re question for those with popular morality in article david terminus ericsson se david bold writes in article freenet carleton ca ad freenet carleton ca james owens writes you seem to be saying that god being unknowable his morality is unknowable yep that s pretty much it as i understand it the sadducees believed that the torah was all that was required whereas the pharisees the ancestors of modern judaism believed that the torah was available for interpretation to lead to an understanding of the required morality in all its nuances talmud the essence of all of this is that biblical morality is an interface between man and yhwh for a jew or christian and does not necessarily indicate anything about yhwh outside of that relationship although one can speculate the point i m trying to make is that we only really have the bible to interpret and that interpretation is by humanity i guess this is where faith or relevation comes in with all its inherent subjectiveness god being unknowable i can t comment on his motives but it would be distressing if he allowed us to misunderstand him through no fault of our own for sanity s sake we must assume if we believe in him at all that his message comes through somehow the question is whether it comes through immediately to every individual or is contained in a complex canon that must be interpreted by experts in consultation with one another or is transmitted directly through appointed representatives who are free to interpret extend and modify the canon if god s message is indeed mediated the further problem arises as to whether the individual under stands the mediated message fully and clearly since the responsibility for understanding lies ultimately with the individual we must assume that god in his benevolence guides each individual to the appropriate source for that individual whereof the person may or may not drink metaphysically if there are multiple moral codes then there is no absolute moral code and i think this is theologically questionable no there may be an absolute moral code there are undoubtably multiple moral codes the multiple moral codes may be founded in the absolute moral code as an example a parent may tell a child never to swear and the child may assume that the parent never swears simply because the parent has told the child that it is wrong now the parent may swear like a trooper in the pub or bar where there are no children the wrongness here is if the child disobeys the parent the parent may feel that it is inappropriate to swear in front of children but may be quite happy to swear in front of animals the analogy does not quite hold water because the child knows that he is of the same type as the parent and may be a parent later in life but you get the gist of it incidentally the young child considers the directive as absolute until he gets older see piaget and learns a morality of his own your example is complicated in our age by the thin line between morality and politeness you might have said burp for burping and swearing carry about the same stigma today if you are talking about taking the lord s name in vain as a serious transgression then this example is more a case of hypocrisy than of varying moral codes if there is an absolute moral code propositions or laws in that code apply absolutely and universally by definition conceivably some moral codes could be subsets of the universal code as you say at the outset so for example god s code could include thou shalt not create beings without a hospitable planet to live on but this law would be inapplicable to us nevertheless we would be entitled to suppose that all laws applicable to us are also applicable to god but when you begin to ask what laws might appear in god s moral code you have a sense of the absurdity of the question does god make laws for himself to follow perhaps god is not the sort of being to which the category morality can be sensibly applied james owens ad freenet carleton ca ottawa ontario canada
