God's plan can never be thwarte. It seems to me as if that story is not logical. :/

Then again, nevermind. I suppose it makes sense.

God's ultimate plan cannot be thwarted, but we can endanger our own salvation by disobedience, and his plan will be fulfilled by others.  His plan includes free will, so it is up to us to make sure we use it in a way that makes the plan work.

Although I don't really like saying "plan..." like it's a battle strategy or something.  If God's intention is the greatest degree of happiness for his children, then we thwart that plan all the time.

Would depend in part on when I did it.  If I saw you in the act of trying to kill Heath, then yeah, it'd be defending him.  If I heard you might do it, so went over to your house at night and shot you in your bed, that'd be murder.  But I do see what you're getting at.


In this case, I'd say it doesn't really matter that god or anyone else has told you to do it.  If it's right to do it, then it's right to do it, regardless of who told you to do it.  And if it's wrong to do it, it's wrong to do it regardless of who told you to do it (with the corollary that if it's wrong to do it, then the person who told you to do it has indicated something about their own morality when they told you to do it).  It's not really an issue of faith, so much as an issue of morality.


Yes, agreed.  And in the abortion case, I think if the government denied people any non-violent way to try to change the laws, then it should probably be the government you're targeting rather than the abortion clinics themselves.


This is likely to get us off on a tangent, but I still stand by the position that the "question of whether its a person or not" is the wrong way to approach it, because it's merely a labeling issue, and isn't one that will solve the problem (because even if you enforce some definition of "person" some people are either going to decide it's not always wrong to kill people, or that there are some non-person things that deserve not to be killed, depending on where the definition ends up).  Basically, we have two sets of things, one of which is a subset of the other.  People on one side of the debate feel it's wrong to kill things in the smaller set, people on the other side feel it's wrong to kill anything in the larger set (ie, there's things the second group feel are wrong to kill that the first group doesn't feel are wrong to kill).  Both sides call their set "persons," but sorting out which group has more cause to that particular label doesn't really solve the fundamental disagreement (that is that the groups disagree on what is in the set of things that shouldn't be killed).  Just as legally mandating that cows be called "people" won't make everyone stop eating hamburgers, and declaring plants to be people won't make vegetarians start eating hamburgers, one side or the other 'winning' the debate over who gets to label fetus as people or not isn't going to change anyone's views on whether or not they can be killed.


Yes, exactly.

Hmm, guess it isn't really clear from the story how old he was, though it really isn't particularly relevant to my point.  For me "he wants me to commit human sacrifice" is a disqualifying feature for a deity.  If there's is any other better indicator of evil in a deity, I'm not really sure what it would be.  That Isaac gave permission doesn't change this at all, in my view.  The demand was an evil one, and Abraham should have decided then and there to change religions.


I see no need for Abraham to do that (or for God to do it--he could have just said "okay, no one goes to hell anymore" and been done with it).

Once you're able go justify human sacrifice to a god and not consider that demand evil, you're no longer able to condemn terrorists who blow people up because they think god wants them to do it.  If you say we can't judge the goodness or evilness of a deity by the demands it makes, then you can't really fault people for committing acts of horrible evil for their religion.


A God that demands that you murder someone while they're helpless again doesn't seem like a god worthy of worship to me.  Nephi should have said "do it yourself big guy, I'm not your hitman."  Killing Laban while Laban was in the act of committing an atrocity is one thing.  Killing him while he's stumbling around drunk is another.  It's cold blooded murder, and not a demand any god worthy of the descriptor "good" would issue.  Especially if that god is supposed to be omnipotent, and could stop the evil guy without killing anyone just by snapping his fingers.

There's a clinic about five miles from where I live. They're not open tomorrow, but they will be on Monday, and will likely be doing abortions. I don't think it's reasonably possible for me to change the laws between now and 8am Monday, so the legal aspect isn't really a huge argument in this case.

However, I still have the option of gluing the doors shut or chaining myself in the hallway or whatnot. While still illegal, it's a good sight more moral than 'blow up the building and everyone inside'.

Regarding Laban, I'm actually rather comfortable with it, if you accept the concept of an objectively provable God. If Nephi is just hustlin' and God says 'hey, totally just did a heaven trial on this Laban guy, he's guilty, and for the executioner, I choose you! How 'bout it?' then that seems quite reasonable. (Of course, if God is just in Nephi's head and unprovable objectively, then killing Laban is sort of a very dangerous way to roll.)

