Mistaken Syllogism in Atheism: The Case Against God


curi

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Not this guy. He also thinks he's coming here to put it to George with a trite logic lesson with an example ripped out of one of his books.

You gotta spike this crap when it appears or it grows like cancer. And more and more people coming upon Rand don't know this basic stuff.

--Brant

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Mr. Personality, did you actually write this on May 20, 2015?

most guys have enough trouble getting one girl to fuck them, so cheating isn't an easy and great option. a lot the guys with an abundance of girls do cheat, but they are the minority, and also some of the players don't cheat because they just don't agree to be monogamous in the first place unless they actually want to. but tons of girls easily have lots of guys who'd be eager to fuck them (and pay a lot of money for the privilege – indirectly of course because whores are evil or something).

sex itself is dramatically overrated, by the way, so it's not really necessary to learn these social dynamics, although it's a fun challenge. sex is basically like doing drugs – your body releases chemicals and you feel good. but for no reason, non-procreative sex is treated as a completely different category of activity – as something important instead of like sitting around wasting your life getting high.

wives are dramatically overrated too. most women today are not very smart or rational, so where is the appeal in that? especially if you actually try in life and make a ton of progress, because there's very few great women. today we have Ann Coulter and who the hell else? if you look at the interesting, cool, worthwhile, awesome, etc, people in history, it's very male dominated. that dynamic is still in place today.

women are not biologically inferior, but for cultural reasons they typically emphasis reason and thinking less, and are less willing to go to extremes or be an outlier. a lot more men are willing to aim high than women. if you aim high – and if you don't you're reading the wrong blog, lol – then odds are you're a man who won't be able to find a woman to match him. but may settle for less, make excuses, etc. even semi-notable semi-interesting men with a mere hint of greatness have a very rough time trying to find women to match them. so they marry a dumb bitch and then put her on a pedestal, and hold her to a different standard of intelligence than a man, and she uses social skills (the thing she worked on instead of intelligence) negotiates-manipulates a ton of concessions.

How old are you 14?

A...

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did you actually write this on May 20, 2015?

Yes.

I don't understand. You think I put fake dates on my blog posts? What for?

Can you explain what you're talking about? This seems to be a misconception I haven't encountered before.

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did you actually write this on May 20, 2015?

Yes.

I don't understand. You think I put fake dates on my blog posts? What for?

Can you explain what you're talking about? This seems to be a misconception I haven't encountered before.

Mr. Personality, let's try to follow the conversation.

The reference to the date is satirical.

Obviously you wrote that this week.

Therefore, looking at the content of your post, I asked how old you are.

I am older than you by at least a factor of four (4), therefore, I asked if you were 14.

Are you older or younger than 14?

A...

I will try to keep our discussion free of any humor...

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Atheism: The Case Against God, in the rational morality section:

Mr. Jones wants x.

In order to obtain x, one must do y.
Therefore, Mr. Jones ought to (or should, or must) do y.

This is false. Just because you want something it does not follow that you ought to (or should or must) do what it takes to obtain it. It might be immoral to want x. Maybe you shouldn't want it, and should change your preference instead of pursuing that preference.

I agree. Amorally is holds true, but falls apart the instant morality is invoked.

For secularists, morality by default can only be a matter of subjective opinion, as there is no standard of behavior greater than what people think or feel it should be.

Greg

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Atheism: The Case Against God, in the rational morality section:

Mr. Jones wants x.

In order to obtain x, one must do y.
Therefore, Mr. Jones ought to (or should, or must) do y.

This is false. Just because you want something it does not follow that you ought to (or should or must) do what it takes to obtain it. It might be immoral to want x. Maybe you shouldn't want it, and should change your preference instead of pursuing that preference.

I agree. Amorally is holds true, but falls apart the instant morality is invoked.

For secularists, morality by default can only be a matter of subjective opinion, as there is no standard of behavior greater than what people think or feel it is.

Hi,

Do you think Ayn Rand was a secularist? Yes, right?

Do you think Ayn Rand's morality was subjective, not objective? Do you disagree with Objectivism? Do you consider yourself an Objectivist? Are you religious?

I agree with Objectivism about morality and atheism. Do you want to talk about it?

