Moral Subjectivism AMA

In future comments, I will take you on a tour of history, philosophy, and science to show you that the soul, like geo­centricism and creationism, is a figment of our imagination, and I will try to explain to you what gives rise to the illusion. Modern astronomy and the theory of evolution did not precipitate the end of the world. They are unmis­takable signs of progress. Likewise, I will show you that in spite of repeated claims to the contrary, we lose nothing by letting go of our soul beliefs and—better—that we even have something to gain.

If there is no soul, then psychology is a nonsensical area of study. "Psyche" is literally the Greek word for soul.

Of course there is a soul. You just don't know what it is.

What? No, do you actually try to spread that lie around? Just because a greek root of a word men's something that doesn't mean the modern-day word means the same thing. You are wrong on so many levels. We have actual evidence that consciousness is completely based on the brain, definitely, no soul required. You are dangerous if you spread that lie around, you propagate false information which could hurt someone or make them doubt how important mental health is. 

How dare you? Do you actually have the audacity to claim that? 

Yeah, lock all of humanity up in digital masturbation chambers while we hand over our sovereinty to innanimate machines that will become defunct the next stray solar flare.

Evolution

The modern worldview was specifically constructed to negate Christianity.

What is one of the ways this is accomplished? Confuse language. Make people superstitious.

I am a very.rational person, but you wouldn't know that because everything I say to you goes through the fairies and unicorns filter.

No, none of your claims are actually backed up with any evidence, consciousness is very specifically a work of the physical body, hence why people lose it whenever they die. 

Your misinformation can actually hurt someone if they were to ever buy into your malarky. Please go elsewhere with it, or prove it true using actually fcking evidence. 

Yeah, that's what the Soviet Union said when they destroyed our churches, slaughtered our episcopate, and put us into work camps.

But you presume to know what a soul is. You certainly wouldn't allow yourself to be taught by us what we believe.

Really, I could just as easily accuse you of spreading misinformation that leads to the persecution of my people.

Persecution of your people? For not getting to preach or be oppressive towards gay people? No. The difference is what you are doing could cause someone with depression to not trust medication or counseling and cause them to not trust anything really even medication for illness in general. Afterall if one industry is spreading such lies, why wouldn't another one? My point is, what you are doing is actually dangerous with no evidence to support your claims. Did you even bother to investigate my evidence? I would guess not, because you don't actually care what kind of evidence I present you, only of your own conclusion.

Also, no, the soviets said there was no god yes, but that was not the reason they did that, the reason they did that was that especially back then, the church had a lot of power, just as Hitler dismantled them, the Soviets looked to undermine any potential political influence that churches could have before it went to bite him in the arse. Which if you're trying to take over a country is essential. They happened to get the answer right to the soul question, doesn't mean what they extrapolated from there is actually accurate. That would be a non-sequitur and a false equivalence on your part if you came to that conclusion.

Oh yeah, sure. I get it. They used the same reasoning Hitler used to get the Jews.

Except they killed ten times as many Orthodox Christians as Hitler killed Jews.

That's totally justifiable, because you know, all heirarchy is inherently anti-communist. Even church heirarchy.

If youbwere gay in China they would kill you. If you were gay in Saudi Arabia, they'd kill you. None of these people are Christian.

Historical "persecution" of homosexuals is not in any way the sole domain of Christians. Most civilized people had enough sense to realize that this type of abberant sexuality is harmful. Sure, there were exceptions. Doesn't change the fact that it is maladaptive and harmful to society.

No, there was never an event whenever they declared it to all the world, I'll give one thing to them about persecution, they were clever about it. Also, just a fact, nobody cared. Literally. Nobody cared about gay people, religions (which most people were under pain and penalty of death) thought they mentally deceased, it is also true that most historians were also religious. Therefore it makes sense that not very much historic record was documenting it. But through some European sources we see a couple of events that paint the picture clearly. 

Also, no that s not the justification Hitler used either, Hitler was most likely at least neglected as a child, grown up with strict hierarchies, that would be enforced by his time in the military, where his views on antisemitism and hierarchy would combine, and well, we know how that turned out. Also any sources for the more killing of religious people? Any sources for that being Hitler's or the Soviet's justification? Or are you just pulling it from nowhere, like most things you try to claim?

Are you claiming that being gay is harmful to society?

I certainly believe that homosexuality is a mental illness. One that can be cured even.

But not if you are prideful about it.

The actual fuck? Do you have any proof of that claim? Are you saying you support conversion therapy? Because that has been documented as abusive and atrocious. It is neither a mental illness nor a choice. 

Of course it is a mental illness.

You are a nihilist, that being the case, I can't take you seriously when you ask for evidence. Evidence is an arbitrary thing to you.

I don't support this protestant phenomina called conversion therapy, no. That certainly isn't how we orthodox do things.

