Open Discussion
The comments below serve as an open thread, prompted by a discussion elsewhere, on general topics that encompass religion, morality, ethics, secularism, and whatever is reasonably related. Here are the rules of conduct, which I will enforce as needed, as fairly as I can:
- Do not make personal attacks.
- Having an opposing opinion is fine. Being unreasonable or grossly and unnecessarily intemperate in expressing your opinion is not.
Anyone who can follow those simple rules is welcome to participate. If you have never commented here before, your comment will probably have to be approved before it will be posted. I’ll try to do that as fast as I can.
Finally, let me also suggest a few guidelines for the substance of discussion:
- If you state opinions, be prepared to support them with facts, reasoning, or both.
- Recognize the difference between facts and opinions: facts are potentially true for everyone, opinions are not.
- Even if you think you have supported your opinions with facts and reasons, remember that different people are convinced by different things. If someone is not convincing you, give them a hint as to what it might take. If you know that no one will ever convince you that you’re wrong, then you should probably take your discussion elsewhere.
- No matter how persuasive you think you are, you cannot force others to agree with you.
- Punctuation, correct spelling, complete sentences, and coherent paragraphs are not required, but they sure make other people more likely to pay attention to what you say.
You can disagree with the guidelines. You still have to follow the rules.
Peter, I have read the book; in fact, twice, and look forward to discussing it with you.
Well, I’ll start. After having read through the comment thread over there, it seems that atheists or even non-Christians of the brand represented there are consistently re-imagined and redefined in a rather arbitrary way. I suggest we start there if any defenders of that position decide to converse here. Why do you not take people with opposing viewpoints at their word? If I say I am an atheist liberal and I love the U.S. and want to see it succeed, what do you say to that? Do you call me a liar? Do you re-examine your position that all liberals are America-haters?
Greg,
Thanks. Since it will probably take me a bit to get my hands on that book, would you mind giving a summary of which arguments in it you find most powerful or persuasive?
While I could be wrong, without knowing anything else, I would assume that you probably don’t agree with everything in the book, or that you favor some parts over others. To avoid the problems that might arise from my (or anyone else’s) assuming that anything in a book you recommended is something you would say, too, maybe you could point us in a narrower direction? Adam has already observed that when people talk about these kinds of things, they can easily start talking not to each other, but about abstractions or ideas that they (often mistakenly) believe others represent. I don’t want to assume that you are the manifestation of Timothy Keller or somebody else, so make sure we know where you stand.
Thanks.
For those who may have stumbled onto this thread and are confused, the book mentioned in the comments above is: The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller.
Greg, I’d also say that I disagree with the way Keller frames his method in the intro. His reasoning behind declaring non-belief a form of faith is a gross misinterpretation of the word faith as it pertains to Christianity. It’s an apples to oranges comparison.
To say a non-believer has faith in the sense that they have sincerity in what they understand or even that they have a strong conviction in their understanding of the world is quite different than the faith of a Christian in the way I’ve always understood it to be: belief in something for which there is no proof. For Keller to tie it all together and claim that everyone has faith is damaging to Christianity in the sense that it waters down the word so much as to make it nearly meaningless to anyone.
Adam, you have to give the book more of a chance. I am not saying this book is the end all be all either. I think its a little premature to assume the author’s points, attitudes and conclusions. Please elaborate on the arbitrariness of how non-Christians are dealt with.
After having read your writing, I have no doubt you mean what you say.
I say you have every right to be an atheist liberal, and I don’t believe I have ever questioned your love of country. I can state that I am certainly critical of this country in many ways. I do not call you a liar; and why would I presume you’re a liar?
I believe that both conservatives and liberals can equally love or hate this country. In fact I think we need to get beyond this idea of country and deal with mankind as a whole.
I do believe that both sides of this discussion need to put aside all preconceived notions of the other until we truly understand each others positions.
Adam, I believe Keller is simply trying to differentiate between “Christians” and what he is calling secular skeptics.
I disagree with your statement regarding “faith of a Christian”, in the sense that I believe that their is proof of God according to what the Bible has to say. Creation is essentially the chief proof of God’s existence. This world and all that is created in it did not happen simply by some random occurrence. The seasons, the multitude of species of both flora and fauna, and the unchanging nature of things like the earths revolution around the sun, etc. If this planet were a minute amount of distance one way or the other from the sun it would cease to exist as it is.
I can’t say that I agree with all of what Keller says or how he frames his arguments, however, I believe I can state with certainty that atheists have a certain faith that God does not exist. Thus, there is maybe an inverse type of faith which separates atheism from Christianity. But, read on.
Peter, the book is basically presented in three sections. First, Keller raises some of the arguments that skeptics of Christianity have, such as, There cannot be one true religion, How can God allow suffering, the Church being responsible for so much injustice, How can a loving God send people to hell, Science disproving Christianity.
In the “Intermission” he basically lays out a foundation for the third section, which he entitles The Reasons for Faith. He lays out his argument for God and the reasons we should be followers of Jesus Christ.
I don’t think it would be productive if I attempted a synopsis of the book. In fact, I don’t want to give you my opinion on any of it until you have had the opportunity to read it yourself. If you have trouble locating the book, I can probably provide one for you.
“Adam, you have to give the book more of a chance.”
Greg, I don’t have to, but I am. You recommended it and I’m pointing out to you the aspects of what portion I’ve read that I disagree with. I do agree with his assertion that religion is currently very polarizing.
I’m only assuming what he leaves me with. My assumption at this point is that, like a lot of book intros, he’s seeking to lay a foundation for the thesis of the meat of the book that follows. If his book is laid on the foundation that non-belief is a form of faith, he needs to argue that point much more cogently than he did in the paragraph I read in that introduction. Hopefully for him, he does in an early chapter, because if he doesn’t, he’s on shaky ground already.
My initial comment was not directed at you, but several of the other more strident commenters from the linked thread. I apologize if you got the feeling it was aimed directly at you. If I had to pick a person it was aimed at, I would say it was directed at OffRoad.
“I disagree with your statement regarding “faith of a Christian”, in the sense that I believe that their is proof of God according to what the Bible has to say.”
Then you disagree with a lot of people. Look up the religious definition of faith among any of the standard reference materials and you’ll see the definition I offered.
It should not be hard to find a copy of the book. There are plenty used for sale online. But it will take a while to get here.
Just some quick responses to what you’ve portrayed however:
- Why couldn’t there be one true religion? If there are certain indisputable facts about the universe, and if the universe is the creation of a deity who desires our worship, then it would make sense that, by process of elimination, people eventually would discover the one true religion. So that’s not an objection I share. My objection would be more like this: Even assuming there could be one true religion, with true factual information about God, the universe, or both, we should be able to test that information; otherwise, we could not possibly ever know whether we have in fact found the one true religion.
- Why couldn’t God allow suffering? Why not posit a God for whom our world is an experiment to see how people respond to suffering? In that case, there would still be certain indisputable facts about the universe, and the universe might still be the creation of a deity, but maybe that deity does not desire our worship, and just wants to see what happens when we suffer.
- No one should be surprised that the church, comprised of people like every other institution, has caused injustice. What we should be surprised about is that an institution claiming to know certain fundamental facts about the universe does not stand above all the other human institutions in that respect. If the beliefs protected by the church do not give us an institution that consistently stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world in its promotion of justice, then why should we think they are any more effective than a spiritual placebo, so to speak?
- Asking how a loving God can send people to hell assumes that God is loving. What if God is not loving at all? Since the people in the church who safeguard the belief in God are not markedly and consistently more loving than every other group of people in the world, then wouldn’t that support the hypothesis that God is not loving?
- Science cannot disprove “Christianity” because “Christianity” is not a falsifiable hypothesis, any more than “Marxism” or “Democracy” are falsifiable hypotheses.
So if those are the types of objections that Keller is writing to confront, then he is missing my criticism by quite a large margin.
Next, regarding your other comment above:
I don’t see how “the multitude of species,” “the earth’s revolution around the sun,” and the distance between the earth and the sun are “proof of God’s existence.”
