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Who What Now posted:So, again, you don't have anything objective at all and it's all subjective. And yet you still maintain that you have access to objective morals despite not having any real means of even knowing what they are. Theist have an objective ideal. They cannot be, in themselves, objective.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:10
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Agag posted:You'd have to assume that God was eternal. Christianity still has its historical point of origin. Oh right, your god is the only true god and only true source of moral inspiration. Despite all evidence to the contrary found in social creatures in both nature and isolated civilizations. Got it. Got any more special pleading?
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Feb 16, 2015 19:10
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SedanChair posted:Where's the evidence for him being divine? Faith alone, my friend.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:13
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CommieGIR posted:Oh right, your god is the only true god and only true source of moral inspiration. It is the position of most religions, as well as atheism, that they alone are correct and all others are incorrect.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:14
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Miltank posted:What you are asking about is metaphysics. And metaphysics, at least theistic "metaphysics", aren't worth poo poo. Agag posted:To everybody, but one set to the Jews specifically. But that is specific to Christian theology. In e.g karmic religious the objective morality is just there and you need to open your mind to it, etc. So, again, rather than giving down the true objective morals he has, he deliberately gave the Jews flawed ones, yes or no?
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Feb 16, 2015 19:16
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Agag posted:Theist have an objective ideal. They cannot be, in themselves, objective. And I have an objective ideal as well, and it doesn't come from god. So why did you say I didn't?
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Feb 16, 2015 19:16
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Agag posted:It is the position of most religions, as well as atheism, that they alone are correct and all others are incorrect. The willingness to admit that you are not the sole source of morality might be a little more humble, just saying. I am fully willing to admit that some people certainly do find moral guidance from their religious beliefs, but I have no reason to believe that everyone finds morality only from a religious perspective, and science and observation uphold this idea. So what is it? Either you admit that you do have moral standards found in your faith, but others can find morality elsewhere, or you continue this endless game of pretending you are the only bearer of truth.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:17
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Agag posted:Theist have an objective ideal. They cannot be, in themselves, objective. Well since we're all just forcing air across our crude meaty vocal cords and I don't see any ethereal presences or pure light beings around, I guess you were bullshitting about the difference between religious and secular approaches being one of objectivity! Miltank posted:Faith alone, my friend. I didn't say proof I said evidence. Even faith is based on evidence, even if it is nothing more than a brain state that forms the evidence.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:17
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This thread moves way too fast. In any case Agag I feel like you're just making up bullshit as you go along. Its like there is a big long equation of the universe and its all complex and hard and we're discovering it, and at the end of it you keep adding "+God" at the end. So we solve this part, and erase "+God" and tack it on the end again. We do this over and over and over again until we have this huge long equation of hte universe and then there at the end is "+God". All we're doing is coming up and erasing the "+God" and lo, the equation still works. You're just tacking on this extra thing for some reason. Someone mentioned it before, and I did as well, but atheists aren't claiming that they just "made up" morality. All the posters in this thread are saying is that morality is something that is borne out of our social action and common agreements. Its not handed down from God, nor is it an objective perfect truth set up by some theist deity. Why do I say this? Becuase I don't need the "+God" to make the equation work. We can figure out what works and what doesn't based on our valuation of our fellow humans. The reason this is problematic for the theist is that "+God" doesn't change. Somethings are ok until they aren't and instead of erasing "+God" you just redefine it. You rewrite it. That isn't progress, that moving goal posts.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:54
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There's a severe disconnect in the "discussion". Agag seems to be describing religious (mostly Christian) points of view. His opponents seem to assume he's trying to win an argument about if God exists or not. Miltank seems to be Miltank. 
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Feb 16, 2015 20:26
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Who What Now posted:So, again, rather than giving down the true objective morals he has, he deliberately gave the Jews flawed ones, yes or no? I don't find this objection to be particularly persuasive. Given that YHWH is a transcendant, omniscient being, I find it difficult to conceive that whatever objective morals they have would be transmissable to any finite being, let alone a bunch of Bronze Age assholes lost in a desert. For instance, imagine God is a consequentialist: since they have perfect knowledge, they would objectively know the "correct" thing for every person to do at any time to get the best outcomes, but there's no way to transmit this knowledge without essentially engaging in mind control. Even a deontologist God presumably has to (if they don't want to breach free will) be realistic about what commandments will be actually recorded, followed, and passed down. Plus, of course, there's a pretty easy cop-out if you don't believe Biblical authorship was infallible (which you shouldn't, because God directly dictating the Bible would violate free will). e: (Free will doesn't exist, of course, but it's a necessary premise of almost all Christian theology afaik so contravening it opens it just as many problems as it might solve.)
