>>25321835
Yes lol what?
Are you retarded?

>t. theist

>>25321841
OH also, off topic, not a single piece of Literature was mentioned
>>>/his/
fuck off

No. But ethics can.

Yes, all that should be needed is the golden rule. Unfortunately most people are too dumb to follow even one code

File: pepe hyper.jpg (56.3 KB)

>>25321844
Oh man... We are heading into some deep intellectual territory

>>25321849
Is it good, yes.
Is it all we need even if people are not too dumb, absolutely no. its overly egocentric

there are no moral religions

>>25321854
That's fair. I guess it also doesn't really cover crimes like littering or vandalism of public property that isn't direct person-on-person crime

>>25321841
I'm retarded and I disagree but whatever

>>25321882
If you actually are disabled OP, I am sorry

yeah why wouldnt it be?

>>25321835
That really depends on where you draw the line. Morality requires qualitative intuitive judgements that will be largely beyond the scope of propositional reason. And it will require you to create a hierarchy across those qualities. Meaning, your ethics are usually rooted in something that's almost indistinguishable from spirituality and religious thinking. Not in the sense of having rituals and explicit dogmas, but in the sense of considering something de facto holy - be it consent, freedom, personhood, power ... - and having some intuitive sense of how these holy things should manifest in the world - for example that babies shouldn't be 100% free or that consent of a drunk person is questionable.

It's technically possible to achieve that without religion... you can theoretically create an ethical system out of any random set of ideas if you brute-fact your way through. But the question is, will that system be sustainable? Not just logically, but pragmatically. Will the things you hold sacred still be up on the altar when it starts to cost you? As I grow older and more religious, I ironically lean more and more towards this being possible without religion per se, but definitely not without some kind of practiced spirituality. However, the line is so vague that to an average neoatheist, it might just seem that I'm saying religion is necessary for morality. And maybe it is.

Kant invented morality for atheists with the categorical imperative

>>25321914
got me there

>>25321914
You know Kant was also a freemason but this isn't talked about lol

>>25321926
Kant gets a pass.

>>25321835
Religion is not possible without morality.
in order for humans to live peacefully amongst each other and cooperate sufficiently to form and propagate a religion humans must be instrinsically moral.
If we were Hobbesian murder machines we'd never have come together to form the preconditions of civilization.

morality only arises when people have lost the way - lao tsu.

i think a more interesting question is can a religion exist without being moral.

>>25322007
This morality-as-cooperation and morality-as-survival framings are intuitive, but it didn't really work when they tried to base a field on this premise: evolutionary ethics. It turned out you can replace a good portion of morality with its exact inversion and the species will propagate just the same.
For example, some monkeys adopt each other's children, should their parents pass away. Other species of monkeys kill each other's infants regularly. From human perspective, children's right to life is one of the biggest ethical focal points ever and so its complete inversion across two species should naturally predict dramatically different successes of survival. But that's not what we found. It seems ethics cannot be explained as a mechanism of survival. Doesn't mean it's magic, of course, but it does mean the reduction is exaggerated.

>>25322050
Do monkeys have a civilization I don't know about?

No. But if you steal the word and redefine it to mean "whatever I personally approve of" then the most insane faggots in the world can reply yes.

>>25321849
why is this retarded low tier answer so popular now?
It's the same as saying "everyone should just follow the law". It doesn't justify anything or why I would even want to be reciprocal. Maybe I want to kill everybody else but me if I can get away with it. It's arbitrary and retarded. Hence nobody follows it blindly, it's not self-evident to everyone. It could be that you are retarded anon and maybe they are the smart ones not listening to your tard argument and take advantage of their present situation.

>>25321835
What do you mean by "possible", that morality can be a true ought? Even in the case a God exists there still wouldn't be a true ought, an ought is always conditional to what the goal is. Religion just makes these oughts unconditional, which is a delusion. That said, there are still wise actions and unwise actions, just as there are foods conducive to bodily health and foods that are not. Whether you "ought" to do it is another story; if you want to be healthy, then you "ought" to eat healthy; if you want to be happy, then you "ought" to develop the habits and character that is conducive to happiness. I think this is ultimately what anyone means by "morality", how should you live a life that is fulfilling? Of course you can say that you don't care about being fulfilled by to whatever degree everyone cares even if it isn't explicit, because every action is a desire which seeks it's own relief, ie fulfillment. That is to say what we actually desire is the relief from when a desire is attained, and that every action is like this, even if it's self-destructive; self-destructive actions are just the result of ignorance.

>>25322365
Of course you can claim that you don't care about fulfillment, but to whatever degree*

>>25322365
God would be a Final Cause. That's a true ought.

>>25321835
depends
> top ~15% of humanity
yes
> the rest
no

>>25321835
You mean
>Can morality be possible without a universal authority?
If there is no single law or order that everyone refers to, then people have the will to choose their morality themselves; this has always devolved into people having terrible opinions on what's right because they just refer to their base instincts. Those don't get people anywhere on their own.

>>25322397
Not really, there's no ought even with the two different conceptions of God. If it's the kind where God makes commands and you're punished or rewards depending on whether you follow them, there is still no true ought. The ought is conditional on whether you want to be rewarded or punished. Of course, most people are not going to want eternal hellfire but that still doesn't make it an unconditional ought. Either that, or God is the Good, and the more an action is aligned with the Good the closer you are to God. Again, there is still no ought, you can say if people knew how amazing it was to live according to God's will that they would want it, but it's still conditional. It can be the most blissful thing ever but it's still not a true ought. And ultimately you really don't need any of this for morality, you can just leave God out and there will still be actions conducive to peace, happiness, and fulfillment, and actions that aren't conducive to that end. You may rebut and say that without something to ground these actions, it's just a tautology, in other words, you do it because it's good, and it's good because it just is, like how if you cut your arm off it just is painful; however, it is still tautological even if there is a God, now you do it because it's good, and God is good, and God is good because he just is. Literally makes no difference.

