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06/01/2012 06:27:33 PM · #351 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Originally posted by RayEthier:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
"But in any case I'm not painting a religion... I'm painting religion." Holy cow. How could we get any more broad or stereotyping? Perhaps hone your language a little and it won't be so offensive.. |
When one considers the views expressed by religious groups, I can understand how a generalization such as this could creep into the conversation.
Ray |
Bigot. |
You forgot to add "Amoral Atheist" that some other person alluded to a while back... I feel cheated. :O)
Ray
Message edited by author 2012-06-01 18:28:58. |
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06/01/2012 06:34:10 PM · #352 |
Originally posted by RayEthier:
You forgot to add "Amoral Atheist" that some other person alluded to a while back... I feel cheated. :O)
Ray |
Still waiting for you to dig up that quote Ray... |
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06/01/2012 06:37:26 PM · #353 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Originally posted by RayEthier:
You forgot to add "Amoral Atheist" that some other person alluded to a while back... I feel cheated. :O)
Ray |
Still waiting for you to dig up that quote Ray... |
You will note that I did explicitly state that you did NOT say that. I can (I am certain) find something that alludes to that comment that you indicated that YOU did NOT state.
Ray |
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06/01/2012 06:44:03 PM · #354 |
| BTW, Ray, I don't really consider you any more bigoted than any of us here on Rant. Honestly, by the common definition, any of the usual Rant suspects are bigoted by being "obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices". It's just fun to throw it out there because many people I run across gasp and say, "oh, I'm no bigot because I'm not religious." Those people need a little nose tweaking. You can decide for yourself if you are one of them. ;) |
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06/01/2012 06:46:56 PM · #355 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
BTW, Ray, I don't really consider you any more bigoted than any of us here on Rant. Honestly, by the common definition, any of the usual Rant suspects are bigoted by being "obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices". It's just fun to throw it out there because many people I run across gasp and say, "oh, I'm no bigot because I'm not religious." Those people need a little nose tweaking. You can decide for yourself if you are one of them. ;) |
BTW - you did remember saying it at some point... //www.dpchallenge.com/forum.php?action=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=1058922&page=15
Originally posted by RayEthier:
...and you are asking this in this thread because???
Did you not suggest a while back in some other thread that "Atheists" were amoral...so how could they possibly even begin to hope to help? :O)
Ray
That was tongue-in-cheek. I know atheists have moral systems. I just want to explore them. (And, yes, before someone says the blatantly obvious, I understand there is no single "atheist morality". I chose this one because it's commonly mentioned here on DPC.)
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06/01/2012 07:29:15 PM · #356 |
| Heh. That's no smoking gun Kelli. If anything it reveals what I really think (ie. atheists are not amoral). It's not a big deal, but a few people have said I have held such an opinion and nobody has ever found the actual conversation. You guys didn't even accept the scientific data looking at sex selective abortions, why should we suddenly think this qualifies as some sort of evidence? ;) |
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06/01/2012 07:30:52 PM · #357 |
| Enter a challenge whydontcha? :-) |
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06/01/2012 07:48:33 PM · #358 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Heh. That's no smoking gun Kelli. If anything it reveals what I really think (ie. atheists are not amoral). It's not a big deal, but a few people have said I have held such an opinion and nobody has ever found the actual conversation. You guys didn't even accept the scientific data looking at sex selective abortions, why should we suddenly think this qualifies as some sort of evidence? ;) |
What I was pointing out was that you at that point had remembered saying something along those lines, but that you weren't serious. ;D
I wasn't accusing you of anything. |
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06/01/2012 07:50:02 PM · #359 |
Gotcha. Backing down now. Slowing panic breathing. Modulating fight or flight response... ;)
I almost entered the green macro challenge but my subject went into hiding... |
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06/01/2012 07:55:15 PM · #360 |
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06/01/2012 09:26:50 PM · #361 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
II almost entered the green macro challenge but my subject went into hiding... |
Did you check behind the huge stack of baloney in the fridge?
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06/01/2012 10:32:41 PM · #362 |
Originally posted by RayEthier:
I can (I am certain) find something that alludes to that comment that you indicated that YOU did NOT state. |
Something? There's a whole thread full of it right HERE. To summarize, Jason states repeatedly that he's NOT saying atheists are amoral. Oh, no... only that they lack a moral foundation (no logical reason to be moral) and the faithful don't, which is why Americans wouldn't vote for an atheist:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
"All I was trying to say was atheism is not concerned with telling people how to act. Religion is. That's all I'm say. Tie that into my poor attempt at explaining why only 45% of Americans think an atheist would make a good president and you have my whole argument." |
He tried desperately to tap dance around the obvious implication:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
You guys keep thinking that I'm saying that atheists are amoral. They are not. But the term "atheism" does not conjure up a stereotypical code of conduct in ones mind because no such stereotypical code of conduct exists. |
But he's literally declaring that the morality of a candidate is questionable without belief in a god. There are similar posts readily found throughout Rant, including this little gem:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Originally posted by Ivo:
As an atheist, you would only do selfless things for tangible personal benefit as logic is your religion. |
I also think Ivo's point is completely rational. All actions to a materialist should be, at least on some level, self-serving. A completely selfless act would be illogical and against a materialists worldview. Take it to the extreme. How could a materialist ever justify sacrificing their life for a complete stranger? I do not see how such an action could ever compute as something "logical" to do for a materialist. |
Message edited by author 2012-06-01 23:00:28. |
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06/02/2012 12:15:28 AM · #363 |
Your summarizing statement of my position is incorrect Shannon. I don't, however retract any of my quotes. Understood, they do reflect my position.
Wow. That post was from 2007. You had to go back five years?!?
Message edited by author 2012-06-02 00:18:45. |
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06/02/2012 12:46:31 AM · #364 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Your summarizing statement of my position is incorrect Shannon. |
Well, fortunately you clarified it for us:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
my point is that while Slime Mold apparently exhibits altruistic behavior, it is unconventional to call such behavior "morality" [<-- slime mold = amoral]... 55% of Americans don't think an atheist is "up to snuff" to being president when he/she considers morality as much a realm of slime mold as of humans [<-- atheist = amoral] |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Wow. That post was from 2007. You had to go back five years?!? |
Maybe that's why Yanko suggested your baloney was old? The other quote was from 2009, not that it matters:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
I don't, however retract any of my quotes. Understood, they do reflect my position. |
Perhaps you'd prefer a quote from 2011? Let's see you tap dance this one away:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
NOT ALL ATHEISTS ARE AMORAL. Shannon IS in any meaningful sense of morality. |
You've made similar insinuations as recently as 3 weeks ago:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
I refuse to pay any attention to statements like this coming from someone who feels morality is merely make believe anyway. |
Oh, and don't even bother trying to pawn this off as only talking about the basis of a still-moral person since your direct implication is that morality from such a foundation is less "up to snuff" than that of a Wiccan, radical Muslim, or Voodoo cult follower merely because the latter groups subscribe to a religion while an atheist doesn't. That's horribly offensive, and to demand evidence of such a quote in the context of calling Ray a bigot for "sweeping all religious people into the same group" is frankly appalling.
Message edited by author 2012-06-02 01:32:20. |
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06/02/2012 02:40:57 AM · #365 |
The statements about you are directly related to your twenty post defense of Moral Error Theory, not the fact you are an atheist. If you want to say you don't personally buy into Moral Error Theory then I'll retract my statement, but rather think you a devious polemicist since you seemed to defend it to within an inch of your life. Your choice.
Do we feel the need for me to go quote dredging about what YOU say regarding morality? I thought not. |
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06/02/2012 09:44:11 AM · #366 |
So we should ignore the rest and focus only on your statement about me? Fine, the twenty posts of your buffoonery are here if anyone has the stomach for it. For others, let me 'splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up:
You begin with the faulty assumption that morality is only informed by religion and double down on that error by asking how an atheist moral system (WTF?) then has any possible basis for declaring something right or wrong. Enter a group smackdown pointing out that atheism is not a system just like disbelief in unicorns is not a system. A tap dance routine ensues where you claim that you're not saying atheism is a system and simply want to know what informs the atheist moral system (WTF, take 2). Naturally, this goes nowhere, so you try to reframe the question with the assertion that morality is a universal, objective truth rather than something agreed upon by society, and I asked you to prove it. You reply with "sometimes stealing is wrong," which is no more proof than saying "sometimes driving 65mph is wrong" proves that traffic laws are universal objective truths. I and others contended that statements of morality– "eating with your left hand is wrong," "talking on your cell phone in a theater is wrong," "eating bacon is wrong," "a woman baring her shoulders in public is wrong"- are obviously neither universal nor objective, but creations of society based upon other underlying reasons or instincts which may themselves be true or not. Stalin, Mengele and forced sterilization provide occasional comic relief as bad things supposedly done for the sake of disbelief in gods, and Paul schools you in chess. You unilaterally assign a title to my position and declare than I must be amoral if I think morals are a creation of society and thus essentially fiction just as the knowledge that traffic laws are created by society must mean we consider those laws invalid because they're make-believe. You obsess over this last absurd notion in subsequent threads, going so far as to equate atheists with materialists and materialists as necessarily amoral, and then pretend you never said atheists were amoral (despite quite a few people calling you out for doing exactly that) and feign indignation over "sweeping all religious people into the same group." I envision you typing in clown makeup with a duck on your head and we all move on.
Message edited by author 2012-06-02 14:19:21. |
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06/02/2012 10:45:16 AM · #367 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Well, you can count on me as being one of "them" and I am here to dissuade you from forming that impression. :) You've got your own personal evangelical staring you in the face saying "it ain't so!" |
As far as I know, you're not your own pastor. What does your faith leader say? And why should I listen to the exception, when the majority of faith leaders are silent on the issue, despite easily being able to present a national, unified, horrified front of criticism the moment Dan Savage opines that there's some BS in the bible? Wouldn't listening to one voice (yours) be focusing on... a fringe element... which you've just admonished me not to do?
To put it another way, and assuming you're NOT a lonely fringe element, when evaluating Catholic beliefs on birth control, should I listen to the pope, or the majority of a renegade laity who use it anyway? When evaluating Catholic beliefs on the sin of homosexuality, should I listen to the Pope, or the Catholics who "When asked if sexual activity between people of the same sex is sinful, 56 percent said no." Here's a huge difference between the platform held by the pope, and what individuals say privately when polled.
Call me crazy, but I listen to the Pope. Because the Pope sets the agenda, and I'm not a big fan of cherry picking.
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Your summarizing statement of my position is incorrect Shannon. I don't, however retract any of my quotes. Understood, they do reflect my position.
Wow. That post was from 2007. You had to go back five years?!? |
OMG... suggesting that someone has misrepresented your position?
You are sounding more shrill by the moment...
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06/02/2012 10:58:09 AM · #368 |
I keep getting this thread mixed up with the who would vote for Romney one, must be the size of the walls.
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06/02/2012 01:27:57 PM · #369 |
Originally posted by jagar:
must be the size of the walls. |
or the color of the padding. |
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06/02/2012 02:19:12 PM · #370 |
Thanks for your summary Shannon. Your Princess Bride quote made me smile and it's been too long since I've watched that movie. You could have saved yourself quite a bit of effort by simply stating, "I do not subscribe to moral error theory." If you said that I have no reason to consider you to be amoral. I'm not sure if you would say something like that because either a) you do subscribe to it or b) you don't like making statements so straightfoward (which is consistent with your usual debating style of always leaving a way out for yourself).
A moral error theorist is amoral. If not, the word has no meaning. Not all atheists are moral error theorists. I would guess that all moral error theorists are athesits (but I suppose I could be wrong).
As far as everybody else is concerned who has worries that I consider atheism to automatically equal amorality, the thread you found should be sufficient to make a judgement. I made many straightforward, difficult to misinterpret quotes:
"Again, I am NOT saying atheists are not moral, but rather atheism does not concern itself with morality."
"My supposition is that morality is not the raison d'etre of atheism..."
" I am not arguing that you are not a moral being. I am not arguing that Shannon is not a moral being." (obviously many years before I was introduce to moral error theory.)
