Wait, is the same WLC that's defined god as a disembodied mind in his various other "proofs"? I'm struggling to understand how objective ("mind independent") moral values could be the result of a disembodied mind. Contradiction, anyone?
Excellent! Craig is doctor of stupidity. He is simply not very bright! He is the big debater of christianity in the states. He is not to be taken seriously. God told me that much yesterday. God spake to me and said: "12? Mind if I call you 12? I am letting one person on this Earth know the truth and I chose you. All the religions of the world are wrong. They don't have a clue. I'm so imbarrased. But what can I do - I gave them free will! Thanks for listeníng". I'm not kidding!
Well, at least we have moved beyond your initial (mind-bogglingly inane) question.
Yes, God is good - in fact, he is the Good.
Yes, Good can exist without evil - but evil cannot exist without the good.
The definition of the good has been the subject of discussion for the greatest minds in human history for thousands of years. If you require an exact definition, perhaps this says something about your character. Perhaps you should grow up and get used to a little ambiguity in life.
How can anyone prove that "mind-independant" values exist or do not exist. I'd like to know what WLC means by "mind-independant". If he just means moral values that exist for every human, no matter what they believe in, then I would agree that those kind of morals exist.
But if none of us had minds, then I don't see why we should believe there would be any universal law such as morality. Mindless objects don't need to treat each other nicely. Comets can destroy planets and not be immoral.
You would think someone with a Ph.D. in Philosophy would understand that philosophical arguments must start with premises that are either self-evident or evidential. The existence of god is neither. The existence of objective morals is neither. A connection between the two is neither. Besides circular reasoning, I want to say he's "begging the question" also, but I'm not sure if this qualifies. I love all of your videos NonStampCollector. Keep up the good work, much appreciated.
Most monotheists would argue that the first premise in your refined argument is false because polytheism rules out the possibility of one objective standard for morality. If only one god acts as the source of morality, then we have either monotheism or polytheism with a single supreme deity which might as well be monotheistic for these purposes. The moral argument is wrong because both premises are false, not because it is circular.
Even my Catholic philosophy/critical thinking professor will go WTF if he hears this argument (and be disappointed to see a well-known theologian/apologist make a very poor argument).
I don't think NonStamp's argument is equivalent to Craig's. If morality comes from god(s) there is nothing that necessitates more than one god. He could change it to "god or gods", but then it's pretty much the same argument that Craig is giving.
I don't think Craig is basing his argument on the "And I think the premises are right", as he (attempts to) justify them.
Craig's argument is flawed in both premises regardless, for many other reasons.
Apparently, speaking of gods, Craig may likely be referring to a *specific* deity (with specific characteristics), which is a big enough problem already.
subjective would mean what is true for you is not true for me, do you honestly think man who loves his baby & and a man who smashes that childs head against the wall are simple differing in opinion or taste & that morality goes no deeper?
@lxAgnosticxl no retard. Subjective means that morals depend on the person. But it doesn't mean that people can't have the same opinions on morality. go back to school
that does NOTHING to say infanticide is wrong. subjective does depend on the person IS THAT WHAT MORALITY IS TO YOU???? so the rapist is just got a different view but to you he does nothing wrong???? same opinons on morality would be intersubjective agin that doesn't show right from wrong.
@lxAgnosticxl No. Don't start PMSing just because you don't understand.
To me, rape murder and pedophilia etc is wrong but to pedophiles, pedophilia is right and to rapists, rape is okay, and to murderers, murder is alright. Morality is an opinion by everyone. Every action is either moral or immoral by different people's opinion. If morality is objective, then everyone would have the same opinion and their wouldn't be any rape or murder.
"To me, rape murder and pedophilia etc is wrong" I know you believe that, but the way you define moralit doesn't alow for that to be justified.
"pedophilia is right and to rapists, rape is okay, and to murderers, murder is alright"
ARE YOU FUKING SERIOUS ??????????
so because its just opinion , both are equaly valid who are to say rape is wrong. its not opion its a moral abomination. people wouldn't have the same opinion. its independent of what you believe.
@lxAgnosticxl "I know you believe that, but the way you define moralit doesn't alow for that to be justified" It's against the law in probably every country to murder and rape and commit pedophilia. That's not enough for you? i know it's written in the bible that god said it's wrong, but that doesn't do shit all. Laws is what stops people from killing and raping. The bible is useless and not even christians read their own stupid book.
@lxAgnosticxl (continued) "ARE YOU FUKING SERIOUS ??????????" First, calm the fuck down. The reason why you're freaking the fuck out is because you can't understand. I never said that it's valid to let rapists rape and murderers to murder. I said that in their minds, they believe it is okay what they do. But since most people disagree, murderers and rapists go to jail. And that's good.
"I never said that it's valid to let rapists rape" but if its just opinion why is yours more valid than theres, if the world was just populated with rapist that wouldn't make it okay. but you can't get that on a subjective morality."But since most people disagree, murderers and rapists go to jail. And that's good."
if its just opinion then why is your more valid than charles manson?
so this is intersubjective, thing is majority said salvery or kill homosexuals. the majority in ww2 nazi germany said kill jews are these moraly acceptable?
@lxAgnosticxl "thing is majority said salvery or kill homosexuals." I've only heard the bible support slavery and the death of homosexuals.
No. Not the majority of the world. Well, in germany in ww2, they enslaved jews. In THEIR minds, it was morally acceptable because they all loved hitler and then he kind of brainwashed them into thinking that jews deserve to die. But Hitler lost the war because the majority of the world disagreed with him and got bombed by other countries. Majority rules.
"No. Not the majority of the world. Well, in germany in ww2, they enslaved jews. In THEIR minds, it was morally acceptable because they all loved hitler and then he kind of brainwashed them"
right so you see whats wrong with an intersubjective morality.
majority doesn't rule majority can't it changes its mind. what majority deemed good 2000 years ago is not what majorit deems today.
@lxAgnosticxl When I said "majority rules" It's because they have the most power.
Yes it does say in the bible that homosexuals must be stoned to death and there is a lot of slavery in the bible. You never read it, just like a lot of christians.
again this only reflects majority opinion , or prefrence by sheer cahnce majority are gonna favour 1 out come. but that does nothing to show its really evil to rape another.
it does say that about homosexual but jesus said 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' . i have read the bible my point was jesus never condone those things
so its on the same scale of other opinions, so when considering judgement the man who rapes a child is morally equivalent to the man who prefers MC Donald over KFC.
if atheism requires this view on morality , let any mocker of religion for ever hence be silent i can not think of anything so irrational.
@lxAgnosticxl I never said that rape and restaurant choice are on the same scale. I only said it's about opinion.
"if atheism requires this view on morality , let any mocker of religion for ever hence be silent i can not think of anything so irrational." So just because atheists like me say that morality is opinion, we deserve to be silent??? I never said rapists & murderers are good to let them kill & rape. I am AGAINST murder and rape. I don't understand why you want atheists to be silent.
I know you don't think rape & murder are ok. but if there just opinion ( which i know you can't honestly believe) then its just like anyother opinion. i was saying any mocker of religion e.i. anti theists etc not necessarily all atheists. "I only said it's about opinion"
thats realativism. that would mean the child rapist does nothing wrong but only has an unfashionable view on realativism you can't get right & wrong. How can you possibly think morality is just opinion.
@lxAgnosticxl If morality isn't an opinion, then why would the rapist rape and the murderer murder? If it's not their opinion, then they wouldn't do it.
Religion mockers should be silent? That is still absurd and repulsive. We have free speach.
The child rapist DOES do something wrong but onbly to the children and, since most people are against rape, they protect the victims and jail the rapists. Even though it's their opinion, they still need to go to jail...
objective morality says nothing about how people will behave. the rapist may be of the opinion hes doing good or hes satisfying himself never the less he is still doing wrong.
im not trying to take away free speech,
"the child rapist does something wrong " yes he does, regardless of whether he thinks he does right. Most people today don't want free speech for women or wan't homosexuals to be killed on a relativistic view that would be classified as moral.
who are you to force your opinion on the rapist. after all he just holds a different view, what makes he raping someone wrong? to quote sam harris " if there was only 1 person in the world who held down a struggling screaming little girl & cut off her genitals
with a septic blade & then sewed her back up, the only question would be how severly he should be punished" - thats objective morality
@lxAgnosticxl Well first of all, that's what the bible god does. (oh and FYI, it doesn't say anywhere in the bible that rape is a sin)
Rape is wrong to most people, because it causes a lot of misery to rape victims. Opinions can always change, and it's not good to be a rapist because it doesn't make anything better. It makes things worse.
the bible consider rape & lust adultery, "It makes things worse." for the rapist it doesn't
rape might not be social advantageous , and thus has become taboo. but that does nothing to say rape is really wrong. Morality can't be subjective Think about this
is mutilating the face of a child on moral equivalent with prefering chocolate over vanilla,
it doesn't matter whether the majority agree or not. if every1 loved killing children would anything be wrong with it?
@lxAgnosticxl (continued) Oh btw I forgot to ask you, why is your youtube name "agnostic" when you obviously are not an agnostic? Are you trolling or on someone else's account?
@lxAgnosticxl Most people consider it to be morally acceptable to involuntarily deprive people (including innocent women and children) of their lives -- so long as it's during wartime. We (presumably the "good guys") do it all the time. We just fix it in our moral system by not calling it murder.
During my life time it was both legally and morally acceptable for certain men to force certain women to have sexual relations - so long as they were husband and wife.
(cont'd) (2) It wasn't legal for a wife to refuse sexual relations with her husband.
