I think the word you may have missed in what I was responding to was "if". I was told I have my head in the stand if I didn't realize something I had made no statement on.
Texas v abortion
- Thread starter Trunkage
- Start date
Ok, lemme say it more clearly for you.
You're wrong.
And in case you're confused as to what you're wrong about... the "imaginary stereotype" you spoke of most definitely exists in every day America.
Don't be a pedantic twat, yeah? I'm sure you're at the very least smart enough to know exactly what I meant
I mean, it hurts me that you're telling me not to be pedantic and then you set me up with "the stereotype most definitely exists", and then I'm supposed to not respond "well yes, the stereotype does exist, that doesn't mean it's accurate."
Are there people in the world that fit the stereotype? Yes. Are there people in the world that fit every negative racial stereotype? Also yes. Are you comfortable calling stereotypes accurate because some subset of people fit them? Is that where we're at? Defending the use of broad stereotypes? Congratulations, you can't sink much further than actively defending prejudice as a concept.
My original posts towards you were to point out that you seemed to be pretending that these people did not exist, or did not fit a stereotype.
By acknowledging that stereotypes exists by your own admittance above, you're clearly aware of what creates a stereotype (and perhaps why these extremist Christian Americans might fit that stereotype). I believe we're on the same page in that regard.
However, neither of my posts towards you stated any intent or belief of my opinions or feelings towards stereotypes themselves, just that they exist and people fit them.
So if you want to put words in my mouth and act like you know what my stance is about stereotypes and how they affect people, then by all means. Just be aware that they're words you made up and inferred from my post on your own accord, and not something I outright stated myself. I'm not defending stereotypes as a concept, I find they're quite negative overall. I'm merely stating their existence and how and why people may fit into them
To be fair, I don't start steering clear until I find out that their Christian. I also don't need them to start talking about Christ to find out. The Bible certainly changes a person's perspective of people and life.
But, then I've never really liked how the church as an institution warps Jesus' message. I will say evangelicals in Australia are not the same Americans and are more willing to help out their fellow man.
My mum is still in a church but has had serious doubts because now her church friends have all gone antivax. She is now seeing how easily the Bible is wsrped to fit a narrative... It's all identity politics
So would you prefer to rewind to the part where you weren't actually saying that I'm wrong? You were reacting to inferences you made on what I had said rather than what I was actually saying, hence not actually saying that I'm wrong. The words I put in your mouth didn't come from nowhere, they are the logical extension of you telling me that I was wrong. I'm not surprised you didn't actually believe those things, because I don't think we were ever in disagreement in the first place.
You don't know how willing to help their fellow man evangelicals in the US are. You only have the biased lens of the internet to judge. Most of your exposure to American Christians online is posted by people who want you to hate them.
As someone who, when "good Christians" find out is pansexual, is at best treated to "Hate the sin, not the sinner" attitudes, have fun with that "help their fellow man" belief. I'm not saying every Christian wants me dead or something, but a fair chunk of them would like me to not be pansexual, as if it was a choice on my part. They often use what I call "condescending compassion", where they pity me for my sinful ways, and the fact that I'm going to hell for not being straight.
It's more like that I've taught in religious schools. Their help usually has strings attached. Or they have this weird way of determining who 'needs help.' I've seen how they're 'treating of fellow man' leads to the Texas abortion law. The last church I went to was saying the exact same things as Abbot was when my state was discussing abortion.
I remember people from my church trying to set me up with a girlfriend because they didn't like the one I had. I remember a different denomination (while I was born Lutheran, I'm a denominational slut) always gossiping about others sins while doing the exact same thing. Another was quite accepting homosexuality but vehemently again bisexuality. Because clearly that means you dont have a stable partner.
I've shopped around. I tried for a long time to fit into Christianity. But only certain identities are acceptable. Anything outside the norm is evil.
