Was Adam a Slave?

[Narz]

You're incorrect, you're using the terms incorrectly, is all. We 99% agree, except on the usage of the terms. "What's healthy" is not subjective, it's objective. No matter how much you want cyanide to be healthy, it isn't. No matter how much your culture believes drinking cyanide is healthy, it's not.

What you're saying is that 'healthy' is complicated and unknowable. Yes, but that's not the same thing as saying it's subjective.

But it is subjective. Your cyanide example is terrible. IIRC they've done studies where they rub harmless leaves on people & tell them it's poison ivy & rub poison ivy on others & tell them it's a harmless leaf & the harmless leaf group gets more rashes. If that doesn't prove health effects are subjective I don't know what will.

Just because different people have different 'needs' to be healthy, it doesn't mean that it's subjective. It's still objective. If you & I look at an elephant, we absolutely see something different. Our perception of the elephant is subjective, but its existence is [edit:] objective.

The fact that the elphant exists is objective, what's good for the elephant is subjective.

In science we get away from that. Implicit in the statement "it's 45 degrees outside" is the addendum "plus or minus 500 millidegrees", which then makes it a true statement, because even if the temp shifted a few millidegrees, the changes are already accepted within the acknowledgement of the rounding error.

Fair enough, withdrawn. That said, words like objective are best used for things that can be measured, the human emotional/social realm is far too complicated for that & uses such absolutes inappropriately can only cause conflict.

 

[Harv]

I appreciate that you're trying but I really don't know how to bridge the gap between your misunderstanding and what I'm saying. It's already pretty clear you're on the wrong track when your psychoanalysis puts me as a nontheist when I've been making my personal case for the existence of God on this website for over ten years.

Are you saying that I am the only one with a gap between what you are saying and what I am understanding?

Which isn't what I was saying at all. What I'm saying is. . . .

I think not.

(1)If...

If God does not exist then nothing matters and all is subjective​

...Sounds like rational logic to you you have premises of what things mean that are rooted in your head divorced from actual cause and effect.

(2)And premises that I or most others in this thread don't share.

(3)For the sake of communication, you cannot assert these things as true without proving them evidentially and/or logically within appropriate epistemes.

In the first sentence above, you made a bare assertion. In the second sentence, you made an argumentum ad populum. Then you lectured me about making bare assertions.

Or to think that just because I assert that how historically Abrahamic religions have described God's morality as God's subjective morality then therefore even if God of any form exists, I find my subjective values equal. That doesn't follow at all as you can value one subjectivity over another. There's no reason you have to place your self at the top of any such hierarchy. Why would you presume that?

Hang on. You just replaced "God" with "historically Abrahamic religions." You replaced "God's subjective morality" with "how historically Abrahamic religions have described God's morality." You just changed what you were saying!

Which isn't what I was saying at all. What I'm saying is. . . .

The quote (post #75) I have is:

BTW Even presuming an Abrahamic god that's still God's subjective morality, by the Bible's own anthropomorphized logic of its God.

This sentence tells of your faith.

You said, "Even presuming." This implies that when you are talking about god, you could be talking about any god.

You said, "an Abrahamic god." Abraham only knew one God.

You said, "that's still God's subjective morality." The word "subjective" is smack in the middle of "God's" and "morality." You intentionally described God's morality as subjective. It's just his opinion.

Further, you said, "by the Bible's own anthropomorphized logic of its God." You used a five-syllable word starting with "anthro" to describe the Bible. This says that you do not believe the Bible.

(What I suspect you're doing is assigning categories and sides to what I'm saying and then arguing against them without considering that what I'm saying doesn't conform to your categories and your sides to begin with.)

.....because it is very difficult to pin down exactly what you are saying?

Which isn't what I was saying at all. What I'm saying is. . . .

We need to get our signal chain correct, and take heed of OJH's mention to El Mac that we should not think of a limited God.

When saying, "We should not think of a limited God," are you really saying, "We should not limit our thinking to the God Abraham knew, as described in the Bible?"

Spoiler :

Which isn't what I was saying at all. What I'm saying is. . . .

 

[Hygro]

I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that this is neither a contest nor is this a debate between atheists and Christians. The problem isn't that you or I are making assertions, it's that your assertions require you to already accept your faith as a given and so any logic outside of your faith is going to seem wrong, regardless of whether or not it is. By asserting your faith in this argument as part of your argument, your faith limits your ability to understand what I'm saying.

So you could accuse me of "fallacy by ad populum" but you'd be wrong, because I'm not saying something is correct because it's popular, I'm saying if you have a different set of premises to begin with and don't spell them out, the people who don't share them are going to dismiss you because you sound crazy. That's because if you shared, say, my premises you could never arrive to that conclusion because it would be logically impossible to assert. I'm not debating you. I'm trying to explain how you can reach your audience. But I did provide my reasoning so you could understand better where folks like me are coming from, which was the majority of my response to you and entirely unaddressed in your reply back. As long as you understood it, then that's fine.

