Is morality objective or subjective?

[iambiguous]

Good luck with that. All the best.

Thanks.

But there's still this part...

No, actually, there's not. I have no interest.

Not to worry. There are still plenty of folks here less interested in being saved than in pinning Christianity down philosophically.

[bahman]

Okay.


Great. That's an obvious thing, isn't it?

Actually, AJ took my attention to the scenario that all religions are false.

Not "are." Logically, it would be possible that all contradicting views are false, only so long as they are not the complete spectrum of possible views. If they are, then logically, one HAS to be right.

No, they all could be wrong. That is a possibility that we cannot rule out.

That's a very good question, and the right one, I would suggest.

Well, neither you nor I is an expert on the spiritual world, I assume, though it's clear we both understand something of its existence. We also know we are at a severe disadvantage in negotiating that plane. So what I can suggest is only what the Scriptures themself instruct us to do:

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God..." (1 John 4:1-3)

So we can follow the guidance God has given us on that; or if we decide not to, we're really at sea and at a very serious disadvantage in anything involving the spiritual world. We really can't know, then, what would be true and what would be deception.

Well, Satan can pretend that He is from God even if I ask for His confession!

That's why the test given above is the only test. It's the only one that cannot possibly be lied about. To deny Christ is to expose oneself as "antichrist," as the passage puts it. Any spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh cannot possibly be from any other source but God. It's the one thing Satan will never do, and cannot lie about.

Why He cannot lie? What happens if He lies? He is the master of lies.

I read the gospel of Mark and it didn't impress me at all. You know, what if Satan can perform miracles and Jesus was a simple man misguided by Him? What if that was Satan instead of Jesus who performed the miracles?

You read Mark? Then I presume you read chapter 3, in that process. Go and look at verses 20 to 30. And you'll have the perfect answer to that question.

Do you mean verses 20-30 of chapter one?

I told you that I accepted Christianity for less than one year. Now I am quite happy with the state of my mind regardless of all the doubts that I have. I am in a permanent state of peace. I don't care what happens to me after I die. I am happy that I was open to all Spirits. They come and go. Satan sometimes tortures me. I am happy to have them all. It is all alright!

Then you will get exactly what you're getting now. At the end of the day, we all get what we decide to live with, in this life. But the afterlife? That is not in my charge or yours. That's when we answer for our decisions, unless we make better ones now.

Actually, it does not matter to me where I would go after my death. I want to be open to all, whether good or evil. I love all creatures, good or evil!

I am not sure that that verse works. I asked Satan to confess. He laughed at me and said He is the master of all lies.

Did you do the exact test?

He didn't answer, did he? So he ran away from the test. And now you know what he is.

Yes, He can lie for sure. Nothing happens to him if He lies. He is very powerful. Sometimes I think that that was Satan who made all religions! He is the one who challenges God according to the Bible.

Let's please work with reason since others are subjective.

I'm a big fan of reason. And it will get us a long way. But the last step takes faith, and reason won't quite be enough. It will take you to the gate...it won't walk you through.

"...without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him." (Heb. 11:6)

OK, you talk about your spiritual journey toward Christianity. What was the main reason that you accept it?

[bahman]

Alas, according to IC, one is obligated to watch all of them.

On the other hand, even after I did so here -- viewtopic.php?t=40750 -- IC refused to explore them in depth with me. He responded obtusely "up in the spiritual clouds" once or twice. Then nothing at all.

I watched a few of them and to me, they were not great clips. You are such a patient person to put all these efforts into that thread!

It's not so much patience as the fact that, as I get closer and closer to oblivion, a part of me really does want to believe again in the Christian God.

I was Christian for a year. I think I understand how you feel.

In part because, without a doubt, I never felt more "comforted and consoled" than back when I was myself a devout Christian. And unless you once had that peace of mind -- that crucial psychological foundation to anchor I in -- and then lost it, you can't begin to understand just how disoriented you come to feel. Sure, for some years after, I was able to anchor the Real Me in one or another secular/ideological rendition of The Right Thing To Do. But than that crumbled as well and I found my "self" convinced that my own existence -- human existence itself -- was essentially meaningless and purposeless.

