So you're an atheist? Not so fast...

[odysseus]

Atheists enjoy their, what shall i call it, pride in being able to look unflinchingly at the hard truths of the world. But really, atheism is at least just as indefensible as theism. I mean, if you're thinking that theism is just a joke about an old man ina cloud, then you don't understand theism, or any defensible form of it. If your atheism is just the justified denial of a medieval anthropomorphism, then so what. Try arguing a against a more respectable thesis: that of ethical objectivism. Anti-objectivists here deny that ethical values need for their theoretical underpinning something absolute, like god or Plato's FOG (Form of the Good). Objectivists, like myself, think they do need this. In order to make sense of this world there must be something that, and I will use a fragile word, redeems it. We do not live in a stand-alone world, meaning that the ideas that constitute all that we can bring to bear on the problem of being here qua being here, just plain being here and all that it possesses, are wholly incommensurate with what they purport to explain. In other words, atheism explains nothing. It simply walks away on a cloud of value nihilism, you know, like Jesus walking on water (both absurd).

If you can't argue well an anti-objectivist view, then you are a lot closer to theism then you think, for you have to admit that the world needs redemption.

[Immanuel Can]

Objectivists, like myself, think they do need this. In order to make sense of this world there must be something that, and I will use a fragile word, redeems it.

Explain that.

Three questions:

1. Why "must" there be,

2. What is "redemption," that is, what does it consist in, and how is it obtained or achieved, and

3. Since you think "ethics" are "objective," what grounds or establishes their "objectivity"?

[uwot]

Atheists enjoy their, what shall i call it, pride in being able to look unflinchingly at the hard truths of the world. But really, atheism is at least just as indefensible as theism.

It really depends on what you mean by atheism. If by atheist you mean someone who positively asserts that god does not exist, then I would agree with you. The evidence theists offer for any god is circumstantial and their arguments flimsy, in my view. It's a bit like nailing jelly to the wall, but at least there is some material to work with. An atheist doesn't need to provide evidence that gods don't exist, you qualify simply by not being persuaded by the case theists make.

I mean, if you're thinking that theism is just a joke about an old man ina cloud, then you don't understand theism, or any defensible form of it. If your atheism is just the justified denial of a medieval anthropomorphism, then so what. Try arguing a against a more respectable thesis: that of ethical objectivism.

Well, you haven't set the respectability bar very high if beardy bloke in the clouds is your standard.

Anti-objectivists here deny that ethical values need for their theoretical underpinning something absolute, like god or Plato's FOG (Form of the Good). Objectivists, like myself, think they do need this.

So present your case.

In order to make sense of this world there must be something that, and I will use a fragile word, redeems it.

Again, what is your argument? Does a story need a happy ending to make sense?

...what they purport to explain.

Which is what?

If you can't argue well an anti-objectivist view, then you are a lot closer to theism then you think...

As with atheism, I don't feel compelled to argue that there are no objective ethics, it is enough not to be persuaded by whatever arguments anyone asserting ethical objectivity puts forward.

...for you have to admit that the world needs redemption.

Why does that follow?

[odysseus]

Immanuel Can wrote

Explain that.

Three questions:

1. Why "must" there be,

2. What is "redemption," that is, what does it consist in, and how is it obtained or achieved, and

3. Since you think "ethics" are "objective," what grounds or establishes their "objectivity"?

Redemption, unfortunately, has a sort of bible-study connotation, but if you look past this, it is a useful term, because, after all, in a biblical context, it is a decisively ethical term, even though people don't realize this. And they don't because they don't usually ask basic questions about religion, questions like, why are we born to suffer and die? This kind of thing is by far exceeded in the pulpit by bible talk, which is great for winning friends and influencing people, but terrible for getting at the existential ground of religion.

