Posted on 02/26/2003 7:19:40 AM PST by Nix 2
What "reasoning" is that? The Golden Rule doesn't say do onto others whatever serves your self-interest.
What "reasoning" is that?
Read the thread from where I first mentioned the 'rule'. Rebut my comments, if you can. Make an actual argument. Two bits you cannot.
The Golden Rule doesn't say do onto others whatever serves your self-interest.
Who said it did? - How utterly daft.
Ghengis Khan certainly controlled his own destiny.
You contend your God gave you that freedom. - I contend it doesn't matter how we got it, its how we use it. - Constitutionally, with reason.
High-sounding words, all right. But if your reason can't tell me why Ghengis Khan was wrong, then they're pretty much useless words.
Why don't you demonstrate for one and all why Ghengis Khan and his ilk need to be stopped?
What's to rebut? You engaged in no reasoning or argumentation, you simply made a bunch of unsupported assertions.
Make an actual argument. Two bits you cannot.
It would be awfully refreshing to see you make an actual argument for once.
Who said it did? - How utterly daft.
Well ... you said it did, tippy. But I do agree that it's a daft comment.
It's not at all "obvious" that you can demonstrate it without an appeal to a Higher Power. All I know is that I've been asking you for over a year to demonstrate this "obvious" point, and you've failed to do it.
One might almost conclude that you cannot demonstrate it.
Still waiting......
[The Golden Rule doesn't say do onto others whatever serves your self-interest.]
2. Who said it did?
You.
Are you this dense? Do people have a right to personally own a nuclear weapon? Answer me that...do people have a right to personally own a nuclear weapon?
That is entirely different from a statement of "ought", which is a statement of Moral Value. OWK is not assigning any Moral Value to his desire to not be murdered; he is just acknowledging that this is his desire.
I know why you won't admit this. Because if you do, your libertarian ideology (again, you're not a Christian, you're a libertarian--I know that now by your tolerance of public displays of simulated child pornography.)
Ok, the guy who murdered the other guy to eat him...forget about that. Let's just say that a guy wants to eat another human. He pays someone who is terminally ill $5,000 dollars to let him eat him after he dies of natural causes. Ok? There's no coercion or initiation of force. The guy voluntarily agrees to be eaten, after he dies of natural causes.
You've already conceded that your belief system would tolerate the public display of simulated child pornography--hey, why not cannibalism?
Is voluntarily contracted cannibalism O.K. with you? How about ownership of nuclear weapons?
There's no end to the fun you can have with libertarians...
Thank you r9...again, there is no way to derive a value from a fact and vice-versa.
To wit: there is no such thing as a "virtuous" tack hammer; similarly, you cannot pound a tack into a wall with "virtue".
Sheesh, how hard is this?
I'm going to keep hammering you with the question you don't dare answer, because it clearly demonstrates that you are implacably opposed to the Law of God:
Alcohol, Hashish, Opium, and other powerful Intoxicating Drugs were well-known and commonly-used in the ancient Near East. When God wrote the Civil Law for Israel, however, Intoxication was not specified as a Civil Crime and there was NO Civil Penalty whatsoever for Private Intoxication.
Was it morally right for God to institute no civil penalty whatsoever for Drug Intoxication, or was the Law of God wrong?
This is the third time I have asked this question.
I answer all of your questions; yet you are incapable of answering mine.
Why? Because if you do, you know you'll lose.
Are you this dense? Do people have a right to personally own a nuclear weapon? Answer me that...do people have a right to personally own a nuclear weapon?
Suppose Bill Gates renounces his citizenship. He purchases from France an island in French Polynesia, hundreds of miles from any other human -- full renunciation of Sovereignty by France, full transfer of Sovereignty to "Gates-Land". Bill Gates declares "Gates-Land" to be a Nation without a Government -- i.e., an Anarcho-Capitalist Nation -- and not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "Gates-Land" is recognized as a Sovereign Nation by all countries in the world. Bill Gates then proceeds to build a nuclear weapon, as a Private Citizen of "Gates-Land", a Sovereign Nation of which he is the sole Citizen.
Does Bill Gates not have the right, as a Private Citizen, to ownership of his own personal nuclear weapon? Why or why not?
