Honestly, the word pagan has been corrupted to mean a Wicca like religion. I am pagan in the old sense of the word. Just not a Christian.
I believe that there is a divine energy that seeks balance, but that there are "higher" beings that are more powerful than man. Finally man should find harmony with his world and himself. I am the only practitioner of my religion.

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CliffStamp

That is the moral dilemma, what is the X and Y?

I think you have the nub of it here. Earlier you were asking about moral resolution - what would be the end point if you will. I suspect that until we have a viable 'Universal goal for humanity' there will be no end point. Discussions on the nature of morality will inevitably be circular. The real problem comes from trying to identify this goal. I could probably form an argument for one but it would inevitably be subjective, I don't claim to be perfectly rational or objective. As I said earlier I don't think a moral choice should depend upon the outcome of that choice. This would not be workable as we would all be paralysed into inactivity by what ifs. For example, if I give £10 to a homeless man what if he then, understandably, uses the money to by drugs and the drugs contain contaminants which kill him. Or more direct what if he is attacked and robbed by another person who covets his new found wealth, or crosses the road to buy some food and gets run over by a truck as he is so exited by the though of a hot meal that he forgets to look both ways? Would my choice to alter his circumstances be moral then?

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A question such as "Could God make a taco so hot he could not eat it?" is basically asking Could God do something he could not do? The statement is without rational meaning.

Actually it is asking weather an omnipotent being could exceed it's own power. If the answer is no then you have discovered a limitation - which means it is not omnipotent. If the answer is yes then you have discovered a limitation - which means it is not omnipotent. This does not really tell you anything interesting about the concept of God but it does show the limitations of language and the human ability to deal with concepts on that scale.

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A more subtle question of the same type would be if you asked God Is the statement "I am telling a lie." true or false? then what would it say. A more direct question is "Can God do evil acts?" .

That is a more subtle way to reach the same point, I think I like it better.

The second question here is more intriguing when it comes to the nature of God. If you abandon the preconception that God must be entirely good and benevolent then things get interesting. Given that even if God is not 'Omnimax' he must be so far beyond human abilities that it makes no difference, how would we know if God was messing with us? How could we be sure that God was the creator rather than simply a stupendously powerful being who found the Universe lying around and decided to tell everyone they made it? Would we have any way of knowing whether there were actually a bunch of gods snickering over a multidimensional bong hit and wondering what they could make the monkey's do next?

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TerriLiGunn
Honestly, the word pagan has been corrupted to mean a Wicca like religion. I am pagan in the old sense of the word. Just not a Christian.
I believe that there is a divine energy that seeks balance, but that there are "higher" beings that are more powerful than man. Finally man should find harmony with his world and himself. I am the only practitioner of my religion.

Cool,I like the harmony part. According to Tom Holland's book the word Pagan is a shortened version of pagani which is Latin for civilian.

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HedgeChopper

I suspect that until we have a viable 'Universal goal for humanity' there will be no end point. Discussions on the nature of morality will inevitably be circular

This is where you can't jump from the premise to the conclusion. Are discussions about gravity circular or subjective? But we don't know the end point, and the way we know doesn't produce information in a 1:1 kind of mapping (we know things as they exist).

Morality can be thought of and approached the same way. For example morality has to involve choice because if people can not actually make choices then ought has no meaning - does it make sense to say what a toaster ought to do? Thus you can make an objective statement :

-morality has to both involve and allow choice

Then you start mapping out a set of rules such as something which has moral attributes is like a color in that something is considered to be colored simply if it has colors. These sound really simple, trivial even, but all math is like that and those simple foundations lead to very broad conclusions.

A lot of this gets tricky to talk about because some of the words don't mean the same thing in lay speak and this is where you have to be very careful because you have to interpret the arguments with the definition of the words as they are being used in the arguments.

For example if you admit :

It is possible that God exists.

Is a true statement, then it can be shown that God exists is also a true statement using modal logic/mathematics. The problem is that people will say yes to that statement from the lay perspective but not realize in the proof the word possible means something very different.

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Would my choice to alter his circumstances be moral then?

