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But your explanation is better, right?
You're rather missing the point, I'm afraid, which is a very simple one:Obviously.
This is based on your faith statement above that you don’t believe in God.
Or that they had knowledge but not a relationship. Again you are building on your own faith statement that God does not exist.
I don’t see this as an equivalence. Perhaps you could expand on this.
Truth is not fungible. Something is either true or it is not.
I have encountered statements from other men and women that I thought to be true but discovered their statements to be false or incomplete after further examination. This is to be expected of the ways of fallen mankind.
As I stated to Big V earlier, a Christian does not just read a book and mentally affirm the Truth of the Gospel. That’s part of it as the Scriptures state “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
More is happening to even bring a child of wrath dead in their trespasses and sins to the Light of the Gospel. The Gospel comes in the power of God. God calls spiritually quickening us. It is called the ordo salutis or order of salvation. Not to be confused with the historia salutis or
history of salvation.
The historia salutis is the history of salvation, and most of the Bible is concerned with it. When we do theology from the perspective of the historia salutis, we consider what Christ our Head has done and what He has been given, and then we consider what we as members of Him participate in. He suffered and was glorified, and in union with Him so have we. He was raised, ascended to heaven, and sits enthroned; in union with Him we have these privileges in essence now, and look forward to their fulness in the world to come. He judges all men, and we in union with Him will also judge the world. This is the way theology is done in terms of the historia salutis.
The ordo salutis is the order of salvation. This focuses on the acts of God and the response of the individual in salvation. God calls us, produces regeneration in us, so that we respond with repentance, faith, and obedience. Behind the divine call is God’s electing decree. The ordo salutis is not concerned with a temporal sequence of events, but with a logical order.
Paul provides a condensed form of the ordo salutis in Romans 8:29–30. He tells us that God foreknew certain people and predestinated them to be conformed to the image of His Son. Since God exists in eternity, foreknowledge and predestination are not sequential actions on His part, but logical aspects of His decree. Romans 8:30 says that God called these people to His kingdom, and that those who are called are justified. Since we are justified by faith, we can insert faith between calling and justification. In fact, God’s inward call produces regeneration in us, which causes us to cry out in repentance and faith, so that we are justified.
“And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified” (v. 30).- Romans 8:29-30
You're rather missing the point, I'm afraid, which is a very simple one:
An ex-Christian is a person who thought that God was real, but then realised they were wrong.
Could be, of course. But, in the context of this thread, we're discussing people who decided that God does not exist.Or it could be a Christian that converted to Judaism, Islam, or Hindusim.
There are also people like me that are less strictly atheist and more apatheist.
Oh yes the question is quite clear.An ex-Christian is a person who thought that God was real, but then realised they were wrong.
Right and I explained the distinction.Or, to see it from the Christian point of view, an ex-Christian is a person who once believed in God, but then decided they had been mistaken
You sure did, but did not consider what I posted.I hope I've explained it?
You views are wedded to your faith view. Which I cannot fathom is based on anything objective.It isn't wedded to unprovable metaphysical assertions, unlike the explanation offered by Christians.
You views are wedded to your faith view. Which I cannot fathom is based on anything objective.
Every worldview is based on some faith statement."Faith view?" My "worldview" isn't based on faith at all.
Every worldview is based on some faith statement.
Even unbelief is a faith statement.Presuppositionalism isn't a very persuasive position to take and it's full of absurdities.
Needles to say, I don't agree that every "worldview" is based on faith.
Even unbelief is a faith statement.
OughtAgain, I'm not making a moral judgment on the claim that "might makes right," I'm just saying that that's what your view seems to in fact boil down to: God is right because he is ultimately powerful. I don't have a problem with that statement per se, I'm just pointing out that if might does indeed make right, then "right" doesn't really mean what we think it does. It means that God doesn't do something because it is right, but that it is right because God does it.
I'm not sure what you mean by surmount here. If you mean that none of us can escape a sense of moral obligation, I think you're absolutely right, with the possible exception of truly psychopathic people.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that. The more I learn about evolution the more sense it makes to me. Without faith in God, I admit the options for explaining the universe are more limited. But it's not like evolution is the only view that can be attacked for being ad hoc. Your preposition is that God exists, and hence you will tend to try to find justifications for his existence in nature.
And that's what we got. But it's not the ONLY thing we got. It's obvious when we look at history, or even society today, that on the grand scheme of things, rape is generally not the best way to propagate genes. The fact that a few people have had "success" with it doesn't mean our species as a whole would prosper better with such behaviour.
I don't know what that means, to "act upon its beauty." I still don't see how I'm acting contrary to my worldview just because I value things.
Anyway I think we actually agree here, we've just been talking past each other. I assume you find your family to be more valuable than, say, mine. Or that you find value in some sort of art. And I'm pretty sure you agree with me that a painting or a sunset doesn't have objective value, like the value is inherent in it. Right? So are you acting "contrary to your worldview" when you enjoy something? Of course not. The fact that we value things isn't contrary to anything. It's just how we are. I've never suggested that just because value isn't intrinsic/fundamental/objective, that it's therefore somehow unreasonable to value anything (or to detest other things, for that matter).
No, because again my worldview doesn't mean that we should, or should be expected to, act like machines.
No, what I'm doing when I mention genocide etc, is to point out that God doesn't seem to act according to his own moral values. This of course depends on how we interpret the bible, but it doesn't make sense to say for example like many Christians do, that God is both a righteous judge AND that he's right to torture people for eternity. I know this may not be your personal conviction, it's just an example.
If my morality is given by God, then I guess whatever he does should appear to me, instinctively, to be right and good and justified. Unless, as you propose, my morality is tainted or damaged - but in that case, how would I even know which of my moral judgments are in line with God's?
That is supposing the scriptures are in fact the word of God and that our interpretation of them is trustworthy.
It may be that the terrain (me) is faulty here, but it's also possible that it's the map (the bible).
I can't really make claims about God's nature because I don't think I can really know. But when someone does make those claims, I have to ask if they make sense, are backed by some evidence or logic, if they're internally consistent etc.
