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re: This is no way to live
Posted on 7/4/26 at 8:35 am to CrystalPreserves
Posted on 7/4/26 at 8:35 am to CrystalPreserves
quote:Okay. You're an idiot.
And every time Trump’s accountability comes up
I mistook you for something else.
I'm usually a better judge of such things.
0
Posted on 7/4/26 at 8:37 am to CrystalPreserves
quote:I used your own words, doofus.
You keep pretending my argument is confused because you keep replacing it with one I did not make.
I even quoted them back to you ... verbatim.
Was someone else posting on your account?
Posted on 7/4/26 at 11:19 am to NC_Tigah
NCTigah, quoting words is not the same thing as understanding them.
Yes, you quoted me. Then you stripped the context, assigned the dumbest possible meaning to the sentence, and attacked that instead. That is the whole point.
Yes, you quoted me. Then you stripped the context, assigned the dumbest possible meaning to the sentence, and attacked that instead. That is the whole point.
Posted on 7/4/26 at 11:40 am to CrystalPreserves
quote:I continue to highlight that you are writing like there is an objective standard to support your statements, but there isn't one. I'm hoping it will eventually sink in that you don't have one in your worldview, and that you are borrowing from a Christian worldview.
You keep repeating “by what standard?” as if repetition can do the work your argument hasn’t done.
quote:You're missing the point here. I'm attacking your own atheistic worldview for lacking an objective moral standard. Whether Christianity is true or not doesn't change that fact. You cannot act consistently within your own worldview because you act as if an objective standard exists, even though one cannot in atheism.
Your entire case is conditional: if Christianity is true, then you have objective morality.
The word “if” is carrying your whole cathedral on its back.
Concurrently, I'm arguing that Christianity does provide a basis for moral objectivity, so it should be preferred to atheism.
quote:My focus isn't on proving Christianity true at this time but deconstructing atheism for you, since you are the one promoting atheism as at least an equal option.
You have not demonstrated that the biblical God exists, that the Bible accurately reveals him, that your interpretation is correct, or that God’s nature is good rather than merely defined as good. You have simply said, “If my theology is true, then my theology wins.”
That dog won’t hunt Bubba. You haven’t built a foundation.
However, I have already given some argumentation to support Christianity, by showing that the cosmological argument supports the existence of the God that is revealed in Scripture, but if you want more argumentation for the proof of Christianity, I'd be happy to do so after you admit that atheism has no source of objective moral reasoning, and therefore atheists are being inconsistent when they act as if there is objective morality.
quote:Yes, I'm using what I understand as "goodness" to identify it in the Bible rather than learning all sense of goodness from the Bible first. That is not problematic to my position.
And your answer on God’s goodness is still circular. You identify mercy, justice, love, and faithfulness as good only because you are already using moral judgment before the scripture ever speaks. You are not deriving goodness from God. You are recognizing goodness, finding it in a passage you like, and pretending the passage created the recognition.
You are wrongly concluding that the order of recognition is the problem rather than the order of origin. I'm not arguing that no one knows what goodness is until they read the Bible. I'm arguing that what is good originates from God as revealed in the Bible. It's a matter of origin, not a matter of epistemology. Or in other words, it's an an order of being, not an order of knowing.
More fundamentally, we're talking about where that prior intuition came from, as well as whether or not that intuition is identifying something real. Christianity posits that the intuition came from God: that both the standard of goodness and the intuition come from Him. The standard for goodness merely reflects God's character, and we intuitively know it because we are made in His image with that intuition impressed upon us on purpose, rather than through some accident of evolution.
quote:Objectivity and subjectivity are referring to something in relation to the mind of a subject. If something exists only within a given subject's mind, then it is subjective.
All you’ve offered is divine subjectivism. Morality is “objective” in your system only because God is the biggest possible subject. You have not escaped “might makes right.” You have moved the might to heaven and called it holiness.
To be more precise, we're talking about arbitrariness, variability, and contingency in the human experience. Atheistic morality is subjective because it is arbitrary (it could be something other than it is), variable (it can and does change over time, and from person to person), and is contingent (it's tied to humanity, which doesn't need to exist).
By contrast, Christian morality is objective as it originates from a God that is not arbitrary (it reflects God's being, which cannot be otherwise), not variable (God cannot change), and necessary (God must exist).
So no, it's not just shifting the subjectivity to God, because morality isn't dependent upon God's mind, but His being.
quote:I absolutely have. "Might makes right" refers to the arbitrariness of morality enforced by the person with the biggest stick. The emphasis is on the stick that makes something "right", as if what is right could change if someone with a bigger stick comes along to enforce a different arbitrary standard.
You have not escaped “might makes right.” You have moved the might to heaven and called it holiness.
God's power does not make His moral standard "right", as if lack of ability to enforce it would change its necessary rightness. God's morality is right because of His moral nature, not because of His power to enforce it. Morality is good because it reflects who God is, not because He is more powerful than any of us. God's morality is not arbitrary.
quote:Not true. I'm demonstrating the arbitrariness of atheism's view of morality.
When you ask, “Who cares if a child is tortured?” you think you’re exposing atheism. You’re exposing the poverty of an argument that cannot recognize suffering as morally urgent until it is notarized by God.
