re: Pornography is not conservative

quote:

---

The three classical laws of thought are self evident, no God needed. Once you have anything it's reasonability is baked in by virtue of simply existing.

Hell those laws even apply to "nothing".

---

The classical laws are immaterial, invariant, and necessary. They cannot be rationally explained in an entirely natural universe that is purely material, variant, and contingent. They must be assumed rather than explained.

quote:

---

He's only the transcendent source for good things, though, right?

---

Yes and no. God is perfect, which includes moral perfection, yet His moral perfection (the standard for what is "good") can let us know what evil is since evil is that which is contrary to the perfect good.

We wouldn't say that the sun is the source of the darkness just because we see darkness when the sun's light is absent. Darkness, instead, is the absence of light. Likewise, evil is the absence of that which is good. We know what is evil by understanding what is good.

quote:

---

Y'all fell for a cult of personality, rejected conservatism and now have developed standards?

---

Freak off. I didn’t fall for jack-sh*+.

I disabused myself long-ago of the absurd notion that the Republicrat Party has anything to do with the principles of limited government. My primary interest in Trump lies in the fact he has enemies in all the right places — most especially in the GOP.

quote:

---

It’s of course possible. We don’t really think Mark Walburg or Tom Cruise are special agents who can kill you with their bare hands.

---

Give me a freaking break — must we be so opened minded that our brains slip out of our noggin? Whether you acknowledge it or not, the two are hardly comparable occupations: we are not talking about an actress but a hard-core pornographer.

quote:

---

Again, Trump had a well publicized affair with a porn star,..who are we kidding.

---

We are not discussing Trump but Turning Points, a organization whose primary mission is promoting conservatism to a teen audience. It is entirely reasonable that such an organization would not want a worker in the adult sex-industry to attend.

quote:

---

Consensus doesn't create truth, even moral truth. Your worldview precludes the notion of truth and the ability to know it if it existed.

---

It does for practical purposes which is what we need to do business with each other and get through our lives.

quote:

---

Disagreement or consensus doesn't make something moral or immoral on its own. There was a great deal of consensus centuries ago that black people could be enslaved against their will and forced into labor for the benefit of others. Today, in our society, we look at that and think it was immoral, yet according to your explanation, it wasn't immoral for them, because there was broad consensus at the time. If the common person in Germany during Hitler's rule thought Jews were an evil plague on society, that was perfectly moral to think, and if the people generally agreed that they should be killed off, that, too, was perfectly moral in that context. A great number of people in America today have no problem thinking their political opposition should be killed off or imprisoned against their will for their ideas. If we came to a general consensus that such things were morally good, would the consensus make it so?

---

With regard to slave owners, we don’t tend to judge them as harshly as we could from out present point because slavery in was thought to be a moral good in their time and place. We intuitively recognize that their morality was contingent on that. And by the way, Christianity in the American south was all in on being pro-slavery. All the American Protestant traditions broke apart in the decades leading up to the civil war because they vehemently disagreed on slavery, while reading the same Bible as Lincoln pointed out. So if there was an objective truth there, we didn’t get it from Christianity.

As for the Nazis, they lost the war. That’s one reason why their morality is rejected. If they had won the war, they would be celebrated. Hell, I saw a poster in another thread today talking about the vile nature of the Jews and the Jews bringing it all on themselves. They got more down votes than up votes but they got some upvotes too.

I like your idea of objective truth to a point, but if it exists, it doesn’t appear to be something we have any access to or consensus on.

quote:

---

Why does being alive matter more? What's the standard you are using to make that moral determination? Or, are you just providing me your own opinion on the matter?

---

You missed the point. Being alive matters more to the collective us because right now we are alive and form our vantage point as living beings, being alive was good.it’s not an objective truth, but it is an almost universally held truth among living things.

quote:

---

Thank you for confirming that value judgements are entirely subjective in your worldview. I'm still waiting for you to agree that all personal value judgements are equal on their face.

