Recently I participated in a brief exchange on Shelfari that annoyed me. On a science fiction thread a commenter said he (or she) had recently read Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and had enjoyed it even though the fictional conceit was off base. I asked why and the response was “His worldview is off-base because it is humanistic – it excludes God.”
That annoyed me. Actually, it pissed me off. The exchange ran a little while and then I suggested it be moved or abandoned. The admin allowed that it was a troublesome thread and it would be better to just stop it. I withdrew (except for one more exchange about why it had troubled me since as it continued it turned into a typical “does god exist” thread. My annoyance was with the assumption that stories can be judged automatically off-base because they don’t take into account a particular belief.
When pressed, the original commenter admitted that it was Asimov’s world view in general that was the problem—which means that the beliefs (or disbeliefs) of the author were used a priori to judge the quality of the stories.
Here’s the problem with that: fiction is about the human condition and the writer is responsible for getting the character and interactions within a story right. In other words, to tell the truth about people, how they feel, what they do, why they think or act certain ways. To do this, the writer must imaginatively assume the viewpoint of the characters (to greater or lesser degrees) in order to treat them honestly so what is then written about them is a true picture.
To do that, the writer must be an observer, a very accurate observer, a student of people, of humanity, even of civilization and culture.
To claim that a writer cannot write truthfully about the human condition unless he/she already holds a particular world view is sheer, slanderous nonsense. At its most basic, it suggests that to hold a particular world view might guarantee that a writer not only can but will write the truth, and that simply doesn’t follow.
But further, it suggests that the truth of human beings is hidden from a writer who doesn’t believe a particular way. Extend that, and you can take the position that a writer of any other religious view must be incapable of writing accurately and truthfully about people as compared to a writer who holds a preferred view. You are immediately immersed in the unsolvable debate over which view is the Truth (capital T) and which false. Or, furthermore, you would have to accept that a believer would be incapable of writing as honestly about atheist characters, since that is a world view not shared.
We would, very simply, be unable to speak honestly and truthfully to each other.
One would have to accept that stories written (truthfully, honestly) by a believer would somehow be different than stories written (honestly, truthfully) by an unbeliever. But that would deny the universality of human experience.
On a meaner level, this is a denial of agency. It’s very much like the argument put forth by those who think Shakespeare is a pseudonym for another author, one of which is the Earl of Oxford. The argument says that “William Shakespeare” lacked the education and aristocratic sensibility to have penned works of such insight about nobility. This completely discounts the richness of imagination writers must apply to any subject of which they lack first-hand knowledge. It says I, if I were Shakespeare, could not possibly have imagined what I wrote and told the truth so accurately because I didn’t possess the proper “world view.” You can see this argument used against any author or group of authors another group (usually not authors) seek to deny validation.
(I suggest finding a copy of the late, great Joanna Russ’s How To Suppress Womens Writing for a detailed examination of this process.)
It suggests two things that are false—one, that there are human experiences to which only select groups are privy and that no one on the outside can possibly know about, and two, that human experience is not universal on some basic level that underlays all successive experiential additions.
If a religious writer wrote truthfully about two people falling in love and an atheist wrote about the same two people, and both told the truth of what they observed and described the experience of those two characters honestly, how might they differ? For either of them to make the case, within the story, that their world view mattered in the telling of human truth, the author would have to intrude and, to greater or lesser degrees, proselytize. You would end up with a bad story at best, propaganda at worst.
Throw a dozen or two dozen stories on a desk without attribution. No one knows who the writers are. Tell me what the beliefs are of the author of each story. (This presumes excellent stories, truthful stories.) The idea that an atheist, a humanist, would write “off base” stories because of their world view is a denial of agency. What that says is that no writer not a believer could write a truthful story about believers, or that a believing writer could not possibly write a story about atheists.
Nonsense.
