Most vile concept/aspect of atheism.

Originally posted by whodey
Common sense. Your heart refers to what is most important to you. It refers to both what you usually think about and your general attitude and motives towards those things. Therefore, the condition of your heart determaines who and what you become.

Define your 'heart', because as far as I can tell, the heart is an organ concerned with pumping blood around our bodies, not something which determines who and what you become.

Originally posted by whodey
And there you have it. This is where we dissagree 100%. The transformation of your heart is all that matters. How intelligent or good looking you are matters little in comparison to the condition of your heart. In fact, the most dangerous people in the world are those who are highly intelligent and who have an evil heart. The Bible says that God goes to ...[text shortened]... Your heart is what gives us our humanity. Perhaps you think our humanity is trivial as well?

The transformation of your heart is all that matters. How intelligent or good looking you are matters little in comparison to the condition of your heart.

Why???

In fact, the most dangerous people in the world are those who are highly intelligent and who have an evil heart.
As opposed to franatical terrorists?

Also, according to your definition of the word trivial, "yes" humanity is trivial just as is God transforming peoples hearts.

Originally posted by Starrman
Define your 'heart', because as far as I can tell, the heart is an organ concerned with pumping blood around our bodies, not something which determines who and what you become.

"Yb (Ib, Ab) - The heart, this was the source of good and evil within a person, the moral awareness and centre of thought that could leave the body at will, and live with the gods after death, or be eaten by Ammut as the final death if it failed to weigh equally against Ma'at. "

http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_soul.html

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
"Yb (Ib, Ab) - The heart, this was the source of good and evil within a person, the moral awareness and centre of thought that could leave the body at will, and live with the gods after death, or be eaten by Ammut as the final death if it failed to weigh equally against Ma'at. "

http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_soul.html

So this judgement of your life after you die thing predates christianity, islam and judaism. Interesting.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So this judgement of your life after you die thing predates christianity, islam and judaism. Interesting.

I have no doubt that if we could go back in history further you would find afterlife-style beliefs aplenty.

Originally posted by bbarr
You should cite your sources, else it looks like plagiarism:

[b]http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5i.htm

Also, see above.[/b]

The entire post was a cut and paste. Did you think it even sounded like me? The post was given (sans citation, with no confusion intended) as a refutation to your untenable assertion that God wasn't an assumed by the man.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
The entire post was a cut and paste. Did you think it even sounded like me? The post was given (sans citation, with no confusion intended) as a refutation to your untenable assertion that God wasn't an assumed by the man.

Learn to read. I didn't deny that Kant didn't postulate God, I denied that Kant ever asserted that God was necessary for morality (which was the question Halitose asked).

Originally posted by bbarr
Learn to read. I didn't deny that Kant didn't postulate God, I denied that Kant ever asserted that God was necessary for morality (which was the question Halitose asked).

"Learn to read." Great advice, o wise sage, he of the scruffy beard and serious deep-thoughts. Bleack.

I know you take yourself very seriously, so I'll type this r e a l slow and thoughtful-like. You know, a homage to your brainiaciness.

Here's the original post (if I read it right):

Originally posted by Halitose
Didn't Kant assert in his Critique of Practical Reason that morality requires a belief in the existence of God, freedom, and immortality, because without this said existence there can be no morality?

[bbar's response]No he didn't.

Here is Hal, challenging whether IK asserted in CoPR, that God was an assumed and necessary source of morality. There's you, flat-out responding in the negative.

Here comes Hal's counter to your response:

Then how would you interpret this paragraph from Book 2, Chapter 2:
“...it must postulate the existence of God, as the necessary condition of the possibility
of the summum bonum (an object of the will which is necessarily connected with the moral legislation of pure
reason). We proceed to exhibit this connection in a convincing manner."

You come back with the very emphatic:

“it is simply false that for Kant morality is dependent on God.”

It gets better, of course. In my learning to read (it took me a little while to catch up with you), I found this definition of the noun form of the word postulate:

n.
1. Something assumed without proof as being self-evident or generally accepted, especially when used as a basis for an argument.
2. A fundamental element; a basic principle.
3. Mathematics. An axiom.
4. A requirement; a prerequisite.


That fourth one really strikes home on this argument, don't you think? Now, I don't have a degree in philosophy, but I've seen that three-card monty in action before. When you cite a draft of an essay not in question, and use it as your answer for a question specific to another of Kant's widely-read works, i.e., CoPR, that smacks just a wee bit of oh, I dunno, intellectual dishonesty, maybe?

I'll leave it to you to decide. Professor.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
I'll leave it to you to decide. Professor.

oh, that tricky word, possibility. What does it mean to you?

Originally posted by FreakyKBH"Learn to read." Great advice, o wise sage, he of the scruffy beard and serious deep-thoughts. Bleack.

I know you take yourself very seriously, so I'll type this r e a l slow and thoughtful-like. You know, a homage to your brainiaciness.

