WTF is this forum coming to? Awesome discussions on life, the universe & everything!

The contradiction is that in your "absolute" moral framework, moral values of good and bad are not absolute!

Furthermore, the use of the word "harm" is arguably circular because one definition of harm is "moral injury, wrong, evil." LOL.

 

Morality is a human psychological affect- it is a thought process, it is not an invisible force like gravity. You do make me laugh with this extremely poor bit of reasoning constantly- 'morality exists separate of life because life is separate from morality'. What was that about circular reasoning again...?

There is no 'might'- you obviously watched those videos with your fingers in your ears singing la la la I'm right you;re wrong the whole time; anyone capable of critical thinking and listenign to reasoned arguments would disagree with your view point.

They hold water perfectly- they invalidate every possible argument you have & can come up with, so you just keep ranting about 'oh noes, they are fake and gays, my invisible old man morality story am teh only correctest answer'.

You do have to prove the existence of god in order to validate your claims; you cannot, so you can't & won't- instead you opt to try and discredit perfectly reasonable counter arguments which rubbish your beliefs. Until you can come up with a compelling argument that isn't based on personal belief, you will not convince anyone.

Oops, you just played the 'offensive' card; you lose. You don't like what I'm saying because it offends your beliefs...

See: my last post- the notion of an all powerful being who needs mortals to do his dirty work is laughable- christian faith is a joke, hence why church attendances are in decline & the church is coming under greater and greater attack; people can see it for what it is, just another money making club where old men will try to cover up eachothers crimes.

 

I think he is offended that your being an ass. You can challenge someones beliefs in a reasoned, adult manner or you can point, shout and deliberately try and belittle your opponent. Your doing the latter

 

Works for me.

I give up though, it is a pointless task trying to argue with a religious person as the strength of their conviction ( not for for child molestation, different kind of conviction ) is greater than their ability to think logically & coherently. It doesn't matter how bat-poop silly the notion of god is, they are too thoroughly convinced to hear any other viewpoint which does not agree with their own, even in-spite of overwhelming evidence & logical understanding of how the universe actually works, and works without the need for their to a be an invisible driving force which they feel the urge to worship.



I'm done, feel free to disagree with me & rubbish my conclusions all you want, your own conclusions are still, and will always be based on believes with no solid evidence.

 

Dead wrong - I've learned a lot from specofdust, Nexxo, asura etc.; they have all made me think (and continue to do so). You haven't made me think once, and that perhaps is why you have a chip on your shoulder; you desperately want to challenge me philosophically but you cannot, so instead you hurl insults in my direction.

If your conduct is not an infringement of the forum rules, I really don't know what is.

 

The way I explained it they are absolute. Raping someone is wrong. Killing someone is wrong. Killing a rapist in self-defence is wrong, but the wrong is committed by the rapist, forcing the person to commit the act in self-defence. See?

Do we have to go there again? I already explained how I defined evil and the rationale behind it. No circular reasoning: first axiom. Feel free to disagree, but if you cannot move beyond this first fundamental then that's where we'll have to agree to disagree and any further debate is pointless.

While you are picking SuicideNeil up on tone, I'm not sure if your response of "LOL " is much different. Just sayin'.

 

If you can do it, so can I.

 

SuicideNeil, I don't have an issue with your beliefs, or that you think mine are stupid, it's merely your manner while stating them, you're coming across as quite rude.

 

I didn't see you explain it though - in the example I presented, why would it be considered "wrong" to murder a rapist if by doing so you are doing society a favour? You said the people who murder the rapist "harm" him... but if you can execute the rapist in such a way that he feels no pain, and assuming (for the sake of argument) he has no family or friends to lament his passing, who is harmed? From the picture of morality that you painted I can only see something "moral" happening here since nothing harmful is done, but murder is still committed.

The problem with your definition of evil and your rationale behind it remains: it's still subjective, because you are the one who chooses the definition. Any naturalistic definition of morality (or good and evil) is made by people based on perception/function and is therefore relative. The only way you can have absolute and inherent good or bad is if an external entity defines them - that way it is the very definition, not simply the source, that makes the definitions absolute and inherent. For the morality to be immutable, the entity that gives the morality must also be immutable.

 

Oh come on, it was tongue-in-cheek... trying to lighten the mood, and I guess I failed. Seriously, I even put a smiley in there. Is that an infantile gibe, or an abusive remark, or a mockery of what you believe? *head in hands*

Sometimes I don't know why I bother. You gave him a warning before, and did absolutely nothing the second (and third, and fourth) time he (IMO) overstepped the mark.

If we can't have a little lighthearted humour in this thread (which is being branded as "bad tone"), I'm out.

To make out that I'm being pulled back in line for the same kind of behaviour as SuicideNeil is utterly ridiculous, and I'm sure others in this thread would agree.

Just sayin'.

 

The rapist is harmed (I'm quite sure that he really doesn't want to die). The person killing him is harmed (by the rapist), by being forced to commit a (to them) psychologically harmful act.

No argument on the inherent aspect, but such morality does not exist (and I would argue cannot exist), and you have been unable to prove that it does. You believe that it does, basically because you think it should exist. Somewhere.

