one more thought... we should all find it highly self righteous to be judgemental toward others... I am certainly guilty of this and I ask God to forgive me for Jesus sake. it is one thing to explain God's moral laws and another to criticize, judge, and even sermonize others personally. why would I want to beat someone up with the moral law. doesn't God look at the heart? If God is the judge of all, then I think we should all give more grace, patience, love and compassion to each other. Speak the truth, point out moral sin, explain the commandments but why try to be judge and jury? I find certain things repulsively evil, and I despise that people make wicked choices, but as I look into my own heart I see the same pride, rebellion and selfishness lurking. I don't hate murderers, but I do hate murder and would try to stop anyone in the act. I believe in accurate justice. But I don't want to think more highly of myself than others or forget the grace extended to me, when seeing faults in others. We tend to judge others intentions quickly and at the same time expect everyone else to fully accept our own intentions as pure and right. God says we all need His grace. We should listen to one another and respect - this gives us a chance to learn and extend love to others. my opinion
That's a much better example. The only argument I had ever heard concerning if rape fits into moral relativism is the caveman example, which I thought was weak at best. I find it is pretty hard to find an argument for rape being moral in a soceity, but your example is a stronger one. However, your example does involve two people being married. I have yet have someone give an argument that rape between two strangers is in any way, given the circumstances, moral - and I doubt I'll find one any time soon because it would be quite a stretch to justify.
Just a couple of misconceptions. 1. Mormons believe in the bible, and Jesus. 2. Allah is the exact same God in the bible. It means God in Arabic. If Christians in the holy land read the bible in Arabic, then Jesus is the son of Allah. The French who read the bible read the word 'Dieu' or in Spanish 'Dios'. It is another language, but the exact same God.
1. Any search on Google with the words "mormon's views" and "Bible" or "Jesus" will tell you otherwise. Their belief is a twisted version of things. 2. You're right about the translation of Allah. I meant Allah as defined in the Qu'ran.
1. Well if you go talk with a Mormon or read the book of Mormons then I think you will get a better idea than the misinforation that is spread on the internet. I am not Mormon, and I don't agree with everything they agree with. But basically it is they believe the bible, and then some add on stuff that is written in the book of Mormons which they believed to also be a biblical testament. I am not saying that their version is the same as everyone elses. But they do believe in God and Christ. The Mormons that I know actually live some of the most exemplarary Christian lives that I have seen. 2. Again you can disagree with the Quran but Allah is still the same. I don't believe there are two seperate Allahs that both happened to have the same Moses, Noah, Abraham, Lot, etc. Like I say some people can believe that Prince Charles isn't Queen Elizabeth's son, but that doesn't mean they are talking about a different Queen Elizabeth.
I am not a theological scholar, so I'm not going to claim a detaile dknowledge of Mormons, I'll leave that to Max or maybe rhester. I do know that the Mormon's beleif in the Bible and Jesus is a much different view than mainstream Christianity. If you want to stick with the belief that Allah is Yahweh, go right ahead. Nothing I say will change your mind. I doubt you'll too many ministers or priests who concur with you. EDIT: There are many religions which borrow from Christianity, and then add their own twist to it. It does not mean that they are the same as Christianity.
Sorry if I am not clear. I didn't mean to say that Islam was the same as Christianity, just that they are about the same God/Yaweh/Allah. Almost every Bible Scholar will agree to that, and all of the Christian clergy that I know of(which is far from scientific of course). I didn't mean to say that Muslims and Christians worship the same, or have 100% identical beliefs about God. Just that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have the God of Abraham as the "father". They have different beliefs about a number of things with regards to that God, but it is of the same origin.
Some problems and questions I have for those who are advocating moral relativism in this thread. A) The confusion of free will with freedom. This is a big mix up that happens all the time. I think this really needs to be defined. Does "sexual freedom" actually make you free? Or are you just free to decide to have sex? Nobody is trying to assert that there is no free will (except maybe Tolstoy if he's in the room, or is that Hegel in the corner?). The real debate centers around if that makes you free. This of course leads to the question of what is freedom? Is it something that can be understood through a morally relativistic view point? I.e. for me I would say you are not experiencing freedom until you can bring your free will into line with truth. Which brings us to my next point. What is truth, which is really what relativism is about. B) Phenomenology vs. Relativism Phenomenology is the idea that there is absolute truth, but that that truth is simply filtered and experienced differently by different people. Simple example is two views of a sunset, same sun setting. Person A might be at a different angle from person B and thus the sun setting would look different, yet the fact remains that the sun is the same. To me, moral relativism tries to state that the suns are different. If we are not living with a view towards truth then we are not free. People keep wanting to say well society says this is moral and society says that is moral. This is good and that is bad. I think the question would be better framed in terms of does this lead you to or away from freedom and truth. I think once we can agree that we are looking at the same sun, we will start to realize what morality is and hwo we should treat each other. So in summation, I disagree with moral relativism, I think it is the subplanting of your own personal truth for absolute truth. I believe this leads to slavery of the will. I do, however, think phenomenology offers a better understanding of how we can bicker so much and have different viewpoints on a subject. I think once we start viewing things in terms of free will vs. freedom we can start to treat each other better as humans...