On the question of whether the universe would be depicted differently, well now that is a bit more interesting, but the fact is that the universe is how it is and both atheist and believing scientists see it, measure it, explain it pretty much the same way. They may argue over first causes, but in the advent of thirteen billion years since that event, both see the cosmos essentially the same way. Atoms operate the same way for both, gravity is the same for both, the life and death of stars…
But in fact, it was not the stories that prompted that initial remark, but a knowledge of the author’s world view that colored the perception. (Of course this is one more reason I tend to tell people that if they really love an artist’s work, see, hear, read as much of the work as possible before finding out anything about them. The personal facts of an artist’s life can ruin the appreciation for the work.) This is a dishonest gage. It sidesteps the only valid metric, which is, does this story say true things about people?
I won’t go so far as to say that a writer’s world view doesn’t affect the work. The whole point of doing art is to express personal opinions about subjects. But at the level of good art, all authors’ work must hold up in the court of truth, and to suggest that certain world views de facto prevent someone from telling the truth about the subject at hand is overreaching at best. You can certainly say of certain writers “his/her beliefs so color their work that it is skewed from truth” but it is not correct to say “these beliefs guarantee that their work will be skewed from truth.”
It also suggests that personal experience can be disingenuous at its core if it leads to conclusions inconsistent with a preferred world view.
Denial of agency indeed.
Valid points, but this is trying to apply reason to a basically non-rational mindset. (And to call any religion ‘non-rational’ is a description, not a criticism since religion is trying to describe non-rational concepts, to confront death and to define ethical behavior –totally worthy, but not rational.) At least the believer could enjoy the work even if it didn’t chime with his/her dearest beliefs.
Alrighty then. As you took the time to write an entire blog post on this subject, allow me to attempt to state my position a bit more clearly this time around, as I think much of what I said has been taken the wrong way… 🙂
1) I can appreciate something – be it a story, song, movie, etc. – for it’s artistic merit. Considered solely as a work of art, I think Asimov’s “I, Robot” is downright awesome. But there’s the thing: I do not believe that such a thing can be judged *solely* by its artistic merit. As a Christian, I must go a step further and examine its world-view/belief system in light of Absolute Truth – God’s Absolute Truth, to be exact.
And apparently, that’s just not cool with some people.
2) I don’t think that certain beliefs *guarantee* that a work will be skewed from truth; I’m not sure how you got that from my comment. I’ve read books by non-believers that offer spot-on insight into the human condition – insight that I can readily agree with and appreciate. I do, however, believe that certain beliefs *tend* to color the work in question so that it is skewed from truth. And such coloring is quite apparent in some of Asimov’s work.
This does not mean I brush Asimov off entirely; what it does mean is that I take the meat and spit out the bones, so to speak.
Very lucid response. Well stated. I admire your stance. I am glad that it didn’t erupt in a flame war. I think that you are entirely correct.
That said, I disagree that any religion can simply be dismissed as “non-rational.” Most religions start with the premise that God exists. Many then follow logical proofs and arguments based off of observations and tenents. Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, and a few others spring to mind. Especially all the Platonic speculation regarding the Logos. For others they begin with the tenet that there is no God without concrete proof. Then seek to proove or disprove such from that point. Niether of these is particularly invalid after the initial premise is stated.
While the view that Asimov’s worldview was off is offensive in conversation, an individual is free to believe what they will. Every story has its moral, but like most art different people see different things in it(see Nietzsche). If his comments were simply about the story he had every right to feel the way he did.
However, the question then arises, if he did not agree with Asimov’s worldview to begin with and chose to read it anyway, why did he do so? This is a reader that reads through the lense of his own beliefs rather than suspending them for the sake of the story. His own filter for the world. Yet this also is not the issue.
The issue when it comes down to it was the lack of respect for the worldview of another. A lack of tolerance for that view as equal to his own. Is that a reader’s right? Does an author open himself for such criticism? The answer is no. For the reason that it is really the artist being judged, not his work.
I agree with Mark T. Art should be regarded as art. An artist, while putting himself into that art, is something completely different. I doubt Bill Shakespeare was recommending murder by writing Hamlet.