---

Equal to whom? The Milky Way? I promise you it doesn’t care. I, however, am an American and was raised to be an American and so have values that are consequently apart of me. Again, I won’t hold these values when I am dead. There’s no me separated from that context. So no, I am incapable of seeing all things as equal. However, if I were born in another time and place, I would have an entirely different set of beliefs.

quote:

---

. Feeling like we are at liberty to make a value judgement isn't the point. Being consistent between our judgements and our worldviews, is the point. You have no rational basis for calling anything objectively evil (for the sake of condemnation) while I at least have that possibility within my worldview. [/quote
Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am vast and contain multitudes. I don’t know anyone on earth who has an entirely consistent and rational worldview. Rationality is a way of thinking about the world and making sense of it, but it’s got its limits. We evolved to be at this size, at this timescale, to use these tools to survive. It would be hubris to suggest that any form of thinking we exhibit would get close to untangling the mysteries of the universe. We can be a lot more certain in human affairs, but even then we will never have all the information, or know who is lying. What most people call “reason” in common conversation is just dressed up “common sense”. It’s their intuitive understanding of how things are based on their cumulative life experience. That’s not a put down - I do the same thing. You do too.



[quote]And yet people get punished for doing "good" all the time. People get rewarded for doing "evil" all the time, too. This illustrates the ridiculousness of your own arbitrary standard. Clearly it's "moral" to lie, cheat, and steal in D.C. because that's the consensus there and you get rewarded for it.

---

I would go further. Look at the latter 20th century and you see titans battling it out: US and the USSR. One free the other communist. Both sides claim values that are widely believed to be good. The United States argues for liberty and human rights and the Soviet Union argues for equality and solidarity. There were no doubt plenty of people on both sides who fervently believed in their cause. However, the concentrated power of the Soviet system produced prison camps, secret police, genocide, and mass starvation. Sure there were tons of Russians who were opposed to these things and defected or went to prison camps themselves and there were citizens who kept quiet out of fear but there were also citizens who accepted these horrendous actions as things that must be done for the good of the revolution and to them even questioning it was tantamount to treason. The United States on the other hand was aided by the fact that power in capitalism is more defuse than in communism, has never done anything has awful as the Soviets have. However, we constantly turn a blind eye to people who suffering under capitalism, whether they be slave laborers in a foreign land, people whose natural resources are taken by large companies, people who are dumb here, the old, the sick, the poor. How much of our culture celebrates cheating? Whether it be in marriage, sports, business, school. It’s every man for himself get what you can by any means necessary or else you are weak and a loser. Is there any place in this country where the homeless aren’t regarded primarily as a nuisance? The debate in America isn’t about helping them, or providing them opportunities or mental hospitals. It’s either lock them up so we don’t have to look at them or else let them overrun the streets with feces because we are afraid of the optics of locking them up. Is that a christian value? What would Jesus say? Of course it’s not. Jesus, if he were watching, would be furious with us. Because it’s not a Christian value. It’s an American one. They are not productive members of society, so they are wretched and undeserving. I believe that. You do too. We are both contingent on our time and place.

quote:

---

Objective moral reasoning is necessary

[quote]And yet we live our lives being able to make sense of reality, at least in a sense. I'm saying you wouldn't be able to even know if you can make sense of reality if God didn't exist because He is the source for all knowledge, reasoning, morality, beauty, etc.

---

entirely possible, but even if it is true, it’s not demonstrably true. It’s just a thing that sounds nice.

Lighten up Francis. If a wife did her job a man wouldn’t need it.

quote:

---

I hope you two didn't have anything you had to get done today

---

I’m actually in the middle of a stressful negotiation and am welcoming the distraction while waiting for email responses from lawyers. During the last post an email came in that I was waiting for and I thought, ive got to finish this post first, and um, it suddenly dawned on me that I might be stupid

quote:

---

They cannot be rationally explained in an entirely natural universe that is purely material, variant, and contingent. They must be assumed rather than explained.

---

Like I said, they're self evident.

Pornography cuts to the core of man’s strongest weakness; it doesn’t give a shite what you believe.

Are people really claiming this? Personally I wouldn’t classify myself as all that conservative (I’d say personally I’m liberal in the classical sense in lifestyle), but no porn isn’t conservative. It exploits vulnerable people. Like I watch porn, but I know it’s not exactly right. Honestly actual conservatives should wear this as a badge of honor.