hmm so in essence your point is that Islam is to Christianity as Christianity is to Judaism? I think I can agree with that. Well except for the part where Jews consdier Christians heretics and Muslims consider us infidels =P.
Yes kind of similar to that. Here is a link to something I read awhile back. It makes a similar statement to what you just said. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/mideast/themes/religion/index.html
I think my position on this is slightly different than any I’ve read so far, (which would be up to about page 3 1/2). I think there may well be absolute laws and universal morals, and my personal belief is that there are, but: 1) No human knows exactly and without error what they are. (There are lots of Biblical verses to support this too, btw). 2) No human can keep to these universal laws without fail. (There are also Biblical verses to support this). So I believe that it is within this context that we have to structure our laws and society. We can’t expect anyone to be perfect, because we ourselves aren’t perfect, and we can’t judge anyone, because we can’t be sure we’ve got the facts right or that we understand the moral principles fully. We do need to maintain order and security in society but we can only come to an agreement on laws, and enforce them, as best we can while knowing that we will be imperfect in our attempts to do so. Different societies in different situations come to different agreements about laws and morals and they change over time (see slavery in the US). Also, from a developmental psychology standpoint, people grow through different stages of morality in their lives. (See Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development). So in principle this rules out any kind of practical moral absolutes. We can and should decide what we believe, individually and as a society, while knowing full well that we will be wrong in some areas, individually and as a society, and we should make personal choices and laws for our comminutes based on those decisions. But since we know that they are not absolutes but merely our best discernment of what the absolutes are, and as a society our best agreements and compromises which were made come up with the best laws possible, we should be constantly striving to make them better and to change them when we discover areas where we are wrong. Is this moral relativism? Well, it’s not that either because it doesn’t just take a hands off approach to other cultures and sub-cultures that may be doing things that, to the best of our ability to discern, are very bad. It does mean that we have to check ourselves and reevaluate our beliefs, and learn as much as we can about the other culture or sub-culture and try to see the world through their eyes, but at the end of that process we may well decide that, for example, we feel we should not allow a subculture in our country to force a 14 year old girl to marry a 40 year old man, and we may decide to intervene to stop that from happening, if we have the power to do so. And there are probably other considerations too, like considering whether a given action will cause some greater harm to the people involved.
good stuff you can't plant a apple seed, grow the apple tree and pick pecans off of it truth is what it is
Good post. I find the bolded line to be particularly challenging. Maybe what's being said there relates to the way in which we try to talk to someone about such issues, i.e. doing it non-judgmentally?
*you have implied an absolute here no absolutes= no truths I am viewing your point as absolutes (as truths) are not defined by man, so man's attempt both to define them, observe them and believe them are limited to just that- attempts When men observe truth, and agree to live in harmony with truth there must be a divine basis for the truth. If it is man's consensus then it is a mutually held opinion more than a truth (ie- the world is flat) No point in saying murder is absolutely wrong if it is voted upon or a summation of mankind's popular opinions. We can be absolutely certain that men's votes and opinions change- truths (as absolutes) do not change. I think God defines truth in His word- absolutes- we need revelation from God to have a clue... Sorry if I misunderstood your post.
Yes it is definitely a difficult thing to live day to day. When I hear certain dogmatic approaches, and (borrowing from Velvet Elvis since I know you've read it) Brick house vs. Trampoline approaches, it is very hard for me not to lash out, and try to throw stumbling blocks in my brother's way. I try very hard to respect differences, and not try and "prove" their ideas wrong to them. It is silly of me to think that I am at a place or have sufficient knowledge to do that in the first place. But I do find it difficult when I hear some folks speak on their particular beliefs of the bible, and announce that their way is the one correct way.
Two points: 1) The laws were written by men, NOT god. They were imposing their belief structure on society, through "god". That is practical moral relativism. 2) If you say point 1 is false, than you need to adhere to all those laws still today - get ready for a lot of stonings.
