Tamaratonye1:

I'm a bit tied up, so I'll whip up a relatively short rebuttal to this cute little spiel here. I might add more when I've got more time to spare.

Meta-ethical frameworks based in naturalism may stretch the boundaries of what is commonly conceived of as ethics, but then so does error theory, and even divine command theory has its issues. The nutshell version is that no specific meta-ethical position has been demonstrated to be necessarily inconsistent with ethics and morals as they exist in the real world. As always, it's useful to keep the Duhem-Quine thesis in mind, to wit, any system can be made consistent in its major premises by an adjustment of its minor or tertiary premises.

As a consequence, where you end up on morals depends to a large extent upon where you began, being limited more by the assumptions you conceive as reasonable in the beginning than any of the chess moves that you make further down the line. You have certain requirements and propositions that you hold true, some of which, if questioned, lead to other equitably reasonable meta-ethical stances. That you are unwilling to enlarge your mind to entertain the larger domain of meta-ethics, and not just solely with regard to naturalism, is a you problem, not a me problem, or a them problem, lol.

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I was going to post a variant of the trolley problem meme attached just below, but am limited in my tools atm, so I'll just describe it. Instead of the trolley being diverted to either a single person or multiple persons, it would include a third path that runs headlong into a church. "Problem solved!", lol

Dtruthspeaker:


Morals do not change. It is the people who change by disobeying the morals as they exercise their power to obey and disobey.

Bet you never heard this statement of Law (Morals)

"A crime does not cease to be a crime simply because it's offenders have increased" eg like the crime of adultery.

Morals do not change.

'Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, AND THEY WILL BECOME YOUR PROPERTY. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as INHERITED PROPERTY and make them SLAVES FOR LIFE, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Endtimer:
Finally, she proves my point by accusing me of evil and demanding my immediate arrest and imprisonment without the possibility of bail and without a fair trial, all because I, the Christian, am a mass shooter and arsonist (I'm as shocked as you are, as I was just informed). Her last paragraph is proof of what I've been saying all along: she wants me locked up for not believing what she believes. The significance of this is that atheist morality is dependent on personal opinion. Our laws are codified morals and would-be tyrants would have me (and all other believers) locked up for believing a logically unassailable position (moral contingence on deity).

midnight378:


Aren't you special. Quoting a moronic piece of tripe. Where do you get this garbage ?

Hahahahahahaha. Sonmvayina come see your mumu guy. Dem wan roast am alive for this thread

Dtruthspeaker:


NOW THIS IS NOT TRUE! YOUR SCIENTISTS FIRST USED A THING!

See your report

As Big Think reports, in early 2022, a group of researchers created strong enough electric fields in their laboratory to level the unique properties of a material known as graphene.

Surely, generating "strong electric fields" is the use of many things eg Nepa erm electricity supplied by the Power Company, a Laboratory, a room in the laboratory, Air-conditioners and climate controls etc and all these things are Some Things Laid on Some One else's ground or Land (They did not make their own Land or bring their own land as they were born).

So they used things to create other things as is normal.

Thus, they are lying and you are helping them to spread the Lie.

O Lord please let this game be over! Let the Final Whistle Trumpet blow!

Judas1X:

You're using a THING in your explanation too. You're calling it GOD. So you are just using special pleading under a different guise.

Tamaratonye1:

I'm a bit tied up, so I'll whip up a relatively short rebuttal to this cute little spiel here. I might add more when I've got more time to spare.

Meta-ethical frameworks based in naturalism may stretch the boundaries of what is commonly conceived of as ethics, but then so does error theory, and even divine command theory has its issues. The nutshell version is that no specific meta-ethical position has been demonstrated to be necessarily inconsistent with ethics and morals as they exist in the real world. As always, it's useful to keep the Duhem-Quine thesis in mind, to wit, any system can be made consistent in its major premises by an adjustment of its minor or tertiary premises.

As a consequence, where you end up on morals depends to a large extent upon where you began, being limited more by the assumptions you conceive as reasonable in the beginning than any of the chess moves that you make further down the line. You have certain requirements and propositions that you hold true, some of which, if questioned, lead to other equitably reasonable meta-ethical stances. That you are unwilling to enlarge your mind to entertain the larger domain of meta-ethics, and not just solely with regard to naturalism, is a you problem, not a me problem, or a them problem, lol.