I don't think that believing in God can give meaning or purpose to your life since there is no meaning or purpose at all.

Now, with IC, our exchange changed when he began to argue that his own belief in God was not a "leap of faith" or predicated entirely on "because the Bible says so". Instead, he broached those William Lane Craig videos...insisting that if one watched them, they too would have access to the "scientific and historical" evidence that would bring them over to the knowledge that God did exist. The Christian God.

As I said the videos didn't impress me at all. I was familiar with some of them. In fact, I find it ironic: If there is a reason for the existence of God then there is no need for faith! Faith in Christianity is however an important thing.

On the other hand, in my view, IC is almost always up in the spiritual clouds here. Not once have I felt he has any truly personal, emotional, intimate connection/commitment to the Christian God.

Then the part where, in my opinion, he avoided like the plague discussions that revolved around these other three factors:

1] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why his?
2] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
3] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

Over and again, I have reminded him of this. Why on Earth does he not commence a thread that focuses entirely on those videos? Given the enormous stakes on both sides of the grave, how can "saving souls" not be his number one priority? He claims the evidence is there in the videos.

But, aside from exchanges with me months ago, he never really brings them up at all.

I can only conclude it's because he doesn't really believe them himself. Instead, he just likes coming here to exchange "arguments" with others in the "ethical theory" forum. Worlds of words.

I see.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Iambiguous: “In part because, without a doubt, I never felt more "comforted and consoled" than back when I was myself a devout Christian. And unless you once had that peace of mind -- that crucial psychological foundation to anchor I in -- and then lost it, you can't begin to understand just how disoriented you come to feel. Sure, for some years after, I was able to anchor the Real Me in one or another secular/ideological rendition of The Right Thing To Do. But than that crumbled as well and I found my "self" convinced that my own existence -- human existence itself -- was essentially meaningless and purposeless.”

What you describe here traces the path of our Occidental civilization, doesn’t it? The movement, the falling away, from the “consolation” and “comfort” of a child’s perspective, into adult confusion and loss, but finally onto a secure platform of personal choice and decisiveness.

We cannot ever (this is my opinion anyway) regress back to what you describe as a consoling religious cocoon of the past. If we are truly going to recover ourselves we have to rediscover and reground ourselves in a far more original Indo-European attitude toward existence and life.

Christianity is, in many ways, a child’s and a woman’s religion.

Men define their purpose and then anchor their will to it despite the vicissitudes of chaos and mutability. I cannot say that stance “consoles” but it certainly makes the man.

[Harbal]

Christianity is, in many ways, a child’s and a woman’s religion.

Why do you say that?

[promethean75]

"The movement, the falling away, from the “consolation” and “comfort” of a child’s perspective, into adult confusion and loss, but finally onto a secure platform of personal choice and decisiveness."

Indeed, and when one matures, leaving theology behind, they enter into that new state of confusion - philosophy - and find themselves with no better footing than before. I explain this process in greater detail in my brief history of philosophy course but I can't remember which thread I posted it in. Was a couple weeks ago. One of Vaporized Apricot's threads. Notes: KIV.

"One has to 'leave philosophy aside,' one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality . . . Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as whackin' off and sexual love." - Marx, Karl

[Alexis Jacobi]

Please note how here, at bottom, everyone is ultimately seeking, each according to personal dharmic acrobatics and the wildest of wild grabbings, an anchor in ever-transitioning mutabilities in which we are all suspended.

Houseflies in a web.

Harmonies or broken chords. Mental balance or the distuned strings of solutionless confusion. Who will resolve the discordancies? Looking outward toward the scattered shards through fractured glass a broken mirror. What is that mechanical groaning like a bent bridge aching to snap?

Darkness a malignant fog seeps through the world’s soundtubes and its rotting floorboards; electronic grating bites my brain and envelopes like tar. What to wish for?