Come now, everything is off base if you don’t believe the truth. How can I trust anyone who doesn’t accept that God guided the hands that wrote the Bible. I can therefore be certain that God changes his opinions from book to book. This is a pity because it means that God is sometimes off-base, and because we don’t know when, we can never be sure of anything. Of course I have a few nagging doubts, which lead me to the idea that a few humanistic flaws may have crept into the scriptures from time to time. That can’t be true though because then man might believe something that Asimov said just as much as a particular sentence in the Bible, and Asimov often contradicts himself. So “I, Robot” is fundamentally off-base, and God is off-base. Holy shit man, I have the vision to see all, I can see the flaws, therefore, the only judge I can trust is myself. I am Base. I am the truth. Other views are interesting, they may even be logical, but if I say they are… Can’t you see the light! No one should be taken seriously without first checking it out with me. Oh my! what if I’m…
So, Ink Slinger, if I understand you correctly, it’s not so much that Asimov is off-base—which implies an inconsistency with a standard everyone can more or less find valid—as inconsistent with your world view. Given that you believe your world view to be based on an absolute, such inconsistencies inevitably affect your perception of the work at hand.
Mark S.—I didn’t take Ellen’s comment as “dismissive” (and she said as much) as simply the case. If, in your view, reason trumps faith, then her description is valid—religion (all religion) deals in matters of the unprovable, i.e. faith. It is de facto non-rational.
Richard—exactly.
Mark T.
No, it is precisely the point I was making. Unproven does not mean irrational. This is a fallacy. Democritus, logically reasoned the existence of atoms without a microscope. Was this irrational? Of course not. An unproven proposition that is believed to be true is known as a conjecture. This is far from being unlogical. In fact, the non-exisence of God is just as unproven as the existence of God. In turn I support the statement, that the concept in which God does not exist has just as much faith locked into it as the concept that God does exist as a logical premise.
This is not simply a belief verses a non belief. Each side has facts that they recognise that the other does not. Does witness testimony to miracles equal scientific observations that are recorded? How would one measure God?
Is it simply the fact that things have not been proven in accord with a particular worldview that makes them irrational in this case? How many theories would then be irrational? Both of these sides have equal weight in irrationality. This is not a simple question of what atoms are in water. This is a question that tends to be far too subjective even for a scientists. A man of faith looks at order in the universe and believes that God created that order. A man without faith believes in the order, but not a creator. Both sides acknowledge the order.
It may be that this is purely a semantic disagreement. When Ellen used the word “non-rational” I took it as other than “irrational,” which does have the dismissive, negative connotations you suggest.
By nonrational I take it as meaning a choice to accept as fact something for which that usual products of a reasoned approach fall short of validating. It is a leap of faith, if you will.
Irrational, on the other hand, is to accept as fact something for which there is ample proof of its unreality. And you are correct, demonstrations of a god’s existence do not fall under this descriptor.
The long history of science (and reason) vs religion (and superstition) is not a history of science proving the nonexistence of god. Rather it has been one round after another of science saying of phenomena “What can account for this?” and then, secondarily, “What can account for this besides god and does the evidence we see support a conclusion that it would be this way with or without?” After which it is Occam’s Razor at work.
In the original thread, I posited that there were two descriptions of god that could suggest agenda, one being the hand-laying, sawdust variety of holy roller literalism exemplified by Pat Robertson, or that of Spinoza, which is an emergent property of nature. (This latter case was ignored.) The one I believe does fit the description of irrational, but not the other, which might be better termed nonrational. After all, god did not drown New Orleans because there are gays living openly in our society. That god is an irrational conception. And while it would be impossible to prove that a god did not do that, it is possible to show that other things—factual things—can just as easily, if not more so, account for it and that to bring god into the equation is not only unnecessary but frankly irrational.
Perhaps I misunderstood. However, once again you yourself label the history of science (reason) vs religion (superstition). Occam’s razor states that the simplist answer, requiring the fewest leaps of logic is generally the correct one. Once again you stress that science is on reason’s side and religion defacto is not. I disagree. It seems that whether God exists or does not, this is more of an ontological arguement than it could ever be a scientific one.