I realise now that it's what we now call cancel culture
I actually studied theology at a Catholic University. I realised how made up all those strictures were. They weren't in the bible. It was just the church making them up.
I also studied Hinduism for a long time after this. I realised how restrictive the church is (all denomination, not specifically Catholic here.) They were demanding I live a certain way and they sure weren't making me force other into 'the good life.' (Well, Modi and everything in India that's been happening is just f'ed up so I'd say Hinduism is changing). The only focus was on how you can become the person you need for others. Not the person the church needs you to be
You don't have to be in church to have a relationship with God. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it.
But I understand if the Catholic church fit your identity and make you safe. That's cool. It just doesn't do that for most people.
Should we maybe tell Christians that Hell doesn't exist? I think maybe we should, it'd be the nice thing to do.
Maybe she doesn't, but guess what. I DO! Not only that, I live in a heavily evangelical Christian area. I get to see the hypocrisy up close. I get to hear it every day at work when I hear them bragging about their drinking, and fighting and sexual escapades while talking shit about how IMMORAL those outsiders are.
Considering the shit they already do while believing eternal damnation is a possibility, I personally don't want to find out how they would act without it hanging over their heads. Remember, these are the people who actually say things like "morality has no meaning without religion."
That's not it. It's not that religion gives morality meaning, it's that if morality has meaning, religion is the logical consequence. Morality is a supernatural concept, it requires free will to make any sense at all. In a deterministic, materialistic world, the most morality can be is a list of things we prefer to happen. Any normal conception of morality believes that people have the capacity to make real decisions, which requires people to have a supernatural component to their existence. Religion is where people go to consider the source and significance of that supernatural existence.
Moreover, you're all talking about like 8 different groups of people. There isn't one monolithic group of people who are all simultaneously living hedonistic lifestyles while criticizing others for the same thing, AND preaching about a literal fire and brimstone hell, AND posturing about the impossibility of morality without God. These are all things you can attribute to some Christians, but you're talking about 2.5 billion people. You're doing "guilt by association" for 1/3rd of the human race. As I said recently in a different thread, deciding what you believe based on who you don't want to associate with is doing it wrong.
You do understand that the Catholic Church made the Bible, right? The writings put into the bible were around, but the Catholic Church decided to put them together into a single thing and call it effectively "The Book". The particular configuration of the Bible is no more or less based in tradition than the things not in the Bible. The Christian Bible is not like the Quran or the Book of Mormon, it's not something said to be passed down by angels with the absolute truth from heaven. Whether we believe the Bible to be inspired by God because it is true, or believe it to be true because it's inspired by God, is a bit of a tautological question. If you don't believe in a God that is also the Truth, the Bible is equally just the the Church making things up.
What, and take all the fun out of the Rapture (something that doesn't actually exist in the Bible), where Jesus takes all the "good Christians" up to Heaven and lets them point and laugh at all us sinners roasting in Hell?
Suffering and enjoyment is all subjective. Animal and human. You cannot say with certainty that a sadist doesn't "get so much" from hurting another human being, either.
But there's evidence. We can look to our own experience of suffering and enjoyment. Then we can look to how almost all creatures, human and otherwise, exhibit obvious and scientifically-observable signs of stress and discomfort when encountering stimuli that we ourselves would also find painful. Ultimately, there's fuck all reason to believe that the gulf between human and animal is so great that suffering is significant for us and insignificant for them.
It's pure callousness, with a veneer of moral philosophy. But ultimately, there's a reason diagnosed sociopaths often get their start abusing animals: if you find reasons not to give a shit, and those reasons can easily be extrapolated further and further and further, because the dividing line you've chosen is arbitrary.
I haven't just been saying "nu-uh", though, have I? I've actually gone into quite a bit of detail. If you simply don't give a shit, that's okay, but that's not what you've been saying; you've been presenting moral frameworks (like the categorical imperative) and trying to argue that they justify cruelty to some creatures and not to others.
