Is morality objective or subjective?

[attofishpi]

I don't recall ever being taught about what sin is (and to be honest I am still not certain). I was taught the 10 commandments (in RC primary school) around about the age of 11-12 because I remember the teacher and class I was in. I think I assumed, and probably still do, that not adhering to the 10Cs were sin, and the other 'sins' are what we comprehend as morally reprehensible, such as rape. (Maybe Moses ran out of room on his tablet for that one, or God decided 'it goes without saying'!)

]Sounds like a rather gentle version.
But Jesus pretty much broadens the 10 Cs to including thinking about them. Sinful thoughts. Of course kids are not generally thinking about adultery, but the idea is present in J's interpretation of the 10 c's that one need not act to have sinned.

I'm not familiar with that, can you provide an example?

But that's great if you weren't burdened by this kind of thing. I believe a lot of Christians are. And I certainly was a child for a couple of years in a religious school. Sinning was regularly occurring, even merely attitudinally.

Yes, that's awful. I have nothing but good things to say about my RC schooling, learned a great deal of values none of which had the bigotry that seems prevalent in US "christianity". Were you raised there?

[Lacewing]

I know that God is very fair

Based on what exactly?

[Immanuel Can]

How can infants be saved by Christ if they never even hear about him?

... maybe it's not something we particularly need to know, since we have ourselves to look to.

What do you mean by 'we have ourselves to look to'?

I mean that moral responsibility starts with you and me. We can worry about many ethical speculations about other people and entities...why did that river flood, what's my neighbour's moral condition, can we be immoral towards AI, where are all the babies who never reached the age of decision...all very engaging to think about, but maybe not with answers you and I are due to be given.

We aren't in charge of everything else, or of anybody else. But we are in charge of what we do. That much, we know.

I don't imagine the secular world, which aborts babies at a rate of millions per year, can much concern themselves with the welfare of babies, though.

You think that secularists don't care about the welfare of babies?

That depends: are these secularists aborting them? Then I don't any longer they have any sincerity of concern for babies, for children, or for anybody but themselves. That much must surely be evident from their actions.

Do you think Christians don't have abortions?

I can't say I have any way of knowing conclusively, of course; I don't have any reason to think so. But I can say that abortion is an anti-Christian action. Something immoral does not become moral when somebody who makes a claim to being moral does it. It remains immoral.

[Immanuel Can]

Christian wars

You'll have to show me the words "Christian" and "war" ever rightly go together. Otherwise, that's just an oxymoron.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Do we teach them to confront tragic existence boldly and realistically?

Well, if life is just "tragic," as you suppose, then there's actually no use in teaching them anything at all. Human life has no nobility, and death ends all: who's to care what they believed between the womb and the tomb? In that worldview, there's no rewards for harsh "realism" of that type. One may as well embrace any consolation one can grab...true or not.

But I don't suppose that. And I'd rather teach them not just realism and boldness, but also hope.

Since you and I, for reasons related to how we have, or have not, advanced along the path of sober realism, do not and cannot agree on the most basic primary tenets, we have no alternative but to oppose each other in the most direct terms. I find this glorious, useful and quite proper, and for that reason I try to maximize the value I receive from our opposition. On a forum like this, as we all can clearly notice, a person like you serves a needed function: in order to articulate contrary ideas it is super useful if there is someone who clearly enunciates what it is that they oppose. Obviously, all the philosophes here oppose you. More than that they have in a sense tied their fates to the post-Enlightenment intellectual project and are carrying it forward in their own selves. The *self* then is the locale where something like a new ethical modality is presented and manifest.

My position is actually quite different but I am not sure if you have noticed. It would not matter though to you because in some sense you need your opposition just as they need you, and thus it suits your project to get the opposition you continually receive. In fact you set it up and, you too, benefit from it. But in my case what I try to do is to see through you (the rigidity of your ultra-Christian position which, in my view, is more closely aligned with a Jewish posture than it takes advantage of a radical Jesusonianism), or beyond you to a more transcendent height. In this I am a simple-minded Platonist and I work continually within the metaphor of the Cave. That said, I see most people here stuck on a *lower level* and busting forth with opinion-laden ideas that do not and cannot advance one to any particular place of attainment, but are symptomatic of the degree of their stuckness.

