on discussing god and religion

It’s your time then. Since you have participated in discussions there.

Yes, that is precisely my point. All these “guys” live lives that may well be far, far removed from the life that you lived. Very different experiences, relationships and access to ideas.

Why on earth then would anyone expect them to share value judgments regarding these things?

My point on this thread is that with or without God, how might philosophers [or scientists] assess these narratives so as to ascertain the optimal frame of mind?

It’s just that with God, immortality and salvation are at stake. And what could possibly be more crucial here then in pinning down the actual existence of a God, the God?

You tell me.

No, I’m not saying that he is right. I am saying that based on the components I describe in my own understanding of moral nihilism, there does not appear to be a way [sans God] for mere mortals to determine and then to demonstrate what it is alleged [by moral objectivists] that all rational men and women are obligated to accept as right.

Acknowledging in turn that I myself have no capacity to determine and to demonstrate that this too is any less an existential contraption.

No more so then the gap between the “real capitalism” conveyed by Ayn Rand in her books and the capitalism that actual flesh and blood human beings experience.

And, for millions, that experience is brutal indeed.

Just out of curiosity, how might VO factor in here? You choose particular behaviors on this side of the grave. And you must have imagined your fate on the other side of it.

Noting particular experiences from your own life, how would you connect the dots here?

I’ve done lots of stupid things in my life. At some point, I learn not to keep on doing them.

I don’t expect everyone to know the same things about math, physics, history, geography, etc.

That doesn’t mean that some people are not more knowledgeable about those things than other people. It also doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to detect who is more knowledgeable.

Exactly what do you think that I would get out of a discussion with those guys in that particular forum?

I don’t care what “all rational men and women are obligated to accept”. That’s a crazy idea from the start. As far as I’m concerned, nobody is obligated to accept anything nor to demonstrate anything.

All that I’m required to do is to improve my ability to distinguish a fresh fish from a rotting fish … an edible mushroom from a poisonous mushroom. That’s doable.

Suppose that God reveals himself and states what humans ought to think and do.

It seems perfectly reasonable that some rational humans would disagree with God.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus

Is Prometheus irrational? Is he wrong to defy the gods?

Okay, let’s see if you do continue to participate on that board.

But here there are going to actually be right and wrong things to know. Unless we go way out on the limb where conjecture is still the rule.

True, but, again, this can be calibrated to be either closer to or further from what can be demonstrated to in fact be true for all of us.

Communism as a political ideology did in fact exist historically on planet earth. But then it becomes a question of whether some can demonstrate in turn that it ought not to have.

Well, if you go into the discussion convined that your own value judgment is the right one, then the only thing you ever can hope to get out of it is that everyone accepts that.

On the contrary, when engineers use the laws of nature in the construction of airplanes or dams or bridges or skyscrapers, the consequence of not being in sync with the most rational understanding of these relationships can be catastrophic.

You do agree, don’t you?

Or…

“All that I’m required to do is to improve my ability to distinguish a robust capitalism from a rotting communism.”

The default premise here always being that you are simply “more knowledgeable” about this than those who disagree.

That part I get, believe me.

I’m not all that familiar with “the gods” back then. Were they said to be both omniscient and omnipotent? As the preponderance of religious folks today describe their own rendition of a God, the God.

How could a mere mortal possibly be more rational than an omniscient God?

And leaving aside the conundrum embedded in reconciling human autonomy with an omniscient God, folks can in fact choose to defy the God they believe in.

But that’s where being omnipotent comes into play.

In a word: Hell.

And this thing called “Judgment Day”.

:-k Now I’m tempted to post there … just so that he overthinks it and continues to believe that he has some extraordinary ability to influence and predict behavior. :laughing:

](*,) Tired of hitting my head on the wall trying to explain.

Cause the mass graves don’t demonstrate anything.

That’s not why I participate. It never was my motivation or expectation.

They are not obligated to be engineers or to build anything. It’s a choice which obligations a person takes on.

And your default premise is that I can’t be more knowledgeable about it.

So you don’t need just any god to settle right and wrong … you have to have an omniscient and omnipotent god. Anything less leaves you with the same dilemma. #-o

Who said “more rational”? Nobody.

I’m human and I’m playing Blackjack holding a 19 in my hand. The dealer shows 10. Rationality says that I don’t draw a card.

God is playing Blackjack and is holding 19 and again the dealer shows 10. But God, being omniscient knows that dealer’s hand is 20 and that the next card is a 2. God draws a card. And wins.

That play makes no sense for a human.

