Is morality objective or subjective?

[Dontaskme]

Human beings have never been able to do anything about evil, other than make more of it. Hence, the need for divine intervention.

Evil or Goodness, good and bad, are human inventions, they are nothing other than human relativistic constructs. In reality, no human creature is a sinner, they are just doing something that is highly questionable to you personally or doing something that you personally do not agree with. In essence, no earthly creature is an evil demon or a devil, that will go to hell for their actions. Do cats and dogs go to hell? Dogs that rip their owners heads off, and cats who rip the heads off of little cute mice?

What if, just maybe, this Earth is already hell, and will always be like that. Life is obviously suffering and pain for all sentient creatures who have a nervous system. Many animals are eaten alive, so imagine how torturous that must feel for them. Imagine how it must feel being pumped full of bullets or being stabbed to death. People are worse than other animals, they've even invented nuclear bombs and all sorts of other nasty weapons. They've even invented a God who will make everything better, in their hopeless and desperate need for some divine intervention, all in vain of course.

This life on earth should never be happening at all, if there was such a thing as a benevolent force running the universe, it would simply screw the whole idea up and throw it out for good, and never contemplate the idea ever again ..But no such intelligence exists anywhere, life is happening, and there's nothing anything can do about it, or prevent it from happening. So if this life is some sort of God's divine plan, then it's absolutely sick, it's far from being well, or a good idea. A better idea would be to not create life in the first place, one cannot miss or yearn for a life what one has absolutely zero awareness of.

You need to wake up out of your delusion and accept the world for what it actually is and stop trying to sprinkle it with a false sense of wonderful, it'll never be the sugary flowery ideal you think it ought to be. That will always be your fantasy, just like your Good God.

[Will Bouwman]

Do tell us what any of that has to do with determining constants.

You don't understand what measure theory and measurements have to do with determining the value of a constant?

If:

Last I checked the universe doesn't speak Mathematics; nor does it have any "constants".

why ask?

It's so peculiar that you don't recognize the "/" symbol in all the SI units of measurements...

You're right, I don't. You show me, Skepdick.

Wow... The level of spelling out a "philosopher of science" requires. It boggles minds.

Still not seeing the / in s.

You don't recognize any of the mathematical operations in 8.854×10^-12 F/m do you?

Well, I'm not a mathematician, so there are plenty of mathematical operations you could have chosen that I wouldn't recognise; but it says more about you than me that you think the above is a tricky one.

[Skepdick]

Still not seeing the / in s

There is no / in s.
There is a / in s^-1

The second is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the cesium frequency ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the cesium-133 atom, to be 9,192,631,770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s^−1

[Will Bouwman]

Still not seeing the / in s

There is no / in s.
There is a / in s^-1

And which one is the SI unit?

[Skepdick]

Still not seeing the / in s

There is no / in s.
There is a / in s^-1

And which one is the SI unit?

The second is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the cesium frequency ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the cesium-133 atom, to be 9,192,631,770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s^-1

[Will Bouwman]

The second is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the cesium frequency ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the cesium-133 atom, to be 9,192,631,770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s^-1

Duh! Hz is cycles per second. Where is the / in s?

[Age]

So if neither you as a Christian, nor I as an atheist, can do anything about what you call evil, what point were you trying to make?

Human beings have never been able to do anything about evil, other than make more of it. Hence, the need for divine intervention.

But adult human beings are the only ones who do evil things. Saying that human beings have never been able to do anything about evil, other than make more of evil, implies that that something else was/is making/doing evil, which is obviously not True at all.

Also, human beings can do very many things about evil. For example like stop causing, creating, doing, and/or making evil.

As for supposedly you people needing so-called divine intervention, why do think the Divine has not yet intervened "immanuel can"?

[Skepdick]

Where is the / in s?

In the (circular) definition!

The second is defined in terms of Hz. Which is....

Hz is cycles per second.

Shame, it's difficult to explain units of measurement to somebody who has no fucking clue what a measure is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_(mathematics)

[bahman]

Okay. Then, if we say the BB was the First Cause, then our theory has to be that a random, uncaused, unintelligent explosion accidentally caused all the order we find in the universe -- and as well, conscious beings capable of knowing about that.

Is that the theory?

Yes, the singularity just existed at the beginning, and from that, all sorts of things emerged.

You mean, "the Big Bang," right? You're saying it was what you call "the Singularity," and it had no cause?

