Thought Experiment

[El Cid]

No, the law of causality is not that everyTHING has a cause, only every EFFECT has a cause. Something can logically be a cause and not be an effect. That is what God is.

Are you limiting nature to only that which we can retroactively measure back to some big bang event? Why? Couldn't that beginning merely be a an event caused by an unmeasurable, uncaused nature? A declaration of some uncaused willful entity being a necessary origin to this universe, which is an odd declaration on its face given that all willful entities we are aware of have causes, seems an ad-hoc assertion and unnecessary agent in this chain of events.

It is possible that the universe had a natural cause but unlikely given the characteristics of the universe. Such as it containing purposes, such as eyes for seeing and ears for hearing, we know that purposes are only created by persons. So the universe most likely had a personal cause.

 

[El Cid]

Look what happened when you trusted your spouse, hopefully a long and happy life together. Thats what taking a risk can get you. Of course, there is more evidence for God because there are millions that have had a relationship with Him and His truthfulness has been confirmed with all the millions.

You just confirmed Islam and Hindi too. Oh my! Now what?!

No, both gods of those religions can be demonstrated not to be the creator. And also there are serious moral issues for those religions that go against the moral conscience of most humans.

 

[El Cid]

If Occam's razor can be validly invoked here, then it is quite simple to demonstrate the reality of this world without having to assume that God exists, which is the claim you've been disputing all along here. Either there is a real world which we perceive and live in, or there is an illusory world which we perceive, and somebody or something which produces this illusion through unknown causes for unknown reasons; Occam's razor says the latter thesis introduces too many complexities, therefore we perceive and live in a real world.


But I was not suggesting "self-causation" as an alternative to your assumptions/deductions. I said that you could not assume that your existence was an effect, and so required a cause, rather than being something uncaused; and that you could not assume that there was some law of causality requiring that persons must be caused by other persons, and so your cause must be a person.


Invalid argument: you are assuming the existence of "human history," which is the thing you are attempting to prove. (And if you did want to go there, what has been empirically observed is that persons with physical bodies produced persons through physical actions, so if human history is our guide...)

You still have no reason to assume, as part of your deduction, that causes must share an essential nature with their effects


No, because if this world is my dream, it means that I dreamed up King Lear and Beethoven's 9th symphony and General Relativity, etc., etc., and this is entirely impossible.


If there are good reasons for thinking we live in an objective reality (see above), and no good reasons for doubting it, then "hope" doesn't enter into it.


This sounds as if you were saying that your act of deduction springs God from his imprisonment in conceptual space and causes him to pop into reality space ("brings Him into things that exist"), but obviously that can't be what you mean. I can't see what you do mean, however. That if you deduce that you were created by a person, it follows that this person also created everything you think of as real? No, it doesn't follow. It doesn't at all follow.

Let's try to keep it simple. Assume for the sake of argument that you've established "I was brought into existence by a person." What's the next step?

If I was brought into existence by a person, then B follows.
If B, then C follows.
If C, then the things we think of as real, are in fact real.


Again, "I see things; if my creator is a person, then he sees things" does not at all imply "he must be seeing the same things I am seeing, therefore the things I am seeing are real." Nowhere close.


As Occam's razor is generally summarized, it's "don't multiply entities without necessity." You don't know enough about the ultimate ontology of the universe to be able to say whether multiple creators are or are not necessary. Certainly at this stage of your deductions you haven't established anything which would let you say, one way or another.

Moreover, you aren't addressing the possibility that the person who created you is in fact the source of the illusions you are experiencing, including the illusion of an all-good YHVH who would never deceive you or permit you to be deceived.


Here are two answer to the question, "how do we know the world we seem to inhabit is real?"

Argument 1: I cannot recall events before a certain time; therefore I was created around that time; since I am a person, my creator must be a person; since people observe things, both my creator and myself observe things; I observe what seems to be a big world full of stars, people, etc., etc., so my creator also observes what seems to be a big world full of stars, people, etc., etc.; if the same thing is observed by two different people, it is likely real; therefore the world of stars and people is real.

Argument 2: If it seems to be a big, real world, likely it is a big, real world.

If our criteria is, "the simple answer is usually the right one," which is the better answer?


See above, to coin a phrase.


