Atheistic Double Standard?

[1robin]

No ego here, folks. Move along. Nothing to see. It's all perfectly objective in my subjectivity.




Just wow. First of all, Hitler and Stalin were just about as far as you can get to being humanists. it is also *quite* clear that neither were working for human well-being, but instead were working purely for their own egos and their own power.



No, it is subjective, period. In fact, it is a figment of your imagination, which is about as subjective as you can get.

Our discussion has been placed on hold by me until such time as I can confer with forum staff about a specific issue.

 

[1robin]

What? You can't be serious.

MY subjective opinion corresponds to objective fact, therefore yours cannot. My subjective assessment of you could probably be considered objectively negative.

What on Earth are you talking about? You post sounds like incoherent psychobabble.

 

[Polymath257]

Our discussion has been placed on hold by me until such time as I can confer with forum staff about a specific issue.

There has been a server problem leading to duplicate postings today.

 

[ArtieE]

Nope, disregarding other is something you do not like, because you don't like the result.

That does not make it objectively moral. It just makes it contradictory to your preference, which basically means that morality equals whatever you prefer.

LOL You just said that the goal of God's objective morality was "To create a just world, with far less suffering than we experience." And that is what I prefer. So what I prefer is the same as the goal of your objective morality.

 

[1robin]

What theory? Where have I ever said that "epilepsy explains all claim to supernatural experience"?

There's a lot of online information about temporal lobe epilepsy and religious experiences. Just use Google. Here's a good article.
Transcendent Experience

I said I had a personal experience with God (which would also accurately describe any personal claim to miracles). You responded:

This sounds like temporal lobe epilepsy. If any reader of this thread comes across a person who suddenly has religious experiences or shows signs of hyper religiosity please advice them to seek medical help. These could be symptoms of disease or injury of the brain.

The rates of temporal lobe epilepsy and every other kooky naturalistic explanation for events which only the person having the experience has access to, occur at such low rates that even if you tripled them they wouldn't even dent the claims of religious experience. They remain only a desperate attempt to deny the inconvenient fact that billions of claims to supernatural events have been made. Not to mention the fact that many those making these personal claims go on to live radically changed lives (for the better) despite persecution, hardship, and even death without retracting their claims.

If your not going to own up to your own claims why should I bother with them? Either accept your overstep (instead of rationalizing it or trying to misdirect the discussion from it) or our discussion will not last much longer.

 

[Polymath257]

Nope, disregarding other is something you do not like, because you don't like the result.

That does not make it objectively moral. It just makes it contradictory to your preference, which basically means that morality equals whatever you prefer. Find me something in nature that shows us that hum well being is the goal for objective morality. I will make it even easier think of anything that could happen, even a theoretical action that could take place which would actually be objectively evil. Without appealing to the supernatural.

Since I know it will be required let me post what descriptions of what objective morality is.

1. Let's start with what objective means given the word’s versatility. In philosophy, objective refers to existence apart from perception. An object independent of perception does not change with our feelings, interpretations, or prejudices. Applied to moral values; if they are objective, then they are discovered, not invented. Contrast this with subjective moral values which change from person to person, culture to culture, etc. If morality is objective, it is reasonable to ask: What is the mind-independent basis for objective morality and is this basis sufficiently binding? In other words, it is not enough to show some external ground for morality and then subjectively link that grounding with obligation. Obligation to a particular ethical system must transcend personal preference and also have some significant grounding in the object of perception.
apologetics.net | What is objective morality?

2. By “objective” morality we mean a system of ethics which universally pertains irrespective of the opinions or tastes of human persons: for example, the holocaust was morally wrong irrespective of what Hitler and the Nazis believed about it, and it would have remained morally wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and compelled everyone into compliance with their values.
Moral Argument

3. A proposition is objective if its truth value is independent of the person uttering it. A fact is objective in the same way. For morality to be objective, moral propositions such as "Killing is bad", "Stealing is bad", etc... need to be true independently of the person who is stating them. Moral statements are basically statements of value. Some value statements are clearly subjective: "Tabasco flavored ice cream tastes good" can be true for me, but false for you.
What is objective morality?

