Jaw Dropping Stupidity

_{Barry Arrington

August 22, 2016

Intelligent Design}

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Sometimes a materialist will post a comment, and I will read it and then just sit there with my mouth literally agape, wondering at the sheer stupidity on display. I got that treat today when Rationalitys bane posted this gem:

we are much better off not pretending that morality is objective and live our lives knowing that we all bear responsibility for everything that we do in our lives.

Jack Kreb quoted RB’s little aphorism and added: “Excellent statement.”

So let me get this straight fellas. Morality is entirely subjective. If this means anything, it means that we are not accountable to any standard of objective moral truth, because no such standard exists. According to my dictionary “responsibility” means “the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable.” But wait a minute. You just said we are not accountable to a standard of moral truth, because no such standard exists.

RB’s statement boils down to this. We are better off not pretending we are accountable and live our lives knowing we are accountable.”

*palm forehead*

Comments

Barry, as a lawyer, does it ever seem to you that they're all : 'he says, she says', 'would, coulda, shoulda' is the way to understand morality, i.e. as a kind of Modern Art project ? Maybe we should ask Judge Judy to chime in.Axel_{September 6, 2016
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Your post #23, Mung Strangely enough, I misread your ironical construction of Pindi's precept : 'Yup. Whichever way the wind happens to be blowing at the moment ', as : 'Whichever way the mind happens to be blowing at the moment' - perhaps a less ironical, more direct construction of his words.Axel_{September 6, 2016
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Pindi asks:
WJM, I don’t know. But do you disagree with what I saying? If Jews were being rounded up, beaten to death in your street, and slaughtered in the millions do you think we would be having a conversation like this on the internet?
Unless it was against the law or dangerous to do so, why wouldn't we be debating it on the internet? We might also be protesting it or picketing, being active politically to try to change the law, and working behind the scenes to save what Jews we can (all of which can be said to have analogous correspondence to action taken by pro-lifers).
If your country enacted laws saying Jews were non-persons and providing for their total extermination you don’t think you would change anything about how you would act?
I would be politically active in trying to change the law, argue when and where I could against the law, and I would do everything I could within the law to overturn it and save what Jews I could. What would you do?
Those limits are based on my belief that killing Jews and paedophilia are abhorrent.
What does it mean to say that you have a "belief" that those things "are abhorrent"? You either find those things personally, subjectively abhorrent or you do not.
Its based on my belief in the rule of law.
What is based on your belief in the rule of law? Your abhorrence to those things? Surely not that. Perhaps you mean your unwillingness to defend the client by arguing that such things should be made legal? How does your respect for the rule of law prevent you from arguing that a law should be changed? You're not breaking the law; you're not advocating that anyone else should break the law; you're just arguing about what a law should be for the best interests of your client. Earlier you said:
When I am arguing with another lawyer or a judge I am arguing (passionately) my opinion about what the law should be in the given situation. It’s entirely subjective.
So, do you not represent any clients you find personally abhorrent? Isn't it an attorney's job to set their personal feelings aside and vigorously represent the best interests of their client? Isn't your abhorrence nothing but a personal feeling? What justifies you refusing to do your job based on personal feelings, when it is actually your job to set aside those personal feelings? The point I'm trying to draw you to realizing, Pindi, is that there are some moral wrongs that neither you, I, and indeed nobody on earth (outside of sociopaths) react to as if they are nothing more than personal, subjective feelings. There are certain laws that we do not react to as if they are just subjective rules made up by men. We react to them as if they are objectively true and are binding on all people regardless of their social or legal system. Note your view on a hypothetical modern holocaust; you are implying that you yourself would do more than what was legally permissible if the law because one of exterminating Jews, and you seem to expect that others would also do more than was legal in opposition to such a law, contradicting the notion that such a law would be just another subjective rule invented by men that you would just subjectively disagree with but obey because of your "respect for the rule of law," as you put it. I'm trying to get you to see that you are intellectually and semantically using terms and phrases to defend the notion of "subective morality and law", but you (and all sane people) do not actually, and cannot actually, act as if your intellectual views are true. Thus, your refusal to obey certain laws (even if hypothetical) and your refusal to make certain legal arguments on behalf of your clients contradicts how you have characterized morality and law (as entirely subjective) and contradicts how you have characterized yourself (motivated by rule of law and by the job requirement to passionately work towards your client's best interest). If you are saying that you will defy the (hypothetical) law and not represent your client (in the hypothetical case) because of your own personal, subjective abhorrence, then it is not the rule of law or your professional obligation that ultimately motivates you. You are simply doing whatever you feel like doing and you are attempting to characterize this motivation as something that sounds more noble (respect for rule of law, professionalism) than it actually is. That's the problem with moral and legal subjectivism; it all boils down to "because I feel like it, because I can", and that maxim justifies anything and everything.William J Murray_{August 31, 2016
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WJM, I don't know. But do you disagree with what I saying? If Jews were being rounded up, beaten to death in your street, and slaughtered in the millions do you think we would be having a conversation like this on the internet? If your country enacted laws saying Jews were non-persons and providing for their total extermination you don't think you would change anything about how you would act? Those limits are based on my belief that killing Jews and paedophilia are abhorrent. Its based on my belief in the rule of law.Pindi_{August 30, 2016
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Pindi, what exactly do you think Christians or anyone else who considers abortion a modern-day holocaust should be doing, and why? Pindi said:
As to your questions, no I wouldn’t participate in the formation of a new law that permitted minor sex and Jew killing. A lawyers obligations to his or her client does have limits.