Christianity teaches that a person torturing a child is fundamentally bad because of who God is and who we are. Human children are made in God's image with inherent value to God as His very representation to creation, and the torture and destruction of children is an attack against God. The violation of the image of God is what makes it "wrong", not the emotional appeal you make.
I'm focusing more on why atheism can't conclusively say that torturing children is wrong, because there is no objective standard outside the human experience/mind that says that it's wrong. It's all an appeal to emotion.
quote:No, I'm not. Being written in the stars is a word picture I'm using to describe an objective reality that exists outside the human experience. I know you really and truly experience disgust and displeasure at the thought of a child being tortured. That's a real response, but what I'm saying is that your disgust doesn't mean the act is morally wrong any more than someone being disgusted at a cow be butchered means it's morally wrong to kill and eat cows. Not liking something doesn't mean that that something you dislike is "wrong". It just means you don't have a preference for it, and that's been my point all along. Atheism makes morality nothing more than a set of preferences.
You keep confusing “not written in the stars” with “not real.”
quote:You're confused here, too. When I'm talking about the judge, I'm talking about a practical application of justice that puts some wood behind the arrow of morality in the Christian worldview that doesn't exist within atheism. The point is to show another reason why atheistic morality lacks real moral weight, because it doesn't account for true justice, and has the logical conclusion of Nihilism, which is a purposeless and hopeless prospect, whereas Christianity is grounded in hope and purpose with meaning behind morality.
And your “when I die, it’s all over, so who judges me?” line gives the game away. You are reducing morality to final sentencing. But morality is not made real by a courtroom after death. It is made real by what happens to living beings before it.
You want a judge. I’m talking about the victim.
Posted on 7/4/26 at 11:55 am to FooManChoo
FMC, I would remind you of this passage:
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."
You are wasting your time and wisdom arguing with that idiot.
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."
You are wasting your time and wisdom arguing with that idiot.
Posted on 7/4/26 at 12:57 pm to BFIV
quote:Thank you for your concern, really. I keep that in mind as I'm discussing on this forum.
FMC, I would remind you of this passage:
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."
You are wasting your time and wisdom arguing with that idiot.
The reason why I continue is because I'm not speaking 1-on-1 with someone who is not engaging with the apologetical effort. This is a public forum, with people like yourself reading the interaction, so I don't think Matt. 7:6 quite applies. It's more like Jesus teaching the blinded Pharisees with the crowds around Him, or Paul reasoning with the Greek philosophers.
If these guys ever stop engaging with real discussion and resort to nothing more than personal attacks and blasphemies, I'll cease the engagement. Until then, I'll continue to give a reason for the hope that is in me, and to answer a fool according to his folly
This post was edited on 7/4/26 at 12:58 pm
Posted on 7/4/26 at 2:59 pm to FooManChoo
Let me slow this down a little.
You keep saying atheism has no objective standard, but what you really mean is that atheism does not have your standard.
That is not a refutation. That is a demand for monopoly.
You define “objective morality” as morality grounded in a necessary God, then announce that atheism fails because it does not contain a necessary God. Well, of course it doesn’t. You smuggled your conclusion into the definition and then acted pleased when it came back out.
That dog won’t hunt.
Your entire case rests on a stack of assertions: God exists, God is necessary, God is unchanging, God is good, the Bible reveals him, and your interpretation of that Bible is correct. You have not established those things. You have merely placed them in a row and called the row a foundation.
I understand why that feels sturdy from inside the house. But from out here on the porch, son, it is still just a stack.
And when pressed on God’s goodness, you retreat into wordplay: God’s nature is good because goodness reflects God’s nature.
That is not an explanation. That is a circle wearing a halo.
You admitted the problem yourself. You recognize mercy, justice, love, and faithfulness as good before scripture has done any work. Your moral recognition is carrying the load, and your theology is riding in the wagon taking credit.
You say that recognition comes from God. Fine. Prove it. Do not just baptize intuition and call it revelation.
You have not shown that conscience is stamped into us by a deity instead of arising from social, rational, emotional, evolutionary, and cultural realities among conscious beings who can suffer, flourish, reason, cooperate, and be harmed.
Now, I have been around long enough to know the difference between preference and pain. A child being tortured is not wrong because I personally dislike it, the way a man might dislike weak coffee or cold biscuits. It is wrong because a conscious being is being terrorized, violated, damaged, and treated as disposable. Those are facts about the victim’s experience, not decorations inside my mood.
Your cow and spider examples are evasions. Moral borders can be difficult without making the center disappear. We can argue about where the fence line runs without pretending the house itself is imaginary.
And your “image of God” answer is not morally deeper. It is morally revealing.
You say torturing a child is wrong because it attacks God’s image. I say it is wrong because of what is being done to the child.
You need the child to be a divine emblem before the suffering has ultimate meaning. I think the child matters before you turn him into church property. That is the difference.
You keep asking “who cares?” as if it is devastating. It is not. It is what morality sounds like after theology has hollowed it out and replaced concern for the victim with concern for cosmic bookkeeping.
A crime does not become meaningless because the criminal escapes. A murdered child is not suddenly unharmed because heaven does not hold court. You are confusing perfect justice with moral reality.
And no, atheism does not end in nihilism. That is just the sermon’s favorite scarecrow. Meaning does not become fake because it is finite. Love is not worthless because people die. Justice is not pointless because it is imperfect. A fireman does not need eternity to pull a child out of a burning house and know it mattered.