But that still doesn't explain Abraham. You can argue that God is Lord of heaven and earth, and looking at life on earth is short-sighted. Beyond that ... it's a pretty awkward situation.

Nope, not going to change the laws between now and monday.  But neither are lots of people you probably really strongly disagree with (e.g., KKK, al quieda, Fred Phelps, etc.).  If you feel you can start killing people because you can't change the law as quickly as you'd like, you have to accept all those other people doing the same thing when they can't change the law as quickly as they'd like.  One unfortunate part of democracy is that we have to accept not getting our way sometimes, even about things we think are really, really important.  On the upside, it means some people you really don't want getting their way also don't go around killing people just because the law doesn't fit their ideology.


True, non-violent (but still illegal) protests can be justified at times, I think.  You should be willing to accept the legal consequences of your actions, but yes, I'd agree, there are times for non-violent civil disobedience.


But then couldn't the people who blew up the twin towers claim the exact same thing?  Are we really going to say we can't judge them because they believed that God had told them everyone in America had been judged and found guilty?  But more to the point, if God exists, and is all powerful, then he shouldn't need Nephi or anyone else to carry out his wet work.  If he wants Laban dead, send him a heart attack or a stroke or what have you.  Asking someone else to kill him in cold blood is a pretty clear sign (in my view) that that deity isn't quite the loving-merciful-infinite-goodness guy he claims to be.


Agreed.

The important note there is 'objectively provable'. In the context of the stories in the Book of Mormon, it seems reasonable to assume that God would come down and everyone around would agree yeah, that was God alright! (Or maybe not, in which case, the bit I had in parenthesis becomes more critical.) I feel pretty confident that the 9/11 bombers did not have that degree of objectiveness.

In reply to katisara (msg #27):

It's not just an issue of provability though, in my view.  Even if the existence of the deity isn't in question (and I think in many cases, the faithful believe in their god's existence just as strongly as they would if they had objective proof), there's still the issue of what its demands tell you about it.  Even if a god is 100% real, if it asks you to perform human sacrifice or murder helpless people, I think that's a good time to convert to a new religion, because that god had just proven themselves morally corrupt.

I'm guessing people will reply something along the lines of "who are we humans, with our imperfect knowledge, to judge the actions of God?"  But the same people will usually have no problem judging other religions by the strictures of their gods (e.g., "oh, islam says to kill people who convert away from islam, so surely it's an evil religion!").  I don't think you can really have it both ways.  If we can decide another religion is wrong based on the actions its followers are supposed to take, then the same should apply to our own.  If not, we can't really fault people in other religions for not questioning the actions their religion tells them to take.

I still disagree with your first paragraph, but your second one is definitely true. You can't throw a fit about Islam being a 'violent religion' and still accept the Old Testament.

So your point of view is that morality is an absolute objective measure that cannot be overridden by a deity with omniscience?  That even though we are as ignorant as ants in comparison, we can judge and understand deity?


I don't see your point on this one.  If the point of life is to test us and our faith, Abraham is the supreme example of obedience and faith.

That's right.  We can't condemn religiously because only God knows the truth, but we can condemn them as a society based on laws.  We can also judge that what they are doing is based on hate; Abraham never killed the innocent or threatened them in that way.  Abraham's test was based on bowing one's will (and his son bowing his will) to God's will.  No innocents being murder was involved.


So maybe they shouldn't have killed Bin Laden either when they found him helpless in his house?  If someone has committed atrocities and will imminently commit more, that seems a far cry from killing an innocent.

God's first law is that he grants us free will.  It also would not have taught the lesson that came out of the story.  If God sent bin Laden drunk to your house and said that if you do not kill him, he will get his terrorists and kill your whole family, are you saying you should wait for him to be sober and start attacking you before you take action?  Or should you listen when an angel appears, trusting that God knows better?

On the issue of Abraham, if you read the New Testament, you see it revealed that Abraham believed God would raise Isaac back from the dead after he was sacrificed.  (Hebr. 11:19.)  Therefore, this sacrifice may be looked at differently if you believe deity has the power over death and will resurrect the person dying.  (This is very different from the "terrorist" example above.)

Therefore, his faith was not that he would kill his son, but that God would resurrect his son if he showed faith in the ultimate sacrifice.

It's important to keep in mind the society we live in too.  We have other means of making our protests known than they did in ancient days and more rights as citizens to make changes.  There is no need to be violent or break the laws because we should also respect the "free will" of others to do harm.  If God can do that, we should too.  Like God, our best weapon is education and moral understanding.

