Atheists Who Celebrate All The Good That God Causes.

Your second line sounds like caring to me.

You can decide what you see as consistent, but that is not what makes it consistent. Indeed, you can be wrong about seeing something as consistent. True=False is not consistent with logic. You can decide to see it as consistent with logic, but that does not make it so, you'd simply be wrong.

So, if you and those atheists disagree on what you should be consistent to, then your point 13 isn't true:

"{13} I want to be consistent with this principle."

because actually, the atheist does not use the same principle as you do.

I don't see that that makes the position any better. It seems to me an ask can be incorrect.

"I ask that you water my plastic flowers, because I want them to grow".

This is an ask, yet it is based on false information (that plastic flowers grow if you water them). The fact that the sentence is a request or a hope, desire, belief or asking does not change the fact that the person saying it is wrong, and we could be justified in correcting them.

 

What would the issue be? The normal basis for holding someone to account for acts tend to be retribution, incapacitation, rehabilitation, deterrence and restoration. Retribution may be reliant on free will (and consequentially, is often considered not a good justification), but the others are not.

Humanism (in the secular humanism sense) suggests that moral worth comes from out humanity. The resulting morality is not subject to free will being real, nor does it suffer from the is/ought problem, both on account of being subjective. Some people don't like it being subjective, with the argument that it allows us to avoid our moral duties. However, if it is based in our humanity, then it is no more escapable than our humanity is.

 

Well, there are arguments that can be made that do not rely on position. If the argument of evil is a good reason to believe that there is no god, then looking in the Andromeda won't make a difference. Of course, you haven't actually been able to show me any atheists who make these claims (other than your fictional one), so I can't verify that that is the arguments being made, but I doubt that very many arguments atheists make would rely on having looked throughout the universe.

I'd be inclined to agree, but you bring up points that are dealt with by the unicorn argument, so maybe not.

What makes you think that? Indeed, consider the statement 2+2=4. That is true in the Andromeda galaxy. And I don't say that because I've added stuff together in the Andromeda galaxy, I say it because I have constructed an argument that is true everywhere. Clearly, there are arguments that can be made that don't require you to look everywhere to prove them.

 

If it is so crystal clear, couldn't you explain it to me?

It seems to me humans are very good at rationalising, and would do so even against a waterproof argument.

 

I get 1 and two. Rehab. On this system is this essentially reconditioning? 4 I get. On 5 I would add restitution/restoration. I greatly favor redirecting much of our criminal justice system of retribution to restitution, and where there is no victim to make restitution to, there is no crime.

I don't see how objective right and wrong exists outside of God, but, our current system is full of subjective laws, yet works fine, so I don't see it as a fatal flaw.

One concern I do have for a view that free-will is that would seem to lead to a result were everything is the result of triggering and conditioning. We seem to be flirting currently with a system where if a cry-bully says "that triggers me" that lawless activity is somewhat justified against who ever does the triggering, while what triggers others seems to fairly rapidly become "whatever I don't like," giving a lot of society control to whoever are the loudest babies who can describe what they don't like, in the most hate-filled terms.

​

 

Yes, rehabilitation includes anything that makes it less likely that the criminal commits more crime (or as bad crime). I'd say restitution/restoration is part of the restoration point. Either way, the point is that most of these principles don't rely on free will.

Well, with a subjective morality, it doesn't need to. Objective morals will always suffer from the is/ought problem. God doesn't resolve that, it's just a device to hide the problem. However, we don't need morals to be objective in order to hold people to them or to build laws.

We should not mix up right and wrong with lawful and unlawful. There is great overlap between the two, and they follow some of the same principles, but there are some areas where they don't overlap.

I'm not sure what the first sentence here says, are you saying this is a system based on free will, or based on no free will? I don't see either being particularly responsible for the rest of things you describe.

 

I don't see how what I describe has any application to free-will. If our response is an act of the will, then this idea that someone triggered us into the response is a cop out. I've been through a lot of training in the proper application of deadly force and square one before any responsible person will provide anyone training in that is the acceptance that I, and only I, am wholly and solely responsible for every action I take.

