You should consider that you've fallen into a particularly narrow slice of history in which such a phrasing/concept is even plausibly attainable.

Indeed. Monotheistic concepts of "God" is established in such a manner. It's nearly tautological.

You are welcome to view it in that way. Whether your perceived sense of power is congruous with reality is yet to be seen. If we consider the total global moral content to be 100, what portion of that do you think you have influence over?

View it how you want to view it.

Even after adjusting "conceded" to "conceited," I don't know what this sentence means. What do you mean by "the freedom of value"?

Generously, I have influence over around .01 of that content. But more importantly, I have the potential and opportunity to raise that to whatever portion I desire. Whether I should, is a separate issue. Whether anyone SHOULD have control over 100% is a definite no however.
Conceited: that's the one. Freedom of value, albeit poorly phrased, simply means the freedom to value whatever I subjectively hold to be true. Through belief in an ethereal moral authority, I can not have such freedom. Nor can I complain to anyone about it, since that moral authority answers to no one.

Why does your belief trump the rights of others to express their veliefs? You do realize the exact opposite stance is also a reality. For those who refuse to allow "in God we trust", "one nation under God" or "God bless America" there is a (currently) larger population that disagrees with the assumption that God doesnt exist and has the same rights of free (and peaceful) speech to express that as you to dissent. For now, the gov't still allows this.

*I'm curious enough to wonder if our current POTUS only uses the phrase "God bless America" for political purposes rather than religious through polling that alleges my claim of a greater population who prefer a mention of God than not.

I consider that to be extremely generous, given that you represent approximately 0.0000001% of the number of people on the earth. You must be some sort of moral monster if you've got an influence 100000 times your actual size.

It's far from clear that this statement is grounded in reality. This is nearly as ethereal as the God that you just criticized.

Why don't you address this. What level of moral influence *should* you have as an individual person?

Okay. But you can clearly see that God doesn't have 100% control. As you've said yourself, you have your own moral influence. You are free to establish your own moral standards. And God himself cannot stop you from doing that.

Subjective + True. That's always an interesting combination. What is your concept of true when it falls under the umbrella of subjective?

Under a theological concept of freedom, you have the freedom to adopt values in one of two categories. One that reflects true morality and one that doesn't. So that same concept is still there, it's just set up differently.

Indeed. That's kind of how reality works.

There's not really anyone you can go to in order to complain about gravity, either. It's just an inescapable part of reality, whether you like it or not, whether it's convenient or not, whether you believe in it or not.

This hypothetical may actually cause your head to explode when not only does the person use "mom" as an assumed possessive, but assuming a decent sized meeting, more than a few people will show sympathy towards "mom" (regardless of whose mom it truly is) needing to go to the hospital. If its not yet enough to set you off that multiple people chose to empathize for mom rather than scrutinize the connotation of the noun itself, I can only imagine the scene when more than one will say "God bless her" or "I'll pray for her" ...

Which ironically brings us full circle to your OP 160ish posts later.

/End thread.

Although God can't stop people from adopting their own moral standards, he can and does indeed stop believers from doing so. I'm not sure how much anti-gay or anti-abortion news you've exposed to recently but it's quite clear that God can and does prevent believers from establishing their own moral standards.

Just like a mother teaching her child that playing with fire is bad, often deters the child from playing with fire. In the same way, God can stop me from doing, believing or not believing in x, y z, by telling me that I won't get into heaven. In fact, he doesn't even need to say that I won't get into heaven for me to avoid x, y, z. All he has to say to deter me from x, y, z is that: heaven exists. Naturally, one extrapolates the rest.
What is your subjective concept of true?

That question is like asking someone to prove to you that they have consciousness.
The "one that doesn't" cannot be chosen, without shedding belief. Only in very rare circumstances are the two compatible. E.g., religious fanatics who murder people.
It's not just set up differently. Having an ethereal moral authority that is not accountable to anyone and that does not answer to anyone, is not the same, as having no such authority: no matter what rhetoric you may spin inside your head.
To equate gravity with the existence of an ethereal moral authority is like equating the existence of rocks to the existence of a flying spaghetti monster.

Sorry to bring it out again, but it's only fitting to such a ridiculous comparison.

