Gary's Corner

[Gary Childress]

Well, my purpose for speaking is to liberate monsters from the shackles of their society and State, not to plead for sympathy or as an attempt to identify and solve any real problems, philosophical or otherwise. That can't be done, won't be done, so there's no point in wasting intellectual energy on anything that isn't some kind of direct encouragement of anarchy or f****** with internet assholes you don't like for the fun of it. Anarchy in writing itself, in structure, destructive and dissembling of everything and everyone. Taking the world as my property. Smashing all hierarchies of order, law, and morality. Think of me as Dan Akroyd in Ghost Busters, except I'm busting philosophical spooks, not ghosts.

Where does morality fit into all this? Does an anarchist believe in right and wrong?

[promethean75]

That's kind of a good question, G. Morality is only possible for the pure egoist-nihilist. Why do i say that. Without an understanding that everything is meaningless and there are no gods, one can't act authentically; a moral act would then simply be a misunderstanding on the part of the non-egoist. He would be valuing wrongly, judging wrongly, acting for reasons that are none. So, paradoxically, morality is only possible, can only begin, when it is recognized that there is no morality. Only an egoist-nihilist can do that.

I'm counting hard-anarchists in this group... not soft-anarchists (leftists).

[Gary Childress]

That's kind of a good question, G. Morality is only possible for the pure egoist-nihilist. Why do i say that. Without an understanding that everything is meaningless and there are no gods, one can't act authentically; a moral act would then simply be a misunderstanding on the part of the non-egoist. He would be valuing wrongly, judging wrongly, acting for reasons that are none. So, paradoxically, morality is only possible, can only begin, when it is recognized that there is no morality. Only an egoist-nihilist can do that.

I'm counting hard-anarchists in this group... not soft-anarchists (leftists).

Only "egoist-nihilists" can do what? And what is a "pure egoist-nihilist"? Why can't other people do what a "pure egoist-nihilist" can?

[Immanuel Can]

That's kind of a good question, G. Morality is only possible for the pure egoist-nihilist. Why do i say that. Without an understanding that everything is meaningless and there are no gods, one can't act authentically;

Why is "authenticity" a value, in a meaningless world? Why is it, of all qualities, assigned a "meaningfulness" so great that you think we ought to orient ourselves to it, when you deny the existence of meaning? That makes zero sense, from a "meanglessness" perspective.

There can be NO special or privileged values in a truly "meaningless" universe. Nothing is objectively "better" than anything else. All there is, is whatever is. No more can be said. To be "authentic" is no "better," then, to be "inauthentic."

a moral act would then simply be a misunderstanding on the part of the non-egoist. He would be valuing wrongly, judging wrongly, acting for reasons that are none.

Right. This is what Nietzsche tried to say. Morals are for chumps. They're for people who cannot recognize the essential meaninglessness of reality -- or worse, they're ruses used by the weak to prevent the strong from robbing them. But they have no more reality than a fiction, he thought.

So, paradoxically, morality is only possible, can only begin, when it is recognized that there is no morality.

Au contraire: there can be no morality in a meaningless world. There can only be ruses. And we're fools, thinks Nietzsche, if we believe ruses.

[promethean75]

"Why is "authenticity" a value, in a meaningless world?"

Good question, mate. Why Truth at all. A species such as ours is not only in constant error but may even thrive on account of being in error!

I suppose the attraction to Truth comes from the thrill and sense of power we feel in claiming to be in possession of it. But it really is a good question. What drives man to want to know so urgently what the deal is? Is he afraid he might f*** something up or do something wrong? Well, then, this drive has been bred in man over eons of failure, mistake, bad judgments. His drive for Truth is the collective nervousness of his species in a hostile environment, then? How paltry.

[Gary Childress]

The concept of morality exists in the minds of human beings. Morality exists, just not in rocks and laws of physics. That doesn't mean that we humans who believe in morality must abandon morality. It's like a bridge builder saying, no bridge exists over the river; therefore, no bridge can be built. Morality exists in the human psyche. If there's a God, then fine. If God is a demon who thinks that genocide is righteous, then God is wrong; God is not good. We humans are what we are, and we have morals. If God doesn't like our morals, then God shouldn't have created us with moral ideas in us. We know what morality is. We know what good and evil are and it's not because we defied a God and ate an apple. Good and evil are real. God doesn't decide what is good and evil. If God does evil, then God is evil.

I would like to think that God is good, but if God commands genocide and floods, then that's not a good God. That's a myth created by humans who tried to justify committing genocide against another group of people. The Bible is garbage, and the idea that humans cannot have an idea of what is right and wrong in a world that itself does not behave on the basis of right and wrong is garbage.