Dissolve and conjoin …

Cosmic physician retune my bizarrely jangled strings. I intuit a chromatic medicine grounded in harmonies stronger than triangles.

[iambiguous]

Iambiguous: “In part because, without a doubt, I never felt more "comforted and consoled" than back when I was myself a devout Christian. And unless you once had that peace of mind -- that crucial psychological foundation to anchor I in -- and then lost it, you can't begin to understand just how disoriented you come to feel. Sure, for some years after, I was able to anchor the Real Me in one or another secular/ideological rendition of The Right Thing To Do. But then that crumbled as well and I found my "self" convinced that my own existence -- human existence itself -- was essentially meaningless and purposeless.”

What you describe here traces the path of our Occidental civilization, doesn’t it? The movement, the falling away, from the “consolation” and “comfort” of a child’s perspective, into adult confusion and loss, but finally onto a secure platform of personal choice and decisiveness.

A secure platform of personal choice and decisiveness? Indeed, go ahead and pick one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

No doubt that most of the folks on these hundreds and hundreds of at times hopelessly conflicting One True Paths to Enlightenment are especially decisive regarding their own personal choices. And not just here in the West.

But then your own didactic [and in my view pedantic] assesment really is the One True Path to enlightenment, isn't it? If only on this side of the grave?

We cannot ever (this is my opinion anyway) regress back to what you describe as a consoling religious cocoon of the past. If we are truly going to recover ourselves we have to rediscover and reground ourselves in a far more original Indo-European attitude toward existence and life.

We'll need a context of course. Choose an issue in which conflicting goods -- moral conflagrations -- have prevailed going all the way back to the pre-Socratics [here in the West]. Let's explore what it means to rediscover and reground ourselves in, what, the most rational frame of mind? Yours?

Well, if only "theoretically" up in the philosophical clouds?

Or is it mine? Being "fractured and fragmented" in regard to value judgments? Only I'm the first here to acknowledge that my own moral philosophy is rooted existentially in dasein. That, in other words, it is always subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge.

But I repeat myself.

Christianity is, in many ways, a child’s and a woman’s religion.

In your opinion, right? Here and now. In other words, will you admit that given "new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge", you might change your mind and come over to IC's frame of mind or my own?

Nope:

Men define their purpose and then anchor their will to it despite the vicissitudes of chaos and mutability. I cannot say that stance “consoles” but it certainly makes the man.

Are you suggesting here that if others don't come around to anchoring their will in your own dogmatic assumptions they are less a man?

As for black folks, women, homosexuals and Jews...fuhgeddaboudit?

[iambiguous]

Instead, from my own "rooted existentially in dasein" point of view, you are to religion what AJ is to race and gender and homosexuals and Jews: Mr. Yak, Yak, Yak.

Now hold on a cotton pickin’ second there, buster!

Let’s establish “a context”.

A Northern European yak no doubt.

[iambiguous]

I am interested in exploring this with Mr. Craig or with someone at Reasonable Faith."

Hmmmmm …

And Satyr?!?

Actually, Ichthus77 just summed him [and you] up rather handily:

"Do you have like a document with all of your tirades copied into it so you don’t have to keep coming up with new material? Or does it just flow out like diarrhea?"

Of course, she'd make the same point about me too.

[Immanuel Can]

Actually, AJ took my attention to the scenario that all religions are false.

Not "are." Logically, it would be possible that all contradicting views are false, only so long as they are not the complete spectrum of possible views. If they are, then logically, one HAS to be right.

No, they all could be wrong. That is a possibility that we cannot rule out.

We can, if the options listed are all the possible options, as in the case of the Atheism-Monotheism-Polytheism triad. That's because there ARE no other possibilities, so one HAS to be true. But in cases where there are still possible alternatives not included in the group, then it is theoretically -- though, of course, not necessarily so -- possible that all the given alternatives are wrong.

Well, Satan can pretend that He is from God even if I ask for His confession!

That's why the test given above is the only test. It's the only one that cannot possibly be lied about. To deny Christ is to expose oneself as "antichrist," as the passage puts it. Any spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh cannot possibly be from any other source but God. It's the one thing Satan will never do, and cannot lie about.

