How to beat a presupp at their own game

[The Architect Of Fate]

You are making a strawman here. It's clear that a maximally great deity won't sanction raping babies. You say : " Let's presume that something that you've accepted as moral actually isn't moral" , isn't moral according to whom, again? what's more probable, that your own moral assessment is wrong, or that an all knowing deity made a moral mistake...........?

It's better to think of it in a bottom-up fashion. We establish God's existence first, as a maximally great being, then we follow God's moral recommendations. What you're doing here is the exact opposite : you think moral recommendations are arbitrary because you're not convinced that any maximally great being exists in the first place, and I don't blame you, actually, you cannot accept the conclusion (God is absolute morality) because you don't accept the simplest premise of it (God exists as a maximally great being).... well, duh..

No, that's not correct and it's not a strawman.  You say it's clear that any maximally great deity wouldn't sanction baby-raping, yet you don't actually show how you would determine that your god was sanctioning something similarly immoral.  You skipped the question which asked that very thing.  Until you can show how you would determine that your god's morals are wrong, you can't conclude that they are right. The question of who it's immoral to is irrelevant as long as there is objective morality.  If morals are an objective real feature of reality, it doesn't need a who.  And no, my conclusions about your god's morality have nothing to do with my not thinking he exists.  They are based upon what your religion tells us about Allah, namely that he answers to no one and anything he says goes.  If that's your justification, that same justification can be used to declare ANY god moral, including the baby-raping god.  The people in that alternate reality are saying all the same things about their god that you are saying about your god, so obviously the things you are saying don't in any sense pick out a moral god from a pantheon of possible other gods with different morals.  Here, let's make it plain.  Let's say that I am a traveler from that alternate universe, and I've told you how shameful I think it is that your god forbids baby raping.  How would you go about convincing me that I was the one who was worshipping an immoral god?  You've already said that it's clear that he is, to which, as a believer in the baby raping god I reply, "Nonsense.  It's clear that baby-raping is moral and that your god is immoral for not allowing it.  It's obvious!  All laws and morality come from my god and my god has a morally perfect nature and so he couldn't sanction baby-raping if it were immoral.  So, obviously, baby-raping is moral!"  What's your response?

Btw, there's a serious problem with your counter-argument.  You can't determine that something is maximally great without examining all its properties for maximal greatness.  Since maximal greatness morally isn't a product of any other property or attribute, you can't determine it from some other characteristic, so you have to evaluate Allah's morality on its own terms just as we have been doing regardless of anything else you can determine.  You can't conclude that Allah is maximally great without first concluding that he is maximally moral.  You've got the cart before the horse.  This is probably because you've never actually determined that Allah is maximally great, you've just swallowed the assertion whole as just another piece of dogma that you accept uncritically.  But feel free to show that Allah is maximally great without showing that he is maximally moral.


"There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and remembers Allah often."
Surah 33:21

Mohammed says, "Grab 'em by the pussy while they're still young!"

So he's whipped out the whole "maximally great" nonsense, has he? One would think after a decade of that being lampooned they would drop it.

[R00tKiT]

"There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and remembers Allah often."
Surah 33:21

Mohammed says, "Grab 'em 

I think you're not a person worth discussing morality with, since you clearly aren't capable of respecting other people's beliefs. I'll stop here and wish you good luck with your godless objective morality. Sounds promising, I'm alreading seeing the fruits of it.

[Angrboda]

"There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and remembers Allah often."
Surah 33:21

Mohammed says, "Grab 'em 

I think you're not a person worth discussing morality with, since you clearly aren't capable of respecting other people's beliefs. I'll stop here and wish you good luck with your godless objective morality. Sounds promising, I'm alreading seeing the fruits of it.

I respect you. I don't respect your beliefs. There's a difference. I owe nothing to your beliefs. You don't respect my beliefs either. But you do respect me, right? This is just another example of a religious person claiming a privilege for their religion that they don't accord other people. It's nothing but hypocrisy. Apparently your beliefs are so weak that they can't withstand criticism.

