Doe it really matter if God exists or not...?

[o_O.Q]

JWeinCom said:

 

" The observations of human behavior are objective, assuming you have good ways to record them.  Claiming one pattern is best is the subjective part."

 

my comment to the last comment you made in this post addresses this

 

"We don't just see two things happening together and conclude it's highly likely that one is causing the other."

true i didn't word that well

"What you do in the scientific method is devise an experiment that isolates one of the variables.  Then you run statistical tests.  And even then, you would still only have correlation.  "

so you are pretty much admitting to what i said previously that you are dismissing objective reality... if you are saying that the method we use to evaluate our environment simply reduces down to correlation

 

"No, because the overwhelming body of evidence suggests that cars work as a method of transportation."

yes when they are not broken down, correct... but they do break down and suffer from various issues that have to be maintained, the same way that forms of communication have to be maintained and if that maintainance is neglected like with a car the process breaks down

 

" If we had an overwhelming body of evidence that religion led to objective moral judgments (for example if we had tons of societies reading the bible and independently reaching the same moral systems"

 

i'd say that for many core christian values such as the golden rule, abstainance, charity that is actually the case

 

this doesn't mean that there is no variance between sects, but to try to claim that there is a massive disconnect between what the different denominations are teaching is not true

 

"Because subjective does not mean that all options are equal... "

 

your example is conflating personal preference with shared judgements between people which is what i was reffering to

the personal choice of an individual for one thing over another is inherently objective (edit: subjective typed objective by mistake)(since the person is making a choice based on some type of individual criteria)

that's completely different from individuals giving their opinion on behavior.... the point i was making is if there is no objective standard for behavior then the all opinions provided are pretty much equal since there is no standard for one to be better than another

 

and as i said just now that idea is rubbish since obviously everyone does believe that some behaviors are better then others

so you are pretty much admitting to what i said previously that you are dismissing objective reality... if you are saying that the method we use to evaluate our environment simply reduces down to correlation

I still haven't said that.  There are things that we can objectively observe.  That would be data.  That is our objective reality.  Our interpreation of this data is subjective.

It is for example an objective fact that objects with mass attract one another at a certain rate that we can calculate.  It may be my subjective evaluation that this phenomena is caused by gravitons.

yes when they are not broken down, correct... but they do break down and suffer from various issues that have to be maintained, the same way that forms of communication have to be maintained and if that maintainance is neglected like with a car the process breaks down

The difference is that there are lots of cars.  Language is the only practical method to communicate this data.  It's like if we only had one model of car in the world, and that model was faulty.  

i'd say that for many core christian values such as the golden rule, abstainance, charity that is actually the case  

this doesn't mean that there is no variance between sects, but to try to claim that there is a massive disconnect between what the different denominations are teaching is not true 

We'd expect that human beings with similar minds are going to come to some similar conclusions whether or not a god or religion is involved.  If religion actually helped objectively transmit morals, you should wind up with moral systems that are far more similar, if not practically identical.  That's what objective means.

As for massive disconnects, christians have literally killed other christians for worshipping god the wrong way.  In Islam too people are being killed with regularity because other people think they're not worshipping Mohammed the right way.  Then you have sects like Mormonism, Amish, you have people speaking in tounges, faith healers, baptist sects, anabaptist sects, catholicism etc.  

Even within one sect, you'll find tons of different views among the people.  To quote Matt Dillahunty, "if you want to find out what's wrong with the first Baptist Churh, go ask the second Baptist Church.  If you want to find out what's wrong with the first pew, go ask the second pew.  The differences are far too great to claim the message is subjective. 

your example is conflating personal preference with shared judgements between people which is what i was reffering to

the personal choice of an individual for one thing over another is inherently objective (edit: subjective typed objective by mistake)(since the person is making a choice based on some type of individual criteria)

The example wasn't about personal choice.  It's not about buying which game I think is the best, it's about trying to predict an outcome based on a pattern, and looking for a positive outcome.

that's completely different from individuals giving their opinion on behavior.... the point i was making is if there is no objective standard for behavior then the all opinions provided are pretty much equal since there is no standard for one to be better than another

The standards are whatever values we have.  Suppose that we both agree that teenage pregnancy is a bad thing. 

Suppose you say the best way to do so is to teach about birth control.  I say the best way is to force every teenager to put a picture of Rosie O' Donell in a thong up in their bedroom to kill their sex drive.

These are both subjective opinions.  We have no way of knowing for certain which will yield a better outcome according to our values.  But, you can make a pretty strong case that the course of action I'm suggesting is less likely to be feasible or effective.  Your subjective opinion is clearly better supported than mine.

and as i said just now that idea is rubbish since obviously everyone does believe that some behaviors are better then others

Subjective doesn't mean the same thing as arbitrary.  I have beliefs about what behaviors are best.  These beliefs are subjective.  I believe they are well supported, but they may change with more data.

 

"There are things that we can objectively observe. "

 

the thing is from the line of reasoning you've been using i could argue that this is not really true... i could claim that all human observations are in fact subjective and biased due to our limitations 

for example yes we observe that objects fall to the ground, but for all we know what ever causes gravitation to occur could turn off tomorrow and we'd have to completely reassess our understanding of our environment

 

but of course we don't do this... we do say that some things we observe have occured so many times unaffected by changing variables that we conclude that they are part of objective reality and we use that as foundation to work from

 

"The difference is that there are lots of cars. "

 

there have been many tales through the century all with common themes - osiris, isis, horus |  nimrod, semaramis, tammuz  | zeus , hera , hercules etc etc etc

all were used to communicate an objective standard for how people and societies should conduct themselves

 

"  If religion actually helped objectively transmit morals, you should wind up with moral systems that are far more similar, if not practically identical.  That's what objective means."

 

and in the sense of their core values they are as i stated

 

"As for massive disconnects, christians have literally killed other christians for worshipping god the wrong way."

 

as i said an idea can be sound but the delivery of that idea because of our limitations can be flawed... as i've stated many times that does not invalidate the idea

you stated that we can make objective observations of the world... well how then do you reconcile that with people who think the earth is flat or hollow or that we never went to the moon or whatever? does the fact that some people go astray invalidate the observation? i'm sure you'd say not

 

"Even within one sect, you'll find tons of different views among the people.  To quote Matt Dillahunty"

 

i wonder what matt dillahunty would say about differences in conclusions between scientists?

 

"The example wasn't about personal choice.  It's not about buying which game I think is the best, it's about trying to predict an outcome based on a pattern, and looking for a positive outcome."

 

isn't buying what game you think is best personal choice? anyway what does this have to do with weighing different opinions between people?

 

"These are both subjective opinions.  We have no way of knowing for certain which will yield a better outcome"

 

a better outcome? didn't you previously completely throw out the idea that there's a better outcome?

 

" Your subjective opinion is clearly better supported than mine."

 

how? when we throw out the idea that one standard can be objective better than another standard?

 

"Subjective doesn't mean the same thing as arbitrary."

 

well actually it does if you throw out the idea that one standard can be better than another objectively

 

" I have beliefs about what behaviors are best.  These beliefs are subjective.  I believe they are well supported, but they may change with more data"

 

what's the point of worrying about it if you don't think the data is actually taking you to an objectively better standard?