For certain facts to be proof or evidence of a particular conclusion, then you need facts that are either necessarily or demonstrably contingent on the cause you’re trying to prove. For example, the presence of fire is not necessarily or demonstrably contingent on the striking of a match—there are other ways to start fires. But by experimentation people have demonstrated that fire is necessarily contingent on fuel, oxygen, heat, and a chain reaction. In other words, even though it is possible to start a fire by striking a match, if all you know is that there is a fire, that fire is not proof that the fire started that way, but it is proof that you have fuel, oxygen, heat, and a chain reaction.
Similarly, it is possible that the universe is the way it is because God made it that way, but the simple fact that the universe is the way it is does not prove anything—except perhaps that the universe is (and even that is too circular to be a useful idea).
Finally, I have managed to see the 16-page introduction to the book that is freely available online. I am troubled by what appears to be very sloppy thinking. For example, when discussing his two-year confirmation class, and the two different instructors—one “traditional and conservative” who talked about “the danger of hell,” the other “a social activist” with “deep doubts about traditional Christian doctrine”—Keller apparently wondered which one was “lying.” I can understand the fourteen-year-old Keller feeling that way; having spent a lot of time in classrooms, I can affirm that teenagers are highly sensitive to any whiff of controversy. But recognizing controversy is not the same thing as thinking carefully about it, and the adult Keller should know better than to relate his anecdote without suggesting that maybe his fourteen-year-old self was simply immature. I would guess that neither of the instructors was “lying,” and that “lying” is not even a useful word for the differences that he witnessed. In the next few pages, Keller describes growing up and realizing that the rote religion he learned required personal experience to keep it alive into adulthood. The fact that he went through different stages in his belief, though never, apparently, giving it up entirely, should have given him the maturity to recognize (and point out) that neither of the two instructors was “lying,” but perhaps represented different stages in the lives of believers, instead of just leaving the observation of his younger self to hang there without comment.
And his self-proclaimed confusion about “moral relativity” in college suffers from the same problem. (What is “moral relativity,” anyway? I assume he explains that later in the book.) But if he observed in college that “[t]he people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didn’t seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world,” why didn’t that spur (then, or now in his book) questions about how he, even then as a confused youngster, deigned to judge the moral worth of those different kinds of conduct? If “moral relativity” is a bad thing, then shouldn’t asking why those alleged “moral relativists” did such “good” work be just as important as asking why God allows “bad” things to happen to “good” people?
In other words, the person I see in the introduction appears remarkably immature and unselfreflective (I hope that’s a word) for someone writing a book on such a weighty subject.
I would hope that these issues are addressed in the body of the book, but the way he presents them in the introduction does not give me a lot of hope. Maybe you can offer some hints while I am waiting for my copy to arrive.
Peter, I don’t believe we can approach this book as a scientist would. For the time being, I am not trying to push an agenda, nor do I have ulterior motives. I simply asked if both you and Adam would be interested in the book.
I realize God’s existence cannot be proven in the same manner as proving that this keyboard I’m typing on exists. My asking you to read the book, arose out of the fact that I have found it beneficial in discussions with others and wanted your opinion.
As far as the specific chapters in the book are concerned, once again, I thought the subject matter is of value and would be willing to discuss them.
I would like to meet the two of you simply for that sake alone. Sometimes, just maybe we need to step away from our stridently held positions and find something that we just may share in common, as I am attempting to do at this point. If you choose not to, I guess that will have to be fine too.
To quote a past president, maybe it would be to everyone’s benefit, regardless of beliefs to be a little “kinder and gentler” with each other.
Peter, Adam, I’m finding it difficult to respond to both of you in terms of time. What would you have the author offer that would be satisfactory? He claims to be a Christian. For the sake of going forward with this discussion, we need to separate out those who call themselves Christians and those who are truly followers of Jesus Christ. I agree wholeheartedly that people such as Pat Robertson, to name one, gives Christianity an unfavorable view from outside the Christian faith, however there remain many true followers of Christ who do practice those very good attributes of God.
I would ask, if we deal only with the second foregoing group, what is wrong with the message? Jesus Christ only taught and lived what was good. You must not have a disagreement with that.
Greg,
I am not a scientist, so I don’t think I tend to approach things as a scientist would, and I’m not sure how my approach here is one that a scientist would take.
But I am a lawyer, and I tend to approach things as a lawyer would. For example, you made some claims about “proof” and I responded to them as I would normally respond to claims about proof: by trying to determine whether there is actually some link between the evidence offered and the proposition asserted.
And in other parts of my last comment, I addressed things like youth, growth, and maturity in ideas about the world. Those are not exactly scientific concepts. I am concerned that someone who wants to tell me why I should share his beliefs ought to demonstrate a thoughtful, careful, and reflective approach to these matters. But Keller does not come across to me that way so far.
I’m certainly interested in Keller’s book, as I am interested in most books on this question. I like to know why people think and believe as they do. Right now I am also reading The Case for God by Karen Armstrong. She takes a drastically different approach than Keller appears to take, but I am just as troubled by some of the things she writes, and the way she misunderstands the people who disagree with her (which is different than the way I am beginning to think Keller misunderstands the people who disagree with him).
I have also read other books, like Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ (which is probably even more conservative than Keller’s), Douglas John Hall’s Why Christian? (which is undoubtedly more liberal), and even Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, which presents the Roman Catholic perspective. None of them have left me feeling as though their authors knew something special, or that my life would be better if I adopted beliefs like theirs. But I keep reading these books because I appear to be insatiably curious, not just about why these people have such beliefs, but why they think I should share them.
For so many people to be so fervently fixed on matters—mere ideas, really—that are unobserved, probably unobservable, and wholly inconsequential to my life seems bizarre to me. People have always shared their ideas about how to get along better in life, how to live more ethically, how to succeed at business and pleasure, how to win friends and influence people, and so on, and that seems quite normal to me: we all have to get along in life, we all engage in some kind of business or pleasure, and we all want influence and friends. But where is God? I am looking out the window at a world that appears to get along quite nicely without any hint of divine revelation or intervention.
And my own life is getting along nicely, as well. I have a good wife, who loves me, a nice house, a good job that allows me to help others, a fair amount of leisure time to pursue my own interests, good food to eat, the ability to volunteer my time for others and give a little money to non-profits, and all sorts of other good stuff. I am curious about the world and the people in it, so I listen, watch, and study. I am quite certain that I will never know everything, but I hope to keep learning until the day I die—even though I don’t expect any life afterward.
So why should I want to train my eyes (or my mind or my heart or my soul or whatever you want to call it) to see something that I would not otherwise see, just because . . . well, I’m not sure why. But still here are all these people like Timothy Keller telling me that, as an atheist, there is something wrong with how I live my life.
You want to know what is wrong with people who follow Jesus’ teachings and, I would guess, live their lives much the way I live mine. Nothing. My wife is a Christian. We get along just fine. She doesn’t seem to think there’s anything terribly wrong with me, nor I with her.
What really makes me curious about you, however, is your belief, as you put it, “that we need a higher authority than ourselves to look to for guidance as well as absolutes in relationships between people.” Why? That’s what I want to know.
This would never happen, but just humor me and imagine: Tomorrow, we prove conclusively that there is no God. Do you just start lying, cheating, stealing, raping, murdering, pillaging, and so on? Or do you keep living the same way you live now (which I presume does not include those kinds of activities)?
Greg, I understand your frustration and I’m not trying to monopolize your time. I promise. I see honesty in your quest to separate out the true Christians from those who just claim the title. But I have to ask you, how is that possible, but to actually be God itself?
Especially myself, as an outsider, an infidel, a whatever. Who am I to dispute the claim of a self-described Christian? Name me one person who claims to be a Christian whose claim you dispute? I guarantee I could find you a bunch of people who would whole-heartedly endorse that “Christian’s” claim. It’s not my place to arbitrarily decide the honesty of such a claim. Scott Roeder claims to be a Christian. I know of other people who call themselves Christians that think his actions were absolutely un-Christian.
Adam, I can only say with regard to discernment between true followers of Jesus Christ and those who call themselves Christians in name only, we must look to what they profess versus their actions. I believe that God endowed all of us with the ability to discern a fake from one that is not.