As for pedophilia -- likewise. In various states in the U.S. at various times the legal age of consent has been as low as *nine* -- at various times girls of twelve or thirteen getting married was common and accepted -- and still is in various parts of the world today.
So in what sense are any of these things -- murder, rape, pedophilia -- "independent" of our beliefs?
(cont'd) (3) Hell, let's just skip ahead to the "deal-breaker" that everybody loves to trot out -- killing babies. Surely that's got to be a universal wrong. Really?
First -- we're perfectly okay with killing babies so long as the baby-killing is defined as "incidental." That is, if you invade a town, line up the babies and machine gun them - that's obviously horrible. But if you just saturate bomb the town full of civilians and kill the same number of babies -- that's somehow okay.
(cont'd) (4) That's because we allow ourselves the moral distinction between targeted killing (aiming at the babies) and incidental killing (aiming at the town with the babies in them, knowing that they'll be killed -- but not specifically wanting them to be killed).
But the fact is, if you act in a way that kills them, knowing ahead of time that they'll die -- you're a baby killer either way.
(cont'd) (5) In addition, at various times and places in history, babies were intentionally killed for sacrificial or other reasons, and the killers made no bones about it, and obviously didn't consider it to be wrong. In fact, they viewed it as a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
When the Spartans exposed a sickly child at birth, or a Cathaginian buried a sacrificed child beneath the post hold of a newly made house, or an Aztec cut the heart out of a child to ensure the rising of the sun --
(cont'd) (6) -- or when all of these ancient societies engage in genocidal warfare against neighboring societies and killed every man, woman and child, down to the last baby -- all of those that committed these acts, as individuals and as members of their societies, thought that what they were doing was perfectly fine.
So it's very hard to support the claim that there are universal moral beliefs of the kind you suggest in the face of the fact that -- there just aren't any.
also nothing says you can't come to know morality in an evolutionary way, how we recognise objective morality is also independent of whether or not one exists.
You start off with in my opinion many good examples, and would you agree whether these people like what there doing whether they agree or not , there doing wrong?
thats objective morality, nothing in the argument says most people will behave morally.
when ascessing moral judgement its not enough to use blanket statemnets like 'killing is wrong' we also need the intention. So i ask you is it wrong for me to kill a child for fun? <thats objective morality.
@lxAgnosticxl No, if you're saying that it's "wrong to kill a child for fun" -- by which you mean it might be okay to kill a child under some other circumstances -- say, in a war, or if god instructed you to kill a child, then that's not "objective morality" -- that's a value judgement.
In the former case, if it's "objectively wrong" to kill a child, then it would be wrong under every circumstance -- even if killing a child meant saving the entire universe, or your soul, or the child's soul.
(cont'd) (2) Or even if in the face of God's command, because if God ordered you to dash in a child's brains - would that then be right? Oh, God wouldn't do it? Why not? Oh -- because it would be wrong.
Well then, I guess that means that I'm correct. That if God *did* order it - it *would* be wrong.
But if it's sometimes right and sometimes wrong (say right if done incidentally in a war but wrong just for fun) - then that's not objective morality.
"Well then, I guess that means that I'm correct. That if God *did* order it - it *would* be wrong."
if you're talking about psalm 137 thats a prophecy not a command.
"But if it's sometimes right and sometimes wrong (say right if done incidentally in a war but wrong just for fun) - then that's not objective morality"
i think you're using blanket statements we still need the intention.
but that still doesn't answer the question , does a rapist do wrong even if he is happy.
"then it would be wrong under every circumstance" No it wouldn't to acess moral judgement you need the action & the intention, killing in self defense is ok, killing children for fun is objectivly wrong.
@lxAgnosticxl Does a man who bashes in a child's head or cuts out her heart do *right* if he's unhappy while he's doing it? So there is both the action and the intention, but in addition, the sense of moral necessity, say provided by a belief in some higher power (a command by a god) but the person doing it is sort of unhappy but nevertheless obedient to what he perceives as divine command.
(cont'd) (2) So I need to know if you distinguish between someone who bashes in the head of a child because it pleases him (objectively wrong, according to you) or someone who bashes in the head because it pleases God (objectively right?).
If you agree, then when someone asks you if it is wrong for a man to bash in the head of a child your only honest answer must be -- "I have insufficient information to answer" - because if God orders it, then it's not "objectively wrong."
(cont'd) (3) And, by the way, it's always interesting to me that people make these assumptions about moral absolutes -- like self defense. Self defense *seems* like self evident grounds for killing someone. But that most definitely has not always been the case. You killed somebody who was trying to kill you -- so what? Still murder. You'd still be punished for it.
What? That's ridiculous. It's self-defense! They didn't care.
@lxAgnosticxl I'm afraid that you do not understand the legal definition of "malice." In legal terms this doesn't refer to some sort of evilness of spirit. It means "with the intention to cause harm."
If I shoot someone accidentally, there was no "malice" because there was no intention to cause harm.
But if someone is trying to kill me, and I purposely kill him, there is an intention to cause harm. The defense is not absence of intent, but rather that the killing was legally justified.
If god is so frequently doing these things can you reference it?
believe me ive read the bible. Can you reference any of this? if i don't understand malice , you don't understand murder
Yes ,but someone who kills in self defense doesn't wan't to kill they want to defend them self. and did you seriously say "You killed somebody who was trying to kill you -- so what? Still murder. You'd still be punished for it."
(cont'd) (2) And depending on the time and place, those *legal* definitions have changed. When you talk about self defense that is a "legal" defense -- now. In other times and societies, it was not. You may assert that it has always been a moral defense, just as you may assert that a husband has never had the "moral" right to have sex with his wife against her will -- but until quite recently (and still in some places) he assuredly had the *legal* right to do so.
(cont'd) (3) A husband could not *legally* rape his wife because a wife could not *legally* refuse sexual relations with her husband.
So let's not get distracted by questions of law. I assume that we both agree that there have been (and in some places still are) unjust laws. Wrong laws.
The question is -- by what standard are they wrong?
It just seems as if no current moral theory correctly accounts for the way in which people actually behave because that's not really what they're for.
(cont'd) (4) Moral theories should be first, descriptive, and second predictive. Instead, they all seem to be merely prescriptive. None of them accurately describe the way people actually behave, nor predict how they will behave. They just tell us how people ought to behave.
The law of gravity doesn't advise a rock of the speed at which it *should* fall. It describes the behavior of objects in gravitational fields and allows us to predict how those objects will move in relation to one another.
(cont'd) (5) There's no moral theory that does anything like that. Everyone's just in some kind of hurry to figure out how to make people behave themselves, to give people advise on how to do it.
But there's no real research plan involved in moral *theory* -- no attempt, in any scientific sense to propose some idea about how human beings treat one another, morally, that's experimentally testable.
While there have been some sociological experiments that provide some interesting insight into moral behaviors, there's still no overarching *theory* and until then, this is all just a lot of talk.
How one comes to know morality is not a issue as to whether an objective morality exists. And if you think those verses are really wrong then thats only to approve of the second premise that objective morality exists.
@lxAgnosticxl I fear that you have been ducking, dodging, and begging this question since the very beginning of these exchanges. I may consider various things to be right or wrong, just as I consider various works of art to be ugly or beautiful. The former is no more an argument in favor of objective morality than the latter is an argument for objective beauty -- especially given that many people today and historically disagree with me about both.
(cont'd) (2) And that's what I've been waiting for and am still waiting for -- your *argument* - not just your assertion that objective morality exists. This is not in any sense a default position that I have to prove wrong. If you're claiming that it's true you have to demonstrate that it's true in light of the fact that countless cultures have believed that slavery is moral, child killing is moral, genocidal war is moral, and torture is moral.
(cont'd) (2) How can you assert that these are universal moral truths when people still argue about their truth to this day? And if you claim that they are true but only a select and privileged few have access to that truth -- i.e. -- you and those who agree with your position, then you have a pretty high burden to meet to demonstrate how you have achieved this access and what the basis is for the content of this moral truth that *you* have but which countless billions of other clearly lack.
(cont'd) (2) More to the point, there have been countless times and societies in which women had no choice but to enter into arranged marriages and no choice, once they did, but to submit to the sexual advances of their husbands, a situation which, by out definition, would certainly qualify as rape -- as they could not, in any meaningful sense "consent." They had no choice in the matter.
(cont'd) (3) But their societies certainly didn't consider such acts to be rape and the husbands who forced their wives might very well have been perfectly happy about it, in the sense that, in their view, a willful wife ought to be made to obey and it's just jolly good fun to do it.
So why were countless generations wrong and why are we right -- and why do we know we're right and why didn't they know that they were wrong?
(cont'd) (4) And in what way -- where in any of your posts, have you advanced any affirmative argument to suggest that any moral precept is eternal, unchanging and universal, other than by simply asserting it to be so and then shifting the burden of the argument onto me.
It's not for me to disprove. It's not for me to provide some counter-argument or alternative moral system. My view is that your claim should not be accepted because it unsupported by evidence.
We both have a burdon, were are both trying to account for morality, i ask you this question because the answer is very important to determine the answer. So i'll ask again even if a rapist does to his hearts desire , does he do morally wrong?
"So why were countless generations wrong and why are we right."
OM is independent of what anyone thinks , a child rapist is just as mistaken as man who says 2+2=5, < that is OM.
@lxAgnosticxl I don't recall offering a counter-position. Whatever my position might be is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of OM. If OM is correct, then it is, period. But if it is, there has to be some basis for accepting it as true.