If you go deeper into your own understanding of understanding then you can find the fork in the road that allows any of this to make sense to you. You have to go back beyond your own faith. But if your faith requires you to consider your faith to be the genesis of your ability to form values or to gain an understanding of objective properties of the universe (physics existing, the existence or not of God, how biology functions) then you run into a fundamental problem which is that you can't escape your own logical circle and comprehend that which, to begin with, understands that your faith is a product of your humanity and not a product of God's existence which is only as material to your faith as it is material to the fact that it is otherwise immaterial. i.e. that whether the Bible's God built this world or not, it exists within certain properties and those properties include a species which biologically and psycho/sociologically believes in this God's existence because of "non-Godly" things. I.e. that there's evolutionary advantages to being religious separate from the content of our religion.


What I'm trying to tell you is that I and other's can't engage you on your own terms because your own terms require you to assume too much. It's not unrelated to the classic question "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" It's loaded, and the only way to say "I don't have a wife and I wouldn't beat her in the first place" is to reject the entire premise and start earlier in the signal chain.

 

[onejayhawk]

Hygro, Harv has you cold on one point. You have definitely changed and rechanged your premises. I think I can make an accurate, parsable statement.

If the Hebrew God exists, then that God's law is not subjective.

Treat Hebrew to be identical with Abrahamic and Mosaic. With reservations, this can be extended to both the Christian and Muslim God's. It is almost possible to say that none of the monotheistic God's have subjective laws. The fact that the law is directly from the diety precludes subjectivity. You can argue interpretation and application, but not the underlying mandate.

J

 

[Borachio]

What if your diety is entirely imaginary?

I'm surprised that your underlying premise is that your diety does in fact exist. Though I do realize it's a basic belief. Yet what is belief without doubt, eh?

 

[El_Machinae]

If the Hebrew God exists, then that God's law is not subjective.

It is. Firstly, the God has a 'do as I say, not as I do' morality.
God can let kids starve to death, but we're not supposed to.

Secondly, his commandments change, based on context.
"thou shalt not murder"
"go stab those babies"

 

[onejayhawk]

It is. Firstly, the God has a 'do as I say, not as I do' morality.
God can let kids starve to death, but we're not supposed to.

Secondly, his commandments change, based on context.
"thou shalt not murder"
"go stab those babies"

You are not addressing the statement. You are arguing against the premise. Try again.

What if your diety is entirely imaginary?

I'm surprised that your underlying premise is that your diety does in fact exist. Though I do realize it's a basic belief. Yet what is belief without doubt, eh?

See above.

J

 

[Hygro]

Hygro, Harv has you cold on one point. You have definitely changed and rechanged your premises. I think I can make an accurate, parsable statement.

If the Hebrew God exists, then that God's law is not subjective.

Treat Hebrew to be identical with Abrahamic and Mosaic. With reservations, this can be extended to both the Christian and Muslim God's. It is almost possible to say that none of the monotheistic God's have subjective laws. The fact that the law is directly from the diety precludes subjectivity. You can argue interpretation and application, but not the underlying mandate.

J

Blurp. All of God's "laws" are God's subjective whims. This is because those religions have an anthropomorphized god that rules by decree based on personal preference of said god. That's what these words mean.

By definition God's morality is subjective. Maybe as God, God gets to say "my laws of the universe are the objective laws of the universe" which therefore means that God's subjective laws of the universe are subjectively the objective laws of the universe but you can never escape the subjectivity of the Biblical god's logic, because God's subjectivity rules over any decree of the objective nature of a subjective objectivity.

Again, this is a matter of signal flow. You can argue the reverb all you want but the distortion pedal came first.

 

[onejayhawk]

Blurp. All of God's "laws" are God's subjective whims. This is because those religions have an anthropomorphized god that rules by decree based on personal preference of said god. That's what these words mean.

By definition God's morality is subjective. Maybe as God, God gets to say "my laws of the universe are the objective laws of the universe" which therefore means that God's subjective laws of the universe are subjectively the objective laws of the universe but you can never escape the subjectivity of the Biblical god's logic, because God's subjectivity rules over any decree of the objective nature of a subjective objectivity.

Again, this is a matter of signal flow. You can argue the reverb all you want but the distortion pedal came first.

You have that backwards. By definition, nothing about God is subjective. He is what defines reality. If it pleases you to think that God's whims are laws, on par with the laws of physics, that is much closer than your statement. It falls short. Physical laws are more pliable.

And don't be silly. Jimi Hendrix came first.

J

 

[Farm Boy]

You can argue the reverb all you want but the distortion pedal came first.

We engineered and manufactured the distortion pedal to re-create reverb according to our whim. No?

 

[El_Machinae]

You are not addressing the statement. You are arguing against the premise. Try again.

