₦airaland Forum

Area_boy: 2+2 = 5 (for extremely large values of 2 )


@ topic, I have indeed battled with this question over sometime now and certainly cant come to a conclusive answer to satisfy all my questions.

Well, the first obvious one has to do with conciousness. Are we really? or is it all an illusion? hmmm

For simple definitions of consciousness, experiments have shown chimps and dolphins to be concious (ie they can recognize their own image in the mirror)

Both animals mentioned are very social animals and exhibits elements of morality (sense of good or bad). Chimps have been known to expel a member of their group for wrong doing.

Taking the other groups of animals that do not exhibit conciousness, Instincts and evolution takes the front seat. Guiding them on what is "good" or what is "bad" in order to survive.


This idea leans towards morality being objective, thus universal.

But then things turn upside down when I now ask the next question

Does morality necessarily translate into doing the right thing?. If no, then how can morality ever be really measured as being objective or subjective?

A tribe in Borneo pride themselves with how many heads of outsiders they have chopped off. Now in this same tribe it is wrong to kill anyone in their community. So, on one hand it is wrong to kill, and on the other it is Good


I'm loosing my mind already

So one could say some bits are objective, others are not, maybe? But where to draw the line, like you've indicated.

Consider how the good mayans loved a sacrifice. Or lions who don't care much for the cubs of males they've killed/driven off, so they kill them. Even if shaped by nature, it seems to be determined arbitrarily by random mutations. One species might decide killing babies aids, the other doesn't. One tribe thinks human sacrifices would solve their problems, others don't (in this case mutations are not the sole reason for the different behavior, hmm, it's more complicated).

italo: OBJECTIVE!

WHY?

Consider 12 year old girls were once considered ripe for marriage? How does one know what is objectively good?

There was the teacher who people thought should be beheaded because she named a teddy bear mohammed. Her intentions were good as well, she was trying to teach, and thought the kids would relate more if she used one of their beloved figures. In fact, it was her own way of respecting him. How could she deduce using 'mohammed' as name for a teddy was wrong (to muslims only, again subjective) without someone explicitly telling her it was wrong?

With 1 + 1, get any two objects and count them, you'll get 2. Aliens don't need to meet us to confirm that
For the speed of light become a supa dupa scientist then get your equipment and measure it. Aliens don't need us to confirm that.
To figure out naming a teddy mohammed was bad (to some people), you have to ask people. There's no way an alien could know that if they've never encountered islam before.

I wonder..

I think not, there's just not enough money in there. Anyone with hard numbers?

Bear in mind, I think it doesn't really matter if tithes alone are not enough to buy a jet. Most of their income would come from the considerable good will they garner from their flock as mog. Raw cash is not the only commodity available to fleece. They also seem to give rather little back, other than a placebo or two.



EDIT: if you have hard numbers, what if they were posted here (you would open a new account with a random email account and watch what you type if you wish to remain anonymous). Or if you're feeling james bondish, one could try wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:Submissions
Consider using tor as well in either situation
https://www.torproject.org/download/download
With tor, retrieving your ip would be more or else impossible for anyone trying to
How to verify any documents presented is another story though. Still, there's a remote chance it might lead to something

I'm not asking you to do anything oh! I'm just saying what if
...

Would morality exist without conscious beings? Or is it just a construct in our heads? Are there deeds that would be universally accepted by any conscious being as being good or bad regardless of species, creed, etc or any form of bias?

For instance 1 + 1 = 2
Or the speed of light is constantly c (c may vary though, depending on the medium the light is traveling through)

No alien species anywhere in this universe could come up with different answers. Are there any actions that would be deemed good universally as such?


Sometimes objective morality is associated with trandenscental morality, while subjective morality is associated with empirical morality. More on that in this fairly long post.

www.nairaland.com/1090616/biological-basis-morality

To quote

"Every thoughtful person has an opinion on which
premise is correct. But the split is not, as popularly
supposed, between religious believers and
secularists. It is between transcendentalists, who
think that moral guidelines exist outside the human mind, and empiricists, who think them contrivances of the mind. In simplest terms, the options are as follows: I believe in the independence of moral values, whether from God or not, and I believe that moral values come from human beings alone, whether or not God exists."


