To ask if you are not a Christian, what non Christian values you live by?

[BlossomBlanket]

Just that really!

So what is the "good" that leads to all these exceptions that muddy the waters then?

No, because a society needs a diversity of people for it to thrive. If you breed exclusively for IQ, you end up with a population of people who are fabulous at cryptic crosswords and existential philosophy, but are rubbish at really essential things like building houses, plumbing, art, music - the list is endless. For society to thrive, you need people of a huge range of personal qualities and IQ is only one item on that long, long list.

Have a lovely evening everyone

I'm not entirely sure I understand what it is you are asking. But if you think it is possible to live in a world where the waters are never muddied and everything is always a matter of black/white, right/wrong, then you haven't been paying attention.

I love my family, haven’t killed anyone, haven’t stolen, help others where I can, treat others like I’d like to be treated.

Straightfoward and non complicated - life is good.

No we absolutely can't tell you what good is seeing as you just said coercing people into reproducing is good for the species....

Can you?

I don't know to what extent is truly matters whether goodness or morality objectively exist, vs moral relativism.

If, for example, The Bible contained a clear, strict, comprehensive and easily-applicable (in various circumstances) set of moral rules, then I think the distinction would be more relevant. Instead, it (to a large extent) provides guiding principles that are often very open to interpretation, to the extent that it has resulted in multitudes of denominations that have differing viewpoints on many moral issues, and room for disagreement (and changes, over time) on issues even within a denomination.

To pick one example (that isnt a social hot-topic), I think (perhaps wrongly) that most Christians would think killing someone in self-defence can be acceptable, but some do not (to me as a non-theist, I'd say that the latter view looks more biblically correct, but that's a pretty cursory google).

If the Bible does contain absolute moral truths then whether or not it is sometimes okay to kill someone (and if so, when) seems like a pretty big issue to be open to interpretation.

I suppose it's fair to say that The Bible (if you believe in it) reduces the range of possibilities for what may or may not be "moral", but I still think that it is sufficiently imprecise that even the moral realist cannot know with much certainly if their principles are "objectively" the correct ones.

Coercion: the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.

Whether 'gently' or otherwise, you think coercion is a positive thing? This is an example of your moral superiority?

I don't want to get into detailed exegesis. But here's something for you to think about.

Clearly it's anachronistic to claim Nietzsche as a postmodernist: too early. But lots of people have claimed him as a prefigure -- postmodern avant la lettre. You think this, it seems. Have another think.

Yes God died, and so (Nietzsche thought) ethics and morality lost their ground. But it's a step further along from ethical/moral relativism to the truth-relativism of postmodernism ("chaos" as you say). I'm not convinced this was a step Nietzsche took.

Possibly he was too smart. (He was quite clever, most his life.) Of course truth can't be relative; maybe he'd have liked to think it was, but anyway it didn't work out (because it couldn't).

(Why can't truth be relative? (This is fun if you've not seen it before.) ... Here's why. "Nothing is (really, actually, definitively, absolutely ... whatever) true" is a proposition that says of itself (among other propositions, but still) that it isn't (really etc.) true. So if it's true, it's false. So it's false. (Why does that remind us of B. Russell?) And, yes, "truth is relative" is equivalent to "nothing is (blah, qualifications) true". So "truth is relative" is false. So truth isn't relative.

You might think of this as the Epimenides argument against postmodern relativism (obvious reasons). You might try to manufacture an Epimenides argument against (Nietzschean or other) moral relativism ... but it's kind of hard (essentially, I guess because of the partial reliance on disquotation or similar: works fine for 'meaning' ("nothing means anything" says of itself it's meaningless) and other semantic predicates, but maybe not (I'm not definite here) for morals/ethics and related). Don't give up, though; we didn't go to the moon because it was easy, after all.)

I'm not claiming Nietzsche thought all (or any) of that explicitly, btw (though those who enjoy exegesis might like to trawl). But anyway, not everyone agrees he was a postmodernist, even avant la lettre. (And, incidentally, much less even was he a poststructuralist, which that stuff about transcendental signified suggests you think.)

No, clearly I don't. The opposite. Anyone with an IQ of 40 or above would realise that was a challenge to a previous poster's assertion that the "survival of the species" was the highest value and that all morals should be oriented towards this. It is the other poster who believes this, take it up with them.

Take it up with the authors of the books my lecturers told me to read which told me this. I got a A+ in the essay which argued this, so clearly he had no issue. Knowledge schmowledge. I did learn that people who have something they believe is worth saying, make an effort to be understood.

No, not obvious at all, because there is no mention of survival of the species in any of those nested quotes, and yours was a direct response to one about rape!

"But it's a step further along from ethical/moral relativism to the truth-relativism of postmodernism ("chaos" as you say). I'm not convinced this was a step Nietzsche took."

You are right.

How does this belief manifest itself for you vs the Christian belief? What does equal mean? How do you think this should effect people?

It was to a poster who has argued throughout the thread that what is moral and good is whatever promotes the "survival of the species".

I don’t covet my neighbour’s ox.

That was me. And you are wilfully choosing to misunderstand everything that I have said.

The point I have been trying to make, which the majority of people on this thread have been able to understand perfectly well, is that those values which you view as 'Christian', or 'religious' are values which are held in common by humans of pretty much all faiths and none, because they are conducive to the survival of human society. Those values have now been claimed by the faithful, but they are as old as humanity itself because they just make sense in a purely pragmatic way.

I did not say that there are no values which might be conducive to human survival which are demonstrably not good nevertheless. There are, eugenics is one of those. It wasn't me who suggested that coercion to breed for intelligence might be a good idea, was it?

I mean... this is what Shaun Best is saying and they let him write a book and it was recommended the students read it

You got an A+ so your argument has to be correct? Really? Your mark merely reflects the quality of your writing and the way you structured your essay, it is by no means a benchmark of objective truth.

It's also in this book photo attached, and in this lecture by Gregory Sadler https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mGg8v3ekbpU&pp=ygUPTmVpdHN6Y2hlIHRydXRo

And Neitszche also said that truth is a "mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically". He argued that truths are illusions about which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors worn out and without sensuous power.

So you tell me what is wrong with my interpretation and that of those whose job it is to teach us?

It cost me a fortune. Are you saying it is not an educators job to point out if I'm objectively wrong? This explains a lot. So - you believe they don't have to correct students if they're wrong, but this same institution creates the arbiters of objective truth. 🤣🤣🤣

You clearly studied philosophy or an adjacent subject. That's a humanity, so not a field where there are objective truths. It's like literature - it's perfectly possible to have two people who have wildly different interpretations of a given book or author, but who both argue their points and substantiate them so well that they both get an A+. Doesn't make them both right, or wrong.

If you want objective truths, go into STEM - and even there not everything is a simple matter of right/wrong, as evidenced by the field of theoretical physics.

There are so many things in this universe which can't be objectively known - we can only go by the knowledge we have, recognise that it is incomplete and imperfect and do our best. That includes human morals.

Sorry about that, I thought you were just one of the flying monkeys joining in on the pile on

There are still objective truths in the humanities though - if I said Foucault was a raging heterosexual who thought nonces should be hung - I'd be objectively wrong. Probably.