Philosophy with Cap'n Coconuts

[Cap'n Coconuts]

I've gotta say, this is pretty insulting. It's easy to tell when somebody's only agenda is to make other people's philosophies look bad.

Could not the same have been said of Socrates? You know, corrupter of the youth, bringer forth of strange gods, general philosophical gadfly and bogeyman of Ancient Greece.

Or perhaps I'm not here just to "make other ideas look bad", but to actually evaluate ideas and their implications, and I decided to critique naturalism first.

Since you specifically chose to look at another worldview with your view's ideas of meaning and morality, surprise, they don't line up.

Is this a roundabout way of calling me "biased"?

I have my own presuppositions and biases, yes. So does everyone else. That has no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of anything I have said.

And frankly, I'm doing a better job at it than you are.

First of all, who cares how bleak naturalism might look. If I have cancer would you suggest that I just choose a worldview where I don't since that's just too depressing?

I certainly care, and Bigpotato certainly cares, and I contend that you should.

Besides that, I don't think I implied that naturalism was false because it was too depressing.

Second of all, I give my life meaning the same way you do.

My meaning in life is defined by my closeness with God, and yours is defined by living apart from God. How are these the same thing? Are they not the opposite?

If you're a Christian, let's face it, you aren't meant to be on MFGG right now. You're commanded to go preach the gospel, not go to college and get a career and etc. The blood of every sinner you don't warn is on your hands. Jesus said to not even worry about food; when you go somewhere to preach, somebody will give you some. Yet here you are living like a naturalist, enjoying what the world has to offer.

Does my apparent hypocrisy change whether or not what I said is true? Absolutely not. How faithfully I follow God's commandments have no bearing on whether or not they should be followed. Even the Apostle Paul, as faithful as he was, struggled with his own sinful nature.

Anyway, MFGG is not a thing I use to make my life "meaningful". Fangaming is nothing more than a hobby to me. You have assumed it is something more. Or, perhaps, you are interpreting my meaning in life by your beliefs--wait, weren't you just criticizing me for applying my beliefs to other worldviews?

Since you specifically chose to look at another worldview with your view's ideas of meaning and morality, surprise, they don't line up.

You see, your responses to me thus far aren't really all that reasonable. You are arguing with your emotions and with personal attacks.

I really doubt you have the intellectual or moral high ground you seem to think you do.

Third of all, your morality is probably only different than mine on a surface level. We assimilated to our society's morality. If you claim the Bible is the perfect moral authority but are against child sex trafficking and genocide (Numbers 31:17-18), for example, then you're being hypocritical.

You made a reference to the scriptures! It's a shame you didn't do that for the earlier railing accusations against them in your reply, but here goes.

First, it's convenient that you skipped over the immediate context, which would have given you a reason for people being killed. Here's some highlights you missed:

Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people. (Numbers 31:2)

Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. (Numbers 31:16)

So this event, which you call a genocide (emotionally loaded, like everything else in your post) was because they had caused the people of Israel to fall away to sin! This is not kiling them based on their nationality, genetics, or even religion. This would not have happened if Midian had left the Israelites alone.

And as for "child sex trafficking"? Now that is insulting. It's easy to tell when somebody's only agenda is to make other people's religions look bad. /s

Yes, they spared the little girls. In the custody of Israelites, they would learn the law of Moses. Many of them would even be married to Israelites. But child sex trafficking? Perhaps I have gone partly blind from seeing such an audacious accusation, but I don't see that in the text!

If you're against pedophilia, you're probably against it for the same two reasons I am: you were raised to strongly denounce it, and you understand that it causes bad psychological harm. Not because of the "objective moral standard" you claim to have, which encouraged it at one point and never condemned it.

If you look for pedophilia specifically? Probably not.

If you look for illicit sex, of which pedophilia is a subset? Absolutely.

which encouraged it

Is that explicitly in the scriptures somewhere, is it your interpretation, or is it someone else's?

If you want to discuss.philosophy, awesome. Don't come out to try and deliberately misrepresent other worldviews please.

And what have I misrepresented? From what I can tell, you've misrepresented me far more than I have misrepresented anything.

CC's argument summed up.

Appeal to ridicule (posting a Chick Tract comparing me to him). Straw man ("what's to keep me from becoming a god" even though I never said that). Moneyman's argument summed up.

I have trouble seeing why I ever bother arguing with you. Time and time again, you have chosen to mock people and ideas you don't like. If you're not going to take me seriously, then maybe you should stop posting in this thread. Perhaps I shouldn't dignify you with any further responses because you deserve none.

And the rest of this I'm just going to skim through because replying to everything is time-consuming and exhausting.

your point is that the universe will eventually end, so nothing a person does will affect the outcome. it's like a math equation with no variable: 2+2 always equals 4.

Well, it's more like there are variables, but they basically get multiplied by zero at some point. It's something like lim t-> ∞ of x*(1/t); Your impact X is there, but it becomes less significant as t increases.

while it's true that on the scale of billions of years we won't have much effect, it's completely pointless for living creatures to operate on that scale. a person can make decisions that affect people for a month, a year, a decade or even a lifetime. it's because we only live for a short time that our decisions have meaning. if you or i can have a lasting positive impression on a person's life, we should be proud of that impact, even if the people we influenced will also someday die.

But that positive influence you've had on them will die with them unless there's a higher purpose for it that transcends nature.

I don't believe in free will.

If you don't believe in free will, then why were you acting as if you do?

You were offended that I expressed my thoughts in a certain way. It doesn't make sense to be offended at me if I couldn't willfully insult you, nor does it make sense if I didn't have the will to make ideas look bad. You are contradicting your words with your actions.

The Old Testament doesn't believe in an afterlife

The Old Testament doesn't believe in anything. It's a collection of books.

Though from my impressions, it not that it denies the afterlife so much as it has no idea what the afterlife is. The last verse of Ecclesiastes says that "God shall bring every work into judgment", which doesn't seem very sensible thing to do if there's nothing left of us after death to reward or punish.

But I'd also like to get to the whole "you aren't committing suicide right this instant, therefore clearly proving the existence of Yahweh, national god of Israel and Canaanite storm god-turned-primary deity" thing.

Although my original post was clearly influenced by Ecclesiastes, It was not written to prove that Yahweh specifically existed. I suppose "whoever He is" is not broad enough.

Regardless, you really should know better.