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Again I think you are misreading, SlowBoy is pointing out that I don't believe in God (which he knows because I do not hide it and as I mentioned earlier in the thread, not that HE didn't believe in God). You have to look at the conversation as a whole. Given I am an admitted atheist which I talked about earlier, clearly I can't have been attempting a rhetorical trick, as there is no point in attempting the trick you think I was aiming for, when I have an open history and do not delete my past posts to hide my positions. I make no secret of the fact and have mentioned multiple places here that I don't believe in an objective morality. If I were going to attempt such a trick I would assuredly do it better!
You are reading something into my intentions which is not there. If you want to say that I could be clearer then sure, but I can categorically say you are wrong about my motivations. If you think I am violating the norms of discourse, report me to the moderators.
Oh wow, I did actually somehow read SlowBoy wrong. I went back and checked and everything. Whoops.
In any event, I'm not claiming that hiding your atheism is the rhetorical trick you're using. I think it's that your meta-ethical position shouldn't allow you to respond in ways that heavily imply that you're speaking about a generic moral truth of the matter. In response to a now-corrected-reading of SlowBoy's comment, you could have said something like, "According to my meta-ethical position, the moral truth of whether murdering people for religious reasons is wrong for me is irrelevant. Instead, I'm only pointing out that I think it would be wrong by THEIR worldview," which is the position that you have now spent pages more word count getting around to saying. Does this at least correctly portray your position? That would be significantly more clear and not require all this follow-up. The only downside is that it wouldn't allow you to imply that you think that "religiously-motivated killing is wrong" is a generic moral truth.
I probably didn't have much of a sense of what you were actually meaning to say, given your meta-ethical position, until much much later. In fact, rereading now, I see a shred here, where you say:
But this leads to still the same confusion, which is probably why I spent so much time getting you to say that you really really really just committed yourself to the meta-ethical position that you're claiming. Statements like this are damn near impossible to parse, given your meta-ethical position. You don't have to agree that they are "correct"? "Correct" about what? What truth-value is in question here? Certainly not the truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong," because you have expressly declined the possibility of such statements. The truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong to them"? I mean, you just said that their experiences and values and community and stuff means that this statement is false. Like, full stop. What is there for you to think is "incorrect"? Incorrect about the truth value of their moral statement? I don't think so. Incorrect about something concerning Christianity? Very weird, and would require a very different type of argument than what I see anywhere. Incorrect about how the results would look from the perspective of others? Seems irrelevant. At the very least, I think this is not a paragon of clarity.
But just because I understand they think their beliefs are moral does not mean I have to agree they are correct (as I obviously think my moral view is "better" than theirs otherwise I would hold their moral views, not the ones I currently do).
What I am saying is that the default when we speak and say I think this is immoral, is that we are making such statements from our own point of view, and if not we specify (as I did when I said I don't think God would find that moral).
In other words I think you are getting a little too bogged down in details which don't actually matter to the argument in question. If Christians believe religiously motivated murder is wrong and I think religiously motivated murder is wrong and therefore if Christian Nationalism led to more such murders we both agree that would be bad, it doesn't actually matter why we both believe what we do for the argument. The whole conversation about whether such murders are bad is basically a distraction because regardless of how we arrive at it, most people seem to agree with it.
...but you were specifically trying to consider the opposite of that. This is why it is so confusing. This is the bit
before the "[I do not] have to agree they are correct" bit. Specifically that they don't believe that religiously motivated murder is wrong. So, you think that they are not correct about what?!
Or now, when you say:
What does "better" have to do with "correct"? What truth value... or what thing... or where is the concept that you are talking about?
Remember we are talking about a subset of Christians in Northern Ireland vs Christians in the current US where sectarian conflict between Christian denomination is currently not a real live issue.
So my point is that if you make that a live issue, then there is a chance that the divisions will re-occur. So MOST Christians do not approve of murder, but if you change the conditions that can change as it did in Northern Ireland, and did in the 30 years war.
I think my point stands that you keep trying to zoom into small sections of the conversation. Without going through each section and seeing what my replies are in response to. In one place we are talking about most Christians in the context of the US in another we are talking about a sub set of Christians in Northern Ireland. Those sections won't make sense outside of the context of the specific point in the conversation they happen in.
When I say better or more correct without giving you a comparator the only thing I can be comparing it to is my own beliefs. That is the default, that I think you are not quite getting.
In order to hold my moral beliefs, it must be true that I think those beliefs are somehow "better" than others. It doesn't matter on what axis "better" means in this context, just that if I didn't think that I would not hold my current beliefs but the other set of beliefs that I felt were "better". It is axiomatic that we each feel the beliefs we hold and believe are "better" or "superior" or "truer" than all the others, because if we didn't we would be holding those other beliefs instead. How we each make that determination is largely illegible both to us and the outside world because it isn't.... all together now...rational. So when I say, "just because I understand they think their beliefs are moral, I do not have to agree they are correct (compared to my own beliefs). Whether they think murder is right or wrong I do not have to agree with them just because I understand they think they are being moral. This is a general point, that applies to murder, child mutilation, or kidnap, and whatever side of the fence the person or group I am comparing against falls.