>>25322414
Not every society comes up with the same laws, so what possibly universal authority are they referencing? They only know what keeps their society functional and what they think will lead to a fulfilling life. And who comes up with these ideas? Obviously the people within that society, and this doesn't just devolve into people choosing their base instincts. Obviously people aren't necessarily making the choice all on their own, they look up to role models or people with wisdom, they learn customs and manners from their parents. All these things though are something that people themselves came up with that became tradition.

>>25322427
>there is a God, now you do it because it's good, and God is good, and God is good because he just is
This is correct.

>literature?

>>25321844
Tomato tomato. Morality was Cicero's coining of a translation of the Greek "ethikos".
>>25321835
Morality has more to do with customs than religion, per se. You live in a society with customs, and thus morality. If you act in accordance with those customs, you are moral - if not, you aren't. The idea of personal morality doesn't really make sense because you can't really act against your own internal values - if you think you are or have done so, it is because you don't consciously accept your deeper unconscious values - but you will act according to them anyway - and if everything is moral, then the term becomes meaningless. The idea of objective morality also doesn't make sense, though I have no interest to go into that - many others have, and I'm sure would be interested in debating this.

>>25321835
Yes. Sociologically speaking, religious morality is simply a way of saying "these fundamental moral axioms are beyond question". There's no explicit reason why an atheist society couldn't be as intolerant regarding the questioning of its own moral axioms. In fact, many people who chafe under liberal democracy feel this intuitively; this society which preaches tolerance becomes violently opposed to anybody that questions, let alone lives, too radically.

>>25322497
>you can't really act against your own internal values - if you think you are or have done so, it is because you don't consciously accept your deeper unconscious values
You can also act against your own values out of ignorance. Like every time someone gets food poisoning: if they knew a food was going to make them sick, they probably wouldn't have eaten it. So by eating it, they unknowingly acted against their own values. Or, for a less extreme but still food-related example, if you go to a restaurant, there might be a dozen dishes you've never tried before, and one of them you might really like more than any of the others if only you ordered it, but figuring out which one it is isn't necessarily perfectly obvious. You can look at the ingredients and know which ones you typically like and don't like, but certain combinations or unusual varieties of ingredients might surprise you.

What I'm saying is—try robbing a bank. You won't know for certain whether you'll dislike it until you're right there in the moment.

>>25321835
Where this pic is from

>>25322527 (cont.)
Oh, and people also act against their highest values often out of limited willpower. Take for example anyone with an addiction. It could genuinely be the case that they would happier without, but overcoming the addiction might be incredibly difficult to impossible for them without fortunate willpower-improving circumstances or third party intervention.

>>25322539 (cont.)
You might also imagine a case where someone is a psychopath, but it's due to brain damage or a tumor somehow and they would be happier if it were cured, incidentally or not incidentally along with their psychopathy.

>>25322358
>Maybe I want to kill everybody else but me if I can get away with it.
How is that related to the golden rule at all?

>>25322566
Doubly interesting is that, having been cured, they might be very sad about what they did while still in the psychopath headstate. But if they did fewer bad things while a psychopath, they would have less to be sad about when no longer a psychopath, so it might conceivably be the case that purely out of self-interest, the psychopath should have acted more morally even when their subjective apprehension of their own values at the time, based on what they knew at the time, would give no indication of that.

>>25322442
>Not every society comes up with the same laws, so what possibly universal authority are they referencing?
The universal authority would be their religion/god that transcends the limitations of their society's existence. Your point about role models is true, but since you're taking your example from real life and I perceive the world as a Christian, your example is inseparable from God's influence.

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>>25322497
>You live in a society with customs, and thus morality

full retard

The concept of morality necessitates its objective nature and requires it to have not been made by humanity

morality requires God. otherwise "morality" is just arbitrary and meaningless.

>>25321841
you are also very dumb

>>25321835
It is possible, but not the morality of the slave, but of the master. Slave morality has no logical justification without religion.

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>>25322531
git gud and lurk moar

>>25322480
Oh shut up this is the only board left with even a bare concentration of non retards to talk to

>>25321835
Look up the etymology of the two words. They're the same thing, maybe a slight focus on formal ritual in the latter. So no.

>>25322758
Hard to believe when you see posts like >>25322723

>>25322702
>requires it to have not been made by humanity
What? Why can't humans make observations about objective natural facts? Who told you that, some imaginary demon that speaks to you when you pretend to drink human blood and eat human flesh?

>morality requires God. otherwise "morality" is just arbitrary and meaningless.
How is intentional physical harm arbitrary and meaningless? How is the Hippocratic Oath not a moral judgement made independent of any gods and their commands?

>>25322358
>Maybe I want to kill everybody else but me if I can get away with it.
Somebody like that probably just isn't cut out for morality.

>>25322808
>How is intentional physical harm arbitrary and meaningless
Meaninglessness is the default. If you have material evidence for why physical harm is meaningfully bad I'd like to see it. Evolutionary psychology arguments do not fit this criteria unless you have similar evidence for why we should allow ourselves to be bound by evolutionary psychology. You're confusing your intuition—as irrelevant to reason as my intuition that God exists—with something deeper.

>>25322760
Can morality even compete with ethics if it requires some invisible immeasurable ghost whose identity nobody seems to agree upon instead of observable objective facts regarding consequences of behavior?

>>25322813
*This criterion

>>25322815
Ethics are as real as your job's HR policy as far as I understand it.

