How do agnostics live? (Introduction)

by Mark , Saturday, June 14, 2008, 16:20 (6004 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Leaving aside the possibility of other life forms, if God is the ultimate good, in what context could wrong exist without humans?

I'm not sure we're really disagreeing here. Clearly, if nothing other than God existed then there would be only good. There would be no wrong acts. I think the only point I wanted to make is that I believe that good exists whether or not humans do. - You say that in theist mode you "must acknowledge that God is the ultimate arbiter, the all-powerful judge, the creator of right and wrong". In response, anticipating the Euthyphro dilemma which you may put my way, I would say that God's goodness and his being come together. "God is love" is not merely an emphatic way of saying that God chooses to love. It is to say that love is of his essence. Love is what he is, not just what he does. So you should not think that a theist must regard God as someone who can arbitrarily, from moment to moment, on a whim, decide what is good or bad. Nor is the moral law something outside God to which he is subordinate. - On the torture, let me first give a couple of quotations, not because I think you'll feel obliged to defer to the sources, but to demonstrate that my thinking is not eccentric amongst Christians: - C S Lewis: "We must resolutely train ourselves to feel that the survival of Man on this Earth, much more of our own nation or culture or class, is not worth having unless it can be had by honourable and merciful means" - Archbishop Rowan Williams: "If the power of argument proves not to be universal after all, sooner or later we are back with coercion; and when that happens it becomes harder and harder to hold firm to the classical liberal principles that are at the heart of the Enlightenment vision, harder and harder ... for example ... to maintain that torture or the deliberate killing of the innocent in order to protect the values of society can never in any circumstances be right. It is one of the great moral conundrums posed by the experience of recent years: what if the preserving of civil liberties and the preserving of the security of a liberal society turn out not always to be compatible?" - The scenario I presented is shocking, and either option has the capacity to shock. Clearly the 6 billion weigh heavier with you. So let me remove a few noughts. - A deadly virus evolves to which children are particularly susceptible. Tens of millions of children are dying around the world. The scientists say that the only way to find a cure is to allow experimentation on healthy children. A group of 100 must be taken to a laboratory. Many will undergo extreme suffering and many will die. However, they are sure that it will yield the answer. Would you approve? - Removing all the noughts ... you are on a bridge overlooking railway tracks and have spotted a runaway trolley bearing down on six workers. The only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you push the man off the bridge? - dhw: "Don't tell me they're all atheists, so they don't count."
No, of course I am not saying that, and I am sorry you felt you had to check. - dhw: "God's approval... God's favour... God's favour... God will approve"
What you suggest about my motive is a complete misrepresentation of Christian belief. Christians do not do good in order to win God's favour. It is fundamental to the Christian faith that God's love precedes any good on our part and is unconditional. "God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). The motive to do good is not to achieve some personal gain in this life or the next. The Christian ideal is that we love as God loves. To achieve this is the ultimate goal of humanity, made possible by God's gift of himself offered to each one of us. - dhw: "God, who according to Christianity was willing to sacrifice his own son in order to save the world?"
It is interesting that you raise this as an argument in favour of your decision. I am more used to this being used against Christianity, arguing that it makes God out to be cruel. Either way the perspective is wrong, for in the sacrifice of Christ, God is both the giver and the gift. Unlike the child, who is used as an instrument, in the cross God is the judge and the judged.