Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

There was not anything like hydrogen or oxygen... at the Big Bang. We still don't know the theory of quantum gravity so we cannot talk about the nature of spacetime at the Big Bang point.

Okay. Then, if we say the BB was the First Cause, then our theory has to be that a random, uncaused, unintelligent explosion accidentally caused all the order we find in the universe -- and as well, conscious beings capable of knowing about that.

Is that the theory?

Yes, the singularity just existed at the beginning, and from that, all sorts of things emerged.

You mean, "the Big Bang," right? You're saying it was what you call "the Singularity," and it had no cause?

[Harbal]

You need to meet a better class of "religious" person, I guess.

The ones who are able to keep things in proportion and not let it completely dominate their lives, you mean?

No, of course: I mean you need to spend more time with people who are Christians than with those who only say they are, but "keep things in proportion" by being equally unchristian.

If someone says they are a Christian, then they are a Christian as far as I'm concerned. I don't have the means to sort the improper Christians from the proper ones.

You said:
No. I think they've been convinced they have to give in to their sexual whims...or more precisely, that they can escape blame for having lost self-control and having given in to bad desires, just because Freud told them they could plead that it was necessary. The reason they give in to their sexual whims is obvious...they want to do evil, and don't want to be told that something as important and powerful as sexuality needs a moral context.
I don't see any mention of adultery.

Where is the word "relationships"?

Whenever two people engage in a joint venture there is automatically a relationship between them, so I hardly think I am misrepresenting you by using the word when you didn't specifically mention it. On the other hand, the quote clearly demonstrates that your recollection of it was totally incorrect.

Well, you were the one who promised me an Atheist answer to what evil is...and now you say there's no such thing. Not much of an answer, is it?

I don't think I did promise you that; can you show me where?

If I correctly understand what you mean by evil, then no, I don't believe it exists, and I've said that. What more can I say?

But I have given the Biblical answer, which is my answer, many times. I'll do it again: evil is anything contrary to the nature and will of God.

Well there you are then. I don't believe God exists, or evil exists. How am I to be expected to account for things that don't exist?

Then you can explain how you, as a Christian, are able to solve the problem of it, if you want to.

Quite readily.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his unique Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That's it, in the tidiest form you'll find it.

And how is that going to prevent a murder or a rape?

[Immanuel Can]

The ones who are able to keep things in proportion and not let it completely dominate their lives, you mean?

No, of course: I mean you need to spend more time with people who are Christians than with those who only say they are, but "keep things in proportion" by being equally unchristian.

If someone says they are a Christian, then they are a Christian as far as I'm concerned. I don't have the means to sort the improper Christians from the proper ones.

Maybe you should.

You said:
No. I think they've been convinced they have to give in to their sexual whims...or more precisely, that they can escape blame for having lost self-control and having given in to bad desires, just because Freud told them they could plead that it was necessary. The reason they give in to their sexual whims is obvious...they want to do evil, and don't want to be told that something as important and powerful as sexuality needs a moral context.
I don't see any mention of adultery.

Where is the word "relationships"?

Whenever two people engage in a joint venture there is automatically a relationship between them...

Well, there's a relationship called "victimizer" and "victim." But I hardly think that sort of "relationship" qualifies.

In any case, as I said, I never used any such word, nor did I imply it.

Well, you were the one who promised me an Atheist answer to what evil is...and now you say there's no such thing. Not much of an answer, is it?

I don't think I did promise you that; can you show me where?

Sure. You said only "logic and common sense" were all it would take for an Atheist to do that. I think it was rather nice of me to take your word for it, and to assume you had some access to this "logic and common sense," the existence of which you affirmed.

Then you can explain how you, as a Christian, are able to solve the problem of it, if you want to.

Quite readily.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his unique Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That's it, in the tidiest form you'll find it.

And how is that going to prevent a murder or a rape?

You didn't ask me how to prevent murder or rape. You asked me how I, "as a Christian, could be able solve the problem of evil." The answer is that I can tell you what will make evil back into justice and fairness. I can't tell you I have ability to stop somebody from doing evil, since we are free will beings, and free will entails that possibility.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Could you please share the link to the debate?

I watch videos on YouTube where physicists talk about the kind of upset the new telescope is doing to their understanding of the cosmos. It would be very easy for you to find such talks. What I will say, though it is impression and not based on intimate study (for which I have no background i.e. physics), is simply that *the world* and existence appears stranger and stranger at every renewed glimpse. Some of the physicists -- maybe they are just playing for appeal on YouTube? -- begin to challenge their own rock-solid understanding of a specific beginning. Or as I say: what seems for us a beginning is not and cannot be! We can only conceive in terms of eternity. Simply put that existence and being must always have existed. There is no logical alternative.

