@shinyblurry

Of course, just about universally, humans hold very similar moral values about certain behaviours like killing, inflicting pain, caring, protecting and so on. To determine what this entails, I need to know if you agree with this snippet from my earlier comment:

...[our agreed-upon standard definition of "objective moral values" as given verbatim by Craig] entails that if all humans on Earth agreed that torturing babies for fun was morally acceptable, that it would still not be morally acceptable. In fact, it also entails that if all humans were dead, those moral values would still exist...

This part of the definition (the "objective" part) is necessary for determining that a god must have made the OMVs.

If you don't agree with that quote, then all you're saying is if any moral values (not necessarily objective moral values) demonstrably exist in humans, then a god exists, without determining what is so special about these moral values that a god must have made them. If human moral values are no more metaphysically significant than large brains, upright posture, self-awareness, reason, guile, or any other human characteristic, then there's no reason to suggest they must have come from a god, and Premise 1 (that a god necessarily created OMVs) remains unproven.

On the other hand, if you agree with that quote, then you have to admit that just because humans all exhibit the moral belief that torturing children is bad, it isn't entailed that torturing children would continue to be bad if humans all changed their minds about it or if humans were all wiped out. In other words, to say there is a universal human moral value is not to say that the value itself transcends our DNA and is therefore an objective moral value (by Craig's definition: "independent of whether anybody believes it to be so"). In this case, Premise 2, the existence of an objective moral value, remains unproven.

what do you believe? That is what is truly relevant to the argument.

If you want to take a position of moral skepticism, then feel free, but you don't get to dismiss the argument over it. How we determine whether premise 2 is true or false is at the heart of how you approach this entire problem. How about you engage the argument rather than trying to break it apart so you don't have to take any position? It would be nice if we could advance the discussion.

I joined this argument to see how you think, and how someone being logical might think that Craig's argument was valid, and to challenge that position. What I personally believe has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of Craig's argument, just as a defence attorney's opinion of their client's guilt or innocence holds no weight in the courtroom. It's only the people who make propositions (like Craig) who must defend them. I have no interest in defending my own positions because I know they're not provable, and may even be false. I also don't guide my life by them, so it doesn't matter.

In this argument, I have taken no position whatsoever about the nature of moral values. This was on purpose and with great restraint. I've had dozens of serious drawn-out ontological discussions with believers, and when their own position is pushed against the wall, they get desperate to find out what I think, then when I tell them, they point out how it's possible that my theory is wrong or that it doesn't explain everything, and say I'm close-minded for not considering their theory, and dance around the room saying that my theory isn't necessarily true either. It's the "either" that really pisses me off because it implies that their various beliefs are merely "not necessarily true", and on equal footing with my own non-proven beliefs, whereas I have actually shown their beliefs to be self-contradictory, unlike my own.

Or if I have merely shown that one particular assertion of theirs is not necessarily true, they think it's a massive victory to prove the same about something, anything that I believe, and spend a great deal of effort in the process, even though I already knew it wasn't necessarily true when I woke up that morning, and I don't care.

So as a rule, if I'm in an ontological debate with an opponent and I intend to join the debate seriously, I keep my own opinions out because I'm not trying to prove any propositions, and my own unproven opinions cannot disprove anyone else's anyway. Only logic and reason can do that, so that's what I use. I don't hold anything to be absolutely true, so if they demonstrate what I believe is not necessarily true by proposing an intelligent creator as an alternate theory to mine, I'll just agree.

"Breaking apart" an argument is how I "engage the argument". What other way is there? You say Craig is right, and I go about proving he's not necessarily right, then you say I'm not engaging the argument because I won't talk about the side issue of my own beliefs. I'll answer any questions you have about my beliefs once this Craig argument is settled. If we can't settle a formal logical debate on logical terms, then I don't see any point in having any logical discussions.

Do you see the problem? To prove Premise 1, Craig had to define OMVs as independent of human opinion, but in his (and your) proof of OMVs' existence, he invoked human opinion, which, by the original definition, must be irrelevant. As soon as you redefine OMVs as something humans can validate, they cease to require a God to have determined them, as we could have determined them ourselves.

As Premise 1 and Premise 2 cannot both be proven true with consistent definitions of the term "objective moral values", the conclusion that God exists remains unproven.

And this is all that is required, as nobody is trying to prove that God doesn't exist, nor explain the existence of our innate sense of morals.

There is no problem with the definition of OMVs here. This is a standard definition that you will find in any dictionary or philosophy handbook, and both premises are consistent with it. The problem is that you are bringing up two unrelated issues and conflating them. If you want to observe Jupiter and you use a microscope and don't observe it, does this mean that Jupiter doesn't exist? Does the method you use have any bearing on whether it exists or not? Then neither does how we determine whether OMVs exist have any bearing on whether they do actually exist or not. If you to argue we cannot know objective facts by making subjective determinations then we will be exactly where you said you wanted to avoid..this is my reality, that is your reality, and no objective world between us, but only mere opinion.

Yes, we determine premise 2 subjectively. I apprehend an objective moral realm which imposes itself upon my moral choices. There is nothing logically inconsistent here, and certainly nothing that invalidates the argument. We can affirm an objective truth with a subjective interpretation, it doesn't make it contingent on that interpretation. So, premise 2 will stand regardless of whether we subjectively determine it or not. OMVs can be apprehended subjectively and still exist objectively. The question is, what do you believe? That is what is truly relevant to the argument.

If you want to take a position of moral skepticism, then feel free, but you don't get to dismiss the argument over it. How we determine whether premise 2 is true or false is at the heart of how you approach this entire problem. How about you engage the argument rather than trying to break it apart so you don't have to take any position? It would be nice if we could advance the discussion.

>> ^messenger:

@shinyblurry
PART 1 OF 2
Logical discourse
It seems we
[edited for a few very minor things]

@shinyblurry

PART 1 OF 2

Logical discourse
It seems we disagree on what logical discourse is and requires. You probably know most of this already, but please go through it carefully and see if you can spot the places where we differ. I'm stating all this part as logical fact, not my opinion, so go ahead and trash it if you think anything I have said is logically false. Also, as per your advice, I read everything you say as if you're a smarter person, and humbly request you do the same.

About syllogisms. They have at least three parts. One part, the last, is the conclusion. The logic goes that if all the other parts (the premises) are true, then the conclusion must also be true. The relationship among the truth values can be determined logically before proving anything using the rules of formal logic:

One common formulation goes like this:

Premise 1: "If A is not true, then B is not true." (Necessarily entailed by this premise is: "If B is true, A is true.")
Premise 2: "B is true."
Conclusion: "A is true."

It doesn't matter what A and B are, so long as they are statements with truth values. Anything put into that framework will suffice.

Now, let's make it apply to Craig's argument:

Let A = "God exists."
Let B = "Objective moral values exist."

So, if it can be proven that OMVs cannot exist without God (premise 1), AND it can be proven that OMVs exist (premise 2), then God, ipso facto, exists. This is airtight. I think we agree and are clear to this point.

Nothing is proven yet though, because neither premise is yet proven correct. Both must be proven correct for the conclusion to be proven.

