God also enabled something which isnt justified, as God enables everything
Enabling a bad motivation can be justified; having a bad motivation isn't.
the problem with this is that God also wants for people to suffer for no other reason than his own. the only difference is that when God does it, you call it justice.
Or if it's the Christian God, because he is actually motivated by justice? We could discss a non-all-good God, but then we aren't talking about the Christian God anymore.
this comparison doesnt really work in framework of "all suffering is justified".
That wasn't my framework, you are oversimplifying it. I said God is justified in enabling suffering, not that humans are.
If God wants for person A to cause suffering to person B, I dont see why person A would be considered evil for doing what God wants for person A to do.
Because their motivations are morally relevant. You can say they aren't, but you haven't proven that, you are just not discussing the Christian view of morality anymore.
And what makes a motivation evil? If its because it causes suffering
No, it could be selfish reasons, or personal satisfaction from seeing suffering, as opposed to justice.
the causation chain doesnt stop just because its indirect. If you made a robot which you knew would go around killing people, responsibility would be on you because causation chain leads to you. Maybe you would not be directly killing people, but indirectly counts just as much
But a robot doesn't have free will. This comparison doesn't work.
If all suffering is justified punishment, then no action is evil and no person does any evil action.
No, because human motivations are not fully pure. If you arrest criminals because you enjoy kidnapping and seeing people suffer, then you could still be a bad person even though a good person arresting the criminals could be justified.
Person comes to God and asks "Am I evil?" and God says "yes". Person asks "Did you create me?" God answers "Yes". Person answers "So you created evil".
Indirectly though which is not the same thing. God created people and people created evil.
snitching results in good (harm prevented)
In Christianity, God has a duty to punish sin. So evil people suffering is justice based on the motivations of the entity causing said suffering, in fact much less than they deserve.
God enabling all evil actions is. It makes him responsible for all evil which occurs.
Again, responsibility for a thing has different implications depending on who is doing the thing and what their motivations are.
causing evil makes someone responsible for that evil. If it were not so, there would be nothing to judge evil actions by
You can judge evil actions by the motivations for them. Causing something indirectly has different implications depending on the motivations for doing so.
If humans harming each other isn't justified, then God helping make that happen isn't justified either.
I've already addressed this with the analogy of detectives getting criminals to snitch.
C logically follows.
God enables evil actions is not the same as saying God is evil.
God causes that, so saying it's not justified is merely saying God isn't justified.
God creating people who have impure motivations is not the same as having impure motivations. It's like saying God creates people who aren't all knowing therefore God can't be all knowing.
Please vote on ultrarated debates when you get the chance. We need a few more votes before next round can start.
Reminder that it's profile then badges then vote quiz then once you pass under badges you can click to be assigned a debate.
If God says "it is wrong to kill innocents" and then goes around killing innocents, God is unjustified by his own words
God says it's wrong for humans to kill each other outside of certain circumstances, that's not the same as saying he's not justified in doing so.
If God does evil, what his motivations are is irrelevant. Doing evil makes you evil. What excuse you make up to do evil, doesn't change the fact that you are doing evil.
The motivations for harming a bad person are what makes it evil though. Since humans are also evil and have impure motivations, killing other people isn't a justified punishment for sin. But since God is motivated purely by judgment, he can punish humans and be justified. This is how virtue ethics works.
I don't need to prove that morality exists, because Christians and Muslims already believe it exists, so I can just use their version of morality.
Well their version of morality says everything God does is justified. So kind of defeats your point.
This makes no sense in neither Christianity nor Islam, who both command people to save each other from evil
if people deserve to suffer, then nothing which happens isn't strictly "evil" to begin with
Humans aren't in a position to punish each other for sin, so its more virtuous to save each other. It matters a lot the purity of your motivations, and no one's motivations are fully pure except God.
it is God who at the very least enabled that evil. So he is still indirect cause
Again, it can be justified for non evil ppl to enable evil people to harm each other (like detectives getting criminals to snitch) even if the evil ppl harming each other is itself not virtuous.
It's not logically possible. This is mainly because God also chose to create evil people, and is as result indirectly responsible for their evil.
I disagree that any of the moral claims you made here are logically proven or that their negation is impossible. A good number of philosophers are moral antirealists. We can't even get people to agree on whether morality exists or not, much less what it would be good or bad for God to do. Depending on whether you're a deontologist, virtue ethicist, utilitarian, etc. there are different answers to whether indirectly causing a thing implies responsibility for it. Particularly if you are talking about Christian belief systems that include total depravity or original sin, most of your claims become a lot more tenuous. I think it would be contradictory to take a secular framework and say you don't have 100% certainty on what's moral, but then say you know for a certainty what it would be moral or immoral for God to do if moral realism were true...if you had that kind of hypothetical knowledge I think you could probably just prove moral realism outright.
