WasatchMan

I don't think you can say inanimate things have any objective to life... They are by definition not alive.

It wasn't an argument, it was an example of a wall of myth and fallacious arguments that religious people use vs what someone who cares about truth uses. You were making a claim and I was showing you an example of the opposite of your claim. I am not the one that brought the need for proof into this conversation, you did when you brought up myths and the need to expel them. If we are not talking about things that can be proved than we are just talking about whims and emotions as substitute for reality.

Hmmmm... I didn't make any of those arguments.. seems like you are attempting to strawman. - Darwinism is true because Science (underlined and in bold) and We couldn't be wrong I said it was the best explanation, using science, which is a method of documenting evidence found in reality (sorry you don't understand what science means - and are willing to conflate it with faith). Saying something is the best explanation for something because it is the most consistent theory using the scientific method is not a fallacious statement, it is a truth statement. - Darwinism is true because Biblical creationism is so riddled with inconsistencies I didn't say that creationism was wrong because of inconsistencies, I said they have a lot to explain (like why we so many stars in the night sky - for just one). - Darwinism is true because it is hard to imagine an omnipotent being creating and running the show I used "it is hard to imagine" as a parody of the person I was replying to saying "It is hard to imagine how something as complex and specialized as the human eye to have evolved from entirely random processes...", showing that it was a fallacious way to argue... context matters....

hmmmm... which one of these is a wall of myths and/or fallacies and which one is demanding evidence...

I would consider alpha females to be the females on the extreme hypergamous end of the spectrum where you are always having to perform well in an alpha male capacity in order to keep their attention.

I am a capitalist, and appreciate the ability to get feedback on my efforts, good and bad.

But a deity is not required for a religion according to the definition. Buddhism would fall under the part of the definition that said "an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group" Atheism, however would not. Atheism is only a word because the majority of society is theists, and all it means is a lack in a belief in theism. There are no aunicornists, or abigfootists, because society does not believe these things exist in general.

I get it is not philosophically rigorous. I was just throwing around some examples of how that sort of analysis would work - not indicating that the conclusions I was making are true. That would take some time to go through to prove any of those conclusions as true. Sorry I put that in a hard way to understand. I did mean you can't remove it morality, I meant you can derive morality out of universal behavior for achieving aesthetic preferences. I am not against the idea, however it is not something I have thought much about. It just came across as an interesting way to look at APAs, so I think it needs some fleshing out in my mind. What sort of question would you think would be good for this topic? (FYI - I am heading out of town for the weekend, so don't take my lack of replies here shortly as a lack of interest)

I think this is an interesting point. I do have some disagreements, because it would lead (I think) to the conclusion that it is immoral to not be a healthy individual (that poor man in a coma is not only in a coma but is now immoral). However, I think ethics could benefit from a categorical analysis of universals behavior for the achievement of aesthetic preferences. Like if you want to be healthy person, exercise is universally preferable. If you want to be a magnanimous man, therapy is universally preferable. If you want to associate with magnanimous people, people who have gone through therapy is universally preferable. This would help philosophy ostracize people who do not meet their aesthetic preferences, because you cannot be friends with everyone, so it is universally preferable to seek out good people (if your goal is to live a good life). However, I don't think you can get morality out of this analysis.

Natural Selection via evolution is the best explanation/model that the human species has been able to construct. If you wish to overthrow it, you have a mountain of evidence to explain. If you are whetted to the idea that we have it wrong, you have a lot to overcome. However, give it your best, if you think that science has it wrong, we can only benefit from continued scientific exploration into this topic.

Strong aesthetic preferences are not moral statements by nature. The magnitude of the consequences of positions held do not equate to something being moral or immoral. Philosophy is not consequential in nature. Philosophy is trying to find what is true, damn the consequences. Please demonstrate how you would universalize the position that "I'm better than you because of X" automatically makes that a moral statement. How about I am better than a fat slob because I work out and treat my body right. Is this moral or purely an aesthetic preference to health?

The fossil record is limited because it is extremely rare for fossils to form. People who spend their lives in the field as scientists do not think there is a problem with the fossil record. See Canis lupus familiaris (aka dogs) Its hard to imagine something as complex as on all powerful omnipotent being creating and running a universe where he a created a species after his own image, on one spec of dust on the outer edge of 1 out of 100s of billions of galaxies. Especially given that there is no evidence for this.

