How do agnostics live? (Introduction)

by Cary Cook , Monday, June 09, 2008, 03:53 (6010 days ago) @ dhw

Excellent point. If there is a personal Supreme Being, then the values of that being are not only an objective standard for ethics, but the only possible objective standard. If such a Being ever chose to communicate that standard to humans, what can we conclude, given the data we've seen? - If such data is in the Torah, then the standard is necessarily subject to upgrade. The law of blood vengeance was once endorsed by "God", then revised gradually in favor of state law. If it was revised once, we can't conclude that the most recent revision is final for all time. - If such data is not in the Torah, then the Christian update is irrelevant, and the Koran only raises the question of why it took "God" so long to speak up, and why He didn't annihilate the false and misleading religions that had claimed to represent Him. Though admittedly we have to give the Moslems credit for trying. - Back to the first possibility: It may be that "God" revealed stuff to the people to whom it was applicable, and continued to reveal updates. It may also be that "God" is sitting back with His objective ethics and allowing humans to guess at ethical approximations. Maybe He tinkers with history in favor of the ethical codes He likes, and maybe He just lets it evolve naturally. No way to know. - What we can know philosophically is that if there is an objective standard for ethics, the only people who can lay claim to it are those who assume that a personal Supreme Being exists. Such people can be confident of doing the best they can do if they at least try to obey Him. - Would a personal Supreme Being allow sincere people to think they are obeying Him, and be grossly wrong? If a personal Supreme Being exists, we are forced to either that conclusion, or to conclude that the Crusades, Inquisition, 9/11, etc. are somehow moral acts. - The final conclusion is that if we want objective ethics that make sense to us, then a just personal Supreme Being must exist, despite all the apparent evidence to the contrary.