I've said quite a lot in support of my view. You may disagree with it or dismiss it, but you can't say I haven't supported it.
Yes, and I think that's the case when it comes to Christianity just like all the other religions.
That would be inconsistent of me, yes. But I haven't brought up moral standards as if they are objective. I've repeatedly said that I don't believe such a thing exists, it just feels that way to us.
Not true. What I have done, or at least tried to, is to correct your misinterpretation of my intent. I'm not saying that's all your fault, I'm sure I could get better at getting my points across.
I agree
But I can't just choose to value some bible verse, or choose to believe it's true.
I don't see why I should be obliged to participate in any particular religion.
That said, ideas like humanism are basically just as religious as Christianity. Like other religions it's based on metaphysical (or at best philosophical) claims like people have human rights. "Rights? Says who?" Well, we do. And personally I think it's a great idea and I believe humanism and related concepts will turn out to be better for us than (other) religions.
If I'm reading you right you're suggesting I'm no longer a believer because it was a chore. I can assure you that's not the case. I lost faith against my will. I fought to keep it for years, using every option I could find in prayer, support from other believers, apologetics and even the sheer desperate will to believe. Life without faith in God seemed like death to me. And for a long while, it was. Still, I lost my Christian faith. I couldn't deceive myself any longer, I had to admit that I didn't have sufficient reason to believe. Now maybe you do - I'm not really in a position to be the judge of that. But I honestly don't.
Thankfully and amazingly, I have found that it's very possible to find all the meaning, comfort and hope I need, apart from believing in God. I believe the universe and human life is ultimately meaningless. Yet we create all this meaning, all this goodness and charity, music and dancing, in spite of that (maybe even in response to that), and I think that's absolutely beautiful, magical, miraculous.
We're all victims of cognitive bias. I know from experience that that's at least as true for Christians as for atheists.
But he was outcompeted in the end. He was an outlier. Even though he got to spread his genes far and wide, even among his "children" it's evident that there are better ways to go about it. It's not enough to be a sociopathic narcissistic rapist, there are lot of things that need to be in place to produce a Genghis. A tribe of narcissists won't last very long in history even if they rape a lot of women.
Like I said earlier, I think @InterestedAtheist will do a better job debating solutions to the Ethypro dilemma, so I'll leave that for now.Ought
Oh okay so this "might makes right" comment is just another attempt to reframe my statements into the Euthyphro. Got it. I have stated what good refers to very clearly. I think you should put your efforts into something other than continually trying to reframe my statements into a strawman so that you can employ the Euthyphro. You asked why we should obey the highest authority, that is because there is a consequence if you don't.
I agree with that. Everything we do has consequences, if not for us in eternity, then certainly for others here and now, which for me is all the reason I need to act morally.One cannot overcome their moral duty, there is an unavoidable consequence in how we respond.
Not true at all. A sociopath may father other sociopaths, but since they are much less likely to care for their family and ensure their children grow up, they will be outcompeted. This is clearly the case among many species - again, penguins for example. A promiscuous male penguin may fertilize a lot of eggs, but few of them will ever grow up, because the parents take shifts gathering food and warming the egg. So if we look at penguins and ask why they act this way, evolution has a pretty good answer - the genes of those who for some reason didn't participate in caring for their young, had a tendency to die out.Mass Rape through conquest is the best way to propagate your genes.
I agree that evolution isn't concerned with anything, as if it were an entity. It's just the mechanism by which different lifeforms have come to be. Some species depend on two participating parents or even a tribe for the young to survive, others don't. Man's place on the "tree of life" places us right in the middle of typically social species where the offspring depend on their family for a rather long time.Especially if you are unlikely to propagate your genes with willing participants. You say we have achieved Darwinian expectations with Genghis Khan, but he was one man, an outlier. Now our thoughts are predominated with not propagating our genes. You bring up the prosperity of our species as if Evolution is concerned with that. It isn't. It isn't concerned with anything. It embeds behaviors and capabilities that lead toward the passing on of genes. That said it is debatable whether a particular type of species cohesion would lead to greater propagation, but it isn't striving for any prosperity. Most societal animal and insect groups do not have free ranging genetic propagation among it's members. The alpha animal or insect exclusively owns propagation while the other animals receive survival. I think you are light years from claiming we are any way near what we should expect from evolution.
Again, you're talking as if I mean that since nothing has objective value, I should act as if nothing matters.Moral Faith
Acting upon beauty, or rather acting upon the acknowledgement of your intuitions is to take action in accordance with that intuition. You keep equivocating between action, and subjective experience. It is not contradictory to your world view to acknowledge your subjective experience, it is contradictory to act upon an intuitive duty when you believe it is contrary to reality.
We don't agree. I don't believe the value of life is set by me, as you do. So your family is no more valuable than mine. That is however objectively true for both of us. Your example of the value of a painting is conflating two different things. Subjective experience, and subjective duty. My comment is over subjective duty, IE not to eat your kids.
Of course it exists, I have never said it doesn't. It just doesn't exist outside of, or apart from, me and my relationship with my children.You do contradict your world view because you act according to a duty to your kids, even when it would be easier sometimes to abandon them. You are choosing to abide by a perceived duty that does not exist according to your world view.
No. I'll clarify this one last time. When I talk about genocide in the bible etc, I'm not judging God according to my personal morality. I'm questioning the internal consistency of those who claim that God can both be good AND order genocide and infanticide at the same time. As far as I can tell, those two things are mutually exclusive. Now if you claim that God isn't ultimately good, or that he doesn't really want everybody to be saved, or whatever, then genocide isn't a problem, it doesn't go against God's supposed morality. When I read the bible it does seem to contradict itself. Maybe my understanding of it is wrong.Genocide, Morals and Consistency
Ah, but when you say that God doesn't act according to his own moral values you aren't declaring those values from scripture, you are declaring those values from what you apprehend by your moral faculties.
Sure I can, because there are also verses that say God will judge righteously. I don't see how he can both judge people fairly while also condemning anyone to eternal torment.So you are indeed presenting a moral paradigm as if God should follow it, and verifying what you deny in the process. You further bring up Eternal conscious torment. Where in scripture does it say that ECT is wrong? You can't.
