And you miss the point again, what you should be asking is if that standard is objectively true, and before you leap to a broad consensus and a fallacious bare appeal to numbers, your bible depicts a deity stating that killing is verboten. Then depicts it killing indiscriminately and on a global scale, so is it objectively true that killing is wrong JC, and the deity depicted in the bible is immoral? You don’t seem to have an answer here.
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Sheldon, as I’ve said, I believe a deity exists because–without one–life is a meaningless, purposeless, fatalistic farce where we simply exist, but don’t truly live. It becomes little more than “Survival of the Fittest” and who’s got the biggest club (or can holler the loudest in a debate).
No, when it comes down to it, as Jefferson said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that our Creator has endowed us with certain inalienable rights.” Even though he was a Deist, he still held theistic views: which point to design, purpose, justice and love (regardless of the time or place of one’s existence).
No true Scotsman fallacy, and justice is every bit as subjective as morality, it’s a human creation, likely the desire derived from our evolved morality, that all animals who have evolved to live in societal groups must have, otherwise societal living would be impossible of course.
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Says the guy who cannot objectively justify his beliefs, and has only personal preferences and opinions.
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Nope, that’s not what I said, Mordant: for I’m as convinced of my beliefs from an objective standpoint as you are of yours. Our difference is over how we define and measure objectivity. For me, everything in the universe–including our planet and every part of creation (including us)–points to a Maker and a Grand Design: for none of this happened by accident or coincidence.
And, that’s where we differ.
I asked for your best reason, are you really going to go with the assertion that you find the alternative depressing? I think even you can see that’s not evidence of any kind, it is the very definition of wishful thinking. Nice false dichotomy fallacy inn there as well, atheists mange to behave at least as morally as theists when measured on any level playing field, there is decades of research to support this.
This is the Thomas Jefferson who enslaved more than 610 human beings throughout the course of his life, so much for inalienable rights.
So an appeal to authority fallacy, where the authority was a slave owner, alongside it makes you feel better to deny the harsh reality of existence, are your best reasons for believing a deity exist, wow.
That was pretty edifying, now can you explain how you got form that appallingly poor reasoning for an extant deity, to Jesus being the one true god?
Still waiting for you to offer even one single objectively moral claim, that does not rest on a subjective belief, whatever can the holdup be?
[sigh] In many, many of our cases it is rather that we tried very hard, and failed, to verify the existence of someone we believed in (and very much wanted to) and had to conclude that we were wrong in that.
There are skid marks outside where I was dragged kicking and screaming out of my faith in Jesus.
You act like there is self-evident capital-T Truth and nothing else, for your position.
My observation is that the percentage of unbelievers who are that way because they weren’t exposed to religion in any significant way, are at best in the single percentages. Your views are far more considered than you think they are.
But it must be thus, because it’s far more comfortable for you to imagine that your views are unassailable and that therefore anyone rejecting them is trying to be a libertine or reactionary or deliberately obtuse, rather than having deeply considered good & sufficient reasons.
Oh I am sure all those little girls carted off by adult Hebrews for their
pleasure would be feeling that “objective justice, mercy and love” …what nonsense is spouted by our lates apologist.
I am coming of the opinion that this chew toy is becoming bedraggled and used up…
I’m still waiting on you JC and will continue to wait until I receive your honest answer.
The question isn’t a technical, complex or difficult one that you need to go away and research. It simply has to do with the openness or closedness of minds. All that you need to answer the question can be read in this thread and can also be found in your heart and in your mind. All you have to do is to honestly reveal the openness or closedness of your mind by looking at what’s here and then telling me your answer.
But if you’re going to engage with Sheldon, Mordant and others in preference to answering me, then please do the honest thing and tell me that you won’t answer my question. I encourage you to do this because I’m incapable of being deflected, dodged or diverted from this. Fyi, I was a member of another forum before I joined here and stalemates like the one you and I find ourselves in sometimes ran for up to twenty pages before the Moderators locked the thread.
So, please understand that I won’t be giving up. You will answer my question honestly or it will recorded here that you refused to do so, either by stating that you wouldn’t or by just leaving me hanging with my question unanswered.
The choice is yours.
So, I ask you again. Please answer my question honestly.
Thank you,
Walter.
Yeah that abstraction works, until it doesn’t. I’m glad in a way that it hasn’t broken for you. Yet.
Your views are a product of sufficient luck and privilege, and the best you will do when any of that runs out is exemplified by Job. Who eventually came around, as he had the advantage of a God that actually (finally) spoke to him. But as my sect taught that God stopped doing miracles or speaking directly to people once the “canon of scripture was complete”, I could not even hope for that.
