FunkyTown

I have a few questions: 1) How will this be different from previous attempts to speak with you, where you simply evaded questions or simply answered different questions to what was asked? 2) Why is it that the 4 main academic approaches to ethics are important, but your own approach to ethics are not? 3) Why do you, personally, care about discussing this when you, personally, have no metric by which knowledge of good and evil might be measured objectively? And finally: 4) For the 19th time, are you more interested in discovering truth or in having an argument?

Which isn't to say there aren't sociopaths with no overarching guide of innate moral law. There are, just like there are people who were born blind, or deaf. Just because one or two people do not have this universal sense doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You would be hard-pressed to find a society where betraying those who had been kindest to you, for instance, were seen as a great good. Even the worst societies in history became so because of an obsession with some universal good at the expense of all others - Honour(Or the appearance of honour), or familial loyalty are examples which have been twisted to become great evils.

You did not answer it honestly. Nor did you answer the very first question I asked for 70 posts. You have been intellectually dishonest - (Saying, for instance, that 'Any schoolchild knows what 'Better' means' when I pressed you to tell me what you meant by better in the context of understanding morality. When I then asked if you were sure that you meant that any schoolchild knows what 'better' means in relation to morality, you then backtracked and said that wasn't the case despite having insisted it just the post before). You have claimed you have answered my posts and yet, when I decided to go back and go question by question and show how you didn't answer, you then proceeded to refuse to answer -those- questions. You have prevaricated, and slithered, and verbally avoided answering any questions or clarifying any statements. You have refused to answer questions about what standard you use to judge the merits of an argument about finding truth. You have refused to answer even the basic question of whether you would rather learn the truth or have an argument. You attempted to use emotional blackmail when I wouldn't fall for your blatant verbal misdirection and bad faith arguing. I am not angry. I understand why you do it. It's a form of intellectual bullying. You hope to use quotes from famous philosophers as a means of building a framework of you being an intellectual juggernaut. You ask questions not because you want answers, but because you want to set the stage for an argument - An argument where you can engage in verbal chicanery to shift your own standards(If you have to vaguely allude to them at all) so as not to give even an inch to what you consider your verbal opponent. When you are forced to pin down your own beliefs, you find it threatening - Irritating. You first try to avoid answering questions by simply not answering the questions asked and answering questions that weren't asked. If that fails, you give vague answers that you can verbally backtrack if you find yourself on the losing end and can simply insist the other person simply didn't understand your statement. If that fails to work, you feel truly threatened and become so irritated you lash out and use emotional blackmail or ad hominem attacks as a means of controlling the discussion. And if that fails, you leave with a final dramatically adolescent huff saying things like "You can have the last word." when, in point of fact, you don't mean that at all and it rankles you incredibly if you come off a discussion where your verbal magicianry(To coin a phrase) is exposed. This isn't unique to you. It's not even that original. It's simply you not wanting to be vulnerable - And nobody does. I don't. You don't. Certainly not on the internet. The problem is that it's very adolescent. A more mature way would be simply to take a deep breath and think, "You know? Maybe there are things I can learn. But maybe I can't control all aspects of a conversation, and that's okay. I will engage with this discussion because it is important, not because I want to win some verbal sparring match." That takes swallowing pride, though. And that's hard. So I will ask for an eighteenth time: Would you rather learn the truth, or have an argument?

You haven't participated up until this point, so I don't see how that changes anything. You've simply engaged in bad faith arguments and avoided any attempts to engage with you in the questions you posed. And so I ask for a seventeenth time, Would you rather learn truth or engage in an argument?

And this is a different tactic to slither, and prevaricate and verbally avoid: You are using emotional blackmail to infer I am a bad member if I do not engage with your bad faith arguments. It doesn't offend me. That's fine. And so I ask for a sixteenth time: Would you rather learn truth or have an argument?

I do. I, and pretty much everyone reading this, can see you simply want an argument. I get that. I understand and so do most others. However, based upon your previous posts, I can easily infer that you intend not to argue in good faith - Shifting positions(Or refusing to hold any real positions) to avoid any chance at learning. And that's fine - It's just who you are. It's what's important to you. So I ask for a fifteenth time: Would you rather learn truth or simply have an argument?

