Does life have value?

Originally posted by KellyJay
I may spend an hour thinking of some insults, after all he has been away for awhile, I want
to make him feel at home. 🙂

This is a curious post.
I cant make head or tail of it.

I could say that it reflects badly on you (as you did to me when I had a chuckle about something)
I remember you saying how that post of mine was most revealing of my character. (Judging me on one post) . That was frustrating for me.
I won't judge you on one post although saying you're going to spend an hour thinking of insults is ... curious.

Originally posted by karoly aczel
This is a curious post.
I cant make head or tail of it.

I could say that it reflects badly on you (as you did to me when I had a chuckle about something)
I remember you saying how that post of mine was most revealing of my character. (Judging me on one post) . That was frustrating for me.
I won't judge you on one post although saying you're going to spend an hour thinking of insults is ... curious.

Even if you're not, I'm willing to judge KellyJay. One can look at him in two ways. As an amiable, generous, intellectually robust man through whom the warmth of Jesus shines, perhaps. Or as a bitter, huffy little peephole ideologue who stops talking to people whose disagreements put a dent in his constipated self-righteousness. LemonJello is, of course, a thoughtful, good humoured, even-tempered and attentive poster who has no problem engaging dissent. No wonder KellyJay might "spend an hour thinking of some insults" to hurl at him.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I think even a plague would require time to form up at the beginning.

And an ocean, and a sun.

Originally posted by karoly aczel
This is a curious post.
I cant make head or tail of it.

I could say that it reflects badly on you (as you did to me when I had a chuckle about something)
I remember you saying how that post of mine was most revealing of my character. (Judging me on one post) . That was frustrating for me.
I won't judge you on one post although saying you're going to spend an hour thinking of insults is ... curious.

I think, by the deployment of an emoticon, we can safely assume he was joking.


I will now spend two hours thinking of some insults of my own. 🙂

(See what i did there? )

Originally posted by LemonJello
There's fundamentally no difference in the way atheists and theists ascribe value to life.

Value is reducible to reasons. If, in fact, there are reasons for one to promote (preserve, defend, nurture, etc) X, then X is to that extent valuable. If those reasons take as their object X as an end in and of itself, then the value is intrinsic; if, on the ...[text shortened]... ing so, they contradict their own post-hoc theistic rationalizations. Hence, the schizophrenia.

Person A: Life has intrinsic value.

Person B: Life has no intrinsic value.

Who in your opinion is speaking the truth and why?

Originally posted by karoly aczel
This is a curious post.
I cant make head or tail of it.

I could say that it reflects badly on you (as you did to me when I had a chuckle about something)
I remember you saying how that post of mine was most revealing of my character. (Judging me on one post) . That was frustrating for me.
I won't judge you on one post although saying you're going to spend an hour thinking of insults is ... curious.

I think of him as a friend.

Originally posted by apathist
And an ocean, and a sun.

And yet, it is the small things that have to be there without them, oceans and the sun will
not help.

Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
I think, by the deployment of an emoticon, we can safely assume he was joking.


I will now spend two hours thinking of some insults of my own. 🙂

(See what i did there? )

With some they will always look for evil in another.

With you I'm looking forward to the insults. LOL

Originally posted by KellyJay
And yet, it is the small things that have to be there without them, oceans and the sun will
not help.

True. And yet, all the things are there, large and small.

Originally posted by apathist
True. And yet, all the things are there, large and small.

I do enjoy talking to you.

Originally posted by apathist
True. And yet, all the things are there, large and small.

Well, yes of course everything is scattered everywhere, no question there, but was there
a place where specific things were, were they there in the right amounts, mixed together
in the proper sequence, and afterwards was life able to start without being killed off, or
died off due to lack of one thing, or exposure to another for billions of years?

Originally posted by karoly aczel
This is a curious post.
I cant make head or tail of it.

I could say that it reflects badly on you (as you did to me when I had a chuckle about something)
I remember you saying how that post of mine was most revealing of my character. (Judging me on one post) . That was frustrating for me.
I won't judge you on one post although saying you're going to spend an hour thinking of insults is ... curious.