[Immanuel Can]

"Why is "authenticity" a value, in a meaningless world?"

Good question, mate. Why Truth at all. A species such as ours is not only in constant error but may even thrive on account of being in error!

Yes. So if mere survival is what Evolution aims at, what gives us justification for thinking any of our beliefs are true at all? And what gives us an obligation to be "authentic" or "moral," when it might be more survival-apt for us to be inauthentic and amoral?

In this way, you will have undermined not only authenticity as a value, but morality and truth itself. It will be pretty hard to do science, too, in a world in which people's cognitions are oriented to survival, but not to truth, morality and authenticity.

I suppose the attraction to Truth comes from the thrill and sense of power we feel in claiming to be in possession of it. But it really is a good question. What drives man to want to know so urgently what the deal is? Is he afraid he might f*** something up or do something wrong? Well, then, this drive has been bred in man over eons of failure, mistake, bad judgments. His drive for Truth is the collective nervousness of his species in a hostile environment, then? How paltry.

Right. You've got it. That's the logic of the position.

So you can see that there's no point in valourizing "authenticity" in such a world. Nothing suggests that quality has any survival value at all. The camoflauge of being able to morph one's values instantly might well be much more survival-apt than sticking to any one "self."

[Gary Childress]

"Why is "authenticity" a value, in a meaningless world?"

Good question, mate. Why Truth at all. A species such as ours is not only in constant error but may even thrive on account of being in error!

Yes. So if mere survival is what Evolution aims at, what gives us justification for thinking any of our beliefs are true at all? And what gives us an obligation to be "authentic" or "moral," when it might be more survival-apt for us to be inauthentic and amoral?

In this way, you will have undermined not only authenticity as a value, but morality and truth itself. It will be pretty hard to do science, too, in a world in which people's cognitions are oriented to survival, but not to truth, morality and authenticity.

I suppose the attraction to Truth comes from the thrill and sense of power we feel in claiming to be in possession of it. But it really is a good question. What drives man to want to know so urgently what the deal is? Is he afraid he might f*** something up or do something wrong? Well, then, this drive has been bred in man over eons of failure, mistake, bad judgments. His drive for Truth is the collective nervousness of his species in a hostile environment, then? How paltry.

Right. You've got it. That's the logic of the position.

So you can see that there's no point in valourizing "authenticity" in such a world. Nothing suggests that quality has any survival value at all. The camoflauge of being able to morph one's values instantly might well be much more survival-apt than sticking to any one "self."

So, Immanuel. Is your argument that a person's survival sometimes depends on killing other people; therefore, killing is not immoral? Is your argument that if evolution operates by nonmoral principles, then we must follow the dictates of evolution? Are we unable to say that evolution is an amoral or sometimes even immoral process? Should we say that a person with a birth defect that will cause him or her to die in a matter of a few years after being born should be left to die, even though we may be able to find a cure for it? However, evolution is always right, therefore we should leave them to die?

I honestly don't understand why you think that no god would mean that we must all become psychopathic killers. It's like saying, without a God there is no gravity, and yet we see something we call gravity at work in the world. We don't see God. WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER THERE IS A GOD OR NOT. IT DOES NOT LOGICALLY FOLLOW FROM THE ABSENCE OF A GOD THAT MURDER WOULDN'T BE IMMORAL. WHAT IS YOUR INTELLECTUAL MALFUNCTION????????

[Immanuel Can]

That doesn't mean that we humans who believe in morality must abandon morality.

What it does mean is that there was never any substance to this idea of "morality" at all.

Morality exists in the human psyche.

So do all kinds of delusion. But we're trying to figure out if morality is real, or just another of those.

If God is a demon who thinks that genocide is righteous, then God is wrong; God is not good.

Wait. How do we prove, in a survival-focused world, that anything is "wrong" or "not good," especially a "God" we don't think exists?

We humans are what we are, and we have morals. If God doesn't like our morals, then God shouldn't have created us with moral ideas in us.

Are you assuming Theism, then? That's very different from the situation Prom is proposing.

Good and evil are real. God doesn't decide what is good and evil. If God does evil, then God is evil.

You've reduced the idea of "evil" to meaning, "what (some) people may not like." On the other hand, there's practically nothing that some people haven't "liked," in that sense, including genocide, which is usually performed by people. But if evil means no more than "Gary and his friends do not like X," and we actually live in Prom's kind of world, then in what meaningful sense can you speak of "evil" at all? What makes it "evil" for something "Gary and his friends don't like" to be done?

I would like to think that God is good,

Why? And what is this "good" thing, that you would like God to be, if "good" and "evil" are merely concepts made up by Gary and his friends? If the Fascists, or the Stasi, or the Khmer Rouge, or the Maoists believe genocides can purge the world of "counter-revolutionaries" and thus prepare the way for Socialist heaven-on-earth, what makes their kind of killing "wrong"?

