Jacob Posts

I agree with that point. All that basically means is , "Things are as they are." which is simply an obvious statement from Ms. Obvious.



Why would you kill someone who's not? Why OUGHT we contribute to society? This is question begging of the highest degree. Also, Reason isn't out only means of percieving reality. The senses, for instance, are not entirely reliable. Memory is not entirely reliable. IT takes other people's confirmation of things to be rationally sure of a claim.

3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

I wasn't born to be responsible for someone else's happiness, although I can choose to be if I want to, which in essence, would also be part of my rational self-interest. It's not "evil" to care about yourself.[/quote]

And we then begin with a problem. I didn't say it was 'evil' to care about oneself, in fact, Ayn Rand is the one saying it's 'evil' to care about others. She's made this point clear not only in premise 3, but also in her books, where she defines an English professor who preaches that his students are part of a whole and ought contribute the whole of society, as an evil person that eserved the oncoming death he recieved.

If everyone thought like this, we'd all be dead, don't sacrifice yourself to others? alright, I won't sacrifice my time to making medicine for people. Don't sacrifice oneself to others? alright, I won't feed the poor, fuck the poor. Don't sacrifice myself to others? Alright, fuck all the people who were unlucky enough to be born in a country where they were fucked from the beginning, they don't get to have any help.



Great, we adopt a laissez-faire capitalism and monopolies start arisinng everywhere. There's a REASON there are limits to trade in people's markets, because if there wasn't a limit, one rich guy could epically screw over the rest, creating a monopoly over the entire market he's taken part in, and overcharge the FUCK out of people, which would be even worse if it was an industry we RELIED on every day, like...gas and fuel.

the difference is in the tone of the post. You're seeing the subjective definitions of A and B as a problem, whereas Dr. Harris ad I, and many others, not only see it as a solution, but fully embrace it as the best solution, for various reasons. there really is nothing wrong with defining A and B subjectively, that doesn't undermine objective morality at all.

I believe life starts at the third trimester. That's when babies begin to feel pain and the like, it's when they become sentient, it's when they show all the different signs of life that we recognize .Heartbeat included. There really is no justification that life begins at conception. The fertilized cell is completely unfeeling, nonsentient, and is far less than a bacterial cell in DNA information.

Oh yes, it was trivial, but what you don't get is that in human society, words mean everything. If you're going to say the words "Seperation of church and state aren't in there really" then you understand that those sets of words entail you're saying, "Well we can't really say it's violating church state seperation, because there's no such literal thing, but I agree anyway."

It may be trivial to you, but semantics are an incredibly important part to discussion.



You're trying too hard to sound intellectual and it's showing. Just relax and speak plainly enough to get your point across.[/quote]

Not trying to sound intelelctual, actually my specific reply to your condescending statement was an attempt to be ironic, clearly you missed it.

Many people seem to have this problem that we're trying to somehow DISCOVER an objective morality. Mr. Harris was simply saying the first thing we need to do is define A and B in the equation A+B=C, and we can do that subjectively, because part of morality IS subjective, and that's our decision to place values on certain things. what we can do from THERE is demonstrate, scientifically and accurately, wh some things are better valued than others, and hjow we can reach that point. People are hung up on this idea that there is an overall objective moral value that we all are 'discovering' or 'trying to discover and uncover' but that's simply not true. Any atheist concerned with morals will first make the admission that all moral statements are broken down to "If I prefer (blank) Then I ought (blank)"

The if part, the first part, is subjective, the second part, is objective.

Ok..would you be so kind as to explain WHY you feel slavery isn't objectively immoral?

Seriously, do you read what you're saying? "You're wrong about objective morality because you fail to take into account that it's purely subjective."

Honestly you're being rediculous here. You'r ebeginning from the basis of objective morality being wrong, instead of trying to deconstruct it from the inside out. You're not presenting a coherent argument against anything I've been saying.



And moral actions aren't physical? I can't measure how much an action affects someone either negatively or positively? We're going to have to heavily agree to disagree on that point.



No I dooooooon't. For the thousandth time, you're startig from the point that subjectivity is the only true morality, and then attacking my morality based off of that. Your argument is fundamentally flawed from the beginning.



