Donnadogsoth

All this is a dodge by Eudaimonic who maintains that free will is compatible with materialism.

Hey neeeel, we agree on something: that materialism precludes free will. If matter is all there is, it must be enslaved to material law, whether that law is deterministic or random or a mixture of both. There is no "wiggle room" here, no possibility of meaningful choice in any way.

If so, there is no good or evil, which means there is no reason not to raise our children to be wolves.

How is the Church against free will?

I have heard that "separation of church and state" was in part to protect the church from the state and not vice versa, to give the church its freedom from being tied to state control.

Principle of least action. God interferes with history to the least degree necessary to accomplish his aims.

Talk past whoever is trying to wordshame you. Tell them firmly that you don't engage in metaconversations, and continue talking for the sake of the audience.

Reproducing the human species requires two things. One, to biologically procreate, and two, to reproduce the culture of universal principle that allows society to function. Just having babies is not enough to advance or even maintain a civilisation, the new generation has to be educated properly in how the civilisation works and their innate creativity needs to be fostered so that new advances will be made. Biology and culture together fall under what we can call expanded socialist reproduction. You've just admitted you don't think anyone is born to do anything in particular, so you can't have a meaningful conception of evil. If there is no human nature, there is no way to violate that nature. You still haven't given a reason why a serial killer shouldn't serially kill, you've just dodged the question by waffling about how serial killers are made.

I'm not making that concession, whether you're a moderate feminist or not. "Mankind" is not only traditionally accurate where by everyone knows what we're talking about, it's spiritually accurate as men tend to be the explorers, adventurers, and leaders of the race. Keeping "mankind" in my vocabulary also expands my vocabulary instead of shrinking it, which gives me more options when describing or referencing it. I didn't say "procreate," I said "survive," as in, survive as a species. You still haven't given a serial killer who has "made his own damn purpose in life" a good reason not to be a serial killer.

We must do what God has created us to do, which is survive, and we find that with proper education most people will take their highest happiness in assisting with that survival. Lopping the head off of that ambition, we find people increasingly concerned with drugging themselves into happiness. Men who do not care about humanity will become beasts, and worse than that, they will become livestock because the ambition towards species survival is a large part of what keeps men free. I don't see how referring to mankind as mankind deprives me of a future, but it does help stabilise society and ground it in common sense instead of winging it off into the stratosphere of politically correct Newspeak.

"Man" as in "mankind." Changing that usage is cultural vandalism and I won't stand for it. Don't be bugged, embrace tradition, it is part of what makes us who we are and grants solidity and continuity. By "survival" I'm not referring to individual survival, I'm referring to species survival.

Evil is that which reduces man, in terms of survival and happiness. By survival I mean man's ability to master the Universe and thus increase his power to exist. Happiness is therefore divided into three: happiness associated with contributing to such survival, happiness associated with things neither helping nor hindering survival, and happiness associated with things which detract from survival. The first category of happiness should be promoted, the second let be, and the third suppressed. We know this to be true by our nature as potential masters of the Universe, located by the measurement of progress referred to as increases in potential (potential, not actual) population density, something only we humans are capable of doing. So, we have the potential, in principle, to discover principles of nature, in order to increase our power to survive in the Universe, potentially immortally, for billions of years, and beyond. The closer we can align our happiness with that, the more felicitously will our happiness be aligned with our highest nature, just stated in the previous paragraph. If neutral things help us survive, then we allow neutral things as well. But, things which actively go against our survival, which reduce our dignity as men, reduce our minds, addict us to distractions, or otherwise wound us or kill us, are evils we must militate against if possible, or else seek to mitigate. That is good and evil as best I understand it.

Okay, I read you. Long story short: evil people, keep on being evil, because it's all relative.

You have given no reason why an evil person should not continue to do evil, if they find evil to be "more fun" than good.

You don't dismiss Christianity? You mean you take it seriously?

You have not answered the question. Why shouldn't an evil person continue to do evil?

Efficient indeed. So, why shouldn't people do evil things to each other? That way God gets to be the divine Masochist and the divine Sadist/Hedonist at the same time!

That's stupid, he took a critical hit to the ear. Everyone knows that incapacitates you for 10 minutes. Put him and the chick in a cage match together and see what happens.

Tom Woods draws and jaws on the possibility that the Left aren't hypocrites because they never said they believed in freedom, instead relying on the worship of "our great institutions" to whip up hysteria against President Trump, when, as Woods says, the US government has done far worse things than Trump has ever countenanced. He also needles virtue-signalling libertarians who appear oblivious to, or cowed before, the Left menace. Why The Left Can't Be Reasoned With

Amazing to think that people can call themselves philosophers while dismissing the very Christianity, Judaism, and Classical Greek thought that allowed them to be alive in the first place and capable of thinking such thoughts...and in a philosophy forum, no less!

How can God be a hedonist and have no preferences at the same time? He likes suffering and he likes "beauty" having no preference for either?

I was raised Catholic but only started to get serious about it in my twenties. I attend Mass at Christmas and Easter, typically. I lost interest in weekly Mass after I realised they were reading the same 156 Bible passages year in, year out. As Terence McKenna put it, "When you get the message, hang up the phone". My family and other personalia are off limits.

Correct.

We agree, there is no such thing as nothing in any ultimate sense. Which means there must be Something. I differentiate between that Something that is æternal (which might include as part of itself, time), and that Something which is not, but rather which changes. In other words, I am arguing that the constant of the Becoming is the Good. I am a Christian, a Catholic. My relationship to God is through Jesus, whom I know as the most powerful human to have ever lived, whose life is attested to in the Gospels, and whose resurrection is vouched for by the blood of the original martyrs such as Peter and Paul. It took me a long while to come around to faith, I still have my disagreements with God, but I got there.