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What is God to you?
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Infinite regress doesn't make sense, on a philosophical level. I've studied quite a bit into the arguments for and against the idea of an infinite regress when I studied the Philosophy of Religion nearly 2 years ago (Have another module in it next year).
If an infinite regress exists, the Creation would still be ongoing. For a process to complete, it needs a finite starting point. I.E - A terminating factor. I'm not sure how easy his source is to find, but a philosopher James Sadowsky has done a lot of work in this area. Much easier to find is Thomas Aquinas and his explanation of contingent and necessary existence in his 5 Ways.
If God created the world, and if God actually exists, then yes I believe that Jesus was born of Mary, and that He died for our sins, and rose from the grave. Christian history from Jesus onwards makes absolutely no sense unless something extraordinary happened after His death.
Where we have agreement, is that in the absence of God, this stuff could well be regarded as crazy.
So in summary: If God doesn't exist, the Biblical accounts are crazy. If God does exist, the Biblical accounts are well and truly possible to have come about.
From the point of creation to our salvation, Christianity is coherent with human nature, it explains what has gone wrong with us, it explains why it went wrong, and it provides a real solution for putting it right. From start to end there is a progression.
Likewise, in terms of cosmology, it also makes sense in that it recognises that a cause is necessary for our existence, and for the universe to have come about.
I'm not going to argue infinite regress as I'm not equipped with sufficient knowledge to do so
What I will say in regards to the second point is that even if I accept god existed why all the malarkey with bronze age people? Why go such an intense period of meddling and then vanish?
Why does your god do things in such a convoluted way (thinking to a thread in A&A when Paul on Damascus gets struck blind and gets a message to go to some town whilst off somewhere else another dude gets a message to go heal Paul and all this because Jesus revealed himself to Paul)?
I still can't and never will grasp your acceptance of the bible or other people and their acceptance of their own religious texts nor do I understand your NEED to. I'm a complete and utter non believer. I'm a good person. I love my family, my partner and my friends. I am part of a fleeting human civilisation with morals that have developed over time and I agree with how we run things here in the UK. I believe I'll die someday and that will sadly be that (woe is me to never be able to enjoy a holodeck or another planet). What need have I of a man in the sky who won't show himself but yet demands my subservience?0 -
fontanalis wrote: »What does that even mean?
And which god are you referring to, and why do you believe in that one and not others?
It means that I believe that a God does exist and by God I mean something more to life something other than us living and dieing (and not just a big man in the sky) something we are unable to understand. However I believe humans are fundamentally selfish and prone to corruption which leads to them abusing religion and starting wars etc. I mean the three religious groups who are most well known for starting wars in the name of religion are Muslims Jews and Christians yet they all believe in the same God.
As for which God I believe in I am a practicing christian but do not accept the churches views because they make no sense like according to the church a christian who murders and rapes has a better chance of getting to heaven than a jew or a muslim who lives a good life which is crap.
so to answer your question I dont really know I just think there is something more to life and that if you live a good life you will be rewarded wheather its by getting into a heaven or just simply finding peace within yourself im not sure.0 -
Canis Lupus wrote: »I'm not going to argue infinite regress as I'm not equipped with sufficient knowledge to do so
Pick up a Philosophy of Religion book with both sides argued in it. It's fascinating stuff.Canis Lupus wrote: »What I will say in regards to the second point is that even if I accept god existed why all the malarkey with bronze age people? Why go such an intense period of meddling and then vanish?
I believe God is very much at work in our own age, so I don't believe He has vanished at all!Canis Lupus wrote: »Why does your god do things in such a convoluted way (thinking to a thread in A&A when Paul on Damascus gets struck blind and gets a message to go to some town whilst off somewhere else another dude gets a message to go heal Paul and all this because Jesus revealed himself to Paul)?
You mean why does God use people in His plans? - I guess, I'd have to answer my question with a question, why wouldn't God, especially if people can learn from being involved in His plans, and if people are an effective means of doing so?Canis Lupus wrote: »I still can't and never will grasp your acceptance of the bible or other people and their acceptance of their own religious texts nor do I understand your NEED to. I'm a complete and utter non believer. I'm a good person. I love my family, my partner and my friends. I am part of a fleeting human civilisation with morals that have developed over time and I agree with how we run things here in the UK. I believe I'll die someday and that will sadly be that (woe is me to never be able to enjoy a holodeck or another planet). What need have I of a man in the sky who won't show himself but yet demands my subservience?
It's not about needing, it's about recognising what is there for me. Denying God's existence, is denying the most central part of reality for me.
As for being a good person, what are you defining as good, is good something that is objective, or subjective? - I personally don't believe anyone is truly good in and of themselves. I can say personally of myself, that I am not a good person on my own account. Everyone has done things that are wrong.0 -
Ok, well I think answers to the previous questions/arguments should be contained in my criticism of the set definition of your system.
Right, so we will accept these as observed facts, things that people actually value. They are descriptive is statementsPeople value living in society. Why this is doesn't even matter. You can say this is an arbitrary fact but it's still a fact.
People also care about others. Not everyone but they care about their friends and loved ones and want to protect them from harm. Again this may be an arbitrary fact but it remains a fact.
This contains (if your system is to be no more than "people don't do bad things, automatically") , the statement "a society ought not to destroy itself". This is arbitrary, to say otherwise, or to say that it is somehow derived from the previous statements is crossing hume's gap.A society can only accept certain rules or it will destroy itself.Anyone breaking these rules is not living in a way that is compatible with society and must be expelled if they are caught.
Yes there are ways that people can avoid getting caught but only a certain level of socially incompatible behaviour can go unnoticed and unpunished. The world as it exists today demonstrates that the desire to live in society, fear of getting caught and caring about others is enough that most people can live peacefully together and as many offenders as possible are punished.
You can point out any flaws you want in comparing it to your god based system but that's the way the world is even though there are religious people going around telling everyone they're doing wrong, which you think should make the world better than it is.
Now I haven't only been contrasting your system with religious systems, in fact, I bring these up the least. I was contrasting it with systems which are more openly arbitrary. It is your attempts at an unarbitrary, and evolutionarily defined system that makes it worthless. Now since we are re-hashing arguments based on your set definition, I'll give some examples of things that this system has nothing to say about and why I do not think it's a very good system.
-Stealing : Stealing is easy, it is easy to do, easy to escape punishment and doesn't prevent one from living in a society or doing any of the things you listed in your definition. People who steal from big shops probably do not care about the multinational corporation owning millionaires from whom they are stealing. In fact, anyone stealing from anywhere doesn't care about the people from whom they are stealing as much as they want to have the object of their desires.
-Killing isolated weak/sick people: It is easy to kill them because they are weak, you can follow this up with stealing all of their stuff, you could even rape their corpse if you wanted some added chemical release. We've all heard about old people rotting in their houses for months before anyone finds them. All you need do is kill one such person. This is possible to do without being caught, and happens in real life.
-Charitable donations/any good deeds to other societies. Based on your first two premises, the only reason anyone would do any of these things is to impress people within one's own society, and thus increase the pleasantness of societal living. It is much economical to simply lie about charitable work if one's ultimate goal is to impress people.
-Depressed people: Some children are depressed, and no longer want to live in society, I also do not imagine that they care to much about a group of people who have driven them to suicide. This can be seen when people go into a school with a gun and kill loads of people and then themselves.
-The largeness of society: the largeness of society means that certain subgroups can be created. Each of these subgroups can define as "others" the entire rest of society. An exampe is knackers. Groups of angsty teens who think that they are brilliant and that everyone else is a conformist/idiot (new atheism hohohohoh). They would then have no reason to act nicely to these people in anyway. So their only constraint is being caught, the largness of society is also an argument against their being caught. In any judicial system or other such mechanism of punishment, there are cracks through which people can slip.
-Even for perfectly sized perfect small societies all these problems come up with we relate them to other small societies (indeed those subgroups, and the world in general, are evidence of this)
In my opinion the strongest of these arguments is the largness of society, I had these as much shorter points earlier but it was lost and this second version had to be made.This is another problem with logic over empiricism btw, your logic tells you that telling people they're doing wrong should stop them but a cursory glance at the world shows that this is not the case.
Empiricism is a mechanism which applies logic using certain axioms. Empiricism is the set of axioms from which to proceed logically. They are not two distinct things.
Now we are talking about ethics, ethics isn't simply "observing what people do and then calling it ok", which is essentially what your system boils down to. And it's not j ust religioius systems which are superior. Any more openly arbitrary system is superior to this, as they contain in them rules against all those things I listed. An example is a system which has:
"Raping people is bad", "stealing is bad","killing people is bad" as arbitrary and accepted rules are far more effective.