>>25322813
>If you have material evidence for why physical harm is meaningfully bad I'd like to see it.
Ok, then feel free to induce great physical harm to yourself and prove it does not negatively impact you or your quality of life.

>>25322816
No, your understanding seems retarded, its more like every HR department of various industries getting together to develop a framework of productive, harm avoiding, behavior. Even if it were as you say, HR departments are infinitely more tangible than magical ghosts.

>>25322825
>No, your understanding seems retarded
Uhuh
>its more like every HR department of various industries getting together to develop a framework of productive, harm avoiding, behavior.
This has never happened and never will. There does not exist a shared coherent understanding of what "harm" even is between just the anons in this thread, let alone people in general.
>Even if it were as you say, HR departments are infinitely more tangible than magical ghosts.
Even more so the barrel of a gun pressed against your forehead. Should we acquiesce to the supremacy of violence? I'd rather not.

>>25322818
I have and I'm satisfied with it.

Both are impossible. But morality can be psychologically useful.

>>25322828
>This has never happened and never will
It happens constantly from licensing boards that set ethics standards for doctors to enforce things like the Hippocratic oath to regulatory authorities that oversee banking and commerce to food safety and standards even to things like the NIST that are currently overseeing ethics in AI while working with the internal ethics boards of multiple major corps like Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft.

>Should we acquiesce to the supremacy of violence?
What the fuck are you talking about? I was the one who said violence is bad, you are the one once advocating for a violent supreme being who regularly commands tribes to genocide each other while also manifesting violent disasters so he can violently burn the majority of people in a magical pit forever after he sent a son that specifically said he didn't want to bring peace but wanted to be like a sword and cut up families across entire nations, so by groveling to a demon like that, you are definitely acquiescing to the supremacy of violence.

>>25322829
How so? You accidentally drank coffee that was too hot or something?

>>25322845
>cope 1
Right, and that's not what you said. You said EVERY industry getting together.
>cope 2
You are actually fucking retarded lol. I extended your criteria of realness—you can go out and touch it, concreteness—to the most concrete immediate thing I could think of in order to show you why reductive realism is such a waste of time.
>a violent supreme being who regularly commands tribes to genocide each other while also manifesting violent disasters so he can violently burn the majority of people in a magical pit forever after he sent a son that specifically said he didn't want to bring peace but wanted to be like a sword and cut up families across entire nations, so by groveling to a demon like that,
I suggest getting over your daddy issues and childish fear of suffering before attempting philosophy.

If you're the anthropic guy I fear for our future.

>>25322762
I didn't say it was old school Usenet..

>>25322848
In terms of actual suffering probably leaving my ex, dramatic and gay as that sounds. I'm still far less happy than I was and would have been and that will never change but it was Correct.

In terms of everyday pain I used to practice some mortifications of the flesh when I was very Catholic.

>>25322849
>You said EVERY industry getting together.
No I didn't you lying retard, get your imaginary demon to feed you better lies that can't be immediately disproved simply by looking at the last few posts.

> I extended your criteria of realness—you can go out and touch it, concreteness
No, I said not to cause physical harm because it can be objectively measured and you threatened to put a gun to my head, you fucking demon wanking retard.

>I suggest getting over your daddy issues and childish fea
>t. the childlike retard who thinks the only way to know something is bad is if a magical cosmic sky daddy says so.

>>25322852
>actual suffering
That wasn't the metric you emo retard, the metric was objective physical harm, IE off your hands with a rusty hand saw then type up some cope about how its not actually bad.

>>25322870
I'm not sure what you'd actually accept given that all suffering and harm is temporary, death resolves all of it. I did physically ruin my health when I was young and am in pain most days because of it but it wasn't entirely a choice at the time, and I really don't care about it. I think you just want to whine that I'm not as depressed as you are, idk

>>25322887
>I'm not sure what you'd actually accept given that all suffering and harm is temporary, death resolves all of it
Then cut off your hands with a rusty hand saw and post the video for other's entertainment since its no big deal to you, pain doesn't matter and the loss of function is just a temporary minor inconvenience.

You are the one whining and coping because you are a hypocritical retard who will never actually act according to what you are implying, you will protect yourself from massive trauma and physical harm because you know having no hands would be bad.

>>25322903
If I didn't need my hands for duties greater than making you look retarded I would, that would be pretty funny.
>and the loss of function is just a temporary minor inconvenience.
Objectively true given that I'll be dead within a century at most

>You are the one...
No lol

>>25322904
You don't, though, there is nothing greater if everything is just temporary and productive life doesn't matter like you say, you are just being a hypocritical retard who can't actually walk his talk. Jesus even said to cut off your hands if they could tempt you to sin, so doing so would actually be a hypermoral act that would prevent your hands from doing anything sinful in this temporary life and all but guarantee you a spot in the greater afterlife you pretend to belief in for likes.

>No lol
He says as he copes and fails to practice his own stated philosophy.

>>25322913
I already do practice it. Forgive me if I'm not going to detail my youthful mortification to titillate your subcontinental sensibilities.

>there is nothing greater if everything is just temporary
Incoherent, life ends regardless
>and productive life doesn't matter like you say
What?
> you are just being a hypocritical retard who can't actually walk his talk.
SAAAAAR
>Jesus even said to cut off your hands if they could tempt you to sin, so doing so would actually be a hypermoral act that would prevent your hands from doing anything sinful in this temporary life and all but guarantee you a spot in the greater afterlife
Yeah and I've done similar
> you pretend to belief in for likes
...Where do you think we are?

>>25322918
>I already do practice it.
By crying to anon when girls break up with you?

>Incoherent, life ends regardless
So you keep impotently saying, yet you won't actually prove you believe it by cutting off your hands with a rusty saw blade to show that life will still basically be the same regardless of you having hands or not.

