Um, no. Leaving if you're unhappy you lost a political fight or election is absolutely not how democracies work. If it was, why aren't Republicans all moving right now?

No, they didn't. Being Christian doesn't equate to wanting to outlaw abortion. Most Americans are Christian, and a vast majority say they want abortion to be legal when asked. You're logic fails to recognize that some Christians don't believe in forcing their beliefs on others, and many only kind of believe, only when it's convenient, and limiting their options could feasibly hurt them.

No contraception is perfect, lack of sex ed in Texas means many don't even know how pregnancy works before being sexually active. Also I haven't heard of exceptions for rape or incest. These people have no option to use contraception, which fails far too often.
Also, I believe no person should be forced to be an unwilling biological life support system for another, certainly not for just a potential human, absolutely not children under any circumstances.


No, Shit Sherlock, it is not how it works in most of the world, certainly not in the developed world, are you under the impression that abortions only happen in America? Do you think people will accept sex only to procreate?
Access to multiple methods of terminating unwanted pregnancy are how it works across the world, because abstinence is insanely unrealistic and there's no even near perfect birth control without terminations when the main methods fail, which happens between .1% for the implant (the best, but with restrictions, and side effects and problems with having it implanted for 3 years) and >27% for the contraceptive sponge in women who've had a child ...typical methods like the pill fails 7%, condoms 13%, diaphragms 17%, many others in the >20% range. None of those numbers are acceptable when you're talking about an unwanted child without a secondary method with a 100% success rate.
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/contraception/index.htm

If women around the world didn't rely on secondary methods when primary ones fail, which they often do, they would only have sex for procreation and everyone would be exponentially more frustrated and angry. Not a reasonable or feasible solution.

* a h e m *

wisdom can be displayed at any age.

and age is a teacher...but not all pay attention.

there's a reason the phrases "from the mouth of babes" and "no fool like an old fool" will be passed on to the next generations. it is universally true.

even @18 or 19...or even matt gaetz girlfriend's age, 17...the demonstrative truth is SHE IS A VALEDICTORIAN and she has the sapience (you can look it up) to understand what she is condemning.*

am STILL unconfident that you believe what you're saying (it'd be an insult to both of us). have to be a wag of a satrist. no one is so subtly self-owning w/o some thread of chicanery showing.

just the juxtaposing of "well read" and "idiot" in the same sentence is A SCREAM!! man! that's good!

it's a Carlin skit. "jumbo shrimp"

makes me smile.

[if you're using newt as an example of a bad example, it's a bad example of a bad example. the low-hanging fruit here would be, it's unlikely bk33/tt ever had to worry about any unwanted pregnancy other than their own. doubt they've ever even stroked a petting zoo beaver.

* to be fair; its' Republican fly fodder. hardly 'gold star' level.

No, it's not really a no brainer. The few studies done, when other known factors are considered, showed that virgin marriages had <2% difference in satisfaction, probably within the margin of error....divorce rates are obviously skewed because most virgin couples are extremely religious, which accounts for lower divorce rates...it doesn't mean they have happy or successful marriages.
STDs and unwanted pregnancy are easily avoided with responsible safe sex...granted, most teens aren't very responsible.

Your reasoning is flawed...if Christians raise Christians, (and I assume you think the same goes for other religions) where do atheists come from? Also, you do know that children given abstinence only sex ed, usually Christians, have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, don't you? Very few follow church instructions once outside of church, that's why less than 5% of marriages are by virgins.

Bob, I'm unsure how you can reach the decision that preventing a 13 year old rape victim from terminating an unwanted pregnancy is not a punishment.

Let's say that you or I was raped by a person with HIV and contracted the disease. To mimic the abortion situation, let's also say that there was a large segment of society that, for religious or cultural reasons, felt that treatment of HIV should not be allowed. Would you not feel that you were being punished unfairly by not being allowed treatment for something you had no control over?

In any case, these laws will not stand in the end. They are simply new versions of Jim Crow Laws to prevent what a small segment of society doesn't like. The sad thing is that a lot of young girls and women will be traumatized or die because of them. Religious people need to stop trying to make laws to force people to follow their tenets.

It's interesting to me that the same people who are anti-contraceptive (and against sex-education or availability of contraceptives) are also the same people who are anti-abortion.

How do they not see the correlation between unwanted pregnancy and abortion? And yet, they don't want any more "welfare moms" either? /confused.

States dictating free-will is fascist no matter one's particular passion or leaning in any direction or another. Would this not be the simplest way to express everything said above? Unplanned or unwanted pregnancies most often occur when two people with little or no thought as to the resulting responsibilities incurred, boink for fun.
Unwanted pregnancies taken to term more often than not lead to the formation of an individual with damaged imprints. Against abortion personally for these reasons and others but more-so, am wholly against any legislation or state-sanctioned nose in one's personal business.

Those thin little veggy bags make about as much an impact in the grand scheme of the environmental clusterfuck as a single wild horse fart. Reserve that guilt for an unwanted pregnancy or maybe changing your car's motor oil on a public beach?

Or, you could simply save them all in a box in your closet where they couldn't choke anemone...I know! Melt them into a giant blob on the end of a pole, a quick-crete base, and you've got public art!

So FUCKING hate public service parodies with too-much-too-little-too-late messages, especially when lame rappers take two minutes to scrawl lamer lyrics on a bev-nap at a tittle bar ass-raping a decent tune to remind idiots to remain idiots.

Hacks und posers.

There are things that are not accepted by all but that just have to be tolerated as the alternatives are way worse. On abortion that means providing access to safe abortion cause if you don't, theyäll happen anyway.. And what then.. when a mother dies from illegal abortion, doesn't that mean we lost two lives instead of one. Personally don't consider fetus living, i'm teetering on whther it's the amount of brain capacity, heart pumping or is it simply the point when a child can be brought out of womb and it has some level of survivability, i don't know. That is not the point.

One things that is not discussed here is THE point of her talk: prevent the unwanted pregnancies in the first place. That doesn't mean abstinence but condoms, pills, counseling, info and abstinence (i do believe that not all youngsters should be having sex, abstinence is the BEST choice for those early year, no doubt in that. But instead of giving all single people, young, old or between, only ONE choice, and if that fails you have failed your life, why not give them access to the second best and so on.. Religion....

Keep religion out of this and just look at things in neutral manner. Some don't like gay sex but have no problem with gay marriage, just like some don't like carrots but have no problem other eating it.Banning either will not make them go away, if carrots were made illegal, people would still eat and grow them. So get out of that shell and try to look the big picture, ten try to look at things from the perspective of people who are actually going thru with it (most pro-lifers never had to do abortion, they have no clue on what's going on that persons head who makes such a choice; they have zero sympathy and are essentially sociopaths when dealing with this issue. No understanding, no caring, just pure judgement..

Plus human society has changed, we live healthier lives and longer so it only makes sense to have some variety when people want to procreate. The best possible time, place, resources, partner.. when all that falls in place wouldn't you think that is the best time to bring new people in? Not when your time is spent trying to gather those things, having a kid then might just slow that progress to a halt and we have yet another generation living in poverty and diminished options in life (we are talking USA here, where you have very limited social mobility, basically the more equal society, the less there are reasons for abortions... Most abortion occur simply because the mother can not provide a good life to a new human. More equal societies tend to take care of the societys main building blocks a lot better.

I won't!!
Hey sunkid, choggie wishing youl n yers well....any unwanted pregnancies yet??

