Glad to hear my response is well received.
Those areas are ones I wonder about too. There is some diversity in how they are presented and while with most of it one position isn't necessarily better than all, I do wonder what the correct approach is.
How theoretical would you get though? I merely ask because in all likelihood there are some circumstances that would fall into highly implausible if not impossible, some of these applying to humanity as a whole and some applying to individuals.
Getting at the particulars of personal convictions is somewhat harder than eternal truths. For myself, I happen to struggle with the entire concept of personal convictions in the "meat offered to idols" sense since I try to align myself with the Bible but I don't really take stock of what my personal beliefs are and tend to consider violating my own set of principles to not be the same thing as violating God's but merely being inconsistent. But then I also struggle to identify what are my own personal convictions are. Most of these "convictions" are not convictions at all but in fact pragmatics.
Good point though about how some things we feel perfectly fine doing today would have shocked the disciples but is also not immoral. For example, in western civilization it is perfectly acceptable for women to wear bikinis at the beach but I would imagine to the early disciples this would be nudity (although some Christians today would probably argue its immoral too because they believe it is immodest).
Hmm, something of this undertaking would also take individuals committed to finding the truth wherever it will take them and that is frankly a very hard position for most people to be in because everyone seemingly has their own pet theory that they cling to. Now, don't get me wrong, I am certainly not saying it is impossible to get at truth but discovery is easy compared to untangling bias.
On your three proposed topics of debate--those are certainly some thorny issues indeed. Of them, the ones I will comment on is the eugenics one (I don't believe in it, aside from the abuses that always seem to arise, much like with euthanasia, as well as the fact that I think there is strong evidence to support environment and free will as having a far greater impact on life) and the detective one . Now aside from the problem you mentioned with implementing a benign version of it there is a far greater issue--the big picture impact. What I mean is that eugenics doesn't work because there are too many forces that act on us to produce the effect we set out to achieve. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make the world better but for something this major it does argue that perhaps there are some forces humanity shouldn't mess with. This is why a utopia, while practically possible, is impossible because it would require human beings to create it and we just can't seem to be able to do that whether because of physical or mental limitations or more likely our inclination to sin.
Re: the detective scenario--This just reminds me of Abraham sacrificing Isaac and how an angel intervened. After all, it isn't that the detective in this scenario is denying Jesus but rather that he is trying to save his friend while his friend is demonstrating his faith. Trying to save his friend through use of his skills may be in some sense be demonstrating faith in God in the same sense that Abraham had faith that God would provide another way than killing his son. In this scenario, the detective is "another way". Saving life is good and being a living witness for Christ is important. Ultimately, God knows what is in your heart even if nobody else does.
By faith do you mean by taking things with a blind guess rather than the more Biblical meaning of faith as loyal trust in God. I consider faith in God to be, although of a greater degree, like faith or trust in other people. In this sense (faith as a blind guess), I can understand your contention with it because I often had tussles with that kind of "faith" which seemed like some spiritual guess work. I wanted to know why. I didn't understand how people could make assertions without anything to back it up. I think morality is something you can rationally assess because it is something happening in our world today so it can be investigated and studied. It was a relief when I came to understand that morality isn't some blind black box of mystical aether.
This isn't a pointless question by any means, and certainly don't feel worthless for asking, frankly, it is good to be concerned with morality. As far as parsing out the particulars of morality being impossible, clearly it isn't because God knows, so its not logically impossible. Now could it be practically impossible for a human being--perhaps in the sense of getting at it 100% but I don't think it would be impossible to get at it to a reasonable degree. Compare this to figuring out the exact particulars of physical reality--clearly it is impossible to get at 100% of everything in existence (I happen to think, unless Jesus is not coming back for a really long time, that we will never map the entire universe out--every rock, planet, star, etc), but that doesn't mean we can't develop a good understanding of the universe even if we can't literally know everything about it either individually or as a species. Likewise, morality might be something like this to an extent, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't explore and map out as much of it as you can because that is going to be useful. Now does moral theory preclude doing this, I would tentatively argue no, although as you did indicate before, it would take a very long time to do. Now I would be interested in the counter arguments too because I don't see anything logically impossible about it nor is it irrelevant because meditating on God's expressed nature (which is in a sense what morality is, its grounded there so any rules we find are going to be essentially outworkings of His spirit) is a good thing.
Based on this I think it would be productive to explore that area you alluded to that is troubling you the most. I think passing it onto someone privately would be the next step to go to since no obvious counter-arguments to what your proposing have, to my knowledge, been made.
There is also the fundamental nature of God, the universe, both seen and unseen (Heaven, Hell, and possibly Purgatory and Paradise, although I don't believe in the third, and find the fourth dubious and not of any great practical importance). That is much less relevant to me though. I am, as you guessed, and as I probably initially overstated, much more interested in the moral rules.