You have to have faith in order to be healed. That involves effort on the part of the person being healed. It would be unethical from our persppective to say, strap someone to a table and electroshock the gay out of them against their will.

I don't really know what goes on at these "conversion therapy" camps. Don't care to know. I'm sure it is atrocious.

You know what, let's grant that position, that I'm a nihilist. Okay fine. Let's say I am. So what? Disprove the point. Explain why there are objective moral facts about the world. Also here's what I'm looking for when I ask for evidence: Empirical evidence, sound, and valid syllogisms, etc, anything like that would do.

I'm moving all of my responses to one topic, because this is getting annoying, so I'll respond in the other one.

I'll move my response there then.

If there is a purpose, I doubt that it is to hang around on this speck of cosmic dust for ever.

It will be necessary to escape the Sun eventually.

As I suggested, this isn't going to happen overnight.

Solar flare proofing might  be a necessary development, irrespective of what or who is on board.....Depends upon which way you're heading I suppose.

And "masturbation chambers"...Good idea...Sexual gratification only needs a quick fix....Reproduction will need to become a more selective process, best achieved in the factory laboratory.

Why keep producing redundant illogical numpties?

What do you think about Kant's categorical imperative?

I think that the imperative can be interesting, but the fact that it completely dismisses the consequences of an action is worrying. Take the following as an example: A man sets out with the intention of helping a friend out. The situation is that the friend has furniture and other such appliances that need to be moved into a new flat (upstairs apartment), and he needs some help. 

This man, lets call him Steve, and this friend lets call him Bob. Just for simplicities sake. 

So Steve arrives at the entrance to Bob's flat and calls out to Bob, Bob tells him, correctly, that Steve has just left the hospital and isn't in the right shape to help him out with the heavy couches and such. Steve insists with the best of intentions and that he can in fact help move the couches. Due to the insistence and the fact that Bob does need the furniture moved inside he abates.

During their trip up the stairs Steve drops his end of the couch and Bob is rammed against the railing, the entire couch falling onto him. Bob is badly hurt. While it is true that Steve was acting in a manner that he would expect other friends to act, and had the best of intentions, the end result was simply not worth the help Steve would have received had he not dropped the couch. 

My point here is that there are all kinds of scenarios where the intentions will not justify the means. Also, a person's could simply think of their outcome of the situations, the best and be wrong, essentially that people will have good intentions, yet not align those good intentions towards what would justifiably be moral. Perhaps Marx had the best of intentions whenever he wrote his doctrine, to help the suffering worker class, and yet sparked famines, death, and war in Russia.

The moral value of Steve's actions in that example are determined by the universality of his maxim for his action. So what would be his maxim In this case?

Your usage of maxim in your response:

Modifying it to be "his" maxim, and applying them to "his action" implies it to be some sort of replacement for intention, consider the following: Maxim can be defined as the following:

"A short, pithy statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct."

Essentially your saying that the universality of his truth determines the moral value. This is fundamentally fallacious. An essential appeal to ad populum, it would not matter if his maxim was the most universal, only that it determined truth. 

His maxim or statement he would apply however would be: helping your friends is good.

Ad populum Is the fallacy of saying that something is true because everyone else believes it. I'm stating that the maxim must be able to apply universally without contradicting itself. "Helping your friends is good" or "always help your friends", when applied universally, leads to contradictory outcomes, like one where a friend is not physically able to help and ends up causing more harm than good thus causing the contradiction to the maxim. So a more complete maxim that could be applied more universally would be "always help your friends when it is within your power." In this way, Steve's maxim could not apply universally, and thus could not be a categorical imperative.

In that consideration, nothing could apply universally. There are situations in which nearly every single "statement of truth" could be contradictory

I'm not sure what you mean by statement of truth. I'm talking about moral imperatives for all people, derived from maxims of action, and tested against the premises of universality, and seeing rational beings as ends in themselves rather than mere means.

In the previous statement, the maxim I provided, I believe would be non-contradictory if applied to these tests.

Which would be? You asked about Kant's categories, and then about Steve's maxim, I really don't care about what his Maxim is or isn't, what I care about is the discarding of results by Kant.

Well the point is that if the maxim contradicts itself when applied universally, then it cannot be a moral imperative. Kant argues that a metaphysic of morals can only be found a priori, using reason alone. The only thing that can be good in all cases is the good will. So, the only actions that can be called morally good are those done because of a duty to the moral law, because otherwise the will is not good. Any reason other than duty to the moral law is done for material (sense) incentive, which is a posteriori rather than a priori, and therefore not being done In a good will, but rather a neutral, or evil will. Therefore the maxim is the only thing that matters when considering an action to be moral or immoral.

In other words, you can never discover a universal, necessary principle of morality by looking at a particular, contingent, perception.

So an action has to be good in all circumstances for it to be good? That's absurd, and completely ignores nuance.