Morality: What Part Do Gods Play? by Grant Petersen

[Monkeylover]

This article is hilarious. One should attempt to understand a viewpoint before discrediting it.

The idea of an "objective morality" is not that there is some nameless, faceless morality out there to which every being is subject. Rather, the concept of an "objective morality" applies to man who will be held accountable to God's own "subjective morality." It's 'objective' insofar as man is concerned because it applies to ALL mankind.

From the article: "Problem of subjectivity: Who is to say that god's perception of right and wrong is superior to anyone else's? With no guarantee that objective morality even exists (philosophers are still arguing about that one) could one be sure that god's opinion is not any less subjective than yours or mine? "

Of course God's opinion is subjective. It's from God's point of view. Why is it superior to man's? Well, to boil down the argument to its purest essence: might makes right when you're God. You can argue "right and wrong" all day long with God if you want, but in the end whose opinion is going to count? . . the one who has the power to enforce their opinion.
So, quite simply, if ONE SUPREME God exists and has an opinion, then this defines an "objective morality" as far as man is concerned. Of course, many will reply, "That's not fair," or "That doesn't seem right to me," but as the author contends, there really is no truly "objective morality" to which to appeal. As Bob Dylan once sang, "You're gonna have to serve somebody."

[Abdul Alhazred]

It is the opinions of people which count. If they DON'T count then we don't have free will and we are not moral agents, so your entire argument falls on its face ON THE FACE OF IT (yes, thats punny :) ).

The challenge is not 'obeying God' because we have NO reasonable idea of exactly what that means. Show me 3 Christians and you'll be showing me 3 different concepts of what 'God' wants from them! I think we CAN distill some general ethical concepts from the teachings of major religious traditions, and there is nothing wrong with doing so, but ethics are a continuing ongoing debate, a dance if you will, between general principles and specific circumstances.

In my mind what you and most other die-hard religious zealots seem to be advocating is blind obedience to your own pet theories about right and wrong. YOU are right, and the rest of us are wrong, and your specific interpretation of the "Word of God" rules. That is the interpretation of whichever group happens to be able to enforce its will on the rest of us. Sadly that process is largely carried out with no reference to ANY ethical system at all.

Happily it seems that century by century humanity seems to have been engaged in a slow clime from utter ignorance to some semblance of rationality which at least has finally permitted SOME tolerance to exist in at least a portion of the world. I would suggest that progress often takes the form of discarding outdated absolutist views of ethical systems. I might suggest your time is better spent practicing tolerance than preaching.

Watch out though, too much tolerance MIGHT lead to enlightenment! ;)

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