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Feb 16, 2015 20:29
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Valiantman posted:There's a severe disconnect in the "discussion". No, he is arguing that morality can only be inspired by the divine and that atheists are without morality or no objective morality.
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Feb 16, 2015 20:30
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Mornacale posted:I don't find this objection to be particularly persuasive. Given that YHWH is a transcendant, omniscient being, I find it difficult to conceive that whatever objective morals they have would be transmissable to any finite being, let alone a bunch of Bronze Age assholes lost in a desert. For instance, imagine God is a consequentialist: since they have perfect knowledge, they would objectively know the "correct" thing for every person to do at any time to get the best outcomes, but there's no way to transmit this knowledge without essentially engaging in mind control. Even a deontologist God presumably has to (if they don't want to breach free will) be realistic about what commandments will be actually recorded, followed, and passed down. So you're saying a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient being is incapable of finding a way to transmit knowledge of objective morals without resorting to mind control? That seems like an arbitrary limitation because just because we can't think of one doesn't mean God can't.
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Feb 16, 2015 20:33
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OwlFancier posted:You are arguing that because people treat god somewhat like they would a person, and that when they purportedly interact with god they do so as they would a person, that god therefore is more or less exactly like a human. In addition to what you said about people "treating" and "interacting" with God as a person, every common religious account of him is that he is a person, substantially and not analogically. The constant refrain of "complicated" does not explain away the contradiction between that and the lofty academic notion of him not being a person. You say that in addition to religious people saying that he's a person, there are ones saying he's not, whom I'm ignoring. Well yes I am, because they don't figure into my argument against the propositions made by those who do. (If it does figure, how?) I don't see why I can't "gotcha" the religious belief that he's a person because of a competing (and losing) belief that he's not. I can address a subset of people under a common label, right? It's like, for example, addressing the views of liberal Jews vs. genocidal Zionists. The existence of the former doesn't render the latter unassailable by requiring that their views only be taken as a package deal. You make an analogy to people treating their pets as persons, and here's the thing... pets actually do have some of the qualities of human persons, which is what engages pet owners' social instincts and draws them to those animals to begin with. (And, what qualities the animals themselves don't have, may be ascribed by the owners anyway, like they do, to a lesser extent, to boats and classic cars.) What does this mean for your defense of religion? It would help your case if Christianity treated humans as just one of the multitude of animals and objects, which would mean that our ability to ascribe an imagined personhood to any wildly different animal or object shows the same ability for a (lower-g) god to present itself to any of them as a person, or whatever other type of relatable being that might apply. However, your defense fails because Christianity does not say that; on the contrary, it says that God uniquely created us in his image over and above any other part of his creation (animal or object), which means that we're fundamentally similar to him in a way that anything else (animal or object) isn't. Infinite Karma posted:In philosophical discussion, when you're talking about hypothetical highly intelligent beings, person has a different meaning from everyday English. In common usage, humans ARE the only things with complex enough intelligences to be considered moral agents, so person overlaps with human with 100% accuracy. Via Google: Moral agency is an individual's ability to make moral judgments based on some commonly held notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong." If "person" has such a different meaning than in everyday English, why don't you make up a new word instead? The answer is that it's not a different meaning at all, but rather a backpedal of embarrassed philosophical apologists that that's not what we actually mean, you don't understaaand it's so ~complicated~! Well then what did you actually mean? If it really was a different meaning, then they'd have no problem just ditching it in favor of a new invented word, and clearing up all the equivocative confusion once and for all. Of course that's not possible because that would tear it away from the common religious meaning (just as much as it would from the common English meaning) where God is clearly a person who uniquely created man in his image. Humans beings are like God in fundamentally important ways, instead of another regular piece of his creation, is a central Christian tenet. Disinterested posted:I think Vessbot may be Richard Dawkins. Well, he's too stupid for that. Maybe Richard Dawkins' PA? Where we left off was you saying that it's idiotic to fact-check theology, and I asked you "why" but you haven't said, so far. You alluded to it not being "the point" and I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but from context I'm guessing that you think that theology doesn't make factual claims, and that factual attacks are therefore meaningless. What you actually suppose it to do is more like textual criticism of fiction, whereby we can learn important allegorical lessons like Uncle Tom's Cabin or Aesop's Fables. But if that's what you mean then you're wrong because religion does make all sorts of factual claims about the world, which are assailable by factual criticism. If that's not what you mean but rather something else, then what is it? Why do you think it's idiotic to fact-check theology? Twelve by Pies posted:So what you're saying is it would be impossible to create an artificial intelligence