Morality exists without your God.

[ParkCungHee]

And ideas don't exist; they're illusional and made up by people.

If ideas don't exist, what are these "people" and how do they make ideas?

 

[Dachs]

That it's reductionistic crap?

forgive me for exploding into laughter

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

These are all just examples.

Let's say that I believe X is wrong, and you don't, and we are the only beings in the hypothetical universe. In this example, there is just our two opinions.

Since no one answered me, I'll address the first person who appealed to divinity for moral righteousness.

So, your criticism is that morality without divinity is prone to subjectiveness. But how about I copy your example like this:

Lets say I believe my God, or my interpretations of a holy text dictates X is wrong and yours doesn't. How does this differ from the example you gave?

How about we simply observe where morals came from. They arrive the same time when civilisation arrived. Tribal men had rules with regard to killing. Killing people from your own tribe is generally considered bad (exceptions can be found) but killing people from a rivalling tribe is considered good sport. Since it benefits the society in the scope in which people perceived it. From there it's not that hard to see how a changing and expanding society would dictate evolving rules which benefit that society.

You only have to look at the different ways the Bible has been interpreted during it's existence to come to the obvious conclusion. Which is the rules of society at that moment very strongly influence the claimed divine morality. The divine morality has been called unchanging. And I'm sure that were there an entity which is like the God people tell me it is, that it's rules would indeed be unchanging and divine and good and completely irrelevant when it's followers after 2000 years still haven't managed to create a coherent system they all agree on out of it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

If ideas don't exist, what are these "people" and how do they make ideas?

By dressing provocatively.

 

[ParkCungHee]

But dressing proactively is an idea. It's doesn't exist, so you can't do it.

We've entered into materialist puritanism.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

But dressing proactively is an idea. It's doesn't exist, so you can't do it.

We've entered into materialist puritanism.

As long as the beer is cold, and the skirt are short I'll enter any bar you'll take me to.

 

[ParkCungHee]

As long as the beer is cold, and the skirt are short I'll enter any bar you'll take me to.

Sorry. Coldness and shortness are both ideas. They are illusions that do not exist Ziggy. You've been living a lie.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Sorry. Coldness and shortness are both ideas. They are illusions that do not exist Ziggy. You've been living a lie.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

 

[Mark1031]

That it's reductionistic crap?

I'd hesitate to call it an "argument", let alone a "nice" one.

........

 

[ParkCungHee]

........

Being brief is not the same as being reductionist.

 

[BvBPL]

What a coincidence! God was made in Albuquerque's image.

That's a viewpoint specific to some conservative churches. Catholics believe God was made in Santa Fe's image.

Unitarians think He was made in the image of Taos.

 

[Angst]

Sorry. Coldness and shortness are both ideas. They are illusions that do not exist Ziggy. You've been living a lie.

Uh, are they actually ideas? Don't each have things to do with scientific measurement (temperature and distance) that exist in the real world? And even so, I don't see of those concepts having anything to do with the idea of morality? (As the temperature, distance and the metaphysically acknowledged way to act each have their respective distances to the real world, both in origin and application...)

 

[Save_Ferris]

If God didn't exist, Albuquerque would have had to invent Him.

You blasphemists! You have denied the preachings of Birdjaguar and have taken no heed to mine! May you have a 2-hour delay while flying to Amarillo!

 

[cardgame]

Uh, are they actually ideas? Don't each have things to do with scientific measurement (temperature and distance) that exist in the real world? And even so, I don't see of those concepts having anything to do with the idea of morality? (As the temperature, distance and the metaphysically acknowledged way to act each have their respective distances to the real world, both in origin and application...)

They're concepts, which is really just an idea.

 

[Angst]

Ok. They're measurable though, or have measuring properties. Morality isn't and doesn't. Please help me semantically provide how morality then is an idea that as immeasurable and therefore, well, not physically there.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Morals should have weight so we can quantitatively determine which ones are more important, and to assure that none of them are witches when we throw them into a lake.

 

[cardgame]

I'm just sort of playing along, not serious about that line of argument

 

[ParkCungHee]

Uh, are they actually ideas? Don't each have things to do with scientific measurement (temperature and distance) that exist in the real world?

Well I do think those things exist, but even from a strictly materialist point of view, coldness and shortness are ideas.
Coldness and shortness are the absence of something, produced only in relation to what our minds expect and are used to. The idea that a skirt is short, or even that it's a piece of clothing, is simply the result of mental constructs of a skirt, and from deviations from that idea, likewise, the idea of cold beer is a result of our knowledge of heat, and our expectations of it.

 

[Angst]

So it's a recognizable lack of something?

Aren't the terms anyways originating in subjective real perspective and the following relativity? As in: Things that are cold actually feel colder than you and things that are warm feel warmer - before people found out what heat was, this was what they felt and what they ascribed the feelings to, and why they named something "cold" rather than "not warm".

I don't see how it translates into morals existing because both things are based upon the perception of our senses. Morality is something we make up (unless you're a religious moralist and believe it's divinely given).

 

[Ayatollah So]

At this point in time, I would say facts about our normative reasons. Normative reasons are reasons which rationally justify an action. They derive from those things we would value if we were fully rational. Moral facts are fact about what we would value under conditions of full rationality. They are counterfactual facts, but fact nonetheless.

That's a taster. I will try and expand on it tomorrow, if I have the time.

Definitely barking up the right tree

Let me clarify:

How do you decide what goes in the positive section and what goes in the negative section?

By direct experience, usually. By living through that sort of event, one can make a first-cut determination whether it is good or bad. If an event (or action) is good, the more one knows about it the more one seeks it. If bad, the more one knows about it the more one avoids it. There are individual differences and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" needs to be tempered with knowledge of them, but, to a first approximation, all humans are very much alike.

There are at least two large layers to moral learning: figuring out what's beneficial or harmful for each particular individual, and figuring out right and wrong ways to treat each other. They're heavily intertwined, but you can learn something about the first part without knowing much about the second. For the latter, learning what right and wrong mean (which relates to justification) is a very powerful start.

Sartre's The Wall.

Nietzsche is peachy but Sartre is smartre. But they're both still wrong.