Imagine my surprise when I heard that atheism was based on a search for truth. We all know that’s false.
Let’s examine a couple recent examples.
Patrick claimed that I did not provide any links.
You’ll note the complete absence of any links…
I provided links. Patrick lied.
KN claimed that Immanuel Kant was an atheist philosopher.
KN lied,
Patrick demands morals of others while denying that there are any objective moral obligations.
Why do atheists care about what is true and what is immoral?
Why do atheists attack the object of their ignorance?
Would you also ban them for having bigger boy pants than you? Do you know we don’t ban? Because your ideas are shit and uncompetitive with good ideas.
There are about half-a-billion (nontheistic) Buddhists in the world, and about half-a-dozen white evangelical Christians who evince any awareness of their existence.
Why do atheists care about what is true and what is immoral?
Is Mung ignorant of the role of morality in Thomas Nagel’s atheistic argument that “the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false”?
Oh, you just argue for an objective morality, but you don’t believe it exists. That’s cute. How can something nonexistent imply we ought to do something?
I think you didn’t have a response so you elected instead to go for an insult.
What’s it like now knowing your morality is subjective?
Yes.
It is not a property of the object about which the idea is held.
No.
No, not correct.
Outside of the minds of sentient beings, yes, it does not exist there.
No, ideas exist in the minds of sentient beings.
Yes.
Oh? Who are these moral subjectivist physicalists who think they both exist and don’t exist? It’s clearly not me, since I definitely believe ideas exist in the minds of sentient beings.
.. as ideas in the minds of sentient beings. Yes.
In fact I don’t know of one (purpose) that isn’t (subjective).
Yes, and nowhere else.
We can’t just assume whatever the fuck we want. Or well, I guess we can, but then we’re being guilty of a basic fallacy in logic. If you don’t care about that, I don’t know what kind of logical argument to use to make you care about it.
You need to show that your morality is objective, rather than just assert it.
Why not? Seems to work just fine for lots of people. Take myself. I don’t murder, steal, rape or lie.
Please demonstrate these “necessary logical conclusions” with some sound arguments.
It’s not an assumption. It’s an evidentially derived conclusion.
What does it mean to act as if morality is subjective? Your entire line of argument seems to be framed by the assumption that being a moral subjectivist automatically entails a disposition to commit moral atrocities. Yet that is in stark contrast to my experience. There are many moral subjectivists and they aren’t sociopaths or commit sociopathic acts. And there are many moral objectivists that DO commit atrocities.
In other words: Your concern is a fantasy and your solution is provenly ineffective.
Demonstrate the hypocricy.
The only equivalence there would be the rather uninteresting statement that they both operate on subjective moral principles. That doesn’t mean we have to think their acts or thoughts are morally equal. For example, we could simply agree to certain subjective moral principles and then evaluate their acts and intentions in light of that.
Since it isn’t assumed, but a conclusion derived from evidence and logic, it’s not one arrived at because of some desired outcome or point. It’s just one of those unpleasant and inconvenient facts of reality we have to get over and learn how to live with.
William J Murray:
Rumraket:
The same William J. Murray wrote this:
You crack me up, William.
William,
Time to bring back the pimply-faced teenager:
You’ve been clinging, literally for years, to the misconception that
The pimply-faced teenager is “a sentient creator”. Do you bite the bullet and accept that the inhabitants of his basement universe have an objective moral obligation to have sex for his pleasure? Or do you recognize, as rational people do, that the purposes of a creator simply reflect his subjective desires?
Sigh. It’s like watching a perpetual rerun of a chess game. Ends in stalemate. Spoiler alert. Oh, sorry, should have put that first!
Allan,
Ends in checkmate, actually, though William can never bring himself to admit that.
He just goes away for a while and then comes back to play the very same game, ending in his defeat, once again.
I think the obnoxious ones are pretty obvious. It’s Mr. A’s blog and he’s free to do what he wants. I don’t have a personal relationship with him.