What are those limits based on? Why do you draw the line there when it comes to representing the best interests of your clients? You wouldn't be doing anything illegal, and it's all subjective, and it's your job, so why not?William J Murray_{August 30, 2016
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Scientific Materialists Crave Morality But Can’t Evolve It August 21, 2016 Mercy, kindness, and generosity should be unknown in a Darwinian world, as Holmes knows: In biological and evolutionary terms, it makes no sense to give and get nothing in return. Altruism is rare in other animals, yet humans can be inexplicably kind. Are we generous by nature? How did we get to be this way? What role does culture play in kindness? If Darwinians had an answer after 157 years since the Origin, they wouldn’t be embarking on a campaign just now. These are the big questions now being addressed by researchers in the Human Generosity Project, who are using fieldwork, experiments and modelling to explore osotua [an African custom among the Maasai] and other examples of human cooperation. Their aim: to find how best to make the milk of human kindness flow. Holmes just hit on another Darwinian conundrum. Why would members of the Human Generosity Project want human kindness to flow? The project assumes that kindness is a good thing—a moral thing. It should be promoted. It should be facilitated. Whenever you see “should”, there’s a moral subtext driving it. The milk of human kindness seems innate; how did that evolve? http://crev.info/2016/08/scientific-materialists-crave-morality-but-cant-evolve-it/
bornagain77_{August 30, 2016
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I do believe that abortion is the holocaust of unborn human beings, but the Christian response to it is not to overthrow the secular democratic state by force of arms, but to try to correct the rot in society by our words and deeds. Though we can indeed pray that the secular democratic state self-destructs speedily.Autodidaktos_{August 29, 2016
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PPS: I draw attention to Cicero on the nature of law in his De Legibus:
http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/cicero/documents/de-legibus . . . M: And indeed correctly. For recognize that in no subject of argument are more honorable things brought into the open: what nature has granted to a human being, how many of the best things the human mind encompasses, what service we have been born for and brought into light to perform and accomplish, what is the connection among human beings, and what natural fellowship there is among them. When these things have been explained, the source of laws and right can be discovered. [17] A: So you don’t think that the discipline of law should be drawn from the praetor’s edict, as many do now, or from the Twelve Tables [archaic set of basic Roman laws], as earlier men did, but from within the profoundest philosophy? M: In fact, Pomponius, in this conversation we are not seeking how to safeguard interests in law [ius], or how to respond to each consultation. That thing may be a great matter, and it is, which formerly was undertaken by many famous men and is now undertaken by one man of the highest authority and knowledge [Servius Sulpicius]. But in this debate we must embrace the entire cause of universal right and laws, so that what we call civil law [ius] may be confined to a certain small, narrow place. We must explain the nature of law [ius], and this must be traced from human nature. We must consider laws by which cities ought to be ruled. Then we must treat the laws [ius] and orders of peoples that have been composed and written, in which what are called the civil laws [ius] of our people will not be hidden. [18] Q: Truly, brother, you trace deeply and, as is proper, from the fountain head of what we are asking about. Those who hand down the civil law [ius] differently are handing down not so much ways of justice as ways of litigating. M: That is not so, Quintus: ignorance of the law [ius] is conducive to more lawsuits than knowledge of it. But this later; now let us see the beginnings of law [ius]. Therefore, it has pleased highly educated men to commence with law—probably correctly, provided that, as the same men define it, law is highest reason, implanted in nature, which orders those things that ought to be done and prohibits the opposite. The same reason is law when it has been strengthened and fully developed in the human mind. [19] And so they think that law is prudence, the effect of which is to order persons to act correctly and to forbid them to transgress. They also think that this thing has been called [from] the Greek name for “granting to each his own,” whereas I think it comes from our word for “choosing.” As they put the effect of fairness into law, we put the effect of choice into it. Nevertheless, each one is appropriate to law. But if it is thus correctly said, as indeed it mostly and usually seems to me, the beginning of right should be drawn from law. For this is a force of nature; this is the mind and reason of the prudent man; this is the rule of right and wrong. But since our entire speech is for the people’s business, sometimes it will be necessary to speak popularly and to call that a law which, when written, consecrates what it wants by either ordering [or forbidding], as the crowd calls it. In fact let us take the beginning of establishing right from the highest law, which was born before any law was written for generations in common [corrupt text here] or before a city was established at all [--> in other words, foundational, the law of our nature as responsibly free, rational, morally governed individuals with duties of care to truth, right, genuine rights and justice, etc. Where, a right is inherently a moral claim implying a duty on the part of others, so one must be first manifestly in the right before claiming a right. In respect of various fashionable sexual insanities of our day, note this current research.] . . .
--> Yes, the pagans knew better, 2060+ years ago.kairosfocus_{August 29, 2016
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JAD, why am I not surprised, and why am I not surprised to see the ACLU cynically involved in lawsuits that it must know will if successful close Christian hospitals -- and onwards, lock Christians out of the profession of medicine. As in, to be a doctor, you must be a participant in blood guilt at sword-point of the usurped sword of justice, under the false colour of law. This is where we have reached as a civilisation, and it traces directly to the undermining of the responsibly free, rational, morally governed en-conscienced self [ . . the candle of the Lord within, enlightening our inner lives] triggered by irretrievably self-falsifying and necessarily amoral evolutionary materialistic scientism. Notice, perverted law and legal reasoning in the hands of those sworn as officers of the courts of justice to uphold justice thus the right -- the legal profession, lies at the heart of the breakdown . . . whereby in particular, power to interpret law becomes power to legislate from the bench and to over-rule the principles of sound law and democratic, accountable governance. Those are terrible matches to be playing with, and the conflagration likely to result would do huge damage to our civilisation. But then a folk saying in my native land is "fire deh pon mus-mus tail [ = the mouse's tail], but him think seh a cool breeze deh dere." KF PS: Notice how there is a studious avoidance of this underlying worldviews failure and moral bankruptcy on the part of evolutionary materialistic scientism.kairosfocus_{August 28, 2016
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Pindi, with all respects, you are wrong. You and RVB8 tried to divert the matter, which was duly answered by several persons (including me by way of a lifelong commitment learned at mother's knee and literally written into the anthems of my childhood, backed up by generations of family life which I experienced at first hand . . . ) and redirected to the clear and present horror and danger of the worst, ongoing holocaust in history -- 800+ millions of innocents slaughtered in the womb and mounting at 50+ millions per year -- and what it speaks to by way of how we have collectively corrupted law, government, justice, rights talk, media, education, worldviews, society and culture, family, sexuality [as in, what we need is sexual sanity and soundness]. It turns out that evolutionary materialistic scientism still exhibits the same failures that Plato identified 2350 years ago, and also it undermines the responsible, rational, free, morally governed individual, leading to destabilisation of society in all its aspects. Your onward response simply reveals the bankruptcy of current jurisprudence in our civilisation, tainted as it is with a self-falsifying worldview that undermines justice, and corrupted as it is with enabling of mass blood guilt in the worst -- and ongoing -- holocaust in history. KFkairosfocus_{August 28, 2016
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Lest anyone think I was being alarmist (@ #104) in linking abortion with euthanasia consider what has been going on in the Belgium and now the Netherlands.
