I don't understand why you can't understand what I am saying. Is English not your first language? Or do you just enjoy being told off?
An instrumental reason is, by definition, a reason to do something due to it's being in one's interests to do it.
Moral reasons are not instrumental reasons. That's why we call them 'moral'and not 'instrumental'.

Again, to be selfish is to be being self interested when one OUGHT not to be. So, if or when it is right to be self interested, it will not be selfish.

Well, you can't have an obligation to be selfish and the concept of selfishness incorporates wrongness - that is, to be selfish is to be self-interested when one ought not to be.

And when it comes to moral reasons, they are a subset of normative reasons. A reason to do something because it serves one's own ends - so a reason generated by one's own interests rather than those of another - is called an 'instrumental' reason, not a moral reason. They are both from Reason. But one is grounded in one's own ends - and so we call it 'instrumental' - and the other is not, and so we call it 'moral' (although there are other defining features).

But it is question begging to say that he is referring to different entities. The point is there are other interpretations.
The founder, the chair and the majority shareholder can all be the same person. The founder is not the same as the chair, and the chair is not the same as the majority shareholder - these are not synonymous expressions - yet they can refer to one and the same person.
Thus the fact someone refers to the father, son and holy spirit is not decisive evidence that someone is referring to three entities.

Now in addition, a person can have different properties at different times and still be the same person. This makes sense of how it might be that someone might talk of giving instructions or reports to someone who will in fact be themselves. We do this all the time. It's what calendars are for. We tell our future selves about things for we know that our future selves will not have the memories that we do.
Note too that one can be the same person and not realize it. When Winnie the Pooh follows the trail of the Heffalump he does not realize that he himself is the Heffalump. So, Pooh talks about the Heffalump as if it were a different person, but that does not entail that it is (it isn't). And thus even if Jesus sometimes talks about the Father and Holy Spirit as if they are different persons, that would not establish that they are.

God is all knowing. But it does not follow that jesus is, even if God and Jesus are the same person.

I don't know how you got that from what I said. My point was that it is one of the marks of a moral norm that it is grounded in the interests of others. If I have a reason to do x for your sake - so, the ground of the reason is your sake not mine - then it seems to qualify as a moral reason. More to it than that, no doubt. But it seems to be one of the hallmarks

It depends where you get it from and who your examiners were. A PhD from a top 100 university and with good examiners - that's something.
An MD is just a plumber

Once more, if you borrow 1million to generate 500,000, then you're a rubbish business person. You've made a loss.

Now, when a person deserves something, that's a debt. So, when you create a person, you create a debt. They deserve a harm-free happy life.

They're not going to get anything like that.

Here's how it works. If happiness is deserved, then it's good when the person gets that happiness because it pays down a debt.

If the debt has been paid and the person gets further happiness, then that's not deserved, but it's good. It's pure good - it's profit.

Once more: when a person is created, they deserve a harm-free happy life. If they get that, then that's good because it was deserved. Good, in other words, becasue the debt has been paid. If they get additional happiness - so, if they're not just living a harm-free happy life, but a harm-free ecstatic life, then that's profit.

So, back to business school: if you borrow $10m but you only make 5m, then your business is bad. You can point out that 5m is good. But it was only good that you made 5m because it paid off half the debt. Overall the business is bad - it made a huge loss.

All you can do is keep pointing out that $5m is good. Yes, other things being equal it is. And it is good insofar as it lessens the losses you would otherwise have made. But in the larger context of a business in which you borrowed 10m to generate it, it's rubbish - the business is a bad one.

And that's procreation: it's a bad business. The moral debt that is incurred by starting it is one that it is not going to repay.

But perhaps you are addicted to gambling on fruit machines and do not understand this.

So, it's a big black mark against procreative acts that they create a great injustice.
— Bartricks

This is bare assertion. — Isaac

No it isn't. Every single harm an innocent person suffers is an injustice. How many harms do you think that is? Oh, it's all of them. That's quite a lot, isn't it?

There's no question that the injustice is huge. An innocent person gets nothing remotely approaching what they deserve.

