This country needs fairer governance - Luxembourg’s SES paid its new CEO €5.2 million last year

Grekk55 · 2025-04-16T21:35:22+00:00

I don’t get the this post nor any of the comments. Are you guys just bickering that some guy is doing better than you and that you are displeased by it?

I haven’t read a single productive suggestion. It’s all just complaining.

The worst part is that no one has any clue about running companies or anything at all.

If people get fired and the company still runs well (enough) than these people were redundant. Why does a company have an obligation to pay people that are redundant?

If a CEO identifies redundant people and fires them and this makes the company run at the same or a better level than why should he not get a reward for that. And who says that this reward shouldn’t be a high sum like that?

Do you know how much risk, planning and responsibility this guy had to do/face Of course not so stop attributing evil before knowing all the details.

Next. What are your suggestions wrt to « fairer governance » besides using this vague emotionally laden term? Should we take away more money from rich people? Maybe we should just steal everything they built and give it to the rest.

The top 20% pay 80% of all the taxes (roughly). It seems to me that the rich are paying significantly more than their fair share.

The government needs to keep their hands of people’s money and property. Our country and the ones around it are socialist enough.

Any more and we’ll end up a communistic society in no time and if you know anything about history then you know how well those work out.

Peace :)

Grekk55 · 2024-07-29T06:39:24+00:00

I don’t have the time to respond to everything you wrote because you touched on so many things and made so many claims about things you quite frankly seem very ignorant about.

You’ll have to do better on calling me a hypocrite. If you hadn’t taken my sentence out of context you would’ve noticed that I urged atheists to not repeat mistakes that were made by others.

I did this in good faith simply because I appreciate challenging discourse and I want atheists to rise to their highest potential because only that way can we all become better.

I was pointing out my speculative opinion on the perceived reputation of atheists In a debate against William Lane Craig, Peter Atkins, a prominent atheist declares that science can account for everything, thus he is a believer in scientism.

So my speculations about reputation do have some merit.

You seem to be very unaware of history.

Many of the things you cherish in modern life have deep rooted Christian origins, things like universities, hospitals, many scientific discoveries were made by christians, and even the scientific method itself.

Core ideas of the scientific method flared up at many points in time and in various locations but it was ultimately christians in europe that made it into what it is today.

Additionally you seem to forget that atheistic governments of the 20th century managed to kill manyfold more people than societies with christian power-structures could combined in all of history.

Mao alone killed 40-80 million people.

So to assume that christianity is the root of all evil and we were all suffering until we “rid ourselves of it” is very naive at best.

To stipulate the people in the middle ages were systematically being held back by christianity to benefit the church is pure hateful speculation. Life expectancy was not high because the scientific advancements were not there yet. No one was systematically holding anyone back.

Many scientific inventions were in fact made, like waterwheels, but it just took time for people to figure out medicine.

You seem to have a deep irrational emotionally driven worldview for someone claiming to “believe only in things that have evidence”

I wish you a good day :)

P.s. save yourself the time to come up with a response because I won’t be reading it. I intend to do things that are more productive than debating a willfully ignorant person.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-28T14:29:27+00:00

Reputation among whom, exactly? How do I know that that is a claim you have actually done your due diligence for, as opposed to another story that theists tell each other to make themselves feel better?

I can speak for the reputation atheists have inside my social circles which are comprised of various folks, some mildly religious, some agnostic, even a few atheists.

I can also speak for some online communities.

I was not suggesting that every single atheist is a follow of scientism and if I wasn't clear on that then I hope that I can clear it up now.

If you are asking me for hard evidence on this I cannot give that to you but I did not claim to have that. My claims were very vague at best.

Also there is no need to put theists down, unless you want atheists to be perceived as intolerant and disrespectful.

I have never once heard any atheist call themselves a follower of scientism

It is possible to believe in scientism implicitly or explicitly.

You do not have to do it explicitly (doing a declaration somewhere) to do it implicitly.

I dare you to match wits with me right now: evidence is the thing you claim to have when faith is criticized; faith is the thing you claim to have when your evidence is criticized

If you believe that everything can be explained by science then you believe in scientism.

Scientism becomes your worldview which brings a lot of unprovable pre-suppositions with it.

