Thought Experiment

I made four specific objections to your definition of "objective" in message #1045; this doesn't address any of them.
I think it does deal with them
Moreover, the basic meaning of "subjective" is "from one, limited perspective"; so saying "it exists objectively to humans" basically means "it exists objectively, in a subjective way," which is an oxymoron.
No, it is objective from the perspective of billions, how can that be from one limited perspective? You are not making any sense.
 
Another way this is problematic: you begin with the claim,

God values humans out of His love for us and that we are created in His image. That value exists outside of human thoughts and desires. Therefore, it exists objectively.

And the more precise version of this, by your last statement, would be

God values humans out of His love for us and that we are created in His image. That value exists outside of human thoughts and desires. Therefore, it exists objectively to humans.

But then it would make just as much sense to say,

John values Mary out of his love for her. That value exists outside of Mary's thoughts and desires. Therefore, it exists objectively to Mary.

... and then repeat, for every human being who is valued by a different human being (which is true, I'd say, of every human being there is). It follows that even if God does not exist, every human being possesses objective value ("value which is objective to him or her").
But that value is not objective to all of humanity. Because that value does not exist outside of humanity. Gods value DOES.
 
No, He doesnt pull the trigger, the murderer does. And God only allows it if it produces a greater good.
But God allows people to exist with the capacity to murder knowing full well the consequences where he didn't have to.
No, He had to allow people to have free will even to commit evil. Otherwise we could not truly love Him so that evil could be destroyed forever which is His one of His main goals and purposes for the universe.
Where is the greater good from the holocaust? We can see the evil in the holocaust but where is the equivalent good?
We dont know yet.
El Cid said:
No, sadly the consequences of sin are far reaching and you only can avoid them completely is in the next world and only those that repent.
What an evil system God has set up.
He didnt set it up. It is just the way things are. Such as the fact that even God cannot create a square circle.
El Cid said:
Well that is the argument of homosexuals to justify their behavior. So you disagree with them?
Natural doesn't mean immoral either. Whether something is immoral or not depends on the consequences of actions.
Science has shown that engaging in homosexual behavior leads to both physical and mental illnesses. So is that evidence it is immoral?
El Cid said:
No, if we are made in Gods image then our suffering has meaning and produces a greater good, if atheistic evolution is true, then our suffering and pain is meaningless.
The suffering and pain would be the same in either case. You are justifying suffering now as you previously justified rape. That's abhorrent. As a Christian, you don't care if someone suffers if there is no God.
I didnt justify rape, atheist scientists did, as I explained about that study I referenced. If there was no God, then I wouldnt be a Christian. But if there is a God then suffering has meaning and can sometimes create great good. Like how Christ's suffering and death produced eternal life for billions and how the Civil War ended slavery and many other examples. Other times suffering has other meanings. But if there is no God then suffering and death is meaningless. I care greatly if people suffer and why they suffer. Such as helping homosexuals overcome their sin so they dont suffer the problems I mention above.
El Cid said:
Yes, from our perspective.
So our thoughts are objective from his.
Yes from Gods perspective our thoughts objectively exist.
El Cid said:
Not objective value if there is no God.
What makes something objective just because God says so?
No, if something exists outside human minds then it exists objectively and since God exists outside our minds then His valuing of us exists outside our minds and therefore objectively exists.
El Cid said:
No, animal suffering and human suffering are qualitatively different.
But it's still suffering as you've said, which is the point.
Animal suffering is not as important as human suffering. As long as it is not in vain and caused by humans then it is just part of being an animal.
 
No, He had to allow people to have free will even to commit evil. Otherwise we could not truly love Him so that evil could be destroyed forever which is His one of His main goals and purposes for the universe.
This isn't necessarily true. Mothers love their children without wanting to go around killing people.
We dont know yet.
God being omnipotent could bring about any good he wanted without the holocaust. This is really scraping the barrel.
He didnt set it up. It is just the way things are. Such as the fact that even God cannot create a square circle.
H e created everything, He set it up, and unlike an impossible square circle there is no logical necessity about it.
Science has shown that engaging in homosexual behavior leads to both physical and mental illnesses. So is that evidence it is immoral?
Science has shown that engaging in heterosexual behaviour can lead to physical and mental illness. What's your point?
I didnt justify rape, atheist scientists did, as I explained about that study I referenced.
Yes you are justifying rape, you said that without God our pain and suffering are meaningless. If God didn't exist would you go around raping women? I don't think He exists and I don't do such things. Would you?
If there was no God, then I wouldnt be a Christian. But if there is a God then suffering has meaning and can sometimes create great good. Like how Christ's suffering and death produced eternal life for billions and how the Civil War ended slavery and many other examples. Other times suffering has other meanings. But if there is no God then suffering and death is meaningless. I care greatly if people suffer and why they suffer. Such as helping homosexuals overcome their sin so they dont suffer the problems I mention above.
Tell that to the slaves who were endured suffering.
No, if something exists outside human minds then it exists objectively and since God exists outside our minds then His valuing of us exists outside our minds and therefore objectively exists.
How does he do that valuing? How does He evaluate rape is wrong?
Animal suffering is not as important as human suffering. As long as it is not in vain and caused by humans then it is just part of being an animal.
Go and watch a video of a gazelle being caught by lions.
 
