Why Secular Morality is Superior

[John V]

Not sure what the tiger blood is a reference to but when you lose an argument, there's always appeals to ridicule, it would seem.

Charlie Sheen's meltdown. He was always claiming "winning" when he obviously wasn't, so of course you remind me of him.

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.

Still waiting for you to justify the increased and confusing complexity that religious-based morality dumps on top of the issues of secular morality. No more red herring evasion for you. Your options are:
1. Answer the challenge or
2. Concede point #1

Special pleading.

You and Frodo love to bandy around terms that describe logical fallacies but don't seem to understand what they mean.
[/quote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies...ading.html

[Rahul]

Charlie Sheen's meltdown. He was always claiming "winning" when he obviously wasn't, so of course you remind me of him.

But Charlie did win. He's going to make a minimum $200 million off of Anger Management.

The guy is crazy as a loon. But he won in my book.

[DeistPaladin]

Still waiting for you to
1. Answer the challenge
2. Concede Point #1

Glad you do know what these fallacy terms mean. Now you need to explain how they apply.

[DeistPaladin]

But Charlie did win. He's going to make a minimum $200 million off of Anger Management.

The guy is crazy as a loon. But he won in my book.

To paraphrase from an otherwise bad movie, Speed:
Only poor people are loons. Charlie Sheen is "eccentric".

[John V]

Still waiting for you to
1. Answer the challenge
2. Concede Point #1

Glad you do know what these fallacy terms mean. Now you need to explain how they apply.

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.

It's so blatant it's embarrassing, particularly as you made the initial positive claim.

[DeistPaladin]

It's so blatant it's embarrassing, particularly as you made the initial positive claim.

I made the positive claim and supported it.

How many times do I need to repeat myself?

Religion brings all this crap about blasphemy, apostasy, idolatry, etc to the table along with a lot of useless "virtues" and harmless "taboos" (see the Islamo-Christian demonization of homosexuality for an example), causing needless complexity to our discussion about morality.

More needless complexity = inferior. Secular morality gets rid of all that crap.

Your attempts to turn this conversation into a discussion of "oh yeah, well what about how exactly you define sentience? Or do you mean sapience? And where do we draw the line on..." is all red herring evasion because religious-based morality has all the same problems with the added truckload of sectarian crap.

So, can you justify all the added complexity that religious-based morality brings to the table?

If not, I win.

[fr0d0]

Please demonstrate how that is so.

At the moment that you begin defending genocide you have clearly demonstrated that you have no morality at all

That's not an answer. Don't fly off on one until you've succeeded In proving a point. So far we have bare assertion to hang me with.

But of course if you make a big enough smoke screen you inadequacy might be obscured. Your deliberate misreading of the text might be forgotten.

Guess what? I still need evidence. Don't be shy.

Innocent babies: I've been through this before this week. God, having the ability to judge future action, can judge you on what you will do.

No one can judge: precisely the point. What we have is a definite statement or two. All of those statements are consistent in reporting a just God exercising justice.
This is what we have to deal with.
If you want to disprove the statements, you have you show how those statements are incorrect. That burden is yours to shoulder.
If you make that claim without substantiating it, we can all happily move on and disregard your claim.

Likewise, If I we're to make a claim that the statements could be proven, I would expect you to demand that my claim be backed up. Do you see me making any claims? No.

So here we are again, waiting for these inspired claims to be substantiated. Meanwhile, we must assume their falsity.

---

Weren't you the one just telling me that Calvinism is an incorrect interpretation of Christianity? If God is willing to kill someone for crimes uncommitted, then the idea of free will is fraudulent.

Not me my friend.

There is no such thing as free will, only free agency.

Once more with your claims of supernatural abilities. Please tell us how you know if it's just to circumvent a life justly, and let another play out unjustly. I guess you can't tell us because then we'd know as much as you do and your claims wouldn't sounds so absurd.

[John V]

I made the positive claim and supported it.

How many times do I need to repeat myself?

At least one more:

By contrast, secular morality focuses on the issue with laser-like precision. Morality is a function of how we treat our fellow sentient beings.

Your laser can't even tell me what you consider a sentient being. Until you do, any claims of superiority based on focus is unsupported.

Religion brings all this crap about blasphemy, apostasy, idolatry, etc to the table along with a lot of useless "virtues" and harmless "taboos" (see the Islamo-Christian demonization of homosexuality for an example), causing needless complexity to our discussion about morality.

I've addressed this repeatedly in two ways. First, as you've noted yourself, the religion-specific parts are easily identifiable and so don't complicate the social aspects. Second, secular moralities also prohibit victimless activities. I've mentioned public nudity. Another example is legalization of marijuana.

More needless complexity = inferior. Secular morality gets rid of all that crap.

Your attempts to turn this conversation into a discussion of "oh yeah, well what about how exactly you define sentience? Or do you mean sapience? And where do we draw the line on..." is all red herring evasion

Incorrect. You claimed that secular morality focuses like a laser on what's really important. You have an obligation to support that. You keep ducking it. This isn't the first time. You had to throw out your lead sentence of the section earlier when it caused you problems.

because religious-based morality has all the same problems with the added truckload of sectarian crap.

Incorrect. Some religions, for instance, expressly allow the eating of meat. Some deny that. You admit that secular morality does not provide a clean answer to this question.

So, can you justify all the added complexity that religious-based morality brings to the table?

If not, I win.

Can you support your claim that secular morality focuses like a laser on what's really important, and justify the added complexity that it brings to some issues? If not, you lose.

[DeistPaladin]

Removing all the red herring evasion...

Can you support your claim that secular morality focuses like a laser on what's really important, and justify the added complexity that it brings to some issues? If not, you lose.

Secular morality dumps all the sectarian crap. Can you justify the sectarian crap?

[fr0d0]

Show your proof that these people were guilty of any offense against the God who destroyed them

You don't make counter claims for your unsupported claims until your own claims are supported. How am I supposed to defend against an unknown argument?

Your point here is that the text must be untrue. Yet you cannot prove that statement. So why make it? Would you be happy that I make equally wild claims? I would fully expect you to correct me. Hopefully I would have the humility to retract.

Truth is, you do not and cannot know.

It is completely dishonest of you to make such claims. Please try and regain some credibility and face the truth.