[The] Netherlands is following Belgium by conjoining euthanasia with organ harvesting, raising the prospect that the mentally ill will come to see their deaths as having greater value than their lives.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/439446/killing-mentally-ill-netherlands Most people in the U.S. still probably don’t know that the so-called “right to die” or assisted suicide is no longer just about people who are terminally ill. And in the United States…
With assisted suicide on the march and the pro-choice movement becoming more openly pro-abortion, Catholic hospitals and Hippocratic physicians are under pressure to buckle to secular sensibilities on issues such as euthanasia, abortion, sterilization and contraception. As I have discussed, the ACLU is suing Catholic hospitals in California and elsewhere to force them to violate Catholic moral teaching. If those suits win, it could result in hospitals closing.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/439438/would-secularists-rather-see-hospitals-closed-catholic?target=author&tid=73549 I would say that western society is sliding down the slippery slope pretty quickly. That’s how the Nazi holocaust began. The scary thing is that this time it is happening without the Nazi’s. It’s now the trendy and enlightened way to think and act and it’s all being done in the name of human rights. From where do our rights originate? According to the U.S. Declaration of Independence they come from God. When men start creating rights then they are assuming a role only God can fulfill. That’s a very dangerous path for civilization to start walking down, because down is really a very steep downward slope. This time there may be no way back.john_a_designer_{August 28, 2016
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KS, is that chirp, chirp, chirp for all the people who have failed to answer my hypothetical about the holocaust. WJM is the only one who gave it a go. Come, on, they are rounding up Jews in your street. Pulling them out of their houses. Beating some of them to death right in the street. Loading the rest into cattle trucks to go to the death camps. There is talk they are going for homosexuals next, and then Latinos. Your response to this would be to debate the enablers on the internet about Plato and the meaning of objective morality? Maybe go and protest outside the gates of a death camp every now and again? In your workplace, have debates with your friends who are pro killing the Jews? Try and convince them of the moral problems with their position over lunch? Because this is your response to the alleged holocaust going on right now. But somehow I very much doubt that would be your response to the hypothetical I have described. Therefore be honest. Is abortion really comparable tot he holocaust?Pindi_{August 28, 2016
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chirp, chirp, chirp . . .kairosfocus_{August 28, 2016
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john_a_designer @104
PS I have actually known a number of Christian couples who wanted to adopt a child but had a difficult time finding a child to adopt. In a high rate abortion country like the U.S. it appears the demand far surpasses the supply. Some of the couple I knew spent a small fortune to adopt a child from overseas. (Anyone else have that experience?) Maybe rvb8 needs to become a little bit better acquainted with the facts.
Yup. I know a few couples in Canada who have had to adopt a child from overseas after having difficulty adopting one here.HeKS_{August 27, 2016
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rvb8 @ #100:
Kairos, to change the focus a little I would like to ask you a ‘moral’ question which you, and your side never address. That is, once these babies are born; “What shall we do with them?” Now under socialised medicine, high taxes would place them as wards of the state, and they would ‘hopefully’ grow to become functioning members of our society. I suppose in your fantasy world ideally, all families that have less than three children would take in a fourth, or fifth and ‘love’ and ‘nurture’ these waifs as their ‘own’ children. How many of these possibly ‘murdered’ potentiates would you take into your home? Oh, and how many potential abortees do you have living under your wing at present? You must realise that when you bandy about figures such as ‘800,000,000 murdered’, that if they weren’t aborted, they would be ‘living”?
That is the same kind of thinking that led to the Nazi holocaust, which began with sterilization and then euthanization of the unfit, infirm and other “undesirables.” Ironically the Nazi’s modeled their eugenics program after one that was already being aggressively implemented in the U.S.A. It appears that the same path the so-called secular progressives want to take us down again. What is that quote about those who fail to remember or learn from history? Make no mistake, abortion is a full-fledged euthanasia program. By any objective scientific, philosophical or theological definition an unborn baby is a human being. You can now understand why people so eagerly reject any kind of objective moral or ethical standard. They do it so they can assuage their guilt feelings and live a lie. PS I have actually known a number of Christian couples who wanted to adopt a child but had a difficult time finding a child to adopt. In a high rate abortion country like the U.S. it appears the demand far surpasses the supply. Some of the couple I knew spent a small fortune to adopt a child from overseas. (Anyone else have that experience?) Maybe rvb8 needs to become a little bit better acquainted with the facts.john_a_designer_{August 27, 2016
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PPS: 5 min vid: http://kairosfocus.blogspot.com/2016/08/video-jakubowski-open-source.htmlkairosfocus_{August 27, 2016
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PS: And BTW, what we need is deeper ethics, life skills, sound thought skills and civics education, which feeds self-governance, self discipline, virtue-seeking, sound family life and sound community informed by a broad and deep insight on world history and history of our civilisation; that last bit being critical -- it gives a fund of common good sense resting on sound knowledge of our experience across thousands of years that stops PC rubbish and media marches of folly cold. Handling our sexuality with sanity is an aspect -- think of a UNIT: "Sexual Sanity," just like handling money through financial sanity, sound and robust study and career planning -- if a man does not teach his son a trade it is as though he taught him to be a thief updated to C21 -- and the like. Where inter alia it is time to lay to rest genetic determinism of sexual and other behaviour (cf a current paper here), the rotten, irresponsible and utterly self-falsifying fruit of self-refuting -- and inescapably morally groundless and amoral -- evolutionary materialistic scientism.kairosfocus_{August 27, 2016
