[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
So Pat, you get no personal satisfaction from feeding your child or helping a neighbor?
[/quote]
Maybe sometimes I do, maybe sometimes I don’t. Whether I do or don’t is irrelevant. How you feel about something does not make something moral or immoral.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
I’m not sure how antique they are [my ideas] but surely the idea that an external higher force exists [whether that’s god or morality] is at least as antique.
[/quote]
That wasn’t the question. The idea that the only things that exist are what your senses tell you exists is the antiquated idea.
The actions are still immoral, but his culpability for them may be affected by circumstances beyond his control.
So yes, you deny the existence of metaphysics…
You do realize there is no way to prove physical matter exists, right? You also know that breaking down physical matter leads us to a place where it’s not physical at all.
Our senses are crude instruments for telling us about the world.
Reason, logic, math, correlation are all higher level, non-physical objects. Yes, we have physical components that allow us to interact with these things, but these things lie beyond our physical existence. Otherwise they would die with us.
It all boils down to a simple question, does something exist if no one is around to sense it?
You need to spend lots of time with Plato’s forms. He was the father of metaphysics.
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/platform.htm
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
As for the history of the Catholic Church and blacks, look no further than the history of Mexico. When the Spanish were colonizing Mexico there was much debate as to whether the indigenous people had souls or were beasts. If you are unaware, Spain had a conquest model based on something academics call the Mission System, maybe you should familiarize yourself with it because it answers the question as to how Spain colonized Mexico, and why Mexico is predominantly Catholic today. [/quote]
The Spanish…not the Church. Mexico is predominantly Catholic today because of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Papacy told the Spanish to knock it off when they found out what they were doing.
But, not by the Church. They willingly baptized slaves, proving that they had souls.
Pope Paul III issued three major announcements against slavery…the most famous…Pope Paul III applied the same principle as Pope Eugene a century before, to the newly encountered inhabitants of the West and South Indies in the bull Sublimis Deus (1537).
You’re also not making a distinction between slavery based on debt and slavery based on color and religion. The Church didn’t say the former was inherently bad.
“Slavery” is the condition of involuntary servitude in which a human being is regarded as no more than the property of another, as being without basic human rights; in other words, as a thing rather than a person. Under this definition, slavery is intrinsically evil, since no person may legitimately be regarded or treated as a mere thing or object. This form of slavery can be called “chattel slavery.” (There are other ways in which the term can be used, such as in reference to the slavery discussed in the Old Testament, where slaves were regarded as property but nonetheless as bearers of human rights.)
However, there are circumstances in which a person can justly be compelled to servitude against his will. Prisoners of war or criminals, for example, can justly lose their circumstantial freedom and be forced into servitude, within certain limits. Moreover, people can also “sell” their labor for a period of time (indentured servitude).
60 years before Columbus, Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of peoples in the newly colonized Canary Islands. His bull Sicut Dudum (1435) rebuked European enslavers and commanded that “all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of [the] Canary Islands . . . who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money.”
When Europeans began enslaving Africans as a cheap source of labor, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was asked about the morality of enslaving innocent blacks (Response of the Congregation of the Holy Office, 230, March 20, 1686). The practice was rejected, as was trading such slaves. Slaveholders, the Holy Office declared, were obliged to emancipate and even compensate blacks unjustly enslaved.
Further decrees against slavery:
Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 bull, In Supremo, for instance, reiterated papal opposition to enslaving “Indians, blacks, or other such people” and forbade “any ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this trade in blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse.”
Pope Leo XIII in 1888 and 1890 condemned South America and Africa for their slavery.
[quote]St. Thomas Aquinas believed there was reason for slavery.
[/quote]
This is just a lie. St. Thomas Aquinas proved that slavery was a sin. Thomas’ overall analysis of morality in human relationships, Aquinas placed slavery in opposition to natural law, deducing that all “rational creatures” are entitled to justice. Hence he found no natural basis for the enslavement of one person rather than another, “thus removing any possible justification for slavery based on race or religion.” Right reason, not coercion, is the moral basis of authority, for “one man is not by nature ordained to another as an end.”
The fact that slavery was pretty much nonexistent around Thomas is telling on his lack of writing on the subject. The Church willingly baptized slaves was claimed as proof that they had souls, and soon both kings and bishops–including William the Conqueror (1027-1087) and Saints Wulfstan (1009-1095) and Anselm (1033-1109)–forbade the enslavement of Christians.
[quote]
Immanuel Kant, who is one of my heroes was a Lutheran who believed blacks were an inferior creature as well. I understand how much it sucks that some people we consider great were flawed and racist, but we change and evolve socially as well as spiritually, nothing wrong with it. I think you should maybe do a little more reading. You hold the church in such high esteem, it bugs you when people bring up it’s flaws.[/quote]
I don’t think it bothers either one of us, but when don’t do your own reading…then make false accusations that does upset us.
Lol. [/quote]
Word up BC… Well said.
[quote]ds1973 wrote:
I’d love to get involved in this thread, however I just don’t have the time to read the last 31 pages nor the time you guys seem to have free to discussing this. However, I’d like to post a link to an article that may be of interest to you all. Some neat neurological studies that try to shed light on the brain areas responsible for “morality”
How Does the Brain Secrete Morality?
Pondering the neuroscience of moral platitudes, free will, and sacred values.
If the link doesn’t post, goto reason.com and search for the title: How Does the Brain Secrete Morality?
[/quote]
How about using unbiased sources and not some atheist propaganda website for one? Second, we’re way past this point. Not compelled to read yet another wall of words for little purpose, you have to determine what morality is, before you can assess it’s physical components.
What morality is not is empathy and sympathy. Emotions are to flippant to be concrete enough to base something like morality on them…
atheist propaganda? Apparently only christians are allowed to talk about morality now?
forget reading then, here’s a video:
Oh, I readily accept that thing exist outside of our scope of perception. The bandwith of our senses is so limited compared to what’s out there, it would be silly of me to claim otherwise.
That, however, does not extend to an idea[l] existing separately from our senses.
[quote]So yes, you deny the existence of metaphysics…
You do realize there is no way to prove physical matter exists, right? You also know that breaking down physical matter leads us to a place where it’s not physical at all.
Our senses are crude instruments for telling us about the world.
Reason, logic, math, correlation are all higher level, non-physical objects. Yes, we have physical components that allow us to interact with these things, but these things lie beyond our physical existence. Otherwise they would die with us.
It all boils down to a simple question, does something exist if no one is around to sense it?
You need to spend lots of time with Plato’s forms. He was the father of metaphysics.
http://www.anselm.edu/...ch/platform.htm[/quote]
Basically, it doesn’t matter whether reality exists even if we aren’t here to experience it.
If we aren’t here to experience reality then reality could just as well not have existed at all.
You believe that a human quality exists that’s not dependent on the physical form, and will ultimately survive death.
I don’t share that belief.
Our difference in opinion is based on this.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
So Pat, you get no personal satisfaction from feeding your child or helping a neighbor?
[/quote]
Maybe sometimes I do, maybe sometimes I don’t. Whether I do or don’t is irrelevant. How you feel about something does not make something moral or immoral.[/quote]
I never suggested it did.
I was merely trying to point out that no action is without emotion.
[quote]ds1973 wrote:
atheist propaganda? Apparently only christians are allowed to talk about morality now?
forget reading then, here’s a video:
[/quote]
Are you unable to speak for yourself?
We’re not talking about the existence of God. I swear there must be some atheist school or bible or something. You guys say all the same shit and repeat and post the exact same shit al the time. I’d like to see something new from you guys, just to shake things up. Geez.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Oh, I readily accept that thing exist outside of our scope of perception. The bandwith of our senses is so limited compared to what’s out there, it would be silly of me to claim otherwise.
That, however, does not extend to an idea[l] existing separately from our senses.
[/quote]
So, by that reasoning. Things exist beyond our senses, but we can’t know what they are? WOW…
Clearly, reality doesn’t matter to that which doesn’t exist. That’s not the question, the question is does it exist if nothing conscious is around to sense it.
[quote]
You believe that a human quality exists that’s not dependent on the physical form, and will ultimately survive death.
I don’t share that belief.
Our difference in opinion is based on this.[/quote]
That’s not an opinions statement. It’s a factual statement and your flat wrong. Back to the math example. Does 2+2 still equal 4 without a mind to know it?
Let’s cut to the chase a bit. Numbers don’t exist as does math in a physical sense. We’ve been through this before, but you have gone through some strange regression.
You’re a fan of math and science as you claimed before, now you are positing that math doesn’t really exist because it’s a metaphysical object. You cannot sense it in anyway, we know it exists through reason alone. We represent it with symbols, but the symbols are representations of an object, not the object itself.
Under your professed view, if mathematics exists, it too exists as a manifestation of the human brain and is arbitrary and malleable depending on consensus and who chooses to believe it. So in your world 2+2 can equal 5 if I am in a room full of people who agree with me? Right?
You’re on a slippery slope, for with out static abstracts nothing has any foundation and all study is worthless because it depends on someones opinion alone.
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
So Pat, you get no personal satisfaction from feeding your child or helping a neighbor?
[/quote]
Maybe sometimes I do, maybe sometimes I don’t. Whether I do or don’t is irrelevant. How you feel about something does not make something moral or immoral.[/quote]
I never suggested it did.
I was merely trying to point out that no action is without emotion.
[/quote]
But that’s not the point. The point is that actions are what can be moral or immoral, emotions cannot.
Not exactly; form, symmetry, chaos all exist in nature not as a concept but as a part of undefined reality. This is different from ideas/ideals, those are purely human concepts.
Morality is not a part of reality we’ve defined [and refined], morality is part of reality because we conceived it.
How would we know if we don’t exist? We know when a trees falls in the forest it makes sound, so it’s logical to assume that when a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to witness it, the falling tree still makes sound.
But in this case the tree isn’t a concept, like morality.
If morality exists independent of humans, what is its source? You probably answered this before, I can’t remember, sorry.
I’m not argueing that math does not exist. One plus one equals two. As such math is the application of our perception of how reality is ordered.
You’d like to see morality, which is a concept, in the same light. I disagree.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
So Pat, you get no personal satisfaction from feeding your child or helping a neighbor?
[/quote]
Maybe sometimes I do, maybe sometimes I don’t. Whether I do or don’t is irrelevant. How you feel about something does not make something moral or immoral.[/quote]
I never suggested it did.
I was merely trying to point out that no action is without emotion.
[/quote]
But that’s not the point. The point is that actions are what can be moral or immoral, emotions cannot.[/quote]
Very true, but you stated you act without emotion in doing things that you feel are unpleasant.(feeding your kid in the early morning, and helping an annoying neighbor, I believe.)
My argument is that perhaps the feeling of satisfaction you get from living up to your own personal code of morality is just as much a motivator as the code itself.
Unless of course, you’re sole reason for being a good person is to avoid eternal damnation?
Even then though, every decision based on that premise would be based in fear, an emotion.
So, even though you can sit and prescribe that morality is it’s own separate entity, I can always rebuttal that the decisions being made in the name of morality serve to satisfy a specific emotional need, or a specific biological need.
Which brings us back to the idea that morality is an eternally evolving function of nature, as we evolve, so does our desire to make the world around us pleasant, some people attack this progression with selfish pursuits, others pursue this goal by imposing a code of ethics on their world, one of which they deem to result in a more pleasant and beneficial life experience on the whole.
So, I put forth that morality exists as consciousness exists, on a purely intangible, and individual level. I also put forth that it exists as a biological function to help propagate a more pleasing environment for both the individual and the species as a whole.
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
So, I put forth that morality exists as consciousness exists, on a purely intangible, and individual level. I also put forth that it exists as a biological function to help propagate a more pleasing environment for both the individual and the species as a whole.
[/quote]
It’s probably confirmation bias but I must say, “good post!”.
[quote]ephrem wrote:[quote]iVoodoo wrote:So, I put forth that morality exists as consciousness exists, on a purely intangible, and individual level. I also put forth that it exists as a biological function to help propagate a more pleasing environment for both the individual and the species as a whole.[/quote]It’s probably confirmation bias but I must say, “good post!”.[/quote]And I say once again that this is the very definition of religious faith that you claim to disdain in people like me. There is absolutely ZEEROH possibility that science, even as perverted by godless unbelief, will EVER provide you anything other than a wishfully thinking basis for this. You talk yourself into believing it to escape believing what I believe. Which is, according to the Word of God, what you actually cannot prevent yourself from believing anyway. This is a very old quest Ephrem. Zillions have tried. None have succeeded. You won’t be the first.
Morality= Guilt avoidance, pretty much everything else is just a means of rationalizing your ethical position.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:[quote]iVoodoo wrote:So, I put forth that morality exists as consciousness exists, on a purely intangible, and individual level. I also put forth that it exists as a biological function to help propagate a more pleasing environment for both the individual and the species as a whole.[/quote]It’s probably confirmation bias but I must say, “good post!”.[/quote]And I say once again that this is the very definition of religious faith that you claim to disdain in people like me. There is absolutely ZEEROH possibility that science, even as perverted by godless unbelief, will EVER provide you anything other than a wishfully thinking basis for this. You talk yourself into believing it to escape believing what I believe. Which is, according to the Word of God, what you actually cannot prevent yourself from believing anyway. This is a very old quest Ephrem. Zillions have tried. None have succeeded. You won’t be the first.
[/quote]
I never tried to talk you out of your faith Tiribulus.
In fact, I find it noble that you stick to your beliefs with such conviction.
As long as you are a good person, I don’t care who you pray to.
However I do have a problem when you insist that good people will burn in eternal hellfire for simply not believing in what you believe.
That’s not cool, because as you have just stated, no matter what we believe it’s always going to be based in faith, and just as Pat stated, only action can be deemed moral or immoral, not faith.
So, basically, who cares what someone else believes in, what deity they worship or what scriptures they prescribe to, as long as they have a positive effect on your life and the lives of others, their existence is justified in my view.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:
So, I put forth that morality exists as consciousness exists, on a purely intangible, and individual level. I also put forth that it exists as a biological function to help propagate a more pleasing environment for both the individual and the species as a whole.
[/quote]
It’s probably confirmation bias but I must say, “good post!”.[/quote]
I enjoy your posts as well Ephrem.
…ha, and he might not believe me, but I very much enjoy reading what Tiribulus has to say, he knows his faith very well.
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:<<< as Pat stated, only action can be deemed moral or immoral, not faith. >>>[/quote]Ephrem has a sounder grasp of morality than Pat does. If you’re actually interested in learning what Christianity is there are threads with discussions underway. I don’t mean this how it may sound, but you have no clue.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:<<< as Pat stated, only action can be deemed moral or immoral, not faith. >>>[/quote]Ephrem has a sounder grasp of morality than Pat does. If you’re actually interested in learning what Christianity is there are threads with discussions underway. I don’t mean this how it may sound, but you have no clue.
[/quote]
Are you saying that faith can be a sin?
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]iVoodoo wrote:<<< as Pat stated, only action can be deemed moral or immoral, not faith. >>>[/quote]Ephrem has a sounder grasp of morality than Pat does. If you’re actually interested in learning what Christianity is there are threads with discussions underway. I don’t mean this how it may sound, but you have no clue.
[/quote]
Are you saying that faith can be a sin?
[/quote]No, I was saying that sin goes much deeper than action alone. Thoughts and words can be and are grievously sinful. However, faith in anything except the one true God is idolatry and if you have any doubts whatsoever about God’s attitude toward that, read Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Just open, point and read. You will be unable to miss God’s promise and delivery of the most horrific judgements imaginable for worshiping anything or anyone other than Himself in Spirit and in truth. Unless of course yer jist doin yer best then he overlooks it. I forgot about that part. =]