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Do you think having a belief and obeying the rules make you less 'human' and ...
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It pleases the one whom we love whether god exists or not and can that not be a good thing to do unless god says so? If god didn't exist would you stop doing things to please your loved ones?Sam Vimes said:
Not without God being real. If He is as He says, then doing good is rational because:
1. it pleases the One whom we love;
2. is the right thing to do;
3. it brings eternal reward.
Oh and doing something for eternal reward is not moral, it’s selfish.
That’s called a no true Scotsman fallacy. You can keep a 100% success rate for moral behaviour if you just disown members once they break the rules.True believers will not.
So until the day that all religious people actually follow the rules willingly all these arguments about the wonder of objective morality are irrelevantAgreed. But one day we will be.
…
But I agree that many religionists have no more morality than the moral secularist. Their religion is in name only.
Your idea of morality is an objective law that exists independent of humans and that is given to us by a divine being. We of course cannot claim that but we don’t view morality that way. Morality is about how human beings treat each other and I don’t need a god to tell me that every sane person on the planet wants to be alive so it’s better for everyone if we make murder illegal.My point in this thread has not been the effectiveness of objective morality. It has been to show the irrationality of atheists claiming any action is good or evil in itself.
I only wish that were true.Certainly, especially as he does not believe my assertion about it being wrong. If he did, it would give more restraint to him than otherwise.
That’s absolutely true, if it wasn’t no one would ever do anything to harm anyone else. The fact remains that kindness and oppression are not alike in any world because the latter forces you to work out the risk/reward ratio. In any world, hurting others is a risk to yourself.Absolute certainty is not needed. All of us live with taking risks daily - otherwise we would never leave the house. Having an acceptable risk/reward ratio is what counts.
And this is what it all boils down to. It’s not that atheists have no rational basis for saying something is right or wrong, we can tell someone that something is wrong just as easily as a religious person simply by pointing out that we don’t want it done to us and that the perpetrator wouldn’t want it done to themselves or anyone they love. The only difference is that we don’t have a big muscley guy called god standing behind us forcing him to listen to us. We don’t have a book that threatens eternal torture if they don’t listen to us. You don’t try to convince someone not to do something by appealing to their sense of morality and pointing out that it’s wrong, you try to scare them into not doing it by appealing to their sense of fear and telling them they’ll be punished. Sorry wolfsbane but that’s not morality, that’s toeing the line out of fear.Indeed, telling them there will be reprisals is generally more effective than merely telling them it is wrong. But if we can persuade them that being wrong makes the reprisals eternal - then substantial behaviour modification can be expected.
Again, I only wish that were true.Most effective of all is for them to fall in love with the Lawgiver - that motivates an earnest desire to keep His laws at all times. We do not always succeed in keeping them, but we pick ourselves up and try again.
Let me tell you wolfsbane that you would have an extremely difficult time behaving any more morally than myself or any atheist I know. The only way you’re deluding yourself is thinking that an atheist is any more prone to immoral behaviour than you. Good people do good things and bad people do bad things completely independent of religionWe have been born again, made new creatures, given a new nature - so we will be marked by marching to a different moral drum. If our conduct is no better than our heathen/atheist neighbours, then we are deluding ourselves.0 -
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Fanny Cradock wrote: »It might imply that if you want it to, specifically if you are arguing from a position that God is not God. However, it is far simpler to say that logical consistency is a property of God's nature, and you can't separate God from his nature without getting rid of God.
And is that not a rule?
Surely the rule "You cannot separate God from his nature without getting rid of God" is a rule above God, a rule he is bound to?
Ultimately God exists in a reality where certain things hold, like what you just said. And they just are, they exist as properties of reality and bind God as much as anything else since he exists in reality.
Why?Fanny Cradock wrote: »Given that you aren't contesting God's existence in this thread, I'm not sure how you can conceive of anything existing without God, be it matter, rules, laws, truths or falsehoods.
It is only an assertion on the part of Christians that all these things come from God. That doesn't mean such an assertion logically holds, as pointed out above.Fanny Cradock wrote: »The result of remaking God into god is that you are back to informing us that it's turtles all the way down.
Possibly, but simply because that conclusion is both inescapable and unsatisfying isn't really may concern.
You should try being an atheist, we have no freaking clue what or where the universe came from
My point is that logic and truth cannot come from God since God is confined by logic himself (as you point out above).Fanny Cradock wrote: »What's your point?
God exists in a reality where certain truths hold, such as the statement "God exists"
God cannot decide certain truths about reality. For example God cannot decide that "God exists" is a false statement, because to do so he must exist in the first place, thus making the statement true.
God does not control or decide the truth value of the statement "God exists", that is determined by the properties of the reality he finds himself in.
Therefore truth cannot be sourced from God.
