/lit/ - Literature

>>18436226
All of them???

>>18436226
Pascal's Wager?

>>18436226
No because that's an obviously untenable position. If the entire thing your moral system is based on isn't real, then you don't have a fully fleshed out moral system. You have philosophers like Pascal who argue that whether you can demonstrate that God exists is irrelevant to whether you should believe, but no one's going to say that God's existence is irrelevant. That's just plainly nonsensical.

All debates over natural law touch on that issue in some way.

Ultimately everything comes down to the Euthyphro paradox of what creates/grounds the Good: is it good because the most powerful being (God) wills it (meaning he could have willed something else), or is God good because he embodies the Good?

If you believe the Good is the Good regardless, you can have an optional creator figure. Aristotle thought this (but Aristotle also thought natural law dictated natural hierarchies between masters and slaves). If you believe God specifically revealed specific codes of ethics, or that following God's will specifically is necessary for moral truth to be revealed (or revealed consistently), then you need a creator God.

Even if you do believe in godless natural law you run into the problem that nobody agrees what it is. The very idea that people can disagree about the Good to begin with indicates that it's not simple enough to be accepted on rational merits alone once "discovered," unlike what many Enlighteners thought.

Kant thought the moral law was in us in such a way that enough rational inquiry would reveal it to all, and Kant also famously thought we couldn't know anything about God, except that our consciousness contains certain desires or expectations that God exist. We don't know whether he really does, but we do have the "moral law within us," always accessible to reason. See the short essay "What is Enlightenment" for example. The problem with this is, if Kant were right, Enlightenment (and thus enlightened moral behaviour) should have "spread" naturally. It didn't.

Same basic problem as the Marxists. If Marxism was so scientific and communism so inevitable, "why didn't it become self-evident to the proletariat/why didn't it happen then" is a big problem. Then you get into issues of social engineering: "It's true, but only a vanguard is smart enough to understand this, so we have to control/brainwash the stupid masses into thinking it's true too." That's when you get the interesting parallel phenomenon of fascists in Italy and Germany talking about propaganda to "educate" the people while across the border in Hungary, Lukacs and the other communists are forcing polyamory on traditional families to "break up the bourgeois patriarchy that's holding them back."

>>18436226
No because that’s stupid as fuck

>>18436226
Nietzsche I think

>>18436286
No he hates christian morality and thinks you should develop and live by your own personal moral code

>>18436226
Epicurus

>>18436253
Morality isn't based on reality anyway numbnuts

>>18436323
>source: dude trust me

>>18436323
If you believe in god it is

>>18436317
Butters posted, lol.

>>18436492
I gave the right answer again, lol.

>>18436226
Unironically Jordan Peterson

>>18436226
>fully fleshed out moral system you should obey
>but God doesn't real

Joseph de Maistre
Plato
Kant (read Practical Reason)
Locke
Hume

>>18436313
he believed in a higher power similar to schops idea of the will.

>>18436226
Jewrdan Peterstein?

>>18436226
Kant did, but some ancients did as well. Probably a presocratic that I can't remember right now and cba to check my notes.

>>18438401
Kant's system of morals was theocentric you twit.

>>18436226
Yeah any of the Bush-era cabinet memoirs which muse on lying to you about Iraq & WMDs fits this criterion preddy well. Have fun!

>>18436226
this is a bugman-tier understanding of religion which attributes value to religion on the basis of it having a social utility rather than expressing a metaphysical truth. this is hardly better than materialism and bugmanism of Smith, Mill, Bentham or Marx.

>>18438462
Yes...? Did you miss the point? OP asked if any philosophers argued for theism from a position that it's better to believe in God because of the utility of the belief rather than trying to prove God exists. And Kant did exactly that, Kants argument is that everyone should believe in God because if you don't you can't ground morality in anything.

This is literally Confucianism, or rather it can (in actuality the personhood of Confucius and tracing things back to him is really important in Confucianism). Taoism does this in as much as it lacks an Abrahamic-style creator deity, but it is making a lot of metaphysical postulations that the entire religion is based upon (there's zero point in "doing Taoism" if 道 doesn't exist; whatever a universe where that would be the case would look like idk). Buddhism can do this in as much as the Siddhartha's historicity is irrelevant to the doctrine but I have a feeling you want MUH SOCIETY and MUH MORALS which Buddhism isn't really interested in in favor of a metaphysics and epistemology focused on soteriological advancement rather than crafting some kind of ideal state or social system (even monasticism is just a bunch of shit slapped together because "it just werks bro").

