No. All comments are viewable. If you set up the discussion in the 'question' mode, as you've done here, then you get to pick a reply as the answer to your question. You don't have to do so, it's optional. — Sapientia

Thanks, Sapientia.

Okay, everyone, please feel free to carry on as usual. I shan't be accepting posts from here on, but that is only a time-saver, not a reflection of my opinion on the quality of posts.

I am abandoning this thread. Posts I accepted in the past are marked as to be accepted again. It is a tedious and unnecessary process. I don't know how other users operate, but to me it's a total headache and an unwanted, basically unnecessary, busy-work. To the heck with it.

Sorry, and I extend my empathy and sympathy to the participants of this thread, but I don't have enough hours in the day to spend on such imbecilic procedures that this site is forcing me to do.

I have never operated this way, and I shan't, I refuse to.

I will still participate in others' threads, but I shan't ever open my own again.

This is for the birds.

Again, apologies to those who were interested and supported the thought.

I agree that America has long abandoned the pursuit of any genuinely Christian vision... I do not agree with you that this is a good thing. — John Gould

Well, according to Christianity, you ought to turn your other cheek (to the Indians, to the French, to the Loyalists), and which the Americans never did. If they did, America never would have got off the ground.

According to Christianity, wealthiness is a sin, greed certainly is. The entire capitalist system, which buoyed America head-and-shoulders above the rest of the world was built on cruel, unforgiving, greedy capitalism. This would never have happened if Americans were TRULY Christians.

In fact, Christianity, when obeyed to the letter, is absolutely counter-survivalist UNLESS all people behave the Christian way.

So I have to ask you... when was the time, or time period, do you think, when Americans never frayed form the pursuit of genuinely Christian vision?

Can somebody help me? Do I need to click on "Accept" and then click on "view Answer" to make the posts appear to you all?

I have been doing that incessantly, and old replies to this thread that had been "accept"-ed before need to be "accept"-ed again.

This is very tedious, and I don't know how this reflects on the site, as I can only see my browser.

HELLLLP!!

how does one arrive at knowledge or certainty given known knowns, known unknowns, and the seemingly metaphysical unknown unknowns? — Posty McPostface

Thanks, Posty, I was wondering about that myself, but I slid over it lightly.

READ my lips: if they don't read the bible in the first place, they don't know what's in it; and they can get the same information form other sources.

It is a fallacy to think or to opine that that bible contains human lessons that are not found elsewhere.

When people judge the quality of a teaching based on where the teaching is found, then they have become religious about being anti-religious. — John Days

They don't judge the teaching. They just don't bother reading it, because it is packaged with a whole bunch of what the atheists consider nonsense. They get the useful info other places.

They don't judge the quality of teaching in the bible. They just ignore it altogether, avoid reading it. You can't judge something for content you haven't read. They don't judge the bible for content quality of human concerns; they just have other publications that describe the situation which is in the bible as well, but don't have the unnecessary text of devotional noise around the teachings.

I dunno, man... the rich can't eat more food in the same life span, can't have more orgasms, can't have more laughter, can't have more drinks than a poor man. The rest... is nice, but nothing compares to scratching your back exactly where it itches, and nothing compares waking with the break of day, hearing the birds and playing with your dog. ("Catch that bird, boy!")

I've known some extremely rich people, who were self-made men. Their biggest piss-off? Their lives not being much different from that of the ordinary man. They are financial giants, they expect extraordinary entitlements, like double the lifespan, or triple the sexually active period of their lives. They demand perfect health, perfect scores for their children at school, and perfection from everyone around them. These people are not happy... their own success made them full of future expectations, and they are really short of the target.

Whereas me, to live with the words of Paul Spenser, "my parents now think I'd be lucky to amount to nothing".

Life is just a bowl of oat bran... every morning wake up and it's there. Don't let no rich people tell you otherwise.

800,000,000,000 tons, or 725,747,792,000,000 kg if my calculation is correct. Dr Google tells me the mass of the earth is 5.972 × 10^24 kg. — Wayfarer

You asked a straight question and I'm going to give you a straight answer.

