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Saiyan Lusitano
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They aren't a free university and that should be common knowledge. They are Conservative propaganda channel that pushes Right Wing views, they are extremely biased and often push these extreme views.
Okay, so I'm gonna assume the OP is an atheist... Why is murder wrong? That's an interesting discussion, because as someone who agrees with the video, I have been trying to figure out a possible atheistic source for objective morality for quite a while now and I'm coming up short every time. Sure, we can have "majority rule" morality, but that's still not objective "right" and "wrong", that's just law.
I'm not religious, nor right-wing, and that was a good video.
I kinda fail to see the argument. Are you saying religious morality is objective?
I highlighted your mistake. Morality isn't objective. Sure, people sometimes agree on some moral principles, but they aren't objectively right. I know it's hard to imagine, but some people (or even cultures) don't necessarily have to view murder as wrong.
Leaving aside murder being defined as unlawful killing and thus human law coming into it (if you kill someone in self defence it not necessarily being murder being the classic example, to say nothing of all the weird and wonderful laws out there that various religions or historical quirks might have given us).
I think I will start with a favourite quote from Terry Pratchett, mainly because why not.
Anyway the general foundation for most modern non theistic morality is that life is pretty sweet and causing suffering to others, much less removing their ability to continue life without their permission is a bit of an arsehole thing to do, and if you allow it then you allow it to be done to yourself (nobody can yet wield enough force to prevent it). It gets codified in a few different ways, some with some subtle distinctions, and there is endless debate about various things*, but that would be the basis of it.
*whether the right to your existence also includes the right to end it being a big one, when said existence might start, how the state of technology might change things being another, the nature of your autonomy -- going from tech in the previous things where do we grant ourselves the ability to compel certain actions with force, the scope of autonomy (of which the start of existence mentioned earlier is but a small aspect) and what counts as what here, the nature of suffering (words is words vs words is violence) and it goes on and on.
I have not seen the video at this point so I will skip the countering of religious morality stuff for now.
If the only thing stopping you from killing someone in cold blood is your belief in your flavor of deistic faith, I think we've got bigger issues to discuss here
An interesting point
But consider this - even if there was a God there would be no objective right or wrong
God would be another entitiy simply stating his wishes - and perhaps you could follow his subjective opinions, but his authority as "creator" would not allow him to make actions objectively right or wrong - only right or wrong in the eyes of one being.
It will always be impossible to make a value judgement objective.
Last edited by x65943,
The mere fact that you're able to say that means it clearly isn't. But, to a degree, I agree with that statement. Just not for the reason you probably said it
I like quite a few of their videos, they often present the flip side of issues and they're well-researched. I don't think these views are "extreme" and demonising them is simply divisive. If you disagree with someone, you can make a coherent argument instead of just calling them "biased". News flash, we're all biased, we naturally lean one way or the other, it's just that some are transparent with their bias while others aren't. PragerU isn't a "real university", but they never promoted themselves as one, so that's simply a strawman. They're a conservative organisation that creates videos which explain their point of view, I don't have a problem with that.
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Basically sums up PragerU in one image:
As for this video in specific, the idea that morality can only come from religion or god is ludicrous. It's straight up religious propaganda, and the logic throughout the entire thing is full of more holes than Swiss cheese.
As for this video in specific, the idea that morality can only come from religion or god is ludicrous. It's straight up religious propaganda, and the logic throughout the entire thing is full of more holes than Swiss cheese.
Last edited by Xzi,
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Saiyan Lusitano
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I'm Christian but not really religious about it. By definition and morally, murder is wrong since it's not something you'd be doing in self-defense but attacking someone and taking his/her life away completely with or without mercy.
There's also other aspects of PlagueU's video that are cringey and could turn into a drinking game but eh, I prefer to stay away from alcohol. lol
Basically sums up PragerU in one image:
As for this video in specific, the idea that morality can only come from religion or god is ludicrous. It's straight up religious propaganda, and the logic throughout the entire thing is full of more holes than Swiss cheese.
That's also the kind of audience PJW goes for and his videos have become pretty repetitive, he tends to pick subjects he already covered but does them somewhat differently again. His newest is about how great Tik Tok is (can't believe I just wrote this).
I'm subscribed to PJW for a long time now but generally don't even bother finish watching his videos entirely anymore or even agree with him most of the time. Sorta want to unsub but don't want to miss out on how silly his videos can be.
Now, I do somewhat enjoy watching other YouTubers who roast PJW 'cause he thinks he's always correct about everything.Personally, I'm neither a lefty or a righty but look at both sides and see the good that both have and realize that both are flawed.
By the way, his video about love.. He got dumped hard. xD
Atheists always say morality is not objective, but nobody actually believes that. If morality is just "behavioral tendencies specific to given culture", we have no right to call Islamic terrorists wrong. Their morality says infidels are to be killed. Meaning they're not monsters - they're martyrs, heroes, saints. How dare you say a bad word about their actions, you bigot. Sure, they break our laws and we can prosecute them because of that, but our laws are simply unjust in this regard, clearly.