Actually I'm responding to other people's claims about his nature.Secret Laws.
You are making claims about God's nature Holo
We agree on most things. You are asserting that objective morality exists. My objection to that is that 1. Objective morality can't exist by definition, and 2. where exactly is this morality, how is it found, in short, how do you know?The only thing I have asked support for, in regards to your world view is why it is true, for which you can only respond with 'why is it false' statements, and support for why you can trust your intellectual faculties, especially when you don't trust your moral faculties which has only been supported by your beliefs about evolution. I am unable to identify what you mean when you say you have supported your world view.
Yes. And tellingly, that's not by far the craziest religion people have inventedMoral reliability.
It is your belief that mankind constructed Christianity, but I fail to see how that makes any sense. People created the idea that someone who just died by the state for His beliefs is alive again and we should continue in the same belief that just resulted in His gruesome death?
You keep saying that, and I keep saying they aren't objective, they just feel like they do. Of course I feel and act as though moral values are objective, I'm just asserting that they aren't in fact that, and neither can they be.Inconsistency of world view.
You are bring up moral standards as if they are objective, as I just mentioned.
No, I may support some religions, but of course I'll never support a religion that practices human sacrifice or slavery, for example. Just because something is a result of evolution doesn't mean it's always good.You aren't obliged to do anything, and yet you are acting according to evolutionary obligations for everything else. You simply choose what you want to do. And if you think religion is an evolutionary product that facilitates societal progress then you should be supporting it
Basically the same thing. What is tolerated is based on the idea that there are rights.Mankind has no rights under humanism, they have actions that are tolerated and actions that are not.
True. So I'm glad to see that in functioning democracies, especially secular ones, things like fascism and communism seems to be the exception, when seen on a large scale. Secularism and humanism has a pretty good track record so far, especially when compared to theocracies.Humanists can thrive in a small society of people that all agree, the problem is that in large societies you have a large group that doesn't agree. Humanism could very well be killing all those with down syndrome and intellectual and physical defects.
It's true that when I found new ways to see reality and acting out my spirituality, I could simply drop a lot of the questions I struggled with as a believer and reluctant agnostic. For example the religious idea of sin is basically meaningless to me now.I'm not saying you adhere to whatever is convenient and enjoyable to you back then, but now. Whatever sense of self questioning you went through back when you were a Christian ceased as soon as you found satisfaction in your new belief.
Could be, but I seriously doubt it. I can't even imagine what it would take to convince me that Islam's claims are correct. Probably the same for you.All you did is pass over a different wave. You convinced yourself out of one wave for another, on and endless ocean. You may get swept up by another wave and become a Muslim and find it beautiful, magical, and miraculous.
Absolutely. It's quite amazing to me, it doesn't have to be special to anybody else.So defining your wave as that is really unspecial.
I'm none the wiser.Hunh?
I reply in complete sentences. What you aren't understanding was taken from your own reply. Those aren't my points.
According to many (most?) Christians, he did. It's what the bible appears to say.Moral epistemology
You already believe in the trustworthiness of the Bible to speak of God don't you? Didn't you just claim God committed genocide?
That's because I don't make claims about the existence of invisible, logically impossible laws or principlesIntellectual reliability.
You seem to only have questions for me, not your own world view.
God could be a liar. You could be deceived. You assume not only his existence, but his personality.The ONLY source of intellectual faculties which makes the breadth of human truth claims reliable is a God whose purpose was to give us intellectual faculties that can be used to derive true belief. My belief is the only belief from which I have warrant to make truth claims.
We base ourselves on the same axioms though - that our faculties are, at least to some extent, able to tell us some truth about reality.You don't, nor have you succeeded in giving warrant for you claims, all you have attempted to do is undermine my ability to make claims as if that give you any ability to make claims.
I think I believed in God first and foremost because my parents did, which is usually the strongest predictor of what people believe. I didn't really question the faith before my late twenties, and then only reluctantly. Especially since I didn't believe in a legalistic form of Christianity then, but rather one that actually did me (and many around me) a lot of good.Proposed reasons why I believe in God.
It's only fair for my own motivations to be challenged. I am not afraid of a universe without God, however I don't know how to live sanely in such a universe, nor does it seem logically possible. I would not believe in God because it is convenient to, I think it would be more convenient to create my own paradigm of self satisfaction than one where I constantly fail to meet that paradigm. Does this hypothesis reflect why you believed in God?
You say knowing truth is inexplicable on evolution. I don't see why that must be the case. Sure, evolution would be more "concerned" with having us survive, and knowing the truth about things would be selected for to the degree that it meets that end. We've made more than enough discoveries to know that we see at best only a little part of reality - we only see a fraction of waves for example. But that doesn't mean we can't possibly be justified in believing anything.How So?
I'm not looking for mere responses but reasons. Those you have not given in any way that would obtain your claims. You have called me to evidence and reason so I think it's fair to ask the same.
And anyone can (re)interpret their religion to fit better with how the world seems to operate. Christianity has certainly evolved over the years.Evolutionary hypothesis.
The problem is it is very easy to ad hoc what is expected on evolution, that is why I ask you to explain why it is expected. Anyone can write stories on how it happened.
"Life comes from life" is kind of like saying "human comes from human." That's obviously true, but if you go way way way back you will eventually find an ancestor of yours that wasn't actually human. Or take the evolution of musical styles as an example. This jazz came from that jazz which came from yet another type of jazz, but in the end you'll find some predecessor of jazz that isn't itself jazz. Know what I mean? Life as we know it may only come from previous life, but there may be something like "life as we don't know it." Nobody knows exactly how life, or the universe itself, came to be. A theist can fill those "holes" with God.Consciousness.
The predominant theory is that that the universe had a beginning. So I don't know what you mean when you say you don't claim life came from anything other than life. There is not gap theory in following a sequence, that is the exact opposite of a gap theory.
OughtLike I said earlier, I think @InterestedAtheist will do a better job debating solutions to the Ethypro dilemma, so I'll leave that for now.
I agree with that. Everything we do has consequences, if not for us in eternity, then certainly for others here and now, which for me is all the reason I need to act morally.