How do you know that? It is just a simple step in logic. There are mw any scientists that claim they do know.
Logic is all very well, but might struggle to tell us anything in an area where we lack knowledge to be logical with. Particularly when what we discover prima facie seems to go against what we would consider logical, eg relativity.
The theory of relativity does not go against logic. In fact it is based on mathematical logic.

I'm sceptical any scientist would claim to know we know why there is something rather than nothing. Examples please.
Arno Penzias, Hugh Ross, early Steven Hawking, Albert Einstein, John Polkinghorne and many others.
El Cid said:
There is a great deal of evidence that is why all you need is a very small leap of faith in logic.
If evidence proved something, I wouldn't need the leap.
Nothing can be proven with certainty except your own existence and that only to yourself.
El Cid said:
You dont seem to understand science. How do you think they come up with scientific theories that deal with the deep past? They have to provide evidence that can be observed in the present and extrapolate that into the past. That is how the theory of evolution was supported, microevolution has been observed in the present, so they extrapolated microevolution into macroevolution.
You didn't empirically observe the resurrection, yet think it happened.
No, but others did. And You didnt empirically observe that Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, yet you think it happened.
 
The theory of relativity does not go against logic. In fact it is based on mathematical logic.
I agree, but you miss the point. Unless you understand the math, which most ordinary people won't, the effects of relativity seem go against our common sense intuitions and prima facie ideas of logic. My whole point here is, this is an example of something seeming to go against logic when you don't have all the information. I think this is what is happening when you say the universe has a beginning and then conclude God. You do this when lacking all the information, information that could explain why there is something rather that nothing without God, even though such an explanation might presently go against your common sense ideas of logic.
Arno Penzias, Hugh Ross, early Steven Hawking, Albert Einstein, John Polkinghorne and many others.
This seems confused. I asked for examples of scientists who think they know why there is something rather than nothing. The operative word here is know. I will restate, no one knows why there is something rather than nothing. We have an understanding of things back to a micro second after inflation started, but before that we just don't know. We might have ideas, but so far not knowledge.

Besides, you think God created the universe which is why there is something rather than nothing, but there is no science from any of the scientists you mention that conclusively shows this. This means that by your lights they don't know why there is something rather than nothing.
Nothing can be proven with certainty except your own existence and that only to yourself.
The Earth orbits the Sun and is a globe.
No, but others did. And You didnt empirically observe that Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, yet you think it happened.
You don't know others did, we only have stories that others did that cannot be verified.

This is baffling, I think Einstein came up with relativity even though I didn't observe it, therefore I should accept the resurrection happened? The amount of evidence for Einstein and relativity is huge, where for the resurrection it isn't.
 
What makes us moral agents is our ability to reflect upon our behaviour and it's consequences. Lions for example don't have that ability and so are not morally accountable. As far as morality is concerned that is the crucial difference between us and the rest of the animal kingdom.

Whether we evolved or not, or are animals or not, or are special or not makes no difference to that ability that makes us morally accountable, we have it nevertheless.
We are only morally accountable to people who have a different personal preference in morality. We are not morally accountable to any objective moral standard and judgement. Jeffery Dahmer thought it was moral to murder and eat people, but your preference is that that is immoral. But both of your views are just based on your personal preferences if there is no God.
 
We are only morally accountable to people who have a different personal preference in morality. We are not morally accountable to any objective moral standard and judgement. Jeffery Dahmer thought it was moral to murder and eat people, but your preference is that that is immoral. But both of your views are just based on your personal preferences if there is no God.
How do you know he thought it moral to kill people? How do you know he didn't think it wrong but did it anyway?
 
It’s more than how we “ought” to behave. As a result of why we enforce boundaries on one another as a result of the common human reasons those boundaries exist defines how we act towards one another objectively. That landscape is not a choice. Those boundaries and reactions to their violations are natural. The fact that you do have a choice to either violate or respect others natural sense of self protection enshrines moral action - “ought”.
Why is it wrong to violate the sense of self protection for humans but not for other animals?
 
No, He had to allow people to have free will even to commit evil. Otherwise we could not truly love Him so that evil could be destroyed forever which is His one of His main goals and purposes for the universe.
Those that are convinced of his existence still have free will, yes?

Then why not convince everybody of his existence?
 
This is baffling, I think Einstein came up with relativity even though I didn't observe it,
More to the point, if we discover that Einstein didn't come up with it, but plagiarized it from another physicist... who cares? The theory itself is what's important.

