(December 8, 2017 at 12:02 pm)wallym Wrote: 1) I understand you weren't directing it at me. But you and I were the ones exchanging posts. So it's a bit of a non-sequitur to address christian beliefs again, in a discussion you and I are having that has nothing to do with christian beliefs. Talking about christians, for the most part, isn't that exciting.
I'm not fussed about Christians either. But I do think their views are relevant enough to point out as absurd in a discussion about Christian (and other theist) views (go reread your OP). And I have to keep pointing this out because everytime you "open your mouth" about morality, theists are all too happy to support what you have to say, not having understand anything about what other atheists have been telling them about how God is not needed for morality to be objective.
Quote:But here we have atheism, where we've got all these different opinions on how people should live their lives and there's substantial disagreements on the nature of a godless world, and you're still hung up on the God stuff. You're an atheist. You've made the call on their pitch. It's time to move on. Don't be one of these losers who just follows around the 5 theists and says "Nuh-uh" after every post, and that's the extent of their philosophical endeavors.
Ok, great. We can have a discussion, you and I, on what morality should be like when you are ready to go beyond what your intuition as a self-admitted sociopath says about morality. And for this, you need to start a bit of heavy reading on philosophical matters to do with morality and ethics. Now this doesn't mean I will stop responding to what Christians continue to argue, especially if I do think it's utterly wrong what they're saying. And I have attempted some serious responses to them, brief as they may be, to which they don't even respond to and just move on only to repeat their fallacies at a later time.
Quote:2) The thing with objectivity, is that it's premises also have to be objective. An objective conclusion based on a subjective premise is subjective. That's where people are going to try and slip one by you.
Like others have said, I don't think you understand what objective vs. subjective means. I don't even know what you mean by "subjective premise". That we have the ability to come up with a system to determine and assess the moral rightness and wrongness of acts means that it is possible for morality to be objective without the need for a upper being like God. Even if it were the case that we've yet to come up with an adequate system, or even if all the systems proposed have problems, this doesn't change the fact that objective [godless] morality is possible. In fact, any system that requires God to be the ground for morality is going to end up with lots of problems because no set of criteria that are backed by God is accessible to us, and it's not needed anyway (Occam's razor and all).
Anyway, it's ok to not be well-read on everything in philosophy. I admit my ignorance when it comes to ethics, so the best route for me would be to do some relevant reading and thinking in light of the new stuff learnt. I suggest the same for you and for the theist members here (e.g., Steve and C_L) who clearly have not read anything outside of apologetic materials with regards to morality.