All you need to take away is that I am not making implications about there being some standard morality I comparing to, I am either comparing it to my own morality (if I don't specify) or to some specific set of moral beliefs I think some other group holds, which I will specify. You don't need to make assumptions, outside of the one where when someone says something they are saying it on behalf of themselves unless they tell you otherwise. If I say I think France is better than Poland, that is on my own criteria, if I say the French think France is better than Poland, then I am telling you what I think someone else thinks. You don't have to try and read into that, that I am trying to smuggle in some kind of objective truth that France is better than Poland, for I am not. I have no access to objective truth and I do not claim to have such.
So all you have to do when you read my posts, is avoid drawing an implication that you think is there but does not exist.
I'm definitely siding more and more with ZRslashRIFLE that I'm going to have to just interpret your statements in terms of vibes. When you say that something is "correct" or "not correct", you just mean that you like it or don't like it. Not that it's like... "correct" or "not correct" as those words would be used in any other context. When you say that you think murdering people for religious reasons is moral/immoral, you mean, "According to my meta-ethical position, the moral truth of whether murdering people for religious reasons is wrong for me is irrelevant. Instead, I'm only pointing out that I think it would be wrong by THEIR worldview."
I will try to update when reading your comments in the future. I think this new language is going to be wildly difficult to remember.
But if I were to try one last time...
I really think it does. Because best as I can tell, when you say "X is better", at this point, I guess it just means, "I like X more," and there are no more implications whatsoever. This is especially problematic, because you're using "better" as the sole explanation of "correct/not correct", meaning there are two stages of hidden meaning when you say that something is correct/not correct. The first stage is that you think it is just "better", not really "correct" or "not correct" in the sense of having a truth value. The second stage is that you think "better" is just "I like it". Meaning that when you say, in the future, that something is "correct" or "not correct", I pretty much have to filter it twice to mean "I like it" or "I don't like it". It honestly is no wonder why this theoretical haranguing leads to many of the excesses of wokeism; it really does make it seem like statements that appear at first glance to have truth value are really just expressions of personal feelings/emotions.
It's not about like, which I have tried to explain repeatedly. My position is straightforward and the way most people in the world act as far as I can tell. It doesn't matter what I like, or don't like. I don't have a conscious choice.
As another point I am not actually a progressive and would certainly not identify as woke, and my point is that almost everyone has their morality determined this way, whether woke, conservative, fascist or communist.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden, AOC and MTG, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Princess Diana, Bob the Builder, the Pope, etc. etc. The way I am describing how my morality exists is as far as I can tell how about 95% of the worlds population operate.
They internalize their moral code, and judge things against that. When Bob the Christian says murder is wrong and Christianity is better than Islam, he isn't having a complex conscious philosophical debate with himself as to what he means by better or wrong. He uses the terms as they mean in every day English. If you ask him what he means by better, he may tell you that the Bible is true and that the Quran is false, but that is a rationalization, because he can't know that for sure, he has just absorbed his belief system.
I think perhaps the reason you are struggling with this, is exactly the issue you mention in your last line. Emotions and feelings ARE I think more important than truth when it comes to human interaction and morality. And that is how most people operate, and how we intuitively understand that most people operate. If you are trying to break down things into logical segments when it comes to this, well you've already missed the point. You don't have to do any gymnastics, just read the sentence as you would when talking to someone in the street.
In general, when a Philadelphian tells you the Eagles are better than the Cowboys, you don't have to try and work out what he means by better. He isn't comparing their win/loss records and Super Bowl wins. You don't need to look for any deeper logical meaning, just engage at surface level for that is the level at which he means it. That the Eagles are his hometown team and Eagles fans hate the Cowboys. That's it. If you want to call that vibes based, then sure go ahead, but you should at least recognize that if you don't operate that way, that you are the outlier. And when he comes across a Cowboys fan on the train and they start debating which is better, that there is no objective answer, that they will settle upon.
It sounds like you are making everything way too complicated for your own good.
I don't think I'm making anything too complicated. I'm simply trying to find out if there is any room for rational argumentation on your view of the moral world, where we can say that certain statements have truth value... or whether it's all vibes-based. I think this last comment is by far the most clear embrace of the vibes-based view of the world. Whereas before, it was really hidden in language that seemed to imply other things.
And sure, I understand that you think that everyone else is just purely operating in a vibes-based way, too. That was the essence of what ZRslashRIFLE said, only much more compactly. I get that idea. I just sort of wish you had said that twenty comments ago, at least no later than when I linked to him. And I really hope you won't be so loose with your language in the future.
I was clear. I would suggest you simply read what is said and not make assumptions about underlying motivations as you did. That will almost always lead you astray.
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