Why He cannot lie? What happens if He lies? He is the master of lies.

He didn't answer the question. That tells you everything you need to know.

I read the gospel of Mark and it didn't impress me at all. You know, what if Satan can perform miracles and Jesus was a simple man misguided by Him? What if that was Satan instead of Jesus who performed the miracles?

You read Mark? Then I presume you read chapter 3, in that process. Go and look at verses 20 to 30. And you'll have the perfect answer to that question.

Do you mean verses 20-30 of chapter one?

I don't.

Actually, it does not matter to me where I would go after my death.

Really? Well, you're on a different side of the discussion from Jesus, apparently. He said, "What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul, or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Good questions. Eternity is a very, very long time.

OK, you talk about your spiritual journey toward Christianity. What was the main reason that you accept it?

I can answer that with one word: Jesus. I went on my first serious search to understand who He is. If you meet Him, everything is different.

[iambiguous]

Now, with IC, our exchange changed when he began to argue that his own belief in God was not a "leap of faith" or predicated entirely on "because the Bible says so". Instead, he broached those William Lane Craig videos...insisting that if one watched them, they too would have access to the "scientific and historical" evidence that would bring them over to the knowledge that God did exist. The Christian God.

As I said the videos didn't impress me at all.

Okay, but my point is that they did impress IC.

And yet, apparently, not enough to make them the focus of a thread here [to the best of my knowledge].

It just doesn't make much sense. If he really does believe there is both scientific and historical evidence for the existence of the Christian God, while at the same time arguing that those who refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior cannot be saved...are destined for eternal damnation in Hell...how could he not come around to them over and again?

"The three main religions classified as missionary religions are Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, while the non-missionary religions include Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism. Other religions, such as Primal Religions, Confucianism, and Taoism, may also be considered non-missionary religions." wiki

In fact, those like Jehovah Witnesses and others who practice their door-knocking ministry are sometimes ridiculed for doing so in, for example, movies.

But I've always respected them for doing so. They really are committed to saving souls. And it's not like anyone is forced to interact with them.

From my own uniquely prejudiced frame of mind, IC seems far removed from an actual heart-felt commitment to God. It all comes off instead as largely cerebral.

[Will Bouwman]

Well, Polanyi is just one link in a chain of thought that goes back through Hume's "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions" all the way to Protagoras claiming that "Man is the measure of all things."

Oh, decidedly not. He owes his insight to an entirely different line of thought. His point is not cynical or critical of science at all, the way theirs has been construed to be.
No, Polanyi is only interested in reintroducing us to the role of the investigator in any investigation. As he puts it, "Knowledge is personal," or as he also said, "tacit" -- not meaning that it is unreliable, or suspect, or like Nietzsche thought, all about power, but rather that science is a distinctly human activity, in which human beings are invariably involved, and which much of which goes on in the procedure is done with a kind of intuitive, human impulse, rather than with some mechanistic purity.

Which is pretty much what Protagoras, Ibn al-Haytham, Hume and others already said. Kant's thesis that space and time are human intuitions can be thrown in for good measure. There have always been thinkers who have understood that science is putting the world into a human context. It is a simple fact of life that some people are cynical and some critical of science, that doesn't change the meaning of their message: science, along with all other 'knowledge' is indeed personal. All knowledge is theory laden. All hypotheses are underdetermined.

How do human beings, you for instance, manage to escape their "biases, predispositions, particular interests, and so on" when they are doing religion?

Polanyi's point is that you never really do "escape" your role as a human investigator. You always bring, along with your methods, your own disposition and interests. Along with that, things like bias can come, to be sure, especially if the investigator is not humble and alert to their possibility. And that's what Polanyi seems to campaign for: not the denigration of science, but rather its performance as a duly humble and self-aware kind of activity.

If you understand Polanyi's point, you will appreciate it applies to you as much as anyone. In your investigation, the investigator is you. Being humble doesn't give you any advantage, except in the Socratic sense that you understand you 'know' nothing for certain.