So, redemption, I contend, refers to the moral incompleteness of the world (and this is not a scientist's "world" but, if you will, the world of meaningful events for us). One asks what suffering in the world really IS, and this is not simply an ethical question; rather, it is an ethical-ontological question, or a metaethical question. what does this mean? It means that ethical problems have as their essence (the absence of which would remove what makes something ethical at all) something real, e.g.s, that broken heart, or leg or severed finger and any of the afflictions we are subject to. But it is not the empirical evidence that makes something ethical, not at all! It is the mysterious ethical badness that ethics is about. Here is the argument:

Ethical badness and goodness is not contingent in its nature, but absolute. Of course, this is Wittgenstein (see his Lecture on Ethics). A contingent judgment of badness is like when we say this hammer is a bad hammer or, this is a lousy couch. Lousy because it's lumpy and small and so forth. Most uses of bad and good are like this. He's a bad waiter because he's slow, this is a terrible watch because it keep time badly, and so on. Ethical judgments are very different, because there is no "because" in the metaethical question, why is, say, pain bad? If you start explaining evolution and how pain encourages survival and reproduction, or some other science based response, you have missed the point. Pain qua pain is considered as a phenomenological "presence" not reducible, not analyzable. A "thereness' that carries the badness in itself.

One can argue that no such thing is the case contra Wittgenstein. Of course, Witt is very clear, this is something entirely unfit for discussion. It's like talking about the color yellow. The word, the concept is of course, nothing but talk; but the, if you will, qualia of yellow is unspeakable.

Since ethics is grounded the presence or the giveness of the world and not some social or otherwise construct, we have admit that the world is an sethical world, for the ethics we generate in our lives issues from the world itself as part of the fabric of things. Our ethics' existential foundation IS the world itself, and the world itself is utterly transcendental (Witt again).

This brings us to atheism: God is generally just a piece of worthless metaphysics, one might say, though not so worthless if your family is being tortured before your eyes, but then that is not the point here. Here the point is essentially God is just a place holder for the metaphysical redemption of evil in the world. A convenient anthropomorphism that responds to the horrors of being human. Take away the anthropomorphism, and what you have is the "giveness" of suffering itself with no relief. BUT, and here is the clincher: the very nature of suffering requires its own nullification. Suffering is not a stand alone phenomenon. This is what religious metaphysics is really all about. Why are we born to suffer and die? is not a rhetorical question. The ontology of ethics presents a deficit that is not achieved in the analysis of the world. The "proof" for this lies squarely in the pudding: take a lighted match and apply it to your finger. Ask, what IS this? Just as you might ask what Being itself is.

[odysseus]

uwot
It really depends on what you mean by atheism. If by atheist you mean someone who positively asserts that god does not exist, then I would agree with you. The evidence theists offer for any god is circumstantial and their arguments flimsy, in my view. It's a bit like nailing jelly to the wall, but at least there is some material to work with. An atheist doesn't need to provide evidence that gods don't exist, you qualify simply by not being persuaded by the case theists make.

They generally present a strawman argument, reducing God to an indefensible idea as with omni this and omni that, and concluding a reductio ad absurdum. Silly notions like this are conceived in abstract logic. I think if you are going to get to the essence of God, you should be looking at the world, its everydayness that we live in. IN this "place" unspeakable horrors are rather standard and we just ignore this (as we need to, obviously. You can't go around morbidly possessed by this kind of thing. On the other hand, of you want to philosophize about the world, you absolutely MUST look, and do so in earnest. Existentialists have never been a happy lot).

God never was a person. This is a child's conception. God is a stand in for the ethical ground of suffering and joy that is in the world.

As with atheism, I don't feel compelled to argue that there are no objective ethics, it is enough not to be persuaded by whatever arguments anyone asserting ethical objectivity puts forward.

