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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (81884)	11/23/2009 2:44:30 PM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

<<I didn't misrepresent your post I just paraphrased what you said...>> "Untrue: You complained that I had made statements without offering explanation." I simply made an observation. you are the one complaining. Here is the exchange that you seem to be referring to: ........................................................... Sadly, the following comment pretty much sums up your entire argument. <<How do you get from what is to what ought to be?>> "You don't. What is, is. I didn't make it that way and I've no clue what you mean by 'what ought to be' (exception human beings) but you or I can't change what is nature." No explanation for the "exemption" granted to human beings. "What is, is." ....................................... NOW: aside from the fact that I inadvertently transposed <<"exemption" granted to human beings>> when you used "(exception human beings)", I have to point out that I quoted you verbatim and simply said; that was representative of your larger argument. Which in fact, it is. What are you complaining about? "I have offered that the underlying 'rightness' of the human condition lies in the nature of human beings. You asked how can anything ever be right or wrong? I answered but you ignored and/or dismissed the answer." I find your responses to be unsatisfactory and philosophically ungrounded. You call that ignoring and dismissing. I disagree. "The evidence for the following assertion (hardly bare) would be the condensed doctrines of every major religion, every society, every philosophical text, every moral teaching, and every sane mother's knee in recorded history." Overstatement much? But I see; everybody knows that what you are saying is true so you don't have to bear the burden of explanation? Is that what you are saying? Do you really think <<everyone knows that>> is a philosophically robust answer? Are you trying to ground Natural goodness in a supernatural God or are you grounding it in an atheistic materialism? "Human rightness is established on a regard for the goodness in all," This is viciously circular. "and is the foundation of a healthy society." How do you know what constitutes a healthy society? "Rather than a rigid dictate, handed down by social authority to control you, it is the idea that you control, by your free will, the choice of a beneficent path over the corrupt." You assume free will exists in a mechanical world. You also assume to know what is ultimately beneficent and by putting that "over the corrupt" you must therefore also know what the uncorrupted must look like. Can you justify any of these assumptions from a materialistic worldview? "Rightness is realized individually through freedom of conscience, which maintains the delicate balance between responsibility for the care of one's fellows and the freedom from oppression by one's fellows that we should all seek individually and on behalf of one another"." But the question at hand is how do you objectively ground obligations and freedoms from a materialistic worldview in the first place? "In a world that is wholly material there remains vast evidence of the natural and common existence of right and wrong, as it is bound in the human experience. It is secured to the operant conscience each and every human possesses, woven through the transitions of time and space, yielding meaning to every circumstance." I'm sure you think that is very erudite and compelling; I think it's just ungrounded question begging and gobbledygook. Individual conscience is about as subjective as you can get. Sociopaths sleep just fine. Collective conscience OTOH is at best, a symptom or a clue, that points to another source beyond itself; it is not an answer.