that was capable of these things because it doesn't have fleshy parts in it? If you mean anything other than specifically created by humans to emulate human intelligence, then yes. The types of cognitive processes and tasks undertaken by AI are vastly different from those by humans or their relatives. If you mean specifically created by humans to emulate human intelligence, then you'll have to explain how that bears on the discussion at hand, because I'm not seeing it. Unless it's a suggestion that humans could have time-travelled back to the creation of the universe (or to outside of time, or to a "necessary" dimension, or whatever) to create an intelligence similar to, but more capable than, them, and then that intelligence in turn created those humans? Or a separate third party intelligence creating God from a human model? Mornacale posted:In my analogy, God corresponds to the real person, but the point is not to claim that they are in fact real. Rather, I am presenting another context in which you could create a "being" in the image of another while remaining very clear that they are not physically or cognitively similar. Another analogy would be a song cover, where it's clearly made in the likeness of the original but may have any number of major differences. The point is that saying one thing is "like" another leaves a whole lot more room for difference than you're allowing. OK, got it now. A representative character (fictional, the commonly-referenced religious God) is in the likeliness of the real person (actual god, impersonal, unknowable, complicated, mysterious). And you can draw instructive parallels between the two of them despite one being real and one being conceptual. Except, you can't draw parallels between them unless there is some significant similarity. If there wasn't, what could the parallel be? And, via the incessant theological goalpost-shifting, the more particular scrutiny is put on the commonly-referred to god, the more different the "real" one gets! And a cover song would have to have some significant similarity to the original, otherwise it wouldn't be a cover song; it would just be a song. quote:This is manifestly untrue, since of course there is no actual person called God that could start concrete and get more abstract. Certainly I don't mean to imply that this increases over time, rather that it's natural for humans in all periods of time to anthropomorphize all kinds of things. As someone else said, we often think of pets as if they were humans, but of course we know they are not. Of course I'm not talking about a real god (duh) but rather the idea of one. And ideas can very much start a certain way, and later develop into other ways (including multiple versions held by different people at the same time). So what I said being "manifestly untrue" is not a consequence of there not being a real god. There was no real god that started concrete and got more abstract, but there was the idea of a god that started concrete and got more abstract. Until medieval scholars, every conception of him was of a person (who started off as either a weather god or a warrior god, and was a member of a pantheon rather than being the sole being that created reality). It wasn't until later that his personal qualities were stripped away and quote:How can you possibly accept that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent supernatural being exists and yet continue to insist that such a being could make humans vaguely similar to them only by perfectly matching their exact biological processes? If in fact you're accepting the premise of an infinite supernatural God then it's quite obvious that the explanations for how humanity can be "in his image" without requiring specific physical correspondence are equally infinite. But of course you are not really accepting this at all; you are attempting to argue theology from materialist terms and then acting smug when it predictably doesn't work. But that proves nothing about religion and plenty about you. I can insist on that because the fundamental nature of any similarity of God to humans is rooted in our biological processes. Be careful you don't make the mistake, that 2 other posters already did, of taking "intelligence" to be a vague homogeneous quantity that can only be described in terms of the relative strength exhibited. By that notion, sure, given that humans have intelligence then Russell's Teapot can also have intelligence, and I'd have no basis for disputing that. But that model of intelligence is abysmally incomplete, and is not shared by anyone who's not ten years old, or a religious apologist. Every aspect of our intelligence and emotions is an evolutionary accident of biological, environmental, and social circumstances. To demand of me to explain why Russell's Teapot can't have great intelligence like ours is the same as demanding of me to explain why it can't speak Cherokee. Remember my reasonable descriptions of what religious accounts of God would be like if God was based on the neurology of a fish or a black widow spider instead of an ape. He's not a product of some unrooted intelligence, but rather a uniquely ape one. You can counter that by saying that he could indeed by some unrooted type of general super-intelligence, which can be adapted to the neurology of any species and supernaturally communicate with them just as easily; and that from our planet, it's chosen us as its most sentient subjects. But then you would no longer be defending Christianity which takes as a core tenet that we humans were created "in his image," apart from every other animal, to be his unique counterparts in the physical world. You say that "it's quite obvious that the explanations for how humanity can be "in his image" without requiring specific physical correspondence are equally infinite." Well it's not obvious to me, can you give a few of these explanations from ths infinite set? If you think that supernaturalism is bullshit, then what exactly are you arguing? Don't tell me that the choice of ontologies is subjective -- tell the religious. You're wrong in implying that the religious don't hold their beliefs to be factually true. vessbot fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 20:41
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vessbot posted:
I'm under no obligation to engage with someone as risible as you, but I'll make a refinement: you feel the need to fact check elements of theology that are unverifiable. You don't simply accept that their non-verifiability might be a sign favourable to your argument. Likewise, when you engage in your crass attempt to more broadly deal with religion in your manner, you're missing the point that theology is a necessary exposition that starts from (in my view) incorrect basic coordinates. In large part this is the fault of the faulty initial assumptions and not the theology as such, which is often just doing its best to work with the basic material it has. But rather than simply contenting yourself with the view that these foundational mistakes have started a chain of reason that may or may not be faulty as a result, you feel the need to wade in all the way to no benefit. Of course if God isn't real large numbers of theological claims won't be true, by definition. That's putting aside your persistent habit of missing nuance, for example in your very latest post: quote:The answer is that it's not a different meaning at all, but rather a backpedal of embarrassed philosophical apologists that that's not what we actually mean, you don't understaaand it's so ~complicated~! Well then what did you actually mean? If it really was a different meaning, then they'd have no problem just ditching it in favor of a new invented word, and clearing up all the equivocative confusion once and for all. Where you seem not to have considered the possibility that it is you who is using person in a divergent way from the relevant meaning, instead of visa versa.
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Feb 16, 2015 21:01
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Disinterested posted:I'm under no obligation to engage with someone as risible as you, No one has an obligation to engage with anyone on this board, so don't act like you're being uniquely magnanimous.
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Feb 16, 2015 21:37
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Who What Now posted:No one has an obligation to engage with anyone on this board, so don't act like you're being uniquely magnanimous. I wasn't, but perhaps you felt the need to point that out for reasons other than my tone in a post to someone else? We'll never know, I suppose.
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Feb 16, 2015 21:38
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Disinterested posted:I wasn't, but perhaps you felt the need to point that out for reasons other than my tone in a post to someone else? We'll never know, I suppose. No, calling you out on being sanctimonious was good enough reason for me to post, I felt, and so I did. Now you know.
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Feb 16, 2015 22:01
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Agag posted:Atheists and theologians accept or reject those premises a priori, so they have no dialog with one another. Theologians don't care what atheists say, and atheists don't care what theologians say. They are talking past one another. You note that atheists and theologians reject each other's premises. You're correct in some cases only. You might have heard of a field called "natural theology," which aims to prove the existence and attributes of God from the things we sense, (i.e., from the food of science) instead of revelation. In the cases where you're right (different premises) then naturally we'll get different conclusions. But those conclusions are concerning the same matters, and in many cases are in direct opposition. Now you can be content to leave things there, and that's a valid personal decision concerning how you enjoy spending your time. But you draw a wrong conclusion that no argument is possible. It's just that one side or the other has false premises and/or inferences, and a "dialog can exist" by figuring out which ones are false. And you're even more wrong in saying that they don't care what the other side has to say. quote:So what do you think a theological response to "I don't believe anything you believe, and I don't have any respect for what you do" should be? Given that they expect everyone else to believe the same thing, the response should be to give us some reasons for doing so. Agag posted:the historical record doesn't prove or disprove any theological claims, which is what I've said from the start. List of disproved theological claims from the historical record: The Earth is at the center of the universe and is orbited by the Sun The Moon is perfect and has no features Jupiter has no moons The universe was created ~6000 years ago Humans and animals are not related, and were created in their present form All of humanity descends from one reproducing couple There was a layer of water above the atmosphere, which was released as rain to cause a global flood God lived in the region outside of Saturn's celestial sphere Agag posted:Indeed, and they've shown that prayer is medically beneficial. But does this mean that prayer "works" in the sense it is literally intended, or merely a placebo effect that is purely psychological? It doesn't matter, nor would it matter if it turned out to have no influence or a negative influence, because none of this could actually prove or disprove any metaphysical claims. It would matter, because if prayer has a higher (or lower) rate of success than placebo, then it would be shown to be effective (or, respectively, ineffective). That would would be a confirmation or refutation of the metaphysical processes that support the efficacy of prayer. quote:I'm of the opinion that any medical benefits would be better explained psychologically than theologically Barlow posted:The fact that religions change and are reinterpreted is by no means a bad thing. Many traditions can justify this easily by saying that revelation is ongoing. Even the most literalistic traditions also face new challenges, how Orthodox Jews deal with things like organ transplants is a great example of this kind of adaption. They may acknowledge that it's changed, but that sure puts lie to their claim that God's commands are unchanging. They try to get around that by saying it's not his commands, but our interpretations of them are what changes, but they struggle to account how our "interpretation" of dashing the Canaanite babies against the rocks and taking the women as "wives" etc. (and all the other Old