Anyones welcome of course, but no holy book quotes or arguments based solely on religious doctrine. Go elsewhere if for one you cannot understand that most of the world doesn't share (and probably doesn't particularly care for) your particular faith.

I say it is subjective, and/or empirical. Cannot elaborate atm due to time*. What say you?


*no vex, silly I know. just want to generate activity of a particular sort

Do you guise sometimes 'like' posts because of their sheer ridiculousness just to troll? Just to pis.s off any sane rational person that may be reading?

I'm not saying I do that btw, or that I will ever do such. No, never. Why are you looking at me? Who would do such a thing?

^^^
You've told him all this several times already, yet you're still patient? I envy you...
It's now looking like trolling but it's probably not. He's programmed to blindly follow imaginary sky tyrant while thinking that somehow makes it objective to boot.

@anony, good lucking with your project

musKeeto: it's in your name, image120lodo...

He has a point, he isn't a troll. He's genuinely errr, well... You know what I mean

He didn't force them to pay him I believe, they were sheeple being sheeple. A people get the government they deserve, etc. He shouldn't be explaining himself either, what sort of feudal lord does that?

Of course if any pastoneur tries to preach to the wrong crowd though, he should expect what he's undoubtedly going to get. I wonder who the target audience of this interview are

Agiliti: at the end of the day, the irony i am trying to point out is that 1000 years ago, people from the west who were going through their dark ages came to the islamic world to learn, but today, the same muslims claim that this knowledge is haram.

They unquestionably contributed, but you overstate their case. You make it sound like they were the greek. And the knowledge was haram even then, they just hadn't gotten to the troublesome bits yet. As they pursued science it eventually clashed with islam irreconcilably, the rest is history.

tpia1: depends on the era or region you're referring to.

dubai, for example, doesnt fit your description.

Why not? From the article I linked earlier

"A useful, if imperfect, indicator of scientific output is the number of published scientific research papers, together with the citations to them. Table 1 shows the output of the seven most scientifically productive Muslim countries for physics papers, over the period from 1 January 1997 to 28 February 2007, together with the total number of publications in all scientific fields. A comparison with Brazil, India, China, and the US reveals significantly smaller numbers. A study by academics at the International Islamic University Malaysia2 showed that OIC countries have 8.5 scientists, engineers, and technicians per 1000 population, compared with a world average of 40.7, and 139.3 for countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (For more on the OECD, see http://www.oecd.org.) Forty-six Muslim countries contributed 1.17% of the world's science literature, whereas 1.66% came from India alone and 1.48% from Spain. Twenty Arab countries contributed 0.55%, compared with 0.89% by Israel alone. The US NSF records that of the 28 lowest producers of scientific articles in 2003, half belong to the OIC.3"

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_60/iss_8/49_1.shtml?bypassSSO=1

Agiliti: at the end of the day, it's hard to deny the effects early islam had on todays western education

So did say, even the egyptians. They probably influenced others who influenced the greek. That's how progress works. But I am not arguing this anyways.

My point is (or one of them is) islam itself probably had little to do with their scientific success, and in fact care little for those achievements except that it makes them look good. So when you assume they are hypocritically enjoying nice things from that era, they aren't being hypocrites because they don't really place value on that. They don't think them as nice a thing as reverting to 7th century arabia, which is their ultimate aim. Science? Pfft. Unless it can aid the koran or something similar it's valueless

plaetton: The Crusades changed Islam for the worse.
After the crusades Islam began to redefine itself solely on the basis of the paranoi, distrust, fear and hatred for western civilisation. It began to build barricades around itself to shield it from western corruption, treachery and influence. It gradually became a religion of anger, always under the constant threat of having its values diluted or completely eroded.
As we see very often in history, whenever a group isolate themselves from new influences, ideas and trends, they tend to stagnate and regress over time.

I think that has been the tragedy of the Islamic civilisations.

This may be true, but one could also reason the crusades only hastened the inevitable. Iran for instance was set to become an advanced society by western standards. Next thing we know, khomeini. 13 year old girls are getting shot for going to school. Bh thinks the world is flat.

