RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Mar 22, 2022 12:55 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am
I do not believe the universe had a beginning...
Interesting.
That means you don't know the science on that...at all.
There is no science on that.
QED.
There is.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
You don't know about the red shift effect, or about entropy, for example.
But you know all about what I know.[/quote][
Not the point. Red herring.
The topic here is whether or not you know these scientific facts, not what I do or do not know.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
If the beginning of the universe was not an accident, then it had to be intentional...but by whom, or what?
There was no beginning.
That's scientifically false.
But of course, you have the right to cling to things that are scientifically falsified if you wish to.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am
"Accidents," only pertain to human activiti
No, actually.
An "accident" just means "a happening nobody deliberated or created on purpose." In that sense, all empirical happenings that are not caused by an intelligent agent are "accidents."
You just made that up.
The dictionary did. Check it out.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am
If you want to call everyone who doesn't happen to believe the same fairy tales you do, an atheist, you certainly can
I don't. It's what they call themselves.
You must not get out much
No, you'll even find Atheists doing it here, on the PN forum, if you go and look.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pmRCSaunders wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am
...the false premise, "if there is no God, there is no meaning (or purpose, value, etc.)"
That's actually a
true premise, if you examine it fairly.
You're mistaking the idea that people can
make up what they want to think are real purposes, that that can be substituted for an
objective purpose. But it cannot.
You have that backward. You are the one that believes in some mystical non-objective purposes. You believe that there can be values that have no purpose whatsoever, just dictated or mandated by some supernatural being.
No, I've got it the right way. It's not "mystical," and it is, by definition, "objective." There is nothing "objective" about the "purposes" a man subjectively makes up.
There are no purposes unless there is a human being who wants something.
Those are purely
subjective -- a human being makes them up as he/she sees fit, but they have no objective reality beyond that of a personal delusion.
Before anything can have a purpose, there must first be some end or goal, some objective relative to which something is needed or required to achieve or realize that objective.
Ah, I see...you've mixed up two uses of the word "objective" there.
Back to the dictionary we go. "Objective" can mean: a) real, or b) a goal. It partially depends on whether it's being used as an adjective or as a noun. (There are other uses of the word too, but we they aren't relevant here, of course.) You are assuming that something becomes "objective" if it involves "a goal"; but this is not the correct use of the word "objective" in this context -- in our context, it's the opposite of "subjective," and means "real" or "grounded in the ontological truths of how things are, regardless of subjective opinions."
To say, "I have
an objective" tells you nothing about the value or possiblity of that "objective." You could have the "objective" to flap your arms and fly...but it would not make that "objective" objectively possible...meaning, reality would not allow or make your goal possible, because people
objectively cannot flap their arms and fly.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pmWhat people can
make up does not make anything true. The imaginary figments of "the human mind" as you put it, are no substitute for facts.
But that's exactly what every religion is,
Red herring, and
et tu quoque fallacies, in one.
Even were every religion a delusion, that would not make human fictions "not-a-delusion." In fact, it would just furnish a further proof of the claim I made.
So your protest here does not help your case.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pmRCSaunders wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am
...no one can violate the requirements of reality and their own nature and get away with it.
It depends what you mean. People can certainly violate moral requirements and escape the temporal consequences.
Required by what for what?
]
Required by
objective morality.
For example, if we can accept that pedophelia is wrong (and I hope we both can), then perverts violate that wrongness all the time, and escape without comparable consequences...or so it seems evident to us. There are predators with hundreds of victims, who, even if we locked them up for the remainder of their natural lives, would not have "repayed" in any sense for the things they've done to helpless children.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
Whether they can escape Judgment is quite a different question.
No one escapes the consequences of their choices and actions in this world (and there are no other consequences), and you cannot escape them either.
Even in the case above, you think?
I'm prepared to hear your argument, if you think that all pedophiles get full payment back for the damage they do, and get it in this life. But I can't quite imagine what that argument would be.
Justice has no meaning for me, except as a word others use.
Then I guess you can't expect any. And yet you seem to have something like it bedded in the words you use, like "consequences," "suffer," "bad," "lust," and so on. You seem pretty free with accessing moral language to try to describe a problem you also claim doesn't even "have meaning."
Does justice serve any purpose? If so, what is the objective, purpose, end, goal (or whatever you want to call it) that justice pertains to.
This gets back to your confusion of the two meanings of "objective." Human justice serves human "purposes, ends, goals or whatever," perhaps. When a policeman arrests a criminal, it "serves the purpose of" the State in limiting wrongdoing. But that is not what we mean when we say that justice is "objective."
We're not saying, "Does justice have
an objective (noun use: i.e. does it have a human purpose)." We're saying that justice
is an objective fact (adjectival use: it is something real.)
In other words, what's at stake? If there were no justice, what difference would it make?
Well, public order, for one thing. But you should also ask the victims why they value having the perps locked up...they might have a further thought on that, I suspect.
But my use of "justice" is ontological, not merely sociological. I don't think justice really serves human purposes -- at least, not more than in imperfect ways -- because the real purpose of ultimate justice, eternal justice, is to serve the purpose of
righteousness...the righteousness of God, not merely of fallible man.