For example, I heard a true story of a pastor of a church who completely changed his appearance; changed into that of a “street person” and laid down in front of the front doors of the church that he pastored on a Sunday morning. As his parishoners began arriving, their only concern was how to get rid of him before more people began to arrive. No attempt at help, no signs of compassion, and they truly didn’t even take enough time with him to recognize him. That is an example of taking the label of Christian and totally convoluting it into something that is bordering on, if not, hateful. Not Christian in any sense of the word. We are what we think and do. I am aware of people such as these, but on the other hand I am to work out my own salvation with fear and trembling as the apostle Paul has told us.
I also know I am far from perfection, but I also know as it has been conveyed to me in the Bible that I cannot be perfect in this life, and if I believe I am, I am a liar. However, when it comes to those of us who desire to follow Christ, the means is the end, at least in this life on earth . Its the striving to be as Christlike as possible in this world with the promise of eternal life, as God has promised. I also can state that it is by God’s grace we are saved by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. So, if I believe I can obtain eternal life, I cannot earn it by what I do. Faith in God and all that it entails extrapolates itself into (hopefully) good works. James states that one’s faith is shown and demonstrated by one’s works. Faith without works is dead. Thus I get back to my original example; one can claim faith all day long, but if he doesn’t demonstrate such faith in his life by good works, he is lost.
You are absolutely correct in your statement regarding that God is the only one who will ultimately make the decisions as to one’s authenticity.
That was a really long non-answer.
We’re back at square one where you tell us we need to just talk about true Christians. How about we do this:
Is Pat Robertson a true Christian?
Is Scott Roeder a true Christian?
Is Charles Swindoll a true Christian?
Is George W. Bush a true Christian?
Is Ashley Swearingin a true Christian?
Is my neighbor a true Christian?
Is Timothy Keller a true Christian?
Can you answer all of those accurately? Can you show your work, your logic, your reasoning behind those answers? Because if you can’t, I don’t see how I could possibly argue that I hold a position in which I can.
Greg,
You say that “we need to separate out those who call themselves Christians and those who are truly followers of Jesus Christ.” I’m not sure I understand why we even need to be talking about “those who are truly followers of Jesus Christ.” Since the conversation so far is between you, Adam, and I, then why aren’t we just talking about you, Adam, and I? Whatever affiliations any of us claim, we do each other a terrible disservice if, instead of each responding to what the others actually say, we are responding to some idea of who the other is, based on group affiliation.
I understand that being a “true follower of Jesus Christ” is an important part of your identity. I don’t want to deny that, and I don’t think Adam does either. But you still have opinions and things to say. Whether those are prompted by your following of Jesus Christ or by something else, those are the things we want to hear about, and what I (we) would prefer to respond to. I have no interest in creating some imaginary amalgam of “Christian” or “True Follower of Jesus Christ” and then treating you like that amalgam, rather than like the individual you actually are. (And I trust, based on your comments above, that you have no interest in treating us like “Atheist Liberals” or something like that. We’re individuals, too.)
So I’ll reiterate that, for right now, I’m really curious as to why you think “that we need a higher authority than ourselves to look to for guidance as well as absolutes in relationships between people.” If your reasons are fully or partially expressed in Timothy Keller’s book, then that’s definitely one of the reasons I’ve ordered a copy. But if, while I’m waiting, you want to answer that question in your own words, I really am curious to hear the answer.
Yes, I’ve heard other answers to that question, and yes, I’ll admit that none of them have ever convinced me. But I remain open to the possibility that someone, someday might have an answer that does convince me. (It doesn’t seem probable, but it’s certainly possible.) That person might be you. So why not share?
Peter,
My apparent need to separate those who call themselves Christians and do not obey Christ or at least attempt to, and those who do, is probably a notion on my part that you and Adam have some preconceived idea of “Christians” as those who make no attempt to live up to what Christ himself taught, therefore, hearers but not doers (hypocrites); therefore, not very good sources of teachers of morals. If you do not have any of those ideas and you are willing to accept my beliefs as authentic (as a Christian), then I’ll drop it.
Coming from the perspective of what I believe Jesus Christ expects from His followers (and not simply a pragmatic approach), my need to look to a higher authority, is based upon what Jesus Himself mandated. Jesus said that only the Father is good, directing us to look to our creator. Therefore, if only the Father is good, He, through his Word and His Son, has conveyed to us the way we should live (with the expectation of eternal life). The Bible serves as the only tangible guideline we have with which to attempt to live by.
As God’s creation, He has a mandate that we live within certain constraints, for example, the 10 commandments, then by fulfillment of the law, Jesus Christ’s teachings. Fulfillment of the law is for example, the Old Testament commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill, is fulfilled when Jesus, in the New Testament says that just to be angry with your brother now, is the equivalent of murder. Commands against adultery in the Old Testament are now fulfilled by Jesus by His saying that whoever simply looks at a woman with lust in his heart is guilty of the sin of adultery.
I believe God gave us the 10 commandments as a way of constraining any group of people, society, etc., to live not only with respect for others, but also as part of His overall plan to those who obey to return to Him, as their creator. Without God as the world’s authority, we have potential for chaos and a form of moral relativity. What I think may be good for me, and possibly my own selfish desires, others may not agree. Therefore, with as many people at any point in time in the world, we could have as many different standards by which we live. (Could we agree, for instance, that Thou Shalt not Kill is a pretty good absolute in all civilizations?) I guess, my point is, that if we leave it up to mankind to set the rules for the way we live, which ones are chosen to set the rules, and by whose authority did such people get chosen, and by whose authority, and by what standards did they make up the rights and wrongs of a society.
(Adam and I have gone over this once before)
The people I would look to to make the rules, may not be the people you would look to, so we couldn’t even agree on that. Thus where is the starting point?
I do agree with most of what Keller has to say, however, I find some of it unnecessary within the context of this topic.
Due to time constraints I have to stop for now. I look forward to your reply.
Adam, I see your point. However, Jesus Christ was able to see through the Pharisees of His day and make the assertion they were whitewashed tombs filled with dead mens bones. He determined they were fakes (hypocrites). Thus, He was capable of the discernment I speak of. He had to have spent time with them and observed them as well as determined their motivations. I think He had an advantage over the rest of us in that area. God does provide discernment for those who are true followers of His, and even gives direction to the church members to make judgments regarding fellow members and instruct them in His right way.
There is in Christianity, as there is anything that man is involved in where people pay lip service to a certain cause or issue and do nothing in furtherance of such cause. You are not suggesting that all who claim they are Christians as Jesus Christ would define it, are? Are you? The “rules” for Christianity are laid out in the Bible. I will continue to maintain that we can separate the authentic from the inauthentic, however, it requires observation of what one professes and whether or not their acts and motivations are consistent with their own Christian proclamations.
In the scheme of the text, this issue will play a larger part when the author chooses to differentiate between “religion” and “the gospel”.
Greg,
You have made many statements, some of which are dependent on others. If you have not ensured that a reader (like me) has apprehended the more basic ones, then how can he get to the others?
For example, here is one place to start. You write:
“The Bible serves as the only tangible guideline we have with which to attempt to live by.”
How can that be? Would there be absolutely no other way to determine how to live without the Bible? I currently read from the Bible only occasionally, and never for guidance in how to live my life. But every day I keep living, making decisions for how to act, and generally getting along just fine that way. How do you explain that, if the statement above is true?
Peter, there are many who get along just fine without looking to the Bible for guidance, in this life. One of the points of the Bible, beyond guidance for life on this earth, directs us to the kingdom of God which extends beyond this life and to eternal life. God promised us eternal life, at least for those “whosoever believe”.
For many, this life seems to go on just fine, but eventually all end up in troubled times, whether through loss of health, deaths of loved ones, etc., etc.,. God has promised us that if we look to Him in this life He will answer our prayers if they are petitioned in His name and according to His will. That is not to say that such prayers will necessarily be answered the way we think they should, nor within our time frame, as we have no capacity to conceive of God’s eternal plan.
The way you make (at least moral) decisions in your life must be according to some standard of what you have determined is best for you, and hopefully what is best for those that such decision affects. What standard do you use? For example, if you pay for something at a store and the cashier mistakenly gives you 20 extra dollars in change, you are faced with a decision. Do you go ahead and take the extra knowing it is not yours, or do you inform the cashier of their mistake and return it to them? A decision is warranted. In the making of that decision, a standard has to be looked to. There is no simply doing nothing. Either action, whether walking away and saying nothing, or returning the ill-gotten money is a decision. How is that decision based? I guess if we looked to Darwin, his survival of the fittest doctrine and the whole idea of preying on the weak for self interest and preservation, would dictate that we take the money and walk off. If you subscribe to the teachings of jesus Christ, the decision is made for you. You return the money, end of story, with no sense of loss, because it wasn’t yours in the first place.
Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, and spirit. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. If you love your neighbor, in this instance the cashier, as yourself, you know you would not want to lose 20 dollars and therefore would care about not inflicting a loss on them. Also, Jesus taught that we are to do unto others as we would have them do unto to us. We reach the same result in my example.
Thus, I believe that moral decisions in our life have to have a basis from which we derive an answer. None of us live our lives without some authority we look to. Whether it be the collective learnings of mankind to get to the rules by which we live today, or whether it be by certain people we look to who have engendered our respect sufficiently for us to model our lives after, or whether it be biblical teachings. But I do know one thing, there is no neutrality.
Thomas Watson stated (paraphrased) that civility is one of the main reasons for those who do not follow Christ, do not end up in the kingdom of God. They have determined they have no need for Him. Civil people, he says, do not engage in the gaol sins, but give no regard for the sins of the heart.
Believe me, I didn’t come to the foregoing without alot of delving into God’s word, suffering depression on a couple of occasions, and prayer. In fact, I thought that people who were quote “religious”, as I perceived them, were weak and needed a crutch for what I considered the failures in their lives.
“I didn’t come to the foregoing without a lot of delving into God’s word, suffering depression on a couple of occasions, and prayer. In fact, I thought that people who were quote “religious”, as I perceived them, were weak and needed a crutch for what I considered the failures in their lives.”
No offense intended, but that comment reads as self-contradictory. You yourself are using religion as a crutch for your admitted life struggles. That, and the very basis of Christianity is that people are weak and essentially can’t take care of their own lives.
You seem to admit that non-Christians are able to build an equally successful secular morality, so from where I stand, I see Christianity and a lot of other religions as entities that survive on people who are in crises (most often in my observation, existential crises fed by depression, sadness, loneliness, fear etc) in the guise of offering a system of morality that is more or less the same as the modern secular morality most people hold now. And on top of that, they take your money in order to perpetuate themselves. It’s a system that people buy into to make their lives better. And I don’t blame them at all. In a lot of instances, people can be very happy with it. Just like they can be happy by paying to be in a social club, or engaging in other social activities similar to church.
The issue will always be that supernatural argument (life after death, heaven and hell, a god, spirits) is lacking in evidence. And it’s arbitrary. Do you believe in the tooth fairy? Do you believe in poltergeists? Do you believe in ESP? Do you believe in other gods? If you believe in some supernatural things, why not believe in all of them? Why would you hold skepticism for say the existence of a man in red suit impossibly delivering gifts all over the world in one night but not for a deity that you say does all the seemingly impossible things it does?
Adam, please read this all before you make any conclusions. Actually the depressions I suffered were prior to my actual coming to a following of Christ. I had been a member of the church for years, in name only, and when I now look back on such time, I know I was no follower of Christ.
The apostle Paul says that we are not strong, unless we are weak. Christ said we must come to Him with the attitude of a child, recognizing our dependence on Him.This means that until we realize we, in our own eyes, view ourselves as nothing in relation to the all powerful God and look to God for our strength, we can do nothing (of eternal value). Eternal value being the good that furthers God’s eternal kingdom. If something doesn’t have eternal value and is not good, it has no value. Paul was a very highly educated Pharisee himself, subscribed to all of the man made laws, viewed himself as strong in the law, and persecuted the church prior to his encounter with Jesus as described in the book of Acts. After his encounter with Jesus Christ, Paul completely switched gears and realized he, self admittedly, was the worst of persecuters of Christ and His church.Paul further stated that he can do all things through Christ who stregthens him.
Paul endured every type of hardship we can think of and yet he did so with an eternal perspective. He knew that in this life we only will determine where we spend eternity. That is why he viewed the world as a house afire and needed to spread the gospel of Christ to as many people as he could in order to give each hearer the opportunity to know Christ with the time he had left here.
Thus, prior to Pauls encounter with Jesus, he believed he could do all things through his own accord. The difference and point I want to make is that there is “doing all things” on your own, and there is “doing all things” that furthers God’s kingdom, and that can only be done through reliance on faith in Christ and strength through God.
Paul went from a position of strength as the world viewed strength to a position of weakness as the world viewed weakness. But, he was strong in Christ, where he gained the strength with which he said he can do all things.
If this life is all we have, why do any good for anyone? We are here for such a short time in relation to eternity, why not just grab everything we can for ourselves and not care whether we hurt anyone in the process? It all comes to nothing, with no purpose. Everyone would end up the same. Good people, bad people. Food for the worms.
God’s plan has laid out a way in which if we come to our creator and if we have a faith and trust in Him and His teachings, love and obey Him, we are rewarded for not placing ourselves first at every opportunity, but esteeming ourselves less than others and helping, with compassion and mercy, toward those less fortunate than ourselves.
As you say, we are in crisis. We are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God. I didn’t say it, God did. Keep in mind, I’m only repeating what I have read and have a faith in.
Regarding other gods. Yes, I believe people can make gods out of anything; money, power, sex, drugs, alcohol and on and on. Anything that we place before God the Father is a god. It is a form of worship.
And yes, I truly believe in supernatural powers other than God. I will rely on Paul again where he stated that our battle is not with the physical world, but with the unseen spirits that are in a battle for our soul. Satan and his minions do not want to go to hell alone. Jesus Christ said don’t fear whose who can take your physical life here, fear those that are battling for you soul.
Just for the sake of pragmatism alone, why not accept there is an all powerful God and have a faith in Him as opposed to having a faith there is no God with this life as the entire means and ends. At least I’d give it a chance.
I feel I am intelligent enough to not be hoodwinked into falling for a scheme that people have concocted to take my money and occupy my time. This was not a flash in the pan decision on my part, as I have stated earlier.
I read your comment fully. A couple of things jumped out at me.
“If this life is all we have, why do any good for anyone? We are here for such a short time in relation to eternity, why not just grab everything we can for ourselves and not care whether we hurt anyone in the process? It all comes to nothing, with no purpose. Everyone would end up the same. Good people, bad people. Food for the worms.”
Good questions. My stance on those questions is that if all I’ve got on this planet is my life and then it’s over, I want to make it as comfortable and happy as I can. Hurting other people in that process is more likely to upturn my life and take away that comfort and happiness. If I start a war, I’m more likely to end up dead. If I steal, I’m more likely to end up in prison. If I hurt my friends and family, I’m more likely to alienate them and lose them. Because I believe this is all I get, my life is more important to me than anyone who believes that the part after death is more important. The variation of that is the question Peter asked you above but which you never answered:
“Tomorrow, we prove conclusively that there is no God. Do you just start lying, cheating, stealing, raping, murdering, pillaging, and so on? Or do you keep living the same way you live now (which I presume does not include those kinds of activities)?”
Then you say near the end of your comment:
“Just for the sake of pragmatism alone, why not accept there is an all powerful God and have a faith in Him as opposed to having a faith there is no God with this life as the entire means and ends. At least I’d give it a chance.”
You’re forwarding Pascal’s Wager. You say you’ve labored over choosing to be a Christian of the particular specification you are. What’s to stop me from going over all the materials and deciding that the god of Islam is the “all powerful God” I want to have faith in? Which one of us is right? Christianity says I’m still going to hell, but I certainly have faith in an all powerful god.
Some clarification on this sentence I wrote in my last comment:
Because I believe this is all I get, my life is more important to me than anyone who believes that the part after death is more important.
It was not meant to imply that I hold my life as more important than that of a Christian. I meant to say essentially, that by the logic of those who yearn to be in Heaven, their actual living life is less valuable to them than the perceived value of their forthcoming life in heaven. Whereas, to me, this being my only chance, I hold it to be very important; much more so by a relative comparison to those Christians.
