Author Topic: Searching for GOD...  (Read 3732763 times)

Maeght

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26300 on: January 27, 2018, 06:35:01 PM »
You have given your own theological formulations. A telling one was your statement that baptism does not remove sin. Perhaps you should consider the ramifications of what you have said for a pleaded atheism.

What's a pleaded atheism?

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26301 on: January 27, 2018, 06:37:44 PM »
What's a pleaded atheism?
It's what goes on on this board Maeght.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26302 on: January 27, 2018, 06:44:05 PM »


What excuse has he I wonder for not accepting Onur, the lunar goddess of the aborigines,

   
Since this Goddess is in outer space I would have thought she was more relevant to you.

Stranger

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26303 on: January 27, 2018, 07:05:02 PM »
Sin is not dependant on a tendency to it as the first sinners demonstrated. All that is needed it seems is an opportunity and the choice to do it.

So it's a design flaw - and I'll say it again: free will is nonsense to an omnipotent, omniscient creator; such a being would be responsible for literally everything.

As you aren't engaging with anything I've said, I'll leave it there until and unless you do.
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bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26304 on: January 27, 2018, 07:25:01 PM »
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Again a post to deflect from Actual sin.

“Actual sin” meaning presumably, ”the behaviours a book I think to think to be inerrant tells me are sinful”. 

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Sin is not dependant on a tendency to it as the first sinners demonstrated. All that is needed it seems is an opportunity and the choice to do it.

"Sin" is not dependent on anything – the performance of it is just behaviours that are aligned with the things a book Vlad thinks to be inerrant calls “sinful”.   

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You did not address my questions on institutional behaviour. Are individuals responsible?

Presumably because it was incoherent gibberish.
 
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Concerning the Godless morality. Isn't there the evidence of its futility and dishonesty of it's premise?

And speaking of incoherent gibberish…

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Can its constant shifting and usurpations really be put down to evolution? Isn't there only really behaviour?

Wrong terms, but essentially yes. “Morality” is just a label for behaviours considered to be un/acceptable by various peoples at various times and places. Some is pretty much hard wired for obvious reasons to do with the protection of the phenotype (not killing ones own babies for example), while some is more fluid (attitudes for homosexuality for example). Moral injunctions contained in "holy" books are atrophied codifications of the rules of the various tribal peoples who wrote them, which is why they're concerned a lot with livestock, slavery and sacrifice, and not so much with, say, the rights and wrongs of spreading computer viruses.       
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bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26305 on: January 27, 2018, 07:29:05 PM »
Quote
It's what goes on on this board Maeght.

And once again Vladdo displays his obdurate refusal ever to grasp what "atheism" actually means - ie, the falsification of the arguments attempted for theism. 
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God

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26306 on: January 27, 2018, 07:44:38 PM »
“Actual sin” meaning presumably, ”the behaviours a book I think to think to be inerrant tells me are sinful”. 

"Sin" is not dependent on anything – the performance of it is just behaviours that are aligned with the things a book Vlad thinks to be inerrant calls “sinful”.   
   
And that is inferior to a ''morality'' pulled extra rectally how?

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26307 on: January 27, 2018, 08:18:08 PM »
Quote
And that is inferior to a ''morality'' pulled extra rectally how?

In which old liar boy demonstrates his undiminished enthusiasm for the false binary.

What’s odd too about the (thankfully small) band daft enough to essay objective morality with a straight face is their selectivity – morality’s kissing cousins of aesthetics and language for example (being other areas of human endeavour that rest on a mix of instinct and reason) don’t need a sky fairy to validate them, yet for some reason morality alone it seems does. It’s all a bit odd, but it’s where you get to I suppose when your critical faculties are so compromised by the notion that faith beliefs are any more reliable than just guessing.

Ah well.   
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God

Stranger

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26308 on: January 27, 2018, 08:22:37 PM »
And that is inferior to a ''morality'' pulled extra rectally how?