If they believe they are capable providing a healthy environment for science, one has to note that their inability to modernize does not indicate so. They aren't the only ones that were crushed by the west, we all were. Japan closed its borders for maybe 3-400 years. They eventually got pummeled effortlessly by some western ships. So they opened their borders again and industrialized in roughly one generation. They defeated russian ships less than 50 years later (meanwhile black man was using jazz in warfare). China, it was more or else agreed that it should be left alone. Too much trouble. The west could recognize that theirs was a formidable culture going through rough times, so they left it to its own devices, isolated more or else as well. Communism arguably halted progress but look at them now. Prediction is chinese and indians are soon going to have a sizable amount of nobel laureates. Korea was repressed by all its neighbors, seemingly since the dawn of time. These and other societies have recovered or are recovering quickly from isolation or oppression. But the islamic (and black man) world...

Agiliti: alchemy, alkali, algebra, alogrithm, and pretty much anything with "al" as it's prefix is arabic by origin. they might not have been the first to practice it, but they perfected it and spread it out, and that directly evolved into what we have here today. even the stars in the sky were catalogued by the arabs, and they still bear the names today
i'm not muslim so i have nothing to gain by this, but it's a known fact baghdad was a centre of learning and inventions for centuries.

next time you want to say im talking nonsense, come with facts

You present your case as if islam was primarily responsible for that. Has it occurred to you that that success, which is not as special as you present it, may have been in spite of islam rather than because of it? You see many islamic nobel prize in the sciences winners where? I can only think of one palestinian. Have they contributed anything of worth in hundreds of years? Modern western science has given them more than the al's have, yet they choose to ignore that as well. That would be a better example.

Quite a few of those scholars were only interested in making the koran look good as well. Usually, that is all they are ever interested in actually. They didn't turn their backs on science, it was never important to them. They use science to justify the dogma. Once science violates their principles, it becomes haram, at the least until they can find a way wiggle it in, claim it was predicted etc

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_60/iss_8/49_1.shtml?bypassSSO=1

YIELD ANONY YIELD

Things need not get any bloodier now....

Mr_Anony: Again with the "arbitary good"....yawn.

Secondly, omnipotent has to do with ability and not decision. I have the ability to ra[color=#000000]p[/color]e little girls but I cannot do it (it is my decision not to, r[color=#000000]ap[/color]e is not part of my character). Stop being disingenuous

You have given me a fine demonstration of crazy. Thank you for that

You call me being disingenuous?

Omnipotent god cannot do a simple thing: die. Do you know the meaning of omnipotent? You cannot ra.pe little girls? What's the problem, you don't have a penis? Or you're not capable of being physically imposing?

You choose not to, for whatever reasons, not that you cannot do it. I would think that would be obvious, honest one. Just as it would be obvious that an omnipotent being should be capable of dying, or performing evil deeds, like rap.ing children if it chose to.

I suspect you would ra.pe little girls if god asked you to. And don't whine, he's asked others to do similar before, look up the OT. The ra.pe would be good to you, just like when he ordered genocides and declared those deeds 'good'. You would also simultaneously think "thou shall not kill" is good, because he also said so. Do you what 'arbitrary' means? You don't even need to get to the new testament to spot this nonsense.

You have no excuses. Faulty wiring maybe? You are a dangerous sociopath

Mr_Anony: Morality is discriminating between good and evil. God's nature is good. Evil is a deviation from God's nature.

I actually lol'd, but ok. @kay is right. But this claim, as usual, pisses over other claims you usually make. Omnipotent god, cannot do evil? I could get my niece to do 'evil' probably. The 'evil' will depend on context, including intentions and society. See what I'm doing here? And this omnipotent god cannot die? Worms that live off the shit in my gut can die. The tiniest, weakest organism can die, rather easily actually. Omnipotent god cannot?

What is god?

And are you saying whatever god does, arbitrarily, is good?

You could ignore me though... Let's see where you're going with the others....

iv4fb: @wiegraf, I think u need to grow up, u don't have to insult ppl to make a point. For heaven's sake you haven't posted anything without insults. Are u so full of shyte? Who's accusing u? Aint u even worse that whatever accusation u got? If I don't learn-have u ever learnt anything in life? Appraise yourself before condemning ppl and fyi, if u got raised in the gutters of insults, u don't have to remain there-sometimes be positive and objective. I aint replying u no more, go ahead and spew more insults-thats what you're made up of.