The ontological proof process exists to prove that one particular conclusion, that God exists, is true; it's not about seeing who has the best theory about morality or evil. Those are just tools used in the argument. Morality and evil are interesting arguments on their own, but in this situation, all Craig is doing with them is proving God's existence. The premises are either all proven correct, or they aren't all proven correct. If they're not all proven correct, then the conclusion that rests on them isn't proven correct either.

You or others may want to propose an alternate theory for the phenomenon, but lack of such a theory is not proof, nor even an indication that the first theory is correct. "I've never seen a better theory," is likewise not proof of anything. The belief that the best (or only) theory is necessarily correct is false. Even if you're just saying that God's existence is the best theory for the existence of OMVs, that still proves nothing. Even if that theory were objectively the best theory (which can be measured), it still wouldn't make it necessarily true.

Further, the fact that someone has never seen disproof of a premise similarly proves nothing, and not just because it's anecdotal. Even if nobody anywhere ever has disproven a particular premise, it still doesn't demonstrate that the premise was correct. If it doesn't stand proven true today, someone may still refute it tomorrow. Another reason a premise may not be disproven is that doing so may be impossible based on its construction. If the definition of the terms is insufficiently precise, or if the definition rests on other non-defined or otherwise unprovable assumptions, then it can never be conclusively demonstrated to be false (or true, for that matter), so the lack of valid refutation should surprise no one, and count for nothing in favour of the premise.

The only thing ontological arguments are interested in is proof of God, not conjecture, not best guesses, not probabilities, not begging, not theories, proof. And nothing else short of or beyond proof matters.

The Video
So based on the above, I take on the following statements of yours:

You can invalidate the whole argument [Premise 1] right here, but you have to provide a logical foundation.

I'm not sure if you mean providing the logical foundation for Premise 1 itself being false, or the logical foundation that the premise was not proven by Craig. Neither is possible, but neither is necessary, as you'll see: I cannot prove Premise 1 is false because that would involve objective definitions of God and morality, both of which are in question, and any random definition I made could be challenged. By the same token, I cannot demonstrate that Craig didn't prove it because Craig's definitions are inconsistent.

What I will demonstrate, however, is that Craig's proofs for Premises 1 and 2 are in logical conflict, and so both premises cannot be proven with one consistent definition of OMVs.

Premise 1: If we accept Craig's statement that "objective moral values" means things that are necessarily good or bad regardless of what anybody thinks, then there must be something else besides humans to determine what those moral values are. This entails that if all humans on Earth agreed that torturing babies for fun was morally acceptable, that it would still not be morally acceptable. In fact, it also entails that if all humans were dead, those moral values would still exist, but be meaningless since there would be nobody around capable of violating them. That fact would be indicative of a god or a higher power than us, if only we could prove that these OMVs by this definition exist.

Premise 2: Craig's (and your) argument for Premise 2 is that we all generally agree that torturing babies for fun is morally wrong, therefore OMVs exist.

Do you see the problem? To prove Premise 1, Craig had to define OMVs as independent of human opinion, but in his (and your) proof of OMVs' existence, he invoked human opinion, which, by the original definition, must be irrelevant. As soon as you redefine OMVs as something humans can validate, they cease to require a God to have determined them, as we could have determined them ourselves.

As Premise 1 and Premise 2 cannot both be proven true with consistent definitions of the term "objective moral values", the conclusion that God exists remains unproven.

And this is all that is required, as nobody is trying to prove that God doesn't exist, nor explain the existence of our innate sense of morals.

The basic trouble for you is, if you want to dispute premise one, you have to come up with a foundation for objective moral values outside of God.

This is faulty logic. God is one theory for the existence of moral values. Until God's existence is proven, or until the origin of morals is proven, it will remain unknown. I may or may not have an alternative theory, and it may or may not be better than your God theory, but whether I personally have an alternate theory is utterly irrelevant to my arguments against the validity of Craig's argument.

If you admit there is no such foundation, then we move to premise 2, and there you have to argue that objective moral values do not exist. If you can not argue it, or if you admit objective moral values do exist, then you are forced to accept premise 3, that therefore God exists.

Like I said above, you misunderstand how syllogisms work. I don't have to prove anything about moral values, nor do I have to disprove either premise. Craig has to prove that all the premises are true and consistent. I only have to show that Craig didn't prove they are true and consistent, which I did.

You may think that the difference in definition of OMVs is a trivial one, but it is absolutely crucial. Craig's proof of God relies on the existence of moral values that persist outside of our judgement and even outside of our awareness, if we haven't been shown the "truth" yet. But he can only demonstrate that they exist by relying on our awareness and judgement, invalidating the definition.

Nothing here disproves the existence of any god, but it obviously doesn't prove it either.

[edited for a few very minor things]

Having watched the first 30 seconds again and thought about it, with Craig's ...Premise Two cannot be proven, and that's Craig's argument completely sunk, and it could have been the end of the video too.

I think you're looking at the argument from the wrong perspective. Let's examine the premises:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist:

The basic question here is, in the absence of God, is there is any objective difference between good and evil? That, if there is no God, is the difference between good and evil like the difference between coke and pepsi? An example Craig gives is, is the difference like which side of the road that you drive on, which varies from culture to culture?

So, this is where you would make an argument for valid and binding objective moral values outside of Gods existence. You can invalidate the whole argument right here, but you have to provide a logical foundation. I have yet to see anyone refute premise one.

2. Objective moral values do exist

Now, to say this premise is false is to admit that objective moral values do not exist. IE, you will have to admit that torturing babies for fun isn't actually wrong. I have actually debated people who tried to defend it, but I give them credit for being intellectually honest, because that is the logical conclusion; that if objective moral values do not exist, torturing babies for fun isn't absolutely wrong. However, I think we both know that it is, therefore objective moral values do exist.

So, this is a rather tricky argument for an atheist. Qualia soup gets the whole thing wrong here. The basic trouble for you is, if you want to dispute premise one, you have to come up with a foundation for objective moral values outside of God. If you admit there is no such foundation, then we move to premise 2, and there you have to argue that objective moral values do not exist. If you can not argue it, or if you admit objective moral values do exist, then you are forced to accept premise 3, that therefore God exists.

For example, can we just accept that you and I exist, one independent of the other, neither a figment of the other's imagination? Can we accept that our normal external sensory input can be accepted as correct for the purposes of this conversation, (except in the trivial cases of optical illusions and so forth)? You probably know what I'm saying. I hate it when I get into an argument and think I've made a very strong point, only to have my opponent come back with, "Everything's subjective; you can't prove anything is real," or, "Maybe you imagined the whole thing, I mean, you can't prove you didn't," or, "You can prove anything with facts," or, "Well, you have your beliefs and I have mine," or some crap like that where I'm not talking about subjective facts or my own beliefs.

Yes, I can agree with all of this. I believe that the Universe is tangibly real, and is generally how it appears to be, in that it is not a malicious deception or a meaningless illusion. I believe we are both individuals made in the image of God with an independent existence and a soul. I believe we can come to meaningful conclusions about reality, and that there is a truth which is tangible, accessible to reason, and which does not change based on our interpretation or personal preferences.