The space dust that has fallen on Earth is 8 followed by 14 zeroes. In Kilograms. The mass of the earth is 6 followed by 24 zeroes. In Kilograms.This means that the size of earth increased by less than 0.000 000 001 percent. This is not at all significant, despite being more voluminous or heavy than all the buildings put together on manhattan island or all the pyramids in Egypt or the Great Wall of China, or the Great Barrier Reef near Australia, or... there is nothing in Europe I can think of which is similar in magnitude of size. All the cows of Europe.

if there are good teachings in the Bible about greed and how to deal with greed, why should an atheist disregard them because they can be found in the bible? That is irrational. — John Days

why he should disregard the bible's teaching despite the teachings being useful? Not because the atheist is irrational. But because he never reads the bible.

A theist or atheist who never read "Richard III" by Shakespeare, or more to the point, never read the Gilgamesh story in original Babylonian, can't be faulted for irrationality for not using the useful parts of these works. Similarly, an atheist who never read the bible, will not use the bible's teaching but not out of irrationality.

The good readings in the bible and the bad readings in the bible are holy scriptures for those who are religious. To them it's the truth, because they believe the bible's words were inspired by god. To the atheist, they are human problems written badly and well. You still haven't got the concept that the bible is in its entirety a holy scripture. If you are religious, then the human problems dealt in the bible are religious problems. If you are secular, they are human problems.

An atheist disregards the bible becasue the good, humanly good, teachings in it can be found elsewehre, in more accessible forms. It is not that the atheist disregard the bible in opposition to what the bible says when it says true things, i.e. when the bible says things that are acceptible for truth by the atheist; he disregards the bible as a religious authority, because he does not believe in god. I ought to have been more clear on this. He also disregards the bible's authority on questionable issues, because more often than not, they contradict repeatable, reality, and contradict foreseeable and foreseen events.

Augustino, I could not accept your post, because it involves a movie clip, and I never play movie clips for fear of catching a virus. So... I can't accept something that I don't know what it is or what it says. Sorry, nothing personal. Your comment was good, otherwise, although I meant it more generally than you surmised.

Please accept the comment that answers your question. — szardosszemagad

I did not write this... it is nonsensical. I don't know how it got there into the opening post. Absolute mystery to me.

Okay, I get it: I need to accept comments that come in. All this is new procedure to me.

Praxis, you got it right on. The "haves" are still in the old role.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. '(Matt 16:25)

'Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.' (Matt 19:21)

Do you think they're nihilistic sayings? — Wayfarer

They are not nihilistic. They are just counter-intuitive. Show me two, just two average Americans who have done this and called it the American Dream.

Truth is, American Christians play lip-service to God. If they followed the bible, they would not be the strongest military nation in the world. They would not be the strongest industrialist society. They would not be the technologically most advanced society. The bible in America... is mere lip service. Nothing more, and that is how it should be, actually.

You should love everyone is a proposition. But it's not an imperative sentence. "Love everyone" is an imperative sentence, and it is not a proposition.

In English, the imperative sentence starts with a verb, followed by a predicate, and the pronoun of the person of the sentence is never included. The imperative sentence applies only to the second person; both in plural and in singular.

This is also an imperative sentence:

"Gerry, please, do love everyone." Here the noun is named, but it is not part of the imperative sentence, instead, it is a sentence fragment of a clause.

Anything that the bible says is religious,
— szardosszemagad

Nah, that's just social conditioning. Greed, fear, and pride are problems all humans deal with. — John Days

Well, you are right, everything in the bible is social conditioning if you don't believe it is the word of god. But if you believe that the bible is the word of god, then whatever is in it, is gospel. God's own thoughts and teachings for mankind. And you can't get any more relgious about a topic than listening to god's take on it.

So... while you correctly identified the problem of greed as a real life, layman's type of problem, you can't say that it is not a religious problem
— szardosszemagad

Sure I can. — John Days

Yes, you can do whatever you desire. If you like, you can denounce the rules of logic. Do that. It does not mean that the logic is wrong -- it means that you either don't understand it, or else you have a vested interest in maintaining a point, or else you just said something sometime that people hold you to, and you are trying to save face.

You can't say it's a religious problem if you deny the validity of religion. If you accept that religious views are valid, and furthermore, you are a Christian, then you can't say that a human problem that the bible deals with is not also a topic of religion.

Hypocrites are the ones who want to say these are religious problems, because, if they themselves are not "religious", it's easy to think, "I am not religious, so I am not a bad person like you are". — John Days

You put the horse before the cart. Or the other way around. A non-religious person will treat greed as a human problem, and only as a human problem. A non-religious atheist is not concerned with what the bible says.

Your logic to deny the religious aspect of something that is both a human aspect and a religious aspect is not working.

I stopped reading after about the second paragraph. In Buddhism it's believed that suffering is caused by ingnorance, John, not desire. Once you understand that you may have a better understanding of emptiness. — praxis

Does ignorance about Buddhism also cause suffering? If you are fine, praxis, then you just proved the Buddha wrong.

What I am getting out of existentialism.

What? I AM getting out of existentialism.

When I had selected some basic rules for my layer logic it started a life of its own.
And as it is not easy to think consequently in a new logic,
I often add that something is "my personal view or interpretation of layer logic"
especially if it is a conclusion outside logic and mathematics. — Trestone

Thanks for the explanation, Testosterone!! It makes sense to me now. I had this sort of pleasure in my life, too, albeit I was a child then: I played with Marklin Toy Trains, and revelled in building complex track structures. I had a lot of track. And as you probably well know, it is a three-track system, so creating track configurations that looped back into themselves was easy, effortless with this design.

I was the king of my own domain, building the tracks. Now I see that you have similar sentiments, also building complexity, and trying out new stuff, on your own domain, and only you can tell yourself which way to go, what is right and what is wrong about it... wonderful experience.

I am happy for you.

Will work if X is everything we know. If X is a table, instead of everything we know, then a "What table is not " is a chair, and yet we know things about a chair. So X has to be the complete sum of all knowledge by a human or by a unit.

What is not X then becomes not only a known unknown, but an unkown unknown. When we take all knowledge, and we must according to the previous paragraph, then we can't extrapolate from there. Because to do so, we must have knowledge of things that are not X. But we have no such knowledge.

Therefore I must say that 2 does not exist; it's either known knowns, or unknown unknowns. This is the end point of the reasoning.

Yet in reality we have known unknowns. "How much does the third man in power in China weigh?" Is a known unknown. "Is the weight of this third person in power rapidly increasing now, or rapidly decreasing, or staying more-or-less the same?" This denies the unknown of the unknown.

So according to your essay, the test proves that "known unknowns" are in fact not in existence; and reality is such, that unknown unknowns are not known.

Therefore your theory, described in your essay, does not fit reality.

My old friend, Paul Spenser, suggested one day that they should set up counselling for the poor to help them deal with their hunger.

Paul's joke was a satire on the hypocrisy of society's obsession with dishing out happiness to everyone, on one hand, and on the other hand, the hugely ineffective ways it can deliver its goal and promise.

Part of your article and criticism of Buddhism reminded me of this: get rid of the desire to get rid of the need and suffering.

My addition to your passionate condemnation of Buddhism is this: Nobody can get rid of any amount of suffering when they are in need. I urge any Buddhist to eliminate the need to breathe via meditation. When they are finished doing that, I invite them to exhale all air from their lungs that they can, and not breathe for ever after that. Since they desire has been eliminated.

Buddha says the desire can't be completely eliminated. I say it can't be eliminated even an iota. At least not via transcendental meditation or via counselling.

That when ignorance is bliss, then it is folly to be wise. It isn't stated categorically. — Wosret

My favourite expression (because I created it) around ignorance is "ignorance is power". You can't be defeated in an argument if you don't understand your opponent's argument. You can't be convinced of he failings of religions or of the failings of putting too much credit to religious beliefs, if you don't understand why.