The only reason you're abandoning the discussion is because you can't answer the argument. I'm at least willing to entertain the question. You're apparently afraid of it.

I didn't post that out of any disrespect but simply to point out that, according to Islam, sex with a girl under the age of consent is not immoral, so your claim that baby-raping is "clearly" wrong isn't valid as your very own prophet has muddied the waters. If you can't take an argument offered in good faith because your prophet's behavior embarasses you, that's on you.

What's next? Are you going to threaten to kill me because I post a stick figure drawing of Mohammed. All you're doing is showing that you're immature and can't handle criticism of your religion. That, again, is on you.

Unless of course you're defending the rape of underage girls? Is that what you're saying, that raping underage girls is fine according to Allah?

[Foxaèr]

At least he responded to you. Clearly, either my response offended him too much or not enough.

[The Grand Nudger]

Magic book says alot of things, and when the god in magic book says unjust things and promises unjust things, 

That's irrelevant to our discussion. The word unjust as you use it here is your own moral assessment of the Qur'an's assertions, which doesn't have any bearing on how the Qur'an describes God.
To make matters simpler: let's say that some religion A presents the God A as a "perfectly just deity which will condemn all its creatures to eternal hellfire". 
Now my rule doesn't apply to religion A, even if the actions of the deity strongly provoke our inner moral sense. 

On a side note, a well-known authentic hadith actually declares that no one, including the prophet, will go to heaven if God decides to be maximally just with his creatures:

quote: "I heard Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) saying, "The good deeds of any person will not make him enter Paradise." (i.e., None can enter Paradise through his good deeds.) They (the Prophet's companions) said, 'Not even you, O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)?' He said, "Not even myself, unless Allah bestows His favor and mercy on me."

https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5673

You read that right: infinite justness minutiously applied means that everyone goes to hell, prophets of god included. 

..and I know that you didn't rule any religions on on account of that non-rule to begin with - so it all seems so pointless.  But..go ahead, double down.

Yes, you're right. I didn't rule out christianity for example based on this rule. But you're forgetting something here, is it necessary to look for other religions when you are presented with very compelling evidence for a particular religion? Obviously not. We have to pursue some direction, after all. We can at least rest assured that no just deity will punish us for choosing the wrong belief despite our best efforts.

You imagine and conceive of your non rule as an invalid premise which you will not affirm when that premise is applied to your own religion.

I explain the logical consequences of your invalid non-rule if we attempted to apply it cogently.

You now tell me that magic book tells you to be unconcerned with being maximally just.  The verse doesn't actually say that, but if that's what you believe it's as good as any other.  Am I supposed to be surprised that you've interpreted magic book to provide you an excuse for injustice even as you insist that unjust religions can be ruled out? I'm not worried about whether or not your silly god or your disgusting religion meets the criteria for maximal justness - I'm telling you it fails to meet the bar of minimal justness.

Sure, we all pursue some direction - but some directions are..very clearly, garbage. Yours is just such a diretion. If we were being generous to allah, you're the fuckup, and what you say here is garbage....but, ofc, you'll defend your own honor to the detriment of your silly god's. Other posters are more generous. I don't respect you -or- your beliefs. You've given me no reason to, and have given me every reason to consider both irredeemably broken. Is that a problem for any goal of yours here? Is that the intended effect?

You can argue moral subjectivism as an excuse for moral depravity with a moral subjectivist - but with me, you may as well pound sand. You'd make less of a fool of yourself punching a mound of dirt than reading your own god and your own religion for unapologetic filth, to me. You wondered aloud why you should argue over morality with a person who doesn't respect you - there are plenty of reasons for that - but there is truly no reason whatsoever to argue morality with a person who insists that they have no moral agency and no moral system to apply that agency to if they could muster it up.