[Gary Childress]

That doesn't mean that we humans who believe in morality must abandon morality.

What it does mean is that there was never any substance to this idea of "morality" at all.

Morality exists in the human psyche.

So do all kinds of delusion. But we're trying to figure out if morality is real, or just another of those.

If God is a demon who thinks that genocide is righteous, then God is wrong; God is not good.

Wait. How do we prove, in a survival-focused world, that anything is "wrong" or "not good," especially a "God" we don't think exists?

We humans are what we are, and we have morals. If God doesn't like our morals, then God shouldn't have created us with moral ideas in us.

Are you assuming Theism, then? That's very different from the situation Prom is proposing.

Good and evil are real. God doesn't decide what is good and evil. If God does evil, then God is evil.

You've reduced the idea of "evil" to meaning, "what (some) people may not like." On the other hand, there's practically nothing that some people haven't "liked," in that sense, including genocide, which is usually performed by people. But if evil means no more than "Gary and his friends do not like X," and we actually live in Prom's kind of world, then in what meaningful sense can you speak of "evil" at all? What makes it "evil" for something "Gary and his friends don't like" to be done?

I would like to think that God is good,

Why? And what is this "good" thing, that you would like God to be, if "good" and "evil" are merely concepts made up by Gary and his friends? If the Fascists, or the Stasi, or the Khmer Rouge, or the Maoists believe genocides can purge the world of "counter-revolutionaries" and thus prepare the way for Socialist heaven-on-earth, what makes their kind of killing "wrong"?

THE FACT THAT NATURE IS NOT MORAL DOES NOT LOGICALLY MEAN THAT THERE IS NO "SUBSTANCE" TO MORALITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY ARE YOU SO THICK? DO YOU THINK NIETZSCHE WAS THE GREATEST PHILOSOPHER SINCE SLICED BREAD? NIETZSCHE WAS WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NIETZSCHE WAS NOT INFALLIBLE. HE WAS THE SON OF A PASTOR AND THEREFORE TOOK IN ALL THE CHURCH BANTER ABOUT NO GOD = NO MORALITY. IT DOES NOT LOGICALLY FOLLOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Immanuel Can]

"Why is "authenticity" a value, in a meaningless world?"

Good question, mate. Why Truth at all. A species such as ours is not only in constant error but may even thrive on account of being in error!

Yes. So if mere survival is what Evolution aims at, what gives us justification for thinking any of our beliefs are true at all? And what gives us an obligation to be "authentic" or "moral," when it might be more survival-apt for us to be inauthentic and amoral?

In this way, you will have undermined not only authenticity as a value, but morality and truth itself. It will be pretty hard to do science, too, in a world in which people's cognitions are oriented to survival, but not to truth, morality and authenticity.

I suppose the attraction to Truth comes from the thrill and sense of power we feel in claiming to be in possession of it. But it really is a good question. What drives man to want to know so urgently what the deal is? Is he afraid he might f*** something up or do something wrong? Well, then, this drive has been bred in man over eons of failure, mistake, bad judgments. His drive for Truth is the collective nervousness of his species in a hostile environment, then? How paltry.

Right. You've got it. That's the logic of the position.

So you can see that there's no point in valourizing "authenticity" in such a world. Nothing suggests that quality has any survival value at all. The camoflauge of being able to morph one's values instantly might well be much more survival-apt than sticking to any one "self."

So, Immanuel. Is your argument that a person's survival sometimes depends on killing other people; therefore, killing is not immoral?

No, that's not my argument, for two reasons: one, I do believe in morality, because two, I also believe in God. Rather, I'm trying to explore the implications if we were living in the sort of world Prom proposes we might; and in that case, it's impossible to say why killing, or anything else, would be "immoral," or why being "immoral" was survival-bad. It might be very handy, actually.

Is your argument that if evolution operates by nonmoral principles, then we must follow the dictates of evolution?

I'm just asking, if evolution were true, why should we operate on any particular principles at all? And I'm not alone in that: secular moral philosophers have often asked the same question. For example, Nietzsche famously campaigned for us to get "Beyond Good and Evil," and more recently, Joseph Margolis has written a very winsome book, titled, "Life Without Principles." He sees that without any divine origin, human beings are, as the Existentialists said, "thrown into" a situation in which no rules at all are available beforehand, and he's working through how to embrace the amorality of such a view.

You can see that, far from being MY question, it's a question that plagues every thinking secularist. It's hardly impolite of me, therefore, to point it out.