And within that metaphor of description there is our own verging-on-suicide schizophrenic hopeless 'last man' utterly pathetic genetic dead-end who interweaves himself through all conversations. Is he therefore the end-point of the Age of Nihilism? As such he is a curious symbol to explore.

I know that you would not agree but I think I represent more of a threat than those who, without much historical consciousness of the depth of the danger of their nihilism, oppose you more with bickering complaint than with intelligent, thoughtful opposition that could consider how to contruct, or if it is possible to construct, a forward-reaching metaphysics to confront the dead-ends of our Modernity.

Curiously, in today's NY Times there is one of those *hit-pieces* on the wife of the new Speaker of the House. It attacks her precisely because she is an Evangelical Christian. Their attack is in sync with the general effort to undermine the metaphysics that have supported Occidental civilization. This takes the form of a virulent anti-Americanism, and a virulent anti-Whiteness, and its motor is to be found in the activism of The Frankfurt School, which does link it to Jewish activism, but saying this I admit that I have broached a forbidden topic. Nevertheless I am obligated to do so because, as it happens, the entire issue has come to the fore so strongly in this recent flare-up in Palestine. How weird! All of a sudden it is a life-and-death issue and the entire foundation of The World seems to sway and tremble. As those freakshows-on-wheels of the extreme right say: you know who rules you when you clearly recognize who you are not allowed to criticize. Criticism has enormous consequences and you had best be extremely careful!

Now, and with that said, I once again can only stress that I believe we are right now in the midst of a war -- a world-conflagration in fact -- but one that is ultimately ideological. It is in that sense that I refer to the *tragic*. Yes, and also, I am referring to a pre-Christian and Hellenic sense of the tragic a la Nietzsche, but what is most important is to keep the focus on the present: that which impinges like a rising tide, millimeter by millimeter, with every passing moment, day, week, month and year.

My take on you is that -- and what if? -- you are an exemplar of a true nihilist. It is possible, if I interpose that filter over you, to see you as more of a nihilist than any other nihilist that performs here. But you operate through a unique costume: the absolute, the unwavering, Bible literalist! If I have *manoeuvres* and *strategies* whereby I keep a grasp onto my metaphysics, the metaphysics that have been erased by Enlightenment declarations, and if these show a certain desperation in the face of a monstrous mechanical encroaching and dissolving Present -- and I can admit to this -- your manoeuvre is even more desperate! It is as you once told me: in your university years you became a Christian and you have carried on with it, and it has carried you along, right up to the present moment. But you have done this through an act that looks absolutely escapist: a return to a shelter of an impossible metaphysical picture. Literally, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden into a world that is defined by Man's Sin. The world is the world it is because Man sinned. In the Medieval picture it is Man's expulsion that, literally, brought the whole world down. Again, the world is the world it is because of Man's sin. (Most of those who read here do not actually understand Christian -- or Jewish -- metaphysics.)

So, instead of confronting what has actually happened in our world, in our thinking, your strategy involves a negation of all of that. Literally you *hop over* history and take refuge in a cocooned belief-system that offers a husk-like protection against 'reality'. No matter what or who taps and hammers on your shell-like husk, you can fend off all adversaries. Indeed you seek them out in order to strengthen your performances. You capability to perform against the encroaching nihilism that swoops over the world.

You see, no one who is located, as we all are, within the consequence of nihilism can perform the manoeuvre that you more or less directly recommend. It is not an option for us. Take for example what you recommend to Gary. Instead of commenting directly on that, what I opt to do is to stand back from it and try to see it. It is like going to a play which is ensconced in a specific time-period, where you know the ideological parameters that will be explored, and you watch the actors work out the implications of the limiting set of predicates. You tell Gary: bend your knees to the metaphysical transcendence of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ will send down those rays of salvific power that will save you from this world. Really, your preaching is to a form of The Last Man who teeters on the precipice of life and death but is inclined to death because he cannot embrace the strength that does come from embracing life-as-tragedy.