4. “Objective” means “independent of people’s (including one’s own) opinion.”
Read more: “Objective” or “Absolute” Moral Values? | Reasonable Faith

5. And finally the one I use the most. Malum in se (plural mala in se) is a Latin phrase meaning wrong or evil in itself. The phrase is used to refer to conduct assessed as sinful or inherently wrong by nature, independent of regulations governing the conduct. It is distinguished from malum prohibitum, which is wrong only because it is prohibited.

The criteria you described in your post fail every test for objective truth.

You have posted this multiple times. We got it the first time. And the second. And the third.

It is getting to be close to spam.

 

[ArtieE]

I said I had a personal experience with God (which would accurately describe any personal claim to miracles. You responded:

This sounds like temporal lobe epilepsy. If any reader of this thread comes across a person who suddenly has religious experiences or shows signs of hyper religiosity please advice them to seek medical help. These could be symptoms of disease or injury of the brain.

Yes that's exactly what I responded. And is what I wrote true or false? Be very very careful how you answer that question because anybody can look up temporal lobe epilepsy, religious experiences and hyper religiosity and learn for themselves...

 

[1robin]

And people who aren't Christians all think they are morally perfect and won't admit they're not?

In my experience (which would be a data set in the tens of thousands) they do not do as at even remotely at the same rate. It is hard to admit you stand condemned by Godless ethics merely based on social fashion and preference. It's much easier to see we fail the absolute morality laid out by God than the socio relative by anyone of the 6 billion people on earth.

I do not mean the person who admits they sometime make mistakes, I mean the kind of divine sinfulness and condemnation that produces repentance before God and the acceptance of God's provision for our universal moral insanity.

 

[1robin]

What about human theists?

If God does not exist then the human theists would be acting within the same subjective preference based ethics as the aliens. Though the humans and aliens would probably have different ethics, without God, neither would be objective.

 

[ArtieE]

For your information:

"The surgical treatment of chronic epilepsies is increasing rapidly. Here we report the histopathologic findings in 216 consecutive surgical specimens of patients with chronic pharmacoresistant temporal lobe epilepsy. In 75 cases (34.7%) there were tumors, all but two of which were of low histopathological grade (WHO grade I or II). The most common tumors were gangliogliomas (34 cases), pilocytic astrocytomas (17 cases), oligodendrogliomas (9 cases), fibrillary astrocytomas (6 cases), and dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumors (6 cases)."
Surgical Pathology of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Experience with 216 Cases | Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology | Oxford Academic

Spirituality and religion in epilepsy.
Spirituality and religion in epilepsy. - PubMed - NCBI

Please if somebody around you suddenly start having religious conversion experiences or displays hyper religiosity get them to a doctor.

 

[1robin]

My moral code

I could stop the discussion right here because in 3 words you summed up non-theistic morality. It is 100% based on your preference. I will respond to the rest but the argument has been concluded.

is based on the objective fact that humans have instincts like the self-preservation/survival instinct and that certain behaviors are objectively beneficial for survival and some behaviors are objectively detrimental. My moral code is grounded in objective fact. Yours has no grounding at all. You just subjectively believe in the existence of a god who you believe has the final say as to what is right and wrong for humans to do.

1. Let's say that human instincts are objective. That does not mean and has nothing to do with their being to criteria for ethics.
2. The majority of human conduct through history has been tribal warfare. Is human behavior really what you want to base morality on?
3. Even if it is then your choosing human instincts as the definer of morality as a preference. You can find nothing anything in the entire universe that says human instinct should be the goal of morality.
4. Nature can only tell us what is, it can never tell us what should be.
5. Virtually all moral codes and legal foundations are designed to prevent many of our instincts.
6. Why has no society in known history based it's ethics on human instincts (social Darwinism). The closest we ever got was Hitler's Germany.
7. My morality has the greatest possible foundation. Which is why Jefferson (who was no Christian) said our rights come from God. My morality is based on the eternal, perfect, and completely sovereign nature of God, not on the preferences of a race which has been without a major war for 300 of it's 5000 year historical record and which kills it's own young in the womb based on convenience.

BTW on evolution your brain has been selected based on survival not truth, why do you trust it?

Can you name, or even imagine an action which you can prove is objectively evil without referring to the supernatural?

 

[Darkstorn]

What on Earth are you talking about? You post sounds like incoherent psychobabble.

It was a copy of your own claim applied to myself, instead of yourself. So pot calling the kettle black.

