Moral dilemma.

[jonfawkes]

By admitting there is a God who is the ultimate absolute, and discovering the true purpose of man.

By applying reason to the assessment of whether acts or potential acts contribute to ones goodness or not. And then determining if this assessment holds for all time and all circumstance.

As I’ve stated before that, yes, in the context of religion you can have an absolute, outside the religion it is no longer an absolute. It is relative to the religion.

There is nothing wrong with with this. It just means that it’s not universally true. So it’s not absolute for all people, just those that believe what that religion believes.

Religion is an agreement that people make with their God - I choose to believe this and that and hold these tenets to be true.

You aren’t beholden to Hindu or Buddhists absolutes because you don’t prescribe to those religions.

What is “absolute” is relative to the religion.

 

[davidv]

As I’ve stated before that, yes, in the context of religion you can have an absolute, outside the religion it is no longer an absolute. It is relative to the religion.There is nothing wrong with with this. It just means that it’s not universally true. So it’s not absolute for all people, just those that believe what that religion believes.

So you have repeat it. Why repeat it without explaining why it is true? At this point I don’t believe you as you have not backed your claim.

God is absolute independant of religion.

What religion did Abram have when he was called out of the land or Ur and asked to go to the promised land?

Religion is an agreement that people make with their God - I choose to believe this and that and hold these tenets to be true.

Why do you think this is the correct definition of “religion”? It isn’t mine.

You aren’t beholden to Hindu or Buddhists absolutes because you don’t prescribe to those religions.

How do you know? If they are absolute, they are absolute for me and you both. That is the definition absolute.
By the way, what are the Hindu or Buddhist absolutes? And how do you know they are absolutes?

What is “absolute” is relative to the religion.

So you keep repeating. I don’t believe you.

 

[jonfawkes]

So you keep repeating. I don’t believe you.

So how do you account for differences? If something is absolute, it should be true for everyone. Dietary laws are absolute in Orthodox Judaism and Islam but not in Christianity. Supposedly the three religions worship the same God.

Btw - What is your definition of religion? I see it like a marriage - It’s a relationship of choice. You choose to believe and things follow from there. To have this relationship these are the parameters that I respect and choose to live within.

A hypothetical example - my wife and I have monogamy as a perimeter of our marriage. It is an absolute for us. To step outside breaks that relationship. My neighbor has an “open” marriage monogamy is not an absolute for their marriage.

I can scream eight ways to Sunday how incorrect they are but it’s not my marriage. My absolute is not theirs. What is a deal breaker for me is not for them. It’s relative to the marriage. They can get a long fine in parameters that they choose. They both come to it freely.

 

[davidv]

As I’ve stated before that, yes, in the context of religion you can have an absolute, outside the religion it is no longer an absolute. It is relative to the religion.

There is nothing wrong with with this. It just means that it’s not universally true. So it’s not absolute for all people, just those that believe what that religion believes.

Religion is an agreement that people make with their God - I choose to believe this and that and hold these tenets to be true.

You aren’t beholden to Hindu or Buddhists absolutes because you don’t prescribe to those religions.

What is “absolute” is relative to the religion.

Maybe these words of an Archbishop will hold more weight with you than mine:
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt:

Danger of Relativism
The core theme of His Holiness’s teaching that I detected was the need for individuals as well as nations to bring God back to the center of life. He points out that many people today have fallen into a “practical atheism” (p. 49) whereby the concept of objective truth is considered suspect or even unattainable.
Without ethical values and standards, then, the determining criterion becomes the opinion of the majority, which breeds an intolerance for those who oppose that opinion. In such a context, intolerance for the public display of religious symbols, such as the crucifix, or for the church’s teaching on homosexuality or the ordination of women, grows in light of “an abstract, negative religion” (p. 52) which aggressively challenges the free speech of Christian believers.
In the pope’s own words:
“Christianity finds itself exposed now to an intolerant pressure that at first ridicules it - as belonging to a perverse, false way of thinking - and then tries to deprive it of breathing space in the name of an ostensible rationality” (p. 53).
Yet, as he points out, this experience runs through all the- centuries and is, in fact, a consequence of original sin.
In his answers to Seewald, the pope makes reference to a favorite saint of his, St. Augustine, who described world history as a battle between two loves: 1) the love of self, which leads to the destruction of the world; and 2) the love of others, which calls for the renunciation of oneself (p. 59).
This is not to say, however, that all of modem thinking is wrong, or that the world is totally depraved. Rather, it is important for Christians to incorporate what is good and right about modernity, while at the same time separating and distinguishing themselves from the secular spirit which itself can be described as a kind of “counter religion” (p. 56).
Again, I quote the Holy Father:
“This is a sign of the times that should be an urgent challenge to us, especially as Christians. We have to show - and also live this accordingly - that the eternity man needs can only come from God. That God is the first thing necessary in order to be able to withstand the afflictions of this time. That we must mobilize, so to speak, all the powers of the soul and of the good so that a genuine coin can stand up against the false coin - and in this way the cycle of evil can be broken and stopped” (p. 61).
Conversion required

