₦airaland Forum

None of the above: part of human nature

(later) Bigotry is in the eye of the beholder.

Silverseed:
For context for my questions below, you might want to know something about my views. I don’t believe in the reality or existence of anything that anyone can imagine or describe as a creator of the universe.

Dtruthspeaker:
No different from refusing to travel with God is Good Motors. You have a right to use any of the other available options of travel eg "I hate God motors, or "I use my leg travel company" or "Juju Express" etc.

The real-eyeity is that which ever vehicle you choose for traveling this life is your own suffer or enjoyment story.

Na only Advice the Bible dey advice. No be by force say make you listen!

I’ve read some of your posts, but I don’t remember what you said about your way of traveling. Tell me about it.

Endtimer:
First, this is called a loaded question. Like, have you stopped beating your wife? It is quite obviously a setup, but it touches on the point of what we are talking about. The reason you are concerned with what I'd do is that you believe that killing someone is objectively wrong. As a true Nigerian, I'll redirect the question to gain a more thorough understanding of your meta ethics. Why is robbing people wrong (for example)? I've told you that it is wrong theistically because it isn't imitative of God's nature. Anticipating the obvious atheist response, I should point out that this is a singular example of a larger position, stated thusly: good is a term used to describe God's nature. I've asked two questions now:

- Why is robbing people wrong?
-What is "good" itself?



This is an extremely important point but your response isn't a counterpoint to something I said. I didn't say we decide what harm is. I said we cannot decide that something is bad because it causes harm. That would be an arbitrary definition of bad. We might as well define bad as anything that makes people happy. I define bad as a term used to describe a set of values antithetical to God's nature. How do you define bad?



I agree. But our belief in these principles must be justified. The first principles you appealed to are without basis atheistically: you cannot appeal to harm as bad without telling us what makes harm bad. You have to give reasons why something is bad.



Alright then, tell me what intrinsic fact of rape, murder, theft or any other crimes that make them bad. It is not illogical to assert that actions have moral contingence on things beyond them. That is, in fact, the conventional view rather than yours. It is also simpler and more tenable than yours. Your meta ethics seems to introduce unnecessary complexity to explain away simple things; in the same manner that one could to explain that the sun orbits the earth. In the end you are left with no basis for moral belief and a dangerous arbitrariness.

Presupposing God's existence we have reason to continue believing all we do. In the absence of that, we do not. A foolish person might ignore that I just said presupposing and ask me to prove that God exists. To be clear, what I am saying is if God exists we have reason to hold first principles for morality. If He doesn't we do not. You believe He doesn't so you will have to provide a basis for morality as I have.



I am a moral objectivist so you this doesn't apply to me.



Obviously because you are equating the agents and I am not. Think of it like class struggle. You assume discrimination on the grounds that both classes are functionally equal but a disparity in result persists. I point out that differences in the classes manifest differences in result. The morals agents in the first part of the sentence are you and I; functional equals. You can't tell a bomber he is wrong because you say so. You aren't the boss of him and you lack moral authority. The moral agent in the second part of the sentence is the tradition concept of God: omni-benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent and the creator of all. There is a difference between the agents and an obvious difference between the results.



Objectivism is saying that x is always bad. Relativism is saying that the morality of x depends on the context. Subjectivism is saying that morals depend on personal taste.



This, I believe is the whole point of your post (although I couldn't resist rebutting it entirely, which I'll refrain from in future). What you have is a false dichotomy where information about something is only true when we derive that information intrinsically; failing that it is false. This is an absurd position because we deal with contingence and relativity everyday. Attributes like being tall or fat depend on the heights and weights of others in a similar class (like the species for example). There is nothing intrinsic in 6ft that makes it tall; likewise there is nothing intrinsic in rape that makes it bad. Its morality is contingent on God. Since you don't believe in God, you will have to explain why rape is truly bad without appealing to baseless first principles.

What you’re calling “the tradition concept of God” looks over-defined to me. Apart from that, what do you mean by calling him “omni-benevolent”? How are you defining “benevolent,” to say that he is “omni-benevolent”?

Endtimer:
The above is hardly representative of theistic consensus. You still think God just decides arbitrarily to do X or Y. It isn't God's definition of right and wrong; those are just words created to describe God's characteristics and their antithesis respectively. Also your argument's appeal is essentially ethical (ironic for someone trying to establish moral subjectivity). You must be aware that what the bacteria in the toilet feel has no bearing on moral objectivity. Therefore, you are trying to make us feel sorry for them rather than address the philosophical underpinnings of the moral argument.

The last sentence makes sense. As someone must have already pointed out to you, the answer is: you don't. You have free will to do as you wish, however, you may find that lifelong marriage will fulfill you and that homosexuality will give you diseases; this isn't a form of the prosperity gospel (check out my post on antinomianism for more on that) but it is true in several instances. The reason for this is that:

- You are made in God's image and your nature and mine are corrupted versions of His own. Living like He does therefore strangely provides otherworldly fulfillment.

- God is not only omnibenevolent but omniscient. His knowledge of everything means that we have good reason to trust and emulate Him.

- This is what you want to hear, so I'll be direct: failure to live like God will result in damnation. This and the two above are some reasons to live like God.

This is from the top of my-tired-head so I expect to do a lot of qualifying and explaining when I get back.

For context for my questions below, you might want to know something about my views. I don’t believe in the reality or existence of anything that anyone can imagine or describe as a creator of the universe. I think that there is some good advice in Christian scriptures, but I don’t see any reason to think that Christians practice any of it better than other people do. In fact I’ve been thinking that Christian doctrines, Christian proselytizing, and Christian politics are and always have been hiding that advice from people and repelling them away from it.

In some of your posts, it looked to me like you were saying that the world is better with Christianity than it would be without it. Am I understanding that correctly? In some others, it looked to me like you were saying that it’s better to use the way God lives as moral standard, than any other standard that anyone could propose. Am I understanding that correctly? Is that your definition of Christianity? Living the way God lives?

I’m also wondering what you mean by “the way God lives”? How can we know anything about the way God lives?

(later) Are you arguing against people denouncing Christianity and/or God beliefs?

(later) Something else you might want to know about my views is that I think that the best way to live in the time of Jesus was the way he taught people to live. I'm not sure if that applies to our time or not.