What is God to you?

MagicMarker

We should just have a sticky on religion, with this as the one and only post.

My name is URL

MagicMarker wrote: »

People are committed for that kind of stuff.

They are? People talk to themselves in their minds all of the time, self-talk goes hand in hand with self-awareness.

RachPie said "God to me, isn't a man or a woman or anything like that"

Maybe it's just their own presence of mind which they find comforting.. I don't think that's a sign of insanity

MagicMarker

My name is URL wrote: »

They are? People talk to themselves in their minds all of the time, self-talk goes hand in hand with self-awareness.

RachPie said "God to me, isn't a man or a woman or anything like that"

Maybe it's just their own presence of mind which they find comforting.. I don't think that's a sign of insanity

Do you always take everything literally?

Ickle Magoo

Wibbs wrote: »

I agree with all of that but that wasn't my point. "Want" is too loaded a term, maybe "need" is a better one. There is no niche whatsoever where a multicelled organism has the advantage over a single celled one. None, zip, nada. Where such an organism has exploited new niches the bacteria were there before it. Long before it. Where is the biological and physical benefit to evolving in a less advantageous way? I have no issue with bacteria mutating. Again they are way ahead of complex life on that score too. It's why complex life evolved in the first place. Complex itself is a loaded term too, as single celled critters are very complex and the more we know about them the more complex they appear to be. Indeed if a "God" did exist and wanted to design the perfect lifeform he could have done worse than a single celled bug.

Sorry I'm so late to reply Wibbs, I have a little one with chicken pox at the mo!

The same points stand...there is no why and there doesn't have to be, either. Mutations will have occurred just out of chance, either through an error in replication or damaged DNA; not because there is any particular known benefit or a deliberate effort to mutate or change on behalf of the organism in question to develop a niche - it's the other way around. A trillion mutations occur and one happens to work in a particular niche and so it sticks around while all others less able to cope die. Remember, the mutated organism need not out-perform its predecessor, it just needs to be as successful.

A couple of billion years ago the earth was not the planet we know today, changing from a single cell photosynthetic bacteria to a multi cellular eukaryotic cell over many hundreds of thousand of years may well have have involved forming biofilms in order to take advantage of the changing planetary conditions. Multi-cellurism would give an organism multiple benefits over a single celled organism or a biofilm eg apoptosy, stigmergy, scale, etc. If you think it impossible that single cell organisms would ever become multicellular then have a gander at some volvocine algae transitioning from single-celled phytoflagellate to multicellular volvocine.

It's also a myth that evolution always means a move towards better or more beneficial - look at the panda hand, or the mammalian double lung function, neither are efficient or brilliantly devised - for much the same reason we have five digits because of the skeletal structure of our amphibian relatives, not because we've developed the optimal number to have. Certain paths of evolution will lead to extinction for that variant of organism, that is the basis for survival of the fittest.

My name is URL

MagicMarker wrote: »

Do you always take everything literally?

Only when I think others are speaking literally =p

RachPie

I don't want to speak to people about my problems sometimes, and that's my choice.
Perhaps it is my own presence of mind that I find comforting, but I'd argue it's something more. Everybody believes something different.

RachPie

MagicMarker wrote: »

People are committed for that kind of stuff.

People are committed for praying and sorting their own problems out?
Oh yeah sorry, I forgot the regular way to sort things out in this country is to drink them away. My mistake.

kfallon

God is Kieren Fallon!

That is all!

Sam Vimes

Wibbs wrote: »

I agree with all of that but that wasn't my point. "Want" is too loaded a term, maybe "need" is a better one. There is no niche whatsoever where a multicelled organism has the advantage over a single celled one. None, zip, nada. Where such an organism has exploited new niches the bacteria were there before it. Long before it. Where is the biological and physical benefit to evolving in a less advantageous way? I have no issue with bacteria mutating. Again they are way ahead of complex life on that score too. It's why complex life evolved in the first place. Complex itself is a loaded term too, as single celled critters are very complex and the more we know about them the more complex they appear to be. Indeed if a "God" did exist and wanted to design the perfect lifeform he could have done worse than a single celled bug.

