Where did I bring up the bible? (Ok, I did bring it up, but that was a separate argument entirely from my claim that the OP was plain silly.) I was talking about deities in general, not the Christian god. A god making the universe can build in morals as right. If you disagree with those morals in that universe, then you are wrong by the definition of that universe. I am not saying that our universe is like that, or that all conceivable universes are like that, merely that one can imagine such a universe. Unless you can show that such a universe necessarily introduces a logical contradiction, logic demands that you accept that such a universe could hypothetically exist.
The particular argument of the OP was a moral argument against belief in precisely this type of god. That is, one which builds a certain morality into the universe. This is ridiculous, because if such a god exists, then it defines morality, and your moral argument is simply incorrect. If such a god does not exist, then the argument works fine of course, but is rather pointless because such a god does not exist in that case. So, the validity of the argument depends upon the the conclusion of the argument, which should render the entire argument thoroughly unconvincing to anyone with half a brain in their head.
No, it really isn't. It is not a moral principle. It is a logical principle. If I build a house, I can build it out of gold bricks if I want to. Then the house will be made of gold. This is not a moral principle at all. It is a logical principle. If a god builds a universe, it can build in a particular moral code if it so chooses, or even a plethora of moral codes, each applying to different entities in different situations. It could even build in a moral code by which the actions of entities should be judged by those entities, and a separate moral code by which its own actions should be judged by those entities. Even Socrates and your commentator on Socrates acknowledge that this is logic, rather than morality. "If God is the Creator of absolutely everything, then He would be the Creator of all standards of value also."
What you are suggesting boils down to the proposition that the people who knuckled under to the Nazis had the right idea, they just picked the wrong bully to submit to.
Stripped of the unnecessarily biased rhetoric, almost. I am suggesting that it is possible to imagine a logically consistent universe in which they had the right idea (by having some kind of a moral code), but they picked the wrong bully to submit to (they didn't choose the "right" moral code). Now you can just as well imagine a universe in which there is no right moral code, and then it is impossible for them to say "I picked the right bully" or "I picked the wrong bully", because there is no right or wrong bully (moral code). But it is nonetheless possible to imagine a universe where there is a right moral code.
I just did. Or, rather, Socrates did a long time ago.
This is not what Socrates showed at all. You have badly misunderstood either me (and I don't think that you have done so) or Socrates (or perhaps Socrates just made some errors, if you have not misunderstood him). Also, the person writing the article you link to seems to have misunderstood Socrates. He states that since whatever God does is good, it is unnecessary for Genesis to say "and He saw that it was good". Well, ok, supposing first that whatever God does is good (NOT necessitated by a god building in morality to the universe, it could certainly build in a morality that said some things it did were bad, or that simply said nothing about the goodness of the things it does), then yes, it is not necessary for Genesis to say this. However, he then proceeds to claim that this produces a logical contradiction. This is blatantly incorrect. The addition of the superfluous does not indicate a logical contradiction.
I might build an axiomatic approach to mathematics, such as ZFC. ZFC is very nice, because in 9 axioms, you get all of common mathematics and (we suspect) no contradictions. Since we get all of common mathematics as theorems, we can prove 2 + 2 = 4 (given the usual ZFC definitions of 2, +, 4, and =). So, given those same definitions, we could write a 10th axiom which said 2 + 2 = 4. This is completely superfluous. It is unnecessary to have this axiom. However, it does not introduce a logical inconsistency. Similarly, the addition of "and He saw that it was good" to Genesis is superfluous, assuming that everything God does he has defined to be good. However, being superfluous does not mean that it is contradictory.
Similarly, your author states that either it is insensible to praise God for his goodness (because everything he does is good), or there is some higher moral code to which God strives to conform. The first case certainly presents no contradiction, while the second one does (since we had already posited that God defined all morality, the idea of a higher moral code, one not defined by God, is contradictory). So we conclude that it is insensible to praise God for his goodness, provided of course that the particular way he defines morals is such that everything he does is good (again not required). No contradiction here, either. Your author characterizes this state of affairs as "disapointing", but "disapointing" is a far cry from "contradictory".
Well yes. That is pretty much exactly what I was describing. If you don't believe in God, then you might consider God to be evil. But it turns out that belief in God (well, some conceptions of God anyway) means that you don't consider God to be evil, so using "I consider God to be evil" is not a good argument at all for saying "Therefore, I don't believe in God".
