That wouldn't be my word choice. When you're the only TT math prof for a 3000 student institution teaching 4 distinct classes, overseeing PTIs, administering a new program, with advising responsibilities for a couple dozen students, "convenience" certainly does not spring to mind.

I will take this to mean that the things you've listed are "relevant."

No, there's not. This requires intellectual subtlety to understand. I've explained it above and I don't think I can add much to the explanation here.

I'm not sure what "detail" you want. Is it a "Biblical" position? Yes. Is it a "historical American" position (from my dad's side)? Yes. Is it a "historical Asian position" (from my mom's side)? Yes. Can I point to "this one thing" and say that this is the source? No.

I can feel an undercurrent of the postmodern critique of modernity, which is that modernity wants *THE* narrative. It sounds as if you want me to point a single thing (much like how you want to point to the harm principle) as *THE* thing that drives the view. I don't think it's that simple. I don't think it's realistic. This is why I reject the harm principle as actually being a truly successful moral precept. As I've expressed before, it's actually rather arbitrary, and it does not appear to provide a sufficient framework for moral questions. It doesn't seem functional as *THE* thing to drive the moral narrative forward.

Because that was your claim. Have I not been very, very clear that I'm addressing your specific claim about depression? The analogy works for what I'm using it for, not for what YOU want it to mean.

I'm not sure how you're conflating "legality" with "morality" and expecting that it's going to be meaningful.

No... that's not blackmail. Maybe you should grab a dictionary.

More to come as I have time.

I disagree with Aaron on almost everything, but give the guy a break. He works hard, also posts on strat forums, and if he doesn't have time to compose answers to an RGT thread because of his work, that's legitimate and not "convenient" ducking.

It would be much better if you actually responded to one of my last posts in which I am asking specific questions. I am showing a contradiction right there, you haven't explained why it actually isn't a contradiction.


Okay, we've got a little more information to work with. Summary:

- The Bible says homosexuality is immoral.
- My mom says homosexuality is immoral.
- My dad says homosexuality is immoral.

The last two are simply taking the problem one step back and still don't give any intuition as to why homosexuality should be immoral. I see no difference between "Aaron says homosexuality is immoral" and "Aaron's mom says homosexuality is immoral. Both explain nothing. But there surely must be SOMETHING in that culture that made people hold that moral value, unless your claim is that one day people randomly decided that from then on they'd be deeming homosexuality immoral for no reason. And note that I am not necessarily expecting you to point to a single thing, like harm, to explain your position. You can point to as many things as you like, as long as it provides some plausible explanation.

As for the Bible, I am curious, do you also ask people to stop eating crab, shrimp, lobster, etc. if they want to join your church?

No, both analogies suck big time. Here's what you're trying to do:

Alcohol can lead to alcoholism, the same way long-term abstinence can lead to depression, the same way driving can lead to injuries.

But you are missing key words. Big amounts of alcohol and reckless driving can lead to bad consequences. Drinking a glass of red wine once a week will not make you an alcoholic. A week of abstinence will not lead to anything bad either. A life-time abstinence will lead to bad things.

Legality doesn't matter, as long as they have morality on their side, they can make everything legal. When you ask them "But isn't outlawing Christianity illegal?" they will say "It's legal now". You ask "But why did you make it legal?!" and they will say "Why not?"

Here's one definition of blackmail:

Force (someone) to do something by using threats or manipulating their feelings

Person X is the only one who has a pill that will save person Y's child. X tells Y "if you don't let me have sex with your wife, I will not give you the pill".

Compare that to: Church X has the only key to avoiding hell. X tells somebody who wants to join them "you can only join if you amputate your arms".

It's blackmail.

My main problem is with this quote:

We have a history with him selectively ignoring parts of my posts to which he can't respond or ones which prove my point, etc. I just view this as a good excuse to keep doing this.

Otherwise, I am not putting time pressure on him, he can respond when he can. But so far, he's doing exactly what I was expecting him to do.

Until you stop telling me what my moral views are, and actually spend the time thinking about what I'm telling you they are, you will never understand what they really are. I already know that our moral conceptions are not the same and not very compatible. So that's clearly not the point.

I think you need to rethink your view of moral realism. It seems to me that you're using "moral realism" to mean "moral absolutism (in a global sense)."

So here we go:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/

The "facts" of the matter include (but are not limited to) the facts about the time, location, and culture in which the action is evaluated.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/

What I reject about this is the implied sense of "all moral judgments." I think that *some* moral judgments need to be understood relative to various traditions, convictions, or practices (that is, culture), but cultural concepts of morality are sometimes subordinate to a higher moral concept.

