re: "I refuse to be a slave to religion!"

quote:

---

I also saw a comment you made about if some guy is Islamic and that helps bring peace to his life, you wouldn't try to talk him out of that.

I watched an interview lex Fridman had with Omar Suleiman, who I knew nothing about before. Had no clue he was even from South Louisiana. For me, it was a very educating interview. I know they're both Abrahamic religions, but there's so many similarities between the 2 religions that I didn't realize before the interview. He wasn't pointing them out. I guess they stuck out so much bc of how unfamiliar I was with Islam and just listening I kept thinking to myself "if I didn't know this podcast was about Islam, I may think he's talking about Christianity". Besides him saying Qur'an, peace and blessings and a couple of other things, it very similar .

And I'm simplifying it a bit, but it stuck out to me.

---

It is very interesting and all three religions share much of he same history, or claim much of the same history.

Been learning about some of the Gnostic stuff lately, and its really interesting.

quote:

---

The kalam is not intended to, nor is it claiming that, something came from nothing.

---

So God created the universe out of pre-existing materials?

quote:

---

Most people are against the concept of "convince a group of people that something is right and it becomes right for them". Your opinion that it's wrong is no more valid than theirs that it's right. That's the world of moral relativism.

---

You're making the same mistake as Foo, you keep wanting to shove my square peg into your triangle-shaped hole.

I'm not arguing what's objectively true, because I don't believe such a thing exists within morality.

What I am saying, though, is that some subjective moral frameworks produce better (from a Homo sapiens' perspective, life is generally preferred over death, pleasure is generally preferred to pain, etc.) results than others, and that, over time, those subjective moral frameworks are "convincing" more and more people over time.

If God were the author of morality, you'd expect society would have gotten worse the farther we moved from Adam and Eve's walk in the garden.

The opposite is true. As we've moved out of trees and into close-knit societies, we've developed our own sets of morals. Sure there are instances where we've moved from more peaceful to more violent, but the overall trend towards violence to peaceful societies is undeniable.

Foo, and perhaps you, want to pretend that without objective morality we'd be lost in a sea of subjectivity. No, we naturally shun away from death and pain, that gives us a goal and allows us to sort through subjective moral frameworks that do better at minimizing that. Yes, it's not objective. But it's not all mindlessly confused and wondering around.

quote:

---

So you went through this last election cycle unable to come up with a rational basis why you should care about the opinions progressives hold?

---

Again, you misunderstand. In your example, it would be progressives during the last election cycle that had no rational basis for their opinions. That's what I'm arguing.

An opinion is just an opinion. It has no bearing on reality beyond what anyone desires it to have for themselves. There is no objective reality to it. It's entirely subjective and lives and dies within the mind of the individual. There is no objective reality that the opinion corresponds to.

quote:

---

If they hold no value outside of the individual, how did the opinions of others cause me to stop being a Christian?

---

There's a theological answer to that that I'm sure you're not interested in, but from the philosophical point, you decided that the opinions of others were more satisfying to yourself so you adopted them as your own. Your adoption of them is what made them "valuable" to you, and your rejection of others' opinions made those opinions valueless to you. It's not that your opinion is based in objective reality, but your subjective opinion and preference became aligned with the subjective opinions and preferences of others, giving them value in your mind.

If there is an external reality that is the basis for an opinion, then your opinion is not just a mere opinion but a belief in or acknowledgement of truth. An opinion that is not aligned with objective reality has no meaningful objective value whatsoever beyond what an individual wants it to be, and that's the very essence of subjectivity.

You can have a personal valuation of whatever you want, including the opinions of others, but a subjective opinion has no intrinsic value outside of the individual who holds it, which is my point. When you reject the objective source for morality (the Christian God), then you are left with pure moral relativism, where there is no moral "truth", and what is moral and what is immoral are entirely subjective.

What this always goes back to is the question, "by what standard?"

What standard are you using to judge what is evil and what is morally good? If you have no objective standard, then all remaining moral standards are inherently subjective and are objectively no better or worse than any other. To make a claim that one standard is "better" is simply to argue from preference rather than from reason, since there is no ultimate reason why one is better than another other than personal preference.

When you say, for instance, "this standard is better because... it provides more utility to society", then you've simply created an arbitrary standard (that which benefits society) to ground your moral preferences to, and another person can come up with a different standard (expanding human suffering, perhaps) that they use to ground their own moral preferences. But at the end of the day, you can't reasonably claim that your standard of utilitarianism is objectively better than any other standard when there is no single cosmic measuring stick to compare it to.

quote:

---

I never said that convincing others made it morally true, only that that's what was necessary for it to be done (which is why the opinions of others matter/holds value).