The choice is between morality cobbled together by humans over time or trying to reconstruct morality cobbled together by humans thousands of years ago, from an inconsistent and contradictory old book over which the people who purport to believe in it cannot agree.
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Maeght

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26309 on: January 27, 2018, 09:15:56 PM »
It's what goes on on this board Maeght.

What do you mean? The phrase makes no sense to me.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26310 on: January 28, 2018, 08:38:44 AM »
So the story goes, Vlad: don't tell me you think the Adam and Eve tale isn't myth.
We have been through this one before Gordon. Again it is a myth containing important truths IMHO.
Even if one is a theistic evolutionist or atheistic evolutionist there is a question, How big a population were the first truly moralistic humans?
Some on this board have tried to sidestep the problem by arbitrarily coming up with something called Protomorality. This though is disneyesque anthropomorphism and our old friend the argument from nature fallacy.

Worse still is when the people who talk about an evolved morality( which usually ignores novelty) like this suggest something real but when we get to Homo sapiens protomorality suddenly becomes moral irrealism, Zeitgeist, Good and Bad Memes and all sorts of other non Darwinian or non substantial ingredients(For the full list read anything on the topic by Bluehillside)

......The suggestion that protomorality evolves into something unreal is contradictory nonsense.

Maeght

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26311 on: January 28, 2018, 08:48:45 AM »
We have been through this one before Gordon. Again it is a myth containing important truths IMHO.
Even if one is a theistic evolutionist or atheistic evolutionist there is a question, How big a population were the first truly moralistic humans?
Some on this board have tried to sidestep the problem by arbitrarily coming up with something called Protomorality. This though is disneyesque anthropomorphism and our old friend the argument from nature fallacy.

Worse still is when the people who talk about an evolved morality( which usually ignores novelty) like this suggest something real but when we get to Homo sapiens protomorality suddenly becomes moral irrealism, Zeitgeist, Good and Bad Memes and all sorts of other non Darwinian or non substantial ingredients(For the full list read anything on the topic by Bluehillside)

......The suggestion that protomorality evolves into something unreal is contradictory nonsense.

Not really sure what that is all about,but to me morality is about behaviours considered unacceptable within society. As societies developed so did the moral structures. As a species we need to live in social structures and with behaviours which help that social structure being important.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26312 on: January 28, 2018, 08:59:07 AM »
Not really sure what that is all about,but to me morality is about behaviours considered unacceptable within society. As societies developed so did the moral structures. As a species we need to live in social structures and with behaviours which help that social structure being important.
That could encompass religious views though it is such a broad view .

Being a societal view how does it translate for the individual since it suggests morality on the basis of ''not getting caught by society''?

Gordon

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26313 on: January 28, 2018, 09:03:17 AM »
We have been through this one before Gordon. Again it is a myth containing important truths IMHO.
Even if one is a theistic evolutionist or atheistic evolutionist there is a question, How big a population were the first truly moralistic humans?
Some on this board have tried to sidestep the problem by arbitrarily coming up with something called Protomorality. This though is disneyesque anthropomorphism and our old friend the argument from nature fallacy.

Worse still is when the people who talk about an evolved morality( which usually ignores novelty) like this suggest something real but when we get to Homo sapiens protomorality suddenly becomes moral irrealism, Zeitgeist, Good and Bad Memes and all sorts of other non Darwinian or non substantial ingredients(For the full list read anything on the topic by Bluehillside)

......The suggestion that protomorality evolves into something unreal is contradictory nonsense.

Morality is a movable feast, Vlad: but you know this.

That it is different now from, say, 200 years ago on a variety of issues and that there are newer issue that have been considered from a moral perspective is no great surprise (for example the ethics surrounding embryology research), and that there are also cultural differences is also obvious.

That the Adam and Eve myth may contain a simplistic message about 'good vs evil' is perhaps an interesting cultural myth: but that is all it is.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26314 on: January 28, 2018, 09:04:57 AM »
So it's a design flaw -
So free will is a design flaw?

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26315 on: January 28, 2018, 09:10:22 AM »
Morality is a movable feast, Vlad: but you know this.