>>18436226
You'll find scientific materialists with a positive outlook on religion often have this outlook - it's the social function of a religion that matters, not the veracity of its truth claims. In fact, this seems to be the default position of the social and behavioral sciences.

>>18436732
The point is that God being real or not doesn’t matter, not that he doesn’t exist

>>18436226
Pascal

>>18436323
morality is part of reality and it is interwoven with other parts of reality

>>18436226
Spinoza (TTP)

Nothing worth reading would argue this

>>18436549
You gave one possible answer (out of a plethora), you dumb cunt.

>>18439273
Prove that

>>18439988
name something that isnt real

>>18436226
One of my favourite books

also this >>18436233

>>18439273
It depends on the definition of reality.
1.person claims that morality is not something objectively observable in the nature aka not real
You claim that morality is a thing that human use aka real

>>18440065
defining 'reality' as 'observable objects' is beyond retarded though.

>>18440087
In that case everything is real (including all of the gods, ghosts and unicorns), which I'm fine with because it's usful something to assume that unicorns are real.
It's just that 1st person talks about certain type of usefulness (morality is not as real as laws of physics or dogs)

>>18440121
unicorns (the referent, a magic horse with a horn) is obviously not a real object. unicorns the symbol and unicorns the idea exist in reality, but the word does not refer to the symbol or the idea; it generally refers to the supposed object. so it would not generally make sense to say unicorns are real.

when we talk about morality it is generally agreed that the referent is already our ideas and beliefs, so saying morality is real makes sense in most contexts.

>>18440149
>it would not generally make sense to say unicorns are real
Which means that it can be SOMETIMES useful to call them real. I don't see any difference between usefulness of gods or of a unicorn.

>when we talk about morality it is generally agreed that the referent is already our ideas and beliefs, so saying morality is real makes sense in most contexts.
Sure. However, there is no science about morality yet and we have no criteria to check whether a certain moral system is superior to other. This is why I claim that morality is not as real as gravity - it's not objective enough.

>>18440149
>it would not generally make sense to say unicorns are real.
Also, calling unicorns "not real" contradicts scientific process (by Kuhn)

>>18440214
you realize that there are 5 major different competing theories of gravity right now?

we have no criteria to check which poems are superior to others either but do you think poems are less real than gravity?

There is no moral theory that is not arbitrarily contrived; that is, one can niether empirically observe nor rationally prove that a given moral theorem exists antecedent to the politicization of man insofar as we presume that to live (the act of living) is tantamount to the manifestation of one's will upon reality. Moral theorems necessitate (1) the creation of a higher power and (2) the belief that humanity cannot *be* moral but, rather, is in a state of becoming moral (lesser than but tending towards).

>>18440257
>you realize that there are 5 major different competing theories of gravity right now?
Why does it matter? It's useful to assume that gravity is real no matter the theory. Ethics, on the other hand, is a prescripive discipline that claims that a certain way to be is better that other way to be. We have no way to check how useful it is.

>>18440257
>which poems are superior to others
Poems are useful sometimes, so they are pretty real. "Superiority of a poem" is not a part of poem. Poems never claim that they must be superior to one another. Ethics do though

>>18440305
>Moral theorems necessitate (1) the creation of a higher power and (2) the belief that humanity cannot *be* moral but, rather, is in a state of becoming moral (lesser than but tending towards).
Not all of them. You are talking about some form of objective morality.

>>18440326
>It's useful to assume that gravity is real no matter the theory.
saying something is 'useful' requires you to define a purpose for which it is useful. and that purpose is never in itself 'objective'
>Ethics, on the other hand, is a prescripive discipline that claims that a certain way to be is better that other way to be. We have no way to check how useful it is.
we can scientifically study many consequences of ethical systems in the world. what ethical beliefs and norms allow societies to increase in number? which ones tend to lead to people reproducing? which are correlated with self reported happiness?
>Poems never claim that they must be superior to one another
many do

>>18440364
>we can scientifically study many consequences of ethical systems in the world. what ethical beliefs and norms allow societies to increase in number? which ones tend to lead to people reproducing? which are correlated with self reported happiness?
This is already supposing more than you're allowed.

>>18440364
Are you the same person?
This claim
>saying something is 'useful' requires you to define a purpose for which it is useful. and that purpose is never in itself 'objective'
contradicts this
>we can scientifically study many consequences of ethical systems in the world. what ethical beliefs and norms allow societies to increase in number? which ones tend to lead to people reproducing? which are correlated with self reported happiness?