So not only are your claims of having derived an ethical system from observable things impossible, the system also suffers as a result of it.An argument from authority remains an argument from authority regardless of who the authority is. You say that theists need reasons for doing things but "because an authority figure said so" is not a reason, it's an excuse to avoid thinking for yourself.
Ok well, can we agree to use actual arguments and not just names for them in this discussion? Saying "argument from authority" and expecting everyone to just agree that this disproves their point is ridiculous. This trend of using a bunch of learned off and accepted "logical fallacies" is not one which I believe is conducive to proper argumentation, as people often do not know why they are fallacies.
Anyway, the reason the argument from authority can be used to criticise someones position is that the authority figure is assumed to be fallible. That's the extent of it. I'm sure you've heard of cases where god is defined to be omniscient and all that jive.
And while we are on this topic, it is funny to note that the same john locke who came up with it was an empiricist who claimed to have derived some certain proof of god's existence (I can't really remember what it was), in the same publication.
Also, funnily enough, if we can use "arguments from authority" to dismiss someones knowledge of something willy nilly, then pretty much all of our scientific arguments we've been using here go out the window. For example, there's no need for us to pretend that we understand the high levels of physics. Reading popular science is no different than accepting things based on an argument from authority.Yes mathematics is the only area of human endeaviour where that method can be applied and where the word proof actually means proof. The rest of the universe isn't like that.
Anywhere deductive reasoning can be used we can arrive at proofs. We can view inductive reasoning as deductive reasoning with extra axioms. If you look up deductive reasoning on wikipedia it will have examples. But we'll use the very moral systems we are discussing to show that we can verify claims.
So, we have one rule, which says killing things are bad, a button in a room which chops things heads off, and a person who is asking why pressing the button is bad. Pressing the button is bad because it chops things (peoples) heads off, and chopping peoples heads off is bad because it kills them. Killing them is bad by definition. That's a proof.Empricism isn't able to criticise things that have been defined as being unfalsifiable for the purposes of keeping them out of its grasp. It something that's done by all good pseudo-scientists. I could say that there's a metaphysical pink unicorn behind my couch but that when anyone goes to look at it it disappears. That would be beyond the reach of empiricism but it would still be a ridiculous thing to believe.
Well your example doesn't really make sense, and highlights some misunderstandings. If by metaphysical you mean "non empirical" then it would never be possible to perceive it with our senses, for one thing, and also it wouldn't make sense to spacially position it "behind the couch".Also, it is claimed that god regularly intervenes in the world. A resurrection is not a metahpysical being outside our universe, it's an actual event that actual people are supposed to have seen and that could have been studied had it not happened 2000 years ago
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You can argue that the theory of god himself is beyond empiricism but the things he is claimed to do and to have done are not. Empiricism can't disprove god any more than it can disprove unicorns or goblins but nothing can be definitively disproved outside of mathematics
Goblins and unicorns, in general, things to which an actual empirical existence is attributed. God can be described as something outside of the empirical realm but an important meeting point between the empirical and the metaphysical. This also relates to the question of how something comes from nothing, and if you accept free will then you cannot claim this idea doesn't make sense. The stuff about prayers I didn't respond to, I could respond with stuff like "god works in natural ways" or "he has reasons for not answering prayers", but this isn't really an area of discussion that i have any interest in.
Well, mathematics for one. Moral systems for two, and any system that uses deductive reasoning for "n". hohoh. Also, I think I accuse you for "strawmanning" for saying that i was espousing a system which relied on logic alone, which i have never done, though I do regret the use of such terminology. If terms like "strawman" and "argument from authority" are the only nomeclature you accept in arguments then i can start using them if you'd like. I don't mean to be insuting by this, but you seem to pay much more attention to when I said "that's a straw man" to the millions of times I've said "That's not a thing I've ever argued that you are arguing against"Please give me an example of one of these other systems. You accused me of straw manning a while ago for saying you mentioned such systems.
Well if it were not exempt from them then it would be determined by the completely would it not? It would not then be choice, and not them free will. Swop "decision making faculty" for "free arbiter of choice in making decisions". Ie, it must be something which is the ultimate cause of an action, rather than just the proximal cause. There is a thread about this on the physics forum I can link you to.Que? Who says that a decision making faculty must be exempt from the laws of physics? My computer can make decisions.
I think that any measure of will whatsoever, requires something external from physical reality. Determinism is a massive and seeminly insurmountable blocking factor which prevents a materialist from speaking reasonably about pretty much anything.Also do you think humans have completely free will? If so how do you explain things like addiction, where someone could desperately want to stop something but does not have the strength of will to overcome their compulsion to do it?0 -
I did answer the question. In that post, and in all previous posts I made. But I'll answer it again, though I would like you to read my posts a bit more carefully.
So if a god existed, and I believed in it, and accepted it's definitino of good, then I would see what he said as good. This can be "deduced" from my previous points and arguments. My arguments entail this statement.
LOL, after all your talk of theists needing reasons for doing the things they do. You don't need a reason, you just need an authority figure to tell you what to do so you don't have to think for yourself. This type of thinking is not uncommon as the Milgram experiments show but it is very unfortunate since it has been exploited to facilitate countless atrocities in the past. The whole idea of the argument of authority of "because god says so" is that the authority knows best and shouldn't be questioned but if god assigned good and bad arbitrarily then there's nothing to know, there is no reason why charity is good and murder is bad, they've just been randomly assigned. You don't have to be omniscient to randomly assign the labels good and bad to things, he might as well have flipped a coin. Under your system the answer to why murder is bad is "because a coin flip came up tails" and such a system of morality is truly worthless. There's no reason why anyone should obey a rule if there's no reason behind the defining of the rule
If you would actually murder someone because you thought god wanted you to then you should be locked up in a padded room where you can't hurt the rest of us, just in case you ever somehow get it into your head that god does want you to kill people, as has happened with killing and other similar horrific crimes so many times in the past, such as these people 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Presumably you think that all these people did the right thing because while they may have been (though may not have been) mistaken about god telling them to kill, once they believed he had told them they were morally obliged to do it right?
But I don't think you actually would kill your children if you thought god wanted you to because from what little interaction I've had with you you don't appear to be batsh!t crazy as all the people in those links above are. I think that you said you would because if you said anything else it would contradict everything you've been saying in this thread. You said that my suggestion that god could define killing children and the whole human race to be good was "highlighting cases which will shock people". I described a scenario where god has defined killing the human race as good and since good is whatever god says it is, what possible basis could people have for being shocked by this? Why would you or anyone else have any qualms whatsoever about carrying out this moral instruction? Why do you think people would not eagarly, cheerfully and without a moment's hesitation slit the throats of their children and every person they can get their hands on before turning the knife on themselves, secure in the knowledge that what they're doing is as good as giving money to the poor?0 -
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Unless you get caught. not everyone does but not everyone gets away either-Stealing : Stealing is easy, it is easy to do, easy to escape punishment and doesn't prevent one from living in a society or doing any of the things you listed in your definition. People who steal from big shops probably do not care about the multinational corporation owning millionaires from whom they are stealing. In fact, anyone stealing from anywhere doesn't care about the people from whom they are stealing as much as they want to have the object of their desires.
Unless you get caught. not everyone does but not everyone gets away either-Killing isolated weak/sick people: It is easy to kill them because they are weak, you can follow this up with stealing all of their stuff, you could even rape their corpse if you wanted some added chemical release. We've all heard about old people rotting in their houses for months before anyone finds them. All you need do is kill one such person. This is possible to do without being caught, and happens in real life.
you forgot the bit where I said that "people care about people"-Charitable donations/any good deeds to other societies. Based on your first two premises, the only reason anyone would do any of these things is to impress people within one's own society, and thus increase the pleasantness of societal living. It is much economical to simply lie about charitable work if one's ultimate goal is to impress people.
Yes some people have a grudge against society and can do a certain level of damage before they are stopped or stop themselves.-Depressed people: Some children are depressed, and no longer want to live in society, I also do not imagine that they care to much about a group of people who have driven them to suicide. This can be seen when people go into a school with a gun and kill loads of people and then themselves.
Yup, in case you hadn't noticed, that's the way the world is.-The largeness of society: the largeness of society means that certain subgroups can be created. Each of these subgroups can define as "others" the entire rest of society. An exampe is knackers. Groups of angsty teens who think that they are brilliant and that everyone else is a conformist/idiot (new atheism hohohohoh). They would then have no reason to act nicely to these people in anyway. So their only constraint is being caught, the largness of society is also an argument against their being caught. In any judicial system or other such mechanism of punishment, there are cracks through which people can slip.
