MaxInDHouse:


I don't read lengthy posts so can you give a brief summary of what he typed in just two to three sentences?
Thanks in advance!

KnownUnknown:
@Budaatum
Do you live in Nigeria?

FemiAjani:


That's not exactly what I'm doing, and it's also a bad analogy. I'll tackle why it's a bad analogy first: Doctoring has a specific goal -- to see to the health and well-being of the patients, especially through the treatment of ailments and injuries. That goal in turn provides a means for objectively testing what is and isn't good doctoring: patient outcomes. Doctors who, all things being equal, tend towards good results for their patients are good doctors, and those who trend towards bad patients are bad doctors. When two doctors point accusing fingers at each other and accuse their counterparts of being a bad doctor while insisting they're a good doctor, I, who barely know the difference between mitosis and dialysis, can still look figure out which one's most likely right based on how their patients do. The medical community, in turn, can also arrive at the idea of what a good doctor will or won't do based on objective analysis of patient outcomes. This is critically different from what we see in Christianity. On the one hand, let's say we have an NIFB preacher expressing a desire to see the government round up and execute all gay people and identifies chapter and verse requiring the execution of gay people in the Old Testament, and also quotes Jesus saying that not one jot or tittle of the old law has passed away. On the other hand, let's have a Catholic who's pro-life (meaning ACTUALLY pro-life) and opposes the death penalty, who herself can cite passages chapter and verse about why we shouldn't be executing people - even if she, too, thinks that being gay is a horrific sin and gay people should be excommunicated. On the third hand, we've got an Anglican who says we should accept all into our communities, even sinners, and since we're commanded not to judge we shouldn't be asking whether or not they're sinners anyway, much less condemning them, and he too can quote chapter and verse. (I know that the metaphor in which we have three hands is absurd, but so is the idea of the Bible providing objective morality.) All three point at the others and say they're wrong on the subject of morality, they're reading the text wrong and are mistaken, I have the right answer. Unlike with the doctors, I have no objective way to decide which of them (if any) to believe. The Christian community thus has no objective, shared standard for determining which is the correct way of interpreting the text, and so can't arrive at a shared, objective standard of who is a good Christian or a bad Christian.

FemiAjani:
Am I basing my view of Christianity on the "bad" Christians? (So far as that term means anything without an objective yard stick for who is a bad Christian and who isn't?) Not entirely. They're part of Christianity, but they're not the whole of Christianity. (Don't ask me if they're a majority -- I don't have solid numbers on that either way, and don't know how someone could even get those numbers. Conducting surveys asking people to label themselves as good or bad Christians probably isn't going to get good data.) But they are getting extra focus from me for two very good reasons. First is what I previously pointed out: they're a threat, and it's human nature to pay disproportionate attention to threats. Second -- and this is why they're particularly relevant in this discussion -- they provide a pointed counterexample. The example of the "bad" Christians proves that having that shared source of morals to return to as an objective standard doesn't work. Am I willing to focus for a bit on other versions of Christian morality, including yours? Sure! But first you have to actually tell me which version you're talking about. Despite my prodding, you still haven't spelled it out. Simply calling it Christian doesn't distinguish it from the morality that the "bad" Christians call Christian morality, nor does saying that you're basing it on the Bible when they're quoting chapter and verse from the Bible as basis for their morality. As an aside, I disagree with your notion that Christianity is based on a book of words. Christianity existed for hundreds of years before the Bible was ever canonized. If it didn't need the book to be Christianity then, it doesn't need the book to be Christianity now. The Bible is important in Christianity, but clearly it's not necessary. @MaxInDHouse, nevermind what I said earlier. And no... you do NOT have any answers.

Near1:


Probably because most people are empathetic. Just because morality is subjective doesn't imply that morality is developed separately by each and every individual human on their own, as if they have no contact with any other human being. Subjective points may still be a result of communal agreement and practice.