Are not some de jure rules and regulations morally wrong?
Since we are discussing personal moral compasses and suchlike things, you'd really better describe exactly what value system you are using to determine whether or not something is morally wrong... Morally wrong according to your personal moral compass? But exactly what makes you think that your personal moral compass is superior to something else? Perhaps where your de facto morals disagree with the de jure morals, your de facto morals are wrong. You made several other errors like that, by saying that a particular situation was "even worse", for one. Even worse by what standard? Since we are questioning all moral codes and their various authorities here, exactly what moral code do you think you are judging this by? And if there is some moral code that you are using to declare this "even worse", then why are you not questioning that moral code and its authority, and what makes you think that I hold the same moral code?
In the case of laws on Earth (a poor analogy, I would say, since the source of de jure morals is completely different), the de facto morals are sort of averaged over the population and those are used to judge the de jure morals. This is fine, and there certainly isn't a more straightforward way to judge the de jure morals. However, the sort of average de facto morals are often the source of the de jure morals in the first place. Other times the de jure morals come from the de facto morals of a very few people (such as the US Constitution authors).
However, a god creating a universe is an entirely different case. It can obviously make certain things characteristics of the universe, such as the natural laws (physics). If it can do that, then why can it not make other things characteristics of the universe? Is there any a priori reason to think that a god creating a universe cannot make absolutely anything it wants characteristic of the universe? For instance, a god might create a universe such that the correctness of a particular moral code is characteristic of that universe. Note that I am certainly not saying that a moral code is natural law; this is a misunderstanding that I can easily see people making. In such a universe, simply because of how the universe was constructed, that particular de jure moral code would stand above all others. Does this present any logical inconsistencies? Then how can you rule it out? If you cannot rule it out, how do you know that the universe we live in is not like that? That is, does this conflict with any empirical observations about our universe? Since it does not, it could very well be the case. We cannot and will not ever know (at least while alive on Earth, we can certainly imagine an afterlife in which we will know...).
Unless we can rule out a universe with a built in absolute and correct moral code, whether on logical or empirical grounds (and even empirical grounds are a little bit sketchy, since they require assumptions about the relationship between perceptions and reality; see solipsism), then we cannot ever know whether our personal moral compasses are superior to other moral systems.
I would describe Dawkins and all your "atheist" friends as agnostics then. So would Russell, who, although he did describe himself as an atheist, acknowledged that that was a sloppy use of the word, and that he would more properly be called an agnostic.
Unless someone takes "For all x, not God(x)" as an axiom or theorem in their belief system (and yes, any well thought out belief system can be expressed in terms of formal logic, so this is relelvant), then they are not properly an atheist.
Now, we could certainly say that we are just disagreeing about the meanings of the words atheist and agnostic. However, why should atheist mean "somebody who lacks a belief in God, but would be willing to believe when presented with credible evidence" when agnostic already means precisely that? If we change the meaning of atheist to reflect its common usage, then we've screwed up the language because we then have two words representing one concept, and no words representing another concept. Before we had one word for each concept.
Oh, and by the way, I'm not sure which theists you've been talking to. Most of the theists I know (and I know quite a few) are perfectly willing to question the existence of God. Most of them do so on a regular basis. Questioning a belief and abandoning that belief are two different kettles of fish. Besides, have you questioned your beliefs lately?
If a god made and controls the entire universe completely, then that god is perfectly able to define morality however it chooses. It is certainly possible to imagine such a universe. It is also possible to imagine a universe in which Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Odin, Zeus, Kali, and Ra all exist. In such a universe, perhaps each god would define their own morality, or perhaps they would have an omnipotent elimination cage match, or perhaps morality would be as arbitrary as it must be in an atheistic universe.
I am not using "Might makes right", but "creator and controller makes right if it so chooses". If I paint a picture, and every person in my picture has three eyes, then I have painted a picture in which every person has three eyes. If somebody comes up and says "no wait, people have two eyes", then in the context of my picture, they are wrong. If a god with the power to do so creates a universe, and creates it in such a way that certain things in that universe are right or wrong, then those things in that universe are right and wrong. If somebody comes up and says "no wait, this is right, and that is wrong", then in the context of that universe, they are incorrect.
A transcendent god gets to define morality however it likes. This is an immediate consequence of having created the universe. Certainly it might be that no transcendent creating god exists, and then morality is arbitrary. But in the case where a transcendent creating god exists, it can define morality if it so chooses.
