Mentat1231 Amen! And agreed. His kind gentle spirit with which he communicates is also a treasure.

well said, i love hearing him speak....

Theism is irrational nonsense! There is no EVIDENCE for any deity!

@@GeoCoppens That is an irrational comment.

@@gustavgus4545 Your argument is! We want EVIDENCE! Science! You are an irrational dodo!

Some sort of OCD?

If she had it her way she would be speaking throughout the whole video, but because that can't happen she decided to get attention by randomly knitting. Her objections were noticeably weak and the rest of the panel agreed. Bizarre behavior.

@@reevertoun It's interesting to see this attention seeking behavior at such a supposedly high level of education from a female, it seems they are really different in mannerism

how

_" Traditionally, theism not only holds that God is the locus of moral value (and, by the way, "consensus and discussion" only yield subjective morals as diverse as the Nazi ethic vs. the ethic of Buddha vs. the ethic of Mother Theresa), but it also holds that God has created us to innately comprehend the basic moral truths."_ How does this relate to the fact that Nazi Germany was overtly Christian and that the Nazi party explicitly recruited religious people and opposed atheism? Are you suggesting that whole nations can believe themselves to be doing the will of the Christian God and being mistaken? If so, what value does this innate property of yours have? _"Granted, we can fail to do so."_ Apparently so. _"But even that admission of possible failure begs the question: failing with respect to WHAT?"_ That's actually very easy to answer if you have a pragmatic view of morality. When you act immorally you are objectively failing to maintain voluntary cooperation with people around you(Or you are endangering the same if you, for example, steal) or the goals of cooperative societies such as increasing productivity, happiness, safety, health etc.(Which are the objective reasons why we value cooperation) _"If there is no external, objective standard, then how can it ever be said that we failed to live up to it??"_ Sure, but there is one, so that's not a problem. You're free to reject the fruits of cooperation as a value of course, but that doesn't make this standard any less objective than my rejection of obedience to Yahweh or heaven, as goods. Ultimately, you'd be objectively wrong about rejecting cooperation being far more beneficial to you than cooperating and this is why there's near universal consensus around the basics of reciprocal ethics(But only towards the in-group you're a member of). _"If we arrived at our ethic by consensus and discussion, and that makes it "good", then why were the Nazis not "good"?"_ Well, I don't use the word good like that at all, but your question is more usefully phrased in terms of whether the actions of the Nazis were compatible with coexistence with the Jews. If they were not, they're objectively immoral in a system that includes both the Nazis and the Jews and this is how we use the word "immoral" - to admonish people because they endanger cooperation and peace. Personally I only use good as a subjective word, sort of a synonym for "beneficial". Nobody are "good" in general. For example, we're both horribly destructive towards non-human animals on earth and are in that state even if we are vegans due to occupying territory and engaging in agriculture. It all depends on the values being discussed. Morality however, deals with interactions between people and starts out declaring that peaceful cooperation is a value( Really because of its demonstrable good results). When you start out from there your points simply vanish and there's not much in the way of criticism left. You'd have to make statements like "Well, how do you know that rape and murder is wrong?" and come across as a complete psychopath and the answer will simply be "Because I value cooperation and its fruits, and those things endanger that value, therefore the actions are bad". Such rational oughts are the only oughts anyone could possibly defend - even your god - because if I honestly reject all his values and don't care about the consequences, then his way is objectively not a good path for me.

Gnomefro [quote] Are you suggesting that whole nations can believe themselves to be doing the will of the Christian God and being mistaken? If so, what value does this innate property of yours have? [/quote] You are conflating the epistemological issue with the ontological one. People being mistaken has nothing to do with the objective truth of a set of values. [quote] ...the goals of cooperative societies... [/quote] You are taking cooperative society to be morally good as a brute fact. And you are stipulating that the things humans typically want (productivity, cooperation, happiness) are moral goods... again as brute fact. There is no account for why these are the objective moral goods, and not other things. Moreover, the pursuit of a particular kind of society becomes a sort of consequentialist/utilitarian morality, which has several problems. For one, we cannot know the ripple effect of particular actions, such that something which seems to increase happiness and productivity in the short-run may very well lead to the greatest possible misery in the long-run. Also, consequentialism makes the ends justify the means, such that, if killing off all the old and infirm would increase the sum total of happiness and productivity in the world, then that would be the morally right thing to do. Finally, you actually specify in-group reciprocity, without realizing that the Nazis were doing exactly that. Indeed, had they succeeded in what they were doing, their "in-group" would be the only set of people still in existence, and would be triumphant and happy. This is why Nietzche, Sartre, Mackie, Russell, and others have all worried about the lack of a higher authority which can adjudicate our competing in-group values. An objective plumb-line against which we are either right or wrong. You talk about coexistence with the Jews, but what about the Allied Forces that refused to coexist with the Nazis. It's a conflict of coexistences, and again it has to be judged on the basis of some objective standard. This is why many philosophers have favored a deontological view, where the virtues are virtues in and of themselves, and the consequences (including cooperative, productive societies) are secondary. But then the deontologist still has no objective ontological ground for the virtues, or what distinguishes them from the vices. The theist has a ready answer: God is an absolutely perfect being, and therefore His moral nature is "the Good". His nature just is the plumb-line against which our natures must be judged, and therefore the commands which issue forth from that perfect nature constitute our moral duties. And, since God is a metaphysically necessary being, we can even say that these moral values and duties are also metaphysically necessary truths (which most philosophers would want to affirm).