Also, in theological arguments, I must insist on a couple things. The first is that words must have meaning. If you say something, you can't later say that it's not to be taken literally, or that that word has a different meaning when applied to God. The second is that everything logically entailed by a statement must stand with the original statement, and any other statement. If there's any inconsistencies, then at least one of the statements must be false.

I am very consistent when it comes to meanings. This is one of the hallmarks of literal interpretation, that the words in the bible, while they can sometimes be applied in a metaphorical sense, always have an intended meaning which is absolutely true in all circumstances.

Also, please don't assert supernatural things like the existence of Satan, or your knowledge of how he works, telling me these things like I'm ignorant of them, rather than fully aware of the stories, but sceptical. Say that it's what you believe or have come to believe or whatever, but don't say it like objective fact. Same goes for Bible verses. I don't accept them as fact any more than you'd accept Skeletor quotes as fact. To me that book is best treated as fiction, though it's possible it conveys some details of events that really happened, but pronouncements of the way the world is I absolutely do not accept as the word of God, especially since I don't believe he exists. I don't care if the Bible predicts atheists/sceptics. All that tells me is that people have been doubting the veracity of the word for 2,000 years, and someone took the precaution of adding a word or two against non-believers into the text so believers down the line would have justification "from God" for dismissing my arguments as guided by Satan, or whatever.

I generally won't propose arguments that would take faith to accept. I understand your natural skepticism because I used to be equally skeptical. I will just submit that when you are deceived, you don't know you are deceived:

2 Corinthians 4:4

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

I admit the possibility that I could be deceived, so I think if we both can admit this, we will have a more fruitful conversation.

know you don't think Qualia's line of reasoning holds, but I don't know what you think of Craig's argument. Is it valid, in your mind? And here, I'm mostly interested in how you think. As I've said, the video was only intended to take apart the argument of one Christian apologist, and not to prove or disprove anything.

I think it is logically airtight. That if you cannot prove there is a foundation for objective moral values outside of God, and you cannot disprove that some actions are objectively wrong, that you must accept the conclusion of the argument.

I'm 99% sure you said in a comment somewhere that you're dubious of science. Could you explain what you mean by that? Science isn't a system of faith or a set of theories. It's a process of testing theories. Are you dubious of the process? What parts of it specifically do you mean?

I am dubious of the philosophy of empiricism upon which science is founded upon. Empiricism assumes that truth can only be discerned through our senses, and that our minds merely processes and categorizes this truth. I reject this view because there are clearly truths that empiricism cannot evaluate, including the validity of empiricism itself. I'll bring in craig again for this one:



I apologize for the title..it's just the best clip I could find.

Is it accurate to say that the sum of your experience of God is subjective, that's to say, is based solely on your own experience in your head, and possibly in things in the objective world that you have interpreted in a subjective way, and is not borne out in any demonstrable way in the measurable material world?

I would say my experience is generally subjective but is objectively confirmed, both by other people, and my daily life. You can say I have interpreted those experiences subjectively, and I am just fooling myself, of course. Personal experience is something hard to prove, as the other person is naturally skeptical of the other persons ability to evaluate what is true. All I can say is that truth is paramount to me and I am incapable of believing something just because I want it to be true. I would rather have nothing and die a meaningless death than live out a comfortable lie.

Please describe God. Where is he? When is he? What is he capable of? What does he feel? Is he immutable? Please add anything you can about why he did things like create the universe and animals and us and disease and suffering and inequality and joy, why he cares for us, why he cares what we do, why he made some things moral and some things evil, and any other informative facts. Is there a God the Father anymore, or just Jesus? Did Jesus have a human form and a godly form, or did he transmute from one to the other? What was Jesus before he was born? Was he born of the virgin Mary?

This is a rather large subject. I'll do my best..

God is perfect. He is holy, loving, and just. He exists outside of time and space in His own realm, which is called Heaven. He is capable of doing anything that can be done. As far as what God feels, that can be hard to quantify. For instance, you can say God feels love, but by definition, God is love. In general, from the bible, it seems God can be pleased, can be jealous, has compassion, is kind, is loving, can be grieved and can be angered. His nature is immutable, in that He is goodness itself. He is light and there is no darkness in Him. That doesn't change. He can however change how He interacts with us.

God created us out of the abundance of His love. It wasn't out of a need, as He already had perfect love within the relationships of the Holy Trinity, but it was an overflowing of that love. He created us to be in relationship to Him, as His children.

There were no diseases, or any inequality before the fall. He created the world perfectly, and He set us in paradise, to learn and grow under His care. However, because robots would be undesirable, He gave us free will to be obedient to Him or not. Unfortunately, we abused that, and broke fellowship with God. Sin and death were brought into the world because of it, and since then this has been a fallen creation. If you have something perfect, and introduce an imperfection, then it is no longer perfect and neither can anything perfect ever come from it. Sin and death ruined that perfection, and they are the cause for all of the disease and inequality today.

Because of this, God brought the law into the world, to give us a minimum standard for moral behavior. The law in itself was not capable of fixing the situation, as everyone fell short of the law, but rather it highlighted our need for a savior. This is the reason Jesus Christ came.

He came to Earth, putting aside His glory and position to live as a man, being the first human being since Adam to be born without sin. He lived a perfect life, though He was tempted in every way that we are, and fulfilled the entire law. Finally, He sacrificed Himself on the cross for the sins of mankind, as a substitutionary atonement for our crimes, and He tasted death for all men. God proved all of this by raising Him from the dead. So, Christ defeated death and sin on the cross, and imputed His righteousness, the righteousness of God, back into mankind. Therefore, anyone who accepts His Lordship will have his sins forgiven and receive eternal life. It is by the imputation of Gods perfect righteousness and substituionary atonement that the effects of the fall have been countered, and we are again reconciled to God and can enjoy perfect relationship to Him as His children.

God is three persons, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus ascended to Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, making intercession on our behalf. Jesus was born of a virgin, and was both God and man; He had two natures, which were united for one purpose in submission to the Father. Jesus, before He was born as a human being, existed as God. "Before abraham was, I am."

John 1:1-3

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Hope that answers your questions.



>> ^messenger:

@shinyblurry

@shinyblurry

Having watched the first 30 seconds again and thought about it, with Craig's definition of objective moral values (OMVs) inserted into Premise One, it reads: "If God does not exist, then nothing exists which is good or evil independently of whether anybody believes it to be so." If by this he means, "If God does not exist, then nothing exists which is good or evil no matter who believes or does not believe it to be so", then it's pretty close to a truism, but as Qualia says, it leaves Craig with significant problems. Then, unfortunately, Q goes off apparently on an irrelevant tangent about people assessing other people's moral behaviour, which is the wrong argument to make at this point, as Craig's definition is all about things being moral or evil independent of everyone's judgement. The correct point to make here would be that by Craig's own definition of OMVs, it's now impossible to verify Premise Two because it would require either a human or God to assess that such a moral value or duty existed. This can never happen because Craig's definition of OMVs precludes humans from evaluating things morally, and the argument cannot, obviously, invoke God's opinion, since proof of God's existence is the argument's conclusion. So, by definition, Premise Two cannot be proven, and that's Craig's argument completely sunk, and it could have been the end of the video too.

