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[Reelya]

That shit scares me. Those people literally hold the belief that things aren't right or wrong because of principles but because sky-daddy arbitrarily decides he does or doesn't like the thing. So if sky-daddy said tomorrow to rape all the babies then that would be moral behaviour by definition. Because whatever sky-daddy wants, no matter how cruel or whimsical, is the definition of "moral".

I wish I was making this up, but that's their actual argument for how they define the basis of morality. It scares me to think what such people could be morally capable of carrying out. Nazi-level shit if their religion demanded it.

[TD1]

Don't forget that you and I are incapable of being moral creatures because our morality isn't based off said absentee Sky Daddy.

[Mephansteras]

The thing that always gets me is how so many of them simply can't get their head around the concept that a non-religious person can want to be good for the sake of being good. Like the idea of not stealing and murdering and whatnot if you don't have an afterlife to be punished in baffles them.

[Reelya]

They have to let it baffle them because if they think about it rationally, that morals are ingrained just through your upbringing alone, rather than gained from some magic book then their worldview breaks down. Think about it, if they admitted non-religious people could be just as murder-averse as those raised with their magic book's help then they are basically admitting that the magic book doesn't do jack shit, and said magic book is a core part of their identity.

If they admit that the magic book doesn't impart morality itself then they're left with the argument:

"you could be the nicest person on Earth, but if you don't read the magic book, God gets pissed and will punish you in torment, forever".

"Why, what does the book do?"

"Nothing. Except God hates people who don't read it".

Which is less convincing than explaining that the magic book is the font of all Earthly and Heavenly wisdom.

[overseer05-15]

Yeah, nobody has any idea what any of those four are.

Oi Kino's Journey is a high-quality piece of work.

[Reelya]

I'm not sure that's correct. Everything I've ever been told by Christians is that you must follow Jesus, specifically, to get into heaven and that living a good life is secondary. Way way down on the list compared to being a Believer. It's a cult (and I mean that in a general sense not a derogatory sense), so of course they frame things that way. Members of the cult get the express escalator to heaven no matter what they did in their life. That's why Christians are so "forgiving" of people who make deathbed confessions / repent. It's all good, because you joined the cult before you died so you won the life lottery. It doesn't matter if you were the worst sinner before that as long as you sincerely beg Jesus for salvation.

You don't get in if you just live a good life, because that message doesn't maximise converts. All religions work this way because religions are cults at heart: they survive by converting people. The religious denominations that have persisted have this conversion mechanic ingrained in them. In fact, when you have a state-sanctioned church they may in fact be less "cultlike" since they don't need mind-control / millieu-control mechanisms to coerce people to adhere to the group. So in "free" nations like America you get cult-like churches springing up, mormons, scientology etc, whereas the Anglican and Catholic churches don't have so much of the cultist stuff going on. Because, when you can't choose your religion they don't in fact need to brainwash you into not leaving. (however once Mormons build Salt Lake City they might have declined in the cult-like behaviour since they effectively became the state religion of the city. After that they completely dominate the public space so have less need for individual cult member control).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This is the ultimate contradiction of objective morality, the basic reason why it doesn't work: it absolves you of personal judgement and responsibility. Physical atrocity is preceded by a moral catastrophe. You can't have the Holocaust without Gott Mit Uns, you can't have the Rwandan Genocide without Hutu Power, and you can't have the Cultural Revolution without Revisionists. If you aren't personally responsible for deciding right from wrong in the same way that some people ascribe to God, then someone else is. Your ideology, your cult leader, your cultural biases, anything. And from this a normal person can be swayed into a genocidal fanatic, because it "isn't their decision" at all. They're just doing what has to be done, regardless of their doubts or the consequences of it all.

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm just going to put it out there, to condemn genocide you have to have some kind of objective morality.  Otherwise you can give any answer you want to "why is genocide bad" and I can respond with "but why?" forever.  At some point you have to hold something to be intrinsically true.

To me the point of moral relativism is that you still have beliefs.  You just pretend that other peoples' beliefs might be right, even tho you don't actually think that they are.  Its like a... courtesy, I guess.

Edit: My problem with genocidal ideologies is that they fill in their own blanks.  Its one thing to say "____ killing ____ is OK".  That's madness but at least its internally consistent.  "Germans killing Jews is OK" is blatant bullshit.  Oglaf covers this point in its usual vulgar and whimsical fashion.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Subjectivity isn't "weaker" than objectivity. It's a matter of ontology. Objectively, the gravitational pull of Earth is 9.807 m/s² at the surface. Subjectively, MetalSlimeHunt prefers spicy food and hates bitter greens. The second statement remains true, it's not arbitrary bullshit just because food preference is a personal opinion which may be disagreed with. Subjective things are those which concern a subject, the largest subject of course being humanity as a whole.

This is why objective morality is not just non-functional but kind of impossible. Even if God existed, the morality he enforces is still his personal opinion. Hence the entire body of work relating to Divine Command Theory as a valid or invalid form of moral theory.