Here is an argument, but it is only a piece of the whole:

This argument is about the difference between contingent and absolute judgments. A sharp knife is reasonably called a good for its sharpness. But consider that the knife is to be used in a production of Macbeth. In this case, we would want a dull knife so no one gets hurt. Notice that the sharpness as a good property of the knife vanishes altogether as the conditions for its purpose changes. Sharpness is a contingently good feature. But then, take a situation in which suffering is on the line: you are required to choose between the torture of a single person for a limited duration, or the torture of thousands much more horribly for years and years. There is here a strong argument of utility: the shorter duration with less intensity would be a very defensible choice. If you want to make the case stronger, then make the alternative to the one, millions of innocent children whose agony could be extended into eternity. Forget the impossibility of such a thing; it's not the point.

The point is, if you chose to spare the millions of children their fate, then, the ethical goodness of your action is conceivably unassailable based on utility alone. But note the difference between this case and that of the sharpness of the knife: The sharpness of the knife retains none of its goodness for the play; it is altogether dismissed. This is the way of contingent affairs. They depend on circumstances beyond what they are in order to arrive at a judgment. They are relative or dependent on context. BUT: In the matter of the children over the one, even when the justifiable moral choice is made, the suffering of the one in lesser time and intensity is in no way diminished. In fact, it cannot be, no matter how the matter is drawn up, in itself diminished in what it is. For the knife, the dullness is chosen over the sharpness and the sharpness becomes dull and void; indeed, it becomes the very opposite of a "good" quality, while the torture of the one is in no way diminished. It cannot be diminished, and it is impossible to make it so.

Suffering is an absolute, as is happiness, and this applies across the board to all we do, given that value is something omnipresent in experience. And these are the very substance of ethics: no value, that is, pain, pleasure, suffering, joy in the balance, no ethics. What is it that makes value/ethics an absolute? It cannot be said, which is why Wittgenstein refused to talk about it. It defies language, and that of which we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. But while there can be no discursive way to prove the above argument, the "giveness" of value-in-ethics is itself the only proof required. And because value "speaks" ethics, that is right and wrong, this puts the business of ethics on the same footing as God: an unquestionable, absolute authority.

Alas, ethics is buried in value arbitrary circumstances. this makes judgment entangled and complicated. But this changes nothing: No more is the nature of ethics altered by its worldly entanglements than is logic.

The rest of the argument rests with a dethroning of empirical science as a model for conceiving the world.

[Immanuel Can]

So, redemption, I contend, refers to the moral incompleteness of the world (and this is not a scientist's "world" but, if you will, the world of meaningful events for us).

That's actually to identify the problem and call it the solution. You've answered what you think the world is "redeemed" from (though your use of the term is apparently gratuitous), but you haven't said how this "redemption" comes about...and that's the thing you really need to explain.

If you start explaining evolution and how pain encourages survival and reproduction, or some other science based response, you have missed the point. Pain qua pain is considered as a phenomenological "presence" not reducible, not analyzable. A "thereness' that carries the badness in itself.

Well, wouldn't say pain "encourages survival," even though perhaps it does sometimes...it certainly creates aversions. I would say that there can be sufficient goods the price of which is pain, but that's not to say that pain, in itself, is good. But I don't think you can get away with saying it's a "thereness that carries badness in itself." That isn't at all obvious. It requires justification that's not present in your argument at the moment.

Since ethics is grounded the presence or the giveness of the world

This isn't at all obvious. "Presence" is a fact. "Badness" is a value. The fact-value divide cannot be crossed on a wish. You need to show what property of the world justifies your claim that ethics refer to something real.

Here the point is essentially God is just a place holder for the metaphysical redemption of evil in the world. A convenient anthropomorphism that responds to the horrors of being human.

What's your evidentiary or rational basis for saying that? What convinces you that "God is just a placeholder"? Or are you just saying that's how you wish it would turn out?

In fact, did you every ask yourself why being a human should be attended by "horrors"? What sort of cosmology do you have in mind? Is it the intention-empty, purposeless, indifferent universe of the Atheist? Or is the deliberately malevolent universe of the Gnostic? Or is it something else?

The ontology of ethics presents a deficit that is not achieved in the analysis of the world.

