Yet get properly bent out of shape about aborting a clump of insentient cells. Ironic isn’t it?
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Here’s a definition to consider…
Objective: not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
I’m saying that objective morality tells us the Nazis were wrong. They were wrong whether they felt they were right or not. The objectiveness rests on the fact that it was wrong regardless of their feelings or opinions. It was wrong regardless of my feelings or opinions, and yours, etc.
Evidence for the wrongness comes from the consistency and repeatability of people knowing it’s wrong. True, some suppress this knowledge. The Nazis certainly did. But suppression of the moral law for personal gain does not nullify that the law exists.
Consider the speed limit. It’s a law. When I violate it, you don’t make a case that my violation means the law was subjective, do you? I knew it was the law but violated it in spite of knowing it. Others can point to the law and rightly determine that I was in violation of it. Even if I found a group of people to say that they agree with me, suppressing their knowledge of the law, it doesn’t make the law subject to anyone’s feelings. And, again, if someone were incapacitated in some way that they could not understand the speed limit, it does not mean that the speed limit doesn’t exist or becomes subject to everyone’s own understanding of it. It just shows that an individual did not have the capacity to understand it. So these examples would represent Nazis (suppression of morals) and sociopaths (lack of understanding of morals).
Everything I’ve written above is one step in my logic for objective morals. It does not address your question of: “what about when God violates the morals?” I realize that. But let’s consider this first step first, then methodically move on to the next, shall we? I do better that way. I promise to come back to your other objection too. It’s a fair one to discuss.
Hindsight is 20/20. Had you grown up a good little Nazi you would not be making this argument. Had you grown up Muslim you would be arguing for the same god you believe in differently. Had you grown up Hindu or Buddhist you would be making different arguments. You have no basis to call Hitler amoral from an objective religious perspective. There are no objective religions that have objective Gods. The god you believe in is as subjective as every other god you could possibly believe in.
The Law is a guideline that is subject to officer discretion. The law is in no way enforced objectively and that is independent of its written form.
Next: The National Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) was a provision of the federal government of the United States 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that effectively prohibited speed limits higher than 55 miles per hour (89 km/h). The limit was increased to 65 miles per hour (105 km/h) in 1987. It was drafted in response to oil price spikes and supply disruptions during the 1973 oil crisis. Even after fuel costs began to decrease over time the law would remain in place until 1995 as proponents claimed it reduced traffic fatalities.[1][2]
So the speed limit laws are arbitrary units of speed agreed upon by the government and subject to change according to time, place, political and economic conditions, and the whims of the voters. Nothing in this makes law objective.
Demonstrate that an entire nation suppressed their morality. You appear to understand nothing at all about morality. Let’s not consider the first step. You have no grounding to discuss morality when you worship the murdering, child abusing, piece of shit contained in your Bible.
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Dear oh dear…you’ve offered no objective morality, so what on earth are you talking about? You’re repeating the same subjective opinion over and over, it’s right there underlined and emboldened, only sufficient objective evidence can demonstrate this, and you have offered nothing.
That’s just the same subjective opinion you keep repeating over and over?, Your deity is depicted in your bible committing an act of global genocide, so either that was immoral, or it is not a moral absolute, which is it?
What moral law, humans create their morals subjectively, and create laws to enforce them subjectively, this does not make them objective morals, why would it?
Wow, do you really imagine the speed limits exist independently of human opinions?
No they don’t, since a) they are themselves examples of subjective opinions like speed limits, and b) there is no evidence the Nazis lacked morality, merely that their subjective morality differed from our subjective morality.
That doesn’t make the law itself objective, only your violation of the subjective law is an objective fact. If you claim murder is immoral that is a subjective claim, if I murder someone and it is demonstrated with sufficient objective evidence, then it is an objective fact I committed murder, it is not an objective fact murder is immoral.
I have demonstrated several known logical fallacies you have used, you have ignored them completely, so please don’t lie and pretend your claims are rational when they demonstrably are not. You used a no true Scotsman fallacy above, and you have used an argumentum ad populum fallacy several times, and these have been explained, you don’t just get to skip passed these without any honest response, and then pretend your claims are rational.
Indeed not, and your claim that torturing children, and genocide are objective moral absolutes, contradicts your claim it is just or moral for a deity to set these aside arbitrarily, and commit genocide and torture children. This violates a basic principle of logic, as I explained above it violates the law of non contradiction, I even linked an explanation, and you simply ignored this.
