Why Secular Morality is Superior

[John V]

...and the reason I feel pain and experience the sensation is because I am self-aware. You didn't answer my question.

I’ve previously quoted discussions which said that self-awareness is not a necessary component of sentience, and that sentience necessarily implies the ability to feel pain. Your position above doesn’t hold using those definitions. So, I need you to define self-aware in order to continue.

Well, the good news for me is I win either way.

Of course, as you have tiger blood. WINNING!

The issue of animal rights vs. human rights is a complex one. I'm prepared to say that throwing a kitten off a cliff for fun is evil but hunting for food is justifiable. Perhaps I'm wrong and a vegan can make the case to me otherwise.

We don’t even know if there is an issue of animal rights v. human rights yet. You previously drew the line at sentience. I showed that in philosophy animals that can feel pleasure and pain are considered sentient. Seems we need your definition of sentience, too.

Now before you play the "ha ha, you don't have all the answers, therefore Jesus" card, let me remind you that this complexity doesn't give religious-based morality an edge.

At this point, I’m not saying that you don’t have all the answers. I’m saying that you don’t even have a starting point. You can’t even tell us the covered entities of your morality. This isn’t a complexity, it’s a fail.

Because religious-based morality arrives at the complexity of secular morals and then dumps a truckload of exalted-but-worthless "virtues" and victimless "sins" on top of it all.

John V can try to muddy up the waters but at the end of the day, he still hasn't justified why these "virtues" are really virtues or why these "sins" should be considered wrong. He has to accomplish this task or else admit that theistic morality is needlessly more complex than secular morality and therefore inferior.

As already noted: the distinctions between religious and civil aspects of religious morality are clear and don’t cause confusion; and, secular morality also has victimless offenses such as public nudity.

Let's not forget, amidst all your red herring evasion, that the jist of point #1 is that theistic morality dumps a truckload of crap on the discussion of what is moral and therefore is more complex and therefore inferior. I don't need to provide a list of easy answers to complex questions philosophers have wrestled with for millennia. You need to explain why all this crap about "no gods before me", "don't take the Lord's name in vein", "no idols" etc, are at all useful to our understanding of what is moral and what morality is.

Special pleading.