One can imagine gods which are powerless to define morality. However, one can also imagine gods which are not. Unless you can show a logical inconsistency necessitated by the idea of a god defining morality (and I sincerely doubt you can do that), then you must accept the possibility. Perhaps you would estimate that it is an extremely low probability, but nonetheless it is undeniably a possibility.
I agree that you are free to codify everything you experience as good or evil however you like. You might also have three categories, or 17, or none at all. However, you might be incorrect when you do so. It might be that anything you choose is not incorrect. It might be that everything you choose is incorrect. It might be that some entire range of choices is not incorrect. There are a large infinity of possibilities.
Ok, I'll put it another way. Suppose I do not believe in, say, the Christian god. In fact, suppose I am an atheist. Well, nothing about being an atheist necessitates any particular moral system, so without telling you anything else about myself, as far as you can tell, I am free to choose absolutely any moral system I like. So, suppose I choose a particular moral system such that a description of the Christian god throws up all kinds of red flags that say "Oh, this 'god' is not good at all! I could never believe in him because he does not fit my moral code." In that case, I've made a neat little argument from morals to say that I will never be a Christian.
Now, wipe everything you know about me clean again, and then suppose that I am a Christian. Now you know some small amount about my moral code, because being a Christian restricts my choices of morality somewhat unless I destroy the usefulness of the label "Christian" entirely. Among other things, calling myself a "Christian" necessitates that the Christian god agrees with my moral system. Then I certainly can't make an argument against belief based on morals.
So, you see, the truth of the premise ("God is immoral") of the original argument depends upon the conclusion of that argument ("I shan't believe in god") because one's morality depends upon one's beliefs. This is circular reasoning. All moral arguments for or against the existence of any god who even just claims to define morality run into this problem.
Well, you're right that I'm wrong, but you're not right completely.
The first part of this sentence would make sense only if disembark meant to set out on a journey.
"They are disembarking from their port of origin." -> "They are setting out on a journey from their port of origin." Ok, that would work. But that isn't the false meaning of disembark I really had in mind. I was thinking more like (first sentence) -> "They are leaving their port of origin." This also works.
The second part of the sentence is probably correct since they will most certainly have to get on a ship in order to visit the ocean floor.
Even if they were not getting on a ship, "embark" means, among other things, "To set out on a venture; commence". "They are setting out on a mission to study the ocean floor gash." I'm sure the word embark came from getting on a barque, but words do take on new meanings over the years, and embark certainly has.
But, the main point is that I had made up a false meaning for disembark. And you are right about that. I was taking embark to point at the future, and disembark to point at the past, like the difference between go and come. This works for embark, but not so much for disembark.
People who made it out alive probably had a religious experience... from making it out alive.
Ok, your own analysis of the study. That's perfectly fine. The study necessitates neither this nor any other analysis.
And since only the people who made it out alive can contribute to this study then we have a problem here. I doubt the study takes this into account.
Straw man. Since the original poster didn't give any actual link or reference to the study, we can't know whether or not it takes this into account. It is certainly possible for it to do so. Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn't. Since we don't have the actual study, we can only speculate about what it actually contained. Perhaps the side holding the prisoners did the study, asking each incoming POW whether they were religious or not, and then keeping careful records about who died and how long they lived. That would be an example of a good study which does not take this problem into account because it doesn't have this problem.
I agreed with you that "having something to hope for" likely does not predict who lives and who doesn't in a POW camp. You don't have to keep trying to convince me of that. However, the original poster's analysis was primarily not "having something to hope for keeps you alive", but rather "having religious beliefs in a POW camp keeps you alive". "having something to hope for" is irrelevant here, since it has been shown not to contribute.
I do understand your argument, and I still maintain that it is quite silly. You are using your particular system of morals or values to support a logical proposition "deity X is not worthy of worship or belief" or "deity X has personality issues". Now, logical propositions make claims about what is true and what is not. Deity X (if it exists) decides what is true and what is not. So, if your logic does not agree exactly with deity X, then your logic is faulty. If you use your particular system of morals to support a logical proposition, but your system of morals is not correct, then you are quite likely to get wrong answers from logic. Particularly, if deity X has decided that "deity X is worthy of worship and belief" is a true statement, or if deity X has decided on a particular moral system which leads to that statement, then the fact that you come to the conclusion "deity X is not worthy of belief or worship" indicates that your logic is faulty in some way.