>What?
It doesn't matter because everyone will just die within the century anyway.

>SAAAAAR
TAAAAARD

>Yeah and I've done similar
Getting dumped and crying about it?

>...Where do you think we are?
A place where socially isolated retards like you pretend to believe in magical ghosts for momentary attention.

>>25322923
Holy shit I broke the jeet

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>>25321835
>Can morality be possible without religion?
Yes. And if theism is true, that doesn't necessarily entail that moral realism is true.

>>25322702
>The concept of morality necessitates its objective nature and requires it to have not been made by humanity
>morality requires God. otherwise "morality" is just arbitrary and meaningless.
Theres a few assumptions being smuggled in that dont hold up.
Theres a false dichotomy between if something isn’t objective in a divine sense, then it collapses into arbitrariness. That’s a false dichotomy. Morality can be non-arbitrary without being supernatural.

You are pointing at a real tension if morality is purely subjective preference then it risks collapsing into moral relativism. But most serious secular ethics systems don't go that route. they try to anchor normativity in intersubjective or structural features of reality (e.g., harm, rational consistency, reciprocity).

Its not logically necessary to leap from objective morality to 'Theres must be a God', but that is a different question.

t.platonist

>>25322939
>But most serious secular ethics systems don't go that route.
Not him and I'm not well read but every time I've seen someone do that it ends up being contrived and fragile and you can get back to relativism pretty easily. There's a lot of "...and so forth" that gets (ab)used.

>>25322946
I'm thinking of the categorical imperative and utilitarianism specifically. They just concentrate the uncertainty in unexpected, unnoticed places (the idea that there is a shared, coherent, consistent idea of self interest in both cases, sort of) which produces the illusion of completeness. Divinity cuts the Gordian knot, which is why many people claim it's the only way to untie it.

>>25322924
Holy shit, you told another retarded lie for a bit of attention.

>>25322953
Good morning sir we will make many laak of rupees on todays pull requests sir

>>25322954
>You-u-u're b-brown.
The only people that think that this is an acceptable retort are kike shills.

>>25322946
>contrived and fragile
No, religions are far more fragile and far more likely to give up their contrived superstitious nonsense when confronted with objective physical facts than irreligious logical people are to start doing retarded superstitious rituals like pretending to drink human blood or transfer your transgressions to a sacrificial chicken to assuage their guilt.

>>25322954
Why do you demon worshipers who fail to make a valid point tend to devolve to nonsensical racism so often? Why are you mad at indians when you yourself seem to wholly subscribe to their retarded traditions of izzat tier honor whereby the only way to counter a logical defeat is to try to strike down the perceived honor of the person you failed to debate?

>>25322962
Saar I am worshipping the needful Immanuel Kant needful speaker of sanskrit

The relation between morality and religion is not historically universal. It's also possible for someone to consciously reject the existence of God and still have a robust morality. Nonetheless, I think a robust morality amounts to a functional belief in God, whether one propositionally accepts the existence of God or not. Inversely, if a theist is a moral cynic, if he believes that the ends justify the means, if he makes moral compromises for his convenience, he is a functional atheist. What I mean is that one of the dimensions of belief in God is a belief in the unity of justice, that all goods cohere. This is a remarkable faith in the transcendent for an atheist to have, but indeed some atheists do have it.

>>25322959
Abortion and pride parades belie that lol. Regardless it has nothing to do with what I said.

>>25322968
Tard, I am accepting your concession while laughing at your ineptness.

File: Scotsman.jpg (127.1 KB)

>>25322969
>t.

>>25322971
The ineptness is truly on Christcucks you are very mighty saar

>>25322969
Religion as a term is very new, historically

>>25322970
The fact that religions have changed dramatically in response to scientific discoveries is definitely related to your claims about fragility and contrivances, but abortion and pride parades have nothing to do with transferring your moral failing onto chickens and messiahs.

I don't even really get your point, are you saying that because jews claim abortion, buttsex, and sex change are part of their religion that other people, even in cultures older than jews, are only doing those things to appeal to judaism rather than for their own often nonreligious reasons independent of superstitious and more about physical consequences and desires?

>>25322975
No, christcucks aren't even inept, inept implies some kind of thought process and for the most part, they are just mindless gollums who follow orders from inept jewish fairy tales rather than having some coherent thought process that is factually wrong.

>>25321835
What makes you think it's possible with religion? Even if a God exists you still live in a valueless universe.

>>25322983
>Mindless gollums

>>25322979
No they're not, you've completely failed to understand what I said.
>I don't even really get your point
We can tell

>>25322990
Do you want a cracker or something, Polly?
Are you trying to prove all you can do is parrot?

>>25321835
how do you think morality exists in our world?

>>25323003
Is this you offering your submission?

for the sake of argument, say morality can't exist without religion.

how do then would we describe what's going on when a non-religious society acts according a consistent shared sense of right and wrong?

>>25323000
>No they're not
Who are not?
>We can tell
We who, who else other than you, and can you tell because you are intentionally being incoherent because you lost the plot after being refuted and are just trying to save face with nonsense replies until you get the last reply?

Correct though, I don't get what abortion and pride parades have anything to do with the conversation besides just being things that live rent free in some closeted fag's head who refers to himself as we.

>>25323010
>how do then would
oops

>>25323006
Submit to what, the fact that you christcucks are mindless gollums who are just parrotting "the chosen people's" thoughts?

>>25323010
>for the sake of argument, say morality can't exist without religion.
Which religion?