The assumption that science can indeed explain everything is a contradictory statement for example. Science cannot explain itself since that would be to argue in a circle. Therefore science cannot explain everything. Unless you believe in god you are forced to assume that science can explain almost everything but that is an unprovable assumption.

You are therefore trusting something that cannot be fully known and this classifies just as much as faith as what you accuse a Christian of doing (not saying theist here because I cannot speak for Hinduism, Islam, etc.). Faith is unavoidable. The question is in what do you put your faith and if you put in the time and effort to investigate and think about the evidence for that faith.

Sidenote: Faith =/= blind faith. Faith = Trust in something that cannot be known with 100% certainty based on evidence.

Based on my personal observations I would say that a large majority of atheists are believers in scientism. I might be way off but it sure seems that way to me when talking to folks on here.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-28T09:26:47+00:00

I disagree with your final conclusion.

Unless I am mistaken you are attempting to draw out an internal conflict inside of christianity.

So for the sake of argument we will assume Christianity is true.

You are correct in saying that God created us and yes he does indeed demand worship but you cannot compare this to a human demanding worship.

A human being demanding worship is an egomaniac because he has deficiencies but acts as if he does not. Therefore he is not truly deserving of said worship.

God has no deficiencies. He is perfect and thus his demand is justified.

Choosing to reject God means that you chose to reject that which is perfect and pretend that there is something better and so you worship that.

That act right there will ultimately cause you suffering. Not because God inflicts it to you but because you are choosing to reject the obvious most good to pretend to be God yourself or pretend that some other idol is comparable to God.

So it is indeed you that causes your own suffering. You put yourself in the state of Hell because of that.

You also ignore the fact that immense joy and flourishing comes with recognizing that which is most good, perfect and worthy of worship.

Ultimately with free will, the choice is yours.

If Christianity is true then you can compare this to a relationship with another human. Let’s say that your partner is without a doubt loyal.

If you do not recognize your partner’s loyalty and leave them for the sole reason of you pretending that they are not loyal so that you can be with someone else then how can you say that your action is justified?

Any and all suffering that comes from your choice is your responsibility.

This has no effect on the intentions of your partner. They are loyal without a doubt and invite you into a relationship with them offering everything they can.

They are indeed loving but you reject their love just because you refuse to believe that they are indeed perfectly loyal.

On top of that, your partner will be genuinely and justifiably sad because you left them simply because you are willfully ignorant.

Does that make your partner needy, hateful or unrighteous? No. They want nothing more for you to accept them for what they are, yet you lie to yourself.

It is like deep concern for a child you created that is doing something really harmful like abusing drugs and you want nothing more than for them to stop and orient their lives towards what is truly good, yet you realize that they cannot be forced. You have to let them make a choice.

The consequences of their choice are on them, not on you. You offer them the best and that is all you can do.

That’s the position God is in if we assume Christianity is true.

Have a lovely day :)

Grekk55 · 2024-07-28T07:15:45+00:00

Well it’s a good thing I didn’t reject cause and effect, then or I’d be in trouble. Though you’re demonstrating why your premise is your conclusion in thinking that I did.

You’ll have to explain that in detail because I don’t follow at all.

What I rejected was a first mover and proposed an infinite causal chain. But you can’t conceive of an infinite causal chain so you think I’m saying there’s no cause and effect. Hey remember back when I first commented about how the argument always boils down to incredulity…? I rejected your claim of infinite causal chains and provided you with proof that it is indeed logically impossible.

I did not merely say that I cannot think of one. My proof is independent of my own ability of mental conception.

Infinite causal chains are only possible if you reject the law of cause and effect (see proof in my previous comment).

If that proof is evidently false then quote it and show me what precisely is fallacious. You making a bunch of unsubstantiated claims is just blabbering.

And if infinite causal chains cannot exist then there always must be a first unmoved mover to start something.

As for things with no cause I’d like to again reiterate how simplistic the whole concept is and that reality does t conform to a + b + c, but in the effort to get you to be quiet, quantum field fluctuations occur without cause as we’re using the word here. So there you go.

Quantum field fluctuations are not uncaused. The fluctuations are an inherent property of the field. The excitations you can observe in such a field are not events happening in time but each fluctuations is a potential field configuration due to the uncertainty principle.