And I have dealt with your contention (whether you want to accept it or not - just don't act like I haven't put an argument up against it, it comes off disingenuous like we have not been having a conversation about this point for a while). I don't believe Christianity is anything that any individual Christian believes it to be. It is an ideology with several central claims to it. One of these central claims is that morality is derived from god. I can't use language to describe this belief system (that God dictates right and wrong behavior) any other way than calling it Christianity. Is there a different word I should use? If someone who labeled themselves a Christian wanted to discuss ethics with me, and would first accept that "God said so" is not a valid claim for morality, than that would obviously be different. I don't think it is fair to call that person a Christian, because this is like saying a Christian can claim not be believe in god. One the mains reasons there is the concept "God" is to set up an ultimate arbitrator of behavior. I don't know how you can believe in God but not believe he cares about your behavior. I guess anyone can claim to be a Christian though. The central point of this thread isn't even to determine whether any individual that calls themselves a "Christian" is capable of a moral conversation, it is "can we create moral choice through lies about ethics". I have already given you the two universal definitions of morality that this thread is suppose to be focused on:

That sounds nice.

Well put. I get that there are people who claim to be religious, but do not act that out and are just there for community. However, I do not see how you can separate morality being derived from god from religion (especially Abrahamic religions like Christianity). Morality being possible because of an all powerful god to judge you is central to a Christianity and many other beliefs. That structure (having god as the "objective" arbitrator of behavior) is why religion even exists. In other words, you can't claim to be a Christian and not hold that god creates moral law. This why I have used the analogy that you can't call someone a soccer fan that hates sports where people kick balls. They are antithetical concepts. Since "because god said so" is where religious people derive their moral claims, I don't see how you could have a meaningful conversation about rational secular ethics with them. The minute they don't like what you are saying and don't have a good argument for why, the "god said so" argument will just be invoked. This would be like trying to have a physics discussion with Deepak Chopra, the minute you start to get somewhere meaningful, he is just going to bust some woo all over you.

I am not demanding action out of anyone. I am making a technical argument about the definition of morality and how to apply it. If it turns out that we can't universalize what religious people do as morality, that takes away nothing from their success, it just means that philosophically speaking we shouldn't call what they do morality. I would be fine calling what they do successful, since this is a word about the ends one achieves. I just don't think morality is about the ends, rather I think it is about the methodology.

I don't know what "the vigor with which you make your [my] case" has to do with this conversation, given it is a technical one on philosophical definitions. It would seem like you are trying to smuggle something else into this. Yes, you are correct the reverse is true, however it is not the point. My point is not "any action cannot be called truly moral or ethical without being first founded in logic". Actions can be classified as moral or immoral as such (murder is always immoral), that is the whole point of UPB. However, what you can't say is someone is acting with morality when their actions are moral but their methodology to achieve this behavior (that happens to be moral/immoral - universally) was derived from a lie. As I said in my last response to this same point "murder is still immoral to a sociopath". The reason this is true is because if we universalize ethics we have developed something that is objective, not subjective. Objective things don't care if people can comprehend it or not for it to be valid. Gravity still existed before Newton discovered the mathematical relationship between mass and gravitational force. Would you say that someone who hits a golf ball is acting as physicist? This is the second time I have had to remind you that this was stated in the OP: How can you have gotten from this that my claim is "religious/ spiritual belief is somehow fundamentally incompatible with logic and reason"? My central point is that morality is one thing that region can not claim logic or reason in because central to religion is that morality is derived from the dictates of a supernatural universal overlord. Would you say that someone was a moral person because they kept their family together for the love of jazz music? I would claim you shouldn't because there is no way to universalize how love for jazz music applies to morality. Good and evil (what we are talking about) are not aesthetic preferences. I am not talking about "gold standards". I am talking about a definition of morality that can be philosophically universalized. In my mind we have two choices when trying to achieve this universal definition for morality: 1) Morality is behavior derived from the philosophical discipline of ethics, using a methodology that applies universals, first principles, and truth to behavior 2) Morality is behavior that achieves good and/or just ends

Ok, that is fair. I will no longer offer you feedback of my experience.

Mike asked you a direct question speaking for himself, not on behalf of eight FDR listeners. I could be totally off base, but my experience of your response was to weasel out of a direct answer. Sorry if I missed something in communication. I am not trying to attack you, but you got to realize that you are ostracizing yourself from this community, and I am hoping that maybe some direct feedback of my experience would help stop this from happening.

So here is a great example MMX of what people are talking about regarding how interacting with you is a challenge and at times not enjoyable. Did your last response answer Mike's actual question? Do you think that Mike did not notice that J. D.'s suggestion about combing the two topics came after you said you would think for a week about the ostracism topic alone? I am pretty sure he did, I know I saw it immediately. It is hard to bring these things up in a forum because it is usually seems petty and is a derailment from the actual topic at hand. This form of "subtle trolling" (as you call it) is obvious to people here (at least it is to me), and people resent it because (I believe) they want to have genuine dialogues with people.