Except something interesting happens: Craig contradicts his earlier definition of "objective" meaning that it doesn't matter what any human thinks, and presents the fact that 99% of people would say that torturing and caring for a child hold different moral values as evidence that OMVs exist, in other words, now, suddenly the definition of OMVs rests in what 99% of people think. This means he accepts somebody's assessment of moral value, if on a large enough scale. If Craig appeals to the moral opinion of 99% of people to prove objectivity in his own arguments, then obviously anybody arguing against Craig is allowed to do the same, so any points Qualia Soup makes in the video based on the opinions of humans in general stand because they follow Craig's own rules of evaluation.

So, Qualia's point is valid and relevant, that on the whole, we don't make moral judgements based solely on the act itself, but on what the person committing the act believed about their actions: a healthy adult killing a baby is viewed entirely differently than a retarded adult or a very young child killing a baby. This is not irrelevant if Craig's proof for Premise Two relies on the opinion of 99% of people. This shows that OMVs may not exist independent of what people think. It suggests the opposite: that judgements of the moral value of an action may only exist based on what people think.

QS: It goes on, asking "what do we make of a being that's decided that only one species is morally accountable?"

SB: This is simply a red herring. It makes absolutely no difference and is not relevant what we think about God holding humans accountable and not animals. Our standard for moral behavior is not measured by the behavior of animals. The relevant difference is that the standard for our moral behavior is measured by what God chooses as morally correct.

Here, QS is responding to Craig's accusations of atheists being "speciesist" for thinking humans are special, and throws it back in his face by showing by his definition, God is speciesist if he only chose to hold one species morally accountable. Also, your own argument that morality relies on what God decides is morally correct assumes the existence of God, which you cannot assert in the middle of a proof of God's existence.

The section that follows about "unevaluated value" makes the point that if there are moral values that exist but we lack awareness of them, then it's useless for them to exist undetected. And if we're not positing that a God already exists, it makes more sense for the actions to be noticed, and then evaluated as either evil or good at that moment, rather than to have already been evaluated morally by God, and then detected as morally good or evil by that person due to their internal morality detector provided by God. In other words, the capacity for moral judgement is not proof that God gave it to us. It could have evolved.

The argument beginning at 3:47 shows there's no way to determine that a person has detected something that was already evaluated as good by God and understood it as so, rather than has seen something and evaluated it as good himself by his own judgement.

***

And it goes on from there. Anyway, that's my evaluation of your evaluation of Qualia Soup's evaluation of Craig's ontological proof that God exists.

I'd much rather talk about you and me and our relative faiths in God, but before we go on, I have to know what the rules are and what I will be expected to establish.

About us
For example, can we just accept that you and I exist, one independent of the other, neither a figment of the other's imagination? Can we accept that our normal external sensory input can be accepted as correct for the purposes of this conversation, (except in the trivial cases of optical illusions and so forth)? You probably know what I'm saying. I hate it when I get into an argument and think I've made a very strong point, only to have my opponent come back with, "Everything's subjective; you can't prove anything is real," or, "Maybe you imagined the whole thing, I mean, you can't prove you didn't," or, "You can prove anything with facts," or, "Well, you have your beliefs and I have mine," or some crap like that where I'm not talking about subjective facts or my own beliefs.

Also, in theological arguments, I must insist on a couple things. The first is that words must have meaning. If you say something, you can't later say that it's not to be taken literally, or that that word has a different meaning when applied to God. The second is that everything logically entailed by a statement must stand with the original statement, and any other statement. If there's any inconsistencies, then at least one of the statements must be false.

Also, please don't assert supernatural things like the existence of Satan, or your knowledge of how he works, telling me these things like I'm ignorant of them, rather than fully aware of the stories, but sceptical. Say that it's what you believe or have come to believe or whatever, but don't say it like objective fact. Same goes for Bible verses. I don't accept them as fact any more than you'd accept Skeletor quotes as fact. To me that book is best treated as fiction, though it's possible it conveys some details of events that really happened, but pronouncements of the way the world is I absolutely do not accept as the word of God, especially since I don't believe he exists. I don't care if the Bible predicts atheists/sceptics. All that tells me is that people have been doubting the veracity of the word for 2,000 years, and someone took the precaution of adding a word or two against non-believers into the text so believers down the line would have justification "from God" for dismissing my arguments as guided by Satan, or whatever.

I know you don't think Qualia's line of reasoning holds, but I don't know what you think of Craig's argument. Is it valid, in your mind? And here, I'm mostly interested in how you think. As I've said, the video was only intended to take apart the argument of one Christian apologist, and not to prove or disprove anything.

I'm 99% sure you said in a comment somewhere that you're dubious of science. Could you explain what you mean by that? Science isn't a system of faith or a set of theories. It's a process of testing theories. Are you dubious of the process? What parts of it specifically do you mean?

Is it accurate to say that the sum of your experience of God is subjective, that's to say, is based solely on your own experience in your head, and possibly in things in the objective world that you have interpreted in a subjective way, and is not borne out in any demonstrable way in the measurable material world?

About God
Please describe God. Where is he? When is he? What is he capable of? What does he feel? Is he immutable? Please add anything you can about why he did things like create the universe and animals and us and disease and suffering and inequality and joy, why he cares for us, why he cares what we do, why he made some things moral and some things evil, and any other informative facts. Is there a God the Father anymore, or just Jesus? Did Jesus have a human form and a godly form, or did he transmute from one to the other? What was Jesus before he was born? Was he born of the virgin Mary?

I'll answer your most recent post in my next sitting.

In my comments above, I was responding to your question, "Did you miss
me?" until the last part where I think I only addressed your arguments
about the video, and not very well. To be clear, I don't feel like I
was attacking your character rather than your arguments. I was
commenting on the way I perceive your arguments to often be illogical,
inconsistent, unprovable, or even demonstrably false. That's my
opinion of your arguments, not your character. As I said initially, I
like you, and think you're probably a really nice person of good
character, and I'd probably enjoy having a beer with you. If you mean
the bit about your psychotic break, that's because that's what I think
happened to you based on what you've told me about your conversion,
and I think it's affecting your judgement and perception, honestly and
sincerely. Put in my shoes (as you once were), you wouldn't accept
your own story at face value either, so I don't know why you expect
anyone else to.

I'm not offended by what you said, and after having read through this post, I have a much better idea of why you said the things you did. The reason I took issue is because I am frequently mischaracterized on the sift, and this seemed to be more of that. And no, I don't expect you to believe my story at face value. I wouldn't have believed me either, but neither would I totally dismiss it out of hand.

You're conflating at least two groups of people in your "90%", namely
people who claim religious faith (whether sincere or not, and to
whatever degree of devotion), and those who have actually had numinous
experiences.

I realize that not everyone who believes in God has had a spiritual experience, and I can see I failed to make a distinction in my reply.