---

Again, opinions in themselves have no inherent, objective value. They are only as valuable as someone determines it to be, and if another person determines that someone else's opinion holds no value, then that opinion holds no value to them. It's subjective, and subjectivity is not truth.

When you say, "I never said that convincing others made it morally true", you are actually talking against yourself. Your entire moral framework is based on convincing others of moral truth as you prefer it to be, because there is no other way to determine moral truth for you. It is, by necessity, subjective, and it requires convincing others to agree with you in order to make your personal moral preferences an enforceable law and rule (as opposed to God's moral law, which is enforceable law and rule on a cosmic and eternal scale). So again, the "truth" of your moral preferences is entirely dependent on others being convinced to agree with you, otherwise your preferences would not be "true" or effectual.

And, if you deny that moral truth even exists (in your worldview, moral truth cannot exist because truth cannot be subjective), then you are admitting that you have no rational basis for condemning anything as "evil" or praising anything as "good", since "good" and "evil" are, in essence, in the "eye of the beholder".

So again I say, there is no problem with evil in the Christian worldview, because Christianity has categories for good and evil that are objective because they are based on the unchanging standard of God's moral character, whereas Atheism has no objective moral categories outside of those that exist within the human mind and which are enforced or upheld by a particular society at a particular time. It's the Atheist that as a problem of evil: it doesn't actually exist to him in spite of "knowing" that it does.

quote:

---

I'm not arguing what's objectively true, because I don't believe such a thing exists within morality.

---

Thank you for admitting this. It completely undercuts any meaningful condemnation of "evil" or praise of "good" in your worldview. You've admitted that morality is basically nothing more than a favorite food or color, which has no standard for "right" or "better" or "worse".

quote:

---

What I am saying, though, is that some subjective moral frameworks produce better (from a Homo sapiens' perspective, life is generally preferred over death, pleasure is generally preferred to pain, etc.) results than others, and that, over time, those subjective moral frameworks are "convincing" more and more people over time.

---

Again, you use the word "better" (as bolded in the quote). Better according to which standard? Obviously you're using utility and general wellness and happiness of society as your standard to say what is and isn't "better" for society, but where did that standard come from? How do we know that surviving and thriving is the "right" standard to use, or the better standard compared to human death and suffering? There are a lot of people who believe that killing off a substantial portion of humanity and having our standard of living reduced for the sake of the planet is "better". Why isn't that better than what you are claiming is "better"? What standard is there that helps us know which is right? Is it majority opinion? If so, why?

quote:

---

If God were the author of morality, you'd expect society would have gotten worse the farther we moved from Adam and Eve's walk in the garden.

---

Depending on how you look at it, it has gotten worse. If Adam (pre-fall) and the Garden were the picture of peace, purity, and perfection, then we have gotten worse, indeed.

quote:

---

The opposite is true. As we've moved out of trees and into close-knit societies, we've developed our own sets of morals. Sure there are instances where we've moved from more peaceful to more violent, but the overall trend towards violence to peaceful societies is undeniable.

---

While this isn't necessarily true, even if I granted that it were true, there's still the problem of saying that more peace is better than more violence. Where did that standard come from that you are using to make such a judgement?

quote:

---

Foo, and perhaps you, want to pretend that without objective morality we'd be lost in a sea of subjectivity. No, we naturally shun away from death and pain, that gives us a goal and allows us to sort through subjective moral frameworks that do better at minimizing that. Yes, it's not objective. But it's not all mindlessly confused and wondering around.

---

The problem isn't that we would be morally lost (though, I'd argue that when we reject God's law, we are morally lost, no matter what we do to the contrary), but that we would be irrational with no real basis to defend ourselves in an intellectual war of competing moral standards.

Your subjective moral standard is ultimately defeated with the words, "so what?", because Atheism reduces morality to preference, and when taken to its logical conclusion, should produce Nihilism, which goes against your arbitrary standard of thriving with purpose.

quote:

---

How do you know what the "right" direction is?

---

Neurons in my cerebral cortex.

Well, I suppose that I would argue (presumably to no avail) that God is not nothing. And, that no one can prove that He is nothing.

quote:

---

the collection of ancient books was RECORDED by fallible MEN and that they have since been translated thru (in some cases) a half dozen languages, with nuance lost in every subsequent translation.

---

Please, explain how you know this to be factual.

Can you explain what led you to this conclusion?