Adam, I’ll address the last part of your post first, regarding choice of faith or religion. God, in the beginning created the world and all that is in it. One of the books of John states that “in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God” The “Word” in this instance refers to Jesus Christ, who has always been with God the Father. Jesus Christ states in the New Testament that the only way to the Father is through Him (Jesus Christ). God has promised that if we believe in Him (Jesus Christ), “we should not perish but have but have everlasting life”. Thus, the chain, always leads us back to God and His Son, Jesus Christ.
Further, I do not believe that either at the beginning (creation) or at the founding of Christ’s church, as described in the Book of Acts, that either God, in the first instance, or Jesus Christ, in the second instance offered us an array of religions to become members of the kingdom of God. They did not say, adopt the religion of Islam, Buhddism (sp?), or one of the other what I call man made religions, and you will inherit the kingdom of God. Jesus said that only through Him would people come to the Father.
All other “religions” came about later, and were, what I believe to be false. The Old Testament Jews created all kind of false gods. They worshipped a golden calf, they worshipped the god Baal, etc., and all it got them was more trouble. Jesus himself never spoke of religion except in a negative sense, such as the religiosity (sp?) of the Pharisees, Sadducees, etc., of His days on earth. It is the gospel of Christ, as the apostle Paul referred to numerable times in his letters.
As a result, I do not believe there is necessarily a choice in religions, where many look at them as equal, and we simply pick one, and the rest is good. God provided all the materials we need to come to Him.
Regarding the issue of discovering there is no God tomorrow, as I believe Him to be, is a hypothetical question that certainly requires more thought. First of all, I would be devastated in the sense, that if a good God did not create all that is good, how did it all happen. Certainly it would cause me to reassess how I would live the rest of my life. My gut reaction is to say that my life would not change, as the belief system I have would not automatically be switched off and I could not begin living contrary to such beliefs. But being an imperfect person, upon further reflection, would it make a difference how I lived, when now, this life is all there is, and I feel I have no God to answer to. I’ll have to continue to consider that question.
Sorry I haven’t been able to reply for a bit, so my reply is to a comment that is already pretty far up the list.
I’ve done just fine through troubled times, health problems, and the deaths of loved ones without looking to God. So I don’t see how adding any religious beliefs to the mix would improve things.
What exactly do you mean by “a standard”? Later in the same comment, you refer to an “authority”—do you mean the same thing?
I would approach the question from the opposite direction. What if all my decisions were random? Let’s imagine that I somehow manage to get through life by carrying around, say, a coin and a die. When I have to choose between two things, I flip the coin; for more than two choices, I roll the die. Whatever comes up, that’s what I do. The question is, would it be possible to live that way? Outside the realm of fiction, I don’t think so. Here are a few reasons: preference, laziness, practicality, and reciprocity. Let me explain how I think each of those would prevent me (or anybody else) from wanting to live strictly by a randomizing coin-toss or dice-roll.
Preference means that, in many, if not most choices, we will have a preference. In your example, I may have a preference to keep the $20. But I might not. For example, if the person who helped me in the store was rude and made it into a terrible experience, my preference to keep the money might be greater. But if the person was otherwise—say, someone friendly and attractive with whom I hoped to have more interaction and wanted to impress—then I might have a preference to give the money back.
Laziness means that, for example, if I discover the additional $20 but the clerk has now gone to another part of the store to help someone else and I don’t feel like waiting around, I wouldn’t feel like bothering to do anything about it. On the other hand, if the give-back transaction would be easy, I might be more inclined. Laziness is probably a minor factor in this specific example, but in other situations it could play a larger role. What if you are driving to the store and you see someone on the side of the road with a flat tire and they obviously don’t know how to change it, but you do? Laziness would play a large role in that decision, I think.
Practicality means that some conduct is more likely to be useful than others. What if I see two vehicles on the side of the road with flat tires: an ambulance and a mail truck. How do I decide which one to help? Practicality might say (unless laziness or preference over takes everything) that I should probably help the ambulance. But what if I am more selfish, and more concerned about getting mail than others receiving medical care? Maybe practicality for me will be reversed.
Reciprocity means that I can increase the likelihood of later receiving beneficial conduct in return if I decide something a particular way now. Going back to the $20 example, there might be a different consideration if this is a store where I shop daily, or one where I never expect to return. For example, if I want to build up a good relationship with a local business owner, I will almost certainly give back the $20 and enhance my reputation. But if I am far from home, that urge will probably be reduced. (On the other hand, if I have been chatting with a proprietor in some faraway land and she learns that I am from California, and then complains that people from California are always rude, I might see the opportunity to give back the $20 as a way to enhance the reputation of California—as a matter of pride.)
There are probably other considerations that would keep people from sticking to a wholly randomized life of coin-tosses and dice-rolls, but those are the ones that come to my mind immediately. And my point here is not that those things provide a foolproof path to a respectable set of ethics, but that they prevent me from being completely random, without being recognizable as a “standard” or an “authority.” In other words, I think that when you put “no decision” against “standard” or “authority,” you are setting up a false dilemma: people can make decisions in the absence of standards or authorities, and without even being completely random.
So the idea that in my actions I must be reliant on some “standard” or “authority” that is concealed or unrecognized, or else I must not be acting at all, cannot succeed.
At the same time, it seems quite clear to me that if we think about these separate principles for how people act, aggregate them, and think further about the many benefits we receive when everyone in a community or a society (or even globally, though we can only imagine that today) behaves in a way that is generally predictable to others, then we have a strong reason to create both a “standard” and an “authority” to enforce it. None of this leads me back to anything supernatural. Not remotely!
That’s not to say that it’s impossible to get me to the supernatural—just that arguments from ethics and morality don’t “do anything” for me. I think people’s good behavior is quite easily explainable without any reliance on supernatural forces, standards, or authorities.
Peter, could you elaborate on your statement “arguments from ethics and morality don’t do anything for me”, because I know, or presume you don’t make decisions in your life on the basis of a coin toss or the roll of a die. You must go though some rationalization, reasoning, call it what you like process when decision times arise. I mean decisions as “moral” (what I call them) as in my example of the $20.
I would suggest that anything but a return of the money in my example would be wrong by any rationalization. The idea of being lazy, practicality, reciprocity, etc., would be self centered. For example, if we turn the tables and view the money ($20), or make it a considerable sum that you had mistakenly given to someone, or lost and the sum was a matter of consequence to you, would the rationalization of laziness on another persons part be acceptable to you? Laziness, to me, means that one could not be bothered to put oneself out to even a minor degree to the detriment of one who is out a considerable sum of money, or in the case of the cashier, even lose their job over a shortage at the till. Practicality and reciprocity also reflect a form of selfishness or self-centeredness. From both approaches, we still looking out for either puts us out the least, or what benefits us the most. Apparently no regard for the loss someone will suffer, when we know we hold the remedy to their loss.
I believe the same principle I just explained also applies to the your flat tire examples, although exceptions to rule do exist. Other than an overriding expedience, as you were racing to the hospital with your choking child in your car (or scenarios of the same type of import), anything short of seeing one in need and doing nothing is a form of self-centeredness and a me first type attitude. Don’t get me wrong, everyone who has ever lived is guilty of this, but it is certainly something we should consider as part of a life standard (for lack of a better term).
In the context of my constant harping on the need for an “authority” and a “standard” established by such authority, I must say that who among men are “right” enough to determine what is best in relations between people. How are laws established without underlying principles of what is good for a civilization at their core? Where did these principles come from? Who established them? I believe that no man alone (as all men are imperfect and tend toward the self-centeredness I allude to above), is good enough, or right enough, to make decisions for how you or I are to live. I guess for lack of a better example at this time, take a football game and remove the refs. The players these days with the refs in the game almost stop at nothing to win. They will cheat if they can get away with it. No qualms about taking another player out by injuring them, etc. Now remove the refs and what have we got? Back to Darwin’s survival of the fittest and at best, a melee. Chaos.
We need absolute rights and wrongs both throughout the world and in individual societies. We need them as a basic framework within which to live peaceably with each other. I think we can agree that the prohibition against murder would pretty much be universal in all societies and the world. Why would all societies prohibit this? Is it because it is wrong to take another’s life. If it is wrong to take another’s life, who said so? (I do believe I am reiterating what I have discussed before, so if you have read something similar from me before, please excuse me. NOW ANSWER ME!!! Just joking.)