You're failing to understand anything I've been saying. Here are my basic points, broken down.

1. My definition of morality is subjective to me.
2. The way I define moral actions is done so intentionally in an objectively measureable way.
3. Because it's an objectively measureable thing, I don't have to take into account anyone else's viewpoints on the matter, either something promotes health and well being, and diminishes suffering, or it doesn't. This is an easily measureable scale.
4. Having an objective morality doesn't mean everyone has to follow it, someone might very well come up with a better definition than mine, but they'd still be doing the same thing as me, and completely ignoring other viewpoints, because they do not matter in an objective morality.

Nope, nothing in that quote said you don't have the right to post your opinion, and I stand by what I said, your answer to the question is a bad one, and has a lot of problems, that I demonstrated.



Yes, a priori to God. Meaning God could not have made the morality in option 2. It's funny you think logic isn't getting to me, when it's actually you that's struggling wit hthe logic of this. IF something exists apriori to another thing, than thing B could not have caused thing A to exist.



Alrighty, thanks for showing yet more problems with your idea of morality :D You went back to the classic, "The old testament no longer applies." See, the thing is? It doesn't matter even if it doesn't, and, by the way, nothing in the bible repeals anything in the old testament except for sacrifice. Jesus' sacrifice was supposed to be the last sacrifice, all the other laws will apply, "And I say to you, that not a jot or tittle of the law shall be changed until all the heavens and the earth have come to pass". Plus, you essentially said that God can simply arbitrarily change his mind as to what is moral, and THAT is one of the BIGGEST problems with saying, "Whatever god says is moral." Which means, if God wer eto arbitrarily change his mind and say that you ought to rape people, you would be forced to, under your morality , accpet that it is now ok to rape people, and you ought do it.



No, I didn't say survival is in our nature, I said survival is a preferred trait by many people. But regardless, you want to know why survival is a preferred trait by many people? Simple, it's more pleasureable to survive than not survive. Ask why again, Why is it more pleasureable to survive than not survive? Simple, because surviving entails experiences, many positive ones, in life, and not surviving entails no good experiences whatsoever, that's simply mathematically true. Why is that mathematically true? Well because math is a very definite science that is used as a proof for any one thing, morepositive experiences vs. no positive experiences will always win out. Why are experiences positive? Because we make them positive, we derive positivity from them. I don't know a single person in the world that doesn't derive positivity from at least one aspect of life. And on, and on, and on. Can I answer INFINITE why questions?? No, but you can't answer even a couple. That's your problem. Eventually it would get to a point of basic epistomology with me where I'd have to explain why I prefer not being a solipsist over being a solipsist, and why that's credible, and why it's justifiable, and blah blah blah, but you see, at that point we reach the Axiomatic rules to life that I choose to follow, because I love life. And then you would say, "Finally! Ha ha! You're circular too!" the problem is, that's not visciousl circular, so it's completely viable. You're on a merry go round, I'm on a humongous roller coaster that has ups, downs, twists, turns, and doesn't end for a long long time. Sorry, but me being able to answer a lot more "why's" than you makes my morality more useful, and superior to yours.

Objectivism is quite posibly one of the dumbest secular moralities Ive ever seen. It's an attempt to paint helping other people as bad...and....it's so undemonstrable, that anyone who folows objectivism is...well, simply wrong. Demonstrably.

...I'm sorry, what flaw? You didn't say the boy was suffering, and even then, there is nothing to suggest that saving the boy from killing himself would promote suffering in any way. As a matter of fact, seeing someone care enough about him to save his life might make him make a friend, might make him enjoy life, in fact, systemically I'd say this is an inevitability. AND, furthurmore, because of your added qualifier that I don't know this person, even if he were of the strange mental condition that he would consider himself suffering for hainvg had his life saved by someone who cares about his life, I had no way of knowing that when I saved his life. Sorry, I have performed no inconsistency with my idea of morality whatsoever.

Katan Naar doesn't just possibly refer to young men, it indeed does mean exactly "young boy" children. It's unavoidable I'm afraid, and the age specific for Naar is 13-30, with the added qualifier of Katan, the word specifically refers to around 13 years. Children.