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RVB8, with all due respect, that is simply more of the same lack of respect for life and for the potential, creativity and productivity of the individual. Having slaughtered half a generation in the womb, we have so misunderstood and warped our minds and consciences through self-refuting ideologies -- which issue then speaks to a root of reality that transcends the physical -- we now wonder what would we do with so many new people. The answer is, we need to return to our understanding of the quasi-infinite worth and eternal, morally governed character of the individual, and shift focus away from piling up things to nurturing people regarded as the ultimate resource. The resource that transforms all other things into value by the impact of insight and creative ideas. For example sand was once mere building material of little worth. Now Silicon, a key ingredient, suitably purified and processed, is driving the world economy as the main substrate for computation and signal processing. We consequently have a tablet revolution in progress that potentially utterly transforms education, training and the world of work, just mix in wireless access and powerful digital libraries as well as instrumentation apps ranging from calculators to oscilloscopes and more. If, we will only put away the rubbish that so distracts and dominates us. Education, training, transformation of how we do things. I suggest, next, we need Open Source Industrial Civilisation 2.0, and that Marcin Jakubowski and others associated with the global village construction set movement -- http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set -- are unto something transformational. Multiply by say getting a breakthrough with polywell fusion or the like, leading to say a Bussard drive capable of reaching gas giant moons in 100 days or less. And in the interim, water becomes the key to energy sources on the large scale. Along with molten salt fission tech, esp using thorium (and able to burn up wastes). Toss in pebble bed modular reactors. Wind, Hydro, solar, geothermal as appropriate and not force fitted where they do not work well, in a panic. Try algae oil and hydrogen, bacterial biofuel technologies, fuel cells and more. Modular fusion and fission, other energy sources, desalination, open source modular industries out of the planned obsolescence box, ultimately fabbers that implement something close to a von Neumann self replicating capability at least on a small community scale. Bring in the universities as part of the programme. First, we create an economy on a disk, that empowers communities to move to a sustainable potentially self-contained industrial culture. Likely, using one man one vote co-ops as model rather than one dollar one vote corporations. What we see is the ability to colonise desert areas and to move beyond unsustainable industrial civ. And, to colonise the solar system, with the moon, Mars, Asteroid belt and maybe some gas giant moons as key targets. The cosmos beyond will need a transformation of physics, if there are things out there that allow bridging light years. Worth exploring as part of the global investment in the future. We do not know what is out there. The notion that sexuality is out of control inherently so it's use a condom etc speaks to the self-reinforcing cycle of unsustainable self-indulgence. And your mocked fantasy family structure sounds a lot like that which my family has sustained for generations, except that 100 years ago folks had more kids. Just last night, a cousin called, and we chatted about growing up together -- my parents had two natural children, but ever so many more were part of our family. Cousins, church people, school mates, neighbours and more. FYI, there is a natural population boom followed by a demographic transition as public health breaks the child death by diseases cycle. People then have fewer children. But we have gone way too far due to a warped mentality and our civilisation is ruining itself. I see you impassioned about alleged nonsensical ideas of "criminalising" abortion. FYI, the natural law speaks, with Cicero's ghost leading the charge: life is the first right and treating our posterity as vermin in the womb to be eradicated at whim is inherently unjust, the warping of law to foster the mass taking of innocent life. I leave you to explain to us what the proper name is for the willful shedding of innocent blood. Your reaction above, in short, exemplifies the warping imposed by mass blood guilt. No, we cannot "criminalise" mass abortion on demand sustained by the warping of institutins starting with law. That is the rhetoric of turnabout and projection. No, such is NATURALLY criminal for a race that is morally governed and responsibly, rationally free. No, we cannot "de-criminalise" what robs half a generation of its right to life. We must stop our mad folly, and return to sane law. I call you to re-think and join the reformation and transformation that are long overdue. Yes, we will have to face some awful facts together, as the White Rose movement once called Germany to, at the cost of their lives. We can only repent and seek forgiveness from the God who is so manifestly there, then reform our civilisation in light of sound principles of justice. Starting with protecting innocent life. Shooting rhetorically at the messenger who bears unwelcome news is simply a way of avoiding facing reality. That, is the real fantasy. Rom 1 describes an accursed world under Nero as pervert in chief, not a utopia. And Ac 27 describes the consequences of democracy declining into a manipulated, Plato's cave shadow show driven march of folly, not a scheme to build a sound future. (Resemblance to the current US election cycle is NOT coincidental. Cf here.) The point is, we need to stop the march of folly, go back to bedrock reality and world foundations, and then move on to reform. In that process, facing the ugly reality that in this past generation we have become complicit in the worst holocaust in history, the slaughter of posterity, is the central evil of our time protected by the warping of government, law, education, media, policy thought and more. Utterly corrupting us through blood guilt and the hardening of our hearts leading to a mass march of ruinous, endarkened folly. Paul's rebuke to our civilisation is well deserved, and his remedy still obtains:
Eph 4:17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding [--> professing to be wise and enlightened we become fools, endarkened in conscience, mind and life], alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self,[f] which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. 26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. 29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Words we again need to hear, ponder and heed, if we are to recover to sound health as a civilisation. KFkairosfocus_{August 27, 2016
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Kairos, to change the focus a little I would like to ask you a 'moral' question which you, and your side never address. That is, once these babies are born; "What shall we do with them?" Now under socialised medicine, high taxes would place them as wards of the state, and they would 'hopefully' grow to become functioning members of our society. I suppose in your fantasy world ideally, all families that have less than three children would take in a fourth, or fifth and 'love' and 'nurture' these waifs as their 'own' children. How many of these possibly 'murdered' potentiates would you take into your home? Oh, and how many potential abortees do you have living under your wing at present? You must realise that when you bandy about figures such as '800,000,000 murdered', that if they weren't aborted, they would be 'living''? Where would they be living? I would assume that you don't want this riff-raff any where near you? Russia perhaps, living under a bridge? India, where everyone is happy? Or maybe just on the streets of Spokane, as long as they weren't too noisy? Perhaps send them back to Africa, as an apology for past transgressions? Please understand, the system we have is imperfect, it is after all human, but your 'shag and be born', religious nonsense, is religious nonsense. You are not more moral than I, indeed, with your reckless disregard of the outcomes of birth, I would say you are an unfeeling beast. You see, even if your nonsensical ideas, about criminalising abortion were realised in a modern state you are still left with the insurmountable problem of what to do with this extra humanity. What do I suggest? Well, obviously more, deeper, constant, and thorough sex education. Children must, from their earliest chidhood be made to understand their physicality. Then, from the age of puberty onward, they will fully, and with no fear, understand their bodies and use, if they are so inclined, the correct measures to prevent unwanted pregnancies. I am fully aware that this rapes your notion of 'morality'. However the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions of shame, sham, and cover up, (which you so obviously embrace under the euphimism of 'morality') leads to the abortion holocaust you are so impassioned about. Oh dear, education, understanding, compassion, and empathy once again win the day. Hell, Jesus might approve! WJM! I do apologise. However, if you are not a Christian, do you have any flavour at all?rvb8_{August 26, 2016