One of many possible examples where multi celled organisms have the edge over single celled is in the presence of predators.

http://pleion.blogspot.com/2008/11/watching-multicellularity-evolve-before.html

Chlorella vulgaris is an asexual, unicellular green alga. It has been observed in the laboratory to maintain unicellularity for thousands of generations. Boraas and his collaborators (1998) kept Chlorella for two decades in this way. Then they decided to add a predator, Ochromonas vallescia, also a unicellular organism. It has a flagellum (a tail with which it can swim about), and it eats Chlorella. This is bad news for the Chlorella population, which thus experiences a shift in selective pressure. While it was previously adapted to maximize growth by uptake of nutrients, with Ochromonas around it is suddenly more advantageous to have some sort of defense, even if that should come at a cost of the rate at which it can reproduce.

While we could imagine other mechanisms of defense, size is an obvious choice. Very soon (about 10 days) after the introduction of the flagellate predator, Chlorella colonies started to form. These initially consisted of aggregates of tens to hundreds on Chlorella cells, adhering to each other. Their sheer size prevented the predator from eating them, and thus the multicellular Chlorella was fitter than the unicellular ones, and as a result the unicellular Chlorella all but disappeared. Multicellularity had evolved right before the lucky scientists' eyes.


Single Chlorella cell (FC), Chlorella colony (CC), and the flagellate predator, Ochromonas (Oc) with its flagellum (Fl).

Recall that Chlorella is better able to utilize the nutrients in the environment when they are single cells. Thus, the colonies of tens to hundreds of cells soon disappeared, replaced by colonies of of only eight cells. This seems to be the optimal size for uptake of nutrients and defense against Ochromonas. When Boraas et al. removed the predator from the environment, Chlorella colonies continued to make multicellular offspring. However, with the selection pressure to be large gone, the unicellular Chlorella took over again.

The significance of this experiment is that it lends support to the hypothesis that a predator-prey arms race could provide the needed environmental change to enable multicellular organisms to evolve. It also is an outstanding example of observed evolution in the laboratory. It can be argued that the unicellular and multicellular Chlorella are different species, and this is then also an example of speciation observed.

MagicMarker

RachPie wrote: »

People are committed for praying and sorting their own problems out?
Oh yeah sorry, I forgot the regular way to sort things out in this country is to drink them away. My mistake.

Well I'm an atheist and I don't drink. I can sort out my problems without the assistance of some mythical figure.

raah!

It doesn't make sense to use different interpretations of christianity to criticise it, and then only focus on the easiest forms to argue against in your arguments.

It's ridiculous to suggest that the reason people believe in god is to explain things. If anything, using god to explain things is how they justify their belief in god. If this were the case, then it would be no more than another scientific theory, the relationship people have with it would not be as it is. They would have to be deists. Also not all theists/religious people see this as necessary.

People who are simply arguing the status quo today are in no way superior to people who argued the status quo a hundred years ago. In my mind the people coming on here thoughtlessly proclaiming the ignorance of religious people is no different to the type of people who used to criticise people for not going to mass back in the old times. In both cases, the motivation is social. I believe this is evidenced by the myriad of replies in this thread which are simply "word in commas", and how people have to be sure to tell everyone that they are an atheist before they make any arguments. As if a conclusion supports an argument.

Anyway, yes religion in ireland appears to be on the way out. Being part of a much supported (at least on the internet) cultural movement does not make you intelligent, and it does not make you a scientist. And in my opinion, this is supported by your posts here. But who cares about the actual content of the arguments as long as the conclusion is "atheist good" , "religion bad"

kylith

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Curious as to why you thank god? Have you and others not done these things to you. Why do you attribute life and the **** that happens to it to a fellow in the sky?

+1. I can never understand why people work hard, and study, and when they do well they hand all the credit to a figment of imagination. It never bugs me more than when people praise god for a 'miraculous' recovery from illness, and never bother praising the doctors and nurses who treated them and the chemists that made the medicines.

