If that’s you’re belief, then you’re right: that would be ultimate permissibility and impermissability. Few Westerners believe in reincarnation, so we tend to have simplistic and/or dismissive attitudes for it. My apologies on our behalf, and my apologies for not considering Buddhist conceptions of ultimate consequences in my original post.
If that’s you’re belief, then you’re right: that would be ultimate permissibility and impermissability. Few Westerners believe in reincarnation, so we tend to have simplistic and/or dismissive attitudes for it. My apologies on our behalf, and my apologies for not considering Buddhist conceptions of ultimate consequences in my original post.
So it should read: If God does not exist, and if no system of reincarnation exists, then everything is permissible.
How does one conclude whether something is justified or not? One may or may not refer to rules in this sort of effort, but how does one determine that the rules they consult are justified? Eventually, you reach a dead end.
In a sense, all actions I am aware of affect me personally, because I will inevitably form an opinion about those actions that will cause me to feel a certain way. This is one aspect of being a social animal, after all.
By “subjectivism is the case” I mean “it is the case that moral claims possess no truth value”; that is, we cannot prove or disprove them as we could with empirical, mathematical, or logical statements.
Your phrasing here is confusing. Talking about the importance of ethics is futile, because ethics are supposed to tell us what is or isn’t important. It’s like talking about which ethics should be the case: since ethics are “should” statements, making “should” statements about them is pointless. You would, in essence, be saying, “It should be the case that it should be the case.”
How do you objectively determine the importance of something? If what is important is shone to be a matter of opinion, then clearly what matters and what doesn’t matter is also a matter of opinion.
What about social conditioning?
Nonsense. That would be like waking up and choosing to rewrite one’s personality.
That is assuming, of course, that this particular atheist’s morality doesn’t condemn harmless actions. Many atheists do condemn such actions, however.
Or the theist could merely bend the worldview by joining an allied denomination. The rules are hardly “laid out.” Any theist could just use “God said” or “I had a revelation!” to justify any change of opinion. If your worldview allows you to believe in something without evidence, then it is very malleable. After all, how could another religious person oppose you without evidence?
Since I always act based on my own choosing (“in accordance with my preferences”), all of my actions are necessarily done in my interest.
Translated, does this mean “Since I always act on my own preferences, all of my actions are necessarily done according to my own preferences”? Just asking.
quite right, it would be entirely possible that an individual was mistaken, or that a common group of people suffered a mass illusion. thankfully we are immune from such things in that we have thousands of witnesses over thousands of years. what you are refering to is individual cases of eyewtiness testimony, or mass illusions. not to a string of unrelated people from different cultures and faiths who did not know eachother or live within centuries of one another. all describing the essentially the same realationship with G-d.
no one but the astronauts involved witnessed the landing. everyone else saw pictures on TV. we haved the same evidence to believe the moonlanding exists as to believe that marines are attacking the planet pandora.
they dont have the original, only copies. but no one discounts the exitence of the people or the events that led to the magna carta or the general contents of it.
i dont know about your chain of witnesses out too the fourth degree there. but the moonlanding would be a miracle to someone unaware of the processes used right? they would say it was impossible by the knowledge they have. in the same way, unaware of the processes involved you are denying the validity of those miracles.
well thats a great big baseless assertion. you should take another look, i gave you the things to google. some prophecies are rather vague, some are very specific, but there are dozens and dozens. they are after all the reason Christianity exists. the mathematical odds are irrefutable. google “messianic prophecies” peter stoner, ot josh mcdowell. stoner is the most famous because he he was the first mathematician to work it out. there are a great number of sites devoted to the subject.
another assertion. please tell me what faith has the mathematical certainty of dozens of fulfilled prophecies? not just one or two, but the great many that you will find on those websites?
come now, that is classical truth seeking behavior. you dont know if its true or not, so you dont know if the premises are false. a rational examination of the issue should be done. not an out of hand dismissal.
then try a thousand and one. most people i know personally who say that complain they didnt recieve some sign. the Scripture states quite clearly that you shall not test G-d, you shall not ask for a sign. i did the same thing myself when i was younger.
what silly propositions? what self loathing? (its very telling that you say that, do you loath yourself? why? what are you doing worthy of that? why cant you stop? no one said Christianity was easy. especially the sexual morals to be followed) as to free thinking, religion in no way prohibits that.
i dont think the odds have a thing to do with it. no matter the odds, if you are wrong the result is permanent. if i am wrong, i will never know it.
as you see, it wasnt so easy to discount. ive had this argument a few dozen times.
