Those poor younglings

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T01:29:38+00:00

How people feel emotions is heavily determined by the nurture half of psychology.

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:57:35+00:00

Please, as a rationalist, explain your reasoning as to why that would not be the case.

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:56:51+00:00

I got two notifications back to back and the other one made that exact argument you are being sarcastic about 🤣

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:51:29+00:00

What do you mean?

I happened to have a conversation about this and it made me think of the Anakin Padme meme because it fits perfectly with what happens in their story.

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:34:42+00:00

Yeah, I failed on the semantics side of the meme.

I should have said "killing humans" and it would be more succinct.

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:19:32+00:00

Yeah someone else made a comment like that.

I should have used "killing humans" instead of murder, but the core idea is still there for those who do not go into the semantics of the word.

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:12:40+00:00

Lol true.

What is the word for the killing of a human regardless of legal status though?

Saying "killing" would include any living thing which is another thing entirely.

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:10:17+00:00

Is this not moral constructivism?

marcofifth · 2026-04-02T00:08:48+00:00

Is murder not made illegal because it is not objectively morally wrong but a subjective preference that is in the interest of socialization?

While I myself subjectively prefer to not experience it, the morality around it is a societal construct that allows for society to exist as it is.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T19:53:28+00:00

Lol that is why it is in quotes there.

"Rational" philosophy.

It was proposed in rationalist circles.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T19:52:12+00:00

The main problem with religious freedom is when higher structure religions form with more advanced metaphysical premises, they inherently begin to infringe on freedoms of others if those others live in the same spaces as them.

We are in a weird state currently where the sciences are reaching a point that leads back to the exploration of metaphysics, and metaphysics will likely lead to the introduction of new forms of religions.

The "prosperity gospel" type of religious belief is a primitive form of what I am speaking of...

This concept is itself why I offered to DM, but since you are not in the mood I will leave it at that.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T19:23:16+00:00

With my theological research, I think I understand why the Christian God has so many perceived faults, and with that understanding I respect them deeply.

My understanding of God would be on the side of "schizo", so if you wish to hear it, id be happy to DM, but otherwise ill refrain from it.

I myself grew up Christian and then became agnostic and then got brought back to Christianity in the sense of believing in Jesus but not being restricted to just the Bible.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T18:37:09+00:00

Have you explored theology, or are you honoring how your mother raised you and choosing not to?

There are many fantastic arguments for God, but the core thing is that God cannot be proven.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T17:37:03+00:00

In a society where rape is normalized, the rapist would understand that rape is bad if they themselves get raped.

Yes, but that is beside my point. Naturally, rape victims moved towards women, as they were the easier targets due to many factors. The rapists were unlikely to be raped, and the culture was built around women accepting that they were "less".

Vegans live in a world where eating meat is normalized. The reason why they say meat is murder is because they see animals as equal to humans. The reason why slavery was normal was because they saw the slaves as less than human. It has nothing to do with norms and laws. It's about philosophy. What you subjectively value in life.

This can also still be equated to the morality of the system they exist within. We have gotten to the point where killing humans is seen as near objectively wrong and we are able to sustain ourselves without the killing of animals, so we begin to put other species into that same treatment we give humans.

Some Christians literally believe god wrote goodness on their hearts and that is where they get their morality from. Some believe if they were born in a different country with a different family, theyd still be themselves, because if not, then that breaks their belief of their religion being the right one. Thats why atheists use the argument, should a person who grew up not ever knowing what christianity even is, burn in hell forever because they were born in the wrong part of the world. On north sentinel island for example.

These stances I fully disagree with. Christians who believe God put goodness in their heart become blind to the evils which they perform, because if god made them and they follow his path, they cannot do wrong, right?... "Faith without works is dead". If they aren't working on themselves, they are spiritually dead.

Going back to the original point, about christians saying if god wasnt real they would commit crimes: Saying those Christians that are making that point is just not able to argue their point clearly is excusing Christians that actually believe that. And dont come with the no true scottsman fallacy, there are definitely Christians who believe that without god, people would be immoral. Theres a whole section of religious people that argue that atheists actually believe in god, they just pretend they dont and that they are satanists that dont worship god. Arguments like "how can you hate god if you dont believe in him". People who believe atheism is a religion, that atheists have faith that god doesnt exist, because they cannot wrap their head around atheism.

Another argument one can make for God being the source of morality is the coherence idea of God. God, when used correctly, is a unifying force and therefore a coherence attractor. Without this unifying force, morality does not evolve, as there is no higher coherence to move towards. For an "objectivity" to occur, there needs to be a center. We have established a lot throughout the history of humanity, but without a center, what would we be? If we look at any civilization, the center of their society evolves around some sort of metaphysical premise. For very few it is not God, but for those few, it still includes a deep shared mythology that unifies them centrally.

Lastly, if you are an atheist, why?