If action X happens to be absolutely morally wrong (an adult sexually assaulting a child), then it does not depend upon cultural concepts. However, if action X happens to be morally neutral in the abstract (having small feet), then we can proceed to consider the cultural relevance of such behaviors. And in this way there can be times/places that make an action morally acceptable, morally neutral (or ambiguous), or morally unacceptable.

You also seem to fail to grasp that the moral reality is independent of our ability to articulate it. That is, just because culture A disagrees with culture B about a particular moral claim does not imply that therefore there does not exist a moral reality. The rightness or wrongness of a moral claim (particularly with respect to moral absolutes) does not depend on a culture correctly or incorrectly identifying them.

You really need to stop telling me what I believe if you want to continue down this path in the conversation.

Awwww... are you becoming co-dependent? Do you need me to respond to every single one of your comments in order for you to feel complete?

If your point can be made in a single argument, then only make one argument. If you make 5 arguments and I respond to 4 of them, it always seems like the one I didn't respond to was the one that was your main point.

This leads me to doubt you have a main point. Rather, you're using the shotgun approach to the argument. You just toss out a whole bunch of arguments in the hope that something will stick.

And sometimes, there's just nothing more to say.

Said the person who's been responding exclusively to la6ki and dismissing everyone else for the last few pages... at the very least, the co-dependence would seem mutual

OMG, you still haven't explained how you decide the rightness or wrongness of a moral claim! Why is homosexuality immoral across all cultures but keeping your feet from naturally growing not? How do you decide that?

If you're gonna answer "my religion/culture" again, then what if I told you that according to my religion/culture homosexuality is not immoral but keeping your feet from naturally growing is? How are we going to resolve that?

If you can't give an answer to this question, don't you think that this brings you extremely closely to bigotry? "I can make declarative moral statements based on my culture, but others can't. Only what my culture deems as immoral across all cultures is immoral"

What reasoning do you use when deciding which actions are morally neutral, positive, or negative?

LOL, wut? Where am I using the shotgun method? All of my posts are responses to things you said.

You accuse many people of being intellectually dishonest, blindly defending terrible arguments, etc. You, sir, are "defending" a terrible position here, you have no arguments whatsoever, and when somebody pressures you to respond to criticism, you attempt to dig yourself out of the hole by trying to mock them for being co-dependent.

In the light of your performance in threads like this one, your accusations in previous threads like "your weakness in philosophy is showing" or "you defend the hell out of a position even though it's obvious to everybody in the thread that you're FOS" makes you look even sillier.

By this, you demonstrate (again) your inability to parse the ontological from the epistemological. Until you grasp that distinction, there's little value in continuing.

Please don't ever accuse anybody of being dishonest or sucking at philosophy.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure it's an involuntary reflex for him. I once got him to read an essay by Noam Chomsky (yes, the emeritus institute professor of philosophy at MIT) and his response was basically, "Chomsky seems to suck at philosophy."

The underlying psychology may be related to his bizarre inability here to agree that most people need sex, but who really knows?

Perhaps a better characterization than involuntary reflex is projection.

Check out this quote:

I can fit somebody pretty well in that description

"High places" are in your mind. In the NT Paul mentions that there were homosexuals who were able to put God first.

http://stonekingdom.org/FMS09/March_09_FMS-6-web.pdf

Tomato soup is red

Some people can follow God no matter their physical composition.

The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial

Well the biblical heart is made up of the heart, emotions, mind, desires and the will.

There's nothing stopping a gay person from putting them all together against a desire they have whether it is inborn or not.

Just like there's nothing that stops a disabled person from deciding to win at the Special Olympics.

Obstacles and handicaps can be overcome. Winners overcome them all the time. Sometimes they even make their weakness the secret of their success.

so you are implying that homosexuality is a disability?

This is mis-representation of the conversation. Not caring that much about *WHO* Chomsky is does not suggest that he sucks at philosophy.

Edit: Or are you talking about when you tried to apply Chomsky's(?) definition of science as something like "the study of things that are true" and use it as something like explanation of how modern science progresses?

Read this:

Tell me whether this is an ontological or epistemological question. Are you asking about the nature of my moral concepts, or are you talking about the question of how I "know" any moral facts at all?

Now go back and re-read the comments I was responding to, and tell me what question I was addressing.

Haha I missed that quote before. Pretty awesome.

I would say that I likely disagree with this, depending upon what specifically you mean by "need sex." People do not "need sex" like they "need water." I don't think that people "need sex" like they "need community" either.