In that worldview, there's no rewards for harsh "realism" of that type. One may as well embrace any consolation one can grab...true or not.

Here again you actually do get to the core, or expose the core. Those who oppose you (this is my view) do not seem to have fully realized the degree to which nihilism actually destroys the possibility of *progress* as formerly conceived. I could put forth the metaphor of men who are sinking, bit by bit, into quicksand and who fight, tooth & nail, against the man standing on firm ground with the Life Preserver. I know this makes it seem as if I do see you as operating that Life Preserver, except that is where I think I present (and represent) an alternative to the rigid formalism and the forced return to what I describe as the *images* flickering on the wall of the cave -- which are cast by projectors that are not clearly enough seen nor understood.

So once again I will stress that the issue revolves around what we would teach our children. That is telling. Because we could not honestly fail to teach them what we believe we ourselves understand to be true.

[Gary Childress]

Do we teach them to confront tragic existence boldly and realistically?

Well, if life is just "tragic," as you suppose, then there's actually no use in teaching them anything at all. Human life has no nobility, and death ends all: who's to care what they believed between the womb and the tomb? In that worldview, there's no rewards for harsh "realism" of that type. One may as well embrace any consolation one can grab...true or not.

But I don't suppose that. And I'd rather teach them not just realism and boldness, but also hope.

Since you and I, for reasons related to how we have, or have not, advanced along the path of sober realism, do not and cannot agree on the most basic primary tenets, we have no alternative but to oppose each other in the most direct terms. I find this glorious, useful and quite proper, and for that reason I try to maximize the value I receive from our opposition. On a forum like this, as we all can clearly notice, a person like you serves a needed function: in order to articulate contrary ideas it is super useful if there is someone who clearly enunciates what it is that they oppose. Obviously, all the philosophes here oppose you. More than that they have in a sense tied their fates to the post-Enlightenment intellectual project and are carrying it forward in their own selves. The *self* then is the locale where something like a new ethical modality is presented and manifest.

My position is actually quite different but I am not sure if you have noticed. It would not matter though to you because in some sense you need your opposition just as they need you, and thus it suits your project to get the opposition you continually receive. In fact you set it up and, you too, benefit from it. But in my case what I try to do is to see through you (the rigidity of your ultra-Christian position which, in my view, is more closely aligned with a Jewish posture than it takes advantage of a radical Jesusonianism), or beyond you to a more transcendent height. In this I am a simple-minded Platonist and I work continually within the metaphor of the Cave. That said, I see most people here stuck on a *lower level* and busting forth with opinion-laden ideas that do not and cannot advance one to any particular place of attainment, but are symptomatic of the degree of their stuckness.

And within that metaphor of description there is our own verging-on-suicide schizophrenic hopeless 'last man' utterly pathetic genetic dead-end who interweaves himself through all conversations. Is he therefore the end-point of the Age of Nihilism? As such he is a curious symbol to explore.

I know that you would not agree but I think I represent more of a threat than those who, without much historical consciousness of the depth of the danger of their nihilism, oppose you more with bickering complaint than with intelligent, thoughtful opposition that could consider how to contruct, or if it is possible to construct, a forward-reaching metaphysics to confront the dead-ends of our Modernity.

Curiously, in today's NY Times there is one of those *hit-pieces* on the wife of the new Speaker of the House. It attacks her precisely because she is an Evangelical Christian. Their attack is in sync with the general effort to undermine the metaphysics that have supported Occidental civilization. This takes the form of a virulent anti-Americanism, and a virulent anti-Whiteness, and its motor is to be found in the activism of The Frankfurt School, which does link it to Jewish activism, but saying this I admit that I have broached a forbidden topic. Nevertheless I am obligated to do so because, as it happens, the entire issue has come to the fore so strongly in this recent flare-up in Palestine. How weird! All of a sudden it is a life-and-death issue and the entire foundation of The World seems to sway and tremble. As those freakshows-on-wheels of the extreme right say: you know who rules you when you clearly recognize who you are not allowed to criticize. Criticism has enormous consequences and you had best be extremely careful!