Keiths asks:
Bite what bullet? If god was a different kind of god, then different things would be good and different things would be evil, (or nothing would be good or evile) and we would have been created with a sensory capacity that would, when functioning and interpreted correctly, register different things as good and different things as evil. That would be an aspect of our innate nature as guided by our conscience and reason.
Something I’d like to set straight here: I think that every ensouled human is actually an aspect of god, like the old “drop of the ocean” from eastern mysticism. I’ve change my phraseology from saying that, in my view, god created us for a purpose to god created us with a purpose because that better frames my position. However, I think “created us” is another misleading phrase, because god isn’t actually “creating” our soul in any manufacturing sense. It might be better to say that we are each dreamed or projected avatars of god animated into individual physiological forms.
So, thinking that god is creating us like some science experiment for some reason frames my perspective incorrectly. Using the analogy, god is dreaming himself into a dream world as set of limited individuals in individual situations with various personalities to serve a purpose, that purpose IMO (as best I can express it) being to maximize the opportunity for widely variant individual experience ultimately resulting in maximum love & joy (as base terms for a wide variety of positive experiences).
(I think my explanation/analogy here is very limited, because I hold that ultimately what god is and what god is doing may be beyond any capacity to formally describe or explain.)
The god that may not exist and you don’t think it matters if it exists or not? How does that make sense?
But it’s within your power to know that you were created for a purpose nonetheless. It’s a bit like objective morality. You can’t tell us anything about it not list it’s precepts but we must act as if it exists anyway. You don’t know what the purpose you were created for but you know there must be a purpose.
Is there anything else you know but can’t defend? It’s very convenient that you ask others to accept what you cannot describe or explain but then denigrate them or delete their comments when they don’t.
Nothing there precludes you telling Mr A who to ban.
I think I may start a thread on his claim that aliens abducted his child overnight while still in the womb. I’m skeptical of such a claim and I’d be interested in hear William defend it. Especially explaining how he knew it had happened at all.
Or is it another tale like objective morality – we just have to accept as is with no detail or explanation.
Well, that’s a nice self-serving narrative, but I don’t think that’s why you guys don’t ban. IMO, you don’t ban here simply because being banned is the reason this site was formed and populated. It’d be pretty difficult to start banning people here AND maintain a self-righteous moral outrage over UD banning people. So, you guys are kind of emotionally committed to not banning people. Your sense of superiority over Mr. A kind of depends on not banning people, dontchathink?
Sure you’ve never.
Here’s a thread called ‘Why Deny Objective Morality’ where you say:
Physical laws exist. Objective morality exists. It’s clear what you are saying.
Seems clear to me. Objective morality has a source. It exists.
Again, you can’t prove it exists you just assumed it does. And if you think it does then you are claiming it exists!
Perhaps you should clarify matters with the folks at UD who seem to be arguing on that thread that it does indeed actually exist. I’m sure they’d love to know how you’d played them.
It depends on much more then that. ID’s current leader is a bankruptcy lawyer who also takes on cases to suppress the rights of gay people. But sure, it’s all about banning people…
Yeah, because I tell Mr. A what to do and he does it. That’s how things work over at UD.
Citation please.
Again, nothing there precludes you indicating who you’d want banned. You get what you want and think your hands stay clean.
Anyway, about that overnight baby alien abduction….
keiths,
I think both parties depart thinking they have won.
I mean, I think the ‘objectivist’ argument, whoever tries to push it, is a crock. But if there is no end to proceedings beyond the limited stamina of the participants, stalemate it is.
OMagain,
There is a difference between arguing that a proposition must be logically assumed in order for one’s worldview to correspond with behavior and in order to avoid unacceptable but necessary rational conclusions stemming from the alternative, and arguing that the proposition factually exists.
I’ve reiterated many times that the arguments I make are about the logic. It’s not my problem that you’re apparently incapable of correcting your erroneous inferences.