If we subsequently discover some decent evidence that Jesus came back from the dead, though... our entire understanding of the universe would turn upside-down.

We should be more skeptical the more a proposition would impact our worldview, not less.
 
That's not an issue for those sciences because the theories straightened themselves out. That's the nature of science - Hypothesis, theory, proof or disproof over time based on the observations against the theory - back to the drawing board if need be.
Apparently not anymore in some areas as I stated now many scientists think you can say you are a woman even though you are a man and therefore become a woman. Absurd.
Religion does not have that correctability. What it codified for itself, based on bad ancient superstitious thinking, became codified forever. To throw out religion's terrible base assumptions is to throw out religion altogether. It does not self adjust to reality. It just crumbles or becomes artificially supported by more and more human exegesis and hermeneutics piled on top to protect it.
I dont know about other religions, but Christianity has corrected its interpretations of scripture when we have learned more about ancient history and languages as well as from God's other book, Nature as I have demonstrated earlier in this thread.
To experience a proper and healthy mental and personal relationship to the claims of Christianity you need to realize that back then, supernatural beliefs were the science and the political science/government of the day. In the OT your particular religion is based on a superfluous declaration of a relationship between Jews and a Hebrew war god invented to codify their economics and geopolitics and infuse that with supernatural justification by claiming themselves the "chosen" of a God that eventually became the "only" god. JHVH did not start out that way. Then the NT extended Hebrew politics to their nation being politically freed from Roman bondage by a messianic deliverer. It was all politics with some common and basic human spirituality sprinkled in.

It's a terrible to waste a life and mind in vehement support of old, old political models as if they are now relevant to one's life. It's not correctible, like real science.
The NT has next to nothing to do with politics and even many of the ancient hebrews including the writers of the Bible knew there was only one God, Yahweh, from the beginning.
 
What's the causal mechanism between our rebellion and deformed babies?
Sin is similar to a genetic mutation. When our representatives rebelled, as their descendents it became attached to our spiritual DNA and sometimes damaged spiritual DNA can damage our physical DNA. Just as sin can cause physical disease, such as promiscuous sex can cause you to get a STD.
I'm afraid God can't escape culpability. God being omniscient and omnipotent He would know that we would rebel and that that would cause said deformity and He allowed it to be.
Yes, He allowed it for a greater good, ie that evil could be destroyed forever among probably other things that we dont know about.
 
Sin is similar to a genetic mutation. When our representatives rebelled, as their descendents it became attached to our spiritual DNA and sometimes damaged spiritual DNA can damage our physical DNA. Just as sin can cause physical disease, such as promiscuous sex can cause you to get a STD.
Lets see some evidence to back this up.
Yes, He allowed it for a greater good, ie that evil could be destroyed forever among probably other things that we dont know about.
It doesn't look as though that's going to happen.
 
Yes, He allowed it for a greater good, ie that evil could be destroyed forever among probably other things that we dont know about.
Which is the greater good

a) Having evil exist for thousands of years, then "destorying it forever", or
b) Never letting evil exist in the first place

?
 
Because without basic logic we cannot even communicate, ie the law of non contradiction.
But that doesn't tell me we have been programmed to think logically by God, it just tells me we have the ability to think logically. How that ability came about can be explained by evolution.
Well so far it has not explained how rationality can come from non-rationality. They have come up with some theories but they are "just so stories".
It also doesn't take into account people who struggle to think logically. People also get by without invoking or understanding the law of non contradiction.
Most of us would not survive without understanding the basics of it. For example, most average intelligence people know that they and an eighteen wheeler cannot occupy the same space at the same time and in the same relationship.
El Cid said:
Its thoughts and desires objectively exist from the perspective of humans. Anything that exists outside of the human mind exists objectively from the perspective of humans.
But aliens would still be creatures like us in their ability to think abstract thoughts, which means to them our thoughts and desires objectively exist from their perspective.
Yes and your point is?
El Cid said:
Yes, if it was just subjective then it could not be described by mathmatics.
Anything can be described by mathematics in one way or another.
Only if it objectively exists.
 
Well so far it has not explained how rationality can come from non-rationality. They have come up with some theories but they are "just so stories".
Yes it does, it explains it very well. You haven't explained how rationality can only come from rationality.
Most of us would not survive without understanding the basics of it. For example, most average intelligence people know that they and an eighteen wheeler cannot occupy the same space at the same time and in the same relationship.
That's not the law of non contradiction. Even so, people can understand your example without understanding the law of non contradiction. But so what? What's your point?
Yes and your point is?
Our thoughts are objective by your definition.
 
Absolute madness - "non-human opinions constitute objective facts".

I know that you had to double down to avoid reversing yourself, but come on.
No, you misunderstand. Non-human opinions objectively exist, but that does not mean that they are true or factual.
 
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