If you theists insist in a source for everything then someone must have decided that God exists, thus making the statement true. But as you rightly point out, that is trutles all the way down.
No one said this was going to be easyFanny Cradock wrote: »While not intending to imply any form of pantheism, I'm saying that God is literally the super-set (and things like truth and existence are necessary properties of his nature, not things that stand over him). What a naturalist like yourself would consider to be everything (this universe) is actually only a sub-set of God.
I'm perfectly happy with the idea of everything including the universe and much more. But that still does not get around the issue highlighted above.
God exists in some reality. You can say that God is that reality, and inhabits every part of is. But the points highlighted above still stand.
There are properties of this reality, properties of God if you consider God to be reality, that are determined independently of God, such as the truth of God's existence.
Therefore the ultimately point is that they cannot be sourced from God.
Er, do you see what you just did there :PFanny Cradock wrote: »It's not God defining himself into existence because God by definition has always existed.
Anyway, my point was that God cannot decide he will exist. To claim he can is just pointless definitions, silly semantics.
By virtue of being able to be around to make such a decision he already exists.
God just exists, if we assert that nothing made God.
That fact, that truth, though does not come from God because God didn't decide it, he couldn't have. And thus truth, ultimate truth, does not come from God.0 -
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Not at all. I think a diversity of opinions is actually very healthy.As far as I can see your definition of dogmatic, "the party line" and fundamentalist seems to largely mean "putting forward a different world view to PDN that isn't immediately changed when PDN gives his opinion and justifies it by insulting anyone who disagrees" so I wouldn't call it ironic personally. But each to their own.
I have a lot of respect for posters who, while disagreeing with others, are prepared to display some evidence of critical and independent thinking.
For example, when a Christian admits some of the failings in Christian practice, or is prepared to say that certain things in Church history reflect badly on Christians, then it comes across as a breath of fresh air. The same when an atheist admits that an atheist author made a mistake, or says to a theist, "Yes, you might have a point there."
Then you have other posters who invariably present arguments that follow a dogmatic line. That's not necessarily bad, but it does tend to make for rather predictable threads.
So, for example. we have several posters who can be guaranteed to cut or paste whatever the Catholic catechism or an apologetics website says. Wolfsbane will invariably present the Calvinist position. You will invariable follow the same lines of argument. That is why I found it ironic that you would criticise Wolfsbane for doing what you do yourself.
There are certain posters (eg Fanny Cradock or Malty T) where they post something and I find myself saying, "Wow! I never thought they would say that." Even Wicknight has surprised me on occasion. You and Wolsbane have never had that effect on me.
It's a simple, and I believe accurate, observation on posting styles - I don't know why you're trying to turn into a war by talking about insults or misrepresenting me as insulting anyone who disagrees with me.
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Thanks!
Only you PDN could take Sam shugging and saying "I wouldn't call it ironic personally. But each to their own."
into
"I don't know why you're trying to turn into a war"
A "war", really, that's what Sam is doing is it? :rolleyes:
And that is why we love you. Peace be with you.
[EDIT] oh dear, Sam fell for it [/EDIT]
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Not at all. I think a diversity of opinions is actually very healthy.
I have a lot of respect for posters who, while disagreeing with others, are prepared to display some evidence of critical and independent thinking.
For example, when a Christian admits some of the failings in Christian practice, or is prepared to say that certain things in Church history reflect badly on Christians, then it comes across as a breath of fresh air. The same when an atheist admits that an atheist author made a mistake, or says to a theist, "Yes, you might have a point there."
Then you have other posters who invariably present arguments that follow a dogmatic line. That's not necessarily bad, but it does tend to make for rather predictable threads.
So, for example. we have several posters who can be guaranteed to cut or paste whatever the Catholic catechism or an apologetics website says. Wolfsbane will invariably present the Calvinist position. You will invariable follow the same lines of argument. That is why I found it ironic that you would criticise Wolfsbane for doing what you do yourself.
There are certain posters (eg Fanny Cradock or Malty T) where they post something and I find myself saying, "Wow! I never thought they would say that." Even Wicknight has surprised me on occasion. You and Wolsbane have never had that effect on me.