Mathematical truths are analytic truths. Moral truths are not. So if that's the best you can come up with, you obviously haven't thought about this stuff at all and you've lost at the gate.
@lxAgnosticxl Seven times you have asked me this question and I have, in various ways made the point, which I will make as explicitly as I possibly can.
No. No, Seven times no. Seven thousand times, and seven hundred thousand times no.
A rapist may do wrong according to *some* moral theories, in some societies, within some value systems, and according to some legal systems.
But certainly not in all circumstances, according to all moral theories, societies, values systems or legal systems.
(cont'd) (2) That would meet the very definition of a *subjective* rather than objective system. When and under what circumstances a given sexual act is even considered to be rape has been dependent upon the time, the culture, the society, and the values of the person in question and that doesn't even address the question of when and whether a woman was deemed to have the *right* to refuse a sexual advance.
(cont'd) (3) Personally, I value certain things, including respect for the autonomy of persons and property, and reasonably enough, prefer to live in a society with others who share those values.
But that's not the square of the hypotenuse. It isn't engraved on the fabric of space/time. It's just a way of treating people and being treated by them that (hopefully) help us to get along with one another.
"the culture, the society, and the values of the person in question and that doesn't even address the question of when and whether a woman was deemed to have the *right* to refuse a sexual advance."
you mean to tell me its just opinion, on relativism the rapist's act is no more evil than a tree growing a branch.
@lxAgnosticxl This is not an argument. It is simply an assertion and this is all you have done throughout this entire tiresome exchange. Anyone can assert anything. I can just as easily assert that eating pork is wrong or that drinking coffee is wrong or that stepping on an insect is wrong and that *you're* disagreement is the same as 2+2=5 -- "whether anyone agrees or not."
The fact is, the only reason you've harped on this one question is doubtless because you expect everyone to agree.
(cont'd) (2) I've asked you for some real arguments in support of your position. You clearly don't have any. In fact, I've yet to hear any that are even remotely convincing -- but in order to be convincing, at the very least, one must advance an argument, which, after who knows how many posts, you have yet to do.
I don't think you even know what an argument is. It isn't asking your opponent a question. It isn't "my position is self-evidently true." And it isn't 2+2=5.
This is meta ethics it can only be reasoned so when you keep asking for 'real evidence' you either don't understand morality or meta ethics, the whole point of this argument is self-evident besides you've given no way to account for morality , and for one who claimed OM doesn't exist you'de have to do that.
@lxAgnosticxl So let me get this straight. I shouldn' expect you to provide any evidence for the truth of your position -- because the truth of your position is -- what's the term you just used -- self -*evident?*
I have no burden to meet in respect to *your* claim regarding the truth of *your* position. I don't have to prove that it's wrong. I don't have to prove that something else is right.
I might have no theory at all about what causes thunder and lightning.
(cont'd) (2) That does not offer any support at all for the position that it comes from the Thunder God atop Mount Olympus. And you can't take the position, "If not Zeus where else could it possibly come from?"
That's not an argument. It's shifting the burden. The proponent has to show me that there is a Zeus, not claim that he is evident every time lightning strikes.
Ditto for OM. You can't claim that it's self-evident. Since countless people do not find it to be so, it clearly isn't.
when you say 'evidence' like all atheist anything that isn't science isn't good enough, But were both trying to acount for morality so we BOTH have the burdon. 99% of people would agree raping a child is morally different than loveing a child. <you seriously think i alone have the burdon to prove that, and you need say nothing? because that is OM and that is self-evident
(cont'd) (2) And when I say "modern times" I'm not talking about the middle ages or Biblical times -- all of these things were true and legal and morally acceptable in many part of the United States during my life time.
I certainly consider a thirteen year old girl to be a child. For a thirteen year old to be given in marriage, to have no right to refuse, to have no right to refuse sexual relations with her husband, to be beaten if she refused, and to have no recourse to law if she did --
(cont'd) (3) -- this was the state of the *law* in many parts of this country as little as forty or fifty years ago. And nobody thought that there was anything wrong about it.
You can assert that they lacked moral understanding and we gained it -- but on what basis can we not equally assert that they *had* it and we've lost it?
We oppose genocide. Others support it. You say we've recognized some objective moral truth that they fail to recognize. But on what basis?
(cont'd) (3) In the past, there was almost no divorce, almost no abortion, and very little premarital sex. Now there's quite a bit of all three. Was that because people *better* recognized the "objective moral truth" that those things were right in the past and no longer recognize these truths today? Or the reverse?
In the past there was slavery, women were considered chattel, and most societies practiced genocidal warfare. Today, not so much.
(cont'd) (4) Is that because those societies *failed* to recognize the objective moral truth that those things are wrong and we do? Or the reverse? On what basis, other than that most societies have *evolved* a consensus on these issues, that they are wrong -- in the same way that most, though not all, societies have evolved a *consensus* that forcing young girls into marriages at thirteen and wife beating are wrong -- something that people had no problem with as little as fifty years ago.
(cont'd) (5) I submit that fifty years ago, five hundred, or five thousand, here or in the most primitive societies, people will agree that two things and two other things add up to four things. But the kind of moral absolutes that you advance do *not* and have not produced anything close to universal agreement.
If moral precepts were self-evident across time and culture, than moral codes and behaviors would be as well. The *evidence* of history overwhelmingly shows you to be wrong.
I don't see why keep bringing up moral examples , since they only go to prove my case
OM is independent of what anyone thinks, even if the whole world was populated with nazis OM would still exist, they fact we know there doing wrong proves OM.
@lxAgnosticxl Who is the "we" and who is the "they" -- you keep tiresomely repeating that "we" know that they are doing wrong but what did they do wrong and how do we know? They committed genocide? They exterminated whole peoples? They ruthlessly killed men, women and children? So, if we take the Bible literally, did the children of Israel, when God commanded them to do it. So how does OM distinguish between "good" genocide and bad? Why, as many theist do, is one condemned and the other excused?
(cont'd) (3) And the fact that I reference moral behavior doesn't mean that I necessarily support the existence of objective morality. Morality can exist and still be subjective or conditional in the same sense that "beauty" can exist and still not be "objective" in any sensible use of that term.
Why is it better to love a child than to rape one? I appreciate that the child, no doubt, would prefer to be loved than raped, but why, from the perspective of the person doing it, is the one better than the other?
Other than simply asserting that it is "self-evident" -- explain it to me. What about this claim is *evidently* true that so many people who have done differently fail to find evidently true?
(cont'd) (2) Regarding the OT genocides, since you claim to have read the Bible, I most conclude that you know what I'm referring to. If you don't, go back and read it again, more carefully. I'm tired of doing your work for you.
"Why is it better to love a child than to rape one."
ARE YOU SERIOUS, if you say it isn't (non-objective morality) then you also have a burdon. Ask any rape victim in the world do they think what happened to them is worse than a normal day
Second, the "burden" -- as in "burden of proof" isn't mine, neither to you, not to rape victims. It's yours, since you are the one claiming that OM is true. I don't have to "disprove" your claim. I never have. I still don't. I never will.
*You* have the burden (not burdon) to demonstrate the truth of your claim.
(cont'd) (2) An accident victim, who might be maimed, blinded, or paralyzed for life, obviously has a "worse than normal day." But according you to, according to "objective morality" the person who did the maiming, the blinding, and the paralyzing, isn't morally accountable for their bad day.
But the crowds that drag the drivers from cars that have just run down children and beat them to death obviously haven't gotten that message.
So why do some people understand this and others don't?
(cont'd)(3) Objective laws of nature, like the law of gravity or conservation laws, have the qualities of being both consistent over time and space and being *observable."
In what sense does OM fit either of these criteria? No particular moral standard is *observed* to exist independent of time and culture.
So why should I or anyone else accept (never mind be called upon to disprove) your assertion that one does?
If the best you can do is to repeat the same nonsense about rape, then go away.
Oh i see , you want science to prove it. Thats just pure scientism, Science only deals with the teastable & the reapetable ethics doesn't meet that, that doesn't mean it isn't true it just means it isn't science which no ones argued in the first place.
So i'll ask again what proof do you wan't for a moral claim
@lxAgnosticxl You have made a non-analytic claim. It isn't a "logical* truth as you've tried, indirectly to assert. If it is true, and not an analytic truth, it must then be *empirically* true -- a truth about the physical universe (of which thoughts, decisions, and behaviors are a part).
There is no question that rape and charity are objectively *different* kinds of activities. That is empirically demonstrable.
But you are making the claim that one is objectively evil and other good.
(cont'd) (3) The Imperialist says, we don't want to be conquered, but we want to conquer others.
Obviously, you can say, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but countless individuals, and in fact whole societies would simply ask you, "Why? We profit handily from *not* doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, and as long as we get away with it, why not continue?"
(cont'd) If you were to say to a Spartan who gave you the above answer, "Well, you should refrain from your warrior society, not expose weak children at birth, hew to the "do unto others" ethos, because it's inscribed objectively in the fabric of the cosmos," what would he answer?
"Inscribed where, Hoplite? Pick up that broom and clean my stables or I'll stick my sword in you."
Believe me, you'd need a hell of a better answer than that with him.
" Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,"
that does nothing but tell us what people want ,it doesn't tell us these acts are wrong a lion doesn't want to be killed , he still kills a zebra but he doesn't murder a zebra
OM is not a claim about the universe , its meta-ethics the atempt to ask for empirical evidence for a non scientific claim is a dihonest tactic & an obvious attempt to avoid its conclusion.