@shinyblurry


We seem to be getting into a lot of repetition in this thread, so rather than going line by line, I'm going to attempt my points and reactions to yours with fewer quotes, hopefully hitting the important themes. I don't want to minimize anything you've said, so if I skip anything you feel is a separate issue and is cogent, feel free to draw my attention back to it specifically, but check first and see if you can't answer that same point with something I've already said in here.

Before any quotes, I'll give my own overarching point: Life without a higher purpose may be ultimately meaningless (I'll get more into what sense I mean), and that makes life more difficult than if there were ultimate meaning, but that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth value of the existence of Yahweh. You cannot derive Yahweh's existence (or any deity or pantheon) from your claim that life is easier that way. [Edit: Turns out I never actually get to that conclusion in my comments below, so you might as well address it here, but after you've read the rest.]

My overarching point is to demonstrate the cognitive dissonance inherent in your position ... if this world is not under the sovereign control of God, it is doomed to destruction ... You live as a Christian does, judging what is good and evil … these are just chemical reactions in your brain … why be a slave to chemicals?… you have no rational justification for … saying your sense of right and wrong is any better than the psychopath, or that yours should be preferred.

There's no cognitive dissonance in my mind –at least, not about doing the right thing. I acknowledge a life without God has no ultimate purpose, and that in the grand scheme of things, the Earth is going to be swallowed by the Sun in a few billion years and nearly all traces of humanity will disappear with it, and at that time, nothing anybody has ever done will matter because there will be nobody left for whom it can matter. With that in mind, it does seem odd that despite realizing this, I would still care about doing the right thing.

But the fact is that somehow, in the context of my own little 80-year microblip in the lifespan of our planet, I do care. I just do. I have nothing more than a pet theory about why I care. I care, and I care a lot. I suppose I'm somewhat curious as to why I care, but it's not of primary importance for me to know. I just do, and it's pleasing to notice that just about everyone else around me does too. The only question for me is how to follow this desire of mine to be good given my circumstances.

And why should I reject being a slave to chemicals? The chemicals MAKE ME FEEL GOOD, remember? Should I purposefully do things that make me feel bad? Why on Earth would I even consider it? Ridiculous.

I reject the description that I live my life "as a Christian does", as if Christians invented or have some original claim being good. All humans, regardless of faith or lack thereof, believe in the value of humans (or, any societies that don't value humans go extinct very quickly). We all generally shun murder and violence, foster mutual care, enjoy one another's company, feel protective, have a soft spot for babies and so forth, and have been doing all of this as a species since before Christianity began.

So I would turn it around and say instead that it's Christians who go about their lives living like normal humans, but thinking they're being good because their religion tells them to.

I can claim that I have a stronger sense of what's right and wrong than the psychopath simply because they are defined as lacking that sense (or, perhaps non-psychopaths are defined as people having that sense). And you're right that I do not claim that my way of determining which actions are appropriate is inherently superior to the psychopath's. As it happens, my way of determining morality puts me among the overwhelming majority, and so it's relatively easy for me to mitigate the negative impacts of people like that by identifying and avoiding them. I don't say that my way should be preferred to the pshychopath's; I just notice that it is, and I'm grateful for that, and for the fact that psychopathy is not a choice.

You're drowning in a sea of relativism, where a justifies b and b justifies c and c justifies d, and this goes into an infinite regress.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Can you give an example of a justification to infinite regression that would cause some kind of problem unique to non-thesitic morality?

People worship because they're made to worship … 1 Romans says that God has made Himself evident to people in the things He has made. So, rather than people worshiping because they wanted to avoid meaninglessness, they worship because it the most natural thing for them to do which matches their experience.

I don't accept that it's any more natural to worship Yahweh than some other deity or pantheon or idol, and I can't imagine how you could justify such a position without referring to dogma. Ask a Muslim. He'll tell you with the same conviction that Allah is the natural way and show you his own dogma. 100 years ago, a Japanese would have told you it was natural to worship the Emperor, and today he'd say it's natural to worship ancestors. My point is that any worship will satisfy our natural urge to worship, which is why almost all people worship something, and the object of worship you're brought up around is the one you're most likely to be comfortable with worshipping, naturally.

People don't naturally conclude life is meaningless; they know from their experience that it is very meaningful. They are taught it is meaningless through philosophy and the ennui that comes from modern life. You will never find a population of natural atheists anywhere on the planet.

The problem —and one that I fell into myself— is the conflation of two senses of the word "meaningless". For example, I can say without conflict that the planet and humanity is doomed and so forth, so our actions are ultimately meaningless, AND that interacting with people gives meaning to my life. Now, in the first sense, I mean there's no teleological purpose to my life. In the second sense, I mean certain people and things in my life give fulfillment/bliss. If by "natural atheist" you mean people who have no supernatural practices including ancestor worship or anything, then yes, you're right, I don't believe such a society exists. To me, this points to the universal human tendency to worship something—anything, and to feel better about life when we do so. Slaves to chemical reactions in their brains, as far as I'm concerned.

I can speak on depression because I used to be depressed. I know what it is like, and having come out of it, I am qualified to speak on what I can clearly see as being the number one issue; hopelessness.

Your anecdotal evidence about depression doesn't make you an authority on *the single cause* of depression. Some depressives follow your pattern, and others don't. I don't. When I'm depressed, my feeling isn't hopelessness. In fact, these days, I'm feeling rather hopeless, but I'm not depressed.

If someone feels it right to hurt and steal from you, who are you to tell them that they ought not to do that?

I would never say that someone "ought not to do" anything on objective moral grounds. If I ever said something like that (I wouldn't use the words "ought" or "should"), it would be on the understanding that this person either knows the local laws and is violating them, or more likely shares a moral foundation with me, is acting against it. Either way, that person, upon consideration, would probably prefer not to be doing that mean thing, and is only doing it to satisfy some other need of theirs that they consider higher than their need to do the right thing by me. (This isn't to justify the bad act, but to show you how I think about bad acts and the people who do them. In other words, I don't believe people get encouraged by Satan or anything to do bad things.)

[me:]There’s nobody who’s going to judge my soul when I’m dead, so in that sense, once I’m dead, it won’t matter to me in the least what I do now once I’m dead because I’ll be dead.

[you:]You say this with certainly but I think you have to recognize that this is your hope. I wonder where this hope comes from? Since you've never been dead before to see what happens, what makes you so sure about it? Could this information about life after death exist in the 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of things that you don't know?

It's not my hope. I believe that dead is dead. Much simpler than your belief. Much more likely too. You're implying that I'm following some faulty reasoning about the afterlife. Among the things I don't know are an *infinite number of possibilities* of what could happen in the afterlife, one of which is your bible story. My best guess is nothing. Since nobody's ever come back from the dead to talk about it (Did nobody interview Lazarus? What a great opportunity missed!), nobody knows, so there's no reason to speculate about it ever. Your book says whatever it says, and I don't care because to me it's fairy tales. I'd have to be an idiot to live my life differently because of a book I didn't first believe in. Just like you'd be an idiot to live like a non-believer if you believe so much in Yahweh.

I would also ask how you think the brain understands the complex moral scenarios we find ourselves in and rewards or doesn't reward accordingly? Doesn't that seem fairly implausible to you?

It's quite plausible. I'm no biologist, but I'm sure there's a branch of evolutionary biology that deals with social feelings. My own pet theory is that these feelings are comparable to the ones that control the behaviour of all communal forms of life, like ants and zebras and red-winged blackbirds. It's evolution, either way, IMO.