Be careful to distinguish between God and those who lay claim to what God says. God cannot force believers into adopting something any more than he can force non-believers into it. These are all willful decisions (and that doesn't mean I agree with all of the decisions).

Okay. But I'd also tell you that this is theological nonsense for Christianity. I'm not going to defend all concepts of God that could be put forth. Just the one that I hold.

Naturally? There's something far more than extrapolation in that statement.

Nice try. I didn't say I hold a subjective concept of true. Contextually, you're dodging.

Not really. I can say that I think "true" is some sort of correspondence to reality. Or I can say "true" reflects some sort of verification standard. But you can't just jump from your statement to this.

Don't dodge the question. What does this bolded phrase mean?

You're painting with far too broad of a brush. This doesn't really make any sense if you allow for even the smallest amount of subtlety of understanding.

I would simply say that what you're doing is trying to argue against gravity. Gravity is not accountable to anyone. Nor is the universe at large. It's far from clear what role you think accountability is playing here.

Don't be sorry. Just be embarrassed. Unless you're going to argue that morality doesn't even exist (which is a valid position to take -- just in a direction completely different from where you started), this is just a disappointing lack of thoughtful consideration.

I'm not dodging the question any more than you did. I asked you the question too.

What is your subjective concept of true?

As for me, it's meaning is context-dependent. To be clear, that is to say: its meaning changes depending on the context at hand. So give me a context...
Accountability is key. Accountability is key when it comes to the influence of, and enforcement of any kind of standards, whether moral standards or otherwise (e.g., performance standards within a company). Without accountability there is no transparency. Without accountability there is tyranny and there is absolute power.

And it is definitely not like "trying to argue against gravity". Gravity demands no moral standards on the behaviour of human beings. It demands standards on the functioning and movement of objects, but we're talking about moral standards specifically.
If you assert that an ethereal moral authority exists, and you assert that a God exists, then it is on you to demonstrate these assertions. It is not on me, to demonstrate otherwise. Much like it would not be on me to demonstrate that the flying spaghetti monster does not exist: to believers in the flying spaghetti monster (and there are actually believers).

If you tell a friend that you won the lottery today, and your friend does not believe you, it is not on your friend to demonstrate you didn't, but rather on you: to demonstrate you did.

The way you insist on flipping the onus of proof around, every time I speak to you, is truly limiting in how much of a conversation I can have with you.

I don't understand the role of the word "subjective" in this sentence. I hold that "true" is some form of reality-correspondence. I have no clue what "subjective true" means.

The context in which you used the phrase.

How is the word "subjectively" functioning in this sentence? Why did you insert it instead of saying "... whatever I hold to be true"?

Why are you trying to talk about gravity with regards to moral standards? That makes no sense at all, and completely misses the point of the analogy. The fact that you even acknowledge that you have to narrow to "moral standards specifically" is an indication that you actually understand me and that you're avoiding the issue. Gravity exerts influence over the physical universe, and it's not accountable to anyone or anything. It just does what it does and you just deal with it. I propose (edit: the possibility) that morality functions in the same way.

Furthermore, what role is "accountability" playing in your moral concept? It's far from obvious what this even means at this point. Who is accountable to whom for what when you talk about morality as you understand it. Are you accountable for your moral standards in some way? (Or are you just held accountable for your behaviors -- which is a totally different question.)

This is silly. I need not have asserted anything to ask you about what you believe. I drew out an analogy to inquire deeper into your perspective. You're talking about "accountability" and I'm giving you a known aspect of reality that is completely unaccountable to anyone or anything (gravity is unaccountable).

If there is a moral reality (and I'm not even saying that there is), then in what sense is that reality different from the reality of gravity? It's probably embedded into your concept of subjective truth that you brought up earlier. But you're asserting the existence of a moral reality that is malleable in some sense that you think you have influence over it and even change it. But I see reality including things like gravity, where we cannot influence it.

You are free to end the conversation at any time. But if you think there is something here about burden of proof, you are sorely mistaken. I have not once asked you to prove anything about your beliefs. I've only inquired about your beliefs and sought to have you explain them in further detail.

