Empathy is not just "understanding the emotions of others," it is understanding and caring about the emotions of others. Someone could fully understand the emotions of others and simply not care.
We must be using different dictionaries: "Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's shoes."[1]
Certainly it could cause him to feel remorse, but there's no reason it must. For something to be "universally" intolerable, it's not sufficient to say it "could" be intolerable. "Universally subjectively intolerable" means intolerable to every conceivable subjective observer.
Nether of us know if it 'must' or not. Yet, I will assert it would be more reasonable to believe it is than it isn't. But, you're right. I can't give a logical proof of it, nor can I provide empirical evidence of what would happen if everyone(thing) gained this knowledge. I can't prove any kind of 'universal truth' exists, moral or otherwise.
Regardless, I will assert that Dahmer had a moral learning disability; he was not a moral guru. His inability to understand morality doesn't somehow invalidate morality, anymore than the existence of someone with sever Dyscalculia invalidates mathematics.
Nor does people giving contradictory answers invalidate logic. Anyway, let's be clear about the claims I made:
Complete knowledge of the outcomes of our evil actions could easily be "universally subjectively intolerable."
'Could' being the operative word here. You are right I've not proved it "must," but it was never my intention to do so. In fact, if you've given up on trying to prove it "mustn't," then I am satisfied.
"If a person doesn't think there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?" -Jeffrey Dahmer
This is a most excellent question. If Jeffrey Dahmer was still alive today how would you answer his question?
Would reality be answer enough? If I were to punch a brick wall as hard as I could enough times, I'd probably have a lot of broken bones. So I don't punch brick walls for sport. Morality is a conceptual application of this real cause and response nature of reality; the things we do to ourselves and each other affect one another in a multitude of ways. It makes sense for beings that want to live as long and/or as happily as possible to realize that fighting amongst each other unnecessarily does not have a very good long term payout. It's a combination of our ability to understand and recall logical systems both internally and in application (i.e. analyzing scenarios) and our ability to understand how others feel based on similar experiences and/or social cues that gives us purpose not to run around like a crazed lunatic and kill people on whim.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
We must be using different dictionaries:
"Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's shoes." [1]
We can imagine Dahmer (or a Dahmer-like character) with the ability to fully experience "empathy" as defined above, who simply doesn't care about the other person's suffering. This definition of empathy is not sufficient to render bad actions "universally subjectively intolerable."
Even if this definition were sufficient, it's gutting any meaning of the phrase "universally subjectively intolerable." That phrase refers to something that is intolerable from every possible subjective perspective. This includes the subjective perspective of people like Dahmer who lack empathy. You're changing the parameters of the question by granting Dahmer the ability to feel empathy.
Regardless, I will assert that Dahmer had a moral learning disability; he was not a moral guru. His inability to understand morality doesn't somehow invalidate morality, anymore than the existence of someone with sever Dyscalculia invalidates mathematics.
Nor does people giving contradictory answers invalidate logic.
Crashing00 made a similar point on the previous page. Let me quote my response here:
[R]ationality does not demand that you care about it. No one claims that the existence of rationality imposes any duty on anyone to do anything.
But morality, by making "ought" statements, is purporting to impose duties on people to act a particular way. If people are perfectly free not to care about these duties and not act the way they "ought" to act, then the word "ought" is meaningless. If there is no particular reason a person "ought" to care about and follow moral rules, then why do we call them moral rules?
In other words, the fact that people can freely reject logic (or mathematics, which is a subset of logic) doesn't have any bearing on the validity of logic. This is because logic does not impose any duties or requirements on anyone. Logic doesn't care whether anyone "follows it" or "believes in it."
Morality, on the other hand, purports to impose duties and requirements on people. Unlike pure logic, morality says people "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. If people are free to reject morality, then in what sense can we say a moral duty or requirement exits? What do ideas like "should" and "shouldn't" mean if people are free to simply ignore them?
In other words, the fact that people can freely reject logic (or mathematics, which is a subset of logic) doesn't have any bearing on the validity of logic. This is because logic does not impose any duties or requirements on anyone. Logic doesn't care whether anyone "follows it" or "believes in it."
Morality, on the other hand, purports to impose duties and requirements on people. Unlike pure logic, morality says people "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. If people are free to reject morality, then in what sense can we say a moral duty or requirement exits? What do ideas like "should" and "shouldn't" mean if people are free to simply ignore them?
So, your assertion is a statement like: "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]" -which I hope we can both agree is a moral statement- DOES care if people "follows it" or "believes in it?" Because I don't think it does.
You might be right in some cases morality seems to care if people "follow it," but -at a base level- I don't think that is required. For example -at the base level- Christianity (a moral system) is simply asserting a truth statement about Jesus. There are people within Christianity that feel it's better to believe in this truth statement than not -just like logisticians feel its better to be constant than not- but the system itself "Christianity" I would assert doesn't care.
The moral system of Christianity -and the right or wrong of its truth statement about Jesus- exists independently of people believing-in or following it. It doesn't require people to 'care' about it, but people that follow its tenets do care about it and try to get other people to care about it.
Not unlike how people on this forum care about logic and try to get others to care about and follow its tenets. Logic itself doesn't require this devotion, but people feel the need to give it such anyway.
In other words, the fact that people can freely reject logic (or mathematics, which is a subset of logic) doesn't have any bearing on the validity of logic. This is because logic does not impose any duties or requirements on anyone. Logic doesn't care whether anyone "follows it" or "believes in it."
Morality, on the other hand, purports to impose duties and requirements on people. Unlike pure logic, morality says people "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. If people are free to reject morality, then in what sense can we say a moral duty or requirement exits? What do ideas like "should" and "shouldn't" mean if people are free to simply ignore them?
So, your assertion is a statement like: "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]" -which I hope we can both agree is a moral statement- DOES care if people "follows it" or "believes in it?" Because I don't think it does.
We are in agreement that a statement of the form "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]" does not care whether people follow or believe in it.
However, the statement of the form "one ought to [behave morally]" could be interpreted to impose an absolute duty and to "care" whether people follow or believe in it.
If you agree with me that all "ought" statements of the form "one ought to [do X]" really just reduce to instrumental statements of the form "if one wants [Y] then [do X]" then we're on the same page.