And you have, yet again, prevaricated and slithered and verbally avoided. For the fourteenth time, would you rather learn truth or argue?

How interesting. You didn't answer whether or not you thought taking 70 posts to answer the original question I had posed constitutes an appropriate time frame for answering questions. So I will ask for a thirteenth time: Do you want to just argue, or do you want to learn truth?

You have heard what the LDS think. We believe that, through the light of the Holy Ghost, moral truths can be known beyond the shadow of a doubt. But that answer is irrelevant to you because you have no framework by which that has any relevance. And it was -not- the same question at all - You asked how we can know moral truth I asked how you could know that you knew the way to find moral truth. That is a very different question. "How do we know what this book says?" is a similar question. "How do we know what reading is?" is closer to what I asked. And it took nearly 70 posts for you to finally admit that you didn't know how you could know that you had found truth. 70 posts. Would you say that taking 70 posts to get an answer to a single question is appropriate, or that it constitutes trying to answer?

All right. Let's start from the very beginning of the thread and go through your answers to all of my (Very few, since I had to reframe so many questions and didn't get answers) questions. The very first question I asked was to establish some baseline for how you would know the truth if it was presented to you - Some basic, fundamental way we could communicate in a way you could accept and understand. Does the word 'Exactly' answer my question? Or would you say you prevaricated and avoided the question there? Would you say you adequately provided an answer that I could use to communicate in any way? Does 'exactly' allow me some fundamental insight in to how you approach and discover truth?

And so you prevaricate and slither and verbally avoid the question again. You are using these distractions from the questions for a very easily observed reason: You recognize the weakness inherent in your own position. You can see them. You're a smart guy. That's why you refuse to answer any of my questions with any detail. These base assumptions you have are so important to your self-image that you can't entertain questions to them, because you see the weakness the moment the right questions come. And it scares you. But that's a good thing - You need to recognize that feeling in order to see real truth, to recognize that cognitive dissonance should not control you. And so I ask again for a 12th time: Would you rather have an argument or know the truth?

"Transparent" implies a two-way transparency. You ask questions and refuse to provide the metric by which you judge them. You make statements, then backtrack when you realize they don't help your position(Such as when you said 'Even a school child understands what better means' in the context of understanding morality). That is a 'Moving the goalpost' fallacy. You make a sweeping claim that man cannot know moral truth, but refuse to clarify why you believe that. You engage in sophistry as a distraction, refusing to clarify your own positions as those positions can then be dismantled and examined in detail - Detail that you realize will not stand up to scrutiny. You refuse to answer any questions with any degree of certainty on your positions, nor on what metrics you use to judge other positions(Because you know those same metrics would be used on your positions, which you also refuse to clarify). What I am doing is, in teaching terms, called 'Refocusing'. It's when a student is determined to derail. I understand what you're doing and why, even if you don't. That's fine. It doesn''t offend me or bother me. It just means I have to keep refocusing back to the basics of what your question were. So I ask for an eleventh time: Would you rather have an argument or know the truth?

You did not answer it. You prevaricated, and slithered, and verbally avoided the question. And so I ask for a tenth time: Would you rather have an argument or know the truth?

Like a teacher who says he will assess an argument, but refuses to define the metric by which he will judge said argument, you are creating an impossible task. I ask for the ninth time, only to have you prevaricate, and slither, and verbally avoid the question: Would you rather have an argument or know the truth?

And so you prevaricate, and slither, and verbally avoid the question again. Would you rather have an argument or know the truth?

I certainly do claim to know somebody who does, but I cannot prove anything to you until I understand the basis for your beliefs. And so I ask again, only to have you prevaricate, and slither, and verbally avoid the question: Would you rather have an argument or know the truth?

That is impossible, and I will tell you why. You have a base assumption fallacy: That man cannot possibly know absolute moral truth. And you refuse to answer any questions with any degree of certainty. You choose to prevaricate and slither, and verbally avoid any questions. You refuse to take a stance on literally anything and the base with which you place your assumptions is impossible to determine. To have an argument, you must take a position and be able to justify it. You can not and you do not, because you refuse to answer counter-questions. You not only don't know the truth and admit you know the truth, but you can't have an argument because you refuse to clarify your position. You have lost opportunity to do both and end up doing neither. So I will ask again, only to have you avoid the question again: Would you rather have an argument or know the truth?