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Pindi, reality not hypothetical. Every day, up to 1,500 to 3,000 unborn babies are slaughtered in the USA alone under false colour of law. Globally, per Guttmacher's numbers, it is 150 - 200,000. PER DAY, on average. With the US as leading nation, setting the pace for the world in this evil. What are you doing about the cynical twisting of law to slaughter the innocents, as by your own declaration, an officer of the courts of justice? Until we can see your judgement as sound on the clear and present holocaust, your judgement cannot be trusted on more complex or remote matters. Life is the first right. And the defence of innocent life is the first test of the law, which is being massively failed in the US and across the earth. Wilberforce tells us the first crucial move is to focus attention on the unspeakable evil, the central evil of an age. Surely, that is the in progress worst holocaust in history. We are starting by facing the truth about our civilisation together in the face of this supreme test. It's pass/fail. So far, fail, with rivers of innocent blood crying up to The Just Judge for vindication. KF PS: On current track, it is far more likely that people being hounded, marginalised, forced out of jobs and busineses, bankrupted to lose their homes, stripped of their children and scapegoated and rounded up will be serious Christians. The deflections away from what is beginning to happen -- and in many countries is already happening to the point of genocide -- speaks volumes. Especially given the lack of responsible focus on dangerous trends in a press that has long since led the charge on creating a false impression that the abortion holocaust is mere choice and reproductive rights threatened by Bible thumping would be theocratic Christo-fascists.kairosfocus_{August 26, 2016
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@Pindi #45
You seem to think that you have the one correct answer to very complex philosophical problems that are actually unresolved. The views that you dismiss as naive, illogical, and anti-intellectual, are in fact held by many people who have thought about them as long and as deeply as you, and are no doubt as intelligent as you, but have not come to the same conclusions as you.
I'm not entirely sure what you think I'm saying is "correct". If you reread my comment you will likely notice that it was not framed in terms of which worldview is correct, but referred to the failure of many atheists to hold a robust worldview that is logically consistent with their atheism and materialism. In other words, they accept the foundational premises of atheism and materialism but not the down-stream logical entailments of those foundational principles. And why do they deny the entailments? Often it seems to be because they are simply unaware of them and so have not considered them, and they seem to be largely unaware of how widely these entailments are accepted by academic atheists. Others just seem resolutely determined to reject and deny them without any ability to offer sound counter-arguments. And, of course, some just don't seem to understand the logic of the entailments, but most members of this last group seem to be quickly converted to the second group once they begin to grasp the logic. Of course, if you meant to say that I think I'm correct about the entailments, then yes, I think I'm correct. I think they are logically necessary entailments, and academic atheists widely agree with me.
I personally haven’t sprung up in the wake of Dawkins. I have never read him and am not the least bit interested in what he has to say. I have formulated my views over my 51 years of life so far. I have thought long and hard about these things, and yet I don’t see absurdities. I see strangeness and incomprehensibility, yes but nothing that sames absurd.
Well, I did say that the type of atheists I'm referring to have sprung up in larger numbers since Dawkins and friends. I didn't say that such atheists didn't exist prior to Dawkins.
You are frustrated that people like me don’t get it. Despite the fact that you have exposed me to the truth. But maybe what seems so obvious and true to you, is not in fact. Maybe you are wrong. Or is that not possible?
It's not a question of whether or not it could merely be possible that I might be wrong. It's a question of whether or not there are any good arguments to suggest that I'm wrong, along with all the atheist academics who agree with me. I've yet to see any plausible argument for the reality of intentionality or the dependability of supposedly rational thought under an atheistic / materialist paradigm that holds up to scrutiny ... even from other atheists. Things like intentionality, free-will and objective moral values and duties are not simply thought to be wrong under an atheistic / materialist / evolutionary paradigm, but obviously wrong. And they are thought to be obviously and necessarily wrong by informed atheists as well as by theists. Furthermore, anyone who thinks that there is any meaningful similarity between objective morality and subjective morality is simply delusional with respect to the subject matter. One can deny the existence of objective morality if one wishes, but it is utterly delusional to think that subjective morality is essentially equivalent to objective morality and can offer a similar basis or grounding or justification for our moral actions, just without having to worry about God.
I am comfortable in accepting that I can’t answer many fundamental aspects of life and the universe. I don’t believe anyone can comprehend quantum physics; you just have to accept it for what it is. I don’t believe anyone can comprehend the singularity in the big bang. Or for that matter the inside of an atom. I don’t know whether we have libertarian free will, and if we don’t, how it appears as though we do – what the mechanism is that produces that effect. But could you explain a bit more why you believe that if atheism and materialism are true, the world and us are utterly foreign and incomprehensible absurdities?
Well, Pindi, I'm at a bit of loss for how else I might describe the concept of a world in which I'm currently typing words to you that are ostensibly about a particular subject matter without having any real thoughts that are about the subject matter at hand and producing words that don't actually have any meaning, and no "I" to experience the non-thoughts that I'm not having right now, and no "You" to read these words and either accept or reject them on the basis of rational deliberation. If you have some way to sum up such a world that describes it better than saying it is an incomprehensible absurdity that is utterly foreign to our experience, I'm all ears (but, unfortunately, no mind).
And could you reference some of the academic atheists who recognise these truths?
Umm. Ok. Let's start with comments on the mind, thoughts and free will. I made a note of these last year over the course of just one week because I noticed how often I was stumbling across these kinds of references from various sources. That is not to say that these comments were made during that one week. Only that I kept stumbling across comments of this sort without specifically looking for them and noted the ones I came across during that week. There are VERY many more out there.
