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To: GunRunner
So my retort to this system being "reduced to relativistic preferences for thinking rather than prescriptive requirements", is "so what"? Who cares?

If you throw out prescriptive requirements for logic and reasoning it becomes impossible to have a rational discussion. If you want to have relativistic preferences for thinking then you have no basis or grounds at all for objecting to someone who wants to have different relativistic preferences for thinking. So If the Taliban want to have different moral preferences than you then I just say, "so what" Who cares?

It's been entirely coherent, and I've mapped it out numerous times in previous posts. I never said that I'm in a "position to pronounce on what is universally true or to dictate prescriptive, universal laws of thought, especially in an ever-changing universe", only to provide a theoretical framework for a system of morality that isn't reliant on theism.

You demonstrate the absurdity of an atheistic world view when you state on one hand that the laws of logic can change and then on the other hand, you rely on them to be invariant in order for me not to "get away" with some allegedly improper manner of argumentation.

If you are not in a position to pronounce on what is universally true or to dictate prescriptive, universal laws of thought, especially in an ever-changing universe, then everyone else is free to disregard your utilitarian theoretical framework for a system of morality that isn't reliant on theism.

Cordially,

488 posted on 05/16/2014 11:39:40 AM PDT by Diamond (He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people,)
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To: Diamond
So If the Taliban want to have different moral preferences than you then I just say, "so what" Who cares?

Not at all. The ideas I put forward are admittedly based on a supposition that less suffering is better than maximum suffering, and a double blind assumption that one doesn't know where one is in the pecking order of a society or civilization. So the Taliban couldn't function under this system since they seek to increase suffering, and wouldn't want to be the recipient of that suffering if they found themselves on the other side of it. For the Taliban to attempt to use their ideology under such a system, they wouldn't know whether they would even be part of the Taliban, or an apostate.

It is a requirement that one accept that less suffering is better in order for one to buy into my argument.

However, whatever that leap may be, it's a much less smaller leap than to ask someone to accept the amorphous, non-specific, non-binding, and altogether meaningless idea of "God", especially in the context of your buddy Greg Bahnsen's transcendental argument for God, which is as meaningless as saying "All knowledge is possible and comes from Zeus".

...everyone else is free to disregard your utilitarian theoretical framework for a system of morality that isn't reliant on theism.

Of course people are free to disregard it. But what they can't do is argue against it, at least not effectively as we've seen here with you. People are free to disregard whatever they wish, just as I've disregarded a morality that is dependent on theism. The difference is that I can argue effectively against a theistic basis for morality, and have done so quite brilliantly, thank you.

489 posted on 05/16/2014 12:22:26 PM PDT by GunRunner
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