Is morality objective or subjective?

[Atla]

Arguing with a conscience-less being who is "playing the Christian game" is kinda pointless. He's just playing a long game where he wants to manipulate God into putting him into Heaven after he dies, and he thinks that forever arguing with atheists will score him a few points. Yet he can never actually see the core value of Christianity himself, which is love and empathy.

[Harbal]

There's no duty within an Evolutionary worldview to prefer "the wellbeing and security of a given population" when your own is at stake, or even when you just suppose it is. Your interest in others is purely instrumental...if they serve you, good; if they don't, then the Devil can take them all. That's the logic of survival.

It's a kind of category error to talk about duty within the evolutionary worldview and not for the reason you might argue. The category error is most humanists, say, are not saying we have a duty to act like evolution or natural selection does.

In biological theory which includes evolutionary theory humans are considered social mammals. Social mammals have built-in desires to be social to get along, to feel empathy and to collaborate. Other social animals with risk their lives for each other, sometimes even across species.

And while I am not a humanist I am sick and tired of the ugly guilt-tripping and hatred of humans inherent in the Abrahamic religions. With all their distrust of humans, of desire, of emotions. The Abrahamic religions are hardly alone in this, but that's my focus in this post. The diseased self-hate in seeing duty as the solution is something so dishonestly presented in all the noble terms. Do I need duty to treat my wive with love and respect? To not run over people? To give a shit about what my country's foreign policty leads to in the world?

Very well put, and I'm sure IC knows this, but he isn't at liberty to acknowledge it.

[Harbal]

Yet he can never actually see the core value of Christianity himself, which is love and empathy.

Don't say the "e" word, whatever you do.

[Atla]

Yet he can never actually see the core value of Christianity himself, which is love and empathy.

Don't say the "e" word, whatever you do.

Am I in trouble?

[Harbal]

Yet he can never actually see the core value of Christianity himself, which is love and empathy.

Don't say the "e" word, whatever you do.

Am I in trouble?

Believing in empathy is almost as bad as not believing in God, if my experience of using the word is anything to go by.

[Atla]

Don't say the "e" word, whatever you do.

Am I in trouble?

Believing in empathy is almost as bad as not believing in God, if my experience of using the word is anything to go by.

so I'm going to hell twice over then?

[Immanuel Can]

when did you sign your "social contract"? Answer: never. "Social contract" is just an heuristic device, an imaginary "tool" for thinking about human relations. It does not refer to anything anybody "owes."

Does it matter as long as it works? Not perfectly, but what does work perfectly?

It doesn't "work." Nobody even HAS a "social contract." There's no such thing.

I find this idea you have that all human behaviour is, or should be, founded on and regulated by some system of logic or rationality rather strange. That just isn't how human beings work. That's how computers and machines work.

The point is quite the opposite.

The reason for using logic and rationality is not to make people behave in a certain way, but rather to discover if what they are telling you makes sense. Wouldn't you rather know when people are telling you something irrational and illogical? And if what they say can't even make sense on its own terms, let alone any of yours or mine, what's the reason that you would want to accept it?

You wouldn't. You shouldn't. I recommend against it.

[Harbal]

Am I in trouble?

Believing in empathy is almost as bad as not believing in God, if my experience of using the word is anything to go by.

so I'm going to hell twice over then?

It's probably more that there is a special place in Hell for you, rather than having to go twice, but I'm told it's never too late to save yourself.

[Immanuel Can]

There's no duty within an Evolutionary worldview to prefer "the wellbeing and security of a given population" when your own is at stake, or even when you just suppose it is. Your interest in others is purely instrumental...if they serve you, good; if they don't, then the Devil can take them all. That's the logic of survival.

It's a kind of category error to talk about duty within the evolutionary worldview and not for the reason you might argue. The category error is most humanists, say, are not saying we have a duty to act like evolution or natural selection does.

Natural selection is not a statement about "duty." It's supposed to be a description of "the way things are."