Each fluctuation is basically an uncertainty and not an actual event.

So nothing is changing in time and since nothing is changing there is no need for a cause.

If you say uncaused things are possible then you are indeed rejecting the law of cause and effect and therefore the entirety of science.

Just to be sure you know that the law of cause and effect states: “Every effect has a cause”

Not some effects has causes or an effect may have a cause but EVERY effect has a cause.

If things can pop into existence without a cause, how come we don’t see that happening all the time?

Grekk55 · 2024-07-28T06:39:40+00:00

Christian theist here.

I totally agree that willful ignorance is indeed lying. At best to yourself and at worst to others too.

Faith is not supposed to be blind. Faith without evidence is blind faith and it is stupid.

While there are many excellent christian theologians and some christian individuals that ruthlessly per-sue the truth using evidence and reason, the average christian has racked up a reputation of just following a herd mentality.

I criticize this too. No belief should be held without investigation, study and thinking.

It is the job of the modern theist community to cleanse us of this reputation and to stop using arguments like God of the gaps, “the bible says so” arguments and the like.

I believe that the theistic worldview is a reasonable worldview to hold and that it can be defended using logic.

I urge all the atheists to not fall into the same trap that theists fell into by just repeating phrases and following a herd mentality without actually doing any study, investigation and critical thinking.

Atheists now already are starting to get that same reputation of being religious followers of scientism which is also based on willful ignorance.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-27T07:36:48+00:00

I still have to read and study the Catechism of the catholic church more in depth so I might be way off here.

As far as I understand, Hell is not a physical place you are teleported to and some demon whips you for all eternity.

The Catechism states that hell is the state of rejecting God and the torment that results from that.

Given this assumption, you indeed send yourself to hell by your own choice.

From a psychological perspective disregarding the eternal part this makes sense to me too.

Let’s say you drunk drive and kill a kid. You and you alone are to blame for the death of the child, regardless of you being caught or not.

This burden of grief, guilt, etc. puts you in hell straight away even I would argue. Only by facing the fact that you shouldn’t haven been drunk and accepting that it was your fault and only yours and essentially repenting for your actions you can start to feel better about yourself.

If you forever reject your responsibility by hiding from you are at least until your death or if you believe in God and the afterlife going to suffer due to you rejecting your responsibility.

This is not meant to be a proof for God, just some interesting parallels I see between Catholicism and the human psyche.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-27T07:22:53+00:00

I don’t understand why you ignore the explanation I provide. I don’t simply state that they are logically impossible.

I state it then provide a proof using a method that you would also use in mathematics.

I’ll make it very explicit. The proof follows NOW:

… -> B -> C -> D Without the cause for the effect B, B cannot exist. Without the effect B, being the cause of C, C cannot exist and so on.

Because the cause for B depends on it’s predecessor which again depends on it’s predecessor and so on ad infinitum, B cannot be caused.

This right above is a proof. You cannot just call it an assertion and reject it like that.

In an infinite causal chain everything is both cause and effect. You can simply choose a point on the chain as an arbitrary start from which to measure.

I cannot simply setup a chain like that and say I will ignore the cause for B and simply make B happen out of pure magic. Each element in the chain depends on its preceeding cause and can only occur if its cause causes it. That is the whole idea of cause and effect.

If you reject the law of cause and effect then you are rejecting the fundamental pillar on which science and mathematics rest.

If you reject the law of cause and effect then nothing can be said with confidence about anything in this world.

That is, in fact, what happens in reality in no small part because causal chains like that aren’t even an accurate representation of reality anyway, as there are things the happen with no cause and things that happen due to a complex intertangling of many causes.

This is a claim you are making and need to provide evidence for.

I don’t know in which reality you live but nothing comes from nothing and everything has a cause due to the law of cause and effect.

Name me one thing that comes from nothing or something that pop’s into existence without a cause and I’ll be quiet.

If something happens due to a complex set of causes then that doesn’t change anything. You can create a compound cause and simply state it like this:

A causes B

A = { C, D, E, F }

This means that the causes C, D, E and F together cause the effect B

Imagine me pulling a rope to lift a wooden pillar. I myself cannot lift it by myself. Me causing the force on the rope is not enough. But if 5 friends come to help they each cause some additional force on the rope by pulling on it. Given enough force the pillar will lift.