Not true at all. A sociopath may father other sociopaths, but since they are much less likely to care for their family and ensure their children grow up, they will be outcompeted. This is clearly the case among many species - again, penguins for example. A promiscuous male penguin may fertilize a lot of eggs, but few of them will ever grow up, because the parents take shifts gathering food and warming the egg. So if we look at penguins and ask why they act this way, evolution has a pretty good answer - the genes of those who for some reason didn't participate in caring for their young, had a tendency to die out.
I agree that evolution isn't concerned with anything, as if it were an entity. It's just the mechanism by which different lifeforms have come to be. Some species depend on two participating parents or even a tribe for the young to survive, others don't. Man's place on the "tree of life" places us right in the middle of typically social species where the offspring depend on their family for a rather long time.
Again, you're talking as if I mean that since nothing has objective value, I should act as if nothing matters.
I'll try to make it simple:
1. Do you personally think, say, a particular piece of music is beautiful?
2. Do you think that the beauty of that music is inherent in that music itself, in other words, does it exist objectively?
Of course it exists, I have never said it doesn't. It just doesn't exist outside of, or apart from, me and my relationship with my children.
No. I'll clarify this one last time. When I talk about genocide in the bible etc, I'm not judging God according to my personal morality. I'm questioning the internal consistency of those who claim that God can both be good AND order genocide and infanticide at the same time. As far as I can tell, those two things are mutually exclusive. Now if you claim that God isn't ultimately good, or that he doesn't really want everybody to be saved, or whatever, then genocide isn't a problem, it doesn't go against God's supposed morality. When I read the bible it does seem to contradict itself. Maybe my understanding of it is wrong.
Sure I can, because there are also verses that say God will judge righteously. I don't see how he can both judge people fairly while also condemning anyone to eternal torment.
Actually I'm responding to other people's claims about his nature.
We agree on most things. You are asserting that objective morality exists. My objection to that is that 1. Objective morality can't exist by definition, and 2. where exactly is this morality, how is it found, in short, how do you know?
Yes. And tellingly, that's not by far the craziest religion people have invented
You keep saying that, and I keep saying they aren't objective, they just feel like they do. Of course I feel and act as though moral values are objective, I'm just asserting that they aren't in fact that, and neither can they be.
No, I may support some religions, but of course I'll never support a religion that practices human sacrifice or slavery, for example. Just because something is a result of evolution doesn't mean it's always good.
Basically the same thing. What is tolerated is based on the idea that there are rights.
True. So I'm glad to see that in functioning democracies, especially secular ones, things like fascism and communism seems to be the exception, when seen on a large scale. Secularism and humanism has a pretty good track record so far, especially when compared to theocracies.
It's true that when I found new ways to see reality and acting out my spirituality, I could simply drop a lot of the questions I struggled with as a believer and reluctant agnostic. For example the religious idea of sin is basically meaningless to me now.
Could be, but I seriously doubt it. I can't even imagine what it would take to convince me that Islam's claims are correct. Probably the same for you.
But yeah, I'm on this wave now and I was on another one years ago. Every day is a new wave, because we're never exactly the same two days in a row.
Absolutely. It's quite amazing to me, it doesn't have to be special to anybody else.
I'm none the wiser.
According to many (most?) Christians, he did. It's what the bible appears to say.
That's because I don't make claims about the existence of invisible, logically impossible laws or principles
God could be a liar. You could be deceived. You assume not only his existence, but his personality.
We base ourselves on the same axioms though - that our faculties are, at least to some extent, able to tell us some truth about reality.
I think I believed in God first and foremost because my parents did, which is usually the strongest predictor of what people believe. I didn't really question the faith before my late twenties, and then only reluctantly. Especially since I didn't believe in a legalistic form of Christianity then, but rather one that actually did me (and many around me) a lot of good.
You say knowing truth is inexplicable on evolution. I don't see why that must be the case. Sure, evolution would be more "concerned" with having us survive, and knowing the truth about things would be selected for to the degree that it meets that end. We've made more than enough discoveries to know that we see at best only a little part of reality - we only see a fraction of waves for example. But that doesn't mean we can't possibly be justified in believing anything.
And anyone can (re)interpret their religion to fit better with how the world seems to operate. Christianity has certainly evolved over the years.
"Life comes from life" is kind of like saying "human comes from human." That's obviously true, but if you go way way way back you will eventually find an ancestor of yours that wasn't actually human. Or take the evolution of musical styles as an example. This jazz came from that jazz which came from yet another type of jazz, but in the end you'll find some predecessor of jazz that isn't itself jazz. Know what I mean? Life as we know it may only come from previous life, but there may be something like "life as we don't know it." Nobody knows exactly how life, or the universe itself, came to be. A theist can fill those "holes" with God.
To a certain degree at least. My selfishness is certainly stronger than my sense of fairness or compassion sometimes.I think we actually disagree when it comes to overcoming moral duty. I believe that apart from God we very much can overcome our moral duties because they are not duties, we are not obliged to them, and there is no force applying a certain consequence.
But I have to come back to it, since you keep repeating that I deny my moral faculties. I don't. I have a sense of morality, and I act accordingly. It's perhaps the strongest drive I have. I know for some people at least, their sense of morality trumps even their will to sustain themselves.You claim that the reason you act morally is out of a consequential duty toward others. That is exactly what I mean when I say you act according to your moral faculties, which you deny, rather than your intellectual faculties from which you confirm your world view. Please don't come back saying "oh but I meant x".
Yes. A bunch of soccer moms (and dads!) will, on a grand scale, be more successful in propagating their genes than a rapist.Mass rapists don't need to care for their family. A person who cares for their family may have 2-3 kids. A mass rapist, like Genghis Khan successfully propagated his deny so much that you are more likely a related to him than anyone else. It has been calculated that 1 in 200 men are descended from Genghis Khan. He was basically Conan who paraphrased Khan when he said that what is great in life is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. Are you really going to tell me that soccer man was a better evolutionary product that Khan?