Absolutely. But those problems do not equate to worthless and as I keep saying, no amount of wishing that telling people they're doing wrong would stop them will change the fact that it's never going to happen. You have made exactly the same point probably ten times at this stage and I have given you pretty much the same response every time. My response is not going to change so unless you want to enter an infinite loop of repeating exactly the same point and counter point over and over you should probably make a different point or respond to my response rather than just repeating the point that I've already responded to. If you disagree with me you should explain why; there's nothing to be gained from repeating the same point. I'm sure you'll say that you have responded in a way other than repeating the same point back at me but there's still nothing to be gained from repeating the previous point, which is what you've done here-Even for perfectly sized perfect small societies all these problems come up with we relate them to other small societies (indeed those subgroups, and the world in general, are evidence of this)
In my opinion the strongest of these arguments is the largness of society, I had these as much shorter points earlier but it was lost and this second version had to be made.
I'll stop using the term for the logical fallacy when you stop using the logical fallacy or explain to me why it's not a logical fallacy. I've tackled the "infallible authority" point after the next quoteOk well, can we agree to use actual arguments and not just names for them in this discussion? Saying "argument from authority" and expecting everyone to just agree that this disproves their point is ridiculous. This trend of using a bunch of learned off and accepted "logical fallacies" is not one which I believe is conducive to proper argumentation, as people often do not know why they are fallacies.
As I said in my previous post, the argument from authority assumes that the authority knows best. In an arbitrary system there is nothing to know, it's entirely random. Your "authority" is no more than the flip of a coin.Anyway, the reason the argument from authority can be used to criticise someones position is that the authority figure is assumed to be fallible. That's the extent of it. I'm sure you've heard of cases where god is defined to be omniscient and all that jive.
Science is not an argument from authority. To pick one example, people can go on and on about the theory of flight and how they can build a flying machine but all their talk is not worth a cream cheese dildo until they actually put their money where their mouth is and put a plane in the sky. Science demonstrates itself to work, it doesn't just claim it works and expect you to trust it.Also, funnily enough, if we can use "arguments from authority" to dismiss someones knowledge of something willy nilly, then pretty much all of our scientific arguments we've been using here go out the window. For example, there's no need for us to pretend that we understand the high levels of physics. Reading popular science is no different than accepting things based on an argument from authority.
You're not living in the real world mate. The only way to arrive at a proof is to know every single variable. We do not know every single variable in the universe.Anywhere deductive reasoning can be used we can arrive at proofs. We can view inductive reasoning as deductive reasoning with extra axioms. If you look up deductive reasoning on wikipedia it will have examples. But we'll use the very moral systems we are discussing to show that we can verify claims.
That's circular. You started off by defining a rule that killing is bad and your conclusion was that killing is bad. Assume true therefore trueSo, we have one rule, which says killing things are bad, a button in a room which chops things heads off, and a person who is asking why pressing the button is bad. Pressing the button is bad because it chops things (peoples) heads off, and chopping peoples heads off is bad because it kills them. Killing them is bad by definition. That's a proof.
And yet god is supposed to be metaphysical even though people claim to perceive him and omnipresent.Well your example doesn't really make sense, and highlights some misunderstandings. If by metaphysical you mean "non empirical" then it would never be possible to perceive it with our senses, for one thing, and also it wouldn't make sense to spacially position it "behind the couch".
So is your method of verification that goes beyond logic alone "deductive reasoning"? If so, I don't understand the difference. If not, what is it?Well, mathematics for one. Moral systems for two, and any system that uses deductive reasoning for "n". hohoh. Also, I think I accuse you for "strawmanning" for saying that i was espousing a system which relied on logic alone, which i have never done, though I do regret the use of such terminology. If terms like "strawman" and "argument from authority" are the only nomeclature you accept in arguments then i can start using them if you'd like. I don't mean to be insuting by this, but you seem to pay much more attention to when I said "that's a straw man" to the millions of times I've said "That's not a thing I've ever argued that you are arguing against"Well if it were not exempt from them then it would be determined by the completely would it not? It would not then be choice, and not them free will. Swop "decision making faculty" for "free arbiter of choice in making decisions". Ie, it must be something which is the ultimate cause of an action, rather than just the proximal cause. There is a thread about this on the physics forum I can link you to.
I think that any measure of will whatsoever, requires something external from physical reality. Determinism is a massive and seeminly insurmountable blocking factor which prevents a materialist from speaking reasonably about pretty much anything.
What is it that leads you to believe that a free choice cannot be made within the laws of physics? Do you know every single thing there is to know about the universe, which allows you to make such an absolute statement?0 -
LOL, after all your talk of theists needing reasons for doing the things they do.
"Because God said so" is no less a reason than anything else.But I don't think you actually would kill your children if you thought god wanted you to because from what little interaction I've had with you you don't appear to be batsh!t crazy as all the people in those links above are. I think that you said you would because if you said anything else it would contradict everything you've been saying in this thread. You said that my suggestion that god could define killing children and the whole human race to be good was "highlighting cases which will shock people". I described a scenario where god has defined killing the human race as good and since good is whatever god says it is, what possible basis could people have for being shocked by this? Why would you or anyone else have any qualms whatsoever about carrying out this moral instruction? Why do you think people would not eagarly, cheerfully and without a moment's hesitation slit the throats of their children and every person they can get their hands on before turning the knife on themselves, secure in the knowledge that what they're doing is as good as giving money to the poor?
Well regardless of whether or not I would do it, If I accepted that moral sytsem, then to not do it woud be wrong. It would be no different if you accepted the premises.
This question relates back to the kind of partial free will that you mentioned in one of your posts with regard to peopl being addicted to things. Biologically, it's hard to do those things, so even if one defined doing them as good, one would still not be massively inclined to do them, be cause of the difficulty.0 -
Would you consider "because a coin flip came up tails" to be reason enough to view something as bad?"Because God said so" is no less a reason than anything else.Well regardless of whether or not I would do it, If I accepted that moral sytsem, then to not do it woud be wrong. It would be no different if you accepted the premises.
This question relates back to the kind of partial free will that you mentioned in one of your posts with regard to peopl being addicted to things. Biologically, it's hard to do those things, so even if one defined doing them as good, one would still not be massively inclined to do them, be cause of the difficulty.
Why do you suppose it's biologically hard to do these things? I would suggest that it's because we are subconsciously and consciously compelled not to harm others or do things that we know would result in the extinction of the human race and that these subconscious and conscious compulsions are a large part of where we derive much of our moral viewpoint from, not just "good is what god says it is". Other words for this would be "conscience" or "moral compass". So why do you think this would be biologically hard?0 -
Why do you suppose it's biologically hard to do these things? I would suggest that it's because we are subconsciously and consciously compelled not to harm others or do things that we know would result in the extinction of the human race and that these subconscious and conscious compulsions are a large part of where we derive much of our moral viewpoint from, not just "good is what god says it is". Other words for this would be "conscience" or "moral compass". So why do you think this would be biologically hard?
I agree with you.
I pressed ctrl-w on response to the larger post. I'll just do it fresh.0 -
Sigh, the old sign in proceedure has destroyed yet another post. That's twice in one post.
Edit: I'll do this post later in the day, it's very exhausting to have to write the same response twice whilst forgetting what you said the first time. The second time is inevitably worse because of one's decreasing enthusiasm for the post.0 -
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Sigh, the old sign in proceedure has destroyed yet another post. That's twice in one post.
Edit: I'll do this post later in the day, it's very exhausting to have to write the same response twice whilst forgetting what you said the first time. The second time is inevitably worse because of one's decreasing enthusiasm for the post.
If I'm writing a long post I usually do it in notepad or something like that and paste it into boards when I'm done to avoid that problem.
What's that!? An atheist giving helpful advice without getting anything in return :eek:
There must be no god so
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Get a room you two........
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Absolutely. But those problems do not equate to worthless and as I keep saying, no amount of wishing that telling people they're doing wrong would stop them will change the fact that it's never going to happen.
Remember that it was always a part of my arguments that other more openly arbitrary systems are superior once chosen. It has always been assumed that the people accept these definitions of good when we've been comparing the two systems.
If you'd like to make the point that people abstain from doing the things in your system without being told not to, then this really is an argument against the usefulness of such a system. If it's something people do anyway, then this behaviour is coded for in all systems to begin with (I do not believe that there are many systems which would advocate living outside of society, and if there were, these would be harder to follow because of the biological imperative you describe. The behaviour wouldn’t be "good" then though). So these “good things” people do, like being cowards, are already a part of all other systems.
If you see your system as a description of behaviour, rather than a prescription of behaviour, then you have no criteria upon which to criticise anyone for anything, and it then also stops being a moral system at all. You would have no definition of good or bad.
It seems to me that in an attempt to derive your system from evolution, it has ceased being a set of morals and become a simple description.
I believe the notion that people are prevented biologically from immoral action has been shown to be completely false. It prevents very little, not everyone is a coward and not everybody loves everybody.