Topics like altruism, the social contract, and the group interactions of both humans and animals might help you see why your questions seem, at best, uninformed. Morality does not exist in a vacuum. Indeed, it seems to require human judgement and agreement.

GodHead85:

That's exactly what a metaphysically subjective morality would mean. .. But you don't think that morality is subjective, and your comment here is not, accurately..that "just because morality is subjective".... You, as a point of fact, insist in these comments that morality is relative..instead- which is to say, the result of communal agreement and practice.

Near1:

No, you'll have to actually show you know how to exercise your own brain-power. I wasn't put here for your convenience. Now go reread it. Ask questions where you get stuck. It's really not that hard.

MaxInDHouse:

What PROBLEM is MORALITY expected to solve?
I believe it's until we know the PROBLEM that we can work out a SOLUTION!

MaxInDHouse:

If your morality is not from a SUPREME BEING do you expect your neighbour to develop his own or comply with yours?

MaxInDHouse:

If each person just have to develop his or her own morality how do we cohabit peacefully?

MaxInDHouse:


Well to me he just typed rubbish!

Blablablablajhcchbzdhkbcykl....

LordTheus:

He didn't write rubbish. You're just too thick in the skull to see that literally everybody here is pointing out the stupidity of your so-called "answers". Go get an education. Spewing bigoted and dogmatic views doesn't count as discourse

MaxInDHouse:


I just wonder why you and your cohorts didn't subscribe to what billions out there say about the existence of a SUPREME BEING if it's all about what the majority says!

MaxInDHouse:


I don't read lengthy posts so can you give a brief summary of what he typed in just two to three sentences?
Thanks in advance!

LordTheus:
...I'm talking honest debate, not consensus...

LordTheus:

Nice red herring, except I'm not hungry. I'm talking honest debate, not consensus. What we're talking of here is the fact that people are taking the time to read and address the nonsensical trash in your ignoramus posts and you are not even bothered to read through their posts and understand how they prove your own posts senseless. Instead you're groaning about how long there replies are. What a crying shame.

MaxInDHouse:


Atheists getting dirty as usual!

TammieJo:

Pffft... Maximus doesn't do honest debate. In fact, he doesn't do debate at all. He's a preacher and a shill for the JW, completely unlettered in matters of theology. Go through his posts here.
"Maximus" and "honest debate" in the same sentence. Yeeesh.

LordTheus:

Keep lying to yourself

MaxInDHouse:

[1]If your morality is not from a SUPREME BEING do you expect your neighbour to develop his own or comply with yours?


[2]If each person just have to develop his or her own morality how do we cohabit peacefully?

MaxInDHouse:


When you're through with your ranting here is the question that knocked all of you out of balance:



I already said it's not just for atheists and agnostics only but all intelligent humans including religionists should solve it!

FemiAjani:


We could ask the same about theism-based morality. If you base your morality on the Christian Bible and your two neighbors base theirs on the Muslim Koran and the 10 precepts of Buddhism, respectively, then how do you live side by side peacefully? If you base your morality on (let's say) a Catholic take on Christian morality, and your two neighbors base theirs on Orthodox and Protestant Christianity, then how do you get along peacefully? If objectivity is defined as something that different, disparate people can look at and generally agree on what they see (literally or figuratively), then no morality rooted in theism can be objective, because the theistic dogmas underlying theistic morality are not generally agreed upon. The Hindu will not agree that Moses came down the mountain bearing God's commandments to humanity, any more than the Christian will agree that the Vishnu is watching over us.