>>25323015
Is this bait

>>25323012
>"I'm retarded
We can tell

Look, baiting aside if you aren't smart enough to figure out what I meant I really have no interest in talking to you beyond picking apart the retarded shit you say. Get better at thinking or if your IQ is below 115 stop posting here.

>>25323019
Is this conceding?

>>25322341
I wouldn't know, the goalpost was "preconditions" of a civilization.

>>25323021
I clearly know what you meant, that you are a dysgenic closeted fag who knows you should never reproduce so you constantly think about abortion and other fags while trying to inject them into conversation, I just don't know what it actually had to do with the conversation up to that point.

>>25323030
>I clearly know what you meant
>I don't even really get your point

>>25323026
You actually think it's spelled "gollum"?

>>25323036
Yes, I understand the meaning of what you said, but I don't understand the logical point you were trying to make in the conversation since you were just projecting your faggotry instead of making a logical point.

>>25323036
You actually think a minor spellcheck mistake nullifies the point being made or you just gravitate to the spelling thing since you don't actually understand the logic?

>>25322011
>morality only arises when people have lost the way - lao tsu
/thread

>>25322011
>i think a more interesting question is can a religion exist without being moral.
So you can't determine whether cannibal death cult slave making religions are moral or not without a magical ghost telling you?

>>25323045
Do u no da wey or do u arise morality?

>>25323058
Sounds based to be honest

>>25323081
Ok, sure, sounds like you have a real tight grasp on morality to be sarcastic.

>>25322702
>The concept of morality necessitates its objective nature and requires it to have not been made by humanity
There's no particular reason why an atheist can't believe in that though. Objective morality is a metaphysical reality, and an uncreated metaphysical reality makes precisely as much sense as an uncreated material reality. A materialist can't believe in metaphysical realities of any kind of course, but an atheist is not necessarily a materialist.
I'm not even a fedora myself, it's just that this argument seems pointless when they will never ever concede it and we wouldn't really want them to anyway.

>>25323116
Madam, you are being histrionic.

>>25323122
Do you always cope with being wrong through childish name calling or only when your feelings get hurt in the process of being wrong defending your cannibal slaver ancestor homies?

>>25323169
>your cannibal slaver ancestor homies?
Madam please return to the reddit

Also read Blood Meridian if you haven't

>>25322758
And every post like op brings it a bit further down into the morass.

>>25322586
I'm explaining if you chose to read it all, you have no moral necessity in following the golden rule.

The question contains its own answer, but only if you ask it precisely enough.

Can

>>25321835
It's only possible without religion

>>25322345
Pssst. Religion itself is just what a person personally approves of.

>>25322358
Religion is the ultimate "just follow what the authority says". Real morality is something that you reason out in dialogue with others to ensure maximum fairness, minimum suffering, and voluntary buy in from the most amount of people. If you say "this is good because God said so", you are a slave obeying a master and glad of your chains. If you say "this is good because it benefits people" you are grounding morality in the real world, in interactions between people and thus engaged in real morality.

>>25323991
Grim

>>25322451
If you get to judge God by what is good, you can just judge what is good and pursue it. God becomes superfluous in that case.

>>25322918
Honestly, why not just kill yourself? Your philosophy seems to indicate it is the best thing possible. Could it be that your actions to stay alive and pursue things to better yourself undercuts and contradicts your stated philosophy? Could it be you are a massive hypocrite with unresolved mental illness?

>>25323992
What's worse, people obey an authority spoken for by self-appointed human representatives who claim knowledge they can't have. Why doesn't God appear to each person and instruct him on morality? Why allow the message to be garbled by human intermediaries? Why does God remain silent while so many people falsely claim to speak on his behalf? I'd venture to say because no such God exists and the whole business of claiming to know God's will is a scam, a racket, a way to control naive and gullible humans of limited intellect. But that's just me.

>>25323999
You've completely misunderstood my philosophy then, likely because you aren't capable of imagining what it's like to not have a panic attack every time you think about pain. Life is mostly suffering and it's still good and worth living.

>>25324004
I was referring to the way you "reason". If you're over 18 you should be ashamed.

>>25324008
I can experience negative sensations and positive sensations. Other people confirm it is the same for them. I engage in dialogue with others to secure the most positive sensations possible and as few negative sensations as possible. Frameworks of fairness, the concept of rights, everything moral flows from this foundation. Either you are an adult and part of this conversation, or you're at the kiddie table claiming a sky daddy tells you what is right and wrong.

>>25324005
>Life is mostly suffering
Maybe your life is, and maybe it's because of your failure of a philosophy? My life is genuinely great, I have to conclude it's a skill issue.

It will depend on whether you believe morality is derived from reason or faith. God cannot be known through reason, which is why a religion requires faith; which is to claim to know something which can't be known - otherwise it wouldn't require faith.

>>25324023
I'd have one simple question: "Is it possible to say one moral system produces better results than another?" Or "Is there one mode of morality a society could adopt to make you prefer to live in it than another?" If the answer to either of these is "Yes", the faith based morality goes out the window because you can then use reason to determine which morality is best, and faith would anchor you to a less optimal form of morality.

>>25324034
First off, let me just make myself clear and state that I do believe the concept of morality ultimately arises from our faculty of reason. I personally regard faith as the limit of reason, a lack of imagination, and something that ultimately exists to placate the will; its utility, however, is undeniable.

With that said, whatever is "better" is going to be a value judgement and hinge on an arbitrary decision of what is "objectively best". Since we're all (presumably) human, I would imagine we could agree on something simple like the minimization of suffering, and the promotion of prosperity and preservation of the species - all rather broad and ready to be scrutinized. So perhaps we could boil it down to preservation of the species as well as the reduction of suffering. Which gets priority? Is it acceptable to rape if it is necessary to ensure the survival of the species? Or is the moral answer to embrace extinction in such an event?