 

[davidv]

So how do you account for differences? If something is absolute, it should be true for everyone. Dietary laws are absolute in Orthodox Judaism and Islam but not in Christianity. Supposedly the three religions worship the same God.

Btw - What is your definition of religion? I see it like a marriage - It’s a relationship of choice. You choose to believe and things follow from there. To have this relationship these are the parameters that I respect and choose to live within.

A hypothetical example - my wife and I have monogamy as a perimeter of our marriage. It is an absolute for us. To step outside breaks that relationship. My neighbor has an “open” marriage monogamy is not an absolute for their marriage.

I can scream eight ways to Sunday how incorrect they are but it’s not my marriage. My absolute is not theirs. What is a deal breaker for me is not for them. It’s relative to the marriage. They can get a long fine in parameters that they choose. They both come to it freely.

I am not going to answer any more of your diversionary questions until you address the points I made in post #100. OK?

 

[jonfawkes]

Maybe these words of an Archbishop will hold more weight with you than mine:

Thank you for posting them - The thing that jumps out at me though is: if you as a Catholic and or Christian and believe that Homosexuality is a morally abhorrent then don’t practice homosexuality. Why the need to control another’s behavior.

Having a racist neighbor won’t make me a racist. I can disagree with him vehemently and respect his free speech. The freedom has to include speech that I disagree with or it’s not free.

 

[jonfawkes]

So you have repeat it. Why repeat it without explaining why it is true? At this point I don’t believe you as you have not backed your claim.

God is absolute independant of religion.

What religion did Abram have when he was called out of the land or Ur and asked to go to the promised land?

Why do you think this is the correct definition of “religion”? It isn’t mine.

How do you know? If they are absolute, they are absolute for me and you both. That is the definition absolute.
By the way, what are the Hindu or Buddhist absolutes? And how do you know they are absolutes?

So you keep repeating. I don’t believe you.

I don’t think I can answer them -

Abraham - a YHWH-ist?

It is a partial definition - I explained it in more depth with the marriage analogy.

I don’t know that they are absolute ( that’s the point) - I don’t think absolutes exist except in context of the religion. That’s why I ask how you account for differences. If they say x is absolute and you say y - they aren’t universal. They are conditional to who is saying something is absolute.

Answered?

 

[davidv]

Thank you for posting them - The thing that jumps out at me though is: if you as a Catholic and or Christian and believe that Homosexuality is a morally abhorrent then don’t practice homosexuality. Why the need to control another’s behavior.

Having a racist neighbor won’t make me a racist. I can disagree with him vehemently and respect his free speech. The freedom has to include speech that I disagree with or it’s not free.

What jumps out at me in this post is that it doesn’t address the topic and does not admit to the real difference between “absolute”, “objective” and “relative”.
Would you kindly provide your definition of each and show how post #100 doesn’t adequately answer the questions it was meant to answer.

 

[Betterave]

How we can determine that there are moral absolutes?
How we can identify them?

The rest of what you say is “nuh uuuhhhh” - it’s playground, not a debate.

Please show your work.

