AJ, your argument is flawed. You impose your understanding of the notion of "God" - one you clearly do not accept - on people who have a very different understanding.

God and free will are not mutually exclusive. The Catholic Church holds the free will of man as a central part of its system of belief. I can't speak too much for other churches, but Catholic belief is something I understand thoroughly.

The Catholic understanding of our relationship with God acknowledges His omnipotence and His omniscience, but also acknowledges that God has equipped us with the capacity to make our own choices and allows us to make them. He offers guidance but does not control us.

Similarly, while He knows what is going to happen, He doesn't cause it to happen. While I understand your suggestion that omniscience requires events to be set in stone, it doesn't require us to simply 'follow the script'. Instead, it requires that God can foresee - but does not control - the decisions we make that lead to those events.

I'm not asking you to accept these principles. As a thinking being, and obviously an intelligent being, you are entitled (even obligated) to make your own mind up. It's not my place to try and influence you. I just offer my explanation so you can form a judgement based on a more accurate understanding of the beliefs you are appraising. I hope that helps.

I'm not sure for which Christians you have identified an 'insurmountable problem'. Certainly none I have met.

Sorry - I thought I had erased that last line. I don't want to be confrontational, because I think that's counterproductive. I apologise for its antagonistic tone.

Otokonoko......... IAM JUST GOING TO SAY YES. Maybe they should bring back witch-burning:) Poor Peter Singer......and the man has done nothing to anyone......Tis, Tis, tis.

Human-nature......the biggest contradiction ever seen.

BLUE

“Instead you ask for proof on matters that most people accept as obvious and fundamental”

Thank you, I take that as a compliment because you’ve got to admit that the capacity of most people, in all societies in all times, to accept things as obvious and fundamental that later turn out to be wrong, is quite prodigious. And very many of these beliefs have included sanctioning the unethical use of violence haven’t they, including the widespread acceptance of slavery.

Slavery - the coerced taking of someone’s labour - is, ethically speaking, indistinguishable from taxation. Libertarians are just the modern abolitionists, who reject for taxation the same arguments that were used for centuries to defend slavery: that it is:
• necessary to social order, otherwise social chaos would result
• approved by the majority, by common sense, etc.
• legal
• sanctioned by tradition
• beneficial to the victim of coercion
• necessary to run public utilities – (as if that were a justification)
• only a madman could disagree
• etc. etc. etc.

It is easy to identify the irrationality of the theist belief in God as supplying ethical solutions. The problems of interpretation involved must resolve into nothing more than an arbitrary assertion, from God’s self-appointed representatives on earth, that their will should be done, usually backed up by force whenever they can, in which they usually managed to do quite well for themselves.

But at least the church fathers explicitly chose faith over rationality, as AlGoreIsRich has just done; unlike Singer.

The modern belief in the ethics of the state is, in its deep structure, virtually identical to the old theist belief in the ethics of God. Statists like Singer invest the state with the same mystical qualities as the theists invest in Yahweh – a decision-making entity; over and above the value of the ordinary individual; representing the highest good; it is all-knowing, all-capable and without selfish interests of its own; it is presumptively capable of correcting for man’s imperfections; it can suspend the natural laws of scarcity in our favour; demand sacrifice;
(cont.)

… and it can kill, rape or rob without these being crimes, and even be rights!

Any evidence of the state’s doing good is taken without account of any countervailing cost – e.g. it fixes recessions - as if we had discovered magic pudding. And any evidence of the state’s doing bad is taken as proving the need for more state intervention!

There’s only one problem: these beliefs cannot withstand rational criticism.

“As for compulsory voting, people don’t have to actually cast a vote.”
That’s not actually correct. The law requires you to “vote”.

“I note that you did not dispute that the common weal is entitled to a return on the input of past generations into current economic operations ...”
No I don’t dispute that. It’s just that you haven’t established that the state represents the common weal, nor that it gives society a better return on past investment than they would otherwise have. It’s an apparatus built for force and demagoguery, not for caring or prudence.

“I read the economics.org site recommended and concluded that no sensible society or state could function on such a basis.”

I understand where you’re coming from. The initial reaction to such radical criticism of government is an emotion like a fear of the abyss; a questioning of so much that has been taken for granted; a frame-shift. However once we understand the state as a protection racket, it has enormous explaining power.

Consider also you have had 10 years compulsory education by the state, and probably more states-sponsored education. *Of course* they have given you a version that the state is justified and necessary – that is implied in their compulsory funding, compulsory attendance, compulsory curriculum.

But how much time have you really spent actually questioning that belief? Was all that uniformisation and regimentation *really* for the benefit of developing the child’s full potential? Or for the convenience, the power, or the purposes of the state?

You have not refuted my or Rothbard’s arguments, you have just replied to the effect that you don’t think it would be “sensible”. But if the thought process by which one reaches a conclusion is logically indefensible, then the conclusion is not sound, is it?

If there were no conflicts of interests, we would not need ethics. If no-one offered to do wrong by force, we would not need ethics. We need ethics specifically to delimit the rights and wrongs of using VIOLENCE.

A group within society claims the right to deliberately kill, claiming it is not murder but “execution”, to deliberately take others’ labour or the fruits of their labour without consent using threats of violence, and claim it is not robbery but “taxation”, in short to exercise an ethical double standard.

The state claims a monopoly of violence, and a monopoly of crime, and this fact passes right under the ethical radar of the high priests of statism like Singer . He just carries on singing its praises in liturgy unfalsifiable, and just happens to be on the state’s payroll, like the hypocrites and Pharisees of old!

A right is something you are justified in using violence to defend. Can we justify violence to pay for Singer to pontificate from his post? No. Can we justify it to stop people having sex with animals? Depends, but I don’t think so.

Can we justify violence to force people to obey our social opinions? No. What about if we hold very strong opinions? No, that doesn’t put the matter in any better position. To enforce our religious opinion? No. Our quasi-religious or moral opinions? If it’s necessary to stop aggressive violence, sure! Otherwise, no.

If that means that so much of the state is illegitimate, then your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to show how the state does not involve this intrinsic ethical double standard “I’m allowed to hit you, but you’re not allowed to hit me”.