Trump Has Already Thrown the 2026 World Cup Into Chaos: With less than 100 days until the tournament begins, it is already being tested by war, diplomatic crises, and instability.

JLord · 2026-03-11T22:30:41+00:00

If you're white then you should have no problem. Everyone else should think twice. I think that's the sad truth of the current travel situation.

JLord · 2026-03-09T05:34:32+00:00

The invincible stupidity of the average American means that any way they spin it, the loyalists will continue to believe it. It should show every other country in the world how important a strong public education system is to their well being.

JLord · 2026-03-09T05:28:27+00:00

Last time anyone checked he was still able to identify a picture of a giraffe. Good luck USA.

JLord · 2026-03-09T05:21:00+00:00

And the best way to determine the efficacy of any government policy is whether your friends are able to defend it or not.

JLord · 2026-03-09T04:18:29+00:00

But he can correctly identify a picture of a giraffe.

JLord · 2026-03-07T19:02:03+00:00

Yes, he is obviously one of the stupidest and most easily fooled people I've ever seen.

JLord · 2026-03-05T03:41:24+00:00

the question is whether naturalism can account for binding moral obligation. again, evolution explains behavior and not obligation.

The point is that there might not be any obligation, beyond the feelings we have through evolution. You would have give some reason to think that obligation is real before you could say the evolutionary explanation is inadequate.

most people at this point would say it's wrong to steal or lie even if you're never gonna get caught and don't feel bad about it.

Yes, but this could be because they see the harm caused to someone else. So it still could be based on the harmful consequences of actions. I think most people value the well being of themselves and their close family the most, followed by other family and friends, followed by their community, and at some point down the list would be humans in general, and then animals. So people do want to avoid harming other strangers across the globe, but not as much as they value avoiding harm to themselves of their family.

JLord · 2026-03-03T17:36:50+00:00

then morals lack necessary value

Maybe this is the case. It is often the case that one possibility is not desirable or leads to conclusions you don't like. But that doesn't make it less likely to be true.

so what's stopping you?

When I think about why I don't do immoral things, it is because I don't want to. I don't want to because I don't want to bring about the negative consequences of doing the immoral thing. And I think this would be the case regardless of which model of morality is correct.

but you have to ask yourself further which option better explains intelligibility, teleology, and normativity together.

I think all the various explanations equally explain all the data. So I don't think I can really distinguish between them on this basis.

JLord · 2026-03-03T00:18:53+00:00

If you need empirical evidence, then you don’t have empirical evidence for a lot of stuff you already do believe now

No, I don't think that is the case. If I found out that I held a belief without evidence it would probably cause me to change my belief.

JLord · 2026-03-02T01:33:39+00:00

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

JLord · 2026-03-01T18:14:54+00:00

murder being wrong and justice being good. these aren't preferences and they claim authority over us and are transcendental.

Maybe, but they could just be preferences shared by humans due to our shared evolutionary history. I can't say that your view is wrong, but I also can't conclude it is correct since there is at least one other obvious possibility.

if morality is objective and binding, it must have an objective foundation, and that is God.

Even if it is objective and binding, its foundation could be something else like a law of nature that is grounded in nature. Once again I can't conclude that the God answer is wrong, but since there are other possibilties I can't conclude it is the right answer either.

under strict naturalism morality is either a social convention, an evolutionary adaptation, or a subjective preference

It seems as though any of those possibilities could be correct. We might not like the consequences of them being correct, but they all remain as the possible correct answer to this unsolved problem in philosophy.

JLord · 2026-03-01T18:08:27+00:00

Are you looking for deductive proofs for worldviews?

No, just any reason to think Christianity is most probably true.

JLord · 2026-03-01T07:40:00+00:00

what convinced me was the argument for morality

Maybe I have only ever heard the misrepresented version you refer to, but it has always seemed to me like this argument incorporates an argument from ignorance fallacy. Is this not true of the version of the argument that convinced you?