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I was going to post a variant of the trolley problem meme attached just below, but am limited in my tools atm, so I'll just describe it. Instead of the trolley being diverted to either a single person or multiple persons, it would include a third path that runs headlong into a church. "Problem solved!", lol

Tamaratonye1:

The nutshell version is that no specific meta-ethical position has been demonstrated to be necessarily inconsistent with ethics and morals as they exist in the real world.

FemiAjani:


People behave decent because we are a social animal that lives in groups, and the welfare of the group is very important to us. When no one murders others etc., we are all much safer. We also innately enjoy helping others. No one needs to tell us that. People who don't have these types of emotions are disordered. Social animals take good care of their own. Look at how wolves travel. The sick and the old go first, so they set the pace for the group so they don't get left behind. Then comes a group of animals in their prime to protect the first group and take on any dangers. Then comes the general group, and the rear is brought up by the best who watch over the whole group. They take good care of each other. Every example of social animal takes care of its group. Why would we be any different?

Judas1X:

You're damn right, stupid. The world will damn well be a better place if the September 11 hijackers had been detained BEFORE they carried out their moral imperative, based on their god belief

You are not offering us any assurance whatsoever that you won't ravage some portion of society because your god told you to do it. Your highest moral aspiration is to do god's will. You've said that repeatedly. With a mindset like that you are a dangerous little cunt. You're a ticking time-bomb. So I fully support that they should lock you up and put your ass away, out of reach of society so you don't hurt people, or a whole plaza of people.

Or prove once and for all, irrefutably, that you won't follow any command by your god that would wreak lethal destruction. That the world is safe from you even if it isn't safe from your god. Do you even have the guts? The audacity to tell your god NO? Prove it.

1000WaysToLive:
A moral statement either is or is not true (can or cannot be true), no matter who utters it, or whether anyone is motivated or compelled to adhere to it.


You might not be accounting for the difference between metaethical statements, and statements of practical motivation..and, similarly, between descriptive subjectivity or relativity and metaethical relativity and subjectivity.

Adding or removing gods does not alter or effect any objective metaethical conclusion. It can..however, alter descriptively subjective or relative moral conclusions.

Would you -like- to understand these things? So that you might, for example, understand why an atheist might adhere to an objective moral sytem..and why..for example, your system of favor seeking is not a moral system at all..objective or otherwise?



The short version of a long story, is that moral realism or objectivism is so incredibly simple and intuitive to us, and we're so completely dedicated to acting it out all day every day, that it's surprises me when the faithful or the faithless fail to understand it (regardless of whether they agree with it).



If we understand badness to have -anything- to do with harm, for example, then the statement x is bad purports to report a fact about that act - not about someone's motivation, or some gods decrees.


It either does or does not cause the specified harm. That's it, that's all.

You might notice that god based moralities hijack this? That it's insisted by the faithful that there is some specific harm to the bad x's - the problem being how often they either fail to report facts accurately..or, indeed, invent non facts whole cloth.


You might not think that your god or your religion does that, but I assume you're at least vaguely aware of when other god based..supposedly moral..supposedly objective...systems do so?


You might also notice (either in your own or others) that gods are said to dislike things or make prohibitions against things with no moral import whatsoever. Items like ritual construction and purity. Dietary restrictions?

Now, to sum it all up..it actually would be a pretty safe bet that a person who genuinely believes that that no moral statement has any objective warrant is sick, and prone to do terrible shit - but, in mere reality..no one believes you when you say this. They think that you're adding dishonesty to ignorance.


Would that be bad..do you think? Howsabout your god? Got a position on dishonesty? Your comments themselves are evidence of your compulsion to do so...so, it seems like we have a little microcosm for testing all your questions about objectivity, warrant, motivation, and it's relationship to the real or hypothetical divine...just in that.

chryssanthe:

What large sand dune have you stuck your head in?

Holy shit, go read your Bible. Your god condones slavery. It's in Leviticus!

midnight378:

Aren't you special. Quoting a moronic piece of tripe. Where do you get this garbage ?
A "crime" is the breaking of a LEGAL standard.

Judas1X:

Your opening paragraph could be construed to mean that the 115 year old grandpa who stole goat meat at age 5 and was never punished for the crime accrued 110 years of punishment "interest" D

Judas1X:

Both morals and laws (which are not interchangeable) change, and it's actually a good thing they do. We don't always have great laws, and we don't always know the full extent of an act of moral import. On top of that, our circumstances change.

