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Why would a sense of justice need to come from God? Mere fear of death would naturally lead to a prohibition against murder. Desire to keep things for oneself w

Why would a sense of justice need to come from God? Mere fear of death would naturally lead to a prohibition against murder. Desire to keep things for oneself would lead to private property and the prohibition of theft. Etc. And if our sense of justice does come from God, why does it develop over time? Modern people who read the whole Bible are usually struck by how unjust the God therein is.

randomidiot123 7y ago
That's the problem with interpreting the Bible literally. God represents something of psychological reality.
throw0101a 7y ago
> Why would a sense of justice need to come from God? Is justice absolute or (culturally) relative? The Nazis† thought they were doing good: were they not? Were they "wrong" just because they lost WW2? If they had won, would they have written down that they were "right" and have history remember that 'fact'? If they were morally wrong, regardless of winning or losing, where did that 'objective' moral fact come from? You can certainly be an atheist and me moral and act justly. But where do you pin your morality to? If someone is an atheist, and probably a materialism (i.e., the only thing that exists is matter), where is justice in the scientific realm? What does a molecule of morality look like? † Let's just invoke Godwin's Law and go for the extreme case.
- krapp 7y ago
  Here's the problem - God doesn't exist, and all morality is relative. The only absolute laws are the laws of physics. And yes, there is a universe in which the Nazis won and it's taken for granted that they were right all along. So now what?
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    > Here's the problem - God doesn't exist ... Aristotle would disagree: * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-background.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-backgrou... * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.h... * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-lemmas-make-lemma.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-l... * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-kahuna.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-... > The only absolute laws are the laws of physics. Then you're left with explaining the laws of physics and why they exist. Those laws are contingent after all. See Aquinas's "argument from contingency" (though not the general cosmological argument or Kalām variant, which are not very good) as well as Leibniz: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Argument_from_contingency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Argument... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_sufficient_reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_sufficient_reason For a fuller treatment see Feser: * https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp/1621641333 https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp...
    - leereeves 7y ago
      Aristotle disagreed with inertia too. He was wrong about many things.
      - throw0101a 7y ago
        And the vacuum. People were skeptical of Aristotle's natural philosophy as far back as the 1200s. But each of those things that Aristotle wrote about need to be independently evaluated. Saying he was wrong about X and therefore we should ignore what he said about Y (or about everything) is bad logic: * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

randomidiot123 7y ago

That's the problem with interpreting the Bible literally. God represents something of psychological reality.

throw0101a 7y ago

> Why would a sense of justice need to come from God? Is justice absolute or (culturally) relative? The Nazis† thought they were doing good: were they not? Were they "wrong" just because they lost WW2? If they had won, would they have written down that they were "right" and have history remember that 'fact'? If they were morally wrong, regardless of winning or losing, where did that 'objective' moral fact come from? You can certainly be an atheist and me moral and act justly. But where do you pin your morality to? If someone is an atheist, and probably a materialism (i.e., the only thing that exists is matter), where is justice in the scientific realm? What does a molecule of morality look like? † Let's just invoke Godwin's Law and go for the extreme case.

krapp 7y ago
Here's the problem - God doesn't exist, and all morality is relative. The only absolute laws are the laws of physics. And yes, there is a universe in which the Nazis won and it's taken for granted that they were right all along. So now what?
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > Here's the problem - God doesn't exist ... Aristotle would disagree: * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-background.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-backgrou... * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.h... * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-lemmas-make-lemma.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-l... * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-kahuna.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-... > The only absolute laws are the laws of physics. Then you're left with explaining the laws of physics and why they exist. Those laws are contingent after all. See Aquinas's "argument from contingency" (though not the general cosmological argument or Kalām variant, which are not very good) as well as Leibniz: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Argument_from_contingency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Argument... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_sufficient_reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_sufficient_reason For a fuller treatment see Feser: * https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp/1621641333 https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp...
  - leereeves 7y ago
    Aristotle disagreed with inertia too. He was wrong about many things.
    - throw0101a 7y ago
      And the vacuum. People were skeptical of Aristotle's natural philosophy as far back as the 1200s. But each of those things that Aristotle wrote about need to be independently evaluated. Saying he was wrong about X and therefore we should ignore what he said about Y (or about everything) is bad logic: * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white