The Atheism Thread

[Jacob]

Nephi and Laban?

Dan said "In Mormonism whatever God commands is right. His morals and ethics are situational.".

Most Mormons believe that God's laws are eternal, including his ethics. Of course an ethical or moral judgment is based on the facts and circumstances, but I don't think that is what Dan is getting at. In man-made law, ethics are clearly based on the facts and circumstances, ie killing a human being is not always murder (justifiable homicide, for example). But that has little to do with moral relativism. It cannot be said that our laws are relative. They are supposed to be consistently applied to all.

So with God's laws, except his ethics and morals are more perfect. Thus the killing of Laban by Nephi is a justifiable killing, as are many other killings in war, for crimes committed, etc. Mormonism does not hold what Dan asserts. His ethics are not merely based upon what God feels at the moment, which is what is implied by (if not explicitly stated) in Dan's comment.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Jacob, I will admit that I am a novice at moral relativism. Perhaps you could explain to me how wiping out the Canaanites (men, women, and children) in the OT is not some type of shifting morals. TIA.

[LA Ute]

Can you please speak for yourself?

Please assume that I am doing so whenever I express an opinion here. Don't we give everyone here that same leeway? Come on, play basketball!

Moral is just a term that Cicero coined to translate the Greek word for ethics into Latin. Principles, just means 'first' and 'moral' just means how you're supposed to behave in polite society. You can talk about 'principles' being the origin of truth, but you're ascribing a modern meaning to the word that it did not have when 'moral' and 'ethics' were on the lips of Paul.

So, morals, ethics, and principles, are really two sides of the same coin, with Janus being morals-ethics on the 'heads' side.

In a Kantian sense, principles are worthless if they are not universally morally applicable. Killing Laban is immoral and unethical specifically because it's trying to do the greatest good for everyone but Laban. God's imperative to spare Lehi's descendants from ignorance is subjective (especially when the designs of deity cannot be frustrated) because you shouldn't treat killing Laban as a means to an end, because Laban is also an end. When God allows someone to break a moral in the name of what you call a principle, he is viewing Laban purely as a means, and we side with God because of our moral intuition instead of our rational powers.

Without researching the matter beyond what Prof. Faulconer taught me in Philosophy 101, it seems to me that in modern usage there's a difference between the two words. "Ethical" seems to refer to rules of behavior in a just or civil society. "Moral" seems to include an externally imposed element. So although most people would agree that adultery is unethical, relatively few would agree that premarital sex is unethical. Lawyers have to conduct themselves according to what are called ethical rules. It would seem strange to call those moral rules.

As far as killing Laban is concerned, for me, ultimately, I am uncomfortable judging God. A simple response that I don't think is simplistic. I know it's a complex issue, but that's where I end up. I also remind myself that I don't know the whole story, just as I don't know what was going on when Elisha cursed the “youths” for making fun of his baldness and they supposedly ended up getting torn apart by lions. As I told my Seminary kids, I don't think we have the whole story about that one.

Anyway, that's how I see it.

[UtahDan]

Hmmm. I disagree. First, it seems like an odd fit to judge the God of Mormonism against his "morals and ethics." Morals are "of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character." Ethics are "the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation."

Do you think that definition intends to set up a separate category for religious claims? In other words, if I preface my comments with "God said," do you agree that whatever follows that should be subject to a different set of criteria for determining if it is moral/ethical?

I'd say that instead God governs and lives by principles, or "a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning." Morals and ethics are subordinate to, and based on, principles.

Wuap, that's how we get to "It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief." That's an application of (divine) principle to a set of facts. UD, my brother at the bar, you of all people should understand this.

I'm not sure that principals/ethics/morals are really discreet categories. I don't think the analysis can be sidestepped in this way. At the end of the day, we still have to ask "what are the principles here and do they make sense?" Right?