Testament bonkers crazy genocidal poo poo) could have been so faulty. Agag posted:Only theism can provide an objective moral standard because it posits some kind of external origin for morality. Atheism is purely materialistic, and thus all morality is subjective and conditional. That's actually a valid criticism of secular morality: that it has no rational basis. But that doesn't automatically lower it in comparison to religious morality unless you ignore that glaring criticism that it's based on make-believe. Agag posted:Some churches have moved forward on homosexuality, but not enough. Its a valid criticism of organized religion. Right, but it would be a separate criticism that it unjustifiably claims credit for society's forward movement, rather than acknowledging that it grudgingly began to follow only when it became too embarrassing not to. Disinterested posted:I'm under no obligation to engage with someone as risible as you, but I'll make a refinement: you feel the need to fact check elements of theology that are unverifiable. You don't simply accept that their non-verifiability might be a sign favourable to your argument. I am not content with simply accepting their non-verifiability as being favorable to my side is that the the other side doesn't, and maintains the factuality of all of their claims regardless. You say that Of course if God isn't real large numbers of theological claims won't be true, by definition. But the religious obviously think that God is real, and it follows from that they do believe those theological claims. Claims that are false, so whatever led up to them (premises/inference/revelation) must be also. What can be the fault of theology's initial assumptions, that's not the fault of theology as such? That makes no sense. Say someone told you that they find a fundamental flaw (worthy of dismissing the field) with the initial assumptions of geology, but not with geology as such? What sense would you make of that statement? Help me follow here. Where you gave an example of me missing nuance, you posted a quote of me insisting on one usage of a word and acting bewildered why I insist on doing that, while conveniently leaving out the very next sentence, where I explained just why: "Of course [doing away with "person" in favor a new word to clear up the equivocation] is not possible because that would tear it away from the common religious meaning (just as much as it would from the common English meaning) where God is clearly a person who uniquely created man in his image. Humans beings are like God in fundamentally important ways, instead of another regular piece of his creation, is a central Christian tenet." In other sections of that post I further clarified why whatever type of "person" God is, must be a more specific stand-in for human-type persons than any other random part of creation. vessbot fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 22:33
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Dear lord, so many  vessbot posted:I am not content with simply accepting their non-verifiability as being favorable to my side is that the the other side doesn't, and maintains the factuality of all of their claims regardless. This sentence doesn't make any sense grammatically, but I think you mean: quote:[The reason]I am not content with simply accepting their non-verifiability as being favorable to my side is that the the other side doesn't, and maintains the factuality of all of their claims regardless. Well, what do you care? This only matters if you expect not only to be right but to be believed, which is to expect an awful lot. And of course, the 'other side' doesn't have a single, coherent response. vessbot posted:You say that Of course if God isn't real large numbers of theological claims won't be true, by definition. But the religious obviously think that God is real, and it follows from that they do believe those theological claims. Claims that are false, so whatever led up to them premises/inference/revelation) must be also. Well yes - although religious people also deploy secular and material reasoning to theological problems as well, and so are capable of generating answers which would be self-sufficiently correct without a God. Putting that to one side, my point simply is that you should probably focus on breaking the chain at the first link. The only point in addressing the wrongness of the further links is to emphasise how they fail internally, even permitting their own assumptions, otherwise the only thing that really matters is demonstrating that their initial premise is wrong. Addressing their morality as practiced, on the other hand... vessbot posted:What can be the fault of theology's initial assumptions, that's not the fault of theology as such? That makes no sense. Say someone told you that they find a fundamental flaw (worthy of dismissing the field) with the initial assumptions of geology, but not with geology as such? What sense would you make of that statement? Help me follow here. Best done by analogy, I think: one can do perfectly 'correct' mathematics but put the wrong inputs in to produce correct or feasible results or models. vessbot posted:Where you gave an example of me missing nuance, you posted a quote of me insisting on one usage of a word and acting bewildered why I insist on doing that, while conveniently leaving out the very next sentence, where I explained just why: "Of course [doing away with "person" in favor a new word to clear up the equivocation] is not possible because that would tear it away from the common religious meaning (just as much as it would from the common English meaning) where God is clearly a person who uniquely created man in his image. Humans beings are like God in fundamentally important ways, instead of another regular piece of his creation, is a central Christian tenet." In other sections of that post I further clarified why whatever type of "person" God is, must be a more specific stand-in for human-type persons than any other random part of creation. I don't know how convenient it was to miss it, except that the sentence was a bit garbled because it relies on a long, multi-page quote chain. The idea is 'complex', but so are some other true things that are difficult to express in language (not that this is true, that just isn't why it isn't true). A new word might not be helpful, because people may come to understand the word only by analogy - 'a bit like a person, but not'. There's a lot of ways of looking at it. For one: if one accepts the premise that god has an infinite number of faculties and powers (which God does by definition), then God shares all of your faculties and powers. In that sense he is like you and able to relate to you, while simultaneously being infinitely different from you. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 23:01