All metaphysicians, Christian or pagan, face this reality and ponder it. There are different ways to *ponder* and one is rational, linear thought. Another is a mystical method of perceiving which might be called intuitive. Then there is that of (so-called) revelation: receiving a vision or a (usually large and overpowering) block of *information* (visionary content) that is purposed to be *truth* and often *absolute truth*. Revealed religion is constructed on this basis. Finally, there is another means or *aspect of method* to the investigation of reality: we refer to it as the scientific method or the empirical method. We seem to be in a phase where that method, that means, becomes predominant. It tends, and reasonably so, to blast away the *illusory* content (compressed symbols and elaborate metaphors) of mystics, or dogmatists, who create models that are presented to others as truths.

AJ: Immanuel’s mistake is not so much in positing a creator (the concept is rational) but in his insistence that the god divined (intuited) as being necessary is the god our own yiddishim believe is their god.

But the god of the early Hebrews was never conceived of as the author of the manifest world and cosmos. That notion was borrowed from other races and retrofitted into Judaism.

Bahman: Could you please expound? I am very interested to understand the detail.

Well, by way of a critical comparison: IC has no intellectual means at his disposal to critically examine his own received foundational beliefs. He is, as I often say, trapped or stuck within a specific metaphysical picture that is Genesis. Genesis is taken as, or presented as, a picture which has all manner of different levels of meaning that can be extracted from it (for example by analysis of the Hebrew letters and their correspondence with numbers as well as Kabalistic methods). The *picture* is, for the Hebrews, an infinitely revealing on if one gets access to the exegetic method.

It is a creation story, obviously, but it also an elaborate story that explains, or presents a paradigm, of Judaic interpretation of Judaic existence -- the raison d'être for Judaism, for Jews in history, and for God's mission in this world. Let me say that if it is read *against its grain* (critically) it presents a very negative picture of Judaic activity. But you must understand that I completely condemn this aspect of Judaism and, for my own reasons, completely throw it off. That does not mean though that I do not also discover in Judaism (or Jewish revelation) a great deal that is genuinely good and genuinely important.

Over the course of some years of analysis I discover that Immanuel Can is what I call *a wannabe Jew*. In my view he is not a *real Christian* but a sort of imposter. But I also must say that both Judaism and Christianity, because they are mixtures of confused pictures of the world -- borne of a 'confusion of peoples' in the first century -- can be seen as fractured or even pastiche-like models of reality (the world) and also of political and social models employed to govern behavior. You know, and as Nietzsche said, Christianity is Plato for the masses. But it is clearly a ridiculous cartoon-like set of pictures which yet, for a man of faith, must be taken as real and literally.

IC is so deeply invested in this that he will not ever escape it. Nor should he. If his Weltanschauung collapsed, he would necessarily collapse with it. His *horizon* would fall away and he'd be adrift in a chaotic world.

Myself, I see myself as in a process of recovery of a former, and more encompassing, and certainly an Indo-European understanding of life and existence that, also necessarily, takes issue with the Hebrew imposition. IC demonstrates what it means to come under this *imposition* and, in this sense, he is Yahweh's slave. (Yahweh being a demiurgic representation). The *process of recovery* is difficult and time-consuming and energetically depleting for a number of reasons, but this is another issue.

But the god of the early Hebrews was never conceived of as the author of the manifest world and cosmos. That notion was borrowed from other races and retrofitted into Judaism.

The Hebrew god is a figure, or a symbol if you wish, formerly managed in a desert tribal context. Just one god among many god-concepts. A god of the storm and also possibly of the volcano. But a violent tribal god of war. That god was not conceived as the *author of all things* because delving into such universalism had no sound function for warrior-peoples. But to make a long story shorter, the Yahwey concept was managed by a priest-class into an extremely powerful and extremely possessive god-concept, metaphysical concept, cultural-concept and identity-concept. Only at a later date, and when confronting more developed metaphysical systems, was Yahwey retrofitted to be the god who initiated everything. And that element is expressed in Genesis. The Judaics say: "Yahwey is our god, but also your god, though he chose us over you and you must serve him".

