Was Adam a Slave?

[Borachio]

No. We use the singular. God uses the plural.

J

There's something curious about this.

You say "We use the singular", while yet you're using the plural "we".

And "God uses the plural", while "God" is plainly in the singular case.

 

[El_Machinae]

What is personally healthy is totally subjective.

You're incorrect, you're using the terms incorrectly, is all. We 99% agree, except on the usage of the terms. "What's healthy" is not subjective, it's objective. No matter how much you want cyanide to be healthy, it isn't. No matter how much your culture believes drinking cyanide is healthy, it's not.

What you're saying is that 'healthy' is complicated and unknowable. Yes, but that's not the same thing as saying it's subjective.

Just because different people have different 'needs' to be healthy, it doesn't mean that it's subjective. It's still objective. If you & I look at an elephant, we absolutely see something different. Our perception of the elephant is subjective, but its existence is [edit:] objective.

There is no "truth". Truth is just a human concept. "It's 45 degrees outside" could be considered a "true" statement but objectively it's meaningless & not even correct. By the time you say it the temperature has changed a few millidegrees & is slightly different a few blocks away.

In science we get away from that. Implicit in the statement "it's 45 degrees outside" is the addendum "plus or minus 500 millidegrees", which then makes it a true statement, because even if the temp shifted a few millidegrees, the changes are already accepted within the acknowledgement of the rounding error.

 

[Farm Boy]

There are some people who can't divorce legality from ethics from morality and others who can.

I think we can certainly work to understand how many people mix them up, as it's much easier to live that simply.

They do function very independently when coming from people who understand their difference. And we should all strive to be such people.

Entirely divorcing legal structure from moral structures is barbarity. There are some things to which laws pertain that are essentially raw functions of efficiency. There are many more which are not. There are some where efficiency is actively unjust to a small minority and that is enough reason to be inefficient. You can focus your mental energy on legality and "what" does this law do. "What" are its effects? But once you get into "why" should we pass or not pass enforce or not enforce this law, you are into morality and ethics whether you would like to admit it or not. At least we are if we are going to pretend to live in a representative democracy where citizens are at least nominally capable of caring about the interests of their countrymen rather than being 100% egoists.

 

[Borachio]

You're incorrect, you're using the terms incorrectly, is all. We 99% agree, except on the usage of the terms. "What's healthy" is not subjective, it's objective. No matter how much you want cyanide to be healthy, it isn't. No matter how much your culture believes drinking cyanide is healthy, it's not.

What you're saying is that 'healthy' is complicated and unknowable. Yes, but that's not the same thing as saying it's subjective.

Just because different people have different 'needs' to be healthy, it doesn't mean that it's subjective. It's still objective. If you & I look at an elephant, we absolutely see something different. Our perception of the elephant is subjective, but its existence is subjective.

I think you must mean the existence of the elephant is objective. (Though in some absolute sense I think it probably is subjective - but that's to go off the subject too far, imo.)

Anyway, what was I going to say? Ah yes. About cyanide. It depends what you mean by healthy. Hitler took cyanide for his health because he thought not taking it would be much worse for him. Sometimes it's healthy to be unhealthy?

 

[onejayhawk]

There's something curious about this.

You say "We use the singular", while yet you're using the plural "we".

And "God uses the plural", while "God" is plainly in the singular case.

Frame of reference issue. A more exacting statement is, "Mankind refers to God as singular. God refers to God's self in plural in some situations." Language is inexact by its nature, so complete accuracy is impossible. We use a gendered article, even though it is inappropriate, because nongendered articles connote demeaning things.

J

 

[Borachio]

Hmm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

I'm sure you're right. But I don't remember God ever talking of Herself in the plural.

Mind you, I rather tend to think of Woman-kind creating God in Her own image (instead of vice versa). So there's that, too.

 

[El_Machinae]

Anyway, what was I going to say? Ah yes. About cyanide. It depends what you mean by healthy. Hitler took cyanide for his health because he thought not taking it would be much worse for him. Sometimes it's healthy to be unhealthy?

What that just means is that the objective rule is more complicated than my original analogy allowed for.

IF you're a nutbar, THEN it might be more healthy to drink a little bit of cyanide.
IF you're allergic to peanuts, THEN they're unhealthy to eat.

