Why Secular Morality is Superior

[DeistPaladin]

It could be that secular morality has issues not found in some religious moralities.

Such as?

Let me give you an example of the crap that religion dumps onto our understanding of morality and how it's harmful and confusing: homosexuality. Both Islam and Christianity demonize it. Many devout Christians and Muslims consider it "immoral". This crap in turn leads to bullying and ostracizing of gays, creates self-loathing among gays, leads to gay suicide and the murder of gays and in some cases creates laws in which gays are actually put to death. In efforts to be moral, religions societies that embrace this crap become immoral.

This seems to be why you're afraid to consider animal rights.

Start a thread on animal rights and I'll participate.

I just don't want you to get away with your tactic of red herring evasion. You're trying to muddy up the waters in the hopes that you can push a draw. I want to keep this discussion "simple". Can you justify the extra crap or no?

See, that's the advantage to keeping things as simple as possible.

Secular morality has worthless virtues and harmless sins of its own. I've mentioned public nudity several times.

And I addressed it. And your example of the ban on pot is arguably a religiously motivated law (most examples of legislated morality find more support among the devoutly religious than among atheists).

I'm looking out my window at a flag. There are rules regarding its treatment, some codified, some not, which are worthless/harmless. We have a number of secular holidays. None of these seem to be really important to me, although I'm still waiting for your definition.

Holidays? Flags? These are "moral issues" to you?

Has anyone really said to you, "you didn't observe Memorial Day properly; that's evil!"?

Your desperate quest for red herrings is getting really embarrassing to watch.

Needless and not helpful does not necessarily imply a hindrance. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

Show how it isn't. I've now provided one example of how the extra crap is harmful.

And yes, extra pointless complexity = bad. As Einstein observed, everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler.

[John V]

It could be that secular morality has issues not found in some religious moralities.

Such as?

Such as animal rights, as I went on to say.

Let me give you an example of the crap that religion dumps onto our understanding of morality and how it's harmful and confusing: homosexuality. Both Islam and Christianity demonize it. Many devout Christians and Muslims consider it "immoral". This crap in turn leads to bullying and ostracizing of gays, creates self-loathing among gays, leads to gay suicide and the murder of gays and in some cases creates laws in which gays are actually put to death. In efforts to be moral, religions societies that embrace this crap become immoral.

Are you seriously claiming that no secular societies have discriminated against gays?

This seems to be why you're afraid to consider animal rights.

Start a thread on animal rights and I'll participate.

I just don't want you to get away with your tactic of red herring evasion. You're trying to muddy up the waters in the hopes that you can push a draw. I want to keep this discussion "simple". Can you justify the extra crap or no?[/quote]
By keeping it simple, you mean that you want to focus on the one part of your four-part argument which I’m not particularly protesting.

Here’s a fun analogy.

DP: Fish that doesn’t contain mercury is superior to fish that does contain mercury.
Brand A fish contains mercury.
Therefore Brand B fish is superior.

JV: Hold it there, cowboy. You need to evaluate brand B for mercury before making that conclusion.

DP: No I don’t! You’re muddying the waters with red herring diversion tactics! Can you justify the mercury content in Brand A? If not, I WIN, dammit!

JV: WTF…

And I addressed it. And your example of the ban on pot is arguably a religiously motivated law (most examples of legislated morality find more support among the devoutly religious than among atheists).

I was wondering when you’d fall into circular reasoning.

Holidays? Flags? These are "moral issues" to you?

Yes. Go burn a flag at an Independence Day celebration and you’ll find out that I’m not alone in that assessment.

Show how it isn't. I've now provided one example of how the extra crap is harmful.

Actually, no, you haven’t. The extra stuff consists of meaningless virtues and rituals, remember?

And yes, extra pointless complexity = bad. As Einstein observed, everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler.

Appeal to authority fallacy.

[DeistPaladin]

Such as animal rights, as I went on to say.

Religious-based morality doesn't have to deal with the subject of animal rights?

This is the perfect example of how religious-based morality has all the same conundrums with a bunch of added crap.

Are you seriously claiming that no secular societies have discriminated against gays?

What would be the secular justification for calling homosexuality "immoral"? You'd be on shaky ground at best. Only the religious GodWillsIt provides a solid basis.

By keeping it simple, you mean that you want to focus on the one part of your four-part argument which I’m not particularly protesting.

By keeping it simple, I mean focusing on the body of argument #1, which is religious morality has all this extra crap and secular morality doesn't. If you agree, then just concede I'm correct on point #1 and move on.