So, either deity X is worthy of worship and belief, or it is not. If it is not worthy (and not existing would be one way in which it could not be), then perhaps your argument and moral system are correct. If it is worthy (by virtue of having decided that it is worthy), then your argument and in particular the moral system which took part in your argument are simply incorrect (notice that this is different from logically sound, as always). Thus, the correctness of your argument depends upon that which you are trying to prove. This is circular reasoning at its finest.
You don't have to take my word about what Jesus said, of course. The historical record I referred to is the book of Matthew in the Bible. The particular piece of that record I referred to is Chapter 22, verses 37 through 40. I might contend that if these two commandments (and others) had been more closely followed, that much religious-based conflict might have been avoided, and that reversing the priority, but still collectively failing to follow closely, would not have prevented much religious-based conflict.
I dunno... Stalinism, which certainly was atheistic, certainly made people quite effective killers, probably much more effective than say the crusaders (who you are most likely indirectly referring to). Nazism was also atheistic, and caused in the most effective example of genocide known to date.
These two largest and most notorious mass killings both resulted from atheist regimes, not from religion. I suspect that atheists and agnostics of all sorts are just as good at killing, and just as motivated to kill, as theists of all sorts.
Kind of throws your whole argument out into the realm of pseudoscience, neh?
No..... no it doesn't. Not really at all. If there was a study which showed that religious POWs were significantly more likely than non-religious POWs to make it out alive, then that is science. Perhaps a single part of the analysis of the data ("something to hope for"), is shown to be wrong, but wrong in a fairly superficial manner. Clearly, claiming that this throws everything out into pseudoscience is a little bit ridiculous.
then this is not a deity worthy of belief; let alone worship.
This is a little bit silly. If there is a god, particularly the variety of god that most Christians would describe to you, then that god defines what is moral. So, if there is a deity that your particular moral system deems "not worthy of belief or worship", but this deity has defined morality such that it is worthy of belief and worship, then your moral system is wrong.
Certainly one can imagine gods which do not define any sort of morality, even gods which do not have any power to define morality for a variety of reasons. However, since one can imagine gods which can and do define what is right and wrong, making an argument against belief in that sort of god based on morality is rather silly, except in the imaginable cases where the god has defined morality such that it is not worthy of belief or worship.
There was a cool bloke once, who suggested that the most important thing in life is actually to love thy neighbour, and not get caught up in the minutae of rules,
Incorrect actually. According to the historical record of what Jesus said, what he actually claimed as the most important thing in life is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. He came right out and said that this was the first and most important commandment. (of course, he didn't say it in english... But you get the idea) Loving your neighbor (as you love yourself... in what ways exactly do you love yourself, hmm?) was cited as the second, not the first and most important.
Well, ok. In the bit I quoted from you, you didn't actually claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the one who said this, so yes, there might well be a "bloke" who could be described as "cool", who suggested that the most important thing in life is actually to love thy neighbor and not get caught up in the minutiae of rules. There probably have been a large number of such "blokes", and some of them might even have been named Jesus, particularly the ones in Mexico. But, unless I misunderstand your post, you were actually referring to the Christ worshipped by Christianity, in which case you are incorrect.
What religious people seem to fail to comprehend is that atheism is not a religious belief, it is the lack of religious belief.
Wrong. You describe something known as "agnosticism", rather than atheism. In a formal logical system, a theist would take "There exists x such that God(x)" as an axiom (or choose other axioms such that that statement is a theorem). An atheist would take "For all x, not God(x)" as an axiom (or choose equivalent axioms). An agnostic would take no axiom which was either of those two statements, nor any axioms such that either of those two statements is a theorem. A consistent logical system can certainly exist in all three cases.
Agnosticism says "I don't know whether god exists or not". Both atheism and theism claim to know the answer to the question of gods' existence. In this regard, atheism is much more like theism than it is like agnosticism.
Whenever someone says "I'm telling you the truth of God because I care about your soul" I hear "I'm somewhat insecure in my own faith and I need you to believe with me"
That seems a little odd. There is no inconsistency in the idea of them actually being altruistic and caring about your soul, particularly since what they claim to believe tells them that they ought to care about your soul. I think you've been drinking a bit too much of the cynical anti-religion-at-all-costs koolaid.