Now, if an act is going to create a big injustice, Isaac, do you think that a) is likely to generate moral reason not to perform it, or b) is morally unimportant and can reasonably be expected to generate no moral reason not to perform it?

It's a, isn't it?

If you think that on this particular occasion, the massive injustice that procreative acts produce is one that doesn't create moral reason not to perform them, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence for that.

There are lots of cases where an act creates an injustice and it is nevertheless overall morally justified. But in all of those cases what's doing the work of making the act overall morally justified are positive moral features, such as that the act will prevent an even greater injustice. That's not true of procreation.

Perhaps you can just insist that procreative acts themselves are the counterexample as most people seem to have the intuition that they're morally okay.

But you've already tried that move and I asked you a question which you didn't answer, no doubt because it was obvious what the answer was and what it implied about the intuitions in question.

So, I'll ask it again. Imagine a person has been brought up in an antinatalist cult. They have been told, over and over and over and over again, that it is wrong to procreate. They have been told this by virtually everyone and in virtually every way possible. This person - like others who have been brought up in the cult - now gets the intuition that procreation is immoral. After all, that's why people try and indoctrinate people, isn't it? It works.

Now, what force does that intuition have? Would it be reasonable to think that it was good evidence of the wrongness of procreation? What do you think?

although the idea of Christ, the Father, and the Spirit as three distinct entities is definitely in the Bible — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think it is. Which passage commits one to the view that there are three distinct entities rather than one entity that occupies different roles or has different properties (and thus answers to different concepts at different times)?

That all said, there is a whole ton of justification for the idea of the Trinity throughout the Bible. Just throw it into a search engine. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I did precisely that.

If one believes that the Father, Son and Holy spirit have incompatible properties, then one is not thereby committed to the view that they are different persons. That would be like thinking that because a pyramid and a cube and a sphere have incompatible properties, they can't all be made of the same lump of clay. But they can be - the clay can be a cube at one point, a pyramid at another, and a sphere at yet another.

Is one then a trinitarian or not? That is, if one holds that the Father is not the son and the son is not the holy spirit - just as one can hold that a cube is not a sphere and a sphere is not a pyramid - yet at the same time maintains that all three are one and the same person - just as one can hold that the sphere, cube and pyramid are all the same lump of clay - is one a trinitarian? Surely. ONe is simply not an incoherent trinitarian. For one is not maintaining that they are three distinct persons and one and the same person.

Christianity is a monotheistic religion, thus, 1 God. That God has a set of absolute properties plus a few properties of relations. "The Divine Persons are none other than these relations" (from the same article mentioned above). — A Christian Philosophy

That seems a clear misuse of language. Relations are not persons. I am in front of my computer. That's a relation. It's not a person. There's not me and, in addition, the person of the relation I stand in to my computer.

So, there's just one person. And a person has properties - and when the person is God, the person has the properties of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence.

Those are not essential to being a person of course, for I am a person and I lack those properties. And so the person of God could give up some of those properties - could make themselves something less than omniscient, omnibenevolent or omnipotent - and still be the same person, it is just that they wouild no longer qualify as 'God' anymore, just as a bachelor no longer qualifies as a bachelor when they get married, but they're still the same person.

Regarding your interpretation of the passsages: I agree that if there is a contradiction, then we must look for a different meaning. — A Christian Philosophy

Yes, if the passages can be interpreted in ways that do not contain contradictions, then those are more reasonable interpretations for that very reason.

But when i listen to Christians talking about the trinity they seem to be uttering contradictions: they say that there are three persons in one person - which makes no real sense at all.

There is no contradiction involved in the idea of there being one person who has incompatible properties at different times. And there is no contradiction involved in the idea of there being one person who occupies three different roles. And so I do not really understand why the passages in the bible that are appealed to as evidence for the 'three, but also one' interpretation when that's a clear contradiction and it is not something the passages commit one to.

Sure. It can be rewritten as "3 divine persons having the same nature". — A Christian Philosophy

But then don't you have three distinct persons - three gods - not one?

I don't see anything in those quotes that forces one to posit three gods rather than one god.