Now, and with that said, I once again can only stress that I believe we are right now in the midst of a war -- a world-conflagration in fact -- but one that is ultimately ideological. It is in that sense that I refer to the *tragic*. Yes, and also, I am referring to a pre-Christian and Hellenic sense of the tragic a la Nietzsche, but what is most important is to keep the focus on the present: that which impinges like a rising tide, millimeter by millimeter, with every passing moment, day, week, month and year.

My take on you is that -- and what if? -- you are an exemplar of a true nihilist. It is possible, if I interpose that filter over you, to see you as more of a nihilist than any other nihilist that performs here. But you operate through a unique costume: the absolute, the unwavering, Bible literalist! If I have *manoeuvres* and *strategies* whereby I keep a grasp onto my metaphysics, the metaphysics that have been erased by Enlightenment declarations, and if these show a certain desperation in the face of a monstrous mechanical encroaching and dissolving Present -- and I can admit to this -- your manoeuvre is even more desperate! It is as you once told me: in your university years you became a Christian and you have carried on with it, and it has carried you along, right up to the present moment. But you have done this through an act that looks absolutely escapist: a return to a shelter of an impossible metaphysical picture. Literally, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden into a world that is defined by Man's Sin. The world is the world it is because Man sinned. In the Medieval picture it is Man's expulsion that, literally, brought the whole world down. Again, the world is the world it is because of Man's sin. (Most of those who read here do not actually understand Christian -- or Jewish -- metaphysics.)

So, instead of confronting what has actually happened in our world, in our thinking, your strategy involves a negation of all of that. Literally you *hop over* history and take refuge in a cocooned belief-system that offers a husk-like protection against 'reality'. No matter what or who taps and hammers on your shell-like husk, you can fend off all adversaries. Indeed you seek them out in order to strengthen your performances. You capability to perform against the encroaching nihilism that swoops over the world.

You see, no one who is located, as we all are, within the consequence of nihilism can perform the manoeuvre that you more or less directly recommend. It is not an option for us. Take for example what you recommend to Gary. Instead of commenting directly on that, what I opt to do is to stand back from it and try to see it. It is like going to a play which is ensconced in a specific time-period, where you know the ideological parameters that will be explored, and you watch the actors work out the implications of the limiting set of predicates. You tell Gary: bend your knees to the metaphysical transcendence of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ will send down those rays of salvific power that will save you from this world. Really, your preaching is to a form of The Last Man who teeters on the precipice of life and death but is inclined to death because he cannot embrace the strength that does come from embracing life-as-tragedy.

In that worldview, there's no rewards for harsh "realism" of that type. One may as well embrace any consolation one can grab...true or not.

Here again you actually do get to the core, or expose the core. Those who oppose you (this is my view) do not seem to have fully realized the degree to which nihilism actually destroys the possibility of *progress* as formerly conceived. I could put forth the metaphor of men who are sinking, bit by bit, into quicksand and who fight, tooth & nail, against the man standing on firm ground with the Life Preserver. I know this makes it seem as if I do see you as operating that Life Preserver, except that is where I think I present (and represent) an alternative to the rigid formalism and the forced return to what I describe as the *images* flickering on the wall of the cave -- which are cast by projectors that are not clearly enough seen nor understood.

So once again I will stress that the issue revolves around what we would teach our children. That is telling. Because we could not honestly fail to teach them what we believe we ourselves understand to be true.

Well at least you and IC will be saved. The rest of us heathens OTOH...

Fuck it. I don't care anymore. Someone has to go to hell after they die. I'll volunteer if that gets me away from the torment of talking to the "saved". The only part you got right is that life is a tragedy.

[Will Bouwman]

As a victim of child abuse, and an atheist, what form will my justice take?

I'm deeply sorry for your experience. That's horrible. And sadly, there's nothing that can be done to reclaim the loss, if there is no more than this life. It's one and done, so the past cannot be resolved.