 

[onejayhawk]

Hmm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

I'm sure you're right. But I don't remember God ever talking of Herself in the plural.

Mind you, I rather tend to think of Woman-kind creating God in Her own image (instead of vice versa). So there's that, too.

First book, first chapter, verse 26. The context is the creation of man.

1:26 Then God said, “Let us make 47

humankind 48 in our image, after our likeness, 49 so they may rule 50 over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, 51 and over all the creatures that move 52 on the earth.”

1:27 God created humankind 53 in his own image,

in the image of God he created them, 54

male and female he created them. 55
https://net.bible.org/#!bible/Genesis+1:24

Here is the first note. It is a fairly complex issue.

47 sn The plural form of the verb has been the subject of much discussion through the years, and not surprisingly several suggestions have been put forward. Many Christian theologians interpret it as an early hint of plurality within the Godhead, but this view imposes later trinitarian concepts on the ancient text. Some have suggested the plural verb indicates majesty, but the plural of majesty is not used with verbs. C. Westermann (Genesis, 1:145) argues for a plural of “deliberation” here, but his proposed examples of this use (2 Sam 24:14; Isa 6:8) do not actually support his theory. In 2 Sam 24:14 David uses the plural as representative of all Israel, and in Isa 6:8 the Lord speaks on behalf of his heavenly court. In its ancient Israelite context the plural is most naturally understood as referring to God and his heavenly court (see 1 Kgs 22:19-22; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6; Isa 6:1-8). (The most well-known members of this court are God’s messengers, or angels. In Gen 3:5 the serpent may refer to this group as “gods/divine beings.” See the note on the word “evil” in 3:5.) If this is the case, God invites the heavenly court to participate in the creation of humankind (perhaps in the role of offering praise, see Job 38:7), but he himself is the one who does the actual creative work (v. 27). Of course, this view does assume that the members of the heavenly court possess the divine “image” in some way. Since the image is closely associated with rulership, perhaps they share the divine image in that they, together with God and under his royal authority, are the executive authority over the world.

 

[Leoreth]

I don't see what's wrong with using "he or she" if you don't know the gender of a person. Though I'd agree it can be cumbersome.

It is cumbersome. Also there are people who aren't either he or she, but that's really besides the point in this discussion. (Or is it? I'm not too sure what the exact theological position on God's gender is.)

You can use "she" too. It doesn't send any particular message at all to use a gender neutral he or she. Somebody that's looking hard enough into this to demand that the pronouns can't be neutral and claim that this is an example of "questionable social structures" really needs to invest themselves in more pressing first world problems instead of inventing new ones borne out of factually misguided assumptions borne from a deep seated need to be judgmental and superior. Eh? (tbh, I think people with this sort of opinion are generally just parroting judgmental jerks rather than actively trying to come up with ways to be jerky themselves)

Look, first of all, until now, I haven't even expressed any form of judgment at all. I did not say that people who use "he" to refer to God are wrong or unaware of the gender neutral use of the pronoun. Neither did I say that they should change their behavior. All I said was that I welcome the use of other, equally correct pronouns.

As you said, "she" can also be a gender neutral pronoun. Have you ever asked yourself why it isn't used more often in that context as opposed to "he"? I think this tendency contributes to the often subconsciously held view that being male is the norm. Now I agree that this isn't a particularly important situation, but I also think that language plays an important factor in shaping the way we think and it doesn't cost me anything to be a little considerate, so why not do it? Again, I didn't ask you or anyone really to do the same, and didn't call you a horrible person for not doing so.

So maybe you should really ask yourself what drove you to become so defensive here all of a sudden, up to the point where you have to call people jerks and discredit the experiences of people you have apparently never spent time talking to.

 

[timtofly]

It's not. There are some people who cannot divorce personal taste from morality and a bunch more people who can. There are some people who can't divorce legality from ethics from morality and others who can.

I think we can certainly work to understand how many people mix them up, as it's much easier to live that simply.

They do function very independently when coming from people who understand their difference. And we should all strive to be such people.

It doesn't. It does, though, make more sense than saying that if God created a "correct" morality then it's still God's own subjective morality is false because God is a teaching God, which is how this side debate started.

