re: Pornography is not conservative

“Pornography is a public health crisis!”

Also

“You should have voted for Vitter!”



The war on drugs worked so well. I’m sure the war on porn will be just as successful!

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You said something earlier about finding common ground and for political pragmatism I don’t disagree. However, common ground is difficult when any issue of morality boils down to “morals that secular humanists believe in are ok to codify, but if Christians believe in something that’s at odds with secular humanism then it’s off the table because the Constitution says so.” The majority is fine when they have it, when they don’t the courts are supposed to step in.

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So after answering your question, in pertinent part, the other night with this:

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Perhaps there is some overlap in the doctrines of Federalism/limited government. Rather than advocating for socially conservative policies at the national level, and forcing social policy upon citizens that hold other beliefs, the evangelical conservatives could embrace the notion of having less laws so that more people could have the freedom to live life as they see fit. Even if you disapprove of their lifestyle.

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I think a more refined response is that common ground exists with fiscal conservatism.

Many of the societal ills evangelical conservatives are against exist only but for government funding. Single family households, out of wedlock birth rates, cradle to grave welfare, etc.

The government spending less money to subsidize personal lifestyle choices would realign a lot of what has destroyed the nuclear family with a quickness.

I would respect Trump more if he just bragged about banging pornstars and not pander to creepy Evangilicals all the time.

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Then your definition of the word arbitrary is incorrect, both in the strict dictionary definition and in common parlance.

Outside of your stereotypical Vegas marriages, people don't choose their spouse on a "whim", or "arbitrarily". Dating for years and heavily considering a decision is anything of the sort. Sure, you can say that the weights people give to certain criteria are subjective, that's why people "go after" different types of spouses, but that isn't synonymous with arbitrary.

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You seem to still not get the point so I won't address this any more after this time.

When your standard is arbitrary, ultimately your decision is arbitrary because it has no rational foundation to support it. You can think a woman is pretty or makes you laugh, but when there are thousands of options for potential spouses that may be pretty or make you laugh, then your decision comes down to personal preference.

And no, arbitrariness doesn't have to be merely whim-based. Here's the first result for a search for "arbitrary"

arbitrary

2: based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something

Merriam Webster

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There's no source, they're true with or without a physical universe/supernatural realm (self evident).

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Please justify your claim. How, in a purely material universe, can immaterial realities exist?

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Not the fullest sense of the word, but they were passed down to children, could be beaten so long as they weren't killed, offspring from two slaves were the masters property, etc.

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Same with Jewish slaves in certain contexts. The distinction is important because when you are making a moral argument against God or biblical morality itself by comparing certain historical realities to other historical realities, the comparison needs to be valid. When people talk about slavery in the Bible, they immediately think of American slavery, yet the two were not the same.

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Not sure about the rape, the Bible laws out standards for daughters sold as slaves who do not please their masters. I shouldn't have to spell out the consent issues between a slave owner and a female slave.

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The Biblical standard was regarding marriage, specifically arranged marriages where girls were sold (think of a dowry) to a prospective husband. The law stated that if the "owner" (prospective husband) didn't want to marry the girl, then the girl, by rights, could be redeemed from that arrangement. Exodus 21 specifically says that in this scenario, she isn't considered a typical slave like even male slaves and that she needs to be treated as a wife or be given the opportunity for another marriage prospect.

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Yes, exactly. And you even agreed yourself a few posts back.
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The implication of how I paraphrased horn #1 is correct, by your own words.

Horn #1 = God determines what is right or wrong.

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Nope, I didn't agree with your assertion about the arbitrary nature of morality. I was just describing the horn within the context of the supposed dilemma.

I'm actually saying that morality is not arbitrarily defined by God's choice or decree, and I'm saying God could not have decided that rape was good and charity is bad for the reason I've repeated over and over again: God did not determine His own nature (the basis of moral good) because His nature was not determined by anyone or anything; it is self-existent.