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

If you think it impossible that single cell organisms would ever become multicellular then have a gander at some volvocine algae transitioning from single-celled phytoflagellate to multicellular volvocine.

I'm a big fan of slime moulds myself. They start off single celled, but when food gets scarce they merge into one multi celled creature and set off across the leaf litter in search of better hunting. They also group together to reproduce, some even sacrificing the opportunity to pass on their own genes in order to further the chances of other cells' reproduction.

RachPie

MagicMarker wrote: »

Well I'm an atheist and I don't drink. I can sort out my problems without the assistance of some mythical figure.

Good for you. But I can do as I please (:

MagicMarker

raah! wrote: »

Anyway, yes religion in ireland appears to be on the way out. Being part of a much supported (at least on the internet) cultural movement does not make you intelligent, and it does not make you a scientist. And in my opinion, this is supported by your posts here. But who cares about the actual content of the arguments as long as the conclusion is "atheist good" , "religion bad"

Where do you come up with this crap? What is it with you an insinuating people like me ''must think we're scientists''? You did it to me earlier on this thread too.

MagicMarker

raah! wrote: »

Anyway, yes religion in ireland appears to be on the way out. Being part of a much supported (at least on the internet) cultural movement does not make you intelligent, and it does not make you a scientist. And in my opinion, this is supported by your posts here. But who cares about the actual content of the arguments as long as the conclusion is "atheist good" , "religion bad"

Where do you come up with this crap? What is it with you an insinuating people like me ''must think we're scientists''? You did it to me earlier on this thread too.

Ah, now I get it. I see you're a physics student? Don't worry raah!, I'm sure you're smarter than ALL of us, what with you being the REAL scientist 'n all. There there now, it'll all be okay. :rolleyes:

Christ, talk about a superiority complex!

Sam Vimes

raah! wrote: »

Well not quite :P .That doesn't make their values non-arbitrary. It makes people universally conditioned by simple things like "fire hot" etc.

What do you mean by arbitrary? If a value is constrained by a universal objective fact then it's not arbitrary surely?

raah! wrote: »

Ok well, you've kinda gone in a circle anyway. We've already stated, that since we are not prescribing religious exampes for things, commonly held values like "it's nice to live together" can be explained by evolution. So it reduces to "living together is nice for chemicals".

Again you're making the same mistake you've made before in saying the moral values aren't arbitrary. You can argue "people like living in society", in my mind this reduces to the same arguments about empathy, which can be humerously compared with heroin addicts.

As I pointed out that the fact that it can be compared to heroin addicts doesn't make it any less true. The fact that people like to think of morality as special and magical doesn't make it so.

raah! wrote: »

Saddamn hussein is an example of somone who failed. And yes, when I say things like that I'm not talking about cowards, idiots or people who aren't capable of thinking outside rules imposed on them by the rest of society. Anyway, since I liked being supported hume, you might like to know that socrates also makes pretty much this argument against living the bad life in the republic . Plato also travelled from the individual to society at large to learn more about justice. You've also done that! But it doesn't really matter which way we look at it, in the examples cited it makes it no more clear than in the individual. One could say that morality as it propogates through different levels of society is fractal in nature. And according to this book I'm reading which I don't really understand, it's best to look at the closest magnification, the individual.
...
If you are trying to argue that it's not possible to prosper by acting in contradiction to the values of society whilst not being caught then I'll have to say that that's extremely naieve.
...
My arguments have never left a purely evolutionary description of things in order to criticise them. You have gone from the individual to society, and from chemicals to a few steps ahead. But this doesn't make a difference to the argument.
...
Why do we have to do the best we can? Why don't we just go and rape loads of people and do heroin? We all like living in society sure, but yes we can rape these outsiders, or do it to people within our own society in such a way that we aren't caught.

No I am not trying to argue that it is not possible to prosper by acting in contradiction to the values of society. This line of conversation started with you saying: "things like scientific materialism combined with atheism lead to moral relativism don't they? Doesn't this mean we can define them how we want?". You are attempting to argue that without god ethics are totally arbitrary but this is not the case. If an individual does not want to ever interact with any other human being in any way other than violence then yes they can be defined however they want but what I have been explaining is that if humans are to interact with each other this is not the case.