They are disembarking from their port of origin, and embarking on a mission to study the ocean floor gash. The summary used the word correctly. s/disembarking/embarking/ without changing anything else in the summary would result in something that didn't make sense.
Just because you read it somewhere doesn't mean it's not bullshit.
True, but considering that he didn't say he read it somewhere, he said he read it in FHS, unless he's wrong about having read it there, it would tend to mean it isn't bullshit. OTOH, even just the word "editable" (case insensitive) does not occur in either version of FHS posted at the page I linked, so perhaps he is wrong and it is bullshit.
I think it is a bad thing because it will, if it becomes widespread, wind up damaging the reputation not only of the researchers involved, but of scientific publication as a whole. Widespread publishing outside of peer-reviewed channels will inevitably lead to more high profile retractions and publication of faulty science. This will cause people who are not peers (in the sense of peer-review) to be less certain that what they read in a scientific publication is accurate. Peers of course will still be able to largely determine whether or not a given paper floats, but the general public will gradually develop a distrust of scientific papers.
Today, scientific papers enjoy an exceptionally high reputation of trustworthiness, primarily due to the rigorous peer-review process. Losing that reputation would hurt funding, both public and private, and thus eventually slow the rate of scientific development of the entire human race, if you care to extrapolate that far.
Yeah it looks really cool, but the board is going to die faster now. The original keycaps are vaguely umbrella shaped for a reason: to keep dust out of the buckling spring mechanism underneath them. Those little black plastic tubes that he pulls the keys out of now have their tops slightly exposed, so dust can settle down into them and interfere with things.
If anyone is looking to make their own, they should just be aware of this.
But only a bit. The blogger can quite easily delete the offending post within a few clicks. NYC has to send a guy with not only a bucket of paint and brushes, but also an armed escort, to remove the offending graffiti. Much more difficult and much more expensive. Furthermore, NYC is a public entity, a blogger is a private entity.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I've never thought John Gabriel was really all that GIFTed.
Where did I bring up the bible? (Ok, I did bring it up, but that was a separate argument entirely from my claim that the OP was plain silly.) I was talking about deities in general, not the Christian god. A god making the universe can build in morals as right. If you disagree with those morals in that universe, then you are wrong by the definition of that universe. I am not saying that our universe is like that, or that all conceivable universes are like that, merely that one can imagine such a universe. Unless you can show that such a universe necessarily introduces a logical contradiction, logic demands that you accept that such a universe could hypothetically exist.
The particular argument of the OP was a moral argument against belief in precisely this type of god. That is, one which builds a certain morality into the universe. This is ridiculous, because if such a god exists, then it defines morality, and your moral argument is simply incorrect. If such a god does not exist, then the argument works fine of course, but is rather pointless because such a god does not exist in that case. So, the validity of the argument depends upon the the conclusion of the argument, which should render the entire argument thoroughly unconvincing to anyone with half a brain in their head.
Stripped of the unnecessarily biased rhetoric, almost. I am suggesting that it is possible to imagine a logically consistent universe in which they had the right idea (by having some kind of a moral code), but they picked the wrong bully to submit to (they didn't choose the "right" moral code). Now you can just as well imagine a universe in which there is no right moral code, and then it is impossible for them to say "I picked the right bully" or "I picked the wrong bully", because there is no right or wrong bully (moral code). But it is nonetheless possible to imagine a universe where there is a right moral code.
This is not what Socrates showed at all. You have badly misunderstood either me (and I don't think that you have done so) or Socrates (or perhaps Socrates just made some errors, if you have not misunderstood him). Also, the person writing the article you link to seems to have misunderstood Socrates. He states that since whatever God does is good, it is unnecessary for Genesis to say "and He saw that it was good". Well, ok, supposing first that whatever God does is good (NOT necessitated by a god building in morality to the universe, it could certainly build in a morality that said some things it did were bad, or that simply said nothing about the goodness of the things it does), then yes, it is not necessary for Genesis to say this. However, he then proceeds to claim that this produces a logical contradiction. This is blatantly incorrect. The addition of the superfluous does not indicate a logical contradiction.