The 42 children who confronted Elijah, and did nothing more than laugh at his bald head, were mauled by 2 she bears for this very simple, innocent bit of childhood fun. It's an immoral passage. And it's unavoidable on any level.

One of your points to remember is completely incorrect. :( I never said "You said that doing what is morally good depends on what benefits a person." Sorry, but I didn't. I said a morally good action promotes the health and well being of others, and diminishes the suffering, or one, or the other.

According to my morality, put quite simply, yes, I would stop the boy from doing what he wanted to do, commit suicide, because there is no rational reason to show that his god will in fact accept him into heaven, andhe would be suffering if he didn't die on impact, and death certainly isn't a healthy thing to bring oneself too. I'm promoting his health and well being, and diminishing his suffering, I am performing a morally good thing by saving him from committing suicide.

Please quote where I said anything like that at all. I think you'll find that I didn't. Nice job strawmanning the shit out of me :P




No, I was explaining that you are. Explain how I'm doing something...simply saying "You'recontradicting something" isn't an argument. It's what's known as a bare assed assertion. :)


Yes, and you were saying god made what is moral, moral, therefore you were outright contradicting option 2. which is all I was pointing out. You were coming to the conclusion that it was both, when in reality it was onnly option one, and you were outright denying 2.



It always is entertaining when people think I havne't heard these failed apologetics before. Yes, NA'ar was used, and yes Naar CAN refer to people as old as 30, not 28, learn your hebrew...however, what you failed to do enough research on, was that the added qualifier ka'tan, which literally means little. Na'ar, which means youth, boy, child, is paired with the quailifier ka'tan, which is, by the way, never used in all the adult versions of the word na'ar used, literally translating the word used in that passage as 'little boy'. Sorry, they were kids. Deal with it.



As I already demonstrated, according to the original hebrew word, no they weren't, and they got punished unmercilessly, and unjustifiably.




I just used a couple verses, sorry, but that's not the only bad thing god does. Not only do you agree he orders ethnic cleansing, which by the way ,I want to state for the record, you support, but he also outlines the ways in which the slave trade should be instituted and run, and ordered the stoning to death of a man who recanted his beliefs of god, as well as the killing of a wife who might turn her husband from him, OH! and how about that lovely little law that if a man should hate his wife, he can claim she wasn't a virgin when they married, and, if the father of the wife cannot produce the bloody sheet she lost her virginity in, she is to be stoned to death. How's that one? Does that one not ust STING? That's God's law, by the way.



Ok, viciously circular. That's what you're being. I however, am not. Why is honesty right, rather than dishonesty? Simple, I prefer people to be honest to me, so, if I want to increase the chances of people being honest with me, I shall be honest to them. Why is it objectively right whereas dishonesty is objectively wrong, Also simple, in order to have a cooperative society, the well being of others is directly dependent upon many variables, one of them is inevitably the ability for some to be honest to others. this is a desired trait for survival, and makes it objectively right. "Ah hah!" I hear tyou saying, "But what makes survival preferred?!" Well, me. the people around me, you, unless you don';t want to survive. Everyone who wishes to survive makes survivability the desired trait. Could I go on? yes, I could, but I don't need to, because I've already demonstrated with my morality, I can go steps furthur than you claim yourself you ever possibly could. :)

Your first two sentences contradicted eachother. I'm sorry, but in no way does an objective morality have to take into account...ANYONE'S viewpoints. That's what objective is. I've explained this using the health example, and you still fail to grasp the concept. Sorry. And morality only can't be measured if we define it to be such that cannot be measured. I have succeeded in creating a specific measurement system by which you can live by, and judge individual actions by. I never said that the decision to define moral actions as moral isn't subjective. You seem to be misunderstanding both me and objective as a concept. I'm sorry, but when you make the argument, "Objective morality has to benefit everyone" you not only display a complete lack of understanding of what objective means, but you also don't even understand what I've said. Re read my post and try and get a better understanding.

What you fail to understand the point of MY post was, was to state that it doesn't MATTER that the words aren't in the document. It doesn't matter one single bit. The words might as well go in there, and anyone who has the misconception that they are, are only technically wrong, they're right, however, in all other ways, so poonting out such a trivial unimportant fact is pointless, and serves only to make you seem like you're arrogant.