Holier than thou? You're bigot, you think you should be preaching? Well, if you accept your bigotry and maybe hypocrisy then you should be fine.

I'm not claiming to be mature half-wit. You clearly seem to be lacking some thinking skills. Where did I insult you in that post? Are you completely incapable of telling when one is serious and when one is not?

That said, again, you really are a bigot. Hopefully before you actually harm anyone you educate yourself

Mr_Anony: No we would not.

How does god decide what is good or not?

Mr_Anony: All you have to do now is define Pikkiwoki and it's character. Who or what is Pikkiwoki?

Did you miss the links?

Mr_Anony: So if you don't think intrinsic good exists, what then was the point of your question?

That it's all subjective. Shouldn't that be obvious by now?

I can't play for much longer...Time to pay the price for some odious procrastination...

iv4fb: @wiegraf and logic..., apologies for my choice of words, they were solely my opinion and I might be wrong, just that I never knew you guys would resort to insults and some touch of violence to protect what you've got. Once again, I'm sorry!

VIOLENCE? YOU'RE STILL SENSELESSLY ACCUSING PEOPLE? HAVE YOU LEARNED ANYTHING AT ALL?

Why so serious? You don't take any of this personally, yes? I'm pretty sure I'm very wrong sometimes as well

Mr_Anony: I don't consider my argument to be fairy tales and the fact that you do, takes nothing away from it. In fact you are the one being rude here: instead of engaging the debate properly, you write it off as a fairy tale. As I have said many times over: "I think it is absurd therefore it is absurd" is never a valid argument.
Invoking pikkiwoki here doesn't give us anything if you cannot define pikkiwoki for us and we have nothing to refer to for the definition of pikkiwoki.

It does, where have I presented you with wild speculations, or begged the question? The bold is a little puzzling considering you're pushing the xtian god. The one that sent himself to earth to kill himself so he could forgive us for his mistakes? You have any sort of evidence, logical or otherwise, to back his existence?

Anyways, here is a description of pikkiwoki about as coherent as the ones you usually provide for your god
http://www.pikkiwoki.com/

Here's his (yes he has a gender, and apparently has a son and enjoys that american sport, foot-something) his facebook, and twitter
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pikkiwoki-the-Papua-New-Guinean-mud-god/110840145608298
https://twitter.com/Pikkiwoki

You have any more inquiries about his nature, you could ask him for yourself

Mr_Anony: Secondly, in the last bit of your post it is funny how you seem to be saying that I am being subjective(which I don't agree with by the way), therefore I shouldn't be taken seriously.
What you are conveniently forgetting is that you claimed that morality is subjective and yet you want to be taken seriously in moral debates. Why the double standard?

Why are you conflating issues?
Your arguments are subjective, what does that have to do with the nature of morality. Especially as you can provide objective arguments, but choose to stick with the subjective. With morality, we do not have a choice, societies have to designate some actions as good and others as bad else there'd be chaos.

How we go figuring that out is related to this discussion. You have chosen a subjective method yet label it objective.

Mr_Anony: This is precisely the kind of comment that makes me doubt your ability to follow logic.

First you redefine your opponent's argument for him and then make a counter argument based on your redefined version. This is called playing the strawman: What part of the definition of God tells you that He can die?
(if you are going to debate somebody, represent his point accurately and argue against it properly)

After invoking fairy tales you actually think you are in a position to give lectures? God cannot die, I thought he died on a cross something like 2000 years ago. He didn't? You guys seem to be making this stuff up as you go. I say god can die, prove me wrong.

And that's not the point, which you try to dodge. It's simply, without god would we be able to verify an act is good or not? I have asked this question several times and have not gotten a straight answer. This is simply putting the question to you in another form to avoid your antics. Can you give a straight answer please?

Mr_Anony: Secondly, in the same sentence, you ask a question; Can morality exist independently of gods, like numbers can?.

If the answer you are expecting for this question is yes, then your case will be destroyed completely because then morality will exist objectively like numbers and you would be totally contradicting your previous claim that morality is subjective. Following your logic, the answer can only be no.