I could stop the discussion right here because in 3 words you summed up non-theistic morality.

Yeah, but it wouldn't make you look very good because you haven't shown your version of reality correspond to objective fact beyond the following: That you might have damage of some sort.

 

[1robin]

Which one of your criteria does it violate, and why?

Our discussions is on hold pending a reply from forum staff.

 

[1robin]

Is that why some theists advocate the death penalty for gays and adulterers and abortion providers?

Are you ever going to use actual data and use it honestly.

Exactly what percentage of theists advocate for the death penalty for homosexuals?

After all, Phillip Kayser "writes that government officials are “subject to Biblical statutes and judgments,” claiming that “Christians should advocate the full implementation of all God’s civil penalties in every age…. Every Old Testament statue continues on the books, and without those statutes, we could not have a consistent ethical standard.”
‘Death Penalty For Gays’ Literature At Right-Wing Conference | Right Wing Watch

Never heard of him and 99.9% of the billions of Christians that have ever lived do not agree with anything you said above.

Your being intellectually dishonest because of an apparent desperation.

OT statutes (instead of statues) only applied to one culture, and have applied to no one in 2000 years.

This is some of the most ineffectual argumentation I have ever seen.

If you really want to defend homosexuals then Islam is who you need to be attacking.

 

[1robin]

Our societies are simply a result of evolution and natural selection, since people who joined forces and cooperated in societies stood a better chance of surviving than those who didn't.

No they were not. Societies are made up of such diverse cultures and ethnicities that commonality is not the governing criteria. Just look at the USA, we are basically a conglomerate of every other nation on earth. What usually affects borders and societies is war? England created the greatest empire in history because it had the firepower to do so, so did the Persians, so did dozens of diverse culture into Greece, same with Rome, same with China, same with Russia. Greed and firepower have molded the historical period on human civilization not some silly instinct to band together peacefully. It is Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Alexander, Muhammad, Roosevelt, and Caesar that explain far more about borders than Darwin.

If is was some rabid follower of Haeckel's social Darwinism I should destroy by any means necessary anyone outside my tribe who competes with it for resources. This is probably why no society has ever used your standards for formal foundation of societal ethics.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

OT statutes (instead of statues) only applied to one culture, and have applied to no one in 2000 years.

Your timeless, changeless, objectively true divine morality claim just took another hit.

 

[ArtieE]

I could stop the discussion right here because in 3 words you summed up non-theistic morality. It is 100% based on your preference. I will respond to the rest but the argument has been concluded.

You just said that the goal of God's objective morality was "To create a just world, with far less suffering than we experience." Which would mean increased human well-being. I am a human and I want more well-being. My subjective goal, well-being and survival, is the same as your god's objective goal for me.

2. The majority of human conduct through history has been tribal warfare. Is human behavior really what you want to base morality on?

Have you actually read the Old Testament? Is tribal warfare objectively right or wrong?

My morality is based on the eternal, perfect, and completely sovereign nature of God, not on the preferences of a race

Except that it is your subjective preference to base your morality on this god and not something else.

which has been without a major war for 300 of it's 5000 year historical record and which kills it's own young in the womb based on convenience.

How many pregnant women and children lost their lives in the Flood and all the other atrocities in the Old Testament because of your god's objective morality?

Can you name, or even imagine an action which you can prove is objectively evil without referring to the supernatural?

Sure. It's objectively wrong for a member of a species with an evolved survival instinct to act in a manner that decreases chances of survival. That is why we call such acts immoral in the first place.

 

[ArtieE]

OT statutes (instead of statues) only applied to one culture, and have applied to no one in 2000 years.

But according to God's objective morals is killing homosexuals objectively right or objectively wrong?

 

[ArtieE]

If is was some rabid follower of Haeckel's social Darwinism I should destroy by any means necessary anyone outside my tribe who competes with it for resources.

Have you read the Old Testament? 1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." So is it objectively right or objectively wrong to "destroy by any means necessary anyone outside my tribe who competes with it"?

 

[ArtieE]

Your timeless, changeless, objectively true divine morality claim just took another hit.

I think what 1robin means is that it once was objectively moral to kill homosexuals, then it stopped being objectively moral, but if tomorrow God commands us to kill homosexuals it becomes objectively moral again.