"There is no question that rape and charity are objectively *different*
@lxAgnosticxl Objective Morality requires that they are not merely different but that they have different *moral* content. Winning the lottery is a "happy" accident. Getting hit by a truck is an unhappy one. They are also, as categories, objectively different, but are they "morally" different?
You assert that the former is not merely objectively different, but that it's objective distinction is a moral one.
Raping a child & loving a child has different moral content, And if were to whether that is true on not the child suffers no less, thats OM both his/her suffering & the moral difference.
(cont'd) (2) That is, it is not simply that, as in the case of accidents, that some things objectively cause harm, and others are beneficial. One can speak of droughts as harmful, but not evil.
But in order for such discussions to make sense, there has to be some coherent definition of good and evil, which is also a meta-ethical discussion, and one that certainly has no single agreed-upon answer, any more than OM is the single agreed-upon answer of meta-ethical disputation.
(cont'd) (2) So it's meta-ethics. So therefore -- what? It's like going to the candy shop and you just pick which flavor you prefer? You like Objectivism, somebody else like Nihilism, somebody else likes Subjectivism, so everybody just picks their preferred flavor and goes their own way?
If there are no means by which the truth value of claims are determinable, then claims are possessed of no truth value -- their truth is equivalent to their falsehood.
@lxAgnosticxl You've claimed that OM doesn't need to be -- or can't be -- defended empirically, because it is a meta-ethical claim -- but none of the above accurately characterize any of the above systems, *including OM* as they are defined, in meta-ethical terms.
That an ethical decision "may have profound importance" is a *normative* claim and would call into the category of normative ethics, not meta-ethics, which, as you yourself have pointed out, addresses questions apart consequences.
OM is not a claim about the universe , its meta-ethics" -- so says somebody -- I wonder who? Oh, right. That would be you, earlier in this discussion. So not only don't you remember what the Bible says, you can't even remember what *you* say.
So in terms of weighing how trustworthy *you* are -- hmm, let's see. That's going to be tough. Dare I resort to some empirical measure, such as how often your claims have been reliable in the past?
Objective morality is self evident , e.g. if the nazis won WW2 and brain washed everyone to believe in the 3rd reich, they would still be wrong even if they believed it was ok< thats OM.
So it seems to me that the premise is more plausibly true than false, which is all we need for a good argument.
@lxAgnosticxl That is, unless they were right and you and the rest of us are the ones who've been brainwashed, which is unquestionably the argument that you *would* be putting forward if the Fascists had won WW-II, completed their policy of extermination and world domination and their system had come to dominate the world's moral thinking, including yours.
It's not that you still wouldn't be a proponent of OM, it's just that you'd be filling in different boxes for "right" and "wrong."
@lxAgnosticxl You say that it's undeniable, but obviously millions of people supported the ethos that undertook that extermination and tens of thousands of people actively engaged in its accomplishment. They obviously believed that what they were doing was morally right, in exactly the same way that the Israelites (presuming you believe the Biblical accounts) were morally right when they exterminated the occupants of Jericho, the Ammorites, the Midianites, etc. to the last man, woman, and child.
(cont'd) (2) If the genocides of the Nazis or of Darfur or morally wrong, such that it would be "undeniable" -- what about the genocides committed by the Israelites as commanded by the God of the OT.
Would I also have to be insane *not* to find those acts of mass slaughter morally wrong, under the principles of OM, especially since, under the principles of OM, one cannot look to *consequence* to justify the rightness or wrongness of an act.
(cont'd) (2) OM is the claim that if X is good and Y is evil, that is true, even if there are no human beings in the universe, even if neither act is ever done or ever will be done.
That obviously can't then be tied to any particular choice or its "importance."
It would require rape to be wrong even in the absence of any being capable of raping or of being raped.
(cont'd) (3) But for that to be a correct position -- and thus for OM to be correct, it means that wholly imaginary crimes, say to kill a fairy, must be *actual* wrongs, because it's possible to say, killing a human being is an actual objective moral wrong, even if posit a universe in which no human being lives or ever lived.
That is because OM avers that wrongs don't reside in actual acts and real harm but in some sort of Platonic version of acts that are separate and independent from them.
(cont'd) (4) Okay -- minor correction. In looking back over your post, I'd have to agree that your definition of moral nihilism does accurately reflect its claims -- but you still don't offer any basis, beyond an appeal to our intuition that helping is better than harming, and that thus good is better than bad, as to why moral nihilism isn't correct.
(cont'd) (5) Presume you had to program this into a computer who had no preconceptions of any kind and you couldn't rely on simple assertions.
That is, you cannot state, as an initial premise, that good is better than evil, that helping is better than harming, that raping is better than charity, etc.
The computer doesn't simply accept any of that and you can't simply assert it.
Presume that the computer is capable of understanding any argument grounded in reason.
(cont'd) (2) The 10 commandments? Would that be the same 10 Commandments that forbids the making of any graven images, of any labor on the Sabbath, of the worship of any *other* gods, of coveting your neighbor's possessions?
But you can certainly go much older than the 10 commandments and find laws against murder. The code of Hammurabi forbids it. The code of Ur-Nammu, the earliest extant set of laws we have, forbids it.
But those are *codes of law* -- a law doesn't make a thing wrong.
(cont'd) (3) And the rules governing the meanings of words -- which is what you're talking about when you talk about definitions, likewise cannot make an *act* right or wrong.
The definitions of words change. There are countless words that develop new meanings and that have lost their original meanings. The original poster, that I was arguing with, claimed that moral truths were universal and unchanging -- that they existed even in the absence of *humanity.*
Wait, is the same WLC that's defined god as a disembodied mind in his various other "proofs"? I'm struggling to understand how objective ("mind independent") moral values could be the result of a disembodied mind. Contradiction, anyone?
TheObserver89 2 days ago
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Excellent! Craig is doctor of stupidity. He is simply not very bright! He is the big debater of christianity in the states. He is not to be taken seriously. God told me that much yesterday. God spake to me and said: "12? Mind if I call you 12? I am letting one person on this Earth know the truth and I chose you. All the religions of the world are wrong. They don't have a clue. I'm so imbarrased. But what can I do - I gave them free will! Thanks for listeníng". I'm not kidding!
12Monkeys8u 1 week ago
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12Monkeys8u 1 week ago
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mouthyweasel 2 weeks ago
Well, at least we have moved beyond your initial (mind-bogglingly inane) question.
Yes, God is good - in fact, he is the Good.
Yes, Good can exist without evil - but evil cannot exist without the good.
The definition of the good has been the subject of discussion for the greatest minds in human history for thousands of years. If you require an exact definition, perhaps this says something about your character. Perhaps you should grow up and get used to a little ambiguity in life.
damntull 3 weeks ago
There you go you just proved god(s) exist. Now you can't be atheist, you have found your proof.
MrItchyElbow 3 weeks ago in playlist Stupid videos by YT Atheists
Mickey Mouse??? I have been worshiping at the altar of Scooby Doo.......rut-ro...what do I do now?
steverid 1 month ago 2
How can anyone prove that "mind-independant" values exist or do not exist. I'd like to know what WLC means by "mind-independant". If he just means moral values that exist for every human, no matter what they believe in, then I would agree that those kind of morals exist.
But if none of us had minds, then I don't see why we should believe there would be any universal law such as morality. Mindless objects don't need to treat each other nicely. Comets can destroy planets and not be immoral.
FactsBeforeFaith 1 month ago
You would think someone with a Ph.D. in Philosophy would understand that philosophical arguments must start with premises that are either self-evident or evidential. The existence of god is neither. The existence of objective morals is neither. A connection between the two is neither. Besides circular reasoning, I want to say he's "begging the question" also, but I'm not sure if this qualifies. I love all of your videos NonStampCollector. Keep up the good work, much appreciated.
TheRavensGhost 1 month ago 5
Most monotheists would argue that the first premise in your refined argument is false because polytheism rules out the possibility of one objective standard for morality. If only one god acts as the source of morality, then we have either monotheism or polytheism with a single supreme deity which might as well be monotheistic for these purposes. The moral argument is wrong because both premises are false, not because it is circular.
nanoduckling 1 month ago
Laughed out loud at the end comment..
ttcmp0 1 month ago
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Even my Catholic philosophy/critical thinking professor will go WTF if he hears this argument (and be disappointed to see a well-known theologian/apologist make a very poor argument).
daangelo29 1 month ago
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daangelo29 1 month ago
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daangelo29 1 month ago
Those pesky information guru atheists!! xD
WLC however is a nice guy just misguided
MeeuwtjeMovies 1 month ago
nelly is an elephant. nelly is pink. therefore it is logical to conclude that all elephants are pink
jjcrazi 1 month ago
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@jjcrazi
Exactly. Once can use proper logic but if the key premise is incorrect the logical conclusion also fails
ThieleM 1 month ago
I love you NSC. If I am ever down under I will be sure to look for you in the outback amongst the dingos and such like.
thabood 1 month ago
I don't think NonStamp's argument is equivalent to Craig's. If morality comes from god(s) there is nothing that necessitates more than one god. He could change it to "god or gods", but then it's pretty much the same argument that Craig is giving.
I don't think Craig is basing his argument on the "And I think the premises are right", as he (attempts to) justify them.
Craig's argument is flawed in both premises regardless, for many other reasons.
narco73 1 month ago
@narco73
Who is to say that a god is more necessary than any other for the first premise? Obviously not Craig, hence his formulation.
Redfingers 1 month ago
@narco73
Apparently, speaking of gods, Craig may likely be referring to a *specific* deity (with specific characteristics), which is a big enough problem already.
daangelo29 1 month ago
Brilliant man that William!