Here’s a fun analogy...

***Strawman ensues***

I was wondering when you’d fall into circular reasoning.

*psst* when you accuse someone of committing a logical fallacy, you have to actually point out where and how.

Appeal to authority fallacy.

Only if I were to say, "it's true because Einstein said it's true". Quoting someone who put it so well is not an appeal to authority.

However, you go ahead and try to argue that extra needless complexity is not a bad thing. Don't let me discourage you from hanging yourself.

[DeistPaladin]

Sorry, I missed this one the first time:

Yes. Go burn a flag at an Independence Day celebration and you’ll find out that I’m not alone in that assessment.

Go burn an Iranian flag in downtown Teheran and see if a theocratic society has any problems with that.

Again, this example underscores how religious morality has all the same issues as secular morality, just with extra crap on top.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

So Ryan. God knows the future so you, who do not, don't have free will? Please explain to me how to you, your choice is limited. Please explain to me how you are not a free agent to act as your will dictates.

Once more with the unsupported claims. Wow I had no idea the extent of the hypocrisy of you guys.

It's a paradox.

It's exactly the same as, say, rational choice theory that postulates a choice that maximises utility. It's an illusion of choice becuase if there truely was a 'rational' choice that resulted in maximizing utility above other choices, one would chose that every time thus making the other choices redundant (or illusionary).

You've heard this a million times before no doubt, but it's an irresolvable paradox regardless of what branch of thought one choses to try and get around it. "All roads lead to heaven" except the bad ones that are laid out before you and are made that way precisely so you can end up there.

And whilst technically choosing the 'wrong' path is still a choice one supposedly makes, it's again illusionary becuase, using your own reasoning, the cards are stacked against you before you're even born. If your destination is already pre-decided (because "god knows the future") then it makes the entire process redundant. You may as well not exist at all in any other form than what/where you are at the arbitrary conclusion point of the process. If the choices one makes ultimately lead to a pre-ordained destination, then in what way are they really choices at all?

Just my 2 cents.

[fr0d0]

I disagree Fidel. The choices are not made for you. They were always only your choices. You were not forced to make them. You were free to act as your will dictated.
God knows the history of the universe from beginning to end. He is not bound by linear time. All that he's done here is took a peek at your life from the end point. He knows what decisions you made, but he had no part in influencing those decisions. Those were fully yours to make.

I think you're talking about free will versus free agency. There is no such thing as free will. We act as we're biologically programmed to do. No decision we can make can contradict the influences that precedes it. We are free agents to act as out wills dictate. ie nothing prevents us from doing things we've decided to do. We may choose to commit crime and get caught and punished. Nothing stopped us from doing what we did.

[Esquilax]

What bare assertion have I made Esq? You're clutching at straws now. I only assert what is provable. I haven't asserted anything about the text quoted that supposedly proves the evil nature of God. I am challenging your empty claims of the opposite.

You asserted that the Amelekites would all have ended up doing something worthy of being executed, and therefore executing them before they could commit those acts was just. That's actually two bare assertions; one is that the Amelekites would have committed sufficient evil to warrant execution to begin with, and the other is that executions for pre-crime is ever just. Please provide evidence for these things.

Funnily enough, I detailed what claims you made without evidence in the post you responded to, you just sort of cut out the parts of my posts that said so, and asked me for something I'd already told you.

Break free from this trap and admit that you don't know. That's a respectable position.

Actually, I do know, insofar as one can "know" anything about morality. You're the one making claims you can't back up to support a doctrine you'd find immoral in any other setting. In fact, let me detail the only line of reasoning you could possibly use, here:

1: God is just.
2: The bible has immoral things in it, commanded or executed by god.
3: Those things were moral, because god is just.

Circular reasoning is all you have, that's why you're so unwilling to explain the rationale behind the claims you've made, to the point where you'll just ignore that they've been pointed out to you, both by myself and Ryantology.

You claim that the ending of a life is immoral. Please support that statement.

Sure: it all comes down to knowledge, ironically. We know of precisely one life that we are assured to get, and it's the one we're living. Since nobody to date has been able to demonstrate the existence of an afterlife, we cannot simply assume that one exists. What you believe is beside the point; objectively, we can confirm a single life, with a single body in which to experience it.

Knowing only this, and living in a physical universe that, for all intents and purposes, ends when we die, we can state some objective truths about the universe. One of those is that life is preferable to death, because we can only confirm a single life with which to... well, live. Therefore, the ending of life, the cutting short of our single confirmed chance, is immoral by definition.

And you already know this, because you behave in ways that preserve your life, don't you? You might have your belief in an afterlife, but however sure you are of that, you don't just walk through traffic whenever you need to cross the street, nor do you keep driving right into whatever happens to be ahead. You properly prepare your food to avoid getting sick, you take care of yourself, you probably have insurance, too, right? And you don't go around murdering good christians, even though you know that they'll go to heaven when you do, right?

So you do understand. You might be sure of your next life, but you do see that there's an intrinsic value to this one that outweighs any other considerations. I know you'll be tempted to say that god, being all knowing and all, knows things we don't and is then justified in whatever he does, that it's just beyond our understanding... but if it's beyond our understanding then it's beyond yours too. How do you know you aren't stepping on god's will by preserving your own life? How do you know it's not god's will that you act like your life doesn't matter, but that for some esoteric reason he's unwilling to correct your behavior in line with what he really wants?

Don't say his will is beyond our understanding, because that just gives us both a free license to make shit up.

I believe that human judges cannot decide to end life in justice because they simply lack knowledge. Considering a knowledgeable judge, as God is defined, I believe ending life justly is completely possible.

Including before the crimes for which the person is being judged have been committed? Why doesn't he just kill everyone, in that case?

I didn't say that God doesn't tamper with free will. God knows everything you do through your life. Before you were born, all if your life is known. Does that affect your freedom as a being subject to linear time? Not from your perspective, no. You are completely oblivious of anything other than your own reality.

Yes it absolutely does affect my freedom, in that it means I don't have any, because that freedom has been taken away from me before I've had a chance to exercise it. What you're essentially posing is a choice like this: "You have free will! Yep! You're free to exist. You're free to be a baby. And right now, you're free to die. You're free to be a corpse..."

How am I free if the only choice I have is to obey the influence of an external force?

God manages reality, so God will make changes. He sees something that counters his purpose and corrects it. He sees a life that has chosen evil and effects it's surroundings so badly the only just thing to do is prune out the bad wood. Gardeners see this as nurturing, yet you see it as evil.

Gardeners don't destroy the entire tree and every other tree in the garden because a branch was askew.

That, and you're opening up a whole host of new questions you can't even begin to answer. Where's the consistency here? Why does god allow evil people to live at all, if he has no problem with destroying them before they can do evil? Why did he let Christopher Hitchens live long enough to speak out against him? Why did he let Hitler live- not to Godwin- given the damage he would inflict on god's chosen people? Jeffrey Dahmer? Ted Bundy? Every murderer, abuser, sinner of any shape or form?

Why has he seemingly made a one time exception, here? Or are you saying that everyone who dies early dies because god has seen the evil in their future and sought to correct it, and he's just got bad aim? If so, how will you demonstrate this?

[Ryantology]

So Ryan. God knows the future so you, who do not, don't have free will? Please explain to me how to you, your choice is limited. Please explain to me how you are not a free agent to act as your will dictates.

How would I have the free will to sin if I am slaughtered as an infant, before I ever had the chance to exercise my free will in any legitimate fashion? If God is punishing me for actions I have not yet taken, then it's obvious that I was predestined to act in the way I would have acted. Otherwise, God is punishing me in advance because I might sin, and that is about as unjust as you can ask for.

Once more with the unsupported claims. Wow I had no idea the extent of the hypocrisy of you guys.

Last I checked, you have never proven that your god is real, so not only is that an unsupported claim, so is every single claim derivative from that unsupported claim, including the first paragraph of your post quoted above. Almost every post you make that is on-topic consists of unsubstantiated assertions. It is virtually all you do here.

Just one more sin for which you need forgiveness, I guess.

[Walking Void]

Apparently in a theistic mind, morality is as imaginative as the fictitious characters.

[Ryantology]

Why did he let Hitler live- not to Godwin- given the damage he would inflict on god's chosen people?

That's actually a very good question. Why did he not destroy Hitler--and massacre every single person in Germany--in retaliation for attempting to annihilate his chosen people, when that is precisely the crime for which he commanded the massacre of every Amalekite, only about a billion times worse? A

If your response is "that happened after Christ died for our sins", why did he not kill Hitler's distant ancestor B.C. (or, given God's tendencies, massacre everybody within a hundred mile radius of wherever Hitler's B.C. ancestor happened to live) with the justification that it would prevent one of the world's most heinous evils?

It's not justice. It's a murderous tyrant's whimsy.