Hello, Anyone interested in a debate?

[Mudhammam]

Nestor; let me apologize for the delayed reply.  I was not in a rush as several of the points you have brought up are already covered in the other pages of this thread.  Nonetheless I will try to give sufficient response to save you the trouble of reading through everything again.

No need to apologize, sir. I'm not under the impression that spending one's time on an internet forum warrants high priority considering the brevity of a day.

Regarding the self contradiction of subjective morality we made reference to the Subject A lying for their own benefit to Subject B.  Under subjective morality the moral quality is to be determined according to that of Subject A.  As such the action of lying for ones own benefit is held as moral.  Now if we are to continue to view the situation from the perspective of Subject A, but swap the actors to Subject B lying for their own benefit to Subject A.  From the perspective of Subject A the action would be immoral.  So in the same respect (moral quality of lying for personal benefit) as perceived by same person (Subject A) the action is both moral and immoral at the same time (since the act is not designated as time dependent and may be held at anytime).  

So, you're saying that according to Subject A, lying would be considered immoral when it is done by Subject B to the detriment of A, but it would not be viewed by A as immoral when done by his being against others, such as B? That's not a self-contradiction because it is not in the same respect. Subject A is simply modifying the "moral quality of lying for personal benefit" when it's an action performed by him against others rather than others against his own person. It may be a terribly inconsistent position as it constantly changes with respect to who is lying and who is being deceived, i.e. who is benefiting from the lie, but that's not really how anyone, at least among those I've come across, understands subjective morality. It's subjective only because Subject A values certain facts that may differ from Subject B, not because Subject A believes certain actions under similar circumstances and with regards to different persons changes the moral quality of what it is he values.

Two this there are two responses:
1.  Regarding the measure necessity or even utility of the "God" concept there are indeed any number of works which will far exceed anything I could write in a forum by men of far greater than intellect.  Nearly every philosopher that is not trying to arguing God does not exists comes to the conclusion of the necessity of utility of God as at least a concept or the philosophical God.
2.  As an atheist I expect the argument to the objective existence of God (I sort of wonder why you attempted the linquistic path you embarked upon).  As stated repeatedly throughout this thread it is taken that by proof you mean direct explicit empirical proof rather than circumstantial implicit proof.  I readily admit that there is not sufficient direct explicit empirical proof of God.  However, I must further stress that there is not sufficient direct explicit empirical proof of anything which is not tautological (see the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant for greater explanation of actual and synthetic apriori and aposteriori).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori

1. If you have in mind the likes of Blaise Pascal or William James, I must say that while I admire their deeply felt need for postulating God as a means for creating a definition of meaning or novelty in the universe that really appears meaningful or novel to them, I'm not in the least bit persuaded that they've accomplished anything... well... particular meaningful or novel. 
2. While Kant's Critique is a masterful dissection of reason that demonstrates the limits of our ability to ascertain infallible knowledge, I don't really know what conclusions you think can be drawn from it that are relevant here. You seem to imply that if something like positivism is unsustainable than we are required to accept claims that fail to meet a criteria of demonstration which is both logically valid and empirically sound, and I think history is a museum of colossal mistakes that has proven such clumsy grubbing wrong time and time again. I'm not under the impression that everything we think we know about the world can be demonstrated, but given that, I also don't think we should put forward dogmatic assertions that deny others admitted justification for rejecting them... and lack of any evidence (explicit or implicit) or clarity of definition certainly satisfies that justification as far as I'm concerned.

I recognize that you did not deny the existence of consciousness.  However, in accordance with the general Atheistic threshold of proof, what is your direct explicit empirical proof of consciousness?  As I said several posts earlier, arguing a threshold of direct explicit empirical proof allows you to state that God does not exists for lack of proof, but it also negates the existence of everything you hold as proven to exist.  You win the battle (god does not exist), but you lose the war (nothing exists).

