VANESSA'S AMAZING INSIGHTS....

Overview and thoughts.

So, basically, the speaker on Tuesday challenged us to consider four possibilites within the framework of two questions:
1. Where do our morals come from?
2. What's the point of having them, and opposing evil?
The following are my thoughts within the four options he gave us. (If you can think of a fifth, please let us all know, cuz I can't think of any other options.)

1. There is no God.
So basically, the arguement is that if there is no God, our morals came from something that we developed as a way to survive within a community.
The problem this poses with me:
Doesn't evolution teach us "natural selection", "survival of the fittest"?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I gathered from highschool Science is that all of the species that exist today exist because all of the weaker links in the chain of survival have died out by natural selection-- nature favouring the strong to survive.
Ok, so if this is our situation, and there's no God, does it make sense to create and inforce laws that protect the weak? Why do we feel a moral obligation to take care of sick or even brain-damaged babies, elders, people with disabilites?
Well, obviously, our society believes in equality for all people. But evolution doesn't teach equality. It teaches that only the strong have survived, and are more worthy of surviving for the pure fact of being strong. (We like to give ourselves credit!!)
So at the same time in history where we're weeding out the evolutionary changes that don't work, we're also busy developing moral conscience. One points to selfishness, the other to what's good for the community. You could argue that we were finished weeding out the weak links before we developed morals, but our society would have long died out if there were no rules in place while we were living with each other. Let's face it. Unless our ancestors were all hermits, we have needed morals as long as we've been human.

So our two choices for this theory are:
1. We were in the process of developing morals at the same time that natural selection was working out the kinks in our genetic material (which can't explain our conscience anyway) -or-
2. We first evolved into our current - what science saw as "best" - state as functioning humans, then developed morals.

A final question:
Without God, we are very much alone. Our views are very selfish. So if it's each man for himself, what's the point of community?

2. God is morally good, but not all powerful
To form this belief we must assume that if God was all powerful in his goodness, no evil would be able to exist. Evil exists, therefore God is not all-powerful.
If there's a case at all for good not being all-powerful, than evil must be stronger than good, because if good were strong enough (even just a little bit stronger than evil), it would have defeated evil.
If evil is stronger, then how could good exist at all? Don't you think evil would have entirely overtaken and killed us all?
Well one could argue, "But if God is all powerful, wouldn't he have defeated evil by now?"
But a perfectly good God (even if not entirely powerful), believes in free will, and will not force the truth on people.
Have you ever noticed how evil is louder than good? Someone who is blatently wrong will always state their case louder and more persistantly than someone who is right. The one who is right will sit back, let the other blow off steam, and then quiety show the person reason IF they are willing to listen.
An all-good God would not force the world to be all-good if they don't want to be (assuming that there's an evil force that fights for our attention. And if there's not, then we have no arguement against the limited power of good).
So basically, if God is morally good, he has to be all powerful, or the more-powerful evil would have overtaken and destroyed all good.

3. God is all powerful but not good
If this is the case, there's really only one thing to do. We should rebel against this synical God; he deserves it.
Wait... How do we know how to rebel if we don't have a God that has a perfect will? How do we rebel against something that's not good? By doing good? We all know that rebelling means being bad, not good. Could it be that the way we are wired gives us away? If we are rebelling against God, as we all have, then his will must be good, or why would we rebel? No one thinks "Oh!! That evil God is so horrible, I'm gonna show him what's what by being extra good to tick him off."
Within this view of a synical God poses the question of why he would bother creating us. If he doesn't really "delight in us", as the Bible says, then it must be some sick joke. But a partially good God wouldn't wire us to have morals so he can torture us. The only option is that he's entirely without good, and a God that's void of good would not know how to wire us to have good instincts. Someone void of good cannot create people with insticts to do good. He could not have the moral capacity to do so.

4. God is all powerful and good.
Well, as you can tell by the way I've handled the last three situations, I have no problem with this statement.
I believe that we have no reason to be upset about evil unless there's a good and powerful God that has the power to defeat all evil. Why he chooses to defeat some evil, and not others, only He knows. But firstly, he probably defeats a lot of evil that we never see or bother to give him credit for, because most of the time he keeps us so safe that we don't even have to see all the danger he's kept us from. Secondly, if God chose to never let anything bad happen to us, we would use God as a "Genie", and he would merely become someone who grants all of our wishes, without reguard to his own identity.(Remember how sad the Genie from Aladdin was?) If our prayers were instantaniously answered all the time, we would have no use for faith, and if we have no faith, then we do not have the free will to choose to have faith or not.

A few points to chew on:
*Evil is anything that is in opposition to the perfect will of God. [If God's will is not perfect, how do we define evil?]
*Temptation occurs when someone wants you to fail; testing occurs when someone wants you to pass.
*Suffering is a reality. We get to choose why we believe it's there. It's because God gives us free will that we can choose to believe what's contrary to his nature.
*Our deepest moral judgements are not deceptive. It's nice to know that we can trust our moral conviction.




Vanessa...you rock!