You appear to have accepted that social living puts a great many constraints on the rules that can successfully be applied and that a society can define such rules, contradicting your main point that ethics without god are arbitrary, and you have gone on to saying that an individual can break these rules if they clever enough or strong enough or if the rules aren't applied to outsiders. You have gone from describing something as totally arbitrary to accepting that an ethical system can be arrived at, albeit flawed, and mentioned some exceptions where the system can fall down. You might not have noticed but this flawed system where offenders can avoid punishment and outsiders can be victimised is the system that is currently active in the world we are living in. The way you say morality would be without god is the way it actually is. Yes offenders avoid punishment and yes outsiders are victimised but that is not the same as saying that ethics without god are totally arbitrary.

raah! wrote: »

But anyway, "people like to live in society, therefore we ought to live in society. I've already given arguments against this sort of thing, and so has hume apparently.

I am not saying "people like to live in society", therefore we ought to live in society". What I'm saying is more like "people like to live in society, therefore they must live by non-arbitrary rules that are compatible with living in a society". If humans no longer wish to live in society and prefer to start living alone in caves coming together only to mate and then run away from each other very fast before they're attacked they can do that but if they don't want to live like that they must live by a set of very much non-arbitrary rules. The problem here is that you want me to define a system that directly replaces your god based system where morals are an objective fact of the universe and all immorality is punished by a perfect omnipotent being. I can't do that because morals are not an objective fact of the universe, all immorality is not punished and any system that does not come from a god will not be perfect but that does not mean that any other system is devoid of worth and totally arbitrary. You might as well be arguing that a teleporter is a better mode of transport than a car. While no one will disagree with you people will be forced to point out that teleporters don't exist, that the lack of existence of teleporters does not totally nullify the value of a car and that you'll just have to make do with what you have, whether you think it's flawed or not

raah! wrote: »

Edit: Here's a nice excercise. I'll say "I like to rape people and eat babies" and you arrive from your objective principles and convince me that it is bad (I'll accept the firt principles), mind you, I'm very devious and unlikely to get caught. And what's more moral systems shouldn't be based on punishment, which is why it's so easy to argue against the straw men of christians only being moral because of fear of death.

I can't give you what you want because what you want only makes sense in the context of a god giving us these rules but rather than explaining why something is "bad", a term which only makes sense in the context of a god defining objective morals, I'll explain why it should be illegal


You:Why should rape and eating babies be illegal?
Me: Would you like to be raped or have your baby eaten?
You:No
Me: Can you imagine anyone answering yes to that question, even a baby eating rapist?
You:No
Me: That's why it's illegal. Come back to me when you think a substantial number of people would answer yes to that question and we'll talk about changing it.

I haven't explained why it's "bad" but I have given a rationale for why it should be prohibited and why offenders should be punished that even the offenders themselves would agree with; even rapists want rape to be illegal. What's wrong with that? It's not perfect obviously because of the aforementioned places where it can fall down but it's not arbitrary either.

raah!

MagicMarker wrote: »

Where do you come up with this crap? What is it with you an insinuating people like me ''must think we're scientists''? You did it to me earlier on this thread too.

Where do I get it? The fact taht people derive their supriority over religious people by their reliance on empirical evidence. The fact that people think reading popular science gives them the right to lecture people about their scientific ignorance.

Yes I'm a physics student (this could be construed as a personal attack by the way). What little physics I have isn't the type that people argue about in these types of discussions, so it's irrelevant. And I also like to read popular science, but I do not think that reading a list of conclusions makes me less "ignorant" than people who haven't. Also notice, I've not really used physics or a profession of my knowledge of it in any arguments. If I did I would be wrong.

What I see people doing is engaging housewives in arguments and thinking they are great because they have read a few richard dawkins books and the house wife hasn't. This can serve as nothing more than self-aggrandisment.

Ickle Magoo

Eh, I'm a housewife.