However, I would argue that these kinds of truths are not "moral truths" the way OP (and most people) talk about morality. For example, under our framework, the statement "if you don't want to get cold, you should wear a jacket" is as much a moral truth as "if you want humankind to flourish, you should not kill innocent people." There is nothing intrinsically worse about violating one statement than the other. We as a society might choose to punish violations of the latter and not the former, but there is nothing objective or universal that says it must be so. There is no intrinsic requirement or duty associated with either statement.
If that's the case, then I think you're forced to concede OP's point, which is that the non-theist view of morality is much weaker than the Christian view of morality. Christian morality purports to impose certain inescapable, objective duties on all humankind. Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences. You would apparently concede that moral statements do not impose objective duties on anyone (they may impose subjective duties if society decides to enforce them). If that's true, there's no objective force that compels moral compliance; there's nothing transforming "is" statements into "ought" statements.
In the non-theist view of morality it's possible for someone to live a completely immoral life and "get away with it"; in other words, suffer no negative consequences. There is no objective system of justice imposed by the universe, by Karma, or by God. That's what Dahmer's quote is getting at. "If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I do it?"
[This also means there's no correct answer to the question of what you "should" do in the case of the Trolley Problem. You can give answers like "if you want to maximize human flourishing, do [X]" but the problem doesn't specify that you need to care about human flourishing. If nothing objectively requires you to care, then there's no "should." Any answer to the trolley problem is potentially valid, depending on what the person answering the problem happens to care about. Thus the statement "I would not push the fat man onto the tracks because I want the trolley to kill as many people as possible" would be a perfectly valid logical answer to the Trolley Problem.]
Not unlike how people on this forum care about logic and try to get others to care about and follow its tenets. Logic itself doesn't require this devotion, but people feel the need to give it such anyway.
If moral consequences only exist when people convince each other to care about morality, then these consequences necessarily cease to exist when no one cares. For example, if everyone in your society believes slavery is good, there is no reason why you should feel obligated to oppose slavery. You might decide you want to oppose slavery, perhaps because you believe getting rid of slavery will improve "human flourishing" in your society, but there's no particular reason you must care about human flourishing. And even if you do care about human flourishing, there's no reason why you must bear the personal costs of opposing slavery and freeing your slaves. You might decide you don't care about human flourishing as much as you care about your own personal comfort, in which case you're free to act "immorally" without facing any consequences.
If you agree with me that all "ought" statements of the form "one ought to [do X]" really just reduce to instrumental statements of the form "if one wants [Y] then [do X]" then we're on the same page.
There is nothing intrinsically worse about violating one statement than the other.
I would disagree with this. The consequences can be "worse." Logic might not find anything 'intrinsically worse' with violating one statement than the other, but logic doesn't find not violating one 'intrinsically worse' then violating one. Logic doesn't care about anything, and is incapable of saying if ANYTHING is 'worse' than anything else, even if one violates its own tenets and the other doesn't. Only we are. Intrinsically in this very dissection we are both saying: "My argument is more constant with logic and empirical evidence than yours, and -therefore- is "better." In order to use logic, we must make value judgments and 'care,' otherwise we would be as ineffectual as BS's omniscience computer. Thus, one can certainly say something is "worse" than something else.
If that's the case, then I think you're forced to concede OP's point, which is that the non-theist view of morality is much weaker than the Christian view of morality. Christian morality purports to impose certain inescapable, objective duties on all humankind. Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences. You would apparently concede that moral statements do not impose objective duties on anyone (they may impose subjective duties if society decides to enforce them). If that's true, there's no objective force that compels moral compliance; there's nothing transforming "is" statements into "ought" statements.
Don't you see how these statements refute what your saying? "Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences."
That's the heart of what we're debating about "should."
We're on the same page that "should" is simply a shorthand way of saying a complicated "if.. then." And, even in an 'absolute morality' system -like Christian- that's all it is: "You should do this, because if you don't God will be sad, and you don't want God sad." Morality must work within logic, thus "should" must have a logical analog, and it does. That's the very reason why things like Euthyphro's dilemma have meaning.
Moral/religious systems ALL have negative consequences for doing 'bad' and positive ones for doing 'good.' That's how they ALL work: "You should do [X], BECAUSE if you do [X] then [Y] will happen. You shouldn't do [A], BECAUSE if you do [A] then [C] will happen."
The system you're trying to claim a moral system 'must be' doesn't make sense, and no one has ever claimed to have one. The very reason we are having this debate is because no one literally accepts "You should do good for goodness sake." If we did, this conversation would be moot.
If moral consequences only exist when people convince each other to care about morality, then these consequences necessarily cease to exist when no one cares.
No.
I know we both agree the consequences exist regardless of anyone cares or not.
There is nothing intrinsically worse about violating one statement than the other.
I would disagree with this. The consequences can be "worse." Logic might not find anything 'intrinsically worse' with violating one statement than the other, but logic doesn't find not violating one 'intrinsically worse' then violating one. Logic doesn't care about anything, and is incapable of saying if ANYTHING is 'worse' than anything else, even if one violates its own tenets and the other doesn't. Only we are. Intrinsically in this very dissection we are both saying: "My argument is more constant with logic and empirical evidence than yours, and -therefore- is "better." In order to use logic, we must make value judgments and 'care,' otherwise we would be as ineffectual as BS's omniscience computer. Thus, one can certainly say something is "worse" than something else.
In fact, to even have this dissection we MUST.
We are having this discussion because we both happen to care about logical consistency and we happen to agree that it is a valuable or useful thing to us. Nothing objectively compels us to agree about this, nor is there any objective standard by which logical consistency is "good." Therefore we can only say by fiat or by subjective agreement that logical consistency is "better" or "good." We could have agreed on the opposite if we wanted to. There is no universal or absolute sense in which logical consistency is "good."
If that's the case, then I think you're forced to concede OP's point, which is that the non-theist view of morality is much weaker than the Christian view of morality. Christian morality purports to impose certain inescapable, objective duties on all humankind. Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences. You would apparently concede that moral statements do not impose objective duties on anyone (they may impose subjective duties if society decides to enforce them). If that's true, there's no objective force that compels moral compliance; there's nothing transforming "is" statements into "ought" statements.
Don't you see how these statements refute what your saying? "Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences."
That's the heart of what we're debating about "should."
We're on the same page that "should" is simply a shorthand way of saying a complicated "if.. then." And, even in an 'absolute morality' system -like Christian- that's all it is: "You should do this, because if you don't God will be sad, and you don't want God sad." Morality must work within logic, thus "should" must have a logical analog, and it does. That's the very reason why things like Euthyphro's dilemma have meaning.