As an attorney, you must have a ready rationalization for the state bar’s ethics codes. Is a standard involved in that? If so, where did the foundation for such ethics originate?
Greg,
If your neighbor sees you in distress and decides to help you, do you really care if he does it out of pure altruism, or because he hopes it will cause you to think more highly of him in the future?
Since none of us, not one of us, exists wholly independently from anything or anyone else—all of us are contingent on something and someone—there is no way that we can think about ourselves and our ethics without accounting for how our actions affect the people and things around us. But the same contingency means that there is no way for us to pretend that, for instance, by expecting children to respect their parents—who provide for their basic needs—we are not teaching children that part of treating others right is protecting the sources of our contingency. There’s a reason we say things like, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
So think about the benefits we receive from the others around us. Earlier this evening, I picked up my phone, called a restaurant, and ordered food for my family. Then I got in my car, drove to the restaurant, used a debit card to pay, picked up the food, and drove it home. Think of all the other people I depended on in doing those things: the ones who built and maintained the phone and financial networks, the people who grew the plants and animals for my food, the ones who transported it to the restaurant, the ones there who prepared it, the people who designed and built my car, and so on. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate further. I like being in that loop. It makes my life a whole lot nicer. And my participation makes their life nicer, too.
But that system would break down if people were dishonest, or if they broke their promises, or treated others poorly. For example, if the restaurant where I went refused to pay its bills, then it would be forced out of business. Or if people just called and made orders without intending to pick them up, as a prank, so that food is wasted, then they would probably stop providing the phone-order service. While I was driving, if I decided to travel on the left-hand side of the road, or ignore the speed limits, or fail to use my turn signals, I would significantly increase the risk of major problems. If people aren’t following rules of conduct to make their interactions work well, then the whole system breaks down. That’s why corruption runs societies into the ground and leaves people with such a low standard of living: rather than using the efficient practice of altering their behavior to make society work, they use inefficient practices like bribes, which suck up far more resources than rules.
Whether I like it or not, I need other people, which means I need them to need me, too. Is it selfish to conduct my affairs so that I’ll receive the greatest benefit from others that I can? Sure. But the kind of selfishness that causes a person to follow rules is quite a lot different than the kind of selfishness that causes a person to break them. For one thing, rule-following selfishness is looking out for long-term consequences, treating each interaction with others like an investment: be kind to this person, reap a benefit later. Rule-breaking selfishness, on the other hand, is only concerned with short-term consequences: use a gun to hold up the corner store to grab some cash now, and risk the possibility of being caught.
In other words, what looks like “pure” altruism (and I’m hoping now you’ll think back to the question I put at the top of this comment) is really just a form of social investment through ethics. And when you’re on the receiving end, it doesn’t make much of a difference. As Adam Smith pointed out, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” But the difference between that kind of selfishness and the kind that we consider immoral or even criminal is not a matter of quality, but of quantity: it’s how far ahead you’re looking, and what you’re willing to risk. Socially and ethically, most people have a conservative outlook in that sense; we are not willing to risk the terribly adverse consequences of taking the high payoff in the short term for robbing the proprietor of the corner store at gunpoint.
You ask where these rules came from. You might also ask whether it would be possible to have other rules (much the same way that physicists ask whether the universe could exist with different physical laws and constants). For example, could a society work where the rule was that one should never tell the truth? How about a society where murder is acceptable? What about a society where children are taught to hate, despise, and abuse their parents and elders? How about a society where one can never have the security of personal property, where anyone can come and, literally, rip the shirt off your back because they like the fabric and want to use it to make their own shirt (which could then be subsequently ripped off their back, and so on)?
First, it should be clear that every society must have some rules. Complete chaos and anarchy would not be a society. It would be every individual for itself. But we have no evidence that humans have ever lived that way. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of an animal species that lives that way. So rules in themselves, without regard to their content, are simply necessary if complex forms of life are to exist. Individuals can gain a lot more if they cooperate; so in a world where individuals tend to survive and reproduce if they’re better off, the ones with a cooperative instinct will leave more ancestors. (Of course, as with most types of variation, there’s a “bell curve,” so that every generation will include some small percentage of individuals who are predisposed to riskier behavior: those will be the ones looking for the high payoff in the short term, without regard to serious consequences later on. We try to control their influence on our society with punishments and other sanctions, and probably also by labeling certain risky and destabilizing behaviors as “immoral” or “sinful” and attaching a mythology that’s intended to induce feelings of guilt.)
Your football example is misguided, I think. If we took the refs out of the game, then the game would lose its structure, many players would quit, and the audience would lose interest. Football would just dissolve. Has there ever been a sport that’s just pure chaos? I can’t think of one. People need some kind of beginning, middle, and end before they’ll care about a competitive sport. Rules and refs do give the players a set of limits that they will push, but if we took away the limits, then what would they have to push against? Would anybody really care to play in a game where a bunch of guys just go out on a field and try to move a ball through unstructured physical chaos? And who would want to watch? The faux Darwinism you suggest would never occur: in order to have natural selection, you need to have some selection pressure, some parameter that creates a limit for the agents involved. Take away the limit and you take away the selection pressure. In social life, rules arise from the natural limits of humans living in constant close contact, as I suggested above. I can’t just walk around lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering: it would irritate the hell out of everybody else and they would put a stop to me. So there are limits to what I can do, and those lead to the formulations that we turn into cultural ideas of what we should do.
From the basic requirement that society requires rules, what will be the content of those rules? You suggest, and rightly so, I think, that nobody is suited to make those rules. I don’t think anybody ever sat down, long ago, and said, “You know, let’s make a rule against murder. Let’s say, ‘murder is wrong.’” They didn’t have to. Who wants to live in a society with people where murder is acceptable? It just would not work. We can see that in portions of our own society, including high-crime areas, and even certain demographic groups, where there are high rates of murder, there is a low rate of functional society and a much lower quality of life. If left unchecked, those pockets of society would either obliterate themselves or evolve into groups, like gangs, where the prohibition against killing applies only to people inside the group. Eventually, one group would dominate the others and the in-group ethic would prevail, so that members of that society would come to see the prohibition against killing as something universal.
There are varying levels of efficiency in society that can be obtained, depending on the rules people have, and that’s probably one reason why certain societies have been more successful than others, and why, for instance, some societies are now said to be “exporters” of law. People around the world look to the law-exporting societies for guidance, for instance by citing the decisions of their high courts, or borrowing ideas from the enactments of their legislatures. (The United States is an exporter of law in that sense.) Why? Because our style of rules has worked very well to obtain a high standard of living.
Why is murder “wrong”? It’s not that anyone ever “said so” because no one ever needed to say so. The act of murder is terribly destabilizing to a society, and destabilization is going to have adverse effects on economic success and quality of life.
People can’t just arbitrarily make up rules. The rules have to arise from the specific problems that the group is facing. For example, the United States has a complex system of immigration laws because it has traditionally experienced a high volume of people wanting to get in, in large part due to our consistent economic success. Other nations have different immigration laws because they face different immigration situations. Arbitrary rules aren’t likely to be successful, or they will fall into disuse. On the other hand, where there is a need for a rule that could be satisfied equally well by several different rules, then it makes sense that we would see variety: we drive on the right, the English drive on the left—but it simply doesn’t work to not have any rule on that point, so long as you have a sufficient amount of traffic to necessitate a rule.
Finally, the reason for rules of ethics for attorneys seems pretty clear to me: our job requires trust. If we didn’t have some predictable system that would allow people to entrust us with the most intimate details of their lives and the fates of their fortunes, then they wouldn’t trust us, and they wouldn’t know how to determine which people to trust when they needed help with those matters. The rules of ethics provide an economizing factor for people making a decision to call on someone else for advice or advocacy: you can choose someone who is bound to follow the rules, and subject for discipline for failure to do so, and those people are identified easily because they have been admitted to the state bar association.
