WasatchMan

Sure, a fat guy at a buffet is pretty happy in the moment.

It is not a knee jerk reaction, it is actually the exact opposite of a knee jerk reaction. As has been explained, evolution is the best theory we have for the diversity of species based on evidence. This is how science works. There is no evidence except speculation that there was any other external influence in the process of evolution, therefore this would be considered a hypothesis in search for evidence. Science, in order to avoid knee jerk reactions, bases theories on demonstrable/reproducible evidence and will only entertain this as a theory once evidence is produced. Until that time, it will remain outside the realm of science.

I didn't mean execute, just universalizing if you can punish people based on risk and probability before anything has actually happened. I would veiw letting a serial killer out into society reckless endangerment.

Then drunk driving laws would also be immoral. Not saying this is wrong, I have argued it before, but it is an implication if risk of crime and probability of crime is immoral to use.

Could you see self defense extending after the event if someone is an unrepentant killer with a high probability of killing again if allowed to? Someone like a serial killer.

Just make your case on what he can do better then the call-in show, and stop with this circular abstract argument. In other words, put up or shut up.

The disconnect could be coming from a lot of things. My guess is it is atheism and peaceful parenting, which a lot of the libertarian community rejects. Continually asking the question "could he be doing more good for the world?" is extremely disingenuous, and very telling that you don't have recommendations and only criticisms. Theoretically everyone could be doing something better which would equate to more good in the world. I am pretty sure Stef doesn't think he has reached the theoretically maximum optimal "good for the world", but is trying the best he can to aim for this ideal. The job of the critic who is coming at an issue from a genuine goal to improve is to provide constructive criticism, with actionable things that can be done to improve perceived issues, and a reasoned argument of how doing "y" will create better results than continuing to do "x". Asking a bunch of abstract question with a very limited ability to measure or compare is just being an obstructionist.

It seems like a lot of the arguments are based around Tom Woods being better than Stefan. While Tom Woods is good at making economic and political arguments, it is not philosophy. Stefan is working things out with callers (for the most part) from first principles, ethics, and universals. I personally find philosophy more important than empirical/pragmatic arguments because it teaches people how to think instead of memorizing a bunch of data. In other words, statism being immoral is more powerful of an argument than statism being impractical.

Evolution is the best explanation we have for the diversity of species. It is more probable that the time available to evolution was sufficient for the diversity of species we see today (and the millions of extinct species) rather than some other influence that we have no evidence of.

I agree ETU. If we want to compare religion and the state, it is disingenuous to use the religion that has been neutered by the state as your example. Saying that religion is superior to the state is saying that western philosophy separating the two by law was a bad thing, because if religion is superior to the state than the separation would make the state worse, not better. If you want to compare religion and the state you need to compare what they do with same power... Look what religious people are doing with power in countries where Shiria law is the law.

Stefan has put out enough stuff contradicting this that I am personally willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at this time that this was a mistake that he will clarify. I think we will need to wait and see if he doubles down, or continues this line of rationalizing religion before coming to a conclusion. I will say though that I cannot, and will not, support anything that provides cover to religion.

I wouldn't say that capital punishment is a violation of the NAP as such. Given our inability to prove crime conclusively does make it a huge problem, and is the reason why I am against it. Better 10 killers sit in prison than 1 innocent man be put to death. However, theoretically speaking if there is someone in the community that is killing other people, is it really the responsibility of that community to house and feed them for the rest of their life in order to insulate their aggression from the community? Would it be right for the community to eject that person from that community just so that person can go and prey on another community? Just my initial thoughts, might be missing something.

I was using values in the sense of moral values, which has been the context in this thread. However, I see where your interpretation came from giving that I dropped the "s" on values (accidentally) in my response to you.

People are mainly criticizing this call for apologizing to religion, and for ascribing virtue and value to religion, when there is no philosophical or rational reason to (since effects are not philosophy). Stefan could have given pragmatic advice without doing this.

Your interpretation is correct, given your (correct) premise about morality. To be honest, the issue I had with it is I thought you were trying to level, because it seemed like you were trying to rephrase my question as a tautology, and therefore minimize it. I may have been mistaken though. I am sorry if I was. The purpose of this topic was to have a dialogue on whether we can call what Christians do morality, and in general what universally can be called morality. People can disagree with me and say that morality can be derived from fundamentally flawed ethical systems if they provide overall good effects. It may seem obvious to you and I am sorry if it was. I do agree it is a pretty basic and obvious question, somewhat similar to asking "can you study the physical world without the scientific method". However, Stefan made the assertion that he would rather talk morality with Christians than atheists, so I found it relevant to try to have dialogue on what we can even call morality. If we cannot call what Christians do morality, than it doesn't matter if it is a philosophical question or a preference. You should not use the word morality to describe something that is categorically not morality, regardless of the context. I am sure that you are aware that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their correct names. I think just this right here demonstrates how this question can provide some valuable answers even though it is so basic. If you don't mind, I would be interested if you could flush out the difference between "moral conclusions" and "morality" for me. I would assert that you also cannot call something a moral conclusion if it is not derived from a correct ethical system. Am I missing a different type of moral category that can be derived from its effects rather than its methodology? Thanks Kevin, I really do appreciate your thoughts.

