Not following you here at all. — Banno

That seems to be your rule of engagement, perplexity at other minds saying things you wouldn’t say.

I've been at some pains not to present a definition — Banno

Right, you never do, but you keep talking anyway.

If you aren’t trying to define things, why did you say:
“Faith is…”
“Faith is not…”
“Definitions that ignore this…”

???

Why are you bothering with “definitions” then? You said it.

Why say what something like “faith is” and think you can avoid definition?

Seems odd... — Banno

Exactly.

God was understood as transcendent but also rational. The universe was seen as ordered in a way that human reason could, at least in part, comprehend—since human reason reflected the divine logos. — Wayfarer

I usually cringe at philosophic notions of God. (And I hypocritically philosophize about God, so, no judgment!) I think what you just said here somewhat paraphrases me before. But it strikes me now - how do we know God cares about the things our reason cares about? It makes sense that if there is any logos, there is one logos and if logos is to be known, divine or human, logos is logos. So it clarifies nothing to refer to divine logos in a philosophic manner. What is that?

I see knowing the divine or the transcendent as equivalent to knowing another person. We can know the other person perfectly, but i only to the extent they reveal themselves to us. I now know something of what Wayfarer thinks. You said it, and so I know something of you. I don’t know everything about Wayfarer, but I know something. That is how God knows Wayfarer too (it is always particular knowledge when knowing a person, and God also knows much more than maybe even Wayfarer knows about Wayfarer); and this is how Wayfarer knows God. This is what any knowledge is like - the other, revealed, to me.

It’s easy to know a physical thing - we can use our sense and invent tools to measure it. But to know the transcendent, like God, or like a person, words and revelations of a person to another person, these are most intimate and can be much more true than senses and, as a Christian, they are whole ball game, the purpose of knowing anything. Knowing he person of God who knows the person of me - that is the purpose of everything.

the question of free will and divine determinism. Protestantism involved at its core fideistic, denying free will in order to preserve God's absolute power. — Christopher Blosser

your comment, about trusting God because nothing makes sense, actually reflects a deep-standing thread in Christian culture —a move away from the idea of a rationally ordered universe toward a faith based on trust in God’s sheer will. — Wayfarer

Interesting.

God gave me reason so that I could use language and understand what he says when he says “my will is x” - but not reason enough to understand whether what God wills makes sense towards achieving whatever God says he is trying to achieve. We need reason to understand what “go bind and sacrifice Isaac” or “build an Arc in a field” means and reason to put together all the pieces that carry out those commands, but not enough reason to understand how these are good acts reasonably connected to a future for life with a loving God.

My opinion is, when God makes a request that we do not understand, we should trust God and comply with the request regardless of our understanding, because we already understand that it is always good to trust God. But there is nothing intrinsic to God’s will and command that I am unable to understand it. God wants me to understand Him. That includes His will when he reveals his will to me. But if I do not understand, even more than me stopping to use my reason and intellect to seek to understand why God wants what he wants and how what God wants is good, I should not stop and trust God, trust his perfect goodness, and follow him wherever he seems to me and my limited intellect to be going.

The point, to me, about not being able to understand God is, God is so big and unique, I will forever have more to learn - I will never know it all (much like another person’s soul). There will forever be vast oceans of more to know and fulfill my desires to know you.”

So when I say “nothing makes sense” it is more like an acknowledgment that nothing fully makes sense, yet. God isn’t waiting for me to figure him out, so when he bridges the gap between me and him, I am always taken off guard and shown things I can’t understand - like someone giving Newton the formula e=mc2, and telling him to trust it and figure that out. God built me to figure him out (to a similar extent we figure out anyone we love). We can’t ultimately figure him out all on our own - we need grace and gifts to come to God (revelation), but our intellect is not going to be abandoned and left to our own devices forever. So I hope.

Hume’s condemnation at the end of his Treatise actually applies to the Treatise. — Wayfarer

Love it! Hume’s understanding of things is a miracle.

Similar motifs can be found in other spiritual traditions … But from a philosophical perspective it’s the convergences that are interesting, — Wayfarer

I agree. Much to ponder peering into the wisdom that overlaps cultures, religions, times.

purity of motive, lack of attachment, abandonment of craving, — Wayfarer

they are agreeing … about something — Wayfarer

I agree as well. And I see Aristotle and Heraclitus everywhere too, as well as I see God everywhere. We are all after the same thing. I’m not afraid to call it wisdom, or more directly, truth, and more practically, admit it is universal to persons who love other persons. Love is at the heart of all. Motion, being, becoming, unity, community, knowledge and truth (unity of mind and object), and language itself - the deepest personal expression of love in the one who truly means “I love you” to another…

idea is that the rational soul of man (psuche) has insight into the formal causes, which themselves arise in the Divine Intellect. I know there are many ways to criticise that philosophy and that it is overall regarded as superseded in the Western tradition, but I’m not sure how many of those who criticise it really understand what they’re rejecting. — Wayfarer

I see a philosophic leap too far when you or Aquinas end up “…in the Divine intellect.” I know God can be an essential ontological feature of many philosophies, but I think it is a scientific cop-out (so far in our experience) to use “God” in philosophy (again, so far in human history, not even Aristotle settled such an assertion) (and not that that is what you are trying to do). I hope you follow me here.

I like where you said, “the idea is that the rational soul of man (psuche) has insight into the formal causes.” I’d say “ the mind sees the formal.” Like the eye senses light. And leave it at that. I haven’t yet explained the formal ( though we obviously keep seeing it in mind) just like I haven’t fully explained light or eyes seeing light consciously… though I obviously “see”.

different mode of knowing and being to that of the detached observer of states of affairs in the world. — Wayfarer

And here, in my view, there is one mode, one knowing. It may take complexity to lay down the science of it all in a language, but if it all doesn’t end up how it starts, with the naive, hand-in-hand with all things in the world, we have lost our way.

Illusion stands out against its only possible context, namely, reality. We can’t bemoan illusion until we know something else, namely the real, so we need to recall and rejoice, for however illusion has been delivered to me, it came with the real!

reference to entering the divine presence, nowadays generally understood as something that happens only at the time of death, but in the mystical sense, corresponding with the advent of the beatific vision. — Wayfarer

I feel like here, in this forum, we are miles away from a more measurable, more strictly philosophical conversation. We’ve leapt into mysticism at its most universal (and more TPF friendly form), or something more like theology in more particular form, and neither are too comfortable here at TPF (and that’s ok with me).

Personally, I see what Aquinas meant when he said his philosophic thoughts about his beloved Father in heaven were straw. The beatific vision will come as a gift and a surprise and I would expect it to be utterly unlike anything I could expect. God’s visage, to me, is different than the aspirations of mystical enlightenment. Enlightenment can be sought and found through one’s own effort (or one’s own complete quelling of effort). To me, in the end, it is only because God wants me to see him that I would ever come to be able to see him and then actually see - and in the end, when it comes to God, I’d rather just look for his own words first, see if God will come to me, then discuss my interpretations (again probably better received in some other forum).

I think we have a similar approach to this thing of ours - this love of wisdom.

