The demonstrable truth of descriptive moral subjectivity combined with a persons own inability to either justify or have confidence in their (or someone else's) justification for moral realism commonly leads to a tentative subjectivism even as the person makes explicit or implicit appeals to realism.

None of this has anything to do with gods, so it still doesn't matter.  It's not a product of their atheism, but of their rational nature and conceptual or academic limitations. If it were a product of atheism, then you wouldn't find realism overwhelmingly represented by secular realists. If it -were- a product of atheism, and none of these true things were true, it still wouldn;t matter. Everything you're bitching about reduces to "hurr durr atheists can get it wrong"

So what, so can theists, as you've demonstrated. People, atheists or theists, getting shit wrong...doesn't have anything to do with gods.

(April 9, 2019 at 9:53 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: The demonstrable truth of descriptive moral subjectivity combined with a persons own inability to either justify or have confidence in their (or someone else's) justification for moral realism commonly leads to a tentative subjectivism even as the person makes explicit or implicit appeals to realism.

And this is why you have a hard time selling atheists here on moral realism. 

Try and rewrite that with less jargon, and in away more relatable and applicable to the real world. Find a way to express that simply. Use rob's moral subjectivism as an example.

(April 9, 2019 at 9:52 am)Acrobat Wrote:

(April 9, 2019 at 9:46 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Where did you present a definition of god for us to agree or disagree on? I'd really like it know what you mean by that word.

Here;

God: a belief that life signifies something, rather than nothing.

Thanks. So you're not a theist (someone who believes a god or God is actually real)? To be clear, as an atheist I have no problem agreeing that God is a belief.

(April 9, 2019 at 10:01 am)Acrobat Wrote:

(April 9, 2019 at 9:53 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: The demonstrable truth of descriptive moral subjectivity combined with a persons own inability to either justify or have confidence in their (or someone else's) justification for moral realism commonly leads to a tentative subjectivism even as the person makes explicit or implicit appeals to realism.

And this is why you have a hard time selling atheists here on moral realism. 

Try and rewrite that with less jargon, and in away more relatable and applicable to the real world.  Find a way to express that simply. Use rob's moral subjectivism as an example.

I don't, actually..but I'm not selling it so it wouldn't matter if I did. Most of the time they just find it unimpressive and not at all what they were expecting. I get that, particularly in the context of the believing lots constant shitposting about what they mistakenly refer to as objectivity. You're the one who needs it for some other batshit reason you refuse to articulate, remember?

-and it still has nothing to do with gods.

---

(April 9, 2019 at 10:10 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(April 9, 2019 at 9:52 am)Acrobat Wrote: Here;

God: a belief that life signifies something, rather than nothing.

Thanks. So you're not a theist (someone who believes a god or God is actually real)? To be clear, as an atheist I have no problem agreeing that God is a belief.

Nor do I, as an atheist, have a problem with the belief that life signifies something.

Right, value requires a valuer. I'm a valuer, and I believe my life has meaning and significance to me and hopefully to those close to me; just as their lives hold meaning to me.

(April 9, 2019 at 5:14 am)Acrobat Wrote:

(April 8, 2019 at 7:18 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: No, it doesn’t. There are perfectly natural, evolutionarily-grounded explainations for why we feel love for babies. It’s really not a brain bruster as to why living things care for their offspring.

Few things, I also accept evolution, appealing to evolution in defense of nihilism, doesn’t get much mileage as an argument.

Then I suppose it’s s good thing I’m not putting forth an argument for nihilism. I’m pointing out that appealing to things like love, empathy, and meaning as evidence for god is an argument from ignorance. These things are not problems or puzzles of the natural world that need solving. 

Quote:Evolution isn’t the source of the potential for lumps of matter to love, have eyes, reproduce, consciousness, etc... It only actualizes such potentials.

...what? 

Quote:Secondly, I didn’t say our love or empathy for babies. I was referring to our perceptions of the wrongness of torturing innocent babies just for fun, as something truly wrong, and not subjectively wrong, like we might say of our taste in food.

What makes it truly wrong?  

Quote:So I guess this universal understanding that harming babies is not so universal after all.

Quote:Human beings across cultures and societies share a core morality, respond similarly to a variety of moral questions. So yes there are some universal understanding when it comes to right and wrong. It should also be said recognizing right and wrong, is not the same as doing what’s right or wrong. A thief may know it’s morally wrong to steal, yet steal.

What does any of this have to do with a god?

Quote:Secondly the practice of child sacrifice, or murdering babies, operates on delusions and false beliefs to justify it, like scapegoating.Those practicing it have to deny or conceal the innocence of their victims, to mask the wrongness  of performing such actions. Meaning that their beliefs, operate similar to other delusional and false beliefs, like holocaust denial, or flat earthism, and not like people who have different taste in clothes. Operate like denials of reality, rather than differences in subjective opinions.

Well, now you’re just moving the goalposts.

Quote:How so?

Quote:Which of these cases, would make a better case for nihilism:

A reality in which we didn’t desire truth, meaning, and goodness. Just creatures looking to survive and reproduce, and not creatures like us, who seek something to live for.

Or a reality in which we do posses such desires.

Which of these realities would appear more meaningless?

That’s a bizarrely formed question. How does it follow that because we seek something to live for, therefore objective meaning and god exist?

(April 9, 2019 at 10:10 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(April 9, 2019 at 9:52 am)Acrobat Wrote: Here;

God: a belief that life signifies something, rather than nothing.

Thanks. So you're not a theist (someone who believes a god or God is actually real)? To be clear, as an atheist I have no problem agreeing that God is a belief.

No I think God exists, is actually real (That life truly signifies something, rather than nothing). 

Now of course you may not agree with this definition of God, though actual theist would have less of an issue with it than you do.

Your beliefs appear to be an ever mounding trash heap of silly equivocations. People can and do think that life truly signifies something without thinking that a god exists. This alone demonstrates that the two are not equivalent, that accepting one proposition does not lead to your state of of belief.

I don't think that this is actually why you believe at all. Just say it and be done with it...."but how can that BEEEEEEEE...without fairies!!??!!"

Theism is the belief in a personal and intervening god. Not the belief that life has meaning. Atheists are not people who don't believe that their lives have meaning...they are people who don't believe in gods.

(April 9, 2019 at 10:24 am)LadyForCamus Wrote: Then I suppose it’s s good thing I’m not putting forth an argument for nihilism. I’m pointing out that appealing to things like love, empathy, and meaning as evidence for god is an argument from ignorance. These things are not problems or puzzles of the natural world that need solving. 

Then we have a problem. I’m not putting forth an argument against evolution, or the natural world. I’m putting forth an argument against nihilism, since you asked why nihilism makes less sense of such things.

Quote:

Quote:Evolution isn’t the source of the potential for lumps of matter to love, have eyes, reproduce, consciousness, etc... It only actualizes such potentials.

...what? 

Imagine if I gave you an infinite amount of traditional legos, and gave you an infinite amount of time, and tasked you with making me a working iPhone. You couldn’t. Because no matter how many endless combinations you could assemble, none of them could result in a working iPhone. The reason being, is because legos lack the potential to be iPhones. You may actualize an endless variety of lego combinations, but since the lego blocks lack the potential to become an iPhone, you are not able to make one.

Evolution like yourself in this example actualizes certain potentials of matter (lego blocks). But the potential is a feature inherent to the raw material/matter itself. Absent of such potentials none of this is possible.

Quote:That’s a bizarrely formed question. How does it follow that because we seek something to live for, therefore objective meaning and god exist?

It’s a pretty straightforward question. And it was related to your question as to why nihilism makes less sense.

Does nihilism make better sense in a reality absent of a desire for meaning, or one in which such a desire exists?

The answer is, it makes better sense in a reality absent of such a desire, then one like ours where such a desire exists. If reality possess meaning, it makes sense why creatures like ourselves would desire to find it, or seek it. Why we’re not merely seeking for ways to survive and reproduce, but in finding something to live for.

Nihilism isn't a position on whether we live in a world with or without desire.  To be blunt....it explicitly asserts that human beings desire meaning and create that meaning as a direct response to a lack of inherent meaning.

That we desire meaning is true regardless of what kind of world we live in, the existence of that desire, itself, makes no more or less sense regardless of either. This is before we get into the inanity of insisting that desire makes sense in the first place...in any kind of world.

I'm starting to wonder if you'll ever end up getting something right by sheer accident Acro.