This is why I rather harshly describe your system as worthless, there is nothing in it that improves upon peoples actions in anyway. A dog would be able to follow this system without knowing it. I will re-formulate my more detailed criticisms below however. Again a simple set of statements like “stealing is bad” would be far more conducive to moral behaviour than your system. I also do not agree that people operate under your system “in the world as we know it”You have made exactly the same point probably ten times at this stage and I have given you pretty much the same response every time. My response is not going to change so unless you want to enter an infinite loop of repeating exactly the same point and counter point over and over you should probably make a different point or respond to my response rather than just repeating the point that I've already responded to. If you disagree with me you should explain why; there's nothing to be gained from repeating the same point. I'm sure you'll say that you have responded in a way other than repeating the same point back at me but there's still nothing to be gained from repeating the previous point, which is what you've done here
Well when someone is repeating a point it generally means that they do not see your response as sufficient to counter it. I’ll try and reformulate my criticisms against your system once more, and I’ll recheck them against your definition, whilst taking all of your points in this post into account. After that we’ll just have to accept that we aren’t following/or won’t accept each other’s arguments.
Now, above your main point (which I do believe I have dealt with many times previously) is that people will get caught. And that getting caught places certain restraints on people’s behaviour.
For one thing I’d like to point out that it’s a favourite “strawman” of atheists to reduce Christian morality to being about fear of hell/god and see this as something which deserves ridicule. I agree with this. And if your entire system can be reduced to “I’ll do nice things to people I like, but the only thing stopping me from doing bad things to people I don’t like is fear of apprehension” then I do believe that it’s vastly inferior to all other systems.
Also, your points up there about being caught were completely irrelevant, because I precluded the possibility of being caught from all those examples. I was talking about situations where you can’t be caught.
Also I think we have a difference of observations about the world here, you think it’s a lot easier for criminals to be caught than I do.
When you talk about people being prevented from committing immoral acts against people they don’t care about you operate under the assumption that most people are simply afraid of retribution. This completely disregards the fact that people may be operating under their own definitions of good or bad. So you when you say “this is how the world is” you have to take into account that in “the world as it is” people are not just animals acting solely to be allowed to remain in society. Many (I would say most even) people hold unexamined definitions of good or bad and use this as a basis upon which to operate.
So it’s not really accurate to say “the world as it is” supports people being prevented from stealing or doing all those acts above based on fear alone. And even if it did, the fact that the system is only effective against cowards is another massive failing in my opinion.
So I don’t accept people being afraid of being caught, or mere descriptions of how people act as being redeeming factors of your system. Also I think it has been firmly established that it is just as arbitrary, if not moreso than all of the other systems discussed so far.
It is worthless compared to any other system in my mind. In fact, it comes very close to not even being a moral system.
The reason that the argument from authority can be described as a fallacy is because there are two factors: No person is infallible and the person can be lying. I don’t think I need to point out why using the theistic god is different from using a person. People generally view god as infallible, omniscient, and that he loves people. This removes any possibility of the “argument from authority” as being described as a fallacy.I'll stop using the term for the logical fallacy when you stop using the logical fallacy or explain to me why it's not a logical fallacy. I've tackled the "infallible authority" point after the next quote
As I said in my previous post, the argument from authority assumes that the authority knows best. In an arbitrary system there is nothing to know, it's entirely random. Your "authority" is no more than the flip of a coin.
This isn’t what I argued, or If I’d like to impress people reading this “that’s a strawman”.Science is not an argument from authority.
Yes it doesn’t do that, but I referenced people like you and me. We can sit here saying “oh I read this book on planes, they work because of this”, this isn’t something we actually know we are appealing to the expertise of the person who wrote the book. Now maybe you’re an airplane expert, but I’m not, so I would use an argument from authority when describing planes based on what I’ve read in books. Just as if you were an aeroplane expert you’d have to rely on arguments from authority to talk about scientific advancements in other areas.To pick one example, people can go on and on about the theory of flight and how they can build a flying machine but all their talk is not worth a cream cheese dildo until they actually put their money where their mouth is and put a plane in the sky. Science demonstrates itself to work, it doesn't just claim it works and expect you to trust it.
Also, the premises upon which the “argument from authority” are based, can really be applied very widely. If this really were a logical fallacy, then the human race would not really be able to accumulate knowledge very well.
The argument from authority, if this term is to be used to criticise something as a fallacy, can only be used in cases where the authority of the figure does not imply expertise in the area being discussed. It doesn’t make anything not true, but if someone is not an expert, or dishonest, it makes it likely that they don’t know what they are saying , or are lying.
The aim of the deduction was to determine whether pressing the button was bad. We arrived at this deductively. It seems you didn’t read the post. (or I could just say “strawman!”)You're not living in the real world mate. The only way to arrive at a proof is to know every single variable. We do not know every single variable in the universe.
That's circular. You started off by defining a rule that killing is bad and your conclusion was that killing is bad. Assume true therefore true
Well, I don’t think this is a valid criticism when you consider the rest that quoted paragraph. But anyway, that can be easily described as “perceiving god through his creation”. By people who make such claims, that is.And yet god is supposed to be metaphysical even though people claim to perceive him and omnipresent.
Deductive reasoning is the method of verification everyone uses. We can view inductive reasoning (what science, and most everything uses) as deductive reasoning with extra axioms. Deductive reasoning is the mechanism of all human understanding, it’s not just my method. We’ve been using it (with extra assumptions) in our discussion here.So is your method of verification that goes beyond logic alone "deductive reasoning"? If so, I don't understand the difference. If not, what is it?What is it that leads you to believe that a free choice cannot be made within the laws of physics? Do you know every single thing there is to know about the universe, which allows you to make such an absolute statement?
Well I’ll just quote myself from a different thread about just that here. First it’s not necessary to be able to predict something completely for it to be completely determined. For example, if the function of our brains is completely impenetrable and for all extensive purposes random, then it’s random. Random does not mean we are deciding things. Anyway.Free will when looked at from a physical point of view is completely absurd. People are composed of particles of matter as are their brains. Particles are governed by physics and physics is deterministic. Therefore, free will cannot exist unless there are certain substances outside of the influence of physical forces, and that's not a very scientific idea
Tolstoy gives a good example of an argument for free will. He didn’t rely on physics here but simply on an idea of cause and effect, he was well into studying the histories of wars and stuff. Say you want to disprove that all your actions are previously determined. You say; “with my free will, I’m going to decide to raise my hand” and then raise your hand. Everything you said previous to raising your hand necessitated the raising of your hand. What you said was necessitated by the conversation. The conversation happened because you and your interlocutor were in the same place at the same time and some fancy came into one of your heads to talk of determinism. This happened because you saw a stone fall. Etc.
Now Tolstoy argued it much better, but it just illustrates cause and effect.
Apologies for the delayed reply0 -
raah, you've always been assuming that people accept these definitions of good and I've been telling you that you're living in a fantasy land where you have defined the world the way you think it should be and failed to take account of the way it actually is. A cursory glance at the world shows that just telling people they're doing wrong doesn't prevent anything. Everybody who hurts someone else already knows that what they're doing is defined as "wrong" so telling them again isn't going to achieve anything.
Remember that it was always a part of my arguments that other more openly arbitrary systems are superior once chosen. It has always been assumed that the people accept these definitions of good when we've been comparing the two systems.
If you'd like to make the point that people abstain from doing the things in your system without being told not to, then this really is an argument against the usefulness of such a system. If it's something people do anyway, then this behaviour is coded for in all systems to begin with (I do not believe that there are many systems which would advocate living outside of society, and if there were, these would be harder to follow because of the biological imperative you describe. The behaviour wouldn’t be "good" then though). So these “good things” people do, like being cowards, are already a part of all other systems.
If you see your system as a description of behaviour, rather than a prescription of behaviour, then you have no criteria upon which to criticise anyone for anything, and it then also stops being a moral system at all. You would have no definition of good or bad.
It seems to me that in an attempt to derive your system from evolution, it has ceased being a set of morals and become a simple description.
I believe the notion that people are prevented biologically from immoral action has been shown to be completely false. It prevents very little, not everyone is a coward and not everybody loves everybody.
This is why I rather harshly describe your system as worthless, there is nothing in it that improves upon peoples actions in anyway. A dog would be able to follow this system without knowing it. I will re-formulate my more detailed criticisms below however. Again a simple set of statements like “stealing is bad” would be far more conducive to moral behaviour than your system. I also do not agree that people operate under your system “in the world as we know it”
Well when someone is repeating a point it generally means that they do not see your response as sufficient to counter it. I’ll try and reformulate my criticisms against your system once more, and I’ll recheck them against your definition, whilst taking all of your points in this post into account. After that we’ll just have to accept that we aren’t following/or won’t accept each other’s arguments.