When I say that you can't come to any other conclusion
because of your mental condition, I'm only referring to you and other
people who have actually had a serious numinous experience like yours,
which is an underwhelming minority of religious people, nothing like
90%.

My entire life is a numinous experience, and no, I wouldn't say the majority of religious people have had an experience like mine. I would say though that a large majority of them have had some kind of spiritual experience and many non-believers too. I have spoken to more than a few who will eventually admit to me that they have seen evidence of the supernatural, but suppress it because they don't like the implications.

This minority, and anybody else who claims to have seen ghosts,
or communicated with daemons, or been abducted by aliens, or been
levitated, or seen other locations in time/space, or communicated with
the dead, I view with equal scepticism. The first reason is that it's
very common among holders of all sorts of mystical beliefs to have
gained the belief following such an experience, and to have attributed
the belief to whichever mystical force is closest at hand, in your
case, Jesus.

In my case, that isn't true. I had no belief in God, nor was I looking for one when I found out that there is a higher power working in this world. Even after I was opened to the spiritual reality, I didn't immediately leap to a belief in God. There just came a point where I could no longer plausibly deny His existence, and that's when I started to believe. Even then I had no religion or belief system. From there, I explored many of the worlds belief systems and philosophies, religions and traditions, for many years, before being led to Christianity. To note, at the time, out of all the religions, I considered Christianity to be one of the least plausible. Again, because it had been uniquely confirmed to me, there was no way to deny it. The evidence was as plain as my reflection in the mirror.

The second is that there's no real reason to choose one
mystical explanation for the experience over another explanation, and
until there is, it's smartest to reserve judgement, and assume for the
moment that they're all wrong, as only one of them, maximum, could
possibly be right, no matter how fervently held they are.

Well you're correct that only one could be the truth, it doesn't mean that no one else is having a genuine experience. The solution to this puzzle is very simple. There are two powers in the supernatural realm. The first and greater power is from God. He is the only source of truth, and anyone in contact with Him has access to that truth. The second and lesser power is that of Satan. He is the source of all lies, and anyone in contact with him is deluded and in bondage. Satan is the ruler of the world system, and in general, the people who are enslaved to him are not aware of it. He can only really enslave someone who is ignorant of the truth. This is the default condition we're all born into, but God has put the truth out there, as a beacon for anyone who hungers for it, for anyone who is not satisified with lies. He is constantly giving people opportunities to accept that truth, but unless they do, they will choose to believe the lie and thus remain in bondage.

Just like 1+1 has an unlimited number of wrong answers, Satan has an unlimited number of lies about the truth. He also has a supernatural power that can reinforce these lies. So, in general, the people who are reporting supernatural experiences from the various religions are largely telling the truth. The only question is, are they from God or from Satan?

That was nearly twenty years ago, and I'm still not yet at the point where I can laugh
at how silly it was, and have just become comfortable enough to talk
openly about it.

Thanks for sharing that with me. I think it's a natural thought to have, that your life might be something like the Truman show, and everyone else is in on the conspiracy. A belief like that puts you in the very center of the Universe, and from there you could weave together any story you could imagine. I had an ex-girlfriend with bi-polar disorder who used to do this. She would start making connections between things which had no plausible connection, and pretty soon she was staring some kind of hideous reality square in the face, and living in absolute terror. To her it was absolutely real and everything that happened, perceived as it was through these filters, served to reinforce them.

So I understand the princple. I have had thoughts like this myself, and I had to stop myself from engaging them. For instance, I once had the idea that a very powerful and very malevolent entity might exist somewhere in the Universe that could potentially pick up on my thoughts, and if I ever drew his attention to me by thinking about him he would kill me (or worse). After living in fear of this for a little while, I decided that my best option was to doubt it was true and stop thinking about it, because that's what was going to get me killed in the first place.

The thing is, what I know now is, that everyone who falls into these traps has a little help. That you don't just fall into the abyss, you get pushed in. Satan fuels these types of experiences supernaturally. He can cause people to give you responses or engage you in dialogues which confirm the lies that he has planted and therefore reap a harvert of delusion. He will even give you these kinds of experience in order to debunk them later with the ultimate goal of getting you to doubt the real thing:

2 Corinthians 4:4

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

The "truth" that I received was unquestionably true, impossible to
consider denying since to me it was so obviously true, and
agonizingly, mindbendingly horrible. Depending on how you look at it,
this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If the "truth" that I saw
had been fulfilling, hopeful and beautiful like yours was, and not
horrible, dark, pessimistic and paranoid as it was, I would have had
far less motivation for questioning it, and may have just gone along
with it forever, especially if holding that view improved my life in
certain ways.

It seems to me that you think I am not very self-critical about what I believe. I suppose you have to believe that since you think Christianity is nonsense, but why not assume for a minute that my standard for the truth is not inferior to yours and let me try to explain:

I am not naturally inclined to believe anything in particular for any particular reason. I don't make choices about what I believe based on how those beliefs make me feel, or what kinds of rewards I might receive. To become convinced that something is true, there must be exquisite evidence which justifies that belief, and it must fit seamlessly into a logical framework with no contradiction. I admit some things I believe may seem counter-intuitive to you, but as you have admitted, our intuitions about what is correct are not always reliable. Quantum physics is a good example of this truth.

What I believe isn't about me. I only care about what is true and what is real; if the truth is that I am nothing more than an insignifcant fly speck that will die forever in a cold and indifferent Universe, then I wouldn't try to hide from it, I would in fact embrace it. It was in fact my original position before all this began, and I was okay with it. Was I happy that I had to die one day? Not as such, but it didn't really bother me. I accepted it as fact and knew it was out of my control. The only reason I changed my mind is because I encountered evidence good enough to convince me otherwise.

Everybody who has a break like this comes to a slightly different
conclusion as to its meaning. Mine was a very, very dark conclusion,
which is vastly different from yours, but similar to many other
people's, though probably not exactly the same as anybody else's, just
like yours probably isn't. Like Double Rainbow Guy was probably
experiencing a similar break right at that moment, and concluded
neither that Jesus was the saviour, nor that the world was evil, nor
that he himself was the new messiah.

It seems to me that you're still very much interpreting reality through your experience. You make the leap that since you were able to fool yourself to such an extent, and that your experience had the character of the supernatural, that everyone who has a supernatural experience is undergoing a similar process. Yet, this is a classic example of confirmation bias. How do you know that you're still not seeing things according to an unconscious paradigm you haven't yet questioned?

So I don't like the word "crazy" because of its negative connotations,
and wouldn't have appreciated it being flung at me during that time
nor now (and if I've ever used it about you, it was probably when I
thought you were a real troll, Poe's Law being what it is, and
definitely before I knew about your numinous experience). That said, I
have no issue pointing out to people that I don't believe they are
applying critical thought to their assertions, and that they don't
seem capable of doing so because of a story in their head that is so
powerful it renders contradictory input trivial. I've been there. I
get it. And if the story in your mind from your experience is the
truth, then so is mine, and so are millions of other people's, but
they can't all be the truth, and probably none are.

