honorentheos wrote:Abraham in the Bible is a terrible person.
I think it still comes back to whether or not one has a belief in a creator/God that loves perfectly.
Oh, and of course, whether that's the God we're referring to as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, etc.
Abraham, unless he was simply hallucinating on mushrooms was purportedly acting in compliance to God's commands.
So who is this God?
Regards, MG
You don't realize you are proving a point.
Suppose you were a well tuned moral agent whose moral compass swung on principle. Suppose you were told one story of a cartel boss who commanded one of his henchmen to shoot his son in the head to prove his loyalty, and when he follows through he finds the gun had been loaded with blanks. And then a second story regarding a claimed divine being who demanded his devotee sacrifice his son to him to prove he would do whatever the deity commanded. Being a moral agent you would see on principle both stories are the same, describing monsters who use power and fear to compel their followers to do horrific things. Because commanding a father murder his son to prove his loyalty to anything is horrific.
On the other hand suppose you were not a moral agent but instead had your moral compass pulled off true north towards an allegance that is the foundation of what you consider right. Suppose in this case that institution is the cartel. Clearly the boss was right and what he did was due to having the best interest of the henchman at heart. The boy was not murdered by his dad while his dad was able to prove his loyalty. Surely this ended in the maximum possible good, right?
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
that the commandments of God are not a bunch of arbitrary rules and/or commandments that have little or nothing to do with correct moral principles but in fact are based upon eternal verities and moral guidelines and practices that can bring us to a state of godliness
Sounds like money laundering to me.
The problem for MG is that his two questions to me provide no new information about the money laundering scheme.
Everything he wrote after the 'but' is extraneous and merely pads his diversion; moves bad money between more banks. The question, according to his own words, is if the commands advance moral living. But what is moral living? According to MG, it's not living arbitrary commands, but if not obeying God's arbitrary commands, then what is it?
He -
Won't -
Tell us.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
Yeah, basically MG commits hard to the idea what we call good is good because it is what God loves or commands. It's goodness is not contingent on principle, the consequence of following through or on any other relationship consideration besides the person doing what God commands.
In other words, morality comes down to obedience to whatever God says. And since the Church is the oracle of God in modern times, morality comes down to what the Church tells you God says.
So it is impossible for someone to view the cartel boss as having done anything but good no matter what the cartel boss commands. Murder or attempted murder aren't inherently wrong for their consequences but because they are only wrong if it isn't the cartel boss who orders the murder. Rape, assault, theft, deceit - all are described at times in the Bible as having been commanded or at least sanctioned by God as well. The cartel boss is free to see any act committed in his name he pleases so long as it pleases him that it occur and the only moral outcome available is to call it good.
MG has one moral thought and that is God must love us so we should trust whatever is ascribed to God as being an act of love. And with this, his moral agency is swept away.
Recognizing a being who would command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to prove Abraham's loyalty doesn't love either of them, period let alone perfectly shouldn't just be easy for the skeptic. It should be easy for anyone.
Last edited by Guest on Sun Sep 01, 2019 3:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
honorentheos wrote:Yeah, basically MG commits hard to the idea what we call good is good because it is what God loves or commands. It's goodness is not contingent on principle, the consequence of following through or on any other relationship consideration besides the person doing what God commands.
In other words, morality comes down to obedience to whatever God says. And since the Church is the oracle of God in modern times, morality comes down to what the Church tells you God says.
So it is impossible for someone to view the cartel boss as having done anything but good no matter what the cartel boss commands. Murder or attempted murder aren't inherently wrong for their consequences but because they are only wrong if it isn't the cartel boss who orders the murder. Rape, assault, theft, deceit - all are described at times in the Bible as having been commanded or at least sanctioned by God as well. The cartel boss is free to see any act committed in his name he pleases so long as it pleases him that it occur and the only moral outcome available is to call it good.
MG has one moral thought and that is God must love us so we should trust whatever is ascribed to God as being an act of love. And with this, his moral agency is swept away.
MG suggests that those who don't believe in the God-of-perfect-love cannot really critique the God-of-perfect-love, because those who aren't part of the cartel should not critique the Boss of the cartel.
Morley wrote:MG suggests that those who don't believe in the God-of-perfect-love cannot really critique the God-of-perfect-love, because those who aren't part of the cartel should not critique the Boss of the cartel.
Sounds exactly like what one should expect from a morally bankrupt mind incapable of doing it's own moral reasoning.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Your last point is very good, H, that in MG's world, agency goes bye-bye, ironically, for the very reason why he just recently (wrongly) criticized the Netflix movie "I am Mother". Anything that God commands we must assume to be good. And so we just thoughtlessly do what God has commanded us.
Maybe you can take a shot at my question, H? Since MG won't answer it. Suppose the moral criteria is "men are that they might have joy". In other words, what is good is what's best for "men". (sorry ladies)
How would Abraham killing Isaac bring joy to men? The answer must be that it wouldn't directly, that this was just a test of obedience. If we can bracket agency for this exercise, and assume men having joy is the only criteria and assume they can have joy without agency, then we would probably say killing Isaac would have been bad (lets not get into the weeds of varieties of hedonism) and thus, God had no intention of ever killing Isaac, that he intentionally told Abraham to trust him in a scenario where Abraham knew the object of the trust was wrong.
That could benefit men because then Abraham trusts the commandments knowing the object of the commandments will either lead to men having joy, or in the rare case where it doesn't, God will intervene to prevent the sorrow from occurring. In other words, in the consequential world of Mormon ethics, where the ends are the happiness of man, the means are justified by the ends, which means lying is okay, and that God lies all the time, such as in the more than one case with Abraham. (also true in the Netflix movie I am Mother). But hey, we'd lie to protect a Jewish family, right? I'm not saying any of this is wrong, I'm just saying what it is.
Here's my question. What if Abraham would have killed Isaac anyway? Perhaps the angel was too slow, or perhaps he questioned the authority of the angel. If the happiness of Isaac matters -- I think it would be disingenuous at this point to say the killing was justified by the greater good of trust Abraham showed -- if he would have killed Isaac, would it have been a sin?
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