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There's no direct implication in that statement, nor was I trying to imply anything else indirectly.

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Of course you are. The point of taking the ED back to God's nature is exactly to attempt to show that the nature argument doesn't work because either God arbitrarily determined His own nature or that His nature was determined by something outside Himself, making morality objective apart from God.

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Going beyond this, but sticking to the notion of objective morality being baked into God's nature, I recall having conversations with you about God killing, and ordering killing of, thousands of children in various Biblical stories. You reminded me, in so many words, that God isn't bound by objective moral values.

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I don't recall my exact words, but I've been consistent over the years of my participation on this board that God cannot act against His own nature. If you can show that I've contradicted myself on that point, I'd like to see it.

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Interesting that when discussing killing children he's above it, but when it comes to other discussions now it's an intrinsic part of his nature.

So I'm to understand that objective moral values are part of God's nature, and God also kills children?

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God isn't "above" His own nature out of necessity. However, I have previously stated that God has the right to do with His own creation as He sees fit and is not bound to act towards us exactly as we are, not because He is above morality, but because an aspect of what makes an action moral or not is the relation of the action to the authority of the person doing it. There are certain actions that are immoral for one person to do but moral for another to do. For instance, it's immoral for a civilian to take a person by force and lock them up in their basement while it's moral for an agent of the civil magistrate to arrest a criminal and lock them away in a cell. God has the authority to take the lives of His creations as a penalty for guilt, and that applies to children. We have no such authority to take the lives of children on God's behalf, but He can certainly do so by His own authority. That's not God being above the law; that's God having the authority to enforce it.

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The sort of slavery practiced in the Bible isn't much better than the slavery practiced here in the states. If you think it's a win saying it was only 80% as brutal go for it.

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80% is an arbitrary number, but a couple of things to mention.

First, slaves had rights in the Old Testament culture and civil law of Israel. Slaves had no such universal rights in American culture and civil law, so to say that it slavery was a brutal existence in the Bible simply wasn't true. Jews, for instance, purposefully sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts or simply for purposes of welfare when they couldn't take care of themselves. I don't know about you, but I'd probably rather starve to death than sell myself into slavery where I could be raped and murdered on a whim of my master.

Secondly, and more to the point of what I was talking about previously: if God does not exist, brutality in slavery is not an objectively immoral act. If a nation or society decides that it wants to permit it, then it is morally justified, or even if an individual wants to kidnap someone to use as a personal slave based on their own moral code, then they are morally justified in doing so if an objective moral law-giver doesn't exist. When you make a charge of evil or immorality, you either have to accept that such a charge is logically baseless and nothing more than subjective opinion on your part (in which case, who cares what you think?), or you have to accept that objective morality is based on a personal God who is the basis for such a standard and have to judge actions according to that standard, not your own.

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When your standard is arbitrary

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*Subjective. I'm contending that subjective doesn't automatically equal arbitrary.

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And no, arbitrariness doesn't have to be merely whim-based. Here's the first result for a search for "arbitrary"

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It's not quite the first result if it's the second definition (you chose the second because the first cut against you), but it's still relevant.

I'm aware that it's not merely based on "whim", but I assumed based on our conversation thus far that we weren't getting hung up on the "random choice" part of the definition I provided.

With respect to the definition you referenced, Merriam Webster also defines a gem's worth as "intrinsic". How humans value some materials, like say diamonds, would surely fall under your definition of arbitrary if spouse selection does as well.

You're definitions aren't working within the framework of our language.

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Please justify your claim. How, in a purely material universe, can immaterial realities exist?

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The recognition that "A = A" and "A =/= not A" doesn't create an immaterial reality. I'm not sure where our disconnect is occurring with respect to the three classical laws of thought.

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When people talk about slavery in the Bible, they immediately think of American slavery, yet the two were not the same.

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They don't have to be the same for both to be immoral.