MagicMarker

raah! wrote: »

Where do I get it? The fact taht people derive their supriority over religious people by their reliance on empirical evidence. The fact that people think reading popular science gives them the right to lecture people about their scientific ignorance.

Yes I'm a physics student (this could be construed as a personal attack by the way). What little physics I have isn't the type that people argue about in these types of discussions, so it's irrelevant. And I also like to read popular science, but I do not think that reading a list of conclusions makes me less "ignorant" than people who haven't. Also notice, I've not really used physics or a profession of my knowledge of it in any arguments. If I did I would be wrong.

What I see people doing is engaging housewives in arguments and thinking they are great because they have read a few richard dawkins books and the house wife hasn't. This can serve as nothing more than self-aggrandisment.

Eh, as an atheist I don't see a problem with reliance on empirical evidence. Do you suggest I leave it out and ignore science completely when discussing the probability of God's existence with ''housewives''? (this could be construed as a personal attack by the way).

Ickle Magoo

You just think you're a scientist MagicMarker and those with opposing views are just stupid housewives that can't even read a book, jeez raah! You're a real charmer, anyone ever told you that?

Terry

raah! wrote: »

Where do I get it? The fact taht people derive their supriority over religious people by their reliance on empirical evidence. The fact that people think reading popular science gives them the right to lecture people about their scientific ignorance.

Yes I'm a physics student (this could be construed as a personal attack by the way). What little physics I have isn't the type that people argue about in these types of discussions, so it's irrelevant. And I also like to read popular science, but I do not think that reading a list of conclusions makes me less "ignorant" than people who haven't. Also notice, I've not really used physics or a profession of my knowledge of it in any arguments. If I did I would be wrong.

What I see people doing is engaging housewives in arguments and thinking they are great because they have read a few richard dawkins books and the house wife hasn't. This can serve as nothing more than self-aggrandisment.

Sorry, but I just had to point something out here.
There is no way whatsoever that it could be construed as a personal attack.
He emrely made an observation and then judged your posts on that observation.

If anything, you are insulting the people who disagree with your stance on the issue at hand by making assumptions about their personal lives, as opposed to MagicMarker who used facts.

That's just my opinion though.

Carlos_Ray

For me God is a friend that I have fallen out with. In the early days I made loads of excuses for his/her behaviour, but now I couldn't be arsed.

My name is URL

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

You're just think you're a scientist MagicMarker and those with opposing views are just stupid housewives that can't even read a book, jeez raah! You're a real charmer, anyone ever told you that?

Why should try to charm anyone? All you lot (the A&A regulars) have done in this thread is shoot down the beliefs held by others, regardless of the fact that none of those people infringe in any way on how you live your life. And before you go on a rant about how organised religion does impede your life, remember what the thread title is.

Seriously, more preaching from atheists goes on in these sort of discussions than from those who are religious

Sam Vimes

My name is URL wrote: »

Why should try to charm anyone? All you lot (the A&A regulars) have done in this thread is shoot down the beliefs held by others, regardless of the fact that none of those people infringe in any way on how you live your life. And before you go on a rant about how religion does impede you, remember what the thread title is.

Seriously, more preaching from atheists goes on in these sort of discussions than from those who are religious

Have you never had a discussion on this forum telling someone you disagreed with them when it didn't have a direct impact on your life?

And are no religious people on the thread "shooting down" our "beliefs" by telling us they disagree with us?

My name is URL

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Have you never had a discussion on this forum telling someone you disagreed with them when it didn't have a direct impact on your life?

There's a difference between disagreeing with someone and making them out to be of low intelligence or ignorant

raah!

Sam Vimes wrote: »

What do you mean by arbitrary? If a value is constrained by a universal objective fact then it's not arbitrary surely?

Arbitrary as in without reason. Again (I'm going to start using terminology I learned in this thread) you are crossing humes gap when you make this journey from "living together feels nice" to "we ought to live together". Or "we ought to do things that help us live together".

The arbitrary universal fact can itself be derived from empathy/evolution, so I don't see why you skipped ahead up here. It does make the argument less clear in many ways, but it's still essentially the same.

