Isn't that the Negative Zone? I'm fairly certain it works like however Marvel wants it to work. Sort of like the Power Cosmic. Stupid review judging it as a movie outside the bounds of comic book conventions.

Comics are silly, convoluted, and prefer form over function:

1. Thor and Iron Man are required to have pissing contests.
2. Sunglasses and eye patches make people without super powers look badass.
3. Banner on a motorcycle is a good juxtaposition against his Hulky-jump-through-the-air travel form.
4. Loki is a conceited god so the Iron Man delay works -- didn't this reviewer. already assess that Loki was there to convert and not kill?
5. Of course CAPTAIN AMERICA just jumped from a plane. Idiot.
6. Did he just judge the movie according the Captain America's silly costume? Idiot.
7. No lap dance? He wants to watch the Russian dude give Black Widow a lap dance? I'm confused.
8. Bad guys running laps happens in... most action films with bad guys that need to fill in some time and guide direction visually. Reeeaaaally dumb criticism.
9. Plasma screens? You'd prefer to see a cell phone and then a split screen with 4 other people on cell phones? WTF
10. Loki's scepter is also a space phone??? My phone is also a camera, GPS, medical adviser, blogging tool, gaming device, and if I could download an app that performed mind control, I would. Loki is a god so he can.
11. The hellicarrier was created by Jack Kirby. Fuck you, this is an Avengers movie.
12. Sweeping cameras may sound silly, but comic book logic dictates that this is fine. Why not?
13. His criticism of little girls being able to find Bruce Banner is a criticism of our emotional attachment to the Gavroche, not the Avengers. Is the mystique of a street smart urchin gone from our collective unconscious?
14. Hawkeye's virus arrow is perfectly executed and makes sense according to his abilities.
15. Thor being easily tricked by Loki using low brow tactics is true even in Norse mythology. What exactly are we critiquing here?
16. Loki's objective in being captured is partly him being an overly confidant asshole god. He's just sort of going around half cocked because he can and likes to do so. The gods aren't smarter than us, just more powerful and with magical abilities that trump technology. In fact, this means they don't need to try as hard and would definitely be candidates in the personality disorder department. Hell, for all we know they could suffer from intellectual disorders that would never have become an issue (aside from making them stupidly violent) considering their power.
17. Hawkeye versus Black Widow is not cool? Damn.
18. Fury also gave an intimidating death stare in Jurassic Park when Nedry's "Ah ah ah, you didn't say the magic word" security screen pops up. HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS. I liked the half reference.
19. If you have trouble understanding the powers of Mjölnir, why do you also complain about the plodding exposition?! These things require exposition and it's so arbitrary that it becomes plodding. Comics are FILLED with plodding exposition because of this and there's a point where you just have to know the characters. Do they explain superman's laser eyes in the movies? Actually... do they?
20. Black Widow is a weapons expert, including theoretical weaponry.
21. In the comics Hulk learns to control his powers and can even be intellectual in said form.
22. The alien invasion would do more damage than a nuclear bomb. These villains enslave entire worlds.
23. The ending requires homework??? THE ENTIRE SERIES OF MOVIES REQUIRES HOMEWORK.


That being said, I agree with a good number of the points:

1. The tesseract was a rebranding of the Cosmic Cube which has a long history in the Marvel universe. (So I guess this movie was made for comic book fans?)
2. Well lit facility. There should have been some sort of cloaking shield around it, which is perfectly acceptable in a comic book world, if not the real.
3. Cap's bet. I don't believe Cap would have done that because it isn't just.
4. Speaking in English to Germans. It would have been cool to hear him speak in German. Damn!
5. Hawkeye's arrow fucking up the hellicarrier. However, I could see this happening in a comic book, I just don't like it.
6. Captain America's ear piece and bad aim.
7. Tesseract mind control wearing off after blunt trauma.
8. Cap's super powers are kinda lame in these movies, but I'm sure if they weren't, then this review would contain criticism about how his human fists can smash through metal.
9. The aliens are a pretty shitty replacement for the Skrulls. This is what makes me the saddest.
10. Imiatating transformers... this bugged the crap out of me when I first saw the trailer. UGH!
11. Thor's lightning must have a long cooldown.
12. Yeah, it was pretty lame when the aliens died after they were cut off from the mother ship. Inferior to the Skrulls fo sho.

you're not an adult until you learn how to patch the holes you punch

Looks like Santa will be sporting a "soul patch" this season =oD

>> ^deathcow:

Would like to see what an icy patch of road might do....