In that context, it means: whatever moral standards I believe are worthy of valuing. Whether those standards have correspondence with reality is not particularly important, because I have the opportunity to gain the power that is needed to enforce those standards, thus making them a reality.
"Whatever I hold to be true" also misses the point. Instead, it's - whatever I hold to be true on the one topic of moral standards: as further dependent on context.
Let's assume that your equivalence here is correct. In this case, I would expect that since technology allows us to overcome some of the standards of gravity (e.g., we are able to fly - using planes), you should believe that technology should (theoretically) allow us to overcome some of the standards of morality? Or is your notion of morality somehow exempt from being tinkered with?
Without accountability, moral standards remain forever unchangeable. When there's no one to turn to (ethereal authority) to change them, they cannot be changed.

Because I'm not expressing my beliefs. I don't see why you or Aaron W can't understand such a simple fact. It is only AFTER YOU START PUBLICLY IMPOSING YOUR BELIEFS that I take exception.

The government has no business taking a stance on god one way or the other, regardless of how many of its citizens believe in god.

I would bet a large sum that this president is an atheist. Ditto for the Clintons. Politicians have to pay lip service to Americans or they'd never get elected. I'd like to change that. But you have to get through people like you and Aaron W first, I guess who mistakenly think that the majority rules in this country.

Can you explain the process of gaining this power? I'm not sure what you mean by this.

What's the difference between what you hold to be true and being true in the sense that you've actually made it a reality? Or is it a reality as soon as you believe it?

Ummmmm... I'm having a difficult time understanding you here. It's not like we've overturned gravity in some way. We haven't tinkered with gravity at all. It doesn't disappear just because we're flying. We are working within the confines of gravity.

What is your concept of accountability? Because this is making no sense with my concept of accountability. In my mind, accountability is about being measured up against a pre-existing standard. I don't know what this has to do with changing something.

Ummmmm... What do you think a "belief" is?

Do you believe that people shouldn't publicly express their beliefs? Is that concept consistent with your concept of belief?

How do you conceptualize "imposing" a "belief"? In what way are you forced to adopt some sort of position by people saying something?

Basically, you've got a self-defeating position until you actually elaborate on your concepts more completely. Just saying "I'm not expressing my beliefs" when you're very obviously expressing beliefs in the common understanding of the term is absurd.

I'd take you up on that bet by any normal standard of defining religious belief.

In a certain sense, this is absolutely true. That's one of the founding concepts of a democracy. What you seem to be trying to say is that we believe that majority rules without limit. That's absurd and I don't believe it.

But I also don't believe that every minority position must be given equal status and standing from a legal perspective, and even more so from a cultural perspective. I ask you again:

I mean, if you just want to whine about baseball announcers saying statements of comfort directed at a person who has been injured, go ahead and do that. But don't pretend like this is anything about imposing beliefs on you. If you don't ever want to hear anyone express any beliefs, go find yourself an isolated island and live there.

Until you put together a cogent concept, your position is simply absurd.

It's also faster, you're eliminating an entire word that is basically redundant. If it's Mom ... it's my mom.

How does that differ from raging against apostrophes?

For example, with enough political or corporate influence, I can enact or push-through legislation that changes what behaviours are lawful and what behaviours aren't. Given enough time, power and influence, I could also change what behaviours the majority considers to be moral and immoral. Thereby making my subjective notions of morality: an actual reality.

A dictatorship can accomplish the same, but that's not what I'm advocating. I'm simply stating that given I had an expanded sphere of influence, and given that I chose to do so, I could make my subjective morality: a reality.
Well, once a upon a time, a man held it to be true that the sun does not spin around the earth. For that moment in time, this was his subjective truth in which he believed, but no-one else did. With enough evidence, and the power of evidence to influence people's beliefs: he made it a reality.

Perhaps you can guess who this man was? and what a struggle it was for him to push his heliocentric model against the prevailing Biblical understanding during this time?
No. It's reality when my sphere of influence makes it reality. Refer to example above.
What we've done is that we de-constructed the effects that gravity has on specific functions of a device that was in the making: and we then used that de-constructed understanding to make a device that overcomes the physical limitations that were placed on our behaviours - by gravity.

