RE: If it wasn't for religion
January 28, 2019 at 4:58 pm
(This post was last modified: January 28, 2019 at 5:00 pm by Acrobat.)
(January 28, 2019 at 4:41 pm)unfogged Wrote:(January 28, 2019 at 3:47 pm)Acrobat Wrote: One ought to be good.
One ought to do what is good, one ought not do what is bad.
Neither of those is an example of what I asked for as they are nothing more than opinion and, without a definitions of "good" and "bad" they are effectively meaningless. If somebody defines "good" as "slaughtering the Midianites and keeping the virgin women for yourself" then wholesale slaughter, salvery, and sex trafficking become moral. There is no reality, other than the actions of people who disagree with you, to prevent you from declaring that as "good". The universe does not care; only the opinions of other thinking agents will get in your way. If you decide, on the other hand, that gravity should be a repulsive force you will quickly learn that your opinion is at odds with actual reality.
You asked for a moral aim or goal.
I gave you one, that one ought to do good. One ought not do what is bad.
It doesn’t matter how you define good, if one recognize what is good, he recognizes that he ought to do it, if one recognize what’s bad he recognizes he ought not to do it. Nazis may have been deluded as to the evil of the holocaust, but there belief that it was morally good is false. Everyone outside of someone delusional or a sociopath can recognizes this.
In fact you yourself said morality isn’t reducible to personal opinion, indicating it’s rational. And all morality is built on this fundamental truth, than one ought do what is good, ought not do what is bad. All religious people can agree that this is true, but atheists like yourself can’t right?
Reason might lead you to this truth, but reason isn’t reducible to it.
Such a belief underlies the moral views of folks like MLK as well, so not sure how the same atheists that deny this, think out of such a denial an MLK could have risen from it.
