Post your theological argument here.

[bugfartboy]

There have been life or death situations where some have been allowed to lie. But only to save the people of God.

[Steel Ersatz Man]

1)So there was a Jesus now huh?
2)Jesus is and was the only one who can claim to be perfect. He was God Himself in human form.

Ha! Gout you there. Jesus was actually part of the Trinity and he was meant to be human. Also, Jesus DID sin. (Remember the story where he went crazy in the temple?)

[bugfartboy]

Ah. But he was cleaning house:

The Cleansing of the Temple
; ,
12 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.' "
14 Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were indignant

16 and said to Him, "Do You hear what these are saying?"
And Jesus said to them, "Yes. Have you never read,
'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants
You have perfected praise'? "

17 Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there.

[Steel Ersatz Man]

Ah, different moral compasses. (I'm using your own argument against you here)

[ArtDrake]

Buggy, you say there have been certain cases. Is this an exception, case-by-case? Or is God willing to accept any lie told to save the people of God?

EDIT: Interpret that how you will. I didn't really mean it in a "burn" sort of way, and I hope it doesn't offend anyone.

[Steel Ersatz Man]

Buggy, you say there have been certain cases. Is this an exception, case-by-case? Or is God willing to accept any lie told to save the people of God?

Oooh, burn!

EDIT: Oh, okay, sorry Bugfartboy and yogc elf.

[cyso]

Buggy, you say there have been certain cases. Is this an exception, case-by-case? Or is God willing to accept any lie told to save the people of God?

EDIT: Interpret that how you will. I didn't really mean it in a "burn" sort of way, and I hope it doesn't offend anyone.

Case by case.
I am not trying to force my belief onto you. If I was, I would have given up a long time ago.

You haven't mentioned the second part of my response. Morals are like an instinct that can be overpowered by feedback over time. When I was young, I could easily tell if something was right or wrong because of an internal feeling.

No you could tell if something was mean or nice .

How do you determine "mean" or "nice?"

Duckling, let's assume that you are right about evolution. Where would morals evolve from?

[ArtDrake]

Morals are "evolved" from the ever-persistent need for community and the ability to work together. Those who are incapable of doing to can't fend off the lions. Also, morals are memetic, and not genetic, so they can work their way into human cultures much faster than physical changes.

No burn.

And while we're at it, would lying be a sin in the case of the Nazis and people lying to hide refugees? Are you saying that the case-by-case process continues past Biblical times, and He would judge each one? Clarification would help.

[cyso]

A lot of animals work together, but they don't have morals. The nearest thing to morals in animals is mothers protecting their children, and that's instinct. Animals aren't altruistic in any way. Humans are different. Yes, they are smarter, but being smart doesn't make much of a difference. The smartest gorilla has no more morals than a buffalo. Morals make us different from other animals.

Yes, I am saying things work by a case-by-case process.

[ArtDrake]

I would argue that to a certain extent, some animals have ethics. Ethics are a system of rules in place for cooperation, so that this can happen with optimum efficiency.

Excuse me? The smartest gorilla in captivity was successfully able to understand abstract concepts like love, and metaphors. I would say that it never would have killed the cat it was confined with. Morals, anyone.

Ethics are the basis of morals in the evolutionary process; to successfully work together, there must be certain behaviors those in a group must not exhibit. These are then discouraged by process of elimination. Cannibalism is not sustainable on a large scale, so all creatures have another food source. Then, morals are a behavioral extension of ethics. When one is in a group, one cannot exhibit behaviors which negatively affect others, or there are consequences. If one is exposed to a system of ethics from a young age, these are successfully imprinted. Then, when the consequences are removed, there is still a sense of "wrongness" about the act. Also, for most acts that we would deem "wrong", there are usually consequences that are hard to remove, like when you kill someone, that person ceases talking to you, and you lose their company. These are morals.

Finally, if you truly remove all consequences, like in a videogame, then people's true innate ability to ignore ethics if there is no expense to them is revealed. Some children that play violent videogames end up being psychologically disturbed, and very violent, since their ethical imprinting is weakened, and the leap to morals deadened.