Are we unable to say that evolution is an amoral or sometimes even immoral process? Should we say that a person with a birth defect that will cause him or her to die in a matter of a few years after being born should be left to die, even though we may be able to find a cure for it? However, evolution is always right, therefore we should leave them to die?

But we need to work on it from the opposite end: given that secularism were true, why would we be obligated to let him live? Why NOT let him die, and thereby cleanse the gene pool of his birth defect...or save us the research dollars, so we can use them for other things? Whence our duty to let him live, or to cure his ill?

I honestly don't understand why you think that no god would mean that we must all become psychopathic killers.

Well, that's because it's nothing I've said. Absent God, there's nothing at all, good or bad, that we "must" do. But we should want to know why we SHOULDN'T become killers.

[Gary Childress]

So-called "Continental" philosophers like Nietzsche and Heidegger were frauds who simply stated their opinions and did not use logic. They weren't philosophers. They were sophists.

[Immanuel Can]

THE FACT THAT NATURE IS NOT MORAL DOES NOT LOGICALLY MEAN THAT THERE IS NO "SUBSTANCE" TO MORALITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY ARE YOU SO THICK? DO YOU THINK NIETZSCHE WAS THE GREATEST PHILOSOPHER SINCE SLICED BREAD? NIETZSCHE WAS WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NIETZSCHE WAS NOT INFALLIBLE. HE WAS THE SON OF A PASTOR AND THEREFORE TOOK IN ALL THE CHURCH BANTER ABOUT NO GOD = NO MORALITY. IT DOES NOT LOGICALLY FOLLOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All-caps aren't an argument, Gary. Being emphatic and being right are two different things.

So you don't like Nietzsche. Okay. Why is he wrong?

[Gary Childress]

Yes. So if mere survival is what Evolution aims at, what gives us justification for thinking any of our beliefs are true at all? And what gives us an obligation to be "authentic" or "moral," when it might be more survival-apt for us to be inauthentic and amoral?

In this way, you will have undermined not only authenticity as a value, but morality and truth itself. It will be pretty hard to do science, too, in a world in which people's cognitions are oriented to survival, but not to truth, morality and authenticity.


Right. You've got it. That's the logic of the position.

So you can see that there's no point in valourizing "authenticity" in such a world. Nothing suggests that quality has any survival value at all. The camoflauge of being able to morph one's values instantly might well be much more survival-apt than sticking to any one "self."

So, Immanuel. Is your argument that a person's survival sometimes depends on killing other people; therefore, killing is not immoral?

No, that's not my argument, for two reasons: one, I do believe in morality, because two, I also believe in God. Rather, I'm trying to explore the implications if we were living in the sort of world Prom proposes we might; and in that case, it's impossible to say why killing, or anything else, would be "immoral," or why being "immoral" was survival-bad. It might be very handy, actually.

Is your argument that if evolution operates by nonmoral principles, then we must follow the dictates of evolution?

I'm just asking, if evolution were true, why should we operate on any particular principles at all? And I'm not alone in that: secular moral philosophers have often asked the same question. For example, Nietzsche famously campaigned for us to get "Beyond Good and Evil," and more recently, Joseph Margolis has written a very winsome book, titled, "Life Without Principles." He sees that without any divine origin, human beings are, as the Existentialists said, "thrown into" a situation in which no rules at all are available beforehand, and he's working through how to embrace the amorality of such a view.

You can see that, far from being MY question, it's a question that plagues every thinking secularist. It's hardly impolite of me, therefore, to point it out.

Are we unable to say that evolution is an amoral or sometimes even immoral process? Should we say that a person with a birth defect that will cause him or her to die in a matter of a few years after being born should be left to die, even though we may be able to find a cure for it? However, evolution is always right, therefore we should leave them to die?

But we need to work on it from the opposite end: given that secularism were true, why would we be obligated to let him live? Why NOT let him die, and thereby cleanse the gene pool of his birth defect...or save us the research dollars, so we can use them for other things? Whence our duty to let him live, or to cure his ill?

I honestly don't understand why you think that no god would mean that we must all become psychopathic killers.

Well, that's because it's nothing I've said. Absent God, there's nothing at all, good or bad, that we "must" do. But we should want to know why we SHOULDN'T become killers.

WE DON'T KNOW WHO OR WHAT CREATED THE UNIVERSE. IF SOMETHING OTHER THAN AN OLD MAN WITH A BEARD WHO DWELLS IN ETHER IN THE SKY STARTED THE UNIVERSE, THEN IS THAT "GOD"?

[Gary Childress]

So you don't like Nietzsche. Okay. Why is he wrong?

Because he did not use logic. He merely stated the church's opinions of his day. You don't think Marx is right but you think Nietzsche has to be right even though logic does not dictate that no God = no morality.