This seems to mean, "The fact that ethics exists creates a problem we can't solve by analyzing the world." I'm not sure I understand how that argument is supposed to work. I think I'm missing the force of the point you're trying to make here.

[odysseus]

Immanuel Can wrote
That's actually to identify the problem and call it the solution. You've answered what you think the world is "redeemed" from (though your use of the term is apparently gratuitous), but you haven't said how this "redemption" comes about...and that's the thing you really need to explain.

Such an explanation would be worse than gratuitous. It would be bad metaphysics. You might call my position an "error" theory: There is an error, something wrong that is not resolvable in what can observe in the world. The problem of evil (one has to think of the material instantiations of evil, the actualities that are simply there; certainly not as some Platonic form of reified badness. That is bad metaphysics) as giveness is inherently incomplete. Indicates, refers to a solution that is not disclosed empirically, for it is not an empirical "phenomenon" (questionable use of the term here); it is a meta-phenomenon. Wittgenstein is right: we cannot talk about what it is, for, like logic, it only shows itself. Logic can never be gotten "behind" to see it for what it really is, for the seeing requires logic. One would need another system of signs and language to do this, but then, that would need explaining as well. Ad infinitum. Value is much the same: We are shown value, as when we slip and fall, fall in love, and so on, but its nature is invisible. It is not the falling down, nor any descriptive account of it. There is within the pain event something else entirely.

Consider (as a response to your other questions as well): take a fact of the world. Facts are all the same, Witt tells us: the lamp brighter than the candle, a wind is currently blowing in from the east--I mean, there are an infinite number, all equally there, on the logical grid the understanding AS facts. This is a scientist's world. In this world of factuality, there is no value. He means that value is transcendental and has a "thereness" that is not seen nor is it logically or discursively determined. I certainly understand your objections, but take tow facts. One is the fact that volcanoes are caused by seismic activity, the other is that burning lava on flesh is painful. Both equal as facts, but to understand pain, one has to, as with all facts, examine the empirical event, and in doing so, we discover there is more there than simply state of affairs, as Witt called it. It is the valuative "badness" in the experience. That is: the sum of all empirical aspects of being burned by molten lava does not exhaust the content of the event. The "more" that is "present" is the value.
This is what drives ethics in all cases. It makes ethics, ethics. Whether it is a paper cut or being flayed alive, hagen das or the Marx Brothers.
If you remain unconvinced that there is this "invisible" (keep in mind that logic is invisible as well) moral dimension to value-in-experience, I can't help you. One simply has to look plainly at affairs as they are. Put a lighted match to your own finger and observe, and if all you find it 'just the empirical facts" then, well, ....are you serious?

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can wrote
That's actually to identify the problem and call it the solution. You've answered what you think the world is "redeemed" from (though your use of the term is apparently gratuitous), but you haven't said how this "redemption" comes about...and that's the thing you really need to explain.

Such an explanation would be worse than gratuitous. It would be bad metaphysics.

Then why use a term like "redemption"? It seems totally misleading for what you actually want to say, because it has particular implications you deny are even reasonable for you to answer. I should think you could find a better coinage than that. Or were you just trying to be dramatic, and messed up the metaphor?

You might call my position an "error" theory: There is an error, something wrong that is not resolvable in what can observe in the world.

That doesn't help.

To recognize an "error," one already has to have the concept of the thing as whole and without errors. Similarly, to be able to recognize evil, one has to have a conception of the particular good that is recognized as mangled, poisoned, decayed, or otherwise damaged by the "evil." If the good is unrecognizable, then so is the evil.

...the sum of all empirical aspects of being burned by molten lava does not exhaust the content of the event. The "more" that is "present" is the value.

No, it's really not. What's more than the event is the experience of the event. But it takes a whole other step to show that that experience is tied to any objective "badness" or "evil." To feel "value" is not to confer objective value. It's just to say one has a particular kind of illusion or impression...and if it is more than an illusion, that claim must be justified by something.