But you have nonetheless borne out my point (my failures of expression notwithstanding!), that the Christian conception of morality is not essentially selfless. Thus, any attempt to argue its superiority to secular morality on that basis is invalid. We are self-interested - and often selfish - creatures; it’s part of our nature, to varying degrees. I think we all agree, however, that it’s a happier world if our self-interests tend to harmonise with the interests of others.
A totalitarian regime is never an honest attempt to create harmony, regardless of political spin. It’s an attempt by a powerful figure to bring everyone else into line with their own goals. That ain’t social harmony. Genuine social harmony is achieved by finding the balance between self-interest and altruism.
See above, regarding totalitarian regimes and social harmony - to assume the two are in any way compatible is a misrepresentation. Balance between individual interests and social interests is key. We are all individuals with our own interests, but social animals by nature - indeed, often the only way we can achieve our individual goals is by working with others. What could possibly provide a more all-encompassing explanation for morality than the need to achieve a balance between these two aspects?
our taxonomical identification aside. we arent animals simply because of our biology, we can seek to improve ourselves, exercise free will, violationg the laws of the universe. i have never seen an animal seeking self improvement, at any level. horses dont practice mooing, but i speak spanish. i have never seen an animal act outside of its social programming. i have never seen an animal do anything that seems to be an exercise of free will. all their actions can be attributed to instinct, determinant and unwavering. ours however cannot. i play the ukulele for fun. i dont do it in front of others. i do it solely because i like to learn new things and thereby improve myself.
Prove me wrong with a hardy example.
Prove to me first and only that the prophecies are direct and I promise I will fall onto my knees and worship any god of your choosing.
Victim-blaming. I didn’t pray to *test *God, I prayed because I believed in Him. I was disappointed because, after some consideration, I had never felt a single thing in prayer that extended beyond my own rambling thoughts.
This, to me, is an obvious religious safeguard built into the system to protect it: “Don’t ask God to proove himself because he won’t be able to.” How convenient!
If that’s what you know of God, you certainly can’t know anything else about him. at least not other than by bronze-age conjectures.
Use your imagination - I can’t do all the work for you.
It’s not telling of anything. And there is no self-loathing because I was never very good at it (just the way God made me?
) Christianity demands a level of guilt and contrition that makes it pretty unbearable if you want to follow the religion by the book.Oh no, there’s thought-crime. That there isn’t, let no one gainsay. I can’t sit here thinking about what a jerk that guy was that cut me off today; I can’t think erotically about my wife-to-be; I can’t think outside of belief (atheism). That’s not free-thinking.
Yeah, they really do (see below).
Using the example of a landmine is a manipulative tactic (even when you’ve stated 1 in a million) because the odds are typically known to be so variable as to whether they’ll go off. There is a greater chance of the electrical wiring in my house to malfunction and start a fire, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to shut off the circuit breakers each time I leave my house or go to sleep or whathaveyou.
It’s plenty easy to discount - that doesn’t mean you’re not going to have more of the same objections.
Isn’t this a confirmation of the OP’s statement that absent God (e.g. in a subjective world) everything is permissible in the moral sense because, as you stated, moral claims possess no truth value? The entire concept of morality would be as meaningless for us as it is for clams. We can talk about behavior that is helpful, harmful, acceptable or unacceptable to the law or to our particular society, but we can’t talk about any action being immoral because the word applies to something that doesn’t exist.
An atheist may certainly condemn any action, but he cannot do so on the basis that the action was immoral, only that he personally doesn’t like it.