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Agag posted:Theism "has" one as part of its metaphysics. Individuals don't "have" it except as an ideal. Agag posted:That's an American political signifier that means nothing to me. All I'm saying is that Western civilization has consisted mostly of Christians, and consequently reflects Christian morality in its social and legal institutions. That is, historical idealism is contradictory because it places the driver of history as something that itself cannot be independent of history, and therefore cannot explain its own internal dynamics. As an example, the abolishment of slavery (actually just chattel slavery) has more to do with the rise of industrial capitalism than any intrinsic nature of christianity as claimed. rudatron fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 00:09
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rudatron posted:That is, historical idealism is contradictory because it places the driver of history as something that itself cannot be independent of history, and therefore cannot explain its own internal dynamics. And of the offered alternative explanation in your example: economics (eg. industrial capitalism). Can't we say the same thing? At least in Christianity we can can be honest and go "it's a mystery". Like this: "with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right" Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 20:52
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BrandorKP posted:At least in Christianity we can can be honest and go "it's a mystery". Like this: "with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right"  As if that isn't a laughable claim.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:00
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BrandorKP posted:And of the offered alternative explanation in your example: economics (eg. industrial capitalism). Can't we say the same thing? And I don't think it's enough to simply say "it's a mystery", because ideology exploits weaknesses like that to implant itself, historicize itself. Like Miltank claiming it as a 'win' for Christainity or whatever, that's a way for him to try and score 'a point'. Is it good history? It doesn't matter, because that's not the goal. Empty spaces get filled whether you want them to or not. The greatest irony here, after all of this debate is that slavery still exists. There are people, right now, in India working as slaves, in brick kilns. They're just debt slaves, instead of chattel slaves. Is it there because they're hindu, not christian? No, that's racist garbage. Working conditions would be just as bad in the west were it not for working class people sticking together, and not just 'being christian'. So if you're looking forward to the weekend, don't loving thank christians or thank god it's friday, you can bloody well thank a union.
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Feb 18, 2015 03:02
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Agag posted:As I said previously, this is tied in to theism or atheism. If God exists then He presents and objective morality. You deny the existence of any objective morality when you deny the existence of God. Neither position is "provable." Why does god present an objective morality?
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Feb 18, 2015 05:00
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rudatron posted:The greatest irony here, after all of this debate is that slavery still exists. There are people, right now, in India working as slaves, in brick kilns. They're just debt slaves, instead of chattel slaves. Is it there because they're hindu, not christian? No, that's racist garbage. Working conditions would be just as bad in the west were it not for working class people sticking together, and not just 'being christian'. So if you're looking forward to the weekend, don't loving thank christians or thank god it's friday, you can bloody well thank a union. Walter Rauschenbusch, the famous Social Gospel thinker posted:We must come by public ownership some time, and any one whose thinking parts are in order ought to see it is by this time. Christianity and the struggle for workers rights tend to go well together. Barlow fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 07:21
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Barlow posted:Christianity and the struggle for workers rights tend to go well together. rudatron's contention isn't that there were no Christians involved in the struggle for labour rights, but that the struggle for labour rights was, itself, a result of the process of class antagonism created due to the rise of industrial capitalism. That Christians involved themselves in the labour movement is incidental, not correlative, just as there were Christians fighting vehemently on both sides of the chattel slavery debate.
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Feb 18, 2015 07:45
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Agag posted:Human morals are always subjective. The point is that theistic subjectivity strives towards an objective ideal. Atheism has no such ideal, its just whatever you borrow or make up. Atheists can absolutely aspire to objective moral ideals. Utilitarianism and virtue ethics are two examples of these. Sure, people might make mistakes as to what action will bring about the greatest utility, or what is included in the proper catalog of virtues, but they are nonetheless striving towards what they see as an objective ideal (to maximize utility, to act in accordance with virtue). You might claim that adherence to one of these theories comes down to a subjective choice, but theistic morality is in the same boat. Christians have to make choices as well; the choice of virtue ethics or utilitarianism is no more arbitrary than the Christian's decision to follow divine command theory or natural law ethics or some other ethical system.