Yes.

[Will Bouwman]

Well, Atheists...like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Nietzsche...the proud ones, the ones who trumpet their Atheism, exhibit their own anger and rebelliion against God, and in fact, often declare it as a badge of honour.

These 'proud', 'angry', 'rebellious' men are not your ideological "Atheists"; they are people who, like you, think that religions are false; they just happen to apply it to one more religion than you.

Well, Will, I don't have any reason to think that they are your kind of Atheist.

My kind of atheist is anyone who is not a theist. I can't speak for others, but the conclusion of my studies is that there may or may not be a god. As I have said, it is one among many possibilities and not the craziest. What is quite clear though, is that every text which claims to be the inspired word of a god, is very clearly the work of people, and in all cases I am aware of, people who had no idea how the world actually works.

...the dichotomy of "Does God prefer some moral imperative because it's good, or because He's God," proposes a dichotomy between "God" and "good" that would have to be justified by the proposer.

I'm not proposing such a dichotomy. Nor am I suggesting that it is

...impossible for "good" and "what God prefers" to be the same thing.

Well, according to your objective morality, the vast majority of human beings will spend eternity being tortured, but that is the price of freedom. It is hard to imagine a subjective morality that could be worse.

"Tortured"? I wouldn't say that. Not all unpleasantness or even suffering is "torture."

In that case:

Well, according to your objective morality, the vast majority of human beings will spend eternity being subjected to "unpleasantness or even suffering", but that is the price of freedom.

It is still hard to imagine a subjective morality that could be worse. No godless morality could countenance eternal "unpleasantness or even suffering", and if that is what your God 'prefers', I would suggest the onus is on you to explain how that is good.

What I have from my own experience is not, as you claim, "thousands of examples of fossils consistent with human evolution," and if I may say, it's also obvious to me that the scientific community doesn't have them, either. If they did, they would be producing them.

Well they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... on_fossils

[Will Bouwman]

Where is the / in s?

In the (circular) definition!

The second is defined in terms of Hz. Which is....

Hz is cycles per second.

Shame, it's difficult to explain units of measurement to somebody who has no fucking clue what a measure is.

Tell me Skepdick; how is a second measured?

[bahman]

Could you please share the link to the debate?

I watch videos on YouTube where physicists talk about the kind of upset the new telescope is doing to their understanding of the cosmos. It would be very easy for you to find such talks.

I searched YouTube and I could not find anything new. Of course, except for what they found by the James Webb telescope that I was aware of it.

AJ: Immanuel’s mistake is not so much in positing a creator (the concept is rational) but in his insistence that the god divined (intuited) as being necessary is the god our own yiddishim believe is their god.

But the god of the early Hebrews was never conceived of as the author of the manifest world and cosmos. That notion was borrowed from other races and retrofitted into Judaism.

Bahman: Could you please expound? I am very interested to understand the detail.

Well, by way of a critical comparison: IC has no intellectual means at his disposal to critically examine his own received foundational beliefs. He is, as I often say, trapped or stuck within a specific metaphysical picture that is Genesis. Genesis is taken as, or presented as, a picture which has all manner of different levels of meaning that can be extracted from it (for example by analysis of the Hebrew letters and their correspondence with numbers as well as Kabalistic methods). The *picture* is, for the Hebrews, an infinitely revealing on if one gets access to the exegetic method.

It is a creation story, obviously, but it also an elaborate story that explains, or presents a paradigm, of Judaic interpretation of Judaic existence -- the raison d'être for Judaism, for Jews in history, and for God's mission in this world. Let me say that if it is read *against its grain* (critically) it presents a very negative picture of Judaic activity. But you must understand that I completely condemn this aspect of Judaism and, for my own reasons, completely throw it off. That does not mean though that I do not also discover in Judaism (or Jewish revelation) a great deal that is genuinely good and genuinely important.

Over the course of some years of analysis I discover that Immanuel Can is what I call *a wannabe Jew*. In my view he is not a *real Christian* but a sort of imposter. But I also must say that both Judaism and Christianity, because they are mixtures of confused pictures of the world -- borne of a 'confusion of peoples' in the first century -- can be seen as fractured or even pastiche-like models of reality (the world) and also of political and social models employed to govern behavior. You know, and as Nietzsche said, Christianity is Plato for the masses. But it is clearly a ridiculous cartoon-like set of pictures which yet, for a man of faith, must be taken as real and literally.