The other piece of this is that once I was out of the “reality distortion field” a LOT more made sense and my beliefs about reality lined up much better with lived experience and now I would not trade my position for yours in a million years. Bare-metal reality isn’t pretty sometimes but at least I have some clue what it IS. And it might surprise you that there’s no shortage of beauty or hope for me either. My hope is just grounded in what is rather than what I used to wish were true.
Mordant, since I don’t know you, there’s no way for me to know why you chose to be “dragged kicking and screaming out of your faith in Jesus.” Was it because of what you saw in other “professing” Christians? Was it because of some horrible things that happened to you and/or your family with regards to the problem of evil and suffering?
I don’t know–and I’m not asking you to share or explain (unless you choose you).
But, I know this: in those times when I, too, have doubted most everything I believe and even reached the point of abject despair, I’ve always come back to the simple faith/trust of a child trusting a parent: and, in this case, that parent is the One Who made me.
My faith/trust in Him isn’t dependent upon my feelings or some type of fairytale make-believe; instead, it’s rooted in what I know to be true from experience and observation. And, in reality, there’s nothing left to believe in if I reject what I know to be true: for the world becomes a cold, meaningless mess where we’re little more than blind men taking ahold of one part of elephant and then trying to describe what it looks like.
As I said, in reality, we’re all “seekers of truth" when it comes down to it; but, the question is “How will we know when we find it:” because, if truth is relative and subjective, then it’s really not Truth at all. It’s still just a matter of opinion and personal preference.
Worth searching for Project Steve, it is tongue in cheek of course, but nonetheless puts their list in the correct context. Project Steve | National Center for Science Education
How apt, you’re leaving us with a false dichotomy fallacy. Now ask yourself, why is what Hitler did wrong, and see if the answer is subjective or objective, and then ask yourself if it was objectively wrong, why you worship a deity that committed global genocide according to your own bible?
If you ever learn to think for yourself, you will be able to examine beliefs and claims critically and objectively, but as long as you blindly repeat the superstitious claims you have been indoctrinated into, that will remain impossible. So you have a choice the warm comfort blanket of subjective religious delusion, or the sometimes stark truth of objective reality.
Correct, though the random capitals are pointless, and little bit nuts, and even if you did stumble into it fallaciously. Now ask yourself, if what Hitler did was not objectively wrong, would I still object to it, and why? Then look up metaethical moral subjectivism, moral relativism, and moral emotivism, and learn the topic at least a little bit. Your claims will be less dogmatic and less embarrassing hopefully.
One last thought, if murdering unarmed civilians on a massive scale is objectively wrong, then the allied bombings were immoral, do you really believe that?
Do take your time…moral relativism can fuck with the best minds, and your mind has grown flabby from all the Kool aid you’ve been ingesting.
Interesting analogies, Sheldon, but still judgmental statements rooted in your own opinion–which doesn’t make them true. No one needs to tell us that what Hitler did was wrong, even as we know rape is wrong, stealing is wrong, etc. It’s easy to try and justify what we do or don’t do based on our own standards of right-and-wrong; but, at the end of the day “The end doesn’t justify the means.”
And, again, that’s where an objective Standard of Morality comes in that governs all of us; our problem is our refusal to believe that and adhere to it because we, by nature, want to be “God for a day” and sing “I Did it My Way.”
I’m still waiting on your honest answer to question, JC.
Please provide it.
Wrong question, why do I think what Hitler did was immoral, is the correct question, and in your case, how can I claim Hitler’s genocide was objectively immoral, but your deity’s biblical global genocide was not. If you want to examine this objectively try Googling moral relativism, if you want to dishonestly tap dance around it waving away the cognitive dissonance Goggle William Lane Craig.
Take the red pill JC, but only if you are genuinely seeking the truth.
I know, Walter, I’m just avoiding you. hahahah 
You’re correct, Sheldon, in rephrasing the question so it’ll ask “Do I think what Hitler did was immoral?” and the answer is, without question, a resounding “Yes!!” Not because I believe it and not just because the existence of a Deity demands it: all because it’s an objective Moral Standards that governs every society. So, again, the question “How did we come to instinctively know that such actions are wrong?”
No, you are avoiding an honest and critical examination of the facts, in favour of a belief you find comforting, Walter is just trying to help you see this.
I’m prepared to take that as a serious reply, JC.
So that I can move on from this logjam to discuss other things with you.
If so, let it be recorded that you avoided answering my question.
That news will then be carried forward into all other discussions with you.
People will know that you sometimes choose to avoid answering questions honestly.
Thank you,
Walter.