What’s my point?

Even if God comes down out of heaven and lays out “the rules”, humans are still going to have make decisions based on their limited knowledge and ability. The rules won’t cover every possible situation and God is not going to make every decision for every person. What kind of puppetry/slavery would it be if He made every decision?

Men are not gods and gods are not men. They won’t make the same decisions and they shouldn’t.

You have posted there. Many, many times. Just click on your name. Click on ‘Search User’s post’, then scroll down.

I’ve addressed this above. The historical narratives are clearly in dispute. And capitalism is bursting at the seams with its own horror stories. But, again, it would seem your point of view is that Communism is to be construed only as you portray it. The right way.

Okay, but, for all practical purposes, that seems to be the way it works. Otherwise you would offer us your own views on communism while acknowledging [as I do] that others [with very different life experiences] may well see it in other ways. Ways that they are able to rationalize based on a different set of assumptions regarding human interactions.

All this thread does is to provide an outlet for the believers – a discussion enabling them to connect the dots between here and now and there and then.

What’s that got to do with the point I’m making? There are the material obligations engineers must embrace if they ever get around to building the most effective wall for Don Trump; and there are the moral obligations that folks all along the political spectrum endlessly argue about regarding whether the wall ought to be built.

No, my premise is that conflicting arguments do exist all along the political spectrum. Arguments the objectivist proponents already insist do reflect a more knowledgeable perspective.

Clearly, if “the Gods” are not deemed to be omniscient and omnipotent, then it must somehow be established how “for all practical purposes” the existential relationship between them and “mere mortals” really does work.

And I’m merely pointing out the obvious. This: that when [historically] “the Gods” reconfigured into a God, the God, my God, the overwhelming preponderance of the true believers themselves ascribed omniscience and omnipotence to them.

Look, either the God that one believes in is deemed omniscient or He isn’t.

If so, human moral interactions would [necessarily] be judged from that frame of mind. If not then it would appear that some human interactions are not known by God. They would be judged only by other mere mortals subscribing to whatever particular set of behaviors they deem to be either right or wrong.

Or you might choose a behavior that no one at all is privy to. Then what? Well, as long as you can rationalize it to yourself, you’re good.

Yep, that’s the way it would work alright. But what about those who come along and insist that gambling itself is immoral. With an omniscient God, it either is or is not “a sin”. But in a no-God world how exactly would mere mortals go about deciding that?

Well, Christians can Google it. They can find sites like this: biblestudytools.com/topical … ing-a-sin/

They can read them. And, afterwards, the objectivists among them can decide that it either IS immoral or that it is NOT immoral. Period. That they are “more knowledgeable” about it.

Me? Well, in my own rendition of a No God world I tumble down into my dilemma above.

How about you?

But there a world of difference between being a gambler who proves he is more knowledgeable about playing poker and being an ethicist who alleges to be more knowledgeable in deciding if one ought to play poker for money at all.

And how about strip poker? [-o<

Did you understand any of the points that I was trying to make?

Nope, not even one. :character-willie:

Phyllo, note the ongoing contradiction…

He creates a situation in which one 1) presumes moral/value judgments then, see the bolded value judgment 2) says he can see no way to make one objectively and 'wonders
’ if we can show him how one does that. Objectivists are bad, they make ‘objective value judgments’, and these lead to horrors.

He accused me LOL of being an epistemologist. But he does not seem to realize that his posts claim ONLY to be about epistemology - since he has no way of knowing what is good or bad, good or evil - despite his motivation being precisely that, an urge to reduce the horrors caused by objectivists. If he truly thinks there is no way to know the objective good, he might as well talk about a sports team, because otherwise, this is only a discussion of epistemology, something he thinks is a bad thing to be, a la Will Durant. Talk about irony, since they just stack up and stack up.

If one points this out to him, he repeats his challenge, since his behavior and contradictions are not relevent in a discussion with him.

The only possible end to the discussion is precisely what he accuses objectivists of demanding: agreement with his values and epistemology.

The coquette posture of ‘wondering’. I’m just… I simply had this realiziation…

I understand why women took on the coquette role, when they were not allowed to take initiative or be self-assertive, the role shown so creatively in films in the 40s and 50s. Why he plays the coquette is known only to him and his therapist.

One of the really interesting questions is :

What would the world look like if God was around running it?

It think that people would still be making decisions based on their limited skills and knowledge. IOW, they would still be making the same sort mistakes that they make now.

Would God swoop down and smite them immediately when a mistake is made? Would he undo the consequences of the mistake?