Most long, drawn-out, in fact incessant dialogues on the Internet forums are between normally and customarily these two types: a theist, a religionist, who refuses to give up the apparently very false beliefs of dogma, and an atheist, who revels in driving home countless valid arguments, but to no avail, since the theist's point is to get to heaven, and that's worth eschewing the truth.

This gives an effect of ignorance to the theists in these debates, and it is power, for the theist, feigning or really not internalizing the atheist's points, doesn't have to lean toward the weight of argument at all.

Jesus said A LOT about greed, which isn't a religious problem. All humans on the planet struggle with greed. Jesus also gave solutions to the problem of greed. It is in the context of problem and solution that I referenced some Biblical teachings. For example, Jesus said that the answer to greed is for people to start sharing with one another. That's not a religious position; it's a solution which works in real life. — John Days

What separates a lay problem (not religious) from a religious problem, when the bible directly and explicitly deals with it, including Jesus in the debate or discussion? It is a worldly problem, all right, but it is also a religious problem. Anything that the bible says is religious, as the words in it were inspired by god, and by definition religion has to do with god, his nature, and man's relationship to god.

So... while you correctly identified the problem of greed as a real life, layman's type of problem, you can't say that it is not a religious problem or consideration at the same time and in the same respect. Because it very much is.

To be sure, your brief description is so scant, that I don't understand layer logic. I have few of its properties and the corollaries, but the whole thing escapes me. And I won't research it, because I am too old to learn new tricks. So this is what I gleaned from your posts:

Trestone, I think your layer logic is a kind of notation, and as such, it can describe, for instance, paradoxes simpler.

Mind you, this sort of notation is also present in some computer languages which we studied during my undergrad years, back a million years ago (make it 30) and which I have promptly forgot by now.

Under layer logic, it seems to me, you don't use a different logic, but a different notation of events vs truth values. This is fine.

The difference between layer logic and conventional logic is similar to the difference of function forms that describe the same function in a Cartesian coordinate system and in a circular coordinate system. The same function, which is complicated to the extent of unusability, becomes tame and useful in the other system.

This I find fine too.

What I don't find fine is how you keep saying "to me..."

For example, in:

to me not only the liar sentence is different in layer logic but the whole world:

Like with complex numbers there are more and new possibilities, new dimensions.

Which of those worlds is more "real"?

To me this is an open question. — Trestone

What bothers me is the subjective value of "to me". Logic is the last vestige of the absolutists; it is unassailable, much like the flow of a chess game is unassailable. You can't make mistakes, and everything falls into place every time. So if logic is impartial, impersonal, and unbiassed; if it is the ultimate unchanging governing set of rules which can't be applied more than one way, ever, then why is layer logic not that? It is not that, because to you, Testosterone, it must be different than to others; it is different because "to me", that is, to you, it is different than "to someone not me" or to others. And bang, the absolutes of the logic system are crumbled.

THIS I don't like. "To me."

be compassionate yet at the same time renounce life? How can we be compassionate and renounce life at the same time?? — jancanc

Renouncing life can mean two things: 1. verbally declaring that life is not worth living or 2. Verbally and in actions declaring and following up that life is not worth living. Thus,

under 2 you may want to starve yourself to death or give up all your worldly possessions, and

under 1 you provide lip service for OTHERS to give up all worldly possession and to commit suicide, while you immerse yourself in hedonistic or intellectual pleasure and unprecedented wealth.

Under 2 it is impossible to renounce life and be compassionate.

But under 1 it is possible.

I recommend actually reading Kant and Newton, and additionally Jonathon Israeli's magisterial trilogy on the Enlightenment to cure yourself of your ignorance on the subject. — Maw

Now, that would be a shame. "Ignorance is power." As long as you don't know your subject material, you can assert and claim anything.

Then again, that works better for an audience of dilettantes than for an audience of experts.

That's actually the trick and salvation and damnation of Donald Trump's political success: he bedazzled those who don't have a clue about anything, and they are the majority of the voters. And now Trump faces all these Yale and MIT and whatever-graduated eggheads who are looking at him with stern expectations written on their countenance and body languagem, and god have mercy on Trump should he try the same tactics on them.

Most people think philosophy is science without numbers. That garners a lot of sympathy right there.

Most people who are religious think all philosophy proves the existence of god.
Most people who are atheist think all philosophy proves the non-existence of god.
Whereas all science proves the falsehood of the bible.
Therefore philosophy can be popular with the entire population, while science can never be 100% popular with the population.

Similarly to the five-line display above this, philosophy can be used to prove or disprove the pertinence and allowability of abortions; of sinning; of a virtuous life; of smoking and debauchery; of running and asceticism; of singing the blues (in fact, it is encouraged to sing and dance; Plato was a the number 3 ranked tango instructor in all of Athens, and Kant invented the Waltz. Einstein almost left physics in his early days to play the violin, and Heidegger pledged to never again publish if he only could sing "Lohengrin" at the Scala di Milano in front of a full audience.)

So little wonder philosophy is the darling of the crowd.

But give them a little taste of Heidegger, Heimverkaufenstassubersollkraftkrankenheitwagen, Zoll, or even Kant, and they will run with the tail between their legs back to their mother's aprons.

REAL philosophy is for lions and giants.

Or because somebody wants to get rid of you. — Bitter Crank

:-) well, that's what the point was. Hehe. Being the best means... basically dick all.

"Thus, the first shall be last and the last shall be first."

Or, as my old friend Paul Spenser put it, "nice guys don't even finish."

In reality, the "voluntary" tax honor system we have is not all that voluntary. — Bitter Crank

true, it is not necessarily voluntary, and in a lot of cases it is coerced. But it does not mean it is not agreed to. A person can agree, due to coercion.The question is, is agreement under coercion a nice thing of the gov to do to its citizens? Or rather, the citizens, since they are the People, do they have the right to coerce originally unwilling people to participate in building society?

Now, this is a "should" or "ought to" question which I am too small to answer.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the happier people in your orbit are discretely "nihilists." Just listen to the popular comedians. Maybe it's even the "secret truth" of our lifestyle these days. — 0af

Latest theory of happiness is "having success beyond expectations."

And please cross this with "A pessimist can never be unpleasantly disappointed."

The lower the expectations of life, the higher the probability that you will find happiness.

Nihilism, by definition, means "no expectations whatsoever". Therefore anything that happens to a nihilist, which is not nothing, and not negative like pain, is a very joyful event and source of happiness for the nihilist.

But wait! If you buy this now, there is more!!

We can say if your expectations are BELOW the base line, or below no expectations whatsoever, then you are really in the "zone".

For instance, you could expect every day that you will be hanged, or strung up by your tongue or toe; severely burned; hot lead would be poured into your ear canal; at work every day starts with a three-hour calculus exam; your daughter will sue you (and win) for sexual abuse; police will raid your apartment and confiscate all pieces of porn and a judge will issue an order for you never to look on the Internet; god may turn you o'ernight into a pedophile; your wife will give aids, Hep C and a left hook. etc. You may even turn instantaneously into a (ghasp!!) evangelist.

The people who wake up with deep and unsettling, let's say torturous paranoid fears or phobias then are the happiest people of the entire lot.

It seems like the rational and emotional parts of me are very much conflicted. — Particle thing

I would say you just proved the innate need to act ethically, and an inability to act unethically in terms of one's own DNA-commanded ethicality; by declaring that you have reasoned to not consider ethics in your day-to-day operations, yet it does not feel good to do that (emotions speak against behaving unethically).

This alone should convince you of the validity of ethical imperative: that reason is trumped by emotions in these instances.

While suicide may be ultimate pain reliever, it is also the ultimate pain. It takes courage, and a lot of loathing for life to build up to killilng one's own self.