What makes someone a bad person?

In the absolute sense, religious faith, only, can bring that kind of judgement as a meaningful label.

In the relative sense where I would colloquially refer to someone as "a bad person" (my prime minister, Stephen Harper is an example), I mean someone who has shown they are sufficiently disruptive to other people's happiness due to acting too much in their own self-interest that they're best removed from influence and then avoided. But I would only use that term as a shorthand among people who knew that I don't moralize absolutely.

Do you think this could have something to do with the fact that the bible says you should do things you don't want to do, or that you should stop doing things you don't want to stop doing?

An interesting question, but no. I don't believe it because everything I see points all religion being a human invention.

Your atheism leaves you in the position of not being able to tell me that something like child rape is absolutely wrong. In your world, there is no such thing, and if everyone thought it was right, it would be.

Your hypothetical is an appeal to the ridiculous. It simply is a fact that just about everyone —including child rapists, I'm guessing— believes that child rape is wrong for the simple reason that it severely hurts children. If it increases a person's suffering, then it's wrong. I can think of nothing simpler. Your hypothetical is like one where a passage in the bible prescribed child rape. Would it be OK then? Does the bible that say that rape is wrong? Does it say you cannot marry a child?

[me:]Yahweh’s morality is nowhere near as simple as a secular morality. Where in those two commandments of Jesus does it say that using condoms or allowing same-sex couples to marry is wrong? In fact, saving lives, preventing unwanted pregnancies and allowing all loving couples to get married are ways to love your neighbour, and they’re exactly what I would want my neighbour to do or advocate for on my behalf.

[you:]God wrote His commandments on our hearts, which is the reason your feelings tell you what is right and wrong.

And elsewhere…

[me:]First, you’re talking in circles. If Harris’ model of morality is arbitrary, then so is Jesus’ model of “do unto others…” because they amount to pretty much the same thing, and what one person wants his neighbours to do may not be the same as someone else’s, etc. At some level, we’re going to have to determine for ourselves what’s right and what’s not.

[you:]We have the freedom to obey or disobey God. The one thing God will never do is make you obey Him. In that sense, you have to determine whether you will do what is good or evil.

In both cases, you didn't address my point. 1) I'm stating that Yahweh's laws are far, far more complex than secular morality. You countered that Yahweh's laws were as simple as Jesus' two rules. I showed that was wrong with my AIDS in Africa example (condoms saving lives). You can address that, or you can agree that Yahweh's laws are more complex that Harris' model of secular morality. 2) I also pointed out that Jesus gave us a moral model that requires the individual to determine for themselves based on fixed criteria what's good and what's not. "… as you would have your neighbour do unto you…" implicitly requires the individual to compare their actions with what they themselves would want someone else to do to them. That means relying on their own understanding. This contradicts your other statements that we shouldn't rely on our own understanding. You see? To follow Jesus' second law, you must rely on your own understanding.

[me:]Third, do you picture a world where everyone suddenly agrees that torturing babies is OK? Do you really believe that without religion people have absolutely no internal direction whatsoever, and will accept torturing of babies as acceptable? I don’t. So, no, Harris’ moral system does not allow for the possibility of torturing babies.

[you:]This is really an argument from incredulity. I'm sure no one pictured an entire society could be convinced that killing millions of jews is a good thing, but it happened.

So your answer is yes? You think that without religion, society may decide torturing babies is good because it decided that killing Jews was good?

It's a bad comparison anyway. Genocide happens all the time, even in religious societies (by the 1939 census, 94% of Germans were Christian, FWIW). You can't compare this with an entire society suddenly deciding that torturing children is morally correct. If I ever heard of such a baby-torturing society existed, I'd immediately assume it was in accordance with their religious belief, rather than just what they all decided was OK, wouldn't you?

[me:]If you think I’m being ridiculous, what do you think is more likely: that a society somewhere will suddenly realize that they feel just fine about torturing babies, or that a society somewhere will get the idea that it’s their god’s will that they torture babies? Human instinct is much more consistent than the will of any gods ever recorded.

[you:]What about all of Pagan societies throughout the ages that sacrificed their children to demons?

You're making my point for me. Paganism is religion. Non-believers would never justify a habit of killing their own children.

The fact is, in a meaningless Universe you simply can't prove anything without God. You actually have no basis for logic, rationality, morality, uniformity in nature, but you live as if you do. If I ask you how you know your reasoning is valid, you will reply "by using my reasoning".

You're slipping back into solipsism. We agreed not to go there. I'm not going to answer any of those things.

Overall, this is how I summarize your arguments: (A) Life without God is meaningless, and (B) a meaningless life would sometimes be difficult to tolerate, therefore (C) God exists. We pretty much agree on A, and we do agree on B, but C does not follow from A and B. You can correctly conclude that (C) life without God would be difficult to tolerate at times. So? That still doesn’t mean that God exists. I believe that God doesn’t exist, so I conclude from A and B that life is difficult to tolerate at times. Which is true.

My overarching point is to demonstrate the cognitive dissonance inherent in your position. While you have correctly concluded that life without God is meaningless, and I commend you for being intellectually honest to admit this, the point is that you certainly will not live that way. You will actually live as a Christian does, believing that human beings have value and dignity, and that there are good things we should do and bad things we shouldn't do. The problem is, in a meaningless Universe, you have no rational justification for any of these things. You're drowning in a sea of relativism, where a justifies b and b justifies c and c justifies d, and this goes into an infinite regress. You have nowhere to stake a claim, and this is why your atheism becomes a sinkhole which is pulling you down directly into nihilism. In the end, a bag of stardust has no rational justification for morality, or any kind of value. If you are an atheist/agnostic you have to admit you have no value, no dignity, and no basis for good or evil.

Fair point. They may not have ever had the philosophical conversation with themselves about whether their lives have meaning, so it never occurred to them to be upset about it. I agree that it could be a very difficult thing to face, and I think that’s why the human species developed a proclivity for religion. Elsewhere here I’ve suggested we developed metaphysical faith because we’re intelligent and inquisitive, and it freed our minds from the obvious nagging questions of our existence with a one-stop catch-all answer: “Because God”. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense. If believing you have a purpose in the grand scheme of things makes you feel better and gives a higher community bond, then it conveys higher survivability to you and your genes. It may be (or once have been) helpful for us to believe that a god exists (any god/gods, mind you, or even a non-deity-based faith system like Buddhism), but this still is not an indication that any god exists.

People worship because they're made to worship. Go around this Earth and you will find people worshiping all manner of Gods and created things, the sun the moon and the stars, celebrity, money, power, themselves. 1 Romans says that God has made Himself evident to people in the things He has made. So, rather than people worshiping because they wanted to avoid meaninglessness, they worship because it the most natural thing for them to do which matches their experience. People don't naturally conclude life is meaningless; they know from their experience that it is very meaningful. They are taught it is meaningless through philosophy and the ennui that comes from modern life. You will never find a population of natural atheists anywhere on the planet.

I’m going to be blunt here: you don’t have a clue what depression is. You’re starting with your conclusion, and applying it to whatever pop psychology you’ve picked up. You’re like a North Korean telling me what democracy is, and concluding that Kim Jong Un therefore is the greatest person on Earth. I know what depression is for me, for my family members and my friends who have suffered from it, and I have done private research on it beyond that. Reducing depression to the factor of “hope” is incorrect, and presuming to know something because you’ve got Yahweh on your side is arrogant. You don’t know us, you don’t understand our condition, so please don’t assume to speak for us. You can guess, and you can ask me, and I’ll tell you what I feel, what I have experienced, and what I have learned. Then if it fits your argument, you can let me know.