[Jacob]

Jacob, I will admit that I am a novice at moral relativism. Perhaps you could explain to me how wiping out the Canaanites (men, women, and children) in the OT is not some type of shifting morals. TIA.

I don't consider myself an expert either. If you don't understand what moral relativism means, then I suggest you go read up on it from a better source than me. But moral relativism does not mean "shifting morals", at least I don't think it does.

I think that wiping out the Canaanites is immoral. It would have been wrong in their time, it would be wrong in our time. I'm more of a moral absolutist. But Dallin Oaks seems to be referring to moral relativism at a single point in time, not across generations. So, I'm not sure how he would answer the question about the Canaanites. But he would say that genocide is wrong in Darfor just as it is wrong in American today. Homosexual acts are wrong for everybody, not just some people. Fornication is immoral regardless of a person's background or wither they are "harming anybody." Stealing is wrong for everybody Killing is morally wrong, though homicide is sometimes justified.. Etc. That is the moral relativism he is talking about.

[UtahDan]

Dan said "In Mormonism whatever God commands is right. His morals and ethics are situational.".

Most Mormons believe that God's laws are eternal, including his ethics. Of course an ethical or moral judgment is based on the facts and circumstances, but I don't think that is what Dan is getting at. In man-made law, ethics are clearly based on the facts and circumstances, ie killing a human being is not always murder (justifiable homicide, for example). But that has little to do with moral relativism. It cannot be said that our laws are relative. They are supposed to be consistently applied to all.

So with God's laws, except his ethics and morals are more perfect. Thus the killing of Laban by Nephi is a justifiable killing, as are many other killings in war, for crimes committed, etc. Mormonism does not hold what Dan asserts. His ethics are not merely based upon what God feels at the moment, which is what is implied by (if not explicitly stated) in Dan's comment.

The problem is that no one can tell you what His decisions are based on. No one can really tell you why sometimes murder, slavery, rape are okay, or why polygamy is okay one day but not the next or why institutional racism is okay one day but not the next, lying is sometimes okay but not other times. The best explanation seems to be that God is operating within a set of rules that we are not privy to. Given this ignorance, the God of Mormonism is morally inscrutable. He can literally command almost anything and it is right. There is no methodology by which we can analyse what he is saying. Of course, He is not actually saying anything, rather, a human being is telling me what he thinks God said.

The problem here is that if I said that I am operating by a set of rules that I'm not going to tell you about, but that are better than yours, and which justify all sorts of things that by most definitions are immoral you would rightly not accept that. You would insist that if we are going to analyse these things that we do so by the same set of rule or criteria and that I cannot exempt myself by saying "I'm not telling you how I make my judgments." This is what Mormonism asks people to do. And if I tell you that I after much deep thought and meditation on countless occasions that both my mind and my emotions have confirmed to me that my judgments are right, will this be convincing evidence to you?

So given the lack of any explanation of the rules being played by, it simply appears that the Mormon God's ethics are ever shifting in a fashion that it is just a coincidence, we are urged to believe, seems to mirror the social evolution of the societies the people claiming to speak for him live in.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I don't consider myself an expert either. If you don't understand what moral relativism means, then I suggest you go read up on it from a better source than me. But moral relativism does not mean "shifting morals", at least I don't think it does.

I think that wiping out the Canaanites is immoral. It would have been wrong in their time, it would be wrong in our time. I'm more of a moral absolutist. But Dallin Oaks seems to be referring to moral relativism at a single point in time, not across generations. So, I'm not sure how he would answer the question about the Canaanites. But he would say that genocide is wrong in Darfor just as it is wrong in American today. Homosexual acts are wrong for everybody, not just some people. Fornication is immoral regardless of a person's background or wither they are "harming anybody." Stealing is wrong for everybody Killing is morally wrong, though homicide is sometimes justified.. Etc. That is the moral relativism he is talking about.

Thanks, but I guess I am trying to figure out why you object to UD's assertion. Whenever I have seen the Canaanite genocide come up in a church setting, the explanation always seems to be "If God commands it, it is righteous." Ditto for polygamy, polyandry, priesthood ban, etc.

