<p>^I’ll agree with you there.</p>
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well, bombing infidels is ‘demonstrably’ right to the terrorist Muslims. what is your point?</p>
<p>demonstrable means you can show how it’s wrong. quoting scriptures don’t count. that’s appeal to authority (an authority which authority hasn’t been demonstrated by anything besides faith).</p>
<p>demonstrating can be done in many ways: clinical trials in medicine, showing with evidence, statistics, history, logic, etc.</p>
<p>demonstrable |diˈm</p>
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key word. let’s say i have a random book at home who says having hair on your head is wrong. or inferior. or sinful. or something. it also says everything in that book is right. i believe it. now i can demonstrate, within my random book’s premises to you that having hair on your head is wrong. IF YOU DON’T GO BALD YOU’RE AN INFERIOR PERSON!!1!elebenty!!</p>
<p>what you consider ‘demonstrating’ can be used to demonstrate anything you want, really… demonstrating within the system of biblical premises is demonstrating something within an indemonstrable premise. (tongue twister :D)</p>
<p>that “the demonstrable injustices of racism” is something i lifted out of a dictionary… it’s an example sentence. it’s the built-in new oxford american dictionary in macs… you can use “the demonstrable virtues of committing jihad” if you like.</p>
<p>“(social) conservatism is almost entirely based on christianity.”</p>
<p>I completely disagree with this statement.</p>
<p>1)The majority of the sect of people who base their conservative views on their religion do so because of the VALUES they gain from their religion, such as humility and family, not the TEXT of their religion. Therefore, their social conservatism is based on a belief system their developed through their religious faith, but is still unique to them, ergo not based entirely on Christianity.</p>
<p>2)Many Christians, and even people from other religions, are socially conservative because they believe in principles and ideas that fall within that spectrum. Similar to many other groups of people, they develop these beliefs through their own thought, as well as environmental factors such as their parents beliefs. This is the category I personally fall into - I am very socially conservative, but draw my reasoning from sources other than the Bible and my religion.</p>
<p>I was drawn to comment on this thread because it made me, as a conservative Christian, feel targeted for simply falling into a category of the political spectrum. Please understand that the majority of people within this category, as I am sure exists with any other group of people, do not subscribe to the beliefs espoused by the few who are able to gain press. The reason they are able to be in the spotlight is because they differ greatly from the average person. I am not faulting anyone his beliefs, only asking that the conversation remains civil and that the individual is not blamed for the faults of the group.</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>aren’t “VALUES they gain from their religion” values they gain from christianity?
“their social conservatism is based on a belief system their developed through their religious faith”, which is christianity…</p>
<p>… i’m confused. how is that not based on christianity???</p>
<p>“develop these beliefs through their own thought”
how do you develop your own thought into thinking things like ‘homosexuality is wrong’, ‘sex outside marriage is wrong’, ‘masturbation is wrong’, ‘believing in many gods is wrong’ without the bible/pastors/parents/other christians? i once held those views, but i was fully aware that i thought those were wrong because god said they’re immoral…</p>
<p>i dunno man… your post sounds like your views stem from christianity, through and through…</p>
<p>To clarify:</p>
<p>I was merely making the point that people can take away values from their religion (not just Christianity, but also other religion), similarly to how they can take values away from other influences in their lives, such as parents. They can then weave all these values together to form their own belief system. Although this is somewhat based on religion, it is more what the person decides to take from the religion in terms of virtues (NOT beliefs about social issues, which is what you assumed) and how they decide to apply these virtues to their lives and beliefs. Therefore, these beliefs vary by person and are not mandated by the religion to which they subscribe.</p>
<p>As to your second point, that people cannot develop such views on their own, it seems as if you are making a judgement as to what the “right” beliefs are or the beliefs that a person can develop on his own. Is it to fantastic to believe that a person could come to such beliefs by their own thought? This may be the root of your problem.</p>
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<p>I can’t find what he says exactly, and I haven’t read any of his books, but from a Google search, his position seems to be that agnosticism is no more valid than theism. Look at the Wikipedia article on Russell’s Teapot, it’s under ‘Contemporary Usage’.</p>
<p>pkmntrainerharry–</p>
<p>i sort of had a knee-jerk reaction to your post. maybe you aren’t saying what i thought you were saying. i need to know this to be able to figure out where to go next:</p>
<p>do you believe that conservatives’ beliefs are a result of incorrect reasoning?</p>
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<p>On the flip side, a lot of atheists too don’t realize the limitations of science, and mistakenly use it as a replacement for epistemology.</p>
<p>@FBItomboy007:
well we were discussing social conservatism, no? and thus those topics in which conservatives are often seen as intolerant, e.g. sex, gender, abortion, etc… not virtues… let’s not drag us into more and more irrelevant topics…</p>
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well then show me how that’s not fantastic. without ever invoking ‘god’, ‘bible’, ‘sin’, or anything related to christianity’s dogmas.</p>
<p>@speculations about dawkins:
Dawkins “doesn’t believe there is(are) god(s).” He doesn’t “believe there is(are) no god(s).” That’s an important difference. Agnosticism says ‘I don’t know’. Dawkins, like me, thinks there is not enough (i.e. none at all) evidence to believe in god(s), and enough unsupported extraordinary claims by religion to not need to say ‘I don’t know’.</p>
<p>@silence_kit
i think conservatives’ social beliefs are a result of following god’s words in the bible/pastors/parents/whatever is related to christianity. christianity is based on faith. thus it is not valid reasoning (faith is not reasoning in the same way basing your beliefs on throws of dice is not reasoning).</p>
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<p>what are your ethical beliefs based on?</p>
<p>that depends. if you’re utilitarian (like me), you base ethics on whether it harms other people. no faith(s) required.</p>
<p>you probably would see utilitarianism as ‘just another faith’. but it’s not a truth claim; it’s a system meant to minimize harm and maximize happiness—it’s just the best way to obtain happiness for everyone in the world.</p>
<p>you probably aren’t consistently utilitarian, but whatever.</p>
<p>why is this ethical system more correct than the other ones?</p>
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<p>OK, so math majors are, to me, different from “mathematicians” - most math majors will never become mathematicians and may not even have wanted to in the first place.</p>
<p>I have seen a fair number of mathematicians (graduate level and beyond, as well as some undergrads with strong desire to become mathematicians) who don’t like to put themselves on any specific side. I certainly haven’t noticed a conservative trend, but then again, check my location and you know to take that part potentially with a grain of salt. I have met my share of libertarian math majors.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that how a mathematician views things can correlate with his/her field of interest.</p>
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it’s not ‘correct’ or ‘true’ or anything. it’s just what we aim for. e.g. not getting killed in a car crash is not ‘correct’ or ‘true’—it’s just what we aim for.</p>
<p>according to notgettingkilledinacarcrashism, walking on the side of the road is ‘right’, and walking in the middle of the street is ‘wrong’. according to utilitarianism, that homosexuals are no different from straights is ‘right’, and that homosexuals are messed up is ‘wrong’.</p>
<p>religions, however, makes the claim that homosexuals are inherently sinners, as dictated by the LORD/Allah(peace be upon him)/or whatnots, as if ingrained in the very fabric of the universe… or something. that’s a fact claim.</p>
<p>and WHY are you turning this into an interrogation of me??? :(</p>
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<p>this is an aside, but if you don’t want to talk about what is right and what is wrong (this was my question), then obviously this isn’t true. people do wrong things all of the time.</p>
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<p>you too are making a fact claim. maximizing happiness (nevermind what that could be) is right. why is utilitarianism more correct than the other ethical systems? would you make that claim?</p>
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<p>well if your beliefs are the correct ones, the product of perfect reasoning, this should be a painless procedure</p>
<p>secular ethics deal with the should/shouldn’t question. utilitarianism isn’t necessarily the most ‘correct’ one, it’s just that i know of no better alternative.</p>
<p>what i’m sayin is, ethics is a should/shouldn’t question, as opposed to an is/isn’t question. to claim that there’s an inherent morality to the universe needs to be backed up.</p>
<p>as i’ve said in a thread before, to claim absolute ethics is like saying coffee is inherently tastier than tea. my take to ethics is something like people seem to like coffee better than tea (they don’t; it’s just a comparison i’m making), thus it’s best to make coffee more widely available.</p>
<p>it IS a painless procedure… it’s just that i’m lazy to expound on it… my reasoning not as simplistic as ‘goddidit’, you see… besides, this thread wasn’t about me :p</p>
<p>You don’t realize utilitarianism claims an absolute ethic? Utilitarianism states (roughly) “that which causes the greatest amount of happiness is right”. Is that not an absolute?</p>
<p>Your ethical system is no more valid than non-secular ethics, so stop pretending it is.</p>
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<p>you aren’t answering the question . . . why are all of the other ones worse?</p>
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<p>but, correct me if I’m wrong, you are constructing a system of absolute ethics. do you want to me to disregard what you’ve said previously?</p>
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<p>well, so far your reasoning has been ‘the good thing is the thing that maximizes happiness’, and you haven’t gotten further than that . . .</p>
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i dunno man… i think “that which causes the greatest amount of happiness” should be done, not is right…</p>
<p>did i sound like i was constructing absolute ethics? well maybe i was being inconsistent. lol. sorry. i’m not an absolutist, though. i’m just pointing out that it’s not valid to espouse absolute morality, when there’s nothing to support one.</p>
<p>i’m not saying my morality is right, just that faith-based ones are not right… not unless they can demonstrate it.</p>
<p>edit: i scrolled up and didn’t see a post in which i said i’m inherently-as-the-property-of-the-universe right…</p>
<p>edit again:
let me clarify my position on ethics with an analogy to politics: e.g. i’m a liberal. there is no inherently correct political system: one can argue for libertarianism/conservatism/communism/etc., but none of them claim to be inherently correct.
religious ethics is, however, like ‘god said, let there be free markets’; therefore state intervention is wrong. i think that’s nonsense.</p>