What could be more direct than experience? That's all consciousness is... what it is to experience something. Indirect empirical evidence would be a threshold we define in terms of third-person observation that coincides with expected behaviors analogous to our own experiences and like-behaviors which ensue. Less indirect evidence would be the capability to translate brain patterns into a language that allows an experimenter to read the subject's thoughts and feelings back to them before they were able to verbally inform anyone as to what it is they were actually experiencing... an experiment that, due to the annual exponential growth of technology, no longer appears destined to forever be relegated to the realms of science fiction. Surely you're aware of the Turing test? That's a rough start for determining whether or not a body possesses consciousness. One can reject the existence of deity for lack of empirical evidence, as well as the internally inconsistent logic of definitions put forth for god, without losing the ability to claim positive, albeit perhaps at best probable, knowledge of... anything??? Your claim to the contrary is nothing but a non-sequitur. We must admit that our knowledge is only such in the paradigm we have to go on... BUT even if that paradigm itself must to some extent be taken for granted (such as the assumption that I'm not a brain in a vat), it doesn't require that we view others as equally valid or fruitful, or that all other claims within that paradigm are equally justified.

There is ample circumstantial implicit empirical proof of consciousness; like the phenomena of experience (change in brain activity is not indicative of consciousness, though it is indicative of physiological response to stimuli.)  But as stated just above, circumstantial implicit empirical proof is not sufficient proof of the existence of a thing.

Even if I were to agree that all we have for asserting the existence of consciousness is "circumstantial implicit empirical proof"---which I'm not sure I do as that is a mouthful which I'm not entirely sure I understand in the context you seem to be using it in---why wouldn't that be sufficient for positing something as probable even if only vaguely defined or apprehended, with the qualifier that more research is required and that our future knowledge of it is likely to require a change in our current perspective?

Ha ha!!  As compelled by the Atheistic threshold of proof: "What proof do you have that the environment contains others capable of thought and communication?" other than reactionary meat responding to stimuli in a manner that implies thought and communication.

What you rudimentarily call "reactionary meat responding to stimuli" is exactly what is meant by a more refined definition of beings which exhibit conscious behavior. You can try to change the meaning of words so as to always retain an appearance of mysteriousness for certain dearly held concepts, but it won't make them any less unintelligible or useless in discussion.

 "And hopefully someone will eventually discover"...You whipping out the faith card?  Do you "believe" the day will come?

"All these things, then, we feel: but the heaven has a nature which is incomprehensible, and it has never conveyed to us any distinct indication by which we can understand its nature; for what can we say? that it is solid ice, as some persons have chosen to assert? or that it is the purest fire? or that it is a fifth body, moving in a circle having no participation in any of the four elements? For what can we say? Has that most remote sphere of the fixed stars any density in an upward direction? or is it merely a superficies devoid of all depth, something like a plane figure? And what are the stars? Are they masses of earth full of fire? For some persons have said that they are hills, and valleys, and thickets, men who are worthy of a prison and a treadmill, or of any place where there are instruments proper for the punishment of impious persons; or are they, as some one has defined them, a continuous and dense harmony, the closely packed, indissoluble mass of aether? Again, are they animated and intelligent? or are they destitute alike of mind and vitality? Have they their motions in consequence of any choice of their own? or merely because they are compulsory? What, again, are we to say of the moon? Does she show us a light of her own, or a borrowed and illegitimate one, only reflected from the rays of the sun? or is neither of these things true, but has she something mixed, as it were, so as to be a sort of combination of her own light and of that which belongs to some other body? For all these things, and others like them, belonging to the fourth and most excellent of the bodies in the world, namely, the heaven, are uncertain and incomprehensible, and are spoken of in accordance with conjectures and guesses, and not with the solid, certain reasoning of truth, so that a person might venture to swear that no mortal man will ever be able to comprehend any one of these matters clearly." - Philo of Alexandria (25 BCE - 50 CE)

(bold mine)
If history has taught us anything, one lesson should most definitely be not to underestimate the ingenuity of human beings.