MeepullStewray 1 month ago
I cannot believe how disingenuous WLC is, every-time I see him.
"The conclusion follows logically from the premises."
Yes it does. However premise 2 is completely Begging the Question. Which makes the entire argument flawed.
But of course he ignores this and hopes his audience is gullible enough to take it without question. Which they sadly do most of the time.
thomaseshuis 1 month ago
Yeah, this argument's pretty ridiculous.
However, his worst one is his "subjective evidence" argument. Yes, it's real, yes he has made it in academic settings against credentialed opponents.
Redfingers 1 month ago
The fuck? "By objective moral values I mean mind-independent".
How in all the world can something to do with "morality" be independent of minds?
anglicantian 1 month ago
Does anyone know what nonstampcollectors educational background is? He is very well spoken and clearly intellectual. Is he a philosophy student?
ChaseBanta 1 month ago
@ChaseBanta Why not ask him directly? D:
Aragashia 1 month ago
@ChaseBanta Learnin stuff never taught me nuthin.
NonStampCollector 1 month ago 7
2. objective morals do exist
uh no they dont
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
then morality is relative?
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl What?
Morality is subjective
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
subjective would mean what is true for you is not true for me, do you honestly think man who loves his baby & and a man who smashes that childs head against the wall are simple differing in opinion or taste & that morality goes no deeper?
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl no retard. Subjective means that morals depend on the person. But it doesn't mean that people can't have the same opinions on morality. go back to school
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
that does NOTHING to say infanticide is wrong. subjective does depend on the person IS THAT WHAT MORALITY IS TO YOU???? so the rapist is just got a different view but to you he does nothing wrong???? same opinons on morality would be intersubjective agin that doesn't show right from wrong.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl No. Don't start PMSing just because you don't understand.
To me, rape murder and pedophilia etc is wrong but to pedophiles, pedophilia is right and to rapists, rape is okay, and to murderers, murder is alright. Morality is an opinion by everyone. Every action is either moral or immoral by different people's opinion. If morality is objective, then everyone would have the same opinion and their wouldn't be any rape or murder.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
"To me, rape murder and pedophilia etc is wrong" I know you believe that, but the way you define moralit doesn't alow for that to be justified.
"pedophilia is right and to rapists, rape is okay, and to murderers, murder is alright"
ARE YOU FUKING SERIOUS ??????????
so because its just opinion , both are equaly valid who are to say rape is wrong. its not opion its a moral abomination. people wouldn't have the same opinion. its independent of what you believe.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl "I know you believe that, but the way you define moralit doesn't alow for that to be justified" It's against the law in probably every country to murder and rape and commit pedophilia. That's not enough for you? i know it's written in the bible that god said it's wrong, but that doesn't do shit all. Laws is what stops people from killing and raping. The bible is useless and not even christians read their own stupid book.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl (continued) "ARE YOU FUKING SERIOUS ??????????" First, calm the fuck down. The reason why you're freaking the fuck out is because you can't understand. I never said that it's valid to let rapists rape and murderers to murder. I said that in their minds, they believe it is okay what they do. But since most people disagree, murderers and rapists go to jail. And that's good.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
"I never said that it's valid to let rapists rape" but if its just opinion why is yours more valid than theres, if the world was just populated with rapist that wouldn't make it okay. but you can't get that on a subjective morality."But since most people disagree, murderers and rapists go to jail. And that's good."
if its just opinion then why is your more valid than charles manson?
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl It's the majority that rules.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
so this is intersubjective, thing is majority said salvery or kill homosexuals. the majority in ww2 nazi germany said kill jews are these moraly acceptable?
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl oh i mean slavery
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl "thing is majority said salvery or kill homosexuals." I've only heard the bible support slavery and the death of homosexuals.
No. Not the majority of the world. Well, in germany in ww2, they enslaved jews. In THEIR minds, it was morally acceptable because they all loved hitler and then he kind of brainwashed them into thinking that jews deserve to die. But Hitler lost the war because the majority of the world disagreed with him and got bombed by other countries. Majority rules.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
"No. Not the majority of the world. Well, in germany in ww2, they enslaved jews. In THEIR minds, it was morally acceptable because they all loved hitler and then he kind of brainwashed them"
right so you see whats wrong with an intersubjective morality.
majority doesn't rule majority can't it changes its mind. what majority deemed good 2000 years ago is not what majorit deems today.
jesus said nothing about homosexuality or slavery
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl When I said "majority rules" It's because they have the most power.
Yes it does say in the bible that homosexuals must be stoned to death and there is a lot of slavery in the bible. You never read it, just like a lot of christians.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
again this only reflects majority opinion , or prefrence by sheer cahnce majority are gonna favour 1 out come. but that does nothing to show its really evil to rape another.
it does say that about homosexual but jesus said 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' . i have read the bible my point was jesus never condone those things
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Good and evil are only opinions.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
only opinion, do you realise what your saying?
so its on the same scale of other opinions, so when considering judgement the man who rapes a child is morally equivalent to the man who prefers MC Donald over KFC.
if atheism requires this view on morality , let any mocker of religion for ever hence be silent i can not think of anything so irrational.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl I never said that rape and restaurant choice are on the same scale. I only said it's about opinion.
"if atheism requires this view on morality , let any mocker of religion for ever hence be silent i can not think of anything so irrational." So just because atheists like me say that morality is opinion, we deserve to be silent??? I never said rapists & murderers are good to let them kill & rape. I am AGAINST murder and rape. I don't understand why you want atheists to be silent.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
I know you don't think rape & murder are ok. but if there just opinion ( which i know you can't honestly believe) then its just like anyother opinion. i was saying any mocker of religion e.i. anti theists etc not necessarily all atheists. "I only said it's about opinion"
thats realativism. that would mean the child rapist does nothing wrong but only has an unfashionable view on realativism you can't get right & wrong. How can you possibly think morality is just opinion.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl If morality isn't an opinion, then why would the rapist rape and the murderer murder? If it's not their opinion, then they wouldn't do it.
Religion mockers should be silent? That is still absurd and repulsive. We have free speach.
The child rapist DOES do something wrong but onbly to the children and, since most people are against rape, they protect the victims and jail the rapists. Even though it's their opinion, they still need to go to jail...
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
objective morality says nothing about how people will behave. the rapist may be of the opinion hes doing good or hes satisfying himself never the less he is still doing wrong.
im not trying to take away free speech,
"the child rapist does something wrong " yes he does, regardless of whether he thinks he does right. Most people today don't want free speech for women or wan't homosexuals to be killed on a relativistic view that would be classified as moral.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
who are you to force your opinion on the rapist. after all he just holds a different view, what makes he raping someone wrong? to quote sam harris " if there was only 1 person in the world who held down a struggling screaming little girl & cut off her genitals
with a septic blade & then sewed her back up, the only question would be how severly he should be punished" - thats objective morality
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Well first of all, that's what the bible god does. (oh and FYI, it doesn't say anywhere in the bible that rape is a sin)
Rape is wrong to most people, because it causes a lot of misery to rape victims. Opinions can always change, and it's not good to be a rapist because it doesn't make anything better. It makes things worse.
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
the bible consider rape & lust adultery, "It makes things worse." for the rapist it doesn't
rape might not be social advantageous , and thus has become taboo. but that does nothing to say rape is really wrong. Morality can't be subjective Think about this
is mutilating the face of a child on moral equivalent with prefering chocolate over vanilla,
it doesn't matter whether the majority agree or not. if every1 loved killing children would anything be wrong with it?
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl (continued) Oh btw I forgot to ask you, why is your youtube name "agnostic" when you obviously are not an agnostic? Are you trolling or on someone else's account?
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
theres no such thing as an 'agnostic' its ether 'agnostic theist' or 'agnostic atheist'
but i think im slipping into Gnostic theism
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl (continued) If morality is objective, then why are there still murderers and rapists?
ChinnuWoW 1 month ago
@ChinnuWoW
sorry was gone for a bit. ive 2 resonse to this
1)its indeendent of what they believe to be right
2)just because a physco can't detect O.M. doesn't mean it doesn't exist
in the same way taking a blind erson into a room & them not see art work on the walls doesn't mean it isn't there.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Most people consider it to be morally acceptable to involuntarily deprive people (including innocent women and children) of their lives -- so long as it's during wartime. We (presumably the "good guys") do it all the time. We just fix it in our moral system by not calling it murder.
During my life time it was both legally and morally acceptable for certain men to force certain women to have sexual relations - so long as they were husband and wife.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) It wasn't legal for a wife to refuse sexual relations with her husband.
As for pedophilia -- likewise. In various states in the U.S. at various times the legal age of consent has been as low as *nine* -- at various times girls of twelve or thirteen getting married was common and accepted -- and still is in various parts of the world today.
So in what sense are any of these things -- murder, rape, pedophilia -- "independent" of our beliefs?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) Hell, let's just skip ahead to the "deal-breaker" that everybody loves to trot out -- killing babies. Surely that's got to be a universal wrong. Really?
First -- we're perfectly okay with killing babies so long as the baby-killing is defined as "incidental." That is, if you invade a town, line up the babies and machine gun them - that's obviously horrible. But if you just saturate bomb the town full of civilians and kill the same number of babies -- that's somehow okay.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (4) That's because we allow ourselves the moral distinction between targeted killing (aiming at the babies) and incidental killing (aiming at the town with the babies in them, knowing that they'll be killed -- but not specifically wanting them to be killed).
