DoOrDoNot, it was you who made claims about how and what religious people believe or do not believe in the first place. Since you now are questioning both the basic epistemology and method behind bog standard surveys performed by credentialled parties, this leaves a very big question.

How exactly did you come to your conclusions and why are these to be believed?

That's a completely fair question which you yourself opened the door too. To on one hand sit and make very broad and completely categorical blanket statements about how and what religious people believe or do not believe and then hand-wave survey research that contradicts you aside with a basic dash of philosophical skepticism seems just... bad.

It seems like an extremely convoluted way of saying "I'm right, therefore anyone who disagrees is wrong".

Explain to me how those poll numbers don't support my conclusion that religious people have polar opposite moral opinions than non theists. The data proves me right. It's wellnamed who is incorrectly lumping in "not a moral question" with morally permissible. Regardless, I already said polling isnt a good indicator of reality, and gave up to this point uncontested reasons why, but in this case the numbers back up my claim.

Explain to me how the data presented contradicts my claim that in general religiously affiliated people have different moral opinions than non affiliated. The gap between 80% and 18% isn't big enough for you or what?

This is not honest. You claimed:

Well named posted survey data showing that 62% of US Catholics say gay-lesbian relations are moral acceptable (Also 38% of US Catholics say abortion is morally acceptable). That clearly shows that your original statement that we'd be hard pressed to find Christians or Jews who think these things are morally permissible is false.

You are now retreating to a weaker and different claim that in general religious people have different moral views from non-religious people. Okay, that's fine, probably most people would agree (although maybe not on causation). But don't pretend that claim is what well named was disagreeing with.

If you care to read the first post I made on the subject in general with exceptions is precisely what I said. I also said it was dependent on devotion. Evangelicals and Mormons tend to be more fundamentalist than Catholics and It also makes perfect sense that Catholics would be the most agreeable based on what I know of Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, there is a clear divide between religious and nonreligious people regarding moral stances on those issues, and the more fundamentalist/devoted/homogenous the group is, the bigger the difference. It's surprising people are arguing with this; it's simply obvious to nearly everyone that the divide on moral issues like homosexuality, abortion, gay marriage etc are religious in nature. Case in point find me a significant sample of very conservative atheist Trump supporters who are against abortion and gay marriage. It's almost humorous to imagine. I'm sure a few exist, but in general atheists fall pretty far left of center politically and socially.

I highly suspect the reason is because it lends credence to my argument, but in any other context I'm near certain you'd all be agreeing the moral divide on these issues is due to differences in religious belief. The level of cognitive dissonance is palpable.

I'd suspect that over 90% of Christians who believe that the Bible is inspired, infalllible and inerrant would say that same-sex relations are immoral.

No, you just argue in a hostile manner. Maybe you didn't mean it or were just being hyperbolic, but the plain sense of your original statement is clearly false and refusing to acknowledge this just makes you seem churlish. Well named was arguing against the claim that there are very few Jews, Christians, or Muslims that think abortion or homosexuality is morally permissible. That claim is false. If you want to say that what you really meant is that some moral beliefs are correlated with some religious views, fine. The responsibility to communicate your views clearly is on you.

As I made clear from the beginning,


it depends what you mean by Jew/Christian/Muslim. There are people who claim that status nominally but ignore what their book says. I specifically said non nominal and discounted those from my assertion. The polls quoted do not (the first one isnt even talking about morality, but legality). That is the problem with polls. It just says 'Christians, Jews, Muslims' without any necessary parsing. It leaves out key information. Actual Christians, Jews and Muslims (those non nominal people that have read and attempt to follow their book) would, in general, disagree with the morality of abortion and homosexuality. 12% of atheists are pro life. The divide is primarily religious in nature.

I'm sorry you think I'm being churlish, but if you actually read my posts it's clear what I meant.

It's a bit weird to carry out an entire discussion on a very abstract conception of God and then do this jump. The ultimate accountant, supercomputer or alien entity are just a few things that have been thrown around (my paraphrases), and it's been fairly implicit that we have been discussing non-revealed religion. Then suddenly in an argument on what religious people believe the rest us must suddenly understand that you are talking about revealed religion, and not only that, but that you are referring to literalists that specifically adhere to the Abrahamic religions.

Not that I think your point holds up even if we limit ourselves to these specific religious believers, but I think this sudden jump was very strange.

More importantly, if this is suddenly what we're debating then I'll just point out that there exist theologies of all these three religions that have used naturalism. Concepts very similar to naturalism has also been applied in religious and spiritual beliefs that have no deity but still ascribe to moral obligations, for example taoism.

