Is morality arbitrary?

A question I've been pondering: if God decides what's right and wrong, does that make morality completely arbitrary?

Here's an example of what I mean: if God had decided that hatred is good and love is bad, would that be any worse than living in a reality where love is good and hatred is bad? If God truly defines morality, then that reality couldn't be any worse, morally. (Yes, it may involve more suffering, but suffering wouldn't be a bad thing.) If that reality was worse, wouldn't that mean God is subject to some sort of higher moral principle that even he can't control? If God completely defines morality, then making love better than hate would have been a completely arbitrary decision on God's part and there's no inherent reason for it except "God said so."

Is there an alternative explanation that I'm not seeing?

House pictures

My internet access did indeed get set up on Monday, but it took me until now to get around to downloading the pictures from my camera--all two of them. So here it is--my house:

And here's the first home-cooked meal I ate there:

The Move

You haven't heard much from me lately on this blog because I've been settling into my new house, which doesn't have internet access yet. (It's supposed to be hooked up on Monday. We'll see if that happens. I'm writing this at my parents' house.) My house is a townhouse in Clareview (northeast Edmonton). It was built in the late 1970s. I took possession on September 15 and moved a bunch of my stuff there, with my parents' help. I've been gradually buying more stuff for it, like a fire extinguisher and a toaster, and gradually unpacking.

The house is probably the nicest place I saw in my price range while I was looking, but of course it's not perfect. There's a large stain on the carpet in one bedroom, and the doorbell doesn't work. My dad came over and fixed the back doorbell and began to fix the front one, so hopefully it will work soon.

I'll post a picture or two once I have my photos and internet access in the same place at the same time. In the meantime, thinking about my doorbell reminded me of a song, so give it a listen:

Frisbee and philosophy

If you throw a frisbee (or a ball) badly, do you ever apologize to the catcher? Sometimes I do, but lately I've been wondering if that's a bad thing. If I apologize for something minor, does that tell the people around me that I think it's something significant and I expect them to apologize when they do the same thing? If so, our efforts at being nice and humble might be backfiring. It could be making us think we have to be good at stuff before our friends will like us. The "I have to impress people before they'll like me" attitude could make it harder to make friends and grow friendships. Ultimately, it can take away our sense of freedom.

Of course we need to apologize for more significant things, but would it make the world a better place if instead of saying, "I'm sorry for that bad throw," we say, "You should've caught that! It was only 40 feet away from you!"?

Busy weekend

Saturday is the day I take possession of my condo in northeast Edmonton, so I'll be doing some moving that day. Meanwhile, two friends of mine from out of town will be in Edmonton, so I'll get together with them. (They're friends of each other, so this isn't a coincidence.) It's kind of a shame these two things happened on the same weekend, but I guess this is a nice problem to have. Then early next week I'll get together with another out-of-town visitor, and near the end of the month yet another visitor will be in town.

If I'm indecisive, does that make me a genius?

"The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize that nothing is as clear and simple as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. Being a man of action, I can't afford to take that risk."
--Calvin, September 21, 1993

What's wrong with my email?

I got an email from a friend recently asking if my ualberta.net email address is still working because he got some error messages when he sent messages to me. A couple months ago, someone else was having trouble sending me messages. This makes me wonder if I'm missing emails from anyone else. If you got an error message when you sent me an email, please re-send the message through Facebook (if you use Facebook) or send to my alternate address: ascheuer Άт yahoo.com. (You'll have to replace the word "Άт" with an @ sign. I wrote it this way to make it harder for spammers to get my email.) And if you still have the error message, please send that too.

I did hear that the ualberta.net server will go through some sort of upgrade that will be announced this month. If this doesn't fix the problem, and soon, I'll have to switch to a different main email address.

A Tribute to Dinkus

Last year, my sister adopted a cat from the Wetaskiwin SPCA and she named him Dinkus. (That's short for Dinkus Maximus.) I haven't spent much time with the cat (for one thing, I'm allergic, although my sister has been cleaning him well, so he's probably less allergenic than the last time I saw him), but he's a very friendly cat. Of course, to someone who lives with him, he's needy. When my sister shows any signs of being awake, he starts poking her so he can get some attention. One time (or maybe more than once) recently, he started poking her when she was trying to go to bed, until she took him in her arms.

Dinkus loves to eat muffin wrappers and salsa, so my sister recently bought mild salsa (or was it medium?) instead of strong salsa so he wouldn't get as sick. When my sister's friend took care of Dinkus for a while, he managed to sneak into the closet where his food was stored and finish the bag a lot faster than he was supposed to. He gained a bit of weight then.

This gets me thinking of the nature vs nurture debate. Does the cat have psychological problems because the kids at school made fun of his name, or was he just born this way?