I say that under such conditions Bill Gates has the Right to own a nuclear weapon, because he has taken adequate safeguards to Fence in his Externalities -- he's not going to blow up his neighbors.
If you say that under such conditions Bill Gates has NO Right to own a nuclear weapon, explain your reasoning. Also, explain exactly what criteria must be satisfied, in your mind, for any Party (including a Government) to enjoy the Moral Right to own a nuclear weapon. What are the moral criteria?? Can you answer that??
I know why you won't admit this. Because if you do, your libertarian ideology (again, you're not a Christian, you're a libertarian--I know that now by your tolerance of public displays of simulated child pornography.)
You didn't finish your second sentence, but that's okay. You didn't have anything to say anyway.
And to reiterate -- a display is not "Public" if it should be kept behind a Fence high enough to hide it from the street. If I own a couple-acre spread, and I fence in my lawn with a 20-foot-high solid-wall fence, you're just being silly if you claim my lawn is "public".
Ok, the guy who murdered the other guy to eat him...forget about that. Let's just say that a guy wants to eat another human. He pays someone who is terminally ill $5,000 dollars to let him eat him after he dies of natural causes. Ok? There's no coercion or initiation of force. The guy voluntarily agrees to be eaten, after he dies of natural causes. You've already conceded that your belief system would tolerate the public display of simulated child pornography--hey, why not cannibalism? Is voluntarily contracted cannibalism O.K. with you?
Voluntarily contracted cannibalism... hmmm... before I answer that, I'm going to have to ask you to define your Moral terms. To wit: should it be legal for Roman Catholics to eat real human flesh and drink real human blood, if that is the real substance underneath the "accidents" of the elements?
If it is real human flesh and real human blood, should Roman Catholics be allowed to eat and drink it?
Just curious...
How about ownership of nuclear weapons?
You never did answer my questions about the two gentlemen who each lkived alone with a ton of nitro-glycerin in leaky barrels -- one in a house by himself 30 miles from his nearest neighbor, the other in an apartment at the base of an occupied 2-story apartment building.
I suppose you couldn't answer it. So I'll just posit to you the core philosophical question, without the hypothetical:
I hate it when people can't even explain there own positions -- which is all too typical of unthinking clods these days.
Explain yours on this matter -- with precision.
There's no end to the fun you can have with libertarians...
Sure -- especially when you can't bear to answer their questions.
Better to try to bluster your way through, than admit your own hatred against the Law of God.
So, just to remind you, you still have a Question to answer:
Alcohol, Hashish, Opium, and other powerful Intoxicating Drugs were well-known and commonly-used in the ancient Near East. When God wrote the Civil Law for Israel, however, Intoxication was not specified as a Civil Crime and there was NO Civil Penalty whatsoever for Private Intoxication.
Was it morally right for God to institute no civil penalty whatsoever for Drug Intoxication, or was the Law of God wrong?
Right now, you are more in love with the idea of using the State as your own Contract-Murderer than you are in love with God. But you can Repent and become a Christian even yet.
No, that is NOT why a Behavioral Maxim is Absolute. A Behavioral Maxim can be Absolute even if other Behavioral Maxims would also accomplish the Objective in question.
It's not going to be worth my bother to deal with the rest of your post until you understand WHY a Behavioral Maxim would be Absolute.
Here's a hint: it has to do with Necessity of Consistency, not Necessity of Exclusivity. If you re-read my post and correct your misunderstanding, I'll proceed. If not, it's not even going to be worth my time to argue with the functionally illiterate.
(Sigh)
I do understand what you're saying. The problem is that in order for us to accept your derivation of "Absolute Behavioral Maxims," we must first accept a huge pile of a priori assumptions and pre-conditions. There's no point in accepting your reasoning if we don't agree on the terms under which your reasoning is conducted.
In your mountain climbing example, you've arbitrarily disallowed any other means of reaching the top of the mountain. IF there are no other means, and IF I want to get to the top, THEN I have to climb. Of Course it's an absolute behavioral maxim in that case, but so what? In defining your conditions, you've dodged the Objective Fact that there are still many other methods for me to reach the top. Your behavioral maxim is therefore not "absolute" in the real sense of the term. It's only "absolute" within the arbitrary constraints you've placed on the problem. You've merely assumed away the underlying "moral problem," which is to decide which among of the many available solutions are truly available to us.
