re: A fact worth remembering: Those who don't believe in God argue against absolutes

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A fact worth remembering: Those who don't believe in God argue against absolutes

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I fully believe that the increasing numbers of people who believe in nothing more than their thoughts or the thoughts of their pack will destroy the country. If there are no religious/moral absolutes for right and wrong, then why do the unbelievers even care about of need to follow anyone else's notion of right and wrong?

It took me a couple of encounters with him to learn the Uncle Remus lesson.

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The mass murder of children is objectively detrimental to the future of a species under the biological parameters of life here, especially with respect to a social one attempting to develop cooperative societies for the betterment of that species.

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So what? What has that to do with objective morality?

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If we define “wrong” as something that negatively impacts our survival as a species or leads to unnecessary pain and suffering, then we can say murdering children is objectively wrong.

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The "objective" part is not whether or not an action is in alignment with a standard but whether the standard, itself, originates from within or without the human mind and experience. You are calling for the moral standard to be that which "negatively impacts our survival as a species or leads to unnecessary pain and suffering" but my argument is that such a standard is arbitrary in its nature and is subjective. I could just as easily say that the definition of "right" is that which gives me the most pleasure, happiness, and ensures my own survival and passing along my genetic code and "wrong" would be anything that gets in the way of those things for myself alone. I could steal, rape, and murder to my heart's content with that definition and have a clean conscience knowing that by my own standard, I'm acting "morally". That's the problem with arbitrary definitions and standards of right and wrong.

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But no, there is not some base universal truth that killing children is wrong. There could be societies in our universe which killing is not wrong by these standards. And there is no ultimate, eternal punishment for those who murder children where it is considered wrong.

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This is objectively true: that without an objective moral standard that is universally applied to all people, we would have what you just described, namely no single standard for right and wrong. As you said, in such a world, the morality of murdering children would be relative to the particular society, yet we don't act as if this were true. We act as if murdering children were objectively morally reprehensible. My worldview provides a basis for what we know to be true: that moral absolutes do exist and murdering children is objectively wrong. My worldview is therefore to be preferred to yours.

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So with respect to our species and our society, yes I can say murdering children is wrong. That statement is conditional however and I cannot say that murdering children would always be wrong in every conceivable society.

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What this boils down to is your own opinion. You think murdering children is wrong because it goes against your opinion of morality, but that's all it ultimately is, an opinion. If Hitler has a different opinion about what true morality is based on what he believes is best for himself or his own society, who is to argue with him? In your paradigm, the best you've got is a personal dislike or distaste for that which conflicts with your moral preference. You have no objective basis to condemn those contradictions any more than you have a basis to argue that your favorite color is the right color.

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If that upsets you well, I’m sorry. But the fact is a claim being too horrifying to accept has no baring on the truth of the claim.

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It doesn't upset me at all. I know what the logical conclusion of such a worldview is and it's garbage, to be blunt. If people lived consistently with such a worldview, the world would be absolutely chaotic and simply an evil place all around.

On the other hand, if everyone lived consistently with my worldview, there would be far less actual suffering and pain and people would be logically consistent by condemning actual evil.

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Get the maximum hedonistic pleasure you can while you are alive.

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That’s everyone.

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It sure is a lot of people, but it's not everyone. If everyone lived their lives consistently with that standard, there would be a lot more suffering in this world than there already is.

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Again, this is all meaningless if you cannot show the truth of the claim. Even if god exists, if he cannot be detected or evidenced for by any means whatsoever the only reasonable stance is that we have no reason to believe he exists.

Yahweh and Shiva have exactly the same amount of the evidence at present for their existence. These are mutually exclusive deities who cannot both exist in the context of their respective religions’ claims. One of them COULD exist, but the only choice I have is to reject the existence of both until someone provides evidence for the existence of one of them.

A god who doesn’t provide evidence for his existence is indistinguishable from a god who doesn’t exist.

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There are all sorts of evidences that exist for all sorts of things. What you're looking for are clearly "scientific" evidences, as those are material, testable (repeatable), and potentially falsifiable. You're wanting to provide a scientific test to something/someone that is clearly not "testable" according to the scientific method. This is why worldviews are so important. You reject the existence of God outright because His very nature is in conflict with your only accepted epistemological methodology: scientific empiricism.

That methodology is inconsistent because we learn all sorts of things outside of empiricism and even the strict empiricist cannot claim to have gained all their own knowledge empirically as they have taken a great deal on faith and trust in the words and experiences of others. You can't even trust your own experiences, as even if God had revealed Himself to you, you would simply try to explain it away as some sort of hallucination or an experience that you simply can't explain yet but trust that you or someone else would be able to in the future.

Your worldview precludes the existence of God from the start.

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Philosophers don’t get a seat at the scientific table because the nature of their field is a lack of falsifiability. People become philosophers so they can never be proven wrong.

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Epistemology is simply how one learns things or gains knowledge. Scientific empiricism is just epistemological methodology. Why are you ignoring all other ways to gain knowledge?

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as even if God had revealed Himself to you, you would simply try to explain it away as some sort of hallucination or an experience that you simply can't explain yet but trust that you or someone else would be able to in the future.

Your worldview precludes the existence of God from the start.

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Likewise, Shiva could appear to you and you'd claim it was a hallucination, Satan trying to trick you, etc.

Your worldview precludes anything that goes against the Christian faith from the start.

Sure, you'll list a whole bunch of reasons which you'll say that when added together outweigh the Shiva appearance, but probably scoff at anyone who would do the same if God appeared to them.

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This just isn’t true. Anything you’ve “learned” absent empirical evidence constitutes a belief, not knowledge. All verifiable human knowledge has empirical evidence for it.

There is NOTHING that ANYONE can say they know absent empirical data, no matter how hard they attempt to.

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It sounds like you believe in scientism. You should give Ian Hutchinson a listen.

https://youtu.be/YvTPDRDCZLU

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I’m an empiricist

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Kissing cousins to scientism.

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Kissing cousins to scientism

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Call it what you will, it’s the only path to truth that can produce verifiable results. Every other means of knowledge acquisition, in one way or another, attempts to label beliefs as knowledge.