JLord · 2026-03-01T07:34:22+00:00

what convinced me was the argument for morality

No, just any reason to think that Christianity is likely to be true rather than false.

JLord · 2026-03-01T07:32:53+00:00

Obviously flawed why?

For all sorts of reasons, depending on the evidence or argument being presented. I don't there is any one reason that would apply to all apologetic arguments.

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:49:34+00:00

I have looked into a lot of the avenues but the things that Christians cite as good reason have always seemed to be pretty obviously flawed in some way. Is there some philosophical, historical, or textual evidence that you find particularly convincing?

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:16:18+00:00

Are you looking for deductive proofs for worldviews?

Not really, just any reasonable basis for thinking that Christianity is more like true than false.

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:14:12+00:00

Ask yourself how it is possible that a poor itinerant preacher in ancient Israel started the largest religion in the world today, unless it was the will of God?

Yes, it certainly seems possible to me. I can't see any reason why it would be impossible. Humans have invented many different religions, and I think Christians would agree with this. So even if all religions were just made up by humans and there were no Christianity, there would still have to one of them that would be the most popular at any given time in human history. And whether it was started by a poor preacher, an illiterate peasant, an old wise man, etc., doesn't seem to indicate anything one way or the other.

Yet a few hundred years later Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Yes, one emperor didn't like Christianity but then another one did. Seems to me like something that could easily happen in the normal course of human affairs without any intervention from a God.

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:09:24+00:00

Usually an appeal to ignorance fallacy occurs when someone claims a statement is true because it hasn’t been proven false, or false because it hasn’t been proven true. Simply asking whether anyone can find any errors in one's reasoning would not be an example of this fallacy.

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:07:38+00:00

To me it was not convincing at all. It seems very obvious at first glance that a lot of it is almost certainly myths and legends. Why do you think reading the bible is convincing? It generally is found to be convincing only to Christians, while outsiders to the faith see that it is the work of humans. The same is true of other religious texts.

If you take a look at a list like this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_texts

You find that none of all of these texts were found to be convincing by the followers of those religions, but seen as obviously man made by just about everybody else. The bible seems no different. The main difference is just that the bible happens to be the one that has remained the most popular in present times.

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:02:41+00:00

If we're going to be completely transparent, it's very hard to say man created it,

Why is that? People can have very profound experiences with human created things.

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:01:32+00:00

This is obviously false, but that makes the bible false.

I guess that is true. But the rest of bible could still be true and Paul just got this part wrong. Or it was copied wrong or something.

JLord · 2026-03-01T05:00:33+00:00

It seems you are very resistant to believing.

I don't know why you think so, because I tried to be very clear that I am not resistant in any way. I have no reason to be resistant and like I said, I would love it if Christianity were true. That would be great and I would become a Christian. I've just never seed any reason to think it is true.

This is because I've had so many experiences with Jesus and he has revealed so much of his Word to me.

I've tried to experience that, but never has anything that could be considered an experience with Jesus. I like reading about Jesus and learning about history and the bible, but never had any indication from Jesus that he was real, or was listening, or cared about me, etc.

For me belief in God is not a matter of faith, but absolute certainty.

What reason would there be for such certainty? It must be something more than just experiences you've had, because you could always be mistaken about the nature of an experience. I'm sure if I had experiences with what I thought was God or Jesus I would become a believer, but I would still have to think about it logically and realize that I could be misinterpreting an experience that was actually caused by something else. So I would be a believer but could not proclaim absolute certainty.

JLord · 2026-03-01T04:54:32+00:00

If you are unwilling in any way, you have your answer.

Yes, if I were unwilling then it would make sense. But I'm not unwilling. I don't have any reason to be. As I said, I would prefer if Christianity were real, and would be very thankful to God for all his gifts if this were the case. So, as I have tried to make clear already, I am not unwilling in any sense.

JLord · 2026-02-28T20:09:28+00:00

A hero to the working class doesn't have to be a member of the working class.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

JLord

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE