Quote Originally Posted by mutton View Post
Is your favour for omnibenevolence purely for personal reasons? Imagine God as a scientist-like entity who creates the world as an experiment and merely observes. Is this scenario inconceivable or abhorrent to you? Also sorry if you explained this earlier.
I didn't explain it earlier, no. I just sort of let it hang.

Basically, yes. I feel guilty enough knowing how many live in absolute misery around the world, and not devoting literally every speck of energy I have to improving things. Imagine how guilty I'd feel if I were omnipotent. We're taught by pretty much all religions (as discussed earlier) that we are to be kind to others and treat them as we would ourselves, but we have a terrible role model in our holy father.

The idea that god is sitting back and viewing us as lab rats in an experiment -- or watching us try to work our own way through a brutish natural life -- is abhorrent to me. As you say, this is abhorrent to me. I can conceive it, it's just a combination of abhorrent and unconvicing.

Quote Originally Posted by mutton View Post
This is a really strong statement. To back it up, you'd have to establish a coherent moral theory. As far as I can tell, believing in morality requires some serious faith—much less faith than belief in the existence of God, and much more faith than belief in induction. I'm not saying this to be a pedantic prick (nor am I to you, VS) with a position like "you're just as bad as them." What I mean is there's say a hierarchy of faiths that looks something like this:

...

So you can draw the line somewhere between morality and god and say only faith in things listed above it is worthwhile. This approach may appear relativist, but it's super hard to argue that any of them except #1 requires absolutely no leap of faith whatsoever.
You're totally right. And I've wrestled with this for a while. My only answer is that, logical or not, we need morality to survive as a species and improve the world. The same cannot be said for religious faith.

Quote Originally Posted by mutton View Post
Your conception of knowledge is sort of loose, even if it's common sense. Is Newtonian physics knowledge? My answer is no, not really. Do you have any knowledge of morality? I believe not.
Mmm, I was more or less using the "common sense" understanding of science. I'm not using it in any philosophically precise way. All I mean is, when modern scientists claim to know something, there are far more rigorous scientific standards in place before you can call it knowledge than there were a hundred years ago.