<p>@noimagination, my impression was pkmntrainer actually acknowledged at some point that utilitarian beliefs being held needn’t depend explicitly on empirical things. I could be wrong, and may be someone else said that.</p>
<p>@mathboy98
unfortunately, for most religious people, the factual claims are just as important as, if not more important than, the message/meaning/understanding. and as would be very obvious, i take issue with false/unsupported factual claims. if you’re willing to take the message despite full understanding that it is but a myth, then i see absolutely nothing wrong/contradictory.</p>
<p>@noimagination
yeah. that’s a question i’ve been thinking about myself. but as silence_kit has pointed out, i’m probably not consistently utilitarian—and in this point (s)he’s right. in this context i’d prefer truth to positive effect out of something false. why? because i like it that way. in that way, i’m being selfishly utilitarian, because i’m catering to what i like.</p>
<p>^edit:
this is why morality is not absolute. which to value more? truth or pleasure? there is no way to figure that out. to me, truth is to be valued above all. but that’s a personal choice.</p>
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In essence, you are setting up a deontological framework around the idea of truth as an absolute moral. Why is your subjective moral imperative superior to those espoused by Christianity?</p>
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<p>in this sentence you are deriving an is from an ought. this is why i felt like i needed to say more about the problem.</p>
<p>Well, pkmn, while that’s true, I don’t see many religious people making completely false factual claims. Many believe in heaven and hell in some sense of the words, and that’s fine with me. As long as their faith is consistent, namely they do not place faith in contradictory things, and seek the sort of fulfillment (being loved, etc) that many of us do, I don’t see an issue.</p>
<p>I guess I have met quite a few “Faith-Based” religious folk and don’t seem to come across people who decry evolution, etc, i.e. people who descend to the realm of science without any facts.</p>
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<p>what?? i don’t think truth is an absolute moral… i just hate lies. i don’t think lying is ‘sin’ or ‘immoral’… i just don’t like it. if other people think pleasure is better than truth, i’m fine with it and won’t call it wrong, since i already said that there’s no way to figure that out beyond personal, arbitrary choice. can’t i please, please have a preference without being called making an ‘absolute’ judgement???</p>
<p>edit: the color analogy again.
i like white. if someone says ‘red is absolutely the best color’ and i take issue with that unjustified claim, does that necessarily my preference for white has to be superior? no.</p>
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This would justify a utilitarian framework. At which point your criticisms of Christianity from an empirical or rigorous outlook are moot.</p>
<p>EDIT: Crossposted w/#146, but I think this is a satisfactory response there too.</p>
<p>@ pkmntrainerharry</p>
<p>sorry about spewing all of that unfocused stuff into the thread. i still have a problem with your philosophy though, but i think mathboy & noimagination are doing a better job than me with pointing these things out</p>
<p>@mathboy98
well perhaps you live among liberal theologians. i don’t. lol. my parents are creationists, many of my friends are jesuscracker-eating catholics who think not going to church weekly is sin, etc. and so on…</p>
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my criticism is at its absolutist claims… most christians aren’t saying ‘this is just my opinion’… they’re saying their morals are fact, like that the earth is an oblate spheroid, and that those who reject their christianity morals are wrong…</p>
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<p>if these are all personal, arbitrary choices, it means that you can’t claim that the person who likes red is reasoning incorrectly</p>
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If I say “rape is bad, and rapists are bad people”, that is stating my moral view as fact. Am I wrong?</p>
<p>if you say “my opinion is that rape is bad, and rapists are bad people” then you’re not wrong.
if you say “it is fact that rape is bad, and rapists are bad people” then you’re wrong.</p>
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Is it appropriate to incarcerate rapists?</p>
<p>how is that answering that question going to benefit me? 
i dunno, really. i’m not sure on the benefit of jailing people.</p>
<p>it’s 1.30 AM here. night.</p>
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<p>Frankly, I don’t think Christianity or religion is about opinions. It’s about correct living. And I do think there is such a thing as correct living, in fact, in agreement with your view about some sense of consistent happiness.</p>
<p>I do think those who reject things one identifies with Christian morals will frequently enter into an inconsistent belief system. But the folks you are talking about probably interpret Christianity inconsistently. For instance, someone who disdains you based on your not attending Church is contradicting Jesus’s philosophy to my knowledge. Their faith may be inconsistent, and they’re going to have some rude shocks someday. Indeed, as you might tell them, they’re going to hell.</p>
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<p>maybe i’m mixing up ideas again & attributing things to you that you haven’t said, but i don’t see how you can assert that there are no truths not derived from experience while not relying on a truth that isn’t derived from experience.</p>
<p>this became my big problem with what you were saying in the middle of the debate.</p>
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I ask because your answer will be extremely relevant in determining your own adherence (or lack thereof) to your concept of individual morals.</p>
<p>^^ some of the most churched people/religious people I have met are the ones who don’t act like a Christian. Church activities does not equal obedience to the Bible.</p>
<p>I probably do not share pkmntrainerharry’s views on morality and its importance, but I think I can help.</p>
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<p>Your view is perfectly valid, though I would not give it any more credit than another person’s view that rape is not bad and rapists are not bad people. Everyone is entitled to their own version of morality. Neither statement, however, is fact (though you are free to pretend so).</p>
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<p>Yes, because we can agree (largely out of our own self-interest) that forcing someone to have intercourse with you against their will is not behaviour that benefits humanity in any way (this need not be tangible, mind you). Incarceration will prevent that and/or potentially rehabilitate the rapist (though I fear the latter is unlikely).</p>
<p>Though, from looking at page 10, I have this feeling that I’m missing the point (or, more likely, a couple hundred of them) somewhere here. :</p>