Moral/religious systems ALL have negative consequences for doing 'bad' and positive ones for doing 'good.' That's how they ALL work: "You should do [X], BECAUSE if you do [X] then [Y] will happen. You shouldn't do [A], BECAUSE if you do [A] then [C] will happen."
The system you're trying to claim a moral system 'must be' doesn't make sense, and no one has ever claimed to have one. The very reason we are having this debate is because no one literally accepts "You should do good for goodness sake." If we did, this conversation would be moot.
This is where a concept along the lines of "objectively intolerable" or "universally subjectively intolerable" would come into play. A Christian would make a statement along the lines of: "all creatures with a soul, by their intrinsic nature, will necessarily come to the conclusion that immoral actions are intolerable (i.e. when they face judgement in the afterlife), and therefore all creatures with a soul necessarily should act morally." In other words, there is some inescapable distinction that God or the universe will always draw between moral and immoral actions, and this distinction compels all humans to ultimately determine that the moral choice is "good" while the immoral choice is "bad."
Perhaps we can rephrase all moral statements as "if you want [Y] then do [X]," but a Christian would say that moral statements have the additional special property that all entities will a soul will inescapably come to the conclusion that they should have wanted Y. How can non-theists draw an intrinsic distinction between moral and non-moral if-then statements? What makes the exhortation to wear a jacket fundamentally different from the exhortation not to kill?
We could have agreed on the opposite if we wanted to.
We couldn't do that AND have a sensible discussion. If we want to have a meaningful conversation, then we have to agree inconstant is worse than constant.
If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic.
Perhaps we can rephrase all moral statements as "if you want [Y] then do [X]," but a Christian would say that moral statements have the additional special property that all entities will a soul will inescapably come to the conclusion that they should have wanted Y.
A Christian could feel all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that "2+2=4," does that make it moral?
How can non-theists draw an intrinsic distinction between moral and non-moral if-then statements? What makes the exhortation to wear a jacket fundamentally different from the exhortation not to kill?
For a theist the difference would be between spiritual consequences and physical ones. Things with nonphysical "if..then" clauses and consequences would be "moral."
But, really all this is saying is a subsection of "if..then" clauses and consequences can be labeled "moral."
Nontheists -normally- use "moral" for "if...then" clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering. The bottomline being -like all words- it's just a label that refers to something. And, like words such as "alive," the line between what counts and what doesn't is blurred and subject to personal axioms. This doesn't mean nothing is "alive," it just means the discussion continues about what exactly is "alive."
We could have agreed on the opposite if we wanted to.
We couldn't do that AND have a sensible discussion. If we want to have a meaningful conversation, then we have to agree inconstant is worse than constant.
If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic.
Yes, if our mutual goal is to find truth. But there is no reason it "must" or "should be" our goal. We have chosen to care about finding truth, but we could have chosen to do otherwise. There is nothing inherently "good" or "correct" about our decision, and nothing "bad" or "wrong" with choosing to care about other things instead.
Perhaps we can rephrase all moral statements as "if you want [Y] then do [X]," but a Christian would say that moral statements have the additional special property that all entities will a soul will inescapably come to the conclusion that they should have wanted Y.
A Christian could feel all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that "2+2=4," does that make it moral?
The word "feel" in your statement is a little confusing. The Christian isn't making a claim about what they "feel," the Christian is purporting to make a factual claim about what actually happens to creatures with souls after they die. I happen to think the Christian is wrong, but they're still purporting to advance an objective factual claim, not a matter of subjective feeling.
Morality adds a "good" and "bad" dimension, so in order to transform "2+2=4" into an objective moral statement, we would need to add that all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that believing "2+2=4" is "good" (perhaps because God always punishes those who do not believe 2+2=4, or because he always rewards those who do believe 2+2=4, or because some other property of the soul necessarily compels this conclusion).
How can non-theists draw an intrinsic distinction between moral and non-moral if-then statements? What makes the exhortation to wear a jacket fundamentally different from the exhortation not to kill?
For a theist the difference would be between spiritual consequences and physical ones. Things with nonphysical "if..then" clauses and consequences would be "moral."
But, really all this is saying is a subsection of "if..then" clauses and consequences can be labeled "moral."
Nontheists -normally- use "moral" for "if...then" clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering. The bottomline being -like all words- it's just a label that refers to something. And, like words such as "alive," the line between what counts and what doesn't is blurred and subject to personal axioms. This doesn't mean nothing is "alive," it just means the discussion continues about what exactly is "alive."
This shows that the term "alive" like the term "moral" does not have an objective definition. It is a useful subjectively-defined term that we humans use to categorize things. But "aliveness" is not an objective property of anything. It's a descriptive term humans invented and defined.
To say "nontheists -normally- use "moral" for 'if...then' clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering" only reinforces my point that non-theist morality is entirely subjective. First of all, even if all Moral statements are about suffering, why should the "direction" of Moral statements necessarily point away from suffering rather than toward it? Moreover, why must morality have anything to do with suffering at all? This is just an arbitrary determination that humans have made, but there is no objective reason why it must be so.
To put it another way, there is nothing objectively "special" or "privileged" about moral statements, and there is no way to prove that any true "if...then..." statement is "better" than any other. Compare the statements "if you want to maximize human flourishing, you should not kill innocent people" with the statement "if you want to maximize human suffering, you should kill as many people as possible." How can we establish that one statement is "good" and the other "bad?"
The bottomline being if you conceded that "Being constant is good and being inconstant is bad" is a moral statement, then you can't even participate in this debate without first also conceding that morality is necessary.
Yes, if our mutual goal is to find truth. But there is no reason it "must" or "should be" our goal. We have chosen to care about finding truth, but we could have chosen to do otherwise. There is nothing inherently "good" or "correct" about our decision, and nothing "bad" or "wrong" with choosing to care about other things instead.
I think you're starting to fall into the "Labyrinth of Otherwise" on ExtremeStan's chart. Regardless of what we "could" do, we did.
But, I think we're starting to go around in circles.
If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic. In order to even have a dissection about anything we must establish some subsection of ideas are 'good' and others 'bad.' In order to even use logic, we have to say some statements are intrinsically of more worth, or "better," than others.