But the fact is, if you act in a way that kills them, knowing ahead of time that they'll die -- you're a baby killer either way.
So you have to accept that moral burden.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (5) In addition, at various times and places in history, babies were intentionally killed for sacrificial or other reasons, and the killers made no bones about it, and obviously didn't consider it to be wrong. In fact, they viewed it as a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
When the Spartans exposed a sickly child at birth, or a Cathaginian buried a sacrificed child beneath the post hold of a newly made house, or an Aztec cut the heart out of a child to ensure the rising of the sun --
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (6) -- or when all of these ancient societies engage in genocidal warfare against neighboring societies and killed every man, woman and child, down to the last baby -- all of those that committed these acts, as individuals and as members of their societies, thought that what they were doing was perfectly fine.
So it's very hard to support the claim that there are universal moral beliefs of the kind you suggest in the face of the fact that -- there just aren't any.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
also nothing says you can't come to know morality in an evolutionary way, how we recognise objective morality is also independent of whether or not one exists.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
You start off with in my opinion many good examples, and would you agree whether these people like what there doing whether they agree or not , there doing wrong?
thats objective morality, nothing in the argument says most people will behave morally.
when ascessing moral judgement its not enough to use blanket statemnets like 'killing is wrong' we also need the intention. So i ask you is it wrong for me to kill a child for fun? <thats objective morality.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl No, if you're saying that it's "wrong to kill a child for fun" -- by which you mean it might be okay to kill a child under some other circumstances -- say, in a war, or if god instructed you to kill a child, then that's not "objective morality" -- that's a value judgement.
In the former case, if it's "objectively wrong" to kill a child, then it would be wrong under every circumstance -- even if killing a child meant saving the entire universe, or your soul, or the child's soul.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) Or even if in the face of God's command, because if God ordered you to dash in a child's brains - would that then be right? Oh, God wouldn't do it? Why not? Oh -- because it would be wrong.
Well then, I guess that means that I'm correct. That if God *did* order it - it *would* be wrong.
But if it's sometimes right and sometimes wrong (say right if done incidentally in a war but wrong just for fun) - then that's not objective morality.
That's just a value judgement.
prodprod 1 month ago
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@prodprod
"Well then, I guess that means that I'm correct. That if God *did* order it - it *would* be wrong."
if you're talking about psalm 137 thats a prophecy not a command.
"But if it's sometimes right and sometimes wrong (say right if done incidentally in a war but wrong just for fun) - then that's not objective morality"
i think you're using blanket statements we still need the intention.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
yes its a value judgement so what?
but that still doesn't answer the question , does a rapist do wrong even if he is happy.
"then it would be wrong under every circumstance" No it wouldn't to acess moral judgement you need the action & the intention, killing in self defense is ok, killing children for fun is objectivly wrong.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Does a man who bashes in a child's head or cuts out her heart do *right* if he's unhappy while he's doing it? So there is both the action and the intention, but in addition, the sense of moral necessity, say provided by a belief in some higher power (a command by a god) but the person doing it is sort of unhappy but nevertheless obedient to what he perceives as divine command.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) So I need to know if you distinguish between someone who bashes in the head of a child because it pleases him (objectively wrong, according to you) or someone who bashes in the head because it pleases God (objectively right?).
If you agree, then when someone asks you if it is wrong for a man to bash in the head of a child your only honest answer must be -- "I have insufficient information to answer" - because if God orders it, then it's not "objectively wrong."
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) And, by the way, it's always interesting to me that people make these assumptions about moral absolutes -- like self defense. Self defense *seems* like self evident grounds for killing someone. But that most definitely has not always been the case. You killed somebody who was trying to kill you -- so what? Still murder. You'd still be punished for it.
What? That's ridiculous. It's self-defense! They didn't care.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
Its not murder, murder is defined as killing with malicious intent. You wouldn't be punished for it its not a crime to kill in self defense.
But that only goes to prove the 2nd premise that objective morality does exist.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl I'm afraid that you do not understand the legal definition of "malice." In legal terms this doesn't refer to some sort of evilness of spirit. It means "with the intention to cause harm."
If I shoot someone accidentally, there was no "malice" because there was no intention to cause harm.
But if someone is trying to kill me, and I purposely kill him, there is an intention to cause harm. The defense is not absence of intent, but rather that the killing was legally justified.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
If god is so frequently doing these things can you reference it?
believe me ive read the bible. Can you reference any of this? if i don't understand malice , you don't understand murder
Yes ,but someone who kills in self defense doesn't wan't to kill they want to defend them self. and did you seriously say "You killed somebody who was trying to kill you -- so what? Still murder. You'd still be punished for it."
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Ho hum. References?
Sure. Here are some for starters. Ezekiel 9:5-7, Leviticus 26:21-22, 1 Samuel 15:2-3,
Joshua 8:1-29, Joshua 6:20-21, NU 31:17-18, DT 2:33-34, DT 3:6, JS 6:21-27, EZ 9:4-6. HO 13:16,
Since you've read the Bible, I assume you must be familiar with all of these delightful passages.
And before we get carried too far afield, malice, as applied to murder is a "legal" term.
Murder, in the law, like malice, has a legal meaning. So, for that matter, does rape.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) And depending on the time and place, those *legal* definitions have changed. When you talk about self defense that is a "legal" defense -- now. In other times and societies, it was not. You may assert that it has always been a moral defense, just as you may assert that a husband has never had the "moral" right to have sex with his wife against her will -- but until quite recently (and still in some places) he assuredly had the *legal* right to do so.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) A husband could not *legally* rape his wife because a wife could not *legally* refuse sexual relations with her husband.
So let's not get distracted by questions of law. I assume that we both agree that there have been (and in some places still are) unjust laws. Wrong laws.
The question is -- by what standard are they wrong?
It just seems as if no current moral theory correctly accounts for the way in which people actually behave because that's not really what they're for.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (4) Moral theories should be first, descriptive, and second predictive. Instead, they all seem to be merely prescriptive. None of them accurately describe the way people actually behave, nor predict how they will behave. They just tell us how people ought to behave.
The law of gravity doesn't advise a rock of the speed at which it *should* fall. It describes the behavior of objects in gravitational fields and allows us to predict how those objects will move in relation to one another.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (5) There's no moral theory that does anything like that. Everyone's just in some kind of hurry to figure out how to make people behave themselves, to give people advise on how to do it.
But there's no real research plan involved in moral *theory* -- no attempt, in any scientific sense to propose some idea about how human beings treat one another, morally, that's experimentally testable.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (6)
While there have been some sociological experiments that provide some interesting insight into moral behaviors, there's still no overarching *theory* and until then, this is all just a lot of talk.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
How one comes to know morality is not a issue as to whether an objective morality exists. And if you think those verses are really wrong then thats only to approve of the second premise that objective morality exists.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl I fear that you have been ducking, dodging, and begging this question since the very beginning of these exchanges. I may consider various things to be right or wrong, just as I consider various works of art to be ugly or beautiful. The former is no more an argument in favor of objective morality than the latter is an argument for objective beauty -- especially given that many people today and historically disagree with me about both.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) And that's what I've been waiting for and am still waiting for -- your *argument* - not just your assertion that objective morality exists. This is not in any sense a default position that I have to prove wrong. If you're claiming that it's true you have to demonstrate that it's true in light of the fact that countless cultures have believed that slavery is moral, child killing is moral, genocidal war is moral, and torture is moral.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) How can you assert that these are universal moral truths when people still argue about their truth to this day? And if you claim that they are true but only a select and privileged few have access to that truth -- i.e. -- you and those who agree with your position, then you have a pretty high burden to meet to demonstrate how you have achieved this access and what the basis is for the content of this moral truth that *you* have but which countless billions of other clearly lack.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
"countless cultures have believed that slavery is moral, child killing is moral, genocidal war is moral, and torture is moral"
again nothing in the argument says people will behave morally, do these people do wrong even if they did practice these things?
"How can you assert that these are universal moral truths when people still argue about their truth to this day."
how you come to know morallity is irrevelvant, OM is independent of whether any one believes in it or not.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
Begged the question???? ive dodged? seriously? i must have aske 3 or 4 times if a rapist is happy in what he does , does he still do wrong?
No its not , saying the same thing about paintings to disprove OM is a fallacy,
a is false a doesn't imply b therefore b is false.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Yes, and you just did it again, as you did in your next reply.
Every time you answer me with a question you are engaging in a classic logical fallacy.
You are *shifting the burden.* I ask you to provide evidence and you respond not with evidence but by *asking me something.*
What difference does it make what I think? Clearly there have been and are people who committed rape and were and are perfectly happy doing it.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) More to the point, there have been countless times and societies in which women had no choice but to enter into arranged marriages and no choice, once they did, but to submit to the sexual advances of their husbands, a situation which, by out definition, would certainly qualify as rape -- as they could not, in any meaningful sense "consent." They had no choice in the matter.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) But their societies certainly didn't consider such acts to be rape and the husbands who forced their wives might very well have been perfectly happy about it, in the sense that, in their view, a willful wife ought to be made to obey and it's just jolly good fun to do it.
So why were countless generations wrong and why are we right -- and why do we know we're right and why didn't they know that they were wrong?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (4) And in what way -- where in any of your posts, have you advanced any affirmative argument to suggest that any moral precept is eternal, unchanging and universal, other than by simply asserting it to be so and then shifting the burden of the argument onto me.
It's not for me to disprove. It's not for me to provide some counter-argument or alternative moral system. My view is that your claim should not be accepted because it unsupported by evidence.
