Not the typical thread to discuss the existence of God. I just want to know your opinion in this context:


For a minute imagine how many people are suffering right now because of others and that a significant percentage of them will go unpunished of acts of extreme cruelty and violence, among them pedophiles, murderers, sadists, etc.. Right at this moment are destroying a large number of lives and many of them of children.


Now, just imagine for a moment that there will not be divine justice and that these people will not be punished in another life and another time. Think that the worldly injustices will not be penalized in a extraphysical future. The grief of the families will not be compensated and they will never have close them family members in a spiritual afterlife. And that is only confusion in this fictional reality with no comfort to those affected. Questions:

1. A reality without divine justice will be different from ours?
   
2. Will intensify your desire of justice in this context? Or it will be the same?

This is not possible for a believer to conceive, therefore, it is impossible for them to answer your questions.

Trust me, I just asked Mrs. RoundGuy.

IDK, I'm curious about what would say guys like LEMONZEST, Akileos, Duffee, RLK

Dude, these guys can't hold a candle to Mrs. RoundGuy. Just sayin'.

LOL

A reality without divine justice will be different from ours?

I understand your question to be asking how a world without divine justice would differ from our world (which we assume does have divine justice).

I think people have a hardwired desire for justice. Why is that?
I would argue this hardwired desire for justice is part of God's character built into us.

I think life could be much simpler if morality wasn't so important. The fact that morality is so important and such a central theme of humanity indicates (to me at least) that there is something more than the mere here and now. There is a transcendent eternal moral judge.

In a world without divine justice I would expect humans to be more or less selfish and not really care about morality. The only thing that would matter would be survival.

Will intensify your desire of justice in this context? Or it will be the same?

In a world without divine justice I would have less desire for justice. There is no purpose to want to see justice occur. The important thing would be my survival and comfort. Also as I mentioned above I think in this version of the world I would just care less about morality/justice.

1) I don't know
2) at least for me, no it wouldn't.

I would like a definition of justice.

Seems to me, christian ( and everyone elses, I guess) definition is "he did x to me, so I want at least the equivalent of x done to him, if not more than x , to make up for the pain and trauma I suffered"


Where does this concept of retribution come from? ( I know theres the "eye for an eye" speech in the bible, but anywhere else?)


Seems like a concept of scales, or balance. That everyone has a balance sheet, and that we are all owed, that we demand and expect, even, that all acts balance up at the end of our life.

As usual, LEMON said nothing of value to answer your questions. Trust Mrs. RoundGuy.

Well, i don't get it. I asked this question to a catholic priest, he said that it will intensify his desire because irrelevant of a future compensation he will do anything for help the human justice. I was impressed, it was pretty clear to me that he was pretty much opting for that career for his intention of helping people much more than for indoctrination.

I meant modern human justice, not the talion or arabic modern law. Modern reasonably intelligent laws systems

justice (ˈdʒʌstɪs)
— n
1. the quality or fact of being just
2.ethics
a.the principle of fairness that like cases should be treated alike
b.a particular distribution of benefits and burdens fairly in accordance with a particular conception of what are to count as like cases
c.the principle that punishment should be proportionate to the offence


Hope that helps.

1. No
2. No

1. The "reality" ( if you call it that! ) will be different in that it will be nonexistent.

2. Unanswerable and moot since such a "reality" is not possible.

Whether or not a theist/atheist can conceive such a "reality" is moot since the exercise is similar to conceiving a "world" for which some tautological statements are false.

hypotheticals are always sticky. Just tossing out my best ideas on it.
As far as helping others v. indoctrination I think helping others is the clear winner.

The question arises though:
Without God is there still good reason to help others? (in other words does anything have meaning?)
If God doesn't exist will we still have a built in desire to carry out justice?

Of course. Perhaps you've heard of it, it's called Humanism. It's why people risk their own lives to save others, regardless of a belief in God.

1. most likely there are many different realities

2. also many forms of justice, context, believers...etc

just testing my account anyway

We covered this in the morality thread. If there is a god there is still no reason to help others that isn't simply an unjustified axiom (e.g. "I desire to avoid hell" => "WHY do you wish to avoid hell"; "I want to be like god" => "WHY do you want to be like god"). This is particularly a problem for you, as you have been unable to justify why god commands us to help others.

Pragmatically, there are many good reasons to help others. Altruism can be shown to be advantageous in both evolutionary and game theory terms.

Yes, the desire for justice and the dislike of unfairness has been demonstrated in dogs and monkeys for example.

Still put there by God though pontentially. The fact that the desire for justice exists in animals doesn't negate that it was created and imparted by God.

My default position sans God is always Nihlism.

http://www.helium.com/items/2193446-...and-dostoevsky

The above link kind of outlines my view from both sides (God existing and God not existing).

"If there is no God, everything is permitted." This is the statement attributed to Dostoevsky.

You've ignored the rest of my post. There is no question about the facts of the matter: humans and (some) animals have an innate sense of fairness. This is explained naturalistically via the evolutionary benefits and by game theory. It's also explained if God injected it into us. Though how this ad hoc explanation fits in with the equally ad hoc hypothesis that god requires us to have free will seems mysterious to me. Apparently you think God both wants us to be perfectly free to choose good or evil and also simultaneously injects us with a desire to be fair/just/kind etc. As per previous discussions, your view seems incoherent in a way that some other Christian theologies are not.