But, I know that you're not particularly sold on the concept of free will, so I was looking for areas of commonality. I like to see where folks with different viewpoints can agree in areas of policy. Everyone acknowledges that we have at least the illusion of free will. I see my sense of freely choosing as not appearance only, for if it were, nothing I think or do is of any significance whatsoever. Even the decision to believe in free-will would be meaningless, no more significant than a cramp. I lived a life of bent toward self-destruction, followed by the embracing that I have a real choice and opportunity to be free, a part of my being that is so essential to my humanity that even God honors it, to the point of giving me the freedom to destroy myself and others, or, the opposite, it's my choice. Now, if freedom of the will is a necessary condition of meaningfulness of my life, I may as well assume that I have it. After all, if I do not have free will and my life is meaningless, who cares?

If I understand your position correctly, you do not adhere to determinism, rather to random spontaneity. I don't see why that is incompatible with free will, rather, it would serve as a potential alternative cause. I'm also unclear on how that operationally differs from "it just happened", which doesn't appear to me to be as much an explanation as an appeal that an explanation is not needed, which frankly could be suspected as a means of avoiding the fact that one does not have an explanation.

My view is that I solely am the cause of every action I take, or refrain from taking, therefore, I have accountability for the results of my actions. It is up to me how I choose, and nothing determines my choice. My decisions are differentiated from random events by being done by me, for reasons that are mine, that are formed in my mind.

So, on your system, if I lift my arm, that's not an act of the will, but rather a random brain event? That' can't be what you mean. So, I make a free-will decision to lift my arm. I attribute this act to a free will decision. What do you attribute it to?

Free Will Agents, Making Really Destructive Choices​

 

Some people act as if this is the 1st generation to ever protest.

 

It may be sensible to tell people who may have to make the decision to apply deadly force in stressful situations that there is free will. I'm not convinced that that makes it so, though.

If there is no free will, then nurture and nature have an impact on how we act, so does the situation. You could make the argument that if there is no free will, then we have no justification to blame people for their wrongdoing, but if we accept that line of thinking, then we also have no justification for not allowing people to blame whoever they want. All in all, that just gives us nothing to go on, but of course, it leaves room for us to pursue other bases for our actions.

I don't see how you make the jump from there not being free will to there not being significance. If there was a truly random event that caused a tree to hit me and break my leg, it would seem to me that it was not caused by free will (and would not have "meaning"), but still carries a lot of significance. Or if I was tortured by someone without free will (there may be meaning, and definitely significance).

I don't see that freedom of the will is necessary for the meaningfulness or significance of ones life. Yes, it doesn't have "ultimate" meaning or significance, but if that doesn't exist anyway, then why focus on that, when actual meaning and significance is on the menu?

I believe I have not committed to either determinism or random processes in this thread. I switch between those (as well as any other I can think of) depending on which makes my argument the clearest.

My actual view has aspect of both random and deterministic ideas. Fundamentally, it is random, in that there are truly random events which can shape the world. That being said, they tend to fall in pretty narrow ranges, and don't infuse the world with any more meaning/otherwise than deterministic causes, so in practice, it will look more like determinism than a world in which humans would identify random stuff happening all the time.

I think people "randomly" lifting their arms is extremely rare (it might happen, what do I know, but my guess is negligibly often). I think the vast vast majority of times you've chosen to lift your arm, you were prompted to lift your arm. You tried to do a specific thing (including scratching an itch, or attempting to prove that you can do supposedly uncaused actions), and consequentially lifted your arm. So, I do not attribute the act to a free will decision, I attribute it most likely to a constrained will decision (it could technically be caused by a random brain-fart, but I view it as relatively unlikely).

My view is that you are fully responsible and accountable for actions you take, but others who have an impact on your actions are also responsible and should be held accountable. I do not mean to relieve people of their accountability, but if we look no further than to the individual, we'd miss many important aspects of what make people behave the way they do.

 

That's a bit of a platitude though. It doesn't actually tell you what makes things good, since you have to understand what good is to evaluate it (which of course makes it useless when it comes to trying to figure out what good is).

I think there are positions which do not require that sort of faith. For instance, anything that happens in our heads, we actually have access to. I might not be able to say "there is an onion in my fridge", but I may be able to say "I am pretty sure that I have an onion in my fridge". Similarly, I can that an argument has been convincing (rather than whether it is true).

In addition, there is some access between reality and things in our heads, such as convincingness. If someone said "the sky is blue, therefore you have an onion in your fridge", I can say for sure that that would not be convincing (there may be aspects that link blue skies to onions, but if it is not detailed in the sentence, then the sentence is still not convincing, even if it happens to be true).

This is one of the reasons I reject your idea of percentages, because it makes statements about truth that it cannot uphold. Concepts like "beyond reasonable doubt" however, have the link between reality and our minds baked into them.