No, that is not how logic works, and your first steps are equally as irrationally as I have demonstrated. You have failed to offer a single example of absolute morality, you have failed to offer rational arguments, and you keep repeating your subjective opinion that genocide is immoral as if tacking the word objective onto it changes this somehow?
You just ignored this, and my previous post, and simply repeated your previous subjective claims???
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This went completely unanswered? Even assuming all humans agreed, and they don’t of course, else children would not be tortured and killed, and this happens all the time.
Now since you keep ignoring this, a consensus alone does not indicate objective truth, only sufficient objective evidence can do that, it is an argumentum ad populum fallacy to make a bare appeal to numbers.
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I’m not sure if you are trying to be silly or real. When we talk about objective vs subjective reality, you have to use the right definitions. Nice try though. To be fair, if we never defined it, here is what is meant when discussing the philosophical objective vs subjective reality:
Objective:
- Existing independent of or external to the mind; actual or real.
- Based on observable phenomena; empirical.
Notice how it is external to the mind. Concepts like morality only exist in the mind which is what makes them inherently subjective. When we talk about faith in the epistemological sense, you wouldn’t use the definition “a person’s religion” because it isn’t an epistemology. Picking the wrong definition doesn’t work here since we are talking about established philosophical ideas. The whole reason why we break these two concepts apart is we can then understand their limitations.
Saying “everybody knows” is a bandwagon fallacy. If a Christian (or anyone for that matter) were to commit blasphemy in parts of the muslim world “everybody there” would think it was fine to kill or execute that person. A bunch or people knowing something doesn’t help us to actually know truth. That is why it is a fallacy.
To say that something must objectively exist because some people feel the same way doesn’t make any sense. You are basically saying that something must objectively exist because a bunch of people have the same subjective feelings about it. If everybody on earth believed that the planet was only a day old, it wouldn’t change the planet’s true age.
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I’m happy to accept that definition, but it doesn’t help, as he immediately offered a string of subjective claims:
He seems to think repeating the subjective claim it was objectively wrong, is evidence it was objectively wrong, that’s almost funny.
Exactly the point right there, if these actions are objectively moral he needs to demonstrate this independent of any human opinion, lots of luck with that.
Indeed it is, also known as an argumentum ad populum fallacy. He seems to not only have ignored this fact when it was pointed out, but is now declaring his arguments as a logical step.
Exactly so…
Again you have nailed this, the difference between subjective opinion and objective fact is the amount of objective evidence that supports the claim, and nothing to do with the number of people who accept it as true.
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Cuz you say so….oh, okay.
Yep. Otherwise there would most certainly be at least one orange politician who would be in prison right now.
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He’s moving the goal posts again. First it was absolute, then it was objective the way we normally define it, now he’s redefining it…
@christianapologist
Let’s say someone claims to me that there was a McDonalds promotion that said they sell cold fries, but doesn’t actutally have it… I then show them an ad that states that McDonald’s French Fries are “hot”, produced on their website. A logical person who cares about truth, at the very least, moves from false knowledge to ignorance if not change their mind altogether. Instead, that person now says that the promotional poster meant “hot” as in “popular”. This is them caring more about the fires being cold or their image if they are to be found wrong rather than they do about truth.
If you have to keep redefining words you are losing the argument, but that’s okay. I’m happy to be proven wrong if at the end I know truth. Once again, I don’t know how morality being objective helps your case here because you would just run into another fallacy anyway. If I were you, I would concede this point, and move to another.
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On a side note, when I ask some of my Christian friends a question like: “What would it take to stop believing in Christianity”. They’ll give me an objective answer every time, usually impossible, like “the bones of Christ”. (For our apologist friend, it’s impossible since we don’t have his DNA on file anywhere so there would be no way to know which bones were his.) If I ask them what it would take to change religions, once again, they will give an objective answer, “an angel telling me so”, “a muslim performing miracles”, etc. This is another sign of cognitive dissonance when they set the bar to something impossible to change their mind. Once again, caring about the idea being true more than truth itself.
They never say “just provide me 5 dubious subjective arguments please”. However, that always seems to be enough to believe in their current religion.
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I have always had an interest in the flood legends,as they exist in both North American, Asian, African, and European sources.
The Cosmic Hunt story traveled from Asia into Europe and North America via the land bridge (Beringia) between Asia and Alaska during the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago . . . and this led me to the idea that the flood myths may be a story about Beringia being flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.
