God's moral code

[dungeonbaby]

Ok, let me give it a shot. Fellow theists, be reminded, this is just an exercise in mental masturbation (lol).

 

PRAGMATISM in the context of "what is best for humanity is what is true". By humanity, I mean to say not just the current population living now but also includes future generations. All laws under this concept shall then be guided accordingly. To illustrate, killing another human being is BAD because killing another human being (indiscriminately) foments chaos. And chaos is not good for humanity. On the other hand stem-cell research has the potential to serve humanity and therefore should be allowed (take note atheists, the religious right does not want stem cell research to be conducted! why didn't you offer some moral code to justify why this should be allowed?!).

 

If the above premise is an acceptable "truth" to everyone, then I shall continue on with further details on what I think it would be like in my "pragmatic world".

 

just a teeny, tiny correction. the religious right don't want embryonic stem cell research to be conducted. esp when umbilical stem cells seem to be just as promising, minus the dead babies.

 

so far, so good.

[skitz]

Let us wait awhile for the other atheists to put it their 2 cents before I proceed.

Edited September 29, 2010 by skitz

[knoll1234]

God's moral code was made by man, for man. without it man's history on earth would have been different.

[dungeonbaby]

was that worth 2 cents yet?

[skitz]

Lol! Not even close. But hey. if nothing else, that post only goes to illustrate my previous point.

 

Knoll1234: PLEASE LEARN TO BACK-READ BEFORE INFLICTING ON THE REST OF US YOUR "GENIUS".

Edited September 30, 2010 by skitz

[skitz]

Ok, time's up. I shall proceed under the assumption that my premise is an accepted "truth" (by way of agreed upon convention).

 

Let me start with form of government. DEMOCRACY (popular vote) is not logical. And therefore should be replaced with MERITOCRACY. The average Joe, whose intelligence was responsible for GW Bush in the US and Erap Estrada in the Philippines, should not be the ones to decide who shall lead them. The average Joe is DUMB. And being DUMB, they can not appreciate what it takes to be a good leader. Meritocracy on the hand is PRAGMATIC. Get the best and brightest to lead. This is logical (and yes, will serve humanity best). How to implement? Set up a computer program that will test candidates with predetermined qualities on who will make the best leader. Intelligence, "morality", etc. Candidates can apply for the job to be tested. Best candidate gets to be the leader. As you can see, the "blind" nature of this process has eliminated the problem associated with popular democracy.

 

More later.

Edited September 30, 2010 by skitz

[dungeonbaby]

Ok, time's up. I shall proceed under the assumption that my premise is an accepted "truth" (by way of agreed upon convention).

 

Let me start with form of government. DEMOCRACY (popular vote) is not logical. And therefore should be replaced with MERITOCRACY. The average Joe, whose intelligence was responsible for GW Bush in the US and Erap Estrada in the Philippines, should not be the ones to decide who shall lead them. The average Joe is DUMB. And being DUMB, they can not appreciate what it takes to be a good leader. Meritocracy on the hand is PRAGMATIC. Get the best and brightest to lead. This is logical (and yes, will serve humanity best). How to implement? Set up a computer program that will test candidates with predetermined qualities on who will make the best leader. Intelligence, "morality", etc. Candidates can apply for the job to be tested. Best candidate gets to be the leader. As you can see, the "blind" nature of this process has eliminated the problem associated with popular democracy.

 

More later.

 

I can see how a meritocracy sounds super appealing. But I'll let you expound on that before protesting your statement that it is more pragmatic than problematic. (I'll also let you get away with the statement that Gore or Kerry would've been better presidents than Bush in the interest of staying on topic.)

 

But who determines which qualities are tested for? And how do you test for morality? Do you base this fledgling meritocracy (still) on an existing moral code?

[skitz]

The problem is only in the transition, from where we are right now to where we want to be. It is unavoidable to make that transition with "learned men" chosen by popular vote. It is these "learned men" who shall be the ones to decide the standards. Take note also that I had "morality" in quotes. For lack of a better word, I had to use that. That is morality minus the hand of God.

 

More later (doing this on a net cafe while waiting for someone).

Edited October 1, 2010 by skitz

[skitz]

Hey, don't think the proposal is totally out of this world. Think SINGAPORE. They are not a democracy. But my version would be Singapore on steroids. More later, be going on road trip for a week, leaving tonight.