In the case of New Orleans, both of us acknowledge that a hurricane hit. To the scientific mind you present, the vision of God represented is a seperate being from creation and is somewhat anthropomorphic. That God sent a hurricane for some moral reason. Thus you reject it as irrational.
However, to a believer, God is present in all things not simply the guy who got the ball moving. Everything that exists is a part of that God. Since God created all things he made evil and good. Sure there may be plenty of scientific reasons for it to happen, yet who is to say it was not the hand of God that influenced these things…or the hand of man. Man chooses freely between good and evil. Human mistakes are human mistakes. Without them mankind cannot grow or learn. Man has to choose freely between good and evil to truly have a choice. Foolish, selfish, short sighted decisions are just as much his right as wise ones. To blame New Orleans on God, ignores the human right to err. Men knew there were issues with the levies. They chose to neglect them. Man also knew all about the hurricane seasons in the Gulf. God might have made a pattern, but man chose to ignore it.
Sorry, I’m getting argumentative. Next I’ll be quoting philosophers at you;) My point is that scientific proof of God is something that will never happen. How do you measure God? Hey mister, can you come back and do the miracle again so we can get some decent readings? The subject is too intertwined with a subjective view of reality. Coincidence, luck, act of God…events get interpreted in these frames. A lady doesnt get crushed by a falling building that collapses all around her. How does she interpret it?
I really don’t see a scientific basis in the argument. Both sides of it appear firmly entrenched ontologically.
—-Mark S.
p.s.
Science is the grandchild of mythology and the child of alchemy.(Of course, philosophy was a favorite uncle);P
p.p.s. Perhaps I didn’t read clearly. You are not stating Spinoza’s or a diest concept of God as irrational, but the anthropomorphic “Pat Robertson” version as irrational? Spinoza is “non-rational.”
If you mean nonrational in the sense that it is something that eludes the grasp of reason, a depth dimension of the human psyche that cannot be appropriately expressed in rational language, or that it can only be grasped intuitively and expressed in symbols…not simply a leap of faith, then I concur. If this is what you meant then I agree.
I get the feeling I have now made a gargantuine mountain out of the proverbial molehill. Please accept my apologies for the thick skull and low, sloping brow.:D
p.s. Ink Slinger—since theologians have been arguing and debating it for 2000 years (in the case of Christianity) and have come to no consensus, just what would be this Absolute Truth against which all things are measured? It seems to me that the first step in making critical assessments is a solid description of the tool being used.
Things to south the instant anyone starts attempting to define “Absolute Truth”.
I spent a little more than 5 years trying to tease out a coherent definition of absolute truth before I was [accidentally] shown the only possible Absolute Truth – namely, that there can be no Absolute Truth that is *shared*. Each of has our very own versions of “Absolute Truth”, and theres not a thing anyone can do to change that.
The clearing of the webs before my eyes came bicamerally: first, I stumbled across a fantastically insteresting book: “On Christian Truth”. Yes, read that again! “Christian Truth”! Not “Truth and Christianity”, or “Christianity’s Search for Absolute Truth, but “Christian Truth”! The book argues, persuasively, that there is a separate and distinct Christian Truth which can be used to guide the followers of Christianity. It goes even further to argue that True Christians should never allow themselves to be exposed to anything which may tend to alter their preconcieved position that only Jesus – through the bible mind you – has Usable Truth, all of which is Absolute Truth if it flows directly from Jesus’ teachings in the book, or from jesus’ appointed ambassador to Planet Earth, the not very Honorable Pope.
The second opening came when I watched a couple very close to me split after a run of close to 20 years. Each of them had what they considered the “Absolute Truth” about ‘what was going on’ with their so-called marriage (which had been dead for over 10 years anyway). Each party had an absolute truth that maintained greater than 90 degrees of difference, and each side could make rational and compelling arguments why theirs was the only True one. This is right in line with the pseudo-christian book (infra), which is unintentionally asserting that Truth is what we choose to believe, and that Absolute Truth is just a cleaner and slighly better copy of plain Truth.
