Actually, I dealt with this sort of thing at length on another thread:Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 6:31 amNotice, as I am sure you will, that he does not respond to the point you are making. It reminds him of something.Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 8:06 pm Wait a sec, the "scary part" is that people might use force to stop people torturing babies to death?
Now, as with FJ, let him address the points I raised here:This comes closest to upending my own "fractured and fragmented" frame of mind. People tap me on the shoulder and ask "can you seriously believe that the Holocaust or abusing children or cold-blooded murder is not inherently, necessarily immoral?"
And, sure, the part of me that would never, could never imagine my own participation in things of this sort has a hard time accepting that, yes, in a No God world they are still behaviors able to be rationalized by others as either moral or, for the sociopaths, justified given their belief that everything revolves around their own "me, myself and I" self-gratification.
And what is the No God philosophical -- scientific? -- argument that establishes certain behaviors as in fact objectively right or objectively wrong? Isn't it true that philosophers down through the ages who did embrace one or another rendition of deontology always included one or another rendition of the transcending font -- God -- to back it all up?
For all I know, had my own life been different...for any number of reasons...I would myself be here defending the Holocaust. Or engaging in what most construe to be morally depraved behaviors.
After all, do not the pro-life folks insist that abortion itself is no less a Holocaust inflicted on the unborn? And do not the pro-choice folks rationalize this behavior with their own subjective sets of assumptions.
Though, okay, if someone here is convinced they have in fact discovered the optimal reason why we should behave one way and not any other, let's explore that in a No God world.
What would be argued when confronting the Adolph Hitlers and the Ted Bundys and the 9/11 religious fanatics and the sociopaths among us. Arguments such that they would be convinced that the behaviors they choose are indeed inherently, necessarily immoral.
How would you reason with them?
Note to others:Sure, in a world in which an omniscient and omnipotent God exists, one ought not to. And that is because 1] God will know you did it and 2] with regard to most Gods, you will be punished for doing so. Either your death will end in oblivion or you will burn in Hell for all of eternity.
But, in a No God world, how on earth would mere mortals establish that objectively, universally and/or deontologically torturing a human baby [or sending six million Jews to the gas chamber] is inherently/necessarily wrong?
You might do so [for whatever personal reason] and never get caught, never get punished. It's "universally immoral" but for all practical purposes what does that mean then?
Or next month the Big One might come hurtling down to Earth and extinguish all human life. What of "universal morality" then?
Nope, it seems reasonable to me that, in the absence of God, all things can be rationalized. And, really, hasn't almost everything already been rationalized?
For example, you might not see abortion as the torture of a human baby, but others do. And it certainly results in the baby's death. But that's rationalized, right? And not only was the Holocaust rationalized it was embraced by many Nazis as nothing short of a moral crusade to rid the nation of those who were deemed unfit to live.
These two have tag-teamed me before. Here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=34247&start=2865
What is it about me that most perturbs them? Well, I have my own suspicions of course. After all, I've been getting reactions like theirs from others for years now. I'm a threat to their own rendition of what constitutes "serious philosophy"; and my own "fractured and fragmented" sense of identity in the is/ought world have always disturbed those who, morally, political and spiritually, "somehow" feel "at one" with, well, something or other. God or No God.
Then of course the part where I am more inclined to bring "ethical theory" down to earth.
Unless, of course, I'm wrong.