But I don't think that's how it is, actually, so I would give you the Biblical answer. The justice that's coming takes the form of God's perfect justice.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that in God's eyes, between child abuse and atheism, the greater crime is atheism. Am I wrong to understand that the crime was not against me, but against God, and that the perpetrators will be looked on more favourably if they repent, then I will be for whatever trivial misdemeanors I have been guilty of?

[Immanuel Can]

...we have no alternative but to oppose each other in the most direct terms...

Sure, we have alternatives. What you mean here is only, "I don't agree with you." Fine. This is a philosophy forum, so we don't have to; but we can still treat each other respectfully, of course. Understand this observation in those terms, if you would.

The problem is that your writing style does not invite comment. You use a lot of words, leaving no opportunity for anyone to interject. You opt for verbosity and lengthy clauses, instead of precise language. It's sort of the dead opposite style from that advocated by Orwell in "Politics and the English Language," which I think it an excellent guide to sincere speech.

I find your style turgid and pretentious. It's as if you want to hide your meaning inside lengthy sentences and pompous wording. Unfortunately for you, some of us have the vocabulary to detect that, and to be less-than-impressed with the obvious strategy of obfuscation and pedantry it betrays. You're offending your most intelligent readers, in short.

So I recommend you change that style. It's not getting you what you think it is, and I think you're capable of being more concise, and at the same time, more profound. You also don't want to wear your audience out with meaningless verbiage, do you?

But of course I have no power to incentivize that. What I can do, however, is decline to engage it, which I am inclined to do, because it's a lot of work for not much thought or progress. It's actually a kind of anti-philosophical, anti-conversational, anti-informational style. It's too bad: you occasional have good thoughts, but you make it not worthwhlie to spend the time to mine them out of the mountain of polysyllabic words and run-on sentences.

So carry on as you see fit, I guess. But if you want dialogue, I think you will find it useful to be more brief and precise, and to pause more frequently for feedback from your interlocutors, if any remain. Just my advice. You don't have to take it. But I'm out, if this is the style to which you're committed.

[Immanuel Can]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that in God's eyes, between child abuse and atheism, the greater crime is atheism.

I wouldn't say that, at all. Of course, I'm not the Judge: but it seems to me that to threaten those who cause harm to children to have a fate less desirable than to be chained and thrown into the bottom of the sea, as Christ did, implies a very serious condemnation to abusers of children. But Atheism, by comparison, is a quickly curable condition.

[Gary Childress]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that in God's eyes, between child abuse and atheism, the greater crime is atheism.

I wouldn't say that, at all. Of course, I'm not the Judge: but it seems to me that to threaten those who cause harm to children to have a fate less desirable than to be chained and thrown into the bottom of the sea, as Christ did, implies a very serious condemnation to abusers of children. But Atheism, by comparison, is a quickly curable condition.

I think his question was more along the lines of: if he is unable to sincerely accept Christ and has committed relatively minor transgressions in life against others himself compared to greater transgressions originally done to him but he doesn't accept Christ, will he be condemned for not accepting Christ? And if the one who committed those much greater offenses to him accepts Christ through honestly repenting and declaring Christ his/her savior, will his abuser, in return go to heaven for accepting Christ while he goes to hell for not accepting Christ?

What are your thoughts on that IC? As someone who has been closer to God than many of us, what do you think will happen in the end?

[Walker]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that in God's eyes, between child abuse and atheism, the greater crime is atheism.

I wouldn't say that, at all. Of course, I'm not the Judge: but it seems to me that to threaten those who cause harm to children to have a fate less desirable than to be chained and thrown into the bottom of the sea, as Christ did, implies a very serious condemnation to abusers of children. But Atheism, by comparison, is a quickly curable condition.

I think his question was more along the lines of: if he is unable to sincerely accept Christ and has committed relatively minor transgressions in life against others himself compared to greater transgressions originally done to him but he doesn't accept Christ, will he be condemned for not accepting Christ? And if the one who committed those much greater offenses to him accepts Christ through honestly repenting and declaring Christ his/her savior, will his abuser, in return go to heaven for accepting Christ while he goes to hell for not accepting Christ?

What are your thoughts on that IC? As someone who has been closer to God than many of us, what do you think will happen in the end?

