Seasons

I was answering Mr. Crab's question.

I already answered your question, Butterfly. I was just bringing up a new subject.

I believe there is a universal morality too, but I also believe that a lot of people are too blind to see it. Because then they'd have to analyze their actions and realize that hey maybe some of their actions were wrong in a moral sense. And most people tend to hate being wrong, especially in a situation where someone else knows they're wrong. Also, I think a lot of people consider their values to be more important than morals. For instance, Joe values his independence, which can cause him to do immoral things to various women to keep them from having enough control over him to impede his independence. Although Joe will probably also be inconsistent enough to control others to an extent he wouldn't approve of if it was being done to him. He'd think it was pretty much an either-or situation...*someone* usually has to be controlled and he doesn't want it to be him. This is why acting morally generally requires a certain amount of empathy. If you don't care about others to some extent, you won't bother to figure out how your actions affect them, and the "do unto others" thing won't work too well even if you try. We all have blind spots, and none of us is perfect. I don't think it's even possible to live a 100% moral life, but that shouldn't keep us from at least trying to see the big picture and realizing when just maybe we've been wrong.

Right OnyxFlame -- I think values do trump morality. In fact, just about anything trumps morality, including morality sometimes. So that's why we have the study of ethics, I think, which is how to recognize what the moral claims on you are in a given situation and what you're going to do about it.

Eugene, that raises two questions immediately for me: I can understand why loving your neighbor should be the crux of your moral theory, but how can loving God (who after all can derive no benefit from it) be a moral issue? And the second question is, obviously, how do you define neighbor?

Is who objective, Butterfly Dream? Me? I try, when it's important...

Not that any of us are going to devote our lives to being the posterboys and girls of morality.

Isn't it amazing how most priests & other religious officials aren't even moral all the time? There's a big difference between knowing what the most moral action in a situation is, and actually choosing to DO the most moral action. If we were all 100% moral it'd be a bit like 2 ppl trying to get through a door & both of them would spend the rest of their lives telling the other person to go first. This is why I say that even if we knew how to be moral 100% of the time, none of us would be that way.

As for loving God, what's to say he can't derive benefit from it, providing he exists? You derive benefit from someone loving you, in the sense that it makes you feel better about yourself if nothing else. I maintain it's impossible to tell whether God gets anything out of it or not, since we can't really put ourselves in his shoes since we don't know what size his feet are.

Fair enough, but I'll limit my moral considerations to things I think exist.

In the case of God though, I see that as especially suspect since if there was something God needed or wanted, he could get it for himself. So I don't have to worry about how my actions affect him.

Hail Pengwin! Viva la Pengy!

Let's face it, God could MAKE us love him if he particularly wanted to. I think the point is to leave us on our own and see what we do though...love means more if it's a conscious choice rather than a forced action. Of course there's no scientific way to tell if this is God's motive or if there is no God to have a motive. But just because there's no scientific evidence doesn't mean something can't exist. There's a lot of things that happen for no apparent scientific reason. (Whether this is because science doesn't cover them or because we don't know enough science yet is of course unclear.) When all is said and done, all we can do is believe what we believe, and not worry too much whether it's right or wrong. Unfortunately, a lot of people take this to mean they can do anything to anyone and get away with it.

Mr. Crab,

Loving God is a moral issue because it is part of what He created us to do. If you love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, e.g., with everything that is in you, then you will serve Him with equal abandon. The one who is serving God will of course be acting morally.

As for your second question, you aren't the first to ask it.
"And a scribe stood up and put Him to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' And He said to him, 'What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?' And he answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.' And He said to him, 'You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.' But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?' Jesus replied and said, 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion,
and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, "Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you." Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands?' And he said, 'The one who showed mercy toward him.' Then Jesus said to him, 'Go and do the same.'" -- Luke 10:25-37

Well, that's a little weird. Maybe I'm just not reading very well, but if you follow the logic of this story, the only person the robber should feel compelled to "love as himself" would be the Samaritan. That's not the way I understand this fundamental principle at all -- in fact, I'd automatically assume it to apply to the entire human race (maybe with some exceptions) and I'd be wondering whether animals, plants, and rocks should also be worthy of neighborly affection.

As for the first part, you blow my mind when you say loving God is a moral injunction because God wants us to do it. If I want you to bark like a beagle, does that impose a moral obligation on you? What if God wants you to slit my throat? Or is this getting too close to "if Jane told you to jump off the Empire State Building..."?

That's not how I understand the concept of morality at all. There is no foundation of empathy there. I don't of course, mean to suggest to you that you should stop loving God, if indeed you do, or that loving God is equivalent to slitting my throat (unless you belong to a religion in which you must demonstrate your love of God by slitting my throat, which I don't think either of us would say you do). But there's no *moral* reason why one should love God -- all you've given me is a religious one.

I think sometimes religion misses the point. We should act in a moral manner not because God tells us to or because we think it'll get us to heaven, but because it's the right thing to do. However, I rather doubt most people would do so if there was no idea of God and his commandments to go by. Let's face it, God could've created us and kept himself secret if he wanted to, but then how would most of us know what was right? You'd have very few moral people and a bunch of criminals and perverts. Kind of like it is now, except in our world when someone does something wrong they have a bunch of people to point fingers at them and tell them they're wrong.