Morality adds a "good" and "bad" dimension, so in order to transform "2+2=4" into an objective moral statement, we would need to add that all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that believing "2+2=4" is "good" (perhaps because God always punishes those who do not believe 2+2=4, or because he always rewards those who do believe 2+2=4, or because some other property of the soul necessarily compels this conclusion).
I think it's fair to say two things: Most(all) versions of God have Him valuing truth; and it is true that "2+2=4."
Yet, people that believe in those versions of God would likely not classify "2+2=4" as a moral statement.
This shows that the term "alive" like the term "moral" does not have an objective definition. It is a useful subjectively-defined term that we humans use to categorize things. But "aliveness" is not an objective property of anything. It's a descriptive term humans invented and defined.
If you're going down this road, then "redness" isn't an objective label either. In fact, no labels are, since all meanings are subjective.
But, your looking at it the wrong way. If you have a clear definition of the label "alive," say something that has all 7 of these properties, then the label becomes meaningful. We don't need to get everyone to agree to this definition for it to be true that somethings are alive and somethings aren't. In fact, even if we get everyone to agree about the definition, there can still be those that argue about certain things falling into the category or not. Yet -even among all of this derision- some things would be alive and somethings would not be.
To say "nontheists -normally- use "moral" for 'if...then' clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering" only reinforces my point that non-theist morality is entirely subjective. First of all, even if all Moral statements are about suffering, why should the "direction" of Moral statements necessarily point away from suffering rather than toward it? Moreover, why must morality have anything to do with suffering at all? This is just an arbitrary determination that humans have made, but there is no objective reason why it must be so.
A university might call a class a "mathematics" class, and another might call the same class a "philosophy" class. But, that doesn't mean "mathematics" is subjective. In order to talk about anything, we have to arbitrary assign words to everything. Yes. But, this limitation of language doesn't translate into everything and anything being arbitrary.
So, it depends on how you define "morality" -sure- but that doesn't mean "morality" is subjective any more than it means "mathematics" or "logic" is subjective.
To put it another way, there is nothing objectively "special" or "privileged" about moral statements, and there is no way to prove that any true "if...then..." statement is "better" than any other. Compare the statements "if you want to maximize human flourishing, you should not kill innocent people" with the statement "if you want to maximize human suffering, you should kill as many people as possible." How can we establish that one statement is "good" and the other "bad?"
In order to even use logic, we have to say some statements are intrinsically of more worth, or "better," than others. In order to even have a dissection about anything we must establish some subsection of ideas are 'good' and others 'bad.' If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic.
But, I think we're starting to go around in circles.The bottomline being if you conceded that "Being constant is good and being inconstant is bad" is a moral statement, then you can't even participate in this debate without first also conceding that morality is necessary.
Using the Bible to prove the Bible is not a problem because it is Biblical. It is perfectly consistent within itself to do so. The fact that it is circular is trivial because the Bible is not concerned with proving its claims in a logical fashion. That is not the case with logic. Using logic to prove logic is a problem because that is illogical. So no it is not a double standard.
When you place logic as the ultimate authority over scripture you have placed a worldview that is an absurdity to begin with over the Bible. My worldview does not have to be sucked in to the problems of your worldview.
What you have is not so much a "worldview" as a "blind spot".
Consider the matter of consistency. You assert that the Bible is self-consistent. (It isn't, but for the sake of argument let's grant that it is.) Furthermore, you imply that the self-consistency of the Bible is a positive thing. You rate the Bible as "good" on some scale because it is self-consistent, and you would rate it as "bad" were it not self-consistent. You do not believe other religions' scriptures, like the Qur'an, because you think they are not self-consistent -- again, "bad" on this scale. You think the Bible is better than the Qur'an, and you think self-consistency is the reason for it.
Have I reconstructed your position accurately so far?
Okay. Now ask yourself: what is this scale?
It's logic, dude. Logic is, in its entirety, the idea that consistency is good and contradiction is bad. Everything that logicians do is just variations on that theme. So when you decide that the Bible is self-consistent, you are using logic to evaluate the Bible. And because you are using self-consistency to determine whether you should accept or reject the Bible and other scriptures, your logic has overriding authority over these scriptures. If it did not, you would not have any grounds to praise the Bible for self-consistency, any more than you would have grounds to praise it for being made of tree fiber -- these properties would simply be irrelevant to the question of why the Bible is valuable. And you would not have grounds to reject the Qur'an -- its inconsistency with itself and with the Bible would likewise be irrelevant to the question of why it is not valuable.
I'm not the one imposing a logical "worldview" on the Bible. That's you. You've don't realize it, because you're used to thinking of "logic" as "that nasty thought process skeptics use to challenge my faith". So as a result, whenever the idea that consistency is good and contradiction is bad reinforces your faith, you embrace it as simply natural and clear thinking, but whenever it challenges your faith, you call it "logic" and reject it. But in reality it's all the same logic. It's all simply natural and clear thinking. You're just applying the idea that consistency is good inconsistently. And, before you think you're allowed to do that because worldview or circular reasoning or whatever, remember that if you're not applying the idea that consistency is good consistently, there's no reason for you to apply it to the Bible.
PS: You should also worry that justifying yourself on the basis of differing "worldviews" is entirely too subjectivist for someone claiming to possess universal objective truth.
I don't believe the Qur'an because it contradicts the Bible. Again the ultimate test is not whether or not something is logical, but rather whether or not something is Biblical. Sola Scriptura doesn't mean that logic does not exist or isn't useful. It doesn't mean that consistency is a bad thing. It is in fact a good thing. It just means that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority.
Consistency has value because "God cannot lie" (Titus 1:2). The Bible says God is consistent, therefore consistency is good. I have a basis for knowing that consistency is good. What's yours?
I don't believe the Qur'an because it contradicts the Bible. Again the ultimate test is not whether or not something is logical, but rather whether or not something is Biblical. Sola Scriptura doesn't mean that logic does not exist or isn't useful. It doesn't mean that consistency is a bad thing. It is in fact a good thing. It just means that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority.
Consistency has value because "God cannot lie" (Titus 1:2). The Bible says God is consistent, therefore consistency is good. I have a basis for knowing that consistency is good. What's yours?
If the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority, then what place does God have in your belief system?
I don't believe the Qur'an because it contradicts the Bible. Again the ultimate test is not whether or not something is logical, but rather whether or not something is Biblical. Sola Scriptura doesn't mean that logic does not exist or isn't useful. It doesn't mean that consistency is a bad thing. It is in fact a good thing. It just means that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority.