So when you say I am borrowing from Christianity, no. That is not what is happening.
I am using the moral recognition humans actually have, the suffering humans actually experience, and the consequences humans actually live with. You are taking that human moral recognition, stapling a Bible verse to it, and then claiming nobody else is allowed to use the word “good.”
You have not grounded morality. You have asserted a God, defined that God as good, called the definition objective, and then accused everyone else of stealing furniture from a house you have not proved exists. That is not moral philosophy. That is theology admiring itself in a mirror and calling the reflection objective.
You keep saying atheism has no objective standard, but what you really mean is that atheism does not have your standard.
That is not a refutation. That is a demand for monopoly.
You define “objective morality” as morality grounded in a necessary God, then announce that atheism fails because it does not contain a necessary God. Well, of course it doesn’t. You smuggled your conclusion into the definition and then acted pleased when it came back out.
That dog won’t hunt.
Your entire case rests on a stack of assertions: God exists, God is necessary, God is unchanging, God is good, the Bible reveals him, and your interpretation of that Bible is correct. You have not established those things. You have merely placed them in a row and called the row a foundation.
I understand why that feels sturdy from inside the house. But from out here on the porch, son, it is still just a stack.
And when pressed on God’s goodness, you retreat into wordplay: God’s nature is good because goodness reflects God’s nature.
That is not an explanation. That is a circle wearing a halo.
You admitted the problem yourself. You recognize mercy, justice, love, and faithfulness as good before scripture has done any work. Your moral recognition is carrying the load, and your theology is riding in the wagon taking credit.
You say that recognition comes from God. Fine. Prove it. Do not just baptize intuition and call it revelation.
You have not shown that conscience is stamped into us by a deity instead of arising from social, rational, emotional, evolutionary, and cultural realities among conscious beings who can suffer, flourish, reason, cooperate, and be harmed.
Now, I have been around long enough to know the difference between preference and pain. A child being tortured is not wrong because I personally dislike it, the way a man might dislike weak coffee or cold biscuits. It is wrong because a conscious being is being terrorized, violated, damaged, and treated as disposable. Those are facts about the victim’s experience, not decorations inside my mood.
Your cow and spider examples are evasions. Moral borders can be difficult without making the center disappear. We can argue about where the fence line runs without pretending the house itself is imaginary.
And your “image of God” answer is not morally deeper. It is morally revealing.
You say torturing a child is wrong because it attacks God’s image. I say it is wrong because of what is being done to the child.
You need the child to be a divine emblem before the suffering has ultimate meaning. I think the child matters before you turn him into church property. That is the difference.
You keep asking “who cares?” as if it is devastating. It is not. It is what morality sounds like after theology has hollowed it out and replaced concern for the victim with concern for cosmic bookkeeping.
A crime does not become meaningless because the criminal escapes. A murdered child is not suddenly unharmed because heaven does not hold court. You are confusing perfect justice with moral reality.
And no, atheism does not end in nihilism. That is just the sermon’s favorite scarecrow. Meaning does not become fake because it is finite. Love is not worthless because people die. Justice is not pointless because it is imperfect. A fireman does not need eternity to pull a child out of a burning house and know it mattered.
So when you say I am borrowing from Christianity, no. That is not what is happening.
I am using the moral recognition humans actually have, the suffering humans actually experience, and the consequences humans actually live with. You are taking that human moral recognition, stapling a Bible verse to it, and then claiming nobody else is allowed to use the word “good.”
You have not grounded morality. You have asserted a God, defined that God as good, called the definition objective, and then accused everyone else of stealing furniture from a house you have not proved exists. That is not moral philosophy. That is theology admiring itself in a mirror and calling the reflection objective.
Posted on 7/4/26 at 6:12 pm to CrystalPreserves
quote:Ultimately, yes, I'm arguing for the Christian worldview and demonstrating that it should be preferred to atheism, particularly in regards to morality.
You keep saying atheism has no objective standard, but what you really mean is that atheism does not have your standard.
That is not a refutation. That is a demand for monopoly.
With that said, I'm arguing that atheism has no objective standard at all, whether the Christian view or otherwise. I'm also saying that it lacks the Christian standard, but I don't even have to go that far to say that it lacks an objective moral standard, and therefore it lacks a rational basis for any meaningful moral condemnation, regardless of the particular Christian beliefs are. So yes, it is a refutation of your position, because you're smuggling in meaning to morality when you have none by default.
quote:Like I said, you can reject the Christian God and you still have no basis for moral objectivity. The lack of moral objectivity in your worldview undermines meaningful moral condemnation. It leaves you with nothing but a bunch of opinions.
You define “objective morality” as morality grounded in a necessary God, then announce that atheism fails because it does not contain a necessary God. Well, of course it doesn’t. You smuggled your conclusion into the definition and then acted pleased when it came back out.
quote:That's typically how argumentation works. A logical syllogism is made up of some premises that, if true, result in a necessary conclusion. I've given you some premises and a conclusion, and so far you haven't refuted it, you just keep saying I haven't proved my positive case for Christianity. Maybe so, but I've supported my premises throughout this discussion.
Your entire case rests on a stack of assertions: God exists, God is necessary, God is unchanging, God is good, the Bible reveals him, and your interpretation of that Bible is correct. You have not established those things. You have merely placed them in a row and called the row a foundation.
