| [part 2] > Yes, you said that to be physical is to be able to have measurable effect [...], but then denied that the measurable effects of the potential of the universe to change state (namely, the measured change in state) implies that the potential of the universe to change state is physical, while you also say that the same kind of measurement when applied to the effects of charged particles implies that electrons are physical ... so, it's completely incoherent. Where did "'the measured change in state' is an effect 'of the potential of the universe to change state'" come from? I never stated this, thus you've made a straw-man and then drew comparisons with it to electrons, effectively making up the notion of me being incoherent. === > So, it is, under certain circumstances, immoral to do what is moral? Moral =/= immoral > Like, how could a sentence of the form "X is moral" possibly mean anything other than "doing X is moral"? It doesn't. There is more to the form of my sentences that you are clearly missing. My form is "A: X while you think X is immoral", "doing A is immoral". Another way to think of it. "A: X while Y". A is moral when "X: Throwing darts" and "Y: aiming at a dart board". You can modify Y to "aiming at someones face" and make A immoral with out changing X. > Either it's defined by one's personal opinion, then there is no objective definition, or there is an objective definition, then it's not defined by one's personal opinion. Both at the same time doesn't work. Oh please. The objective definition incorporates subjective conditions. Ex: Define F as the set of propositions {A -> B, C -> D, A -> ~D, C -> ~B}. F is an objective framework which never changes, but what is derived from F is subject to the truth values of A, B, C, and D. === > Now, I am making some assumptions based on how theists generally justify their position, and it is possible, though somewhat unlikely, that you have a completely different justification. I'm curious. How do you think theists generally justify their position? === > 1. You couldn't have picked a more biased example. If I were to show you that there exist millionaires who got rich with day trading, would you consider that evidence that day trading generally makes people rich? False analogy. I'm claiming that everyone whom employs the methods of the saints achieves their goals of happiness. Your analogy would only be valid if everyone got rich with day trading, and if that were the case then that would be evidence that day trading generally makes people rich. > If you want to figure out whether some method reliably gives a particular result, you have to look at all people who have [carried out] the method, not just those who are known for having ended up with a good result. Even terrible methods usually will not prevent all good outcomes. Replaced "attempted the method" with "carried out the method" because you can fail an attempt, but to fail to attempt the method is to not follow the method. There is not a single known instance of a person having carried out the methods employed by the saints that didn't end up with good results. > but it's not at all obvious that they were particularly good at achieving overall-happiness Depends on how you are defining overall happiness. Many saints died joyfully while being tortured to death. > If you wanted to compare methods, you would have to compare scenarios where either only one or only the other method is being used, or you risk misattributing results. The problem you'll find with this is that you're not likely to find anyone who employs no aspects of the methods used by the saints, particularly because such a person, and you'd agree, would be completely depraved. |