What we CAN agree on is secular morality. Not necessarily morality by only secular people, or morality that hinges on disbelieving in the existence of a god, but morality that doesn't NEED a god for us to agree with it. We start by asking basic questions -- what kind of world do we want to live in? What kind of people do we want to surround ourselves with? -- and when we do that, we arrive at some pretty similar answers with most of the people around us. We want to live in a world where we feel safe and secure, which means a world where people don't beat and rape and murder each other willy-nilly. So we work to discourage and prevent that in various ways. We won't agree that the 10 commandments are divinely-written, but we will agree that murder isn't something we want in our communities. We want to live in a world where, if something bad were to happen to us, people will support us, and so we build up social norms in which people are expected to help others in trouble. We might not agree that Confucius had any particular authority when he commanded "Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself," but we can evaluate it as a sensible rule for living in a peaceful world rather than a violent one and adopt it as good advice, rather than a religious commandment. All of these preferences are common, and all of these rules are sensible and obvious steps towards those preferences, and so societies as a whole (with some individual holdouts) tend to adopt them. Regardless of whether that's objective or subjective, it happens, and it does so even if some parts of society think the morality in question comes from the dictates of the Christian God, and others think it comes from the necessities of transcending the Dharmic cycle to achieve Nirvana, and others just value human happiness and agency and think it's a good way to advance those causes. At the end of the day, secular morality works, regardless of whether we agree on the existence of a god. Not perfectly and not without friction, but it works. (And it works a far sight better than religion-based morality does, if the long trail of religious conflict stretching back into human prehistory is any indicator.) You might ask how it could work and imply that it couldn't, but the bottom line is that it does. Whether or not we explain to your satisfaction HOW it works won't change that fact.

Tamaratonye5:

Say some actual objective morality exists. Is the entirety of humanity in compliance with it? No. Is that a problem? Say that it is. Can it be fixed? Whatever remedies have been attempted thus far have been failures. All of them. We only have to look at the last 10 minutes to find 100,000,000 or so violations around the world.

The closest any human culture has been able to achieve is to establish a body of law and the means to enforce it. But it's very spotty. That we have such trouble with "morality" across our whole history of existence indicates that we don't actually know what morality even is - much less how to always be in accord with it.

People like you keep insisting religion holds the remedy, but religious "remedies" have been the most spectacularly counter-productive of any of them.

To my mind "morality" isn't the problem. The problem is competing and conflicting self interests will always hamper the cooperation that is the heart of a successful social species. As individuals, learning to cope with disappointments and find compromises, and seek fair outcomes leaves the least bloodshed.

But that assumes bloodshed is undesirable. One of the most defining aspects of human nature is its love of bloodshed. A remote observer could conclude, looking at all of human history, that absence of bloodshed constitutes the most grave violation of "morality" of all.

MaxInDHouse:

[1]If your morality is not from a SUPREME BEING do you expect your neighbour to develop his own or comply with yours?


[2]If each person just have to develop his or her own morality how do we cohabit peacefully?

Vic2Ree:
Comical religionists

MaxInDHouse:

[1]If your morality is not from a SUPREME BEING do you expect your neighbour to develop his own or comply with yours?


[2]If each person just have to develop his or her own morality how do we cohabit peacefully?

MaxInDHouse:


Just answer this question in two or three even four sentences no STORY!

Go back and read the posts answering your questions. You are yet to address them. Enough people have done their best correcting your error, and all you've done is ignore. If you like, you can keep spamming those questions from now till the cows come home, and I'll keep directing you to the posts that you shamelessly ran away from. I'm not going to waste my mental energy on you.

"Casting pearls on swine", isn't that how you people say it?

Vic2Ree:

Go back and read the posts answering your questions. You are yet to address them. Enough people have done their best correcting your error, and all you've done is ignore. If you like, you can keep spamming those questions from now till the cows come home, and I'll keep directing you to the posts that you shamelessly ran away from. I'm not going to waste my mental energy on you.

"Casting pearls on swine", isn't that how you people say it?

MaxInDHouse:


Throwing tantrums!

Says the man who can't read and cries about lengthy posts

KnownUnknown:
@Budaatum
Do you live in Nigeria?

Vic2Ree:

Says the man who can't read and cries about lengthy posts

MaxInDHouse:

Read stories when you're supposed to answer two simple questions, shey?

The fact that you can't see the relevance of the so-called "stories" to your illiterate questions is no one's fault but yours. Learn to take responsibility for your shortcomings