[Hex_Arenas]

God is not some kind of superman, like us but with superlative moral virtue. No. Many atheists, as well as theists, make this mistake -- that of thinking of God as someone comparable to us humans, only without limitations. He is not like that at all. God does not have goodness. God is THE Good -- He is goodness itself. God’s goodness is His power, which is His knowledge, which is His essence, which is His existence. "I AM WHAT I AM", He reveals to Moses. Pure Being.

 

So can man be good without God? Can man be good without goodness itself?

Edited October 7, 2010 by Hex_Arenas

[skitz]

Hex, that's all well and good. But as far as this thread is concerned, "God does not exist". Just a little experiment. Trying to figure out how we would find our moral anchor without "good" in our lives.

 

TO continue with my SOCIAL SYSTEM (minus the God influence), on population control:

 

The learned men who runs the government (through meritocracy) shall decide the best population size of the country. Birth control shall be implemented via selective sterilization of the population. For example, it can be decided that the lowest 10 percent (criterion to be decided by the "learned men") shall be sterilized. This makes sense. If you understand anything about breeding as a science. The government can also "encourage" unions between two couples to improve the race. Yao Ming is a product of China's drive to create the super basketball athlete. His parents are both national team players (in baskteball) who were "encouraged" to marry each other. Yao Ming himself is now married to another national basketball team player. Third generation Yao would be MVP in the NBA.

 

 

(Hmmmmm... just wondering. What do the atheists think about all this?)

[Hex_Arenas]

Hex, that's all well and good. But as far as this thread is concerned, "God does not exist". Just a little experiment. Trying to figure out how we would find our moral anchor without "good" in our lives.

 

TO continue with my SOCIAL SYSTEM (minus the God influence), on population control:

 

The learned men who runs the government (through meritocracy) shall decide the best population size of the country. Birth control shall be implemented via selective sterilization of the population. For example, it can be decided that the lowest 10 percent (criterion to be decided by the "learned men") shall be sterilized. This makes sense. If you understand anything about breeding as a science. The government can also "encourage" unions between two couples to improve the race. Yao Ming is a product of China's drive to create the super basketball athlete. His parents are both national team players (in baskteball) who were "encouraged" to marry each other. Yao Ming himself is now married to another national basketball team player. Third generation Yao would be MVP in the NBA.

 

 

(Hmmmmm... just wondering. What do the atheists think about all this?)

 

In other words --- EUGENICS. Bad.

[skitz]

You only say "BAD" because you believe the "God moral code". But as far as this thread is concerned, God does not exist, so that moral code is not true. You need to debunk the contention logically without that or destroy my premise (backread a little for that).

Edited October 25, 2010 by skitz

[skitz]

Hey, where all the atheists go?

 

Could the silence be because a purely "logical" society now doesn't sound too appealing? Given that 99% of the atheists who post here should not even exist at all in a purely "logical" world? lol.

[JHP]

This piece is about 9, 10 years old. i don't agree with all of it, but still it seems relevant and might add some context to the topic of this thread.

 

 

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/print.php?id=14-02-020-v

 

Lethal Humanism

 

Link Byfield on Ted Turner’s Global Religion

 

Sometimes it’s surprising what surprises people. There was widespread outrage last September over the killing of a newborn baby by Chinese Communists in Hubei province. Five officials invaded the parents’ home, yanked the infant from their arms, took it to a nearby rice paddy, and drowned it. Apparently finding this shocking, the Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, and Ottawa Citizen all ran it on the front page.

 

To which I can only say, I’m shocked that they are shocked. What did they think China’s infamous one-child policy was all about? Did they imagine it was like limiting lawn-watering during a dry summer, or restricting a supermarket sale item to one-per-customer? Of course the child got killed. It was the woman’s fourth. She should be grateful they didn’t k*ll two more.

 

Since the Communists decreed their one-child edict in the 1970s to reduce population, they have forcibly aborted and sterilized countless women and seized and starved countless children. It has been credibly reported that fetuses have even been eaten as health food. Because most parents want their only child to be a boy, girls are now so rare in the more zealous one-child areas that they are routinely kidnapped and raised in captivity.