Descriptions for now I think. Applications can come later, except as they serve as useful test cases to refine the descriptions. As such, I would submit that applications to highly theoretical cases are about as useful as stuff that many people in this forum put into practice (to one degree or another of theoretical elegance) every day.
For example: There should be Christians who abstain from all intoxicating drink. There should be Christians who have to have a designated driver 3 days out of the week. Ideally, both should admit, when pressed, that there particular take is not necessarily an eternal truth. More relevantly, there should be people who do things that would have horrified any of the 12 disciples, because their comprehension of physical reality was less than our own.
Good point though about how some things we feel perfectly fine doing today would have shocked the disciples but is also not immoral. For example, in western civilization it is perfectly acceptable for women to wear bikinis at the beach but I would imagine to the early disciples this would be nudity (although some Christians today would probably argue its immoral too because they believe it is immodest).
My preliminary understanding is that it is a truly colossal undertaking to get to the level I'm thinking of on all subjects. I've been told (by just one person) that it is something, given the starting point of moral understanding that exists today even among the best of theologians, would take millions of man-hours, and, in addition, probably billions, if not trillions of dollars spent on systematic data-gathering by professionals to examine the pragmatic outcomes of certain types of behaviour plus the individual leadings of the Holy Spirit in certain cases, and deduce from that God's Will in enough precisely defined cases to back calculate to the theoretical-level rules and double-check them in that fashion.
On your three proposed topics of debate--those are certainly some thorny issues indeed. Of them, the ones I will comment on is the eugenics one (I don't believe in it, aside from the abuses that always seem to arise, much like with euthanasia, as well as the fact that I think there is strong evidence to support environment and free will as having a far greater impact on life) and the detective one . Now aside from the problem you mentioned with implementing a benign version of it there is a far greater issue--the big picture impact. What I mean is that eugenics doesn't work because there are too many forces that act on us to produce the effect we set out to achieve. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make the world better but for something this major it does argue that perhaps there are some forces humanity shouldn't mess with. This is why a utopia, while practically possible, is impossible because it would require human beings to create it and we just can't seem to be able to do that whether because of physical or mental limitations or more likely our inclination to sin.
Re: the detective scenario--This just reminds me of Abraham sacrificing Isaac and how an angel intervened. After all, it isn't that the detective in this scenario is denying Jesus but rather that he is trying to save his friend while his friend is demonstrating his faith. Trying to save his friend through use of his skills may be in some sense be demonstrating faith in God in the same sense that Abraham had faith that God would provide another way than killing his son. In this scenario, the detective is "another way". Saving life is good and being a living witness for Christ is important. Ultimately, God knows what is in your heart even if nobody else does.
Reducing the amount of stuff that is taken "on faith" and removing any reliance on "church tradition" of any sort (especially regardless of denomination of that tradition) as a basis for moral analysis is my goal*at this time.This thread was started in an attempt to see how strongly it could be argued that such a goal is fundamentally impossible given God's nature, and his desires for how he would relate to His People... because that is the impression that I've gotten from a lot of people I've asked for moral guidance in years past at various churches. It really made me feel like I was being told I was worthless, but I've realized I may have been making a fundamentally incorrect assumption about moral theory. Thus I came here. I was hoping to give the most erudite group of Christians I happen to know how to find a chance to at least state their case logically direct me to a still more erudite source who would be willing to talk to me... or else-wise to say "Nope, you've actually got it right, now could you please tell someone what exactly the area(s) you were investigating when the hurt occurred, at least privately, so we can try to direct you to someone who can help you gain a more rigorous understanding of the matter?"*
This isn't a pointless question by any means, and certainly don't feel worthless for asking, frankly, it is good to be concerned with morality. As far as parsing out the particulars of morality being impossible, clearly it isn't because God knows, so its not logically impossible. Now could it be practically impossible for a human being--perhaps in the sense of getting at it 100% but I don't think it would be impossible to get at it to a reasonable degree. Compare this to figuring out the exact particulars of physical reality--clearly it is impossible to get at 100% of everything in existence (I happen to think, unless Jesus is not coming back for a really long time, that we will never map the entire universe out--every rock, planet, star, etc), but that doesn't mean we can't develop a good understanding of the universe even if we can't literally know everything about it either individually or as a species. Likewise, morality might be something like this to an extent, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't explore and map out as much of it as you can because that is going to be useful. Now does moral theory preclude doing this, I would tentatively argue no, although as you did indicate before, it would take a very long time to do. Now I would be interested in the counter arguments too because I don't see anything logically impossible about it nor is it irrelevant because meditating on God's expressed nature (which is in a sense what morality is, its grounded there so any rules we find are going to be essentially outworkings of His spirit) is a good thing.
Based on this I think it would be productive to explore that area you alluded to that is troubling you the most. I think passing it onto someone privately would be the next step to go to since no obvious counter-arguments to what your proposing have, to my knowledge, been made.
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