I might build an axiomatic approach to mathematics, such as ZFC. ZFC is very nice, because in 9 axioms, you get all of common mathematics and (we suspect) no contradictions. Since we get all of common mathematics as theorems, we can prove 2 + 2 = 4 (given the usual ZFC definitions of 2, +, 4, and =). So, given those same definitions, we could write a 10th axiom which said 2 + 2 = 4. This is completely superfluous. It is unnecessary to have this axiom. However, it does not introduce a logical inconsistency. Similarly, the addition of "and He saw that it was good" to Genesis is superfluous, assuming that everything God does he has defined to be good. However, being superfluous does not mean that it is contradictory.
Similarly, your author states that either it is insensible to praise God for his goodness (because everything he does is good), or there is some higher moral code to which God strives to conform. The first case certainly presents no contradiction, while the second one does (since we had already posited that God defined all morality, the idea of a higher moral code, one not defined by God, is contradictory). So we conclude that it is insensible to praise God for his goodness, provided of course that the particular way he defines morals is such that everything he does is good (again not required). No contradiction here, either. Your author characterizes this state of affairs as "disapointing", but "disapointing" is a far cry from "contradictory".
Well yes. That is pretty much exactly what I was describing. If you don't believe in God, then you might consider God to be evil. But it turns out that belief in God (well, some conceptions of God anyway) means that you don't consider God to be evil, so using "I consider God to be evil" is not a good argument at all for saying "Therefore, I don't believe in God".
In the case of laws on Earth (a poor analogy, I would say, since the source of de jure morals is completely different), the de facto morals are sort of averaged over the population and those are used to judge the de jure morals. This is fine, and there certainly isn't a more straightforward way to judge the de jure morals. However, the sort of average de facto morals are often the source of the de jure morals in the first place. Other times the de jure morals come from the de facto morals of a very few people (such as the US Constitution authors).
However, a god creating a universe is an entirely different case. It can obviously make certain things characteristics of the universe, such as the natural laws (physics). If it can do that, then why can it not make other things characteristics of the universe? Is there any a priori reason to think that a god creating a universe cannot make absolutely anything it wants characteristic of the universe? For instance, a god might create a universe such that the correctness of a particular moral code is characteristic of that universe. Note that I am certainly not saying that a moral code is natural law; this is a misunderstanding that I can easily see people making. In such a universe, simply because of how the universe was constructed, that particular de jure moral code would stand above all others. Does this present any logical inconsistencies? Then how can you rule it out? If you cannot rule it out, how do you know that the universe we live in is not like that? That is, does this conflict with any empirical observations about our universe? Since it does not, it could very well be the case. We cannot and will not ever know (at least while alive on Earth, we can certainly imagine an afterlife in which we will know...).
Unless we can rule out a universe with a built in absolute and correct moral code, whether on logical or empirical grounds (and even empirical grounds are a little bit sketchy, since they require assumptions about the relationship between perceptions and reality; see solipsism), then we cannot ever know whether our personal moral compasses are superior to other moral systems.
I would describe Dawkins and all your "atheist" friends as agnostics then. So would Russell, who, although he did describe himself as an atheist, acknowledged that that was a sloppy use of the word, and that he would more properly be called an agnostic.
Unless someone takes "For all x, not God(x)" as an axiom or theorem in their belief system (and yes, any well thought out belief system can be expressed in terms of formal logic, so this is relelvant), then they are not properly an atheist.
Now, we could certainly say that we are just disagreeing about the meanings of the words atheist and agnostic. However, why should atheist mean "somebody who lacks a belief in God, but would be willing to believe when presented with credible evidence" when agnostic already means precisely that? If we change the meaning of atheist to reflect its common usage, then we've screwed up the language because we then have two words representing one concept, and no words representing another concept. Before we had one word for each concept.
Oh, and by the way, I'm not sure which theists you've been talking to. Most of the theists I know (and I know quite a few) are perfectly willing to question the existence of God. Most of them do so on a regular basis. Questioning a belief and abandoning that belief are two different kettles of fish. Besides, have you questioned your beliefs lately?
If a god made and controls the entire universe completely, then that god is perfectly able to define morality however it chooses. It is certainly possible to imagine such a universe. It is also possible to imagine a universe in which Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Odin, Zeus, Kali, and Ra all exist. In such a universe, perhaps each god would define their own morality, or perhaps they would have an omnipotent elimination cage match, or perhaps morality would be as arbitrary as it must be in an atheistic universe.