And through this -- all of it -- we can study how the conceptual order (how things are conceived) is necessarily also a political and social tool to manage human life. Power, rhetoric, and certainly threats of punishment and extermination can easily be seen as *operative* concepts at the core of this religious manifestation.

Existence and being must by definition be eternal. There is no contrary or inverse notion to existence and being. Eternality is the sole *logical* option. There was never a beginning, and there is no ending — except as eternal continuations.

I must disagree here. There must be a beginning.

There may be a new manifestation which can be taken as ur-beginning, but it seems to me that if one thinks it through it (our beginning) must be just one of an eternal complex of beginnings. Really, how could it be different?

[iambiguous]

Existence and being must by definition be eternal. There is no contrary or inverse notion to existence and being. Eternality is the sole *logical* option. There was never a beginning, and there is no ending — except as eternal continuations.

I must disagree here. There must be a beginning.

There may be a new manifestation which can be taken as ur-beginning, but it seems to me that if one thinks it through it (our beginning) must be just one of an eternal complex of beginnings. Really, how could it be different?

Try this...

1] Start here: https://www.google.com/search?q=did+the ... URT-reRWmz

2] spend a few days getting familiar with all of the arguments pro and con

3] throw in your own philosophical speculations

Afterwards, given the focus of this thread, we can zero in on a particular context...one that is bursting at the seams with conflicting goods. Then, in regard to objective morality, we can attempt to connect the dots between the existence of the universe itself, the human condition and "the right thing to do".

[Age]

Existence and being must by definition be eternal. There is no contrary or inverse notion to existence and being. Eternality is the sole *logical* option. There was never a beginning, and there is no ending — except as eternal continuations.

I must disagree here. There must be a beginning.

There may be a new manifestation which can be taken as ur-beginning, but it seems to me that if one thinks it through it (our beginning) must be just one of an eternal complex of beginnings. Really, how could it be different?

Try this...

1] Start here: https://www.google.com/search?q=did+the ... URT-reRWmz

2] spend a few days getting familiar with all of the arguments pro and con

3] throw in your own philosophical speculations

Afterwards, given the focus of this thread, we can zero in on a particular context...one that is bursting at the seams with conflicting goods. Then, in regard to objective morality, we can attempt to connect the dots between the existence of the universe itself, the human condition and "the right thing to do".

The existence of the Universe is that the Universe is eternal and infinite'.

The human condition is that human beings have the ability to learn, understand, and reason any and every thing.

And, the right thing to do is teach children what is Right in Life.

If the word 'morality' is referring to what is the right thing for human beings to do in Life, then like how all things are relative to the observer, or 'subjective' if one likes, then things like 'morality' are always 'subjective', but obviously when all 'observers' are looking together as One, then what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is 'objective'.

And what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is the 'objective' Truth of things.

As can be proven absolutely and irrefutably True.

[Age]

Morality has never been objective 'or' subjective, but is always subjective 'and' objective.

It, literally, just depends on which way you are looking at this, and from.

[iambiguous]

Existence and being must by definition be eternal. There is no contrary or inverse notion to existence and being. Eternality is the sole *logical* option. There was never a beginning, and there is no ending — except as eternal continuations.

I must disagree here. There must be a beginning.

There may be a new manifestation which can be taken as ur-beginning, but it seems to me that if one thinks it through it (our beginning) must be just one of an eternal complex of beginnings. Really, how could it be different?

Try this...

1] Start here: https://www.google.com/search?q=did+the ... URT-reRWmz

2] spend a few days getting familiar with all of the arguments pro and con

3] throw in your own philosophical speculations

Afterwards, given the focus of this thread, we can zero in on a particular context...one that is bursting at the seams with conflicting goods. Then, in regard to objective morality, we can attempt to connect the dots between the existence of the universe itself, the human condition and "the right thing to do".

The existence of the Universe is that the Universe is eternal and infinite'.

The human condition is that human beings have the ability to learn, understand, and reason any and every thing.

And, the right thing to do is teach children what is Right in Life.

If the word 'morality' is referring to what is the right thing for human beings to do in Life, then like how all things are relative to the observer, or 'subjective' if one likes, then things like 'morality' are always 'subjective', but obviously when all 'observers' are looking together as One, then what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is 'objective'.

And what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is the 'objective' Truth of things.

As can be proven absolutely and irrefutably True.

NOTE to Age:

DO you agree WITH THIS?

WE'LL need A CONTEXT of COURSE.

[Harbal]

No, of course: I mean you need to spend more time with people who are Christians than with those who only say they are, but "keep things in proportion" by being equally unchristian.