Consistency has value because "God cannot lie" (Titus 1:2). The Bible says God is consistent, therefore consistency is good. I have a basis for knowing that consistency is good. What's yours?
If the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority, then what place does God have in your belief system?
The Bible is simply what God has spoken. The Bible is God breathed. So to say that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority is to say that God is the ultimate epistemic authority.
The Bible is simply what God has spoken. The Bible is God breathed. So to say that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority is to say that God is the ultimate epistemic authority.
So then the Bible cannot be the ultimate epistemic authority.
Either God is subordinate to the written word of God, or the written word of God is subordinate to God. It cannot be both. One must derive authority from the other.
So, if you are arguing the Bible is true because God said it, then you are arguing that God is the authority, not the Bible. The Bible derives its authority from God. Right?
The Bible is simply what God has spoken. The Bible is God breathed. So to say that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority is to say that God is the ultimate epistemic authority.
So then the Bible cannot be the ultimate epistemic authority.
If the Bible is true because God said it, then God is the authority, not the Bible. The Bible derives its authority from God. Right?
If you want to nitpick between what God has spoken and God Himself, then sure I guess you have a point. It seems like a trivial distinction to make, but if you think it is necessary to do so then more power to you I guess.
If you want to nitpick between what God has spoken and God Himself, then sure I guess you have a point.
You think that the difference between God and a book is a trivial detail? I would think that the distinction is rather important given that you profess to worshiping one of them.
Alright, so if the Bible is God's word, then its authority derives from God and not the other way around. As such, God is the ultimate authority, and the Bible's authority is dependent upon its being reflective of God. In other words, if the Bible is God's word, then it must be true because it would derive authority from God. If the Bible is not, then it does not derive authority from God.
Ok, so natural follow up question: Can you demonstrate the Bible is God's word?
(And indeed, the Bible didn't exist when any of the books that comprise it [and those differ!] were written.)
I think we also need to contend with the differences between say even as simple as the different Christian sects, without even Mormonism, about canon. Then how each interprets the Bible, such as Anabaptism being against child baptism. It is therefore, also to note early Christians such as the Gnostics and Cathars that were also influential but eventually destroyed. Manicheanism is another area to discus even without leaving Christianity.
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Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
If you want to nitpick between what God has spoken and God Himself, then sure I guess you have a point.
You think that the difference between God and a book is a trivial detail? I would think that the distinction is rather important given that you profess to worshiping one of them.
Alright, so if the Bible is God's word, then its authority derives from God and not the other way around. As such, God is the ultimate authority, and the Bible's authority is dependent upon its being reflective of God. In other words, if the Bible is God's word, then it must be true because it would derive authority from God. If the Bible is not, then it does not derive authority from God.
Ok, so natural follow up question: Can you demonstrate the Bible is God's word?
(And indeed, the Bible didn't exist when any of the books that comprise it [and those differ!] were written.)
OK...a valid point. What authority is sufficient to tell us that the Bible is God's Word? The Holy Spirit's testimony in the heart of the regenerate man of God is sufficient to know that the Bible is God's Word.
Can I demonstrate to you that the Bible is God's word? No I cannot. Only God himself can do that.
Again the ultimate test is not whether or not something is logical, but rather whether or not something is Biblical.
Why is that the ultimate test? What made you decide that was the ultimate test? You can't have made that decision using the Bible because you can't have used the Bible as the ultimate test before you decided to use the Bible as the ultimate test.
Consistency has value because "God cannot lie" (Titus 1:2).
Then do inconsistency and lying have value because "if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet..." (Ezekiel 14:9)?
The Bible says God is consistent, therefore consistency is good. I have a basis for knowing that consistency is good. What's yours?
I just wrote down on a piece of paper, "Consistency is good". Consider that piece of paper my basis. It has exactly as much merit as your piece of paper saying that consistency is good. More, perhaps, because my piece of paper doesn't undermine that message by saying lots of other things that are inconsistent.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
OK...a valid point. What authority is sufficient to tell us that the Bible is God's Word? The Holy Spirit's testimony in the heart of the regenerate man of God is sufficient to know that the Bible is God's Word.
So the reason that the Bible has authority is because you feel it has authority?
If this is the case, then you're claiming the chain of epistemic authority goes:
Cloudman before God, actually. He has to decide that God is worth listening to.
I was going to wait for him to get there on his own, but yes, exactly. The authority by which cloudman determines the Bible is God's word? Himself. The authority by which he decides that his feelings are God's word? Himself. So cloudman dictates what is or is not God's word.
Also, since God is unknowable except through "The Holy Spirit's testimony in the heart of the regenerate man of God," and said "regenerate man of God" is cloudman, that means God, and in turn all truth, is only knowable through cloudman.
The end result: cloudman is the ultimate epistemic authority, because cloudman said so. Or, alternatively, cloudman believes he's God. I'm not sure which.
Either way, really don't think his choice of the name "cloudman" was a coincidence.
I just wrote down on a piece of paper, "Consistency is good". Consider that piece of paper my basis. It has exactly as much merit as your piece of paper saying that consistency is good. More, perhaps, because my piece of paper doesn't undermine that message by saying lots of other things that are inconsistent.
The thing is, even if you got him to admit that the Bible is inconsistent, he would just respond by saying that being inconsistent is now superior to being consistent by virtue of the Bible being inconsistent.
Using the Bible to prove the Bible is not a problem because it is Biblical. It is perfectly consistent within itself to do so.
How many stalls for horses did Solomon have? How many Baths?
How much did David gave Araunah for the threshing floor?
And Chronicles Two, verse 4 line 2, puts the value of pi at "3."
Or why stop there?
In what order was creation created?
What is the genealogy of Jesus?
What is the story of Jesus' birth?
How many times did Jesus go to Jerusalem?
What were the names of the twelve apostles?
But, of course, there's another salient problem:
As I said before, the Bible didn't exist when the books of the Bible were written. It was created much later. The term "Bible" refers to a "biblia," a bound codex, in this case the Biblia Sacra, the Holy Bible, a bound codex consisting of several "books," or scrolls.
So in order to get a Bible, you must first have a bunch of books, then have a group of people who decide that these books are authoritative, and then have said group of people make a bound edition of all of them, right?