In the first claim you say that "a purpose of something is never objective" but in the second claim you imply that increase in numbers or vague happiness is universaly good (has something objective).
I don't understand you.

>>18440016
What's the book about?

>>18440410
no, i am saying that any science with a notion of 'usefulness' is dependant upon the reality of something which isnt itself objective.

we can study the objective consequences of ethical systems using any objectively observable metric that we want to use. just like with our study of gravity, we will still have to define the purpose of this study in non objective terms. there is no contradiction because i am not claiming that increase in numbers or vague happiness is an objective purpose, i am just giving examples of ways that ethical systems can be put into objective hierarchies.

>>18438523

Kant doesn't ground morals in God, wtf are you talking about, read critic of practical reason.

>>18440497
Using the word objective doesn't make it so, anon.

>>18440475
Basically it's a meta-self-help book
1.Religion is a flawed concept. Religions were created by constant repetitions of a certain action. Our brain does the trick.
2.Some people experience vertical tensions (calls to greatness)
3.You must change your life for the best because our lifes consist of a series of repeating local apocalypses. We are constantly overtaxed and never have enough time for the deadline.

>>18440550
which use of the word in that post did you have a problem with

>the perspective that it whether or not God actually exists is totally irrelevant and all that matters is that people have a fully fleshed out moral system to guide them
This is also known as cope

>>18439996
Ontology

>>18440497
Let's roll back.
Our main point of dispute was that morality is less objective that gravity.
>any science with a notion of 'usefulness' is dependant upon the reality of something which isnt itself objective.
This is true BUT ethics claim that a certain view is better that other view. Every view is better for SOMETHING but while science doesn't claim that they know what is better, ethics do.
Ethics have in themselves the notion of something being better that other.
Science is just a descriptive instrument while ethics is a perscriptive instrument.
This is why I say that morality is less objective.

>>18440649
in practice science is subjective interpretations of data. anomalous data is disregarded, certain data points are emphasized over others and an idea is imposed upon the described phenomena. i dont think a purely descriptive science exists in the real world, its just an ideal that people aspire to (and this aspiration itself is based in prescriptive reasoning)

>>18440673
>i dont think a purely descriptive science exists in the real world, its just an ideal that people aspire to
Very true but we are talking about more/less real.
Scientific process is less value driven than ethics.

I'm sorry but either I'm misunderstanding you or you are intentionally missing the point, so let's just end our conversation here.

>>18440065
>>18440149
>>18439273
>>18436327
>>18436253
>>18440257
good job OP, you managed to expose some of the biggest retards browsing this board

>>18436226
Spinoza argued for almost this exact position

>>18436226
>Are there any philosophers who wrote arguments in favor of religion from the perspective that it whether or not God actually exists is totally irrelevant and all that matters is that people have a fully fleshed out moral system to guide them?
Literally Kant.

why do you need to lie to yourself bro, if what you really want is to conserve your race, than that's your telos. You want religion to be your intermediary, but without it being "too religious", that won't do, you won't convince anybody of that because all it takes is a person to ask you "yeah but *why* should society's member be 'guided' and where to?". And if the answer is "to what feels better to me", than you'd agree no one is obliged to have the same heuristics as you do. You'd be essentially the same as the basedboy goytoy globohomo footsoldier.

Now if your objective is something else, say you just want to consoom your videogames in peace without drug addictions and violence and other social problems that stop you from consooming, equally, you still should just stop being a liar trying to use religion as an intermediary that is more palatable than "because I WANT things to be like so and so". People can see through all of this. You are just lying to yourself.

>>18436226
>Something works
>NOOOO IT'S NOT HECKIN REAL BECAUSE I SAID SO

As far as I can tell, there's only one good reason for people to be religious, and it's that religious people have higher birth rates than non-religious people. People meme about trad cath wives for a reason. I'm completely atheist, but I'm starting to realize this might be a completely valid reason to avoid going full knocking on your door anti-theist. Otherwise, there's significant evidence atheists are as happy as the religiously devout (people often conflate non-religiosity with atheism when referencing studies. Very different groups), are more educated, and less likely to commit crime.

>>18443130
>there's significant evidence atheists are as happy as the religiously devout
You don't have a single fact to back that up

>>18438479
This is the best post in this thread.

>>18443350
But there is zero metaphysical truth to religions.
Religion is mythology still adhered to.