If a man asks you for $10 and openly tells you it is to buy bullets to kill his children so he can avoid child support is you giving him the money more/less moral than if he doesn't tell you?

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Actually it is asking weather an omnipotent being could exceed it's own power.

Exactly, which doesn't have a truth value. You are using omnipotence (you have defined it) in a way that you can write a non-rational statement and again this isn't how it is used in the arguments for an omni-max God.

Consider this simple argument :

a) All ducks are animals
b) That is a duck

Conclusion :

c) That has to be an animal

Now can you say that argument is not sound because you define "are" to mean "possibly"? No, because you are making a different argument.

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If you abandon the preconception that God must be entirely good and benevolent then things get interesting.

There is in fact an argument which is used to oppose apologists which argues for the omni-max evil God. It isn't held seriously as in people believe it, but it is argued just to show that most of the arguments used or in defense of omni-max Gods could in fact argue for / defend an Evil God.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2014 05:58PM by CliffStamp.

This thread has got me studying logic in a far deeper manner then when I used it for programming.

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CliffStamp

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HedgeChopper

I suspect that until we have a viable 'Universal goal for humanity' there will be no end point. Discussions on the nature of morality will inevitably be circular

This is where you can't jump from the premise to the conclusion. Are discussions about gravity circular or subjective? But we don't know the end point, and the way we know doesn't produce information in a 1:1 kind of mapping (we know things as they exist).

Firstly, I have more than once demonstrated my ability to leap from premise to conclusion without going through the intervening steps or even basing my conclusion on my premise!

Secondly we have both argued that there is unlikely to be an end point to a discussion on the nature of morality.

Thirdly I said circular not subjective. Although I would argue that discussion is an inherently subjective thing to do. All parties put across arguments based on their own (subjective) perspective even where the goal is to reach an objective conclusion. As to circularity, all discussions I have read on this so far involve continual argument and counter argument with the same argument frequently being used to support opposing contentions. An example of a similar, though not identical, phenomenon from our own discussion was that what you considered to be a strong refutation of utilitarianism I considered to be utilitarianism in action. Another example, which applies to us both is we have repeatedly answered questions with further questions and this seems to be a common theme for these types of discussions. Circular may be a strong way of putting it but I think it is at least oval.

A question which I realise has not actually been asked. What is your stance on morality? Objectivism, relativism, nihilism even? You have been mainly arguing from an objectivist's point of view but you could easily be playing devil's advocate as you seem primarily interested in the consistency of argument. Even when I asked you directly ,twice, whether you were able to provide an objective argument that murder was wrong your response was 'Yes' which is cheeky. Any chance you could expand?

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Then you start mapping out a set of rules such as something which has moral attributes is like a color in that something is considered to be colored simply if it has colors. These sound really simple, trivial even, but all math is like that and those simple foundations lead to very broad conclusions.

I'm missing something here. Are you saying that something can be considered to be moral if it has morals? I am definitely going to have to try and read Kagan at some point.

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Exactly, which doesn't have a truth value. You are using omnipotence (you have defined it) in a way that you can write a non-rational statement and again this isn't how it is used in the arguments for an omni-max God.

I do know that. I threw that in to the mix because it amused me just as it amuses you to talk about a knife being built with the blade on the wrong end because the blade smith was from Australia.

It does show though the limitations of language, which brings me to:

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A lot of this gets tricky to talk about because some of the words don't mean the same thing in lay speak and this is where you have to be very careful because you have to interpret the arguments with the definition of the words as they are being used in the arguments.

I agree totally. I'm sure I'm guilty of mixing lay speak with mathematical/logical terminology. This is mainly because I have an extremely limited knowledge of the formal terminology. It is probably safest to assume that I am using lay definitions in this discussion.

This does illustrate a personal bugbear though. I hate the phrase 'That's just a semantic argument/distinction.' with a passion. A semantic argument is one of the most fundamentally important ones you can have or make. If we don't all agree on what the words mean before we start then we can neither communicate effectively or reach strong conclusions.

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If a man asks you for $10 and openly tells you it is to buy bullets to kill his children so he can avoid child support is you giving him the money more/less moral than if he doesn't tell you?

By my own arguments that would depend on whether I believed it was morally wrong to kill children for that reason.
Assuming I believe that it is, then having prior knowledge of his intentions to kill those children would make providing the means to do so less moral. However if showing altruism towards a stranger inadvertantly causes harm to the stranger or another, the moral aspect of the action is unchanged. I note that you have edited your post to remove the point about us needing to be aware of potential outcomes for an action to be moral. Does this mean you agree with me?
Personaly, I would not feel it was right to give him money for that purpose and I would wonder why he had sufficient means to be expected to pay child support but insufficient to buy some bullets.

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There is in fact an argument which is used to oppose apologists which argues for the omni-max evil God. It isn't held seriously as in people believe it, but it is argued just to show that most of the arguments used or in defense of omni-max Gods could in fact argue for / defend an Evil God.

On that note I found this article: [www.hamzatzortzis.com] which considers the problem of evil from an Islamic point of view. If you have not already read it then it is an interesting take on the modal defence. It describes in part the concept that God, in Islam, is not considered to be entirely benevolent.

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HedgeChopper

An example of a similar, though not identical, phenomenon from our own discussion was that what you considered to be a strong refutation of utilitarianism I considered to be utilitarianism in action.

To clarify, it is considered to refute utilitarianism to people who hold the view that example is immoral. If you argue that actually is moral then obviously it doesn't refute the maximal utility approach. This isn't a contradiction between us. I am drawing a circle and calling it a circle, you are saying you disagree and draw a square and calling it a square. I don't disagree you drew a square just like I don't disagree that if you accept the doctor cutting up one guy at random is moral then it doesn't refute maximum utility style moralities.

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What is your stance on morality?

I would not assert that moral realism is true (aside from exploring it as a topic of discussion). This is based on the fact that I can not justify that free will exists and without free will ought doesn't mean anything.

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Are you saying that something can be considered to be moral if it has morals?

A decision is said to be a moral one if any aspects of that decision are moral in nature. Note that this creates very specific maths which result from it and this kind of rule doesn't hold for everything. For example a car is made out of parts but the parts themselves are not cars.

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I hate the phrase 'That's just a semantic argument/distinction.' with a passion.

Ironically that is really misused. The problem is illustrated by this exchange :

Interested Party : "Hey, when you forge a steel do the molecules of the steel get more dense?"

Idjit : "There are no molecules in steel dummy."

This is where someone missed the point of the question and made a semantic and non-critical (and actually false) correction which ignores the actual point in contention. Now it may be an interesting point that steel itself isn't molecular as metallic bonds are different than ionic/covalent bonds (molecules) and you might want to make a note of that, but ignoring the main question isn't that productive especially when the other party may have no ability to understand why the iron/carbon bond isn't molecular and even if you could teach them they are not interested and would never retain it. Plus it doesn't help them at all with the request for information on should they forge a knife to make it better or not.

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By my own arguments that would depend on whether I believed it was morally wrong to kill children for that reason.

In retrospect I should have made the point that he told you it was for some reason you objected to morally as that was the point I wanted to make. If you agree that it changes the morality then in general you are morally responsible for actions based on what is reasonable for you to have known about their outcome.

For example :

a) you see a box in your driveway and throw it towards the garbage can, it bounces and lands in the middle of the road, you look up/down the road, see it is clear, put your coffee down on the seat of your car and move to get the box

vs

b) you see a box in your driveway and throw it towards the garbage can, it bounces and lands in the middle of the road, you do not look up/down the road, put your coffee down on the seat of your car and begin to move to get the box but you see a kid on a bike crash right into it, he is killed

As you did not take what most would argue is reasonable to infer consequences in the second example you would be held morally responsible for the actions which result as they could have been easily prevented even though there was no intent to for the actions which resulted from your actions.

(this hinges on the fact you accept if you knew about it you would/could have done differently - this is critical)

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It describes in part the concept that God, in Islam, is not considered to be entirely benevolent.

"God’s wisdom, as there may be divine wisdom in permitting evil and suffering. Even if we can’t evaluate what the wisdom is, it doesn’t mean it is not there"

Is exactly the modal defense. When Christian's say God is all Good that doesn't mean he doesn't punish people, in fact many Christians argue God doesn't even love everyone (he doesn't love sinners for example as doesn't have a relationship with them, that is what hell means, to be apart from God for eternity) they say the same thing :

"God’s punishment as a result of our sins and bad actions."

This is the free will defense.

This isn't the type of person I am interesting in talking to as the argument is really basic and self-contradictory for example :

"People can also suffer from past, present or future sins."

If God punishes us for sins that he knows we will commit in the future then how can you argue the free will defense at the same time because this defies rationality (it allows any interpretation of events and you can not learn from anything because causality is violated).

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CliffStamp
This is based on the fact that I can not justify that free will exists and without free will ought doesn't mean anything.

I thought the consensus was that free will did exist. I know there are some researchers who are developing theories (scientific sense) that suggest otherwise. I was under the impression though that the weight of evidence was not yet great enough to substantiate the idea. This would obviously be a big one if shown to be true. I wonder, if it were announced that free will did not exist, would any change in human behavior as a result show the concept to be false. Otherwise could it be argued that the behavioral changes were inevitable in a world where everyone was aware they had no free will. A lack of free will would also change the nature of being self aware.
Another topic to read up on.

Just had a thought. Does this make you a Moral Nihilist? Morality cannot exist without free will. You can't conclude that free will exists therefore morality cannot exist. Would that be right?

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As you did not take what most would argue is reasonable to infer consequences in the second example you would be held morally responsible for the actions which result as they could have been easily prevented even though there was no intent to for the actions which resulted from your actions.

Some of your actions should have been events I think. Just being pedantic.

In this instance you would have been immorally negligent. Presumably this would hold true if no one crashed into the box also.

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This isn't the type of person I am interesting in talking to as the argument is really basic and self-contradictory for example :

If that argument bothered you then don't read his take on the theory of evolution. The argument is even worse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2014 07:46PM by HedgeChopper.

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HedgeChopper

I thought the consensus was that free will did exist.

In the literature? Not to my knowledge. Here is a very nice summary of modern ideas :

[www.youtube.com]

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You can't conclude that free will exists therefore morality cannot exist. Would that be right?

Not exactly. I can not justify that free will exists and thus I can not justify that moral realism is true. The difference, removing the jargon :

-I can not justify the claim that your middle name is Frank

This doesn't mean I would say your middle name is not Frank or that you don't have a middle name or that your middle name can not be known as I can't justify those claims either.

Most people are quite willing to make very strong claims without justification, I rarely make a claim unless I can justify it very well.

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Some of your actions should have been events I think. Just being pedantic.

You need to be careful if you separate out things you do (say call them actions) vs things that happen (call them events) as the fact that there is any difference is a large point of contention in moral theory so you can't just jump to that conclusion.

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If that argument bothered you then don't read his take on the theory of evolution. The argument is even worse.

It doesn't bother me, it just isn't interesting. It is like listening to Ray Comfort on evolution, aside from comedic affect you don't learn anything as Ray isn't interested in being rational.

This guy looks like he could join up with Thorin and Company (that is meant as a compliment.) These do look like good ZA weapons. You should get good penetration with the spike but it probably won't get stuck in a skull easily.

His prices are at the end of the video.
- 18" model $35.00
- 24" model $50.00

[www.youtube.com]


Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

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Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

Looks better in the box.

I keep meaning to stick my nose into the religion/morality side of this thread, lots of interesting stuff has been raised, but I never get time.

Anyway for now, has anyone seen the film 'Dead Alive' or 'Braindead'? The title depends on where you are in the world.

It's the funniest/quaintest/goriest zombie film I've ever seen. It's also written/directed by Peter Jackson, before he got distracted by the whole Lord of the Rings thing. I wish he'd go back to making that sort of stuff.

There are some top-tips in that film for improvised zombie slaying - lawn mowers and food blenders can be put to excellent use.