kurt vonnegut said:
Bob Lee said:
If you can't understand there's no compromise to be had between two mutually exclusive philosophies, we aren't going to get anywhere. It would be as if one guy is hell bent on killing the other guy, who doesn't want to die. But then you come along, and say "why don't y'all compromise?"
Do you know what other philosophies are mutually exclusive? Christianity and Hinduism. Or Christianity and Islam. Or Christianity and Judaism. Or Christianity and atheism, or agnosticism, or Buddhism, or paganism, or scientology. Or Catholicism and Mormonism even. But, somehow, we coexist in this country with different sets of beliefs.
Here are some other things that are mutually exclusive. . . . Christian teaching and greed, hate, divorce, gluttony, laziness, drunkenness, idolatry, adultery, eating shellfish, and wearing mixed fabrics. Despite that, and even though you would say we should avoid those sins, Christians are absolutely RIPE with these sins. But yes, the gays and the lesbians and the trans people must be stopped!
Quote:
You also have a philosophical bias that precludes any belief in a law giver, but somehow you've fashioned moral rights and duties for yourself. Where do those come from? How have you missed this? And how do you keep missing it over and over? How do you know what you have a right to, or what are your obligations? Explain it to me.
First sentence is 100% wrong. I simply require evidence to believe something.
I've explained where my morals and values come from many times. I do so over and over and over and you keep missing it. So lets save some time and not rehash it - because you'll reject then ignore it anyway. And on the next thread we meet up at again, you'll just ask the same questions anyway.
On your answer about mutually exclusive philosophies, you'd have to give particular examples. Almost without exception, there aren't the kind of important teleological differences that preclude a relatively healthy brand of pluralism.
What we're talking about about is a difference in the way two philosophies perceive reality and the human person. It wasn't that long ago I was very taken by libertarianism. It wasn't until I had children that I realized libertarianism doesn't account for the inevitability of conflicts of will, and who should win out in that instance. We have the right to raise our children in a society and around people who don't have a tenuous grasp on reality, who aren't insane, who don't believe we're not our bodies or that homosexual relationships are exactly equal in value to heterosexual ones. That those are fundamentally different things. In a society that values children and their innocence. Where your "right to exist" is not apparently inextricably linked with a right to expose children to debauchery in the public schools. All that is clear to me. There are things that are clearly wrong, and things that are clearly good. And the good things are worthy of promotion by our government for the good of society, and the bad things ought to exist in our periphery only. We should work to marginalize the bad.
I'm not surprised that you won't answer the question about where you can derive moral rights and duties. But it's interesting your comments about Christians sinning. I think there's maybe a little cognitive dissonance where on the one hand you have this view of freedom that it's just the ability of people to pursue the things they personally like and enjoy. Like Christianity is only burdensome for people who aren't Christians themselves. But now this recognition that actually, Christianity requires that we subordinate our desires to something EXTERNAL to us. There's a humility required in the recognition by us that we're subject to a law we're not the source of. Our bodies aren't ours to mutilate. Our sex organs are not merely ours for our amusement. We don't have a right to Children, but children have the right to a parent of both sexes, and we have the obligation to educate them in the truth.
A tenet of Christianity is that we ought to hold each other accountable, and correct and admonish. I care about the things on your list (mostly). But we aren't even at a place right now where societal taboos exist at all anymore. The slightest admonishment is perceived as condemnation, hatred, and arrogance. It's so unhealthy.