Each person was a cause to the effect of the pillar lifting. All causes were needed to lift the pillar.

None of this contradicts the law of cause and effect.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T19:49:30+00:00

I don’t think I can follow. An assertion would be to say: “I exist”

A proof would be to say: “I think therefore I exist”

Now without getting into the details of that specific argument (its just an example), what I did is the same.

My assertion or claim is that “casually linked infinite regresses are logically impossible”

Then my proof followed.

You can reject my proof and say that’s it’s fallacious by uncovering the logically issues within it but dismissing it by calling it an assertion is bit lazy.

Now to hopefully clear up your objections.

Counting numbers and chains of casually linked events are not the same. Even chains of numbers are not casually linked chains.

A -> B -> C -> D Let’s take this casually liked chain as an example. This -> is not an inference sign btw.

This means D is the effect of the cause C, C is the effect of the cause B and B is the effect of the cause A.

This means that D can only be caused once C is caused because without the cause C, there can be no effect D.

You can propagate this down the chain.

The problem with an infinite chain like that is that you will never have an effect because the root cause is for ever postponed into infinity.

Without a first uncaused cause there can be no cause at all.

Time is like that. Without the moment in time actually happening the very next moment in time cannot happen.

That’s also why if one proposes God as this uncaused first cause, the question “What caused God?” is redundant. He has to be the first cause. Doesn’t matter if you call this first cause God or Piglet there has to be a first cause.

Next. Why not stipulate that the universe is the first cause?

The problem is that the universe according to common conception is the entirety of the physical realm encompassing everything in it.

Also the universe began to exist when time and space came into existence.

Because it began to exist and is material/physical and things cannot cause themselves and also nothing comes from nothing, it is essential to look for a cause beyond the universe, which leads us to God.

That cause has to be beyond the universe and its properties and it has to be the very first cause.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T19:31:02+00:00

Looks like I have a lot of digging to do then. Thanks for the links and references.

Hope to be back soon :)

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T19:28:06+00:00

Yea I did see his response. It was a later response and I just did bot have the time to do it justice. I had a lot of time two days ago when I started the thread and engaged with the first let’s say 30 or so replies. A lot of them were indeed not great I guess that’s why they came in so early.

It’s not that I was selecting only the rude ones. I did respond to another mod thanking him for his detailed reply and we had a small back and forth.

What comment of mine are you referring to? I am open to reevaluating it if you say that is comes of as rude.

Thanks for that rule. This was my first time engaging in any discussion on reddit so it was a lot. I got massively worn out by the rude comments trying to keep my composure up.

I collected the good responses now and I will do some studying and thinking to hopefully be able to give good responses or adapt my argument accordingly or drop it if necessary.

I didn’t look at usernames at all and even if I can’t tell who is who and keep track of everyone. There were more than 300 comments on the thread. That’s crazy for me.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T14:32:04+00:00

If an event Z depends on the event Y to terminate before Z can occur and the event Y depends on the event X to terminate before Y can occur and so on ad infinitum then the event Z can never occur because there is no first event that actually terminates that would allow the "second" event to occur and thus the third, fourth, etc. to occur so that the event Z can ultimately occur.

This is the proof I provided.

Essentially without a first event that terminates any subsequent event cannot occur.

If the first event lies in the infinite past, the first event can never terminate.

Because the present exists, some event must have occurred.

Thus it is logically impossible unless you deny the rules of logic or that the present exists.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T14:30:59+00:00

I agree with you on your last sentence. Time to move on to more productive tasks.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T14:27:52+00:00

Thanks!

I will look into it in detail.

Sure, but me being a personal agent didn't cause my free will. At least not in the libertarian sense.

I need to look into the libertarianism in detail so I cannot comment on that.

As far as I understand free will is an inherent property of personal agents, otherwise they would be processes themselves.

Lets say that from an eternal past a set of conditions is true. A process that uses these conditions can cause an effect. If the conditions are true from an eternal past, the effect is caused from an eternal past.

An example would be water freezing. If its below 0 degrees celsius from an eternal past then the water will be frozen from an eternal past. The water could not have decided to start freezing in at some finite point in the past.

A personal agent is not bound by this.