If we're able to do this for gravity, and your equivalence holds true, then we should be able to do something similar for morality? That is to say that: according to your belief in the 'ethereal moral authority model', a more developed and de-constructed understanding of it, should yield methods by which to overcome the limitations that it places on our range of behaviours?
I would avoid this line of reasoning for future reference, because as soon as we understand gravity even better and we begin to develop anti-gravity devices, you won't be able to make statements like this. So then, I suspect we should also expect some sort of anti-morality devices in the near future....

Sounds absurd doesn't it? Do you know why? because it is...

because the ethereal moral authority model does not hold up, and because no matter how much we deconstruct it and no matter how well we try to understand it, there is no possible way to tinker with it.

And the reason we can't tinker with it isn't because God won't let us. It's because there's nothing there to tinker with.

There are only the subjective moral standards which influence makes reality - using power.

Not sinning as much as others. And for the purposes of my point I am willing to use a religion's definition of sin. But even if you totally subscribe to, lets say the Christian definition (regarding gays, abortions, or whatever) its not good enough as far as Protestants are concerned if you sin less than a believer if you are not a believer. Even if your reason for disbelieving is based completely on how you have analyzed evidence.

A deistic God is highly possible. The other type is a giant longshot regardless of whether RLK's arguments that its not logically impossible are valid.

Theologically, this does not work.

So, pure moral relativism?

Do you believe that the earth did *NOT* revolve around the sun? I'm curious about this whole "make it reality" thing because it's not as if the reality of planetary orbits actually changed.

Was he really keeping God accountable? Doesn't this have more to do with people than God?

I don't understand the example above.

I'm stuck on your concept of "overcoming" gravity. We didn't overcome gravity. It's still there. It's still acting on us. We're still subject to it. We never really "deconstructed" it. To me, this really doesn't make a lot of sense. In no way have we denied gravity's influence on us. We didn't change the reality of gravity. Also, flight really had to do with understanding fluid dynamics.

See above. I don't really understand your analogy.

You're welcome to posit future events as you wish. But I don't think even the futurists think that we'll create devices that destroy gravity in some way.

We haven't really tinkered with gravity. I don't think anyone expects that we'll be able to change the fundamental constants and fundamental objects of the universe.

This is making less and less sense to me. Even if we posit that we create devices that somehow interact with gravitons that influence their behavior, I don't see that as being any different than creating devices that influence the behavior of electrons. We've not actually changed anything fundamental about the universe.

The second half of this sentence reads like some sort of new age rhetoric. The first half sounds like pure moral relativism again.

Stop asking ridiculous questions and thinking you're so smart. You can offer condolences or well wishes without expressing a belief. Once you bring god into it, you're demonstrating your beliefs.

I generally think it's a good idea for people to keep their beliefs to themselves until they are called upon. If you're audience is all Christians, then go ahead and start invoking god. If you're in a roomful of dumb right wing republicans, then feel free to declare global warming a farce. But in general when your audience is unknown, I think it's best to remain neutral.

By imposing, I mean having to listen to it. When reading a baseball forum, I don't need anyone asking me to keep someone in my prayers.

You can't possibly be stupid enough to think I'm unaware of expressing my beliefs here. This is a religion forum dummy. Of course I, and others are going to discuss their beliefs about god on a forum devoted to religion, god, and theology.

I'm done talking to you. There's no point. I can predict almost every one of your responses before I even finish typing out my sentence (he's certain to nitpick over my use of this word or phrase. He's definitely going to say I'm confused about this...). You think you're so smart, but you either miss my points entirely, or deliberately take them out of context.

I'll give you this: I've checked and you're right there is nothing grammatically wrong with omitting a possessive like "my" when a noun can also be a name. That said, it still sounds funny to my ear and many others agree with me, so I'm not dropping it from my list of pet peeves.

What irritates me is when Brits say they are going to hospital or someone is in hospital.

Aaron. Let's not get bogged down in the ontological assumptions between creating or discovering reality, because that's a whole conversation in itself and it doesn't warrant the derail. I'm also a little tired of answering so many questions, so let's ask you a few.

Since we have methods by which to study gravity, its properties and its effects - e.g., theoretical physics, experimental evidence etc. - what methods do we use to study and better understand your ethereal moral standards?