There's plenty of things stopping one from murdering, but other than belief in higher, objective morality, there isn't anything I can see that would stop one from believing murder isn't wrong. That's my point - I believe that the world was created not just with matter, not just with space and time and not just with rules of physics built in - but also with moral rules. That morality is as real and objective as gravity - it's not "ideas we invent", it's "facts we discover". It's like science, only we're capable of going against it, unlike with, say, gravity.
Do tell me what stops you from believing murder is as morally neutral as blowing your nose and doesn't have its source in objective idea of morality. That something is exactly what I have never been able to find.
Not exactly.
Because of His omniscience God knows what is right and because of His Love, He commands exactly that. Things aren't good because He commands them, He commands them because they're good. This may sound like God is subject to an even higher authority, a "morality" beyond Himself - but again, that is no morality at that point, that's Love. He wants Good, because He is Love and that's what Love wants for Its object. We're like little children, trying to put a metal fork into the electrical socket and calling our parents' decision to forbid it "arbitrary" and "selfish". It's not - they just know better and they love us. That combination is key.
Once again, an atheist hears "morality comes from God" and answers with "that's just ridiculous, illogical propaganda and no, I'm not gonna tell you why that is, have an insult instead".
Edgy 13-17 year-olds indeed.
Come on, if you want to argue against the points made - argue against the points being made.
Last edited by eworm,
god is not the answer, morality swings in each religion, there are more religious murderrers than non religious murderers.
morality comes with experience not relligion...
someone feeling cornered because his or her words of "wisdom" are not taking serious could bring anyone to murder, specially when this "wisdom" is religous based.
politics is much alike religion, and so the same kind of killers are in both to be found.
the other kind of murderers, for money, drugs, sex or panic? no religion ever changed numbers here...
or wait yes it does sometimes, when a (wo)men based on religous words got the idea that being married means they've claimed the partner for life, then this increasses the number of murderers in the religous corner.
Oh boy, there's a lot to unpack here.
It's exactly what's happening. Are you saying they're fully aware they're monsters and don't believe they're martyrs, heroes, saints? That fact itself will tell you that they believe in a different set of morality.
A christian set of morals will literally believe everyone but christians are "monsters", especially people believing in polytheistic religions.
There isn't even one objective set of morals within christianity, what about monogamy, homosexuality? Weird how even christians are divided on these issues.
You whole argument is that there's ONE objective set of morals that comes from YOUR particular flavour of christianity and relies on a majority consensus of people who believe in that brand (which is a concept you earlier dismissed as "just law").
Again, not even all christians adhere to the same set of morals and their understanding of morality has changed massively over time. I'm sure your argument would be that past christians such as the popes just weren't christian enough, which is nothing but a cheap cop out.
Chimpanzees have been shown to develop a sense of morality, last time I checked they couldn't read or communicate. How did they become aware of christian morals?
Look, the sense that murder is wrong has been around before christianity or judaism, you're just attributing the existence of a belief that murder is wrong to YOUR particular god and your line of reasoning makes it easy to refute everything with "but I believe everything was created at the start, we can only discover", so you'll just say it was instilled in people if they knew it or not.
I'm sorry but that's what you get for invoking religous morals without making clear you're talking about a set of morals specific to a fraction of christianity, it also makes it really hard to argue because you were not precise. As I've laid out before not even all christians agree on one set of morals. No one has insulted you here, unless you think challenging your beliefs is an insult.
The problem with "God is moral!" is it's pure Stockholm syndrome.. or the unwillingness to think on their own. I mean seriously... It -really- boils down to "The guy above me said it's okay!"
Abortions are performed *sometimes because the fetus is dead, sometimes it's a danger to the mother, sometimes the kid is unwanted." it's evil murder!
God kills thousands of babies with floods, plagues, telling people to rip wombs from women.. "It's fine! He decides what's good!"
it is literally abused spouse syndrome. "He just broke my arm because he loves me!"
Abortions are performed *sometimes because the fetus is dead, sometimes it's a danger to the mother, sometimes the kid is unwanted." it's evil murder!
God kills thousands of babies with floods, plagues, telling people to rip wombs from women.. "It's fine! He decides what's good!"
it is literally abused spouse syndrome. "He just broke my arm because he loves me!"
I generally like Prager's content, but I think he's making a big mistake by arguing about natural right from a religious perspective. I prefer the Shapiro approach towards natural rights, since all are logically derrived. If you were born on an isolated island, a Garden of Eden scenario, so to speak, you would have certain freedoms baked in - you could live and travel freely, you could satisfy your biological needs, speak and express yourself freely, defend yourself against the adversity of nature and so on and so forth. All these abilities are available to you naturally and without a government in place, so we can thus conclude that they are inalienable natural rights. At that point it doesn't matter if they were granted by a diety or not - natural rights are the basis of morality and they're logically derrived from the natural state of being human. Now, if you are religious, you could argue that said rights were granted to you by God, that's the "God-given rights" school of thought, but that's a different discussion. The point of this exercise is to outline that rights are not granted by government, you have de facto rights that others may infringe upon, but Prager goes a step further and fumbles in his video.
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