Now, above your main point (which I do believe I have dealt with many times previously) is that people will get caught. And that getting caught places certain restraints on people’s behaviour.
For one thing I’d like to point out that it’s a favourite “strawman” of atheists to reduce Christian morality to being about fear of hell/god and see this as something which deserves ridicule. I agree with this. And if your entire system can be reduced to “I’ll do nice things to people I like, but the only thing stopping me from doing bad things to people I don’t like is fear of apprehension” then I do believe that it’s vastly inferior to all other systems.
Also, your points up there about being caught were completely irrelevant, because I precluded the possibility of being caught from all those examples. I was talking about situations where you can’t be caught.
Also I think we have a difference of observations about the world here, you think it’s a lot easier for criminals to be caught than I do
When you talk about people being prevented from committing immoral acts against people they don’t care about you operate under the assumption that most people are simply afraid of retribution. This completely disregards the fact that people may be operating under their own definitions of good or bad. So you when you say “this is how the world is” you have to take into account that in “the world as it is” people are not just animals acting solely to be allowed to remain in society. Many (I would say most even) people hold unexamined definitions of good or bad and use this as a basis upon which to operate.
So it’s not really accurate to say “the world as it is” supports people being prevented from stealing or doing all those acts above based on fear alone. And even if it did, the fact that the system is only effective against cowards is another massive failing in my opinion.
So I don’t accept people being afraid of being caught, or mere descriptions of how people act as being redeeming factors of your system. Also I think it has been firmly established that it is just as arbitrary, if not moreso than all of the other systems discussed so far.
It is worthless compared to any other system in my mind. In fact, it comes very close to not even being a moral system.
The reason that the argument from authority can be described as a fallacy is because there are two factors: No person is infallible and the person can be lying. I don’t think I need to point out why using the theistic god is different from using a person. People generally view god as infallible, omniscient, and that he loves people. This removes any possibility of the “argument from authority” as being described as a fallacy.
This isn’t what I argued, or If I’d like to impress people reading this “that’s a strawman”.
Also, the premises upon which the “argument from authority” are based, can really be applied very widely. If this really were a logical fallacy, then the human race would not really be able to accumulate knowledge very well.
The argument from authority, if this term is to be used to criticise something as a fallacy, can only be used in cases where the authority of the figure does not imply expertise in the area being discussed. It doesn’t make anything not true, but if someone is not an expert, or dishonest, it makes it likely that they don’t know what they are saying , or are lying.
Well, I don’t think this is a valid criticism when you consider the rest that quoted paragraph. But anyway, that can be easily described as “perceiving god through his creation”. By people who make such claims, that is.
Also when you compared our two "axioms" with the assumption that they would be accepted your version of mine was quite the straw man and it remains quite the straw man, e.g. you're still talking about being "biologically prevented" from doing something as if it makes it impossible and not just more difficult and you're also still talking about "deriving my system from evolution" when I keep telling you that evolution is only one part of it. Your argument also "precludes the possibility of being caught" but that is not possible in the real world, another example of you defining the world how you like and ignoring how it is. Everybody is afraid of being caught, everybody, and the fact that you use the pejorative term cowards does not change this any more than using the pejorative terms dogs and heroin addicts to describe biological compulsions changed that. Anyone who precludes the possibility of being caught is not brave, they're stupid. Everybody has this fear but some choose to ignore it and hope. Then a significant proportion of them hope in vain because they're caught
You are also ignoring the fact that I said fear of retribution is not the only thing preventing people from doing harm. People for the most part care about other people, this is again the "moral compass" or "conscience", and this caring about people causes people to restrain themselves from doing harm even in the impossible scenario where they know for a fact they will never be caught. In one breath you talk about my system being "derived from evolution" and talk about the failings of this, then in the next you say that my system's only motivation for not doing harm is fear of retribution, totally forgetting the evolution component. Fear of being caught gives us one reason for not doing harm and our "conscience", which exists as a result of evolution, gives us another.
But anyway, besides all of your straw manning of my system, I have acknowledged that it's not a perfect system over and over and over again as you repeated the possible flaws over and over and over again. The arguments against your system are as follows:- Regardless of how strongly your logic suggests that telling people they're doing wrong because god says so over and over again should stop them, reality begs to differ. People have been telling other people they were doing wrong for thousands of years and they did "wrong" anyway.
- Your system depends on the existence of a god whose existence has not been proven despite thousand of years of trying. Both this reason and the previous one mean that your assumption that people will accept your "axiom" and adjust their behaviour accordingly is nothing but a pipe dream. It's never going to happen no matter how much you think it should. As I keep saying, you're arguing that teleporters are better than cars and forgetting that teleporters don't exist
- Your system of morality is decided on a coin toss so I don't even see why it even matters if anyone behaves morally. Your reason for saying that an argument from the authority of god is not a fallacy is "No person is infallible and the person can be lying. I don’t think I need to point out why using the theistic god is different from using a person". But in your god based system morality is defined arbitrarily, as if by the flip of a coin. Infallibility and honesty are totally irrelevant if the decision was arrived at by a flip of a coin. The "authority" in your argument from authority is not an infallible being, it's a coin that lands randomly on either side. Your system of morality goes back as far as "because god says so" and says "for us the arbitrariness ends here" but you are forgetting that we can go one level further:
Why is murder bad?
Because god says so. <----You stop here. I continue
Why did god say so?
Because he flipped a coin and it came up tails.
Anyone can flip a coin and randomly assign labels to things, infallibility and omniscience are irrelevant. Your system makes the terms right and wrong completely meaningless, they're just labels that were randomly assigned to actions by someone who happened to be omniscient. A system that is defined without reason provides no reason to follow it; why should anyone obey a rule that was decided by a coin toss and that could just as easily have led to the extinction of the human race as a utopian paradise, had the coin landed the other way, especially someone who insists on having reasons for doing the things they do? How can one place value on right over wrong when they're just randomly assigned labels?
No one has to rely on arguments from authority in science, that's the point. If people are too lazy or don't have the expertise to verify things for themselves they can just accept whatever scientists say but it's not the scientists fault and it's not a failing of science, it's a failing of lazy people.Yes it doesn’t do that, but I referenced people like you and me. We can sit here saying “oh I read this book on planes, they work because of this”, this isn’t something we actually know we are appealing to the expertise of the person who wrote the book. Now maybe you’re an airplane expert, but I’m not, so I would use an argument from authority when describing planes based on what I’ve read in books. Just as if you were an aeroplane expert you’d have to rely on arguments from authority to talk about scientific advancements in other areas.
LOL, you assumed your conclusion. That's the definition of a circular argument. Here's another one for clarity:The aim of the deduction was to determine whether pressing the button was bad. We arrived at this deductively. It seems you didn’t read the post. (or I could just say “strawman!”)
Define a rule that raah's arguments are always circular.
raah has just made an argument
Therefore it's circular.
That's a proof!!!!!
Your argument is just:
Assume killing is bad.
Therefore killing by pushing a button is bad
Of course it is, you've started off by assuming that killing by any method is bad and given the example of killing by pushing a button, which is already included in the initial assumption. For this argument to be non-circular your conclusion would have to be something like "pushing buttons in general is bad" but it's not, it's only bad when it's used as a method of doing something that you've already assumed is bad.
Yeah I know deductive reasoning is used but it's not a method of verification. It defines what you think should be the case, not what actually is the case. After you arrive at your conclusion you must then find if your conclusion is correct by seeing if your conclusion matches the facts of our universe. You can just accept your deductive conclusion if you want but there is a significant chance that you will be wrong, such as when you use a circular argument as you just did. Even when you do externally verify something there's still a significant chance that you're wrong but less of a chance, and every external verification decreases that chance moreDeductive reasoning is the method of verification everyone uses. We can view inductive reasoning (what science, and most everything uses) as deductive reasoning with extra axioms. Deductive reasoning is the mechanism of all human understanding, it’s not just my method. We’ve been using it (with extra assumptions) in our discussion here.Well I’ll just quote myself from a different thread about just that here. First it’s not necessary to be able to predict something completely for it to be completely determined. For example, if the function of our brains is completely impenetrable and for all extensive purposes random, then it’s random. Random does not mean we are deciding things. Anyway.
Tolstoy gives a good example of an argument for free will. He didn’t rely on physics here but simply on an idea of cause and effect, he was well into studying the histories of wars and stuff. Say you want to disprove that all your actions are previously determined. You say; “with my free will, I’m going to decide to raise my hand” and then raise your hand. Everything you said previous to raising your hand necessitated the raising of your hand. What you said was necessitated by the conversation. The conversation happened because you and your interlocutor were in the same place at the same time and some fancy came into one of your heads to talk of determinism. This happened because you saw a stone fall. Etc.