 

At the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies last year, researchers reported that in one region of China from 1971 to 1980 almost 800,000 baby girls were abandoned or killed. “Given that these numbers represent only one of a dozen regions in China and only one decade out of the past three,” wrote Steven Mosher of the Population Research Institute, “the number of little girls missing and presumed dead throughout the length and breadth of China over the past generation must number well over ten million.”

 

All of this, of course, is supported with dollops of money, enthusiasm, and expertise from Planned Parenthood, the transnational abortion conglomerate, and abetted by concerned globalists like Bill Gates and Ted Turner.

 

A Bitter Irony

 

It is a bitter irony that the super-rich always agree with the anti-rich that humanity’s chief problem is humanity. As G. K. Chesterton observed, most philanthropy consists of a ceaseless effort by the rich to control the poor. It’s always justified by some sort of false argument of expediency: we don’t have room; we can’t possibly feed all these people.

 

The reality is, of course, that China is not at all short of land. Most of its northern territories are almost empty and could produce far more food. But that would require officialdom in Beijing to adjust their thinking. It seems easier to order people to stop having children; and when people stubbornly insist upon having children anyway, officials dispatch them like unwanted kittens.

 

All of which should give us pause when gazillionaire humanists like Ted Turner and Maurice Strong, in a spirit of public service, invite representatives of all world religions to a meeting in New York. Mr. Turner is not seeking their wisdom; he intends to impart his own. He wants them to accept his own moral code and disseminate it across the globe.

 

Now if some Vatican moral theologian were to tell Messrs. Turner and Strong that they plainly misapprehend and despise humanity, both gentlemen would be genuinely offended. They would say, as Mr. Turner himself said in Edmonton a month ago, that they are “just trying to make the world a better place, both for its human inhabitants and all the other creatures that inhabit this planet with us.” I’m sure they really think this.

 

The gulf between them and the Christian, however, is profound. The Christian holds that each and every human—rich or poor, young or old, smart or less smart, handsome or ugly, lucky or unlucky, healthy or sick, happy or miserable, Christian or otherwise—is made “in the image of God.” This doesn’t mean that we all look like God; it means that to an extent we can think like him, distinguishing virtue from sin, beauty from ugliness, and truth from falsehood. This small apportionment of the divine is the source of all human dignity, freedom, rights, and responsibilities. Anyone who arbitrarily shortens or ruins this divine life and freedom is guilty of a terrible sin.

 

But the pure humanist sees life quite differently. He has no concept of the image of God; he has only an image of himself, and of his own wants and hopes. And what he wants, naturally, is comfort, convenience, knowledge, long life, and friendship. With these he has “quality of life” and he is content; without them, or at least the hope of them, he considers his own life—or anyone else’s—to be without point.

 

Divine Yeast

 

Two things should be noted about these divergent attitudes. The first is that they are both based on faith, though the humanist does not see this. They are both defended as self-evidently true, and anyone who disagrees is all too often dismissed as stupid or perverse.

 

The humanist is just as prone to such condemnation as the Christian; perhaps more so, because, unlike the Christian, he is rarely aware that he has a faith at all, and he has no doctrines of the fall and of grace to temper his pride. Communists see themselves as “scientific”; liberals like Mr. Turner imagine themselves to be merely “rational.” But all human understanding is ultimately based on faith.

 

The other noteworthy point is that our whole concept of human rights arises from our long exploration of the Christian doctrine “that man is the image of God, the imago Dei.” Derived from the creation story in Genesis, and developed by early Christians like St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine, who lived among people much like Mr. Turner, it continues to this day with Pope John Paul’s insistence on the “transcendent dignity of man.”

 

Take away the acknowledgment of the God who has created man in his image and you remove the central agent guaranteeing human rights, the yeast that causes the bread to rise. The only way you can judge what is good to do is “quality of life”—your comfort, convenience, knowledge, long life, and friendship. Almost instantly, you start deciding whose “quality of life” is sufficient and whose isn’t. Instead of building more houses and plowing more land, you end up drowning babies in rice paddies.

 

Link Byfield has been editor and publisher of The Report Newsmagazine and its predecessor, Alberta Report, since 1985, and a columnist in it since 1989. The fortnightly publication brings a conservative perspective to Canadian news. Mr. Byfield is a Roman Catholic, married, and the father of four children.

 

 

Copyright © 2001 the Fellowship of St. James. All rights reserved.

Edited October 25, 2010 by JHP