Epistemological Failures of Apologists part one
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Ok how about this. As far as I know there is no test for Alzheimer's while a person is alive. We can diagnose it based on the symptoms, but we can't slice your brain open and put it under a microscope until after you die. Despite our inability to test Alzheimer's, it is still a testable disease, and sooner or later, someone creative enough will find a way to test for it with blood sample or an MRI or something.
it's pretty obvious when someone can't remember shit anymore.
Memory loss is obvious, but what isn't obvious are the causes. Perhaps it's Alzheimer's, but perhaps it's alcohol related, perhaps it's caused by trauma, or a stroke. There's lots of reasons why someone might lose their memory.
@John 61X Breezy: "If God exists, then objective moral values exist as well"
Why do you assume that objectivity is an essential characteristic of god? Judging from what we learn about him from the Bible, he picks favorites (i.e., the chosen people), he tolerates child marriage, rape, war, and torture, but violently opposes homosexuality and masturbation. His rules are applied differently at different times, and his rules do not seem to apply to his own actions.
These are not indications of an objective personality. So how does the existence of god imply the existence of objective morality?
I agree that differing perspectives on morality do not rule out the existence of objective morality. But is there any evidence of that ideal in the real world?
Well obviously I'm going to disagree with what you just said, otherwise I wouldn't be Christian.
But I do think there is evidence of an objective morality in the real world. I see it as the umbrella encompassing all other moralities. For example: When we talk about women's rights, the end of slavery, or even same-sex marriage, people tend to call it moral progress. But its not really moral progress. Its the same old moral principle: that of justice and treating other's as yourself. We've simply found new things to put under that umbrella.
correction.
it is a 'consequence' of curvature in space time according to general relativity,
this is due to uneven distribution of mass.
Well I side with Craig the Christian apologist I succinctly believe that there are objective moral values in life. and that it transcends us ,it is beyond human opinion. There is a God who is justice and objective and corrects our subjective limitations, Just look at our justice system take the penal laws they are objective independent of ones subjective prose. Morals does make a person turn better in attributes, toward other human beings.
Hey, @devoutchristian. If there are objective moral values, where do you get our guidance? From the Bible? What about the rest of Humanity, do we wander withouth moral compass? How do hinduists tell what's wright or wrong? Because even though some biblical texts have remained the same since they were chosen and rewritten in Nicea, others have been supressed and rewritten throughout history. Penal laws are precisely the proof of evolution of human moral systems. If there was something like a moral objectivity, then Christians would have not changed their morals during these 2000 years, wouldn't they?
People make the same brain processing to decide whether something is ethical or not, according to what they have learnt and their own intuition, regardless of having an imaginary friend or not.
(edited to fix mistakes)
What you said is equivalent to:"I believe x" I don't care if you believe x or not. That I care about is whether or not x is true and if I should believe it. Do objective moral values exist? Demonstrate that they do and we shall continue in the rest of the argument.
Can you prove there is a god without appealing to authority(bible)?
So, Jehovah has said that it was OK for parents to stone children for talking back to them. If morals are completely objective, then it is still moral to do that today. If it was moral at one point but is no longer moral today, then it is not objective. It is simply subjective to whatever Jehovah's whim is for that time period.
Working inside corollaries that fit a known logic escapes the abstractions of the unknown lurking in the physical world. Despite the if/then logic scenarios, all theism has to do is shirk science and reach for the old tried and true to the cause stance that god's will cannot be described in such a simplistic brief.
Morality, once again, is a proposition battle-hardened into a conventional assumption by theism's fact-making industry to be the work of some god-construct, or AI by another name, and denies absolutely its simple, honest and stoic place among all other virtues in man's innate psyche.
It gets assigned to a transcendent conjuring of man's imagination and remains there entrenched by the memes of fear-based doctrines. While it resides there man build's an entire industry around it, a surrounding fortress of conscripted imagery and pageantry, and then mandates it across entire populations foreboding horrific threats if not observed as truth.
Ridiculous, the logic that is becoming a modern ground swell dismissing it as a general lack of intellect, in the face of an unyielding despair for hope, was desperately absent when men were originally enslaved and usurped by it through the greed, despotism and dishonesty among men of all stripes. We are now tasked to retroactively convince ourselves that morality is a naturally occurring human trait. It is rather insulting and sad that our current measure of human advancement still finds itself engulfed in the worship of demons, wizards, gods and all manner of related hobgoblins.
There is s constitution in the USA. There are people who don't follow it. But there are also other constitutions. Where are the objective moral values written down?
In my example I'm treating the United States as the only one in existence, a closed system of sorts. Other countries are irrelevant to my example. It also doesn't matter where objective moral values are written down, what matters is that you can't say they aren't written down somewhere, just because people disagree.
Are you using a different definition of objective than I am? Because if you are that would explain a lot. It's fine if you are, but if we are to ever hope to understand each other we have to be using the same definition. What's yours?
I'm curious, @Breezy. According to you, are objective moral values written down somewhere? Is it the Bible or other so-called holy book? Because you've already read the Bible enough to know that it's a very unreliable moral code, in which one has to cherry-pick, since truly awful tales from our current moral perspective co-exists with other moral teachings. Is it some place else? Or maybe it's no written at all, but you think it's out there, already fixed somehow by a divine entity? How do you explain historical evolution and cultural disctintive features of moral codes?
Determinism is not testable; there is always a way to salvage it from the rubbish heap after any test; especially if you are willing to postulate crazier and crazier stuff.
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