But more to the point, my "entire case" does not rest on those assertions, because my case is multi-pointed. My primary point is that atheism doesn't provide a rational basis for meaningful moral judgements because it has no concept of objective morality. You haven't refuted that point at all, so if that's all we discussed, you would be losing, because it's a fact that you have no objective moral standard.
The second part of the case is the Christian alternative, which I've provided some argumentation for. I keep telling you I'd be happy to elaborate on that some more once we get past the factuality of atheisms moral problem, but you won't cede that point yet.
quote:It's not wordplay at all. It's a logical distinction. You are trying to tie goodness to an arbitrary standard and I'm explaining that goodness has characteristics that we recognize because it comports to the reality that flows from God's very character. I'm also explaining to you the basic logical fact that termination of appeal is not a vicious circle, but a logical necessity when speaking of ultimates. For instance, you cannot prove that the laws of logic exist without using them.
And when pressed on God’s goodness, you retreat into wordplay: God’s nature is good because goodness reflects God’s nature.
That is not an explanation. That is a circle wearing a halo.
quote:It's not a problem, which is why I keep typing so many words that you are apparently not understanding.
You admitted the problem yourself. You recognize mercy, justice, love, and faithfulness as good before scripture has done any work. Your moral recognition is carrying the load, and your theology is riding in the wagon taking credit.
I described to you the difference between an order of origin and an order of recognition and how recognition of goodness is not the origin of it, and necessarily so. If goodness is a subjective concept, then it has no ultimate meaning beyond what we give it, which is the same problem you have with morality generally.
quote:I already did, but let me put it in a syllogism for you:
You say that recognition comes from God. Fine. Prove it. Do not just baptize intuition and call it revelation.
P1: Whatever is uncreated, necessary, and self-existent is the ultimate source of anything that depends on it for existence.
P2: God alone is uncreated, necessary, and self-existent.
P3: Goodness as a real property is not uncreated, necessary, and self-existent, independent of God (it's not a part of our own minds or some concept that is just floating out in space)
C1: Therefore, goodness must depend for its existence on something else that is uncreated, necessary, and self-existent, which I call God.
quote:Refer to the syllogism above and swap out "goodness" for "conscience" and it still fits, because all things ultimately have their source from God, including morality.
You have not shown that conscience is stamped into us by a deity instead of arising from social, rational, emotional, evolutionary, and cultural realities among conscious beings who can suffer, flourish, reason, cooperate, and be harmed.
But to your point about evolving conscience: as I said in a previous post, that would only be a description of a what, and not an evidence of an ought.
If we evolved a conscience, that would be no different than our evolved ability to use force. It's simply a mechanism for humans to interact with and respond to the world around us. It doesn't describe what we must do, only what we can do. Therefore, a person with a conscience (as you seem to now be describing it) is not obligated to use it for the "good" (again, that is a subjective word) of others any more than a person with great strength is obligated to use it for others, either. It also doesn't address what you do with someone whose "conscience" is malformed or nonfunctional, and why they must act the same as those with similar consciences. You still don't have a standard of what anyone must do because you don't have an objective standard for what is right to do.
quote:You're right that there is a difference between the experience of pain and our opinions of it, however the experience is neither good nor bad in and of itself, which is why we have to interpret it one way or another. Pain in a operating room is usually a good thing, because it means we are getting a surgery to improve our health. So no, pain and suffering are not objectively bad in and of themselves.
Now, I have been around long enough to know the difference between preference and pain. A child being tortured is not wrong because I personally dislike it, the way a man might dislike weak coffee or cold biscuits. It is wrong because a conscious being is being terrorized, violated, damaged, and treated as disposable. Those are facts about the victim’s experience, not decorations inside my mood.
So what does that leave us? Our own interpretations of pain and suffering, which is subjective. The terrorist being tortured to death may think it's bad, but the family of the victim of the terrorists actions may think his pain and suffering are good. It all goes back to subjectivism again and again in your worldview. You can't escape it no matter how much you want to.
quote:The examples were not evasions at all. It was to show you how people interpret actions differently, highlighting subjectivism.
Your cow and spider examples are evasions. Moral borders can be difficult without making the center disappear. We can argue about where the fence line runs without pretending the house itself is imaginary.
quote:It's both. You have no moral depth in your worldview because it's all a matter of opinion.
And your “image of God” answer is not morally deeper. It is morally revealing.
Posted on 7/4/26 at 6:16 pm to Deepblueskies
The Founding Fathers never intended for this nation to be as diverse as it is now. It’s something that most people don’t want to talk about but know it’s true.
Posted on 7/4/26 at 6:43 pm to CrystalPreserves
Continued...
I care that innocents suffer. I want it to end. I want the wicked to see justice. I believe the wicked will see justice because God is a God of justice.
However, what the "who cares" comments are about is showing you that your position has no actual weight to it, because it makes morality nothing more than your opinion, guided by whatever personal constraints and influences you care most about, and no one is obligated to care about your opinion. You are moved by your emotion for the suffering of children. That's great, but that doesn't mean it's bad any more than painfully watching your adult child go to jail for killing someone means that justice being served is "bad" in that case.
You can make helping the poor and fatherless your particular goal in life. Great! Someone else can make robbing from the poor and fatherless their goal. Both are equally acceptable in atheism because both are created in the minds of the individuals without any outside standard to appeal to to judge them as good or bad.
