EricE

@MormonGator Oh dear, that isn't what I meant, sorry for the confusion. What I meant was that my question was posed for the purpose of seeing what the average LDS response was going to be as I prepare for an upcoming debate. When I said my suspicions were confirmed, what I meant was that I had suspected that the majority of responses would be rationalizations for why murder/slavery etc. is actually moral, and how the responses to some of my rebuttals would go. It was always possible that the responses would have gone down the line of I was misinterpreting the story in the scripture, but that doesn't seem to be the case. This was my first time participating in these forums, and I must say I was impressed with the respectful tone of many of the responders (I can't say all, but many ). I'll definitely be back for more discussions!

I stopped commenting on this thread a while ago, as the rationalizations presented confirmed my suspicions. But I would like to point out one of your scriptural mistakes (there were several, but I'm just going to focus on the one). You claimed that slavery under the law was not for life unless the slave chose to remain with his master. This is incorrect. The 6 year term (and released on the 7th) only applied to Hebrew slaves. Slaves who were not Hebrew were the property of their masters for life and we're passed down to their master's children when he died. Also, the term limit only applied to male slaves. Second, to say some slaves "chose" to remain with their masters is a vicious misrepresentation. What Exodus 21 lays out is a manner in which slave owners can essentially trick slaves into remaining a slave for life--namely by giving the male slave a wife so that when the male slave's time is up, he is given the impossible choice of remaining a slave forever, or leaving behind his wife and children. Lastly, this idea that slaves were treated "very well" is laughable. God specifically said you could beat your slave, as long as they were able to heal after a while. Lastly, your claim of the purpose of god's slavery as "on-the-job worship training" has no scriptural basis. People were sold into slavery for being in debt, because they were conquered by someone else, (if you were a woman) by your father just because he needed the money, or a myriad of other reasons. I didn't compare god's proposed slavery to any other kind. But we are still talking about the god of the bible saying it is moral for one human being to own another human being as property. If you want to defend and/or justify slavery, be my guest. I'll stick with saying it is immoral under any circumstance.

Can we agree that one person's personal revelation is only hearsay to everyone else? No matter which religion and/or god you believe in, there are more people who have and do believe in something else. And each claim to have personal revelation confirming the truth of their beliefs. Not all religions can be correct (they're too contradictory), but it is possible that all are false. Therefore we need to mechanism for determining which is true. Since personal revelation is demonstrably poor at determining what is true, we need to find something else. I'm open to suggestions.

Can we agree that one person's personal revelation is only hearsay to everyone else? No matter which religion and/or god you believe in, there are more people who have and do believe in something else. And each claim to have personal revelation confirming the truth of their beliefs. Not all religions can be correct (they're too contradictory), but it is possible that all are false. Therefore we need to mechanism for determining which is true. Since personal revelation is demonstrably poor at determining what is true, we need to find something else. I'm open to suggestions.

Yes, I understand the eternal perspective you are positing. But following that line of logic means that in your justification of allowing women and children to burn to death, you are agreeing with the passage's claim that the punishment of the offenders is more important than stopping the pain and suffering of believers. I suppose that's the difference between me and this god. If I saw a child being burned to death and I had the power to stop it, I would.

Ok, so things are good because god does them. In that case, why do we not still judge the things god did as moral? For example, god specifically condoned slavery. In other stances, he condoned the mass genocide of entire populations because they were non-believers (or at other times just to prove a point, e.g. all the first-born Egyptians). Our morality has advanced since the bronze age to now shun such things as unspeakable acts of cruelty and immorality. So was god wrong?

That would seem to be extraordinarily circular reasoning. You can only understand god's morality if you believe in god's morality? What evidence is there that god is acting morally in this story?

I don't know. You tell me.

I want to make sure I'm understanding. You're arguing that someone burning to death is not in violation of their well-being because it is what god desired to have happen? Even though god's justification, in this case, was that he wanted to justly punish the offenders? If we follow that line of thinking, wouldn't it then be pointless to make murder against the law, because people dying isn't against their well being?

Excellent questions. But isn't both the BoM and the Bible full of examples of god getting involved on that level? Why is god moral for intervening in some instances, but not intervening in others? Why is god moral for leading the slaves out of captivity in Egypt, but also moral for allowing the wives and children of his believers be burned to death?

Are things good because god did them? Or does god only do good things?

We're far off the topic of my original post. However, it sounds like you are suggesting that the comfort the religion provides to you is worth more than whether or not it is true. That's a perfectly acceptable opinion for anyone to have, and I can't find fault with it as long as people are honest about that being the case. However, for me, I sincerely want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible, and I put comfort secondary to determining the truth of a proposition.