I can speak on depression because I used to be depressed. I know what it is like, and having come out of it, I am qualified to speak on what I can clearly see as being the number one issue; hopelessness. A person who depressed is carrying burdens in their life which tell them that tomorrow will not be better than today, in fact it will probably be worse. People who are depressed often times see no reason to carry on at all. This could be for a number of reasons; living situation, health, low self-esteem, loneliness, finances, abuse, or perhaps all of the above. In the end, it all boils down to a lack of hope that whatever they are depressed about will ever change or get better, or that it would matter if it did. People who have hope are happy and not depressed.

Your first sentences are close enough I’ll just agree. The last one is your own fantasy straight out of nowhere. That aside, so what? We’re close to killing ourselves. I don’t know if humanity will survive another 100 years. I hope it does, but I can’t know. It’s hard to face, and very frustrating to watch our so-called leaders (who all leverage claimed faith in God, mind you) pissing it all away for money and power. No other age has had to face the possibility of the destruction of civilization. It’s hard. You said your point was that there’s nobody in the driver’s seat. I agree. What’s your point? How do you figure Yahweh’s “in the driver’s seat”?

So, I suppose the point is that it is hopeless. Not only is a life without God meaningless, but if this world is not under the sovereign control of God, it is doomed to destruction. This is what I mean when I have said in the past that in all of our history human beings have made absolutely no progress what so ever. All of the knowledge in the world doesn't count for anything if you don't have the wisdom to use it. All of our learning is simply hubris when you take a look at the condition of the world today. It is actually more wicked at this time than any other time in history. I believe God is in absolute control because He has shown me this is true. I'll give you an example:

One time I had to hitchhike across country. This was just before I became a Christian and I wasn't sure about Jesus. I was kind of scared having never really hitchhiked before, so I prayed and said: "Jesus, if you are the Son of God, and I need to know you, please help me through this. I can't do it on my own so I am going to trust you to help me". After I prayed this prayer, everything was lined up for me as if it was programmed. Money, food and rides all came to me at the right time in the right place. For instance, I would meet someone in one spot and they would help me, and then 800 miles away in a different state on a different day I would meet them again. This happened to me 3 times. Two of them I met in the same place within 20 minutes apart, and they both were met in different states many hundreds of miles away. The timing of all of this was practically impossible. Only God could have arranged me to keep meeting the same people when they were going in opposite directions across the country and on different routes, at the same time. Even if they were going in the same routes and directions it would still be improbable. Not to mention they were in small windows of time where I was in the right place at the right time to see them.

Separate from those people, let’s imagine there’s a group of people who feel they’re experiencing the same bliss you feel in your numinous experiences, but they feel it only when they hurt or kill people. Now, I’m asserting that these people probably don’t exist, but if they did, people behaving according to the principles of what’s “good” (which I’ll get to later) would have to restrain them from hurting other people, and with a heavy heart, would probably imprison them. And while they were in prison, compassionate people on the outside might be researching ways to help the inmates self-realize – within the limits of their confinement, like they do in the Swedish penal system.

Actually, one of the defining characteristics of being a psychopath is the ruthless manipulation of others for pleasure and short term gain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

You can say your bliss is better and more noble than their bliss but you would have no justification in doing so. There is actually no reason in your worldview to say that psychopaths aren't normal and you are abnormal.

The reason we’re having this conversation, or at least the reason I am, is because we both already have a sense that some things are right and other things are wrong. That is primary. We both agree that we have this sense, and that for us it feels important to follow it. So for me, the fact that I have this feeling that some actions are good and others aren’t is all the “ought” I need. I don’t need anybody’s permission or orders. I ought to do things that I feel are good things to do. So, whether my conscience comes from human DNA (my position) or from an external entity (your position) doesn’t matter because we have both already decided to follow it, and so has just about every human on Earth.

Yes, we both have that sense, but the difference is you have no basis for saying your sense of right and wrong is any better than the psychopath, or that yours should be preferred. If someone feels it right to hurt and steal from you, who are you to tell them that they ought not to do that? According to what you've said here, that would make you a hypocrite.

There’s nobody who’s going to judge my soul when I’m dead, so in that sense, once I’m dead, it won’t matter to me in the least what I do now once I’m dead because I’ll be dead.

You say this with certainly but I think you have to recognize that this is your hope. I wonder where this hope comes from? Since you've never been dead before to see what happens, what makes you so sure about it? Could this information about life after death exist in the 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of things that you don't know?

What I want to do at any given time is what feels good to me, and that’s the same with almost everyone, in spite of what religions teach people about their wicked “fallen” souls and how not to trust themselves (except when they paradoxically teach us to trust ourselves).

You're absolutely right about that. The scripture says when there is no King every man does what is right in his own eyes. It also says that there is a way that seems right to man, but the end of its ways is death. Also, interestingly, this philosophy matches the only rule of Satanism "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"

Christianity teaches that we should trust in God with all of our heart and lean not on our own understanding.

I don’t feel I’m wasting any time navigating any landscape. I hardly think about morality at all, since to me, it’s quite easy. Jesus knew it; he just claimed that his father had made it up. I think it’s human nature. It gives me immense joy to see people in love getting married. That extends identically to same-sex people too. See? It’s not complex. Taking what I can when I can in the malevolent sense feels awful, and I don’t want to do that.

Right, but not doing things because they make you feel bad isn't the question. Unless there is an absolute morality, these are just chemical reactions in your brain. Your mind is deluding you into thinking something is bad by secreting a certain chemical which makes you feel guilty when you steal, and secreting a certain chemical that makes you feel good when you don't do it. These things aren't really bad, they are just how your brain evolved. So, why be a slave to chemicals? I would also ask how you think the brain understands the complex moral scenarios we find ourselves in and rewards or doesn't reward accordingly? Doesn't that seem fairly implausible to you?

I agree completely (except where you said I think it’s out of ignorance or automatic function, which I didn’t say). You say it’s about people getting carried away or being enticed. What I was explaining is when that happens and why. It’s not relevant anyway. People are the only ones who can be held responsible for their own actions, and they should be, but not because they are bad people who need to be punished, but because their behaviour hurt someone and as a member of society, they need to understand this, make amends, and hopefully change their behaviour moving forward.

What makes someone a bad person?

But I would have had to already accept Yahweh to think that’s true. And I don’t, so it’s not. Nothing in me tells me that the bible is a holy book or that following it has anything to do with what is good, so I don’t need to follow any religious dogma.

Do you think this could have something to do with the fact that the bible says you should do things you don't want to do, or that you should stop doing things you don't want to stop doing?

It involves accepting one assertion: Harris’ definition of “bad”. If you accept that, and you accept that “good” is its opposite, then moving away from something bad must be good. I think your problem with my argument is that there’s no argument for a metaphysical morality. That’s because I don’t believe in one. As I said above, this whole conversation, for me, is based on our shared feeling that there are right and wrong things. That’s it. If I kick someone’s dog, no matter who they are or what their religion, they’re going to know without consulting any authority that I did a horrible thing. I don’t really know why, and I don’t care. I do know that humans share this sense, and I’m keen to live with respect to it.