On the topic of the judging of lies, are there any concrete rules we can know about, or are we best guided by our own morals, and we were made in His image, so His thinking process on whether something is right or wrong is going to be simliar?

[cyso]

If the lie is self serving, then it is probably wrong.

I understand that animals successfully work together. That's a symbiotic relationship. It's not quite the same as morals. For example, I can work together with people I don't get along with to get something done. That doesn't mean I like the person, want to work with the person, or care about the person's grade. I care about my own grade, so I work to make sure my grade is good. Similarly, animals might work together to survive, not because they care about each other, but because they care about themselves.

Animals, such as your gorilla and dogs, can understand morals. A dog can understand that if it jumps on people, it will get in trouble, so it won't jump on people. In this case, the animal doesn't have morals, it just knows there is an unfavorable consequence to its action. I'm sure the gorilla wouldn't have killed the cat it was confined with. It was probably smart enough to know that killing the cat would get it in trouble, and that there was no reason to kill the cat. The biggest characteristic of human morals is altruism, or doing something for no reward or gain.

I never said that people can't ignore morals. In fact, people do all the time. They ignore morals, they try to justify themselves, and they twist morals to make themselves feel good. I have no doubt that humans are capable of overriding morals. Humans are also able to override reactions and instincts they are born with, such as crying for help.

[ArtDrake]

It is my belief that if the truth would do more than twice the harm that telling the lie would, the lie is acceptable. That's my threshold. Any lower, and it would be a personal fault, but any higher, and you have a reason to lie.

I don't think animals have morals. I may not have been clear. I believe that some animals have ethics, for efficiency in symbiosis.

And if you can say that a mother cares about its child, or lover care, why is our maternal or reproductive instinct any lesser than theirs? In their own way, they care about familiy. Some animals go to lengths to protect their siblings.

I don't believe that humans are truly altruistic. There is always gain in emotional feedback. They will most likely feel they have done their duty in society at the end of the day if a person does something "kind". The cost of donating money, for instance, is outweighed by the good feeling of righteousness of cause. This is why some people don't donate past an amount; the good feeling runs out before their pocketbook does.

Some people don't just ignore their morals, as far as I believe. I think that some never recieve them properly.

[cyso]

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you ask why our maternal or reproductive instinct is less then theirs. I believe that humans maternal instinct is the same as animals, but animals may be more capable of defending their young than humans. I believe our reproductive instinct is less because God created us to survive, so we don't need as many kids.

There is not always gain in emotional feedback. For example, if a person dies to save someone else, they are probably dead before they gain emotional feedback. Plus, I doubt positive emotional feedback by itself is enough to cause someone to die for someone else.

If a seven year old who already has solid moral values was told by someone he trusted that something he previously thought was wrong was actually right, confusion would probably result. After enough times of being told, though, the child would probably accept the idea. You can hammer through someone's existing morals. People can hammer through their own morals. That doesn't mean they don't have proper morals in the first place; otherwise, there would be no need for the hammering.

Edit: Buggy says hi.

[bugfartboy]

Morals are like a rod of iron. Hammer at them enough, they will bend. The end result is a bent person to match the bent morals. The moral of the story: the more you hammer, the easier the morals become the bend. The result of this is a person so twisted that even if you fix them, they can be bent right back up again in new ways.

[ArtDrake]

Once someone's morals are fully established, however, it is darn hard to remove them or hammer them. I would never accept killing as right, now that it has been drilled into me, and I understand the negative consequences. To remove my inhibition about killing, someone would have to prove that the negative consequences were not there, and that there was gain involved.

If you die to save someone, it is usually because you did the cost-benefit analysis split-second, and decided that they dying was worse than you dying. Emotional feedback at the end of the day is just one of the reasons people do "altruistic" things. Sometimes these things are because there is no cost to them; I help people up, I hold doors, because I become happy that I helped, but at no cost.

Hi, Buggy. I don't know what to say about your iron analogy. I really don't. It makes too many assumptions, and I'll address them later when my parents aren't about to yell at me to go to bed.