thatguysnephew
New member
I am planning to reply! Sorry for the delay. I just sat down to read your replies. I had time about three weeks ago to read them, but they’ve faded from memory. Hope to reply this evening, or in the next week!
"Objective" is often a weasel word. The "moral argument" gets its plausibility by switching back and forth between two different meanings of "objective," just as the first cause argument switches between meanings of "begin." So I mostly ignore the word. If you said, "Is X objectively true?" I would hear, "Is X true?"
But in this case you define it:
(something that doesn't change)?
So you're asking whether happiness changes.
Like, does the amount of happiness change? Yes, it does.
Does what makes people happy change? Yes, it does.
Does the nature of happiness change? I might have to refer you to neuroscience.
I think that happiness/contentment comes from knowing the person of Jesus Christ--God in human flesh.
In which case I have never been happy. Since I have been happy, that doesn't work for me.
Plus, it would mean that nobody was ever happy back in B.C., and that nobody is happy in Heaven.
Basically, I'm saying that I don't see the utility of this linguistic move.
That's my objective definition of happiness.
Again, I don't know what you mean by "objective" in that context. Are you saying that your definition never changes?
If that's a definition, then we can't argue about whether it is true, we can only look at implications to see if it is useful: On the assumption that Jesus really existed, we must conclude that some people were happy between roughly 1 A.D. and 36 A.D., but then nobody has been happy since?
It's a weird definition--possibly unique to you--that clearly doesn't refer to what other people mean by the word "happiness." I don't see the point of it.
2b) Does a 40 week old gestation fetus have as much personality as a one day old newborn?
So let's posit twins: One has just been born, and the other as yet not. How can it be wrong to kill one but okay to kill the other?
That's a stumper…. Let me at least admit that your question is uncomfortable.
It's nice to have a brightline: Killing is okay after birth but not before. You think that conception and/or ensoulment is a brightline, but I could pick at that one as easily as you can pick at mine.
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Would that soulless person be fair game for murderers? "No soul, no foul?"
I feel like I'm cheating here. Instead of answering your question, I'm asking another question in hopes that you'll find mine as awkward as I find yours.
If we weren't in a society where churches try to use the abortion issue to usurp power over people who aren't in those churches, then I might possibly be willing to entertain arguments for prohibiting abortions somewhere before birth--but after the development of a working brain. Before the PoC (zygote/embryo/fetus) develops a brain, it cannot have a personality. Personhood cannot exist before a working brain.
I understand your concern. That certainly seems to contain the tension in which we all find ourselves in the U.S. The Bible teaches that stealing is wrong. The state enforces laws that forbid stealing. The state is enforcing a Biblical principle.
And Sharia law, right? And, for all I know, the law of devil worshipers.
"Is happiness, as the best (from my perspective) secularism has to offer as a standard of morality, able to allow for human flourishing in the U.S.?
Two answers:
First, yes, I think that utilitarianism is the highest and best standard of morality, the best promoter of flourishing.
Second, when Conan the Barbarian was asked "What is the best in life," and he answered, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women," he wasn't answering for theism as a whole, even as I'm not answering for the whole of secularism.
Utilitarianism is compatible with both theism and secularism, and secularists aren't all utilitarians.
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I really am fumbling to pour all the tension into a question. But the issue seems worth deliberating. Stealing was a ho-hum example too. Maybe you can kick me a better one.
Theft is wrong anyway. We don't need gods to tell us theft is wrong. Maybe we should discuss things that are only wrong if Jehovah exists? Wearing cloth made of two different fibers, for instance, eating shellfish, suffering witches to live, or failing to honor the sabbath, those would be sins if Jehovah were real, but there isn't anything wrong with doing them.
I've mentioned "sin," and you're new here, so let me go off on a tangent:
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Sin consists of doubting or disobeying gods. Doubt is the bigger part of that. Eve's first sin, then, wasn't when she tasted the apple; it was when she entertained the serpent's argument (the argument that Jehovah hadn't had her best interests in mind when he forbade eating the apple).