Not at all. The penguins are an example of a species where family ties beat rape, hands down. Again, there are other species where the offspring doesn't depend on a caring father, and so the father tends to run off as soon as he's impregnated a female.Your example of the penguin is one of extreme cold conditions. Are people living in Antarctica? Outside of those there for research they are not. Do you really intend to use antarctic conditions to explain non antarctic conditions?
Just because I don't think morality exists independently of myself, doesn't mean I have no reason to act on it. As I said, it's perhaps the strongest intuition I have. I just happen to realize that it is just that - an intuition.I don't think that you should act as if nothing matters, I think you should act as if nothing really matters, which is the conclusion of your intellect which you hold in higher esteem than your moral faculties. When you act according to a duty that you don't believe actually obliges you it shows you have more faith in your moral faculties than your intellectual ones. That is both contradictory to your prior claims, as well as your world view. Your questions again equivocate between subjective experience and action in regards to duty.
Yes. Like any other emotion or hunch or drive I may experience, it happens in me, it originates in me. It's most likely grounded in biology and shaped by culture. It doesn't exist outside of my body or my brain. If you think it does, again I think you have the burden of proof.You have no duty, at all, under your world view. You act as if you can get by through relegating this duty to you and your children, but you just said earlier that your duty was to others. So it's not just your relationship with your children is it. You say the duty certainly exists, but not how, who or what causes the obligation? You?
Yes. Well, I did expect you to believe what I was saying, but you keep insisting I've said something else entirely. If you don't know what I mean, I like you to ask me, rather than making assertions of what you think I mean.So you find scripture to be unreliable in it's description of God's nature, but find what other people, not me mind you, say about Him to be reliable to judge God against? How is that suppose to make your statement any better here. Do you expect me to believe that was your intention here Holo?
We all do.You are determine what righteous means from your own moral faculties, just as I said you were.
Well, if killing innocent babies can be righteous, then the term righteousness is completely meaningless to me. Don't you agree?You are using your own moral intuition to define what righteousness means.
True, but that's not what I'm doing. I'm not saying God is neither good nor evil. But if others make such claims, I think it's fair to examine if they can be right.If you are using other peoples claims as an argument condemning God you are strawmanning.
Well I don't believe in God, I think evolution is true and that what we see in the world fits quite well with that theory, and I've explained why (I don't mind discussing that further, but don't say "where is it" as if I haven't said anything at all.You responded to my call for you to give support for your beliefs by giving me objections to my beliefs. Where is the support for yours? I have given support for mine, namely the same source that provided our intellectual faculties provided our moral faculties, I cannot doubt one without the other.
I don't think neither the sense of duty, or religion, is crazy. Both are natural phenomena. But I'm sure you'll agree that there are some pretty weird religions out there, right?I asked you to explain how it makes sense to say that people constructed Christianity, and you just shrug that off with a joke? How is Christianity any more crazy than thinking you have a duty to others?
Why exactly is that a problem?It's fine if you state that moral standards feel objective, it's another thing when you act as if they are objective. It's not a problem to feel certain things, it's a problem to make claims and do things contrary to those claims.
Because I think it's wrong.Why wouldn't you support a religion that practices human sacrifice and slavery?
In another time, that may have been true, and it probably was true for many people in the past. In a kill-or-be-killed world pillaging and taking slaves may very well be beneficial to the strongest tribe. But thankfully, humanity has progressed.You expressed concern over societal cohesion and progress. It behooves you to enslave as many people as you can Holo. The more slaves you can own the better opportunity you can provide for your kids.
If you didn't believe in God, would you think child sacrifice could be a good thing?And why not child sacrifice?
That's the thing though, I'm not "praising" evolution for anything. I'm just convinced that it's a reasonable explanation for why things are as they are.If you are going to praise evolution as a prosperous source of moral faculties
I'm not sure we can really "expect" it - i.e. we probably don't know enough about how evolution and nature as a whole works, so that we could somehow predict it. But one reason springs to mind: societies that abandon slavery etc for more humanistic and/or secular values, seem to grow richer, bigger and more stable than those who don't. When I look at the world, it seems like democray, secularism, freedom of expression, human rights, universal healthcare, a free market etc produces happier, healthier, richer and more powerful people than theocracies, dictatorships, communism and so forth. So the former generally outcompete the latter.I mean why should I expect 'not slavery' on evolution?
True, the idea of rights is basically just something most of us have agreed on. You'd be hard pressed to point to some "right" floating about somewhere in spaceSure what is tolerated is based on the apprehension that we have rights, but we don't have rights.
Secularism, democracy etc are still extremely new phenomena historically speaking, but I would definitely say they have resulted in more health, happiness and freedom than theocracies or dictatorships ever had. So if I can choose, I'll go for that, and I will fight for it because I know it can't be taken for granted.You can be glad that fascism and communism are present exceptions but you could wake up one day and democracy is the exception and fascism and communism is considered humanistic. It's just self congratulation to say that your circle is progress. Humanism has no real track record and what are you even appealing to when you say track record? It has a record, but it's no more privileged than any other societal record. Secularism has a record but I wouldn't appeal to it. One might excuse the embarrassing accounts of secularism, but in reciprocation one can excuse the positive accounts of secularism just the same.
I agree 100%. I think "wave" is the perfect term here because if there's something we're not, it's stationary. I try to be open to changing my worldview again, because I have in the past, and there's practially infinitely more I don't know than I do know. But that doesn't mean I can't be justified in believing anything at all to be true.When you question only certain world views, there is a real lack of sincerity toward true beliefs. Unless most of your life is behind you, you have no reason to believe that the wave you're on is any more stationary than the wave preceding it.
Still no idea at all what you're talking about. If it's something important, please explain.If you don't know what you said, how should I explain it.
I may be wrong about that. It's a common belief in the Christian milieus I grew up in and still know.The meaning of an ancient document is not derived from a majority of opinions. In fact I challenge your claim that the majority of Christians even claim that God committed Genocide.
Not sure what you mean by value here. Again, if a Christian makes self-contradictory claims about God, I'll point that out, regardless of what the text may say.Further I find it disingenuous that you find the claims of Christians of greater value than the actual text those claims are presumably derived from.
That moral values can be objective.What logically impossible laws or principles do you claim that I hold?