As I pointed out that the fact that it can be compared to heroin addicts doesn't make it any less true. The fact that people like to think of morality as special and magical doesn't make it so.

I am not thinking of morality as special and magical at all, I'm saying moral axioms are arbitrary, if not already supported by something else (which can be arbitrary or otherwise, but that's a different discussion)

You appear to have accepted that social living puts a great many constraints on the rules that can successfully be applied and that a society can define such rules, contradicting your main point that ethics without god are arbitrary, and you have gone on to saying that an individual can break these rules if they clever enough or strong enough or if the rules aren't applied to outsiders. You have gone from describing something as totally arbitrary to accepting that an ethical system can be arrived at, albeit flawed, and mentioned some exceptions where the system can fall down. You might not have noticed but this flawed system where offenders can avoid punishment and outsiders can be victimised is the system that is currently active in the world we are living in. The way you say morality would be without god is the way it actually is. Yes offenders avoid punishment and yes outsiders are victimised but that is not the same as saying that ethics without god are totally arbitrary.

Society places restrictions on the success of a person/persons who accept certain moral systems. It doesn't mean that moral systems have to be successful. People who define a system where eating each other is ok, are no less arbitrary in their premises than people who define one where eating each other is not ok. The difference is that one set of people eat each other.

Also, citing examples doesn't make things any less arbitrary. Again Humes gap.

I am not saying "people like to live in society", therefore we ought to live in society". What I'm saying is more like "people like to live in society, therefore they must live by non-arbitrary rules that are compatible with living in a society".

Only if t hey say "what I like is what is good" that is the arbitrary part. Without that sentence, you are crossing hume's gap. We should determine whether or not you accept this as being possible or not to continue the discussion.

The problem here is that you want me to define a system that directly replaces your god based system where morals are an objective fact of the universe and all immorality is punished by a perfect omnipotent being.

I don't want you to do that at all. And this type of thinking is only conditioned by your seeing this as a battle between theists and atheists, when I have never given my position. There's nothing wrong with saying "to survive as a society we must set a group of rules (this is essentially what laws are) that we all follow." If everyone agrees to them then bang bing, a nice moral system. Punishment is necessary for people who don't follow them or fail to follow them, or simply as an incentive for people to follow them. For me this is the most important part of any discussion of these types. Since I consider the system to be arbitrary, reasons to follow it are the only thing that can make it non-arbitrary, but may or may not themselves be arbitrary. Now if I don't love the government or fear it's punishment, I have little incentive to follow it's laws.

I can't give you what you want because what you want only makes sense in the context of a god giving us these rules but rather than explaining why something is "bad", a term which only makes sense in the context of a god defining objective morals, I'll explain why it should be illegal

Well you see that's massively different. And is beside the point

I do not believe that all moral systems without god are arbitrary. Here is an example. We can pick many examples, and note that many of the best ones start with value judgements

I love the government, the government knows best. The government can also punish me if I don't listen to them

Now from here we can again arrive at the two types (maybe there's more) of religious morality, the weak and strong types:

I love the government and think what they say is so correct, so I'm going to follow the laws.(strong)

I'm a dirty little coward, so I'd better not cross the government.

So, the reason these moral systems are not arbitrary, because you go from "the government is right" which is fairly arbitrary, but you can go back further from that if you'd like. Anyway, "the government is right, the government's laws are right"

So "why is that bad?" The government says so. This is similar to "God says so". We could further explore and compare these two, but those aren't the main points at the moment.

Another quick example to determine arbitrariness.

Doing things detrimental to societal living is bad.

Why.

Everyone agrees that societal living is good.

Why is it good?

Because everyone agrees it is.

Why do they agree that? (alternatively "why is something everyone agrees on good?". In fact, I think this is more relevant to your argument.)

It releases the right chemicals.

Why are those chemical releases good?

They feel good.

Why are things that feel good, good?

Sam Vimes

My name is URL wrote: »

There's a difference between disagreeing with someone and making them out to be of low intelligence or ignorant

Who's doing that? If someone says something ridiculous and someone points out that it's ridiculous, it's not the fault of the person who pointed it out surely?