Since you equate the influence and effects of the existence of moral standards for human behaviour - to that of the existence of gravity and its influences/effects - then just like any phenomenon in the universe, these standards must be studied somehow...

How? Because I can't see how they can be studied through experience alone - experience is subjective, and your contention, so far as I understand, is that moral standards are not subjective. So they must be studied using....?

More importantly. What are these standards? and do they align closely to those of utilitarianism or to some other ethical philosophy?

I don't disagree with the bolded. But it's mostly irrelevant to the actual content of the conversation. Your concept of "belief" is narrowly defined so that you can express your beliefs about things but others cannot. That's an absurd double standard.

See? This is just a belief that you hold.

You don't seem to understand the full implications of this idea, despite my many attempts to get you to see it.

Oh waaah. Are you really that much of a cry-baby? That's what you think imposing something on somebody means?

Did someone specifically request that *YOU* keep someone in your prayers? You take all this stuff so personally, as if you can't really tell the difference.

No, you still don't get it.

If you know what the problems are with your statements, why do you make them?

At least you're seeing somewhat straight now. As I said, you can be annoyed by it. But know that it's the irrationally annoyed type of annoyance and not because you're somehow "justified" in your reasons for being annoyed.

Okay. But I think there's something really subtle going on there in your concepts of influence over reality that warrant a deeper consideration.

I think ethical reasoning is a good start. We have to remember that even physics has underlying assumptions that aren't being directly tested (say, that the physical universe operates by fixed laws), so that in our ethical reasoning we are cautious to understand the assumptions that are being placed on the system.

Edit: You might consider how it is that you've come to believe that logic "works" in some sort of meaningful way. It's not at all clear that you've made any sort of direct measurement of logic. When you test the logic of an argument, you're not directly testing something in any sort of phenomenological way. But there's clearly something else going on that lets you know about the rightness and wrongness of a statement.

I don't see why the fact that experiences are subjective is a particular problem. It's no more difficult than the variation that we see in psychological experiments. For any given subject in a study, it's usually the case that the exact outcome is unpredictable. Yet there's a sense of pattern based on general observations.

I think forcing yourself into one specific ethical approach is going to be an error. I do think that concepts of harm are useful, which brings value to using a utilitarian approach. But I also think that not everything can be quantified, so that a strictly utilitarian approach will miss some features of morality. I think that moral intuition suggests that there are some deontological features of morality, that there are certain concepts or ideas that stand out in situations (some things are just wrong). I also think that the idea of eudaimonia has some merit when it comes to understanding moral standards.

I'm a little confused, because on the one end, you argue for quantification, in how psychological experiments and social science methods ascertain patterns and averages across human behaviours and across subjective human beliefs. Yet in the same vein, you argue against quantification.

This seems incongruent and incompatible to me. If you truly believe that there are ethical moral standards that hold true all the time, as gravity does, then the use of ethical reasoning or introspection or subjective experience is unlikely to yield any useful insights into learning about these standards. Studies of large groups of people, and behavioural patterns therein however, are likely to be a far more promising avenue for gauging these standards, no?

For example, a sociopath can justify to themselves the reasons for why they lie, cheat or steal, so too can a serial rapist or a serial child molester, for the things they do. So then, I assume you wouldn't view their moral standards as being reflective of the true moral standards would you? And if you wouldn't, then you can't put much (if any) weight on the evidence that's solely provided by case study/subjective experience.

Also, I just read up on eudaimonia, and the psychological approaches of studying averages has deconstructed it significantly, into the below concepts:

1.Autonomy
2.Personal growth
3.Self-acceptance
4.Purpose in life
5.Environmental mastery
6.Positive relations with others

All of these have been studied extensively, and as far as I'm aware, the fulfilment of each of them is highly context-dependent. That is to say that, there is no ethical moral standard that can be attained from these, that does not change based on changes in the context/environment in which one lives.

Now I'm not sure if you see where I'm going with this.....but if the fulfilment of these is context-dependent then they cannot be elevated to the same level of truth as something like gravity, which (a) does not depend on context and; (b) does not depend on subjective experience. We can deal with (b) later, but let's first address (a).