I am not using "Might makes right", but "creator and controller makes right if it so chooses". If I paint a picture, and every person in my picture has three eyes, then I have painted a picture in which every person has three eyes. If somebody comes up and says "no wait, people have two eyes", then in the context of my picture, they are wrong. If a god with the power to do so creates a universe, and creates it in such a way that certain things in that universe are right or wrong, then those things in that universe are right and wrong. If somebody comes up and says "no wait, this is right, and that is wrong", then in the context of that universe, they are incorrect.
A transcendent god gets to define morality however it likes. This is an immediate consequence of having created the universe. Certainly it might be that no transcendent creating god exists, and then morality is arbitrary. But in the case where a transcendent creating god exists, it can define morality if it so chooses.
One can imagine gods which are powerless to define morality. However, one can also imagine gods which are not. Unless you can show a logical inconsistency necessitated by the idea of a god defining morality (and I sincerely doubt you can do that), then you must accept the possibility. Perhaps you would estimate that it is an extremely low probability, but nonetheless it is undeniably a possibility.
I agree that you are free to codify everything you experience as good or evil however you like. You might also have three categories, or 17, or none at all. However, you might be incorrect when you do so. It might be that anything you choose is not incorrect. It might be that everything you choose is incorrect. It might be that some entire range of choices is not incorrect. There are a large infinity of possibilities.
Ok, I'll put it another way. Suppose I do not believe in, say, the Christian god. In fact, suppose I am an atheist. Well, nothing about being an atheist necessitates any particular moral system, so without telling you anything else about myself, as far as you can tell, I am free to choose absolutely any moral system I like. So, suppose I choose a particular moral system such that a description of the Christian god throws up all kinds of red flags that say "Oh, this 'god' is not good at all! I could never believe in him because he does not fit my moral code." In that case, I've made a neat little argument from morals to say that I will never be a Christian.
Now, wipe everything you know about me clean again, and then suppose that I am a Christian. Now you know some small amount about my moral code, because being a Christian restricts my choices of morality somewhat unless I destroy the usefulness of the label "Christian" entirely. Among other things, calling myself a "Christian" necessitates that the Christian god agrees with my moral system. Then I certainly can't make an argument against belief based on morals.
So, you see, the truth of the premise ("God is immoral") of the original argument depends upon the conclusion of that argument ("I shan't believe in god") because one's morality depends upon one's beliefs. This is circular reasoning. All moral arguments for or against the existence of any god who even just claims to define morality run into this problem.
Yes, the summary is wrong, and I was wrong. However, it is still true that s/disembark/embark/ produces meaninglessness.
Dang it! Mod me down, I'm wrong!
"They are disembarking from their port of origin." -> "They are setting out on a journey from their port of origin." Ok, that would work. But that isn't the false meaning of disembark I really had in mind. I was thinking more like (first sentence) -> "They are leaving their port of origin." This also works.
Even if they were not getting on a ship, "embark" means, among other things, "To set out on a venture; commence". "They are setting out on a mission to study the ocean floor gash." I'm sure the word embark came from getting on a barque, but words do take on new meanings over the years, and embark certainly has.
But, the main point is that I had made up a false meaning for disembark. And you are right about that. I was taking embark to point at the future, and disembark to point at the past, like the difference between go and come. This works for embark, but not so much for disembark.
Well, let me know when you find some, then. Extreme solipsism is the sole refuge of the pure anti-dogmatist.
Straw man. Since the original poster didn't give any actual link or reference to the study, we can't know whether or not it takes this into account. It is certainly possible for it to do so. Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn't. Since we don't have the actual study, we can only speculate about what it actually contained. Perhaps the side holding the prisoners did the study, asking each incoming POW whether they were religious or not, and then keeping careful records about who died and how long they lived. That would be an example of a good study which does not take this problem into account because it doesn't have this problem.
I agreed with you that "having something to hope for" likely does not predict who lives and who doesn't in a POW camp. You don't have to keep trying to convince me of that. However, the original poster's analysis was primarily not "having something to hope for keeps you alive", but rather "having religious beliefs in a POW camp keeps you alive". "having something to hope for" is irrelevant here, since it has been shown not to contribute.
I do understand your argument, and I still maintain that it is quite silly. You are using your particular system of morals or values to support a logical proposition "deity X is not worthy of worship or belief" or "deity X has personality issues". Now, logical propositions make claims about what is true and what is not. Deity X (if it exists) decides what is true and what is not. So, if your logic does not agree exactly with deity X, then your logic is faulty. If you use your particular system of morals to support a logical proposition, but your system of morals is not correct, then you are quite likely to get wrong answers from logic. Particularly, if deity X has decided that "deity X is worthy of worship and belief" is a true statement, or if deity X has decided on a particular moral system which leads to that statement, then the fact that you come to the conclusion "deity X is not worthy of belief or worship" indicates that your logic is faulty in some way.