Yes. I assumed that “done in my own interest” meant “acting according to my preferences.” It might mean something else, but since nobody on this thread bothers to provide definitions when I ask (ahem), some guesswork is involved on my part.Translated, does this mean “Since I always act on my own preferences, all of my actions are necessarily done according to my own preferences”? Just asking.
This is the same tired old argument I’ve been talking about. You can’t make moral claims about the nature of morality under normal circumstances, and especially not in this case. Here, you’re saying that all ethics are worthless if all ethics lack truth values. However, the ethical claim “Ethics are worthless” would then lack a truth value, so your point is moot. It’s the ethical equivalent of the claim “All propositions are false.”
Personally, I find ethics useful because they indicate how particular people feel about certain circumstances.
As my peers would say, “Same difference.” What else could “immoral” indicate? Really, I would like a definition, a derivation, and everything.
how so? i dont know of anything major.
so, thousands of different people, living thousands of miles apart, thousands of years apart, speaking different languages, living in different cultures, and practicing different faiths all suffered the same illusions?
its not a waste of time. you cant prove the moonlanding happened anymore than i can prove the miracles of the Bible are true. im pointing out it is hypocritical to have 2 standards of evidence.
i would say that to a roman slave, the magna carta, and the moonlanding would be ridiculous enough to question their authenticity.
believers have done it through the centuries. i dont see where you get the idea that demons are no longer cast out, or that miracles no longer occur? happens everyday. im sure you can google some events.
people didnt sit around verbatim for a great chunk of historical events. my point is the double standard being used, because you dont understand the process by which a miracle may occur.
Voice of Reason;6209405 said:
how are you a victim? and how is this different than a test? He didnt perform to your standards so you rected him right? you wanted to feel something and He didnt do it.
that was written when everyone was a witness to G-ds deeds, i dont think so. though its a fair feeling to have.
what do you mean?
i can tread minds.
.It’s not telling of anything. And there is no self-loathing because I was never very good at it (just the way God made me?
no, your not allowed to hate the guy who cut you off. youre not allowed to treat your fiance as a an object solely for your sexual gratifications. and being an athiest and a Christain are mutually exclusive.
the reasons the odds dont matter is because there is no payoff for stepping on a landmine. just as in poker there is no payoff for bluffing at a tiny pot.
lets see if you can then… i do this all the time, an original argument would be a treat for m
And when people follow your god’s morality, they end up with the genocide of non-Jewish populations (according to the OT), the crusades, the inquisition… People, to generalise over the course of history, just are vicious by nature, but if that was all we were, we would have destroyed ourselves as a species long ago. Because we also possess reason and empathy, social cohesion is possible - but there have to be agreed-upon rules and at least some common values - that’s what morality is, regardless of how it is worked out.
So you have some other source for Christian morality than the depictions of your god in the bible? Love to know what those are, and on what basis you give them any credence. The unsavoury dealings referred to are the mass slaughter of whole populations of people, including women and children, in order that the Israelites would have somewhere to settle; Lot offering his virgin daughters to be raped by the people of Sodom, then later impregnating them (albeit in a drunken haze which the daughters had deliberately induced); enslavement of the Israelites for ‘disobedience’; the notion that the sins of one generation should be visited on the next several generations, and that this somehow constitutes justice… The list goes on, but alas there is limited posting space.
No matter what those reasons are, the fact remains that it is impossible to reconcile an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god with the sheer scale of suffering in the world; suffering for which an omnipotent creator god, if such a being there is, bears ultimate responsibility. No amount of apologetics or appeal to inscrutability can get around this.
Nothing is wrong with reverence for your god, per se - you’re entitled to worship whatever disembodied and undetectable entity you wish, so long as you don’t let that reverence lead you to treat others badly. What’s wrong with god being jealous and vengeful is that the pathological jealousy and vengefulness attributed to the Bible’s god are not qualities that we generally associate with goodness and benevolence (unless we engage in Orwellian doublethink). You might say that we don’t know the mind of god (which is a bit of a twinkie defence, if you think about it) - but that doesn’t really leave us on very solid footing if we believe it is morally acceptable to be understanding and forgiving.