Well, there you go. You have no justification for right and wrong, and you admit that. You don't know why, and you don't care, so you go by your feelings. This is the cognitive dissonance I was talking about at the beginning of the post. You know intellectually that a meaningless Universes gives you no basis for morality, but you don't live that way. You live as a Christian does, judging what is good and evil and acting as if life has meaning and value when you know that it doesn't. You are fooling yourself into ascribing meaning to what you know are just chemical reactions in your brain. There is analogy made to the brain being like a soda can..you shake it up and it starts fizzing, which is just like the chemical reaction in our brains. One is fizzing morally and the other is fizzing immorally. What's the difference?

Your atheism leaves you in the position of not being able to tell me that something like child rape is absolutely wrong. In your world, there is no such thing, and if everyone thought it was right, it would be.

Yahweh’s morality is nowhere near as simple as a secular morality. Where in those two commandments of Jesus does it say that using condoms or allowing same-sex couples to marry is wrong? In fact, saving lives, preventing unwanted pregnancies and allowing all loving couples to get married are ways to love your neighbour, and they’re exactly what I would want my neighbour to do or advocate for on my behalf.

God wrote His commandments on our hearts, which is the reason your feelings tell you what is right and wrong. It's very easy for everyone to understand Gods laws because we already know them. The problem is that people suppress the truth about God, and so people are deceived about what is good and evil are just doing what is right in their own eyes. I didn't understand growing up that fornication was wrong because society said it was okay, but now that the deception has been lifted my heart is in agreement with it. I know that is wrong, not just because Gods law says it is, but because it is written upon my heart.

First, you’re talking in circles. If Harris’ model of morality is arbitrary, then so is Jesus’ model of “do unto others…” because they amount to pretty much the same thing, and what one person wants his neighbours to do may not be the same as someone else’s, etc. At some level, we’re going to have to determine for ourselves what’s right and what’s not.

We have the freedom to obey or disobey God. The one thing God will never do is make you obey Him. In that sense, you have to determine whether you will do what is good or evil.

Second, you can’t possibly make the argument that “better for people” and “makes the world worse” are arbitrary concepts. They’re not perfectly defined, but that doesn’t mean arbitrary. As for the torturing babies example, according to Harris’ morality, it’s bad because babies are people, and torture causes misery. Where’s the ambiguity?

The ambiguity comes in when you assert these things with no rational justification. You admitted earlier that you have no ultimate justification for right and wrong, so why do you think Harris somehow does?

Third, do you picture a world where everyone suddenly agrees that torturing babies is OK? Do you really believe that without religion people have absolutely no internal direction whatsoever, and will accept torturing of babies as acceptable? I don’t. So, no, Harris’ moral system does not allow for the possibility of torturing babies.

This is really an argument from incredulity. I'm sure no one pictured an entire society could be convinced that killing millions of jews is a good thing, but it happened. People can and have agreed to do some extremely wicked things. The point is that if morality is based upon what people agree on, and people can potentially agree on anything, then you have a moral system that could call the same thing good or evil depending on what the opinion was at that time. That is no basis for morality.

But yours does. Whatever else you address, please answer this: I believe –and forgive me if I’m putting words into your mouth– somewhere on the Sift you agreed that if God commanded you to do something people think is horrible (like torture an infant/rape your own son/etc.), that you would do it. Is that true to say? If so, then by your own witness and a test you came up with, it’s your system that allows for the possibility of absolutely any vile act, and it’s time for it to go.

I don't recall saying this. There is the divine command theory which states that whatever God commands is ethically good. For instance, although God commanded us not to kill, He used the Israelites to judge the Canaanites after giving them 450 years to repent. This though was a unique situation because God ruled the Israelites directly as His own kingdom. The only other example I can think of is Abraham and Issac, and of course God didn't want Abraham to kill Issac.

These days, though, we're under a new covenant, and Gods Spirit dwells within His people. There is no example of God telling us to do anything contrary to His word in the NT, and therefore I see no basis for agreeing that I would either.

If you think I’m being ridiculous, what do you think is more likely: that a society somewhere will suddenly realize that they feel just fine about torturing babies, or that a society somewhere will get the idea that it’s their god’s will that they torture babies? Human instinct is much more consistent than the will of any gods ever recorded.

What about all of Pagan societies throughout the ages that sacrificed their children to demons?

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.

True. Your point?

"a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws."

The point is, without enforcement a person is free to violate their conscience as freely and as often as they choose without any consequences. A conscience doesn't preclude the need for an external set of laws because most people willfully ignore their own conscience.

It’s not arbitrarily invented. Religion is. I must be misunderstanding you. By my reading, your argument is that the connection between reducing people’s misery and doing good is arbitrary. Is that right? You don’t think that wanting to help people who are suffering is normal and good? If you agree that there is a connection between the two, that’s all you need. If you don’t agree, then your morality system really sucks, and I don’t know who I’m talking to.

Christianity wasn't arbitrarily invented, it is revealed truth. I've also already covered this throughout the reply. According to you, unless you appeal to an authority, you have no basis for right and wrong, and neither you or Harris have any authority to appeal to in a meaningless Universe. You're content to just follow your feelings and not think about it, which I pointed it is cognitive dissonance.

The fact is, in a meaningless Universe you simply can't prove anything without God. That is the proof that God exists in the middle of all of this. You are living like a Christian while denying God with your atheism. You actually have no basis for logic, rationality, morality, uniformity in nature, but you live as if you do. If I ask you how you know your reasoning is valid, you will reply "by using my reasoning". That would be the same as me saying that God exists because He exists. It is a viciously circular argument that you would never accept from me. I can point to a transcendent God who reveals truth, and tells us what is right and wrong, and is the source for the uniformity in nature. I can justify these things, but you cannot.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/29/half-german-teens-dont-know-hitler-dictator_n_ 1636593.html

I take it you didn’t read the article yourself. There’s no mention of Americans, anyone of college age, nor anyone who can’t identify Hitler. It’s about German high school students who didn’t know that Hitler was a dictator, etc. Please take better care with your arguments. It’s disrespectful and a waste of my time.

Sorry. I can't remember what I was thinking of, or if I wasn't just confusing one thing for another. Perhaps I was thinking of this:

http://videosift.com/video/Ray-Comfort-Teaches-about-Adolf-Hitler

>> ^messenger:

stuff

@ReverendTed

Sorry for the late reply. I was having email issues and didn't know this conversation was still going on. Also, I really don't have the time or energy to read all the posts right now, so apologies if I'm saying something that's already covered. Perhaps tomorrow after work I'll give it all a better look.

I agree that "at birth" is almost certainly not the best place to draw the line for omniscient lawmakers. Unfortunately, we're fresh out of those. We have to draw the line somewhere based on what we actually know. This is why I said before that we need to identify some particular quality (henceforth known as "qX") that we can agree makes a fetus a human. That way, we can say, "No, this fetus has developed qX and is no longer eligible for termination." Of course, once we define qX, then we may also need to be able to test for it, depending on what qX turns out to be, otherwise this is all pointless.

Now, I suppose we could say "qX is normally developed in week 25" and draw the line there but then we'll have those who develop sooner and those who develop later and we will inevitably terminate those that should technically not have been. I concede that this could still be a decent law even if we had to define it this way, but we've got a long way to go before we can even consider it. We haven't even defined qX, let alone identified approximately when it develops.

Defining qX alone is a nearly impossible task because most people who are trying to define it are using feelings (It's a defenseless little baby!), mysticism (The soul enters the zygote at conception!) and abstract concepts (Once the fetus has developed consciousness, it's human.) to do so.