 

That looks to me like giving a rat's butt. I'm not concerned with you making your point, I'm concerned with you asking or expecting them to make your points.

How so?

The kelp example illustrates that you are using some principle for what you think atheists should be saying, but which you are hiding. If it was true that we should state things that are true, then you should ask people to talk about kelp, just as you ask people to talk about hospitals. However, you do not, you use some justification to single out hospitals and not kelp. I believe that if we looked closely at that principle, and how it applies to atheists, it wouldn't actually single out hospitals either. However, you have chosen not to disclose your principle, either because you don't understand my argument or because you don't want your logic examined.

The four atheists show that my understanding of what atheists think is at least more reliable than yours in predicting what atheists think. My guess is that your entire logic is based on misunderstandings of what atheists believe. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but you refuse to show me the atheists you talk about, or the principles you use.

I agree, therefore I haven't been complaining about that.

Again, you have failed to provide the link between what one believes to be true and what one ought to state.

So that seems to be number 6 in my list of people who believe point 14, but who don't bring it up in most places because it is beside the point in most cases when point 12 is used. That's 6 against your 0.

 

I will expect whatever I want to expect.
You don't have any authority to tell me what I can, or can not expect.
Or what I should, or should not, expect.

I don't care what they say because it does not matter what
they say. If they mention 1 -6, I am going to request
of them they they also observe 13 and mention 14.
Its merely a request and it can be described as my:
personal:
-- request
-- view
-- opinion
-- hope
-- desire
-- belief
-- suggestion
-- expectation
-- asking

And my Opening Post never went any further than asking,
In fact I used that exact word "ask" in my opening Post.

___________

Speaking earlier of "red herrings", your posts are packed with
red herrings. You ignored the simplicity of my Opening Post
and crammed this thread full of your red herrings and a huge
number of your personal opinions and a huge amount of
subjects and rabbit trails that HAD NOTHING to do with my
Opening Post. ---and you STILL ARE DOING THAT.

Absurd nonsense.
I don't care how many you find. So what? You can get 5000
of them to "agree with you" -- that has got ZERO to do with
my Opening Post -- - but everything to do your red herrings
and your misdirection and your own personal issues.

Again , , ,
I don't care what they say because it does not matter what
they say. If they mention 1 -6, I am going to request
of them they they also observe 13 and mention 14.
Its merely a request and it can be described as my:
personal:
-- request
-- view
-- opinion
-- hope
-- desire
-- belief
-- suggestion
-- expectation
-- asking

And my Opening Post never went any further than asking,
In fact I used that exact word "ask" in my opening Post.

 

Again, who are you to decide for me, what I think
people "ought to state "?

I ask.
I request.
Keep on ignoring this below:

I don't care what they say because it does not matter what
they say. If they mention 1 -6, I am going to request
of them they they also observe 13 and mention 14.
Its merely a request and it can be described as my:
personal:
-- request
-- view
-- opinion
-- hope
-- desire
-- belief
-- suggestion
-- expectation
-- asking

And my Opening Post never went any further than asking,
In fact I used that exact word "ask" in my opening Post.


``

 

You quoted me below:
JAG Wrote:
I will continue to hold the following: {my 1 -14} as applied to
atheists when their talk and conversations are
about 1 - 6
And if their conversations are NOT about 6 -12, then
I do NOT call upon them to also include 13 and 14

And its all just that simple.
This is not complicated.
End quote

Swensson Replied:
"I agree"___Swensson

JAG Now Replies:
Good.
That's all I ask.
That is all my Opening Post asks.

 

It does not matter what they think.

Keep on ignoring this:
I don't care what they say because it does not matter what
they say. If they mention 1 -6, I am going to request
of them they they also observe 13 and mention 14.
Its merely a request and it can be described as my:
personal:
-- request
-- view
-- opinion
-- hope
-- desire
-- belief
-- suggestion
-- expectation
-- asking

And my Opening Post never went any further than asking,
In fact I used that exact word "ask" in my opening Post.

It does not matter what they think.

Keep on ignoring this:
I don't care what they say because it does not matter what
they say. If they mention 1 -6, I am going to request
of them they they also observe 13 and mention 14.
Its merely a request and it can be described as my:
personal:
-- request
-- view
-- opinion
-- hope
-- desire
-- belief
-- suggestion
-- expectation
-- asking

And my Opening Post never went any further than asking,
In fact I used that exact word "ask" in my opening Post.