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" — A Christian Philosophy

That's no different from me saying "in the name of the founder, the chair of the board, and the majority shareholder". Those can all be one and the same person.

"But I tell you I am going to do what is best for you. This is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you." - John 16:7 - this shows the Son and Holy Spirit are separate things. — A Christian Philosophy

But there seems to be an alternative interpretation that does not commit one to contradictions. Let's say that Jesus denotes a particular mind - p - that has property x. The holy spirit denotes the same mind, but when it has property y (a property incompatible with x). Well, then in order for the holy spirit to come and help, Jesus would need to lose property x and acquire property y. Just as, say, a bachelor, to become a married man, needs to acquire a wife. It's the same person, it's just that now the person has a wife. So, let's say you need a married man to help you, but I'm a bachelor. Well, then I could say "a married man can't come and help you until I go away and get married. And giving oneself an instruction - or giving an instruction to the married version of yourself - is not incoherent, even if it is a little eccentric.

"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." - Luke 22:42 - this shows the Father and the Son are separate things. — A Christian Philosophy

If 'the father' refers to the same person as himself but with different properties, then I do not see why that line could not be interpreted as Jesus reminding himself that it is this version of his self whose will is being done, or some such.

We make promises to ourselves and sometimes to earlier versions of ourselves that we might refer to in this way: I owe it to my teenage self to do this or that or to realize this or that plan of his.

i don't deny that these interpretations might look a little strained, but outright incoherence is worse, and to maintain that there are three persons in one person - which is what I take the trinity to involve (perhaps mistakenly) - seems incoherent because contradictory.

The Trinity is 3 divine persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) in 1 nature (Godhead) — A Christian Philosophy

What does that mean?

A person is a mind, a bearer of mental states. A 'nature' is had by something. You can't be 'in' a nature - that makes no sense.

So, what do you mean? There are three distinct minds 'in' what? And if they're distinct minds, they are not one and the same mind.

What passage from the bible forces one to think that there are three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (as opposed to there being one person who is, say, the founder of the company, the chair of the board and the majority shareholder? Or one person who has different properties at different times - just as I was once short and now I am tall?

That was just noise

Er, what you presented wasn't an argument. It was just a numbered list of arbitrary propositions!

What I presented was an argument. It was valid, you just think it is unsound because you think premise 1 is false. You said it was circular. It isn't circular. You were just expressing your disagreement with premise 1.

What I've asked you to do is present an argument against premise 1. You haven't. You just keep saying things about genocides that don't bear on the credibility of premise 1.

So you seem very confused to me. On what basis do you reject premise 1 of the argument I gave?

I can give you an argument for it - I can prove it is true. But you think it is false - so what's your case against it?

Well, I am just interested to uncover the reasoning. Are there statements in the bible that do not admit of any interpretation other than the incoherent 'three persons in one person' interpretation?

For example, someone above mentioned that Jesus supposedly said something about 'the Father' that made it sound as if 'the Father' might be a distinct person from himself. He said "forgive them father, for they know not what they do" or something.

But there's nothing incoherent about talking to oneself. We write ourselves messages and tell ourselves things all the time. So. it's more reasonable to interpret Jesus as doing that, than it is to suppose that Jesus is a person distinct from the Father who is nevertheless 'in' the Father or some such nonsense.

Then I don't see what this thread is about.

It's not a circular argument. You clearly don't know what that means. A circular argument is an argument one of the premises of which asserts the conclusion.

This was the argument I just made:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocides have never been right
3. Therefore genocides have never been approved of by God

That's not circular, for the conclusion 'extracts' the implications of the premises.

What you mean is that you disagree with premise 1. Yes?

Well, ok. What's your case against premise 1? It can't be 2, for 2 does not contradict 1.

Again, if morality is made of God's attitudes and - as you think is the case - genocides have never been right, then the conclusion is that God has never approved of them.

Yep. That'll probably be why I said...

This is indeed all valid and sound. It soundly proves that there is a negative aspect to procreation, that it creates a situation in which there will be undeserved harm which is a bad thing.
— Isaac — Isaac

No, Isaac, for you then proceeded to bang on about the benefits that life confers on the liver, yes? So, you didn't understand the point, did you?

