[split] Are Questions About God Important?

[FrustratedFool]

@Belacqua
It's not that you can't prove that it's bad to torture infants for fun, it's that the question is somewhat meaningless because the word 'bad' has been smuggled in - which is the whole problem.

Is it wrong to do X (whatever X is)?

Since no ought can be derived from an is, the terms bad/good and all moral language doesn't seem to refer to anything objective or concrete or measurable - it only refers to subjective feelings and intuitions. It boils down to personal preferences. You can see the influence of Hume, the logical positivists, and nihilism upon me lol

So, certainly, because of the way humans have evolved, the psychotic lack of empathy is seen as an illness, but it doesn't correspond to some delusion about the nature of reality in the way someone subject to irrational illusions and hallucinations does. It's just that a psychopath's brain doesn't work the same as everyone else's not that they are misperceiving reality.

The rubber hits the road with the idea of human flourishing when there's a split between what is best for me as an individual and what is best for human flourishing, or anyone else in any quantity. There's nothing irrational about choosing to do what is entirely selfish, nor can we say there's anything 'bad' as if morality was some external objective force. The only concern would be whether or not the selfish action is truly in my own best interest given how society functions (and given whatever degree of personal empathy and conscience etc I have).

I don't see any ethical question that needs to invoke anything else other my own best interest or personal preference. There's no need to obfuscate matters by trying to place ethics outside myself.