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The Biblical standard was regarding marriage, specifically arranged marriages where girls were sold (think of a dowry) to a prospective husband. The law stated that if the "owner" (prospective husband) didn't want to marry the girl, then the girl, by rights, could be redeemed from that arrangement. Exodus 21 specifically says that in this scenario, she isn't considered a typical slave like even male slaves and that she needs to be treated as a wife or be given the opportunity for another marriage prospect.

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Dowries is certainly the more flowery side of the coin, unfortunately there's another side - like Numbers 31:18.

Female prisoners of war (that's kidnapping, right?) were sorted by their virginity, the ones who weren't virgins were killed and the ones that were, the Hebrews were allowed to "keep for themselves". You're a Bible buff, was there any other way in the Bible that one could tell whether or not a woman was a virgin outside of having sex with her and seeing if she bled? Because if not, that does imply raping a prisoner of war, and killing her if she didn't bleed, but "keeping her for yourself" if she did bleed.

You could argue that Moses was acting outside of what God wanted, but literally a few verses later Moses was talking to God about how to divide the spoils of the battle that had just taken place and I'd think God would have told Moses "Hey, what you did to the women and children prisoners of war wasn't too cool." if he thought that were the case.

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I'm actually saying that morality is not arbitrarily defined by God's choice or decree

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I know. But that part of our conversation isn't about what you're saying, it's about what a specific horn of this dilemma is representing.

You originally said that one of the horns was that morality simply was God's own decision, as if he could just choose to make rape moral. Then when I paraphrased that horn you told me that I was wrong because my paraphrase of that horn would allow God to decide what is moral, and gave the exact same example of rape being made moral - the very same example you gave when describing that horn in your own words.

In short: My summation of that horn is correct, even by your own words.

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Of course you are. The point of taking the ED back to God's nature is exactly to attempt to show that the nature argument doesn't work because either God arbitrarily determined His own nature or that His nature was determined by something outside Himself, making morality objective apart from God.

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No, I was just saying that something that's "not-determined/eternal" isn't necessarily objective.

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There are certain actions that are immoral for one person to do but moral for another to do. For instance, it's immoral for a civilian to take a person by force and lock them up in their basement while it's moral for an agent of the civil magistrate to arrest a criminal and lock them away in a cell. God has the authority to take the lives of His creations as a penalty for guilt, and that applies to children. We have no such authority to take the lives of children on God's behalf, but He can certainly do so by His own authority. That's not God being above the law; that's God having the authority to enforce it.

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So objective morality is an intrinsic part of God's nature, but he doesn't follow it himself? Then it's hardly part of his nature. This "God's nature" stuff seems like a dishonest way to avoid the aforementioned dilemma because it's kicked to the curb the second you step outside of this thought experiment and start walking through the stories of the Old Testament and watch God killing countless children.

"Pacifism is an intrinsic part of my nature." the assassin told his latest victim, before shooting her and her child twice in the head each.

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*Subjective. I'm contending that subjective doesn't automatically equal arbitrary.

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Subjectivity is arbitrary at its core.

I'm contending that subjective moral reasoning is by necessity arbitrary, because people are ultimately choosing a moral standard for themselves out of preference, not out of logical necessity. They may make logical connections between their standards and their actions, but they are not choosing a standard based on logical or even moral necessity because there is no such thing without God as the standard for what is right and what must be held.

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It's not quite the first result if it's the second definition (you chose the second because the first cut against you), but it's still relevant.

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Merriam Webster (the site providing the definition) was the first result from the search. The definition was the 2nd definition from that result, which is a valid definition and the one I've been referencing.

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I'm aware that it's not merely based on "whim", but I assumed based on our conversation thus far that we weren't getting hung up on the "random choice" part of the definition I provided.

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I'm not hung up on the "random choice" part of the definition at all. I'm "hung up" on the fact there moral standards are chosen arbitrarily, or without rational necessity, and therefore alternatives could also be chosen and just as valid.