Religion isn't science, of course.

No, but it is subject to exactly the same human foibles; only rarely the humility.

What does it mean for your assertion that:

...a dictionary is "accurate" when it captures the most relevant facts about the thing it is defining with the greatest precision.

I find that a pretty clear claim, I think. But okay, I can illustrate.

Try to define "palomino." But try to do so in a way that keeps it clear that a palamino is not just not a beagle or a wardrobe, but is also not a shire, or an appaloosa, or a rahvan, or a unicorn, or whatever else. A good definition will include precisely the characteristics that make a palomino a palomino, and eliminate all the other possible confusions with other types of horse.

So is it a specific breed? Can it mate with other horses? What would the foal be? Suppose you can bookend palomino and every horse just out side the margins is a completely different horse, how do you define words which are not simply a list of characteristics? Science, for instance. How do dictionaries escape human biases?

[bahman]

Not "are." Logically, it would be possible that all contradicting views are false, only so long as they are not the complete spectrum of possible views. If they are, then logically, one HAS to be right.

No, they all could be wrong. That is a possibility that we cannot rule out.

We can, if the options listed are all the possible options, as in the case of the Atheism-Monotheism-Polytheism triad. That's because there ARE no other possibilities, so one HAS to be true. But in cases where there are still possible alternatives not included in the group, then it is theoretically -- though, of course, not necessarily so -- possible that all the given alternatives are wrong.

If only one religion among 4000 religions is right then it means that the rest are the work of Satan. Why should I believe that that single religion is not the work of Satan?

You read Mark? Then I presume you read chapter 3, in that process. Go and look at verses 20 to 30. And you'll have the perfect answer to that question.

Do you mean verses 20-30 of chapter one?

I don't.

OK, I read Mark 3:20-30. What is your point?

Actually, it does not matter to me where I would go after my death.

Really? Well, you're on a different side of the discussion from Jesus, apparently. He said, "What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul, or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Good questions. Eternity is a very, very long time.

Living eternally even in Heaven is a trap to me. You get used to things after a long time. You cannot have a sense of wonder... You know it simply becomes very disturbing for an intellectual being, a human, for example, to live such a long time without anything to intellectually entertain.

OK, you talk about your spiritual journey toward Christianity. What was the main reason that you accept it?

I can answer that with one word: Jesus. I went on my first serious search to understand who He is. If you meet Him, everything is different.

I know Jesus. He is a Good. I know Satan as well. He is Evil. I don't understand why should I prefer Jesus over Satan and vice versa. I want to be an open person to all spiritual beings and I think that is the right way of living. God, if there is any, loves all His creatures equally.

[bahman]

Now, with IC, our exchange changed when he began to argue that his own belief in God was not a "leap of faith" or predicated entirely on "because the Bible says so". Instead, he broached those William Lane Craig videos...insisting that if one watched them, they too would have access to the "scientific and historical" evidence that would bring them over to the knowledge that God did exist. The Christian God.

As I said the videos didn't impress me at all.

Okay, but my point is that they did impress IC.

And yet, apparently, not enough to make them the focus of a thread here [to the best of my knowledge].

It just doesn't make much sense. If he really does believe there is both scientific and historical evidence for the existence of the Christian God, while at the same time arguing that those who refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior cannot be saved...are destined for eternal damnation in Hell...how could he not come around to them over and again?

I think he mostly likes challenges.

"The three main religions classified as missionary religions are Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, while the non-missionary religions include Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism. Other religions, such as Primal Religions, Confucianism, and Taoism, may also be considered non-missionary religions." wiki

In fact, those like Jehovah Witnesses and others who practice their door-knocking ministry are sometimes ridiculed for doing so in, for example, movies.

But I've always respected them for doing so. They really are committed to saving souls. And it's not like anyone is forced to interact with them.

From my own uniquely prejudiced frame of mind, IC seems far removed from an actual heart-felt commitment to God. It all comes off instead as largely cerebral.

Really?