As to your edit, There are a few of us who have an extensive cornucopia of vocabulary terms we find exhilerating to use in everyday conversation.

i am adamantly pro choice. A woman has the right to her own body, pregnant or no.

I think something people don't seem to be understanding is that just because you're pro choice, that doesn't mean you're going, "Woo hoo! Abortion! Let's do it!" It means you respect the right a woman has to her body, despite your own personal disagreement with what she's doing with it.

Wow…let me see if I can deconstruct this and help you understand where you’re wrong, or simply misunderstanding me.

Firstly, is health objective? Well of course it is. Take drinking battery acid for instance…that’s objectively unhealthy, right? Yes, I think we can agree on that. By objectively unhealthy, I mean it doesn't matter if someone thinks Battery Acid might taste absolutely delicious...it's still unhealthy for them. This is in regards to humans, by the way.

Now what if we were to re define health? I’m going to re define health to mean…having a wonderful smell. Now it’s become something rather subjective, hasn’t it? It becomes whatever people think smells good, which not everyone CAN agree on, and an objective standard cannot be achieved.

Am I WRONG to re define health this way? Well, societally, and systemically, yes, I am. But on a basic philosophical level, it’s alright to define any word however you want, words only mean what they do by theot anyway.

Alright, so now that you understand that, you can see that re defining morality to be something that can be objectively measured, like health already is, is all I’m doing. I never said that me DEFINING morality was an objectively true thing to do, merely that the morality I FOLLOW is objective, and it is. Anything can be measured on that scale, and not only that, but most people tend to follow that morality, whether they are aware of it or not.

Also, you don’t seem to understand what objective means, as evident by your statement “And that's the thing, for you to be able to be objective, you would have to know of an action that would satisfy EVERYONE'S viewpoints” Nope. That’s not an objectively good action at all. Objective, by definition, is literally a word that means, “It doesn’t matter what you think.” So even if I do an action that’s objectively good, there CAN still be people who are dissatisfied by the action.

And lastly, I’d like to lol at your closing statement that if I were to think I’m more moral than I am, I’d be selfish, and therefore…less moral. Tell me, how do you know selfishness is immoral? ;)

Your answer is extremely flawed. In reality, your morality isn't whatever god says is moral. The first thing you needed to do was determine that God is good, and that whatever he says is good. Whether you recognize it or not, you used your OWN standard of morality ot make that decision. As far as saying whatever God says is right, is right, I have a lot of problems with that. I'll go over that in the rest of your response.




Morality isn't a 'thing' though that's to be created. You've already chosen answer 1 OVER answer 2, and I've already explained why that creates not only a meaningles tautology as well as makes you...well...morally bankrupt. :/ I don’t have a hard time with morals, mine soar over the morals taught in the bible, as do…well most people who accept that the bible isn’t literally true, or whatever such nonsense.




Ahem. Problem 1 with that response. Firstly it’s that Abraham clearly thought God was indeed the type of God that would ask for sacrifice, else he would have the faith to say, “Oh, clearly you aren’t the real God, because my God would never ask me to do such a thing. Obviously you are an imposter.” No no, Abraham clearly had the faith that God would indeed ask for his son’s death, and was fully willing to go through with it. The story of Abraham is a testament to the cruelty of God. As far as God actually ACCEPTING human sacrifice, one must merely look to the Story of Jepthuh. Also known as Judges 11. And yes, I know the apologetic response that “Burnt sacrifice” could have meant simply making his daughter into a nun, however, that’s a bold faced lie. 



Really…God has never…unjustly murdered anyone…Let’s take a look at Elijah and the bears, shall we? Found in the Book of Kings, Elijah is laughed at by 42 children because of his bald head. Elijah asked God to punih them, so God sent 2 she bears to maul and kill all the children.

Unfortunately, you are forced to believe that mass child murder for calling someone bald is moral…because you dogmatically must believe God cannot do anything wrong. How sad for you. : / Course, you can go ahead and believe that, but it just shows me once more why my morality is…better than yours.