This is why Abraham is very different from terrorists too.  If God told him to go out and kill people who were sinning, as opposed to a personal sacrifice with faith that his son would be resurrected, we might be having a different conversation.

FYI, here is a discussion that scholars believe Isaac was somewhere between 18 and 33 years old at the time of the "sacrifice:"
http://www.apologeticspress.or...=11&article=1272

I have to say, I'm finding your position here to be a bit surprising Heath.  Take a step back for a moment, try to step outside the fact that you're defending the particular religion you've endorsed, and realize that you're defending ritualistic human sacrifice and murder of helpless people!  If you're not willing to say "hey, ya know, I don't like to judge people and all, but really, I think ritualistic human sacrifice is wrong," what are you ever really going to take a stand on?  Sadly I know the answer (gay marriage), but hopefully you can see what I'm saying here! ;)



An absolute objective measure?  To be honest, I'm not 100%.  I'm happy to admit that different people have different morals.  On that we can all agree.  At the same time, we each think our own is 'correct' in some sense, and in many cases are willing to say "I think X is wrong."  I don't think that's unreasonable.  I could believe that there is an objectively optimal moral system in some sense, but would say we haven't figure it out yet if there is.  We've seen lots of good stabs at it, that are probably fairly close, but might have some issues in odd cases.  Whatever the case, I'm pretty comfortable saying "ritualistic human sacrifice is wrong."  It's not one of those "tricky cases" or something where reasonable people regularly disagree.  It's a pretty easy call, in my view.  Really, I can't think of many (if any) cases where it's easier to "okay, that's wrong," than ritualistic human sacrifice.  It's pretty firmly in the "evil" category in pretty much any moral system that I can think of that's worthy of the name "moral system."

As for whether we can judge deities or not, yes, we can, and we must.  I'm sure you think God is good, and satan is evil.  That's you judging both of them.  If you're saying we can't judge beings above us, you have no way of claiming that God is good or that Satan is evil, and no reason for worshiping one rather than the other.  We HAVE to be able to judge deities in order to make any rational decisions about them.  You do without even thinking twice.  The only time people try to say we can't is when an embarrassing/hard-to-explain example of their deity acting evilly comes up.

Could it be that God knows better, and that He has some really good justification for demanding Abraham to kill Isaac?  Sure, it's possible.  But if so, He damned well better give the justification, in my view.  And Abraham damned well better demand that explanation before following orders.  Just assuming God's got a reason is the kind of thinking that makes it possible for people to do all kinds of horrible things.


So you're saying terrorism isn't morally wrong (or, rather, we can't say that it is), it's just illegal?  What about government sponsored terrorism?  If it's not illegal, is there nothing we can say about it?


[emphasis added by Tycho]
You might have read a different version of the story than I did, because in the one I read, murdering an innocent was EXACTLY what it was about.  Sure, in the end he didn't get killed, but the order to kill him was given, and Abraham was going to follow it.


If he was helpless, no, they shouldn't have killed him.  I will admit to being somewhat uncomfortable with the stories that came out after the raid that killed bin laden.  If they gave him a chance to surrender, and he resisted, that's one thing.  If he put his hands up and said "don't shoot" then they capped him, then I'd say that was wrong.  And if the order was to kill him no matter what, and not give him a chance to surrender, then I think that order was wrong too.


Yes, it is.  But that doesn't make it right.  It would be worse to murder someone completely innocent, but that doesn't make it okay to murder someone who isn't innocent.



I don't really see where free will comes into it.  The guy getting killed doesn't get to exercise his will in either case.  Doesn't really matter to his free will if he dies of a God-delivered heart attack or a God-ordered murder, in my view.  And if you're talking about Nephi's free will, then I'd say it's a worthless gift (or perhaps even a curse) if he's expected not to use it to make moral decisions.  Free will means he has a responsibility, in my view, to not take evil actions just because someone bigger than him tells him to do so.


Which was?


Before "taking action"?  No, of course not.  Before murdering him?  Yes.  It's one thing to try do what you can to stop something bad that's likely to happen.  Its another to kill someone when they're no immediate threat to you or anyone else.

And I say it again: If God wants someone dead, He's more than capable of handling it Himself.  Asking someone else to do his wet work doesn't seem to serve any purpose beyond sadism.


I'd say when you get an order from an angle to murder someone in cold blood, or to commit ritual human sacrifice, that's not a time you should be trusting that God knows better.  If that doesn't call into question that God knows better, what on earth would?