I’m not going to make an evidence-based case that objective morality is factually existent because I don’t think that case is worth trying make. Like a non-solipsistic universe, it’s just something you must assume and cannot be proven.
Claiming that morality is subjective is similar to claiming solipsism; you can claim it’s true, but you cannot act as if it is true. Why claim something is true when virtually every second of every day you act as if it is not true?
I agree. KF is ver obnoxious. As is StephenB, BA77 and many others. But they seem to be immune to Barry’s heavy hand.
But you certainly are willing and happy to take advantage of Barry’s controlling ways.
I don’t understand what you’re implying. What do you mean by “clean hands”? I’ve already said I have publicly asked Mr. A to ban people. If I had done so privately, why wouldn’t I say I have asked him privately? I don’t understand what you think the distinction is, why one would be different from the other. If you want to think I’ve privately asked Mr. A to ban people, go ahead. If I had that kind of relationship with Mr. A, I certainly would privately email him to ask him to ban certain people I find to be repetitively obnoxious.
I honestly don’t understand your perspective here, but then, when I have been banned from sites on the internet, I just leave and go somewhere else or do something else because I understand my presence at any such privately-run site is at the pleasure of the people who run it, and it is their right to ban me for no reason at all if they want. I don’t run around butt-hurt about some perceived moral injustice and build a shrine site to demonstrate and continue bleating my moral outrage.
But then, as I’ve said, I’m not as moral as others, so I’m probably a quart or two low on moral outrage.
Who did that then?
Your audience at UD does not understand that distinction.
I act as if morality is subjective every second of the day. Do you dispute that?
Perhaps the term should be collaborator?
William J. Murray,
Being morally superiority to Arrington is not a high bar to go over. Who amongst us has had BBB complaints about threatening phone calls. Who amongst us has defended a school’s decision to prevent the year’s valedictorian from giving the traditional valedictorian address simply because the kid is gay.
So, yes, I feel comfortable in making the claim that I am morally superior to Barry.
You don’t actually make those arguments, you just state things you claim are facts where one follows naturally from the others. These ‘arguments’ have already been dismantled but you don’t respond to those posts. Funny that. IMO you don’t really understand what ‘logic’ means. It’s not just words where it seems one thing ‘logically’ follows from the previous.
Anyway, about that overnight baby alien abduction….
Acartia,
Perhaps you don’t realize this, but those guys are on Barry’s side of the argument. Are you utterly unaware that it is human nature to protect those on your side or in your tribe and attack those who are not? Mr. A is not under any moral or legal obligation to treat everyone at that site the same when it comes to their “obnoxiousness”.
I mean, it’s really only common sense and common courtesy that if you go to a site as a member of the antagonist position (antagonist to those who run the site), you should bring your A game in terms of being civil, polite, and respectful, and you should expect the home team will be given far more leniency than the visiting team because that’s just the way the real world actually works.
If you go to UD thinking you can act like a regular there who bats for the home team and be treated the same as that regular, you might prove to yourself that the moderators at UD don’t live up to some ideal of human perfection and, when you get banned, feel some sense of satisfaction that you’ve … what, demonstrated them to be normal human beings? Yes, Virginia, the world is unjust and humans are imperfect. They extend to those on their side leniency they do not extend to antagonists. WOW! Have you learned that life lesson yet?
No, I suppose not. Some of you guys kept going back and kept getting banned apparently in some effort to martyr yourself for the cause of repeatedly revealing some behavior you find to be morally abhorrent, which is a big fat piece of hypocrisy for self-described moral subjectivists.
Imagine someone who claims that morality is subective and that absolute truths do not exist engaged in an attempt to reveal some truth about the supposed immoral behavior of some other person. It’s like a solipsist trying to prove to someone else that solipsism is true; whom is he trying to prove it to??