That was sin. Evil is different. Many people conflate evil and sin, but evil (the sources of unhappiness) is the punishment for sin. There are categories of evil listed in Genesis. I remember pain in childbirth, having to earn our living by the sweat of our brows, having to cope with the misbehavior of weeds. (As Abbie Normal would say in Christopher Moore's [FONT=&]Bite Me[/FONT], "I'm paraphrasing.”)
When I was a kid, women's clothing was perverse, made for left-handers. One theory I don't particularly believe was that this dated back to when ladies had servants to dress them. So, there's this joke--or there used to be, back when it didn't need this much introduction: We're quoting Jehovah chastising the kids in the garden, telling them the terrible punishments they must suffer, and we get to the part where he's saying they have to cover their nakedness with raiment. "And [FONT=&]you[/FONT]," he says, turning to Eve, "gots to button yours backwards!"
"Aborted baby" strikes me as oxymoronic. It makes as much sense as "aborted professor" or "aborted mechanic." I'm not correcting you; I'm sure your terminology works well for many people. I'm just explaining why it doesn't work for me. Babies start at birth. Before that you have zygotes, embryos, fetuses.
If the souls aren't damaged, then there's no harm done, it seems to me. Why would you be concerned for the life of an aborted embryo if you aren't concerned for the life of an unfertilized egg?
I'm concerned for the souls of those who allow them to be murdered, or who do the murdering.
From my point of view, if abortion is murder then so is chastity.
If people who get abortions aren't harming souls, then I don't see the problem.
Can I grant that they may do some good work, but still look askance at them because I suspect their motives?
In a way, that's kind of cool; it means we agree on this: The line should be drawn somewhere in the conception-to-birth area.
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In this context and all others, I argue against the oxymoronic phrase "inherently valuable." You can't have value without a valuer. If something is valuable, it is valuable for something or to someone. To call something "inherently valuable" is to say that it would be good even if it wasn't good for anything or to anyone. That's a logical contradiction.
Note that I'm not claiming that zygotes aren't valuable. I'm just saying that, in my view, the phrase "inherently valuable" doesn't make sense.
It is a comfort to me to know that I can speak with my Uncle with whom I disagree so profoundly while not disagreeing bitterly. Thank you for your kindness in engaging with me, Uncle.
I don't know if I replied to everything that you replied to. Feel free to bring things back up, but I created enough confusion in some of my previous posts that I wanted to streamline what I could.
2) To illuminate that happiness is not a strong enough idea/construct to effectively determine what is right and wrong
I imagine what I’ve said so far is unintelligible within your worldview.
My concern is that happiness can’t uphold a moral framework. You never said that it should, but I don’t see what else can do it better without something other than human’s creating that morality.
I believe that the Bible within relationship to Jesus Christ provides an effective and attractive morality.
Thank you for the pushback. Quite helpful…not comfortable, but I bet Ginsberg and Scalia had several uncomfortable conversations within their friendship.
Personhood cannot exist before a working brain.
We have at least established that this topic is complicated. Not so complicated that it can’t be talked about. And not so complicated that something couldn’t be decided upon to protect women and to at least agree with european nations that post mid-second trimester abortions should be illegal.
I want to flesh out my confusion with how you see chastity as murder in my view of human life. I believe that once a sperm and egg unite and form an embryo a human bearing the image of God has been formed.
How does chastity…the prevention of the making of a human life (as defined above) constitute murder in my view? I’m willing to believe it does, but I’m guessing this is a matter of mixing worldviews inadvertently.
Let me try my sentence again: Once a Homo Sapien is created (egg and sperm make a little embryo) then it's assumed to be valuable as a human.
Is that better?
Generator fixed?
Generator fixed?
Would you be opposed to me posting a link to this on facebook? I imagine other people would be encouraged by seeing a model for civil familial discourse.