In response to your question, yes, I agree that at some point a human being can affirm their own individuality. That point is usually very early in childhood, but still post-birth, and I would want to convey protections earlier than that. I also think this is something utterly non-unique to humankind, and I don't believe that neuroscientists need to determine that, because it's already been adequately researched by behavioural scientists and biologists.
Of course, it's all subjective, but that doesn't mean it has to be arbitrary. We can determine a rational basis for how we make these decisions, and then try to iron out contradictions to get a coherent moral philosophy. That's what every moral philosopher has done, including Kant; it's just that I think his "categorical imperative" is bunk.
Sorry, why in hell is it a "supernatural concept"? Why is it difficult to imagine that morality developed naturally?
I do not think supernatural is the word you're looking for there: you probably mean metaphysical. Nor is religion a logical result of morality.
I would view morality as a social construct: partly deriving from psychology and social activity, coupled with pragmatism for what works. So at the most basic level, we know suffering, and we have empathy to see others' suffering and feel bad for them because we would not want the same for ourselves. And so from this, mutual agreement to minimise suffering for each other. Pragmatism because when a moral tenet fails a society and the individuals within it and increases suffering, that tenet tends to be abandoned.
I do get that morality can lead to religion, because the idea that morality is just a wishlist for how humans treat each other can seem very... arbitrary. And also very weak, in the sense that bad people get away with an awful lot. This is one reason I think justice and vengeance (a powerful human emotion) actually forms a huge part of religion. People want to believe they will be rewarded and the evildoers punished in the end, otherwise the universe can seem a depressingly unjust place. Elements of religion of course also come from superstition, fear of and desire to explain the unknown, and imagination. It's easy enough to marry morality to spiritualism and get religion.
Religion would be a "logical" extention of morality for reasons such as a utilitarian scenario where someone deliberately made up deities or claims of what those deities said in order to persuade people to adhere to a beneficial morality.
I would read the second half of the sentence you quoted. Morality is a supernatural concept because free will is a supernatural concept. Natural forces follow the rules of cause and effect. To make a real decision, one must be capable of choosing between different possible effects. To be able to direct future outcomes with a certain level of independence from the causes that made you requires you to personally have supernatural influence on the world. The idea of free will, the concept of a choice, is a miniature version of the uncaused cause, the idea of man made in God's image. If you are simply a physical object with no existence outside of nature as we know it, free will makes no sense. If free will makes no sense, you can't really make choices, you are a deterministic blob guided by the forces of nature, which makes morality kind of a useless concept.
Supernatural is the word I was looking for. It is also a metaphysical concept, but that's not the point I was making.
Lmao, if god is omniscient and has a plan then free will is an illusion. God already knows what "choices" we're gonna make and we're just going through the motions.
What you are actually describing is called "hindsight"
What I've said is that because we don't know we can make up a reason. And we can make it the most precious reason ever and then we would be justified to go to war for it or even exterminate all life but the roaches, and anybody who comes up with a different reason can defend themselves or not if we convince them otherwise.
I find it extremely irrational to compare a suffering of a free range hen to the convenience of me eating it later (after a year or two of laying eggs). Add to that other "cruelty" like shredding male chicks that nobody even eats. Any 'cruelty free' certificate could only be a checklist of things... like how we have requirements for 'organic' animal products. Who is the rational arbiter there? What is the 'normal' amount of suffering that comes with living in the first place? Unmeasurable, unanswerable, so I err on the side of convenience.
Anyway, that wasn't at stake here at any point, you made me elaborate on other things because my take on abortion isn't good enough, but I'm fine with it. So I'll ask you instead that if you base a fetus' life's worth on awareness are you fine with science determining when abortion changes to murder?
Also afaik, sociopaths don't do empathy very well. They don't have rules for it or even pick and choose. Should a normal person behave like a sociopath they would cease immediately after simply explaining to them that working together increases total well-being.