And see how far I stray from the problem of evil where “God” is falsely taken as an object that can be fixed in a syllogism that concludes “God is not”; I feel obliged to save God from the fiery pits of Hume’s “to the flames!” Or Nietzsche, or Russell..

But then I recall, philosophy is its most pure when it remains science first and foremost, so it is likely no one cares God has been spared by me.

Anyway, always interested to know what you think. Cheers.

Faith, unlike ordinary belief or trust, is best understood through its persistence under conditions of strain, doubt, or suffering. It is not a rigid refusal to change, nor merely trust in authority, but a form of commitment that reveals itself when it is hardest to maintain. Definitions that ignore this pragmatic and temporal dimension fail to capture the lived meaning of faith.

Seems odd that religious folk seek to deny this. — Banno

Deny this aspect? You said yourself faith is “a form of commitment that reveals itself when it is hardest to maintain.”

That tells us where to look to see faith revealed, but doesn’t tell us what faith is. It doesn’t tell us what precisely is revealed, only “when” or where we might look to point to what faith is.

So I think people are denying this aspect speaks to the question of what faith is qua faith.

The grace under pressure aspect you find essential to the “lived meaning of faith” could be deceptive.

Galileo persisted in his beliefs about the solar system/galaxy in the face of duress, but for the sake of empirical science, which I’m sure you don’t equate with faith.

So pointing out beliefs maintained under duress may show you where to look to seek the “definition” (as you reference it) of faith, but maybe not. There must be something else entirely that defines faith, or you might have to say that Galileo under arrest was possibly trying to start a new religion.

a higher intelligence makes perfect sense, but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’ — Wayfarer

Because there is such a thing as “making sense”, I agree it therefore makes sense that there is a being that makes all sense of everything. And I agree, such a being is not one of us, so we may never apprehend it, or will never make sense of everything.

And absurdity creeps in when we think, until it all makes sense it remains possible that “making sense” is a house of cards and so nothing ever made sense in the first place. Meaning, if we admit we don’t know everything, we must admit we haven’t yet learned the one thing that would undercut all that we thought we knew, so maybe we never know anything.

But I also think there is a possibility that, in our likeness to God (the higher one), we sometimes apprehend things completely, that when we know something, we know the same thing God knows. We will forever pursue all-knowledge, but along the way, possess particular knowledge the same as any knowing being would possess. That makes sense to me - that I am not God, but that I can know God anyway (because of God, not my own discoveries).

I am always moved/inspired by the existential embrace of the absurdity of being a person. Kierkegaard is good reference.

I hope God does come between you and anything else one day. I’m actually sure God will, and expect that will be a pleasant meeting. But not today. Cheers!

I don't 100% believe there is no afterlife, but it really is nothing more than a fantasy, — Janus

I am a Catholic, so I hope and believe in an afterlife, but it all sounds impossible to me. The body supports my consciousness and my consciousness is where I live and breath, so if my body dies, where and how could I exist anymore? Stuff of fantasy for sure.

But I believe anyway. Because God makes no sense either, and really my own existence with all of its questions and knowledge of illusion, makes no sense either. None of it makes sense, so, to me, there is plenty of room to trust God anyway.

moving away from philosophy and into a world of faith, dogma and doctrine. — Tom Storm

God is obviously a big puzzle piece in the history of philosophy and on this forum. I get it. But it is just as reasonable to conclude this “God” doesn’t exist, as it is to conclude we must not understand this “God” in the first place, and, using this same reason, neither can be proven to be the sounder conclusion, or premise. About “God”. God doesn’t exist, or even if God exists and his existence makes no contradiction, we may not understand God anyway - both are sensible estimations of this “God” in philosophy.

What becomes the point of further discussion using this “God” in our arguments if we can’t use religious sources and experiences to make further distinctions? We would have to ignore that this God might not exist to clarify “God and suffering in the same good world.” Ignoring the fact that God may not exist is not reasonable if on the other hand one isn’t sure one has any idea what “God” means. So we are stuck. Without saints and some other religious experiences to draw from besides our words and arguments and logic, we are stuck.

“God” becomes a placeholder in such philosophic discussions that once directly analyzed seems interchangeable with “everything” and “nothing” or “the one” or “truth” or “being itself”, or “Self” - so I would rather talk about those other things as a philosopher talks, and only talk about this God as one who believes this God actually exists talks.

Hindu Uber driver who was incensed at 'stupid Christianity' with its superstitions and held that his gurus lives and the scriptures and how these aligned with science clearly demonstrated the superior truth of Sanātana Dharma. — Tom Storm

That all sounds silly. Interesting uber ride though. But there is no superior truth. Just truth. Christianity and Hinduism, and Buddhism and Taoism, and Islam, and Judaism, at base, agree on this. Just one truth if “truth” is to have any meaning. Many schools of Hinduism ultimately value the truth of love above all, which, like Christians, seems the “superior” value to me. Again, what good metaphysician or epistemologist or logician would care to parse all of that? And what believer in God would find fruit doing the parsing with no recourse to the experience of other believers, and to do so with people who don’t believe?

And what does he mean his religion aligns better with science? Which science is aligned to which religion, and when? Science today, or science from 500 years ago, or science as it will be in 500 years? Aligned with which eternal wisdom, in a superior manner? Silly. Reincarnation aligns with being born again in Christ. Does reincarnation of one eternal soul align with any science better than simply rebirth in heaven?

There is nothing about Christianity that requires the repudiation of any empirical laws or scientific facts and observations. The problem of evil is a valid syllogism. It’s just not sound. Because it misunderstands any tangible, lived experience of “God” for sake of some hypothetical “Omni-being” thing called “God”. That need not exist for sake of argument.

And of course, you don't have to play the game, but there will be consequences. — Banno

Why assume that? There may not be consequences. Or must there be consequences? Must there be effects? What causes that?

if one is talking logically — Banno

How do you mean that inside of modus ponens? Where are you standing to observe “if one is talking logically”?

Is that supposed to answer any of my questions?

Draw a starting line without anything transcendent referenced in it and then move forward. Give me an example. You don’t even have to define anything.

I don’t think you can. Because you have to use language.

But why should we presume that there is such a thing as the form of the table — Banno

There's a logical gap between “I can’t imagine it being otherwise” and “this must be how it is” that's found in transcendental arguments of all sorts.

It's a transcendental argument becasue it goes: things are thus-and-so; the only way (“I can’t imagine it being otherwise") they can be thus-and-so is if forms are real. Hence, forms are real. The minor premise is the problem - how you can be sure it's the only way?

But there is also a different criticism here, the the transcendental argument also presumes hylomorphism in the major premise - the "Things are thus and so" just is the presumption that hylomorphism is correct. — Banno

So how do you get out of the starting gate with any inquiry into anything, on any terms?

How do you avoid being one of the ones you criticize, and proceed to speak at all?

Should the most honest scientist admit there is no point to science? There is no real solution possible because there is no real problem possible.

I agree there is a gap between whatever must be and whatever I cannot imagine otherwise, but how do you even make this distinction and speak about it, without the formal, the essential, the hylomorphic identity of some thing distinguishable from the other thing?