Evil = causing bad things, enabling bad things, (all which God does)
You're ignoring cases where a non-evil person can allow evil people to harm each other. Like it's good for detectives to get criminals to snitch on each other, even if the snitching itself is motivated by self-preservation and isn't virtuous. That's a highly oversimplified analogy, but if you accept original sin or total depravity, then God is justified in allowing people to suffer since everyone's natural inclination is to be evil and saving them from suffering isn't strictly "good" unless it serves some higher purpose. People might appear non-evil, but I think that comes down to some combination of moral luck, and (if you are looking at the Christian view) common grace or divine providence, which gives people the illusion of being more virtuous than they are. God's motivation for allowing suffering can be pure since his motives are, but it's still evil for humans to harm each other and call it "punishment for sin" since their motives will always be impure and they aren't in a place to judge due to also being inherently evil.
As a challenge to Muslims and Christians, I challenge them to name 1 good thing their God did.
Created Costco $1.50 hotdog.
Induction on its own is usually useless unless it is part of deductive argument.
Well it proves one of the premises on its own so it is useful for something. If you can use it for that, why can't you use it for some larger argument?
You can make argument:
P1. Smoking is harmful
P2. If something is harmful, then it shouldn't be done.
C. Smoking shouldn't be done
I feel like it's easier to make the argument "Smoking shouldn't be done" than it is to argue for P2. Cause like vaccines are also harmful cause they hurt in the moment, so now you gotta defend banning those when originally you just had to argue against smoking.
The first premise can be either observation (induction)
I mean if inductive argument is allowed, it would mean other forms of argument than deduction are allowed.
I agree that premises and conclusion are usually longer version of saying same thing, but it's useful to check the argument.
Sure but it could mean extending a 500 word argument to several thousand words if everything is put in terms of deductive logic, and it would often just be more confusing.
I think if someone isn't making a deductive argument, he is not making argument at all.
The deductive argument will rely on premises, and you'll need to use inductive reasoning for a premise sooner or later, which is kicking the can down the road. Technically I think you could formalize everything into deductive logic plus a priori premises, but that makes it way less readable. Also, I think most arguments have an implicit deductive argument that's obvious from reading it.
Like if I say "killing homeless people is bad, it violates their rights," people reading it know my argument is basically
P1: If killing homeless people violates their rights, it is bad
P2: Killing homeless people violates their rights
C1: Killing homeless people is bad
But by using more casual language, I can pack more substance into fewer words. Like your comment that I'm responding to right now isn't using deductive logic, but I still get your point.
A lot of people would improve their arguments if they actually placed them in form of premises and conclusion.
You know, this is probably true. Maybe you have a point.
Tho I sometimes start to wonder if debating is a productive activity. At some points, it does feel like it leads to nowhere.
I don't think you can really learn much without seeing an argument for or against something. Back when I wanted to form a better position on an issue, I'd go to one subreddit echo chamber and argue with them until I didn't have a good counter, then go to the opposite echo chamber sub and argue with them, and so on, until one of the echo chambers couldn't really address my points in my view. I think only like 10% of debates lead to significant new info being learned, but everything that's learned is from the 10%. Though for someone more open to new viewpoints, it might be more like 90%.
I was thinking about how a lot of the front-page Reddit political posts seem like strawmen of the opposition, even more so when looking at specific communities devoted to one viewpoint or another. But if your exposure to right-wing arguments is based on videos of people like this, and the post is read as a response to those people, then they make a bit more sense. That said, just because I can understand why people would make posts targeting the lowest intellectual tier of the opposition, I don't think it's particularly useful.
Example:
Mathematician: I think I found a proof of the Riemann hypothesis.
Idiot #1: 1+1 = The Riemann hypothesis
Idiot #2: The Riemann hypothesis is true because Kim Jong Un said so.
Idiot #3: The Riemann hypothesis is true because astrology
Internet Arguer: Look at idiots 1, 2, and 3, and their terrible arguments for the Riemann hypothesis.
While the criticism from the internet arguer is probably true, it's probably more productive to answer the question of whether the Riemann hypothesis is true, you should probably respond to what the mathematician has to say rather than focusing on the endless supply of idiots out there. However, a lot of online forums are structured in a less than ideal way to prioritize clicks and don't allow the mathematician to rise to the top.
During Remy's trial, this line of thought occurred to me, because the defendant's posts all seemed like over-the-top strawmen, but he would link to rage-bait posts off the platform and say those were worse, and if I read his posts as a response to those, then I could see where he was getting this image of the opposition from.
Basically, I think someone will see people making strawmen arguments on r/politics and get downvoted when they try to respond/their comment gets buried. So they go to r/conservative to somewhere more aligned with them and argue against those arguments, but it comes across as a strawmen because people who disagree with them on r/conservative don't make the bad argument they're responding to. So those people call it a strawman and their comments get buried or they get banned, and the cycle continues.
I think places like DebateCraft or Discord or even real life can lead to more productive arguments. But I think people carry a lot habits from places like Reddit which causes them to strawman the opposition and often makes discussion more difficult. I've interacted with a fair number of people where they were using certain definitions or responding to certain arguments they assumed were universal and I had to clarify what their argument actually was before the discussion could move forward. I think a possible solution for this is when entering a new forum, don't assume your ideological opponents are as dumb as they were on the other forum, but this might be difficult to get people to stick to.
Well we just need more ppl on site, then some of them will want to do ultrarated.