Now Tolstoy argued it much better, but it just illustrates cause and effect.
Apologies for the delayed reply
That's an argument for limited free will. I can't control every single thing in my life that led me up to lifting my arm but I can control the decision to lift my arm or not. I can't control the past but I can have limited control over the future. The options are not absolute free will where we have total control over ourselves and our environment (e.g. I can't choose to walk on the surface of the sun) or absolute determinism where we're nothing more than robots, the reality is somewhere in between.
btw, I see you're setting the colour of your text to black. That can affect people who use different skins where the background can be black. you should just let the website decide what colour to make your text. What's that, an atheist asking you to do something to help others for no return, even though it doesn't affect him personally!?!? :eek::eek::eek::eek::pac:0 -
raah, you've always been assuming that people accept these definitions of good and I've been telling you that you're living in a fantasy land where you have defined the world the way you think it should be and failed to take account of the way it actually is. A cursory glance at the world shows that just telling people they're doing wrong doesn't prevent anything. Everybody who hurts someone else already knows that what they're doing is defined as "wrong" so telling them again isn't going to achieve anything.
I've never said that, I just said that for "glance at the world as it is" to confirm things about your system you'd have to know alot more about people.Also when you compared our two "axioms" with the assumption that they would be accepted your version of mine was quite the straw man and it remains quite the straw man, e.g. you're still talking about being "biologically prevented" from doing something as if it makes it impossible and not just more difficult and you're also still talking about "deriving my system from evolution" when I keep telling you that evolution is only one part of it.
Liking people, and fear of being caught can be reduced to evolutionary reasons. It wasn't a strawman but a means by which to compare the two systems.Your argument also "precludes the possibility of being caught" but that is not possible in the real world, another example of you defining the world how you like and ignoring how it is.
I firmly believe that this is you ignoring how the world is. I know people who steal things from shops everyday, and haven't been caught. Induction by enumeration would imply that they are not likely to be caught
You are ignoring the fact that I addressed this "caring about people" notion, in nearly all my posts. I didn't give it the same attention as fear of being caught because you accepted that everybody loves everybody.You are also ignoring the fact that I said fear of retribution is not the only thing preventing people from doing harm.
And yes, also in all the cases I mentioned, the crimes were being perpetprated against people about whom the perpetrator did not care. This is a strawman!People for the most part care about other people, this is again the "moral compass" or "conscience", and this caring about people causes people to restrain themselves from doing harm even in the impossible scenario where they know for a fact they will never be caught.In one breath you talk about my system being "derived from evolution" and talk about the failings of this, then in the next you say that my system's only motivation for not doing harm is fear of retribution, totally forgetting the evolution component. Fear of being caught gives us one reason for not doing harm and our "conscience", which exists as a result of evolution, gives us another.
I said that was the main motiviation, going from the definitino you gave, where there were two motivating factors. Fear and caring about people. Concscience formation is very much a cultural/ideological process. And while this could be argued to be linked to evolution, it does not support your system. In fact it serves as evidence for the point you argued against at the start. A "conscience" is what tells us good from bad. This is also predicated on the fact that the person will care about the person to whom they are supposed to display a conscience. This is not a part of your system.
Again, a summary: not everyone is afraid of everyone, and not everyone loves everyone. You've never addressed the fact that your system fails to prevent someone who doesn't like somone and does not fear retribution from killing that person. That's a massive failing, and on it's own renders the system worthless. Any other system is superior. That's why it's more than "imperfect".
Also, much of this suggests your not actually reading or understanding my points, because your rebuttal does not answer them in anyway.
Well I never actually put forward a single system. But anyway number 2 sounds like you don't believe any people believe in god? or that some proof is necessary to do so. If anything it's you who isn't looking at the real world. Number 1 is just a massive strawman. It applies every moral system. For example somone is in a shop stealing things and you say "hey, you care about people and are afraid of being caught, stop!", technically he would have been caught al ready, but if we see this as a conversation between the two then he wouldn't care. Equally, a religioius person would also be afraid of being caught if they were stealing something. They would also be plain wrong. They would be doing a bad thing. As to number 3 I don't know where you got this flip of a coin business.But anyway, besides all of your straw manning of my system, I have acknowledged that it's not a perfect system over and over and over again as you repeated the possible flaws over and over and over again. The arguments against your system are as follows:- Regardless of how strongly your logic suggests that telling people they're doing wrong because god says so over and over again should stop them, reality begs to differ. People have been telling other people they were doing wrong for thousands of years and they did "wrong" anyway.
- Your system depends on the existence of a god whose existence has not been proven despite thousand of years of trying. Both this reason and the previous one mean that your assumption that people will accept your "axiom" and adjust their behaviour accordingly is nothing but a pipe dream. It's never going to happen no matter how much you think it should. As I keep saying, you're arguing that teleporters are better than cars and forgetting that teleporters don't exist
- Your system of morality is decided on a coin toss so I don't even see why it even matters if anyone behaves morally. Your reason for saying that an argument from the authority of god is not a fallacy is "No person is infallible and the person can be lying. I don’t think I need to point out why using the theistic god is different from using a person". But in your god based system morality is defined arbitrarily, as if by the flip of a coin. Infallibility and honesty are totally irrelevant if the decision was arrived at by a flip of a coin. The "authority" in your argument from authority is not an infallible being, it's a coin that lands randomly on either side. Your system of morality goes back as far as "because god says so" and says "for us the arbitrariness ends here" but you are forgetting that we can go one level further:
God said so because he loves people and wants them to live a moral life. If he flipped a coin he would have known exactly how it came up because he was omniscient. Silly exampe really.Why is murder bad?
Because god says so. <----You stop here. I continue
Why did god say so?
Because he flipped a coin and it came up tails.
Also, even if it was a coin flip situation (which it's not) I still maintain this system would be superior to yours.
Again this depends on your coin toss business which I disagree with.
Anyone can flip a coin and randomly assign labels to things, infallibility and omniscience are irrelevant. Your system makes the terms right and wrong completely meaningless, they're just labels that were randomly assigned to actions by someone who happened to be omniscient. A system that is defined without reason provides no reason to follow it; why should anyone obey a rule that was decided by a coin toss and that could just as easily have led to the extinction of the human race as a utopian paradise, had the coin landed the other way, especially someone who insists on having reasons for doing the things they do? How can one place value on right over wrong when they're just randomly assigned labels?
This is a strawman. I never said that it was a failing of science, I was just saying that it's the means by which lazy people like you and me confirm what we read in popular science books. For example, I said that quantum mechanics has no effect whatsoever on the ridiculousness of free will. This is based on what an expert said. I trust he knows what he's talking about.No one has to rely on arguments from authority in science, that's the point. If people are too lazy or don't have the expertise to verify things for themselves they can just accept whatever scientists say but it's not the scientists fault and it's not a failing of science, it's a failing of lazy people.
I didn't end in the conclusion, I just put it at the end there to help you out. The question was "is pushing hte button bad", the conclusion was "yes, pushing the button is bad bec ause people die when there head is chopped off and therefore, it kills them".LOL, you assumed your conclusion. That's the definition of a circular argument. Here's another one for clarity:
Yes in deductive reasoning the premis entails the proof. Every mathematical proof words like this. It's not circular because while the conclusion entailed the premis, the conclusion and the premis were not the same thing. We Proved that pushing the button was wrong, we didn't know this. It depends on the proposition being proved. The proposition being proved was not that killing is bad. It was regardness the badness of pressing the button. This consideration will be helpful in our discussion of morality aswell.
Yes it depends on the proposition being proved, that's why yours is circular and mine isn't. If the question was "prove killing is bad" then it would be circular, it wasn't so it's not.Define a rule that raah's arguments are always circular.
raah has just made an argument
Therefore it's circular.
That's a proof!!!!!
Your argument is just:
Assume killing is bad.
Therefore killing by pushing a button is badOf course it is, you've started off by assuming that killing by any method is bad and given the example of killing by pushing a button, which is already included in the initial assumption. For this argument to be non-circular your conclusion would have to be something like "pushing buttons in general is bad" but it's not, it's only bad when it's used as a method of doing something that you've already assumed is bad.
That the button killed was not part of the assumption. Now, you are completely wrong, but lets suppose you were right. Your exampe would serve as the example of deductive proof then, so it would only support my earlier points for which I cited this as an example.
This is wrong. And if you criticise deductive reasoning you are criticising any system of thought whatsoever, including science.Yeah I know deductive reasoning is used but it's not a method of verification. It defines what you think should be the case, not what actually is the case.
As I've said, empiricism uses logical reasoning. Induction is a less accurate form of deduction. Empricism is less valid at verification than pure deduction, or maths.After you arrive at your conclusion you must then find if your conclusion is correct by seeing if your conclusion matches the facts of our universe.