An omnipotent being can irresistibly implant the conviction that he is trustworthy, even if he is in fact a deceiver. Are you disputing this? If not, it makes no sense to say his trustworthiness is something which you can validly prove over time. All the "proofs" could be irresistibly implanted illusions.

This was all just a hypothetical line of reasoning for someone that was a solipsist and not really worth pursuing. It was an offshoot of my main more important point that only a theist has a rational basis for believing that there is a subject-object correlation and therefore, an objective reality. And the atheist has to make a huge leap of faith to believe in that correlation.

 

[Komodo]

This was all just a hypothetical line of reasoning for someone that was a solipsist and not really worth pursuing.

I think you might have refrained, then, from pursuing it for more than two months and many hundreds of words.

It was an offshoot of my main more important point that only a theist has a rational basis for believing that there is a subject-object correlation and therefore, an objective reality.

This exchange started on April 13 when I summarized your reasoning as,

If there is a personal creator, and the personal creator does not practice or permit deception on a grand scale, then we are not living in an illusory pseudo-reality, and so there is a subject-object correlation.

...and I asked why this was better than an atheist's,

If there is no such thing as an illusory pseudo-reality, then there is a subject-object correlation.

And every answer you gave to this question, for the last 2+ months, followed this "hypothetical line of reasoning" that you've just conceded was "not really worth pursuing."

So do you have any answer to my question which follows a different line of reasoning, one which is worth pursuing?

 

[El Cid]

No, it doesn't.
It means "based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic."

One can have empirical evidence of a thing that happened in the past.

Ok provide an event in the past that is verifiable by observation and experience in real time. Actually there is one event that can be empirically observed, ie the Big Bang, and certainly not macroevolution.

 

[El Cid]

So because enough people in Germany thought the same thing, then what Nazi Germany did was justified and moral according to your criteria.

NO.
I just said that justification is 100% a matter of opinion, didn't I?

I don't see how that is different from what I said. If justification is a matter of opinion and the overwhelming majority of the nation favored persecuting jews, then that means it is ok.

El Cid said:
And if you are referring to Western Europe, they still borrow from many of their founding Christian principles so that is why they still have some of the freedoms and justice even though they are mostly secular humanist.

Christianity borrowed those principles, not the other way around.
.

Where did Christianity borrow those principles from?

 

[El Cid]

According to Dawkins the goal is to pass on as many of your genes as possible. If one group of humans were not very good at that, wouldnt that be considered inferior?

The "selfish" gene whose "goal" is to pass on copies of itself is of course figurative speech, not meant to be taken literally. And even if it were taken literally, again, European Jews were not inferior at this specific “goal,” and the Nazis never said they were.

Actually it is not figurative. Dawkins believes that natural selection's primary selection is on the gene rather than morphology. I was not saying that the Nazis actually followed that criteria, that would be an anachronism. I am just saying that IF they did believe that they would probably be considered evolutionarily inferior using Dawkins criteria.

El Cid said:
Yes, but what if one group of humans decided they wanted to speed evolution up and go ahead and eliminate the competition?

A population with more Germans and fewer Jews is not a “more highly evolved“ state according to evolutionary biology, so killing Jews (or any other target group) does not “speed up evolution.” And even if it did, again, evolutionary biology does not include a commandment to sacrifice others to Evolua.

Yes and it does not include a commandment NOT to sacrifice others.

El Cid said:
You must consider sentient beings more valuable because you said it is wrong to kill them but ok to kill roaches. Are sentient beings higher in value than non-sentient beings?

I do consider sentient beings more valuable, but not because of anything I learned from evolutionary biology.

Evolution does not impute any objective value to sentient beings nor non-sentient beings. They are equal in nonvalue. So your valuing of sentient beings is just based on subjective feelings.

El Cid said:

Not a rationally objective one.

I don't think you've defined either "rational" or "objective" clearly enough to tell whether this is true, or -- if it is -- why we would need to have a "rationally objective" basis for saying collective punishment was wrong. If only indisputable proofs can be a rationally objective basis for some moral claim, then there is no such thing as a rationally objective basis for any moral claim, including yours, since your premises about God are obviously disputable.

Because if you dont have an objective basis for making a moral claim it is just your subjective opinion. There is pretty strong evidence that the Christian God exists as the objective Good.

El Cid said:
Collective punishment is sometimes necessary. Without it, we never would have defeated the Nazis.

