(January 28, 2016 at 12:01 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 11:28 am)Drich Wrote: So then if Empathy is controllable by the culture, it is not a force that will trancend the culture and help you define right and wrong because the culture will control who it is you will have empathy for. So again if the culture makes a hard left into evil then you can be sure your empathy will have been long switched off so you can march right over who the culture wants gone.

And if you happen to be born into the wrong religion, will your belief in the wrong 'objective' values help you to transcend your predicament?

That the exact question I'm asking isn't it? What do you have that will help you see through whatever you've been taught?

(January 28, 2016 at 12:11 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 12:05 pm)Drich Wrote: This is still performance based morality.. which means no matter how well intentioned it is still subject to self righteousness, and will eventually degrade and fail.

Every criticism you can come up with for a subjectivist morality plagues your subjectively selected 'objective' morality too.

That's the thing... I am not selling any type of morality. (Works based righteousness)

(January 28, 2016 at 12:15 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Jeus schrist man we get it, you're certain that people are terrible, shitty and craven things.  I'd suggest that you may be under this impression due to a small sample size.  Namely yourself.

My moral standard has nothing to do with my heart - which pumps blood.  You;re free to hold the opinion that any given morality is junk, as am I.  So, pop morality is out as per you, biblical morality is out as per me.  I guess that means I'm just going to have to drift into amoral cuntitude.


.....Or not.  

Hearts are not limited to just pumping blood. the term heart (according to the Oxford english dictionary) also refers to the
the centre of a person’s thoughts and emotions, especially love or compassion. So unless you have created your own language that mirrors the english language except in instances like this where you simply don't want it to, YOUR HEART does indeed reflect your/any moral standard.

Not only that if you were to actually open your little mind, you would quickly see I am not talking about replacing one set of morals with another. ALL MORALS are Crap! God is not Looking at Any version of morality, and neither should any of us to determine if one is righteous or not. Because ALL Morality no matter if it is christian or not allows for sin God is not willing to abide. That is why atonement is offered instead.

ASK A QUESTION If YOU STILL DONT GET IT, rather than go off on a self righteous rant.

This is a complex subject, because the 'church' has itself wrongfully pushed its own version of morality for so long. However this is not what the bible teaches.

To the OP, is it possible that conforming to a moral absolute often entails responding to specific circumstances including the times amd cultures in which people find themselves?

Sorry buddy, my heart is just a blood pump.  If you want to be a shitty poet go and do that, but not while you discuss what you purport to be facts of divine importance.  I'm not interested in atonement, and gods opinion of all morality is worth nothing to me, as are the teachings of the bible as related by yourself.  

A complex subject?  Doesn't seem like it, you just summed up your position in what, three sentences...summed up gods in one sentence.....none of which have any relevance to me.  To you and to god all morality is crap.  NP, you've recused yourselves from the discussion of morality.  Why then, do you persist? What questions do you think I would have for you -or- your god? There was nothing I needed either of you to explain to me -before- you'd excluded yourselves from the discussion, what could either of you possibly have to say now?

(January 28, 2016 at 12:27 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Except that the claims the Nazis used to justify their holocaust were, you know, factually incorrect? If you build a moral outlook based upon false foundations, the moral system that results will not supply morally correct conclusions because the means of deriving those conclusions would be wrong. Are you so completely spaced out and separated from reality that you don't even consider whether the things people do align with the facts anymore?

But that's the thing isn't it? "Nazi" facts were not too far off center at the time. what they did was take what was known about 'evolution' and through their propaganda machine put a slight slant/positive spin on one race/sub species over the others, then they identified their followers as being apart of the ultimate evolutionary purity that 'natural selection' was taking too long to vet out ...

ever wonder why if a particular species of a given genus shows any variances it is reclassified with a different species name or placed in a sub species category? All except Humanity? Well, in the 1930's was indeed subdivided. This division is what the Nazi's used to justify their claims of racial superiority/ablity for higher reasoning and cognitive abilities. They were not just pulling random facts out of the air. they were using real science, that at the time the world recognized. what's more they (the citizens of Nazi germany) like any of us do not generally have access to facts beyond what a given discipline wants circulated. I point back to the 'fact' that we are no longer subdivided into different or sub species categories. Our knowledge of the 'truth' is capped by the same society that provides us with 'morality.'

Quote:(the question)
So how then do we know in this soceity who like Nazi German has separated the state from God, have not made an 'evil' left turn like the nazi's did?

Quote:Constant reverification of the moral underpinnings of that society via evidence and logic. Democracies are actually pretty good (not perfect, but pretty good) at that.