Jumping from non-revealed religion to revealed religion makes this an entirely different ballgame. Why is taoism wrong and literal Christianity right? That suddenly becomes a completely fair question.

There are well known Jesus mythicist atheist Trump supporter anti abortionists too--Robert Price. That doesn't take away from the generality of atheists being socially and politically quite liberal though. I didn't bring it up I was just answering wellnamed questions. No one has argued for the truth or falsity of any specific religion either. That's a separate can of worms. I've simply made the point that differences in moral ontology and the content of moral beliefs derived from that are fundamentally tied to theism or nontheism. If true, it's quite bizarre. It's difficult to imagine how beliving in a non existent invisible man in the sky could so dramatically change how an evolutionary and biologically contingent being views the universe and his place in it, but it does.

Sure, if you define religious as "people who hold belief X", then you will find that all religious people believe X. But that is not very useful in this discussion.

Backing up a little bit, I think you've lost track of what I'm actually arguing. I agree that there are meaningful differences in average belief between the religious and the non-religious, although I think focusing on the few issues where those differences are the largest in American culture (abortion, homosexuality) probably leads us to overstate the difference at least in relation to Americans who are not religious. But in any case, I absolutely grant that there are meaningful differences based in religion.

My point, though, is this: there is a wide variation in moral beliefs, both between members of the same cultural/religiious group, and across cultural/religious groups. The data helps to illustrate that point. The differences between religious and non-religious groups are a part of that. If you can only argue for religious moral homogeneity by excluding everyone except conservative Christians and Muslims from the "religious" then you are already conceding my point.

Further, my argument is that the diversity in human moral beliefs makes it implausible that humans share some innate metaphysical perception of an abstract realm of objective morality. You've rejected that argument also, on the grounds that your belief in the existence of objective morals requires no justification, but in any case the point about moral diversity is in support of that argument, and since I doubt there's much use in trying to further argue the point, I'll go back to the larger argument.

And yet I imagine that you do not think that all beliefs can be properly basic. I expect that you have some actual criteria for determining whether or not a belief may be claimed as properly basic. Also, I think you're nearly contradicting yourself, because you've also said that your belief is justified by your personal experience. Plantinga's epistemology doesn't say that a properly basic belief requires no justification whatsoever, he argues that it requires no inferential justification, and can rely on the kind of justification appropriate to sense experience or memory.

On that point, I am bemused by the fact that you're arguing that anything short of a perfectly objective and transcendental morality is meaningless while appealing to a thoroughly subjective epistemology in order to justify your belief in that same objective moral order. Earlier in the thread you said that if moral claims are not objective then they are merely opinion. Why is that not the case for epistemological claims?

I view existential nihilism as the rejection of any non-immediate purpose in life, not just the objective variety. Purpose on subjectivist accounts is just as real as on objectivist accounts. So maybe I count as an existential nihilist as you understand it, because I'm skeptical that human lives have any purpose outside of that given them by humans. I can expand more, I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for here.

As a practical matter, I view existential nihilism as describing one end of a continuum between short-term and long-term purposes. Everyone's actions are to some extent purposeful (eg walking to get to a destination, drinking to assuage thirst, etc). Some people also have long-term plans for their life, eg raising a family, a particular career, mastering certain skills or knowledge areas, and so on. The nihilist end of the spectrum are those who don't have any such long-term plans or values towards which they consciously direct their actions.

This isn't really a functional definition of nominal religiosity. It's much closer to a true Scotsman fallacy than anything.

No, it's not. Given how poorly worded your arguments are, it's not actually clear what you mean by most of what you've said in this thread.

I'll also note how you've basically ignored my very clearly laid out comments and observations. There is a reasonable inference that I draw from this.

I don't think this is actually a proper definition of "properly basic." A "basic" belief is one that doesn't depend on other beliefs. So it seems you need to justify that a belief is "properly" basic.

If, like me, you were looking for a refresher on "properly basic beliefs", this IEP article is helpful.

Thanks for the link. I had done some other background reading as well before stepping into the conversation.

Insofar as one needs to explain which of these is being relied upon (and possible more), it is not true that a properly basic belief does not need to be justified. It is not enough to say "I don't need to justify my belief" in light of this definition. You need to at least say what you're doing here with "properly basic."

It seems important since DODN brought up Plantiga that Plantiga's account of "properly basic" is different from the classical one. And, as best as I can tell, DODN is conflating the two. Plantiga's challenge is summarized in the quote below.