If we have no free will, and if there is no absolute truth, and if morality is subjective, all your efforts and words and outrage can have no meaningful value whatsoever. You might as well be leaves shaking furiously in a wind, rustling and colliding, a tempest of physically caused sound and fury, signifying nothing. You’re just doing what you must do, physically speaking.
If not, they have never argued with me about it or misrepresented my argument (or at least I’ve never seen it). If they had, I would have corrected them.
ROFL. They are on your side, in the main, so they don’t challenge you like you get challenged here.
Perhaps I’ll get all butt-hurt about some perceived moral injustice and sock up and make sure everyone understands what you are saying next time you bring this up (I’m sure it won’t be long, you seem to have a limited playlist).
That’s the difference between you and I. I subjectively chose to be honest and not argue for things that I do not believe to be factual. I could, of course, be wrong, and often am. This means having to admit an error but I prefer to be honest with myself and not hide behind some rationale that I am not wrong because I never claimed that something I passionately and repeatedly argue for is fact.
Funny how William characterises people who have been banned from UD for making logical, respectful arguments as ‘all butt-hurt about some perceived moral injustice’. It goes some way to showing how their sense of superiority shields them from actual criticism.
When you can dismiss interlocutors as merely butt-hurt why bother listening to their actual arguments at all?
For all your claims of logical arguments, I missed how you logically demonstrated one thing follows from another there.
And lets face it, your words and outrage have no meaningful value currently, regardless of any of those things being true or not. UD is the last hold out of the IDCreationists and you are one of the rats who’ve not yet jumped ship (seen Dembski or Behe lately?).
Generally, arguments made solely on the basis of logical and grammatical consistency are little more than mental masturbation. They make you feel good but are not productive unless supported by evidence.
There is a link I think between what William does and what FMM does. Only William can interpret what William writes correctly. Only FMM can interpret what the bible says correctly.
When William appears to be making an argument that objective morality exists, he’s not really. When the bible makes an argument for the best way to treat your slaves, well they are not really slaves.
It’s like there an in infinite number of fall back positions that can be taken depending on the response given to the claim. The plain reading is always insufficient.
I didn’t say it was my child, Omagain. I said that my wife’s unborn child disappeared from her womb concurrently with her having an uncharacteristic “nightmare” (experience) similar to those reported by many supposed abductees. She went to the doctor that day because she felt it was gone and the dr. told her he couldn’t explain it, it looked like there had never been a fetus there to begin with.
That, coupled with my own experiences and other evidence, leads me to think that what they call “alien abductions” actually occur. It’s not something I spend any time thinking about, though.
For those wishing to peruse that thread:
I believe William has already been down that route and now prefers arguments that cannot be disproven.
And his ‘evidence’ has disconfirmed his point anyway. He accuses me of acting as if morality is objective. I confirm that I do not. I’m aware it’s solely a human construct and one that is specific to this time and place.
And yet apparently I act as I believe morality is objective and nothing I can say to William will apparently disabuse him of that error.
So it’s even worse. When one is making a logical argument and a cornerstone of that argument has been shown to be incorrect, what is the moral thing to do William?
OMagain said:
No. As I’ve said before, KN and others here have interpreted what I’ve argued correctly and do seem quite capable of understanding the nature of my arguments. Most everyone at UD seems to understand the nature of my arguments, or at least they don’t write stuff back that makes it evident they are mistaking the kind of argument I am making. If they did, I’d correct them.
Well let’s look at what you actually said:
Here we have ‘her son’.
Here we have ‘the fetus’
You clearly meant ‘her son’ was ‘the fetus’ that disappeared overnight. If I say I went for an overnight stay it means I came back, not stayed forever.
Now you say
Except that’s not what you actually said at all.
Well, there was your mistake. You should have gone to that faith healer!
Will you be responding to KN’s dismantling of your ‘argument’ then?
But why bother, you’d only have to re-correct them when you change your mind again.