Some people are comfortable admitting that context will dictate what the "right" approach is, but it all boils down to the fact that we're human and instinctually compelled to survive. The ones that weren't didn't make it. Regarding life as a "good" is already subjective.

>>25324075
I have another question: "Are there categories of experience that carry the intrinsic characteristic of desirability or undesirability? I.E. do you arbitrarily decide that pleasure is good and desirable, or is it a trait inherent in the experience itself?" This gets at the root of what experience is, what is subjective and objective. Can there be objective things about the content of subjective experience? If you see a color, and it appears blue in your mind, can we say objectively that you have the experience of seeing blue? If so, why can't we extend this to objectively say that a person has experienced something desirable, pleasurable, or good? And if this move is allowed, haven't we just discovered an objective standard by which to judge at least a majority of moral questions by, if not all moral questions theoretically? Perhaps the trade off between creating life which may have the potential for positive experience requires a certain tolerance of risk which might vary on the individual, but this is more a product of a lack of knowledge rather than a lack of ability to calculate known variables.

>>25324075
>whatever is "better" is going to be a value judgement and hinge on an arbitrary decision of what is "objectively best".
If it's an arbitrary decision then it isn't objective by definition.

>>25322903
>>I'm not sure what you'd actually accept given that all suffering and harm is temporary, death resolves all of it
>Then cut off your hands with a rusty hand saw and post the video for other's entertainment since its no big deal to you, pain doesn't matter and the loss of function is just a temporary minor inconvenience.
isn't this kind of forgeting the object permenance of anon having his own morality , that might make an idea like that a bad idea.

>>25323121
not either anon, one could argue that all of metaphysics is secretly religion , but I feel like that would be a argument only a master mistic could argue , and it might still be total bullshit.

it would be outside of our scope , that is what I am getting at.

>>25321835
No. All other answers inevitably succumb to motivated reasoning to justify their juvenile resistance of a truth they don't like. I'm not saying that any religion is necessarily true but if they aren't then "morality" just becomes a tool we use to protect society.

Religion is the fruit of morality.

>>25321835
Yes, leftist ideologies condemn plenty of behaviors (such as classism, sexism, racism) by their spontaneous sense of indignination at perceived injustices.

>>25321835
Without religion?
Sure!
Without belief in a higher good?
No.

>>25327402
>Without belief in a higher good?
>No.
Wynautt?

>>25322808
>What? Why can't humans make observations about objective natural facts?
Because they are beholden to physical laws that govern nature and do no exist outside of them.

>>25327405
Consider that the words "Morale" and "Morality" are etymologically linked.

>>25321835
Morality is not possible either way.

>>25327413
W-woah dude

>>25327402
Higher than what exactly? Just some other thing? Yeah, that's kind of the point of morality, to rank some things as better than others.

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>>25321902

How do you even choose what to care about in a purely atheistic system? If a human is just a complex animal, there's nothing to any of this other than might makes right, and I know, Tyson, Harris, and Dawkins could all attack me at once, and as long as I knocked that feral congoloid out early on, I'd have no trouble with the Heeb manlet or the simpering chincel. You can try to argue my point, but it's just going to be a bunch of beta male "just because"s. Without a God, the strongest man is God. A man btw, not a woman. They can't even run right to catch meat. Hips are all fucked up.

>>25321835
No, because the argument against anything you say is "Well I'll just be more powerful and take it from you" and if the reply is "Well what if someone more powerful does that to you?" The most common response will be "Well that's why I'm going to do what I'm going to do to you to become strong enough to be the strongest."
You see it time and time again when civilizations or belief within a civilization collapses it immediately descends into violence and anarchy.

>>25321835
Without religion, yes. But without God, no. God is morality.

Morals are one unitive and infinitely transcendent ideal. Aka. God, the almighty. Religion means relationship. If you ascribe to any value-judgement whatsoever, you make a moral argument, and thus you've a relation to the moral centre, no matter how errant, how in denial of the non-subjective you may be . . . You've religion, and you've a belief in morality, though many have incentives to abstract it and wish it mutable at all human-convenience. Do the non-expedient thing and drink deep of life; now, you'll regret it if you wait. God is calling.

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>>25321835
I’d be inclined to believe that religion is just the vestigial interpretation of “morality” already evolved into the human psyche from pre-conscious bicameral Homo Sapiens spanning over 300,000 years. The timeline and evolution of the first archaic religions track with the rapid conscious development of humans spanning between the Neolithic—>Early Bronze Age. They had no concept of a “self” and likely suffered from varying degrees of schizophrenia, hearing the auditory voices of dead tribal leaders, later interpolating them into myths, and then eventually entire belief systems. Continuous contact and offerings to these figures is commonly shown in archaic burial rituals, which over time are replaced and simplified with physical idols and pantheons of gods to explain their guiding voices (archaic consciousness) with still no ability to be self-aware. The idea of developing an idea of the ‘self’ divorced from divine authority was likely first documented with the Pre-Socratics, and the backwards conscious-rationalization of our modern definition of “morality” and “ethics” just happens to follow the timeline of what we call the “Western Philosophical Tradition” when it really just seems to be indexed with collective civilizational development and advancement from more optimally-evolved groups of humans.

My point is, I’d be inclined to believe that ‘morality’ is so deeply embedded in the human psyche and so positively selected from hundreds of millennia of development that we still can’t consciously externally rationalize it. Along with other logical quandaries we call ‘paradoxes’—our attempt at doing so hits the ceiling of our current conscious understanding but yet still leaves enough room for a god to fill the gaps, which is what we always happened to invent gods for.