 

Which is precisely what you have done in this thread with
my watertight Opening Post .-- which was, and still is, a
very simple idea. For example:
I will continue to hold the following: {my 1 -14} as applied to
atheists when their talk and conversations are
about 1 - 6
And if their conversations are NOT about 6 -12, then
I do NOT call upon them to also include 13 and 14

And its all just that simple.
This is not complicated.

 

If I felt strongly about kelp, then I would ask them to talk about
kelp. I do not feel strongly about kelp, but I do feel strongly
about my 1 -14 , , , ,

Many atheists say the following:
{1) I am an atheist.
{2} i don't believe in God.
{3} But He may exist.
{4} I can't prove He does.
{5} I can't prove He doesn't.
{6} The Bible says He is Omnipotent.
{7} That means He is all powerful.
{8} He could have created a different world.
{9} But He did not do that.
{10} He created the world we now have.
{11} That means He is responsible for all that exists.
{12} Therefore God is responsible for bone cancer in children.
I would hope they also include 13 and 14
{13} I want to be consistent with this principle.
{14} Therefore God is also responsible for Hospitals and the Red Cross

 

That is exactly what I say about your posts and your views.
You can decide what you see as consistent, but that is not what
makes it consistent. Indeed, you can be wrong about seeing
something as consistent. True=False is not consistent with logic.
You can decide to see it as consistent with logic, but that does
not make it so, you'd simply be wrong And you ARE wrong about
my Opening Post and my 1 -14 -- totally wrong.
____________

Again you and I do not agree on the color of an orange.
We do not agree on the color of a lemon.

100% irrelevant to my Opening Post and my 1 -14

Your "justified" is totally subject personal opinion.Plastic flowers has zero
to do with the gravity of my 1 -14
Your plastic flowers is a red herring with regard to my Opening Post.
Its is also:
spin
twist
wiggle
squirm
To say or suggest that an "ask can be incorrect" is 100% absurd nonsense.
And all it is, is you squirming and wiggling in order to avoid the watertight
simplicity of the Opening Post.

 

I do not see how I can make it any clearer than this:

"I am 'interested' in your points 2 through 7, but I do not believe they are true"___Swensson

Heh heh, if Andy could successfully accomplish {1} , , , then {2} -- {8} would be his to enjoy.
And that should be obvious --- crystal clear and absolute certain.

{1} You can not demonstrate with Empirical evidence that God does not exist.
{2} If you could do that, you'd be a $ millionaire in just a few weeks.
{3} You would also win many secular awards and prizes.
{4} You would be on national television prime time constantly.
{5} You would be invited to be a guest on all the cable news channels.
(6) You would become the most famous man in all of human history.
(7} You would be the man that had, at last, eliminated Theism off the planet.
{8} Just think. You can eliminate:
Christianity
Islam
Judaism , , ,

, , ,off the planet once and for all , , ,
, , ,and all you have to do is just produce your evidence that there is no God.

Does it make you uncomfortable to know that {1) through {8} is the truth?

Millions of dollars and world fame awaits the atheist that can prove there
is no God and vanish , , ,
Christianity
Islam
Judaism , , ,
, , ,off the planet once and for all.

But they don't really want the $ millions of dollars and world fame.

Yeah right!
End quote.

My view that up there is an clear as can be -- to anybody that wants
to understand what It says.

It is factually true ---Swensson if you accoplish 1 then 2 - 8 would be
yours to enjoy.

JAG

 

More unnecessary nit-picking.
Here is the exchange between you and I

JAG Previously Quoted And Wrote:
Start quote.
"Very vague."__Swensson

"It is the best I can do."___JAG

JAG Wrote:
What about the "greater good" motive?
On Christianity the self-sacrifice of God and the Lord Jesus
resulted in Eternal Life for trillions and trillions. I am a good
Postmillennialist and believe that the human race is in its
infancy and that human history can run for a million years
hence, thus allowing time for trillions and trillions of humans
to be born and salvaged."___JAG

Swensson Replied With:
"Very vague. The majority of arguments appeal to some form
of greater good, the question is what constitutes good and
why."__Swensson

JAG Replies:
Regarding Greater Good" , , ,
All is well that ends well. And on Christianity, all ends VERY well.

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling
place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be
his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 'He will
wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning
or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
___Revelation 21:3-4

a} God will dwell with them
b} humans will be His people
c} God will wipe every tear from their eyes
d} there will be no more Death
e} no more mourning
f} no more crying
g} no more pain
h} the Old Order of things has passed away.