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I'm talking about the section in the book I quoted. This is the forum section for George H. Smith, read his book if you want more context, but I did provide the full syllogism, which is enough to see that it's false.

The following immediately precedes the syllogism:

The role of natural necessity in human motivation is not a new discovery; it was known by Aristotle in what is now called "practical reasoning," or a "practical syllogism." A general example of this syllogism is the following:

So the syllogism was not presented as one of strict necessity, which seems to be curi's basis for calling it false. Also, the difference between a logical syllogism and a practical syllogism appears related to Aristotle's distinction between material cause and final cause.

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The context that #32 supplies also shows that this entire thread rests on a mistaken assumption that the "ought" quoted in #1 is a moral "ought" when it isn't.

If I were to say "the turkey ought to be done; I put it in the oven three hours ago" and Curi were to reply "that's silly; morality doesn't apply to turkeys, least of all dead ones" he'd be making the same mistake.

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did you actually write this on May 20, 2015?

Yes.

I don't understand. You think I put fake dates on my blog posts? What for?

Can you explain what you're talking about? This seems to be a misconception I haven't encountered before.

Mr. Personality, let's try to follow the conversation.

The reference to the date is satirical.

Obviously you wrote that this week.

Therefore, looking at the content of your post, I asked how old you are.

I am older than you by at least a factor of four (4), therefore, I asked if you were 14.

Are you older or younger than 14?

A...

I will try to keep our discussion free of any humor...

You failed.

A kid. A real kid full of undigested intellectualisms. I'm really dumb for not thinking of that. This is the first true kid to ever come to OL I know of. The other teenagers while young were actually adult. Considering all the writing he's done my guess is he's 16, not quite 17. It will take ten more years of real education before he begins to get his feet on the ground. Unfortunately, he'd hardly started and doesn't know he's fulminating right out of the box.

--Brant

so far his education has been to learning what whiskey is to driving

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I agree. Amorally is holds true, but falls apart the instant morality is invoked.

For secularists, morality by default can only be a matter of subjective opinion, as there is no standard of behavior greater than what people think or feel it should be.

Greg

What does morality have to do with the logical -validity- of an argument or syllogism?

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I agree. Amorally is holds true, but falls apart the instant morality is invoked.

For secularists, morality by default can only be a matter of subjective opinion, as there is no standard of behavior greater than what people think or feel it should be.

Greg

What does morality have to do with the logical -validity- of an argument or syllogism?

Morality is only regarded as logical validation by moral people. For amoral secularists, it is of no consequence.

Greg

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What does morality have to do with the logical -validity- of an argument or syllogism?

Morality is only regarded as logical validation by moral people. For amoral secularists, it is of no consequence.

Greg

That is not true Greg.

For some amoral secularists it may be true.

A....

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"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths? Since I'm not a sociopath and don't know sociopathy from the inside out I can only speculate that the price of being one was baked into the pie for genetic reasons or acquired by bad choices. All choices are moral choices and all have moral consequences. Some good, some bad. Some good choices displace even better ones not taken. This is why rationality is so important. Hence the amoral secularist front loaded the consequences or had them front loaded via the gene pool. The former are moral, the latter not. But who knows if the latter even exist.

And they could be mixed up. I read in the financial press all companies--obviously major corporations--were run by sociopaths, which I don't believe--I don't believe the "all." If you take out the "all" you're left with "some" and no way to compare the "normal" to "some" ratio between CEO's, say, and "regular" folk. All such claims are good for is for thinking. (A sociologist might try to create a statistical study as a means to keep his professional wheels turning and likely of no other real value.)

--Brant

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"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths?

That would all depend on what their subjective opinion of right and wrong is. And this needs clarification... in that for secularists there is can be no objective moral standard because there is nothing greater than them to have created it for their own good... which by default leaves only peoples' subjective opinions based on what they think and feel.

In fact a secularist can't even declare one subjective opinion to be better than another for that in itself is just another subjective opinion of no greater weight than anyone else's subjective opinion.

Morality for the secularist is the futility of standing in a bucket while trying to lift it off the ground by its handle.

Now you can declare one behavior to be more moral than another if you first agree with an objective standard that is greater than yourself... that is, greater than the sum total of your intellect and emotions... Something to which you have to answer... Something to which you are held personally accountable through the consequences of your own actions...