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Feb 18, 2015 08:09
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Vermain posted:That Christians involved themselves in the labour movement is incidental, not correlative, just as there were Christians fighting vehemently on both sides of the chattel slavery debate. "Class antagonism" doesn't magically generate organized opposition to inequality or bad working conditions. Christianity has often served as a catalyst for mobilizing people. Now a valid critique is that this cuts both ways, other forms of Christianity can serve to placate workers or drive them harder. Weber's idea that the Protestant ethic was a driving force in the development of capitalism is certainly a provocative thesis in this regard. But it seems hard to argue that Christianity itself can't be a historical driving force.
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Feb 18, 2015 08:33
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Not to mention that notions of Christian "communism" or opposition to private property predates industrialization by more than a century. Probably longer than that once you start getting into the history of the Anabaptists which I don't know much about, and WAY longer than that if you wanted to count the early Churches.
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Feb 18, 2015 14:49
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In shocking news most ideological movements had members of the world's most widespread religion in them
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Feb 18, 2015 14:52
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Irony Be My Shield posted:In shocking news most ideological movements had members of the world's most widespread religion in them Its almost as if Christianity was a majority religion during Abolition!
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Feb 18, 2015 15:40
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Yeah it was, how about that!
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Feb 18, 2015 15:41
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There's a correlation between Christianity and Christian societies: Coincidence?
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Feb 18, 2015 15:57
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rudatron posted:stuff The criticism you're making, is not one I would deny the validity of.
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Feb 18, 2015 16:01
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Miltank posted:Yeah it was, how about that! steinrokkan posted:There's a correlation between Christianity and Christian societies: Coincidence? 
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Feb 18, 2015 16:07
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Agag posted:You said your morality was socially derived. Our society is largely based on Christian morality, so your morality is a second-hand Christian morality. Christian morality is itself a social and historical construct based on what came before - and this provides nothing to the argument for the existence of deities
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Feb 18, 2015 17:45
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Disinterested posted:Dear lord, so many Yup I tripped over myself and skipped a clause and you interpreted it correctly, thanks. What do I care? What do you care what I care? You care enough to poo poo and quit with empty insults, but not enough to address any of the positions. (That seems to be changing as of this last reply, so I'm glad you're coming around.) You're right that I do expect that I'm right and to be believed (depending on the strength of my arguments), and I have no idea why you think that that's expecting too much in a forum called "debate and discussion." Is there an implicit exclusion of topics too sacred to be challenged? Or is it that you're so entitled to having reality agree with you that you feel it beneath you even to acknowledge the opposite position? That can't be since you're not even religious yourself... so spit it out, what is it? You're also right that the other side doesn't have a single argument, and I'm interested in any that would show a flaw in mine. quote:Well yes - although religious people also deploy secular and material reasoning to theological problems as well, and so are capable of generating answers which would be self-sufficiently correct without a God. quote:Putting that to one side, my point simply is that you should probably focus on breaking the chain at the first link. quote:The only point in addressing the wrongness of the further links is to emphasise how they fail internally, even permitting their own assumptions, otherwise the only thing that really matters is demonstrating that their initial premise is wrong. Yes! Exacty! So where do you disagree with me? quote:Best done by analogy, I think: one can do perfectly 'correct' mathematics but put the wrong inputs in to produce correct or feasible results or models. OK, I get the math analogy. You're saying that they're doing good math on bad data, or that their system draws valid inferences from bad premises (supernaturalism) or "incorrect basic coordinates," as you first put it. That their premises are bad, I agree with of course. But you seem to take it as obvious that their inferences/math are good, and castigate me for "missing the point" that I don't also. 1. What I'm attempting to show is that the processes themselves aren't good, since even if I accept their supernatural premise, combining that with data from science leads to absurdities. 2. Even if the processes are good, given that the premises are bad, we know we'll end up with an unsound conclusion. So why such a strong demand to keep hands off? quote:I don't know how convenient it was to miss it, except that the sentence was a bit garbled because it relies on a long, multi-page quote chain. The idea is 'complex', but so are some other true things that are difficult to express in language (not that this is true, that just isn't why it isn't true). Of course I'm not attacking the veracity of the idea based on its being complicated on face value. But there are so few rebuttals to any of my positions and so many deferrals to how "complicated" it is (is there an Avril Lavigne smiley?) that it soon becomes clear that it's a smokescreen without any substance behind it. If one accepts the premise that god has an infinite number of faculties and powers then those he shares with us are an accidental occurrence within infinity, and we don't share a special bond with it above the rest of its creation, as Christianity claims. If he's "infinitely different" from us just as much as he's like us, you've refuted one of Christianity's central tenets in an attempt to save it. There isn't even a meaningful "bit like a person" to build an analogy from. vessbot fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 19:24
