119 wrote:

nojoum wrote:

There is no God but self-interest (wealth and power),

 
No, the best argument for Classical Theism "works" as well as anything in philosophy. That's the problem. The perception that there's something WRONG about the war in Yemen is more than a hardwired kinship altruism response. Our moral intuitions may have been manufactured by an evolutionary process, but they were manufactured to intuit something Objective. The foundation of morality is non-contingent because its Source is non-contingent.

Both through Reason and Revelation all humans are prohibited from shedding the blood of innocents. This is part of Noachide Law. If there's any burden of proof it rests entirely on the shoulders of those supporting any aggression. (What, it's only prohibited for individuals, not groups larger than X acting in the name of Y? Defending wars of prevention requires greater philosophical chops than I possess.)

Getting our Theology & Ontology exactly perfect isn't expected of mankind. Refraining from idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, adultery, and cruelty to animals is. And we're supposed to establish courts to punish violators. There is no "right" to observe false religions, curse G-d, sleep with everyone, or engage in acts of collective slaughter. 

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The War Nerd is a national treasure, though not for the faint of heart. His multidimensional analyses are often illuminating.

Well  you misunderstood my point. All I am saying that the politicians of any country hide their agenda and lust for power and wealth behind a religious mask/ humanitarian concern and etc. The rest can be also applied to media/ large companies and so on. At least Trump was honest and directly said that Saudi's give us way too much money that I can't risk lo

John West wrote:

nojoum wrote:

It also another reason why I no longer pursue philosophy; even if you have the truth, it would not enable you to live a moral life. People do not live an immoral life because they do not know good or evil, they live a immoral life because they do not know themselves enough to change their ways.

Change their ways to what? 
I think it's perfectly possible that, for instance, some brutal consequentialist could be doing evil, thinking he's doing good, because he doesn't know what is truly good or evil. As Sextus points out (and the history books bear witness to), people through time and space have earnestly acted on contradictory beliefs about right and wrong.

In the Euthydemus, Socrates argues that since we require knowledge of how to live the good life (wisdom) to know how to use all the other purported goods and all those other goods can be evils depending on how they're used, wisdom is the only good in itself. Hence, that the study of how to live the good life is at the very least an essential part of living the good life. (cf. 278c–282d.)

(Sorry for the digression, Joe. Farzad: If you want to discuss the argument (which I've just fixed my summary of and reposted, sorry), drop me a PM and I'll start a thread. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to contribute to it, but I know that it's a subject that interests a lot of other people on here who do have time. It might be worth starting a thread on it even if you don't PM me.)

Hahahahahah! Now that you changed the your summary, I don't have anything to argue about. I agree with everything you said. The only point that I am making is that I see no reason to study the wor

Hi Joe,

I hope my opinion helps you. I used to have an interest in having a justified belief regarding the existence of God.  However as I went on, I saw that there are many questions and doubts and if one wants to be strict, it would be extremely cumbersome to form a justified opinion. Even if one narrow his/her scope and considers only Christians, he/she finds strong contrasts in terms of opinions (e.g. W.L. Craig and E. Feser). You can even consider the user by the name 119 here who in numerous occasions has argued against Christianity and rejected it based on Old testament. Assuming that everyone is being honest with their opinions, these observations would mean that it is impossible to reach at ultimate truth with complete certainty.

Therefore, I shifted my focus from establishing the truth to the practicality of a given religion (not necessarily the mainstream interpretation, for example I like the Sufi version of Islam even though the main stream Shia Islam rejects this interpretation). Let us grant that a given religion and its practices are true, can you actually follow its standards and practices? Can you actually become a better person (Also don't bring the topic of ethics here, except the issues of abortion and homosexuality, we are aware of the goodness/badness of almost all situations we face in life). Now, if you have earnestly tried to follow the model of a given religion but yet have failed miserably a thousand times, it would no longer matter whether it was true or not. What's the purpose of these teachings if you cannot follow them? (e.g, pedophiles in catholic church) 

Rather what I am finding more intersting these days, is to find which path (as prescribed by a religion) provides better self-understanding. A path is true as long as it endows us with knowledge of ourselevs, our strengthes, weakenss and ways of improving ourselves so that one can get closer and closer to living a moral life. Any path that does not satisfy the above conditions

DanielCC wrote:

I said God was the source of values rather than the good. Besides even if we did not know why certain things are good we can still have reason to think that they are e.g. our moral intuitions. Consider an analogy with causation: we have prima facia justification to think certain things cause others before we have a theory of causation (of course subsequent theories might undercut our prima facia warrant e.g. Humeanism in the case of causation and atheism in the case of ethics).

It's the same as it would be for other ethical theories - most Consequentialists for instances would not want to say that a person has to understand Consequentialist reasoning before they can rationally recognize X action as good or bad. Even Divine Command theorists like R.M. Adams hold that we don't need to recognize a certain act as accordant with a divine command to know that it's good.
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I see. Sorry for my mistake. I think it is much better now but still I'm not sure if we know what God would value and I should add that intuitions can be a starting point but they are far from being tenable in themselves.

I think there is an easy workaround.

Just print the pages of interest but choose Adobe PDF (or any PDF viewing software) as the printer.