See above. Sorry, but God’s morals as defined in the bible are…laughable at best. Nothing good about them. : /



Shame. You actually think you answered the question, and have outright admitted that you have no interest in asking the question "why?". I'm sorry, but your level of morality is very inferior to secular morality, especially for that reason. You've admitted your answer as to WHY Honesty is moral is because God said it's moral, when asked why is God's word right, it's because...well...God's word is right. You don't care that you haven't answered the question to why...no...you simply say, "No no, you don't ask why, you just accept my answer. God said it, that settles it."

Sorry, but I will never be satisfied by such an...answerless answer.

Oh this tired old canard. Listen, while I disagree with the punishment(I in no way feel religion has any positive effect to rehabilitating criminals, misdemeanors or otherwise), and I feel if it IS tax supported, it should in fact not be signed purely off of that basis alone, I feel this entire idea of “Separation of church and state isn’t in the constitution!” needs to be addressed. The fact of the matter is, if you ask any constitutional scholar where the idea of separation of church and state can be derived from the constitution, they’ll immediately point you to the First Amendment and Article III. The MOST you can say, is that semantically, the exact words “Separation of church and state” aren’t in the constitution, however, the principal, the concept, and the practice of it is outlined specifically in the constitution. Congress shall make no law respecting any religion. This has been heavily accepted to not only mean that no religion may be preferred over another, but that no religion is just as respected as any religion. Congress shall make no law establishing a religious test to enter office(which several states have decided to fuck around and do anyhow). This is extremely simple; the founding fathers were well known to express that they are of the volition that the BEST course of action for government concerning religion is as follows : Complete Neutrality. This is expressed in the constitution, this is expressed by many founding fathers. This silly little game where people think they know something secret when they go, “Huh uh! It was Thomas Jefferson in his letters! The Constitution doesn’t say it!” needs to stop.

Hey guys. BigLundi here with a special announcement on objective morality.

Before I begin, for the purposes of this post, the God being referred to is Yahweh. The Judeo-Christian biblical idea of god.

As an atheist, when I was younger, I was tempted to, and in fact did for a short time, reject the idea of objective morality. Why is this? Well because for the entire time that I've been around religious people, religion likes to claim some sort of monopoly on objective morality, and indeed the argument is made that if objective morality exists, there must be a source of said morality, and that source could only be God.

In this post, I'm going to explain why this idea is wrong, and why I, as an atheist, can have an objective morality, acknowledge an objective morality, and why said objective morality actually goes AGAINST the idea of a God being the source.

Firstly, how can an atheist have objective moral values? I've had debates with other atheists on the subject, and to be honest, it's a combination of subjectivity...and objectivity. This seems odd, I know, but please let me explain. I define something to be morally good if it depletes the unnecessary suffering of others and promotes the well being of the same people. Someone who views morality as subjective might say, "But that's just a subjective idea of morality." Well...yeah. There is no correct and incorrect definition to have for morality, there's just what we place value on. I place value on what is objectively good, or rather, what objectively promotes the well being of others and depletes the unnecessary suffering of others.

However the objective part comes from what is suffering and what is beneficial. I mean, it's objectively true that owning another person as a slave causes unnecessary harm and doesn't promote the well being of others. It's objectively true that murder is detrimental to society and most certainly doesn't promote the well being of others, rape too. These are things that, under my definition(and I contend most people's definitions) are objectively morally wrong.

So I've gotten over the path of GETTING to an objective morality, but...WHY did I chose to define Morality in this way? Well it's simple, whenever you're asked the question "Is that moral?" You should also be asking the follow up of "Why or why not?" Most of us would look at murder and rape and stealing as being morally wrong, but my goal was to define morality in a way to explain WHY these things are morally wrong. So you see all things that we have that are against the law, all things that we instinctualy feel are wrong fall under the definition I've given.

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Next, I'd like to address the argument that if an objective morality exists, then clearly, god must be the source for this morality. Well...that's...self defeating. There are in fact so many problems with this argument, I couldn't fit them al in the generous amount of characters Fakku posts allow. However, I'm only going to address for now, a couple of them, as they directly correlate with my own ideas of morality.

Now, what is moral, under the theistic mindset of God being the source? Well, to address this we look to the Euthyphro Dilemma, which is as follows.
1. Is what is moraly right, morally right because god says it is?
2. Is what is morally right, morally right, and God is simply pointing it out?