Judas1X:

That billy goat you quoted is Nairaland's resident illiterate. Lawyer wey no sabi anything. Prepare yourself for more psychotic mumblings and lunatic claims that have no evidence anywhere

Hahahahahahaha. Sonmvayina come see your mumu guy. Dem wan roast am alive for this thread

Endtimer:
From what I can tell meta ethics simply decides that something is good or bad based on personal taste.

Metaethics is a branch of analytic philosophy that explores the status, foundations, and scope of moral values, properties, and words. Whereas the fields of applied ethics and normative theory focus on what is moral, metaethics focuses on what morality itself is. Just as two people may disagree about the ethics of, for example, physician-assisted suicide, while nonetheless agreeing at the more abstract level of a general normative theory such as Utilitarianism, so too may people who disagree at the level of a general normative theory nonetheless agree about the fundamental existence and status of morality itself, or vice versa. In this way, metaethics may be thought of as a highly abstract way of thinking philosophically about morality. For this reason, metaethics is also occasionally referred to as “second-order” moral theorizing, to distinguish it from the “first-order” level of normative theory.

Metaethical positions may be divided according to how they respond to questions such as the following:
What exactly are people doing when they use moral words such as “good” and “right”?
What precisely is a moral value in the first place, and are such values similar to other familiar sorts of entities, such as objects and properties?
Where do moral values come from—what is their source and foundation?
Are some things morally right or wrong for all people at all times, or does morality instead vary from person to person, context to context, or culture to culture?
Metaethical positions respond to such questions by examining the semantics of moral discourse, the ontology of moral properties, the significance of anthropological disagreement about moral values and practices, the psychology of how morality affects us as embodied human agents, and the epistemology of how we come to know moral values. The sections below consider these different aspects of metaethics.

Tamaratonye1:

The nutshell version is that no specific meta-ethical position has been demonstrated to be necessarily inconsistent with ethics and morals as they exist in the real world.

Endtimer:

In other words, you want us to both be right as none of our positions has “specifically...been demonstrated to be necessarily inconsistent with ethics”. I agree that I am right. You, on the other hand will do well to not assume that anyone agrees with you and prove your points with examples and analogies like the rest of us educated folks do.

Endtimer:


Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it is good planes into buildings.

I have a set of things that I think are good (getting married, giving to poor people, helping those in need for example).

Dtruthspeaker:


Isn't this you living in a grave? This is a Change of Post! The issue you raised was that Moral Law Changes which I showed you that it is people who change and not The Law.

So you have gone off point to talk of something else.

Leviticus 25:44-46 is the very definition of slavery.

But to answer just a short and quick one, first change your Bible to KJV

and see that Leviticus 25 deliberately said "bondsmen and bondsmaid" AND NOT SLAVES.

AND BOND ARJSES FROM A CONTRACT ISSUE WHICH IS WHY BONDSMEN IS DEFINED AS

bondsman
/ˈbɒn(d)zmən/

1. a person who stands surety for a bond...

It is an evil man as you already know people are, who will turn a bondsman to the wickedness of a slave

Dtruthspeaker:


The mere fact that you do not know does not mean others do not know something more than you do.

Legal Means means man made laws. But Moral Laws aka Natural Laws are not made by men. THEY ARE EVEN THE LAWS WHICH MADE MAN AND EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD.

https://www.nairaland.com/7019584/lawyers-every-body-not-deceit

https://www.nairaland.com/6989896/lawyers-not-deceit

So legal can change because man is the god of legal, so therefore he can do as he likes with it.

But he can not change Moral Laws (Natural Laws) for that one is beyond his reach.

Which is why the only thing he can do is to either obey or disobey them according to his power.

The mere fact that you do not know does not mean others do not know something more than you do.

But he can not change Moral Laws (Natural Laws) for that one is beyond his reach.

Which is why the only thing he can do is to either obey or disobey them according to his power.

Dtruthspeaker:
This is a Change of Post! The issue you raised was that Moral Law Changes which I showed you that it is people who change and not The Law.

Dtruthspeaker:
it is people who change and not The Law.

Endtimer:
First, I do not want to harm or kill anyone. That is just absurd: this is the internet so I can’t and more importantly, I don’t want to.

Endtimer:
Good of you to explain what you mean when you use the term meta ethics. Maybe we can come to understand one another and have a discussion. Understanding one another is the entire point of these things.