Back to your reply, you seem to be dancing around what "illegal" means. Someone once pointed out to me that "It's not a law if it's not enforced". There has to be a penalty for having an abortion or it's pointless to make it illegal. What should be done to people who have (or perform) the procedure even after you've "[limited] their access" to it?

If we want to reduce abortions, we should be focusing efforts on reducing unwanted pregnancies; tell people what they can do rather than what they can't.

@ReverendTed
You have been a courteous sparring partner so I will try to answer in kind, but I must admit being very exasperated by your last response. Moreover, I do not think I want to pursue a debate with someone who cannot see how adoption-in-place-of-abortion is neither feasible nor even remotely ethical (vis-à-vis the woman, the would-be child and human society in general). So this will probably be my last wall of self-indulgent dross.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: we both agree that we need more education all ‘round, on all subjects. And as you know, those most opposed to it are the same that are against abortion. Abstinence education is redundant when proper sex-ed is given, because it goes without saying that “no sex = no unwanted pregnancies” is a part of basic sex-ed. Of course, it is un-pragmatic to expect teenagers (or anyone for that matter) to forego sex, so why harp on it, other than for misguided religious purposes?

Your conception of consciousness is fuzzy at best. Everything we feel, experience, etc. is due to electro-chemical reactions in our body/brain. Magical thinking is saying some non-physical “me” exists attached to it, what religious people call a soul. Consciousness is not subordinate to cognition in terms of value, but in the sense that without the one (cognition) you simply don’t have the other (“subordinate” as in “dependent upon”). I mentioned blind-from-birth people for a good reason; they have no visual aspect to their consciousness, their identity/consciousness is built upon the other sensory input. Now imagine a being that has zero sensory input (or a central system capable of making use/sense of it), and you have a mass of muscles/cells/organs devoid of consciousness. And that is what is aborted before the 25th week. I must make it clear, however, that even if this developed much earlier it would still be the woman’s prerogative to choose what she does with her own body/life. In that respect I think the “viability” argument is a pragmatic (albeit conservative) one, because it draws the line between an excrescence and a (possibly) autonomous being.

After the first two paragraphs, your response goes from bad to worse. What I said about adoption v abortion still stands, but I would add that it is still forcing women to go through a pregnancy they do not want (thus still affecting the quality of their lives), not to mention leaving them with the guilt of abandonment, the kids with issues, etc etc. And all for what? So some third person’s unfounded superstitions be upheld? And then you have the gall to compare criminalising abortion with criminalising incest and crazy people locking up/raping their families. You seriously need to think a bit before making comparisons. In the case of child abuse and/or rape (incest itself is a victimless crime, but that’s for a different discussion), there are actual victims, for one, and secondly, the crazies would lock them up whether it was legal or not, because it is a question of absolute control over the other.

Since you cite Guttmacher statistics, allow me to suggest you read a little more:

• Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates. For example, the abortion rate is 29 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in Africa and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America—regions in which abortion is illegal under most circumstances in the majority of countries. The rate is 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds.

• Where abortion is permitted on broad legal grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is highly restricted, it is typically unsafe. In developing countries, relatively liberal abortion laws are associated with fewer negative health consequences from unsafe abortion than are highly restrictive laws.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html

So basically pushing for the criminalisation of abortion is pushing for there to be more abortions, and more dangerous ones.

You note how a large percentage of abortion-seekers are above the poverty line. Obviously, they can afford it / are aware of the possibility. Ever notice how the poor/uneducated tend to have more kids than the others? Do you really think being poor makes you want to have more mouths to feed? Or perhaps it is because they lack access to contraception/abortion (not to mention the poor/uneducated tend to be more religious; religion thrives on misery). Of the “developed” world the US is a bit of a special case, because it is so backward with regards to healthcare and contraception. Notice how most women in the US pay for their abortion out of pocket, and “Nearly 60% of women who experienced a delay in obtaining an abortion cite the time it took to make arrangements and raise money.” (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html/) As an aside, the religious right here in Switzerland (not as influential but almost as stupid and backward thinking as that of the US) are trying to make abortion be no longer covered by the universal healthcare system.

On the “potential” question, everything has been said. I’d simply point out that your “95%” potential leaves out something absolutely crucial, namely the choice of the woman to terminate the abortion, which can reduce that to “0%”. You say “it’s nearly guaranteed”, but so what? Two people having heterosexual vaginal sex without projection over a long period of time will conceive of a child, it’s “nearly guaranteed”, therefore every possible pairing of male and female should have continuous unprotected sex otherwise they are depriving potential beings from existing. “But what if they don’t want to?” Exactly, what if the woman doesn’t want a child at that moment? See how absurd the “potential” argument is?

I’ll risk making this wall of text even wallyer and propose an analogy, The Analogy of the Film and Camera. When you put a film in a camera, the potential for it becoming a strip of individual, unique photos goes up. But so long as no pictures are taken, so long as nothing is imprinted on the film’s receptive surface, you lose no individual photos by taking the film out, and there’s the same amount of potential if you put in a different film at a different time. It’s wonky, I know, but it illustrates that potential individual (the film) is not the same as existing individual (the photo), nor does destroying the first cause any damage to the second, because the second doesn’t exist yet.

The comparison with the IGB campaign is terribly inappropriate and simply false. In one case it is question of keeping living individuals from ending their lives, whereas abortion is about preventing eventual individuals from coming into existence because it would harm the quality of life of an already existing individual (as well as the one to be). IGB is about giving people options/hope, whereas criminalising abortion is about taking that away (from women, to give it to the mind projections of superstitious third parties). The only connection between the two is that in both cases the unsubstantiated beliefs of third persons impinge on an individual’s quality of life and liberty. I already addressed your “good from bad” argument, which you draw out again in an emotionally manipulative way (which frankly made me sick).

On eugenics, oh boy. What you’re saying is akin to saying “self-defence should be outlawed because otherwise some (like Zimmerman) might commit crimes and say it was self-defence”. Or, a little closer to home perhaps: “we shouldn’t have universal healthcare because some might fraud”. Yes, some people fraud the insurance, and yes, some people are aggressive and try to pass it as self-defence. That’s why we have a judicial system. Bringing in eugenics is seriously grasping at straws and you know it.

I’ll end my last contribution to this exchange with the following: having a child should never be an inevitability. Bringing a human life into existence is way too big a responsibility to be an obligation. A women’s body is her own, to deal with as she chooses, uterus and co. included.

Cheers

@shinyblurry

Overall, this is how I summarize your arguments: (A) Life without God is meaningless, and (B) a meaningless life would sometimes be difficult to tolerate, therefore (C) God exists. We pretty much agree on A, and we do agree on B, but C does not follow from A and B. You can correctly conclude that (C) life without God would be difficult to tolerate at times. So? That still doesn’t mean that God exists. I believe that God doesn’t exist, so I conclude from A and B that life is difficult to tolerate at times. Which is true.

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.

Fair point. They may not have ever had the philosophical conversation with themselves about whether their lives have meaning, so it never occurred to them to be upset about it. I agree that it could be a very difficult thing to face, and I think that’s why the human species developed a proclivity for religion. Elsewhere here I’ve suggested we developed metaphysical faith because we’re intelligent and inquisitive, and it freed our minds from the obvious nagging questions of our existence with a one-stop catch-all answer: “Because God”. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense. If believing you have a purpose in the grand scheme of things makes you feel better and gives a higher community bond, then it conveys higher survivability to you and your genes. It may be (or once have been) helpful for us to believe that a god exists (any god/gods, mind you, or even a non-deity-based faith system like Buddhism), but this still is not an indication that any god exists.

