Morality without Religion.

I don't give a rat's ass...

joefromchicago wrote:

I have no idea what you're trying to do here. Are you presenting your own ideas or are you just playing at being a moral relativist?

I'm trying to do both.

Let me try to separate things.

1) To a believer in the Old Testament god and his Old Testament rules, circumcising your sons is an ethical obligation, because humans have ethical obligations to god.

3) To both me and the believer, the conflict between #1 and #2 means that one of us must be wrong -- because neither of us is a moral relativist.

4) To a moral relativist,the conflict between #1 and #2 means the believer is right given his beliefs, and I am right given my beliefs. It is impossible, and may not even be meaningful, to investigate which one is right.

I believe you just want to argue because you're a shithook when it comes to anything i post, and you rarely pass up an opportunity to attempt to argue with me.

Or then again, maybe not. If a club has rules that its members are obliged to follow, does that make the club's rules ethical obligations?

It's always meaningful to determine if one has made an ethical error.

I think that he's referring to whether there is a universal, objective moral standard against which our cultural morality can be measured.

My objection was that the content of the first commandment is doctrinal, not ethical. The deity doesn't hold to a principle that people must be theists, but rather that people must believe in him to the exclusion of any other gods (although describing them as false, the implication is definitely polytheistic, and not monotheistic). The deity describes himself as a jealous god, apparently to explain why he, and he alone, must be worshiped. As i have said, that is a doctrinal requirement. Inasmuch as Brown had offered that as an example of ethical behavior to which an atheist would not adhere, i objected on the basis of it being a doctrinal requirement, and not an ethical requirement.

Of course you are free to disagree, but i remain unconvinced that Brown had offered a plausible objection to Hitchins' claim about ethical behavior on the part of unbelievers.

Being doctrinal and moral are not mutually exclusive, IMO. To a member of the ancient Hebrew sects, I suspect that the requirement to worship Jehova was both.

That doesn't answer the objection to the first commandment as an example of an ethical statement made or ethical action performed by a believer which cannot be performed by a non-believer. That some people may have considered it ethical to worship Jehovah is not evidence that it were. You, just as was the case with Brown, have failed to make that case.

It is not true your first post was in response to TKO. You can't even keep track of what you have posted yourself in this thread. Your first post in this thread, #3727623, was a response to Thomas.

It is not true your first post was in response to TKO. You can't even keep track of what you have posted yourself in this thread.

Thereafter, you started to throw up your smoke screen of straw man arguments, such as that about universal moral principles, which eventually lead[sic] me to point out that you just like to argue with me.

Let me add whiny and self-pitying to the list of your character traits.

Let me add whiny and self-pitying to the list of your character traits.

It is hilariously ironic to see you accuse anyone of being unable to admit errors. You have completely failed to address the point i made with Brown, and with you in my response to the remark you made to TKO. You are, apparently, however, unable to acknowledge that.

As for apologies, you have a laundry list of apologies to make to me and to a great many other people at this site. You'll get yours at about the same time as you make apologies to me and others here.