I think calling someone crazy is an easy way for skeptics to dismiss testimony that doesn't agree with their preconceived ideas. I also don't reject contradictory input. I investigate it to see if there is any conflict, and if there truly is, I will change my point of view. As far as truth, it is by nature, exclusive. There is no true for me, or true for you. Someone is right and someone is wrong. This world was either created with intention, or it manifested itself out of sheer happenstance. There either is a God or there isn't.

If nothing else, please take from this story that I'm not looking down
on you for having a mental injury. I'm identifying with you, and that
seems more important to me than debating the merits of any argument

Again, this is what you presume. You're not really identifying with me, you are putting me in a box you constructed and telling me you were once in that box and know what it is like to live in there. As I said earlier, you're still interpreting the world through your experience and making the world conform to your conclusions about it. What I think is that you threw the baby out with the bathwater, and missed the whole point. You believe you were just deceiving yourself. What I am telling you is that you had supernatural help, and that you're still in it.

People who cleave to a religion despite never having had any numinous
experiences are just following what everyone else is doing without
questioning it because they were raised to do so from birth. I don't
deride these people for it because it's natural for humans to accept
whatever they see being done all around them as normal. That's how we
socialise and learn. It is not evidence that what they're doing is
"correct" any more than shaking hands is the "correct" way to greet
people, and bowing is "incorrect". Children in Muslim environments
tend to grow up Muslim. Children of the Amazonian Pirahã tribe
believe their fellow villagers sometimes are spirits who are visiting
them with messages from other realms. Children of atheists tend to
grow up atheist. Children raised around racists tend to grow up
racist. Victims of childhood abuse tend to believe they are worthless
pieces of shit, deserving abuse. All this indicates that people tend
to believe what they're brought up to believe, not that what people
believe en masse is true.

I agree to a point, but I think the amount of people who believe without any supernatural evidence is much lower than you think. I have rarely met any Christians who haven't had a supernatural experience, and aren't constantly aware of the prescence of God.

This raises the question of why so many people believe in god/s/mystic
beings/supernatural events in the first place, and why it is such a
universal human trait. It's a good question. One answer is that there
is some kind of non-physical "force" we can't detect (yet) except in
numinous experiences, during which it somehow has an effect on our
physical bodies and causes us to know and wonder about its existence.
That's totally possible, even scientifically, and I'm open to it. The
problem is that there are thousands and thousands of systems of belief
which all claim to be the true one, the one that best or most
authoritatively explains the phenomenon of numinous experience. Worse
is that there's virtually nothing to choose between them in terms of
which one seems the best. They all have lore and deities, explanations
for natural phenomena, numinous experience, extremely fervent
adherents, and internal references and contradictions in number and
greatness in rough proportion to the number and greatness of the
claims they make about the universe.

Again, it's pretty easy to explain. There is one truth, and the rest are lies. Just as 1+1 only has one correct answer and infinite wrong answers. There is one truth because there is a God who created it, and many lies because there is a devil that created them. One a supernatural force of good, the other of evil.

So, please don't call me arrogant for saying that your strain of faith, among a long list of mutually
exclusive strains stretching back through human history is probably
not correct, nor any of the others, probably. There's a 1 in n chance
that any of them is correct, where n is the number of mutually
exclusive faith systems that have ever existed. From the point of view
of someone with no specific belief about any particular faith system,
deciding on one seems a fool's errand. Especially when you consider
the other possible answer.

There are many other ways to evaluate the probabilities here. First, you can rule out all the gods who make no creation claims. Two, you can rule out the creation claims that contradict the basic evidence. Right there, you have ruled out almost all of them. There are many ways to look at it. We both agree if any of the religions are true, only one of them could be. Whichever religion it was, we could expect that if it came from a powerful God, it would be the one that has had the most impact on our history. That's clearly Christianity, hands down. We could also expect Jesus, if He is God, to be the most famous and most influential person who has ever lived. Clearly, He is. We could also expect that religion to be the largest in terms of numbers. Again, that is Christianity. So based on those three factors, Christianity is the logical choice. There are many probabilities to consider.

Another answer to the good question about why so many people believe
in gods, etc. -and my best guess- is that it is part of human nature
to fear and mistrust the unknown, and be endlessly curious about it
too. Anything we don't know presents a threat, so we have to go and
examine it. If we can't examine it, then our imaginations are left to
wander unconstrained. This is quite taxing, and we yearn for answers.
It can also lead to dissent among communities. One very simple way to
solve both problems is to assert a god or a pantheon of gods who
control all things. For example, storm clouds are dark and scary and
change shape of their own will and look heavy, yet are way high up in
the sky, and they can send rain and lightning down and make some of
the loudest noises you've ever heard. Someone without any climatology
knowledge might be very scared by these things, and unable to
investigate or explain them. But if they were told they're controlled
by a god named Zeus who can be appeased by building a white marble
temple and killing goats there (or whatever they did), then it's much
more comforting, so much so, that people feel an incredible sense of
relief from the burden of having to know and understand everything.
From that point on, no matter what mysterious natural phenomenon
presents itself, they have merely to ascribe it to some god, and the
matter is solved. So the short answer is that mental and social peace
is the reason I believe so many people believe in gods. And again,
numbers of people believing similar things is no evidence that some
kind of god is real, just that believing in supernatural beings makes
humans feel good. Whether you believe in anything or not, that last
part is an objective fact that we both agree on, I think.

I agree to some extent about psychological motivations but reject the premise as a whole that people need religion to live in a scary Universe. Most atheists aren't aware of the vast intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christianity, or how self-critical it can be. Even Paul said that if Jesus is not resurrected that we are all fools. We're not just a bunch of ignoramouses who drank the kool-aid and are waiting for the UFO to arrive.

This also does not apply to me. When I first became aware that God existed I was very afraid of Him. According to your analysis I should have rejected this belief immediately and embraced my agnosticism because it was more pleasant. But I couldn't reject it just like I couldn't call the day night. I believed what i did because of evidence, and not personal preferences. I was also a man of science, and wasn't worried about how complex the Universe was. I thought science would eventually explain all of its mechanisms, so it didn't bother me that I didn't understand it. It's funny but science functions in the same way for atheists as you say a god does for theists.

Another part of the attraction to faith, I believe, is that many
people also have a hard time taking responsibility for their own
actions, and would prefer some parental guidance, but from perfect
parents, not their own. Belief that there is a father-like god
watching everything you do and communicating with you and telling you
what to do if you'll only listen is also a great relief from the
burden of being responsible yourself for all the important decisions
you make. Most people, I believe, know what the right thing to do is,
but don't always want to do it because it doesn't always meet what
they consider their best interests or motivations. So instead, they
invoke God (which I think is an impartial metaphysical moral version
of yourself), and know what God would think is the right thing to do,
and they do that, believing that it wasn't their conscious choice, but
God directing them

I won't speak for other religions but this isn't how it works for Christianity. You have more responsibility when you believe in God, not less. You are accountable to God for every idle word that you speak, and morally, you have to watch your thoughts and not just your actions. I'll quote Gilbert K Chesterton:

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried"

You apparently have no idea what it takes to live up to example Christ set for us. If you think it is just a bunch of empty platitudes then you are being pretty disingenuous here..have you ever tried loving your enemy, blessing those who curse you, going 2 miles with someone when they demand one, giving your jacket to someone who steals the shirt off your back? Could you forgive your worst enemy? Could you love the person who wronged you the most? And that is just the easy stuff.