If we throw all metaphysics out, seems to me, to be consistent, we have to throw out language. When we speak, forms and essences emerge, as do objectivity, universality, meaning, truth, in addition to all of the things we speak about. It is an unavoidable consequence of asking any question that we appeal to, or presuppose, or invoke, or construct, a metaphysic.

Why fight it, if we choose to speak and communicate our ideas at all?

This is not to say some sort of platonic form of “language” is eternally floating around waiting to be participated in when we speak “English”, but, however it works, language only seems to work, where meaning and truth and essential definition are invoked.

But of course, those who want to believe in a just personal God will always construct some kind of exculpatory theory or version of God in which suffering is either necessary, the result of some contamination, or entirely unrelated to the deity. — Tom Storm

Nothing is that simple for us anymore. Mental struggle and conversational suffering.

It's very shallow indeed if that's your "whole way of thinking about the problem of evil". — Janus

Ok. So it’s my whole way of thinking about the argument/syllogism called “the problem of evil.”

My whole way of thinking about God and suffering includes thoughts of what is “sin” and what is free will, what is the heart, what is love, why did God become a man and die, on a cross….

Anyone who might decide there must be no God because they think they understand the syllogism, had a shallow understanding of “God” or “all-good” or “suffering” or all of the above.

This forum, to me, is not really the place to account for God and suffering, as that would take Bible quotes and histories of saints and in the end, we will only be able to answer how God allows suffering by asking God, so if there is no God to you, there is not only no need to ask the question, but no need to think there would be an answer discoverable through our own reason.

I find myself again at least philosophically more drawn to the Catholic philosophers:

Our minds do not—contrary to many views currently popular—create truth. Rather, they must be conformed to the truth of things given in creation. And such conformity is possible only as the moral virtues become deeply embedded in our character, a slow and halting process. We have, he writes on one occasion, “lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity.” That is, in order to know the truth we must become persons of a certain sort. The full transformation of character that we need will, in fact, finally require the virtues of faith, hope, and love. And this transformation will not necessarily—perhaps not often—be experienced by us as easy or painless. Hence the transformation of self that we must—by God’s grace—undergo “perhaps resembles passing through something akin to dying.”
— Obituary for Josef Pieper, Thomistic Philosopher

Amen to that. — Wayfarer

Amen to that Amen.

complaining about the God they don't believe in doing things they don't believe God ought to do. :roll: — Wayfarer

Essentially, my whole way of thinking about the problem of evil. :100:

The argument concludes the premises on which this conclusion was based make no sense, so why would anything concluded based on those premises be able to be held soundly?

if there is no god and no meaning then needless suffering actually makes sense? It’s what you’d expect to see in a world with no inherent purpose - struggle, chaos and suffering, — Tom Storm

This makes sense to me too. In a way, it’s a tautology and doesn’t really say anything. I can reword it this way: In a world with no meaning, meaningless suffering makes sense (like everything would be meaningless in a world with no meaning.). The tautology is: world with no meaning = all aspects or parts of the world (such as suffering) have no meaning.

But even in this world with no meaning, it still means (sorry) for us here in this conversation that we exist, we suffer, and that there is no power or person (no God) who can change those realities. (So we have to bring into existence meaningful/logical arguments to speak of a world with no meaning, meaningfully to each other, which is a contradiction itself, but I digress into some other, linguistic game. I raise this because that is the main point - we are creating contradictory conclusions in order to defeat the premises we created for n the first place.)

But if creation is about genius design and magnificent order and if God cares for us and wants a relationship with us, then suffering by apparent design does not make much sense. It seems contradictory. — Tom Storm

In an effort to show that I’m following you, I’ll take ‘genius’ as all-knowing, ‘magnificent order’ as all-powerful (organizing, creating physical force), and ‘God cares’ as all-good. Now, if we invent such a God, the formerly meaningless suffering from the formerly Godless world seems to take on a meaning the suffering doesn’t have. It means God is purposely inflicting the suffering on us, or he at least doesn’t care. And so the contradiction arises inside our definition of God. The contradiction is squaring God’s goodness with my own estimation of suffering as badness; God must be bad if I suffer, but God must be all-good if God is God, so God contradicts himself if he inflicts suffering on me and I suffer, so God must not be.

So I see the contradiction. Creator all-powerful good God and my bad suffering shouldn’t co-exist.

What I’m saying is this seeming contradiction arises because of my own invention of who/what God is, and my own invention of the meaning of suffering is that only arises when I assert my invention of who/what God is.

So yes, if we presume to know how God operates, and presume an all-good God would by definition care for my suffering, and presume I know what “all-good” actually means, and I suffer, then either my presumptions are false OR God doesn’t exist.

And so, if my presumptions about God may be false, it is not logically necessary to conclude God does not exist. Therefore, the conclusion of the problem of evil argument that “God does not exist”, is not necessarily a sound estimation of what actually exists and what suffering actually means. The problem of evil is a logical exercise, but not a sound estimation of God and suffering proving anything either exists or does not exist.

——

How should God build bliss from scratch? Since we a judging the process of creation/evolution for improvements.

If we would all call God truly “all-good” had this God created us from our first moment of consciousness to know only perfect bliss and zero suffering, aren’t we just eliminating the process of growth? How is bliss physically built up from nothing? Of bliss is to born from not-bliss, don’t we need not-bliss too? Wouldn’t any process, along the way towards eternal bliss, carry suffering, struggle and process behind it? Does bliss feel blissful in a creature that can’t or doesn’t feel pain, that can’t even remember suffering and struggle and chaos ever? Maybe. Or maybe not as blissfully?

So my conclusion is, if we play God ourselves, invent and create our “God” to be all-good/powerful/knowing, invent our feeling that we know what this even means, it makes sense that we would judge this new God we’ve created as failing to do good or failing to know or have power to do good by me, because I suffer. That does make sense. But I’ve merely stacked God’s deck against himself to rule him out of existence. The animating force behind the problem of evil is our own judgement that God is Not good for allowing or inflicting my suffering, but this same suffering is meaningless (neither good nor bad) without God, so maybe there is a middle ground, where an all-good God and my suffering can coexist (as in a world where God will bring redemption, but I digress again).

Bottom line, there is no logical need for us to be such a harsh judge of God or a harsh judge of our own suffering. Maybe suffering can seem good (as in hard work and growth) and maybe God can seem bad (as in children with cancer, and seemingly unexplainable suffering), and instead of eliminating the seeming contradictions by eliminating the presence of God and eliminating the presence of meaning to my suffering, we simply need to further investigate the meaning of both God and suffering in a world where we can imagine bliss.

When you {plural} use the word "God" are you referring to A) the triune God of Christianity, one aspect of whom is a person capable of empathizing with human suffering? — Gnomon

I think I may have been unclear using the word “justified”. I meant accounted for.

With whatever conception of God there is that fits the all-good-powerful-knowing God of the argument, I am asking why is it we can’t account for all the pain and suffering if there is such a God, but we can account for it without God? Why is it we are fine adjudging “An all-good God would not want there to be any suffering let alone all of the gratuitous suffering, but nature needs there to be all of this suffering in order for it to function at all.’ ??