The Allies did not exterminate the German population.

I didnt say they did, but they did kill many thousands of civilians. Though actually, as a nation founded on Christian principles we should have tried to avoid the killing the civilians if possible. Only in rare cases where the nation uses civilians as soldiers should such a thing be considered. Probably a better example would have been Imperial Japan where they did.

 

[Komodo]

Actually it is not figurative.

I meant that "selfish," as applied to genes, is obviously figurative. Dawkins certainly does not believe that genes literally want to reproduce themselves; he does not believe that genes literally "want" anything.

Dawkins believes that natural selection's primary selection is on the gene rather than morphology. I was not saying that the Nazis actually followed that criteria, that would be an anachronism. I am just saying that IF they did believe that they would probably be considered evolutionarily inferior using Dawkins criteria.

No they would not, and I pointed out why they would not: because even if "inferior" were defined as "less capable of passing on their genes," European Jews were not "inferior" in that regard, and Nazis never said they were. You ignored this point.

Yes and it does not include a commandment NOT to sacrifice others.

Now you're inventing self-evidently absurd standards for what makes a scientific theory pernicious: if it does not come with a commandment not to do harm to others, then it's a potential tool of genocide. OK, Universal Gravitation does not include a commandment not to throw people off buildings. Germ Theory does not include a commandment not to kill everybody with a contagious disease. Plate Tectonics does not include a commandment not to start earthquakes. Your "accusation" of evolution is exactly that ludicrous.

Evolution does not impute any objective value to sentient beings nor non-sentient beings.

And Germ Theory does not impute any objective value to sentient beings nor non-sentient beings either. There are no scientific theories which impute objective value in this way. So you could -- again -- accuse every scientific theory ever proposed of being a potential tool of genocide for exactly this reason, and the accusation would be equally valid: that it, it would be equally preposterous.

They are equal in nonvalue. So your valuing of sentient beings is just based on subjective feelings.

Whether my valuing of sentient beings comes from a subjective source, an objective source, a good source, a bad source, or no source at all has nothing whatsoever to do with your claim that the theory of evolution is potentially a tool of genocide. If you doubt me, try producing an argument starting "Komodo's valuing of sentient beings is just based on subjective feelings" and concluding "if the theory of evolution is true, Nazism makes sense," with at least halfway plausible premises between them. It can't be done.

Because if you dont have an objective basis for making a moral claim it is just your subjective opinion. There is pretty strong evidence that the Christian God exists as the objective Good.

I haven't seen anything that seemed to me to resemble "strong evidence" for that.

I didnt say they did, but they did kill many thousands of civilians. Though actually, as a nation founded on Christian principles we should have tried to avoid the killing the civilians if possible.

Are you then withdrawing the claim that "Without [collective punishment], we never would have defeated the Nazis"? If so, fine. If not, which Allied attacks on civilians are you talking about, which made it possible to win the war? (And if you're only speaking of actions which had the unintended effect of killing civilians, that's not an act of "collective punishment.")

Only in rare cases where the nation uses civilians as soldiers should such a thing be considered. Probably a better example would have been Imperial Japan where they did.

In what sense were the Japanese using civilians as soldiers, which wouldn't apply to Allied civilians as well?

In any case, we're straying far from the question of whether the Theory of Evolution can logically be used as support for Nazism, and (for the reasons I've offered above) I don't think you've made any case for that.

 

[El Cid]

Maybe worth emphasizing this point separately:

El Cid said:
There is such a thing as collective guilt and therefore collective punishment. But contrary to what that Christian said, the Canaanites were not destroyed to preserve our holy religion (God preserves His religion through persuasion not force). They were destroyed for both collective evil and individual evil. In addition, they would not leave the promised land, that God had promised the hebrews so they had to be driven off or wiped out.

You are lecturing atheists on how our ideas can supposedly be used in the service of genocide, and you seem oblivious to the irony, or black humor, of this.

No, genocide is the wiping out a group of people because of WHO they are. God utilizing the hebrews as His arm of judgement was meteing out capital punishment on the Canaanites because of what they had DONE. Anyone who is fairly biblically literate would know that only the old Hebrew theocracy had that responsibility, the NT church does not have that responsibility.

 

[Komodo]

No, genocide is the wiping out a group of people because of WHO they are. God utilizing the hebrews as His arm of judgement was meteing out capital punishment on the Canaanites because of what they had DONE.