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With respect to the definition you referenced, Merriam Webster also defines a gem's worth as "intrinsic". How humans value some materials, like say diamonds, would surely fall under your definition of arbitrary if spouse selection does as well.

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I actually agree with you here. Clearly MW isn't operated by philosophers.

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The recognition that "A = A" and "A =/= not A" doesn't create an immaterial reality. I'm not sure where our disconnect is occurring with respect to the three classical laws of thought.

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The disconnect seems to be that you don't see the laws of thought as "immaterial realities" yet speak as though they are. Logical laws are conceptual in their nature, not material. We cannot observe a law of thought or nature. We simply use our minds to recognize them. In fact, we have to presuppose them in order to even use them because we cannot observe them as we can observe other material realities. Even in your example of the law of identity, we cannot observe a thing that is both itself and not itself at the same time. We cannot observe something that is not itself because that would be "nothing" and we can't observe nothing at all.

Laws of thought do not actually describe physical behaviors. They only describe concepts, or that which we describe as truths. They don't exist materially or can be observed but only exist in the mind, yet they are necessary for understanding the world, universal in their application, and unchanging. Laws of logic don't "fit" in an atheistic, materialistic worldview.

So again, how do you justify your claim that laws of logic exist with or without a physical universe in a universe that all that exists is the material? And if you agree that there are immaterial realities, please explain why you believe that (rather than a purely material nature of things) and how the material and immaterial come together.

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They don't have to be the same for both to be immoral.

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There are two elements in question with that statement, namely the intellectual immorality of it and the emotional immorality of it. Without God, there is no basis for saying anything--including brutal chattel slavery--is intellectually immoral, so all you're left with is emotional immorality, which is what people feel is immoral, and when people think about slavery in the Bible, they immediately think of slavery in the Americas and immediately feel like it's the same thing and "immoral" in the same way. The truth is that they are not the same, and biblical slavery in most cases was more like indentured servitude. In the cases where it was more like chattel slavery, it still wasn't that, and the slaves had certain rights that when examined, take some of that emotional sting out of the conversation.

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Dowries is certainly the more flowery side of the coin, unfortunately there's another side - like Numbers 31:18.
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You could argue that Moses was acting outside of what God wanted, but literally a few verses later Moses was talking to God about how to divide the spoils of the battle that had just taken place and I'd think God would have told Moses "Hey, what you did to the women and children prisoners of war wasn't too cool." if he thought that were the case.

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What you're talking about there is what the people of Israel were to do with prisoners of war. The options were to kill them or take them as wives. Either option would be completely justifiable within the context of war.

In regards to the virgin issue - the same law or concept applied to the women of Israel. In Deuteronomy 22 we find laws regarding a man who hates his wife and wants to divorce her, claiming she wasn't really a virgin when they got married. In order to address this issue, it was customary that on the wedding night, when the newlyweds would have sex for the first time, that there was a cloth or sheet that was laid down to catch the blood that came from it and was kept as evidence of virginity to preserve the woman's name in case she was besmirched by her husband later on. In that case, the man didn't have to rape the woman he wanted to marry to find out if she were a virgin.

But even if the men of Israel didn't actually take wives like that, marry them, and sleep with them to find out if they were virgins first, they could simply have tested virginity with their fingers. It wouldn't be a perfect test, but good enough for the men who wanted wives from a group of women that would otherwise be put to death.

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In short: My summation of that horn is correct, even by your own words.

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I've summarized the horn correctly and have explained several times why it doesn't apply to God.

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No, I was just saying that something that's "not-determined/eternal" isn't necessarily objective.

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What makes God's nature "objective" is in relation to the human experience, or rather, in relation to all of the created order, particularly human beings. God's moral law or standard for holiness (aka morality) is objective because it applies universally to all humanity through all time, and is true regardless of whether or not there is disagreement or even lack of knowledge or awareness of it from a human perspective. Since God is perfect, that extends to His holiness, and therefore the fact that God is God means that He is the objective standard for holiness that all of humanity can look to (and be judged by).

