BobM wrote:If there is no God, then what is the foundation of civil law? If there is no God, then the civil law is only a matter of opinion, and who can claim the right of enforcement of opinion? People, ignorant ones anyway, like to claim that you can't legislate morality, but that is exactly what the greater part of the body of civil law does. Why is murder punishable if it is only a matter of opinion whether or not it is wrong, and why is someone else's opinion of right and wrong worth more than mine? No, there is a law outside of ourselves that applies to all men at all times. We can all agree, maybe, that murder is wrong, but why is it wrong if it is only a matter of opinion?
Consider information. Brother Friend, you will like this. Where does information come from? Does information create itself? Can a blank book fill itself in, or does it require an outside agency? Do computer programs write themselves out of thin air, or is a programmer required? What is DNA, but stored information? Information can not create itself because information is required to create information. But information that can't be read isn't of use, so a reader, RNA, is required. But even with information and a reader, nothing happens without a mechanism for deployment of the read information. To assume that all the incomprehensible amount of information in the universe created itself is, in a word, asinine. Appealing to "chance" as a creator of information-- or anything else--is equally asinine because "chance" has no existence, hence no ability to do anything. The fact of God is both a rational and a logical necessity.
Civil Law? As opposed to Criminal Law? Or are you creating another euphemism for Religious Law? And is said "Law" a matter of mere opinion? Yes, most likely it is. But opinion likely based on a cumulative human experiential knowledge rather than upon divine intercession, divine infusion. And based, as likely was the Book of Genesis, on the desire of non-empirical men to give one another answers for big mysterious questions, and thereby secure moral authority.
And it could well be argued that the purported existence of a God is, itself, nothing more than an opinion.
It is likely that the Book of Genesis is pretty much only a representation of men deigning to answer questions that were, as a matter of knowledge, essentially unanswerable, and a history that was conveyed only through spoken word, thereby taking on a character of being absolute and unquestionable, no matter how wildly distorted that history became over the interpretations of countless generations. After all, wise men were often only "wise men" because they were the most insistent on their own superiority of belief and opinion. That's basically politics, even as we know it today. For all we actually know, Moses was simply a man who was schooled in one of the earliest written languages of men, and deigned record experiential history, along with its non-empirical attribution to mystical powers, perhaps at the very time when this inherited legacy was being adapted into a political rationalization, (the 'political' part meaning the uniting and control of the population by those compelled to do so), whether or not the explanations held veracity. That rationalization, inevitably upon its popularization, became Religion, and, by the extension of brute authority, Law. That record, that became the basis of three major religions, was basically conjecture, myth, and legend that served a political purpose.
Sans the understanding of means and methods of empirically testing unproven belief, enforced Religion was the most expeditious route to effecting social control. And it has performed well in that function ever since. Was it wrong? Perhaps not, since it held a society in cohesion to the mutual benefit of the populus, but also to the immense benefit (profit and prosperity) of those who metered the control. The problem with injecting the name of God into any system of law is that the greatest cruelty and violence becomes not only possible, but essential. For without the taking of life, how can the supposed human representative of the Almighty show his full devotion? And thereby persuade his brethren that he is the chosen one to lead men in a way that is based upon the Law of the Almighty? The sacrifice of human life in the service of popular superstition becomes a necessity, and for the least and most natural of offenses.
We are born ignorant, and absorb what we are taught, whether or not the "course material" of familial/community socialization is factual or imaginary. So that what you have called "civil law" likely emerged from the primitive effort of men to expound upon things for which they lacked the ability to correctly explain. For example, the prohibition of eating pork, since men observed that eating pig meat led to unpleasant disease, never understanding it was due to the trichina worm, a parasite of both pigs and men, assigned the blame to a sign from an almighty deity.
Historically, men have opted to pick and choose among elements of Scripture, according to the times. And that selection eventually goes unchallenged by even religious conservatives. Deuteronomy and Leviticus are filled with passages that sanction rape and violence inflicted by men upon women, and with passages fully endorsing human slavery. Neither of those Scriptural ideas are acceptable today, not even in the most "fundamentalist" congregations. So what went wrong? It's still Biblical, still Scripture, right?
The simple fact is that Society changes without regard to Religion, and, I would argue, rightly so. Any Society that stands stalwartly in a stagnation of belief is a dying Society. The aforementioned issues - sexual violence and human enslavement - were not "dropped" by Religion because God changed His/Her mind, but because those who clung to them were simply abandoned by Society; "left behind," socially speaking. Human Society slowly evolves, intellectually, and drags behind it Religion, kicking and screaming; that's evident today. The same will happen - is happening - with LGBTQ acceptance. It is only a matter of time before "Sodom and Gomorrah" text regarding sexual conformity, held by mainstream Religion, is unknown speech from the pulpit, and thus relegated to the dustbin of Theology. The most primitive of the "faithful" and the most timid of Religious bureaucracies will long cling to anachronistic dogma - until the figurative ax is about to fall - but at that point the foot-dragging doesn't last. Every institution eventually learns how to insure its survival into future generations, even those presumably based upon absolute and immutable belief.
That's the sad thing about death for the devout; they lose their influence over the mores and dogma of the next generation. They aren't around to assure the constancy of belief. That has been so throughout time, yet it seems God opts not to intervene in defense of men's mis-history of Himself/Herself. He/She doesn't seem to object to change. Perhaps He/She simply finds it ridiculous that men pretend to know exactly what's in His/Her mind?