[W]ith me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? - Charles Darwin ------------ Thinking about things can’t happen at all. The brain can’t have thoughts about Paris, or about France, or about capitals, or about anything else for that matter. When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong. - Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist's Guide to Reality ------------ It is of course obvious that introspection strongly suggests that the brain does store information propositionally, and that therefore it has beliefs and desire with “aboutness” or intentionality. A thoroughgoing naturalism must deny this, I allege. If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires .... So, there are no beliefs. - Alex Rosenberg, in a comment on his article The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality (http://onthehuman.org/2009/11/the-disenchanted-naturalists-guide-to-reality/) ------------ [T]he process of natural selection is notoriously unable to deliver true beliefs, only ones that enhance the survival of our genes (and memes, if there are any) in the local environment .... a set of norms’ wining the genetic or memetic fitness-race is no reason for it to be certified to be true, right, or correct. - Alex Rosenberg, in a comment on his article The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality ------------ FOR SOLID EVOLUTIONARY REASONS, WE’VE BEEN tricked into looking at life from the inside. Without scientism, we look at life from the inside, from the first-person POV. . . . The first person is the subject, the audience, the viewer of subjective experience, the self in the mind. Scientism shows that the first-person POV is an illusion. Even after scientism convinces us, we’ll continue to stick with the first person. But at least we’ll know that it’s another illusion of introspection and we’ll stop taking it seriously. We’ll give up all the answers to the persistent questions about free will, the self, the soul, and the meaning of life that the illusion generates. The physical facts fix all the facts. The mind is the brain. It has to be physical and it can’t be anything else, since thinking, feeling, and perceiving are physical process—in particular, input/output processes—going on in the brain. We can be sure of a great deal about how the brain works because the physical facts fix all the facts about the brain. The fact that the mind is the brain guarantees that there is no free will. It rules out any purposes or designs organizing our actions or our lives. It excludes the very possibility of enduring persons, selves, or souls that exist after death or for that matter while we live. (….) The neural circuits in our brain manage the beautifully coordinated and smoothly appropriate behavior of our body. They also produce the entrancing introspective illusion that thoughts really are about stuff in the world. This powerful illusion has been with humanity since language kicked in, as we’ll see. It is the source of at least two other profound myths: that we have purposes that give our actions and lives meaning and that there is a person “in there” steering the body, so to speak. To see why we make these mistakes and why it’s so hard to avoid them, we need to understand the source of the illusion that thoughts are about stuff. - Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist's Guide to Reality ------------ It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.] - J B S Haldane, evolutionary theorist ------------ [T]he feeling of being a subject inside your head, a locus of consciousness behind your eyes, a thinker in addition to the flow of thoughts. This form of subjectivity does not survive scrutiny. If you really look for what you are calling “I,” this feeling will disappear. .... The feeling that we call “I”— the sense of being a subject inside the body — is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you are thinking. The moment that you truly break the spell of thought, you can notice what consciousness is like between thoughts — that is, prior to the arising of the next one. And consciousness does not feel like a self. It does not feel like “I.” In fact, the feeling of being a self is just another appearance in consciousness .... If you look closely at thoughts themselves, you will notice that they continually arise and pass away. If you look for the thinker of these thoughts, you will not find one. And the sense that you have — “What the hell is Harris talking about? I’m the thinker!”— is just another thought, arising in consciousness. - Sam Harris, Sam Harris Vanishing Self (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/) ------------ How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t. The brain has arrived at a conclusion that is not correct. When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong. The machinery is computing an elaborate story about a magical-seeming property. And there is no way for the brain to determine through introspection that the story is wrong, because introspection always accesses the same incorrect information. You might object that this is a paradox. If awareness is an erroneous impression, isn’t it still an impression? And isn’t an impression a form of awareness? But the argument here is that there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device. When we look at a red apple, the brain computes information about color. It also computes information about the self and about a (physically incoherent) property of subjective experience. The brain’s cognitive machinery accesses that interlinked information and derives several conclusions: There is a self, a me; there is a red thing nearby; there is such a thing as subjective experience; and I have an experience of that red thing. Cognition is captive to those internal models. Such a brain would inescapably conclude it has subjective experience. ...the brain [is] computing information about subjective awareness and attributing that property to itself, [even though] the brain doesn’t in fact have this property - Michael Graziano, Princeton Neuroscientist, Are We Really Conscious? (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-conscious.html) ------------ [F]ree will is an illusion, brought to us by evolution . . . . [u]nderstanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that ... we’re all puppets - Robert Wright, The Moral Animal ------------ Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly... [including the idea that] human free will is nonexistent... Free will is a disastrous and mean social myth.” - William Provine, Professor of History of Biology, Cornell University, abstract for Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life, talk delivered on Feb. 12, 1998, posted at the Darwin Day Archives, (http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/darwin/Archives/1998ProvineAbstract.htm) ------------ [T]here can be no such thing as free will for the committed scientist... - David Barash, Dennett and the Darwinizing of Free Will, Human Nature Review (March 22, 2003), (http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/dcdennett.html) ------------ [T]he general delusion about free will [is] obvious - Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin's Notebooks [Every action is] determined by heredity, constitutions, example of others or teaching of others - Charles Darwin Thought, however unintelligible it may be, seems as much function of organ, as bile of liver. This view should teach one profound humility; one deserves no credit for anything. Nor ought one to blame others - Charles Darwin [I]t is right punish criminals, but solely to deter others - Charles Darwin
Here are just a few comments about Morality...
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. - Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995) ------------------------ God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good.... Morality is flimflam.... [Morality] works and it has no meaning over and above this.... Morality is just a matter of emotions, like liking ice cream and sex and hating toothache and marking student papers. But it is, and has to be, a funny kind of emotion. It has to pretend that it is not that at all! If we thought that morality was no more than liking or not liking spinach, then pretty quickly it would break down .... very quickly there would be no morality and society would collapse and each and every one of us would suffer. - Michael Ruse (Philosopher of Science), God is dead. Long live morality (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/15/morality-evolution-philosophy) ------------------------ The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says 'Love they neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory - Michael Ruse (Philosopher of Science), Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics ------------------------ First, nihilism can’t condemn Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or those who fomented the Armenian genocide or the Rwandan one. If there is no such thing as “morally forbidden,” then what Mohamed Atta did on September 11, 2001, was not morally forbidden. Of course, it was not permitted either. But still, don’t we want to have grounds to condemn these monsters? Nihilism seems to cut that ground out from under us. Second, if we admit to being nihilists, then people won’t trust us. We won’t be left alone when there is loose change around. We won’t be relied on to be sure small children stay out of trouble. Third, and worst of all, if nihilism gets any traction, society will be destroyed. We will find ourselves back in Thomas Hobbes’s famous state of nature, where “the life of man is solitary, mean, nasty, brutish and short.” Surely, we don’t want to be nihilists if we can possibly avoid it. (Or at least, we don’t want the other people around us to be nihilists.) Scientism can’t avoid nihilism. We need to make the best of it. For our own self-respect, we need to show that nihilism doesn’t have the three problems just mentioned—no grounds to condemn Hitler, lots of reasons for other people to distrust us, and even reasons why no one should trust anyone else. We need to be convinced that these unacceptable outcomes are not ones that atheism and scientism are committed to. Such outcomes would be more than merely a public relations nightmare for scientism. They might prevent us from swallowing nihilism ourselves, and that would start unraveling scientism. To avoid these outcomes, people have been searching for scientifically respectable justification of morality for least a century and a half. The trouble is that over the same 150 years or so, the reasons for nihilism have continued to mount. Both the failure to find an ethics that everyone can agree on and the scientific explanation of the origin and persistence of moral norms have made nihilism more and more plausible while remaining just as unappetizing. - Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist Guide to Reality, ch.5 ------------------------ We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality. - Kai Nielsen (Philosopher, Ethicist), Why Should I Be Moral? ------------------------ AND YET... ------------------------ Whatever sceptical arguments may be brought against our belief that killing the innocent is morally wrong, we are more certain that the killing is morally wrong than that the argument is sound… Torturing an innocent child for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong. Full stop. - Peter Cave (Atheist Philosopher)
Regarding that last quote from Alex Rosenberg above, I made this comment about it in the first article I wrote here:
Rosenberg [makes an] interesting observation. He notes that if people were to recognize the necessary nihilistic implications of scientific materialism and subsequently reject the truth of those implications, materialism, and the scientism it supports, would unravel. I completely agree. People typically like to think that their worldview is in some way logically coherent, but if the premises underlying their worldview lead inevitably to conclusions that they strongly believe are false, contrary to the evidence of their experience, and in conflict with other basic beliefs they hold more strongly and believe are more warranted, then the only reasonable course of action is to accept that one or more of the premises underlying their worldview must be false.
Rosenberg was essentially saying the same thing I did when I said in #44:
Academic atheists widely recognize these truths, but the average internet atheist seems immune to these realities … perhaps because they realize that if they let these truths sink in then they would find it impossible to continue holding to their naive and ultimately anti-intellectual brand of atheism.
If you want to read my thoughts (or those brain states with no inherent meaning that not-me mistakes for thoughts) on objective morality in more depth you can check out the first two articles I wrote here: DOES IT MATTER WHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT MORALITY? Reply To An Argument Against Objective Morality: When Words Lose All Meaning Unfortunately, I have precious little time for engagement here lately. Take care, HeKSHeKS_{August 26, 2016
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As to your questions, no I wouldn't participate in the formation of a new law that permitted minor sex and Jew killing. A lawyers obligations to his or her client does have limits.Pindi_{August 26, 2016
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Sorry, I overcomplicated it. Forget Christians. The new president is simply rounding up all Jews, gays, and homosexuals. They are taken by the millions to death camps in the desert. It's a question about what the average person would do in the event of a real holocaust.Pindi_{August 26, 2016
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Pindi @94, I see you're still not answering the questions I've posed to you, and now you expect me to answer the ones you pose to me? I'm not that familiar with Christian beliefs. I imagine it depends on what kind of Christian one is, what their specific tenets are. Some Christians I suppose would do things like hide people from the authorities or help smuggle them out of the country. Others might be compelled by their beliefs to damage property. This follows in the dradition of those who hid Jews from Nazis in Germany and those who ran the underground railroad in the USA, as well as those who work to smuggle women and children out of Islamic areas now. I don't think there are a lot of Christian branches that endorse violence or destruction of property. I don't think you really understand the concept of moral responsibility under some objective systems. I think something Christians and I probably have in common which you might be misunderstanding is that the harm and the evil which we are obligated to attempt to stop is not really the harm that is being visited upon the unborn who get to leave life in a very innocent state (probably avoiding a lot more harm over the course of a life than the few seconds of suffering they endure as a result of the abortion), but rather the much greater harm that the abortion is doing to the living who chose to commit or facilitate the act, and to the society at large that endorses such acts. So, while life is sacred, it's not the innocent who are going to suffer the consequences of the act as much as the living, and that is really what moral action is about in these cases - not to stop evil from operating in the world, but to try to convince others not to choose evil and help prevent them from pursuing their self-destructive course. Christians, I think, resign themselves to the fact that the world is not perfect and is largely a vale of tears. We are all going to suffer from evil here. There is no putting an end to it; there is only doing the best one can to help others to understand the path towards the good. And to that end, debating on sites like this, passing out materials, writing books, offering help and services, etc., is about the best that can be done. Sure, there are some cases where one must physically intervene, but that doesn't mean you have to kill people or blow things up; it may just mean putting yourself between evil and the innocent and sacrificing your own comfort or even your own life. I don't know, really, what you expect Christians to do that they aren't already doing, or why you think they ought to be doing more?William J Murray_{August 26, 2016
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Wjm, it was a hypothetical example. Remember what that is? On abortion being compared to the holocaust. Hypothetical for everyone. A right wing racist becomes president. On obtaining office he brings in new laws saying everyone who is not Christian will be deported. Also all non white's and gay people. After this the police start rounding up all these people and putting them in big camps in the desert. Then it is decided deportation is too expensive and the camps are converted to death camps and the killing starts. Let's say you are a Christian white person. Do you spend time debating the rights and wrongs of this on the Internet with the supporters of this president? Do you exchange philosophical arguments about Plato and morality? Or do you perhaps take some other steps?Pindi_{August 26, 2016
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subjective : influenced by or based on personal beliefs or feelings, rather than based on facts . Given materialism, beliefs and feelings are the products of particles in motion over which the person has no control. So, in what sense are they "personal"? And if the person — whatever that means under materialism — has no control over his behavior, in what sense is it meaningful to discuss morality; "subjective" or objective? Freedom of choice is a prerequisite to morality. If people don’t have freedom of choice they cannot be accountable for their actions and morality does not exist. A person must be free from physics and chemistry or a “moral” choice is no different than a stream flowing through a gully.
