moralist
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Posts posted by moralist
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I have just had an epiphany, I can actually tell my soul has been somehow redeemed. I realise now the true nature of existence, by God, IT IS.
There is nothing else to condemn you but the moral law of the consequences you set into motion by your own actions.
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the rules or laws of evidence are pretty strict; either something is or it is not.
That's right. But there is no proof either way so you get to freely choose for yourself to either affirm or deny God.
there is always proof of the attributes of a thing(existent) , there is no reason to deny god simply because there is no reason to postulate god
I have absolutely no problem with the choice you have freely made for yourself, Tad. That is the way it should be. There is no proof either way so that you can rightfully receive the just and deserved consequences set into motion by your choice no matter what you choose... just as I do.
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Ok let me explain why I asked this question. I lied to an employer about my age before he hired me. I told him that I am four years younger than I really am and that I recently finished college in order to conceal the length of time that I had been unemployed. I did this out of desperation when I was very much near the end of my rope (and about to put one around my neck). How immoral am I, and what should I do now? Do I have to tell him?
You could proactively tell him after you've proven yourself to be a productive employee. Then it wouldn't matter. But you had better tell him before he finds out.
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That's a non-sequitor.
You asked what would have to happen, and I answered what would have to happen.
Who is to say it is God who punishes the immoral (or built the system which punishes them)?
Well, that is totally up to you to answer for yourself. There is no proof either way so as not to violate everyone's free choice to either affirm or deny God.
As to moral law, that you can empirically prove for yourself. Just do something you know is wrong and see if you can escape the just and deserved consequences of your own actions. Lots of luck trying to do that.
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Can edit provide evidence for the moral downfall of society,
Sure. The growth of the State is an accurate indicator of peoples' immoral failure to govern themselves.
or how an excess of entitlement programs are causing major economic problems?
Entitlement programs cause no major economic problems for moochers, nor do they cause problems for the government looters whose economic wellbeing is derived from servicing moochers. However, there is still a major problem for both, but it's not economic. It's moral. As both the serviced and their servicers devolve into less decent human beings.
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What would have to happen for God to be disproven to you?
If I could to do something morally wrong and not set into motion any just and deserved consequences... that would disprove God, because it would prove that there is no such thing as the law of moral causality.
Hasn't happened yet.
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You just expressed a profound truth.
No one is required to believe anything if there is no evidence to support the "anything" in question.
This is intentional.
There will never be conclusive proof either way. This gives everyone total freedom to choose either to affirm or deny God. Anything less would rob everyone of that free choice.
There is a quality to love... in that it can only be given by our own free choice.
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Do you think that rights are created or discovered?
This got me to wondering when I heard someone on the radio mention that being armed was already assumed have been a prexisting right, and that the Second Amendment was only created to limit the government.
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I have many hobbies but none of them are really productive.
You might consider assessing any skills you have acquired while enjoying your hobbies and utilizing them in a productive venture. I'd also consider experimenting with creating a minimal committment microbusiness based on the purpose of helping others. Some simple useful task you can do, or product you can make for others which they can't do of make for themselves and are willing to pay you.
For example: After a lot of searching on the internet, I came across a man with a microbusiness who makes and sells a useful part that no one else does. He can provide something for me that I can't provide for myself, and so I'm totally happy to pay him to make it and sell it to me. People from all over the US buy what he produces. And he doesn't even advertize. People avidly seek him out because he produces something of value to others.
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@bert: No- that makes them human. The important thing is what you do once you find out you've made a mistake. Do you admit the error and find a way to correct it? Forget about your new knowledge? Lie to yourself and act as if you're right?
You just answered better than I ever could have.
Life is all about finding out if what we think is right actually is right.
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Christianity, whether you like it or not
I like it. You don't.
has at its roots the supreme good (God) sacrificing his supreme value (his Son [simultaneously himself]) for evil undeserving sinners.
Beautiful, isn't it? ...and that means that people can now only damn themselves with the consequences of their own evil actions. It's perfect moral justice that people should tie the knot in their own noose.
This is one of the best examples of "unreasonable indiscriminate self sacrifice" I can think of.
It is anything but indiscriminate. For no one who damns God could ever enjoy the gift offered to them. It's the Old Testament line Satan said to Job:
"Curse God and die."
And so people do... which is exactly what they deserve... to pass sentence upon themselves.
What's more is that a Christian is supposed to follow this example in an effort to be, and to become like Jesus. This is totally incompatible with Objectivism.
I agree. I don't believe in the liberal interpretation of Jesus as a weak limpwristed feminised doormat any more than you do.
Your personal beliefs on this matter are irrelevant.
That is also true. Only my actions matter... not my beliefs. For only what I actually do sets into motion the consequences I deserve.
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This is simply wrong, and it's a case of losing historical and global perspective. Our government is an absolute mess compared to what it should and could be, but the very fact that you're writing about this without fear of prosecution disproves your point, as there are countries out there where you could not write such things about the government.
The American government has real and serious problems, but let's not lose perspective and pretend that we have the worst government that ever existed on the face of the earth. That's just silly. People talk about us being Greece in the next few decades, but don't forget: Greece is Greece right now.
While America isn't Greece... by popular demand it has adopted the Greek model of European liberal socialist unearned entitlements. The only reason America isn't Greece yet is because we're still riding on the tattered coattails of what the Founding Fathers created... but they are rapidly unravelling. If enough people were to live lives deserving of a decent government, they would have earned the right to get the decent government they deserve. And if they don't, they still are getting the government they deserve.
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The *why* is the most important part because it is the method which one uses to determine what is right or wrong.