It'd get out of the way.

Would like to see what an icy patch of road might do....

>> ^Yogi:

The faulty piece of equipment doesn't bother me, that's something that occurs in my everyday life and we deal with it as best we can. What does bother me is the actions of the polling people...if what this person says is true they shouldn't be there doing the polling. Show them a problem and it's their job to either fix it or decommission the machine.


It bothers me. I've been a software developer for over 10 years (professionally, technically I've been developing software for 3 decades, I know how machines work extremely thoroughly). Even considering the fact that he didn't display the input result from every option presented, this is still entirely suspect.

Regarding voting machine systems: there is literally NOTHING there that requires even a modicum of tech that's post-1985. Maybe encryption would cause a bug like this, but encryption would NOT, under any realistic circumstance, cause a reproducible user-feedback/GUI error like this, because it would be employed to store the data, not display feedback of any kind.


>> ^EvilDeathBee:

Totally.
Also, I would've said to her "No, it's NOT OK! This machine is defective!" and demanded it be removed. I wonder if it's part of the machines that got the "Experimental Patch"


Yeah me too. I would have recorded the entire exchange, as well as getting her name and the specific voting location. I would not let it go, but would probably post it and collect as much evidence as possible. "Both" parties are lying sacks of no good shit, and I don't trust any of them. I am sick of fake, self-servers running the United States at the expense of the rest of the world.

>> ^artician:

"It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK."
Double-plus OK!


Totally.

Also, I would've said to her "No, it's NOT OK! This machine is defective!" and demanded it be removed. I wonder if it's part of the machines that got the "Experimental Patch"

@ponceleon I think we fundamentally agree--but we seem to be talking past one another. You seem to be ascribing motivations to me which I don't think are right.

I do Not think that Jennings should be prosecuted because he's a smug, smirking bastard. I do Not think he should be prosecuted because of what TYT says.

I think he should be prosecuted because he was accused of a heinous crime. Apparently--at one time--the prosecuting attorney agreed. Then he didn't--that smells very bad; taking in to account the history of the US justice system favoring rich people over all others (OJ should be in jail for life for 2 murders--he's not because he could afford a team of scummy lawyers). I am "all worked up" because the dropping of the charges at the last minute smells like privilege.

I know I'm somewhat of a one trick pony here; posting all these TYT vids. But that doesn't mean I think they are always right--or even that their reporting doesn't sometimes suck (like this story).

Ammar's hand was cut and required six stiches. Jennings said the cabbie had grabbed the knife by the blade and that's how his hand got cut. So why was Jennings holding a knife? The prosecutor says he had to drop the case because Ammar had possession of the knife in question 5 months after the incident. Why didn't the cops ask where the knife was for all that time? No one has claimed that the knife wasn't Jennings', so how did the cabbie get it? So, the prosecutor says that Ammar is guilty of obstruction of justice for not telling anyone he had the knife. Weiss (the prosecutor) said he then could be fair and prosecute both or be fair and prosecute neither, and he chose the second option. This all stinks and needs to be brought out in court. Civil court means nothing to the rich--he could pay any fines out of pocket money.

But the justice system has a way to take care of prosecutorial misconduct. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has asked that the Federal Investigators to get involved. That--along with pressure from the stirred up public--should get a true investigation of this incident rolling.

(It sounds like you did a good job on your jury.)

Conservative Logic:

1) On the day Obama took office, somehow the slate was wiped clean, and the economy was reset to 0.
Logic: The house should stop burning as soon as the firetruck pulls into your driveway.

2) If you just patch the hemorrhage, the economy will rebound.
Logic: An obese person who gets a liposuction doesn't have to change their lifestyle and diet to maintain their new weight.