Mentat1231 "There is no account for why these are the objective moral goods, and not other things." So what? They are demonstrably beneficial for social species. Why isn't that enough? Why does there need to be an objective and external standard? Is it not possible that morality is more complex than a singular objective standard? Using God as an answer seems to be a crutch to me. It allows you to answer questions which may have no satisfactory answers with "x". It doesn't actually explain anything. In group/Out group conflicts certainly force us to ask how we can quantifiably determine higher morals than others. However this to me does not mean that an objective standard must exist, but rather that certain ideals are more beneficial than others.

Bo Aganaba The idea that it is good to maximize general human flourishing in the first place is one which would need justification. The individual's lot may not get any better, indeed it sometimes requires a bit of sacrifice or the curbing of certain desires. Why should anyone care whether humanity does well? After all, on the atheist worldview, we are probably going to go extinct at some point before the heat-death of the Universe. What difference does it make whether we live for pure self-interest?

Maximizing human flourishing is important because we necessarily depend on each other to survive. Societies simply would not function if everybody was only self-serving. If somebody wants to be completely self-serving then they may do so. However, they should not expect to receive the benefits of living in a healthy society that requires cooperation. In addition, the evolution of humans includes an empathetic nature, like many other social species. Performing altruistic acts literally make us feel good. Chimps often deprive themselves for the benefit of the group. Bonobos are matriarchal and have little to no violence, even when they come into contact with other bonobo groups. I'm sure you've heard plenty of anecdotal stories of dogs putting themselves in harm's way for their owners. We also have an intelligent brain, capable of building on our empathy to improve our morality as our knowledge increases. Why do people support the LGBT community in today's world? Because we know that it is completely natural and in fact millions of species have a minority number of homosexual members. I care about my friends and family and I recognize that we all help each other. I know that I want others to treat them well, and I choose to reciprocate that action to others. What does any of this have to do with the eventual heat death of the universe? What does any of this have to do with whether or not God exists?

Christian paranoia has unlimited potential as a human gold mine. If you can hold your nose while you fleece the gullible Christian suckers, the sky is the limit.... Knitting doth not payeth as well as Christian bottomfeededing. Right?

Is the existence of gratuitous, pointless evil ubiquitously the responsibility of human agents? Quite obviously it is not. You're misrepresenting the argument. Even if all human evil is necessary for some libertarian free will (a dubious proposition at best) there remains a nigh infinite supply of natural evil waiting in the wings. Homo sapiens lived and died in pain and terror for countless generations before they contrived the notion of God. That seems to be the work of an omnisadistic being rather than an omnibenevolent one.

@@CDVerderben Only humans commit definitional evil. Tornados, house fires, dog bites, cancer, etc...these maladies can not logically be called evil. But evil is done by humans through our creatureally free will. God created us. He rules over all while allowing evil to be evil through us, His image, born under the curse of Adam.

Trevor Hodge you are unbelievably stupid.

Well, Tooley has a hate boner for plantinga lol. I read Tooley on Plantinga's "the nature of necessity" and I was very disapointed though; outright misreadings abounded. For example, he criticised Plantinga for making an argument using premises relying of Stalnaker semantics, when he in the same chapter made another version of the argument without relyoing on them. I take it tooley is better on the EAAN?

Sal C ...and your statement manages to say less than nothing. Amazing.

Read one of his books on modal logic all the way through. Then summarize your findings on here in modal logic. Let's see who's "cognitively limited".

@@Drigger95 🤣🤣

*Tooley

You thinking that can be chalked up to your cognitive limitations.