That it is different now from, say, 200 years ago on a variety of issues and that there are newer issue that have been considered from a moral perspective is no great surprise (for example the ethics surrounding embryology research), and that there are also cultural differences is also obvious.

That the Adam and Eve myth may contain a simplistic message about 'good vs evil' is perhaps an interesting cultural myth: but that is all it is.
Well that is your opinion based on a lack of study in the matter obviously.
The rest of your post carries the same studied vagueness of ideas, a thing basically intended by antitheists to muddy any water or cloud issues here.....AKA wooly waffle.

Stranger

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26316 on: January 28, 2018, 09:21:09 AM »
We have been through this one before Gordon. Again it is a myth containing important truths IMHO.
Even if one is a theistic evolutionist or atheistic evolutionist there is a question, How big a population were the first truly moralistic humans?
Some on this board have tried to sidestep the problem by arbitrarily coming up with something called Protomorality. This though is disneyesque anthropomorphism and our old friend the argument from nature fallacy.

Worse still is when the people who talk about an evolved morality( which usually ignores novelty) like this suggest something real but when we get to Homo sapiens protomorality suddenly becomes moral irrealism, Zeitgeist, Good and Bad Memes and all sorts of other non Darwinian or non substantial ingredients(For the full list read anything on the topic by Bluehillside)

......The suggestion that protomorality evolves into something unreal is contradictory nonsense.

Mostly gibberish - and you don't know what an argument from nature fallacy means (FFS why don't you look these things up to avoid making an arse of yourself?)

There is actually no viable alternative hypothesis from the idea that moral codes evolved from our instincts as social animals (just search for "morality in animals" for more).

Your old book is riddled with contradiction and ambiguity - cherry-picking on an industrial is required to extract anything like a coherent moral code. The god of the bible ordered and personally carried out crimes against humanity on a massive scale.

If there were a god with an absolute moral code, why is it hiding it amongst silly, contradictory, and ambiguous stories?

Once again, the Christian superstition's version is daft and contradictory in the extreme.
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26317 on: January 28, 2018, 09:38:29 AM »
Mostly gibberish - and you don't know what an argument from nature fallacy means (FFS why don't you look these things up to avoid making an arse of yourself?)

There is actually no viable alternative hypothesis from the idea that moral codes evolved from our instincts as social animals (just search for "morality in animals" for more).
.
I'm glad you actually have cottoned on to my arguments. Mere moaning though does not counter my point that people pushing ''evolved morality'' like yourself are cherrypicking examples from nature which seem to fit or explain a morality in an exercise of Disneyesque anthropomorphism.
But what torpedoes your grand theory is that when it comes to people, Morality becomes not an objective characteristic shaped by Darwinian process but to quote Gordon '' A Movable feast'' . It becomes irreal, it becomes moral zeitgeist, it becomes relative, Good and bad memes, it becomes kissing cousins with aesthetics etc.etc.etc.

Evolved morality is therefore in direct contradiction to the moral philosophy of many who propose it.

No viable alternative you say.

That is just intellectual totalitarian triumphalism which ignores the appearance of novelty in evolution and emergence.

And of course the combined moral philosophy you are peddling suffers from being wooly.

ekim

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26318 on: January 28, 2018, 09:42:42 AM »
Not really sure what that is all about,but to me morality is about behaviours considered unacceptable within society. As societies developed so did the moral structures. As a species we need to live in social structures and with behaviours which help that social structure being important.
Yes, I would think that this is a fair assessment.  Morals are social habits developed to maintain a social structure.  However 'sin' is a different concept if looked at from the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words that it is a translation of.  Hebrew ...Chata and Greek....hamartia relate to a relationship with God and mean 'miss the mark' i.e. the target being God.  Religions tend to have structures to help the follower keep on target and not deviate from the straight and narrow trajectory.  God transmits on narrow band but most people prefer broadband.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26319 on: January 28, 2018, 09:44:23 AM »
Morality is a movable feast, Vlad: but you know this.