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OwlFancier posted:Why does god present an objective morality? It's true "by definition" 
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Feb 18, 2015 19:27
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vessbot posted:Yup I tripped over myself and skipped a clause and you interpreted it correctly, thanks. I do plenty of  posting when the situation calls, but you're not the most rewarding of interlocutors, y'know?vessbot posted:You're right that I do expect that I'm right and to be believed (depending on the strength of my arguments), and I have no idea why you think that that's expecting too much in a forum called "debate and discussion." Is there an implicit exclusion of topics too sacred to be challenged? Obviously not, I don't think anything is really 'sacred'. My point is simply that you can be right about the material points without being persuasive [I think you are right about the God thing; I do not find you persuasive]. But even if you are right and persuasive, you probably shouldn't have the expectation that everyone will agree with you on an esoteric subject like this one. vessbot posted:You're also right that the other side doesn't have a single argument, and I'm interested in any that would show a flaw in mine. The first claim disfigures the second. vessbot posted:Yes they do use secular material - sometimes - as in natural theology. The New Testament is fundamentally a marriage of something Greek with something Mosaic, on a certain level. Early theology, moreso. Greek philosophy is not just part of what follows, some of its categories are foundational to the whole thing. This is without getting going on other religions. vessbot posted:Why? Why shouldn't I break it at every link that I can? Is that what is "idiotic" to you? Why? Are the rules of a debate to find one, and only one, flaw in someone's position? It tends to be best to focus on core arguments. I think you might even find that, if you were talking to a lot of committed Christians, even if in the unlikely event you had them admit that all of their theology was incorrect and that the gospels were wrong and that religion had had an immoral influence, a lot of them would remain insistent that there was some kind of a god, or creator. It's that need - and what generates that need - that needs to be addressed (as well as the arguments against God on a general conceptual level). You don't tend to progress arguments very far by attacking a series of small and incidental claims that are made entirely contingent on a major initial premise. vessbot posted:Yes! Exacty! So where do you disagree with me? If you think that's what you're doing, it's not. vessbot posted:OK, I get the math analogy. You're saying that they're doing good math on bad data, or that their system draws valid inferences from bad premises (supernaturalism) or "incorrect basic coordinates," as you first put it. That their premises are bad, I agree with of course. But you seem to take it as obvious that their inferences/math are good I don't take it as obvious, nor do I think that all of the inferences and math is good, but I don't think you have a good sense of which religious claims to go for. You attack a lot of claims that are regarded as well settled, but leave the known and strongly felt pressure-points intact. vessbot posted:1. What I'm attempting to show is that the processes themselves aren't good, since even if I accept their supernatural premise, combining that with data from science leads to absurdities. Sometimes this seems to manifest itself in 'point to the bit of the body that the soul is stored in!  ' kind of arguments.vessbot posted:2. Even if the processes are good, given that the premises are bad, we know we'll end up with an unsound conclusion. So why such a strong demand to keep hands off? Because it's a bull in a china shop. vessbot posted:Of course I'm not attacking the veracity of the idea based on its being complicated on face value. But there are so few rebuttals to any of my positions and so many deferrals to how "complicated" it is (is there an Avril Lavigne smiley?) that it soon becomes clear that it's a smokescreen without any substance behind it. A 'fig leaf', if you will. vessbot posted:If one accepts the premise that god has an infinite number of faculties and powers then those he shares with us are an accidental occurrence within infinity, and we don't share a special bond with it above the rest of its creation, as Christianity claims. If he's "infinitely different" from us just as much as he's like us, you've refuted one of Christianity's central tenets in an attempt to save it. There isn't even a meaningful "bit like a person" to build an analogy from. Not necessarily, because your argument for starters assumes that all qualities are alike. The particular powers might be relevant (e.g. those that define humanity as apart from our fellow animals). To make the argument of 'in the image of God' - not all images are perfect likenesses of the thing they resemble. Imagine we're a kid's crayon drawing of the landscape of Venice. It's still an image of Venice. Nobody said anything about the proximity and fidelity of the image to the original.
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Feb 18, 2015 20:00
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