First, I do not want to harm or kill anyone. That is just absurd: this is the internet so I can’t and more importantly, I don’t want to.

Concerning what you wrote, the important part is that “we” decided that harm arbitrarily constitutes immorality. There is nothing intrinsic in harm that can make it bad without appealing to unspoken first principles. We could have as well decided that anything that doesn’t cause harm is immoral and that harm is the highest good.

I also agree that if x is good, then it is good. In addition to that I only believe that x is good because it is in God’s nature. That it is imitative of God’s nature makes it moral. From what I can tell meta ethics simply decides that something is good or bad based on personal taste. For instance, harm is bad because we the people say it is; while it was good to vikings as they said it wasn’t. I’m not endorsing their terrorism, but it was also personal taste that flew those planes into those buildings back in 2001.

I believe I started this discussion by stating that most here are making the mistake of looking at our ultra-civilized Christianish world and concluding that if we decide to make up good and bad as we go it’ll be alright. Perhaps those people would like to read about the ancient samurai tradition to sodomize little boys (and only little boys) to see what happens in the absence of the Christian morals they think are natural.

I look forward to your response.

midnight378:

Wrong again .
What are considered "natural laws" varies from culture to culture.

midnight378:

LOL .....and when my daddy gets home, he's gonna beat up your daddy.
How incredibly childish ...

midnight378:

You have no evidence, (and you have presented nothing sensible) for this unfounded assertion : "They are the laws which made man and everything in this world."
LOL ... and what are these "laws" and exactly where did they come from ?
What are these laws which you *claim* "made man and everything in this world", and what are you even talking about ?
Provide the evidence.

Endtimer:
Good of you to explain what you mean when you use the term meta ethics. Maybe we can come to understand one another and have a discussion. Understanding one another is the entire point of these things.

First, I do not want to harm or kill anyone. That is just absurd: this is the internet so I can’t and more importantly, I don’t want to.

Concerning what you wrote, the important part is that “we” decided that harm arbitrarily constitutes immorality. There is nothing intrinsic in harm that can make it bad without appealing to unspoken first principles. We could have as well decided that anything that doesn’t cause harm is immoral and that harm is the highest good.

I also agree that if x is good, then it is good. In addition to that I only believe that x is good because it is in God’s nature. That it is imitative of God’s nature makes it moral. From what I can tell meta ethics simply decides that something is good or bad based on personal taste. For instance, harm is bad because we the people say it is; while it was good to vikings as they said it wasn’t. I’m not endorsing their terrorism, but it was also personal taste that flew those planes into those buildings back in 2001.

I believe I started this discussion by stating that most here are making the mistake of looking at our ultra-civilized Christianish world and concluding that if we decide to make up good and bad as we go it’ll be alright. Perhaps those people would like to read about the ancient samurai tradition to sodomize little boys (and only little boys) to see what happens in the absence of the Christian morals they think are natural.

I look forward to your response.

chryssanthe:

You think it is still morally permissible to own human beings as property, to buy them, to inherit them to your children, and keep them for life?...

Dtruthspeaker:


That is for The God of Moral to Judge! But it is sufficient to know that The God of Morals did command that "that which is good, should be done and that which is not good/evil, should not be done"

And we all know those things which are good to do or not do as separate from those things which are not good/evil, to do or not do.

So knowing this, "We each walk the path, that we've chosen" Dmx. (And shall be judged by it)

midnight378:


You really need to get back to Sunday School and pay attention this time.
The entire premise of your religion is that the law changed, and that EVERYTHING changed when your religion started.
How is it you are unaware of what your religion teaches ?

The ENTIRE set of your religion's "laws" changed.
St Paul tried to teach you that the law changed. The New Covenant .

2 Corinthians 3: 7-11 : "...

the Old Testament had about 612 things (sorry it's 613)
"There are 613 mitzvot in the Torah and they guide Jews on how to live a good life. Jews believe that God gave the mitzvot to Moses and that they formed part of the covenant at Mount Sinai ."
your god required of the Chosen People. SIX HUNDRED and THIRTEEN .
They all changed. I bet you don't even know 20 of them . I bet Jews don't even know 20 of them. ..

1000WaysToLive:
Cool...and how did this god of morals know which was which?

Dtruthspeaker:


If you can tell which things are good from those things which are evil, then He Too can.

The Creator and Giver of Discernment must surely have plenty of Discernment in Store, exactly like a jobless man cannot give you a job!