RE: Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position
March 5, 2020 at 3:35 pm
(This post was last modified: March 5, 2020 at 3:35 pm by R00tKiT.)
(March 5, 2020 at 2:47 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote:(March 5, 2020 at 11:58 am)Klorophyll Wrote: Of course. Although I find your question slightly ill-formed. God is morality, in a way.
Whatever that means. It's one thing to derive a moral system from a magic book, or from beliefs about some silly god, but that's not morality in any way that matters to me.
Morality
-principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
-a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society
-the extent to which an action is right or wrong.
I'll repeat once again, and hopefully for the last time: right and wrong are undefined with the absence of god or some external "ultimate judge" that gives them meaning.
Is rape wrong? Everyone, atheist or theist, will say it is. Meanwhile, I find Peter Singer, a sophisticated moral philosopher, who thinks it's okay to rape disabled people.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/04/n...led-people
Now let's listen to the guy's wise reasoning : “When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the haemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.”
You read that right : it's okay to kill the haemophiliac infant. And he gave a sound utilitarian argument for this position.
I am not arguing from authority here, or implying that atheists should advocate for the same ideas, but I think that this guy demonstrates that we can philosophize any moral position to the realm of acceptable if we don't have some ultimate reference.
(March 5, 2020 at 2:47 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Don't you think it might be prudent to allow for simple human error when it comes to a book? If some scribe gets a jot or a tittle wrong god's very existence is somehow on the line? I think we can safely set the first proposition aside as ludicrous. The second touches on your personal view of the moral field. If it turned out that we lived in a world with no god you would suddenly lose all ethical sense, and the world would be morally unintelligible? I would be very interested to see how you complete this sentence.
In a world with a god, skullfucking your neighbors' kid is wrong.
In a world without a god, skullfucking your neighbors' kid is __________________.
In a world without a god, skullfucking your neighbors' kid is simply skullfucking your neighbors' kid, no Eww/Ughh reactions allowed.
In a world without a god, skullfucking your neighbors' kid can be justified from an utilitarian viewpoint, if the neighbors' kid is a haemophiliac infant.
Again, right and wrong are red herring in this context. I agree we all have this inherent moral compass that prevents us from allowing such stuff. But this inherent morality in itself warrants an explanation.