Hope is what keeps people going … They are not mentally ill, they are simply facing the cold, stark reality of their situation.

I’m going to be blunt here: you don’t have a clue what depression is. You’re starting with your conclusion, and applying it to whatever pop psychology you’ve picked up. You’re like a North Korean telling me what democracy is, and concluding that Kim Jong Un therefore is the greatest person on Earth. I know what depression is for me, for my family members and my friends who have suffered from it, and I have done private research on it beyond that. Reducing depression to the factor of “hope” is incorrect, and presuming to know something because you’ve got Yahweh on your side is arrogant. You don’t know us, you don’t understand our condition, so please don’t assume to speak for us. You can guess, and you can ask me, and I’ll tell you what I feel, what I have experienced, and what I have learned. Then if it fits your argument, you can let me know.

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.

Your first sentences are close enough I’ll just agree. The last one is your own fantasy straight out of nowhere. That aside, so what? We’re close to killing ourselves. I don’t know if humanity will survive another 100 years. I hope it does, but I can’t know. It’s hard to face, and very frustrating to watch our so-called leaders (who all leverage claimed faith in God, mind you) pissing it all away for money and power. No other age has had to face the possibility of the destruction of civilization. It’s hard. You said your point was that there’s nobody in the driver’s seat. I agree. What’s your point? How do you figure Yahweh’s “in the driver’s seat”?

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.

This is my fault. As I mentioned in my last comment, I had intended to write further down about people who do find bliss in hurting others, and I had it fleshed out in the drafting process, but I guess I accidentally deleted it before posting. Anyway, here it is. First, there’s psychopaths. You don’t understand what a psychopath is. It’s not a blood-crazed killer from a Hollywood movie. In real life, a psychopath is someone who fails to feel empathy or sympathy, someone who has no sense of altruism. They do whatever serves their own interests best – however they define that. This is in sharp contrast with how the rest of us think about other people, which is mostly with compassion. I’ve been close to a few psychopaths, and they enjoy things like music or sports or writing or whatever like anyone else, and they mostly understand that others think hurting people is bad, so they avoid it. They don’t get any special thrill from hurting others – it just doesn’t hurt their conscience if they do. I’m guessing they don’t really ever feel the bliss I’m talking about.

Separate from those people, let’s imagine there’s a group of people who feel they’re experiencing the same bliss you feel in your numinous experiences, but they feel it only when they hurt or kill people. Now, I’m asserting that these people probably don’t exist, but if they did, people behaving according to the principles of what’s “good” (which I’ll get to later) would have to restrain them from hurting other people, and with a heavy heart, would probably imprison them. And while they were in prison, compassionate people on the outside might be researching ways to help the inmates self-realize – within the limits of their confinement, like they do in the Swedish penal system.

Yes, it feels good to feel good, but this doesn't tell us why we *ought* to do anything.

The reason we’re having this conversation, or at least the reason I am, is because we both already have a sense that some things are right and other things are wrong. That is primary. We both agree that we have this sense, and that for us it feels important to follow it. So for me, the fact that I have this feeling that some actions are good and others aren’t is all the “ought” I need. I don’t need anybody’s permission or orders. I ought to do things that I feel are good things to do. So, whether my conscience comes from human DNA (my position) or from an external entity (your position) doesn’t matter because we have both already decided to follow it, and so has just about every human on Earth.

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?

There’s nobody who’s going to judge my soul when I’m dead, so in that sense, once I’m dead, it won’t matter to me in the least what I do now once I’m dead because I’ll be dead. What I want to do at any given time is what feels good to me, and that’s the same with almost everyone, in spite of what religions teach people about their wicked “fallen” souls and how not to trust themselves (except when they paradoxically teach us to trust ourselves). Like, I might like to eat your cookie, but it would feel worse to steal it from you than it would feel good to eat it. Instead, I think about how I can have the cookie without feeling bad about it. I would probably ask you for some of your cookie, and then I’d not only have some cookie, but I’d also share a friendly interaction with another person in my community, someone who will probably enjoy sharing their cookie with me and be glad I asked them. Win-win. So to recap, “taking what I can” to me and most people, involves having the greatest amount of personally rewarding experiences I can, and those involve not doing bad things, and often involve doing good things.

I don’t feel I’m wasting any time navigating any landscape. I hardly think about morality at all, since to me, it’s quite easy. Jesus knew it; he just claimed that his father had made it up. I think it’s human nature. It gives me immense joy to see people in love getting married. That extends identically to same-sex people too. See? It’s not complex. Taking what I can when I can in the malevolent sense feels awful, and I don’t want to do that.

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.

I agree completely (except where you said I think it’s out of ignorance or automatic function, which I didn’t say). You say it’s about people getting carried away or being enticed. What I was explaining is when that happens and why. It’s not relevant anyway. People are the only ones who can be held responsible for their own actions, and they should be, but not because they are bad people who need to be punished, but because their behaviour hurt someone and as a member of society, they need to understand this, make amends, and hopefully change their behaviour moving forward.

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.

But I would have had to already accept Yahweh to think that’s true. And I don’t, so it’s not. Nothing in me tells me that the bible is a holy book or that following it has anything to do with what is good, so I don’t need to follow any religious dogma.

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?

It involves accepting one assertion: Harris’ definition of “bad”. If you accept that, and you accept that “good” is its opposite, then moving away from something bad must be good. I think your problem with my argument is that there’s no argument for a metaphysical morality. That’s because I don’t believe in one. As I said above, this whole conversation, for me, is based on our shared feeling that there are right and wrong things. That’s it. If I kick someone’s dog, no matter who they are or what their religion, they’re going to know without consulting any authority that I did a horrible thing. I don’t really know why, and I don’t care. I do know that humans share this sense, and I’m keen to live with respect to it.

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

Yahweh’s morality is nowhere near as simple as a secular morality. Where in those two commandments of Jesus does it say that using condoms or allowing same-sex couples to marry is wrong? In fact, saving lives, preventing unwanted pregnancies and allowing all loving couples to get married are ways to love your neighbour, and they’re exactly what I would want my neighbour to do or advocate for on my behalf.

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.

First, you’re talking in circles. If Harris’ model of morality is arbitrary, then so is Jesus’ model of “do unto others…” because they amount to pretty much the same thing, and what one person wants his neighbours to do may not be the same as someone else’s, etc. At some level, we’re going to have to determine for ourselves what’s right and what’s not.

Second, you can’t possibly make the argument that “better for people” and “makes the world worse” are arbitrary concepts. They’re not perfectly defined, but that doesn’t mean arbitrary. As for the torturing babies example, according to Harris’ morality, it’s bad because babies are people, and torture causes misery. Where’s the ambiguity?

Third, do you picture a world where everyone suddenly agrees that torturing babies is OK? Do you really believe that without religion people have absolutely no internal direction whatsoever, and will accept torturing of babies as acceptable? I don’t. So, no, Harris’ moral system does not allow for the possibility of torturing babies.

But yours does. Whatever else you address, please answer this: I believe –and forgive me if I’m putting words into your mouth– somewhere on the Sift you agreed that if God commanded you to do something people think is horrible (like torture an infant/rape your own son/etc.), that you would do it. Is that true to say? If so, then by your own witness and a test you came up with, it’s your system that allows for the possibility of absolutely any vile act, and it’s time for it to go.

