re: Pornography is not conservative

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True except for the ex-President of Liberty College who represented both an average pastor and an average home porn star all wrapped up in one.

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To counter my statement you give a very unaverage person who was also not a pastor but a lawyer.

Good job. Double stupid.

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The whole point of horn #1 is to call out the arbitrary nature of God's determining what is right or wrong, as if God could just as easily have said that rape and murder are moral and giving to the poor is immoral.

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How is that different from my summation of "God determines what is right or wrong"?

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By asking where His nature came from (whether He was involved in its creation) is essentially the same thing as asking where God came from when God didn't come from anywhere.

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So wouldn't the answer to my question be that he didn't have a hand in determining his own nature? If we agree that God is eternal and by definition didn't "come to be", that would mean he didn't have a hand in determining his own nature because his own nature was always there.

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frick off.

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There it is. You start off polite in these discussions but you always end up in the same place.

Never mind.

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You don’t think people have to draw lines in the real world? Come on, we all do that.

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Sure, but like I said, the line seems to be around personal feelings of uncomfortableness regarding sex.

It doesn't seem to actually be about breaking up families or being destructive, as I can't see how this issue is worse (or even as bad, actually) as the others I brought up. It seems no worse morally and not as bad practically.

So sure, we all draw lines, but that doesn't mean all lines draw are equally justified. This one seems very weak to me...too weak to supersede values like freedom.

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That's Libertarianism. And Libertarians have never won shite.

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You missed the point.

Being primarily for freedom and minding your own business can theoretically get you BOTH the religious folks AND the libertarians. Religious folks aren't going to start a 3rd party and if they did it would fail just like the libertarian party did.

Being puritanical limits you.

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And gluttony carries a moral component just like sexual immorality does.

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This is retarded. Being 15 lbs overweight is not ethically or morally equivalent to sucking off the football team on tape for money.

Your argument is ridiculous. Now practice some sophistry in this thread.

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So does being libertine.

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Yes, but you can be religious and join a libertarian party without contradicting yourself.

The most interesting part of this thread is whether people who consider themselves politically conservative must also be socially conservative.

Someone should cleave that issue off and start a new thread. The two are not mutually inclusive. Nor are they mutually exclusive.

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Socrates: Is it not debauchery…that deprives men of their wisdom, the noblest gift of the gods, and drives them into ignorance and stupidity, and all manner of disorders? It robs them of leisure to apply themselves to things profitable, while it drowns them in sensual pleasures; and it seizes their minds to that degree that, though they often know which is the best way, they are miserably engaged in the worst […] But temperance, which accustoms us to wait for the necessity, is the only thing that makes us feel an extreme pleasure in these occasions. It is this virtue, too…that puts men in a condition of bringing to a state of perfection both the mind and the body, of rendering themselves capable of well governing their families, of being serviceable to their friends and their country, and of overcoming their enemies […] But the debauched know none of this, for what share can they pretend to in virtuous actions, they whose minds are wholly taken up in the pursuit of present pleasures?

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All things in moderation…

Sorry for the late response. I've been tied up with stuff and haven't been posting for a few days.

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I dont agree that someone picking their own feelings over "other reasons/standards" isn't rational. Their rationale could be behaving in a way that benefits them, and giving a lot of weight to their own feelings while weighing choices would be rational.

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You left off the word "arbitrarily". My concern was for picking one option among many without a rational justification. Simply liking something more (personal preference) isn't rational in and of itself. If you ask yourself "why" enough times, you'll eventually reach the source of your reasoning, and if the source is "I just prefer that", it's not a rational justification.

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Why would other standards be equally valid, though?

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Because there is no standard to say which ones are more valid and which are less valid, or which ones aren't valid at all. This is the entire point of the discussion: how can you justify anyone's moral standard as objectively right or wrong without first having a standard to compare it to? It's precisely why I keep saying that, logically, morality is nothing more than individual personal preference or opinions rather than objective moral truth when you remove God from the picture. Objectivity means that you can remove an individual (or all individuals) from the equation and a moral standard would still exist, like mathematical truths, for instance. In the absence of God, there is no objective moral reality, and therefore any and all moral frameworks are a matter of personal opinion or preference, being equally valid as any other possible standard that any person adheres to.

I could change that statement to read like this: "Why would other ice cream flavors be equally valid?" A person can (and does) give a lot of weight to the flavor of ice cream to make a potentially rational decision about which flavor of ice cream that they consider their favorite, yet there is no objective standard to judge what the best flavor of ice cream is, so therefore the end result is that a favorite flavor is ultimately arbitrary since any flavor of ice cream could be considered a favorite by any person. In fact, many people's tastes change over time, so their favorite flavors can change over time. They may still have a reason for saying one particular flavor is "better" than all others, but again, their personal preference isn't a rational justification for saying that flavor is the best flavor. It's just the best, in their opinion, which may change. Since there isn't a rational justification for what the "best" is, it may certainly change, rather than being the best out of logical necessity.

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People put different weights on different things. Maybe I'm 60/40 with respect to considering how my behaviors impact me vs someone else. If that's my standard, and that's what informs my behavior, that's not arbitrary. I'm using a standard to inform my actions. Theres nothing unusual or unreasonable about my behavior, it's fairly predictable.

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Again, you're talking about the application of your moral standard being rational and not arbitrary, and in that case, I'd agree with you. If you say that what is morally right is that which results in the most money going into your bank account, then so long as whatever you choose always aligns with that standard, you are being rational in your actions. However, the issue is whether or not it is arbitrary to pick greed as your moral standard in the first place. Since you could just as easily pick something else, even though you have a preferential weight arbitrarily given to greed, the end result is that your standard is arbitrary and based on preference rather than logical necessity.

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So when you order food at a restaurant, purchase a car, buy clothes, or even pick a wife, all those decision are arbitrary?

I think you have a different take on that than most people.

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Ultimately, yes. While you can justify why you might make a decision, you likely can't rationalize the reason for the reason, or in other words, you can't rationalize the basis for your choice of food, car, clothes, or wife, because those decisions are based on standards that are ultimately arbitrary.

Like the teacher example again, it's perfectly reasonable to choose to line up children according to last name in order to accomplish the desire to get them out of the room in an orderly way, yet the decision to go with last name instead of any other equal option is arbitrary.

Likewise with morality: I'm not arguing that people don't act "morally" according to whatever standard they accept for themselves. I'm arguing that the standard for morality is arbitrary and ultimately irrational (lacking reasonable justification) without the objective standard for value and responsibility that God provides.