>>18443340
So there's two important limitations on the research finding correlations between religiosity and happiness and using it to conclude anything about atheists. The first is that they largely happen in America, so they're assuming American culture isn't a significant part of the result.
When research was done on populations from Denmark and the Netherlands, there was no longer a statistically significant difference. I'd link it to you, but apparently the system thinks Springer links are spam, so just search up those countries, religiosity and happiness and you should find it. This suggests that the difference is region specific and is thus not an inherent part of being religious.

The second flaw is that most studies only look at the non-religious and not atheists as a sub group.
>Most of the empirical studies that included both atheist and R/S participants found no group differences in dimensions of psychological well-being or distress (e.g., Baker & Cruickshank, 2009; Caldwell-Harris, Wilson, LoTempio, & Beit-Hallahmi, 2011; Horning, Davis, Stirrat, & Cornwell, 2011; Toburen & Meier, 2010; Tonigan, Miller, & Schermer, 2002). Three studies found evidence of a curvilinear relationship between certainty of beliefs (R/S or atheist) and dimensions of psychological well-being, such that very religious and atheist individuals fare better than people who are less certain of their religious beliefs, are spiritual but not religious, or are agnostic (Galen, 2009; Galen & Kloet, 2011; Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2011)
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.830.3573&rep=rep1&type=pdf
So there's evidence showing that certainty of spiritual beliefs has more to do with happiness. Doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sure of yourself. You can believe in one god, many gods or none. Just don't be a fence sitter, and you'll be fine.

>>18436549
/s4s/
tranime
saged
hidden
and
built for BBC

>>18436226
Jacques Bousset
Joseph De Maistre
Spinoza (sort of)
>>18436281
I guess the solution then is to make God the Good which is the standard measure of all else and so indistinct from it as Neoplatonism and the Patristic Christian Father did following Plato

>>18436226
All the secular moralists, ignorant kym meme posting faggot.

>>18436226
If you think that other people need not just religion, but of course you specifically only mean YOUR religion, to teach them how to be moral...

You are admitting that YOU don't have an internal moral compass or conscience. That's not normal anon. It very much the opposite of gives you the moral authority to dictate shit to other people, it means you have no morals and therefore no moral authority at all. You shitty little subversive theocrat dictator wannabe traitor parasite.

>>18443499
This is an anime website, and you don't belong here.

>>18438479
You're conflating spirituality and religion. NOBODY is talking about spirituality- man's need to find metaphysical truth and be part of something larger than himself. The thread topic is whether one specific organized religion should be given dictatorial political power based on the false claim that they are the only source of morality in the entire world, because like a communist they simply define being moral as agreeing with them. That isn't about metaphysics whatsoever, and I think you know that already and are making this fallacious argument on purpose.

>Wholly and entirely in reference to the topic itself, I remark here that the general principle to be laid down as a foundation for all judgments on the varying modifications, forms, and spirit of the Christian religion is this – that the aim and essence of all true religion, our religion included, is human morality, and that all the more detailed doctrines of Christianity, all means of propagating them, and all its obligations (whether obligations to believe or obligations to perform actions in themselves otherwise arbitrary) have their worth and their sanctity appraised according to their close or distant connection with that aim.
What the fuck is this XD

>>18443130
Having a higher birth rate is not an inherently good thing for anybody but the banker class and retirement class dependent on the current pyramid scheme of unsustainably infinite growth to the exclusion of all else- all the way up to justifying a literal genocide by immigration if the country doesn't breed fast enough to prop that scheme up.

We don't need to breed more. Breeding more is a mal-adaptive primitive behavior. We need to stop committing fucking suicide on purpose to appease liberals.

>>18443676
>We don't need to breed more. Breeding more is a mal-adaptive primitive behavior. We need to stop committing fucking suicide on purpose to appease liberals.
Cool. You'll still have a population decline. All I want is to have births be at replacement levels. Really, I don't care if all the other countries in the world dwindle. I just don't like countries like China getting global influence purely because they have 1 billion people. The good news is that their fertility is tanked.

>>18443615
*tips*

>>18440528
>In his Critique of Pure Reason, German philosopher Immanuel Kant stated that no successful argument for God's existence arises from reason alone. In his Critique of Practical Reason he went on to argue that, despite the failure of these arguments, morality requires that God's existence is assumed, owing to practical reason
?

>>18436226
>only following Christianity for utilitarian reasons
OH NO NO NO