Well, I view that differently. The consequences of our actions are the final judge of whether we do right or wrong. The best of intentions are never an excuse for evil acts.
Removing the why is intrinsicism, because it would declare that the good is separate from you as an individual.
Yes. No one is the good. People can only make the good a reality in this world through their actions.
Things aren't good regardless of your motivation.
People can freely choose not to act on their thoughts and emotions... and in many situations it's in their own best interests that they don't.
things are good based on how they further your life according to one's knowledge.
Again we differ. Good is good regardless of what anyone thinks or feels it is.
Motive is not only a potential, but is also a causal factor in which actions that occur.
Yes. An unrealized potential. But motives are not always a causal factor. Everyone is free to choose to act contrary to their motives at any time.
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You missed the point completely. Motive is irrelevant because it's a definition.
Motive is even less than that. It's only an unrealized potential. Only actions are real. Which is why, as a behaviorist, I couldn't care less why people do what's morally right.
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Great post. Why?
Even you deserve the truth.
In your answer I do not want to hear any flights of fancy on how Christianity isn't about faith and self sacrifice.
Doing good which benefits others is in your own selfish best interests because it accrues benefit to you by making you a better person. Doing good which benefits others also secures for you a treasure more precious than gold... goodwill. And that can never be stolen from you.
Being a leftist, you believe the fallacy that goodness can only be zero sum... that what is good for one person can only come about through what is bad for another. From your own ample expressions, you've made it clear that you are not a business person, because even mundane impersonal ethical financial transactions benefit both parties involved.
Words have meanings. If your version of Christianity is all about reason and selfishness then don't call it Christianity.
I don't believe in unreasonable indiscriminate self sacrifice any more than you do, because that is not Christianity. However, immoral irrationality is your government which indiscriminately gives the unearned to the undeserving, while making both the looter and the moocher into worse human beings.
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Based on what? Why don't you believe in the "secularist interpretation"?
Because it's not true.
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After some thought, I realize it's not necessary to know the motive.
Yes.
It is only our behavior which makes the world what it is... not our intentions.
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whYNOT wrote: Let's not forget that Objectivst virtues are not monopolized by O'ism.
Within your well reasoned comments this particular statement jumped right off the page. You expressed the truth that values are not zero sum. That the same value can be found in different ideologies can only add to its validity. No ideology can claim virtue as its own when virtue belongs to anyone who chooses to aspire to live by it.
If all of the cultural, societal, and ideological differences could be stripped away... it would be impossible to tell the difference between the decent behavior of a Christian, a Jew, or an Objectivist.
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Also to be considered is what Ayn Rand had to say about the actual meaning of selfishness:
(a little more from same the link)
"The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is:concern with one’s own interests.
This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions."
And I agree... selfishness itself is amoral. Whether what we are selfish about is good or evil is determined by our own actions and the consequences they spin into motion.
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Kantian Christianity ("Kantianity"), i.e., the anti-intellectual, faith-based, altruistic, humility mongering, Scriptural cherry-picking Christianity of the modern west is certainly not compatible with Objectivism...or reason...or life...or Capitalism...or Christ.
But true Christianity is absolutely (and exclusively) compatible with reason and life and Capitalism and the good (i.e. rational) parts of Objectivism.
I also experience the harmony between Christianity and many of the Ideas of Ayn Rand. And the real irony is that I don't believe in the secularists' interpretation of Christianity any more than they do.
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No, psychological egoism is invalid, because some people pursue things in the self-interest of others.
...and I'm certainly one of them. I daily further the self interests of others because it is in my own self interest to do so.
Again, the reasons why one acts establishes what is selfish. Part of that involves what one knows - if you honestly know something to be in your long-term self-interest, then it is selfish, even if it does not conform to what I know.
...and the reality of the just and deserved consequences of our own actions is the final judge of whether or not what we do is actually in our own best self interest.
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I say we have the most corrupt government in the world in the last 20 years.
...and that's only because we have the most corrupt citizens who created that most corrupt government in their own most corrupt image.
Our system countenances trillions of dollar of corruption as well as patronage on a massive and unsustainable scale.
...and that massive unsustainable system is a perfect match for the rotten values by which the majority are living their own lives.
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Well, this is incorrect, if you pursue destructive things knowingly, that can't be selfish.
"Knowingly" is the operative word. Everyone believes that what they pursue is in their own best self interest... whether or not it actually is. Some people choose to love truth, while others choose to love lies. What each of us loves is purely a personal choice.
As relevant to the OP, a good question to start reasoning with is why make a religious sect as manipulation. Presumably, a lot of money. But how does the manipulation impact your life further?
It makes you less of a decent human being.
Manipulation conforms to moral law in that to the extent that you seek to manipulate others... to that same degree you are suceptable to being manipulated by others.
Or as the old saying goes...
"The easiest man to con is a con man."
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Only what you pursue matters?
Yes.
Not that you pursue it?
Every livng human pursues. It's essential to life just as is breathing.
What you love comes from what you evaluate as right. Isn't pursuing what you evaluate as right called integrity regardless of whether it is in your rational self interest - do you mean to say this is amoral?
No. Morality depends on whether pursuing what you evaluate as right... actually is right.
You Don’t Believe in God – Disprove Him!
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
Posted
There can only be unsubstantiated assertions when there isn't any proof either way. You are welcome to present anything which you regard as proof for either case. But no matter what is said, the free choice to affirm or deny God will always be a personal one and each one of us can only harvest what we planted.
The question of God's existence will always be completely open... because there is never any coercion in love.