If you want to rephrase it like that it is fine with me, I think the way I stated it was fine but fair enough. I find your interpretations resulting from the rephrasing basically identical to the ones I had from my original phrasing, so lets carry on. The question then comes to, is morality a derivative of good outcomes OR from a logical/universal ethical system. If morality can only be described as a derivative of a logical/universal ethical system, then we can't call what Christians do morality. Furthermore, as a pragmatic stance I do not waste much time talking effects with people before getting methodology. In this internet age, if I want to find out about empirical data I will research it, not try to get it from someone who's fundamental epistemological and metaphysical premise is mysticism (aka the Bible). This post is not intended to be a cost benefit analysis of religion vs nihilism. I stated in my post that this is a false dichotomy. This post was intended to discuss philosophical universals around the nature of morality, and whether you can describe an ethical system derived from a lie morality. It would seem that if morality could be derived from lies and effects, that would mean moral relativism was actually the correct stance, which I think you already correctly pointed out. So even if we rephrased Stefan's question to: "Would you rather talk morality to a Christian or a nihilist", I would assert the answer should be: "Neither, because you cannot talk morality to someone who's premises for morality are fundamentally flawed and whose ethical system is derived from a lie. You can have a discussion of utilitarianism, but you cannot talk morality." Isn't this an argument for moral relativism? I universally do not call good effects morality.

In a recent podcast, Stefan asked the question: With the assertion that he would rather talk to Christians about morality because there are a lot of leftist determinist atheists out there that you cannot talk morality to. Besides being a false dichotomy, since I would only rather talk morality with people who derive it from logic, universals, and reasoned arguments, how can one even talk to a Christian about morality? Morality is one of the major things Christianity should automatically disqualify you from a philosophical discussion of over. While there are a lot of things that I will talk to Christians about, such as politics, economics, physics, personal issues, etc., morality is one thing I would rather not talk to Christians about. This is because Christians derive their morality from an all powerful god who blackmails them into either blindly accepting for an eternity in paradise or rejecting for an eternity in hell. In other words, Christian ethics are derived from a lie. They have short-circuited the need to prove anything about their morality, except for whether or not they know what god wants and can speak for it. How can you have a talk about morality with someone who's ethical premise is "god says so". Here is a moral gem from a Christian demonstrating his great ability to have moral conversations: And here is some actual truth about morality, from an atheist: So, can we create the possibly of moral choice through lies about ethics?

Thanks for the reply Alice. I am really sorry to hear about how introversion impacted you. I look back sometimes and wonder what would have happened if it would have frozen me, because I definitely could see that potential. Once I began working on my self through introspection and self knowledge, I did go through what I consider a pretty major depression where I lost almost all personal discipline. I really like your road analogy, it is a pretty insightful way to look at this. Thanks for that. To be clear, I was not saying the social phobia is a good thing. My purpose of bringing up was to point out the bad things that resulted from my upbringing. Introversion on the other hand can be a good thing if kept to a Aristotelian mean because it usually provides you with the time required for mastery, but when it gets to the extreme side it can cause a lot of damage. As for the fear stuff, I feel I have been able to make good progress in removing it mostly from my life. I am able to be more relaxed now at my job and am able to put things in better perspective instead of always going to full stress mode before major deadlines.

