I know this isn’t typically a theology forum, but since we’re here.....
The counter-argument to this is that if there is an objective morality, then you could reasonably expect that an all-knowing God would know what it was. So when God (you believe) gives laws and tells you they apply universally, you might reasonably think they were objective, without necessarily knowing why.
Having said THAT, I’ve seen some theology textbooks that state that God has absolute freedom to make morality whatever he says it is, and if that’s not subjective I don’t know what is.
There is of course the argument that deities are mind projection fallacies in their entirety....
I’m also not sure about the idea that you need a mind in order to have meaning. If you make a robot that prefers to crawl towards lights to recharge itself through its solar panels, you’re making something on a continuum of more and more sophisticated feeding creatures, topped (arguably) by ourselves, who think that food is good and starvation, bad. Where does meaning begin? Arguably when you begin processing information—something sophisticated enough to be called a mind is not necessary to get started.
Fair enough; I was intending exactly a broad and unsophisticated definition of mind. An information processing unit should be all that’s required. It does still put a damper in “universal meaning” or, in an argument I had with a theist a long time back, the idea that the rocks and the trees and “creation” in general “groaned” when Adam and Eve sinned—as if these objects could care about such a thing were they not possessed by pixies.
That having been said, the passage your friend was referring to (Romans 8 22) is basically saying that the difference between good and evil is a matter of life and death, not just for us, but for everything. And singularitarians around here tend to think something quite similar. One group think there is a good God, and the others are trying to make one....
I’ve seen some theology textbooks that state that God has absolute freedom to make morality whatever he says it is, and if that’s not subjective I don’t know what is.
Presumably, if God is omnipotent he has the power to transform something from being subjective to being objective. I mean, once you’re already breaking the rules of physics, the rules of logic aren’t too far away.
I know this isn’t typically a theology forum, but since we’re here.....
The counter-argument to this is that if there is an objective morality, then you could reasonably expect that an all-knowing God would know what it was. So when God (you believe) gives laws and tells you they apply universally, you might reasonably think they were objective, without necessarily knowing why.
Having said THAT, I’ve seen some theology textbooks that state that God has absolute freedom to make morality whatever he says it is, and if that’s not subjective I don’t know what is.
There is of course the argument that deities are mind projection fallacies in their entirety....
I’m also not sure about the idea that you need a mind in order to have meaning. If you make a robot that prefers to crawl towards lights to recharge itself through its solar panels, you’re making something on a continuum of more and more sophisticated feeding creatures, topped (arguably) by ourselves, who think that food is good and starvation, bad. Where does meaning begin? Arguably when you begin processing information—something sophisticated enough to be called a mind is not necessary to get started.
Fair enough; I was intending exactly a broad and unsophisticated definition of mind. An information processing unit should be all that’s required. It does still put a damper in “universal meaning” or, in an argument I had with a theist a long time back, the idea that the rocks and the trees and “creation” in general “groaned” when Adam and Eve sinned—as if these objects could care about such a thing were they not possessed by pixies.
Well, yes.....
That having been said, the passage your friend was referring to (Romans 8 22) is basically saying that the difference between good and evil is a matter of life and death, not just for us, but for everything. And singularitarians around here tend to think something quite similar. One group think there is a good God, and the others are trying to make one....
Presumably, if God is omnipotent he has the power to transform something from being subjective to being objective. I mean, once you’re already breaking the rules of physics, the rules of logic aren’t too far away.