But either way I'm pretty sure you're having a completely different logical experience in your head than the rest of us. You might want to explain the actual cause and effect of your logic than making assertions.

For example below: You were replying to Borachio asking how one is expected to live in accordance with knowing we all share a common ancestor that was but one shrew among many.

See, this doesn't score you any points, bear with me.

It's very strange to think that your life is meaningless or un-propelled without the existence of a God that specifically and hands on created your species without any of the biological lead-up that the system this God created utilizes. It's a very specific thing to believe. Yet that's the logic of your words.

To think that Nihilism or apathy are the only appropriate responses to life if you accept your ancestry, which isn't even denying God as a concept, really strongly requires to come into the conversation with some preexisting notions that most the others in this thread simply don't share with you. So perhaps you can explain how you get to these very confined conclusions.

Perhaps God did not want to be married to philosophy, but his followers decided to go that route any way.

The whole issue with God being thought up by humans, is conflicting with the actual nature of God, because that nature is not human. We are hardwired to re-act when we hear things that mess with our sensibility, but yet doing so re-inforces that we create God ourselves. However there are too may points of evidence outside ourselves to relinquish the fact that God exist outside of our thoughts.

 

[Farm Boy]

It is cumbersome. Also there are people who aren't either he or she, but that's really besides the point in this discussion. (Or is it? I'm not too sure what the exact theological position on God's gender is.)


Look, first of all, until now, I haven't even expressed any form of judgment at all. I did not say that people who use "he" to refer to God are wrong or unaware of the gender neutral use of the pronoun. Neither did I say that they should change their behavior. All I said was that I welcome the use of other, equally correct pronouns.

As you said, "she" can also be a gender neutral pronoun. Have you ever asked yourself why it isn't used more often in that context as opposed to "he"? I think this tendency contributes to the often subconsciously held view that being male is the norm. Now I agree that this isn't a particularly important situation, but I also think that language plays an important factor in shaping the way we think and it doesn't cost me anything to be a little considerate, so why not do it? Again, I didn't ask you or anyone really to do the same, and didn't call you a horrible person for not doing so.

So maybe you should really ask yourself what drove you to become so defensive here all of a sudden, up to the point where you have to call people jerks and discredit the experiences of people you have apparently never spent time talking to.

I see "she" all the time. It's pretty common in academic literature over here. Or at least it was 10 years ago when I was reading it more full-time. I suppose the preponderance changing is possible. And I don't think you're a horrible person, for whatever that is worth. I do think those who pound the drum of gender neutral English pronouns being impossible and that such language contributes to subconscious male gender superiority/normity are those who stand to profit directly from stirring up an adversarial environment.

 

[Leoreth]

Is that the same way in which climate scientists thrive by making up climate change?

In general, I would prefer if my opinions were treated as coming from an individual, not an amorphous group which may or may not hold the positions you ascribe to them.

 

[Harv]

It's not. There are some people who cannot divorce personal taste from morality and a bunch more people who can. There are some people who can't divorce legality from ethics from morality and others who can.

I think we can certainly work to understand how many people mix them up, as it's much easier to live that simply.

They do function very independently when coming from people who understand their difference. And we should all strive to be such people.

You claim that morality is relative in the absence of an absolute standard. You believe there is no God, and therefore there is no absolute standard.

It doesn't. It does, though, make more sense than saying that if God created a "correct" morality then it's still God's own subjective morality is false because God is a teaching God, which is how this side debate started.

Then you claim that even if there was a God, His concept of morality is no better than yours.

what could I do when God stands up [to judge]? How should I answer Him when He calls [me] to account?

Job 31:14, HCSB

Is this what you are going to tell Him?

But either way I'm pretty sure you're having a completely different logical experience in your head than the rest of us. You might want to explain the actual cause and effect of your logic than making assertions.

I follow J's logic.

For example below: You were replying to Borachio asking how one is expected to live in accordance with knowing we all share a common ancestor that was but one shrew among many.

See, this doesn't score you any points, bear with me.

It's very strange to think that your life is meaningless or un-propelled without the existence of a God that specifically and hands on created your species without any of the biological lead-up that the system this God created utilizes. It's a very specific thing to believe. Yet that's the logic of your words.