So, he didn't actually think he was going to lose his son, so it really wasn't a sacrifice on his part?  It was just...er...killing his son with a knife then lighting him on fire, just to prove God could bring him back to life?  And he had to prove to God (who's omniscient) that he really believed this, why?  Again, seems like pointless sadism to me.


?!?!?  It's better that God told Abraham to kill his innocent son, rather than kill people doing something wrong?!  And isn't your other example (Nephi and Laban) exactly the case you're talking about here (ie, "go out and kill this guy who is sinning")?  Don't you see what you've done here?  You've used the analogy of "Laban was a bad guy, killing him was like killing bin Laden!" in one breath, then turned around and said "Abraham was way better than terrorists, because he was killing his own innocent son instead of going out and killing sinners!" in the next!  You even said, "If someone has committed atrocities and will imminently commit more, that seems a far cry from killing an innocent," and are now faulting terrorists for killing people that they think (wrongly, but they think it) are guilty of atrocities and/or are likely to commit some.

Again, I urge you to step back from the discussion and realize what you're defending here.  You're on the side of the debate that's saying "it's okay to commit ritualistic human sacrifice and murder helpless people in some cases."  I wouldn't have guessed it was going to be a such a hard sell to convince a christian that murdering people is wrong, or that gods that ask for a human sacrifice aren't the types of gods we should follow.


Am happy to accept that Isaac was between 18 and 33 years old, as his age is rather immaterial to the point I'm making, but have to say the reasoning given in this link is a bit tenuous to me.  The only real evidence was that he was old enough to carry the wood for the fire.  Hardly have to be 18 to manage that, I'd say.  But whatever the case, his age isn't important to the discussion, so I'm fine with accepting that age range for the discussion.

I am not defending ritualistic human sacrifice.  You are mischaracterizing me.  What I am saying is that we have societal controls in place to control religious nutjobs.

The point is this:  If God knows everything we don't and is omniscient, then we cannot argue against the logic of someone saying they will do something because "God said so" from a religious perspective because the omnipotence of God will always trump mortal reason with lack of understanding.  All we can do is (1) deny them the right to practice offensive behaviors based on societal controls and/or (2) try to convince them that their behaviors are inconsistent with their religion, so they must be misinterpreting what God is telling them.  Assuming the latter fails (as it most likely will), we have to rely on societal controls.

Your initial paragraph is completely misleading.  You are saying that an omnipotent God should be ignored if we do not agree with Him because we have "taken a stand."  This has nothing to do with right or wrong, but on obedience to God.

Of course, human sacrifice is wrong.  Can an omnipotent God trump our understanding of right and wrong because he has ultimate wisdom and knows what is ultimately right and ultimately wrong in each particular case, as opposed to a blanket statement of right and wrong?  How can you say "no" to that?  The key is knowing what is truly from God and what is from crazy people, misinterpretations or other imperfections of men.  That's where society helps us out.

I think your exposition of judging deities is also off.  You seem to take the position that you have all knowledge of what is right and wrong and can therefore be the judge of that better than an omniscient being.  I cannot take such a stand of hubris myself.  This is where faith comes in.

As to terrorism, of course it's wrong.  What I said was that we cannot condemn them religiously (i.e., short of convincing them they're wrong) but we can condemn them as a society.  Society and government are not synonymous.

Isaac was not an "innocent bystander" like those killed by terrorists.  He voluntarily participated, just like Jesus voluntarily gave up his life.  That's a huge difference.

We obviously have different opinions on bin Laden's death.

As for free will, it was both the will of Abraham and the will of Isaac to do God's will in the sacrifice to demonstrate they will give up everything for God.  God did not take that away from them.  (This is also why Isaac's age is of some importance.  He was old enough to make the decision for himself.)

The lesson that came out of the story was that God was going to sacrifice his only begotten son for the world, allowing him to suffer immensely for the sins of the world even unto death, and this experience granted Abraham an understanding of how difficult this was for God to do.  This event was in similitude of Christ's sacrifice, but even more so of God the Father's sacrifice of Christ.  The lesson is that we are not here for God to do the hard stuff for us, but for us to learn to make difficult decisions, including based on obedience and faith, trusting that a loving God will have it be for our own good in the long run.  Abraham trusted, and Isaac was not killed.

