Is morality objective or subjective?

[Harbal]

You were quoting a play you don't understand.

There is a telling line in the Hamlet play:

Duller ... than the fat weed
That roots itself at ease on Lethe wharf.

In Greek mythology Lethe was one of the rivers of the underworld in Hades. It was also known as the Ameles potamos (river of unmindfulness), and further that Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos (sleep), permeating the Underworld where all who drink from it experience complete forgetfulness. Lethe is also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion with whom the river was also identified.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

[Immanuel Can]

You were quoting a play you don't understand.

There is a telling line...

You spent a whole page on trying to prove to me that your misunderstandings don't mean you don't understand the play?

Well, that tells me something. It tells me that you think my opinion of your erudition is worth a great deal of your time.

[Immanuel Can]

What is your evidence?

For what? "Layman's" inherently means, "somebody who's not really in the know."

Evidence for the Bible is true. I cannot simply agree with the Bible and the story within.

I'm not asking you to, at least not at the moment. Here, I'm only asking you to understand what it means when somebody speaks of "a layman's knowledge."

But you can look that up. So I leave it with you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You spent a whole page on trying to prove to me that your misunderstandings don't mean you don't understand the play?

No, it was all merely — merely I tell you! — a prelude to my intricate expositions on the Restorative Metaphysics of Fortinbras.

An unexpected extra bonus was to have spurred Harbal to include a literary reference (Keats).

What other wonders await?!?

[Harbal]

Here, I'm only asking you to understand what it means when somebody speaks of "a layman's knowledge."

What entitles you to claim being more than a layman on scientific matters?

[Harbal]

An unexpected extra bonus was to have spurred Harbal to include a literary reference (Keats).

I have no interest in Keats, I just happen to be very fond of nightingales.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Evidence for the Bible is true.

The issue depends on how one characterizes truth. For most (here) the stumbling block is that they know, and with no doubt, that all the axial stories in the Bible are not true in the sense of literal histories or chronologies.

Being literally minded they realize they are dealing with Story, and that real weasels (hello Immanuel) use the Story, and the threat of eternal punishment or annihilation of the soul, as a tool for manipulation.

They refuse, naturally, to allow themselves to be manipulated, and so are forced to turn against the manipulator (hello again Immanuel).

However, the Bible (more especially the New Testament) is, when taken from some distance, an exposition of metaphysical ideas. The events in the Story illustrate metaphysical ideas essentially bound up with transcendental concepts: possibilities for living life or being with people that are anatural. Those ideas, those propositions, were common in the First Century though expressed by ‘a confusion of peoples’ in different ways.

They fused in Greco-Christianity which is substantially different from the Hebraic strain (Immanuel’s literalist branch). And they were substantially modified and built-on in successive centuries.

There is a conversation about what those possibilities are (transcendental values like love, self-negation, sacrifice, renunciation, etc.) but dear Manny is unqualified for that discussion and, truthfully, he’d rather subvert that conversation because it veers away from the bizarre faith-declarations he believes are essential for this state he calls ‘salvation’.

For this reason he is a miserable apologist and it is likely his only success is among Mesoamericans or South American peasants. There his “dashing” rhetorical skill likely bowls them over and, reduced to their knees, they succumb to conversion.

However, we are on the other side of all that. We are post-Christian and we are decidedly and definitely in an uncertain and confused position vis-a-vis all religious metaphysics.

Would you agree to all that, Manny? Care to add any details I left out?

[promethean75]

"There is a conversation about what those possibilities are (transcendental values like love, self-negation, sacrifice, renunciation, etc."

Who in their right mind would go to the bible to investigate those ideas tho? Plato and Aristotle would be infinitely better resources for such concepts. I mean seriously bro, when Plato and Aristotle farted it was worth more than anything those clowns wrote in the bible.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Another excerpt from The Human Situation by W. Macneile Dixon (as delivered to The Gifford Lectures 1935-1937):

The failure of science, as anyone can see, is its failure to minister to the needs of the soul. The soul lies outside its orbit, its purview, its range of interests. The failure of religion in our time lies, on the other hand, in its inability to meet the needs of the intellect, to answer the innumerable and pressing questions we daily ask and must ask ourselves.

Poetry is in like case, it offers no assistance to the perplexed intelligence. But that assistance is not asked of poetry. No one goes to Chaucer or to Keats for moral directions. Men, however, ask much more of religion than of poetry. They may be mistaken in respect of its function in their lives, but they ask for its guidance in human affairs. And the genius even of Christianity, the genius even of that world-inspiring poem, fails to solve the intellectual perplexities, and often the moral perplexities by which they are beset amid the infinite complexity of the modern world.

Can anyone tell us whether Christ would have approved of the pattern of our present civilisation at all, and if not, how are we to escape from it? Would He have approved of costly and magnificent churches, of gorgeous ritual and music, of the theatre and the picture house, of all the ordered scientific and social activities amid which we spend our days? Can anyone tell us unequivocally what would have been His attitude to our systems of education, our horse-racing, commerce and athletics, the possession of property, to wealth, the lending of money at interest, to birth control, to the sterilisation of criminals or the unfit, to our legal system, to capital punishment? Is it possible with the help of Christian principles to disentangle the moral issues involved and to say what should be done in respect of these and a thousand other such things?