If you think I’m being ridiculous, what do you think is more likely: that a society somewhere will suddenly realize that they feel just fine about torturing babies, or that a society somewhere will get the idea that it’s their god’s will that they torture babies? Human instinct is much more consistent than the will of any gods ever recorded.

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.

True. Your point?

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.

It’s not arbitrarily invented. Religion is. I must be misunderstanding you. By my reading, your argument is that the connection between reducing people’s misery and doing good is arbitrary. Is that right? You don’t think that wanting to help people who are suffering is normal and good? If you agree that there is a connection between the two, that’s all you need. If you don’t agree, then your morality system really sucks, and I don’t know who I’m talking to.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/29/half-german-teens-dont-know-hitler-dictator_n_1636593.html

I take it you didn’t read the article yourself. There’s no mention of Americans, anyone of college age, nor anyone who can’t identify Hitler. It’s about German high school students who didn’t know that Hitler was a dictator, etc. Please take better care with your arguments. It’s disrespectful and a waste of my time.

@hpqp
I am not at all ashamed of my verbose, self-indulgent dross, so here we go!

Something has to be extra-physical, as least based on our current model. I can fully accept that a brain by itself can receive sensory input, process it against memory, and thus act in a completely human way indistinguishable from a conscious human, but on its own can literally be no more "conscious" than a river flowing down a mountain. Our current view of the physical universe does not tolerate any rational physical explanation of consciousness. Any given moment of human experience - the unified sensory experience and stream of consciousness - does not exist in a single place at a single instant. To suggest that the atoms\molecules\proteins\cells of the brain experience themselves in a unified manner based on their proximity to or electrochemical interaction with each other is magical thinking. Atoms don't do that, and that's all that's there, physically.
I disagree that consciousness is subordinate to cognition in terms of value. Cognition is what makes us who we are and behave as we do, but consciousness is what makes us different from the rest of the jiggling matter in the universe.

A couple of posts back, you challenged my statement about abstinence education as demonstrating a lack of pragmatism. I didn't really address it in my reply, but I'd prefaced it with the understanding that it's not a magical incantation. I know people are still going to have sex, but I suggested that has to be a part of education. People have to know that you can still get pregnant even if you're using the contraceptives that are available. They have to at least know the possibility exists. It's one more thing for them to consider. People are still going to drive recklessly even if you tell them they can crash and kill themselves despite their airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to educate them about the possibility. I fail to see how that's not pragmatic.

I didn't reply to your comment about adoption vs abortion because I'm not sure there's anything else to add on either side. As I've said, my beliefs on this are such that even a grossly flawed adoption\orphan care system is preferable to the alternative, even if it means that approximately 10 times the number of children would enter the system than have traditionally been adopted each year. (1.4M abortions annually in the US, ~140K adoptions, but there are several assumptions in that math that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny.) Many right and just things have unpleasant consequences that must be managed. (The typical counter here is that Pro-Lifers tend to also be fiscal\social conservatives and won't fund social services to care for these new individuals they've "protected" into existence. That's just another issue of taking responsibility for the consequences of choices. If they get what they want, they need to be held to account, but it's a separate issue. A related issue, but a separate issue.)

Criminalizing\prohibiting almost any activity results in some degree of risky\dangerous\destructive behavior. Acts must be criminalized because there are individuals who would desire to perform those acts which have been determined to be an unnecessary imposition on the rights of another. Criminalization does not eliminate the desire, but it adds a new factor to consideration. Some will decide the criminalization\prohibition of the act is not sufficient deterrent, but in proceeding, are likely to do so in a different manner than otherwise. The broad consideration is whether the benefits of criminalization\prohibition outweigh the risks posed to\by the percentage who will proceed anyway. Prohibition of alcohol failed the test, I expect the prohibition of certain drugs will be shown to have failed the test..eventually. Incest is illegal, and the "unintended" consequence is freaks locking their families in sheds and basements in horrific conditions, but I think most of us would agree the benefits outweigh the detriment there.

Is putting all would-have-been-aborteds up for adoption abhorrent or absurd? The hump we'll never get over is asking "is it more abhorrent than aborting all of them", because we have different viewpoints on the relative values in play. But is it even a valid question? They won't all be put up for adoption. Some percentage (possibly 5-10 percent) will spontaneously miscarry\abort anyway and some percentage would be raised by a birth parent or by the extended family after all. An initially unwanted pregnancy does not necessarily equate to an unwanted child, for a number of reasons. I do not have statistics on what proportion could be expected to be put up for adoption. Would you happen to? It seems like that would be difficult to extrapolate.

The "'potential' shtick" carries weight in my view because of the uniqueness of the situation. There is no consensus on the "best" way to define when elective abortion is "acceptable". Sagan puts weight on cognition as indicative of personhood. As he states, the Supreme Court set its date based on independent "viability". (More specifically, I feel it should be noted, "potential" viability.) These milestones coincide only by coincidence.
Why is it so easy for us, as you say, to retroproject? And why is this any different from assigning personhood to each of a million individual sperm? For me, it's because of those statistics on miscarriage linked above. The retroprojected "potential" is represented by "percentages". At 3-6 weeks, without deliberate intervention 90% of those masses of cells will go on to become a human being. At 6-12 it's 95%. This is more than strictly "potential", it's nearly guaranteed.

I expect your response will be uncomfortable for both of us, but I wish you would expound on why my "It Gets Better" comparison struck you as inappropriate. Crude, certainly - I'll admit to phrasing it indelicately, even insensitively. I do not think it poorly considered, however. The point of "It Gets Better" is to let LGBT youth know that life does not remain oppressive, negative, and confusing, and that happiness and fulfillment lie ahead if they will only persevere.
It's necessary because as humans, we aren't very good at imagining we'll ever be happy again when surrounded by uncertainty and despair, or especially recognizing the good already around us. We can only see torment, and may not see the point in perpetuating a seemingly-unending chain of suffering when release is so close at hand, though violence against self (or others).
This directly parallels the "quality of life" arguments posed from the pro-choice perspective. They take an isolated slice of life from a theoretical unplanned child and their mother and suggest that this is their lot and that we've increased suffering in the universe, as if no abused child will ever know a greater love, or no poor child will ever laugh and play, and that no mother of an unwanted pregnancy will ever enjoy life again, burdened and poverty-stricken as she is.
As you said, we're expecting a woman to reflect "on what would her and the eventual child’s quality of life be like", but we're so bad at that.
And all that quality-of-life discussion is assuming we've even nailed the demographic on who is seeking abortions in the U.S.
Getting statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, we find that 77% were at or above the federal poverty level and 60% already had at least one child.

On a moral level, absolutely, eugenics is very different debate.
On a practical level, the eugenics angle is relevant because it's indistinguishable from any other elective abortion. Someone who is terminating a pregnancy because their child would be a girl, or gay, or developmentally disabled can very easily say "I'm just not ready for motherhood." And who's to say that's not the mother's prerogative as much as any other elective abortion, if she's considering the future quality of life for herself and the child? "It sucks for girls\gays\downs in today's society and I don't think I can personally handle putting them through that," or more likely "My family and I could never love a child like that, so they would be unloved and I would be miserable for it. This is better for both of us."
Can we write that off as hopefully being yet another edge case? (Keep in mind possibly 65% of individuals seeking abortion declare as Protestant or Catholic, though other statistics show how unreliable "reported religious affiliation" is with regard to actual belief and practice.)

_{"Argumentation"? I have learned a new word today, thanks to hpqp. High five!}