It is monstrous to claim that a refusal to leave the place where one has lived for hundreds of years (in order to make way for the "rightful" owners "chosen by God") is a wicked deed which justifies killing an entire people. Mass murder is a horrible crime whether or not it meets your peculiar definition of "genocide."

You are also saying Stalin was not guilty of genocide against the Kulaks because he was meting out punishment on them because of what they had done (resisted his collectivization orders), not who they were. Any mass-murdering tyrant can find a similar excuse.

Anyone who is fairly biblically literate would know that only the old Hebrew theocracy had that responsibility, the NT church does not have that responsibility.

Among those "biblically illiterate" people were the Puritans who colonized the U.S. and claimed God's mandate to scourge the land that God had obviously set aside for them from any heathens who opposed them. There are millions of Christians today who still believe they have the responsibility to "wield the sword" in God's name. The idea that God's word shows the justice of wiping out a people for the crime of failing to leave their land is far, far more of an encouragement for genocide than the idea that life evolves through natural selection.

 

[5wize]

No, both gods of those religions can be demonstrated not to be the creator. And also there are serious moral issues for those religions that go against the moral conscience of most humans.

I doubt you could demonstrate anything negative about those religions that wouldn't indict Christianity as well. There are plenty of egregious acts of the Christian God that go against the moral conscience of most humans. I think you know how vulnerable you are there.

 

[5wize]

It is possible that the universe had a natural cause but unlikely given the characteristics of the universe. Such as it containing purposes, such as eyes for seeing and ears for hearing, we know that purposes are only created by persons. So the universe most likely had a personal cause.

But those purposes are meaningless to an eternal non-physical God as they are only useful to us, temporally. So it is trivial to reconcile that eyes and ears have purposes naturally formed to meet human challenges God cares little about.

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for. thee that one of thy members should perish, and. not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

This makes it far more likely that those purposes are natural and not of God, so the charge still stands that the beginning of our measurable universe simply had it's origins in a natural cause that is, as of now, just beyond measure. No personal will of a transcendent entity needed as of yet to explain it.

 

[El Cid]

Besides my own observations of animals

How long have you spent observing chimps, I wonder...

Not very long in person but I have read almost every article ever written by Jane Goodall about chimps and many documentaries about them over the years.

El Cid said:
Yes, it is ultimately. Natural selection is not random but it selects based on changes in the environment which ARE random.

A non-random process driven partly by random variables is still non-random.

No, if the foundation of something is random then ultimately it is random.

El Cid said:
The Christian God is against involuntary slavery. Read Exodus 21:16.

That condemns kidnapping, not the legal purchase of involuntary slaves.

See my posts to Whatsisface where I go into more detail about slavery under Mosaic law and how it was voluntary except for POWs and criminals.

 

[El Cid]

Yes but, we don't know if the big bang was the absolute beginning.

Nevertheless, the majority view among cosmologists, is that it is.

 

[Whatsisface]

Nevertheless, the majority view among cosmologists, is that it is.

Is it? I'd like to see some evidence of that.

 

[Whatsisface]

Nevertheless, the majority view among cosmologists, is that it is.

Also, the majority of cosmologists don't think God responsible.

 

[El Cid]

Besides my own observations of animals, no scientist I know of has ever claimed that chimps actually feel guilty about killing another chimp and no chimp has ever appeared to have a desire for justice.

Evidence?

You should watch this.

Nothing in that shows that chimps have a moral conscience and feel guilty about killing another chimp and no chimp is punished for killing another chimp IOW, no desire for justice.

El Cid said:
Yes, it is ultimately. Natural selection is not random but it selects based on changes in the environment which ARE random.

There we are, natural selection is not random, if it was, along with the environment being random, you'd have a point. But it isn't.

The environment is the foundation, if the foundation is random ultimately the process at its core is random.

El Cid said:
I certainly dont believe that rape is natural and normal. My point was how believing in evolution can lead to highly educated people to believe evil things sometimes.

People can sometimes rationalise anything if it's in their own self interest, like slave owners in the south justifying slavery from the bible.

True.

El Cid said:
Generally only atheists raised in nations founded on Christian principles, ie Western nations, they are influenced by the culture they are raised in. And also, even atheists are created in the image of the Christian God. But since they throw out God, the objective Good, their morality has a subjective foundation.