Is it possible to apply Christian principles to taxation, to systems of government, to international finance, to the adjustment of tariffs and bank rates? What do they dictate to a great nation in respect of its dealings with others? Should it seek or sacrifice its advantages in trade, encourage the presence of foreign blood, the admixture of white and black, give or refuse its blessing upon mixed marriages? Should it abandon or maintain its advantages in geographical position, in wealth of coal and metals? Neither a man nor a nation can preserve its own gains and interests without loss to others. Should America or England dilute their currency or go off the gold standard when it suits them, irrespective of the effects upon their neighbours? These are matters of life and death to their populations. It is not war only which is a matter of life and death, as the simple suppose. Economic sanctions, of which we have heard so much, make war by starvation instead of bullets. Trade and commerce are matters of life and death to millions.

These and similar questions are not in our times to be evaded, and generalisations in the manner of the Beatitudes do not answer them. You are, moreover, not in a Christian world. Has Christianity any firm and workable proposals to make in dealing, let us say, with Japanese competition, or Russian state atheism and its propaganda, upon diplomatic and international exchanges with races which have no regard for its ethics or ideals? And if no clear direction in their difficulties is given by Christianity, is it any wonder men say it has shot its bolt, that it has ceased to be the pole-star, as its adherents hoped, by which the ship of humanity would for all time steer its course?

[henry quirk]

Is it possible to apply Christian principles to (everything?)

The christianist certainly believes so; the Christian, not so much.

picked up a pdf copy of Dixon's book...interesting

[iambiguous]

Well let me modify it by saying it makes no difference to me. I can't say there is not something that fits within someone's definition of the word God, but it is blindingly obvious it takes absolutely no interest in the minutiae of our insignificant little human lives. Whether you believe in God or not might make a difference to how you feel, but it's not going to make a difference to anything else.

I basically agree. But what doesn't change [for me] is that in the absence of God, we don't have access to moral commandments, to immortality and to salvation.

It's possible that without God there are no moral "commandments" (meaning guides to conduct).

Or it's possible that without God there are. Let's call them deontological or ideological commandments. Or "biological imperatives"?

In fact, let's run this by the No God folks here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

Is there anyone here who is an advocate for one of these One True Paths to Enlightenment? If so, given a particular context, let's dig deeper.

However, it's also possible that Jesus himself was a mortal who gave us some very pragmatic guides to conduct that are very real and defying the guides of conduct that Jesus (and other philosophers and sages have observed) may lead to really bad consequences and thus be verifiably good guiding principles.

Sure. But among the moral objectivists here [God or No God] we'll still need a context. For example, some argue that Jesus Christ was considerably closer to being a socialist than a capitalist. Whereas others insist that even though He preached that "...and again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" he was really a big, big advocate of capitalism.

As far as immortality. It would depend on the nature of reality itself as to whether consciousness is destroyed forever when the body dies.

And if you are convinced the nature of reality is such that one must accept Jesus Christ as one's personal savior given a leap of faith to God? The point then being that Christians insist Christianity is the nature of reality. And they know this is true because they believe it is true.

Not unlike these...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...folks.

Different Gods but that's the point. Which one is it?

It seems like it might, however, we don't know what consciousness is and how it might differ from a computer that can (presumably) mimic certain intentional states. Meaning, that there may be something special about living beings as opposed to artificial creations of humans like computers and calculators. Perhaps something about this specialness includes that there is something that persists beyond the grave.

Perhaps? Yes, I can go along with that. In the interim, however, let's ask the true believers among us [of any denomination] to explore all of this given these factors:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

As far as salvation from God, salvation seems to be linked to "original sin" which is an Abrahamic principle. As I've said Christ could still be a very astute prophet or sage and be on to some guiding principles that are necessary for a good outcome for us. If there was no talking snake, no original disobeying of God, then what is salvation other than recompensing with someone or someones we have wronged?

Bottom line? Well, mine is that salvation is whatever the Christian God says it is. You either impress Him on Judgment Day or you don't. Original Sin is just part of the Divine package. Like accepting JC as your personal savior.

One of the tenets of Christianity is that one gains salvation from God. However, if you hit someone in the knee with a baseball bat, it may not be God that you need to recompense with. It's probably the person you hit in the knee.

Okay, but if you are, say, Tanya Harding, it's not Nancy Kerrigan who can send you to Hell.

[Immanuel Can]

What other wonders await?!?

You'll have to find somebody who wonders.

[Immanuel Can]

Here, I'm only asking you to understand what it means when somebody speaks of "a layman's knowledge."

What entitles you to claim being more than a layman on scientific matters?

On scientific matters? It depends on which avenue of science you're referring to. We're all mere "laymen" in somebody else's department. And on theology? Definitely not at the level of the ordinary layman.

[Gary Childress]

Here, I'm only asking you to understand what it means when somebody speaks of "a layman's knowledge."

What entitles you to claim being more than a layman on scientific matters?

On scientific matters? It depends on which avenue of science you're referring to. We're all mere "laymen" in somebody else's department. And on theology? Definitely not at the level of the ordinary layman.

What "avenue" of science are you more than a layman on?

[Immanuel Can]

What "avenue" of science are you more than a layman on?

If it's all the same to you, I prefer to keep my cards in my hand. If I wanted to post that much information, it would be on my profile. But I'm not here to pull rank on anything.