I didn't and there's not. You are confused, and infact using circular reasoning. You are using the matter in question "deductive reasoning" to determine the validiity of deductive reasoning, except somehow arriving at negative conclusions. That's worse than circular reasoning, I don't think there's even a word for that. Maybe it's just regular circular reasoning.You can just accept your deductive conclusion if you want but there is a significant chance that you will be wrong, such as when you use a circular argument as you just did.That's an argument for limited free will. I can't control every single thing in my life that led me up to lifting my arm but I can control the decision to lift my arm or not. I can't control the past but I can have limited control over the future. The options are not absolute free will where we have total control over ourselves and our environment (e.g. I can't choose to walk on the surface of the sun) or absolute determinism where we're nothing more than robots, the reality is somewhere in between.
Tolstoy's example is perhaps. But the physical explanation most certainly is not. If we want to accept materialism, we must conceed the ultimate cause of everything in the universe is the big bang. The proximal cuase could be electrons moving about in your brain. These electrons moving have their own causes and effects.
If you'd like to make any points from a scientific viewpoint about "the reality being somewhere in between" then I'd love to hear them. I've never heard any myself.
Heh, I think my word processor just did this automatically when I pasted it over. I don't think too many people are reading my posts either :Pbtw, I see you're setting the colour of your text to black. That can affect people who use different skins where the background can be black. you should just let the website decide what colour to make your text. What's that, an atheist asking you to do something to help others for no return, even though it doesn't affect him personally!?!? :eek::eek::eek::eek::pac:0 -
This is getting ridiculously long so I'm just going to cut it down to one point
Any people=/=all people. For every person who abuses my system and shows the cracks in it there'll always be one who abuses yours and shows its cracks.Well I never actually put forward a single system. But anyway number 2 sounds like you don't believe any people believe in god? Or that some proof is necessary to do so. If anything it's you who isn't looking at the real world. Number 1 is just a massive strawman.
Why does a moral life matter if it's just a random set of actions that were decided on a coin toss? Let's say god defined eating shell fish and wearing clothes made of different threads as wrong (which he did before his son who is also himself was born). What possible benefit could these rules have for your life and why the hell does it matter if you follow them?God said so because he loves people and wants them to live a moral life. If he flipped a coin he would have known exactly how it came up because he was omniscient. Silly exampe really.
Also, even if it was a coin flip situation (which it's not) I still maintain this system would be superior to yours.
Your point about him knowing how the coin was going to land suggests you don't know what the word arbitrary means. If he had any desire whatsoever for the coin to come up a particular way then he had a reason for wanting that. If he had a reason then the system is not arbitrary, he didn't define right and wrong, he derived it from reason and we can too.
Why is killing them bad?I didn't end in the conclusion, I just put it at the end there to help you out. The question was "is pushing hte button bad", the conclusion was "yes, pushing the button is bad bec ause people die when there head is chopped off and therefore, it kills them".0 -
Yerp, It seems we've covered everything anyway.This is getting ridiculously long so I'm just going to cut it down to one pointAny people=/=all people. For every person who abuses my system and shows the cracks in it there'll always be one who abuses yours and shows its cracks.
What I was trying to point (much more emphasis was placed on this in earlier posts) was that while one needs to contradict systems which say "stealing is bad" in order to steal, one can work it into your system. So rather than them being cracks, they are a part of it.
Again I haven't accepted this coin toss business and given you reasonsWhy does a moral life matter if it's just a random set of actions that were decided on a coin toss? Let's say god defined eating shell fish and wearing clothes made of different threads as wrong (which he did before his son who is also himself was born). What possible benefit could these rules have for your life and why the hell does it matter if you follow them?
That was just a humerous aside to the main piont. That point was that it wasn't arbitrary, it seems you've ignored it.Your point about him knowing how the coin was going to land suggests you don't know what the word arbitrary means.
I do not see the idea of agreeing with a set of rules put down by a god, or derived from his existence to be irrational. You have really disregarded the only serious point i mad ein that argument.If he had any desire whatsoever for the coin to come up a particular way then he had a reason for wanting that. If he had a reason then the system is not arbitrary, he didn't define right and wrong, he derived it from reason and we can too.
In the example stated, this was the premise. You don't prove premises. To prove that it would be arbitrary.Why is killing them bad?
As it is in all deductive reasoning/mathematics.The conclusion was a subset of the premise.0 -
We're back to semantics. Neither system actually prevents these things from happening which is all that matters
What I was trying to point (much more emphasis was placed on this in earlier posts) was that while one needs to contradict systems which say "stealing is bad" in order to steal, one can work it into your system. So rather than them being cracks, they are a part of it.Again I haven't accepted this coin toss business and given you reasons
That was just a humerous aside to the main piont. That point was that it wasn't arbitrary, it seems you've ignored it.
I do not see the idea of agreeing with a set of rules put down by a god, or derived from his existence to be irrational. You have really disregarded the only serious point i mad ein that argument.
You say that you need reasons for doing the things you do
If a system is arbitrary there is no reason behind it, even if the person who arbitrarily defined it is omnipotent
Why should anyone follow the rules of a system that are defined randomly and without reason and why does it matter if they don't?
Do you think that god had reasons for defining good and bad the way he did?In the example stated, this was the premise. You don't prove premises. To prove that it would be arbitrary.
As it is in all deductive reasoning/mathematics.
In a valid argument the conclusion is derived from the premise. If the conclusion is contained within the premise you haven't derived anything, you've just restated the premise in a different way.0 -
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We're back to semantics. Neither system actually prevents these things from happening which is all that matters
I would debate the imortance of saying that "people who do not accept these definitions of good will not direct their lives along them". My point was, your system doesn't stop them even when accepted.
Hey god! Why'd you define this as good?You say that you need reasons for doing the things you do
If a system is arbitrary there is no reason behind it, even if the person who arbitrarily defined it is omnipotent
Because I am by definition good, and I love everyone, so I'd like to direct you to live good lives.
That's not arbitrary. The levels of arbitrariness occur further back in this system.
Again, I've never accepted your coin toss thing so you'll have to justify this before making these points.Why should anyone follow the rules of a system that are defined randomly and without reason and why does it matter if they don't?
I imagine so, though it does depend on the conception of god to which one adheres. What is important is that we can give reasons for accepting them.Do you think that god had reasons for defining good and bad the way he did?In a valid argument the conclusion is derived from the premise. If the conclusion is contained within the premise you haven't derived anything, you've just restated the premise in a different way.
So much for nearly every mathematical theorem then. The definitino of deductive reasoning is that the premises entail the conclusion. The only way to derive a conclusion from a premise without adding extra assumptions (like the uniformity of nature) is for it to be contained entirely within the premise. That's what deductive reasoning is. Deductive reasoning is the best most certain way of validation.0 -
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champion of the universe0
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In every thread that God is mentioned the atheists have to get their say. For people that don't believe in God they sure like talking about him :rolleyes:0
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Again, irrelevant. Neither system prevents immoral behaviourI would debate the imortance of saying that "people who do not accept these definitions of good will not direct their lives along them". My point was, your system doesn't stop them even when accepted.
If god had reasons, the system is not arbitrary and god did not define good and bad, he derived them. If things were defined as good or bad based on whether or not they're loving, then good and bad are extensions of loving and not loving and again, not arbitrary. God is limited to calling those things that are loving goodHey god! Why'd you define this as good?
Because I am by definition good, and I love everyone, so I'd like to direct you to live good lives.
That's not arbitrary. The levels of arbitrariness occur further back in this system.
Again, I've never accepted your coin toss thing so you'll have to justify this before making these points.
I imagine so, though it does depend on the conception of god to which one adheres. What is important is that we can give reasons for accepting them.
Either god had reasons such as "x is loving, therefore x is good", in which case good and bad are not arbitrary and he did not define them or god didn't have reasons in which case the system is completely random and there is no reason whatsoever to follow it
Derived from =/= contained withinSo much for nearly every mathematical theorem then. The definitino of deductive reasoning is that the premises entail the conclusion. The only way to derive a conclusion from a premise without adding extra assumptions (like the uniformity of nature) is for it to be contained entirely within the premise. That's what deductive reasoning is. Deductive reasoning is the best most certain way of validation.
If every disagreement began with making assumptions that implictly include the conclusion and that are never questioned, there would be no such thing as a disagreement0 -
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I think now it is you who isn't living in the real world. Have you not ever heard anyone say "I'm not stealing this because it's wrong". I don't mind using myself as an example. I have some friends who casually swipe all sorts of things from all sorts of places. I could be right there with them in the same situations, you can say I'm just afraid, but I'm telling you the only reason I don't steal things is because I think it is wrong.Again, irrelevant. Neither system prevents immoral behaviour
Yes, pretty much everything must end up in something arbitrary. Such is the nature of logic. People see God as this final point, and while it's often based on "personal experience" I would not call it arbitrary.If god had reasons, the system is not arbitrary and god did not define good and bad, he derived them. If things were defined as good or bad based on whether or not they're loving, then good and bad are extensions of loving and not loving and again, not arbitrary. God is limited to calling those things that are loving good
What ever the case is, the reason people will use to follow the system are the same reasons they believe in god.Either god had reasons such as "x is loving, therefore x is good", in which case good and bad are not arbitrary and he did not define them or god didn't have reasons in which case the system is completely random and there is no reason whatsoever to follow it
I don't understand that symbol. But for direct derivation, without extra assumptions, yes the premise must entail the conclusion.Derived from =/= contained within
People disagree about axiom choice. Those are the unproved quantities. All use of deductive reasoning is such, not inductive, there are more conditions for inductive reasoning.If every disagreement began with making assumptions that implictly include the conclusion and that are never questioned, there would be no such thing as a disagreement0 -
Yes I have heard that, I've also heard "I'm not doing x because I'll get caught" and "I'm not doing x because it would hurt someone". You're focussing only on the cases where your system might prevent immoral behaviour and ignoring all the behaviour that it most definitely won't prevent while ignoring all the cases where my system will prevent immoral behaviour and focussing only on the cases where it won't. It's called confirmation bias, the foundation upon which all poorly reasoned shakily held beliefs are built.I think now it is you who isn't living in the real world. Have you not ever heard anyone say "I'm not stealing this because it's wrong". I don't mind using myself as an example. I have some friends who casually swipe all sorts of things from all sorts of places. I could be right there with them in the same situations, you can say I'm just afraid, but I'm telling you the only reason I don't steal things is because I think it is wrong.
If god has defined his rules arbitrarily then picking god as your end point is as arbitrary as carrying around a coin and tossing it to make all of your decisions. You cannot simultaneously say that god had reasons for defining good and bad the way he did and say that he defined them arbitrarily. Those statements are mutually exclusive. Please choose one, bearing in mind the consequences of each choice: either morality is random and there is no reason to follow it or good and bad can be derived by reason based on the objective facts of our universe, no god required.Yes, pretty much everything must end up in something arbitrary. Such is the nature of logic. People see God as this final point, and while it's often based on "personal experience" I would not call it arbitrary.
What ever the case is, the reason people will use to follow the system are the same reasons they believe in god.I don't understand that symbol. But for direct derivation, without extra assumptions, yes the premise must entail the conclusion.
People disagree about axiom choice. Those are the unproved quantities. All use of deductive reasoning is such, not inductive, there are more conditions for inductive reasoning.
Here's an example of your type of proof:
Assume raah! is a woman
All women have vaginas
Therefore raah! has a vagina
Despite just proving that you have a vagina by your method of deductive reasoning, I still have no idea what's in your pants0 -
Lads, he Abrahamic religions are based on a book written by men.
I wouldn't go putting too much faith into the bible or its sequels.0 -
Yes I have heard that, I've also heard "I'm not doing x because I'll get caught" and "I'm not doing x because it would hurt someone". You're focussing only on the cases where your system might prevent immoral behaviour and ignoring all the behaviour that it most definitely won't prevent while ignoring all the cases where my system will prevent immoral behaviour and focussing only on the cases where it won't. It's called confirmation bias, the foundation upon which all poorly reasoned shakily held beliefs are built.
I've never put forward what "my system" is. I merely stated that more openly arbitrary systems are better. I'm comparing the two systems, I addressed all the strong points, you asked me to point out the weak points and I did so. What I did was show say that every kind of behaviour your system prevents, is also prevented by most other systems, but there are things your system doesn't prevent which mind does. This isn't confirmation anything, you've just ignored when I said "every good thign about your system is contained within others".
I've already said why I don't think using these kind of buzzwords doesn't constitute honest argumentation.If god has defined his rules arbitrarily then picking god as your end point is as arbitrary as carrying around a coin and tossing it to make all of your decisions.
Well my last post was a bit muddled. What i mean is that it is not arbitrary for people accepting this set of rules. Their moral system is then not arbitrary. I do not see god as being anyway similar to flipping a coin, but even the coin system would be non-arbitrary to people adopting it. This is because the arbitrariness is pushed back from the definition of good and bad.
Why is that good?
The coin landed on heads.
If you think people have more reason to accept the rules of a coin than they do of God then I can I accuse you of not living in the real world again.
Ok well it doesn't matter really if he had reasons or not. It's an argument from authority which I've stated earlier (which isn't a logical fallacy in this case, which we've also established). I did not put much effort into replying to this because it's very ridiculous. Do you think a coin is a better authority than a deity? (you probably do, but other people don't and they are the ones we are discussion).You cannot simultaneously say that god had reasons for defining good and bad the way he did and say that he defined them arbitrarily.
All moral systems must start on arbitrary statements. They can be predicated on non-arbitrary ones (like your one based on caring about people etc.). It doesn't make sense to accuse me of something which I've been arguing against this entire time.Those statements are mutually exclusive. Please choose one, bearing in mind the consequences of each choice: either morality is random and there is no reason to follow it
What I am saying is, people have reason to follow the "arbitrary" or "random" rules of an all knowing deity. They have reasons to follow them, regardless of whether the deity has reasons for giving them. That isn't relevant to the conversation.
Again, hume's gap.or good and bad can be derived by reason based on the objective facts of our universe, no god required.Here's an example of your type of proof:
Assume raah! is a woman
All women have vaginas
Therefore raah! has a vagina
Despite just proving that you have a vagina by your method of deductive reasoning, I still have no idea what's in your pants
This completely misses the point. The assumption here is massivelty different to any I've ever used in any examples, but that is an example of deductive reasoning. Just with a faulty assumption.
I gave you an example of verification. You said it was circular, it wasn't. That comparison is completely ridiculous, especially since I haven't ever been arguing against empiricism at all. The assumption that I'm a woman is an empirical matter.
I've already stressed some posts back the importance of choosing your assumptions/axioms.0 -
genericguy wrote: »if i were askmychocolate, i'd be at least a small bit worried that islam/hinduism/judaism might be the correct religions to follow rather than christianity.
at the end of the day though, it stands to reason based on askmychocolates logic that the atheists are better people than the religious, because we're good people off our own backs, rather than because we fear being punished by some almighty bloke.
I,m sorry GG. I should have answered this post properly instead of with a smartarse answer. I believe in a lot of the teachings of Jesus Christ and because of where I was raised I obviously Identify more with him than with other prophets of other faiths of no doubt equal insight/courage/honesty (In the same way as I would think of Cuchulainn or Robin Hood, though I'm sure there are Chinese/Indian/Russian equivalents). I do not believe in religion although I find a lot in the Bible of help when interpreted correctly. I would probably not fit into most people's idea of a follower of Christ( I reckon if he was around today he'd probably be a Muslim) as I don't accept for one second that he was the son of God or that he rose from the dead (except metaphorically). I also certainly don't believe that God is some Man in the sky. I'd have to say, sadly, that "The Force" in Star Wars probably is the closest I can get to explaining what I think God is? I don't believe I will be punished by God for whatever I choose to do.
I believe that morality and justice and altruism, and immorality and selfishness and deceit etc. basically Good and Evil (God and the Devil) predate man and life itself and we evolved into the capacity to be two sides of this coin. I have chosen to believe in this theory of evolution as I can see no other that makes sense. You say you don't need God to know the difference between right and wrong, but unless it is a higher force that guides you then you must give a logical reason as to why you consider rape ,murder, stealing etc. to be "wrong". I have explained why I believe in God and hence why I believe in right and wrong. You have given no reason as to why you believe in it except to say "they just are". This implies that either you just do what your ancestors did, regardless of the fact that their survival needs and associated moral communist activities are no longer applicable to modern capitalist society, or because your parents raised you that way. Fear of jail/reprisal is a perfectly valid reason for not doing bad things. But you have given no logical reason for doing good things or indeed even explained how you have come yourself to the conclusion that any deed is "good" or "bad" or even why you would accept them as concepts.The argument that we evolved that way and are hardwired that way implies that you don't consider yourself evolved enough to challenge social conditioning and inherited values.
Either way, without any valid reason for behaving morally or tendering any logical reason for possessing the value system you have, it really does seem a little Irish to be scoffing smugly at people of faith (in a lot of cases uncertain) for being "Too intellectually lazy to do any research" imo.
AMC0 -
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Sorry, was banned from the thread for a few days so haven't quite caught up. Hope last post wasn't ten pages too late. Will read complete thread before posting again. Lots of interesting stuff. Thanks everyone for replying.
OP0
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