But that meaning is not necessary, and it does not exist necessarily. It's entirely subjective, made up and acted upon by the individuals who have it in their brains, and then when they die, it's all gone. There is no ultimate meaning to grasp for (real justice, real love, real sacrifice to attain), because those things don't actually exist in atheism. They are just concepts dreamed up in the minds of humans that can choose to go after them or not, without any ultimate judgment or consequence. It's all building a snowman outside on a warm day. It will melt away in short order and it will be as if it never existed in the first place.
You need to borrow objective meaning, value, and morality from Christianity because you can't get it in atheism.
I'm not sure how else to explain it to you. I've said it a dozen times at this point, but without an outside source of morality, all you have is morality from within, which is nothing more than personal opinion and preference.
quote:And that's just your opinion, which highlights the futility of your position. It's subjectivism. Your lack of comfort with an action does not make it objectively wrong, which is what I keep trying to show you. You need to provide an objective justification for why torturing children is wrong in order to support your position. We both agree torturing children is wrong, but only I have the moral justification for it.
You say torturing a child is wrong because it attacks God’s image. I say it is wrong because of what is being done to the child.
quote:I don't need the child to be anything other than what it already is: an image-bearer of God. That doesn't mean it's "church property", but God's property. You still have no basis for why anyone should care about the suffering of others.
You need the child to be a divine emblem before the suffering has ultimate meaning. I think the child matters before you turn him into church property. That is the difference.
quote:The "who cares" is not to minimize the victim, but to minimize the victim according to the logical conclusion of your worldview.
You keep asking “who cares?” as if it is devastating. It is not. It is what morality sounds like after theology has hollowed it out and replaced concern for the victim with concern for cosmic bookkeeping.
I care that innocents suffer. I want it to end. I want the wicked to see justice. I believe the wicked will see justice because God is a God of justice.
However, what the "who cares" comments are about is showing you that your position has no actual weight to it, because it makes morality nothing more than your opinion, guided by whatever personal constraints and influences you care most about, and no one is obligated to care about your opinion. You are moved by your emotion for the suffering of children. That's great, but that doesn't mean it's bad any more than painfully watching your adult child go to jail for killing someone means that justice being served is "bad" in that case.
quote:You've yet to show that there is real objective meaning at all. I'm just explaining how as a necessary side effect to your worldview, that most people get away with "crime" all the time with no justice administered.
A crime does not become meaningless because the criminal escapes. A murdered child is not suddenly unharmed because heaven does not hold court. You are confusing perfect justice with moral reality.
quote:It ought to, because there is no real meaning and purpose to life in atheism. Each person has to artificially create whatever purpose and meaning they want. It's nothing more than a fairy tale that each person creates in their own mind to make it through their pointless life before the lights go out.
And no, atheism does not end in nihilism. That is just the sermon’s favorite scarecrow.
quote:It's not about being finite or infinite, but being based in anything objective.
Meaning does not become fake because it is finite.
You can make helping the poor and fatherless your particular goal in life. Great! Someone else can make robbing from the poor and fatherless their goal. Both are equally acceptable in atheism because both are created in the minds of the individuals without any outside standard to appeal to to judge them as good or bad.
quote:You keep missing my point. I'm not saying there is no such thing as meaning in your worldview. I'm saying that whatever meaning you create exists only in your own mind. Love means something to the lovers until they are dead, and then it's gone. Justice means something because we desire it. Saving a child from a burning building is meaningful to the firefighter and many others.
Love is not worthless because people die. Justice is not pointless because it is imperfect. A fireman does not need eternity to pull a child out of a burning house and know it mattered.
But that meaning is not necessary, and it does not exist necessarily. It's entirely subjective, made up and acted upon by the individuals who have it in their brains, and then when they die, it's all gone. There is no ultimate meaning to grasp for (real justice, real love, real sacrifice to attain), because those things don't actually exist in atheism. They are just concepts dreamed up in the minds of humans that can choose to go after them or not, without any ultimate judgment or consequence. It's all building a snowman outside on a warm day. It will melt away in short order and it will be as if it never existed in the first place.
quote:That's exactly what's happening. You continue to speak and act in terms of ultimates and objective realities when you have no basis for them in your worldview. When someone hurts you, you expect justice. When someone steals from you, you act as if it is "wrong". When pain and suffering occur, you don't just shrug it off and say "that's a bummer", but you demand help be provided and retribution be meted out on the guilty parties. You act as if there is real meaning and morality that exists outside of your own brain, expecting others to be held accountable to some objective reality that doesn't actually exist.
So when you say I am borrowing from Christianity, no. That is not what is happening.
You need to borrow objective meaning, value, and morality from Christianity because you can't get it in atheism.
quote:It's all subjective, which you continue to fail to see. You are trying to ground "objective" realities in subjective experiences without any logical way to do it.
I am using the moral recognition humans actually have, the suffering humans actually experience, and the consequences humans actually live with.
quote:I'm actually just using logic to show you that you are trying to use subjective opinions as if they are objective realities that others must abide by. All you have been describing is shared opinions, not moral requirements.