And it's a nonsensical quote. On nihilism, nothing is either permitted or forbidden. As Alex Rosenberg puts it:

"Nihilism rejects the distinction between acts that are morally permitted, morally forbidden, and morally required. Nihilism tells us not that we can’t know which moral judgments are right, but that they are all wrong. More exactly, it claims, they are all based on false, groundless presuppositions. Nihilism says that the whole idea of “morally permissible” is untenable nonsense. As such, it can hardly be accused of holding that “everything is morally permissible.” That, too, is untenable nonsense."

p.s. nihilism is still stupid
p.p.s Merry Christmas to you and your wife

We covered this in the morality thread. If there is a god there is still no reason to help others that isn't simply an unjustified axiom (e.g. "I desire to avoid hell" => "WHY do you wish to avoid hell"; "I want to be like god" => "WHY do you want to be like god"). This is particularly a problem for you, as you have been unable to justify why god commands us to help others.

I have been unable to justify why God commands us to help others? I didn't respond to this part because I didn't really follow the train of thought here. I think we discuss Christian thinking/theology a lot in other threads. Not sure what you are looking for here.

You've ignored the rest of my post. There is no question about the facts of the matter: humans and (some) animals have an innate sense of fairness. This is explained naturalistically via the evolutionary benefits and by game theory. It's also explained if God injected it into us. Though how this ad hoc explanation fits in with the equally ad hoc hypothesis that god requires us to have free will seems mysterious to me. Apparently you think God both wants us to be perfectly free to choose good or evil and also simultaneously injects us with a desire to be fair/just/kind etc. As per previous discussions, your view seems incoherent in a way that some other Christian theologies are not.

I plan to start a thread about Free Will and God's sovereignty. Then we can discuss and I will show you all the ways you are wrong (humor). But starting the thread was serious.

p.s. nihilism is still stupid

I disagree and we can discuss more. I don't think this will get far though since its based on axioms IMO.

p.p.s Merry Christmas to you and your wife

Merry Christmas to you and yours! All the best. Always good argueing with you !

As stated this is clearly incorrect. If God gave us free will then we are seemingly permitted to make any choice we want so that even if there is a God everything is permitted.

I assume instead that it suggests there would be nothing that categorically separated any action from another, that they would all have the same moral value.

Let me ask this though, do you feel that moral distinctions are the only ones which wouldn't exist if there was no God? For example, would you think that we wouldn't make distinctions between left and right, big and small, hot and cold? I imagine that you wouldn't support such a contention, and, at least on the surface, it seems quite bizarre to hold such a view.

Then what is the difference between moral distinctions and any other distinction that we make?

On a fundamental level isn't "cold" simply a symbol denoting a certain category? And doesn't a "thing" logically fit into that category if it has the attributes our senses associate with "coldness"? Aren't things that don't have the attributes of "coldness" sorted into a different category based on the special attributes of that "thing"? It seems obvious to me that "right" and "wrong" are categories which describe "things" with specific attributes too. It also isn't unusual that to our senses things like stealing, killing, and raping, are different "things" than selfless, altruistic, helpful "things", so, like everything else, we sort them into different categories. And much like we react differently to hotness or coldness, we react differently to wrongness and rightness.

I just see no reason why we should accept that morality is the special case where we couldn't make distinctions without God's help.

Ace,

I am not sure if you followed the "atheists have a depressive life" thread. In that thread we covered a lot of similar ground re why life is meaningless without a Creator. If the universe exists soley because time and chance aligned then we have no purpose/meaning here. We are merely the product of random/arbitrary cosmic events. As such our life has no temporal or transcendent meaning/purpose. We may attempt to assign meaning to our lives. However, any meaning we attempt to assign is undermined by the fact that we exist soley becuase of time and chance.

I wish I was more articulate but you get my drift here.

Therefore in a universe without God hot/cold and morality both exist. However, they would only exist in our minds and have no significance.

I mean that when you ask "Without God is there still good reason to help others?" you are presupposing that WITH god there is good reason to help others. It's a loaded question.

Sounds like a good thread idea. Do it!

Sure, happy to take it up with you, but as per previous threads, I have never seen any good justification for extrapolating from "there is no good/evil at the level of fermions and bosons" to "there is no good/evil in human-scale interactions". In the same way, fermions and bosons are colourless, but that doesn't mean that the correspondance of wavelengths between 450-495 nanometres and the sensation of 'blue' is imaginary, or a matter of opinion.

can you believe my boss has us working a 1/2 day on Christmas eve... so lame.

anyway can't watch that vid cause I am at work.

you are presupposing that WITH god there is good reason to help others. It's a loaded question.

I just think the answer is simple and not very interesting (and you already know the answer)

P1. God created the universe
P2. God is omnipotent & omniscient
P3. God sends Jesus to earth and instructs mankind to love others and forgive

Conclusion: Humans should love others and forgive.