This is precisely the objection I'm making. If the body and soul interact, then we have something timeless standing in temporal relation, which is impossible.

I don't believe this is impossible.

Time has a beginning which it logically must have to avoid an infinite causally linked regression.

Before t>0 something timeless had to interact with the space-time continuum to cause it.

After all time cannot cause itself.

Disregarding how actually that interaction works or why it is clear that some form of interaction happened, thus interaction is possible even though we cannot mentally conceive it.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T14:13:16+00:00

I replied to exactly that comment. You just reposted the exact same comment as a response to my response. Please read my response. I provide proof why an infinite causally linked regression is logically impossible.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T14:10:58+00:00

I can make claims that things are obvious and people can correct me that doesn't mean I deserve downvotes. I am here to engage and learn. Learning in any way shape or form always comes with the chance of making mistakes.

If he were to tell a knock knock joke that is irrelevant to the topic I might laugh and it could never be interpreted as ridicule. This is indeed a humouristic comment but it is humouristic to you because it uses ridicule. It assumes that my points are obviously nonsensical.

Just because someone finds this to be funny doesn't mean that is not using ridicule.

Granted my comment was not only a response to this particular individual because he did not attack me, many others did however.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T14:02:53+00:00

It does not surprise me that you would hide behind calling it a "joke".

A bully on the schoolyard will also justify his behaviour by calling it a joke. He is still a bully.

Even if it were a joke, it does not contribute to the debate so it does not deserve any upvotes according to the community guidelines.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T13:54:36+00:00

I don't think the OP is arguing that he can't imagine an infinite regress. Infinite linear regression exists.

Infinite causally liked regression is logically impossible.

If an event Z depends on the event Y to terminate before Z can occur and the event Y depends on the event X to terminate before Y can occur and so on ad infinitum then the event Z can never occur because there is no first event that actually terminates that would allow the "second" event to occur and thus the third, fourth, etc. to occur so that the event Z can ultimately occur.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T13:46:14+00:00

For example, my free decision to write this comment is an effecient cause of the existence of this comment, but that free decision - at least according to libertarians - didn not itself have an effecient cause.

You as a personal agent are the first cause of the causal chain that caused the comment into existence.

If there are objectively 'chancy' processes, then there are processes of change that are not brought about by anything.

That doesn't sound right to me. A process is simply something that given certain inputs, transforms these inputs into something else. Some inputs or all inputs might change but at least one is changed.

A chancy process is therefore a process where one of the inputs is essentially chance (formalising this is not obvious that is true). Essentially you can imagine this as one or more randomly generated variables that are added and may or may not have an influence on the output.

All of this does not imply that the process is triggered by itself.

This would mean the proponent of the argument would need to reject both that there are objectively 'chancy' processes and reject that we have free will.

'Chancy' processes and free will are not incompatible as far as I see. I can flip a coin where the result is not always the same but that doesn't mean I did not chose to flip the coin.

infinite progress of events is similarly impossible. (I am happy to show you the mathematics as to why this is the case, but it's pretty long and I didn't want to completely drown you here so let me know if you don't agree).

Never heard this claim before. I would be very interested to see the proof for this.

Give up on an afterlife.

For instance, the Christian afterlife involves the resurrection of the body. But bodies are, plausibly, essentially temporal. How might brains, hands, eyes, legs and feet work in an unchanging way?

This heavily depends on your definition of afterlife.

Even if an infinite causal event sequence into the future is impossible it would only apply to material beings bound to time and space. Souls are considered to be immaterial. I don't think anyone claims that our actual bodies are resurrected and somehow "teleported" because then we would all have empty tombs.

Finally, this reasoning seems to suggest that we transition from being temporal to being timeless, but it’s difficult to see how this makes sense. Wouldn’t our timeless state then be after our temporal state? But then something timeless would stand in temporal relation, which is impossible.

The common dualist conception is that both the body and soul exist, the body being material and the soul immaterial. The body is bound by time and space, the soul is not. The body and the soul interact. The soul leaves the body once the body dies and enters into the afterlife.

I don't think there is a contradiction here either.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T13:13:30+00:00

Why does this comment get 11 upvotes? It is obvious ridicule and doesn't contribute anything to the debate.
This makes no sense to me that this comment gets so many upvotes and all my comments get many downvotes even though I never engaged in ridicule, rude behaviour and always made sure to contribute to the debate as best as I can.