So the lesson here is also that Abraham was told to do something that seemed wrong, but he trusted that God would only do what's right and he had to have faith.  In the end, he was right because he didn't have to kill Isaac after all and learned an invaluable lesson.  The problem with your arguments is that you ignore the outcome:  no person was actually sacrificed, but Abraham's obedience and faith were tested so he could understand God's difficult decision regarding Christ.

This is completely different from the terrorists.

I really don't like it when you mischaracterize what I said.  You are essentially saying that I am equating a murderer (Laban) with heathens (the terrorists), and that I am saying it is justified in killing both using religion.  That's not what I said at all.

Laban was a murderer who was going to kill Nephi and his family.  Our societal morality tends to justify Nephi's killing him, irregardless of religion.

What you are saying above is that heathens are "committing atrocities" that are akin to murder and the threat of murder.  Is that what those in the Twin Towers were doing?

These are apples and oranges that you are unfairly comparing.  I think it is you who needs to step back and stop analogizing things that are very different--particularly if you are claiming that I am doing that, which I clearly am not.

By the by, I am watching this, and very interested. Both sides have very compelling arguments, so regardless, I'm definitely learning a lot.

A question for Heath, if the story ended with Abraham actually killing Isaac, would that have changed your interpretation of it?

I'm not seeing that.  What I hear you saying is that right action to take when you think your deity wants you to commit ritual human sacrifice is to say "Well, I guess you know better than me," and do it.  That sounds like a defending ritual human sacrifice to me.  It's an active rejection of the idea, ya know, ritual human sacrifice is something a good god wouldn't ask you to do.  I don't see where societal control comes into that part of it.


Exactly.  In that case, you're saying you have no ability to judge whether murder is wrong, ritual sacrifice is wrong, stealing is wrong, etc.  The only thing you can say about them (in your view) is that God tells you not to do them.  But look, Satan tells you to do them.  How are we mortals, with our finite knowledge, and imperfect logic decide which to listen to?  According to your logic, we can't.  We just have to pick one and hope we've got it right.  Any attempt to discern which is right and which is wrong is pointless, because we're "no more than ants" to them.  I reject that.  I say that while our knowledge may be imperfect, it's all we have, and we need to use it.  We not only can, but MUST, decide that certain actions are evil and reject them when we're instructed to do them.  Just as "I was just following orders" wasn't a sufficient defense for the nazi's, it's not a defense for the religious in my view either.  We are each responsible for the actions we decide to take, and have a moral obligation to not do things we know are evil, even if someone with more knowledge tells us to do it.


That might be all that we can practically do to stop people carrying out acts, but I would add that we can try to convince people who may not be carrying out the acts of evil themselves that those who are are wrong.  That's what I'm doing here.  I'm trying to convince you that it's wrong to kill someone, even if you think God wants you to.  Because maybe someday you'll go a bit funny in the head and start hearing voices.  Probably not, but it happens to some people.  And if it happens to you, I'd really prefer for you to tell the voices that you're a moral person and won't commit evil acts just because you're told to do so, rather than saying "well, you probably know better than me."  I'm sure you don't think you'd ever be in a situation where you could mistake a "voice in your head" for God, but the fact is people do.  It does happen to people.  It's unlikely, but it's not impossible.  And perhaps more likely, is if your religion tells you to do something you "know" is wrong.  If your prophet says "this gay marriage thing has gone too far, it's time to start killing gays.  This is what God wants!"  Will you have the courage to stand up and say, "no, that's wrong, and I won't do it," or will you say "well, you're the prophet, you would know?"  Again, I'm sure you don't think that would ever happen, and probably it won't.  But it's possible.  And it disturbs me that if you really believe the things you're saying here, you'd probably do as you were told.


I'm saying if a deity demands an act of evil, then you shouldn't obey, because they've just proven themselves evil.  Good gods don't demand human sacrifice.  If you can't judge whether a god is evil, never say again that your god is Good.  If you believe your god is Good, then you've just disproven your proposition that we can't judge a god.  You can't really have it both ways.  Either you're not qualified to say whether your God is morally superior to, say, Satan, or you are and that implies we're capable of judging the goodness/evilness of gods.


Great!  That's a start.  Now, the next step is "if someone asks you to do something you know is wrong, what do you do?"


I can say no because even if they know better than me, they should know better than to ask me to commit an act of evil for them.  They know my limited understanding, and know that I would view human sacrifice as evil.  They would know that asking me to do it would convince me that they were evil.  They should not only expect that of me, but demand it of me.  A god that prefers obedience to morality doesn't sound like a good one to me.  A good God wants you to do what's right, not just do what you're told.  A good god would want you to make use of your moral judgement, not just be a mindless automaton following orders withing question.