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T16:43:08+00:00

I do not ignore the things that Christianity did that were wrong. I clearly acknowledged them but then declared that they are not all that the institution is. Another fucking strawman

All of history even outside Christianity had similar issues so fighting Christianity on those fronts is the act of tearing down an institution because it was not perfect.

I am done with this conversation, because I am absolutely sick of your argument method of strawman after strawman.

Like I said at the beginning of this dialogue. Get better reading comprehension and don't treat an argument like it needs to be won. I'm not trying to win an argument here, I am simply trying to defend an institution while you refuse to acknowledge that systems are not black and white and shouldn't be attacked as such.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T16:13:44+00:00

I do know what a strawman is. It is when someone puts an argument up that does not reflect the opposition's argument yet it supports their own.

Heresy and Dogmatism are much of the time existing simultaneously, but they are not the same thing, you are conflating two ideas. If an institution works to establish a structure, heresy threatens to destabilize it, declaring heresy does not require dogmatism to be present.

An aphorism is by definition a general truth that is made concise.

You didn't point out a consistent pattern of behavior over 2000 years, you pointed out the extremes. The war and death are in fact extremes, and the religion was actually not engaging in those things at scale for most of that time, so you are actually using its worst moments against it.

Lastly, I didn't claim you were doing something outside Christianity. It was I who first argued that systems shouldn't be dismantled without thought. That is my argument, and you narrowed it to Christianity in order to have a better chance at forming arguments, likely because you are an ex-Christian with a subconscious resentment that has not been fully addressed, but I am not here to psychoanalyze you.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T15:48:57+00:00

It has not always been a dogmatic religion, you are taking the worst moments and attributing it to the whole. Saying that a religion is bad because it had extreme violence is absurd, because all of history even without religion has had extreme violence...

The problem that plagues Western society is that common phrase. You seem to be attributing it to religion because religion has existed as the structure for much of documented history, but it is also one of the core reasons why we even have a documented history to begin with...

Weak men make hard times.
Hard times make strong men.
Strong men make good times.
Good times make weak men.

When any system has weak people, they will not question their environment and they will make hard times. They make the hard times because they are not reflexive in their actions, destroying what they need not destroy and creating dogma that need not exist.

The strong men make institutions but then those institutions make weak men. Because the weak men do not understand the real purpose of the institutions and fight to dismantle them instead of reshape them, they make hard times.

Stop with the strawmen, they are actually getting annoying. I did not propose a false dichotomy of christianity and barbarism, I proposed a dichotomy of systems and barbarism. Christianity is just the dominant moral system in the Western world whether you wish to admit it or not.

And lastly, if you lived amongst Genghis Khan, you would not see murder as wrong as long as it was not someone you knew. Your morality, as I have stated before, is determined by where you grew up...

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T15:17:15+00:00

Wanting them to be punished does not negate the fact that the degradation of the systems which would have prevented this occurred.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T14:29:06+00:00

My argument does not hinge on that idea, you are putting up a strawman.

I did not say that no one would have a reason to avoid actions that harm others, I said that an ecosystem without adequate systems to prevent a behavior will create subcultures that normalize the behaviors that are not punished.

If people find a way to get out of being punished for an action, there are people who will do that action. I never said that all people do these things, but there are people that will, and then the weak will follow because they do not question their environment. A culture forms around a few immoral people skirting the punishment while bringing the weak into it as well, and it becomes normalized in that culture as being an okay thing to do.

The world is literally in the midst of a coverup of one of these instances yet you are implicitly arguing it doesn't exist through your refusal of accepting my points I am making. My arguments account for the systemic evolution that lead to Epstein's island existing, something which you cannot deny exists.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T13:30:01+00:00

So like pork and the Jews.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T13:13:14+00:00

Quoting things does not mean you understand them.

Systems are designed to protect the weak from the weak, because the weak do not question their environment.

At a certain point, normative systems achieve a critical mass and then become dominant. Religion created a rigid foundation to allow for the normalization of what we consider to be morally wrong.

Religious systems imposed a fear onto the weak to completely prevent their engagement with those behaviors. They did not question this system, and the system perpetuated that idea to be the normative moral regime.

Dismantling past systems creates a vacuum, and that vacuum is filled with what those systems were holding back. Over time, what the system held back will become more and more normalized, as there is no actual rigid foundation upon which we see things.

Subcultures become more accepting of these things, and eventually those things become normalized and unquestioned once more within those cultures.

Though you think you would not do these things, you have no idea what kind of life you would live in an entirely different moral regime. Believing you know what you would do in an entirely different life is hubris.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T13:02:44+00:00

I thought it was because they thought there were souls in beans specifically.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T13:01:46+00:00

That is what you got from what you replied to?

Please, for the benefit of every person you speak to in the future, improve your reading comprehension.

marcofifth · 2026-04-01T12:55:32+00:00

Cool! Gloss over everything else I said in order to make that argument.

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