>>25321835
>Local anon discovers religion was a social technology used to propel man out of the survival of the fittest, fuck-you-I-got-mine state that many places are still stuck in so we could do more productive things like develop civilization.

Literally no, the only reason why athiests can be moral is because they grew up under Christian society

>>25328438
Oh look, yet another unique definition of God. Almost like the word is a total black hole of meaninglessness.

>>25328539
Christian societies burned people at the stake for having the wrong interpretation of the trinity. It's unironically the reverse of what you've said, Christians can only be moral once they've been tamed by secularism.

>>25328394
You neglect the possibility of several, less powerful people joining together to be more powerful. That is the basis for society, and morality is the negotiated rules by which people within that society treat each other.

"morality" basically boils down to discouraging conduct that causes conflict among tribe members in order to ensure the tribe's survival.

why is it wrong to fuck another guy's wife? because he'll seek revenge and in the end one or more productive members of the tribe will be dead

why is it good to show gratefulness and appreciation? because unrepaid favors will cause resentment and conflict and reduce the tribe's fitness

it's really that easy. if you need it framed through a religious lens for it to make sense you're just a low IQ simpleton

>>25328582
Atheists tried to start the same thing in the early 2000s and failed miserably, just sounds like you're jealous...
>>25328586
You also neglect the possibility that the same dynamic plays out with groups, I used an individual example because its atomic.

>>25328592
>it's really that easy.
Then what is stopping the tribesmen who don't like how things are being run from rising up, enslaving the women, and killing the men? Literally nothing.

>>25328600
because they understand that the tribe will die off or be destroyed by a rival tribe after half of its working age men are killed

>>25328604
Why would they care if they can be king of the ashes until they die? They wouldn't.

>>25321835
>someone does something you don't like
>"Hey, I don't like that you did that, so don't"

It truly is as shrimple as that.

>>25328620
Only works if Sky Dad is around to send you to eternal time out for misbehaving.

File: Same As It Ever Was.gif (140.2 KB)

>This is good for you and me, so it is good
>This is bad for you and me, so it is bad
>We have been successful for many generations, but where did these rules come from? Ah, who cares
>Man I hate being a slave while those successful assholes are not slave. You know what, they are actually evil for doing what they do and actually, We're the good guys, not because we're slave but because we are humble...
>Alright guys, we've successfully murdered all the evil people and set the entire city on fire because God wills it. Now people still need to work the fields but don't worry, it's for God now and we'll be rewarded later
>Hey wait a second, why should I feel bad for being evil just for existing? This doesn't seem right
>*cycle repeats*

We are currently in that transition from good/evil back to good/bad. Don't worry though, regardless as to who wins the war there will still be slaves. That's the lowest common denominator.

>>25322702
Given an axiom or set of them like "I want to survive" objective rules follow from them but there are no objective axioms we know of saying we should want to survive or value creation.
The rules that dictate material reality transcend material reality which means there's some form of intelligible structure beyond the material but it doesn't need to be intelligent in the sense we think of that word. It probably is somewhat similar though because mind/qualia is more fundamental than anything else.

>>25328330
>Yeah, that's kind of the point of morality, to rank some things as better than others.
You're smart enough to figure it out then.
Keep imagining the best thing you can, then imagine what would be better.

>>25321835
Using utilitarianism and hedonism

>>25328731
They're immoral and evil.

>>25328738
Any form of morality which sacrifices positive conscious experience for something else is immoral and evil.

>>25328731
I actually completely agree that this is the only true and real basis for morality that makes any sense. People will claim otherwise, but for the most part disagreement with this will be caused by:

a) A wrong conception of utilitarianism, i.e. the idea that this necessitates some kind ''hedonism math" where you must be able to add pleasures and subtract pains in such a way that you can always combine more quantity of some experience into the mix to get a state of affairs with the same 'value' as any state of affairs at all (including nothing existing at all), no matter how complex or intense the actual experiences are. John Stuart MiIll for instance gave every indication he saw this kind of idea as complete rubbish, but it seems intrinsically tied up with the very concept of utilitarianism ion a lot of people's minds.
b) Genuine belief, whether they are conscious of it or not, in some kind of transcendental value beyond the "experience of life" they actually have. Hedonism is tantamount to the claim that "experience of life" is the only thing that matters and has value at all, and things like 'virtue' obviously only matter insofar as they affect the quality of how life is experienced by actual beings. Belief in an afterlife or higher spiritual existence implies something that isn't captured by experience that we have direct knowledge of in this life, and so is beyond the scope of what hedonistic morality can make claims about, though religion still usually appeals to a moral understanding that relates to the notion we have that suffering/ignorance is undesirable and that elation/truth is good

>>25328763
>Belief in an afterlife
This is actually the greatest possible threat to morality. If someone genuinely believes in an afterlife, they devalue the only life we are certain we have, and worse, if they can be convinced there is some reward to be had in that afterlife which far exceeds any reward in terrestrial life, they can be convinced to do any atrocity.

>>25328758
>positive conscious experience
You mean heroin, your highest good.

There is no logic to morality. It's intuition. A combination of your genetic makeup which predisposes you to lean towards certain impulses, what was reinforced and suppressed via your upbringing, all tied together with the culture you were raised in which acts as a sort of societal level, psychological technology for social cohesion. The idea of requiring objectivity, God, rationalism, logic, etc. Is all bullshit and is often shit made up after one commits a deed that sits at odds with what is expected of them from their own perspective or what society expects of them/potential consequences from the law.

Any deviation into wu wu philosophical/theological bullshit is just nerd shit. Real life doesn't work that way. You don't sit in an air conditioned room and contemplate what you aught to do or what would you do in a given situation. You merely act when the situation arises and are often guided by either inner strength or by impulses. A man can easily murder the fuck out of another man brutally just to feel bad about it moments later once the adrenaline goes away. Philosophy nerds tend to forget that humans are a social, heavily in-group out-group oriented apex predator species that is extremely territorial. Morality is just the shit we make up and codify to bring stability into the social group. We just forget that origin.