Peter, to answer your question regarding my neighbor’s motivation for helping me, I can suggest that it is not for me to decide why he is doing so. The question becomes one that is for him to answer as to why he is doing so. Your question gets at the heart of why I was curious about what you thought of Keller’s book. I think you will find if you read the entire book, that what Keller and I believe about the need for us to believe in God is that, God looks to the soul (which He gave us), the driving force behind what we think and by extension what we do. I believe we have within us more than a brain to think and reason. We have a core soul that truly makes us who we are and dictates who we truly are. Thus, our thinking processes, as they apply to our relationship and interactions with others, our motivations, and the reasons we think uniquely from anyone else, is that we have that core soul that is our “spiritual blueprint” that truly defines us. It is with this spirit, we make our connection to God through His Holy Spirit.
I believe we cannot have true good, or altruism if it is not God rooted. Yes, many people who feel no need for God, perform altruistic acts every day. However, if for those who feel no need for God and believe that this life on earth is all there is, doing what we call good, serves as much purpose as bending down to tie the untied lace of a shoe of a condemned man on his walk to the gas chamber. Good is only good if it is God rooted, then it has eternal value. If I’m doing “good” for another for some pragmatic reason only that I may gain something, I might as well not do it when it is viewed through God’s eyes. For example, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day performed all kinds of good deeds, and they did it to prove to the rest of the world how holy and righteous they were. They gave out of their plenty, they prayed long impressive prayers, adhered to every legalism imaginable, and Jesus said in response, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said further of the Pharisees that they were clean on the outside but like whitewashed tombs on the inside. Jesus looked to the inside of a person, what motivated them, He looked to the motivation of their spirit.
My murder example was simply a starting point at which we attempt to find absolutes, if not “moral”, then use another term. There have to be absolutes, both with regard to restrictions on behavior in a society and what a society would call good behavior. As I have stated earlier, the principles upon which these absolutes came from had to have their roots somewhere.
I suppose that if we believe this life is it, we would have more of a tendency to look inwardly and do what satisfies us. On the other hand if we have a belief that we live eternally, we don’t place as much emphasis on seeking self satisfaction, because we know in comparison to eternity, this short life here is but a blip on the screen. Eternity is a long time for the enjoyment of a Godly reward. The apostle Paul, subsequent to his encounter with Jesus on the road devoted the rest of his life as a sacrifice for spreading the gospel. He treated the world as a house afire and did his best to aid as many people as he could to the road of eternal salvation.
Two things Greg,
“There have to be absolutes, both with regard to restrictions on behavior in a society and what a society would call good behavior.”
Why?
Secondly, you say, “I believe we cannot have true good, or altruism if it is not God rooted,” which is then closely followed by, “If I’m doing “good” for another for some pragmatic reason only that I may gain something, I might as well not do it when it is viewed through God’s eyes.”
And yet, you finish with, “Eternity is a long time for the enjoyment of a Godly reward.”
If you’re calling admission to heaven for the true righteousness lived in your years on earth a “reward,” then you’ve just negated your position on Godly altruism. You’ve just made eternal paradise the reason for your morality. Conversely, your selfishness in not desiring to live an eternity in hell is the same sort of thing.
And I think that slip on your part is revealing. I don’t think there’s a Christian out there who isn’t deathly (no pun intended) afraid of hell or extremely happy to consider the benefits of heaven. And I don’t think you can deny those two things factor into the morality of Christians, thus negating any pure Godly altruism you might like to argue exists.
Adam, you are 100 % correct when you say that I have made eternal paradise the reason for my morality. I have done so because God has ordained just that. In His plan for mankind he has made the promise to us that if we believe in Him “we should believe in His only begotten Son, that we shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has told us that our only way to the Father is through Him (as I said before). Thus, since God is our creator and has made the rules, I will accept Him at His word when it comes to His plan for us to follow regarding the attainment of eternal life.
Should we skeptical of the many who give there lives in service all over the world in the name of Christ, because they may be doing so for self-aggrandizing reasons? Maybe so, but if they are doing so in the name of Christ, they are doing so because He has instructed them to do so. I do not believe that people who engage in the sacrificial acts of helping others do so with the thought that, aha! everybody, including you God, look at all the good I’m doing, chalk up another one for me. Besides, any Christian knows that it is not through his works that he attains salvation, anyway. It is God’s grace. No, I think they engage in this activity out of an allegiance to Christ (or even a slave of Christ) as Paul said, who see that they are engaged in an endeavor that is good for God’s sake.
Bear with me hear, as I do not intend a sermon with the following. One of the goals of belief and faith in Christ is to become more like Him. This goal is not to be concerned about your own motivation or your own temporary gain, and Jesus said the attitude should be one of gladness and thanks. Jesus says don’t store up things on this earth that are subject to (paraphrased) rust and destruction, but rather store up treasures in heaven. Jesus means by treasures in heaven such things as compassion to the poor, giving, sacrificing oneself for others (charity given with the right heart attitude) covers a multitude of sins, per the apostle Peter) Thus, if we act toward others in a way that reflects our love for Christ who sacrificed Himself for us, gave us the grace that we are not due, He has promised us heavenly reward.
Just so my argument doesn’t sound inconsistent, I realize that it is through the grace of God that we are saved and not through our works. However, James said and I believe the Book of Ephesians also tells us that faith without works is dead. Meaning that one cannot on the one hand proclaim he has a faith and belief in Christ and yet take no action in furtherance of His kingdom.
I will have to get to your question regarding “absolutes” at a later time.
Your argument still sounds inconsistent. Theoretically, you’ve laid out no reason to do good works under the banner of Christianity but because you feel obligated to (guilt? the price to become a Christian?). That is, unless you’re willing to argue that faith alone is not enough to get into heaven. If that is the case, I think you’re on really shaky ground because then we’re back at square one where Christian’s morality is based on the reward they receive for doing good things.
If faith is enough to get into Heaven, then you have laid out a system where a Christian can do anything they like, such as murder, and still claim their faith in a god which will allow them into heaven. You have laid out a system where the Scott Roeders of the world and the Inquisitionists and the Crusaders and multitudes of fatally violent Christians can get into heaven. That to me, is a much more dangerous sort of morality.
So, if I understand you correctly, your response should be:
1. All those people I just listed are not real Christians (which I feel we established before is neither your place nor mine to judge)
-or-
2. Works really do matter (to at least some degree) to get into heaven and you’ve lost your godly altruism
-or-
3. Faith is enough to get in and Christians really don’t need to have any morality (good works) such as is currently laid out through secular society.
Greg,
Your comments are like spinning merry-go-rounds; there is no way to get on. You need to choose a foundational point and then build from there.
For example, in the first paragraph of your last response directly to me, you say:
and
Both of those sentences, while they make sense, only make sense if we have already determined what you mean by “God,” and whether we can even agree that whatever you mean is real.
When you say that the soul that God gave us is the driving force behind our need to believe in God, you have created a closed system. You are standing on an island—it may be a real island, or it may just be a verbal island. Either way, nothing you’re saying really means anything to me unless we can establish some shared sense of what you (and then we) are talking about.
So what is God?
And, just fair warning, the follow-up question will almost certainly be, “How do you know that?” or “What gives you trustworthy knowledge to answer that question?” I’m telling you my follow-up question in advance so we can maybe save an extra runaround; I have a hunch that your answer to my follow-up question is going to be the subject of my first question, and vice versa. In other words, here is something like what I expect you to say (and feel free to prove me wrong):
‘God is described in the Bible, and the Bible is trustworthy because God caused it to be written.’
I’m not trying to anticipate your argument here because I’m trying to build a straw-man—I would be quite happy if you gave some other answer. The purpose of my anticipation is to point out that my fundamental questions may not be the same as yours, or Timothy Keller’s. My fundamental questions, ones that I have never had satisfactorily answered by any Christian, even after reading a big stack of books on theology and Christian apologetics, even after engaging in many of discussions like this one, are the ones that, if left unanswered, or unsuitably answered, are going to make everything else you might say seem pretty pointless to me—or like a spinning merry-go-round that won’t let me on.
So I’ll state my questions again as succinctly as I can:
1. What do you mean when you say “God”?
2. Where do you find trustworthy information to answer that question?
Also, my copy of Keller’s book arrived today. I’ll take a look as soon as I can.
Adam, I will go directly to the source in my discussion on God’s saving grace versus earning one’s way to Heaven through their works. Ephesians 2:8,9 states “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by your works, so that no one can boast.”