All truth – whether “absolute”, “inferred”, “religious”, etc., is true only to the person percieving it… I don’t see any way to change that in the next 25-50 years (the latter part of which I will most certainly be dead for anyway).
er… That first sentence should have read “go south” as opposed to “to south”. Doh. I such at reviewing my posts before placing them – sorry!
—“namely, that there can be no Absolute Truth that is *shared*.”
And that is absolutely true. 🙂
Excellent point.
Mark S.—the short answer is summed up in your p.p.s. Yes, that is what I mean. Roughly.
You mentioned ontology. The problem with the Pat Robertson approach is exactly that what he (and his ilk) try to link causally are of two separate ontological orders (the same reason telekinesis and so forth doesn’t work). How my decision of a morning to cheat on my taxes, say, can result in an earthquake killing thousands is simply applying a false causative to explain a “moral” position with physical consequences. Non-causal relation.
Spinoza’s conception of god is so intertwined with nature itself as to be ultimately one in the same, so on a very basic level to say “god is present in all things” is absolutely true—and in the context of religious dogma absolutely beside the point. To bring this back to my original dissension with Ink Slinger, to make the claim that Asimov’s fiction is “off-base” because it excludes god is, by this metric, an absurd claim because Asimov, being a scientist, was intimately involved with the understanding of nature and therefore god. God-as-nature, to be sure, and I doubt he would have disagreed with this characterization.
But no need to apologize, this has been a good discussion, and that’s what it’s all about.
Mark T.,
I fail to see how the arguments of the last two millennia cut across the issue at hand. What is it about the disagreements of the last 2000 years that makes a Christian-theist stance untenable? How does it put you in a position to rationally discount theologians?
Because, quite simply, there’s been virtually no consensus among the various doctrinal “schools”—Absolute Truth for one generation differs from that of another. All they’ve agreed upon is that they believe there is a creator-god and that he got a virgin pregnant and arranged things so the resultant son was executed. All the rest has been an unsettled debate. So I asked a simple question—just what is this Absolute Truth which is supposed to wash away all doubt?
And to be clear, I don’t discount theologians, any more than I discount philosophers—they are all engaged is the only worthwhile (and quite humanistic) game around, trying to find meaning in life.
You’re avoiding the question. Do you really think “Absolute Truth” is up for grabs? It wouldn’t be “absolute” if it was.
Where exactly do you think the debate within Christianity really centers? Is there really a broad debate about the “Creatorhood” of God? No. Is there debate about the nature of salvation? Not really. The “debate”, as you term it, is really about minor issues, relative to the core.
Now for the Big Question: if there is no Creator God, how is there *any* meaning, and, hence, how is “the only worthwhile game around” (as you put it) anything but blind, meaningless groping around in ultimate meaningless? As Crosby, Stills, & Nash said, “Beneath the surface of the mud… there’s more mud… surprise”. Better to just sit around and play Halo, don’t you think?
Well, once you start claiming someone is avoiding the question, it’s time to look in the mirror. I asked you simply What Is It? You haven’t answered that question. Nor, really, have any of the philosophers or theologians. They try. They grapple. Some think they get pretty close. Frankly, there is debate about “creatorhood” (cool word, that): it’s bound up with the nature of creation, how it unfolded, whether it was, on the one hand, something that happened in Six Days with the utterance of a word or something that occurred over billions of years. Theologians of differing sects disagree over this. I’d say that’s a biggy. As to the nature of salvation, well, there is debate over the means of obtaining it, but no one to my knowledge has yet defined exactly what it is or really from what. Furthermore, did it not already “happen” when Jesus was crucified or is there another step or ten? Seems to me there is debate over that. These are not, to my mind, minor issues, but central, and if indeed they were minor, why then would there be 38,000 Christian denominations and sects? If they all agreed over the big things, why should the minor things keep them apart? Because they also disagree over what is minor and what is major.