Show me some unequivocal evidence for your god, and I will concede that you have a point. I enjoy honing my argumentative skills, and having the opportunity to consolidate my own ideas - that’s why I keep finding myself back here. I’m familiar with what you believe, since I was raised as a Catholic, but over the course of about 15 years, I gradually came to the conclusion that atheism is a far more reasonable default position than theistic faith.
Values form the basis on which the morality of actions is determined.
I don’t believe it to be literal, but I’m not a fundamentalist Christian!
The phrase, ‘slaves, obey your masters’ doesn’t make that distinction. In any case, I’m pretty sure indentured servitude is also frowned upon these days.
In an attempt to get back to addressing the primary concept of your OP, an interesting notion has just occurred to me (it may well have occurred to others before, but I must confess I haven’t read the entire thread…)
At what point have we been able to override the laws of the universe?!
Christian morality is superior to secular morality because it does not stake everything on this life. We are prepared to sacrifice everything in the hope that justice will be done but hope is not certainty. We can choose to be selfless in this life because we are prepared to take the risk that we are mistaken. It is not our fault if we are right! You cannot take that risk because you don’t believe there is an afterlife. Nor do you believe it is possible to be completely selfless because you believe we are animals whose behaviour is caused by events beyond our control. We are just cogs in the machine of nature, no different in that respect from any other animal - to your way of thinking. Belief in moral responsibility is incompatible with materialism because it infringes the law of the conservation of energy. As Kant noted, ought implies can. Animals quite simply cannot act rationally and independently of the ways in which they have been programmed.
The fact that it would be a happier world has no bearing on the ultimate nature of morality - which implies that we can choose and act to make it so. It’s a fact which is of merely hypothetical interest in a world where all activity is predetermined…
Given that human beings are irrational to some extent (regardless of what we believe about our origin) there is no reason why some people can opt for the folly of the Cross. It is a form of insanity because it implies to valuing another more than oneself rejecting the principle that we are all equal. It amounts to virtually committing suicide and is certainly madness in the eyes of the world which has no explanation for totally selfless love.
“often” is the key word. When it comes to the crunch we can be more successful by not working with others. Why should individuals cosider the interests of others when it is not in their own interest?
Not at all. It is absurd to deny that we have a body with instincts and physical desires. Do you reject the concept of personhood altogether? If not why not?
If we are animals through and through there is no reason why animals should not have exactly the same rights as us. Nor any reason why we should be more valuable. Nor why we should be responsible for our behaviour (unless they are too!). This is your dilemma!
In that case, agreeing upon whatever you want them to be does not necesarily constitute reasonable value, but collective social inclinations.
Value making is hardly a democratic process - any evaluation of politics, social, economic, religious, academic and other idealogical forces demonstrate that.
Can you explain why?
Again assumption, and, even if you believe there is no God, I’d say the general evidence behind the likelihood of one is sufficient to base morality upon that concept and that of permanence, largely because, as your arguments emonstrate, everything else doesn’t have any reasonable basis beyond being whatever everyone feels like at the time
Luckily, I don’t need to invent one, and your assumption that the rather hefty human experience of the same is such invention is I’d say simply an issue of the ideologies you follow, which still fail to demonstrate the values you define as being anything resembling what make sense as being ‘moral’ - just what we decide we want, based on a conception of reality we can only find purpose in at all by defying the inherent logical nihlism and inventing illogical purposes to keep ourselves occupied
But that’s the point - humanity does not act as if it is only serving the short term. Making life fulfilling in the short term has drastic consequences in the long term, the realisation of which shows how our moralities and goals only really get us anywhere when we act in the long term. And yet in the long term, if you assume a finite existence, it’s all…No, in that sense, **non-permanent **things don’t have permanent value; no, not if that’s your starting point. Thanks for clearing that up for us.
Not neccesarily - the two do not follow. Morality could be subjective based, but without reasonable purpose, it is meaningless. However, you can still have meaningful purposes, and yet have a subjectivity of morality, although I’d say that subjectivity would simply be based on personal limitations.situations rather than merely inclination. And you are wrong - my idea of purpose does not require a lawgiver - it requires eternal life of one form or another, however.