...whether you like it or not! :laugh:

Greg

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"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths?

That would all depend on what their subjective opinion of right and wrong is. And this needs clarification... in that for secularists there is can be no objective moral standard because there is nothing greater than them to have created it for their own good... which by default leaves only peoples' subjective opinions based on what they think and feel.

In fact a secularist can't even declare one subjective opinion to be better than another for that in itself is just another subjective opinion of no greater weight than anyone else's subjective opinion.

Morality for the secularist is the futility of standing in a bucket while trying to lift it off the ground by its handle.

Now you can declare one behavior to be more moral than another if you first agree with an objective standard that is greater than yourself... that is, greater than the sum total of your intellect and emotions... Something to which you have to answer... Something to which you are held personally accountable through the consequences of your own actions...

...whether you like it or not! :laugh:

Greg

I'm a secularist. The standard is reality itself and in particular the nature of a human being qua human being. This is greater than any human being.

--Brant

I answer to reality

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"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths?

That would all depend on what their subjective opinion of right and wrong is. And this needs clarification... in that for secularists there is can be no objective moral standard because there is nothing greater than them to have created it for their own good... which by default leaves only peoples' subjective opinions based on what they think and feel.

In fact a secularist can't even declare one subjective opinion to be better than another for that in itself is just another subjective opinion of no greater weight than anyone else's subjective opinion.

Morality for the secularist is the futility of standing in a bucket while trying to lift it off the ground by its handle.

Now you can declare one behavior to be more moral than another if you first agree with an objective standard that is greater than yourself... that is, greater than the sum total of your intellect and emotions... Something to which you have to answer... Something to which you are held personally accountable through the consequences of your own actions...

...whether you like it or not! :laugh:

Greg

I'm a secularist. The standard is reality itself and in particular the nature of a human being qua human being. This is greater than any human being.

--Brant

I answer to reality

It certainly is, Brant...

...and neither you, nor I, nor any other human created It by our intellect or our emotions... for It is greater than all of us.

Greg

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"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths?

That would all depend on what their subjective opinion of right and wrong is. And this needs clarification... in that for secularists there is can be no objective moral standard because there is nothing greater than them to have created it for their own good... which by default leaves only peoples' subjective opinions based on what they think and feel.

In fact a secularist can't even declare one subjective opinion to be better than another for that in itself is just another subjective opinion of no greater weight than anyone else's subjective opinion.

Morality for the secularist is the futility of standing in a bucket while trying to lift it off the ground by its handle.

Now you can declare one behavior to be more moral than another if you first agree with an objective standard that is greater than yourself... that is, greater than the sum total of your intellect and emotions... Something to which you have to answer... Something to which you are held personally accountable through the consequences of your own actions...

...whether you like it or not! :laugh:

Greg

I'm a secularist. The standard is reality itself and in particular the nature of a human being qua human being. This is greater than any human being.

--Brant

I answer to reality

It certainly is, Brant...

...and neither you, nor I, nor any other human created It by our intellect or our emotions... for It is greater than all of us.

You mean like how humans didn't create the laws of physics or logic, and don't control those laws? And the way morality works is fundamentally implied by and due to those laws.

I would agree with that but don't see any required connection to religion. An atheist can see it that way.

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"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths?

That would all depend on what their subjective opinion of right and wrong is. And this needs clarification... in that for secularists there is can be no objective moral standard because there is nothing greater than them to have created it for their own good... which by default leaves only peoples' subjective opinions based on what they think and feel.

In fact a secularist can't even declare one subjective opinion to be better than another for that in itself is just another subjective opinion of no greater weight than anyone else's subjective opinion.

Morality for the secularist is the futility of standing in a bucket while trying to lift it off the ground by its handle.

Now you can declare one behavior to be more moral than another if you first agree with an objective standard that is greater than yourself... that is, greater than the sum total of your intellect and emotions... Something to which you have to answer... Something to which you are held personally accountable through the consequences of your own actions...

...whether you like it or not! :laugh:

Greg

I'm a secularist. The standard is reality itself and in particular the nature of a human being qua human being. This is greater than any human being.

--Brant

I answer to reality

It certainly is, Brant...

