RE: Do you wish there's a god?
April 5, 2019 at 9:56 am
(This post was last modified: April 5, 2019 at 10:17 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(April 5, 2019 at 3:57 am)Acrobat Wrote: Human share a core universal morality, that underlies nearly all of our moral perceptions and beliefs. Call it a product of our evolution. What motivates our perceptions here isn't unique to each person, but rather shared in common with each other. I don't have an easy morality, and you have a non-easy morality. Anymore so then similar moral behaviors observed in monkeys, is distinct among them. The reason you see that its wrong to torture innocent babies just for fun, and I see it as wrong, is not the result of our brains taking two different paths to see that conclusion, but rather our brain used a similar pattern or perception to recognize it. Now maybe you'll articulate some convoluted justification, that aligns with your particular moral philosophy, but that explanation, is one you're making after the fact, and not the basis for why you see it as wrong.The thing you're trying to refer to when you say that we share a "core universal morality", the thing that underlies our moral perceptions and beliefs..is called moral agency. We share moral agency, as humans, not a common morality. Descriptive moral relativism and descriptive moral subjectivity are both true comments on human morality.
This is why precision in language is important, the same issue arose when conflating good songs and moral goods. You're trying to say something that's true (I think, lol), but you end up saying something demonstrably false, instead.
Referring to some common pattern -in our brains- is a reference to a subjective fact. A fact about us, you and me. The fact of intersubjectivity.
Thing is, we're discussing an item that we don't share, you and I. Where our moral agency differs, where there is no intersubjectivity. You've asserted that good songs and moral goods are interchangeable. That the good and the beautiful refer to the same thing. If what you're telling me is accurate, rather than a stubborn commitment to equivocation and poor argument...then you simply perceive this differently than I do.
I've already explained to you that and how good can present itself as ugly to me. This is an irreducible fact of my perception that no argument of yours has any force to alter. It differs from yours, and while there may be intersubjectivity between us on some other thing, and while we might both possess a moral agency, nothing about either of those two things changes this thing.
Just as it seems fairly uncontroversial to me to state that chasing beauty is easier than embracing that which we find repulsive, which you disagree with for some silly odd reason, lol.
Quote:I love my wife, love is a thing of beauty. I'd do a variety of ugly things, like kill you if you try to harm my family, in servitude to that beauty. If the bad is more seductive than the good, you'd do the bad. If evolution made bad more appealing than doing good, we'd all being doing bad more often than the good.Maybe you'd do the bad in the event that it were more seductive than the good, and if you base your moral system on chasing the beautiful and avoiding the ugly due to how you can't distinguish between the good and the beautiful it wouldn't be surprising when or if you did so. You're just one gorgeously bad idea away from skullfucking your neighbors toddler, huh, lol?
There's something to be said for the idea that evolution "made" the bad more seductive than the good, though it could be phrased much more accurately. Controlling or mediating the compulsory effect of those destructive impulses we refer to as our animal nature or instinct is one of the goals of ethics. We note that popping some jackass in the mouth might be a compelling idea, the conception of which grants us satisfaction and we may even find the thought beautiful...seductive. Nevertheless, we contend that it would likely be wrong.
Quote:I think whatever you have in mind about morality, doesn't align to how morality actually functions and works. You seem to imagine some sort of conceptions of morality as something done like a mathematical calculation, which is a false belief. Morality, particularly if you consider it in an evolutionary sense, works by the basis of aesthetics, the attractiveness of certain behaviors, and the unattractiveness of others. Making some good behaviors more biologically compelling than some bad ones, such as it's more attractive for a mother to stay with their children, than abandon them, it relies on attaching strong feelings and emotions to things.
I can tell you for sure that what I have in mind about morality isn't how morality commonly works and functions, lol.
I'm a realist, but descriptive moral subjectivity and descriptive moral relativity are -still- true comments on human morality regardless of what position a person takes. Your morality may be based on aesthetics, the attractiveness or unattractiveness of an idea...in which case it's a subjective morality. It refers to some fact of what you find pretty, or ugly. You and I differ on what ideas are or aren't attractive. That irreducible fact above. This isn't to say that I can't also find beauty in good things, only the acknowledgement that this is not always the case. This isn't to say that I don't also fall prey to the seductiveness of an idea, conflating it as a moral good, only that I'm capable of recognizing a difference between them. Your subjective moral framework is an equivocation, and the easy chase of those things you find beautiful. I do that sometimes, myself, I just don't elevate those mistakes to the status of a moral framework.
-and still...it's clear that none of this has anything to do with gods..and you can;t come up with any explanation of how it would. I can accept that you find some ideas beautiful and take beauty to indicate moral content. You could, if you weren't such a complete tool, accept that I can see ugliness where you see beauty, even if we both see that thing as good, lol. We're only talking about how two people view the world, how two people view the moral landscape. The relative accuracy of two peoples vocab. The nature of two peoples moral systems. It can be a fascinating conversation, an exploration of the difference between you and I, but neither you nor I are gods, neither of our moral systems makes any reference to gods. You make reference to the subjective facts of what you find beautiful, I make reference to the objective facts of some matter regardless of what I may find beautiful.
As a discussion on reasons why you believe in god, or why anyone else would..this is a complete non-starter. Neither position is going to yield theism or atheism. You can find atheists here who would largely agree with you, and yet this has no effect on their atheism. You can find theists here who would largely agree with me, and yet it has no effect on their theism.
Ironically..it's -very- easy to make a "biblical case" with a "sophisticated theology" between the good and what we find attractive. We're all fallen, dontchaknow? Your comments as regards the specifics of your moral framework and compulsion align nicely with your alleged human corruption. They would be a validation of that notion. Nutters don't get everything wrong, they get some things right for the wrong reasons.
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