I'd say "he demands a human sacrifice" is strong evidence that it's not truly from God (at least not from a good god).  It's from a crazy person, even if that 'person' is a supernatural being well beyond your level of understanding.


Then never claim that your God is good, because you have no way of judging Him.  Never proclaim the worthiness of your God for worship and praise, because you have no position to judge.  Never say that your God is merciful, truthful, pure, just, or the like, because you're no position to judge.  You implicitly DO believe yourself capable of judging deities by the simple fact that you've picked just one of them to follow, and by viewing him as Good, loving, merciful, just, etc.  Whether you realize it or not, you already have judged God.  It's not hubris, its a necessity.  It's what allows you to say satan is the bad guy.  It's what allows you to say "even though terrorists think they're doing Allah's will, they're still wrong, and it's still an evil act."


And I, as part of society, can likewise condemn Abraham for being willing to carry out human sacrifice.  In each case, I'm forced to use my limited human understanding, and tell someone that what they believe their God is telling them to do is morally wrong.  If it's unreasonable for me to say that Abraham is wrong for following God's order to commit human sacrifice, then it's unreasonable for me to say that al queda is wrong following allah's orders to commit acts of terrorism.  I'm not willing to accept that we cannot question people's actions as long as they believe their god told them to do it.


True, but it doesn't change the fact that Abraham shouldn't have been willing to do it.  It's still an evil act to commit ritualistic human sacrifice, even if the victim is willing to take part.


[emphasis added by Tycho]
Do you see no irony in this statement, given all you've been saying so far?  We're not just here to let God do it for us, we've got to make hard decisions by ourselves.  But when that hard decision comes, the right answers, so you tell me, is to punt and just do whatever God says because we're in no position to make the decision ourselves.  Everything you've been saying is the exact opposite of making difficult decisions and not just letting God do the hard stuff.  I'm the one saying Abraham should have used his own moral reasoning and made the hard decision to tell God to take a hike.  You're the one saying we're simply not qualified to make our own moral decisions, and that we need to trust in God to sort it all out for us.  Everything you've been arguing is precisely the opposite of what you're now saying the moral of the story is supposed to be.


This reminds me of a joke I once heard (might have even been here?  So forgive me if we've been over this already).  Two men and a woman were in training for the CIA.  They'd done all the drills and were about to graduate, when they were all taken into a room by an instructor.  The instructor took the first guy, and told him, "in the next room you'll find your wife, tied to a chair.  Take this gun, and go shoot her.  We have to know that you're really loyal, and willing to do anything we ask you."  So the guy takes the gun, goes into the next room, and a few minutes later comes back out, hands the gun over and says "I'm sorry sir, I just couldn't do it.  I guess I'm not cut out for the CIA."  He gets ushered out, and a few minutes later the instructor grabs the second guy, and tells him, "in the next room you'll find your wife tied to a chair.  Take this gun, and go shoot her.  We need to know you're loyal, and are willing do the hard stuff."  So the guy takes the gun, goes into the next room.  The instructor here's a "click", and a sigh of relief.  The guy comes out, and says "there were no bullets sir," and the instructor says "yes, but now we know that you'll willing to do what we need you to do, no matter how hard.  Welcome to the CIA."  So he gets ushered out, and the instructor goes to the woman, and says "in the next room you'll find your husband tied to a chair.  Take this gun, and go shoot him.  We need to know you're loyal, and will do what we call on you to do."  So she takes the gun, goes into the next room, and a moment later the instructor hears a "click" sound, then a bunch of loud thumping a grunts.  After a few minutes she comes back out of the room, and hands the instructor a blood-covered gun, and says "there were no bullets, but don't worry, I used it to beat him to death."

Now, it's not the funniest joke (and is sexist, I suppose, though I don't think it was intended to be derogatory towards women--more so playing on the 'irony' that she's the most hardcore, I think), but it fits this story pretty well.  Which if these characters was the moral one?  I'd say the first.  He didn't know that the gun was empty, but had to act on the assumption it wasn't, and made the correct moral decision based on the information he had.  The second one didn't end up killing his wife, but he was willing to do it.  She survived, but not because of any decision he made.  She survived despite his decision to kill her.  That's the Abraham and Isaac part of the story.  What about the last one?  What she more or less moral than the others?  She made the same initial decision as the middle guy, but she actually went through with it even after the information changed.  You could say she had more "faith" than the original order was genuine, perhaps.  But seriously, what is the right action in that situation, would you say, Heath?  The instructor really did know more than the candidates.  They had limited info, and had to make a moral decision, whether to follow orders that seemed evil, or to reject the authority of someone who "knew better" than them.  Does the fact that the 2nd wife didn't actually die mean the 2nd guy actually made the correct moral decision, or did he just get lucky?