No I am not arguing against the premise. I am accepting the premise and showing that the conclusion is false, because the Abrahamic god does not represent objective morality; I gave two examples about how the Biblical god gives subjective moral commandments. We're arguing semantics, I mean, you're just using the word 'objective' wrong.

 

[Hygro]

You have that backwards. By definition, nothing about God is subjective. He is what defines reality. If it pleases you to think that God's whims are laws, on par with the laws of physics, that is much closer than your statement. It falls short. Physical laws are more pliable.

And don't be silly. Jimi Hendrix came first.

J

And Jimi Hendrix's music is objectively superior. QED you win.

But I don't have it backward, you see, because I've been debating only the Bible's god. You're introducing your own rules:

The fact that the law is directly from the diety precludes subjectivity.

That's your own rule. You might share your own rule with lots of folks but I might as well make my own rules for the discussion as well. Let me give you an example:

Hygro: God exists, and I know this because of the Bible
Borachio: but what if the Bible is fallacious?
Hygro: that cannot be, because the Bible cannot be fallacious because the origin of fallacy is defined by the Bible, and also because pixies haunt my sleep.
Borachio: that's circular, disregards the meaning of fallacious, and pixies are irrelevant
Hygro: you changed your premise.

You're trying to discuss this based on a "what is" perspective that relies on your faith to hold regardless of contradiction of terms. In turn, that might score you points in your head and among those in your fraternity of likeminded folk, and even your deity if it exists the way you think so, but you're avoiding the actual discussion which requires that you don't get to make up rules that redefine the meaning of subject and objective to fit your preexisting faith.

So I'm not debating the nature of your imagined God (because real or not, you're still imagining it). I'm debating the nature of the historical One True God, the Abrahamic/Hebrew/Religions of the Book God. And that God's rules are subject to it, that God's moral creations are, by all definitions that don't require your own personal addenda, God's subjective work.

We engineered and manufactured the distortion pedal to re-create reverb according to our whim. No?

We indeed do combine the two under one amp, but it's almost always better to follow the convention of making sure you are reverbing distortion and not distorting reverb or it sounds atrocious. Sometimes it works. But either way the signal flow order is paramount.

 

[Farm Boy]

We indeed do combine the two under one amp, but it's almost always better to follow the convention of making sure you are reverbing distortion and not distorting reverb or it sounds atrocious. Sometimes it works. But either way the signal flow order is paramount.

I was interested in meta-ing harder. But that is pretty clever within that frame.

 

[warpus]

If the Hebrew God exists, then that God's law is not subjective.

Treat Hebrew to be identical with Abrahamic and Mosaic. With reservations, this can be extended to both the Christian and Muslim God's. It is almost possible to say that none of the monotheistic God's have subjective laws. The fact that the law is directly from the diety precludes subjectivity. You can argue interpretation and application, but not the underlying mandate.

J

It could be subjective if the God in question does not and/or is not an objective source of morality.

If you assume that he/she/it is, the of course you must conclude.. that it is. But that's not really a given, you just assume it to begin with.

 

[onejayhawk]

No I am not arguing against the premise. I am accepting the premise and showing that the conclusion is false, because the Abrahamic god does not represent objective morality; I gave two examples about how the Biblical god gives subjective moral commandments. We're arguing semantics, I mean, you're just using the word 'objective' wrong.

No. You gave two examples of the pain paradox. That is a long discussion, but it argues against the premise. You are stipulating the premise, so your examples are not on point.

Hygro, I agree Hendrix is a genius. The rest of that is gibberish, except for the electronics.

J

 

[Hygro]

Hygro, I agree Hendrix is a genius. The rest of that is gibberish, except for the electronics.

Which brings me back to:

By asserting your faith in this argument as part of your argument, your faith limits your ability to understand what I'm saying.

To understand it means you'll either have to invent more mental gymnastics to keep up your, uh, conception of reality or you'll have to come to terms with it being made up.

Not worth the risk.

 

[El_Machinae]

No. You gave two examples of the pain paradox. That is a long discussion, but it argues against the premise. You are stipulating the premise, so your examples are not on point

Ehn, whatever. You're incorrect, but it doesn't matter. They're not examples of the Pain Paradox, which mostly requires an intuition that there's an objective good. I do reject the premise anyway. I don't believe in the existence of Abraham or Moses, so their god needn't exist either.

 

[Borachio]

If the Hebrew God exists, then that God's law is not subjective.

Let's approach this another way.

Your statement supposes that you can demonstrate that God exists outside human conception of Her. I'd suggest that no such demonstration can be made.

But if you can, in fact, demonstrate the objective existence of God, then I'll willingly agree that God's law too is objective.

 

[timtofly]

In 1232 BC, there was this guy named Moses. In 1776, there was this guy named George Washington......

 

[El_Machinae]

Right, I mean the Moses depicted in the Bible. Ten Plagues, Exodus, etc.