I would turn the question around just a quarter turn, and give rewards for murdering others. It serves the same purpose, and it is way easier to execute as a course of action than suicide.

To pay taxes, or to do anything, with consent, does not mean that you do it without grudge, resentment or loathing. A hooker may have sex with many men in one day, and she does give consent, but she is not happily doing this; she wishes all men to hell, and all she wants is her customary drug fix.

There is a wide range of things we consent to. Are we studying in school because we consented to it?

Or how many of you Americans on this site voted FOR the constitution of the United States?

I agree with the argument of WISDOPOMOFO that there is no prior consent to pay taxes. But there is consent, due to coercion.

So if the OP hadn't likened taxes to theft, but to highway robbery in a sophisticated delivery, then I would have agreed with the proposition.

But before we are quick to jump on that bandwagon, we have to decide: is consent under coercion still consent? In law sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Signing a contract under undue pressure renders the contract invalid. But murdering someone with the knowledge that one gets punished for it also deters the person. A consent to obey the law is legal. And the law is upheld with a huge amount of coercion.

Is paying taxes a part of law that is bullying (like signing a contract in fear of punishment) or is it a social and societal pacifier (like paying taxes just like not committing murder to avoid punishment)?

Some equate the laws that coincide with human morality, such as "thou shalt not kill" and "murder is punishable with up to 20 years in prison with no parole" just laws, and laws that are not part of natural human morality "unjust laws", such as having to drink a little amount of piss of the queen of England on audiences with her, otherwise the audience is not granted. (This law is not in existence. Yet.)

Both need coercion. Both are practiced by almost all members of society. Both have not been consented to as in an actively executed bilateral original agreement.

The biggest and most damaging criticism of Heidegger in German philosophical literature is "Warum etwas einfach machen, wenn es auch kompliziert geht?" Which translates into English, "Why make something simple, when you have a chance to make it complicated?"

It may be completely true what he says about death, but I already have a concept of that, and I don't need to learn what Heidegger means by hinges, by division one, by division two, and by dasein. All these are noise, complicated amplified noise, without which existence was simple and acceptable, and the new concepts overcomplicate things to the extent that their own mother would not recognize them.

In other words, Heidegger was one of he masters of bullsh(t, and boy was he good at it.If you find any sort of rhyme or reason or meaning in his flow of words, kudos to you. But be honest: are you the wiser for it? Was not death already a concept not hard to internalize? Was it necessary to make the process of dying into a limit-situation, with uncanny (unhomely) unintelligence, thus pulling Dreyfus into the equation, who wanted nothing to do with this in the first place.

I'll be frank: this sounds like philobabble to me. Death? Do we need to connect it with dasein (which nobody in the English-language speaking philosophical world knows what it means) and with limit issues and with intelligence of unhomeliness?

Zheesh.

Jacob, your argument breaks down on a false premise. Everyone pays their taxes with consent. People even sit down and work out with sweat and toil how much taxes they ought to pay.

Your conclusion is false because your premise is false.

-------------------

There are more criteria to theft than what you wrote.

1:All cases of taking someone's money without their consent is theft. — Jacob

This is also true of robbery. For theft, there is a clandestine element in the act: the thief may be fully visible, but his action is hidden from the victim. Even if taxes were paid without consent, they are not theft, because people are fully aware of paying taxes.

I don't think that Kubrick would make a movie without deep social critique. I see your point though. — Meta

You're right. I think there was very much indeed deep social meaning in this movie. Kubrick proved with emphasis, and without leaving any doubt, that it does not matter how much a North American or Hollywood actress values her artistic integrity, and it does not matter how much money she has already earned, if you throw at her a large enough amount of money, she will take off her clothes for each and every male member of the world who pays his twelve dollar fifty cents for the movie ticket. (That was the current going price at the time of first showing the movie.)

This was a social experiment which worked.

Meta, I love this film! I've only seen it once but I think it's an underrated masterpiece, one of Kubrick's best out of an incredibly filmography. — Brian

I rented the movie just to see what the big doodle was about it.