As someone who did believe in God as a child, I can do it any time,
and often do when I have to really think about the right path in a
difficult situation. The difference is I don't believe I'm receiving
wisdom from another being anymore; I believe I'm putting my ego out of
the way and accessing my true "moral" self. This theory accounts for
the different interpretations of faith systems, since different people
even within the exact same strain of faith seem to have different
ideas of moral actions.

Ahh, so you do come to God for help after all, but you give yourself the credit for His help. That's what ego is, my friend. Man as his own god. Yet, there is no explanation for objective moral values without God. Atheists borrow them from Christianity, which is Frank Tureks point. You have to sit in Gods lap to slap His face.

There is also more agreement on basic moral values than disagreement, and this is because we all have a God given conscience which tells us right from wrong. God said He would write His laws on our hearts, which is why we have values which are nigh universal in human civilization.

Why did you abandon your faith in God, if I may ask?

Your arguments, in general
As to your inconsistencies, at least once on the Sift you claimed that
other people have the wrong faith. You appealed to reason and logic to
conclude that Muslims have it wrong by pointing out inconsistencies in
their faith. I can't remember the details, but you probably know what
I'm talking about. You can imagine how a devout Muslim might react to
your logical arguments. Well, you react the same way when presented
with equivalent logical arguments about your own faith. Again, I
haven't searched up any examples, but I will, if you like, or I can
point out some logical contradictions that I come up with. I'd also
appreciate it, as a gesture of good faith (ha ha), if you'd agree to
renounce the theology of your strain of Christianity if I can come up
with even one thing we both agree is a clear, undeniable logical
contradiction from it.

I'm not perfect, I am sure you could find something stupid that I've said and hang me with it. Let's just go from here. As far as other religions, I have explained my views about the deception in this world. This is a good verse:

1 Corinthians 2:14

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

As far as muslims, well I think their religion is just obviously inconsistant. They believe Jesus is a prophet, and that the New Testament is a holy book. As a prophet, Jesus would only speak the direct truth of God. Yet, they believe nothing that He said. I don't know how they deal with that, but I think most muslims just haven't read the New Testament.
So you raised the issue of my ego. I can see why you did, and
hopefully you see from the above why I consider that a
misinterpretation of my position. But while we're here, I openly claim
to know nothing for absolute truth. I hold that the nature of the
universe is probably not knowable, that all I can do is look at what
evidence is before me and decide how it all fits best together, reject
claims that don't make sense, follow ones that seem to bear out, and
plod on as well as my time- and capacity-limited mind and body allow.
I make no absolute metaphysical claims, nor do I think my knowledge is
that much superior or inferior to anybody's. I think you and I are
equal human beings, neither of us more special as humans in any way.

We have similar viewpoints here. I believe we're both equal, and I am no better than you are. I don't deserve my salvation anymore than you would deserve yourself. I don't deserve it at all, that is the point. I do not believe that I am in any way special. I wouldn't know up from down if God didn't let me know. So, whatever gifts I have came from Him and I can't take credit. When I was agnostic, I reasoned much the same way you do. Now that I know the truth is tangible, and can be grasped, I believe the Universe can be knowable, but only through the one who made it possible.

In contrast, if I'm not mistaken, you claim to have direct personal
communication with the single creator and director of the entire
universe; to know his nature, his will, and the "truth"; that he
specially chose you unsolicited to receive this intimate contact
rather than me; and that you will live forever by His side in heaven
in the afterlife. You also believe that if I humble myself to your
god, of whom you are a chosen favourite, he will tell me the "truth",
and if I don't, your god will send me to suffer eternally. Between the
two of us, in terms of faith, it's not me who's puffing himself up.
Seriously, go back and read this paragraph if you don't know what I'm
saying.
What I believe is thus:

That we, as human beings, are born into a fallen world and with a sin nature. That we are sinners by birth, by choice, and by conduct. Because of sin, humanity is spiritually separated from God. But God had a plan:

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God humiliated Himself by taking on a human body, so that He could live a perfect life as one of us and pay off our sin debt. He was tried as a criminal, beaten and tortured, and nailed to a cross for our sake, even though He Himself had done nothing wrong. He took all of our sins upon Himself, past present and future, and nailed them to that cross along with Him. He made a way for humanity to be reconciled back to the Father, and to have eternal life, and the Father proved this by raising Him from the dead. He ascended to the right hand of the Father and to this day mediates for all who call upon His name.

When you make Jesus Lord of your life, you receive a new spirit. You become a new creation, justified before God and adopted into the family of God as a son. All Christians receive the Holy Spirit, and this is the reason I have a personal relationship with God. Gods Spirit dwells within me, and He is always guiding me towards a holy and sanctified life. He is the guaranteer of the promises, and the proof that everything Jesus said is true.

Religious people claim to "know" that they're right, that their God
exists, that their experiences prove it, that believers in any other
faith are wrong, and believers in no faith are also wrong. Believers
in no faith, however, are ready to believe whatever presents itself as
likely to be true, including the existence of gods, or whatever. Just
because claims from your particular faith don't stand up to critical
thinking doesn't make non-believers arrogant or deluded.

This isn't about being right, to me. I am just doing what God told me to do. It's not like I figured all of this out on my own. God led me to the truth, and that's the only reason I know what it is. I have nothing at all to prove to you, nor do I lord it over anyone. I love God, and I am grateful to Him for what He has done for me. I naturally want to share that, and to obey His will, but I don't need to prove anything. I just want to tell you that God loves you, and He is there for you, and if you asked Him for the truth He would show it to you.

Jesus
I'm sure if I sincerely and humbly gave myself up and prayed to my
conception of Jesus, I would feel God moving in me. Sure. But the same
holds for every single religion on Earth. If it didn't, the religions
wouldn't succeed. They all have roughly the same effect. I could
worship Allah, or the Roman Pantheon, or Kim Jong Il, and as long as
it was done sincerely and humbly, it would work. I know this, so I
wouldn't trust the feeling was anything but me deluding myself, no
matter how strong it was.

This is the mistake many people, even believers make. It isn't about a feeling. Trust me, when God is around you would have more chance of ignoring a comet that was plunging into the atmosphere about to destroy the Earth than you would the presence of Almighty God. What you have ruled out is that God would directly reveal Himself to you. What I can tell you is that He is bigger than your imagination of Him, so don't think you have Him figured out, because it is impossible for our finite minds to comprehend His greatness.

This video
I wrote down your comments on a piece of paper so I could refer to
them as I watch the video carefully through. I intend to do so, and
I'm game to talk about all the issues you brought up point by point.
Just not now. This is possibly the longest comment ever written on the
sift, and I'm tired of typing for now. And I'm definitely busy
tomorrow. Tuesday looks good. Hope you're not pissed.