But they aren't Christian principles, they are principles adopted by Christians.

Where did they come from then?

El Cid said:
The Christian God is against involuntary slavery. Read Exodus 21:16.

Only for fellow Israelites.

Leviticus 25:44 “ ‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves". That's involuntary.

No, as I demonstrated in my other post. Strangers and foreigners were not allowed to be oppressed and had to be treated just like hebrews. Read Exodus 22:21-24 and Leviticus 19:33-34. So the foreigner could sell themselves into slavery just like the hebrew as seen in Leviticus 25:47. And they could not be enslaved involuntarily. Except if they are POWs.

 

[El Cid]

According to causality, the cause cannot be part of the effect, it must be "outside" or transcendent to the effect. So it is with the Christian God. He is not part of the physical universe.

But the Christian God is certainly not the only proposed cause which is not part of our physical universe, so that's not evidence that the Christian God is the creator.

It is one of the many characteristics of the Christian God, so it is evidence.

El Cid said:
Creations with beauty are artistic. The universe has beauty in it.

The Christian God is certainly not the only proposed cause which is said to have a love of beauty.

Yes, but it is one of the characteristics of the Christian God, so it is another piece of evidence.

El Cid said:
No, an artist usually puts something unique and deeper than something as superficial as how they live their lives into their creation in order to distinguish them from other possible artists or creators. Something that reflects the deeper characteristics of who they are or their nature.

Then you are not claiming "if the universe is X, the creator must also be X." Which means "the universe is diversity within unity" does not provide evidence that the creator of the universe is diversity within unity. Even assuming the cause of the universe is an intelligent being, there is no reason why a creator who is not three persons in one could not, nevertheless, have the "deep characteristic" of enjoying diversity.

Yes, that is possibility but the triune nature of the Christian God is so unique that it does point strongly to the Christian God. In fact, the Christian God is the only known god with that characteristic.

Moreover, are you saying that the diversity of the universe was put there deliberately "in order" for people to distinguish it from the work of other possible creators? That's a clue so faint that virtually nobody has picked up on it, including devout Christians.

No, not faint, deep. Unfortunately very few people including devout Christians contemplate the deep nature of the universe and notice the connection to Gods nature. But this knowledge it not unique to me, I know of several theologians that noticed it.

El Cid said:
We had never heard the first work by Chopin or ever seen the first Da Vinci or Van Gogh either, but the principle remains the same.

I don't see how this addresses my point. You are arguing that we can deduce the identity of the creator the same way we generally deduce the identity of an artist: by examining their creations. But the only way we deduce "this piece is by Chopin, not Liszt or Mendelssohn," if there's no external evidence about the composer, is by comparing that piece to others which we know to have been made by Chopin, and to pieces or passages we know to have been made by Liszt or Mendelssohn, and saying "this piece has many critical points of commonality with these other pieces which we know were made by Chopin, and many critical points of difference with those composed by Liszt and Mendelssohn." Obviously we can do nothing of the sort for universes; we don't have a bunch of universes known to have been made by YHVH and another bunch made by Vishnu from which we can deduce "ours is a YHVH-type universe, not a Vishnu-type universe." So the principles aren't at all similar.

Yes they are similar at the most fundamental level, they are both artistic creations.

To put it another way, if the only piece of music that existed was Chopin's Ballade #1 (without his name on it, obviously) we would not be able to saying anything about its composer other than "boy, this man/woman really could compose music!"

I think most music experts would strongly disagree with you. If the music is dark and moody, I think that they would say that reflects the personality of the composer. Or light and airy, the composer may be an optimist and etc.

El Cid said:
No, the universe could be a pure unity, ie just made of a single substance or it could be a pure diversity, ie where everything in the universe is different and made of a different substance.

OK.

Glad you agree.

El Cid said:
It is the main characteristic of its physical structure and everything in it's physical structure. If not for that characteristic being reflected in living things as well, Darwin would have never have come up with his theory. That doesnt necessarily mean his theory is correct however.

I'm not saying our universe does not contain both diversity and unity, I'm asking how you come to grant this first prize, so to speak, among the qualities the universe possesses. Darwin also would never have come up with his theory if the universe was made entirely of spirit; that fact doesn't prove that "materiality" is the key principle of our universe.