[pellegrino]

Thanks, but I guess I am trying to figure out why you object to UD's assertion. Whenever I have seen the Canaanite genocide come up in a church setting, the explanation always seems to be "If God commands it, it is righteous." Ditto for polygamy, polyandry, priesthood ban, etc.

there's a better quote than this one out there but this offers the gist of it.

"Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof until long after the events transpire."
Joseph Smith (Scrapbook of Mormon Literature, vol. 2, p. 173.)

[UtahDan]

Thanks, but I guess I am trying to figure out why you object to UD's assertion. Whenever I have seen the Canaanite genocide come up in a church setting, the explanation always seems to be "If God commands it, it is righteous." Ditto for polygamy, polyandry, priesthood ban, etc.

Right. My larger point, in response to DHO, is that these religious ethics can't really be defended in an objective fashion except through speculation, and as you point out you run up against difficulty in speculating about some things very quickly. I don't begrudge someone the right to decide for subjective reasons to accept them, but I don't think DHO's idea that Mormon morals and ethics are better than secular ones because they are unchanging really withstands scrutiny. There may be other good reasons, but that seem to not be one that is defensible.

[Jacob]

Thanks, but I guess I am trying to figure out why you object to UD's assertion. Whenever I have seen the Canaanite genocide come up in a church setting, the explanation always seems to be "If God commands it, it is righteous." Ditto for polygamy, polyandry, priesthood ban, etc.

I thought I just explained that. Sorry it was unsatisfactory.

[LA Ute]

Do you think that definition intends to set up a separate category for religious claims? In other words, if I preface my comments with "God said," do you agree that whatever follows that should be subject to a different set of criteria for determining if it is moral/ethical?

No, I'm just saying I believe in an omniscient God. I'd have to agree with you that God actually said what follows "God said" in your hypothetical sentence before I got to the question of how to analyze it morally/ethically. And that's not always an easy analysis, as I think most here would agree.

I'm not sure that principals/ethics/morals are really discrete categories. I don't think the analysis can be sidestepped in this way. At the end of the day, we still have to ask "what are the principles here and do they make sense?" Right?

Right.

[woot]

One of the points that Pinker makes toward the end of Better Angels is that most moral stances that people take are not actually "moral". The moral instinct in us most often causes feelings of righteous indignation, tendencies toward revenge, and stubborn clinging to old beliefs in the face of evidence, rather than for compassion or the seeking to better the lives of others.

He expresses a few similar points here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/ma...anted=all&_r=0

[wuapinmon]

Thanks, but I guess I am trying to figure out why you object to UD's assertion. Whenever I have seen the Canaanite genocide come up in a church setting, the explanation always seems to be "If God commands it, it is righteous." Ditto for polygamy, polyandry, priesthood ban, etc.

My first taste of wondering about this kind of thing came in seminary class. Why did God command Abraham to knowingly lie to the Egyptians about Sarah being his sister? Lying is knowingly telling a falsehood. Since God sent him into that situation, God is the author of that sin, ergo, theodicy. I can't remember how the lesson manual treats it, but it's claimed to be justified because they would've killed him and taken Sarah. That never say well with me.

[Joe Public]

One of the points that Pinker makes toward the end of Better Angels is that most moral stances that people take are not actually "moral". The moral instinct in us most often causes feelings of righteous indignation, tendencies toward revenge, and stubborn clinging to old beliefs in the face of evidence, rather than for compassion or the seeking to better the lives of others.

He expresses a few similar points here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/ma...anted=all&_r=0

Thanks for the link. That was a good read. The trolley problem is one of my favorite questions to spring on unknowing guests.

[CardiacCoug]

People believe weird things because of our evolved need to believe non-weird things. -Michael Shermer

(Maybe you have to read the rest of the book to make sense of that, but I liked that quote.)