I told you that you had paid a hefty price the moment you came to the conclusion that morality is subject to the individual.

They aren't in the same sentence. Anyways, again, what is your answer?

Mr_Anony: There are also those that don't believe in the metric scale.....it changes nothing

Yes their opinions do not affect the fact that dimensions exist. Or that the planck lenght exists, with or without them. In any part of this universe (likely), this value does not change. It can be empirically confirmed, no need to ask a consciouness his opinion. Not so with morality

Mr_Anony: God is the standard for morality. Without God, the whole concept of good and evil immediately loses meaning. Besides I fail to understand how you can claim that morality is subjective and yet talk about an "intrinsic good".

I'll fix that for you

wiegraf: Pikkiwoki is the standard for morality. Without Pikkiwoki, the whole concept of good and evil immediately loses meaning. Besides I fail to understand how you can claim that morality is subjective and yet talk about an "intrinsic good".

Prove me wrong.

Mr_Anony: God is the standard for morality. Without God, the whole concept of good and evil immediately loses meaning. Besides I fail to understand how you can claim that morality is subjective and yet talk about an "intrinsic good".
For you to talk about anything being intrinsically good, then you are admitting that something can be independently good on it's own. i.e that morality is objective. You contradict yourself.
If however, this is not what you meant, and you still maintain that morality is subjective, then I'll have to ask you... What is this "intrinsic good" that you talk about?

I never said "intrinsic good" exists, that's the point.

Intrinsic good would be good deeds that could be deemed good shall we say, empirically. And they would be universally accepted and be capable of being verified objectively. These 'intrinsic good' deeds will exist, just like say numbers would, in any given universe. Or like dimensions, or the planck units in this universe. They would not require consciousness to be present before they exist.

@anony, from the top good ser, this was posted yesterday or the day before

O.M.E:
lol..you are so foolish to believe the tricks of the devil

To expatiate, note this mo.ronic bigot @anony. He is provided evidence to the contrary of his unverified nonsense, but still thinks it's a 'trick of the devil'. He does so because 'god', against reason, says so. He bases his conclusions on god's opinions. Does this qualify as his being objective? You base your 'good' or 'bad' on simply what god says as well, yet you call that objective?

Note I am not saying morality is objective, I am saying that supposing morality were objective, you base your morality on the opinions of someone else, not the evidence or factors, yet you look someone in the eye and still call that objective.

Supposing you measure an object's length and it's 5 cm, objectively so, then someone walks in and says it's 58.9 and you blindly accept the answer, would you call your behavior objective?

It can be labeled objective, but only in the sense that you are accepting his (very) subjective opinion as an objective fact. That doesn't mean your conclusion was objective, it was the god's subjective opinion. This is simple.

If there were a method god used to arrive at his conclusion, surely he could share it, yes? Or are his ways mysterious? If he says well, he used his own ruler, which he arbitrarily set, in which case there would be no way to determine the scale without his presence, do you still call that objective? Despite the fact that it is built around his opinion?


Does every little thing have to be pointed out to you? Here comes the LALALA. Before you incessantly start begging the question I'll ask you, what god? But even with a god, and morality depended solely on the god's opinion, not an objective methodology, how can you call that objective?

Chrisbenogor: Your blood too d̶̲̥̅̊ε̲̣γ̲̣ hot ni ah! Now now now brain damage, you nor just get joy at all. Oya drink your tombo the keg still full oh

Dude it takes two.....

But you blamed the atheists, conveniently left out the theist, yes?

Ihedinobi: First off, your question mandated him to answer according to his worldview not yours. He need not allow for your disbelief in God.

No
He asked me to show him something about evolutionary biology. I did, without any fairy tales. He then declares I'm wrong about morality, I ask him to back up his claims, he invokes fairy tales. That's just rude.

I'll tell you why I think you're wrong, because pikkiwokki.

See what I mean?

He's being completely subjective, just like @logic indicates, yet he expects to be taken seriously?

Ihedinobi: Next, his answer was exactly appropriate. If God is Good, as Jesus said He is, then the moral value of things can only be determined according to their degree of approximation/adherence to Him. Given that Jesus is God's "metric" standard of measurement for morality and that He is Himself also God, it is right to say that God is the measure of goodness. Therefore, things are only good because there is a resonance between their intrinsic nature and God's. Where there is dissonance between the two then the thing is not truly good, even if on the surface it appears acceptable.