That means, you defy it at your peril, at the cost of running against reality, if the Darwinists are right. If what they say is true, valuing the herd over oneself is very foolish, and means you deserve to die for failing to be fit for reality the way it actually is, which is a bloody struggle for survival, just as you suggested.

In biological theory which includes evolutionary theory humans are considered social mammals.

Physiologically, that has something to it, in that we're made of the same chemicals. It has nothing to it on the spiritual and consciousness side, far less the moral side.

Animals do not do things for moral reasons. They don't do them for immoral ones, either. They do them because of instinct. Unlike humans, they do not respond contrary to their own interests or their own programming. They don't theorize about "right" and "wrong," or make any value judgments.

And while I am not a humanist I am sick and tired of the ugly guilt-tripping and hatred of humans inherent in the Abrahamic religions.

The only way to avoid guilt completely is to become a psychopath. They don't feel any at all. Short of that, my advice is that you get used to it; we all have reasons for shame, at various points in life. The question is only whether or not they're the right reasons.

Do I need duty to treat my wive with love and respect?

Did you go to some high official or religious guru, and swear before your assembled friends and family that you would love her "for richer, for poorer, in sickness, in health...until death do you part?" If you did, why did you do that? If it was automatic, what's the value of such a declaration of duty?

You see, when feelings fail, it's only duty that we can rely on to carry us through, so that the feelings can return. There are no doubt moments in your life when you didn't want to do loving things for your wife, and she didn't feel like she was particularly enthused about you; but hopefully, your duty to your commitment helped you transcend that temporary feeling, and you stayed together.

That's how duty cooperates with feelings...it imparts them a level of durability they inherently lack, because feelings are so mercurial...and the stronger they are, the stronger they go both ways.

[Immanuel Can]

...save yourself.

That's the one thing none of us ever does.

[Immanuel Can]

Yet he can never actually see the core value of Christianity himself, which is love and empathy.

I'm so amused when anti-Christians tell me what they think Christianity is all about. It's always entertaining...but never informative.

[Atla]

Believing in empathy is almost as bad as not believing in God, if my experience of using the word is anything to go by.

so I'm going to hell twice over then?

It's probably more that there is a special place in Hell for you, rather than having to go twice, but I'm told it's never too late to save yourself.

Not sure I want to save myself either, Heaven could be full of IC types and we'd have to pretend for eternity that we love one another..

[Atla]

Yet he can never actually see the core value of Christianity himself, which is love and empathy.

I'm so amused when anti-Christians tell me what they think Christianity is all about. It's always entertaining...but never informative.

I wasn't really telling you, to you those are just words without meaning no?

[Harbal]

when did you sign your "social contract"? Answer: never. "Social contract" is just an heuristic device, an imaginary "tool" for thinking about human relations. It does not refer to anything anybody "owes."

Does it matter as long as it works? Not perfectly, but what does work perfectly?

It doesn't "work." Nobody even HAS a "social contract." There's no such thing.

I would say there is an implicit social contract. I mean, most of us have a sense of our social obligations and rights in respect of how we treat other people, and how we expect them to treat us. And it obviously does work; I only have to consider how I do behave towards others, and how they behave towards me.

I find this idea you have that all human behaviour is, or should be, founded on and regulated by some system of logic or rationality rather strange. That just isn't how human beings work. That's how computers and machines work.

The point is quite the opposite.

The reason for using logic and rationality is not to make people behave in a certain way, but rather to discover if what they are telling you makes sense. Wouldn't you rather know when people are telling you something irrational and illogical? And if what they say can't even make sense on its own terms, let alone any of yours or mine, what's the reason that you would want to accept it?

Well I do use logic and rationality, in addition to my own experience, to assess if what I'm being told makes sense. How do you think I arrived at the conclusion that what you have told me doesn't make sense?

The only rationality I find appropriate in arriving at moral decisions is the rationale that they must be in accord with my moral values.

[Immanuel Can]

Yet he can never actually see the core value of Christianity himself, which is love and empathy.

I'm so amused when anti-Christians tell me what they think Christianity is all about. It's always entertaining...but never informative.

I wasn't really telling you, to you those are just words without meaning no?

No, but don't let me stop you...