You have not answered the question. Would you rather know the truth or have an argument? That's an either/or question. Maybe you didn't understand, which is fair. That's why I am clarifying. Would you rather know the truth or have an argument?

You are prevaricating. You still haven't answered the question. Would you rather know the truth or have an argument?

And you prevaricate once again. Would you rather know the truth or have an argument?

Now that's interesting. In over a hundred posts, and asking numerous questions, I know the following about your beliefs: 1) You believe that man cannot possibly know objective truth as to what is moral. 2) You believe that a man did, indeed, know objective truth about what is moral - Jesus. Or he saved us without knowing objective truth about morality. Or he was just a moral philosopher who improved us without knowing what objective truth in morality was. 3) You believe we get better morally 4) You have no way of measuring what 'better' means, nor do you have any concept of how we could possibly know that it was better. 5) You believe even a school child knows what 'better' means,. 6) You do not know what 'better' means in the context you were using it in - That is, in the context of improved morality and understanding. 7) You have no reason to believe we get better morally as a species due to the aforementioned lack of any possible measuring stick for what better means, but you like to think of yourself as an optimist and optimists believe things are better. 😎 You hate answering questions. How accurate am I in this assessment, I ask, knowing the answer is that I am probably wrong about all 8 assumptions because I have been wrong about every attempt at interpreting your words in this several hundred thread back and forth. Because you refuse to answer any questions. Do you see that you aren't actually answering anything and are completely unable to learn anything, because you reject plain truths, but by the same token are unwilling to share any method by which you accept truth? You spoke about the Gospels as the (Least inaccurate/most accurate/vaguely accurate/very accurate/somewhere in between all those) source of truth in the bible. Do you know why John spoke in the poetic verse of the Greeks, Luke spoke in clinical Jewish historical words and every gospel used slightly different methods of pushing truth? It's because they were all being written for a different audience, who had different standards by which truth could be known. If we do not know your standard, we can not communicate in a manner anyone can reach you with. So, please answer - This is not a rhetorical device, or a question you need to just think about: I genuinely,, honestly, want to know the real answer - Without ambiguity. Do you want to know the truth more than you want to argue?

Then the answer to my question was not 'I believe the Gospels are the most reliable part of scripture'. The answer to my question was, "Not really. He probably existed as a man, but whether he taught the things he did or did the things they say he did, I have no firm belief." Do you understand how you are being deliberately obtuse? In over a hundred posts, you have not directly answered any question I have asked. You have asked how we can know the truth, I asked how you would know that you knew the truth. You prevaricated. I gave a sample morals question and asked how you came to your conclusion and you gave those same vague answers. You need to ask yourself a question: Are you really searching for truth? If so, why are you so afraid of answering questions?

A raft is the most reliable piece of transportation between a raft, a paper airplane and an anvil. I still wouldn't cross the ocean in one. "The most reliable" could mean you think all of the Old Testament is terrible and the new testament only barely better, simply by virtue of having more connection to traceable historicity. Or you could think they're all incredibly reliable, but the Gospels are absolute truth while the Old Testament is more parable. Or you could believe that the New Testament is filled with error, the Gospels slightly less so and the Old Testament slightly more so. If you believe the Gospels are the most reliable(But still unreliable), that could mean you believe: Jesus was a fiercely pious man and a radical who lied to try to save the Jews from the Romans and committed no miracles. Jesus was the Son of God and did everything the Gospels say he did, including the miracles. Jesus was a charismatic madman. Or anything in between those three. Do you understand how that statement is so vague as to be meaningless?

And yet,, that is another question that you aren't really answering. Is that a yes? No? Yes, but...? No, but...? Why is it, do you think, that you find it impossible to give direct answers to direct questions? Or at least complete answers?

Now that's interesting. You quote Jesus in this case, and his two great commandments. Do you believe he existed? Do you believe he taught the things he did?