It is in many moral theories Gordon but I believe you admitted to some things being definitely bad.

So I'm afraid you've sort of talked yourself out of the luxury of morality as a moveable feast.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26320 on: January 28, 2018, 09:47:39 AM »
Yes, I would think that this is a fair assessment.  Morals are social habits developed to maintain a social structure.  However 'sin' is a different concept if looked at from the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words that it is a translation of.  Hebrew ...Chata and Greek....hamartia relate to a relationship with God and mean 'miss the mark' i.e. the target being God.  Religions tend to have structures to help the follower keep on target and not deviate from the straight and narrow trajectory.  God transmits on narrow band but most people prefer broadband.
A timely post and worthy because it is more succinct that I am able to muster under these circumstance and has the virtue of it not being me who is saying it.

Stranger

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26321 on: January 28, 2018, 10:58:21 AM »
I'm glad you actually have cottoned on to my arguments. Mere moaning though does not counter my point that people pushing ''evolved morality'' like yourself are cherrypicking examples from nature which seem to fit or explain a morality in an exercise of Disneyesque anthropomorphism.
But what torpedoes your grand theory is that when it comes to people, Morality becomes not an objective characteristic shaped by Darwinian process but to quote Gordon '' A Movable feast'' . It becomes irreal, it becomes moral zeitgeist, it becomes relative, Good and bad memes, it becomes kissing cousins with aesthetics etc.etc.etc.
  • Morality obviously is a 'movable feast', it does change with the times - look at the changes in moral attitudees to sexual orientation over recent decades. Of course there are some things that are relatively constant because we are humans and need to maintain some order in our societies.
  • If you don't accept evolved morality, the matter becomes an unknown - you have provided no sensible alternative.

Evolved morality is therefore in direct contradiction to the moral philosophy of many who propose it.

In what way?

No viable alternative you say.

That is just intellectual totalitarian triumphalism which ignores the appearance of novelty in evolution and emergence.

Did this mean something in your mind before you started typing?

And of course the combined moral philosophy you are peddling suffers from being wooly.
  • It is woolly - get over it.
  • Your old book is woolly too.
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Gordon

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26322 on: January 28, 2018, 11:06:25 AM »
It is in many moral theories Gordon but I believe you admitted to some things being definitely bad.

So I'm afraid you've sort of talked yourself out of the luxury of morality as a moveable feast.

Not really: I think earthquakes are rarely welcomed, and I think that causing unnecessary harm is not a good thing but I also think that it would be immoral to deny women the same voting rights as men - yet not so long ago, and when my grandparents were alive, there were those who held to a different view and were happy to discriminate on the basis of gender. Not so now, here in the UK anyway.

There are other issues on which moral positions do vary, but that doesn't exclude that on some other issues the zeitgeist is fairly static.   

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26323 on: January 28, 2018, 11:11:55 AM »
  • Morality obviously is a 'movable feast', it does change with the times - look at the changes in moral attitudees to sexual orientation over recent decades. Of course there are some things that are relatively constant because we are humans and need to maintain some order in our societies.
  • If you don't accept evolved morality, the matter becomes an unknown - you have provided no sensible alternative.

In what way?

Did this mean something in your mind before you started typing?
  • It is woolly - get over it.
  • Your old book is woolly too.
I am indebted to Bluehillside who earlier made mention of a moral compass. Is the ''moveable feast morality'' of which we speak not just the uncontrolled movement of the compass needle?

I am not against the evolution of instinct. I have no evidence for or against protomorality. But what is clear is that people who declare protomorality as the evolution of instincts abandon this darwinian process for the movable feast, changing through things like zeitgeist and aesthetic taste and  memes and a host of other non darwinian processes....and that my boy is what is known as a dogs dinner not a philosophical triumph.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2018, 11:22:39 AM by Private Frazer »

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #26324 on: January 28, 2018, 11:14:03 AM »
Not really: I think earthquakes are rarely welcomed, 
You've done it again Gordon....talk of human morality......Straight into earthquakes!