In the same way, you've explicitly disallowed Mr. OWK from undertaking any other actions to keep from being murdered. It's a stacked deck that pretty much demands your conclusion: And at the point that the Atheist Mr. OWK deduces by enlightened self-interest as a matter of Objective Fact the Reflexive Necessity of contracting an Absolute Social Compact in order to accomplish his Objective of Not Being Murdered.
The reasoning leading to this conclusion is simply wrong, on several counts.
First, you arrived at this conclusion by a priori assuming that none of the other existing options were acceptable. You've provided no justification for this.
Second, when we acknowledge the availability of other options, it is quite clearly not an Objective Fact that Mr. OWK must, of reflexive necessity, join this Absolute Social Compact. Rather, he may simply choose to join this compact -- or to choose some other approach. He's not required to join at all, unless there's a real and absolute reason for him to reject all other options.
This is where God comes in. As the Rabbi pointed out, only God can exclude those other alternatives. (And, of course, the alternative that God allows is not the one that informs Mr. OWK's maxims....)
Without God, the only basis for choosing for or against the options is what we can observe and derive from observation. Mr. OWK's "absolute behavioral maxim" is observably not the only viable alternative -- and in those circumstances, a moral system that claims to derive the "Absolute Behavioral Maxims" you derived, is quite simply fraudulent. (Ayn Rand's philosophy is fraudulent for precisely this reason.)
No, you are still presuming that an Absolute Behavioral Maxim depends upon Necessity of Exclusivity. I already told you that it doesn't. It depends upon Necessity of Consistency (i.e., whether or not adherence to the Maxim must be absolute in order to accomplish the Objective).
I already told you that I was skeptical as to the value of my Time if you couldn't grasp that point. It's pretty explicit in my Writings thus far, and I (quite reasonably, IMHO) asked you to re-read them with a little more attention to detail.
But I'm feeling charitable. I will give it one more shot. The "absolute" quality of a Fact-derived Behavioral Maxim does not depend upon the Necessity of Exclusivity, but upon the Necessity of Consistency. Look, I'll illustrate -- Here goes.
Now assume that there are two wide, easy, clearly-marked paths to the top of the Mountain, each measuring 1000 paces exactly -- one from the North face, and one from the South face.
Now, we'll allow each of our Free Agents to choose their starting point, whether from the base of the North face or the base of the South face (call their starting points their "assumed basic premises", or some such). For the sake of the example, we'll assume that one (Mr.A) chooses the North base and the other (Mr.B) chooses the South base.
Now, at this point, we have established that there are two entirely different Paths to the Top of the Mountain -- as objectively different as proceeding south is an objectively different behavior than proceeding north.
And yet, in either case, our Free Agents in question must absolutely adhere to their chosen Path if they want to reach the Top of the Mountain.
Thus we see that the "absoluteness" of a Behavioral Maxim does not depend upon the Necessity of Exclusivity, but upon the Necessity of Consistency. There are two entirely different Paths to the Top of the Mountain (i.e., not an Exclusively-mandatory course of action); but whether he proceeds from the North base or the South base, the Free Agent in question deduces as a matter of Objective Fact that he must adhere with ABSOLUTE Consistency to the appropriate Behavioral Maxim for reaching the Top of the Mountain.
And in either case, there is not necessarily any transcendent moral value assigned to reaching the Top of the Mountain -- it is simply the desired objective of the Free Agent. And there are two entirely-different starting points and two entirely-different Paths which our Free Agent may choose. But once he selects his starting point, he rationally deduces that he must adhere with ABSOLUTE Consistency to the appropriate Behavioral Maxim for reaching the Top of the Mountain.
As I said -- Thus we see that the "absoluteness" of a Behavioral Maxim does not depend upon the Necessity of Exclusivity, but upon the Necessity of Consistency.
Does that make sense yet, or (meaning no offense) should I just throw up my hands and despair of your understanding the point?
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