As for the immutability: been there, argued that. If the first axiom defines evil = harmful, and what is harm is determined by immutable natural laws, then by definition evil is immutable.

OK, sorry if I overreacted, no need to go off in a sulk now. SuicideNeil is already being 'moderated' by the members taking part in this thread (which is how I prefer it, if at all possible). But if you hold yourself to a higher standard, well, then you got to live up to it.

 

Video =/= cartoon, just sayin'.

I'll leave the philosophical debate to the pros; I'm challenging you on much more basic issues which you have yet to post any kind of convincing counter point to. So I say again- basing your argument on a belief rather than evidence is not going to convince anyone that there is a God. Belief = opinion without proof.

My conduct has is not in breach of any rules- I have not launched any person attacks on you as a person; you come across as highly intelligent to me as I said before. I only take issue with your 'religion' and delusional dedication & defence of it.

 

Yeah, well, calling someone's opinion "delusional" is really just another way of calling them crazy. Telling someone that they are bright but nuts is hardly a reasoned argument, more of an ad hominem attack. Must do better to earn those credibility points, I'm afraid.

Edit: and if you think cartoons cannot cover serious subjects, check out When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs, Walz with Bashir by Ari Fohlman or Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Or if your attention span is a bit short, just the first 10 minutes of Up, which is (supposedly) a children's cartoon. You'll cry. Seriously.

 

@ Nexxo,

OK, I'm with you now - no inherent good or bad. Perhaps we have reached an impasse after all. The sticking point for me is the meaning of moral values as opposed to their function - they can be functional without meaning, but they don't really exist if they are not inherent. I still get the feeling that you're trying to straddle two mutually exclusive concepts.

For example, subjectivists hold that "moral" and "immoral" are man-made distinctions that exist in our minds but not in nature; all that nature can show us is our behaviours and their consequences, both of which are non-moral. The consistency here is that good and bad don't exist even nominally because they are accepted to be illusory and therefore unnecessary. I don't quite follow how one can infer a meaningful morality from the exact same premise.

And I'm not sulking, just very tired - my apologies.

@ SuicideNeil,

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything - that seems in fact to be your agenda. I have made no derogatory claims about any worldviews and I respect other people's beliefs; what I want is simply to debate with like-minded people who are happy to see where the debate goes. Launching headfirst into the "you're delusional" foray is always fruitless.

As other members have said, you don't have to attack a person to be disrespectful - I don't think the mods should tolerate anti-religious flaming, but that's their prerogative.

 

Neil; just as Hipoz's input was harming Lenny et all's arguments, at first - though he did back of and straighten out in the course of the debate, your arguments are harming the counterargument. To my mind, what you are currently doing is worse than Hipoz (yes despite his obsession with homosexual monkey intercourse) as you aren't actually injecting anything new into the debate, simply (mostly) picking on a christian god who isn't really being questioned at the moment. The nature of deity(s) may come around at some point but trying to force the issue is getting you nowhere, as Lenny stated, it has been the death of many a previous debate, and this one is proving too fruitful to throw out so early in it's life. Therefore, we're mostly just ignoring you.

Lenny; inclusion in that short list - high accolades indeed, my humble thanks and without turning this into a but kissing orgy, there have been many, many interesting and thought provoking posts throughout this thread.

Are we all just holding our breath visa the m***z return issue and have I just burst some inviolate bubble? And is he-who-shall-not-be-named's return proof of an all seeing spaghetti monster in the sky, or simply some lesser miracle?

 

You're correct, there's a large difference between them, though it's the opposite of what you're implying. A cartoon (in the sense of an animated film or short) is a narrative form whereas a video is only a collection of visual information. It may be a video of a film, or a cartoon, or it just might be this. At first glance I'd take a cartoon over a video any day unless I got further information of what each was. Each should be judged on the content, not the form or medium. Which is where you should be looking: in what ways do you think the narrative portrayed by Futurama isn't a valid reference, and in what ways do you think your is?

 

I'm merging them, I suppose; to me the meaning is in their function.

 

Or, if you dont mind the occasional tentacle rape (you think I'm joking, but i have actually seen it used as a plot device in a serious work), some anime covers some quite serious stuff, Evangelion for example.

 

*puts on sensible cap for a moment*

By that reasoning, christians are indeed irrational and illogical...

I'd say more like 1-2 times a day- it's not a miracle, it's biology...

But seriously though, to call everything* a miracle just because we don't understand it is rather naive; I could take a match or cigarette lighter back in time a couple centuries and people would call it a miracle, or accuse me of being a witch or in league with the devil. In the modern day we all know how a match or lighter works however so it very much not a miracle, just basic chemistry or physics in action. From a christian stand point, 'miracles' are attributed to god; from a scientists stand point, not so much. From a lay-persons standpoint, I'd consider the evidence before jumping to conclusions.

Okay, I know it was a weak retort to say cartoons aren't valid for backing up a view point, and that episode did really make me think too, but the 'cop-out' element of the argument ( for or against the existence of god and why the world is how it is even with his presence ) is undeniable in my eyes.

*removes sensible cap*

 

To those with faith:

"Why has God not revealed himself to me (or Nexxo, Spec, Neil, Porkins etc)?"

We're feeling left out here.