Playground? What’s that supposed to mean? And what does “show your work” mean? I’d say I do show my work and you don’t. You just make stupid assertions based on your own ignorance, then refuse to answer questions or to give any real response when your false assumptions are called into question. And why won’t you answer my questions, jon? If you think it makes sense to pose a question of a certain form, you ought to be willing to respond to a question of that form yourself, shouldn’t you? But you refuse. If you’re going to insist on repeating the same dumb position, while refusing to respond to critical questions about that dumb position, I’ll have to assume that you really just want to be irrational and misinformed, and stop trying to help you to be otherwise… Throw me a bone here, eh?

If you’re serious about attempting to be open-minded and reasonable here, please go back to post 94 and actually respond to my challenges to your position.

 

[davidv]

I don’t think I can answer them -

Abraham - a YHWH-ist?

How could Abram be YHWH-ist? He hadn’t met God until the burning bush and didn’t know who He was.

It is a partial definition - I explained it in more depth with the marriage analogy.

I don’t know that they are absolute ( that’s the point) - I don’t think absolutes exist except in context of the religion. That’s why I ask how you account for differences. If they say x is absolute and you say y - they aren’t universal. They are conditional to who is saying something is absolute.

Answered?

No.

You can say apple.
I can say orange.

If what we are observing is a pear, we are both wrong. The pear is objective reality. It exists as pear whether either of us recognize it as such, or not.

Whether you know something is absolute, or objective, is irrelevant to whether it actually is or not.

 

[jonfawkes]

Okay, so give me the name of one moral philosopher who has an argument for some absolute tenet of morality that fits this pattern and tell me what his or her argument is.

Is this supposed to be relevant somehow??

LOL! Not to me (or to the great majority of people, including moral philosophers who dedicate their lives to thinking about such issues)!

So tell me: in the face of all this counter-evidence, how can you objectively prove that it’s self-evident??

Have you given any “evidence” for your position? What do you mean by “evidence”? What kind of “evidence” are you looking for? - do you even know??

Maybe you should actually answer my question this time, then you’d start to see how stupid your position is:

What would you say if I tried to use the same argument (namely: “my position is correct, and yours is not, because mine is self-evident”)?

It’s irrelevant - I’m not making an appeal to authority. Can you provide a non-religious moral condemnation of homosexuality?

It’s relevant as an example of relative morality.

What counter evidence? The mode of government is a self evident example of relative morality.

The evidence is the examples of relative morality I provide, I would like to see an example of an absolute, and how we can determine it is an absolute. I can show why something is relative.

You’ve given no examples of absolute morality or how to determine that they are absolute. So there’s nothing to call as evidence self or otherwise.

 

[jonfawkes]

How could Abram be YHWH-ist? He hadn’t met God until the burning bush and didn’t know who He was.

No.

You can say apple.
I can say orange.

If what we are observing is a pear, we are both wrong. The pear is objective reality. It exists as pear whether either of us recognize it as such, or not.

Whether you know something is absolute, or objective, is irrelevant to whether it actually is or not.

He was a descendant of Noah - who told Noah to build the arc?

Yes we could both be wrong - we would be acting relative to the absolute pear. How do we know if it’s a pear. - meaning how do we know its not an apple or orange? Without knowledge all we have is our subjective viewpoint. Which is relative.

If it’s unknowable how is it relevant?

 

[davidv]

He was a descendant of Noah - who told Noah to build the arc?

Yes we could both be wrong - we would be acting relative to the absolute pear. How do we know if it’s a pear. - meaning how do we know its not an apple or orange? Without knowledge all we have is our subjective viewpoint. Which is relative.

If it’s unknowable how is it relevant?

I don’t know how to answer your question until you honor my request that I made in post #108.

 

[jonfawkes]

I don’t know how to answer your question until you honor my request that I made in post #108.

i was addressing this part

Without ethical values and standards, then, the determining criterion becomes the opinion of the majority, which breeds an intolerance for those who oppose that opinion. In such a context, intolerance for the public display of religious symbols, such as the crucifix, or for the church’s teaching on homo*sexuality or the ordination of women, grows in light of “an abstract, negative religion” (p. 52) which aggressively challenges the free speech of Christian believers.

I don’t see how tolerance for another actions can denigrate the standards that you hold for yourself.