It's a just a bug (har har) in their pathfinding algorithm. I'm sure a patch will be out soon.

>> ^ReverendTed:

>> ^shuac:
I implore all sifters who are even remotely curious about smoking herbal incense, to NOT do it. Sure, it provides an authentic feel but after a few sessions, the inside of your mouth will feel as though it's bleeding and you'll be able to extract giant patches of dead flesh from your mouth. I'm not kidding. I'm all for bucking the system in favor of personal liberties but this is one of those times where the warning label should be heeded.
Thanks for the personal insight! From your description, that sounds like an allergic reaction. Would you happen to know if this is a common response?


No allergies on my end and I don't know how common such a reaction is.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Well, the central argument of the video is that life without God is meaningless. You've already agreed with that point, so the argument now seems to be is whether someone can be happy and fulfilled with a meaningless life. I'm sure there are plenty of people who weren't believers who died happily in ignorance of the truth, but the question is, did they understand that their life was meaningless? I doubt it. It is not something that many people are able to face, and even if they could, they certainly don't live that way. In some way or another, they are deluding themselves and living as if their life does have meaning.

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

Hope is what keeps people going. Without hope, you are just going through the motions. When you have hope and lose it, it is emotionally devastating. A person without any hope is a person most likely clinically depressed.

You can call depression a kind of mental disorder, and some people may be born without the right chemical receptors for instance, but most people are depressed because of a lack of hope. A person, for instance, who worked their whole life and lost their retirement in an afternoon, or a mom whose kids abandoned her to live in a nursing home. They are not mentally ill, they are simply facing the cold, stark reality of their situation.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

The point being, that if there is no God then no one is in the drivers seat here on planet Earth. I would be surprised if the extreme fragility of our civilization escaped you. If you look at history, and you contrast it to what is going on today, you will find that the new is simply the old in different packaging. We're watching the exact same game show, simply on a grander and more dangerous scale. Humanity has never been closer to utterly destroying itself anytime in its history than it is today. I'm sure, like everything else in creation, you will attribute that to dumb luck. However, if you think everything is a numbers game, then sooner or later the odds say that cooler heads will not prevail and there will be a civilization annihilating calamity. The truth is, it is only the sovereign hand of God that is restraining this from happening.

The reason I made that comment about God is because of your comment about your depression. The reason you have that feeling that if you believed in God you wouldn't be depressed is because you know there is hope in God.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/29/half-german-teens-dont-know-hitler-dictator_n_163659 3.html

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Thanks for the elaboration. I am familiar with the philosophy of Sam Harris, and I figured you were borrowing from him, but it is good to know where you stand. My original point, however, still stands. You say you can't imagine someone finding bliss in hurting people. Well, have you ever heard of psychopaths? They do indeed find their bliss in acquiring power and control and making other people miserable, and they feel absolutely no remorse for doing so.

You also say that you feel the best state of a human being is to be blissfully happy. I'm sure everyone will agree with you that feeling blissfully happy is good. However, why should we believe this is actually what good is?. Yes, it feels good to feel good, but this doesn't tell us why we *ought* to do anything. Maybe this is just incredibly selfish and the opposite of good, or somewhere in the middle is true, or maybe none of it. You give no actual reason (beyond arbitrary statements like that which makes the world better or worse) to equate feeling good with moral goodness. In a meaningless Universe, neither is there any basis for thinking that you have any moral duties. This leads me to some questions that you didn't actually address in the last post. Let me ask them again because they are central to this discussion:

In a meaningless Universe there is no actual right and wrong, so why shouldn't you just do whatever you want? Why waste your time trying to navigate some moral landscape that you don't even believe really exists? Why not just take what you can, when you can, before you lose the opportunity?

I'll also address some of your comments:

In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion

People do evil because they get carried away by their lusts and become enticed. You view this as some sort of ignorance, or automatic function. Not so. When a person is doing wrong, they are almost always entirely aware of this, but simply override their moral restraints with their desire to fulfill their lusts. People are responsible for the evil that they do, not society, environmental factors, their parents, or anything else.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

I've already agreed with you that we all have a God given conscience that tells us right from wrong. Therefore, we don't need to read the bible to know that it is wrong to murder or steal. However, what God has commanded is that we all repent and believe in the gospel. This is something you aren't going to intuitively understand without being told.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

I am familiar with his system, to which I reiterate the point; what is the ground for associating moral evil with misery and moral good with "moving people away from misery". Where do you get moral duties in a meaningless Universe?