"...someone who is simply described as "an atheist" as being someone who doesn't have a grounding in morality. (yes, this is likely a falsehood.)"
"Atheists can have mores. Atheists can have morality. AtheISM, as an "ism", does not have the discussion of mores and morality as its raison d'etre (A basic, essential purpose)."
I hope those quotes are illuminating enough to put this silliness behind us. If they aren't I don't really think anything will and that's just a cross I'll have to bear. |
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06/02/2012 03:24:51 PM · #371 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Your Princess Bride quote made me smile and it's been too long since I've watched that movie. |
I was wondering if anyone would catch that. :-)
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
You could have saved yourself quite a bit of effort by simply stating, "I do not subscribe to moral error theory." |
As you're the only one to make that claim and I never heard of the term before, you need only retract your own label as I've stated my understanding of the basis for morality (thereby excluding amorality) clearly and often.
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
As far as everybody else is concerned who has worries that I consider atheism to automatically equal amorality... I made many straightforward, difficult to misinterpret quotes: |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Naturalistic materialism dictates there is no God. There is no objective purpose. There is no meaningful morality. [you have also declared in Rant that all atheists are natural materialists] |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Passages from a Philosophy Now essay: " The long and the short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality."... In sum, while theists take the obvious existence of moral commands to be a kind of proof of the existence of a Commander, i.e., God, I now take the non-existence of a Commander as a kind of proof that there are no Commands, i.e., morality."
[This] is obvious proof that unless writing from a straitjacket is grounds to get you accepted to Philosophy Now, Shannon (and Ed) merely resort to ad hominem attacks on my sanity rather than accept that I am not alone in my accusation and assertions of the consequences of their worldviews. |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
1. God is not real; he is fictional.
2. God caused me to be outraged at (insert outrage)
Don't you think statement 2 would be silly coming from an atheist? And if statement 1 is a definition of an atheist, wouldn't 'morality has no objective value: it is a fiction' be a good definition of amorality? |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
anybody who bothers to look at morality would see this is the reality of all systems. Of course pretend, fictional systems could be whatever you want because we're all playing house anyway. |
See? It's not just your cross, but your own hammer and nails. You've been invited to put this silliness behind us before and choose to persist:
Originally posted by scalvert:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
NOT ALL ATHEISTS ARE AMORAL. Shutterpuppy would be an excellent example. Shannon IS in any meaningful sense of morality. I'm getting sick of it. |
Then stop making up this garbage. The rest of us are sick of it, too. Somewhere in the dark recesses of your perverted logic, you've seized upon the bizarre notion that a moral system that only exists as a construct of society is the same as no morality at all. By that reasoning, I must also not believe in rules, laws, dress codes, manners, paper money or anything else defined by cultural consensus. It's not just fallacious, it's idiotic. |
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06/02/2012 04:21:35 PM · #372 |
Originally posted by scalvert:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
You could have saved yourself quite a bit of effort by simply stating, "I do not subscribe to moral error theory." |
As you're the only one to make that claim and I never heard of the term before, you need only retract your own label as I've stated my understanding of the basis for morality (thereby excluding amorality) clearly and often. |
Wait. wait. wait. wait. Please be clear about this. Do you mean you never heard of this term before today? Or you never heard of this term before our previous conversation (however long ago that was)? |
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06/02/2012 04:39:43 PM · #373 |
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06/02/2012 04:43:16 PM · #374 |
For the record:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So you are back to being a Moral Error Theorist? |
Originally posted by Shannon:
Did I misspell moral fictionalism or is your monitor really dim? |
It seems like an admission to me unless you see a difference between Moral Error Theory and Moral Fictionalism. The terms are essentially interchangable and we used both in our conversation. It's too bad the essay you originally linked (and the moment I was even introduced to the concept) seems to be gone.
EDIT: I found it. You linked this. You introduced it to me. The essay includes the term "moral error theorist". Now, I know you are apt to quote links that you don't read very carefully, but the truth is, knowingly or not, you introduce the term to the conversation.
Message edited by author 2012-06-02 16:46:00. |
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06/02/2012 04:46:51 PM · #375 |
| Enter a challenge already! (I think Shannon actually has one in voting...) |
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