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So objective morality is an intrinsic part of God's nature, but he doesn't follow it himself? Then it's hardly part of his nature. This "God's nature" stuff seems like a dishonest way to avoid the aforementioned dilemma because it's kicked to the curb the second you step outside of this thought experiment and start walking through the stories of the Old Testament and watch God killing countless children.

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I can't tell if you simply don't understand or if you're just pretending to not understand.

"Killing children" is not an objective evil in itself. "Murdering children" is objectively evil in itself because children are created in God's image and only He has the authority to end a life unless He has provided a reason to tolerate it, such as with self-defense. Not all killing is murder, and murder as the unlawful taking of a life doesn't apply when the law-giver is taking the life lawfully (to exact justice, for instance).

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In fact, we have to presuppose them in order to even use them...

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You word this as if it's a limitation for me.

Anything we do presupposes them. The universes existence presupposes them. Even without a universe, nothing would equal nothing, and wouldn't equal something, and couldn't be both nothing and something at the same time. There's no way to escape them.

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but only exist in the mind

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If no minds existed A would still equal A. They are not dependent on minds. The concept of them exists in the mind, but that's it.

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Laws of logic don't "fit" in an atheistic, materialistic worldview.

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Of course they do, they fit any worldview.

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So again, how do you justify your claim that laws of logic exist with or without a physical universe in a universe that all that exists is the material?

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Because even "nothing" follows the three classical laws of thought. If you want to entertain the idea that nothing can actually be something, then that will have some interesting possibilities for the origins of the universe

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Correct. You won't find many Christians, at least in the SE, championing the welfare state.

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Here is where we agree and I'm glad there is some common ground based in fiscal conservatism. When the government subsidizes how people live it detracts from the natural order of life. We would have a lot less single parent households, for example, if we defunded things like preschool, daycare, and child tax credits, etc. We could also get rid of alimony and no-fault divorce, unless the marriage was childless, as well. Unfortunately both political parties have abandoned any notions of fiscal conservatism whether on social issues or otherwise.

Here's where we partially disagree:

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Christians already do that. Nobody's clamoring for a theocracy, nobody's trying to make criminals out of gay people. I believe all sorts of things are morally wrong that I don't want laws against, and 99% of Christians could say the same. Again, this is about drawing lines, and everybody draws lines. Presumably you don't want hippies screwing on a park bench across from an elementary school, correct? That's you forcing a sexual norm on others.

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I bowed out of the morality debate in this thread earlier when it was made clear that evangelical morality is "objective" and that of non-evangelicals "arbitrary" and "irrational".

A better explanation of morality is that we are a nation of laws and not men and our collective morality exists as laws passed by our elected representatives which govern, among other things, social conduct.

If your laws do not already proscribe public fornication, and I'd wager they do, then work to enact your morality through local legislation.

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The definitions are robust enough, you're just misusing the aforementioned words for effect.

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I'm talking about the logical approach to decision-making, not the grammatical one. I've been very clear, and repeated multiple times, that arbitrariness doesn't have to be in the choice a person makes, but in the underlying reasons for the choice they make. You seem to be sticking to the choices and saying I'm misusing the word.

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People do not consider their choice in spouse as arbitrary, so when you use that word to describe people following a well reasoned system of morals you're not conveying a clear message to people reading your posts. You're saying one thing, and they're almost assuredly thinking something else.

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Again, I've explained my reasoning for my word usage many times. You can have a rational approach to decision making while having an arbitrary standard for your approach. I used the example of the teacher lining up children several times. The approach to orderliness is rational, yet their choice in a standard for the approach is arbitrary, making the entire decision arbitrary at its core. This is what happens with morality.

So yeah, if I say that choosing a wife is arbitrary and then explain why I believe it is that way, I'm being clear. You are making it seem like all I've done is say choosing a wife is arbitrary and then left it at that. I haven't.

And you do understand all Dems are jackasses don't you?