Now of course, neither answer really helps the theist's problem. If we go with option 1, then what is morally right is simply an arbitrary definition of 'whatever God says is right'. therefore, if God were to say, perhaps, that murder is ok, then murder just simply becomes ok. This offers a meaningless tautology that whatever god says is morally good, even if we don't find these things to be good.

If we go with option 2, then the use of God as far as morals go, becomes completely wiped out.

However, most apologists have come up with a third answer.

Neither, what is morally right is whatever reflects God's eternal unchanging nature. God's nature, is what is morally right, and things we see as being morally wrong, are simply things that are not in his nature.

2 problems with that.

Firstly, Is murder wrong? Well duh, murder's wrong. For the purposes of this post, we'll define murder as "Intentionally terminating the life of another human being without consent." Consent, btw, can include having given up their right to life, say by attacking you, or having already murdered someone else. Well why is it wrong? Well as the apologist says, "It's wrong because murder does not reflect the eternal unchanging nature of...god...uh oh...see now we have a problem. Anyone who's read the bible understands that God's nature is, most certainly that of allowing murder in many many cases. He commanded it on a regular basis and even accepts human sacrifice. So clearly that...can't be the reason. What CAN be the case, if we want to be consistant with the apologist explanation of morality and god, is we can say that clearly murder, or rather, the intentional termination of human life without consent, does in fact reflect God's nature. I'm gonna do a little syllogism to illustrate my point.
1. Actions consistent with god's nature are moral, while actions inconsistant with god's nature are immoral.
2. God's actions are always consistent with God's nature.
3. (from 1 and 2) God's actions are always moral.
4. God performs the act of intentionally terminating the lives of human beings without their consent.
Conclusion: From 3 and 4, it is then moral to intentionally terminate the life of a human being without their consent.

Now, while most of us look at that and see the flaw, a christian might be tempted to make the argument, "Morality is such that intentionally terminating the life of a human being without their consent is moral when performed by god, but immoral when performed by us."...For...whatever bullshit reason.
And you know what That's fine, that's a perfectly legitimate way...to cop out. But it's not without its consequences. See, it then follows from THAT argument that neither God's actions, nor god's nature are TRULY the standard for what is objectively moral. See, if intentionally terminating the life of a human being without their consent is morally wrong, and clearly it is, then...why...is it moraly wrong, if it's not morally wrong for GOD to do so?

The SECOND problem wit hthe aplogetic response to the Euthyphro Dilemma is that saying Morality is reflected by God's nature...doesn't...answer...the question. It just puts the question in seperate terms. It just makes the dilemma more interesting. Does God's nature, for instance, include honesty? Then we simply re word the question.

1. Is honesty right?
2. Is honesty right, because god's nature is honest?

To say that God's nature is honesty just because honesty is morally better than dishonesty certainly doesn't answer the question, and any 4 year old could destroy that answer just by having the capacity to ask, "Why?"

Why is honesty morally better than dishonesty? "Well because honesty reflects God's nature whereas dishonesty doesn't." Right, but why is god's nature one of honesty and not dishonesty? "Well because honesty is morally better than dishonesty." And why is honesty morally better than dishonesty? "Because honesty reflects God's nature whereas dishonesty does not."

Circular reasoning...is circular. Get out of the merry go round, view morality not as simply a question of God, but a question of why.

Thanks for reading.

I'm apathetic. Damn near to the point where I'm a sociopath, but i can still laugh at jokes and people getting hurt, so meh.

It's not a good thing. People don't like those that don't care. When you don't care, you don't care about things that are truly important...like...bathing...for instance. Those that are truly apathetic won't bother bathing, won't bother cleaning their teeth, all that crap, know why? Because they don't care. They dont' care if they look bad, they don't care if they get sick, they don't care. THAT is true apatheticism. What YOU might be referring to is apatheticism where someome comes up to you and says, "Hey this is how my day went." and you reply, "Hey this is where I stop caring." That's not apathetic, that's just being a cock, which is still not a good thing.

Round about way of saying it, but meh, apatheticism=bad, is my point.