I'm sorry I did that too, my bad.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Well, yes of course everything is scattered everywhere, no question there, but was there
a place where specific things were, were they there in the right amounts, mixed together
in the proper sequence, and afterwards was life able to start without being killed off, or
died off due to lack of one thing, or exposure to another for billions of years?

Yes, all over, and repeatedly.

Originally posted by LemonJello

Here is what I think is really ironic to all this. It's usually the theist who brings up the charge that their worldview provides for intrinsic value, whereas others do not. They're invariably a bit light on the details for how that works,

The theist is a bit light on the details you say. But the theists brings it up more often and not the non-theist. So then why don't you say the non-theist is the one light on the details if he brings it up at all ?

Who is lighter on details, the theist proposing some or the non-theist holding back from proposing some?

but of course they will claim that a theist has reasons for counting certain things as intrinsically valuable, whereas an atheist has none. But how could this be?

This may be because you yourself said it is the theist who proposes a solution more often than the atheist. Who are you going to blame that on ?

As we have seen, taking X as intrinsically valuable just means recognizing reasons to promote X in and of itself. The theist's claim that we need considerations external to X (related to God and whatnot) in order to assess X in and of itself just doesn't compute.

Intrinsic I see to mean - "inherent, innate, inborn, inbred, congenital, connate, natural;"

I think something with instrinsic qualities can have those qualities bestowed upon it.
I think I could say that the portrait of the Mona Lisa has some intrinsic beauty to it.
Of course that intrinsic beauty was bestowed upon it by the creator of the painting.

I am not sure I see a contradiction in saying man is intrinsically precious and that preciousness is bestowed upon man from God.

I think I understand you to be saying once that is claimed the value is no longer intrinsic.

Now if we had no idea who the artist was who created the Mona Lisa we still could recognize that however it came about, it has inherent beauty.

It's another big helping of dumb.

I don't think there is a "big dumb" because the theist explains where the inherent value of man has its source. It is bestowed upon man by the very ground of value - God.

Both the theist and the atheist may agree that there is value to humanity.
The real "dumbness" is more on the side of the atheist "dumb" and silent more often, to propose a solution to the origin of human value.

And when a theist rebuts that, on the contrary, we need to see the relation of X to its creator in order to actually get at X in and of itself, this is where they really get it wrong.

Atheist Betrand Russell said that we have to build our lives on a firm foundation of unyielding despair. This sounds to me like human life is not of much value at all and we just have to keep a stiff upper lip about this tragedy.

The theists reasons that we rather should build our lives on the inherent value of human life bestowed upon man by man's Creator, who is even the ground of value itself.

I think i hear you saying that belief in a source of God is self defeating and actually robs man of intrinsic value. But if you're a fan of the atheism of Bertrand Russell your much lighter details or absence of any at all are almost unlivable.

Can you defend this "firm foundation of unyielding despair" ?
The last person I knew testing out this kind of despair as a governing life vision killed himself.

By insisting on this, they are no longer speaking of X in and of itself but rather about X-qua-potential-possessor-of-Godly-properties. And that is not to treat X as an end itself but rather as a means to some greater end relating to the divine will.

I see the point. But I considered my body. I could chop off my finger and cast it onto a table all by itself. But it would be useless. Connected to the other parts of my body it has much more meaning.

if you mean "in and of itself" to be complete isolation I think you arrive at meaninglessness.

As a composer this reminds me of Arnold Schoenberg's Atonal Music in which he tried to liberate each note by destroying the central feeling of resolution. This was suppose to make every note equally important.

It kind of makes NO note important instead.
(You have to learn to listen to other things in the sound in which to be entertained).

It becomes like a ballet in outer space.

If you want to do away with God each of us is not liberated into more value.
We are robbed of any really.

Vertically we are left suspended in despair.
Horizontally we are left in the same state towards one another.

So they have things exactly backwards: on their view we have no grounds for taking any specific creatures as intrinsically valuable but rather only as instrumentally valuable toward some ultimate good relating to God or the divine will. Which is not to say they do not take things as intrinsically valuable in everyday life. They do. But in doing so, they contradict their own post-hoc theistic rationalizations. Hence, the schizophrenia.

That is all the time I have now.
Your article is being re-read a number of times by me for good comprehension.

Originally posted by apathist
Yes, all over, and repeatedly.

All things everywhere yes, but not all things required everywhere.