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too.

The morality that God gives can be summed up in two commandments: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy mind and all thy strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself. As Jesus told us:

Matthew 22:40

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments

That's a very simple system. When you love God and other people everything else follows naturally.

Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

On the contrary, it's all arbitrary, because "what makes things better for people" or what "makes the world worse" is something determined by consensus. If everyone in the world agreed that torturing babies for fun made things better for people, it would be good in your view. If your moral system allows for this possibility, I think that's a sign its time to throw it away.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

If this were true, there would be no need for courts, judges, prisons, or police officers. There are also laws which may make some people miserable but are necessary for the greater good.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

It doesn't suffice, though. Yes, we can both agree there is a universal morality among human beings. How is that fact supposed to serve as grounds to invent an arbitrary system of good and evil based on people following their bliss and avoiding misery? I could just easily reverse the two and say the existence of universal morality justifies that too. I could say that the existence of a universal morality justifies that we should all love eggplants and hate rutabagas. There is no logical connection here between the system you've created and universal morality.

If there is no objective morality, then nothing is really wrong. Any system you create in the end is a human invention, based on human interpretation, and agreed upon by human consensus. You still cannot get an ought from an is. Good could be defined as a world of people who love each other, or a world of people who love to eat children. What is wrong then is simply based on your personal preferences.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

I understand that this wasn't meant to be perfect. It has, however, raised more concerns than it answered.

>> ^messenger

>> ^shuac:

I implore all sifters who are even remotely curious about smoking herbal incense, to NOT do it. Sure, it provides an authentic feel but after a few sessions, the inside of your mouth will feel as though it's bleeding and you'll be able to extract giant patches of dead flesh from your mouth. I'm not kidding. I'm all for bucking the system in favor of personal liberties but this is one of those times where the warning label should be heeded.
Thanks for the personal insight! From your description, that sounds like an allergic reaction. Would you happen to know if this is a common response?

I implore all sifters who are even remotely curious about smoking herbal incense, to NOT do it. Sure, it provides an authentic feel but after a few sessions, the inside of your mouth will feel as though it's bleeding and you'll be able to extract giant patches of dead flesh from your mouth. I'm not kidding. I'm all for bucking the system in favor of personal liberties but this is one of those times where the warning label should be heeded.

@shinyblurry

Of what you said above in the first two paragraphs about the consequences of accepting meaninglessness as reality, just about all of it I fully agree with. For clarity, I’ll mark the exceptions:

the closer you are to death the less happy and hopeful you will become
and
Eventually, when enough tragedy happens to you, you will break down and the future will become more and more like a millstone around your neck.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Further, you comment that, "people become depressed because of a lack of hope."

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

For all of our so-called progress, humanity is just as sick and depraved as it always has been. Evil is increasing, not decreasing, and mankinds destructive appetites will never be satiated. There is no hope in man, but there is in God. I think you know that.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

All that is to say I pretty much agree with your view of what meaninglessness implies, and if there’s any bits that you want to explore more, I’m all for it.

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Lots of people do bad things to others and themselves, and later on, some may consider what they did was bad, or they might not. If they still think it was OK, it’s because they’ve used some kind of justification, like, "She did it to me first," "She was teasing me. What did she think would happen?" or, "He had it coming," or "I had no choice," And so forth. These are all rationalizations after the fact, justifications that allow them to still consider themselves as good people rather than change their behaviour or take responsibility for having done something wrong. These don’t address the real reason these people did these things. In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion.

I believe that the natural and best state for a human being to be is happy (and here again, I mean blissfully happy). Every bit of programming we have nudges us towards certain actions by rewarding us with feelings of happiness, or reduced misery. We only live once, so I would modify your description only slightly to, “taking what bliss you can when you can”.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too. Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.