...and neither you, nor I, nor any other human created It by our intellect or our emotions... for It is greater than all of us.

You mean like how humans didn't create the laws of physics or logic, and don't control those laws?

Yes.

We did not create moral law any more than we created the laws which govern physics and make existence possible. We can only continue to discover the infinite depth of the intricacies of an exquisitely designed order that's already here.

And the way morality works is fundamentally implied by and due to those laws.

I would agree with that but don't see any required connection to religion. An atheist can see it that way.

You're acknowledging a physical and moral order greater than yourself so whatever you happen to name it is irrelevant.

Greg

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well other than believing it's designed, a secularist has no trouble then. and you don't have to believe it's designed to try to learn how it works and try to understand it.

The youngster makes an unforced error here...

Prediction: Greg takes round 1 easily.

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did you actually write this on May 20, 2015?

Yes.

Are you older or younger than 14?

A kid. A real kid full of undigested intellectualisms. I'm really dumb for not thinking of that. This is the first true kid to ever come to OL I know of. The other teenagers while young were actually adult. Considering all the writing he's done my guess is he's 16, not quite 17.

I don't know that Elliot is a 'true kid.' He joined Twitter in 2009, when he would have been not quite eleven years old according to your guess. And if your guess is right, his production (in terms of material at his websites -- hundreds of pages) would be that of a prodigy, an adult mind in a child's body. He might be narrow and Ur-Randian and confrontational or mistaken, but naming him child is not rationally warranted.

I would have major, systemic disagreements with Elliot on subjects across the board (from Pick Up Artistry to TAS). I think the arguments he presented here about George's syllogism are too rigid, too dependent on verbalisms, and too narrowly focused. He hasn't acknowledged the objections.

No doubt belligerence can be countered with belligerence, and and belligerent comments can be met with scorn and scolding, but I would say better counterarguments leave aside person attributes as a principal factor. There may be worlds of sprawling wrongness and awfulness in his output, but it does no work to refute it by dubbing the interloper The Kid.

"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths? Since I'm not a sociopath and don't know sociopathy from the inside out I can only speculate that the price of being one was baked into the pie for genetic reasons or acquired by bad choices.

That word carries different freight for Moralist than it does for you, Brant, I think. An amoral secularist could be anything from Stalin to a thieving, feckless neighbour. The phrase can be attached to anything thought 'Bad.'

Sociopathy on the other hand has a narrower definition, in law and in psychology. It describes an absence of traits that are central to human flourishing, and is subtly different from psychopathy. Each has a disregard for the rights of other people, each a lack of remorse or guilt for harmful actions. But the psychopath is more dangerous, more able to cloak his depredations, more charming and able to con, more apt to planning, masquerade, emotional control over himself. The sociopathic are generally self-slayed by impetuous crime, and found in greater numbers of jailed folks than are psychopaths.

That is my potted sub-rant. References on request.

I read in the financial press all companies--obviously major corporations--were run by sociopaths, which I don't believe--I don't believe the "all." If you take out the "all" you're left with "some" and no way to compare the "normal" to "some" ratio between CEO's, say, and "regular" folk.

I wonder where you read this. Any clues for the rest of us?

Here is a Forbes article that touches on your claim, from 2011: Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs. An excerpt:

British journalist Jon Ronson immersed himself in the world of mental health diagnosis and criminal profiling to understand what makes some people psychopaths — dangerous predators who lack the behavioral controls and tender feelings the rest of us take for granted. Among the things he learned while researching his new book, “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry”: the incidence of psychopathy among CEOs is about 4 percent, four times what it is in the population at large. I spoke with him recently about what that means and its implications for the business world and wider society.

Are we really to understand that there’s some connection between what makes people psychopaths and what makes them CEO material?

At first I was really skeptical because it seemed like an easy thing to say, almost like a conspiracy theorist’s type of thing to say. I remember years and years ago a conspiracy theorist telling me the world was ruled by blood-drinking, baby-sacrificing lizards. These psychologists were essentially saying the same thing. Basically, when you get them talking, these people [ie. psychopaths] are different than human beings. They lack the things that make you human: empathy, remorse, loving kindness.

So at first I thought this might just be psychologists feeling full of themselves with their big ideological notions.