You are taking that human moral recognition, stapling a Bible verse to it, and then claiming nobody else is allowed to use the word “good.”
quote:I actually have shown that objective morality must be grounded in something outside of the human experience. You have not shown otherwise. You are just trying to cast doubt on the "God" answer without showing that subjective human experience, emotion, and preferences are a rational basis for moral oughts.
You have not grounded morality. You have asserted a God, defined that God as good, called the definition objective, and then accused everyone else of stealing furniture from a house you have not proved exists. That is not moral philosophy. That is theology admiring itself in a mirror and calling the reflection objective.
I'm not sure how else to explain it to you. I've said it a dozen times at this point, but without an outside source of morality, all you have is morality from within, which is nothing more than personal opinion and preference.
Posted on 7/4/26 at 8:27 pm to FooManChoo
You keep saying “atheism has no objective standard,” but you still have not proven that. You have only proven that atheism does not use your standard. Those are not the same thing. You are trying to make Christianity the only measuring stick allowed in the room, then acting surprised when everything else comes up short.
Your syllogism does not rescue you either. “God alone is uncreated, necessary, and self-existent” is not a proven premise. That is your conclusion slipped into the argument with a clean shirt on. Same goes for “goodness cannot exist apart from God.” You asserted it. You did not prove it. You do not get to rule every non-Christian account of morality out of bounds and then declare victory because yours is the only one left standing. That is not logic. That is fencing off the pasture and claiming you found the only cow.
Your answer to the child torture example is the part that really tells on you. I said torturing a child is wrong because of what is being done to the child: terror, violation, domination, suffering, and damage. Your reply was that pain and suffering are not good or bad “in and of themselves.” Well, that is not moral depth. That is moral numbness. Nobody said all pain in every situation is evil. Pain from a doctor setting a broken bone is not the same thing as someone deliberately torturing a child. One is ordered toward healing. The other is cruelty inflicted on a vulnerable conscious being. If your argument has to flatten those two things into the same category, then your argument is already dragging one boot behind it.
And when you say the child matters because the child is “God’s property,” you prove my point again. I do not need the child to be stamped with divine ownership before the child matters. You apparently do. That right there is the difference.
You also keep confusing disagreement with subjectivity. The fact that a terrorist, a victim’s family, a tyrant, and a bystander may interpret suffering differently does not prove there is no moral truth. People disagree about medicine, history, law, and science too. Disagreement does not make reality disappear. It only proves people can be wrong, biased, vengeful, or too proud to see straight.
Then comes the nihilism sermon. You say atheism “ought” to end in nihilism because meaning is finite. But finite does not mean fake. A harvest ends and still feeds people. A rescue ends and still saves a life. A promise kept for forty years is not worthless because the people who kept it eventually die. You do not prove meaning is unreal by pointing out that people are mortal. You only prove that you need forever before you are willing to admit that anything matters now.
And the Euthyphro problem is still standing in the doorway. Saying “God’s nature is good because goodness reflects God’s nature” is circular. Calling it “termination of appeal” does not turn the circle into logic. If goodness means whatever God is, then “God is good” only means “God is God.” If God is good because his nature conforms to goodness, then goodness is not dependent on God.
You keep saying I am borrowing from Christianity. No, I am using the moral facts human beings actually live with: suffering, harm, agency, vulnerability, flourishing, cruelty, coercion, repair, and consequence. You are taking those facts, branding them with theology, and then telling everybody else they are trespassing.
You have not grounded morality. You have asserted God, defined God as good, defined goodness as God’s nature, and then called the loop objective. That’s a dog chasing it’s own tail and calling it a straight line.
Your syllogism does not rescue you either. “God alone is uncreated, necessary, and self-existent” is not a proven premise. That is your conclusion slipped into the argument with a clean shirt on. Same goes for “goodness cannot exist apart from God.” You asserted it. You did not prove it. You do not get to rule every non-Christian account of morality out of bounds and then declare victory because yours is the only one left standing. That is not logic. That is fencing off the pasture and claiming you found the only cow.
Your answer to the child torture example is the part that really tells on you. I said torturing a child is wrong because of what is being done to the child: terror, violation, domination, suffering, and damage. Your reply was that pain and suffering are not good or bad “in and of themselves.” Well, that is not moral depth. That is moral numbness. Nobody said all pain in every situation is evil. Pain from a doctor setting a broken bone is not the same thing as someone deliberately torturing a child. One is ordered toward healing. The other is cruelty inflicted on a vulnerable conscious being. If your argument has to flatten those two things into the same category, then your argument is already dragging one boot behind it.
And when you say the child matters because the child is “God’s property,” you prove my point again. I do not need the child to be stamped with divine ownership before the child matters. You apparently do. That right there is the difference.
You also keep confusing disagreement with subjectivity. The fact that a terrorist, a victim’s family, a tyrant, and a bystander may interpret suffering differently does not prove there is no moral truth. People disagree about medicine, history, law, and science too. Disagreement does not make reality disappear. It only proves people can be wrong, biased, vengeful, or too proud to see straight.
Then comes the nihilism sermon. You say atheism “ought” to end in nihilism because meaning is finite. But finite does not mean fake. A harvest ends and still feeds people. A rescue ends and still saves a life. A promise kept for forty years is not worthless because the people who kept it eventually die. You do not prove meaning is unreal by pointing out that people are mortal. You only prove that you need forever before you are willing to admit that anything matters now.