And what would that be?

If you remain unconvinced that there is this "invisible" (keep in mind that logic is invisible as well) moral dimension to value-in-experience, I can't help you.

Oh know...I do believe there is. I just don't think you've given us any reason to believe there is. I have my own explanation, but I find yours far too thin on details to convince me, so far.

Put a lighted match to your own finger and observe, and if all you find it 'just the empirical facts" then, well, ....are you serious?

What I find from that experience is a) empirical facts, b) the subjective experience of a thing we call "pain," c) an impression that something "bad" has happened, and d) a trip to the hospital, where others will have some questions for me.

But in all of that, I do not know how you get objective morality. After all, I put my finger to the match in response to your urging. The feelings I had are possibly merely contingent. My impression of the value of the event, or of your advice, is strictly my own, so far as I know. You'll have to show me how I get good and evil out of that.

[odysseus]

Immanuel Can wrote
Then why use a term like "redemption"? It seems totally misleading for what you actually want to say, because it has particular implications you deny are even reasonable for you to answer. I should think you could find a better coinage than that. Or were you just trying to be dramatic, and messed up the metaphor?

Because, unlike the qualia of the color yellow, or the scent of a flower, the value in experience has an intrinsic meaning, which is that it cannot stand alone. The pain in question, were it to be so conceived, would be pain-in-the-world-for-nothing, which we call ethical nihilism. This simply ignores the issue and only examples can make the argument: We are thrown into the world, to use a nice Heideggerian term (derived from Kierkegaard), to suffer for no reason. This is impossible. I place it on the same intuitive grounding as causality: just as spontaneous causality is apodictically impossible, so is suffering with no relief. Redemption is a good word for this notion of relief.

WHY suffering needs relief? As I said, the evidence you seek is not discursive, not empirically based, not analytic. It is IN the intuition of suffering itself. If you do not see this, then I suspect you're not looking clearly. Put the matter in the hands of an intuitive common sense: It's a medieval setting and the young girl has been charged with being a witch and is burned at the stake. One has to put oneself in the agency of the experiencer, the flames rising, the pain unspeakable. The actual question is only as good as the matter registers as it is. My theory (derivative) is that the reason people cannot see this as it is, is due to the way language brings experience and its phenomena to heel. It normalizes, reduces all things to the "totality" of value neutral facts. Which we can affectively handle. The actualities of this world are so horrific, the intensity, the tonnage, the profundity, are taken as everydayness.

But if you're looking, as the philosopher does, for "truth" at the level of basic questions, you have to make the effort move beyond this normalizing tendency. Heidegger opens this up very well. Though he by no means abides by the argument I put forth here. He is unparalleled in arguing a close examination of the contents of experience.

That doesn't help.

To recognize an "error," one already has to have the concept of the thing as whole and without errors. Similarly, to be able to recognize evil, one has to have a conception of the particular good that is recognized as mangled, poisoned, decayed, or otherwise damaged by the "evil." If the good is unrecognizable, then so is the evil.

The error lies in the absence of the relief which I say is apodictically required. It is a metaethical openness that demands closure, and this demand issues from the nature for the intuited pain itself.

No, it's really not. What's more than the event is the experience of the event. But it takes a whole other step to show that that experience is tied to any objective "badness" or "evil." To feel "value" is not to confer objective value. It's just to say one has a particular kind of illusion or impression...and if it is more than an illusion, that claim must be justified by something.

And what would that be?

Not clear on this. Are you suggesting suffering can be an illusion? The idea of objectivity needs to be confirmed. Take the Cartesian route: what is objectively confirmable is what is most intimate to subjectivity. One does not get any closer than pain qua pain.

Oh know...I do believe there is. I just don't think you've given us any reason to believe there is. I have my own explanation, but I find yours far too thin on details to convince me, so far.