Getting guaranteed votes
Because not many people are doing ultrarated debates. Once we get more users, it'll move faster.
I mean the badges kinda are the reward.
I mean, non-literal interpretations raise issues. Who decides when something in the Bible is non-literal?
Hence thousands of years of different denominations going to war. You have to infer using context, but it's probabilistic, not deterministic.
Are we still doing these?
*picks up mic*
I’ll drive-by this wannabe Pac before she steps to me
You’d only blow your own mind, like Hitler’s mortal enemy
You’re in debate retirement? I think it’s more like dead, deceased
I’ll burn you like it’s funeral candles and you’re the centerpiece
I see that it’s your fantasy to have your organ enter me
I can’t tell if you’re trying to settle a score or get with me
I got a different type of side piece, it’s for the lead I keep
And something else can penetrate with AK-47 speed
So let it be; I heard even chlamydia rejected you
You’re like a drain the ill can bow a sickly ugly head unto
You’ll retch up too when you hear the facts I’m gonna sell to you
Called yourself a ten, at least it’s honest cause it’s Thett’s IQ
Nothing in it for me to be candid, but I’ll tell the truth
Beating you’s a layup; not a challenge, just a bet with fools
If any man alive would get with you, he wasn’t well-to-do
Your body rots until you find another bum to sell it to
I think you’re just the type to take the hits and brace for more
So defenseless like the untalented chick I take you for
I’ll wreck has-beens like someone put a hit on Grateful’s corpse
You’ll get as torn apart as all the “ripped” you claim to sport
If I look anorexic, maybe skip the plate and fork
You’re gaining mass like Newton’s specimen on weight and force
Like first and second Thetts you better dip and take the door
Before I smack this MGK-clone into iteration four
It is the ease of access to criticism, contradictory information, AND non-believers that is negatively affecting strict, literal understandings of the Bible.
I don't think non-literal understandings of the bible are that new, even among Christians. Strict literal interpretations became a bigger movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, but up until then, even without all of the modern access to criticism, I think much of the Bible was widely interpreted non-literally. Ironically I think faster communication aided the fundamentalist movement.
Constantine was government spreading the religion and basically being it's sponsor.
That's not the same as forcing it though, it's more akin to strong institutions spreading the religion, and that still happens today. You've kind of abandoned your initial premise at this point, which was that Christianity was "created through government forcing it on people."
Also, debates are much more common now, and atheists are destroying Christians in debates virtually everywhere.
How many people are basing their beliefs off of modern YouTube debates? A small portion actually watch them, and an even smaller portion actually change their beliefs based on the debate itself. If you're just talking about written discourse on the issue, that's been around like forever. Aquinas and Voltaire and plenty of others even before them were arguing for and against religion. I'd rather formalized debate had more influence over people's beliefs and that the best reps for each side were constantly challenging each other, but unfortunately I don't think we are there yet.
It's easy to conclude that something created us. However, saying it was "Christian God" is a huge leap of faith which atheists dismiss easily.
This isn't really a modern argument. Atheists are generally agnostic, so it's not like they have more evidence for their position today than they did before; their argument is just that Christians don't have sufficient evidence, and I don't see how this would be a bigger challenge today than in the Roman Empire.
In modern world where Christianity is neither persecuted nor forced upon people, it becomes a terribly uninteresting religion of worshipping dude on a stick.
Under Constantine, Christianity was neither persecuted nor forced upon people, and it spread pretty rapidly.
It was shown historically that when Christianity is not forced on people, it starts disappearing.
I mean it started off illegal in the Roman Empire. And even after Constantine, new denominations grew despite being persecuted.
"gender equality in cases when it makes sense"
Runs into the difficulty of different values and culture, I expect.
I agree. I wish there were an elegant definition of gender equality we could easily use to decide the right policies rather than having to do it on a case by case basis, but unfortunately I think that is very difficult to come by. Of course, different values and culture are already an issue since some people would say they don't value equality at all. The question is whether it can be solved as an absolute or if it depends on the circumstances, and I think it depends.
AI is getting to the point where it can solve problems humans couldn't solve. Of course it's copying reasoning processes humans use, but that's kind of the point.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anishasircar/2026/04/17/ai-solved-a-mathematical-problem-that-had-stumped-the-worlds-best-minds-for-decades/
I agree with many of your views on free speech, but I'm not sure how a coalition will help. Everyone gets a vote anyway, and with the way the questions are structured, the median voter is going to be represented. There's not really a danger of vote-splitting or an advantage of forming "parties." If your goal is just to encourage people to support free speech, just making arguments along those lines is probably more productive than playing politics.
that naively paints the world in black and white
I mean, this is Remy
I was under the impression you viewed ragebaiting as acceptable behavior. Am I mistaken?
I think he's saying that if other rage bait is acceptable, it follows that his rage bait is acceptable as well. Cause he's fine with both.
People could still come up with original arguments even if they fail to convince the AI, I think most people would have the judgment to see when the AI is hallucinating or when to defer to their own instincts. Talking to the AI is really just to add clarity.
I'd rather people showed my arguments and their arguments to ChatGPT before responding to something I said, because it might help them avoid some pretty common fallacies.