It is the most fundamental characteristic of the universe.

El Cid said:
Out of all the gods for which there was an actual religion created.

Q: What is the basis for saying the creator must be a god believed in by large numbers of people?
A: Because we can only consider gods for which there was an actual religion created.

You're just re-stating the point I was challenging, in slightly different words. Gods "for which there was an actual religion created" are "gods believed in by large numbers of people." That doesn't answer the question, why should we assume the creator must be a god of a religion believed in by large numbers?

Otherwise they are irrelevant. Generally a god that creates a universe would be relevant to His creation. If he isnt, then there is not much point in believing in him.

El Cid said:
No, the hebrew phrase "heavens and earth" means the physical universe, so the earth, sun, moon and stars were created in Genesis 1:1.

What makes you confident that's what it means?

The grammatico-historical context.

El Cid said:
I am not interpreting it freely, everything in my interpretation is based on the context and the hebrew. The words normally translated "Let there be lights" can also be literally translated, as Let the lights happen to appear" and that is what happened when the debris cleared allowing an observer on the earths surface to see them.

Are you saying that the list of what God made on which day is not actually what God made on those days/eras, but only a list of when these things would have become visible to a hypothetical observer?

No, that only applies to things seen in the sky which was covered by dust and debris.

And is that something you regard as obvious on a considered reading of Genesis?

No, it is not obvious but it becomes amazingly clear when taking into account the information provided by Gods other book, Nature.

 

[Komodo]

Komodo said:
You are arguing that we can deduce the identity of the creator the same way we generally deduce the identity of an artist: by examining their creations. But the only way we deduce "this piece is by Chopin, not Liszt or Mendelssohn," if there's no external evidence about the composer, is by comparing that piece to others which we know to have been made by Chopin, and to pieces or passages we know to have been made by Liszt or Mendelssohn, and saying "this piece has many critical points of commonality with these other pieces which we know were made by Chopin, and many critical points of difference with those composed by Liszt and Mendelssohn." Obviously we can do nothing of the sort for universes; we don't have a bunch of universes known to have been made by YHVH and another bunch made by Vishnu from which we can deduce "ours is a YHVH-type universe, not a Vishnu-type universe." So the principles aren't at all similar.

Yes they are similar at the most fundamental level, they are both artistic creations.

You aren't disputing a single thing I said about when it is possible to deduce who composed or created something, and when it is not possible, and why. If you just refuse to address responses to your claims, it becomes pointless to respond to your claims.

I think most music experts would strongly disagree with you. If the music is dark and moody, I think that they would say that reflects the personality of the composer. Or light and airy, the composer may be an optimist and etc.

I am quite confident that zero music experts would agree with what you just said, because it is demonstrably false. Chopin wrote music that was dark and moody, and music that was light and airy, sometimes within the same composition, and so did virtually every composer we know.

Otherwise they are irrelevant. Generally a god that creates a universe would be relevant to His creation. If he isnt, then there is not much point in believing in him.

Then you aren't deducing that the creator of the universe was the Christian god, you are deducing that the creator was either the Christian god or some other being who has not founded a religion, and you feel it would be safe to ignore such a being. And that's assuming that your deductive argument is a good one.

 

[El Cid]

It contains true things that no human knew at the time it was written. And were only discovered by scientists 3000 years later, that is strong evidence the source may be divine.

If your examples are similar to those I've seen (e.g., the Bible said the universe was expanding: "He stretches out the heavens like a tent") then they are are just very forced and unconvincing retroactive readings, and don't at all support the divine authorship of the books.

How are they forced? The hebrew word used for stretching the heavens means an ongoing stretching, just as the BB teaches. Also, it is the only religious book that teaches that the universe came from nothing detectable, just as the BB has found. And there are other examples.

El Cid said:
[. . .] I am not saying that believing in the infallibility of the Bible is an essential teaching to be a Christian. As long as you believe in the apostles creed and try to obey Gods moral laws in both the OT and NT.

This is in response to my statement, "Even if the Bible did, in some sense, represent God's communication with us, that does not imply that everything in the Bible (including the golden rule) is infallibly true in its literal sense." So let's say, for the sake of argument, that the book of Job does contain cosmological truths that no human knew at the time. It does not follow that everything in the book of Matthew, or any other book of the Bible, is divine truth. So you still aren't close to "the infallible source of all truth says 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'."