At a BBQ last week I actually ran into this in a real conversation with people that turned out to be antihumanists. The topic of the environment had come up and a group of them started in with the usual about how gross humans are and how we are just ruining everything, and one of them said something to the effect of "It would probably be better if humans just stopped existing" and then added "well after we are gone of course." I just had to laugh. Such utter selfishness veiled in the dialogue of being unselfish. I brought up the argument that the only reason there is any value for the environment remaining the way it is is because humans value it, and that the earth has been around for millions years, killing off 99.9% of all species to ever exist oscillating between ice ages, showing that mother nature doesn't particular value the environment remaining static. When I got the answer that they are not talking about value, I realized these were broken people (unfortunately successful middle aged broken people) and left the conversation.

So I am a Civil Engineer, and I can tell you that this article is non-sense. I actually have a hard time even understanding the point that is trying to be made in respect to civil engineering, it is almost like they don't even understand what this discipline is and how it is able to do what it does. Like in this quote: Level means 0% change in elevation over a length. Elevation is measured from sea level (0 potential energy for water) on a spheroid, not on a flat plane. Furthermore, 8" a mile is a 0.013% grade, which is in all practical purposes flat as far as engineers are concerned. Freight trains can run 2-4% max grade with LRT running 6% max grade. I also have no idea what "increasing as the square of the distance" is suppose to mean in reality. For this to be a problem trains would have to be 100s of miles long - they are not. Horizontal curves are not flat, unless the design speed is around 5 mph. They are banked so that the centripetal acceleration created by going around a circle applies a component of downward pressure on the rail so the resultant force caused by the centripetal acceleration doesn't make the train fly off the track. Where ever there is a change in grade, like for example going downhill at 2% grade and changing to going uphill at a 1% grade, the engineer must design a vertical curve (in the shape of a parabola) so that grade differential from one part of the train to other is kept within in a specified tolerance based on whole bunch of factors. such axle spacing, cart length, design speed, etc. The minimum vertical curve lengths are typically 300 feet to a 1000 feet depending on the type of train, grade change, and design speed. To say that trains cannot drive on a curve with a varying grade of 8" per mile is an outright lie. I have a hard time trying to understand what point was trying to be made here. At first I thought the author does not understand how a gravitational field works. However, thinking more about it I think he is trying to claim that a project 30 miles in length would have a quantity error of 600 feet. Not only is this wrong because for long projects civil engineers will use a Geodetic surveying projection that do account for the curvature of the earth, 600 feet in quantity in 30 miles is not even that important to a civil engineer running something like rail. Specified quantities tend to allow for around a 5% discrepancy in plan quantity vs. what is actually installed in the field, and 600 feet in 30 miles would only result in a 0.4% discrepancy. Back in the days of major railroad building, a civil engineer being within 0.4% of the field quantity would have been a complete and total success. Now this comment makes it obvious that the author does not understand gravity. The simple explanation for how this works is that gravity is acting downward toward the center of mass of the planet. They dug the Suez Canal using sea level as their datum. Sea level is a radial distance from the center of the earth where water has zero potential energy. Since it is a radial distance from the center of a spherical planet, I am not sure why the author is trying to shove a flat plane across the Suez Canal and say there is a difference in potential energy from the center to the two sides, gravity does not act in a plane, it acts from a radial distance from the center of mass. Since the radial distance from the center of mass does not change, the potential energy of the surface of the water does not change. WTF? Sea level is a radial distance from the center of the earth, when you measure from it YOU ARE TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE CURVATURE.

I don't think so. MMX tends to come off as someone who is willing to rationalize anything post-facto. He will make huge assertions (like ostracizing for aesthetic reasons causes the person harm), and then when called on the logic, double down with rationalizations, goal post moving, or larger assertions (like racism is immoral). It comes off disingenuous to me. He was trying to shame me in another thread for wanting to nail down a precise definition of morality because he claims a precise definition damages Christians, and then in this thread he all of a sudden has such a precise definition of morality that he is willing to make the claim that thoughts (illogical thoughts, but still just thoughts) such as racism are immoral, just so his claim of ostracism for aesthetic reasons causes harm to the ostracizer remains standing. I don't dislike MMX, and I don't go around downvoting all of his posts. However I don't think it is correct, or helpful, to say that he is downtvoted for being a PUA. I just don't find this community that spiteful.

I would classify your analysis as an either-or fallacy. People can primarily focus on the truth / falsehood of someones argument and at the same time maintain their aesthetic preferences for how someone communicates to them. Its called not erasing yourself in a conversation.