[The Architect Of Fate]

I think you're not a person worth discussing morality with, since you clearly aren't capable of respecting other people's beliefs. I'll stop here and wish you good luck with your godless objective morality. Sounds promising, I'm alreading seeing the fruits of it.

You


STOP POINTING OUT MY BELIEFS AREN'T MORAL YOU BIG MEANIE !!!!.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Not respecting someone else’s religious beliefs has absolutely NOTHING to do with morality.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh, idk, the type of morality I follow positively demands that I refuse to respect quite a few religions. If I did or could, it would be a moral failure that pointed out a significant deficiency in me as a person. When an imperial god asserts a theocratic regime dispensed by it's agents on the earth under pain of death or torture - no one should expect to hear any live and let kill kumbaya speeches from me.

I don't believe that, and probably couldn't even convince anyone I did if I tried, lol.

[vulcanlogician]

Hi everyone,

I'm an atheist, although I've really just suppressed my belief in God for 30 years... which is what some theists will tell me. I joined Discord a week ago and I listened to the chats in one of the theist servers

The chat server is filled with presupps and the number one objection for atheism that I hear is what grounds our atheism? What grounds do we have for facts and knowledge? How can we know anything in a godless world?

From their view, God is the foundation of knowledge. It's self-justifying - how do they know? God revealed it through special and divine revelation and therefore they cannot be wrong. So to deny this, means that atheists are appealing to a non-personal universe (??) (I'm probably not stating this argument 100%, I"m tired and haven't slept)

If you say the universe is my starting point as an atheist, they'll say what grounds the universe?

One of the primary presupps there is Darth Darkins. Anyone know how to dismantle this type of argument?

Hopefully you're still around, man. Have you tried debating this guy yet? I'm interested in hearing how it went. I'll help if I can.


I'm astounded by the arrogance of someone who thinks they've "solved epistemology." I have a ton of things you can try. 

The first thing that comes to mind: Can you logically demonstrate that "God-based" knowledge is somehow better than regular knowledge?

I mean, this presupp stuff is CLEARLY question begging. Has nobody brought this up? (I'm assuming they have.) What is the typical response to this?

[Superjock]

Hi everyone,

I'm an atheist, although I've really just suppressed my belief in God for 30 years... which is what some theists will tell me. I joined Discord a week ago and I listened to the chats in one of the theist servers

The chat server is filled with presupps and the number one objection for atheism that I hear is what grounds our atheism? What grounds do we have for facts and knowledge? How can we know anything in a godless world?

From their view, God is the foundation of knowledge. It's self-justifying - how do they know? God revealed it through special and divine revelation and therefore they cannot be wrong. So to deny this, means that atheists are appealing to a non-personal universe (??) (I'm probably not stating this argument 100%, I"m tired and haven't slept)

If you say the universe is my starting point as an atheist, they'll say what grounds the universe?

One of the primary presupps there is Darth Darkins. Anyone know how to dismantle this type of argument?

Hopefully you're still around, man. Have you tried debating this guy yet? I'm interested in hearing how it went. I'll help if I can.


I'm astounded by the arrogance of someone who thinks they've "solved epistemology." I have a ton of things you can try. 

The first thing that comes to mind: Can you logically demonstrate that "God-based" knowledge is somehow better than regular knowledge?

I mean, this presupp stuff is CLEARLY question begging. Has nobody brought this up? (I'm assuming they have.) What is the typical response to this?

Hi there, no I haven't debated Darth who is the one who has put this argument forth to atheists. I'm not knowledgeable enough to take him on yet. :  His reasoning is that in a godless world, there is nothing absolute and ultimate to ground all possibility and impossibility. It's a universe based on chance, so the laws of physics may change tomorrow. Also, his argument is that all facts and knowledge in a godless world are arbitrary, whereas in his worldview knowledge can only be attained through the Christian God because he is omniscient and all-powerful and institutes that which is fundamental and ultimate etc, etc.

---

To fellow atheists, somewhat different question - but a question I often see from theists. The question goes : where do atheists get their basis to justify any claim they make?