Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Tue May 03, 2022 8:03 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 6:38 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:26 pm
True. But I do (at least appear to) exist. By contrast, to my knowledge there's no evidence whatsoever for the existence of even one god.
I don't deny that you are telling the truth about that: you don't know any evidence for God, you say.
Well, who am I to doubt that you know no such evidence, if you say that's how it is?
That, however, falls short of being a fact of any consequence to anybody but you. You're surely not going to insist that just because you don't know something, nobody else can, are you?
I didn't think so.
Agreed. I believe and know only things for which I have, or I think there is, evidence.
Well, I know you can say "I don't have evidence." That, I believe.
But how can you be so dogmatic about what evidence
"there is"? I can only suppose that you don't know the evidence for
many things...It does not even remotely imply there is no evidence for anybody else. It does not even imply that Peter will not come to know some evidence he presently lacks, if he waits five minutes: that's called "learning," and we all do it.
So your objection does not go so far as to declare "what there is." It stops at only this: "
Peter does not
presently know any evidence, if such exists."
And that's hardly something even worth debating. I can take your word for it.
This has nothing to do with ontology - what actually exists.
Yes, it does. Ontology precedes all. You can't say anything about what is true until you've already ruled on
what exists to be considered as possibly true.
Yes, ontology does come first, which is why supernaturalism doesn't even make it to the starting post.
Show that.
Why does "supernaturalism" not "make it to the starting post," except if a person simply decides not to believe in it? Because if that's all it is, then nothing "makes it past the starting post," because it's possible to refuse to believe in anything arbitrarily.
But you persistently fail to address the point. Even if the creator-god of your fantasy did'/does exist, that still wouldn't mean morality is objective - that there are moral facts. And I've explained why, many times.
Actually, I've addressed it repeatedly. I don't know how to help you
understand the explanation...but it's certainly been provided.
Here it is again:
Just as you are free to say what is the intended meaning of your own words, or what is the purpose of something you, yourself, create, so too God is the Master Arbiter of the meaning and value of everything He creates.
Yes, a creator-god would be free to say 'This is what I created this thing (say, childhood cancer) for, and this is its meaning and its value.' But that doesn't mean that the purpose and value of the created thing are morally good (or bad).
You're failing to recognize the difference between a human judgment (arbitrary, only as right as it conforms to objective fact) and the Creatorial power to make particular things with particular moral functions and roles (which is absolute, ultimate, never wrong, and objective).
If God says a man's ultimate purpose is
to know Him, then that's his ultimate, objective purpose; if he purposes not to, he is simply using his free will to violate that ultimate, objective purpose -- and thus, behaving immorally. But a man's decision to refuse to actualize his the objective purpose for which he was created does not make that ultimate, objective purpose disappear: it just makes the man immoral himself.
False.
When you and I evaluate something, we do it as fallible. God is not fallible. When He says why He created what He created, and what its ultimate value is, He's always right.
This has nothing to do with infallibility, or omniscience, or any other supposed attribute of a supposed creator-god.
Yes, actually: it does. I realize that's the part you can't get your head around, but it's true.
The moral rightness or wrongness of an action is never - can never be - in the gift of the actor
It is a function of the act of Divine creation.
What God makes a being for, that is its purpose. It is moral for that entity to enact that purpose and role, and immoral for it not to.
You and I are not the Creator. That is why our judgments are contestable. His is not, by virute of the fact that
none of these things would even exist at all without His creatorial intentions. He made them what they are, for the reasons He did, and for the role to which He assigned them.
You and I never did that. So analogies with lesser "actors" are irrelevant, when it comes to God. Your judgment and mine are fallible. His is not even potentially fallible.
Suppose - heaven forfend - a god disvalues homosexuals and witches and wants them to be killed. That's a matter of opinion with which others can disagree.
There are at least two problems with that objection: one is that "others can disagree" means, according to your own account, that nothing more is happening than that fallible people are subjectively feeling a different way than that. The second is that it does not mean that killing homosexuals and witches is even bad. That is, if, as you say, there is no such thing as an objective moral value.
What evasive codswallop! This god subjectively disvalues gays and wants them to be killed.
The hypothetical was yours.
I simply took you at your word. If you now are revolted by your own hypothetical, do not blame me for that.
But from your own view, you have no way of saying, "Killing gays is objectively wrong." It's not, according to your thinking: it's only
subjectively wrong, which means "Right if I want it to be."
By contrast, some humans subjectively value gays and want them to be protected.
And some want to beat them with baseball bats....subjectively, of course.
Which one is objectively right? I don't: but if I were to hate gays and want to hurt them, would I be an objectively "worse" person than you?
Prove it.
The analogy is between moral and aesthetic assertions, both of which are non-factual.
That's purely assumptive, on your part.
I do not think moral and aesthetic assertions are non-factual. I think that only aesthetic assertions are subjective, and moral ones are factual.
Which of us is objectively right? And am I objectively a "worse thinker" for believing differently than you do on that?