 

[davidv]

i was addressing this part

I don’t see how tolerance for another actions can denigrate the standards that you hold for yourself.

Unresponsive. See post #108.

 

[jonfawkes]

Unresponsive. See post #108.

He seems to believe if we are tolerant of actions we deem immoral Catholics risk loosing the freedom to express their views. That’s what I was addressing. It doesn’t show how we can determine what is an absolute. Only that Catholics need them to prevent losing position and voice. It doesn’t follow in my opinion for the reasons given previously.

Moral absolutism is the ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of other contexts such as their consequences or the intentions behind them.

Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism or universal morality) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for “all similarly situated individuals”[1], regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality, or any other distinguishing feature.

Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:

* Descriptive relativism describes the way things are, without suggesting a way they ought to be. It seeks only to point out that people frequently disagree over what is the most 'moral' course of action.
* Meta-ethical relativism is the meta-ethical position that the truth or falsity of moral judgments is not objective. Justifications for moral judgments are not universal, but are instead relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of an individual or a group of people.[1] The meta-ethical relativist might say "It's moral to me, because I believe it is".[2]
* Normative relativism is the prescriptive or normative position that, because there is no universal moral standard by which to judge others, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others - even when it runs counter to our personal or cultural moral standards.[3] Most philosophers find that this position is incoherent, or at least that it is unclear how meta-ethical relativism can lead to 'ought' statements.[3]

 

[davidv]

He seems to believe if we are tolerant of actions we deem immoral Catholics risk loosing the freedom to express their views. That’s what I was addressing. It doesn’t show how we can determine what is an absolute. Only that Catholics need them to prevent losing position and voice. It doesn’t follow in my opinion for the reasons given previously.

Thank you. Now, could you please apply these definitions and respond to my post #100.

 

[Betterave]

It’s irrelevant - I’m not making an appeal to authority.

J: Absolutist moral philosophers justify their claims based on “God says so”/religious texts
B: No they don’t.
J: Yes they do.
B: Fine - name one who does.
J: It’s irrelevant - I’m not making an appeal to authority

Guess what, jon? YOU’RE RIGHT! You weren’t making an appeal to authority - and obviously I never said you were, so that’s a completely irrelevant observation for you to make!

So what were you doing? You were making an appeal to BS - right??? - and you continue to do so. Can you see that? If you weren’t making an appeal to BS, what were you making an appeal to? Is your original claim true - or not? It it’s true, prove it. HONESTLY. Not with more BS. Give me a name. Tell me how his or her argument goes.

 

[jonfawkes]

Thank you. Now, could you please apply these definitions and respond to my post #100.

this is your post 100 -

By admitting there is a God who is the ultimate absolute, and discovering the true purpose of man.

By applying reason to the assessment of whether acts or potential acts contribute to ones goodness or not. And then determining if this assessment holds for all time and all circumstance.

I have already responded to this - There are absolutes in the context of religion but religion is a subjective viewpoint. Which makes them fit the relative model.

Justifications for moral judgments are not universal, but are instead relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of an individual or a group of people.

The group who’s view you are putting forth is the Catholic Church’s view. It’s relative to the Church.

 

[jonfawkes]

J: Absolutist moral philosophers justify their claims based on “God says so”/religious texts
B: No they don’t.
J: Yes they do.
B: Fine - name one who does.
J: It’s irrelevant - I’m not making an appeal to authority

Guess what, jon? YOU’RE RIGHT! You weren’t making an appeal to authority - and obviously I never said you were, so that’s a completely irrelevant observation for you to make!

So what were you doing? You were making an appeal to BS - right??? - and you continue to do so. Can you see that? If you weren’t making an appeal to BS, what were you making an appeal to? Is your original claim true - or not? It it’s true, prove it. HONESTLY. Not with more BS. Give me a name. Tell me how his or her argument goes.

No, I put forth the example of the immorality of Homosexuality - can you give an example of the immorality of homosexuality outside a religious context? An appeal to religion is the equivalent of “cuz God says so”.

Do you consider homosexuality immoral absolute? If so, please explain how it absolute outside a religious context.

You are still dodging - How do we know that absolutes exist? How do we determine them?