IC is so deeply invested in this that he will not ever escape it. Nor should he. If his Weltanschauung collapsed, he would necessarily collapse with it. His *horizon* would fall away and he'd be adrift in a chaotic world.

Myself, I see myself as in a process of recovery of a former, and more encompassing, and certainly an Indo-European understanding of life and existence that, also necessarily, takes issue with the Hebrew imposition. IC demonstrates what it means to come under this *imposition* and, in this sense, he is Yahweh's slave. (Yahweh being a demiurgic representation). The *process of recovery* is difficult and time-consuming and energetically depleting for a number of reasons, but this is another issue.

But the god of the early Hebrews was never conceived of as the author of the manifest world and cosmos. That notion was borrowed from other races and retrofitted into Judaism.

The Hebrew god is a figure, or a symbol if you wish, formerly managed in a desert tribal context. Just one god among many god-concepts. A god of the storm and also possibly of the volcano. But a violent tribal god of war. That god was not conceived as the *author of all things* because delving into such universalism had no sound function for warrior-peoples. But to make a long story shorter, the Yahwey concept was managed by a priest-class into an extremely powerful and extremely possessive god-concept, metaphysical concept, cultural-concept and identity-concept. Only at a later date, and when confronting more developed metaphysical systems, was Yahwey retrofitted to be the god who initiated everything. And that element is expressed in Genesis. The Judaics say: "Yahwey is our god, but also your god, though he chose us over you and you must serve him".

And through this -- all of it -- we can study how the conceptual order (how things are conceived) is necessarily also a political and social tool to manage human life. Power, rhetoric, and certainly threats of punishment and extermination can easily be seen as *operative* concepts at the core of this religious manifestation.

OK, thanks you for writing.

Existence and being must by definition be eternal. There is no contrary or inverse notion to existence and being. Eternality is the sole *logical* option. There was never a beginning, and there is no ending — except as eternal continuations.

I must disagree here. There must be a beginning.

There may be a new manifestation which can be taken as ur-beginning, but it seems to me that if one thinks it through it (our beginning) must be just one of an eternal complex of beginnings. Really, how could it be different?

It is not clear to me when you talk about beginnings. The whole has one beginning.

[Immanuel Can]

So if neither you as a Christian, nor I as an atheist, can do anything about what you call evil, what point were you trying to make?

Human beings have never been able to do anything about evil, other than make more of it. Hence, the need for divine intervention.

What divine intervention? If the world is full of evil, there obviously is no intervention.

Well, if there's no such thing as evil, then there would be no need, would there? Why "save" the world, if the world is just predetermined to play out helplessly the hand its been dealt? It cannot be "saved" from the truly inevitable...just as it cannot even diagnose the evil if there's no such thing. But if evil exists, and if God's justice is real, then we are all in trouble...unless God does something to rescue us from what we are.

And that, the Bible tells us, is exactly what God has done. He's sent His Son to open up to us the way to forgiveness and restoration to right relationship to Him...if only we will accept it.

That's the intervention: not so much of an intervention as to render us ineffective and deprive us of free will or identity, but just enough to provide a way we can have if we will take it.

[Immanuel Can]

Yes, the singularity just existed at the beginning, and from that, all sorts of things emerged.

You mean, "the Big Bang," right? You're saying it was what you call "the Singularity," and it had no cause?

Yes.

Well, a couple of things about that: one is that I know of no scientist who thinks the BB was devoid of being caused. They tend to say that there were various gasses floating in space (thus implying the pre-existence of both gasses and space) and "something" caused them to explode (though they are never able to say just what that might be). So that's a theory that is pretty much unique to you.

But secondly, is the First Cause you are suggesting (the BB) really adequate to explain the effects (the universe, order, consciousness) you are ascribing to that Cause? Can random explosions produce such things? Do you have a single case of them having done so?

If "yes," then maybe you have a basis for that sort of theory. If "no," then the theory seems again rather gratuitous, as explosions, so far as we experience any of them, produce chaos, destruction, disorder and death, rather than organization, order, life and sentient beings.

[Skepdick]

Tell me Skepdick; how is a second measured?

By measuring the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the cesium-133 atom. Which is precisely 9192631770 Hz.

e.g 9192631770 cycles per second. Thus making the definition of "second" circular.

Can't you fucking read?