If there is no “Creator God” where do we get our meaning? As far as I can tell, from the same place we’ve always gotten it. From each other, from our culture, from the work we do living our lives. It’s your choice if you spend your time mindlessly groping or living constructively. The reason the face of god changes on a regular basis is because people come to new conclusions about the meaning of life and thus god has to change to keep up—one example being the Big Change between Old Testament Yahweh and New Testament God the Father. People develop meaning over time and in the case of believers (in my opinion) such meaning is then covered in a blanket of theology to make it seem more worthy. This is not to say belief is insincere or disingenuous—it’s merely a way to organize the changes and fit them into a story that eases the process.
But I will answer your question. Do I think Absolute Truth is up for grabs? No, but I think it’s a deceptive term. People see the word Absolute and immediately think of concrete, unchanging things, when in fact Truth is an ongoing process, bound up with recognition. Truth changes—changes you, changes me, changes itself. To say something like that is Absolute and not have it misunderstood requires considerable self-knowledge. The process of truth, finding truth, living truth, recognizing truth is an ongoing, ever-renewing thing and if pursued honestly is an absolute. But it’s not A Thing, which is the way it seems to be used usually in these dialogues. So when I asked you to define it, I was not being evasive. I was, however, being subversive.
The nature of Truth as I just described it, btw, is central to the work of fiction—that’s what we do is try to tell a truth couched in a story and the better we do at it the richer the story.
As a Christian, I believe that God is the ultimate absolute truth – the true essence of being and reality who is the Author of all truth. It is by Him – and consequently, by His Words in Scripture – that all things are to be measured. There you are.
You wrote that “there is debate about ‘creatorhood'” and that it is “bound up with the nature of creation, how it unfolded, etc.”. You are referring to the difference between creationism and theistic evolution, I think. Yet, in the end, do not both sides believe that God is the author of the universe, whether He created it in a day or a billion years? That is what I meant when I said there is no braod debate among Christians about the “creatorhood” of God.
As for the nature of salvation, all orthodox Christians believe that it comes by grace alone: it is not works-based. God forgives you of your sins and you are cleansed in the blood of Christ. Done deal. Justification is effective immediately; sanctification is ongoing, as the Christian is conformed more and more into the image of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.
You say you believe that truth is always changing. As I understand it, that means you believe truth is subjective rather than objective. Am I correct?
Okay, excellent. “God is the ultimate absolute truth.”
Now. What does that mean?
I’m not being facetious. There is this concept you’ve named which you call “God” and you say about it that it is “the ultimate truth” and leave it at that. Even were I to agree with you, I would still not have any idea what that actually means.
Skip that for the moment.
I think if you ever saw an argument between a die-hard creationist and a theistic evolutionist you wouldn’t dismiss their differences so lightly—they don’t. The difference (to them) determines the nature of their god. But I’ll concede your point.
Where we part company, I think, is in the nature of approach toward the universe.
Again, with the salvation thing—I read your words and I end up asking, well, fine, but what IS salvation? Going to heaven? Feeling good when you get up in the morning? Suddenly finding it within me to treat people better? And then you throw in another term which everyone assumes they understand—grace—but frankly is just as semantically squishy as salvation.
But you do add a wrinkle. “…the Christian is conformed more and more into the image of Christ through work of the Holy Spirit.” Okay, that’s a bit more concrete. In other words, the Christian is presumed to become more like Jesus.
Again, though—what does that mean? The only thing we have to hand to know what that is is the Gospel and that’s a portrait that has been modified and added to over the centuries, but isn’t real clear on who he was, only on what he did. And then, add to that, is the assertion that he was, basically, God, which kind of puts him out of reach in terms of achieving similar state.
But that’s all right, it’s a starting point, and we then have all the work of all the great theologians over the centuries who tried to refine that portrait into something on which to base direction. So it’s an ongoing process (which I sort of stated) and probably looks today nothing like it did in 300 C.E.
Which brings me to the point of answering your last question. Yes, absolutely subjective. 🙂 Are you familiar with Hume? He asserted that all knowledge comes to us always and only through the senses and therefore is subject to interpretation and limitations. That’s a simplification. But the upshot of that is, that what people always do, with regard to anything, is arrive at a conclusion. That conclusion may sync with reality quite closely—and we have developed techniques to assure they do if used properly—but in the end, we make a conclusion. That is subjective. It can be a subjective conclusion about objective matters, but it is ours.