Democracies like the republic of Iran? or the People's Republic of China?
Or do you mean just white western republics?

I would say a 'republic' simply repersents what the majority of the people want... So if the Majority of people want to be evil, then the country will be evil. (The republic of Iran, or Syrian Arab republic) then what that culture's first task would be is to take control of it's citizens morality and warp it to fit the new direction the country wants to go.

My question remains. If you were in the mist of a given society's hard turn to evil, do you have the tools to spot the turn and do you have the where with all to stand against it?

Quote:I think I see the problem though, which is sort of the problem with every argument you make, Drich: your conception of the issue you're discussing is so simplistic that a child could have it. You're sitting here acting like any change to a moral system is evidence that the system is arbitrary and ineffective, and that stolidly never changing is the sign of objectivity, and that's ridiculous. "You know what I want, out of a moral system? A refusal to ever change in the face of new evidence."

Was it Einstein who said, "if you can not explain a precept so simply a child could grasp it, then you yourself do not truly understand the principle."
Just because the principle is explained very simply does not mean we/I can wade deeper into the pool.. The problem is my 'swim buddy' in this instance you (as witnessed by your opening paragraph) doesn't fully grasp/can't make all of the connective parallels between our popular culture and the pop culture of the Nazis, that would allow us to go any deeper. I feel it because You are either too lazy to look into it or simply place too much blind faith that you/this culture is somehow immune to the mistakes of our forefathers. That's why you are throwing out weak arguments concerning the nature of their evidence or their failure to be a republic.. As if either of those things would safe guard us from following down that path.
Not to mention as simple as my argument is, you don't seem to be able come up with any sort of safe guard that would ensure that you yourself would not be goose stepping your way into some great 'societal cause' if your 'republic' used 'science' to demanded it.

Quote:Morality is a learning process because we as humans are always learning.
We don't know everything, and as the pool of information we have available to make our ethical determinations grows, the determinations themselves must change with that. Why would that be a bad thing to you? If we discover that the underpinnings of something we'd taken as morally bad are factually wrong, why should we continue to pretend as though it's still bad, when the basis of that turned out to be untrue?

then please I'd love to hear your take on my hypothetical concerning pedophiles: http://atheistforums.org/post-1187436.html#pid1187436
post number 25

(January 28, 2016 at 12:45 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 12:33 pm)Drich Wrote: I am asking you and people like you, that without God's righteousness to anchor your ideas of right and wrong/your morality, and your morality simply hangs on what society tells you is right and wrong how will you know when and if society makes a hard left turn into evil Like Nazi Germany did? I pointed out that the Germans did not see themselves as evil, but being moral up right citizens, just like the Americans responsible for the whole sale slaughter of Indians and or the Aussie slaughter of its indigenous people.

God's righteousness is nothing but the pop morality of several thousand years ago.  First we had the Jews and their version of pop morality.  Then along comes Jesus, and he teaches a different sort of morality, based on blood sacrifice and atonement.  Then we have Mohammed's version which builds on that.   And eventually we get to Baha'ullah's version further on down the road.  You aren't defending a specific morality because they all share the same traits of 'pop morality' regardless of from when and where they come.  You're simply arguing a preference for dogmatic truths, ones that don't change, over those that do.  But your God's righteousness is just another link in a chain of relativistic morals.  It's no different, and no better.  Matter of fact, by its inability to accommodate changes in our knowledge about the world makes it worse in that it is a slave to past errors.  (And yes, Virginia, God's righteousness isn't immune to mistakes.)

But again I am not pushing for one morality over another...

Drich, you're right about pederasty. In Plato's Symposium, some of the participants rationalized the practice of older men taking young lovers by claiming that the youths benefited from the relationship. I predict that we will start to see attempts by some perverts to soon do the same. After all, aren't they helping the vulnerable boys to embrace their budding sexuality? They did it "for the children!"

(January 29, 2016 at 11:45 am)Drich Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 12:27 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Except that the claims the Nazis used to justify their holocaust were, you know, factually incorrect? If you build a moral outlook based upon false foundations, the moral system that results will not supply morally correct conclusions because the means of deriving those conclusions would be wrong. Are you so completely spaced out and separated from reality that you don't even consider whether the things people do align with the facts anymore?

