How to easily defeat any argument for God

[LadyForCamus]

@Acrobat

Let me ask you something. It seems you think that humans need god’s objective morality because we are not capable of making accurate moral judgements on our own. If that’s your position, then you have made a moral judgement regarding god’s morality. If you are incapable of making accurate moral judgements on your own, by what method did you conclude that god’s morality is better than everyone else’s?

[GrandizerII]

What I want to know is what exactly does Acrobat find theistic about the clearly secular moral view that he alleges to hold, other than that he chooses to call it such? I know he doesn't see it this way, but the god that Acrobat alleges to believe in seems to me an impersonal god that, through Acrobat's agency, is moved to move Acrobat to feel various sorts of feels and oughts. But then, what important causal role does such a god play then if all this can be done without it? What exactly is an atheist like Vulcan missing in his moral view that Acrobat thinks he has?

[The Grand Nudger]

I don’t think he knows what his position is, and it wouldn’t matter much if he really knew his own thoughts since he lacks the vocabulary to accurately communicate whatever they are.

[LadyForCamus]

What I want to know is what exactly does Acrobat find theistic about the clearly secular moral view that he alleges to hold, other than that he chooses to call it such? I know he doesn't see it this way, but the god that Acrobat alleges to believe in seems to me an impersonal god that, through Acrobat's agency, is moved to move Acrobat to feel various sorts of feels and oughts. But then, what important causal role does such a god play then if all this can be done without it? What exactly is an atheist like Vulcan missing in his moral view that Acrobat thinks he has?

Yes, it renders god completely obsolete, especially considering the fact that the Bible (if he is Christian) doesn’t even condemn the most horrible moral atrocities, like rape and human slavery, that Acrobat himself probably (hopefully) has no internal inclination toward, and never has.

[Belacqua]

Maybe the discussion isn't as focussed as it could be. But Acrobat has been pretty clear in what he's been saying so far, if you go back and look.

He is using the terms "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" to describe two types of meaning in the world. All of these terms are problematic; it might help to be sharper. Overall, though, I think it's easy enough.

In this vocabulary, intrinsic meaning is not invented by individuals. People find it in the world. Acrobat thinks (and I agree) that both Christians and atheists can hold that such intrinsic meaning exists. For different reasons, probably. But Vulcan's view of a Platonic Good is probably an example.

Extrinsic meaning is meaning added to the world by people. Alan has correctly pointed out that this may not be added by individuals, but by groups.

To me, meaning that is created by large groups of people, including species of animals (e.g. us) is real. It won't survive when all the people die, but it is still a real thing.

I'm curious about Acrobat's conception of how intrinsic meaning works. From what he says, it seems to be teleological, and that makes sense to me. Unfortunately some atheists think that teleology can be only divine, but I don't think that's right.

Anyway, I suspect that he knows some things about this that I don't, and I haven't seen him say anything disqualifying so far. The fact that his view of the source of meaning isn't in line with sola scriptura literalist Bible readings does nothing to argue that he's not a Christian, or imply that he's self-contradictory or something. Please let's allow him to develop this without being pelted with insults.

[The Grand Nudger]

Teleology certainly doesn’t need to be divine, and that’s precisely -why- he’s repeatedly stomped on his dick. In trying to come up with a reason that his morality differs from any number of secular moralities.....so that it would be difficult to understand how atheists account for them.....he has been repeating the word teleology like a mantra, while simultaneously denying that this refers to the theological sense of the term.

Thus, his constant shitposting ( there is no interest whatsoever in developing his POV- just plastering this garbage in as many threads as possible) is reducing to a tangled contradictory farce.

[GrandizerII]

Maybe the discussion isn't as focussed as it could be. But Acrobat has been pretty clear in what he's been saying so far, if you go back and look.

He is using the terms "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" to describe two types of meaning in the world. All of these terms are problematic; it might help to be sharper. Overall, though, I think it's easy enough.

In this vocabulary, intrinsic meaning is not invented by individuals. People find it in the world. Acrobat thinks (and I agree) that both Christians and atheists can hold that such intrinsic meaning exists. For different reasons, probably. But Vulcan's view of a Platonic Good is probably an example.

Extrinsic meaning is meaning added to the world by people. Alan has correctly pointed out that this may not be added by individuals, but by groups.

To me, meaning that is created by large groups of people, including species of animals (e.g. us) is real. It won't survive when all the people die, but it is still a real thing.

Ok.

I'm curious about Acrobat's conception of how intrinsic meaning works. From what he says, it seems to be teleological, and that makes sense to me. Unfortunately some atheists think that teleology can be only divine, but I don't think that's right.

Acrobat seems to be suggesting that it is an indicator of the Divine.

Anyway, I suspect that he knows some things about this that I don't, and I haven't seen him say anything disqualifying so far. The fact that his view of the source of meaning isn't in line with sola scriptura literalist Bible readings does nothing to argue that he's not a Christian, or imply that he's self-contradictory or something. Please let's allow him to develop this without being pelted with insults.

Didn't say anything about scripture or whatever. I am happy to call him a Christian, but I still expect him to explain what then is concretely theistic about his position, and what his beef is exactly with atheistic and/or secular morality. If there is no beef, then what is the point of all these debates about morality then with atheists specifically?

[Belacqua]

From Authoritarianism, by Wendy Brown:

Certainly ressentiment is a vital energy of right- wing populism:
rancor, grudges, barely concealed victimization, and other
affective qualities of reaction are the affective heartbeat of internet
trolling, tweets, and speeches at right- wing rallies, and
a striking feature of Trump’s own demeanor. For philosopher
Hans Sluga, however, Nietzsche’s most important contribution to
theorizing the current conjuncture is his treatment of nihilism.43
Often mischaracterized as a nihilist because he reckoned with the
contingent nature of values and truth, Nietzsche is more properly
appreciated as a philosopher of the age of nihilism, which
he knew to be unfolding in the centuries after science and reason
topple God and shatter the foundations of every moral and ethical
truth. As Sluga reminds us, for Nietzsche the age of nihilism
does not mean the elimination of values but a world in which “the
highest values devaluate themselves” as they become unmoored
from their foundations.44 Western Judeo- Christian values, including
those that secure liberal democracy, lose their depth as
they lose their fundaments; accordingly, they do not vanish but
become fungible and trivial, easily traded, augmented, instrumentalized,
superficialized. These effects further degrade the
value of values, inevitably deepening the nihilism of cultures
and their subjects.

There is ubiquitous evidence of this phenomenon today. It is
quotidian in the instrumentalization of values for commercial
and political gain— “branding”— and in the general lack of umbrage
at this instrumentalization. It is manifest in a US Supreme
Court majority that pretends to “originalism” while stretching
the Constitution to sanction everything from torture to corporate
personhood.45 It is evident in a survey of American voters,
conducted in October 2011 and repeated five years later: in 2011,
during the Obama presidency, only 30 percent of white evangelical
Protestants believed that an elected official who commits an
immoral act in his or her personal life can still behave ethically
in public and professional life; this figure rose to 72 percent in
October 2016, when Trump was a candidate. Similarly, in 2011,
64 percent of white evangelicals considered it very important
for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs, a
figure that dropped to 49 percent during the Trump campaign.46
These changes were surely the effect less of deep ethical reflection
than of shifting political tides. This is how nihilism goes— not the
death of values but their becoming protean, becoming available
for branding projects and covering purposes that manifestly do
not comport with them.

Trumpism embodies another feature of nihilism
as Nietzsche depicts it, one crucial to freedom’s antisocial qualities
today. This is the desublimation of the will to power.48 Both
Freud and Nietzsche understand values and the world built to
comport with them as sublimations of what Freud called the instincts
or drives and Nietzsche termed the will to power. Both
understood the untamed human animal to be freer, in some ways
happier, in the absence of such sublimation, but also at risk of
self- and other- destruction. Above all, both understood civilization
itself to be the product of sublimation. With nihilism’s
devaluation of values, there is, Sluga argues, “a falling back and
collapse of the will to power into its own elementary form. . . .
[E]ven religion and the appeal to religious values become cynical
instruments for the unrestrained use of power.”49 More is at
stake in this collapse than the exercise of power unbridled by
ethics or humility. Rather, Sluga writes, “what goes by the way
in this unrestrained will to power is any concern for others . . . in
particular the compact between generations on which our entire
social order has rested so far.”50 Sluga thus helps us understand
an aspect of right- wing freedom unyoked from conscience, not
just because it is contoured by neoliberal selfishness and critiques
of the social, but because of nihilism’s own radical depression of
conscience.51 Combined with the disparagement and depletion of
the social, freedom becomes doing or saying what one likes without
regard for its effects, freedom to be genuinely without care
for the predicaments, vulnerabilities, or fates of other humans,
other species, or the planet. It is freedom, as Nietzsche puts it, to
“wreak one’s will” for the sheer pleasure of it. And when this will
is wounded and rancorous from social castration or humiliation,
it is, as Elizabeth Anker formulates it, “ugly freedom.”52

------------------

end quote

Here the author is aiming her critique at Trump and the Trump-like, but I think it's obvious in most sections of US society. It's clear that we associate rudeness and vulgarity with honesty these days. We think it's downright bad to hold back from calling someone a fuckwad if we happen to disagree with him about metaphysics. "Desublimation" is a useful word, I think.

[comet]

agreed, like calling anybody against things like sanctuary cities a racist makes sanctuary city more logical. Call people that don't agree with one a jerk dork and instantly render their position less valid. I see people having to like a guy to agree with a guy also. I think trump is a buffoon. I am not a far left liberal either. yes, trump is a buffoon and so is anybody that thinks sanctuary city's are even reasonable. the far left is a violent lot that us middle left should avoid like we do the far right.

same with this god thing. The god in the bible just doesn't match observation. Neither does denying things like "living planet" over "non living planet" out of a fear of religion. yeah, bible god is not reasonable but so is deny everything based on how a theist will miss use the information.

determining how the universe works based on a personal dislike of religion is weird.

[Acrobat]

@Acrobat

Let me ask you something. It seems you think that humans need god’s objective morality because we are not capable of making accurate moral judgements on our own. If that’s your position, then you have made a moral judgement regarding god’s morality. If you are incapable of making accurate moral judgements on your own, by what method did you conclude that god’s morality is better than everyone else’s?

No, I don't think that all. In fact nothing I said has anything to do with how we derive moral judgements, but the ontological nature of moral judgments. I also don't believe you need to believe in god to make more judgements, our conscious often reveals to us what's right and wrong, regardless of our particular beliefs or lack of them. 

A subjectivist might suggest that good and bad are social constructs. 

Would you say if society didn't tell us or indoctrinate concepts of good and bad to us, that we wouldn't be able to make moral judgements?