Points that support this:
- An old world (Asia) cut off from the New World.
- The weather and climate in that part of the world has always been extreme, which is related to the “40 days and 40 nights,” etc…
- The megafauna in this part of the world was a staple of the Paleoindian and Asian diet, and these animals became extinct relatively quickly, possibly from climate change (the weather killed off the animals they needed for survival).
- There is some good evidence that Paleoindians made and used boats.
- Genetic studies have shown it likely that all Native Americans descend from about 250 individuals, which seems similar to the flood claim that all people are descended from the few survivors from a boat.
- There are many similarities between the flood myths of Native Americans vs. the Biblical/Gilgamesh (Babylonian) myths.
Points that detract from my arguments:
- I would imagine that Beringia was flooded gradually, as I don’t believe melting glaciers flooded the land bridge “overnight.” It might have even taken a few hundred years, or even longer.
- The flood myth may be better explained by legends relating to periodic flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
- The animals (in pairs and in fours) don’t seem to be relevant to Paleoindians, as they probably didn’t have any domestic animals except for dogs, and it seems unlikely (to me, at least) that they would have captured and domesticated animals for a boat ride without continuing domestication in North America.
- I do sometimes engage in wishful thinking and idle speculation.
- So many embellishments have been attached to the flood myths that it may be impossible to tease apart the historic reality vs. the later embellishments, as a kind of “signal to noise ratio” problem . . . so my arguments may be meaningless.
- While some archeological evidence may support my points . . . this evidence is (currently) rare and probably of poor quality.
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It could equally be said that the legend refers to the lost continent of Oceania between Australia and New Zealand and the many islands to the north that once formed a land bridge, equally it could refer to the the lost land of “Dogger” that was a settled area now under water between Britain and Europe.
Fact is, floods happen, none of them were world wide, all of them impacted civilisations that are now lost to memory except for the tales of the rising waters. The only survivors the embellished tales of their descendants.
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And all civilizations lived near water. Floods were as common as Gods.
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Agree with both of you.
What’s sad is that I would guess that even if there was concrete evidence that Christianity wasn’t real, 95% of Christians would just keep believing it. Obviously, for our theists sake, you can’t prove any religion isn’t real since you can’t falsify something that is unfalsifiable (all the invisible stuff). But for argument sake, you may get some thoughtful people in the religion leave, probably more along the lines of some Catholics or Episcopalians, but I bet the Evangelical community would be largely unaffected.
- Who is the group that mostly thinks the Corvid vaccine was a conspiracy? Evangelical Christians.
- What group mostly thinks the US 2020 election was stolen? Evangelical Christians.
- What group is most likely to believe in QANON? Evangelical Christians.
- Who is most likely to think that climate change isn’t real, although they could just buy the fucking equipment and measure it themselves? Evangelical Christians.
- Who believes that the orange dictator is sent by god, but he, himself is one of the most ungodly politicians? Evangelical Christians.
I could keep going…Overall, they have had a very distant relationship with reality for quite some time. Although, it did catch up with them in 2020 for a little bit. If such evidence ever did exist, they would just say it was a conspiracy created by the demonrats and toss it neatly aside in some corner. Politicians do this all the time, ignore the reality that is inconvenient; discard the facts you don’t like.
One great case study in this is the flat earth movement. I highly recommend the documentary: “Behind the Curve”. These flat earthers run good experiments and get good data back, but they choose to ignore the results. This is what faith coupled with cognitive dissonance looks like.
Spoiler: At the end they ask one of the head people in the movement if they had the evidence that the earth was round, would he keep believing it was flat? He said yes. I have had a Christian pastor tell me the same thing about leaving Christianity. They don’t care about truth, they care about their idea. Why let a little thing like proof get in the way?
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It’s shocking to see the number of humans who are unmitigated chumps. Maga demonstrates this. Evidence be damned, they are going to believe whatever they want. Are they free to do so? Sure. The problem with their idiocy, though (religion, flat earth, white supremacy, maga, etc) is that it fucks things up for others not of their ilk. It can, and does, even cause death. How dare they!
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Anyone believing morality to be anything other then subjective, need to give their heads a fucking wobble.
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Is there a limit to which the ear can satisfy the mind? The body? The tongue? The eye? The nose?
The question is moot. Senses have nothing to do with satisfaction. You are either satisfied or you are not. Life is very simple. From where does such a question come?