WorldGoneCrazy #fundie

WorldGoneCrazy #fundie christiannews.net

"Oh yes, you do very much get to complain if someone mistreats you"
and
"Situations like these are why I don't accept objective morality"

These two sentences contradict themselves ("mistreats" is just an ice cream flavor on your view) just as in your prior post, you dismissed objective morality then used the term "poorly" in an objective sense. You are jumping back and forth between the world of the a-theist and the world of the theist - on the one hand, admitting there is nothing objective in the way YOU behave, but requiring objective moral values and duties when you are the recipient. Technically, you are stealing from a God you claim does not exist.

"from a subjective perspective I have every right to combat or remedy that suffering."

Not unless suffering is objectively immoral.

"Why would suffering have to be objectively immoral in order for someone to resist it?"

Because if it is not objectively immoral, it just becomes a preference. Like ice cream. My point is nothing more than one of consistency.

21 comments

old comment by Echo

The ice cream man here has yet to establish why objective morality is necessary. For the sake of discussion, let's say my preference for not being beaten to a bloody pulp is mere preference - that it is ontologically the same as my preference for strawberry ice cream (so, we'll ignore his fallacy of equivocation for now).

So what? Many, many others have the same preference. So many, in fact, that most societies have prohibited assault and battery. A transcendent Law or Lawgiver isn't necessary for groups to decide to allow some behaviors and disallow others based on common consensus.

I can hear the objection already. "What if the group decides that it's ok with allowing people to beat others to a bloody pulp. Preferences change, after all." There's still no need for objective morality. In this case, all that's really necessary is a sense of empathy - the idea that there are others out there like me, and they experience things in a similar way to me. Empathy is exhibited by all other communal species on the planet. We need it to function effectively in groups. A sense of empathy would tell us that, even if most people in the group agreed that allowing people to harm others was acceptable, it probably wouldn't be a good idea because I still wouldn't like it if someone did that to me. Objective morality simply isn't necessary when we have empathy readily at hand.

Thanks for playing, though. We have some lovely parting gifts.

old comment by mister_pine

I discovered where he keeps getting his ice cream analogy from, he's always quoting this guy's website:

"I’ve argued that without an objective moral standard of what is right and wrong, any judgments about right and wrong are just individual opinions. So, when an atheist says slavery is wrong, what he really means is that he thinks slavery is wrong for him, in the same way that he thinks that,say, that chocolate ice cream is right for him. He isn’t saying what is wrong objectively, because on atheism there are no objective moral rules or duties. He is speaking for himself: “I wouldn’t own a slave, just like I wouldn’t eat broccoli because it’s yucky!”. But he has no rational argument against other people owning slaves in other times and places, because their justification for owning slaves is the same as his justification for not owning slaves : personal preference and cultural conventions."

http://winteryknight.com/tag/new-atheism/