And the Euthyphro problem is still standing in the doorway. Saying “God’s nature is good because goodness reflects God’s nature” is circular. Calling it “termination of appeal” does not turn the circle into logic. If goodness means whatever God is, then “God is good” only means “God is God.” If God is good because his nature conforms to goodness, then goodness is not dependent on God.
You keep saying I am borrowing from Christianity. No, I am using the moral facts human beings actually live with: suffering, harm, agency, vulnerability, flourishing, cruelty, coercion, repair, and consequence. You are taking those facts, branding them with theology, and then telling everybody else they are trespassing.
You have not grounded morality. You have asserted God, defined God as good, defined goodness as God’s nature, and then called the loop objective. That’s a dog chasing it’s own tail and calling it a straight line.
Posted on 7/6/26 at 12:22 pm to CrystalPreserves
quote:I'm becoming more convinced you aren't reading what I'm writing at this point. I have shown it time and time again. I even said in one of my last posts that you can ignore Christianity for now and you still don't have the possibility of an objective standard based on the definition of objectivity. I'll try again to explain it to you without referencing Christianity for this segment:
You keep saying “atheism has no objective standard,” but you still have not proven that. You have only proven that atheism does not use your standard. Those are not the same thing. You are trying to make Christianity the only measuring stick allowed in the room, then acting surprised when everything else comes up short.
Here's a concise definition of a morally objective standard for you: it is a standard of morality whose truth and binding authority do not originate in, and are not contingent upon, the mind of the subject bound by it, but exist independently of that subject's beliefs, preferences, or will.
Now that that has been defined, I'll show you how atheism has no possibility of an objective standard in its worldview.
Atheism doesn't have a universally-binding standard whatsoever (each individual and society creates its own moral codes); it doesn't have any standard at all that originates outside the mind of the subject(s) bound by it (there is no moral law written in stone or in the stars that came to humanity from outside humanity); and it has no standard that isn't contingent with the human mind (all moral standards within atheism are derived from the human mind).
Morality in atheism is absolutely dependent upon each subject's beliefs, preferences, or will.
If you disagree, then provide a positive explanation as to where an objective moral standard comes from in an atheistic worldview.
quote:If you want to debate that premise, then I'd be happy to do so, but you aren't just arguing against Christianity here, but for the conclusion that atheism does provide an objective moral standard that people ought to abide by.
Your syllogism does not rescue you either. “God alone is uncreated, necessary, and self-existent” is not a proven premise. That is your conclusion slipped into the argument with a clean shirt on. Same goes for “goodness cannot exist apart from God.” You asserted it. You did not prove it. You do not get to rule every non-Christian account of morality out of bounds and then declare victory because yours is the only one left standing. That is not logic. That is fencing off the pasture and claiming you found the only cow.
Remember that that's been my contention from the beginning: that atheism does NOT have an abiding and obligatory universal standard of morality, while Christianity does. You keep wanting to say I haven't proved Christianity is correct, but you aren't attempting to prove that atheism is. Show me how atheism provides what I'm contenting Christianity does, and then we can move on to the truth of Christianity if you wish. Whether Christianity is true or not doesn't change that atheism has no source for objective moral reasoning.
quote:You've missed my point completely. You are trying to make an emotional argument by painting me as cruel (even though I'm not agreeing with this "numbness", as you call it, but only showing the logical conclusions of your worldview) rather than engaging with the argument, itself.
Your answer to the child torture example is the part that really tells on you. I said torturing a child is wrong because of what is being done to the child: terror, violation, domination, suffering, and damage. Your reply was that pain and suffering are not good or bad “in and of themselves.” Well, that is not moral depth. That is moral numbness. Nobody said all pain in every situation is evil. Pain from a doctor setting a broken bone is not the same thing as someone deliberately torturing a child. One is ordered toward healing. The other is cruelty inflicted on a vulnerable conscious being. If your argument has to flatten those two things into the same category, then your argument is already dragging one boot behind it.
You haven't demonstrated how the pain of a child being tortured is objectively morally better or worse than the pain the same child might suffer from going to the doctor. You are basing the morality of an action on its effect of pain and suffering, and I was showing you that not all pain and suffering is "bad". I was highlighting the insufficiency of your standard as you were stating it.
And I'm not flattening anything: you are. When you reduce morality to human flourishing vs. human suffering, those categories are obviously too broad to use. You then have to further stipulate that the flourishing increase and suffering decrease must be for "good" purposes and for the most people in order to get to "the greatest good". However, you have to support why those stipulations are true compared to their opposite, and then explain why that more complete definition must be agreed upon by anyone outside yourself, because as keep explaining, you have no basis for moral objectivity, so this standard is merely your opinion.
quote:Again, you're trying to provide an emotional manipulation tactic here by claiming I'm merely seeing people as divine property rather than someone inherently to be valued, but that's precisely one of the points I'm arguing that you cannot support.
And when you say the child matters because the child is “God’s property,” you prove my point again. I do not need the child to be stamped with divine ownership before the child matters. You apparently do. That right there is the difference.
You have to have a basis for value that differentiates a person from a rock in order to claim it's "moral" to protect a person over a rock, and you lack a basis for this in your worldview. I'm saying that humanity has value precisely because we are created by God and His value of us requires us to value each other. That is an objective standard that all humans must follow.
