I mean, what do you say to a Jew or Muslim who asks “You don’t believe in my god? Then what’s to stop you from eating pork?” And from that Jewish or Muslim mindset, not even the vegetarian can answer satisfactorily, because his opposition to pork is based on the pig’s rights as an intelligent, feeling creature, and not the pig’s “uncleanliness”. (I say this as an atheist who nonetheless just enjoyed a hot dog, guilty me.)

Clearly, there is a difference between commandments like “Worship only God” and “Do not kill”, a way in which the latter is seen as more serious than the former, despite the former being, in a way, the one and only thing that stands between you and Heaven. Additionally, there must be something to ethics beyond God’s whims — so what is it? Could there be a universe in which it was “good” to cause suffering and coercion, and if not, what’s to stop God from creating such a universe?

I’m also fascinated by the apparent fact that faiths that believe in posthumous punishment don’t reserve it only for committers of “secular” evils, like theft, rape, and murder, but also for nonbelievers. The idea that most humans who have ever lived are right now suffering in Hell kind of takes away the whole common “afterlives were invented to comfort us” idea. (I think the afterlife exists more as a solution to paradoxes about the soul, the classic “dead body problem” of anthropology.)

Please find a completely different understanding of ethics & justice via this essay.

http://www.dabase.org/p9rightness.htm

Plus related essays on God, religion, science and human life altogether.

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-god.aspx

http://www.dabase.org/spacetim.htm

Plus Reality & The Middle (extraordinary Metaphysics with a capital M) via this url (scroll down for the url)

http://www.dabase.org/s-atruth.htm

To me, it makes everything here make sense as to why Christ *had* to came here and die.

My own view is that what you say is correct and that risk is an essential part of ethics. (Clearly this aspect of my view arises out of the Continental tradition) That is we don’t have a calculable good. The risk isn’t just due to limited information. Rather it is because doing good (or evil) is essentially risky.

I think that this view has a lot of affinity for Mormons, give our view of the necessity of this life. (i.e. the veil of forgetting our pre-mortal life being essential for a certain kind of moral freedom) So instead we have to engage in a process of inquiry where we leap beyond our knowledge. Put an other way there is an essential tension between law and justice. It isn’t that law has trouble representing justice. It’s that law is never up to the task. (Clearly a theme in Paul’s epistles) I think in the LDS tradition (especially in 2 Nephi) there is also a tension in the other direction. That is not only is law always doing violence to justice or mercy but that justice and mercy have to take into account the context which is the law.

I think that LDS philosopher ought really engage with these issues of why Mormons demand a probationary period cut off from God and thrown into a world of suffering as a necessity for growth. I think the question of justice really becomes key here. But there are other places. For instance could an eternal being experience the angst due to anticipating death? How can you anticipate death if there is no death? But for us there is, which provides a huge experiential difference.

On one level we recognize this. After all a psychopath with an instinct to hurt who doesn’t hurt seems more praiseworthy than a suburbanite with good instincts who is nice to their neighbors but never goes much beyond that. This has always been a big strain in LDS thought. (Elder Ashton back in the 90′s gave a fantastic talk along these lines, although not exactly making the same point) Mormons reject the idea of original sin, thinking that Christ automatically makes up for any sinful way given us “by nature.” Most Mormons don’t draw the obvious implication that it ought apply to those good by nature as well.

Given that Mormons see this life as some essential test for whatever it was we were as spirits, it seems that what is praiseworthy or blameworthy is what we do beyond the typical. Further it seems a fair bet that our cosmology entails that it is going beyond this that is important for us. Something to think about as we sit in suburban America thinking we are good and are doing enough.

As for arguments for God, I find most of them baloney. The only argument for God I find persuasive are empirical ones.