Sam Vimes

raah! wrote: »

Arbitrary as in without reason. Again (I'm going to start using terminology I learned in this thread) you are crossing humes gap when you make this journey from "living together feels nice" to "we ought to live together". Or "we ought to do things that help us live together".

The arbitrary universal fact can itself be derived from empathy/evolution, so I don't see why you skipped ahead up here. It does make the argument less clear in many ways, but it's still essentially the same.




I am not thinking of morality as special and magical at all, I'm saying moral axioms are arbitrary, if not already supported by something else (which can be arbitrary or otherwise, but that's a different discussion)



Society places restrictions on the success of a person/persons who accept certain moral systems. It doesn't mean that moral systems have to be successful. People who define a system where eating each other is ok, are no less arbitrary in their premises than people who define one where eating each other is not ok. The difference is that one set of people eat each other.

Also, citing examples doesn't make things any less arbitrary. Again Humes gap.


Only if t hey say "what I like is what is good" that is the arbitrary part. Without that sentence, you are crossing hume's gap. We should determine whether or not you accept this as being possible or not to continue the discussion.


I don't want you to do that at all. And this type of thinking is only conditioned by your seeing this as a battle between theists and atheists, when I have never given my position. There's nothing wrong with saying "to survive as a society we must set a group of rules (this is essentially what laws are) that we all follow." If everyone agrees to them then bang bing, a nice moral system. Punishment is necessary for people who don't follow them or fail to follow them, or simply as an incentive for people to follow them. For me this is the most important part of any discussion of these types. Since I consider the system to be arbitrary, reasons to follow it are the only thing that can make it non-arbitrary, but may or may not themselves be arbitrary. Now if I don't love the government or fear it's punishment, I have little incentive to follow it's laws.


Well you see that's massively different. And is beside the point

I do not believe that all moral systems without god are arbitrary. Here is an example. We can pick many examples, and note that many of the best ones start with value judgements

I love the government, the government knows best. The government can also punish me if I don't listen to them

Now from here we can again arrive at the two types (maybe there's more) of religious morality, the weak and strong types:

I love the government and think what they say is so correct, so I'm going to follow the laws.(strong)

I'm a dirty little coward, so I'd better not cross the government.

So, the reason these moral systems are not arbitrary, because you go from "the government is right" which is fairly arbitrary, but you can go back further from that if you'd like. Anyway, "the government is right, the government's laws are right"

So "why is that bad?" The government says so. This is similar to "God says so". We could further explore and compare these two, but those aren't the main points at the moment.

Another quick example to determine arbitrariness.

Doing things detrimental to societal living is bad.

Why.

Everyone agrees that societal living is good.

Why is it good?

Because everyone agrees it is.

Why do they agree that? (alternatively "why is something everyone agrees on good?". In fact, I think this is more relevant to your argument.)

It releases the right chemicals.

Why are those chemical releases good?

They feel good.

Why are things that feel good, good?

Before I respond to that, can you acknowledge that if human beings are to live in a society the rules they govern themselves by cannot be "whatever they want"? That a society where killing is outlawed will thrive where a society where killing is encouraged will die?

Also, can you acknowledge that "I love the government" is a very different "belief" to "I do not want to be raped", in that the former is subjective and extremely variable where the latter is universal among sane human beings?

raah!

Terry wrote: »

Sorry, but I just had to point something out here.
There is no way whatsoever that it could be construed as a personal attack.
He emrely made an observation and then judged your posts on that observation.

Yes fair enough, I was merely going by how in recent times, I state someones position. Which they hold. And they go "oooh personal attack".

If anything, you are insulting the people who disagree with your stance on the issue at hand by making assumptions about their personal lives, as opposed to MagicMarker who used facts.

To my mind, these type of generalisations are no different, and in fact, less offensive, than "anyone who believes in god is an idiot". You'll often see things along the lines of "theism is a disease, and we should look for psychological reasons to explain it, because of course they don't have arguments, they're simpletons". I did the same thing there.

Jazzy

God is a gas