Furthermore, Plantiga offers a solution:

Notice that at this point, there's a type of justification process involved. Or if not "justification" per se, at least a process that requires elaboration. And it is not clear that DODN is actually doing any of this, and so his use of Plantiga's example doesn't seem to be meaningful.

Based on what I see in other threads, a lot of people ignore you.

I'll leave it up to you to draw a reasonable inference as to why.

Maybe it doesn't change people's viewpoints at all. Maybe it just so happens that the viewpoints and moral beliefs of people who believe in invisible authorities are more likely to be fantastical. There's no studies showing causation. All we have is correlation.

Your powers of observation are clearly flawed. There was a prolonged conversation about the content of my posts. One poster in particular felt it important to repeatedly raise observations about my posting. You can say that some dislike my posts, but that's a separate accusation entirely.

Still, based on this thread, you don't seem to be showing much signs of meaningful engagement. Nor do you show capacity for useful conversation.

I await a post that contradicts me so that the conversation can move forward.

I'm not interested in engaging with you. Continue to post if you like but I won't be responding.

Given that you've barely engaged anyway, I don't see how this represents any type of meaningful distinction.

The most truthful thing that I've seen you state so far is that your justification for pretty much everything you've put forward is "imo."

Cackle. Softly.

Semi-Random Shower Thoughts:

Does the idea that morality is meaningless absent afterlife enforcement imply that popular protestant notions of salvation render morality meaningless? That is, if salvation is by faith, and not by works, and there is this notion that no one can actually pass the test of the "moral accountant", but those who are "saved" are excused from the test, doesn't that imply an interesting lack of accountability?

I realize that this is not the only soteriological view in Christianity, and lots of Christians employ metaphysical ideas involving the Holy Spirit to explain that born again Christians should be transformed and sin less, and so on, but it still seems like if you make accountability necessary for morality to be meaningful then this rather popular conception of salvation is at least in some tension with that idea. Salvation in this view is in large part salvation from accountability.

In some ways a belief in the strong necessity of accountability seems more compatible with something like the concept of karma and reincarnation.

In the purview of eternal justice, maybe accountability can actually mean something, for every wrong you do onto others, you are literally doing onto yourself. The idea is: stretched over eternity, you will be every person ever to have lived. And you'll also live the same life infinitely (eternal recurrence).

Yet, even by this extreme standard of accountability, you're still not really accountable. If you're the cause of all the harm in the universe, so too, are you the cause of all the good. Whose keeping track of the balance? No one.

The Christian conception of salvation is twofold. Justification restores the believers relationship to God immediately and eternally upon sufficient faith. Sanctification is the long process by which Christians are transformed to the image of Christ via the Holy Spirit working on and in believers to 'bear spiritual fruit;' namely: patience, kindness, goodness, peace, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. In that sense I believe salvation is salvation from the ultimate accountability mentioned in the Christian doctrine: the fruits of darkness. If one isn't saved, one ultimately becomes the worst possible being one can become. Living in eternal darkness/cast into outer darkness is a punishment in itself. Hell seems to be separation from all that is good, which is embodied in God. There are many farming/wheat-chaff/harvest metaphors used in the New Testament. This seems to be what it's getting at. If you sow goodness you reap it, if you sow darkness you reap it as well. Jesus uses these metaphors regarding the gospel. The message is a seed that is embraced by faith or not. The harvest are the fruits of the Spirit. If you don't accept the message by faith then you reap the opposite: impatience, badness, harshness, hopelessness, rashness, malevolence, and distress. 'No man can break the Law, he can only break himself against the Law.'

In that sense your character is ultimately held accountable to your actions. You reap what you sow. At least that's the way I understand it. Quite an interesting and compelling take on life, responsibility, etc. It definitely is no simplistic made up garbage theology as a lot of atheists claim. There is some level of truth that resounds to me in the message 'you reap what you sow.'

That said, there's no reason at all why reincarnation or karma aren't valid concepts in lieu of the arguments I've made. It's totally possible you come back to life as a dung beetle if you're a bad person etc. In some ways it's a quite similar concept to the above.

How do you know the life of a dung beetle is worse?

You don't. The kind of accountant that turns you into a dung beetle for doing bad things would be especially silly.

And if you're going to be living forever under every different kind of species then what does it matter that you'll be a dung beetle this time and a human another time? Over an infinite span of time you will be every animal and insect that's ever lived. Importantly, you've already been every animal and insect that's ever lived.