>>25328539
So ex-Muslims who become atheists can't be moral?

>>25328577
Except my definition is right (it's not *mine* anyway). That's why atheists, who reject God, still vehemently affirm the existence of morality and have an inherent sense of right and wrong.

File: 1777311081095194.gif (870.2 KB)

You can tell all these nu-Christians are former reddit atheists by how bad their arguments are.

>>25322702
>you must be a controlled cattle worshipping arbitrary Jewish nonsense mythology or else you have no morality
Fuck off.

>>25321835
Yes it's called philosophy

>>25329008
>God isn't the conscious agent that created reality He's achkually our sense of right and wrong.
This is just sophistry with stipulative definitions.

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>>25329029
You can also tell by their same smug self-righteous attitude.

>>25329355
>>God isn't the conscious agent that created reality
It could be that too, they're not mutually exclusive.
But it doesn't matter that you defined God as one thing and one thing only. To cling to it arbitrarily and dismiss anything else is actual sophistry

>>25329373
>But it doesn't matter that you defined God as one thing and one thing only. To cling to it arbitrarily and dismiss anything else is actual sophistry
I defined what the concept of God actually is objectively. Defining God as morality is just a package deal fallacy. God is not necessary for the existence of evaluative facts.

>>25329358
That ridiculously ironic and vitriolic screed is why we need God. Love your enemies.

>>25329399
>You're a meanie therefore we need God.
I'd be less mean if christcucks were less smug.

>>25329395
Morality is an expression of the conscious agent that created reality. I'd argue our shared idea of morality is intuitive, and cannot be derived from reason; reason instead attempts to justify the individual's awareness of imbued morality. Atheists either deny this irrational knowledge or offer evolutionary psychology which I think falls short.

>>25329422
>Morality is an expression of the conscious agent that created reality.
Ah, so supernatural subjectivism.

>>25329426
Concession accepted

>>25329474
Conceding to what? Subjectivism is an anti-realist view of morality that says that moral facts are constituted by the attitudes of observers. God is an observer, and if moral facts are just the attitudes of this observer, then it is subjectivism. If we can know moral facts independently of God, without reference to his attitudes, why would we need God for morality?
>How would you explain moral intuitions?
Moral intuitions can exist as necessary abstract facts which require no further explanation. In much the same way that we don't need God to know that 2 is less than 3, it's just necessarily the case.

>>25328799
Sadly, heroin is not sustainable, nor is it a deeply positive conscious experience like that which you can acquire from looking into the crib of your healthy new born (if you haven't experienced the difference between these you have my deepest pity).

>>25329492
Since I believe that moral facts cannot proceed from an atheistic metaphysics, yet they seem to exist, then I believe God is needed for moral facts to exist. We can rationally prove that 2 is less than 3, but we cannot rationally prove that consciousness or morality exist. Yet, they seem to exist.

>>25329008
An inherent sense of right and wrong is imperative for groups to survive. Our particular evolutionary branch also developed brains capable of reasoning and thus modifying our basic moral sense. It's all perfectly explainable by evolution through natural selection. No supreme father figure in the sky required as a stand in for morality.

>>25329422
>Morality is an expression of the conscious agent that created reality.
You're just expressing your own super ego, the internalize father figure telling you how to behave when you were a child. At a certain point, you should be able to grow up and evaluate how to live in harmony with your fellow man and nature on your own without this reverting to a child like state.

Atheists are so fucking cringe kek

>>25329552
>I'm so sensitive I can't allow my echo chamber to be challenge, it makes me feel scared
kek

>>25329542
>An inherent sense of right and wrong is imperative for groups to survive.
Wouldn't that imply successful strains of bacteria or insects have an inherent sense of right or wrong? I think the human tendency towards perfect altruism and self-sacrifice, widely seen as the highest morality, stands starkly at odds with natural selection. If all that matters is the propagation of genes, why is rape looked down upon? Morality of course.

>>25329549
My moral sense precedes religion, God is just the explanation.

>>25329568
Rape is detrimental to the cohesion of society, to that of the group. If you note from history, however, rape is WAY more common against a conquered enemy society. Things like altruism and self sacrifice are basically always aimed at the in-group, and it's only by expanding that in-group to cover other groups do you have the phenomenon you refer to. It's all social group dynamics, which is a different framework than bacteria or insects (although insects, like ants or bees, do self-sacrifice for the group all the time).

>>25329541
>Since I believe that moral facts cannot proceed from an atheistic metaphysics
This is just an assumption. You haven't given an answer as to why foundational moral intuitions can't just be irreducible necessary abstract facts.
>We can rationally prove that 2 is less than 3, but we cannot rationally prove that consciousness or morality exist.
And how would you go about proving that 2 is less than 3 if not by reducing them to more obvious appearances? But at a certain point, you reach certain appearances that can't reasonably be doubted, because any premise you could possibly bring up to cast doubt on the appearance is more doubtful than the appearance itself. Moral intuitions are non-inferential intellectual appearances, that is, they are ideas that seem true to you when you think of them and them alone, and not in the light of any other thought or fact. These moral intuitions are the irreducible starting points of all ethical systems. They are just necessary facts that are in need of no further explanation because of their obviousness. And since they are necessary, they aren't contingent, which means that they are true independently of the attitudes of observers. Saying that you can't rationally prove a moral intuition is equivalent to saying that you can't rationally prove a mathematical axiom, if you're trying to prove the self-evident you're missing the point.