Apologies if you feel I'm mischaracterizing you.  It's not my intention.  I honestly feel your argument leads to some contradictions.  I know you don't intend them to be there, but they seem to follow from what you're saying.  I know you're not saying that terrorists are justified in killing heathens.  However, that follows pretty directly from your argument that if God tells you to do it, then you're justified in doing it.  You didn't say it, but it's a consequence of your position.


Not my society! ;)  You have a right to self defense, but not pre-emptive killing of someone who might kill you in the future but is no threat to you right now.  Definitely some people, especially in the states, think that self-defense can justify revenge (ie, shooting someone in the back as they run away from you after you fought them off when they tried to mug you), but I don't accept that.  If your neighbor threatens you, you don't get to break into his house the next night and stab him to death in his bed.


Is that what they were doing?  No.  Is that what the terrorists believed they were doing?  Yes.  The terrorists were wrong, but they were almost certainly sincere in their beliefs.  They really thought they were doing Allah's will.  Their faith was strong, and it led them to commit an act of horrible evil.  This is why I think it's important that we don't let our faith blind us to morality.

But really, let's take it to the logical extreme.  Would you commit murder if ordered to do so by the prophet of the LDS church?  If he said "God has told me that Joe down the road is going to do something really bad in the future, and he wants you to kill him," would you do it?  I really hope not, but by your argument, it sounds like you feel like it would be the right thing to do.

Sorry, tycho, but that got too long and I got too busy to follow up.

Let me rephrase my point:

1- If there is a God who is all powerful and all knowing and he has revealed that he is good, then who are we to question it?  You ask how we can say that God is good if we can't judge him.  The answer is simple:  Because God revealed that fact, so if you have faith, then God is good and you can say that; if you don't, then you can't.  So your premise starts with denying a person's faith in revealed doctrine.  I can't deny even the faith of a terrorist except by contradicting by my own faith or by what he says he believes in; I can just hope and pray our society has laws in place to prevent his version of his "faith" from committing its great evils.  (Obviously, I can't imagine a God or have faith in a God that would command a terrorist to do those evils.)

2- Society makes moral judgments that are separate from God.  For example, our society's judgment would be that it was morally wrong to kill Jesus.  So why would God not only let Jesus die on the cross but say it must be so when it is morally wrong?  But their society totally allowed for what we think is a moral wrong, and they considered it morally acceptable.  So society is a double edged sword.  Sometimes it protects us from the whackos and sometimes it lets them loose.  I think our society has progressed, and so has religion.

3- Do I particularly like the Abraham-Isaac story?  As an allegory and archetype to Christ, yes.  As something that really happened, it would make me uncomfortable and I probably couldn't comply...but then again, I haven't been visited by angels either.  ;)

One thing that has not been discussed is the issue of life after death.  What if one of the following were true:

1) Isaac, if left to live, would have had an encounter that would have jeopardized his eternal salvation?  (therefore, killing him would have prevented that)
2) Isaac, if sacrificed, had an important work to do on the other side of the veil (i.e., in paradise, limbo, or whatever post-death state you believe in), and it would have been far more important to the saving of souls than anything he could have done on earth?
3) Isaac, if left to live, would have contracted a terrible disease that would have made his life miserable.

God would know these things and be able to make a judgment call. We could not.  That's why I say it is impossible to judge an all knowing, all powerful deity who is infinitely wise and good.  But that last bit is about faith.


By "story," do you mean "true" or fictional story?  I think I answered that above but it would have made me wonder what the details are that are not in the story.  We are judging based on snippets of a person's life thousands of years ago and without many details.

I think the issue here is the a priori assumption that it's God.

Imagine a man came to me and proceeded to do tremendous miracles, and knew all sorts of things, and as far as I could tell was all powerful and all knowing. He then proceeded to say 'worship me'.

How could I tell this guy is actually a good guy worthy of worship? He's definitely a POWERFUL guy, but is he good? How can I tell if he's good? Do I just assume the strongest guy is the guy worthy of worship?