If someone says they are a Christian, then they are a Christian as far as I'm concerned. I don't have the means to sort the improper Christians from the proper ones.

Maybe you should.

I don't care what people call themselves.

I don't think I did promise you that; can you show me where?

Sure. You said only "logic and common sense" were all it would take for an Atheist to do that. I think it was rather nice of me to take your word for it, and to assume you had some access to this "logic and common sense," the existence of which you affirmed.

And critical thinking, I also said. And I meant for the answering of questions -"very important questions"- generally.

And how is that going to prevent a murder or a rape?

You didn't ask me how to prevent murder or rape. You asked me how I, "as a Christian, could be able solve the problem of evil." The answer is that I can tell you what will make evil back into justice and fairness. I can't tell you I have ability to stop somebody from doing evil, since we are free will beings, and free will entails that possibility.

So if neither you as a Christian, nor I as an atheist, can do anything about what you call evil, what point were you trying to make? And if I understand you correctly, you don't even think God can do anything about "evil" until after it's happened.

[Age]

Try this...

1] Start here: https://www.google.com/search?q=did+the ... URT-reRWmz

2] spend a few days getting familiar with all of the arguments pro and con

3] throw in your own philosophical speculations

Afterwards, given the focus of this thread, we can zero in on a particular context...one that is bursting at the seams with conflicting goods. Then, in regard to objective morality, we can attempt to connect the dots between the existence of the universe itself, the human condition and "the right thing to do".

The existence of the Universe is that the Universe is eternal and infinite'.

The human condition is that human beings have the ability to learn, understand, and reason any and every thing.

And, the right thing to do is teach children what is Right in Life.

If the word 'morality' is referring to what is the right thing for human beings to do in Life, then like how all things are relative to the observer, or 'subjective' if one likes, then things like 'morality' are always 'subjective', but obviously when all 'observers' are looking together as One, then what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is 'objective'.

And what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is the 'objective' Truth of things.

As can be proven absolutely and irrefutably True.

NOTE to Age:

DO you agree WITH THIS?

Note to "iambiguous":

Do you agree with this?

And,

Do i agree with what exactly?

WE'LL need A CONTEXT of COURSE.

If you say so.

And,

Do you agree with this?

[iambiguous]

The existence of the Universe is that the Universe is eternal and infinite'.

The human condition is that human beings have the ability to learn, understand, and reason any and every thing.

And, the right thing to do is teach children what is Right in Life.

If the word 'morality' is referring to what is the right thing for human beings to do in Life, then like how all things are relative to the observer, or 'subjective' if one likes, then things like 'morality' are always 'subjective', but obviously when all 'observers' are looking together as One, then what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is 'objective'.

And what is 'subjective' to this 'Observer' is the 'objective' Truth of things.

As can be proven absolutely and irrefutably True.

NOTE to Age:

DO you agree WITH THIS?

Note to "iambiguous":

Do you agree with this?

And,

Do i agree with what exactly?

WE'LL need A CONTEXT of COURSE.

If you say so.

And,

Do you agree with this?

My guess: you don't have an ironic bone in your body.

[Age]

NOTE to Age:

DO you agree WITH THIS?

Note to "iambiguous":

Do you agree with this?

And,

Do i agree with what exactly?

WE'LL need A CONTEXT of COURSE.

If you say so.

And,

Do you agree with this?

My guess: you don't have an ironic bone in your body.

I am sure I do not.

Just like I am sure you have missed and miss the irony here sometimes.

[Immanuel Can]

So if neither you as a Christian, nor I as an atheist, can do anything about what you call evil, what point were you trying to make?

Human beings have never been able to do anything about evil, other than make more of it. Hence, the need for divine intervention.

[Harbal]

So if neither you as a Christian, nor I as an atheist, can do anything about what you call evil, what point were you trying to make?

Human beings have never been able to do anything about evil, other than make more of it. Hence, the need for divine intervention.

What divine intervention? If the world is full of evil, there obviously is no intervention.

[Dontaskme]

Why would an Atheist believe in a God they never invented.

It was the God believers who invented God, and the same people who invented God, then decided to invent a Theist and an Atheist. An Atheist was simply someone who did not believe in the God created by the God believers, and why should they believe in someone else's absurd idea. An Atheist didn't call themselves that label, it was given to them by the Theists. The blame goes to the Theists, they started all this nonsense with their brainwashed cult parasitic absurd mentalities.