What self serving reasons do you mean?And if you think your world view is undeserving of scrutiny you aren't really holding it for intellectual reason, but self serving reasons.
It seems the only source you could possibly accept is God, which I obviously can't give.I have asked you several times to appeal to a source that can warrant your claims as true beliefs but you have failed to do so. Instead you continually try to knock me off my warrant as if that somehow gives you warrant - it doesn't.
If you are right that God exists and that our faculties therefore necessarily must be trustworthy, yes. But I don't see good reasons to believe either of those claims. Why can't God be evil, for example, or why can't there be more than one god, etc.All axioms are the product of the very thing in question, intellectual faculties. If my world view is true I have warrant for my claims.
I'm freely admitting my axioms.If your world view is true you do not have warrant for your claims. You earlier tried to accuse me of being circular and yet you are making a circular argument.
Again, please ask me what I mean, don't tell me. I believed because I grew up in a Christian family, that's what I mean. Kids usually believe what their parents tell them. I was immersed in Christianity on most sides throughout my childhood and youth, and I interpreted everything through the lenses of faith.This is cookie jar mentality again. You didn't believe in God because your parents did. That is what you tell yourself in retrospect to justify your position.
True. I would've told you how I believed because God had answered my prayers and that the universe couldn't come into existence by itself and so forth. But when I look back, I see those weren't the real reasons I believed. When I began questioning my own faith, I began seeing that it all originated with what my parents taught me, and I didn't see proof of God because they were actually there, but because I expected them to be.If I asked you back then you would have given me an answer for why you believed in God, and it wouldn't have been because your parent did.
I can't. I can't even say that it's likely that other people than me have a consciousness. Again, it's an axiom. This could all be a dream. Even the concept of spacetime may actually just be a mental interpretation in our heads that happens to help us survive. Fundamentally, I don't see how we can truly know anything. And I really don't see how asserting God's existence makes it any better.I have stated earlier that one could have reliable intellectual faculties on evolution. But that doesn't mean it's likely on evolution. When a rat avoids an electrified floor he doesn't do so because he has a true belief about electricity. Evolution is only concerned with behavior that leads toward survival that culminates in genetic propagation, not true belief. Any behavior that leads to such survival can be attributed to a variety of beliefs, of which only one is true belief. Even if there is only one possible non true belief that can lead to the same survial action that is a 50% likelihood that one carries a true belief. Your job is to show that it's likely that you have such faculties, not make an appeal to nominal possibilities.
Maybe not, but it's certainly possible at least to be convinced of a pretty broad spectrum of interpretations.Reinterpretation is not the same as ad hoc.
No, I mention humans and jazz to exemplify what I mean, not to strawman anybody. Again, life as we know it comes from life, but there may be such a thing as "proto-life." Just like even though only humans can beget humans, it's still possible that if you look back through the generations, you'll find an ancestor that wouldn't meet the criteria of what we call human.You are yet again attempting to reframe my comments to what is convenient for you. I said life comes from life, not humans come from humans. Whenever you don't have something to say you strawman me instead. That is not a good way to discover the truth. All you have done in your reply to this section is appeal to ignorance instead of a gap. I am appealing to what we observe.
OughtTo a certain degree at least. My selfishness is certainly stronger than my sense of fairness or compassion sometimes.
But I have to come back to it, since you keep repeating that I deny my moral faculties. I don't. I have a sense of morality, and I act accordingly. It's perhaps the strongest drive I have. I know for some people at least, their sense of morality trumps even their will to sustain themselves.
Yes. A bunch of soccer moms (and dads!) will, on a grand scale, be more successful in propagating their genes than a rapist.
Not at all. The penguins are an example of a species where family ties beat rape, hands down. Again, there are other species where the offspring doesn't depend on a caring father, and so the father tends to run off as soon as he's impregnated a female.
What we seen in nature, be it among animals or humans, is basically whatever has best stood the test of time. It's the things that have been selected for by evolution. Evolution doesn't demand that every single generation or individual is behaving exactly in the most beneficial manner (procreation wise), just that over millions and millions of years, some traits turn out to be "better" than others.
Of course, it's possible that evolution is false and that we simply misunderstand all the things that seem to support it, but I find it very unlikely.
Just because I don't think morality exists independently of myself, doesn't mean I have no reason to act on it. As I said, it's perhaps the strongest intuition I have. I just happen to realize that it is just that - an intuition.
But you didn't answer my questions. If you don't believe a piece of music is in fact inherently beautiful or valuable, would you still listen to it? I can ask it in a different way: If you held my worldview, would you act as though nothing matters?
Yes. Like any other emotion or hunch or drive I may experience, it happens in me, it originates in me. It's most likely grounded in biology and shaped by culture. It doesn't exist outside of my body or my brain. If you think it does, again I think you have the burden of proof.
Yes. Well, I did expect you to believe what I was saying, but you keep insisting I've said something else entirely. If you don't know what I mean, I like you to ask me, rather than making assertions of what you think I mean.
I think I've been clear that my intention here is that IF you say God is good AND that he's a mass murderer, then it seems to me you are internally inconsistent, self-refuting.
We all do.
Well, if killing innocent babies can be righteous, then the term righteousness is completely meaningless to me. Don't you agree?
True, but that's not what I'm doing. I'm not saying God is neither good nor evil. But if others make such claims, I think it's fair to examine if they can be right.
Well I don't believe in God, I think evolution is true and that what we see in the world fits quite well with that theory, and I've explained why (I don't mind discussing that further, but don't say "where is it" as if I haven't said anything at all.
We agree on the axiom that we can know some truth about reality through our mental faculties. You make some assertions which I don't think you've given good evidence for:
1. There is a god.
2. Objective morality is both possible and does exist.
3. Our faculties must be given by God or else they can't be trusted at all.
4. If our faculties are given by God, they must be trustworthy.
My question to all of the above, is why and how do you know. Why can/must we assume that if God gave us faculties, that they are therefore trustworthy? How do you know objective morality exists?
I don't think neither the sense of duty, or religion, is crazy. Both are natural phenomena. But I'm sure you'll agree that there are some pretty weird religions out there, right?
