If most religious beliefs were/are not made up by people, then who or what made them up?
When you believe those rules exist outside of the human mind, and believe that they can be discovered, you are heading into utopianism.
The square root of negative 1 is i.
The teapot analogy is a Red Herring. It’s simply the wrong question. Can a teapot be put into orbit around Mars? Certainly, but has it been done. I have no idea. That is to say nothing about your following citicism of causation.
‘Everything that exists, must have a cause.’ Isn’t really begging the question, but it is a statement paradox. That isn’t really the premise.
The actual premise is:
P1) Contingent (caused) entities must have a cause.
We don’t use the term ‘Everyting’ because the Uncaused-cause is also a thing, but it lacks the property of being caused.
But there can be no case where more than one Uncaused-cause exists because it results in a contradiction. Only one thing can occupy that space. And there can be an uncaused entity, but you cannot know about it, because then it will have caused and thus resulting in a contradiction.
You are on the right path attacking causation. You want to beat the arguments, you have to prove the premises false. The conclusion is immutable with reference to it’s premises.
Yes it’s called objective morality. That doesn’t nullify the fact that there are societal norms or laws that are subjective, but measured against the objective, somethings are always right and always wrong.
To say that all morality is subjective is to say that even the most personally evil acts can be justified. Say like the Holocaust or the rape and murder of a small child. Irregardless of the society which may justify these things, such things are always evil.
It’s not a statement, it’s an argument. It has several statements in it.
And the end statement is not a negative statement by virtue of being a negative number
http://open.lib.umn.edu/writingforsuccess/chapter/5-2-negative-statements/
It is too broad of a question for me to answer. I don’t even know how “most” religious beliefs lines up. Does each subpoint of every belief system count? Every motif of Zeus? Every single hadith?
Then the sheer number of religious beliefs I cannot fathom
It seems that by your logic, every time a “worse” moral code is exchanged for a “better” moral code its one step closer to utopia.
Risks of utopianism aside, it is a distinct possibility and it is not obvious to me that it is not the case.
Exchanging a moral code for a percieved better one is not utopianism. Exchanging one for a code believed to be the ideal and perfect one, never to be questioned, is utopianism.
When you believe they only exist in the human mind then you must accept that in reality there is no better or worse moral code. No good/evil. Which was my claim in the first place.
Couldn’t help it.
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The problem for you is thinking that the human mind exists apart from reality.
Also, if questions such as necessity are asked, then clearly there are better and worse moral codes that address those questions.
Finally, good and evil do exist as adjectives to qualify human behaviors. If we accept the inevitable, that is, that cultures and societies are going to have morals as one of their defining characteristics, then applying those adjectives will also be inevitable.
If you don’t believe good and evil exist, ask yourself if you have a conscience.
Couldn’t help it.
Do you think that it does exist as part of reality or does not exist as part of reality?
Don’t know what you’re getting at here. Why is that a problem for me, if I do or don’t? I don’t believe morality comes from the human mind, regardless. Which is why I can claim the slave trade of Africans, for example, was evil regardless what society/mankind though at the time.
There aren’t better or worse moral codes without faith. Only preferences based on convenience, risk aversion, appetites, etc. Nobody is actually right or wrong. It’s like having a favorite color and then claiming it’s the best favorite color.
Words for the concepts do not prove the concepts. God. Trinity. Holy. Good. Evil. And what you say of societies and morality can be said of religion/spirituality/faith and society. And not all societies have agreed on what is good and bad at any one time. .
Oh, but I do believe. I have no issue with faith, after all. If one has issue with faith, yet claims the existence of good and evil, that’s where I ask for the evidence. Show me it under a microscope, for example.
Do you believe in the existence of good and evil?
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The equation was affirming a negative. You’re actually proving my point, though. The inability to qualify or quantify something is not ‘proving a negative’.
Happy anniversary @squating_bear.
What is reality?
No it wasn’t. It was stating an equation in which the output was a negative number. You’re not magically affirming a negative just because the number was “negative.”
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What’s a conscience?
Well, it’s not a positive number. And if you break it apart and separate the number, what else is there?
You have to be trolling, for someone who pretends to discuss philosophical matters, this is a very basic point.
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A negative number != Negative statement