Wednesday, October 8, 2014

... on Objective Morality with Guess Who? I bungled original discussion, but made another on slavery


Right, McQuarrie is back on this blog. This time the thread is under his own video.

On Objective Morality
M McQuarrie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emylH-D2TaQ


My original 2 comments on his video
Can objective moral values be ascertained by someone not believing there is a God?

In theory a Christian would usually say yes.

In practise, I find that such and such a guy not believing there is a God tends to miss objective moral values as well.

I just had a debate with you about slavery in which you very obviously had the alignment "lawful stupid". Slavery is bad, ergo God had to forbid it totally and had no right to use any other tactics involving partial toleration of that bad thing. Otherwise God is bad too.

But this is beyond "lawful stupid", this is absurd:

Husbands and wives [according to you] have the same right to refuse each other sex as they have in respect to total strangers, and have the same right to have consenting sex with total strangers as with their husbands and wives, anything else is rape.

OK, in theory you can perhaps ascertain objective moral values without believing in God, but in practise you are not convincing me.

And Dawkins has the same problem. When he advocates medical abortion one of his arguments is that that is what is currently being done.

OK? Once upon a time slavery was also currently being done.

That a thing is currently done does not prove it good.

Of abortion (including of handicapped already known to be such) and slavery, it is arguable slavery was worthy of more toleration and abortion of less, rather than reverse. A slave can be liberated. An aborted child cannot be resurrected except God make a miracle.

M McQuarrie
The only thing you need for objective moral values is a recognized definition of morality and I have that.

And action can be considered moral if it maximizes happiness, health or well being or minimizes unnecessary suffering or harm. Conversely, an action can be considered immoral if it minimizes happiness, health or well being or maximizes unnecessary suffering or harm.

So where does god ever recognize that definition of morality?

What part of believing in god is required to recognize that definition of morality?

What moral action can you do because you believe in god that I cannot do because I do not believe in god?

"Husbands and wives have the same right to refuse each other sex as they have in respect to total strangers, and have the same right to have consenting sex with total strangers as with their husbands and wives, anything else is rape."

Not according to your bible. [I was resuming his position, ending with "anything else is rape", not mine.]

And why should that be contingent on their genders?

+Hans-Georg Lundahl As for Dawkins, well I really don't give a crap about what he thinks on matters that aren't related to biology. He's biologist. When he talks science, that's when I take him at his word. Anything else he says I take on a circumstantial basis. If he says something I don't agree with, I'll disagree with him. What's that got to do with anything?

"Once upon a time slavery was also currently being done"

Do you not know how to speak English?

Once upon a time, slavery was accepted. That never made it moral. [Which was my point, I sadly missed to exploit this admission.] In a secular movement, society gradually deemed slavery to be immoral based on the harm it caused. Society still does and we collectively view slavery as abhorrent based on the harm it causes which can be empirically measured.

So why hasn't your bible changed? And why does it still not say "you will not own slaves?"

"it is arguable slavery was worthy of more toleration and abortion of less"

I fail to see how. I am still undecided on the abortion issue but slavery as a practise causes more harm to individuals and society as a whole.

But while we are on the subject of abortion, read Numbers 5:11-21. That's your god condoning an abortion.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Yes, exactly according to my Bible. [Had forgotten he was referring to my resumé or rather looked to hastily at it.] The one passage which DOES outline the sexual rights of the sexes is I Cor. VII:3-5.

What you propose is so general it is inane. I meant you have shown no talent applying it. Nor about weighing pain and happiness when they go together.

M McQuarrie
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Verse 4 says it best: "The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife"

This is not equality or sexual rights of any kind. This is subjugation.

" I meant you have shown no talent applying it. "

And you do?

You think slavery is acceptable and that marriage is mutual rape.

[Omitting a personal insult plus a blasphemy against God “and everything it stands for”]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Slavery was not just accepted, it was being done, or practised if you prefer the Latin word.

And I mean WIDELY.

The Bible was written in those times and for times including such as repeated that. It was not just a blueprint for brief breaks from that evil. It was written to be applied then too.

Slavery cannot cause more harm to the victim than abortion.

Numbers 5 is not referring to an abortion. a guilty woman died herself as much as the fruit of adultery and so did the guilty man:

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition. NUMBERS - Chapter 5
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id452.html


M McQuarrie
+Hans-Georg Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"In a secular movement, society gradually deemed slavery to be immoral based on the harm it caused."

Simply not true.

M McQuarrie
+Hans-Georg Lundahl The United States of America.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl "Slavery was not just accepted, it was being done, or practised if you prefer the Latin word.

And I mean WIDELY."


How does that make it better? [My original point would have been, it didn't, and so a widely practised thing is not necessarily moral, but atheism offers no objective basis beyond that.]

"The Bible was written in those times and for times including such as repeated that."

You are not making any sense.

Construct an actual sentence.

[OK, what about this one: The Bible was written in those times and for times including but not limited to such times as repeated that widespread practise of slavery - was my sentence really too short for him?].

"Numbers 5 is not referring to an abortion"

It's referring to the termination of a foetus. That's an abortion isn't it?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Numbers 5 is NOT referring to the termination of a foetus. It is referring to the death of an adulteress if guilty and death of noone if she was innocent.

I am sorry your grammar skills suck so much you cannot recognise an actual sentence when it slaps you in the face.

As said, slavery was practised or done too widely and this has been repeated in other forms in XXth C. for God simply to abolish the horror just by forbidding it.

God has for times when slavery is not abolished given instructions on how to humanise it. Humanising masters and rehumanising slaves.

M McQuarrie
+Hans-Georg Lundahl "It is referring to the death of an adulteress if guilty and death of noone if she was innocent."

1 and also the death of the unborn child within her (which is an abortion)

2 and you just admitted your bible condones the death women who, for any reason, had sex with someone who was not their husband.

Explain how that is moral?

"...for God simply to abolish the horror just by forbidding it."

WHY THE FUCK NOT? HE'S GOD ISN'T HE?

Why has humanity had to do all the work to abolish slavery? Why does god get all the credit when it hasn't done anything to discourage or abolish slavery?

"God has for times when slavery is not abolished given instructions on how to humanise it."

Including outlining in the bible who may be bought as a slave, who may be sold as a slave, how a slave may be passed down like a possession and how severely a slave may be beaten. Yeah, god's done a lot of work to "humanise slavery."

Hans-Georg Lundahl
  • 1 key word "also". That is not abortion per se.
  • 2 There is a change because there is a change of testaments. You know the adulteress in John 8?


Douay-Rheims Bible + Challoner Notes : Gospel According to Saint John : Chapter 8
http://drbo.org/chapter/50008.htm


God has slowly made abolishing slavery possible - for Christian societies. For XXth C. we have seen new slaveries introduced by secularised society. Slaveries without the limitations you cavil so much against. School compulsion, taking away children from parents, psychiatry, sterilising gipsies and natives ... way beyond what the Bible condones a master doing to his slaves. Way beyond. Far worse violence than was imaginable in the 13th C. When people were still Christians.

No, it is humanity which has done a very bad job, not God.

M McQuarrie
[Omitting but noting a blasphemy against "my" God "and everything it stands for."]

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