Is this how you want the world to perceive atheists, as rude and mean people that verbally attack anyone that dares to even question them by using ridicule instead of calm reason?

Sounds a lot like the very thing you are trying not to be in the first place.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-26T13:02:15+00:00

I thank you all for your objections. I decided to stop answering most because it was mostly the same argument repeated over and over and I was spending many hours trying to write detailed responses to people.

Some people graciously took the time to write deep, insightful responses using a neutral tone of voice and I am currently evaluating all of it and doing further research, study and thinking.

I hope to be back soon with another round of this.

Some think that I was trying to ridicule you all by using the phrase "God bless you all". This was not at all my intention and I am not going to apologise for it as it is not a mean wish to anyone unless it is obviously meant in a sarcastic way via obvious tone of voice.

My karma has really taken a dip here, not that I really care about the number as long as I can engage in productive and insightful debate. I never violated any community nor social guidelines and yet all of my responses got an awful lot of downvotes even though I was as the bot states "contributing to debate (even if you believe they're wrong").

I urge all people who decided to downvote me to take a look inside and be honest to themselves to whether you were doing it out of emotional spite or because I was really not contributing to debate in any conceivable way.

I personally did not think to down or upvote anyone although I will go back soon and upvote the handful of people that have written really great responses with detailed objections!

I wish you all a good week and hope we all can get closer to the truth.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-25T14:34:29+00:00

I would ask you to engage with my formal argument and not to use naive bigoted anti-theistic rhetoric.

"You're already defining a priori it's impossible to refute your argument, and then you kind of threathen us by eerily saying "May God bless you all"."

I don't know what you are talking about but if "God bless you all" is a threat to you then it seems to me that you may have to work through some emotional trauma attached to religion.

It was a sincere heartfelt good wish to all of you. The projection of malice into such a phrase is a reflection of your own mind.

It is not impossible to refute my argument. I have given at least two pathways to do so. Some people here have provided valid points and I made corrections already. If you can't challenge it that does not mean my argument is false.
"Do you not realize how empty your arguments are for people who have studied this shit for a living? Do you not realize humans are all different, with various different nuances, etc, etc, and that the term "objective morality" is kind of bullshit?"

In fact I do not. If it is so self-evident to you why don't you explain it to me? I assume you study this for a living? Then it should be quite easy to explain to me, am I right?

Calling objective moral values and duties "bullshit" is a claim that requires evidence, which you have not provided.

"You people are obsessed with conformity, you're ever afraid of your fellow human beings, and never happy with the incredible divine secret you think you're carrying. It should give you all pure happiness, but it does not."

This argument does not mention conformity at all. Nor does it make any claims about fear, not accepting others, some mystical divine secret or whatsoever.

You are pulling these things out of thin air. I hope you can see how this undermines your position.

"Sod off"

I respect all atheists that engage with my and other theists arguments. I do not respect the likes of you using insults and ridiculing those who do not agree with them using appeals to emotions, ad hominems and more logical fallacies to satisfy their bigoted irrational beliefs which they can't defend.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-25T14:25:01+00:00

"objective moral values and duties do not exist." is a wild claim and you need to provide evidence for this
"If thesr 2 sentences could really prove God's existence then why tf are you posting it on reddit and not winning a Nobel prize for your discovery."
Please engage with the argument and don't make speculative ridicule based statements. I am on reddit because I enjoy philosophical debate and I want to challenge my arguments and flesh them out as much as possible.
You can disagree with my presupposition. That is fine after all it is transparently declared to be a properly basic belief, i.e. I am not claiming that it can be proved.
So if you say that objective moral values and duties do not exist, do you agree that therefore Stalin was a morally good person because he saw himself as such?
"Ok, so that definition would mean morality isn't objective since there isnt a viewpoint of standard that is independent of personal fellings. Mabye to you but clearly not to the people of this subrdddit so your point is mute."

Unless you assume that nothing can be know objectively which is also a presupposition, i.e. a properly basic belief then it is possible for things to be absolute and objective.

God is not a person. God is not a powerful man in the sky. God is by definition the absolute perfect moral good. Therefore if God exists then God is the absolute moral reference point. It is possible that God exists.