1. If determinism is true, then all our actions and thoughts are consequences of events and laws of nature in the remote past before we were born. 2. We have no control over circumstances that existed in the remote past before we were born, nor do we have any control over the laws of nature. 3. If A causes B, and we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B. Therefore 4. If determinism is true, then we have no control over our own actions and thoughts. Therefore, assuming that responsibility requires control, 5. If determinism is true, then we are not responsible for anything we do or think. Therefore, assuming that freedom entails responsibility, 6. If determinism is true, then we are not free, which is to say that every form of compatibilism is false. [ Bill Vallicella ]
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Pindi, I thought it might help you to cite Cicero in De Legibus on the nature of law:
http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/cicero/documents/de-legibus . . . M: And indeed correctly. For recognize that in no subject of argument are more honorable things brought into the open: what nature has granted to a human being, how many of the best things the human mind encompasses, what service we have been born for and brought into light to perform and accomplish, what is the connection among human beings, and what natural fellowship there is among them. When these things have been explained, the source of laws and right can be discovered. [17] A: So you don’t think that the discipline of law should be drawn from the praetor’s edict, as many do now, or from the Twelve Tables [archaic set of basic Roman laws], as earlier men did, but from within the profoundest philosophy? M: In fact, Pomponius, in this conversation we are not seeking how to safeguard interests in law [ius], or how to respond to each consultation. That thing may be a great matter, and it is, which formerly was undertaken by many famous men and is now undertaken by one man of the highest authority and knowledge [Servius Sulpicius]. But in this debate we must embrace the entire cause of universal right and laws, so that what we call civil law [ius] may be confined to a certain small, narrow place. We must explain the nature of law [ius], and this must be traced from human nature. We must consider laws by which cities ought to be ruled. Then we must treat the laws [ius] and orders of peoples that have been composed and written, in which what are called the civil laws [ius] of our people will not be hidden. [18] Q: Truly, brother, you trace deeply and, as is proper, from the fountain head of what we are asking about. Those who hand down the civil law [ius] differently are handing down not so much ways of justice as ways of litigating. M: That is not so, Quintus: ignorance of the law [ius] is conducive to more lawsuits than knowledge of it. But this later; now let us see the beginnings of law [ius]. Therefore, it has pleased highly educated men to commence with law—probably correctly, provided that, as the same men define it, law is highest reason, implanted in nature, which orders those things that ought to be done and prohibits the opposite. The same reason is law when it has been strengthened and fully developed in the human mind. [19] And so they think that law is prudence, the effect of which is to order persons to act correctly and to forbid them to transgress. They also think that this thing has been called [from] the Greek name for “granting to each his own,” whereas I think it comes from our word for “choosing.” As they put the effect of fairness into law, we put the effect of choice into it. Nevertheless, each one is appropriate to law. But if it is thus correctly said, as indeed it mostly and usually seems to me, the beginning of right should be drawn from law. For this is a force of nature; this is the mind and reason of the prudent man; this is the rule of right and wrong. But since our entire speech is for the people’s business, sometimes it will be necessary to speak popularly and to call that a law which, when written, consecrates what it wants by either ordering [or forbidding], as the crowd calls it. In fact let us take the beginning of establishing right from the highest law, which was born before any law was written for generations in common [corrupt text here] or before a city was established at all . . .
A point of beginnings. Law as the rule of justice in light of our evident nature, evident to the rational, responsibly free, which properly guides conduct. Which is then more or less well echoed in our understanding and legislation or rulings, precedents etc. Whence, the general respect for the corpus of decisions rendered across time as embodying more or less a working replica. But, open to genuine reform, not the mere push and pull of might and manipulation make ‘right.’ Which Plato warned against so sternly in The Laws Bk X. KFkairosfocus_{August 26, 2016
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JAD, some come here for discussion. Others out of intent to achieve message dominance, others, to make sure their views are in every UD thread. Some hope to divert threads and discredit those who stand up for ID. Some see this as entertainment. Some are simply angry. Others are stalking. The first are the ones with whom we can have a serious discussion. KFkairosfocus_{August 26, 2016
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Barry began this blog post by writing, “Sometimes a materialist will post a comment, and I will read it and then just sit there with my mouth literally agape, wondering at the sheer stupidity on display.” But are the atheists who are making the inane arguments here really that stupid? Or are they just very dishonest and disingenuous? I would argue that it is the latter. I think they believe they are right simply because of who they are. (And maybe also because they too lazy to really think through a problem and consider alternative viewpoints.) Therefore anyone who disagrees with them is automatically stupid and wrong. So it doesn’t matter one way or the other if they come across being stupid. This is the kind of smug condescending attitude that the ancient Greeks referred to as hubris. Of course that raises the question, why do they bother to show up on site like this at all? Anyone have any thoughts about that? However this brings up the other problem I have run into time and time again on the internet: How can you have a meaningful discussion or debate with someone who describes himself as a moral subjectivist? If you can’t establish a shared common standard of truthfulness, how can you reason with them in good faith? By definition a subjectivist has to reject such standard because it would be an “objective” standard. So in other words, how can you trust them to be truthful since truthfulness, at least for them, doesn’t really exist?john_a_designer_{August 26, 2016
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“Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.” --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe We'll repeat the truth to you Pindi. 2+2=4, ending tiny human's life is wrong, the Earth is round, etcEugen_{August 26, 2016
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