So, either deity X is worthy of worship and belief, or it is not. If it is not worthy (and not existing would be one way in which it could not be), then perhaps your argument and moral system are correct. If it is worthy (by virtue of having decided that it is worthy), then your argument and in particular the moral system which took part in your argument are simply incorrect (notice that this is different from logically sound, as always). Thus, the correctness of your argument depends upon that which you are trying to prove. This is circular reasoning at its finest.
You don't have to take my word about what Jesus said, of course. The historical record I referred to is the book of Matthew in the Bible. The particular piece of that record I referred to is Chapter 22, verses 37 through 40. I might contend that if these two commandments (and others) had been more closely followed, that much religious-based conflict might have been avoided, and that reversing the priority, but still collectively failing to follow closely, would not have prevented much religious-based conflict.
I dunno... Stalinism, which certainly was atheistic, certainly made people quite effective killers, probably much more effective than say the crusaders (who you are most likely indirectly referring to). Nazism was also atheistic, and caused in the most effective example of genocide known to date.
These two largest and most notorious mass killings both resulted from atheist regimes, not from religion. I suspect that atheists and agnostics of all sorts are just as good at killing, and just as motivated to kill, as theists of all sorts.
Certainly one can imagine gods which do not define any sort of morality, even gods which do not have any power to define morality for a variety of reasons. However, since one can imagine gods which can and do define what is right and wrong, making an argument against belief in that sort of god based on morality is rather silly, except in the imaginable cases where the god has defined morality such that it is not worthy of belief or worship.
Incorrect actually. According to the historical record of what Jesus said, what he actually claimed as the most important thing in life is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. He came right out and said that this was the first and most important commandment. (of course, he didn't say it in english... But you get the idea) Loving your neighbor (as you love yourself... in what ways exactly do you love yourself, hmm?) was cited as the second, not the first and most important.
Well, ok. In the bit I quoted from you, you didn't actually claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the one who said this, so yes, there might well be a "bloke" who could be described as "cool", who suggested that the most important thing in life is actually to love thy neighbor and not get caught up in the minutiae of rules. There probably have been a large number of such "blokes", and some of them might even have been named Jesus, particularly the ones in Mexico. But, unless I misunderstand your post, you were actually referring to the Christ worshipped by Christianity, in which case you are incorrect.
Agnosticism says "I don't know whether god exists or not". Both atheism and theism claim to know the answer to the question of gods' existence. In this regard, atheism is much more like theism than it is like agnosticism.
They are disembarking from their port of origin, and embarking on a mission to study the ocean floor gash. The summary used the word correctly. s/disembarking/embarking/ without changing anything else in the summary would result in something that didn't make sense.
I think it is a bad thing because it will, if it becomes widespread, wind up damaging the reputation not only of the researchers involved, but of scientific publication as a whole. Widespread publishing outside of peer-reviewed channels will inevitably lead to more high profile retractions and publication of faulty science. This will cause people who are not peers (in the sense of peer-review) to be less certain that what they read in a scientific publication is accurate. Peers of course will still be able to largely determine whether or not a given paper floats, but the general public will gradually develop a distrust of scientific papers.
Today, scientific papers enjoy an exceptionally high reputation of trustworthiness, primarily due to the rigorous peer-review process. Losing that reputation would hurt funding, both public and private, and thus eventually slow the rate of scientific development of the entire human race, if you care to extrapolate that far.
Yeah it looks really cool, but the board is going to die faster now. The original keycaps are vaguely umbrella shaped for a reason: to keep dust out of the buckling spring mechanism underneath them. Those little black plastic tubes that he pulls the keys out of now have their tops slightly exposed, so dust can settle down into them and interfere with things.
If anyone is looking to make their own, they should just be aware of this.
But only a bit. The blogger can quite easily delete the offending post within a few clicks. NYC has to send a guy with not only a bucket of paint and brushes, but also an armed escort, to remove the offending graffiti. Much more difficult and much more expensive. Furthermore, NYC is a public entity, a blogger is a private entity.