Well, who decides what gets to be authoritative? The books in the Bible are by no means the only books that were floating around. The Judeo-Christian apocrypha contains many more books. There weren't just four Gospels floating around, there were numerous gospels. This resulted in a need for the orthodox Christ movement to decide what was or was not canon, which is and has always been a much-debated topic and subject to controversy and change.
Now, were any of these men who, over the history of the Christ movement, decided which books were or were not canon Jesus? No. So by Christian belief, these men were fallible. So the Bible, a supposedly infallible book, was selected and composed by fallible people with fallible judgment. So logic prompts us to ask: how can we presume, then, the Bible is infallible? We're just going to table the fact that these books were written by flawed people, because even if we granted they were perfect, how can we just presume that the fallible people who compiled this collection over time necessarily knew an infallible work from a fallible one? Writ simply: what if they made mistakes?
That would make a fallible book, right?
And here's the kicker: cloudman's a Protestant! That means he, as a part of being a Protestant, believes that they DID make mistakes with regards to canon! That's why the canons differ!
"Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's shoes." [1]
Nether of us know if it 'must' or not. Yet, I will assert it would be more reasonable to believe it is than it isn't. But, you're right. I can't give a logical proof of it, nor can I provide empirical evidence of what would happen if everyone(thing) gained this knowledge. I can't prove any kind of 'universal truth' exists, moral or otherwise.
Regardless, I will assert that Dahmer had a moral learning disability; he was not a moral guru. His inability to understand morality doesn't somehow invalidate morality, anymore than the existence of someone with sever Dyscalculia invalidates mathematics.
Nor does people giving contradictory answers invalidate logic.
Anyway, let's be clear about the claims I made:
Complete knowledge of the outcomes of our evil actions could easily be "universally subjectively intolerable."
'Could' being the operative word here. You are right I've not proved it "must," but it was never my intention to do so. In fact, if you've given up on trying to prove it "mustn't," then I am satisfied.
Would reality be answer enough? If I were to punch a brick wall as hard as I could enough times, I'd probably have a lot of broken bones. So I don't punch brick walls for sport. Morality is a conceptual application of this real cause and response nature of reality; the things we do to ourselves and each other affect one another in a multitude of ways. It makes sense for beings that want to live as long and/or as happily as possible to realize that fighting amongst each other unnecessarily does not have a very good long term payout. It's a combination of our ability to understand and recall logical systems both internally and in application (i.e. analyzing scenarios) and our ability to understand how others feel based on similar experiences and/or social cues that gives us purpose not to run around like a crazed lunatic and kill people on whim.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
We can imagine Dahmer (or a Dahmer-like character) with the ability to fully experience "empathy" as defined above, who simply doesn't care about the other person's suffering. This definition of empathy is not sufficient to render bad actions "universally subjectively intolerable."
Even if this definition were sufficient, it's gutting any meaning of the phrase "universally subjectively intolerable." That phrase refers to something that is intolerable from every possible subjective perspective. This includes the subjective perspective of people like Dahmer who lack empathy. You're changing the parameters of the question by granting Dahmer the ability to feel empathy.
Crashing00 made a similar point on the previous page. Let me quote my response here:
In other words, the fact that people can freely reject logic (or mathematics, which is a subset of logic) doesn't have any bearing on the validity of logic. This is because logic does not impose any duties or requirements on anyone. Logic doesn't care whether anyone "follows it" or "believes in it."
Morality, on the other hand, purports to impose duties and requirements on people. Unlike pure logic, morality says people "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. If people are free to reject morality, then in what sense can we say a moral duty or requirement exits? What do ideas like "should" and "shouldn't" mean if people are free to simply ignore them?
You might be right in some cases morality seems to care if people "follow it," but -at a base level- I don't think that is required. For example -at the base level- Christianity (a moral system) is simply asserting a truth statement about Jesus. There are people within Christianity that feel it's better to believe in this truth statement than not -just like logisticians feel its better to be constant than not- but the system itself "Christianity" I would assert doesn't care.
The moral system of Christianity -and the right or wrong of its truth statement about Jesus- exists independently of people believing-in or following it. It doesn't require people to 'care' about it, but people that follow its tenets do care about it and try to get other people to care about it.
Not unlike how people on this forum care about logic and try to get others to care about and follow its tenets. Logic itself doesn't require this devotion, but people feel the need to give it such anyway.
We are in agreement that a statement of the form "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]" does not care whether people follow or believe in it.
However, the statement of the form "one ought to [behave morally]" could be interpreted to impose an absolute duty and to "care" whether people follow or believe in it.
If you agree with me that all "ought" statements of the form "one ought to [do X]" really just reduce to instrumental statements of the form "if one wants [Y] then [do X]" then we're on the same page.
However, I would argue that these kinds of truths are not "moral truths" the way OP (and most people) talk about morality. For example, under our framework, the statement "if you don't want to get cold, you should wear a jacket" is as much a moral truth as "if you want humankind to flourish, you should not kill innocent people." There is nothing intrinsically worse about violating one statement than the other. We as a society might choose to punish violations of the latter and not the former, but there is nothing objective or universal that says it must be so. There is no intrinsic requirement or duty associated with either statement.
If that's the case, then I think you're forced to concede OP's point, which is that the non-theist view of morality is much weaker than the Christian view of morality. Christian morality purports to impose certain inescapable, objective duties on all humankind. Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences. You would apparently concede that moral statements do not impose objective duties on anyone (they may impose subjective duties if society decides to enforce them). If that's true, there's no objective force that compels moral compliance; there's nothing transforming "is" statements into "ought" statements.
In the non-theist view of morality it's possible for someone to live a completely immoral life and "get away with it"; in other words, suffer no negative consequences. There is no objective system of justice imposed by the universe, by Karma, or by God. That's what Dahmer's quote is getting at. "If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I do it?"
[This also means there's no correct answer to the question of what you "should" do in the case of the Trolley Problem. You can give answers like "if you want to maximize human flourishing, do [X]" but the problem doesn't specify that you need to care about human flourishing. If nothing objectively requires you to care, then there's no "should." Any answer to the trolley problem is potentially valid, depending on what the person answering the problem happens to care about. Thus the statement "I would not push the fat man onto the tracks because I want the trolley to kill as many people as possible" would be a perfectly valid logical answer to the Trolley Problem.]