Why exactly is that a problem?
Because I think it's wrong.
If by overcome you mean "will be subject to punishment/reward," then it's really only about obedience and fear, not duty in a true sense of the word.That in one world view our moral duties can be overcome while in the other they are not is very much why the duty for under one is objective and the duty under the other is not. Further it's not a duty at all under your world view.
OK, then I've misunderstood your position completely on that. I was under the impression that you meant our moral intuitions pointed to objective morality, or was even a proof that such a thing exists.I'm not saying you deny your moral faculties, I am saying you deny that they point to anything real. They point to something, but they are not pointing toward where our faculties would have us believe they are pointing, IE objective morality. We both agree you have moral faculties, we both agree they point somewhere, we both agree they don't point to anything objective.
I still don't see why that's a problem. I couldn't escape my moral intuitions even if I tried, that's just the way it is. In any case I don't see why my actions, whatever they might be, can be a confirmation or a denial of whether or not any particular worldview is true or not. I don't claim that I should or even could act according to what I believe is strictly true. We all know we're going to die, yet we hardly ever act like it, right? Doesn't mean it's somehow wrong to say that death is a fact.That isn't at issue, what is at issue is that you are using your intellect to determine what your moral faculties are actually pointing too, however your intellectual faculties come from the same source as your moral faculties. Further, you hold and claim the belief that your moral faculties are not pointing toward an objective ought, and yet your behavior follows the very thing you deny. And you claim as much here, that you act according to your morality. So why should I believe your world view is true when you admit that your actions don't follow what you claim is true, but rather what you deny is true. That is a problem.
That's because they are both matters of personal value. Both exist in our minds and nowhere else. Why does it mean one thing if we "act" on our musical taste, and something else if we act on our moral values?Your question about music is equivocating between subjective experience and action in regards to duty.
I don't think it's that simple. A caring family can raise a lot of strong children, the rapist will leave kids here and there. But since I believe evolution to be a fact to begin with, of course I will assume that the way things are, are precisely because of that. The only alternative I can think of, is God, and I just don't see convincing arguments for his existence, especially not the kind of God claimed by Christianity.Going back to the rapist vs the soccer family.
You state that a bunch of soccer families will out compete a rapist, but you are comparing several families to a single rapist just to out compete him. That simply confirms that rapist is a more advanced evolutionary trait, that 1 rapist is comparable to several non rapist soccer families.
In mankind's early history, they were certainly trying to survive in harsh environments. Early humans probably lived in quite small groups, hunting and foraging, which fits pretty good with a lot of the human traits we still see today. Someone like Genghis Khan wouldn't be able to do as much damage and spread his genes as far and wide as he could when people had settled into cities and nations. Plundering the group, killing the men and impregnating the women would hardly be the best way to pass your genes on. (Today too, children of rapists and single mothers generally are less likely to survive and thrive.)Penguins are an example of how harsh environments require more support for children. No one is living on Antarctica. It is the situation that warrants this behavior, but that situation is not a part of what we are discussing.
I think they probably do, to some degree.You have stated that I have a burden of proof when I say that our moral faculties point toward objective reality. You're right I do. And consequently so do you when you claim your intellectual faculties point toward objective reality.
What do you mean by confirming your moral intuitions? Do you mean how we know if they are true/right?All my faculties came from the same source, logically speaking I don't get to pick which ones I believe lead to true belief. That would be cherry picking. The only way I can confirm my moral intuitions, is to confirm my intellectual intuitions.
I'm sorry but I still don't see how adding God to the mix makes anything better. It depends entirely on who or what God is.The only way to warrant my intellectual intuitions is the attribute them to God
If morality doesn't truly exist, then yes, nobody can act truly morally in that sense.Further, I cannot act morally and sanely unless my moral intuitions refer to a moral reality.
I know you don't believe that, that's why I said IF someone claims God is both A and B, and A and B seem to be mutually exclusive, I'll call them out. I'm glad you don't interpret the bible that way.I told you early on that I don't believe the Bible spoke of Genocide, and you acknowledge that, so why should I believe that you expected me to believe something in which I stated I did not.
OK. I take back everything I said about that.When you agree with me that you were 'determining what righteous means from your own faculties' you are confirming that you were not condemning God by His own standard, but by your own standard of righteousness determined by your own moral faculties. That blatantly contradicts your prior reattribution that you were simply using what other people say about God.
No, of course it's not meaningless. You can find someone who disagrees with the definition of anything, but things like slaughtering babies for fun is pretty universally agreed on to be wrong. But if things like that can fit into someone's idea of righteousness, then we're not speaking the same language. It can mean whatever.You ask me that if killing innocent babies can be righteous, then the term righteousness is completely meaningless. It already is completely meaningless on your world view Holo.
There's lots of it even if you personally can't see it. There's a lot of meaning in my life, it just doesn't come from something or someone outside.Why protest as if there is a dying of the light? There is no light on your world view.
I have a hard time believing that people actually believe this. I think they believe it because they have this sense of what is good, and they have a sense (or faith) that God is also good. If God should turn out to be a sadistical madman, I think they'd change their definition of good to something completely different than "God's nature."I told you at the beginning that on my position good refers to God's nature.
True, the theory of evolution as it currently stands offers no explanation for conscience. But conscience is probably not the thing that dictates our behaviour. In fact a strong argument against conscience being a (necessary) product of the brain is that there seems to be no reason why any being should be aware of what it's doing. Most of what the brain does has nothing to do with consciousness anyway. We could behave exactly like we do without being aware of anything. Consciousness isn't necessary to make choices. So it's more likely that we become conscious of our choices, rather than using our consciousness to make them. Like I said earlier, one theory is that consciousness is basically just a byproduct of advanced computing. Another is that consciousness is fundamental, which if true will have unfathomable consequences for our understanding of reality.Evolution makes sense of very little of what we observe. It speaks only of our physical attributes, it has no viable explanation for the emergence of consciousness which is responsible for the behavior evolution relies upon.