That's like banging on about the $500 grand you racked up $1m to generate. Can you see that? Do you understand yet? The benefits that befall the liver of the life are all deserved - but they're LESS than the person deserves.

So, once more, if you rack up $1m of debt to make $500 grand, you're a shite business person. And if you think the $500 grand is profit, you're an idiot. It's not profit. You're down 500grand. You made 500 grand - but you made it at $1m cost.

Now, if you create a life, then you've created a debt. And it's a debt that isn't going to be paid off, is it? For the innocent deserves a harm-free beneficial life (pssst, this is the point where you forget that you said the argument establishing this was sound and we start all over again).

So, to create a life is to create a debt that can't be repaid. It's to rack up $1m of debt to do something that was always going to generate no more than 500grand. (For it is not in dispute that life here does not take the form of a totally harm-free life of benefit).

You are either incapable of understanding the point, or you're just willfully misunderstanding it because the conclusion is inconvenient to you. I don't know which it is. (And note, if you want once again to return to insisting that an innocent does not deserve any benefits, then you've made your task even harder, because desert adds moral value to benefits.....that is, it is better, morally speaking, for a person to receive a deserved benefit than an undeserved one).

So, it's a big black mark against procreative acts that they create a great injustice. They seem, if we focus on the person who is created by them, to be big moral loss makers. And to overcome those losses you'd need to locate a lot of moral positives (and remember, the benefits the procreative act confers on the person who is created can't be counted among them - if you ask 'why' then you haven't understood the point above; they've already been taken into account).

Now, what are those great other positives that such acts create? Perhaps all the good we do to other animals? Oh, shit, that's not going to work is it? What are the moral positives - the great goods - that procreative acts generate that are capable of overcoming the moral negatives?

Note too, that in this thread I am focussing on 'one' moral negative that procreative acts possess - one that has been overlooked.

They have lots of moral negatives. Lots. The one I am highlighting here is novel. But they have lots of other moral negatives. They're not consented to, for instance. And they cause untold harm to other sentient creatures. And they cause a person to die. And so on.

But what work is the word 'existential' doing?

Moral obligations are had by persons. So, one needs to be a person in order to have any.

And a defining feature of moral obligations seems to be that they concern acts we have reason to perform for the sake of others, or for the sake of the promotion of something of moral value or the prevention or amelioration of something of moral disvalue.

But there's no 'ethic' here, inasmuch as it is left open exactly what we are morally obliged to do. The point is just that when the ground of the reason for action is some consideration that is not to do with one's self - not to do with promoting one's own interests - it can qualify as a moral reason.

Can a Christian explain to me, a non-Christian believer in God, why so many of you think there is 'three persons in one person'??

I mean, that seems an obvious contradiction. One person is not also three persons. A 'person' is a mind, a soul, a spirit, a subject of experiences. They're indivisible. So the idea that there can be two other persons 'in' a person, makes no sense at all.

But I can see no motivation to say such things. So far as I can tell, nothing in the bible calls for it. I mean, you could take certain passages to be consistent with the incoherent thesis, but why would one think they support it given that the thesis is incoherent? And there are alternative, coherent interpretations.

For example, let's say I say "I am in France and I am in trouble". Now, one could take that statement to be expressing a contradiction: that I am in two distinct places at the same time. But why would one give that interpretation, given it makes no sense? There's an alternative interpretation - I mean that I am located in France and that I have a problem (which is what 'I am in trouble' can express).

So, where in the bible is the incoherent notion of there being three persons in one person expressed? Or is it just that apparently incompetent interpreters have foist this silly view onto the Christian tradition? (To its detriment - as I understand it, those who subscribe to alternative religious worldviews typically give the incoherence of the trinity as the main reason to reject Christianity.....yet the incoherent version of the trinity is not in the bible!)

But surely morality is primarily about others, not oneself?

If i have reason to do something due to it serving some of my ends, then we describe that reason as an instrumental or practical reason, not a moral reason.

But if I have reason to do something due to it serving some other person's ends, or due to it bringing about a just state of affairs, or ameliorating an unjust state of affairs, or if I have a reason to do something because it will bring about something of intrinsic moral value, then we describe those reasons as 'moral' reasons.