All I seem to be hearing is, if you have faith, you'll know he's right. But if you have faith, you already believe, so that means it's a circular argument and, worse, someone like Tycho who doesn't have faith to begun with is shut out.




I don't think there's a difference in this case :) The story is our best understanding of what is true.

My point is, if we read in the Bible that God commands Moses to kill Isaac, Moses does kill Isaac, and God then rewards Moses, would you still see God as good, et al.? My understanding is yes, you'd still see God as good, and just figure you have no basis for understanding the situation properly.

Perhaps the argument has been oversimplified.

The argument is that you exercise faith and have your faith confirmed through the Holy Ghost.  So if that guy appeared to you, then you would not accept him at face value.  You would pray to find the truth of his words through the Holy Ghost.  So that is the confirmation system.

(At least, that is the LDS version, and is stated in James in the Bible.  It basically says not to take it at face value, but to pray for confirmation.)

Abraham is also unique in the fact that he was a prophet of God.  So he had a hundred years or so of communing with God and developing a relationship to know what is right or wrong, what is God or not.  So he knew he could trust what an angel told him; it was also consistent with the law of blood sacrifice and his understanding of Jesus' coming sacrifice.

Now, if this happened to a guy on the street who had not spent his life dedicated to peacefully serving God, praying, and demonstrating that he is a prophet through less dramatic means, it would be a different story entirely.

* * *
On the other issue, it is very important whether it is allegory.  Allegory shows us a message even though it's not a true story.  In this case, it makes us understand God's sacrifice of Jesus in a new way.  If it is a true story, then obviously it takes allegory to a new level where we'd actually have to ask questions of morality; otherwise, we don't.

[Emphasis added by Tycho]
Do you see the Irony here?  In one breath you say we can't judge a god who claims to be good, and in the next breath, you turn around and do exactly that.  You've done exactly what you've told me I can't do--looked at the actions demanded by a deity and decide they're not worthy of faith.

You've also implied here that if a deity claims they're good, then we just have to believe them.  I reject that assertion.  And the implication of your last statement is that you do as well.  I'm not willing to just take someone's word that they're good, especially at the moment when they're demanding I commit an act of evil.


Okay, though I'm not entirely sure that this has much bearing on the issue.


Okay, that's a step in the right direction, at least.


Who mean like pretty much everyone?  If we take this reasoning, you've just justified killing of anyone who's currently a believer, just to save them from the possibility of converting later.  I hope I'm not the only one who sees the irony of an atheist having to say "it's wrong to kill christians for being christians" to a mormon! ;)


If so, all-powerful, all-knowing God should have done it Himself.  By "it" meaning "whatever Isaac needed to do on the otherside" in the best case, or "killed Isaac" in the worst case.  Asking Abraham to kill him was simply causing gratuitous suffering, and seems like simple sadism.


In which case Isaac could have killed himself, or better yet, God could have cured him.  If you're saying this is a mercy killing on God's part, that's a bit hard for me to swallow, because Isaac didn't have such a disease, and God could have cured it if he later got one.  And again, even if this were the case, I see no reason for God to make Abraham do the deed.

Basically, from your statement about not being able to imagine having faith in a God that commanded people to commit evil acts it sounds like you already agree with my basic premise, but don't seem to feel it applies to your particular deity.  Maybe instead of focusing on the Isaac and Abraham side it, in that case, we should look into the islamic terrorist half of it?  Why do you have trouble imagining having faith in the deity they do?  What allows you to say you can't imagine such a God?  What is the difference between their faith and yours, beyond your human judgement of which god is the better one?

I feel like this part is very important, and bears repeating. I'm a little surprised it hasn't been brought up until now.

In an attempt to be fair. I think Heath's hypothetical suggestion was taken out of context here. In the Abraham-Isaac situation, Abraham received specific revelation to sacrifice Isaac for reasons that were not at the time reveal. Even if Heath's hypothetical situation was the case, it does not imply that God gave Abraham instruction to kill everyone whose salvation is in jeopardy.

I am also of the LDS faith and it is my belief and understanding that salvation is a personal thing worked out between deity and an individual. Those who are not LDS are not inherently in jeopardy of losing their salvation, so even without the specific context of the situation the counter-argument still wouldn't really make sense. Not trying to be placative, but in my personal opinion immediate membership in the church has little bearing on ones salvation in the long run, if one understands the big picture of LDS theology.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:24, Wed 23 Nov 2011.