_____

So, Swensson, All Is Well That Ends Well.
End quote
______________________________________________________________

And Swensson Replies With:

More unnecessary nit-picking
The point is this:
I go out of my way to compose interesting points for your consideration
and every single time, you nitpick them constantly and unnecessarily
pick them to pieces and not constructively either.
My view is that you have already decided BEFORE I even compose my
points and my posts that you are going to DISAGREE with them.

Let me repeat that.
My view is that even BEFORE I write my posts, you have ALREADY made
your decision that you are going to DISAGREE with what I write BEFORE
I even write it.


``

 

That is an interesting word. Your usage of it is the first time
I have seen that jewel. Cool word.

JAG

 

Humm, yeah?

That'd be kinda hard to do. They're in various threads all over
the Internet At Large and every now and then they will
state the substance of my 6 -12.
I got tired of hearing ONLY their 6 -12 and so I wrote my
Opening Post to encourage them to also observe my 13 and
state my 14. I only asked them to do that. I did not make any
demands. They can say yes or no. Some said yes and some
said no. Then I moved on to something else. Its not a big deal,
My Opening Post is not a Big Deal. If some cat out there does
not want to observe my 13 and state my 14 --- then that's okay
cool with me.

Easy. All ya gotta do is re-read that paragraph just above.
That's it. There isn't anything else. That IS my principle{s}.

'Course, now we don't have anything to argue about , , , /Big Grin
So we gotta take something that is very simple and we gotta
turn it into a conglomeration of mind-boggling
complicatedness and keep it going for 31 pages
so that only God Himself could even possibly begin
to unravel this thread.

Now pick what I just wrote to pieces. . . lol . .

JAG

 

The entire point of the question was whether you could make the argument that it is good for mothers not to love their children. You suggested that children brought up thus would have stronger constitutions as an example of a non-functioning argument (I appreciate that you don't actually argue that mothers should not love their children). I argue that the argument is not complete, since it does not for instance take into account the fact that the children might have stronger constitutions but still be miserable, and therefore, the mistake you made was to equate "stronger constitutions" to "better" (or something we "ought" to do). I would for instance suggest that "better" would be a combination of factors which may include both stronger constitutions and whether someone is miserable.

I.e. my problem with this was that you had made a hasty and simplistic assumption of what made something good, so I asked you to clarify. You gave suggestions such as "for the greater good" or "all's well that ends well", neither which can tell which one is better of the two alternatives (mostly because it still requires us to figure out what "greater good" or "well" means, just as we did before you had suggested them).

We were discussing grand and important ideas, and we disagreed on them, so I drilled down into exactly what the disagreements were. Obviously I will disagree on the points, since the fact that there is a disagreement there is the reason why I ask you to detail it in the first place.

That's also why you're not going to get away with wishy washy stuff like "all is well that ends well", if you failed to address the point that I originally asked about, then there is going to be a glaring hole in the logic. If I'm challenging why a child's happiness isn't taken into account, then I'm not going to be satisfied by "good is what is for the greater good", since it doesn't actually help me string the pieces together.

 

I haven't suggested that you send me every instance, I'm asking you to show me one (maybe two for good measure). Just to be clear, I'm not asking you to show me people who have stated 6-12, I'm asking for ones that explicitly don't believe 14 (as opposed to those who merely have not seen fit to insert it into a debate about the argument of evil). If it is your view that 99.99% of atheists believe that (I recognise that 99.99% is an exaggeration, but your point is "many") then you should be able to show me at least one or two. I mean, I've found six on my side, so clearly, it's not that hard to find people.

Well, I'm not asking you not to, I'm just pointing out that your point 13 makes incorrect assumptions about what atheists are trying to be consistent with.

There must be some principle in there that you're not disclosing, because you make judgements that don't rely on those. For instance, you have chosen to talk about hospitals, and not about kelp. Obviously, I likely agree that kelp is not important, but I want you to tell my why (in particular, because it either might also be true for hospitals, or it might not relevant to the atheists you present it to).

 

"They would simply like to change the subject. They are in a position analogous to that of secularists who urge that research concerning the Nature, or the Will, of God does not get us anywhere. Such secularists are not saying that God does not exist, exactly; they feel unclear about what it would mean to affirm His existence, and thus about the point of denying it. Nor do they have some special, funny, heretical view about God. They just doubt that the vocabulary of theology is one we ought to be using."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm