Lots of bashing for the belief of God....

[vlad321]

GameOver22 said:

vlad321 said:

No, the whatever was meant specifically for that single point, I thought you'd catch on.

So... you basically admit to using circular logic to justify whatever you believe in. Good to know. Just as you say "I found all morals given by God are perfectly correct," I can say "I found all morals given by XXXXXXXXX are perfectly correct" where XXXXX is literally anything, again even fairy tales hold as much logical backing as any belief system out there. In fact using circular logic like you do, I can make ust about anything sound true.

I'm not seeing the circularity. He said he follows Christ's teachings because he agrees with the moral values they instill. That is not circular, and all ethical systems ultimately come back to this point. In essence, the question is, "what is good behavior?" Different ethical systems answer this question differently, and this gives rise to different types of behavior being justified. Most ethical criticism derives from the fact that the behavior justified by an ethical system might not be consonant with a person's feelings. If people raise these points, there is an impasse that prevents further discussion becuase there is an inherent difficulty in arguing over whose feelings are better.

For example, take utilitarianism. I don't feel that the sacrifice of innocents can be justified. Given that utilitarianism allows for the sacrifice of innocents, I reject utilitarian ethics. A utilitarian can come along and say that innocents can be sacrificed as long as the world benefits from the action. The problem is that I have already rejected that proposition because it gives rise to behavior I find to be unethical.

The main point I am making is that all ethical systems eventually come back to foundational beliefs, and if someone rejects these beliefs, there is no further reason for argumentation because they will be talking in circles. Asking someone to prove why someone should treat others as they would like to be treated also falls into the same category. The best someone could do is give examples of how this principle results in good behavior. If someone then denies this is good behavior (or asks why this behavior is good, like you are doing), there is no good objective answer because the truth of the statement is taken as foundational. This is a problem that confronts all ethical systems (not just the teachings of Christ), so you could play the questioning game with any system of ethical belief and eventually force the follower of that belief into a corner.

And if I ask of him why he agrees with those morals, he will say because it is what Christ taught, and you get the circle.

You have hit my point on the head. I can force any follower of any belief into a corner. That is true, and that is exactly why all beliefs are equally wrong, even those of atheists as I have already pointed out (however statistically, atheists are less wrong than followers of a given religion solely because a given religion is a lot less broad than "there is no god"). My sole belief that I know is correct is that all beliefs about existance, how we came to be, etc. that have been outlined by humankind are wrong given the amount of information we have, which is 0. Unless we find more information about what happened before, any belief about our existance is most probably wrong.

As for my ethical standpoint I am an extreme utilitarian. Except that I look at reducing the greatest amount of misery from the greatest number of people. Where a dead person is infinite misery, and if everyone is equal I consider everyone to be miserable not happy. Those two stipulatoins actually make the logic/math/whatever behind utilitarianism more or less flawless.