There is linguistic evidence that all 66 books are consistent with each other and therefore a unified whole. And that is how both the jews and Christians have always believed.

El Cid said:
I dont claim that a personal relationship can be confirmed objectively. Most things in a personal relationship cannot be objectively confirmed. You cannot objectively confirm your wife loves you. But it can be confirmed subjectively to your self thru your experience with the person. So it is with God.

Your argument is, basically, "We can know that God exists through logical deduction, and I know he is good through personal experience (as do other Christians)." But why should I accept what you supposedly know through personal experience? I haven't had any such experience. My experience is that God, if he exists, is entirely silent.

Well given your hatred of how you think He handles unbelievers in the afterlife, I would say you probably dont want a relationship with Him. So He has given you your wish.

So this isn't a valid argument, even if we granted the premise that we can know God exists through logical deduction. To take your comparison, it's as if I were saying "I can prove to you that my wife is a good and loving person. I can show you she exists, with photographs and documents, and I can confirm subjectively, to myself, that she is good and loving through my experience with her." Is that a proof?

A better analogy is that you believe the moon is not made of cheese, but the only way you know that is the experiences of the astronauts on the moon and they came back and said that it is made of rock and moon dust.

El Cid said:

Komodo said:
Even if that could be confirmed, "people feel that the being they are communicating with is good" is essentially the exact opposite of "objective" evidence. People can feel they are communicating with God, and that God is good, for psychological reasons which have little or nothing to do with objective reality.

True but the foundation, ie His existence, is objectively confirmed thru logical reasoning from the objective existence of the universe as I demonstrated earlier. But not with certainty, but thru abductive reasoning.

If you're conceding that what I just said is true, then you're conceding that you might only believe you are communicating with God, but you are not really doing so. But the claim that you did know that you were really communicating with God, and could really perceive his goodness, was an indispensable part of your argument that your morality had an objective basis. So if you're abandoning that claim, you're abandoning that argument. If your argument takes three premises to get to its conclusion, you just can't say "OK, premise two might be wrong, but premise one is still solid."

The foundational principle is objective and is like a chair you are getting ready to sit on, but you are not certain that it will hold you but it appears it will hold your weight, so you decide to have faith and sit on it and it does hold your weight. So your belief is objectively confirmed by the experience of the chair holding you. So it is with God your experience with Him confirms objectively your subjective experience.

El Cid said:
Yes, that is correct. But God is not a machine and does not need fuel. He values us because we are made in His image and loves us.

This was your response when I said that by your definition of objective value -- "Value whose source exists outside of the human mind." -- humans would have objective value to the machines using them to extract energy in the Matrix. My point was that if this is what having "objective value" means, then having objective value didn't seem to be worth very much, in a moral equation. In other words, why should we need to consider such a thing, and think we are bereft if we don't have it?

Because all humans want to live according to what they believe is real, ie reality. If morality and value is subjective then that means people will believe they are not real. This leads to the slippery slope of moral relativism and devaluing of human life which leads to moral anarchy, which then leads to government intervention and tyranny.

El Cid said:
If there is no God then human behavior just IS, there is no ought.

Non sequitur. I'm an atheist, and I believe there are such things as "oughts" (moral truths). You're giving me no reason to believe I'm being inconsistent, you're just saying "no you can't." This is not a logical demonstration.

Where do the oughts come from?

El Cid said:
No, see above about there being strong evidence that the Christian God (the Good) objectively exists. How does the realm of ideas transcend mere humanity? If humans didnt exist, then ideas would not exist.

First of all, I haven't seen any evidence which would at all compel me to reach that conclusion.

See my posts to Eightcrackers and Whatsisface about how the BB theory and the law of sufficient cause strongly point to Gods existence.

Secondly, the point above wasn't "does God exist" but "is God the only possible objective source of morality?" The Platonic "Ideas" -- my candidate for an alternative source -- are not like human thoughts, and they do transcend and pre-date humanity, in Plato's description of them. An alternate translation is "the Forms," i.e. pure forms, without material substance. So for example there is a Form, or Idea, of The Triangle, in Plato's thinking, which is the source for the triangles we see in this world. But all worldly triangles are only flawed copies of that Idea/Form.

Do you have any evidence that such ideas and forms exist?