If moral consequences only exist when people convince each other to care about morality, then these consequences necessarily cease to exist when no one cares. For example, if everyone in your society believes slavery is good, there is no reason why you should feel obligated to oppose slavery. You might decide you want to oppose slavery, perhaps because you believe getting rid of slavery will improve "human flourishing" in your society, but there's no particular reason you must care about human flourishing. And even if you do care about human flourishing, there's no reason why you must bear the personal costs of opposing slavery and freeing your slaves. You might decide you don't care about human flourishing as much as you care about your own personal comfort, in which case you're free to act "immorally" without facing any consequences.
I would disagree with this. The consequences can be "worse." Logic might not find anything 'intrinsically worse' with violating one statement than the other, but logic doesn't find not violating one 'intrinsically worse' then violating one. Logic doesn't care about anything, and is incapable of saying if ANYTHING is 'worse' than anything else, even if one violates its own tenets and the other doesn't. Only we are. Intrinsically in this very dissection we are both saying: "My argument is more constant with logic and empirical evidence than yours, and -therefore- is "better." In order to use logic, we must make value judgments and 'care,' otherwise we would be as ineffectual as BS's omniscience computer. Thus, one can certainly say something is "worse" than something else.
In fact, to even have this dissection we MUST.
Don't you see how these statements refute what your saying?
"Failure to comply with one's moral duty will necessarily have consequences."
That's the heart of what we're debating about "should."
We're on the same page that "should" is simply a shorthand way of saying a complicated "if.. then." And, even in an 'absolute morality' system -like Christian- that's all it is: "You should do this, because if you don't God will be sad, and you don't want God sad." Morality must work within logic, thus "should" must have a logical analog, and it does. That's the very reason why things like Euthyphro's dilemma have meaning.
Moral/religious systems ALL have negative consequences for doing 'bad' and positive ones for doing 'good.' That's how they ALL work: "You should do [X], BECAUSE if you do [X] then [Y] will happen. You shouldn't do [A], BECAUSE if you do [A] then [C] will happen."
The system you're trying to claim a moral system 'must be' doesn't make sense, and no one has ever claimed to have one. The very reason we are having this debate is because no one literally accepts "You should do good for goodness sake." If we did, this conversation would be moot.
No.
I know we both agree the consequences exist regardless of anyone cares or not.
We are having this discussion because we both happen to care about logical consistency and we happen to agree that it is a valuable or useful thing to us. Nothing objectively compels us to agree about this, nor is there any objective standard by which logical consistency is "good." Therefore we can only say by fiat or by subjective agreement that logical consistency is "better" or "good." We could have agreed on the opposite if we wanted to. There is no universal or absolute sense in which logical consistency is "good."
This is where a concept along the lines of "objectively intolerable" or "universally subjectively intolerable" would come into play. A Christian would make a statement along the lines of: "all creatures with a soul, by their intrinsic nature, will necessarily come to the conclusion that immoral actions are intolerable (i.e. when they face judgement in the afterlife), and therefore all creatures with a soul necessarily should act morally." In other words, there is some inescapable distinction that God or the universe will always draw between moral and immoral actions, and this distinction compels all humans to ultimately determine that the moral choice is "good" while the immoral choice is "bad."
Perhaps we can rephrase all moral statements as "if you want [Y] then do [X]," but a Christian would say that moral statements have the additional special property that all entities will a soul will inescapably come to the conclusion that they should have wanted Y. How can non-theists draw an intrinsic distinction between moral and non-moral if-then statements? What makes the exhortation to wear a jacket fundamentally different from the exhortation not to kill?
If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic.
A Christian could feel all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that "2+2=4," does that make it moral?
For a theist the difference would be between spiritual consequences and physical ones. Things with nonphysical "if..then" clauses and consequences would be "moral."
But, really all this is saying is a subsection of "if..then" clauses and consequences can be labeled "moral."
Nontheists -normally- use "moral" for "if...then" clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering. The bottomline being -like all words- it's just a label that refers to something. And, like words such as "alive," the line between what counts and what doesn't is blurred and subject to personal axioms. This doesn't mean nothing is "alive," it just means the discussion continues about what exactly is "alive."
Yes, if our mutual goal is to find truth. But there is no reason it "must" or "should be" our goal. We have chosen to care about finding truth, but we could have chosen to do otherwise. There is nothing inherently "good" or "correct" about our decision, and nothing "bad" or "wrong" with choosing to care about other things instead.
The word "feel" in your statement is a little confusing. The Christian isn't making a claim about what they "feel," the Christian is purporting to make a factual claim about what actually happens to creatures with souls after they die. I happen to think the Christian is wrong, but they're still purporting to advance an objective factual claim, not a matter of subjective feeling.
Morality adds a "good" and "bad" dimension, so in order to transform "2+2=4" into an objective moral statement, we would need to add that all entities with a soul inescapably come to the conclusion that believing "2+2=4" is "good" (perhaps because God always punishes those who do not believe 2+2=4, or because he always rewards those who do believe 2+2=4, or because some other property of the soul necessarily compels this conclusion).
This shows that the term "alive" like the term "moral" does not have an objective definition. It is a useful subjectively-defined term that we humans use to categorize things. But "aliveness" is not an objective property of anything. It's a descriptive term humans invented and defined.
To say "nontheists -normally- use "moral" for 'if...then' clauses and consequences that deal directly with suffering" only reinforces my point that non-theist morality is entirely subjective. First of all, even if all Moral statements are about suffering, why should the "direction" of Moral statements necessarily point away from suffering rather than toward it? Moreover, why must morality have anything to do with suffering at all? This is just an arbitrary determination that humans have made, but there is no objective reason why it must be so.
To put it another way, there is nothing objectively "special" or "privileged" about moral statements, and there is no way to prove that any true "if...then..." statement is "better" than any other. Compare the statements "if you want to maximize human flourishing, you should not kill innocent people" with the statement "if you want to maximize human suffering, you should kill as many people as possible." How can we establish that one statement is "good" and the other "bad?"
I think you're starting to fall into the "Labyrinth of Otherwise" on ExtremeStan's chart. Regardless of what we "could" do, we did.
But, I think we're starting to go around in circles.
If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic. In order to even have a dissection about anything we must establish some subsection of ideas are 'good' and others 'bad.' In order to even use logic, we have to say some statements are intrinsically of more worth, or "better," than others.
I think it's fair to say two things: Most(all) versions of God have Him valuing truth; and it is true that "2+2=4."
Yet, people that believe in those versions of God would likely not classify "2+2=4" as a moral statement.
If you're going down this road, then "redness" isn't an objective label either. In fact, no labels are, since all meanings are subjective.