I've explained why it is a form of subjectivism. I've also explained why it is often thought to be a form of objectivism (objectivism and externalism are often conflated). And now you are just ignoring what I've said.
If you think DCT is a form of objectivism then you are not using that term as I do. Indeed, I think you would be unable to provide a clear definition of the term. But that's semantics. You accused me of inconsistency. I took the trouble to explain to you something I had already explained in one of the quotes from me. And now you are simply ignoring what I have said.
Fine.

You are wrong about an innocent not deserving a happy life. But it doesn't matter as my argument goes through with the agreements secured from you. All that's required is that the innocent deserves no harm. The fact they positively deserve a happy life compounds my case, but is not essential to it.

You clearly don't understand the point.
The person deserves more benefit than they recieve. More. The shortfall represents an injustice.
If you borrow 1m and make 500grand, you have made a loss.
You want to keep emphasizing how good 500grand is.
Yes. But you racked up 1m to generate it. That was stupid. You can keep going on about how you made 500 grand until you are blue in the face, you're still a shite business person, you just don't recognize it.
In this metaphor the 500grand is the benefit that a life confers on a person, and the 1m is the desert of benefit that was incurred to generate it (in case you didn't realize).

Yes, it isn't a problem. And if it was, it'd be a problem for all metaethical theories, not just divine command theory.

For instance, many stupidly believe that morality is individually subjective. Clearly we can change our own attitudes towards an act, and so the morality of an act would be contingent on that view. The same applies into those who stupidly think morality is collectively subjective, for group attitudes are no less contingent.

The same applies if one thinks that moral properties are natural properties, for then linguistic convention will determine what has rightness and linguistic convention is contingent.

And if one thinks that moral norms somehow emanate from a platonic form of the good or some such, then once more there is nothing in that account that would explain why such emanations would be necessary rather than contingent.

So those who think dicine command theory is refuted by the problem should, if they are impartial inquires, conclude that all the alternatives are false too.

It matters because it's not a criticism of divine command theory.
So, you think they are never right. Okay, so this argument is the sound one then:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocides have never been right
3. Therefore God has always had the same attitude towards genocides.

See?

"Yeah, but some people think God wants genocides. So there!"

And what does that show? Nothing.

Why did you think that when I gave - and you quoted - a definition of objective versus subjective?

Objective - in this context - means 'exists extra mentally'. And subjective means 'exists in the mind alone' (it means 'made of subjective states', and those are essentially mental).

Divine command theory is a form of subjectivism. It is just that as the subject in question is not one of us, moral norms become as external to us as they would be if morality were objective.

External to us and 'objective' do not mean the same, but are often conflated. If something is objective, it is external to us. But if something is external to us it is not necessarily objective. Most reason poorly and cannot quickly see this, hence the conflation.

Now that you know my views are well thought through and consistent, address the argument in the OP

As you only have two options and you'll probably not answer my question but just try and change the topic, I will explain why, whatever answer you give, no problem arises for the divine command theorist.

So, let's say you think genocides have always been wrong. Okay. Then this argument is sound:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocide has always been immoral
3. Therefore, God has always disapproved of genocides

Let's say instead that you think genocides have sometimes been wrong, sometimes right. Okay. Now this argument is sound:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocide has sometimes been wrong, sometimes right
3. Therefore God has sometimes disapproved of genocides and sometimes approved of them.

Do you see? Regardless of how you think the morality of genocides has varied ir remained the same, you do not raise a problem for divine command theory. This is because divine command theory is a theory about what morality is, not a theory about how it behaves.

A more sophisticated challenge involves arguing that if divine command theory is true then the morality of an act would be contingent, whereas in fact the morality of an act is necessary and thus fixed.

But that doesn't work for the same reason. If moral truths are necessary truths (and they're not), all this shows is that the God's attitudes are necessary. That's hard to make sense of,but necessary truths are hard to make sense of in any context, so there's no need to single this one out. And if they are not necessary truths - and most people think they're not and that right and wrong varies a little over time - then the fact divine command theory predicts precisely this is a mark in its favour, not against it.