For years now my mom and I have had a strained relationship due to her parenting methods while I was growing up. My mom was a screamer. On top of that, she was emotional and intellectually unavailable and did not play with me as child or talk to me about anything important during my development. These methods have left me with a lot of problems as an adult, such as social anxiety and some rather extreme introversion at times. Before FDR I never even identified these problems, I just assumed that was my intrinsic character. Through introspection and working on self knowledge on why I do the things I do, I was able to identify my issues and their root in my childhood. However, I also did discover that this parenting method provided me with huge benefits to my professional success and level of comfort today. Being alone as a child, I grew an extreme defense mechanism for survival, and particularly self-sufficient survival. Anything I have done in my whole life I have approached with the character of Howard Roark, nothing could stop me and me alone. My lone wolf self survival skills had me working all through university just because I never wanted to be in a position where money was a problem. Ever since I graduated university, money has never been an issue. Even now, I live below my means, with good savings because I have the emotional need to be prepared for anything that comes across, on my own. I am a professional civil engineer, well known and respected in my industry for my ability to solve problems and deliver complex projects. Every manager, boss, and now clients I have ever had has been blown away by what they viewed as my natural talent. Through self-knowledge I have discovered this natural talent initially came from a deep sub-conscious fear where failure was death, which I believe is a direct result of my mom’s parenting styles. I have grown a lot in the years, and I believe that I have been able to get rid of a lot of the fear, and am able to work for the sheer joy of what I do professionally (which I would recommend to anyone who wants an exciting diverse career). However, without the momentum that launched me from childhood I know that I wouldn’t have been able to compete and get to where I am in my career without the very powerful success or death false dichotomy planted deep into my subconscious. I am mentally average (at least for engineers), so there is no other reason why I should be so successful, professionally rising above all my peers. These are empirical facts. Until recently, I was not able to identify the beneficial consequences of my mom’s parenting methods. Through us trying to talk through these issues, I have never given her any credit for this, and have only talked about how bad it was for me as a child and how that impacted my early adulthood. It is strange to me that such a bad methodology could lead to such great results in certain realms. Given my new understanding of these facts, should I apologize to her for not stating the good? Obviously, there is still the bad, but I am wondering if I should take responsibility for not being aware of the empirically good results. If philosophy is about empiricism, it seems like that would be the correct, and consistent, thing to do. Thanks in advance for the feedback.

The entire premise of needing to apologize to religion for values obtained through faulty methodology is saying the ends justify the means. Stef apologized to religion because through superstition and fear they have been able to keep families together. You don't apologize to or ascribe value or virtues to things that have bad methodology but happen to come up with the right answer some of the time. That would be like me praising my broken watch because it is right twice a day. Do you even know how Mormonism keeps family ties together? They tell their flock that the only way they will get to spend eternity with the ones they love is following the Mormon church, and keep their family together in the Mormon church. If you, or any of your loved ones step out of line, they will be lost to you forever. While this may lead to better family cohesion, the method in which it is attained is wrong, and therefore no value is to be described to them for achieving this end.

I would give m.j. the first chance if he wants. Seems like he has his thoughts put together better than myself on this. I agree it is not. The sophistry is coming from the argument for the ends justifying the means. I meant it in the sense that they both want control over people. The church aspires to be the state, and has been for a lot of history. The triumph of secularism, and the first action of the "freedom club" was to kick religion out of power. But fair enough, I probably used the wrong first sentence, the rest of the paragraph didn't require it. This is what I mean by the argument for the ends justifying the means. Also, is it an empirically good traditional value that a guy is terrified to the point he can't eat because a change in his views will mean losing a 16 year marriage and his children and community? You would think that if all these good values were promoted by the church your spouse of 16 years would not abandon you for your beliefs.

I agree with a lot of your sentiment here. I found the call a non-philosophical argument for the ends justifying the means and being able to have your cake and eat it to. In my opinion the conversation centered around comparing the ugliest caricature of secularism to the noblest caricature of religion. Religion has and is STILL doing tons of harm, and cherry picking out good stuff (that should just be contributed to the good people of the world) is extremely disingenuous. As someone who lives in Utah surrounded by this Mormon religious death cult while trying to live my values and be rational while the majority of people appeal to superstition and conformity has been extremely hard. Dating is hard. Finding friends is hard. Finding a community is near impossible. But I believe it is worth it. To hear someone who gave me hope, who I thought was a beacon of reason, appeal to religion for its supposed values broke my heart. It is not easy being an atheist in this world but if you want to be a deterministic, non-thinking, happy monkey, you and your brood may benefit from religion. I for one do not want this and am struggling to stay out of it. The state and the church are two sides of the same coin. The only reason why all that is left is religious "values" in the west is because the state has beat it back from every hold of power they have historically held. If religion had its ways it would be back in the seat of power and a lot worse than the current secular governments (at least if you look at the data...). To use one of Stef's approaches in this conversation ask yourself "would you rather have your daughter live under Sharia law or live in a secular western government?" I for one can only hope Stef remembers he once said this “Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.” and returns to philosophy after this short tangent into sophistry.

The origins of life is not a very well understood phenomena and I definitely don't have a great handle on the current hypothesis on the subject. And yes, I am from Utah.

It is a good question, but the answer is they just aren't able to perfectly replicate themselves. Cells live in reality with all sorts environmental interactions that damage them or intervene during the replication, or dividing process. Everything in reality has a certain amount of variation, which is fundamental to nature, so cells being able to forever and always exactly replicate themselves would be more strange then having variations.

Evolution describes how species change over time through the traits more suitable to survival propagating over traits not as suitable for survival. It is the environment reflecting back on the characteristics of species living in that environment. There is no trait called evolution as such, just like there is no trait that initiated the beginning of solar system or galaxy formation. It is just an inevitable consequence given the laws of nature.