Non-overlapping magesteria

[Thumpalumpacus]

Emotons can be studied as configurations in the brain though.

It only becomes unstudyable once you abstractly wrap it in different languages. And emotions don't seek truth; or if they do, there is at least some methodology involved. I'm not trying to be a dick, just attempting to explain my point I'm sure we agree anyway and I'm just fighting for 1 square millimetre of ground on an epic battlefield.

But sure, people can decide what is true "for them". But I guess I should have been clearer, I'm talking about things that are true to everyone. Like, for example, a particular God exists or he does not, he doesn't exist for one person and not for another. They may claim it does, but that doesn't make it true.

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And religion obviously has an agenda of trying to use this kind of hand waving as a way to sneak in unfalsifiable truths about Religion. And these are usually claims of knowledge, without justification, claiming that there is a "different sort" of justification. What I'm saying is that this is not valid, and stuff doesn't become independently true because you find it "personally" true.

I get what you're saying, and share your distaste for religionists who use this reasoning to smuggle their gods into reality.

But I do think there's a danger in thinking that any one methodology, or approach, or heuristic can describe any given situation. Even science has its limits. We may well be able to understand that molecule X engenders experience Y, but that is not the same as conveying the experience. Both art and emotions are abstract processes, which aren't really susceptible to things like reproducible experimentation and direct causality.

Hammers are great for driving nails, not so great for setting screws, and I don't understand the angst which pointing out such an obvious fact arouses.

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Nah, I wasn't speaking to anyone specifically. I'll admit, I had been skimming through the thread while inebriated and there was just something in the nature of that all too familiar line that struck a chord.

I was talking about people who are convinced that morals could not exist without some divine entity commanding them to be. They assert that whatever this "goodness" is that we are able to recognize, we cannot point to why it is good rather than bad, and that there must be some source of goodness that is not merely something that is good, but the entirety of goodness in and of itself...

...I hear things like this, and that's when I wonder why they've excluded all other physical descriptive experiences. I wonder why they do not contemplate the purest form of the smell of shit when they recognize they've just inhaled a fart? It seems to be the other side of the coin and yet it is intuitively a stupid question. The same can be said about "Moral Absolutes". That's all I was saying...

I saw someone mention The Moral Landscape, and I think there are some really good points made in that book. If we aim to mold our actions around a sense of good that is defined by maximizing the state of well being in conscious creatures, then there are certainly better and worse ways of doing that. And if we think of our decisions in those sorts of terms, it becomes apparently absurd to suggest that religion has ever offered any absolute moral compass that has aided in anything but complicating the path to an ideal moral society.

A simple rule of thumb, don't be a dick. I think think that rule combined with a smidgen of empathy and a huge dose of humility are the ingredients to a much better world. Peace!

Sorry for having misunderstood you, then. I certainly share your dislike of moral absolutism -- and also the bankruptcy of asserting that such absolutism can arise from divine command (when in fact all divine command does is impose one being's morality upon another). We see the fallacy of this thinking when we see believers who do not think working on the Sabbath should be a capital offense, or who don't think homosexuals should be killed for being gay. They are obviously picking the support for their own a priori moral precepts, not imbibing the morality that they claim is absolute even as their actions reveal it to be both relative and subjective.