-- it is a bit of a zany article, in which the interviewee frames capitalism as a function of psychopathy, but even if we count him as an extremist, he does not say anything like most CEOs are psychopaths. You may be remembering a different set of research, Brant.

All such claims are good for is for thinking. (A sociologist might try to create a statistical study as a means to keep his professional wheels turning and likely of no other real value.)

Sounds like you are at once accepting and rejecting concerted study of psychopaths and sociopaths ... that all and any percentage estimates are suspect. What I suspect is that you misremember your source.

"Amoral secularists"--aren't they sociopaths?

That would all depend on what their subjective opinion of right and wrong is. And this needs clarification... in that for secularists there is can be no objective moral standard because there is nothing greater than them to have created it for their own good... which by default leaves only peoples' subjective opinions based on what they think and feel.

The only way to make Greg's rambling make Objectivish sense is to replace "The Secularist" with "Ayn Rand." This shows how he misuses terms to effect his moralizing.

In fact Ayn Rand can't even declare one subjective opinion to be better than another for that in itself is just another subjective opinion of no greater weight than anyone else's subjective opinion.

Morality for Ayn Rand is the futility of standing in a bucket while trying to lift it off the ground by its handle.

This is appreciably wrong, but still funny. Imagine the problems with the bucket an Amoral Ayn Rand Secularist would have.

Now you can declare one behavior to be more moral than another if you first agree with an objective standard that is greater than yourself... that is, greater than the sum total of your intellect and emotions...

The objective standard of Ayn Rand Secularist was human flourishing, or in her terms, Man's life. Not dogma, not christophile inanities, not an invisible spirit world, not a Panglossian perfect morality operating like gravity.

It is surprising, again, that you do not seem to be aware, let alone accept that Ayn Rand Secularist conceived Ethical Egoism as following a moral standard of "man's life."

I am no Randian, and I am sure I got some detail wrong, but Greg -- it seems you haven't seriously grappled with Rand on morality at all. I hope you can see that you have damned her as a secularist by your over-confident generalization, without comprehending her secular ethical system. It is like you have never been acquainted with her writings on morality.

Something to which you have to answer... Something to which you are held personally accountable through the consequences of your own actions...

...whether you like it or not!

And when you are wrong or misinformed, and make a mistake in thinking, and cannot correct your mistake, the consequence is ... ? What does a moral man do, dude, when he is wrong or confused?

Whether you like it or not, there is a big hole in your Secular contraption. I don't know that you can do better, but you ought to try. You started out with a slur, suggesting that secular folk are without morals, and you end with your slogan "We did not create moral law."

For an Objectivish person, for Ayn Rand, moral law has been wholly and utterly a human creation, whether found in ancient scriptures or religious authority or drafted by the UN.

By some contortion you can accommodate secular objections to the slogan, by pretending that moral law is given by the gods in their very design of the universe, and by pretending your perfect clockwork can operate without a supervising supernatural entity.

In some ways you have bled the good parts out of your Christianity. No Jesus, no Jehovah on high, no Rapture, no Armaggedon, no Devil, no angels, no miracles, no hell, no heaven, no afterlife, no sweet loving kindness, no grace, no mercy, no care for the benighted.

Edited by william.scherk
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The only way to make Greg's rambling make Objectivish sense is to replace "The Secularist" with "Ayn Rand." This shows how he misuses terms to effect his moralizing.

Just a brief interruption to your soliloquy, William...

I'm neither Objectivist or Objectivish, because I'm not a person who isn't an Objectivist claiming to be one... and neither do I speak for or on behalf of Ayn Rand. In fact I rarely reference her other than how what she wrote in Atlas Shrugged has effected my life, for that is my only indirect experience of her.

...you may now continue your liberal third person dramaqueen routine. :wink:

Greg

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What is "Ur-Randian"?

Many people think how much they dislike you or disagree with you measures your age. It doesn't. But it does reveal their ageism.

Child, what is your "alignment" with Ayn's condemnation of homosexuality?

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What is "Ur-Randian"?

Many people think how much they dislike you or disagree with you measures your age. It doesn't. But it does reveal their ageism.

Child, what is your "alignment" with Ayn's condemnation of homosexuality?

Is he assaulting us with PCism?

--Brant

bring it on!

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