<p>it has everything to do with it. you are categorically stating that absolute moralities aren’t true, and denying that you are saying it.</p>
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<p>you have refused to defend your own ethical beliefs! why are others’ beliefs held to a higher standard? this is important to the debate. your assumption is that there is something lacking in reason with the christian morality. i claim that it is like all of the others, but you can’t supply this reason with the others! this point is key! </p>
<p>note: providing evidence is a bad way of phrasing it–this isn’t a debate about the empirical. </p>
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<p>this isn’t like your favorite color examples. i guess you have given up your utilitarianism thing, but you are still claiming truth when you say that absolute moralities are wrong . . .</p>
wait… how is this not empirical, when you insist on absolute morality?</p>
<p>it’s like i’m trying to show that creationism is wrong, and then you’re insisting that i defend evolution instead. except that evolution is empirical, and utilitarianism is not…</p>
<p>an empirical claim such as absolute morality is held to a higher standard, because it is an empirical claim! that’s what i’ve been trying to say all this time!</p>
<p>“you are still claiming truth when you say that absolute moralities are wrong”
yes. that’s how science works! i am claiming truth, that morality cannot be absolute unless you show/suggest how it is absolute. there is no One True Best color, unless you can show how! if you can’t show how, everything is just opinion.</p>
<p>wait, I just wanted to say something. As a Christian I think we have something to back up our claim that there is a God. His name is Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>It may not be a strong historical claim and many people want to debate that he never existed but that’s what we believe.</p>
<p>^yes. that’s what you believe. that’s called faith.</p>
<p>to science, that is not valid reasoning, but if you just would acknowledge that it isn’t valid reasoning but a belief, i would agree. i wish silence_kit would understand that…</p>
<p>Well, then it seems that you are making the claim that “valid reasoning” is the only path to absolute truth. It may be the only path to scientific truth… but are we saying that ethics ought to be based on scientific truths? Why? Additionally, are you qualified to determine what is and is not “valid reasoning”?</p>
<p>And I think many science-minded people use faith much more than they realize or care to acknowledge.</p>
<p>@silence_kit
let me copy every single time i’ve mentioned utilitarianism. i think it’s quite clear that since the beginning i had always said that it’s not a truth claim. I do not believe in an absolute morality, including absolute utilitarianism, and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.</p>
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what better way is there to obtain happiness than to attempt to maximize happiness? i’m not saying that it is TRUE to attempt happiness, just that i’d like to. therefore i’m a utilitarian. i’ll just clarify it here since i might not have been so clear…</p>
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<p>see how repetitive i’ve been in expressing it? yet you keep rejecting what i’ve been saying over, over, and over again…</p>
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<p>what is non-scientific truth? even, what is ‘true’?</p>
<p>my dictionary definition is “in accordance with fact or reality”. according to this definition, truth is what is backed up by fact or reality. tell me, how can something that is not “valid reasoning” can be “in accordance with fact or reality”?</p>
<p>in this, saying that any moral action is ‘true’ or ‘wrong’ is meaningless. what is there in reality that tells us something is ‘true’ or ‘wrong’? judging of moral actions is only done by us, and us alone, and it is up to us what to choose… not what the universe dictates. there is no ‘true’ morality.</p>
<p>pierre – please understand that I too am a Christian and believe in Jesus, but I also understand… how can I put this… I believe in him but I also understand my belief isn’t necessarily grounded in emphircal basis. The historical record claims he existed, although there’s some debate, whether he was divine or not has to be tested to count as an emphircal research. The Four Canons of Science (Empiricism, Determinism, Parsimony, and Testability, for those who should be interested) basically. I believe he was but… that’s a belief, and beliefs aren’t science.</p>
<p>and silence_kit… don’t be glib, I gave a perfectly grounded explaination of the ought-is debate. Want me to simplify it even further? “You cannot derive an ought from an is – which means just because something ought to be a certain way, doesn’t mean it always is!” We ought not kill people, and yet people still get killed! We ought not make war, and yet we do!</p>
<p>There seem to be some misunderstandings here. Note that I am far from living a Christian lifestyle myself, but let’s take a look at some things … </p>
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<p>Does “greatest amount of happiness” not sound like a loaded question? Is it not foolish to reject “Christianity” when many Christians have very different beliefs on what it is? And as for “true,” you should consider from which point of view Christian beliefs are true. I definitely agree it makes little sense to define “ethics” as “what the Bible said so” and in some ways, that just renders the term “ethics” without meaning.</p>
<p>If you interpret things, loosely speaking, as a scientist considering the veracity of “Is there a big, fat man up in the clouds of an alternate universe called <em>heaven</em> telling us what to do and calling us His Most Loved Children” and leave things at that, then sure, everything sounds absurd. But Christianity was never phrased to appeal to the absolute intellectual. The intellectual must decode what the essence of its philosophy is, and how the belief system, or at least significant aspects, is even a rational way to live. Sure there are religious bigots who literally claim things which are inconsistent, but there are plenty I’ve met who don’t do this.</p>
<p>In the end, pkmnt, your view of distributing happiness really is the correct way and/or “what should be done” if we’re to give any meaning to the word “ethics,” but realize that it’s a nontrivial task to do this. While certain actions may maximize the pleasure of a group for some time in some sense of the term pleasure, they can lead to misery later. Assumptions must be examined again and again to not fall into the trap of making easy conclusions. </p>
<p>And to be frank, from all the analysis I’ve done, as much as I cannot even come close to forsaking a rational approach to things, many religions such as Christianity do an excellent job of assigning meaning (in a consistent fashion) to important words in our vocabulary through the ways of life and values they discuss, along with the tales and mythologies. The claims of “ABSOLUTE TRUTH”, well we all know that is most likely in the spirit, not the letter of the religious law.</p>
what i’m rejecting is its empirical claims, e.g. god, jesus’ divinity, immaculate conception, etc.—that which you said would sound absurd.</p>
<p>i don’t reject parts of them which obviously make sense—e.g. sermon on the mount. but those parts which i don’t reject are also those parts that make no absurd claims. ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’? cool! ‘believe in me, or go to hell’? not cool.</p>
cool: sounds nice, is supported by/doesn’t contradict fact or reality
meh: doesn’t sound nice, is supported by/doesn’t contradict fact or reality
not cool: whatever, is not supported by/contradicts fact or reality</p>
<p>Again, let me be clear - I think all of the tales of Jesus’ divinity are extremely valuable to understand, and express truths from the correct point of view.</p>
<p>But realize that what value in terms of leading life which an intellectual (arguably, like myself) can gain from decoding Christianity, another may derive from pure faith. I.e., some people may live <em>correctly</em>, even by your utilitarian definition, call themselves Christians, believe in Jesus completely, and derive all the good qualities from the accounts of Jesus that I could, but not have an explanation of it all which appeals to an intellectual.</p>
<p>That’s why I’m in favor of letting each approach religion his/her own way, and while “The Fat Man In The Clouds” is my attempt at conveying absurdity, I obviously don’t see value in laughing at those who take a faith-based approach. However, as I imagine you believe, those who claim something is “Absolute Truth” without understanding what they are saying are certainly being foolish.</p>
<p>@noimagination
well, to me it doesn’t really matter, right? if it’s not supported by/contradicts fact or reality, i’ll say ‘not cool’ even if it sounds nice, e.g. ‘i can do all things through christ who strengthens me’</p>
<p>and if it’s supported by/doesn’t contradict fact or reality, i would either like it or not care, e.g. claims like ‘david was the king of israel’.</p>
<p>hey, come on. the cool/not cool thing was just a figure of speech whether i reject it or not.</p>
<p>@mathboy98
yes… but for christianity to teach morals it doesn’t have to be true. you can also teach morals through fairy tales. jesus’ divinity doesn’t have to be true in order for you to distill morals from it.</p>
<p>As for the “believe in me or go to hell” - I think that has a great meaning too. The intellectual who really wants to decode religion has to scrape through all the mythology, etc, and figure out what it <em>really is getting at</em> in a consistent fashion. Some philosophers say that the role of philosophy is to truly get at what meaning the words we use can carry, and clarify this, and I think an intellectual approach to religion promises a long, drawn out process is ahead to understand things.</p>
<p>In essence, I do believe (as a non-Christian, and just someone who wants to live well, be happy and avoid misery) if one does not understand Christianity and other similar things, probably one will create a hell for oneself. </p>
<p>What is “hell” and what is “God” - what are we as human beings even? “God” is, to someone interested in the terminology by itself, an idealization of many things we have seen. Similar things apply to “hell”. Sort of as different people may choose to visualize a mathematical statement in different fashions, yet lead to the same set of consistently communicable conclusions, so can different people live just as correctly (fairly by the pkmnt view), assuming their faith is well-placed. I.e. they can live without contradictory beliefs.</p>
I’m talking about the moral messages. At what point is a message moral?</p>
<p>Here’s the problem: you say that you espouse a utilitarian worldview but then say that beliefs need to be either empirically or rigorously verified before you can endorse them. The two statements are not necessarily compatible. Let’s say that holding some religious beliefs - even if false - may have a net positive effect for humanity. What would you do in that scenario?</p>
<p>Well, if a Christian claims something to be scientifically true when it’s not been scientifically proved, (s)he would qualify as a fool to me as well. I guess all my points hold independent of this, as we both know.</p>