Really runner all our talk about sin and moral lessons to be taken from Genesis has us in the shallow end, a nice diversion. The waters run far deeper when you appreciate this book for what it is, a great love story.

A story about a God falling in love with a people and a people returning that love. To quote Rabbi Kushner again "the Bible tells us that God's love for Abraham and for the Jewish people is, like all love, irrational. It cannot be logically explained or understood. God has at least the same right that we do to fall in love with someone and leave others wondering what he sees in her".

To borrow a notion, for Abraham so loved his God that he was prepared to give his son born from the union with Sarah, the woman whom he loved so much he was prepared to sacrifice his first born. Okay he may have been a little tardy but Christians think that a couple of thousand years later God reciprocated that grand gesture of love.

We see ourselves doing desperately irrational acts when we fall in love and it's a deeply human thing, not complying with any notion of sacred love. What could be more irrational than sacrificing ones child for love, and what does it say about that enormity of that love?

To transgress that love is called sinning and while we are not called upon nowadays to sacrifice our children it seems we are often prepared to sacrifice our morality. God it appears is not immune from this affliction; Jonah 3:10 “And God saw their works, that they had turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said he would do unto them; and he did it not.”

Possibly it is an intuitive understanding by Christians that they really stand on the periphery of this intense love story, gathering 'crumbs from the table' where they can, that is at least partly responsible for two thousand years of persecution of a God's chosen people.

Graham –I don’t really have time for this but it is an interesting conversation.

If one is an externalist about moral value then the question ‘why be moral?’ is indeed a serious philosophical issue. (As a Neo-Kantian I would probably answer that it has something to do with our rational nature – but there are other possible solutions to the problem.)

Rather than address the technical philosophical argument I will instead point you in the direction of some interesting work in the field of psychology where it has been noted that capacity to recognise moral values develops along with the development of imagination and empathy. The absence of either imagination or empathy, is a psychological ‘defect’. The consequences of which can been seen (in varying degrees) in conditions ranging from autism to psychopathy. This seems to suggest that there is probably some deep neurological mechanisms at play. While this is still explanation rather justification (a distinction that seems to escape some in this forum) nonetheless it is suggests that perhaps the question is miscast. In other words, for most people (most of the time) the question is more apparent than real. We simply are moral because its in our nature to be so. In any case not sufficiently threatening to justify nihilism.

This is all quite distinct from the more common problem of acrasia – weakness of the will – where we struggle against our individual desires to do what we believe to be right. The issue in these cases is - why be moral in this particular instance? It presumes a pre-existing acceptance of moral value as a motivation for behaviour. (For the reductivists – this is also why morality is not reducible to self-interest)

(If one is an Internalist about moral value, then whole problem just disappears – and it is possible to be a realist about moral values and an Internalist). ---more

“Does the mindless stuff of the universe care whether we abide by moral values?’ is similarly problematic. The question sounds like a real question but in fact is largely meaningless. MINDLESS stuff is not the sort of thing that can care. The universe doesn’t care about the laws of physics either. But WE care and are part of the material universe – so values matter.. in… the universe but not… to… the universe. Morality might be just another oddity, like lakes and trees and language (and our own existence) but it doesn’t follow that it is of no significance, its of significance to us. We are not nothing, we are something, something to whom moral values matter.

Similarly regarding retribution. (Strictly, it is not true to say there is no retribution. We are surrounded by it) In a materialist universe there is no ‘ultimate’ retribution – no perfect justice where everyone gets their just disserts. But perfect justice is quite unnecessary for the existence of moral values. The fact that there are some evil that will never be punished and some good that is never rewarded cannot be the source of moral motivation because moral value is not reducible to self interest – certainly not in this way. Murdering people is not something I would think good, even if I believed I could get away with it – and the mere fact that some people do get away with it, doesn’t change my views about the immorality of murder. ---more

Tristan, Graham,

1 Just because the truth is unpleasant or uninteresting, it does not follow that it is not true.

2. If we decide to receive our morality from God, how do we judge the quality of that morality. Are we to accept without question the ethics/morality revealed to us from god? Did not Abraham question gods ethics in Genesis 18:22....  
 
"...but Abraham stood before the LORD.  
And Abraham drew near and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" ...
 
Surely we must continue to question god's word if in our own conscience we believe it to be wrong.

3. Free will does not require explanation if it does not exist. Just because we cannot predict a persons behavior or just because we think that we are behaving freely does not mean that a person is acting freely; The most that we can conclude is that we do not have enough information upon which to make a prediction of another person's or our own actions. First prove the existence of free will. But in any case see 4.

4. Consciousness and sentience. Have you not heard of "emergent properties of matter" ("the whole is greater than the sum of its parts").

5. Graham's "vexed issue of determinism". Determinism does not necessarily follow from atheism - see point 4. Even if it does - see 1.

6. OK if we accept for the sake of the argument Tristan's statement that "the reference points of free will and sentience are, by their nature, proof of a 'cause without a cause'", how can we know that God is THE cause without a cause and that God is not one of many gods created by the ultimate cause without a cause. In fact if god was created by this ultimate creator, then could it not be that our god and creator is imperfect just as we, his creation, are imperfect. In fact our god's morality may be imperfect - back to point 2. And why cannot matter be the cause without a cause - see 4.

Kenneth

Lev

One of many studies that come up with similar conclusions as this:
# 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census.
# 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes. Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.
# 60% of repeat rapists grew up without fathers. Raymond A. Knight and Robert A. Prentky, "The Developmental Antecednts of Adult Adaptations of Rapist Sub-Types," Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol 14, Dec., 1987, p 403-426.
# 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father. US Dept. of Health & Human Services press release, Friday, March 26, 1999.
# 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. US D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census.
# 85% of children who exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. Center for Disease Control.
# 90% of adolescent repeat arsonists live with only their mother. Wray Herbert, "Dousing the Kindlers," Psychology Today, January, 1985, p.28.
# 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.
# 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse canters come from fatherless homes. Rainbows for all God`s Children.
# 70% of juveniles in state operated institutions have no father. US Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept. 1988.
# 85% of youths in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections, 199

Source: Where's Daddy? The Mythologies Behind Custody-Access-Support

Face the facts!

Runner,

Selective quoting from partisan sources isn't going to help. Especially when there is a sum total of two peer-revieweed journal articles, one which is twenty one years old and the other is thirty years old - which would mean that papers in question were probably dealing with data between thirty and fourty years ago!

The world has moved on a bit since then. Back in sixties and seventies the attitude towards women working was a bit dodgy, the welfare system was a bit dodgy, and childcare was simply not affordable. There have been improvements.

So, I see your two peer-reviewed studies from between 20 and 30 years ago and raise you thirty from the past decade.

http://members.aol.com/asherah/fatherlessness.html

BTW, I was raised in a "fatherless" home. Turned out just fine, thank you very much. I note that you still haven't answered the question on what a woman (or man) should do if they are living with a violently abusive partner. Put up with it?