Provide evidence or go away.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
We both have a burdon, were are both trying to account for morality, i ask you this question because the answer is very important to determine the answer. So i'll ask again even if a rapist does to his hearts desire , does he do morally wrong?
"So why were countless generations wrong and why are we right."
OM is independent of what anyone thinks , a child rapist is just as mistaken as man who says 2+2=5, < that is OM.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl I don't recall offering a counter-position. Whatever my position might be is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of OM. If OM is correct, then it is, period. But if it is, there has to be some basis for accepting it as true.
Mathematical truths are analytic truths. Moral truths are not. So if that's the best you can come up with, you obviously haven't thought about this stuff at all and you've lost at the gate.
Better try again or cash in your chips.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
wow , are you serious?
7th time if a rapist does to his hearts desire , does he do morally wrong?
the answers obvious and thats OM
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Seven times you have asked me this question and I have, in various ways made the point, which I will make as explicitly as I possibly can.
No. No, Seven times no. Seven thousand times, and seven hundred thousand times no.
A rapist may do wrong according to *some* moral theories, in some societies, within some value systems, and according to some legal systems.
But certainly not in all circumstances, according to all moral theories, societies, values systems or legal systems.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) That would meet the very definition of a *subjective* rather than objective system. When and under what circumstances a given sexual act is even considered to be rape has been dependent upon the time, the culture, the society, and the values of the person in question and that doesn't even address the question of when and whether a woman was deemed to have the *right* to refuse a sexual advance.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) Personally, I value certain things, including respect for the autonomy of persons and property, and reasonably enough, prefer to live in a society with others who share those values.
But that's not the square of the hypotenuse. It isn't engraved on the fabric of space/time. It's just a way of treating people and being treated by them that (hopefully) help us to get along with one another.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
"prefer to live in a society with others who share those values."
you prefer those things , so what? a rapist likes to rape should he do it?
that does nothing to say rape is wrong
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@prodprod
"the culture, the society, and the values of the person in question and that doesn't even address the question of when and whether a woman was deemed to have the *right* to refuse a sexual advance."
you mean to tell me its just opinion, on relativism the rapist's act is no more evil than a tree growing a branch.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
" No. No"
you are just as mistaken as the man who says 2+2=5
rape is a moral abomination , whether you agree or not whether any one agrees or not there is something seriously wrong with rape,
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl This is not an argument. It is simply an assertion and this is all you have done throughout this entire tiresome exchange. Anyone can assert anything. I can just as easily assert that eating pork is wrong or that drinking coffee is wrong or that stepping on an insect is wrong and that *you're* disagreement is the same as 2+2=5 -- "whether anyone agrees or not."
The fact is, the only reason you've harped on this one question is doubtless because you expect everyone to agree.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) I've asked you for some real arguments in support of your position. You clearly don't have any. In fact, I've yet to hear any that are even remotely convincing -- but in order to be convincing, at the very least, one must advance an argument, which, after who knows how many posts, you have yet to do.
I don't think you even know what an argument is. It isn't asking your opponent a question. It isn't "my position is self-evidently true." And it isn't 2+2=5.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod kudos
eggertstwart 1 month ago
@prodprod
This is meta ethics it can only be reasoned so when you keep asking for 'real evidence' you either don't understand morality or meta ethics, the whole point of this argument is self-evident besides you've given no way to account for morality , and for one who claimed OM doesn't exist you'de have to do that.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl So let me get this straight. I shouldn' expect you to provide any evidence for the truth of your position -- because the truth of your position is -- what's the term you just used -- self -*evident?*
I have no burden to meet in respect to *your* claim regarding the truth of *your* position. I don't have to prove that it's wrong. I don't have to prove that something else is right.
I might have no theory at all about what causes thunder and lightning.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) That does not offer any support at all for the position that it comes from the Thunder God atop Mount Olympus. And you can't take the position, "If not Zeus where else could it possibly come from?"
That's not an argument. It's shifting the burden. The proponent has to show me that there is a Zeus, not claim that he is evident every time lightning strikes.
Ditto for OM. You can't claim that it's self-evident. Since countless people do not find it to be so, it clearly isn't.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
when you say 'evidence' like all atheist anything that isn't science isn't good enough, But were both trying to acount for morality so we BOTH have the burdon. 99% of people would agree raping a child is morally different than loveing a child. <you seriously think i alone have the burdon to prove that, and you need say nothing? because that is OM and that is self-evident
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl This has nothing to do with science. It has to do with making your case, which you haven't done.
Prior to modern times, women were:
first, traditionally given in marriage by their fathers. They had no choice in the matter at all.
second, often married as young as thirteen.
third, had no choice but to accede to their husband's sexual desires.
fourth, were beaten by their husbands (as were children) which was also considered to be both legally and morally acceptable.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) And when I say "modern times" I'm not talking about the middle ages or Biblical times -- all of these things were true and legal and morally acceptable in many part of the United States during my life time.
I certainly consider a thirteen year old girl to be a child. For a thirteen year old to be given in marriage, to have no right to refuse, to have no right to refuse sexual relations with her husband, to be beaten if she refused, and to have no recourse to law if she did --
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) -- this was the state of the *law* in many parts of this country as little as forty or fifty years ago. And nobody thought that there was anything wrong about it.
You can assert that they lacked moral understanding and we gained it -- but on what basis can we not equally assert that they *had* it and we've lost it?
We oppose genocide. Others support it. You say we've recognized some objective moral truth that they fail to recognize. But on what basis?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) In the past, there was almost no divorce, almost no abortion, and very little premarital sex. Now there's quite a bit of all three. Was that because people *better* recognized the "objective moral truth" that those things were right in the past and no longer recognize these truths today? Or the reverse?
In the past there was slavery, women were considered chattel, and most societies practiced genocidal warfare. Today, not so much.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (4) Is that because those societies *failed* to recognize the objective moral truth that those things are wrong and we do? Or the reverse? On what basis, other than that most societies have *evolved* a consensus on these issues, that they are wrong -- in the same way that most, though not all, societies have evolved a *consensus* that forcing young girls into marriages at thirteen and wife beating are wrong -- something that people had no problem with as little as fifty years ago.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
Again its independent of what people think, you're shooting you're self in the foot you're proving my 2nd premise for me.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
(cont'd) (5) I submit that fifty years ago, five hundred, or five thousand, here or in the most primitive societies, people will agree that two things and two other things add up to four things. But the kind of moral absolutes that you advance do *not* and have not produced anything close to universal agreement.
If moral precepts were self-evident across time and culture, than moral codes and behaviors would be as well. The *evidence* of history overwhelmingly shows you to be wrong.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
Again its independent of what people think.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
As ive stated before , the way we know right from wrong is independent of its objectivity.
our understanding of morality may continue to develop but rape a few thousand years ago is still wrong its still rape.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
I don't see why keep bringing up moral examples , since they only go to prove my case
OM is independent of what anyone thinks, even if the whole world was populated with nazis OM would still exist, they fact we know there doing wrong proves OM.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Who is the "we" and who is the "they" -- you keep tiresomely repeating that "we" know that they are doing wrong but what did they do wrong and how do we know? They committed genocide? They exterminated whole peoples? They ruthlessly killed men, women and children? So, if we take the Bible literally, did the children of Israel, when God commanded them to do it. So how does OM distinguish between "good" genocide and bad? Why, as many theist do, is one condemned and the other excused?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) And the fact that I reference moral behavior doesn't mean that I necessarily support the existence of objective morality. Morality can exist and still be subjective or conditional in the same sense that "beauty" can exist and still not be "objective" in any sensible use of that term.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
'they' a rapist, we 'humans'
I seriously have to explain to a grown man why raping a child is morally different than loving a child? What genocide are you talking about?
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl They are human also.
Yes. You do. Explain it. Justify it.
Why is it better to love a child than to rape one? I appreciate that the child, no doubt, would prefer to be loved than raped, but why, from the perspective of the person doing it, is the one better than the other?
Other than simply asserting that it is "self-evident" -- explain it to me. What about this claim is *evidently* true that so many people who have done differently fail to find evidently true?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) Regarding the OT genocides, since you claim to have read the Bible, I most conclude that you know what I'm referring to. If you don't, go back and read it again, more carefully. I'm tired of doing your work for you.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
"Why is it better to love a child than to rape one."
ARE YOU SERIOUS, if you say it isn't (non-objective morality) then you also have a burdon. Ask any rape victim in the world do they think what happened to them is worse than a normal day
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl First, learn how to spell "burden."
Second, the "burden" -- as in "burden of proof" isn't mine, neither to you, not to rape victims. It's yours, since you are the one claiming that OM is true. I don't have to "disprove" your claim. I never have. I still don't. I never will.
*You* have the burden (not burdon) to demonstrate the truth of your claim.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) An accident victim, who might be maimed, blinded, or paralyzed for life, obviously has a "worse than normal day." But according you to, according to "objective morality" the person who did the maiming, the blinding, and the paralyzing, isn't morally accountable for their bad day.
But the crowds that drag the drivers from cars that have just run down children and beat them to death obviously haven't gotten that message.
So why do some people understand this and others don't?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd)(3) Objective laws of nature, like the law of gravity or conservation laws, have the qualities of being both consistent over time and space and being *observable."
In what sense does OM fit either of these criteria? No particular moral standard is *observed* to exist independent of time and culture.
So why should I or anyone else accept (never mind be called upon to disprove) your assertion that one does?