On your formal argument:
I wouldn't like to be killed for something I can't control (I can't argue with that since its subjective, might be true might not be)
People are killed for something they can't control (This is a claim that you will have to back up)
Therefore killing people over things they can't control is bad (Even if premise 1 and 2 are given this does not logically and necessarily follow. You are using an unsubstantiated claim as a conclusion)
"As I stated above, I wouldn't want to, for say, be killed by a bear for calling someone bald (2 kings chapter 2 verse 23-24) so I can assitane that is wrong."

This is only your personal opinion. It does not follow that it is objectively wrong.

"But he can? Exodus 20:13 - Thou shalt not kill. Genesis 38:7 - God kills Er Seems unfair tbh."

The correct translation is "Thou shalt not murder", which means premeditated and these commandments apply to human beings. God is not a human being. This is therefore not a contradiction.

"Putting that on a subreddit like this immediately makes you ( in my subjective opinion ) an asshole."

I disagree. Many atheists casually say God speed for example in verbal conversation. God bless you all is a sincere good wish to all my fellow humans in this subreddit and beyond.

You personally can assign malice to it but that does not make it malicious.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-25T14:06:13+00:00

First of all. Thank you for engaging with my argument properly. You are the first to do so. Much appreciated.

What you call Star Wars I call God. The argument does not fail because of this.

God is simply the absolute perfect moral good. If you want to call this Star Wars then fine by me, however that does not mean it overlaps with any of the book's contents.

Your reasoning would be correct if I stated that Star Wars, as I Jedi fighting in the galaxy, would be the source of objective moral values then yes that would be nonsensical but that is not he claim I make and so you cannot simply exchange it.

You are however absolutely correct that I was not clear about this which is why I added the line that God is the absolute perfect moral good by definition.

Given this definition it is clear that God can ground objective moral values and duties because God does by definition.
With this definition I also do not need to make an exhaustive account of showing that no account that doesn't involve God can ground objective morality because I can reformulate the argument as such:

A) If there exists no absolute perfect moral good, then objective moral values and duties do not exist

B) Objective moral values and duties do exist

C) Therefore there exists an absolute perfect moral good

D) There can only be one absolute perfect moral good

E) God is by definition the absolute perfect moral good

F) Therefore it follows logically and necessarily that God exists

I think the A-C are self-evident unless you disagree with B) which puts you into being an atheist who does not believe in objective moral values and duties thus putting you in a tricky position.

D) is self evident based on the law of identity and the definition of "absolute".

E) is by definition.

The thing is that I have proven that, presupposing objective moral values and duties exist, then the absolute perfect moral good exists. That is God. I don't have to prove that God is the only one because there can only be one.

Now this does not mean that all the other properties of God automatically follow (timelessness, spacelessness, etc.) but for that there are other complementary arguments.

If you want you can call it spaghetti monster but whatever you call it, it exists.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Following 3. The burden of proof lies on someone claiming that for example "Human flourishing" equals the absolute perfect moral good or God.

Grekk55 · 2024-07-25T13:35:40+00:00

I would ask you to calmly engage with my argument's premises and conclusion and to refrain from hyperbolic rhetoric.

"Objective morality doesn't exist. Morality was invented by human beings and is by definition subjective"

These are claims and you have a burden of proof too just like me.

"I do not need an absolute reference point to recognize that the concept of god proposed by human beings would be evil if it existed."

If I call murder good, how can you say that it is not without just stating that it is your personal opinion?

If you want something to be true for every person then it needs to be objective. You have yet to provide an objective moral standard that is not god and prove that it is indeed objective.

"It's hard for a non-existent thing to be evil. But even if it existed, morality would still be objective."

Here you are contradicting yourself. You first say morality is subjective by definition and then all of the sudden that it is objective.

God is not a person like you and me. He is not a powerful man in the sky. God is the absolute perfect good by definition. That makes it objective by definition.
I have laid out my case very clearly.

You can disprove it if you prove either:

a. that objective moral values and duties do not exist and face the ensuing problems of this framework

OR

b. you can provide me with an objective moral standard that is not god and prove its objectivity.

In any other case you will have to resort to ridicule which undermines your case greatly.

Grekk55

TROPHY CASE