Again, assuming the bible is accurate, that is correct about Paul. But that still means that god appeared to him, meaning he did not believe on faith, but on evidence of things he had seen.

As in "I once burned my hand on the stove, and from that I learned not to touch a hot stove again?" Yes.

That seems to be a rationalization for allowing the brutal murder of women and children. It reminds me of a conversation I had with an evangelical a few weeks ago, who in a discussion about child-rape and why god wouldn't step in and stop it from happening, argued "well we don't know if the child wasn't a sinner and was being punished by god." That attitude seems devoid of any morality whatsoever. My question is about how can you justify the morality of a god who acknowledges that he could stop the burning of women and children to happen, but chooses not to so that he can punish those who did the burning?

I'm not looking for "traction." I just enjoy the conversations How is faith the answer to anything? I would define faith as the excuse people give for believing something for which they don't have a good reason. For instance, I can take it on faith that my bottle of mountain dew here is going to turn into pure gold. Do I have a good reason for believing that? No. But I take it on faith. So if you can have faith in quite literally anything, is faith a reliable method for determining what is true?

Assuming that the bible is an accurate depiction of what happened, the apostles didn't have personal revelations in the sense that we're talking about. Jesus stood in front of them and they personally witnessed the events. Such is not the case today. Today we're relying on a method that yields result indistinguishable from just personal feelings and inner monologue.

Unfortunately that response seems to ignore my question. If you cannot understand god's morality, than how can you judge it to be moral? It is true, our understanding of morality, like science, continues to improve and grow with our understanding of the world. So how does it make sense to look at things like god allowing women and children to be burned to death, or (jumping over to the bible for a moment) god condoning slavery--things which we as a species have judged to be immoral--and say that actually it is moral we just don't understand it? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm asking for how you can demonstrate your claim to be true. If you cannot understand god's morality, than how can you judge it to be moral?

Is personal revelation a reliable method for determining truth? No matter what religion you believe in, there are more people who have (and do) believe in a different religion and/or god. And each of those differing religions/gods' followers claim to have their own personal revelation that what they believe is true. Does it not then stand to reason that since personal revelation does not yield consistent results, we must instead look to independent verification to determine truth?

Well, first I would argue that morality is not based on what we believe, but (as Sam Harris argues in his book The Moral Landscape) on well being. Meaning, the well being of both us as individuals and us as a society and as a species. There are certainly some objective morals under this foundation (e.g. life is preferable to death), and it is through discussion, debate, and learning that we build the rest of our moral system. The issue I have here is that you are positing that the act of allowing the women and children to burn to death must necessarily be a moral one because it is god doing it. However, the evidence being presented is essentially that god's morality is non-understandable by us mortals and therefore cannot be questioned. If god's morality is non-understandable by mortals, then by definition we cannot judge it as moral, right? That would be like telling your toddler about linear algebra. Are you correct in your explanation? The toddler is absolutely unable to judge for themselves. What we do know is that (I'm assuming that you agree with me on this point, apologies for the assumption if not) if the state were to decide not to send in the police to stop someone from burning a group of women and children, and their argument was that they wanted to let it happen so that they could justly put the men in jail, that would be fantastically immoral and we would all be up in arms. Therefore, the act is against our (human) morality. If god has a morality we can't understand, then how can we determine whether or not it is good?

Doesn't that leave out the possibility that god, if he exists, does things BECAUSE they are moral? But regardless, it seems illogical to solve a mystery by appealing to a higher mystery. If this god cared enough about this particular story to include it in the Book of Mormon, then it would seem there is a lesson about his nature he is trying to tell. It would seem the only lessons we can rationally pull would be either that he is immoral for letting women and children burn so that he can justly punish those doing the burning, or that this was actually a moral act to be exemplified. How are we to determine which is the correct answer? If the act would be labeled as monstrous if it were committed by a human, do we have a reliable method for determining that it is moral because a god did it?

I see it as two parts of the same question, but apologies if it wasn't as clear as it needed to be. I don't believe that morality is defined by what we accept as true. That's far too broad of a definition and would include "dogs exist" (which is true) as an aspect of morality. However, in this case I'm questioning whether the god of the Book of Mormon is a moral figure worthy of following. Can you help me better understand your comparison to the dentist's office? I don't think "generally unpleasant" is comparable to allowing your children to burn to death when you have the power to stop it. If this were any other being besides a god, we would call such an act "monstrous." Is it different because of who it is? And if so, isn't that by definition Special Pleading?

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