What you have is subjectivism, where human value is not objectively inherent, but only exists as people subjectively give it that value. If we all evolved by accident through random chance as you likely believe, then there is no inherent value in humans, as value is a concept identified and understood in the mind, and there was no mind in existence prior to the first one that evolved. If the first single-celled organisms had no inherent value that had to be protected (again, the concept didn't exist at that time), then why do we? Your own answer can be that we, as humans, create value for ourselves, and assign it to each other. That's subjectivity, and not a basis for inherent value, since we can decide as a people to change our minds at any given time.
While God provides an objective basis for human value, atheism cannot provide the same thing: atheism only has personal preferences.
quote:You can ground science in objective realities like gravity. You cannot take the same approach to morality, because you haven't shown that an objective standard exists to make moral judgements. So no, I'm not confusing disagreement with subjectivity. Atheistic morality is subjective by necessity.
You also keep confusing disagreement with subjectivity. The fact that a terrorist, a victim’s family, a tyrant, and a bystander may interpret suffering differently does not prove there is no moral truth. People disagree about medicine, history, law, and science too. Disagreement does not make reality disappear. It only proves people can be wrong, biased, vengeful, or too proud to see straight.
Posted on 7/6/26 at 12:37 pm to CrystalPreserves
quote:I'm convinced now that you aren't following.
Then comes the nihilism sermon. You say atheism “ought” to end in nihilism because meaning is finite. But finite does not mean fake. A harvest ends and still feeds people. A rescue ends and still saves a life. A promise kept for forty years is not worthless because the people who kept it eventually die. You do not prove meaning is unreal by pointing out that people are mortal. You only prove that you need forever before you are willing to admit that anything matters now.
You keep going back to individual meaning and purpose, and I'm talking about universal meaning and purpose. I already addressed this. An individual can create meaning for themselves (which is what you're describing), but that "meaning" is ultimately just an arbitrary desire by the one creating it, and it has no objective correspondence to reality. The person who sets their house on fire in order to kill themselves will not find a positive meaning in the firefighter saving their life.
Also, when you say "meaning is finite", I'm not speaking of finitude. I'm saying "meaning" is non-existent in an objective sense, and therefore it must be created in the mind of each person, in atheism. Because there is no real meaning (beyond what we create for ourselves), Nihilism is the logical conclusion because there is no ultimate (objective) meaning. A person creating a fictitious purpose for themselves doesn't change the objective reality. Nihilists can and do create subjective meaning for themselves. What they recognize is that there is no ultimate meaning, and each person can do whatever they want.
quote:No, it's not standing in the doorway of the Euthyphro problem, because the problem is meant to highlight moral goodness as either arbitrary, or independent of God.
And the Euthyphro problem is still standing in the doorway. Saying “God’s nature is good because goodness reflects God’s nature” is circular. Calling it “termination of appeal” does not turn the circle into logic. If goodness means whatever God is, then “God is good” only means “God is God.” If God is good because his nature conforms to goodness, then goodness is not dependent on God.
The "circular" (again, I'm using "termination" purposefully because you don't seem to realize that ultimates are not irrational) nature of the appeal to God character as the standard for goodness is not a problem whatsoever, but actually solves the dilemma.
As I sated, the first horn is meant to say that morality is arbitrary, based on God's preferences or choices, while the second horn is intended to say morality is independent of God entirely, so we don't need God to be moral. It's a false dilemma, because the options are not just arbitrariness or independence, but necessity based on an unchanging moral being.
If you want to talk more about circularity in reasoning, or how goodness is defined, that's fine, but you have to drop the Euthyphro problem, because it doesn't apply here, as morality is neither arbitrary nor independent of God.
quote:There are no "moral facts", only actions and (potential) consequences, in atheism. There is no fact of life that says suffering is objectively immoral, or flourishing is objectively moral. We know this experientially when we desire the child rapist to suffer, and we get upset when he flourishes, instead. But where is the moral standard for that paradox? Why is it "right" for the child rapist to suffer if his mother wants him to flourish? Who determines which outcome is the "right" one? That's why I keep saying it's subjective.
You keep saying I am borrowing from Christianity. No, I am using the moral facts human beings actually live with: suffering, harm, agency, vulnerability, flourishing, cruelty, coercion, repair, and consequence. You are taking those facts, branding them with theology, and then telling everybody else they are trespassing.
You can't just say words like "agency", "cruelty", and "consequence" as if they hold an objective moral meaning one way or another. We have to interpret these words according to their circumstances and according to our own beliefs in order to arrive at a conclusion of "moral" or "immoral", and that is the definition of moral subjectivism.
quote:I have grounded morality in God, while you haven't grounded morality in anything but the logical conclusion of individual personal preference and opinion, and necessarily so.
You have not grounded morality. You have asserted God, defined God as good, defined goodness as God’s nature, and then called the loop objective. That’s a dog chasing it’s own tail and calling it a straight line.
I've called you out as holding to a necessarily morally bankrupt philosophy and worldview, and you have not defended yourself. You keep saying that I haven't sufficiently defended Christianity as an objective moral standard. That may be true, but that hasn't been my focus. My focus has been on showing you that you do not have objective moral realities in atheism, and so far, you haven't shown that you have.
Posted on 7/6/26 at 12:49 pm to Deepblueskies
When properly trained you'll only fear one thing. And that is God Almighty himself.
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