel the midwives to let the boys live, aside from a belief in God?

[Oscar_Kipling]

my point is of course they can, people do it all of the time, what exactly is stopping them? Like if I invoke God they aren't struck by lightening or anything if the offender wants to do it my philosophical stance on metaphysical objective morality is as unlikely to stop them as insisting that I'd rather they didn't.

Belief in God can compel good behavior. Nothing else can do that. Let's take the example from Exodus 1:

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.

What else could compel the midwives to let the boys live, aside from a belief in God?

Wait, are you being serious or are you making some point that I'm just not seeing? I don't disagree that belief in God can compel good behavior but so can belief in some forms of reincarnation or Karma or the law of attraction or that your ancestors are watching and judging you all the time or any number of beliefs. I think most people don't even consider killing babies, maybe i'm wrong. Lets say i'm ordered to kill a baby by some authority, I might be compelled to disobey such an order because though I have never tried to kill a baby the mere thought of doing it even if I could get away without any consequences whatsoever is emotionally repellant to me without any reasons at all, I tend to think this is a fairly common and strong instinct but it might not be. If for some reason I needed a reason not to I might think about how the parents or family might feel, or how I would feel if someone murdered my baby, or how society would view me if I murdered a baby or how the law might react to it. I might think about myself being cut down as a babe and never getting to have a life and how I'd be doing that to someone else. Perhaps I could think about the retaliation I might face or the prospect of just living with the guilt of it. The verse doesn't say it but I bet those midwives probably didn't want to kill babies, but the fear of a power greater than the king might crystalized their choices...idk

[RabbiKnife]

I think the point here is that lacking religion, one can't command good behavior or even suggest it in most circumstances.

my point is of course they can, people do it all of the time, what exactly is stopping them? Like if I invoke God they aren't struck by lightening or anything if the offender wants to do it my philosophical stance on metaphysical objective morality is as unlikely to stop them as insisting that I'd rather they didn't.

Ah
Fatalism

[Oscar_Kipling]

I think the point here is that lacking religion, one can't command good behavior or even suggest it in most circumstances.

my point is of course they can, people do it all of the time, what exactly is stopping them? Like if I invoke God they aren't struck by lightening or anything if the offender wants to do it my philosophical stance on metaphysical objective morality is as unlikely to stop them as insisting that I'd rather they didn't.

Ah
Fatalism

sure I know what you mean...I dont think rape is predetermined just that neither of those things are particularly good deterrents, yelling "rape!" is probably orders of magnitude more effective or running or fighting.

Like how would our rape debate be any different if I were the rapist and you insisted that God was going to judge me for it? I'd just keep saying I don't believe in God so that threat is meaningless to me. I'm not especially compelled to rape any more than I am to kill babies or do much more than plan the murders of my enemies in my mind, Not because I might get caught by the authorities, or I fear retaliation or being judged or ostracised by society even though those do deter some people just like The threat of God deters some people. I don't even avoid those things because I don't want anyone to do the same to me, Its mostly the I don't even have the urge. If you asked me about reasons that I avoid lying that is a real test for me because I struggle with it because It has been easy for me to lie as far back as I can remember. That is a thing that i've had to summon all of the tools I have to combat.

[Fenris]

Wait, are you being serious or are you making some point that I'm just not seeing? I don't disagree that belief in God can compel good behavior but so can belief in some forms of reincarnation or Karma or the law of attraction or that your ancestors are watching and judging you all the time or any number of beliefs.

So we can start by agreeing that belief in some higher being leads to good behavior. I think this is a good start.

The verse doesn't say it but I bet those midwives probably didn't want to kill babies, but the fear of a power greater than the king might crystalized their choices...idk

I think what the verse is saying is more subtle than that. It says that fear of God is capable of lifting from a person the fear of man. And this enables us to do what needs to be done.

[Oscar_Kipling]

So we can start by agreeing that belief in some higher being leads to good behavior. I think this is a good start.

I'll wholeheartedly agree that It can,but not that it always does and not that it is the only thing that can and I've never seen anything that always does. So if that's still a good enough start then i'm happy too.

I think what the verse is saying is more subtle than that. It says that fear of God is capable of lifting from a person the fear of man. And this enables us to do what needs to be done.

I'll agree that it very well could be making that point and I don't have a problem moving forward under that assumption.

[Fenris]

I'll wholeheartedly agree that It can,but not that it always does and not that it is the only thing that can and I've never seen anything that always does. So if that's still a good enough start then i'm happy too.



I'll agree that it very well could be making that point and I don't have a problem moving forward under that assumption.

Excellent!

Can we agree that the bible is for the most part a good moral code to follow?

[Oscar_Kipling]

Can we agree that the bible is for the most part a good moral code to follow?

Unfortunately I cannot, It is very long and full of a great many things and at least to me it is not always clear which are to be taken as moral code and which are something else. Even outside of that there are only 3 commandments that I'd describe as good moral code and 2 more that I'd need to delve deeper into what they mean before i'd say yay or nay, 2 more that are probably helpful at best but at least one of those is problematic and the rest of them don't mean anything to me morally. Also those covets are totally split up like that because the 9 commandments dont have the same zing lol

[Athanasius]

Like how would our rape debate be any different if I were the rapist and you insisted that God was going to judge me for it? I'd just keep saying I don't believe in God so that threat is meaningless to me.

The difference is that the moral imperative is situated externally to the human mind. The warning is of some greater wrongdoing against a higher being and not just the violation of a person according to shared moral values, which may or may not change over time. To claim that the threat is 'meaningless to [you]' is not to claim that the threat itself is meaningless or is of an invented moral character vis-a-vis social contract, i.e. social construction.

Much like Pascal's wager that RK mentioned earlier, the rape may be engaged in and lead to no consequences beyond this life, or it may be engaged in and lead to eternal consequences. On the other hand, to acknowledge that moral imperatives are purely human inventions is to affirm that they may be violated so long as one is willing to violate a given social order, which constitutes a rejection of the social contract. But then why should that contract be morally binding - and not just socially binding - as if the individual has violated some greater order?

And so that age-old complaint isn't "atheists can't be moral without God" (as an example). It's that the moral framework developed thereupon can't be binding in the same way. I know all about rejecting social conventions, and while people generally don't like it, it's just a convention at the end of the day. It's nonsense to say something like, "you're immoral if you don't live this kind of life" because that affirmation is nothing more than majority agreement in disguise. Immoral by X standard, maybe, but not by Y standard, and I like Y. Should I accept X over Y because many people are telling me I should? I think they should leave me alone and let me live my life.