But, your looking at it the wrong way. If you have a clear definition of the label "alive," say something that has all 7 of these properties, then the label becomes meaningful. We don't need to get everyone to agree to this definition for it to be true that somethings are alive and somethings aren't. In fact, even if we get everyone to agree about the definition, there can still be those that argue about certain things falling into the category or not. Yet -even among all of this derision- some things would be alive and somethings would not be. A university might call a class a "mathematics" class, and another might call the same class a "philosophy" class. But, that doesn't mean "mathematics" is subjective. In order to talk about anything, we have to arbitrary assign words to everything. Yes. But, this limitation of language doesn't translate into everything and anything being arbitrary.
So, it depends on how you define "morality" -sure- but that doesn't mean "morality" is subjective any more than it means "mathematics" or "logic" is subjective.
In order to even use logic, we have to say some statements are intrinsically of more worth, or "better," than others. In order to even have a dissection about anything we must establish some subsection of ideas are 'good' and others 'bad.' If our goal is to find truth, then we must follow the tenets of logic.
But, I think we're starting to go around in circles.
The bottomline being if you conceded that "Being constant is good and being inconstant is bad" is a moral statement, then you can't even participate in this debate without first also conceding that morality is necessary.
I don't believe the Qur'an because it contradicts the Bible. Again the ultimate test is not whether or not something is logical, but rather whether or not something is Biblical. Sola Scriptura doesn't mean that logic does not exist or isn't useful. It doesn't mean that consistency is a bad thing. It is in fact a good thing. It just means that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority.
Consistency has value because "God cannot lie" (Titus 1:2). The Bible says God is consistent, therefore consistency is good. I have a basis for knowing that consistency is good. What's yours?
The Bible is simply what God has spoken. The Bible is God breathed. So to say that the Bible is the ultimate epistemic authority is to say that God is the ultimate epistemic authority.
Either God is subordinate to the written word of God, or the written word of God is subordinate to God. It cannot be both. One must derive authority from the other.
So, if you are arguing the Bible is true because God said it, then you are arguing that God is the authority, not the Bible. The Bible derives its authority from God. Right?
If you want to nitpick between what God has spoken and God Himself, then sure I guess you have a point. It seems like a trivial distinction to make, but if you think it is necessary to do so then more power to you I guess.
Alright, so if the Bible is God's word, then its authority derives from God and not the other way around. As such, God is the ultimate authority, and the Bible's authority is dependent upon its being reflective of God. In other words, if the Bible is God's word, then it must be true because it would derive authority from God. If the Bible is not, then it does not derive authority from God.
Ok, so natural follow up question: Can you demonstrate the Bible is God's word?
Before you start, let me tell you what isn't a demonstration of the Bible as God's word, and that is saying, "The Bible tells us it is God's word." Anyone can write on anything that what they are writing is the infallible Word of God whether it were or not. Indeed, I can think of one book that did exactly that, and it says that you are incorrect.
(And indeed, the Bible didn't exist when any of the books that comprise it [and those differ!] were written.)
I think we also need to contend with the differences between say even as simple as the different Christian sects, without even Mormonism, about canon. Then how each interprets the Bible, such as Anabaptism being against child baptism. It is therefore, also to note early Christians such as the Gnostics and Cathars that were also influential but eventually destroyed. Manicheanism is another area to discus even without leaving Christianity.
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OK...a valid point. What authority is sufficient to tell us that the Bible is God's Word? The Holy Spirit's testimony in the heart of the regenerate man of God is sufficient to know that the Bible is God's Word.
Can I demonstrate to you that the Bible is God's word? No I cannot. Only God himself can do that.
Then do inconsistency and lying have value because "if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet..." (Ezekiel 14:9)?
I just wrote down on a piece of paper, "Consistency is good". Consider that piece of paper my basis. It has exactly as much merit as your piece of paper saying that consistency is good. More, perhaps, because my piece of paper doesn't undermine that message by saying lots of other things that are inconsistent.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
If this is the case, then you're claiming the chain of epistemic authority goes:
God
then cloudman
then the Bible
Correct?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
How much did David gave Araunah for the threshing floor?
And Chronicles Two, verse 4 line 2, puts the value of pi at "3."
Also, since God is unknowable except through "The Holy Spirit's testimony in the heart of the regenerate man of God," and said "regenerate man of God" is cloudman, that means God, and in turn all truth, is only knowable through cloudman.
The end result: cloudman is the ultimate epistemic authority, because cloudman said so. Or, alternatively, cloudman believes he's God. I'm not sure which.
Either way, really don't think his choice of the name "cloudman" was a coincidence.
The thing is, even if you got him to admit that the Bible is inconsistent, he would just respond by saying that being inconsistent is now superior to being consistent by virtue of the Bible being inconsistent.
Or why stop there?
In what order was creation created?
What is the genealogy of Jesus?
What is the story of Jesus' birth?
How many times did Jesus go to Jerusalem?
What were the names of the twelve apostles?
But, of course, there's another salient problem:
As I said before, the Bible didn't exist when the books of the Bible were written. It was created much later. The term "Bible" refers to a "biblia," a bound codex, in this case the Biblia Sacra, the Holy Bible, a bound codex consisting of several "books," or scrolls.
So in order to get a Bible, you must first have a bunch of books, then have a group of people who decide that these books are authoritative, and then have said group of people make a bound edition of all of them, right?
Well, who decides what gets to be authoritative? The books in the Bible are by no means the only books that were floating around. The Judeo-Christian apocrypha contains many more books. There weren't just four Gospels floating around, there were numerous gospels. This resulted in a need for the orthodox Christ movement to decide what was or was not canon, which is and has always been a much-debated topic and subject to controversy and change.
Now, were any of these men who, over the history of the Christ movement, decided which books were or were not canon Jesus? No. So by Christian belief, these men were fallible. So the Bible, a supposedly infallible book, was selected and composed by fallible people with fallible judgment. So logic prompts us to ask: how can we presume, then, the Bible is infallible? We're just going to table the fact that these books were written by flawed people, because even if we granted they were perfect, how can we just presume that the fallible people who compiled this collection over time necessarily knew an infallible work from a fallible one? Writ simply: what if they made mistakes?
That would make a fallible book, right?
And here's the kicker: cloudman's a Protestant! That means he, as a part of being a Protestant, believes that they DID make mistakes with regards to canon! That's why the canons differ!