That seems incredibly intrusive and oppressive. What kind of human life is that?

Is the natural consequence that people sit around waiting for God to tell them what do? After all, if He makes all the decisions then you might as well not think for yourself.

God is just another entity that you have a relationship with.

You can love, hate, obey, defy, ignore God.

You are an important part of the relationship.

Of course it’s been my experience with objectivists over the years that when they accuse you of not understanding their points, you are really being charged with not agreeing with them.

Call it, say, the Satyr Syndrome. :wink:

Imagine if you could pluck 1,000 people at random from around the world. You gather them together and you note this for them.

What would it mean to them? How would they react to it?

Which God? Understood in what manner? In what particular context?

And, sure, while it might be argued that God is just one more thing in your life to interact with, who would really believe that?

And “you”? Your identity? How would it not be an existential contraption with regard to God and religion.

Yes, you can choose to discuss these things in any way that you wish in your day to day interactions with others. But it would seem [to me] that in a philosophy venue, the gap between what you believe is true and what you able to demonstrate is in fact true about God would involve considerably more scrutiny.

Let us then just agree to disagree regarding what that entails.

I presume the existence of morality and value judgments because human interaction revolves around rules of behavior. And clearly in each community it must be decided what those rules will be.

Now, can these rules be predicated on an objective morality? If you think so, note a context in which values might come into conflict, and describe the behaviors that you would either prescribe or proscribe.

Show us how you would go about differentiating them.

And, historically, the objectivists are often thumped by the nihilists when it comes to horror stories.

For example, the nihilists that own and operate the global [capitalist] economy today, pretty much wrap their moral narrative around “show me the money”.

And this is the world they own and operate: statisticbrain.com/world-po … tatistics/

Wealth and power and self-interest is generally what they worship.

Communism, on the other hand, is an ideological contraption. The horrors that it precipitated often revolved around the dictum that you are either one of us or one of them. The either/or mentality of all objectivists. It then becomes a matter of how authoritarian you are willing to be. And [of course] the extent to which you have the political power to enforce your rigid doctrinaire agenda.

With communism [as with fascism and other such dogmas] the nihilistic horrors often revolve around the assumption that the end justifies the means.

Again, bring this down to earth. Note the sort of conflicted human behaviors that precipitate horrors. For example, with abortion some argue that the horror revolves around killing babies, while others insist that, on the contrary, the horror revolves around forcing women to give birth.

Now, how would a competent epistemologist address this? What can in fact be known here such that it is able to be demonstrated as applicable to all of us?

Or you pick the issue and the horrors it can bring about.

All I can do here is to note that I do not construe my own argument as any less an existential contraption. And that in a world bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change, a new experience, relationship or idea might propel me in another direction. As has been the case many times in the past.

What I suspect however is that this common reaction among the objectivists to my frame of mind “here and now” revolves more around my speculation that it is applicable to them as well.

Good and bad as “existential contraptions” rooted in dasein just freaks them out. The idea that in a No God world construed by some to be essentially meaningless and absurd, “I” can rest only on the “intellectual contraptions” they concoct “in their head”, is just too discomfiting to seriously consider.

After all, look what is at stake: the comfort and the consolation derived from the conviction that right and wrong behavior must be distinguishable. Why? Because they have in fact already distinguished them.

And that’s often when the focus shifts from dealing with people like me, to dealing with all the other moral/political objectivists who share the conviction that right is right and wrong is wrong. But then insist it is their own agenda that nails this.

If an actual existing God made His presense known, everything would revolve around what He either could or could not know, what He either could or could not do.

Though, sure, there may well be any number of folks not aware of His existence. Or, after He made it known how His omniscience could be reconciled with human autonomy, some might freely choose to defy Him. Though here that would seem to be predicated on just how clear God made it regarding the consequences of defying Him.

Exactly! What actually would happen?

Well, God would be around to explain that, right?

This can only be connected to what the actual existing relationship is between this God and any particular mere mortal.

What it means to them or how they react is not something I have control over. I put it out there and get some feedback.

I notice that I don’t get any particularly thoughtful feedback from you.

So you’re in a philosophy venue and nobody is able demonstrate the truth about God to you.
In fact, nobody has been able to demonstrate the truth of any value judgements to you.

If I don’t demonstrate it, then that’s just in line with your expectations.

All you’re doing is sitting there going … “No, not good enough. Next …”. Over and over and over.

Ever have a discussion where you are not dismissive?

You agree but post no content. #-o

Why bother.