If the best you can do is to repeat the same nonsense about rape, then go away.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
Oh i see , you want science to prove it. Thats just pure scientism, Science only deals with the teastable & the reapetable ethics doesn't meet that, that doesn't mean it isn't true it just means it isn't science which no ones argued in the first place.
So i'll ask again what proof do you wan't for a moral claim
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl You have made a non-analytic claim. It isn't a "logical* truth as you've tried, indirectly to assert. If it is true, and not an analytic truth, it must then be *empirically* true -- a truth about the physical universe (of which thoughts, decisions, and behaviors are a part).
There is no question that rape and charity are objectively *different* kinds of activities. That is empirically demonstrable.
But you are making the claim that one is objectively evil and other good.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) In order for me (or anyone else) to have any grounds for accepting that claim, you have to *demonstrate* to me that it is correct.
Otherwise, why should I accept it? Why should anybody? Why should you?
Obviously, we can both say that we would rather be the object of charity than the victim of rape.
But the rapist says, I don't want to be raped, but I want to rape others. The thief says, I don't want to be robbed, but I want to rob others.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) The Imperialist says, we don't want to be conquered, but we want to conquer others.
Obviously, you can say, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but countless individuals, and in fact whole societies would simply ask you, "Why? We profit handily from *not* doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, and as long as we get away with it, why not continue?"
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) If you were to say to a Spartan who gave you the above answer, "Well, you should refrain from your warrior society, not expose weak children at birth, hew to the "do unto others" ethos, because it's inscribed objectively in the fabric of the cosmos," what would he answer?
"Inscribed where, Hoplite? Pick up that broom and clean my stables or I'll stick my sword in you."
Believe me, you'd need a hell of a better answer than that with him.
And you frankly need a better answer with me.
prodprod 1 month ago
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@prodprod
WOW AGAIN 'its independent of what people think' < How many time have i said this ?
if you're gonna just repeat the same non-sense i have no time for you.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
" Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,"
that does nothing but tell us what people want ,it doesn't tell us these acts are wrong a lion doesn't want to be killed , he still kills a zebra but he doesn't murder a zebra
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@prodprod
" But the rapist says, I don't want to be raped, but I want to rape others. The thief says, I don't want to be robbed, but I want to rob others. "
Come on you must know what im gonna say ,its independent of what people think or desire or want
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@prodprod
OM is not a claim about the universe , its meta-ethics the atempt to ask for empirical evidence for a non scientific claim is a dihonest tactic & an obvious attempt to avoid its conclusion.
"There is no question that rape and charity are objectively *different*
Thats OM
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl Objective Morality requires that they are not merely different but that they have different *moral* content. Winning the lottery is a "happy" accident. Getting hit by a truck is an unhappy one. They are also, as categories, objectively different, but are they "morally" different?
You assert that the former is not merely objectively different, but that it's objective distinction is a moral one.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
Raping a child & loving a child has different moral content, And if were to whether that is true on not the child suffers no less, thats OM both his/her suffering & the moral difference.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) That is, it is not simply that, as in the case of accidents, that some things objectively cause harm, and others are beneficial. One can speak of droughts as harmful, but not evil.
But in order for such discussions to make sense, there has to be some coherent definition of good and evil, which is also a meta-ethical discussion, and one that certainly has no single agreed-upon answer, any more than OM is the single agreed-upon answer of meta-ethical disputation.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) So it's meta-ethics. So therefore -- what? It's like going to the candy shop and you just pick which flavor you prefer? You like Objectivism, somebody else like Nihilism, somebody else likes Subjectivism, so everybody just picks their preferred flavor and goes their own way?
If there are no means by which the truth value of claims are determinable, then claims are possessed of no truth value -- their truth is equivalent to their falsehood.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
Nihilism- says its indifferent no matter what you do, hitler & mother teresa were no different on this view
subjectivism -"we should be subjectivists" < self defeating
Objectivism - the moral choices you make have a profound importance,
once again if you think theres a moral difference beyween raping a child & loving him/her OM exists & therefore god exists
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl You've claimed that OM doesn't need to be -- or can't be -- defended empirically, because it is a meta-ethical claim -- but none of the above accurately characterize any of the above systems, *including OM* as they are defined, in meta-ethical terms.
That an ethical decision "may have profound importance" is a *normative* claim and would call into the category of normative ethics, not meta-ethics, which, as you yourself have pointed out, addresses questions apart consequences.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
"none of the above accurately characterize any of the above systems, *including OM* as they are defined, in meta-ethical terms."
what?
When one claims to go behond ethics to support something like god <that is meta ethics
and of course you can't prove it emipircally the same way you can't weigh trust.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
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@lxAgnosticxl "
OM is not a claim about the universe , its meta-ethics" -- so says somebody -- I wonder who? Oh, right. That would be you, earlier in this discussion. So not only don't you remember what the Bible says, you can't even remember what *you* say.
So in terms of weighing how trustworthy *you* are -- hmm, let's see. That's going to be tough. Dare I resort to some empirical measure, such as how often your claims have been reliable in the past?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) What? Past behavior a reasonably reliable basis for future behavior? Why, that would simply be absurd.
No, I'm going to just keep on waiting for your brilliant discourse on the formal and synthetic grounds for believing in Objective Morality.
Oh wait. That's right. It's self-evident. Just like your debating skills and knowledge of the Bible.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
Objective morality is self evident , e.g. if the nazis won WW2 and brain washed everyone to believe in the 3rd reich, they would still be wrong even if they believed it was ok< thats OM.
So it seems to me that the premise is more plausibly true than false, which is all we need for a good argument.
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl That is, unless they were right and you and the rest of us are the ones who've been brainwashed, which is unquestionably the argument that you *would* be putting forward if the Fascists had won WW-II, completed their policy of extermination and world domination and their system had come to dominate the world's moral thinking, including yours.
It's not that you still wouldn't be a proponent of OM, it's just that you'd be filling in different boxes for "right" and "wrong."
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod
The point i made had nothing to do with who won, my point was based on what the nazis did , they killed 6 million jews.
If you agree that was moraly wrong which is undeniable for any sane person then OM exists
lxAgnosticxl 1 month ago
@lxAgnosticxl You say that it's undeniable, but obviously millions of people supported the ethos that undertook that extermination and tens of thousands of people actively engaged in its accomplishment. They obviously believed that what they were doing was morally right, in exactly the same way that the Israelites (presuming you believe the Biblical accounts) were morally right when they exterminated the occupants of Jericho, the Ammorites, the Midianites, etc. to the last man, woman, and child.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) If the genocides of the Nazis or of Darfur or morally wrong, such that it would be "undeniable" -- what about the genocides committed by the Israelites as commanded by the God of the OT.
Would I also have to be insane *not* to find those acts of mass slaughter morally wrong, under the principles of OM, especially since, under the principles of OM, one cannot look to *consequence* to justify the rightness or wrongness of an act.
That's necessarily some form of utilitarianism.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (2) OM is the claim that if X is good and Y is evil, that is true, even if there are no human beings in the universe, even if neither act is ever done or ever will be done.
That obviously can't then be tied to any particular choice or its "importance."
It would require rape to be wrong even in the absence of any being capable of raping or of being raped.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (3) But for that to be a correct position -- and thus for OM to be correct, it means that wholly imaginary crimes, say to kill a fairy, must be *actual* wrongs, because it's possible to say, killing a human being is an actual objective moral wrong, even if posit a universe in which no human being lives or ever lived.
That is because OM avers that wrongs don't reside in actual acts and real harm but in some sort of Platonic version of acts that are separate and independent from them.
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (4) Okay -- minor correction. In looking back over your post, I'd have to agree that your definition of moral nihilism does accurately reflect its claims -- but you still don't offer any basis, beyond an appeal to our intuition that helping is better than harming, and that thus good is better than bad, as to why moral nihilism isn't correct.
Please explain just why is good better than bad?
prodprod 1 month ago
(cont'd) (5) Presume you had to program this into a computer who had no preconceptions of any kind and you couldn't rely on simple assertions.
That is, you cannot state, as an initial premise, that good is better than evil, that helping is better than harming, that raping is better than charity, etc.
The computer doesn't simply accept any of that and you can't simply assert it.
Presume that the computer is capable of understanding any argument grounded in reason.
Proceed.
prodprod 1 month ago
@prodprod Isn't it definitionally true, retard?
damntull 3 weeks ago in playlist Stupid videos by YT Atheists
@damntull I guess it's always making too great a demand on the average theist to expect that -- *they can fucking read.*
If you could read, you would no doubt have read the very sentence above, which said, "you couldn't rely on simple assertions."
That is, you *can't* simply assert that particular things are right or wrong, good or evil -- can't simply define them that way.
If you assert that murder is wrong *by definition* -- where exactly is that definition?
prodprod 3 weeks ago
(cont'd) (2) The 10 commandments? Would that be the same 10 Commandments that forbids the making of any graven images, of any labor on the Sabbath, of the worship of any *other* gods, of coveting your neighbor's possessions?
But you can certainly go much older than the 10 commandments and find laws against murder. The code of Hammurabi forbids it. The code of Ur-Nammu, the earliest extant set of laws we have, forbids it.
But those are *codes of law* -- a law doesn't make a thing wrong.
prodprod 3 weeks ago
(cont'd) (3) And the rules governing the meanings of words -- which is what you're talking about when you talk about definitions, likewise cannot make an *act* right or wrong.
The definitions of words change. There are countless words that develop new meanings and that have lost their original meanings. The original poster, that I was arguing with, claimed that moral truths were universal and unchanging -- that they existed even in the absence of *humanity.*
prodprod 3 weeks ago