Good deal..I look forward to exploring the issue more in depth. Take your time and I'll watch for your reply.

I won't be offended if you don't answer all of this in one sitting.

I decided not to risk it.

ps, is it just me or is the VS editor messed up?
>> ^messenger:
@shinyblurry
There's some meat on this bone.>I won't be offended if you don't answer all of this in one sitting. <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/wink.gif">

This is basically an opinion piece disguised as logical argumentation..here is the first unsupported assumption:

"doesn't reflect the way we tend to make moral judgements"

not relevant to proving the point. how we tend to make moral judgements is no reflection on whether something is objectively evil.

"the idea of evil is only relevant in proportion to an agents understanding"

This is a non sequiter and also begging the question. That is the entire point of the argument from morality, that evil is not relative to an agents understanding. That morality isn't relative, period. Since the argument is assuming what it is trying to prove, it is begging the question.

It goes on, asking "what do we make of a being that's decided that only one species is morally accountable?"

This is simply a red herring. It makes absolutely no difference and is not relevant what we think about God holding humans accountable and not animals. Our standard for moral behavior is not measured by the behavior of animals. The relevant difference is that the standard for our moral behavior is measured by what God chooses as morally correct.

It then leaps to the conclusion that "values are the result of the evaluation process". Says who? It continues "moral values are what *we* judge to be morally valuable or important"

Again, this is not a salient argument. Begging the question in a big way here. A proof that appeals to its conclusion as a premise does not actually prove that conclusion. So, just saying it like it is fact doesn't advance your agrument, it just shows that you have no argument..

This video seems completely devoid of logical argumentation. It's basically a fluff piece speaking to those who will instantly agree with anything that says God doesn't exist. It is certainly is not any kind of philosophical proof of anything.

The book of Proverbs, 13:24:

>> He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.



That's from the NIV translation. Some translations put it as you should discipline carefully, which is an improvement, but either way the Bible says you are a bad, unloving parent if you don't hit your child.

Way to teach moral values!

I'm not claiming that the Bible condones seriously injuring or killing your child, but that I had to put the word "seriously" in there really says it all.

So, in all of the books of the New Testament,

1. anything that's taught represents high moral values;
2. anything that is taught against is sinful and immoral; and
3. anything that's not specifically mentioned either way is OK.

I don't have anything in particular against religion. In fact I believe that the level of global cultural evolution still needs it to a certain degree.
However, the problem lies in the stasis of its moral values. Moral codes present in scripture which might have once made perfect sense to keep people from barbarism no longer apply but are still strictly interpreted by overzealous followers.
The question I often pose to devout believers is what they view as worse- the rise of atheism (and the feared loss of moral values) or the misinterpretation of their own religious belief system (the only pseudo-logical explanation people supply for some of the less humane passages of scripture is after all that it should be interpreted in a different way).

IF religiously based values/faith are so dear and right I'd bet a whole lot more people would (re-)convert to ones system of faith if it didn't mean being thrown back into the dark ages of religious crusades (Catholics, Mormons and Protestants haven't even settled their score yet).

Bummer, I need to read up again about what the different sub-branches of religion think of each other- I remember it was quite funny in a tragic kind of way...

Talking about the morality of various tax codes with someone who disagrees is nonsense. If you've been posting on the internet for years and haven't figured out that other people are quite attached to moral values that are incompatible with your own, then taxes are the least of your problems.

I'd be curious to find out where WP gets his talking points, especially since so many of them are refutable with official government data and a pocket calculator. Actually I skipped the calculator, so forgive my rounding errors:

People in the top bracket pay 38% of the income tax. Income taxes are 33% of revenues. Revenues are around $4.4 tr. So they pay about 500 billion a year.

The top tax bracket is 35%. If as WP claims we raised that to 100% We would be roughly tripling the income from them. Even only doubling it is still an extra 500 billion a year or 5 trillion over a decade, assuming the income of the rich stays steady (which it never does, rich people are much better at increasing their income than the middle class).

Both sides have hired legions of economists to support their viewpoints. I'm sure there's a right wing economist who could explain what's wrong with my arithmetic and make me look dumb (which I am, relatively), though I wonder how the author of that $2trillion figure would do if a liberal economist like Paul Krugman or Robert Reich were in the room while he made his arguments.

For our purposes, we should accept that parroting the talking points bought and paid for by your favorite political movement will not convince anyone.

Um, sweetpea, another way to say this is that "leftists" hate the sin but love the sinner.

A true Christian moral value, whether you are Christian or not.

The best Christians I know aren't.


>> ^quantumushroom:

I don't pretend to love every person of every race like leftists do, so there are Blacks I find despicable and Blacks I like. It's almost as if I'm judging people by the content of their character!

@GeeSussFreeK, I think you're looking for some unifying philosophical principle that ties the liberal/progressive policy positions together.

Essentially all the liberals I know are some form of consequentialist. Meaning, they believe the moral value of an action depends on the consequences of that action for overall human happiness. When liberals disagree about a particular policy, we're usually debating which option best maximizes human happiness.

I say all liberals care about individual rights, because they think human happiness is greatly increased when individuals are empowered to act to fulfill their potential. You can't do that if you live in a society where you can be locked up without due process, or can be jailed for speaking your mind, or can't marry the person you love. But it also means you can't live up to your potential if you can't get an education, or needed medical treatment, or have to put up with dangerous working conditions in order to earn the money to support yourself.

On your question about whether social conservatives are in some sense justified by their desire to ban gay marriage "for the greater good", I would say that there's nothing wrong with them trying to do something for "the greater good", they're just wrong about gay marriage bans having a positive overall effect on society. They're discounting the suffering bans on gay marriage causes, and they're fabricating the suffering allowing it would cause for non-gay people.

If you want a more rigorous framework, I suggest looking at John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. I won't say that's necessarily the bible of all liberalism, but it certainly should give some insight into the thought process of the left when it comes to thinking about right and wrong (and between a just society, and unjust society).

@GenjiKilpatrick

Now you're just playing semantic games. By equating peer review--an impersonal process in which people who probably have never even met each other in real life examine a report about an experiment--with "bringing people together" you've grossly exaggerated what science is and what science does. You then go on in nearly the same breath to so narrowly define religion (as only a means of understanding the physical world) that you create a strawman that (quite conveniently for you) is ridiculously easy to knock over.

FYI, I'm sure your definitions make sense to you, but you should be aware that those definitions aren't held by--well, pretty much anyone except you.

From Wikipedia:

Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world.

Let's look at religion (again from Wikipedia):

Religion is a cultural system that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and moral values.[1] Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature.

So, judging from what you've written here, when you say "science" or "religion" you are clearly talking about something completely different than what the vast majority of people understand science and religion to be. When I refer to science and religion, I am referring to the commonly held notions of them as defined, for example, on Wikipedia. I don't see how we can continue this conversation since you are apparently talking about something different than I am using these terms.

right at the beginning he says that if there are objective moral values, there is a god. what on earth is the relation between the two?! moral values are and have been always SUBJECTIVE to the culture and place.