The best we can do is work continually to achieve a clearer understanding, and that is the process I described.
But it is also a construct. Truth is a subject of profound meaningless to a rock. Probably also to an amoeba. And, being a science fiction writer and believing as I do that there are other sentient beings in the universe, the truth we construct/conclude/recognize does not obligate other species to acknowledge it the same way.
Now, back to the question of what exactly is this god you assert is the ultimate truth. What is the nature of this truth? Mere existence? Just the fact (or assumption, depending on your viewpoint) that he exists? Because that doesn’t offer a lot to distinguish it from simple existence sans deity.
I’ve mentioned Spinoza a couple of times and you haven’t responded. I’ll add a name. Hegel. Both of them viewed god and nature as one and the same. That in order to be self-consistent, god would necessarily have to be every single atom in the universe and manifest through existence. In Hegel’s perspective, therefore, life becomes entirely an emergent aspect of god, asking itself questions. That, in a simplified way, you and I having this conversation is only god talking to itself.
Nature and god, in Spinozan concepts, is like a Moebius strip, one on each side, interchangeable and continuous.
Our understanding of that by necessity is an ongoing examination—truth seeking. One conclusion of that model is that the only valid form of “worship” then is to examine and understand nature.
What is absent from this, of course, is the anthropomorphized personification of god and the rejection of such an object as in any way “personal.” The only way in which god cares for us is when we care for each other.
So, yeah…I find the traditional model which you seem to ascribe to be kind of beside the point. A story.
God is the source and essence of absolute truth because He is omnipresent (present everywhere), omniscient (all knowing), completely understands what is real, what is right, and what is true, and because He made ALL things.
Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood when I say that God is present everywhere. By that I do not mean that He is IN nature (per Spinozan concept), but simply that He is present in all parts of the universe at all times.
Salvation, very simply, is this: being saved from the righteous judgment of God upon the sinner, through blood of Jesus Christ, who made atonement on the Cross. That is justification. It means the righteousness of Jesus is reckoned to the sinner so the sinner is declared by God as being righteous under the Law. It comes by grace alone because the sinner has done nothing to deserve it – it is the work of God entirely. And yes, those who are justified will go to heaven when they die.
Being conformed to the image of Christ (sanctification) involves the Holy Spirit working in the justified person to produce more of a godly character and life (Phil. 2:13), so that he may live more in accordance with what the Scripture teaches. This process will not be completed until after death, when both the soul and the body of the justified person will be made entirely perfect.
Now to the main subject at hand…
If truth is subjective and based on the personal interpretation of the individual, then is not morality – which is based on truth – subjective also? If for example, I feel it is right to murder someone, and then act upon that belief, by what standard do you call it murder? By what standard do you even call it wrong?
I look at such an action and condemn it as wrong because God condemns it as wrong, in His Word – the 6th Commandment to be exact. But since you believe that God does not exist, what objective standard of right and wrong do you have?
Okay, we can cut to the chase now. I find what you describe limited and really rather simplistic, plus it is entirely self-centered—it is about your relationship with a presumed deity who will take care of you. Nothing wrong with that, but it is simply small.
The objective standard of morality is the recognition of The Other—the acknowledgment that we are all essentially the same and therefore should accord respect and regard equally. To murder someone else is to murder that within me that is the same.
That and you learn.
But we can wrap this up now. I don’t accept your recipe. I left it a long time ago. I grew out of it. It is possible to be a “true believer” and leave behind the less important elements (namely, the mythology) and grow into something else.
You may yet discover this. You’re stuck now on the prescriptive aspect of all this.
Just as in physics, Einsteinian relativity does not supplant Newton but includes it as a smaller aspect of the larger picture, so it is in moral development. However, it’s not my intention here to convince. This has been a decent exchange and I thank you for your patience and politeness. I understand where you’re coming from now. I hope I’ve given you something to ponder as well, but if not, so be it, and have a good life.
Ah, well, I appreciated the discussion… even we still (strongly) disagree 🙂 Adios.