Timo & MathIsColl discuss Morality Discussion thread

[screwtape]

Note:  morality still not defined in the discussion.

[Revival]

There is no need to define what's obvious.

[Alzael]

There is no need to define what's obvious.

Then you should have no trouble doing it.

[Azdgari]

There is no need to define what's obvious.

"Obvious" just means that there are hidden assumptions involved.  Sometimes that's reasonable.  Here, it isn't.

[Ivellios]

"Appeal to popularity IS a valid debate technique." It's not like there was ever a point in history where almost everyone was wrong about something/everything: Lightning, Flat Earth, Earthquakes, Volcanoes... nah.

More Muslims than a combined tally of Christians[1], in 500 LESS years. Over 1 Billion Muslims couldn't possible be wrong, can they? In fact Christians need to include Catholics or it's a landslide in favor of Islam.

Non-Christian tech: Japan, China, Rome, Egypt, Central Americas, etc. In fact Europe was doing fine till Christianity came along. Then 'The Dark Ages.' People were KILLED by the Church for "disobeying God" "heresey" and many other religious crimes. Science didn't happen because of Christianity... it came about Despite Christianity. Beteween the Protestant Reformation and the Rennisance, the Church had it's hands full. If they didn't happen at about the same, we would still BE IN the Dark Ages.

I could go on, in further detail, but it's Timo's game. Two words came to my mind: Picard Facepalm.

1.	this includes Catholicism

[velkyn]

wow. 

I've encountered that opinion before on Mr. D'Souza.

So you'd think you might wonder why this is.  Could it be that D'Souza is simply wrong and you beleive him just because he supports your nonsense? 

According to those Christians who invented it, the gathering of knowledge about how stuff works that we refer to as "science" is a distinctly Christian enterprise, a fulfillment of Christian objectives.

And they’d be wrong.  Totally wrong.  As is MiC.   Someone’s unsupport opinion on how great they are is not a historical fact. Nor does it require anyone to look at it closer since it has nothing to support it. and I’d love to know what ‘Christian objectives” are being fulfilled.  I see nothing in the bible that supports knowing how the world really works at all. Indeed, I see only obedience and blind faith being advocated.

If you're really serious about following Jesus Christ, you can't own slaves.

No True Scotsman argument.  Funny the bible directly says that Christians can own slaves. 

Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed.  If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful.

  You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts.  Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them.  (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)[/quote]

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.  (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

It even says not to resist being a slave.

I'm saying Christians invented Science.  They did.  I'm saying Christians ended slavery.  They did.

nice outright lies.  Christians who happened to oppose slavery helped end slavery.  Christians who did not oppose slavery did not and they both have plenty of cherry picked bible nonsense to support *each* side.   Christians who happened to arrive at the scientific method, did science.  So did Muslims, Indians, Chinese, etc. 

and of course

My second statement was (2)If God does not exist, morality does not exist

again baseless and can be shown to be false just looking around in the real world.  I mean, really repeating nosensen and again no evidence that it’s true at all.  I do love the claim here too

Morality does not exist as anything real, assuming God does not exist. [5]

and the attempt at trying to admit that it does but only in a way that MiC thinks it can’t affect anything. 

[Hatter23]

"Appeal to popularity IS a valid debate technique."

Actually it is. It is a good rhetorical technique on an audience not looking for logical falacies. Most logical fallacies ARE valid debate techniques when you are trying to win over a people who aren't skeptical.

[Ivellios]

Point taken. I stand... well, sit and type corrected.

[jaimehlers]

"Appeal to popularity IS a valid debate technique."

Actually it is. It is a good rhetorical technique on an audience not looking for logical falacies. Most logical fallacies ARE valid debate techniques when you are trying to win over a people who aren't skeptical.

Say, rather, that they're good public speaking techniques.  A debate generally does not involve people who are all that credulous.

[Hatter23]

"Appeal to popularity IS a valid debate technique."

Actually it is. It is a good rhetorical technique on an audience not looking for logical falacies. Most logical fallacies ARE valid debate techniques when you are trying to win over a people who aren't skeptical.

Say, rather, that they're good public speaking techniques.  A debate generally does not involve people who are all that credulous.

Debates are generally held before an audience. That's the point.

[jaimehlers]

That wasn't what I said.  I said that debates aren't usually held in front of a credulous crowd.

[Hatter23]

That wasn't what I said.  I said that debates aren't usually held in front of a credulous crowd.

Political debates are. And those are the ones that have the biggest impact beyond the walls of a University.

But since the Academic debates are the majority of them...your point stands.

[jaimehlers]

That wasn't what I said.  I said that debates aren't usually held in front of a credulous crowd.

Political debates are. And those are the ones that have the biggest impact beyond the walls of a University.

But since the Academic debates are the majority of them...your point stands.

Yeah, I was thinking of academic debates.  And you have a good point about political ones, at least ones that aren't held between candidates from different parties.

[Hatter23]

That wasn't what I said.  I said that debates aren't usually held in front of a credulous crowd.

Political debates are. And those are the ones that have the biggest impact beyond the walls of a University.

But since the Academic debates are the majority of them...your point stands.

Yeah, I was thinking of academic debates.  And you have a good point about political ones, at least ones that aren't held between candidates from different parties.

Even the differing political parties ones. That just mean they are drawing amongst an even wider net of the voting public. At least apparently in the US, shown by the popularity of religion, the voting public is mostly rather credulous.

[jaimehlers]

With all due respect to MathIsCool, the fact that some scientists were Christians (even if, as he claims, Christian scientists helped to develop the scientific methods we now use) hardly makes science a Christian endeavor.  The reason we have the highly-developed scientific methodology we rely on today is because the relatively advanced empirical methodology used by the Greeks and Romans was preserved outside the Christian world when illiterate and uneducated Christian mobs were in the process of uprooting it along with so-called paganism.  And by the time the Islamic world started hardening into fundamentalism, the Christian world had come out of the dark ages enough to take up the torch.

Both Islam and Christianity helped keep scientific knowledge alive[1], but neither of them was really responsible for science.

1.	When they weren't trying to kill it, at any rate.

[nogodsforme]

The whole argument that MiC is making assumes that 1) only Christianity (due to having the one true god) can be moral, and that 2)whatever god does is good.

The people who existed before Christ, like the ancient Egyptians, and in other places not touched by Christianity like China and India, could not possibly be moral. The Inca and Aztec and Maya and other people of the Americas had no laws or rules or ways of determining right and wrong. Somehow they managed to scrape by for thousands of years without the benefits of Christianity. People who were forced to convert to European ways of life were automatically better off.

This is blatant ethnocentric bullsh!t.

The Europeans who invaded other societies and enslaved, murdered and robbed the locals did it all in the name of their Christian religion! They saw themselves as superior, not because they behaved better[1], but because they had the right god. In actuality, the only thing the Europeans excelled at was weapons technology.

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

Every human society establishes functional moral guidelines and while none are perfect, some are pretty good. Many non-Christian human societies have figured out how to survive and create economies, arts, social structures that have lasted, sometimes for many centuries. Some were far more socially adept, peaceful, sustainable and egalitarian than anything in Europe. No particular god necessary.

Any "supreme being" who decides that the only way to deal with bad behavior is to kill the bad person is not very supreme. Most advanced industrialized societies have abolished the death penalty. No particular god necessary.

If any religious morality was superior, it would be pretty obvious. In fact, as we have discussed before, the more religious a country, the more violent and problematic it is. Every social advance has happened with in spite of resistance from the very people who claimed to be on the side of god. Go and look at the twisted, hate-filled faces and read the twisted, hate-filled rhetoric of the Christians who massed to prevent civil rights in the US, in South Africa, in India. Slavery, racism, witch-burning, persecution of gays, etc. have not been just anomalies from a handful-- they have formed the very basis of religious behavior.

Genocide, killing every member of a society including elderly and children, is evil.  The great flood, if it happened, was the most evil act in the history of the planet. Killing innocents and laying waste to all the plants and animals was unbelievably evil. No way can that be redefined as "good". I am amazed that there are people who think the abortion of one month-old fetus is a wrong and evil act, but the great flood was just fine. No. If killing one fetus is evil, than killing a million men, women and kids is far more evil.

1.	they were unwashed and uncouth, took without permission and overstayed their welcome-- the world's worse houseguests

[screwtape]

God's goodness:
Yes, that genocide was good.

Look, I could point out how the Caananites were sacrificing their firstborn to fire, ...God wanted a more surefire way to ensure this one didn't make it's way into Israel.

Rather, though, I think I'll point out two things:

1) You don't really have a problem with mass genocide either.  As I keep pointing out below, there's no real objective standard for rightness or wrongness on atheism, so neither of us have a problem with it.

what a douche bag. 

For starters, Canaanites were hebrews.  Hebrews were canaanites. They were not invaders from egypt that took over a land dominated by villainous savages.  This was their original religion.  In the original version of Abraham's covenant, he sacrifices Isaac.  Remenants of that remain in the bible.  He goes back down the mountain alone.   Secondly, god - you know, the all-powerful guy who controls the entire universe - could have just made them stop doing it.  Having someone else kill them all was a really crude way to handle the problem.

As far as atheist morality being based on nothing, what a butthole.  "As I keep pointing out..."  He should have said, "As I keep asserting regardless of the facts..."

What a waste of time.

[nogodsforme]

With all due respect to MathIsCool, the fact that some scientists were Christians (even if, as he claims, Christian scientists helped to develop the scientific methods we now use) hardly makes science a Christian endeavor.  The reason we have the highly-developed scientific methodology we rely on today is because the relatively advanced empirical methodology used by the Greeks and Romans was preserved outside the Christian world when illiterate and uneducated Christian mobs were in the process of uprooting it along with so-called paganism.  And by the time the Islamic world started hardening into fundamentalism, the Christian world had come out of the dark ages enough to take up the torch.

Both Islam and Christianity helped keep scientific knowledge alive[1], but neither of them was really responsible for science.

1.	When they weren't trying to kill it, at any rate.

Very true. Muslims were exploring science, medicine and math in universities and libraries during the Middle Ages when Europeans were persecuting anyone who thought differently. And we can even go back to the Crusades to see how Europe benefited from the knowledge they brought back from the Middle East. Much of what we in "western civilization" take for granted as elements of the good life came from Asia and the Middle East.[2]If Christianity had any inherent respect for knowledge, they would not have burned the Mayan and Aztec cities to the ground and destroyed the Inca civilization. We may never know what we lost when the Spanish conquered the Americas.

2.	Carpets to cushion the floor, soft furnishings on beds and chairs, bathing(!) with soap, using spices to season and preserve food.

[curiousgirl]

Screwtape, I agree. It is rather douche-y of MiC to attempt to justify genocide (mass murder) as a means of dealing with the Caananites sacrificing their children (also mass murder). It ends up with God as a petty hypocrite.

While I will state that morality is subjective (it changes with time or cultures), there are certain actions that are consistently unpleasant and abhorrent to the majority within whatever culture you name. Genocide may seem appealing to megalomaniacs, sociopaths, sadists, etc but to a sane and civilized individual, it is atrocious and immoral. We decide morality, not some higher power.

The douchiest part, however, is when MiC tries to tell Timo that he does not have a problem with genocide. Speaking for someone else does not help his argument.

[Historicity]

I notice when Timo brings up Bible quotes where God does evil and says so, MiC evades repeatedly by saying there have been people who studied the Bible for up to 50 years who have some sort of answer.

My point in citing Christian scholars who have spent lots of time in the Bible is just to say that, if one wants an accurate picture of a character in a book (fictional or not) one could do worse than to find those Christians who have immersed themselves in it's pages (and in derivative works analyzing those pages) for 30, 40, or 50 years - and they all seem to have a somewhat high opinion of God.

There, that answers it.  There are some people with some sort of answer.

[screwtape]

There, that answers it.  There are some people with some sort of answer.

...people with a prejudiced view and loads of emotional investment in that view.  Yeah.  Trust them.  They are sure to give you a fair and unbiased answer...

[Ivellios]

I like how utterly biased his [MiC] posts are.

Jesus: One of what... 30(?) men that "raised from the dead." Spectacular, yes, but by no means singular. Let's see, Tamuz, Horus... etc.
Jesus: Just one of over a hundred guys born from a virgin impregnated by a god.

God created the Earth and the Universe! That's why he deserves his adoration and worship. Yeah! God is just one of thousands of gods that Allegedly created the Earth/Universe. Too bad the only "proof" of his "truth" is the argument to popularity. MiC keeps pointing this out on why Christianity is "right" but he just doesn;'t get it.

The argument to popularity is a fallacy because for one reason Christianity is Not the most popular Religion. Islam has more believers than every one of the 38,000 sects of Christianity combined and they did so in 500 years LESS time. If I'm going to pick a religion just because it's [most] popular, why would anyone want to be anything other than Muslim. Besides the Qu'Ran says that Allah is Creator and Mohammed is his Prophet.

Why oh why can't society just finally accept that these guys were mentally ill?