What I criticised wolfsbane for was looking at the world through christian coloured spectacles, ignoring things that disconfirmed his positions so that he can make statements like "I think I can safely say the Christian is less likely to behave badly in a given situation than an atheist" and, for example, dismiss evolution. If a position is logically consistent, rational and reasonable it is not dogamtic, fundamentalist or "toeing the party line" to hold it and it should not be particularly surprising or warranting of such derogatory terms being levelled if you happen to find that many people independently arrive at similar positions. If someone correctly points out a flaw in an argument/position of an atheist I will be more than happy to acknowledge it; despite your multiple claims to the contrary I care about what is true, not what confirms my position but the fact that I may not change my position after a theist gives what you personally consider to be a rebuttal of it does not make me dogmatic. I know it's helpful to brand someone as dogmatic for holding what you consider to be a “typical” atheist position in the face of what you consider to be a solid rebuttal but sometimes when a lot of people agree with each other it’s because that’s the position that would tend to be reached by someone approaching the problem rationally and not necessarily because they’re “toeing the party line”. A pertinent example of this is that sometimes when someone “won’t admit” that an atheist author made a mistake it is indeed because they’re a dogmatic fundamentalist but sometimes, just sometimes, it’s because the theist is actually building straw men for the purposes of branding the author as dishonest and the atheist is correctly telling him so.
Yeah why would I ever interpret being branded as a dogmatic fundamentalist for holding what PDN considers typical atheist positions an insult :rolleyes:It's a simple, and I believe accurate, observation on posting styles - I don't know why you're trying to turn into a war by talking about insults or misrepresenting me as insulting anyone who disagrees with me.
And I’m not starting any wars, it was a simple, and I believe accurate, observation on your posting style. I wouldn’t say you insult everyone who disagrees with you but I did consider this post by MikeC101 a good summary of many interactions I’ve seen you have with people, and so did several others apparently:Ah. I see. So your plan was :
1. Make your point, giving your reasoning.
2. Respond to anyone pointing out what they think are the flaws in your reasoning to with a world weary "Here we go again"
3. Leave, sighing to yourself, with a snide dig about how the atheists really just want to whine to each other about how victimised they are, without you even bothering to attempt to address responses to you.0 -
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<Suitably flippant dismissal>
<Leisurely exit
>
:pac:
I've no wish to get into a tit for tat argument.
I do try to be somebody who thinks outside the box and hopefully confounds people's expectations of how they think a stereotypical Christian thinks and behaves. That's just my opinion, as someone might say in their sig.
I had no wish to be insulting, and indeed many people would think that folks like yourself, Wolfsbane, or Stephentlig are more to be admired for your consistency in holding the line for your position and not deviating from it.
Different strokes for different folks and all that.
I must admit, though, that it was interesting that, without any conscious sense of irony, you responded by making comments about me and supporting those comments by noting that a good number of other atheists think the same way about me as you do. So, I guess that proves that you are an independent thinker.
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So much for my leisurely exit.
Of course not, you just wish to say derogatory things about meI've no wish to get into a tit for tat argument.
An independent thinker is someone who arrives at their own conclusions. The existence of others who independently arrived at the same conclusions does not negate the fact that I arrived at these conclusions myself. I know you love to take the fact that atheists sometimes have similar opinions and dismiss this as fundamentalist, dogmatic, "party line" groupthink but sometimes people just agree with each other and the chances of this are greatly increased if the position in question is logically consistent. If I have a particular opinion then that's my opinion. If other people share it then that's good for them but the fact that they share it is irrelevant to me. I'm not going to change my position to be in line with the "atheist position" as you seem to think but nor am I going to change a position that I support just for the sake of it (or just because PDN has given one of his ever so convincing arguments), lest I be branded as a stereotypical fundamentalist, dogmatic, "party line" groupthinker by someone who doesn't grasp that people can often independently reach many of the same conclusions without being such. We all agree that 1+1=2 as well, typical atheists eh :rolleyes:. If you give a particular opinion and ten atheists all give the same response, maybe instead of dismissing this as fundamentalist groupthink, you should consider the possibility that there is a flaw in your reasoning that everyone has spotted. If you said that 1+1=5 you'd hardly be surprised if you got ten of the same response now would you? I have to say it is kind of amusing that you have managedI do try to be somebody who thinks outside the box and hopefully confounds people's expectations of how they think a stereotypical Christian thinks and behaves. That's just my opinion, as someone might say in their sig.
I had no wish to be insulting, and indeed many people would think that folks like yourself, Wolfsbane, or Stephentlig are more to be admired for your consistency in holding the line for your position and not deviating from it.
Different strokes for different folks and all that.
I must admit, though, that it was interesting that, without any conscious sense of irony, you responded by making comments about me and supporting those comments by noting that a good number of other atheists think the same way about me as you do. So, I guess that proves that you are an independent thinker.
to take the fact that theists tend to use the same few basic arguments in different forms with the same few basic flaws in them and turn this around so that when atheists point out the very obvious flaws in these arguments you can brand them as groupthinkers for all spotting the same flaw and fundamentalists for not changing their opinion despite your ever so convincing argument
I was "trying" to give a certain impression of myself I might occasionally take a position I didn't actually agree with just for the sake of it but I'm just giving my honest opinion that some people may or may not share. This will of course not make a dent in your opinion so I'm off to piss into the wind now to fill my time with something more productive0 -
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