Here's the original post (if I read it right):

Originally posted by Halitose
Didn't Kant o, intellectual dishonesty, maybe?

I'll leave it to you to decide. Professor.

As I pointed out above, Kant did not think that postulating God was a necessary condition for there being moral obligations. The bindingness of moral obligations was, for Kant, purely a function of practical rationality as such (this is why neither the universal law formulation of the categorical imperative nor the formula of humanity mentions God). So, the existence of God is not a necessary condition for morality, which is what Halitose was asking. Seriously, learn to read. So, if the existence of moral obligations doesn't require God, and if we must, on pain of irrationality, act in accord with these obligations, and this doesn't require God, then morality doesn't require God. Kant advanced the postulates as devices for those for whom acting morally required instrumental reasons. If you are not prepared to act in accord with the moral law out of respect for that law, then, according to Kant, it may be necessary to postulate the existence of God (as well as immortality) as motivating reasons. This is, at most, a practical matter that concerns those that can not bring themselves to act from respect for the moral law. So, morality doesn't require God, contrary to your idiotic assertions.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
"Learn to read." Great advice, o wise sage, he of the scruffy beard and serious deep-thoughts. Bleack.

I know you take yourself very seriously, so I'll type this r e a l slow and thoughtful-like. You know, a homage to your brainiaciness.

Here's the original post (if I read it right):

Originally posted by Halitose
[b]Didn't Kant o, intellectual dishonesty, maybe?

I'll leave it to you to decide. Professor.

[/b]God is not a prerequisite for morality. He is introduced at the end to explain the fact virtue and happiness do not, in this world, coincide.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
"Learn to read." Great advice, o wise sage, he of the scruffy beard and serious deep-thoughts. Bleack.

I know you take yourself very seriously, so I'll type this r e a l slow and thoughtful-like. You know, a homage to your brainiaciness.

Here's the original post (if I read it right):

Originally posted by Halitose
Didn't Kant o, intellectual dishonesty, maybe?

I'll leave it to you to decide. Professor.

In short, in case you're just too dense to get it:

Morality is not the same as the Summum Bonum. The Summum Bonum is, for Kant, that state wherein complete virtue and complete happiness coincide. He thought that it was necessary, in order to be motivated to cultivate perfect virtue, to postulate as a pragmatic matter the existence of God, because only God could make sure that perfect virtue was perfectly rewarded. For Kant, even if it was shown that God was an impossibility, we would still be rationally obligated to act in accord with the Categorical Imperative; we would still be obligated to harmonize both positively and negatively with humanity. So, if our obligations are not, for Kant, dependent on God; if moral obligations obtain for us regardless of whether God exists, then. for Kant, morality doesn't depend upon God. The only role God plays, for Kant, is as a concept that can serve to motivate those who aren't antecedently convinced in Kant's defense of morality. In that respect, it functions much like the theist's claim that people have instrumental (hell-avoiding) reasons to act rightly even if they are not naturally motivated to do so.

Originally posted by bbarr
In short, in case you're just too dense to get it:

Morality is not the same as the Summum Bonum. The Summum Bonum is, for Kant, that state wherein complete virtue and complete happiness coincide. He thought that it was necessary, in order to be motivated to cultivate perfect virtue, to postulate as a pragmatic matter the existence of God, because o l (hell-avoiding) reasons to act rightly even if they are not naturally motivated to do so.

i don't understand much of what you're talking about, but i couldn't help notice your last sentence. wanting to get into heaven would hold more reason to act rightly than avoiding hell. just wanted to say that, but i'll pass on the conversation.

Originally posted by David C
oh, that tricky word, [b]possibility. What does it mean to you?[/b]

Depends what it is attached to, Dave.

In this case, IK is saying for the SB to even be possible, there is the necessary existence of God, thus the postulation of His existence.

Did you see an angle which I may have missed?

Originally posted by bbarr
In short, in case you're just too dense to get it

Yes, I am too dense to smell what the Rock's got cooking. Here is the quote Hal brought out of CoPR:

"In the foregoing analysis the moral law led to a practical problem which is prescribed by pure reason alone, without the aid of any sensible motives, namely, that of the necessary completeness of the first and principle element of the summum bonum, viz., morality; and, as this can be perfectly solved only in eternity, to the postulate of immortality. The same law must also lead us to affirm the possibility of the second element of the summum bonum, viz., happiness proportioned to that morality, and this on grounds as disinterested as before, and solely from impartial reason; that is, it must lead to the supposition of the existence of a cause adequate to this effect; in other words, it must postulate the existence of God, as the necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum (an object of the will which is necessarily connected with the moral legislation of pure reason). We proceed to exhibit this connection in a convincing manner."

Although it's not the typical People magazine fare, it is nonetheless perspicuous for even the average reader, provided they are motivated to follow the string. IK was attempting to explain the existence of a thing which did not appear to be attached to any "sensible motives."

The reader is invited to follow it from there.