This is the same dancing around. So what if god say, dies? There is no moral good then? Can morality exist independently of gods, like numbers can?

Ihedinobi: He was telling you that the metric scale is to length what God is to morality. If you disagree, you simply show Him why you think he is wrong.

For one, I don't believe in god. I also missed where he proved it exists. I don't remember allowing that I would assume a god existed. Even if I did, this is seriously pushing the line, blatantly begging the question, again.

This is a cheap, trollish attempt at obfuscation or whatever. And top it up, it has no effect on the question. So god is the measure of morality, among many other things it seems. So what? The question still stands. Does he think actions are good because they are intrinsically so or because god, his measure of goodness, says so? Does god have to be present before good exists? What about evil? How does god measure goodness? Just his say so, or is there a methodology? Etc etc

Mr_Anony: It seems you are not paying attention to the argument I am making. Without an objective point of reference such as a clock, there is no standard for time. The sense of time will be left to individual interpretation. The same applies to morality, without the nature of God as an objective standard, each is left with his/her own individual definitions of good and evil resulting in a chaotic situation.

As for the second part of your post; God has written His laws in our hearts so we are without excuse. We all have a sense of morality from the get go. We are made in God's image and the nature of God is not something alien to us. God made people decent, but they looked for many ways to avoid being decent. When Christ came, He came as the perfect example, He is the Light but many people have preferred the darkness.

For instance, you don't necessarily need a clock to know when you are late for an appointment, but then the clock stands as an objective basis for time so that you are without excuse to be late.
In the same way, you don't necessarily need to have read the bible to know for instance that adultery is evil (God has already written it in our hearts), however the Word of God (Christ) stands as the perfect example (the objective standard) for us so that we are without excuse not to live righteously.

This is easily one of the most delusional posts I've come across. You might as well start your own weaveon threads, show us your true colors rather than hide behind poor sophistry

I hope you trolling

Mr_Anony: LOL, This is like asking: "Is a line 5 meters because the metric scale says so or is there an intrinsic 5 meters?"

No it isn't, at all
What in the universe is wrong with you?

It is like asking is the line 5 meters because the metric scale says so or is it so because big daddy (arbitrarily) says so. The question couldn't be clearer.

And reply my other post

Front page for justice

iv4fb: @moskeeto, I do not know of any such rituals, I've seen some defend homosexuality which I consider a doctrine, I've also seen the two guys here becoming insulting and criticizing for no just cause just to defend their belief or lack of one. If these two guys were all the atheist that be, I think its very intolerant too-another doctrine, more like accuse/insult anybody that say anything 'bad' about atheism. Having said this sir, will you please help categorize it?

I've also come across some christians who'll argue that christianity aint a religion but a way of life-according to them and this didn't change the fact that its a religion.

@wiegraf, you're now an english lecturer? Nice 1. Other than to insult/criticize, do you have any point/strength?

This whole post...

If despite engaging the subject for a while no noticeable improvement is observed, or in fact the subject's condition appears to be getting worse, then you're debating either a half-wit or a troll. I hope, good ser, for the sake of this good country you're the later.





Doubtful

InesQor: LOL i've been feeling lazy to reply this thread

Wiegraf dropped some really heavy stuff there, need to chew and digest properly.

Will return.

I know what you mean.. Where to even start.. But I'm still driving at this basically: there's no need to assume a conscious purpose, in fact, it complicates things. Thus adding a conscious purpose would violate occam's razor. Also, the evidence to support a conscious purpose is rather weak and perhaps tainted by the anthrophic principle (among other things). But I'll still have to knit it together coherently, and provide other small tidbits to support my case...

I'm guessing you'll return before I do though
Looking forward to it

iv4fb: @wiegraf, and you're the cancer, right? Matured guy!

Where did I claim I was mature?

You have to learn to think before you post. Think out your positions, clearly, rather than spew nonsense. Else you look an slowpoke as well as a bigot. Of course if that's your objective, you're doing well.

For instance, in most situations it should be 'mature guy', not 'matured guy'. Though maybe you get away with it here.