But that's the thing isn't it? "Nazi" facts were not too far off center at the time. what they did was take what was known about 'evolution' and through their propaganda machine put a slight slant/positive spin on one race/sub species over the others, then they identified their followers as being apart of the ultimate evolutionary purity that 'natural selection' was taking too long to vet out ...

ever wonder why if a particular species of a given genus shows any variances it is reclassified with a different species name or placed in a sub species category? All except Humanity? Well, in the 1930's was indeed subdivided. This division is what the Nazi's used to justify their claims of racial superiority/ablity for higher reasoning and cognitive abilities. They were not just pulling random facts out of the air. they were using real science, that at the time the world recognized. what's more they (the citizens of Nazi germany) like any of us do not generally have access to facts beyond what a given discipline wants circulated. I point back to the 'fact' that we are no longer subdivided into different or sub species categories. Our knowledge of the 'truth' is capped by the same society that provides us with 'morality.'

Quote:(the question)
So how then do we know in this soceity who like Nazi German has separated the state from God, have not made an 'evil' left turn like the nazi's did?

Quote:Constant reverification of the moral underpinnings of that society via evidence and logic. Democracies are actually pretty good (not perfect, but pretty good) at that.

Democracies like the republic of Iran? or the People's Republic of China?
Or do you mean just white western republics?

I would say a 'republic' simply repersents what the majority of the people want... So if the Majority of people want to be evil, then the country will be evil. (The republic of Iran, or Syrian Arab republic) then what that culture's first task would be is to take control of it's citizens morality and warp it to fit the new direction the country wants to go.

My question remains. If you were in the mist of a given society's hard turn to evil, do you have the tools to spot the turn and do you have the where with all to stand against it?

Quote:I think I see the problem though, which is sort of the problem with every argument you make, Drich: your conception of the issue you're discussing is so simplistic that a child could have it. You're sitting here acting like any change to a moral system is evidence that the system is arbitrary and ineffective, and that stolidly never changing is the sign of objectivity, and that's ridiculous. "You know what I want, out of a moral system? A refusal to ever change in the face of new evidence."

Was it Einstein who said, "if you can not explain a precept so simply a child could grasp it, then you yourself do not truly understand the principle."
Just because the principle is explained very simply does not mean we/I can wade deeper into the pool.. The problem is my 'swim buddy' in this instance you (as witnessed by your opening paragraph) doesn't fully grasp/can't make all of the connective parallels between our popular culture and the pop culture of the Nazis, that would allow us to go any deeper. I feel it because You are either too lazy to look into it or simply place too much blind faith that you/this culture is somehow immune to the mistakes of our forefathers. That's why you are throwing out weak arguments concerning the nature of their evidence or their failure to be a republic.. As if either of those things would safe guard us from following down that path.
Not to mention as simple as my argument is, you don't seem to be able come up with any sort of safe guard that would ensure that you yourself would not be goose stepping your way into some great 'societal cause' if your 'republic' used 'science' to demanded it.

Quote:Morality is a learning process because we as humans are always learning.
We don't know everything, and as the pool of information we have available to make our ethical determinations grows, the determinations themselves must change with that. Why would that be a bad thing to you? If we discover that the underpinnings of something we'd taken as morally bad are factually wrong, why should we continue to pretend as though it's still bad, when the basis of that turned out to be untrue?

then please I'd love to hear your take on my hypothetical concerning pedophiles: http://atheistforums.org/post-1187436.html#pid1187436
post number 25

"ever wonder why if a particular species of a given genus shows any variances it is reclassified with a different species name or placed in a sub species category? All except Humanity? Well, in the 1930's was indeed subdivided. This division is what the Nazi's used to justify their claims of racial superiority/ablity for higher reasoning and cognitive abilities. They were not just pulling random facts out of the air. they were using real science, that at the time the world recognized. what's more they (the citizens of Nazi germany) like any of us do not generally have access to facts beyond what a given discipline wants circulated. I point back to the 'fact' that we are no longer subdivided into different or sub species categories. Our knowledge of the 'truth' is capped by the same society that provides us with 'morality.'"

Evolution is defined in terms of breeding. A human of any race can breed with a human of any other race and the offspring will itself be fertile. In no sense are humans of different races belonging in a different species.

Google "definition of species".

(January 29, 2016 at 10:38 am)Drich Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 6:26 am)robvalue Wrote: Oh one more thing:

Apologists for the morality we see in the bible/Quran sound like they're writing an essay titled, "Why I deserve the daily beatings from my father".

I will never cease to be amazed that you all still can't get that the 'daily beatings' aren't for the Father's children... they are for those who arent.

Yeah because that makes it perfectly okay right?

So as long as he's not beating his own children it's perfectly okay?

Even your own analogy makes you look like a cunt.