But this is the only argument there is. If you have "reasons" in your thesis, they will not survive scrutiny. Pain is NOT reducible to reasons. I can't say I understand why you think pain simpliciter is "thin". Is that flame on your finger thin in its actuality??

What I find from that experience is a) empirical facts, b) the subjective experience of a thing we call "pain," c) an impression that something "bad" has happened, and d) a trip to the hospital, where others will have some questions for me.

But in all of that, I do not know how you get objective morality. After all, I put my finger to the match in response to your urging. The feelings I had are possibly merely contingent. My impression of the value of the event, or of your advice, is strictly my own, so far as I know. You'll have to show me how I get good and evil out of that.

Feelings are not contingent, statements are. Qualia is not contingent. Dennett says qualia is nonsense, that is, not a sustainable term, and he is right. Heidegger and Wittgenstein were the same. The moment you take the color yellow up, you are already in language and its contingency, which crowd around the sensory intuition (as Kant put it, intuitions without concepts are empty). But the value in the experience is different, as that finger on fire tells you. It is a very mysterious affair. The "badness" is transcendental. Witt will tell you language has no place whatever here. I think he's wrong, for our ethical language serves as an approximation. It is an ideatum that exceeds the idea (Levinas).

How do I get good and evil out of this? I don't know where else to get it if not in the concreteness of experience itself.

[Immanuel Can]

...the value in experience has an intrinsic meaning, which is that it cannot stand alone. The pain in question, were it to be so conceived, would be pain-in-the-world-for-nothing, which we call ethical nihilism.

Right. And I see you don't want to be an ethical nihilist.

But what proves to you that that is not the most realistic thing to be? After all, "I don't want to be a nihilist" is nothing to that question.

Meanwhile, what convinces you that "experience" has either "value" or "intrinsic meaning"? A nihilist would say it has neither. The burden of proof's on you to show he's wrong. How do you do that?

We are thrown into the world, to use a nice Heideggerian term (derived from Kierkegaard), to suffer for no reason. This is impossible.

Not at all. It's quite possible...indeed, it's certain if there's no actual God. For then, there can be no "reason for" suffering. It's just a contingent fact that we all suffer, then.

Redemption is a good word for this notion of relief.

It's a poor word, I think. "Redemption" means "to buy back," as when one purchases another out of slavery. Who will "buy you out of" the world of suffering into which contingency has "thrown" you?

It's a medieval setting and the young girl has been charged with being a witch and is burned at the stake. One has to put oneself in the agency of the experiencer, the flames rising, the pain unspeakable.

Yes. But what convinces you that in spite of unspeakable pain, this girl is being "redeemed" in some sense? I see no sense at all in which that's obvious.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Atheists here, though I am not one. I'm wanting to see you come up with something I can take to them and say, "See"? But I have nothing yet I can use to convince them their nihilism is wrong.

Heidegger

Hitler's favourite, you mean? Or was that Nietzsche?

It is a metaethical openness that demands closure, and this demand issues from the nature for the intuited pain itself.

"Issues from nature"? Nature, qua nature, my dear fellow, has no opinions. She is an unconscious grinder. And "the nature of pain" doesn't "demand" anything...except perhaps that you die.

No, it's really not. What's more than the event is the experience of the event. But it takes a whole other step to show that that experience is tied to any objective "badness" or "evil." To feel "value" is not to confer objective value. It's just to say one has a particular kind of illusion or impression...and if it is more than an illusion, that claim must be justified by something.

And what would that be?

Not clear on this. Are you suggesting suffering can be an illusion?

No. I'm suggesting that any perception of "badness" or "evil" or "value" is just a feeling. And feelings are not objective values. They're just feelings. So you've got to prove the suffering has objective moral status. I see no reason from your argument so far to grant that it does.

...what is objectively confirmable is what is most intimate to subjectivity.

That''s not Descartes view. Descartes view is that all that can be deceptive. The existence of the subjective entity is the most you can get from him: no more follows from his argument.