You may be talking apples and oranges.

What do you think it means to accept Christ as savior?
What do you think it means to accept anything?

This would be a good time for you to get real specific and detailed rather than fall back on the habit of asserting broad nostrums rooted in belief.

[Alexis Jacobi]

So carry on as you see fit, I guess. But if you want dialogue, I think you will find it useful to be more brief and precise, and to pause more frequently for feedback from your interlocutors, if any remain. Just my advice. You don't have to take it. But I'm out, if this is the style to which you're committed.

You just wasted an entire post with a vain but empty critique that addressed none of what I spoke about. And you have repeated, verbatim, other posts just the same.

It’s your way of avoiding the examination of the real essences operative today. For this reason I see you as unconscious of what the real struggles are.

You are “out” only because you’ve never been in. It is as I said: you opted long ago for a cocoon.

I do not feel that you have anything to offer anyone, Immanuel. So I don’t seek anything from you. The option (cocooning) you have taken is incommensurable with what I feel is necessary.

If what I notice about you is true — that under the disguise you suffer nihilism’s ravages — you cannot be of any use to me nor to anyone seeking a way forward.

But what I say here is literally incomprehensible to you. Thus, for all (or most) of us you are the epitome of uselessness.

Yet you continue to be useful for exactly these reasons. And it is not “you-singular” that concerns me or should concern anyone. It is the plurality which you represent.

Any clearer?

[Alexis Jacobi]

IC wrote: Sure, we have alternatives. What you mean here is only, "I don't agree with you." Fine. This is a philosophy forum, so we don't have to; but we can still treat each other respectfully, of course. Understand this observation in those terms, if you would.

No, I believe I mean a great deal more. And in respect to you — this manifest hard-headed true-believer — there is no alternative (for me, I won’t speak for others) to stark and maintained opposition to your core choices.

Yes, it is a philosophy forum, but you are not a philosopher!

But it is really what else you are not that draws my attention to you. You are no adventurer. Many many others have taken a challenge that you cannot perceive. Some have failed, crashed and burnt, but some have sailed (excuse the cheesy rhyme).

You’ve never left the dock.

I certainly do not have to treat you respectfully since I regard your failing as a disease. But what you mean is don’t use insulting language.

You invite contempt, Immanuel. But that allows you a false martyrdom, doesn’t it?

(Again: not you-singular but you-plural. It is crucial that you get this distinction).

[Walker]

You just wasted an entire post with a vain but empty critique that addressed none of what I spoke about. And you have repeated, verbatim, other posts just the same.

It wasn't a waste for me, and to be fair, that's likely because it wasn't addressed to me, so I have no challege to my self-concept to defend against.

Because of IC's demonstrable clarity in presenting concepts concerning how to be clear, and because he is clear, I listen. What I do with what I hear is determined by any perceived need of objectivity within the situation, which I've just provided.

The advice, which was offered at the expense of time, attention, and life force, was not a waste for me which proves that either both or one of us is making a subjective interpretation of the phenomenon. I saw the posting as an objective offering of truth, and I accepted the offering. You did not accept the offering, and that is your human, God-given right.

As a note to IC's advice, when I aim for the endless sentence I do so with awareness of what I'm doing in order to amuse myself, like juggling. If anyone wants to read along for the ride, fine and dandy.

I figure if pure communication of a concept is the aim over and above fun, then state it in fifty words or less and rely on the inquisitiveness of the hearer to expand in the direction of his or her interest. That is a great courtesy to the reader and makes the transmitter transparent.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Because of IC's demonstrable clarity in presenting concepts concerning how to be clear, and because he is clear, I listen.

I am that you find that you like his style and feel he is clear and makes sense. But you, too, are pretty expert at avoiding what people bring to your attention — views and perspectives that are incommensurate with your orientation — just as IC is.

So you might want to consider that even if you do not like my style, or anyone’s style, you are fully capable of extracting from it what is meant — and commenting fulsomely and honestly on that content.

You’ve said nothing (and you generally say nothing because you haven’t much content) and, like IC, wasted a post.

Can you try instead to deal with some ideas?