This means that one cannot earn salvation by keeping the law. This would be a legalistic approach and is consistently condemned in the Bible. This verse is meant to insure that no one can take credit for their own salvation. If anyone could attain salvation by their works, it would negate the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross. Jesus came to die for our sins, not to see that we earned our way to eternal salvation.
The part where it becomes a little more complicated is in the Book of James2: 14-18, where it states “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith, but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
Satan has faith in God and His Son in the sense that they exist, and people will mentally assent to the fact that God exists and that Jesus came to earth which can be interpreted as a certain type of faith. The point at which the genuine faith parts company with the foregoing, is the type of faith that says, Jesus Christ You are my Lord and Savior and I will put my full trust and faith in You for all time (as the apostle Paul did) and I will live my life in accordance with how You taught me to live.
Thus, the result of good works comes from more than a mental assent or acknowledgment of God’s existence, but a genuine faith and dependence upon Jesus Christ.
“Thus, the result of good works comes from more than a mental assent or acknowledgment of God’s existence, but a genuine faith and dependence upon Jesus Christ.”
So you choose option #3 wherein, faith will get you into heaven, but you don’t necessarily have to be a good person, or even try to be a good person. Your assumption is that because someone comes to a place where they can say they have faith in your god and truly, honestly believe he is the one and only, they will automatically try to live a good life.
Of course, the issue you have there is the disparate ideologies that spring from Christianity. It’s not a nice neat little bundle with a unified and authoritative morality as you like to claim. If it was, you wouldn’t have Scott Roeder justifying, with his Christianity, the assassination of another human. You wouldn’t have Christians all over the world exhibiting a wide spectrum of morality systems that don’t agree with one another and yet, stem from the same origin.
When you come from a position of trying to say secular morality doesn’t work because people would do whatever they wanted to do, it’s best that you don’t come from a position where the system of morality you’re toting ends up with a bunch of people doing whatever they want to do and then essentially white-washing it by claiming they’re Christian and therefore forgiven. That’s what I was talking about when I said religion is a dangerous place to receive morality from.
Greg,
You wrote:
Why do there have to be absolutes? A few sentences later, you referred again to the idea that satisfying ourselves would be one way to look at the situation, in the absence of rewards and benefits on an eternal scale. But even that doesn’t explain why there must be absolutes. Assuming there is a God making rules for people to follow, what would stop God from changing the rules all the time? Or is God bound to say that murder is wrong, whether God wants to or not?
Adam, surprisingly enough, I agree with much of what you said. What you have described is exactly the types of perversions Christianity takes on when people don’t take heed of the Bible, or don’t understand what God’s grace really is. God’s grace did not come cheaply, as it took the death of Jesus Christ. When people do not take God at His word, whether it be regarding His wrath, or His judgment, or His love, or His grace, or His holiness, etc., they make a sham out of their so-called Christianity. God says He will not be mocked.
The Bible gives us the direction we are to take on this earth, period. The message is clear, it has been clear for all time. Although there may be issues (such as the book of Revelation and what is to come) which are not clear, the message for relationships between people, and the route to salvation have been made clear by Jesus Christ
This is kind of like cops. We have good ones and sometimes we have bad ones. Because of the bad ones, we don’t shun all cops. As it is with everything that people are involved in; they can screw things up. But the bad ones are not representative of what Jesus Christ calls His church. The members of Christ’s church do not do whatever they want and then expect salvation. As I have previously said, one can pay lip service to anything and do nothing in furtherance of its cause; hypocrites are not members of Christ’s church.
In one of our previous discussions, I believe that you stated that you looked to some of the men that have written authoritatively on various philosophical issues and human relationships for establishing rules or laws that we live by. Do you subscribe to that still? If you do, could you elaborate on your view in this area?
Okay Greg, honestly. You’re going in circles and it’s not fair for you to fail to address what I’m saying and then ask to change the subject.
“As it is with everything that people are involved in; they can screw things up. But the bad ones are not representative of what Jesus Christ calls His church.”
We just had long drawn out discussion about deciding who true Christians are and how we somewhat agreed that neither of us was qualified to make that distinction. That’s what you’re doing again. We’re back at square one where you’re telling me who the true Christians are and who the bad Christians are.
If you want to do that, then I’ll use my earlier example, again. Scott Roeder tells us that murdering a man who provides abortions is a righteous action in his god’s name. He claims to be a Christian just like millions of other people. I know plenty of Christians who would say that taking anyone’s life, for any reason is absolutely against their god’s word.
Which one is the bad Christian? Which one is the true Christian? Until you can logically address this dilemma, you haven’t answered any of my questions.
Adam, what part of my post quoting the Book of Ephesians and James didn’t you understand? I don’t know what you’re after when you say I’m going in circles.
Peter, there have to be absolutes, because they do exist already. People simply choose to ignore them or deny they exist. Anything else is a kind of moral relativity, period. I ask once again, how did the principles upon which societies base their laws originate? Did it just happen that murder, adultery, theft, etc., are actions that are typically found to be contrary to “good behavior” in a society, and worthy of punishment? Who determined these actions were wrong? Did our great philosophers, or statesmen? If so, how did they form the ideas that such behavior was wrong? And these are just what has been determined to be criminal behavior in most societies. Then we have the moral sins like lying, cheating, the wealthy often times taking advantage of the poor, etc. Where did the idea that these actions are wrong? The problem is that some people don’t care whether the aforementioned actions are wrong or not, they engage in them because they say, no one has the right to tell them how to live. Thus, this situation can result with a different standard for right and wrong for every living person.
Maybe I might think Mao was correct and want to live according to his example and writings, regardless of who it hurts, is that ok?
Greg, you’re either being disingenuous or willfully ignorant or you’re incredibly dense. Either way, it’s wearing thin. Did you only read the first two sentences of my last comment? If you didn’t, I asked you some questions there which you are still refusing to answer.
You claim the Bible says, “the message for relationships between people, and the route to salvation have been made clear by Jesus Christ.” And yet, when I provide you with examples (and there are multitudes more) of the incredible disparity between people who claim your particular brand of religion, you ignore it. It’s not even remotely clear.
You can’t claim ultimate authority on morality from a book that creates some of the most diverse sets of moral theories across the globe! And it’s extremely hypocritical to point at an outside system of morality and claim that it’s a free for all when the position you’re standing on is the same exact thing.
As for your last response to Peter, it’s infuriatingly troll-like. You keep asking these questions like neither Peter nor I have answered them on several different occasions, here, at my blog, and in the letter threads at the Bee. It’s called a social contract, Greg. They’re things that have been agreed upon by members of the societies in which they’re deemed wrong because they upset the balance and benefits that come from cooperation. Just claiming that something is absolute doesn’t actually make it so.
Why don’t you read back through the 40-some odd comments above. You’ll see that Peter already answered your last questions.
Greg,
Adam is right. I did already answer most of your questions. So here again are the things I wrote about a week ago, on January 23:
And again:
And here are some short answers, whose basis can be derived from everything I just quoted above:
Nobody knows.
Yes. Try having a society the other way around, where murder, adultery, theft, etc., are prescribed, rather than prohibited. It just won’t work. I guarantee. Or it won’t work for long.
Nobody did.
Nope.
Not applicable. See above.
Nobody did. See above. Same explanation. Try having a society the other way around, where lying, cheating, taking advantage of the poor, etc., are prescribed, rather than prohibited. It won’t work. I guarantee. Or it won’t work for long.
No, I think you need to study a little more criminal psychology. Do you really believe that people break laws and rules because they have taken a conscious, principled stand against others telling them how to live?
And finally:
Maybe you should clarify what you mean by “absolutes.” If you mean there are basic limits to how human societies can work—e.g., since society is, by definition, cooperation, then uncooperative conduct is fundamentally anti-social and will inevitably lead to a reduction in quality of life—then, sure, I guess you can call them absolutes. But nobody thought of them because nobody needed to.
Can your God make a human society with rules that say dishonesty, theft, infidelity, murder, and greed are required?
The answer, since you are unwilling to provide one yourself, is quite simply: No. Your God could not do that.
If you disagree, then explain. If you ask one more time for me to tell you something that I have already said, then you shall receive no reply. But if you ask a clarifying question that is specifically based on something already set forth above, on the grounds that you want more detail or explanation (which means you will need to quote my words back to me and formulate a specific responsive question), then I will answer.