My answer: we don’t know God; we can’t say “an all-powerful God would be able to prevent all suffering, or an all-good God would not want there to be any suffering.” Those who accept the Problem of Evil argument and conclude there must not be such a God are willing to leave suffering as it is and move on to continue their lives in the presence of no-God, but unwilling to live those lives as justifiable in the presence of God.

Basically, God must be a jerk if he doesn’t immediately end suffering as it might arise (or before suffering), but more likely, God must not even exist. OR, we maybe don’t understand God at all. AND therefore, the argument proves/means nothing.

Tell them! — Vera Mont

“Them. They.”

Calling all Hispanic people criminals (which no one ever said) is as wrong as calling all MAGA racist (which a lot of people say).

Both statements allow one to ignore the details of actual issues, and people’s lives.

“They are all……..”.

No “they” are not.

Too many politicians think we need a “they” in order to attract our votes. Most people seem to love this. I don’t.

When will “we” truly wake up from our caves and clans?

If liberals were truly tolerant and inclusive, liberals could subsume the conservative principles and form a larger consensus. That is how America was formed. But liberals today are like everyone else - intolerant, hateful, deplorable, bigoted, paranoid, prideful, arrogant, ignorant - people.

Did you spend a lot of time talking with a lot of people who call themselves “maga”? Or do you know “maga” from the news and media?

You really might want to spend some time with a person before you judge that individual, particularly if you want to judge that person to be “cancer.”

I get it - there is no need to think kindly of Naziism, and any Nazi’s are bad. But unless we are ready to line up all the Nazi’s and kill them all, we have to talk with them. And if we have to talk with them we need to hope we can convince them to change and renounce the evil that is Naziism. The only way to have that conversation is to believe a Nazi is actually, somewhere in there, a whole human being, who can change his views and make amends for wrong-doing, and see the light we good people see.

Otherwise, it sounds like you just want to kill all MAGA people (like a Nazi does to its opponents).

Those of us ordinary humans who suffer and witness the abuses of these sinners cannot love the perpetrators of those abuses — Vera Mont

And that’s why we will always make war, always victimize, always feel victimized - because all of us are perpetrators of abuse, and none of us are saints.

It’s the feeling “I’m better than them, and they are lower than me” that is the problem, the abuse.

Saying all 40 million “MAGA” hat wearers are sub-human is abuse, same as any oppressor abuses.

Humble respect for fellow human beings - one and all.

The only sinner we can know is a sinner is our self. Judge not, lest you bring condemnation on yourself.

There are MAGA and BLM marxists who sit at my table, together, in my family, loving each other. All ordinary humans. They get along because they don’t judge the whole soul and body of each other based on some stupid, temporary, political opinion. They don’t overlook all of the broad ways they are lovable despite narrow political views.

We need to have hope, not just criticism, in our conversations. People, all of us, should have more hope for each other.

To apply the notion of justice to your suffering in the absence of the presumption of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God would be a category error. — Janus

So why must we apply the notion of justice to suffering with the presence of of God? There is no other way?

What you dismiss as a category error, I dismissed as justification - it’s the dismissal of trying to justify suffering that is the point.

Because we know how powerful God is, and we know what God would want to do with suffering, and we know God knows everything - we know God must not exist because we suffer?

We know how all of that works, how suffering, power and goodness would all be justified, and that this new justified world would have no suffering in it? There is no other logical conclusion? We might not understand what we mean by “God” or “all-good” or “all-power”?

God only wants there to be beauty and has the power to make what he wants. I have an ugly mole. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

In your own view, what are The Forms — Shawn

Essences, or universals, or ideas - intelligible/mental stuff.

Or in art, you have the medium (paint, bronze) and the particular form the artist gives them (Starry Night, The Thinker).

Plato’s theory has a lot of issues, as he recognizes in the Parmenides. That only gives him more credibility. And he was having the same conversation we are right now, but about 2500 years ago. So he must have been prettty smart. Not just “a mistaken theory” at issue.

“What is the sum of 2 plus 2?”

Isn’t the number all of us say in answer to this question not only symmetrical, but identical?

Is it even possible that your answer be the slightest bit different than mine?

So now, does the answer possibly affect the world? What if we asked this question to tally up the parachutes needed on a crashing airplane? Do two minds exchanging symmetrical notions of “4” affect the world in which say three or five people need parachutes?

Suffering holds no intrinsic meaning. — Tom Storm

That’s kind of my whole point. Someone who uses suffering to prove God doesn’t exist is putting some intrinsic meaning into the suffering. Suffering = evil doer doing evil.

But since you said suffering holds no intrinsic meaning, it makes sense that:

predation and cruelty … is not a disproof of god. — Tom Storm

Which is my whole point.

So it sounds like you might be agreeing with me even though you are saying you don’t.

The point of this quote:

Without God or anything behind it, pain is just another experience, justifiable and justified as any experience might be justified. It is what it is; that’s how evolution works. Pleasure draws things toward each other, pain repels things apart; the living grow and take over, the dying diminish and are consumed. Suffering is no longer something to be eliminated or something that can even be imagined as eliminated. Pain is now a badge of honor to those for whom that which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Fire Ologist

is this: the existence of suffering, which in nature has no intrinsic meaning, can be taken to mean nothing, or can be taken to mean there must be no good God, or can be taken to mean that I am a hero who overcame suffering. And my point in saying that is irony is that, we can give ourselves a break and turn suffering into heroism (if we want to insert meaning into it), but for the God who created us and is supposedly all-good, it seems easier to only see God as an evil-doer, or just non-existent, despite using the same formerly meaningless suffering as the evidence.

MAGA is a choice. It denotes a set of morally repugnant attitudes and beliefs. — RogueAI

Ok, so you can hate those attitudes and beliefs, but the people, they can still be loved and respected. Is that what you mean? Because that is what I mean.

The fact that someone votes for trump or against Harris, or for Harris or against Trump, or doesn’t vote, or votes someone else - that can all be hated as repugnant if you so choose to look for repugnance or stupidity or ill-intent - but the individual people themselves, and their whole individual lives when they aren’t voting or aren’t saying what politics they are for and what they are against, the people are as good as any other people, right?

Or are you saying all good people should all hate every person who votes maga because “maga” as understood by good people, says enough to sum up each maga voting individual?

There are plenty of men who understand… — RogueAI

Then there is no reason to say “because you are a man” (which you did) as an explanation for something bad/wrong someone says?

Which is my simple point.

There are no actual baskets more than one person can fit in at a time. It’s wrong to see whole human beings as fitting in some notion of “maga” or “marxist” or “white”.

Politics, like the state, by nature, treats people as “citizens” or “voters” or as some other small facet of what a whole human being actually is. We are wrong to buy into the propaganda that holds any individual out to be some mere member of some mere class or type.

Classes or types like “maga” can be useful shortcuts when speaking politics, but they are woefully inadequate to characterize an individual person.

Hating “MAGA” (if that means people who wear maga hats), like hating “Mexicans” (if that means people who are from Mexico), is not addressing any actual people, and only shows a lack of interest in actual people.

You only hate your own ideas when you hate whole groups of people for all being members of your idea of that group.

The experience [of suffering] doesn’t change with or without a deity. — Tom Storm

But using all of the same terms from the flip side, the problem of evil says our experience of God changes with or without suffering.

The argument says suffering can’t coexist with an all-good/powerful/knowing God. We suffer. Therefore, we either do not experience God at all (because God doesn’t exist), or our experience is of a God who isn’t all-good or all-powerful.

You said “the experience of suffering doesn’t change with or without a deity.” I’m saying that may be true, but my point is “the experience of a deity changes with or without suffering” and that changed experience is supposed to be of the deity’s non-existence.

The experience of our pain co-existing with God re-characterizes the pain as something God controls, and this creates a new problem for us that isn’t a problem without the presence God - how can Good God leave us to suffer so much pain? This is a new experience of suffering. It is suffering inflicted by God, and not simply the suffering that happens in nature.

When I eliminate God from the landscape, my suffering remains, only now I can accept or judge it differently; I can’t judge anyone or any deity or other personal force for inflicting it upon me, and I can’t expect any such outside force could eliminate the suffering. Life has pain in it. No reason to seek blame or harbor resentment anymore. And in fact, I have to start taking responsibility for my own suffering, embrace it, and see what it is telling me, especially if I want to alleviate it or change, or grow from or overcome or prevent it.

Without God or anything behind it, pain is just another experience, justifiable and justified as any experience might be justified. It is what it is; that’s how evolution works. Pleasure draws things toward each other, pain repels things apart; the living grow and take over, the dying diminish and are consumed. Suffering is no longer something to be eliminated or something that can even be imagined as eliminated. Pain is now a badge of honor to those for whom that which does not destroy us makes us stronger.

So my point is, why should I think my own experience of suffering where there is NO deity, takes on a new character of “preventable bad/evil” where there IS a powerful, good, deity in the mix? Basically, why is God held accountable for making me suffer unjustly if I can be made to suffer justly by nature without God anyway?

We have to assume an all-good God who was all-powerful would use that power to eliminate all of our suffering. That’s not a necessary, logical assumption.

So the problem of evil tells me I have no idea of the significance of “suffering” or “all-goodness” or “all-power” or “all-knowing.” Or no understanding of all of the above. The presence of suffering doesn’t mean that “God” doesn’t exist, any more than the presence of suffering means that pleasure doesn’t exist.

If you want to be able to feel hardness, with that ability, you will be able to feel softness. If you want to know pleasure, you will learn of pain.

We have to be without, in order to receive.

So unless the argument is against the universe for being the universe, and you wish you were never born, I see no reason to conclude Good God and evil pain cannot coexist.

God is loving and good, and yet the world is filled with devastating suffering — especially natural suffering that doesn’t seem to arise from human choices. — Wayfarer

Far more damning is the design and creation of a world that uses death and pain as the engine of survival. That’s pretty twisted. — Tom Storm

That is the irony of the problem of evil. The argument assumes the existence of God, assumes moral objectivity and normativity (suffering is evil), judges God as immoral because we suffer, all in order to support the conclusion that God must not even exist. God's definition, plus my suffering, proves God's non-existence. We need a certain and specific God in the argument to prove the conclusion that such God must not exist.

But if we take God out of the mix, we still have nature; what does that make of the use of death and pain as the engine of survival in nature (the physics of it)? The world is still as it is, with it's pain and death.

We can't call death and pain "twisted" as natural processes without a creator God behind them.

In a world without God, don't we have to jettison "evil" when we jettison "God" and say that pain, like pleasure, is just another sensation, and that death, like birth, is just another moment in a biological entity's life? Shouldn't we move beyond good and evil too?

So now, with no one to complain to (no God to appeal our case of suffering to), why even call suffering, pain and death, evil or bad? There's nothing twisted about pain and death so long as God does not cause them. It's still the same world, same pain and death, just now, because there is no intention behind them, we are without any need to judge or justify pain or pleasure as bad or good.

But in the case that pain and suffering are no longer adjudged evil or bad, why did we think God wouldn't want us to suffer in the first place? Now the premise about what God would want (God would want to prevent pain and death) in the problem of evil argument seems ridiculous. Why would God want to prevent suffering and pain if these are not evil?

But the real irony is, without God, for some reason, this same life is now seen as the triumph of nature, with life finding a way despite calamity after insufferable calamity. If we take God out of the equation, we see those beings that bear suffering and overcome pain as heroic and good. Suffering almost becomes justified by all of the lives that follow it. Suffering adds to the good of living once it is overcome.

Yet though we can, in a secular way, save our triumph and heroism, we haven't found a way to save our God (at least not in the minds of modern geniuses and academics).

the Bible deosn't help as it depicts a pretty nasty deity who has no issues with slavery and genocide and behaves like a mafia boss, demanding deference and worship to sooth his seemingly fragile ego, so there is that. — Tom Storm

You sound like a hotel guest who doesn't have enough towels (or who can't read his Gideons Bible).

Bottom line to me is, the only way for me to be me, for me to become free one day, for me to participate in the structure of my own character, for me to be able to love, for me to recognize something as good and to choose that good - the world has to be as it is. And this is for each of us. for me to be different than Tom, and for Tom to be different than all others, the world can only be as the world is.

Individuated entities, like Tom, or the moon, don't get to sit in existence, for however long they might exist, without breaking free, which causes suffering.

I suffer so that I can be me. Suffering has to be, for something precisely like me to come into existence.

Its not a 'best of all possible worlds' argument; its a 'there is only one world anyway' argument. I think God does not have the power to create me as me in any other setting besides the world as it is, with pain, and earthquakes and suffering and death of babies and extinction of species, etc.. I don't know what an "omnipotent" being actually means or is. There is no other possible world, if I am to be in it, as me. Maybe it means, God has the power to do anything, but in order to do me, as I am, the world I live in could be no different than it is. This is the same for all beings that exist.

The only position against God, then, to me, is, God should not have created anything. We should never have been given the opportunity to weigh in on our own lives or God's creation. Fine, if you are antinatalist or a miserable solipsist, or just contrarian. But the position that God must not exist because pain exists? Seems ultimately like a complaint to the hotel manager.

The instant you think there is something that exists that should be or could be improved upon, some pain that should be relieved, you now subject yourself to all of the forces that brought you to have that opinion in the first place. And those forces include the ability to suffer, and the suffering itself; you would not imagine the improvement otherwise.

conservatives can model what liberals think, but liberals have no idea what conservatives think and they think that conservatives are just evil. — Brendan Golledge

There are two moves made in this statement. First, liberals have no idea what a conservative thought process is or how conservative ideals can be rationally supported. And second, liberals conclude that conservatives are just evil. Both conservatives and liberals are too quick to make this second move, but I see it as more essential to way the left talks to conservatives (or won't talk to conservatives).

Most liberals can't (or won't) think like a conservative at all. It's why they are shocked Trump won both elections. It is more essential to the leftist methodology to put people into buckets and baskets, and when the people in those baskets won't use leftist language to reason and argue their way out of the simplistic bucket, the leftist can quickly conclude that such people must simply be deplorable, or evil, or just stupid. So the explanation for how Trump won is that, most of America is stupid and/or evil. There is no rational explanation.

But conservatives know how to behave and think like a leftist, and can even see the justification and rationality of leftism. There is much room for negotiation and an ability to compromise with a conservative; there is nothing to negotiate (only absolutes exist) to a leftist. And compromise is only defeat to a leftist (unless it is one leftist compromising with another leftist, presumably to fight another day anyway).

I’m just trying to wrap my head around the image of Brendan sitting in the middle of a group of MAGA supporters and saying to himself “Gee, these people are so much more morally developed than leftists!”. — Joshs

I don't know if you (or Brendan) are liberal or conservative, but this quote sounds like an example that "liberals have no idea what conservatives think and they think that conservatives are just evil."

MAGA is not equivalent to conservative, just like Marxist or Socialist aren't equivalent to liberal. So maybe this doesn't really address the OP.

And maybe it doesn't help anyone to manage the border, and so the US, they way Biden did. Maybe Maga is onto something moral? To better the planet? Impossible to conceive? How about China - no reason whatsoever to be suspicious of their progress around the planet?
____________

it doesn't seem normal to me that a person ought to put killing their babies on the top of their priority list. — Brendan Golledge

Because you're a man. You take bodily autonomy for granted. And you also can't think. You will never be raped and forced to carry the rapist's child to term. Can you imagine how awful that would be? No, because your posts show a total lack of imagination. There are nine states with laws like that on the books. The fact you can't understand why women are passionate about abortion rights tells me your level of moral development is very low. — RogueAI

This is a great example (assuming Brendan is the conservative and RogueAI is the liberal). Brendan maybe shouldn't have said "killing their babies" and should have just said "terminating pregnancy", but he is discussing priority lists. RogueAI responds to the idea that abortion may be bad, or a lower priority issue with "because you're a man" putting Brendan's whole thought process and his humanity in a bucket - men - and downgrading that bucket with "you take...for granted" and "you can't think" and "you will never be...forced" and "lack of imagination" and "you can't understand" and "level of moral development is very low."

Brendan is sub-human now - no reason to argue an opposing point with him. Who would want to debate anything with such a "man"?? Who would want to use their imagination to understand how Brendan could say killing human fetuses isn't normal or good? What kind of human could think abortion rights is not a priority? Rhetorical questions in no need of exploring - because liberals have no idea how conservatives think, or if they think at all.
_______________

There are as many political beliefs as there are people, and the term “Left” and “Right” are by now slurs meant to impugn another, or otherwise to signal one’s political purity, and not much else. A whole host of fallacy results. — NOS4A2

Spot on. There are no true baskets of people. The basket called "maga" is smaller than any one of its members. Just like the basket called "marxist" is antithetical to the individual working man or woman. We are each a political party of one member, or we should be, resisting anyone who thinks they know anything important about us because we registered "democrat" or "republican", and resisting our own biases when we learn someone else is registered some other way.

If we want to emerge from the subjective at all, from the realm of ideas, we must conceive of knowledge as an activity that does not create what is known but grasps what is already there.
— Basic Laws of Arithmetic, 23 — J

An idea qua idea is made in the mind and exists as an idea based on the existence of the mind in which it exists. There is the ontology of ideas.

But what is an idea, but an idea of something. Like a word, an idea, sitting in the mind, is about something "already there" before the idea of it was formed.

So we have to juggle both the subjective ontology of idea formation, and the objective metaphysics of what is thereby formed.

We set our ideas free and independent by holding them in our minds.

This is demonstrated when two people see the same idea. When one person conceives of the idea of mathematical addition and testifies to such subjective experience by asserting "2+2=4" and then a second person says, "Yes, like 3+17=20", the subjective ontology of addition as it is formed and exists in each subject, is simultaneously objective (independent and "already there"), as they both agree the idea of addition also must exist in each other's minds; it's the same addition each sees separately, in each other's minds, in 2+2 and in 3+17. This is both mind-independent (shared between two different subjects), and only there because of the minds that know addition.

Is yours knowledge of a theory, or of the thing itself? — tim wood

I get the issue. Kant is fundamental. Mind-independent reality is provisionally acknowledged. But what could distinguish the ontology of "theory" from the ontology of "thing itself", if not some thing in itself? How to draw lines without a knife to carve them?

It's as if the question of mind-independence can't be asked without mind-independence.

Kant clarified that we can't know things in themselves. But this epistemological/methodological observation of our constructing limitations is distinct from the notion that mind independent reality (thing in itself) is not even there (in some unknowable manner) independently of our minds.

We must see mind-independent reality in order to say we see any change. We may not see causation itself, or things as they "are" apart from our constitution of those things, but we see there are things apart from any constitution in order to wonder about causation or an act of constituting.

And if we see two things, distinct from each other, like the sun and the sky, we have learned about "independent reality" - identity, unique from other identifiably unique things in themselves.

We just can't explain or justify this wondering. But that doesn't mean we cannot really be smacked in the face. It can't mean that, because I've been smacked in the face. My mind is unable to explain how or why, but does not need to wonder whether[/i] "smacking things" exist, because I became one of them, despite my lone dependence on myself to define what "smacking" is, in response to being smacked in the "face".

if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe.

Exactly. Without mind-independence, "explanation" itself has no explanation.

Is anyone willing to defend a mind-independent view? — noAxioms

Who are we all talking to if not something independent of our minds? What do I think can or will respond to my question? Why do I bother to ask, if I can’t see anything independent of my own mind to be an answer?

But, no I can’t defend my view that there is mind independent reality any better than Moore or Aristotle.

I just can’t defend speaking without mind-independent reality either, so, by speaking to you, I reveal my belief in your independence and my ability to reach through the world from me to you, and for you to hurl something mind-independent back towards me.

If no one responds to my post I will probably give up on the mind-independent facts I think I’ve gleaned and go try walking on my unique concept of “water”. (I’ll tell you how it goes in case you are really there.)

to arouse the approbation of all things indifferently — Clément Rosset, Joyful Cruelty, pg 36&37

I agree that music and poetry are under-appreciated and misunderstood forms of truth expression. Plato downplayed the significance of art and just didn’t get it. Aristotle got it much better, but when you really get it, you fire off some poetry.

The philosophical and deep impact of music is why people feared rock and roll as devil’s music - because good music immediately transports/supplants the self for something both wholly other, and completely intimate. One is both lost completely and found completely when taken over by the inspiring (spire meaning spirit, so in-spiriting or devil-possessing) rhythm, tone and melody; rhythm (beat/tempo) representing the logical/mind/structure, tone (particular sound of particular instrument) representing the body/form/appearance, and melody (song played on any instrument at any tempo) representing the spirit itself, uniting the rhythm with the tone as one.

When the takeover is complete, “approbation of all things indifferently” could be one way to put it.

Music provides the shortest distance to be transported. It can be the quickest way to the intoxicated self/ loss of self. But it is not the only vehicle. Mytics get there through meditation. And any true artist can describe their own version of this, like Keats does above. Even sports, like dance, when muscle memory supplants intention and something beautiful is born (a dance form or an impossible football grab) through no intentional/human effort, despite it simultaneously being born through a total commitment of the body. Dancers and athletes play their bodies like an instrument to channel the same muse.

One can even do this with any physical labor, as in Karma Yoga devotions.

The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always my greatest danger — Ecce Homo

Yeah, Fred, we know your struggles. I just don’t see the gap between the rabble and the overman as so wide as you. Many have found God and uttered poetry, against all odds. The rabble is full of artists.

So you’re unhappy with liberalism? — Joshs

I'm not. I like thinking for myself. I like knowing that class distinction is accidental and unimportant. I like democracy.

Just not at the expense of metaphysics, of universal truth. I need these to think for myself. Universal truth and goodness is what prove there never was such a thing as a divine right of kings.

I don't believe mankind can be his own salvation, just that mankind can contribute to and participate in it. So liberalism has wisdom, but not enough. That's why I say it is a method. It has no content or goal defined. Just amorphous "progress". I don't see any progress unless we have an ideal and goal defined towards which we can progress. Once you try to define goals and ends and ideals, you need metaphysics, institutionalizable systems, and definitions of truth and beauty and goodness.

What are the rational grounds for deeming someone or something beyond the pale and dismissing them or writing them off? — Leontiskos

An unwillingness to engage in a rational discussion.

I'd say the fact that a person is being irrational is grounds to write off their views, their arguments, their thought processes, their senses of the facts. You may get the the point that conversation is impossible.
But this still is never grounds to write off the whole person. No grounds for any basket of deplorables, or any other simplistic caricature of something less than a person.

We are all on the same earth, so if we find someone in our midst who is "beyond the pale" we should ask ourselves, "how is it that I am standing right next to them?"

What manner of dismissal is rationally justified or rationally justifiable? — Leontiskos

Ending the conversation is justified. Preventing them from causing harm in their irrationality is justified. Teaching others about the rational and the irrational, using the irrational opinion as an example of such irrationality is justified.

Is a material position sufficient for deeming someone beyond the pale and dismissing them? — Leontiskos

Never. We are mistaken every time we equate a whole person with any one thing they say or do, or even the many things they say or do. We are mistaken for identifying ourselves or others, with some group or ideology. It's is just not the case that people are so simple they can be known completely by other people. Personhood, is an ocean. Opinions, ideologies, life's work, these are rivers, creeks, puddles. (The only scenario where the simple identification of a person with something outside that person is someone who identifies with Christ, who lives in Christ, but this would not pose a question of writing them off - it would be more like they wrote the entire universe off and joined Christ, but I digress.)

In my view, if you think someone else is a person, but that person has immoral, destructive beliefs and behaviors, and that person is always irrational, then that person is beyond you. You are justified in refuting everything they say, disengaging in any conversation, telling them they should stop, stopping them when they assault or worse. Such irrational immoralists do not cease being persons because they are buried in confusion, irrationality, immorality and destruction. And it is the fact that they are always people that forecloses both the ability to truly write them off, and forecloses the possibility that it can be justified that I write them off. Such a person should be our goal to assist in their salvation.

In my view, anyone who writes off another human being is condemning themselves with them. How much better is a saint than a Hitler? Who among us can accurately measure the distance between them? Is there enough of a gap between them that would permit the saint to write Hitler off? Is that what saints ever do when faced with Hitlers?

___

I think the point of you posing these questions is to demonstrate just what I'm saying - writing off people is a mistake in itself. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Writing people off who are otherwise trying to be rational and discuss their views, whatever they are, is weakness. Once we identify another person as a person at all, it is too late for us to be in a position to write them off.

When we have to shake the dust off of our sandals and turn our backs on people, we shouldn't think of this as foreclosing all hope for such people. We just foreclose our individual ability to reach them, today. Who knows how and whether reason and truth will penetrate their hard hearts some other way, some other time? They are people, just like me, who grow. We should hope and pray hardest for those people who we cannot even fathom how they think and do what they do.

So my short answer is, there is no criteria for ever writing people off as beyond the pale. Perhaps only criteria for writing off my own ability to reach them. Perhaps criteria for writing off other people's ability to help themselves, but then, they only beg for more of my attention, not less of it.

the goal of education under liberalism. It is, in theory: "enabling people to do what they want." — Count Timothy von Icarus

And how are people to know or trust that what they want is what will lead to happy good lives, when liberalism teaches that only gray or illusory or socially imposed lines are all that can define anything we might want or pursue? Liberalism is a good method to achieve a goal, but useless as a goal in itself.

Liberalism, in its broadest sense, since the enlightenment, is the reification of experimentation as an end in itself. There is no single, happy goal, or truth, or conclusion to be drawn, as the coup that toppled religion, metaphysics, and kings was quite thorough. Anything institutional, other than liberalism itself, is oppressive. But liberalism itself is a method, a system of due process, a scientific method, devoid of any actual content or judgment of goodness or truth or value. Instead of admitting there is nothing left to progress towards, liberalism teaches that the excitement and adventurousness one feels in putting a hypothesis to experiment is the best there is for mankind and should be satisfying enough. The thrill of discovery is the goal, but once something is discovered, it too must be taken down, deconstructed, to make room for more "discovery." Such as the eternal recurrence of the same arguments against truth and goodness and virtue.

And then, hundreds of years go by with liberals leading the charge, but today, people still wonder whether they are free. Nothing is left to grab onto and build a freedom. Now we see that the wisdom of liberalism could only take us so far. Now, we must recover (rediscover) something permanent, something conclusive, something objective about goodness and beauty and humankind.

I sound anachronistic, to the myopic. Interesting post brother.

The moral wrong here is that someone set up the contraption. — Banno

That’s where I would have gone with the experiment.

The moral relativist can have a moral framework — Tom Storm

What is the difference between a framework and an objective measurement?

Because those are the presuppositions of the objective moralists who claim there is no reason to ever end an infant's life. — DifferentiatingEgg

You are not being careful enough in your presentation here.

Moral principals.
And objective “good.”
Sound like things a thought experiment won’t be able to dispel, especially one that relies on some notion of good in order for it to make any sense.

Bottom line, to me, morality puts something in between two or more people. We put it there, but there it is. That’s an object. If nothing “objective” is between them, at least not provisionally assumed to be objective among the participants, then morality and moral frameworks are nonsense.

I’m not saying a moral relativist couldn’t be a saint. I’m saying, without something objective about the topic (like any topic), they can’t explain why, or tell anyone what is moral and what is not. And if they were certain about their moral relativity, they wouldn’t bother to try.

Once two people agree on a concept, like “murdering babies is to be avoided if possible” (whatever law you want), we see objectivity rearing its ugly head.

Any objective moralist who claims unequivocal, rigid “good” or “bad” is a fallacious liar or pathetic ignoramus.

Is that what you are saying?

Because it sounds like you are saying objective moralists are objectively bad, and your thought experiment will take them down absolutely, rigidly, every time.

Without something objective in the mix, what is even the difference between a suffering baby and non-suffering baby? They both make noise and wriggle. So what?

Why does anyone have any opinion about what others do or don’t do to others and their babies?

Once you care about others, only objectivity can to mediate a mutual, communicative, interaction among them. And a moral objectivity is supposed to make the interaction a “good” one.

Like this post. There is something objective here, or you wouldn’t know I was disagreeing with you.

My question is, for all moral relativists, why do you bother?

If there is no moral objectivity whatsoever, how can you say pushing the button to prevent the baby from suffering is “actually doing some good”? If you were beyond good and evil, there is no difference no matter what you do or don’t do - no good or evil results in any case.

one has to remain 'whole-hearted and half-sure'. — Jeremy Murray

The fact that people keep making inquiry of morality, to me, is a reasonable basis for a hope all of these same people who even ask “yeah, but is it good?” might one day make a morality that is not futile. But, to me, if all is only relative, or we reduce the responsible agent to neurons and prior forces, we are not talking morality anymore. So we have to address relativity in the face of objectivity.

If we want to be more scientific/analytic about this, I have to show you where I’m coming from. I see three ways the specter of futility creeps into the conversation.

First, if all metaphysics is futile, as an unfalsifiable exercise in the logic of tilting at angels dancing on the head of a windmill, there is no such thing as any “system” and so all moral systems are futile attempts to merely describe a fabricated windmill. Morality merely adds the concept “good” to the parallel question “are all systems futile?” which they may be, if we are honest.

(At this threshold spot where we see the futility of identifying any “system”, you find a similar but different threshold futility due to our reliance on language alone to point out all of these musings and figures of speech like “moral system”.…. This is also where epistemological problems lie, where how we know anything is questionable, so how is knowing about morality knowing anything “true” about morality and not simply about my own construction of something? There is a lot of potential futility to any philosophy before we even get started on morality.)

A second layer of futility arises, if we somehow address the problems with systematizing human experience, and come to agree that metaphysics and moral system-making is as concrete as any science, that we can use reason to agree on universal moral laws and a means to adjudicate our own and others’ actions - we still have to come up with those laws and reasonably apply those laws to situations. What is a moral system and whether it can even exist, becomes, what action reflects the moral law? Making universal laws seems just as futile as making a system, even if we have solved the threshold metaphysical/epistemological problems, given how opposed people are to each other in life. In a practical sense, in today’s climate of distrust, and just stubborn ignorance, no one wants to even listen to each other, let alone devise together a law that will equally tell all parties what to do and what not to do. We face the futility that we will never actually be able to agree on one “system” and so we will never actually create the metaphysical “system” we assumed was possible before but now can’t agree on, and moral systematizing remains a futile attempt. The “law” part of the “moral system” is still cloudy and dubious for us even if we agree the type “law” is clearly possible.

But third, even if we worked out all of the metaphysical questions, and we built an entire system of just, moral laws that the entire world’s citizenry agreed was best for one and best for all, threw a party like New Year’s Eve to celebrate because everyone is happy, together if only for a night - now we each still live in time, and the party ends, and we have to go separate ways, and in future moments we have to pit morality against opposing desires, but protect and keep this morality by being moral, daily, being as good as we can. Seems to me, even if we are certain about metaphysical absolute objective truth, and certain we have found it in the moral code we consent to with our whole hearts, we are still able to render this moral system futile.

But then, is it futile build a moral system in attempt to resist or temper these human passions and reasonings of thought and body, anyway?

Wasn’t it myself I was really trying to regulate with morality in the first place, or, can’t I live according to my morality despite the futility of it?

Can I learn to do better, next time? Is there a “better” I can make in the future that guides my actions in the present and makes them better now as I act?

Is there a moral system that I would create out of my own actions despite anyone else, even myself?

Even though moral systems seem futile and I fail my morality every time, is it still better, and so, good, to be moral?

“Good to be moral” - that’s seems either self-perpetuating, or empty tautology.

I think this is the space the existentialists carved out from which to sit on the question of morality. It’s before good and evil, not beyond it - it’s the understanding that we never got there, because we can never get there. So not beyond anywhere.

But here, for some reason, we can still “be moral”, we just have to be moral, anyway. It’s just that now, morality is a creative act merely among persons.

My sense is this was always the case - we learned to speak, we shared communications, and morality was born all simultaneously.

Making a moral system is self-defining act at the same time. So the universal (system) is the particular (self-defining). So maybe making a moral system simply means making myself better. I still have the problems of defining what’s “worse” from the “better” and identifying what is responsible, and how to codify it in law, but I’m doing all of these things looking at the law as a sculpting of my very soul itself.

We define ourselves when we define our morality and, also when we, ourselves, act according to our morality. The moral sense of things, the sense of “good” agreed upon with another, is tied up with what human beings are. Making morals, universalizing, is tied up with being a person, which is tied up with speaking to other speakers, because being a person is tied up with other human beings being people with you. We each define ourselves, together, with the others. Separate, but with each other. This is what morality is, or comes from, or makes. Being moral is an act as much as it is a law that could be acted upon or a system that could teach us how to live best.

We dont need to equate the law with oppression and stagnant resistance to change. The law is just as necessary for us to rejoin as “us”, as is the lawless relativity necessary for us to be apart in our lawless, silent separate subjectivity.

If I saw nothing objective about our existential condition, and left all things relative to forces of undoing and remaking, then what would be the point of speaking at all? Speaking itself can be futile, even thinking logically if thinking about something that isn’t there. Without objectivity, nothing else is there with us, each, a lonely, cut-off subject.

There are a lot of holes in the above. But hopefully something to chew on in between those holes.

International Law has no enforcement mechanism. It gets enforced when countries agree to enforce it, and the same law can be ignored when countries don’t care to enforce it. But without the individual countries taking steps to impose the law, international law is more like a suggestion, or guideline among pirates.

So, yes.

If country A doesn’t like what country B is doing, A can get a whole bunch of other countries to agree with them and then together, go after B. That’s the world before International Law. That’s the law of nature.

Or country A can appeal to international law and make a case to the UN and the International Court. But then, the opinion of the UN as a body and the ruling of the International Court, no matter what they say, will mean nothing, unless a bunch of other countries agree to the ruling and go out and enforce the ruling. Which is the same picture of things as before international law.

So yeah, International Human Rights are more of a political talking point, and means to make arguments for and against other countries, and propaganda (for a good cause), than they are something with the force of law.

No country will give up their sovereignty to some outside body like the UN, or like an International constitution of laws and rights.

The only real jurisdiction of International law is outside of national jurisdiction, like the open seas.

In the middle of the ocean, no country can claim jurisdiction, and all have agreed to abide by international law. (Basically all have agreed we won’t fight each other for sovereignty over the oceans, just ten miles off the shoreline.). But there is no police either, none with any teeth to enforce that law. So if country A doesn’t like what country B is doing on the open seas, and the international court agrees country B has violated the international law, you still need some country or group to use their own enforcement power to actually stop country B.

And if country A doesn’t like what country B is doing to its own people, within its own jurisdiction, International Law has even less significance. To enforce international law on a country that disagrees with the ruling, you basically have to go to war with the country.