Cinematography? There are a lot of really good looking people in this movie.

Good looking people at the Metzger's party dancing.
Good looking hooker totally naked sleeping off an OD. Full frontal nudity.
Good looking, young and famous actress, with a flawless body, pert tits, slim thighs, completely buck naked on screen. Nude from front, behind, sideways, up and down.
Good looking and famous actor (male) buck naked.
Lots of good looking naked women in masks.
A very good looking woman becoming crazy over the good looks of a good looking man.
A good looking wife dancing with a good looking foreigner looking good.

At this point in the movie I got so bored with the plot (non-existent almost) and with the character development (hero goes from one naked woman to another --- what's the big deal?) that I turned off the set.

The cinematography? Like my foot. It's the bucks Kubrick spent on getting really famous people on his screen to take off all their clothes. This is not cinematography. This is actually just a bit more exciting than seventies soft porn.

Pretentious pornography, that's what this movie was. However, it was done in good taste, the bodies were all just washed clean and no smut. I would recommend it to any fifteen-year-old to fuel his pipe dreams.

John, you are preaching. You did two things in your previous one post people are not allowed to do on this site.

Whether your post gets flagged or not, is up to how vigilant the monitoring of this site is. I am new here, so I don't know if it will happen.

I knew a man once, who was the BEST prayer. His prayers always got answered. He was not only good at it, he was the BEST.

In my high school years I was voted three years in a row to be the best maasturbator.

These days, Donald Trump is the BEST communicator. Of his ideas. He just says anything that comes to his mind.

If you get selected in your army unit to lead a squadron through a minefield, replete with poisonous snakes, under heavy enemy fire, you are chosen because YOU ARE THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST.

I read the opening statement, and I can't understand what is going on.

I think it's because there are too many assumptions the author takes for granted as common knowledge, whereas opinions are myriads that oppose what the author feels is "given".

One sense I get (it's not spelled out) is that the OP believes that morality always presents as a choice, and without making a choice one can't be moral. In my opinion that is so not true. Moral actions are always self-sacrificial (to varying degrees of self-harm), but involve no analytic brain work, and they are automatic.

Now, this, I can't even touch:

i.e. whether a concept of moral autonomy could be valid. In the absence of a rigorous logical argument to demonstrate otherwise, the frequently made assumption that the capacity of amoral autonomy and capacity of moral autonomy must necessarily be related is just that – an assumption which may in reality be invalid, and it is logically indefensible to include an unspoken assumption within the framework of a question — Robert Lockhart

HOW must something and its opposite be related? What is the "frequently made assumption" you speak of, Robert Lockhart? Okay, amoral and moral decisions are related, but HOW? These concepts the author ought not to have neglected to describe if not to define.

It is logically indefensible to include an unspoken assumption within the framework of a question -- I am sorry, what is this? If something is not said, of course it can't be attacked. Assumptions are not a matter for defense -- a premise is. Not all assumptions are premisses.

Robert Lockhart, OP, your presentation of a topic is insufficiently worded to make much sense.

By-the-by, what does "epistemic" mean? Sounds delicious. "The Lord Bishop had an epistemic liver pate served up for us at high tea."

Your description is not a paradox A paradox is a statetement that has a truth value of "true", but having a truth value of "true" immeditely turns it into a statement with a truth value of "false", which immediately turns it into a statement with a truth value of "true", and so on. A famous paradox is this:

"I am lying to you now."

The scenario you described with an altruistic figure and a sufferer who can / cannot attain salvation, however, can be turned into a paradox. Thus:

Suppose B can attain salvation. A is an altruistic person. So A tortures B to help him get salvation. B, while he is being tortured, is happy for it, for he feels he is getting closer to salvation. But he is not; because he is enjoying the imminence of salvation so much, that he is not suffering. But because he is not suffering, he is not getting closer to salvation; so A must torture B even more cruelly and painfully. ETC.