So you now accept that the argument in the OP is sound and thus establishes that procreative acts are wrong, other things being equal.
The ceteris paribus clause is important.
Lots of acts that are morally permissible have the feature in question. That's the point you think is vitally important and that you think I've somehow overlooked. You think that because you think I'm a "moron". But only a moron would think I'm a moron. And I am obviously aware that lots of acts have the same negative feature.
But those acts that share the negative feature yet are not made overall wrong by it have moral positives that are not shared by procreative acts.
For example, just as it is bad if an act creates some undeserved harm, it is good if it prevents some too. Sometimes this will make such acts right overall.
Is that the case with procreative acts though? Nope. They just create large amounts of undeserved harm. They don't prevent larger amounts of undeserved harms.
Sometimes an act with the bad feature will prevent the injustice of someone not getting a benefit they deserve. That's a good feature, sometimes good enough to make the act right overall.
Is that the case with procreative acts? Nope. First a) the deserved benefits they create are less than the person they create deserves and so we have an injustice overall, not justice promotion; and b) if the act is not performed there does not exist a person who is being deprived of the deserved benefits the act would otherwise have created.

And on and on it goes. Procreative actions have an important morally negative feature, as you now recognize. It's not a trivial unimportant feature - they create huge injustices for another person. That's a very morally significant bad feature and only a moral idiot would think otherwise. That same crude moral idiot might think that unless it necessarily makes any act that possesses it wrong, then there's nothing to worry about. But that's as thick as thinking that because unattended flames do not always lead to housefires there's no need to blow out the candle that's on the couch.
Here's a job for you: try and come up with an action that creates a big injustice for another and that you can easily not perform that is nevertheless obviously morally permissible and that isn't plausibly made morally permissible by its possession of good features that procreative acts lack.

This thread is about an argument of mine for antinatalism.
It requires that certain evaluative claims be true. It does not require one to subscribe to a particular theory about what the truth makers of evaluative claims are.
So, the claim that innocents do not deserve to come to any harm is an evaluative claim. All my argument requires is that it be true.
Which it obviously is.
It does not require that one take a stand on what kind of fact makes it true. Some think evaluative truths are made true by facts about non natural features and objects; some think they are made true by natural features and objects; and some - including me - think they are made true by divine features. Doesn't matter: what matters is that the claim is true, not what kind of fact makes it true. Why? Because if it is true, then regardless of what made it true, my antinatalist conclusion will follow.

Why do you think there is any inconsistency between those quotes?
Morality is subjective.
It isn't individually or collectively subjective. Those are stupid views only held by those who haven't studied ethics and realized how dumb those views are and how fallacious the reasoning that leads people so confidently to embrace them (so, you know, virtually everyone).
But it is subjective because there are 3 kinds of subjectivism, not 2. The third kind - divine command theory - is true.
Now, those are metaethical claims of mine not relevant to this thread, as this thread is about a normative issue.

I said very clearly in the op that there can be no lag if idealism is true. (It's possible for there to be a lag if idealism is true,but there is no reason to think there would be one). That's precisely why the appearance of presentness implies idealism. Explain why you think there would be a lag if idealism is true

Why don't you answer my question? Do you think genocides have always been wrong or that they were right sometimes even though they are wrong now?
Clarify that first. Then we'll clarify what criticism you are trying to make of divine command theory. (Bet you won't answer)

What were you trying to say? What is your off the peg criticism of divine command theory?
Do you think genocides used to be right, or were they always wrong? Clarify that first

No, you have zero entertainment value. You haven't highlighted a flaw. Like I say, you're just a nay sayer.

That's just your opinion. Have you read the works of eastern philosopher Ispeakcrap? Or Meno Thinkatall?

Do try and engage in some kind of argument, god are being theist

They have good ideas in the east.

Now, once more, what were you trying to say?

Who's to say? It's all subjective. Eastern concepts

Yes, there's no contradiction involved in that analysis. And it is a commonplace occurrence. "Forgive them, Bartricks" I often say, "for they know not how stupid they are".