Without God, "Life is quite absurd, and death's the final word." No this does quote does not come from the Bible.

Without God.....

13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without foundation, and so is your faith. 15 In addition, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified about God that He raised up Christ-whom He did not raise up if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18 Therefore those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. 19 If we have placed our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.
1 Corinthians 15:13-19

To think that Nihilism or apathy are the only appropriate responses to life if you accept your ancestry, which isn't even denying God as a concept, really strongly requires to come into the conversation with some preexisting notions that most the others in this thread simply don't share with you. So perhaps you can explain how you get to these very confined conclusions.

Your discussion at the top, claiming that morality is a relative concept, whatever you make it up to be, and claim that God's morality is subjective, sounds like nihilism to me.

Here is more logic:

what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. 20 From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. 21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools

Romans 1:19-22

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. . . .

Romans 1:25

J believes there is a God who created this world. The rest of his logic follows.

 

[Farm Boy]

Is that the same way in which climate scientists thrive by making up climate change?

You really going to try and throw that at me? No, not in general. But it might be the way in which quacks make up bald-faced lies about the dangers of vaccines or firefighters start fires.

In general, I would prefer if my opinions were treated as coming from an individual, not an amorphous group which may or may not hold the positions you ascribe to them.

Very well. With the respect that is due(which is real, not insignificant ) You are wrong.

 

[onejayhawk]

Is that the same way in which climate scientists thrive by making up climate change?

In general, I would prefer if my opinions were treated as coming from an individual, not an amorphous group which may or may not hold the positions you ascribe to them.

Those are fighting words in some threads.

J

 

[onejayhawk]

J believes there is a God who created this world. The rest of his logic follows.

Much as I appreciate the support, my belief is not necessary. The Abrahamic God was stipulated. This is important, because Abraham's god is not silent. There is no natural relationship between a creator god and a moral authority. That relationship comes from God's teachings.

J

 

[Aroddo]

I'm pretty sure that the whole Adam & Eve story is nothing more than a dirty joke that the ancient people told each other for giggles.

Naked Adam and naked Eve in the garden, and a snake tempting Eve to pick an apple from the tree of Wisdom and eat it?
Come on! This is clearly a metaphor for Adam seducing Eve to palm his apples, suck his snake and thus losing her innocence by by becoming wise in the ways of sex!

The people then must have been rolling on the floor laughing when they heard that the old coot from the ramshackle hut at the edge of their village incorporated that story in his "holy" text!

 

[Hygro]

Entirely divorcing legal structure from moral structures is barbarity. There are some things to which laws pertain that are essentially raw functions of efficiency. There are many more which are not. There are some where efficiency is actively unjust to a small minority and that is enough reason to be inefficient. You can focus your mental energy on legality and "what" does this law do. "What" are its effects? But once you get into "why" should we pass or not pass enforce or not enforce this law, you are into morality and ethics whether you would like to admit it or not. At least we are if we are going to pretend to live in a representative democracy where citizens are at least nominally capable of caring about the interests of their countrymen rather than being 100% egoists.

Which isn't what I was saying at all. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't ascribe morality to things because the law says something about it. We should ascribe morality to things because they have a certain moral character.

Perhaps God did not want to be married to philosophy, but his followers decided to go that route any way.

The whole issue with God being thought up by humans, is conflicting with the actual nature of God, because that nature is not human. We are hardwired to re-act when we hear things that mess with our sensibility, but yet doing so re-inforces that we create God ourselves. However there are too may points of evidence outside ourselves to relinquish the fact that God exist outside of our thoughts.

But it's pretty immaterial because as you say, we suck so hard at comprehending God's nature that to use a modern interpretation of an ancient interpretation (or metaphor) as the basis for what is surely universally true is certainly going to be our own projections. So while we can discuss perhaps what the nature of God might be, to assert anything beyond "to the best of my understanding, here's what makes the most sense to me" is worshipping idols.

Spoiler :

You claim that morality is relative in the absence of an absolute standard. You believe there is no God, and therefore there is no absolute standard.



Then you claim that even if there was a God, His concept of morality is no better than yours.