OK, but again, how does God make it any better? If true, you must assume not only his existence, but his character as well. My worldview may not be able to say anything truly trustworthy about the universe. But can yours say something truly trustworthy about God?I am not even asking you all that, I am just asking you to provide warrant for your intellectual claims. But you can't do that, all you can do is claim that it could, but that doesn't make it likely that you have a true belief.
I'm not saying anything is good or bad because it came by evolution, i.e. if evolution drives me to beat you up then it must be the right thing to do. My morality could drive me to give my life, or even the life of my children, for some cause I perceive to be greater. That doesn't mean morality can't be a product of evolution. We can probably find some sort of irrational (evolutionarily speaking) behaviour in any species.I asked you to explain how it makes sense that Christianity was constructed.
You claim you wouldn't support a religion that promotes slavery because you think it's wrong, but you also claim that your moral faculties come from evolution and is expected on evolution. Slavery is expected on evolution and so your moral intuitions are not in line with evolutionary expectations. So there appears to be no reason to attribute your moral intuitions on evolution is there?
I have no idea where exactly we are going, but when I look at history, it seems we're moving to a more and more connected way of living and that humanism, democracy and secularism are on the rise (with some exceptions of course). Since I think less suffering is A Good Thing, that's good news to me. It's what I'd call progress.What do you mean mankind has progressed. Where exactly do you suggest we are going on your world view? As far as I can see there is no where to progress to on your world view. Again your language perpetually contradicts your claims.
To be precise: if you had stopped believing in God, do you think you could come to believe child sacrifice is good?If God didn't exist I might think child sacrifice could be a good thing. Again morality would be whatever my moral faculties point to.
Just because we can't make completely accurate predictions doesn't falsify the theory. Like other scientific theories it will be tested, developed, possibly disproved some day, but it's by far the best theory we have for the time being.You now claim that we can't really expect anything on evolution, and further that we probably don't know enough about how evolution and nature as a whole work enough to make predictions. In your attempt to mitigate your claim you have undermined it's foundation of evolution as entirely ad hoc, unfalsifiable, and unscientific because science makes predictions and confirms them. You have just set your ability to appeal to evolution on fire.
Again: I'm not denying shoulds, I'm denying that they are objective. I think health and happiness is great stuff.Don't lump in democracy with secularism. I suppose you aren't thinking of Pol Pot and Stalin when you consider secularism...oh that's why you are padding this with democracy...got it... And why present this as if health and happiness were something we should strive to obtain. You deny shoulds.
I admit I'm not very open to believing there is a God, at least not in the Christian sense. I don't think I can ever go back to that kind of faith. Perhaps a different one.You don't seem to be open to changing your world view.
OK.Hunh?
I quoted your statement, if you don't know what you are talking about I can't help you sort that out.
I heard that all the time growing up. The bible was presented as the word of God and literally true, and there were rarely an attempt to "explain away" genocides etc in the OT. I saw some of that when I went to bible school and seminary, but in the lutheran/pentecostal/conservative environments I was in, it was just accepted as fact. I'll bring it up from time to time when I discuss religion with Christians, and more often than not, their answer is basically "I can't explain that." Very few of them offer some sort of explanation like the translation is inaccurate, God's rules have changed, God can somehow be both good and do things like that at the same time, and so forth. But yeah, I've heard it a lot. Maybe it's particular to my country, the different churches I attended, or the time I grew up.I have never met a Christian who believes that God committed Genocide. So you will need to substantiate that claim with something.
The very concept of value is that it's subjective. I don't see how value can exist outside of a mind. And yes, God may have a mind, but as far as I can understand, whatever he may value would still be subjective to him.Why is it logically impossible for moral values to be objective?
It seems to me you have more confidence in our faculties than I do.The only source I know of that could warrant reliable true belief is God. I will accept another source if you can provide it, but all you have provided is that evolution could, not that it is likely that it has.
Again, I am making an abductive claim that if my intellectual faculties are true God is the best explanation for them.
If I'm getting you right:You are yet again trying to reframe my statement into a circular one. As I stated, I am not appealing to an evil creator, I am appealing to God. An evil creator would not warrant much true belief. If your, or my claims, are to hold truth value, they must be derived from a source that makes that likely. Evolution does not make that likely, and evil creator does not make that likely, God does.
I used to believe, I was absolutely convinced. And I saw all sorts of reasons to believe - first and foremost I thought I believed because God had touched me in some way. Looking back, I now think I was mistaken about that. Now I think that the REAL reason I believed was because I was brought up to. I was a Christian, but the testimony I held I no longer believe to be true.If the reason you would have stated back then was that your parents were Christian then you were never a Christian. For certain something you are saying is untrue because you cannot claim you were a Christian if your testimony is that your parent believed. You either need to drop the claim of being a former Christian, or the testimony you held as a Christian, because they are mutually exclusive. You can't reasonably expect me to just accept your word for it when your story doesn't add up.
Would you say that "other people besides me are conscious" is a warranted axiom? If so, why?It's meaningless to speak of axioms without a warrant for those axioms being a true belief. Without reliable intellectual faculties false belief is just as likely as being an axiom as true belief.
OK. What I thought you meant was that since life apparently can only come from previous life, we can conclude that life itself can't possibly have come from something that wasn't itself alive in the exact same way. Would you care to elaborate on what you actually mean?You said "Life comes from life" is kind of like saying "human comes from human." That is a reframing of my position. You change my position, to a new position, and then reject that position by saying "but if you go way way way back you will eventually find an ancestor of yours that wasn't actually human". You are making objections to the reframed statement of mine, that is a strawman.
Ought.OK.
I heard that all the time growing up. The bible was presented as the word of God and literally true, and there were rarely an attempt to "explain away" genocides etc in the OT. I saw some of that when I went to bible school and seminary, but in the lutheran/pentecostal/conservative environments I was in, it was just accepted as fact. I'll bring it up from time to time when I discuss religion with Christians, and more often than not, their answer is basically "I can't explain that." Very few of them offer some sort of explanation like the translation is inaccurate, God's rules have changed, God can somehow be both good and do things like that at the same time, and so forth. But yeah, I've heard it a lot. Maybe it's particular to my country, the different churches I attended, or the time I grew up.
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