Oh know...I do believe there is. I just don't think you've given us any reason to believe there is. I have my own explanation, but I find yours far too thin on details to convince me, so far.

But this is the only argument there is.

Then I'm afraid you have no argument.

I can't say I understand why you think pain simpliciter is "thin". Is that flame on your finger thin in its actuality??

I did not say "pain is thin." I said I find your argument thin.

What I find from that experience is a) empirical facts, b) the subjective experience of a thing we call "pain," c) an impression that something "bad" has happened, and d) a trip to the hospital, where others will have some questions for me.

But in all of that, I do not know how you get objective morality. After all, I put my finger to the match in response to your urging. The feelings I had are possibly merely contingent. My impression of the value of the event, or of your advice, is strictly my own, so far as I know. You'll have to show me how I get good and evil out of that.

Feelings are not contingent,

Yeah, they are.

No two people "feel" exactly the same things. Some people have less or more "feeling." But feelings notoriously are not trustworthy.

Qualia is not contingent.

Qualia are unique to the percipient. As such, they issue in no universals.

The "badness" is transcendental.

I can't make sense of that claim. You, yourself, appeal to physical phenomena, then claim, "it's transcendental". Nope. You're going to have to show that.

How do I get good and evil out of this? I don't know where else to get it if not in the concreteness of experience itself.

Then you can't "get" it at all. For experiences do not justify good and evil, if good and evil are mere personal impressions created by an indifferent universe.

The Atheist case isn't even rocking yet. Have you got more?

[FlashDangerpants]

Try arguing a against a more respectable thesis: that of ethical objectivism. Anti-objectivists here deny that ethical values need for their theoretical underpinning something absolute, like god or Plato's FOG (Form of the Good). Objectivists, like myself, think they do need this.

It seems like the best case for that argument is that it ends up claiming an IS from an OUGHT. Some version of there ought to be some celestial undergarments of morality, therefore there is. If I am an atheist just as a matter of non-belief in the celestial undergarments of anything at all (which is indeed the case), then I'm not very likely to find that argument terribly persuasive, no matter how amazing your objectivist argument might ever be. The complete awesomness of the ought will never convert to the IS.

[uwot]

Here is an argument, but it is only a piece of the whole:

Noted.

...if you chose to spare the millions of children their fate, then, the ethical goodness of your action is conceivably unassailable based on utility alone. But note the difference between this case and that of the sharpness of the knife: The sharpness of the knife retains none of its goodness for the play; it is altogether dismissed. This is the way of contingent affairs. They depend on circumstances beyond what they are in order to arrive at a judgment.

So what are the circumstances according to which you believe extending into eternity the agony of millions of innocent children is analogous to choosing a blunt knife as a stage prop? One of the things that atheists such as myself find most disgusting about christianity is the core message: children are born in 'sin' and unless they accept jesus as their saviour, agony extended into eternity is precisely their fate. Is that your idea of an absolute underpinning?

The rest of the argument rests with a dethroning of empirical science as a model for conceiving the world.

Well, all my post-grad work has been in philosophy of science, so this should be fun.

[gaffo]

We do not live in a stand-alone world, meaning that the ideas that constitute all that we can bring to bear on the problem of being here qua being here, just plain being here and all that it possesses, are wholly incommensurate with what they purport to explain. In other words, atheism explains nothing.

atheism is not a religion, it is empircism.

show your god before me and i will affirm Him.

the whole debate "god no god" bore me.

it you are good man and you affirm your god great, if you use your god to be a dick not good.

in my plane of life - as an ant, my nature is not able to know your God. maybe your nature is higher than mine and so know the mind of God,

[gaffo]

I don't feel compelled to argue that there are no objective ethics, i

ethics is inborn instinct, and why all non dicks are ethical regardless of their religion.

[gaffo]

Atheists enjoy their, what shall i call it, pride in being able to look unflinchingly at the hard truths of the world.

don;'t speak for us, all are individuals.

i affirm Humility, not Pride.

you?