Is this what you are going to tell Him?



I follow J's logic.



Without God, "Life is quite absurd, and death's the final word." No this does quote does not come from the Bible.

Without God.....





Your discussion at the top, claiming that morality is a relative concept, whatever you make it up to be, and claim that God's morality is subjective, sounds like nihilism to me.

Here is more logic:





J believes there is a God who created this world. The rest of his logic follows.

I appreciate that you're trying but I really don't know how to bridge the gap between your misunderstanding and what I'm saying. It's already pretty clear you're on the wrong track when your psychoanalysis puts me as a nontheist when I've been making my personal case for the existence of God on this website for over ten years.

Nihilism is the belief that all truth is subjective and nothing matters.

If...

If God does not exist then nothing matters and all is subjective​

...Sounds like rational logic to you you have premises of what things mean that are rooted in your head divorced from actual cause and effect. And premises that I or most others in this thread don't share. For the sake of communication, you cannot assert these things as true without proving them evidentially and/or logically within appropriate epistemes.

Or to think that just because I assert that how historically Abrahamic religions have described God's morality as God's subjective morality then therefore even if God of any form exists, I find my subjective values equal. That doesn't follow at all as you can value one subjectivity over another. There's no reason you have to place your self at the top of any such hierarchy. Why would you presume that?

(What I suspect you're doing is assigning categories and sides to what I'm saying and then arguing against them without considering that what I'm saying doesn't conform to your categories and your sides to begin with.)

We need to get our signal chain correct, and take heed of OJH's mention to El Mac that we should not think of a limited God. "Meaning" is a human psychological-emotional concept based on our own physical biology. To feel something or life has meaning is a physical state.

If your meaning has been trained to be married to the concept of the particulars of your religion, then it would make sense that you would think your religion created that meaning. That would be wrong. Your ability to have meaning gave meaning to your religion. That your religion tells you that it supplies your meaning is just a nod to how effective and powerful the programming of your religion gives you back. Pretty amazing stuff when we think about it.


The thing is that discerning between "good" and "bad" is a function of the simplest organisms. It's only with our human complexity that what we consider good and bad is so far removed from what's strictly a survival calculus. Our needs as humans are immensely complex as organisms. But the drive to ascribe yes/good vs no/bad is innate to our biology as well despite that we've given it layers of meta, socially speaking.

Without God we still have an intrinsic drive for ascribing right and wrong that come from a hybrid of biological drive and social mediation. Without God we still have the capability and function of meaning, now free to be anything. Truthfully, even most God believing people get more meaning from work and family and society and bodily function than they do from religion, already, so that's part of why you really don't see much behavioral differences between theistic and atheistic people in the big picture.

 

[Farm Boy]

Which isn't what I was saying at all. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't ascribe morality to things because the law says something about it. We should ascribe morality to things because they have a certain moral character.

Hehehe! Isn't that what I was saying? That the law tends to but does not necessarily coincide with morality? That whole bit about me trying to pick out a law(handicapped parking) that seems in keeping with the morality of the nation and a law(cannibis prohibition) that seems remarkably immoral in totality, particularly by those who have studied the effects of the War on Drugs across racial lines? I think we still tend to try and craft laws out of morality, and that laws should indeed be moral. I've never fit into the lefthand or righthand colums on those DnD alignment tests, not about to start arguing for them now!

 

[Hygro]

Hehehe! Isn't that what I was saying? That the law tends to but does not necessarily coincide with morality? That whole bit about me trying to pick out a law(handicapped parking) that seems in keeping with the morality of the nation and a law(cannibis prohibition) that seems remarkably immoral in totality, particularly by those who have studied the effects of the War on Drugs across racial lines? I think we still tend to try and craft laws out of morality, and that laws should indeed be moral. I've never fit into the lefthand or righthand colums on those DnD alignment tests, not about to start arguing for them now!

You're arguing what people are doing, which is why I said what Narz and you are saying are not mutually contradictory. He's saying what things are and how to approach them, you're saying why things are how they are and how people feel they/actually are approaching them.

I guess I just feel like you're using what I'm saying as a proxy to debate something else, which is fine, but I'm not always the best at discussing thoughts that I'm not having at the moment