I don't know whether I said this in an earlier post, but "happiness," when I use it in conversations like this is a kind of shorthand for an ill-defined larger notion.
For instance, reducing unhappiness is just as important as increasing happiness. Other people might talk about people growing, developing, having appropriate challenges. I just talk about happiness, because it's a simple familiar word that I know how to spell, not because it covers the entire area. I don't know what the entire area is.
But I don't know of anything else one could base a morality on. Suppose we were told that people are miserable in Heaven; would anyone want to go there? Suppose honesty caused sadness; would it still be good?
And what other test is there? We can say that honesty is good because it tends to increase happiness. What other test is significant and makes sense and would be at all useful?
Talk about fertilized eggs bearing the image of god puzzles me. How can a fertilized egg look more like a god than an unfertilized egg?
There's an old joke:
Question: What does the "H" in "Jesus H Christ" stand for?
Answer: "Haploid."
Because Joseph didn't fertilize the egg, see? So, really, the unfertilized egg would have to be said to look more like Jesus. And Jehovah didn't come from an egg at all.
I'm torn about whether to leave this part of the post in, because I don't want to give offense, but it makes my point that the "image of god" language isn't coming across as meaningful.
I believe that the Bible within relationship to Jesus Christ provides an effective and attractive morality.
Isn't a world with Hellfire the worst of all possible worlds? I don't see how anybody could want that to be true.
I may have been unclear. I was saying that we don't get to forbid abortions before there is a working brain, not that we do get to forbid them after that point.
If the argument is that killing a person is murder, and therefore preventing a person from coming into existence is murder, then chastity--because it prevents people from coming into existence--is as much murder as abortion is.
Let me try my sentence again: Once a Homo Sapien is created (egg and sperm make a little embryo) then it's assumed to be valuable as a human.
Is that better?
Well, it's not an oxymoron. But I don't share your assumption, and I don't know why you make it.
You can think of a fertilized egg as "a human" but you can also think of an unfertilized egg that way. You can think of a embryo as a reproductive organ. You aren't going to be either right or wrong if you do so, because how you think of something is a matter of viewpoint, not a matter of truth.
I think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. Many disagree. It would be a mistake for proponents of either flavor to criminalize the other.
Likewise it would be wrong to criminalize abortion because of how you like to think about fertilized eggs.
Generator fixed?
Yes.
We ran it in and out, in and out. Both ends moved, and both arrived at their destination at the same time! It was cool. I didn't have to pull the bolt, give the shaft a half-turn, and put the bolt back in. It seems fixed.
That would be nothing to you, but I call a plumber to replace a flapper valve, so I feel like I got a merit badge.
I've been telling people we're on the shore of Lake Superior, but Toni tells me this is some lesser body of water. Some hot days, but presumably not as hot as you're getting. Records setting in Denver, 105 degrees one day. We've got a nice shady campsite.
We've rendezvoused with our daughter and granddaughter, who came from Africa. So, good times.
I don't know why I was talking about Moral Tribes. I mean, it's good and I like it and I tend to agree with most of it ... but I'm listening to The Righteous Mind again when we're on the highway, and it's just so good and amiable and illuminating. I agree with it less, but it's a better read and I learn more from it. It's awesome.
Within a couple of days of talking to you, my shoulder was 98% better. Every few days I may get a twinge to remind me that I used to have a problem, but that's all that remains.
New joke: "Humans are 90% water. Basically we're just cucumbers with anxiety." At least I think it's a joke.
Here's a bit of Jonathan Haidt on Youtube. Delightful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uogEbb0WOJE
Universities have "institutional disconfirmation." You as an individual argue for what you believe, and your confirmation bias blinds you to disconfirming arguments, but, at a university, people who disagree, and who have their own confirmation-bias-induced blindness, interact with you in such a way as to help each other see past their blind spots.
A university without this diversity would not be fit to give advice on public policy.