Moral precepts are not transcendent. They are not written into the cosmos. They are down here on Earth in us. Which is why I say belief in objective morals is irresponsible, because it allows one to transform something that anybody who really thought about what they preferred as a moral authority would never do into a mandatory commandment. Only by sublimating authority and thus responsibility does oppression's obvious practical and philosophical downsides morph into Deus Vult.

Morality what we all agree it is. No more, no less. The "but why" infinite regression also applies to objective facts as well, not even the logic clusterfuck of objective morality, as anybody who's ever tried to explain basic physics (or anything) to a toddler can attest.

[Helgoland]

I'm not sure that's correct. Everything I've ever been told by Christians is that you must follow Jesus, specifically, to get into heaven and that living a good life is secondary.

I think that's mostly a Protestant thing. 'Sola fide' is a pretty fucked-up concept, yeah. Even more so the Calvinist version of predestination, where people are basically chucked into Heaven or Hell for no particular reason at all. Contrast this with the Catholic position (and yeah, I'm shamelessly quoting Wikipedia):

The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church. Since salvation is offered to all, it must be made concretely available to all.

Grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his Sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit. It enables each person to attain salvation through his or her free cooperation.

God predestines no one to go to hell, for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

And thus ceases today's five minutes of Catholic apologetics.

You can't have the Holocaust without Gott Mit Uns

Wait, what? Gott mit uns is an old Prussian abuse of religion for the legitimization of warfare, present since the Napoleonic days. I really don't see what it has to do with the Holocaust.

[scriver]

Yeah, nobody has any idea what any of those four are.

Oi Kino's Journey is a high-quality piece of work.

I've actually got an inkling of what Kino's Journey is I just got annoyed that Reelya responded in such a way as if knowing what those series are was a given.

[Reelya]

People can google things. it would be equally insulting if not more so to assume nobody knew what any of them are. they're well known. All of them exist in both anime and manga formats, and two of them are avaiable in English dub (hell I had a copy of Kino which had both English and German dub, and Aria is apparently getting a dub because of a Kickstarter campaign). They're not that obscure, and they've all been available in English for over a decade.

To be honest, most of the games y'all mention like everyone is expected to know them are way more obscure / niche than this stuff.

[overseer05-15]

People can google things. it would be equally insulting if not more so to assume nobody knew what any of them are. they're well known. All of them exist in both anime and manga formats, and two of them are avaiable in English dub (hell I had a copy of Kino which had both English and German dub). They're not that obscure.

Well known by what metric? Just because something's been translated/is also an anime doesn't mean its not obscure.

To be honest, most of the games y'all mention like everyone is expected to know them are way more obscure / niche than this stuff.

Like what?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

God predestines no one to go to hell, for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

And thus ceases today's five minutes of Catholic apologetics.

You can't have the Holocaust without Gott Mit Uns

Wait, what? Gott mit uns is an old Prussian abuse of religion for the legitimization of warfare, present since the Napoleonic days. I really don't see what it has to do with the Holocaust.

Might be a media division. In English media "gott mit uns" is most known for having been on SS belt-buckles. I've certainly referenced and seen it referenced as shorthand for the Nazis being confident in their genocide due to divine endorsement many a time.

[Reelya]

People can google things. it would be equally insulting if not more so to assume nobody knew what any of them are. they're well known. All of them exist in both anime and manga formats, and two of them are avaiable in English dub (hell I had a copy of Kino which had both English and German dub). They're not that obscure.

Well known by what metric? Just because something's been translated/is also an anime doesn't mean its not obscure.

To be honest, most of the games y'all mention like everyone is expected to know them are way more obscure / niche than this stuff.

Like what?

Just in general. Many more people have seen Mushishi than heard of most of the niche games that get mentioned. It's on Netflix btw. While Kino's journey has been available on US DVD longer than most Americans have known about Neon Genenis Evangelion. Kino is widely considered to be a masterpiece. If more people know Dragonball, Pokemon and Evangelion it's because they either don't have good taste, or more likely just haven't done any cursory level of research at all. Kino's journey along with Cowboy Bebop were two of the most widely praised anime series in the West in the early 2000s. It's gotten a ton of press.

Also, the stuff I mentioned is all stuff that's been out in English in some form for at least 10-20 years in each case. This stuff has been widely avaiable for a long time. Name dropping it is not hipsterism or expecting people to know any secret Japanese knowledge. The only one that's slightly obscure is YKK, which start in 1994, had a short anime in 1998, so it's been floating around for 20 years (scanlations and fansubs). And for that ...

Even though it has not been published in English, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō has received significant attention from reviewers outside Japan. Many reviewers praise Ashinano's drawing style, meticulous pacing, and engaging characters. Dirk Deppey wrote in The Comics Journal, "Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou isn't just one of my favorite manga stories; it's one of my favorite comics, period." Derik A. Badman wrote, "This is light years beyond almost all the manga being translated and published in the US." A reviewer at Uknighted Manganime wrote, "Artwise, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou ranks as the most impressive I have ever seen," adding, "Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is, in short, the finest manga I have ever read, and I don’t see it being surpassed anytime soon, if ever."

I mean, I get having not heard of them. But making it sound like you're trashing them merely because you haven't heard of them is ridiculous. Those 4 series I listed are the stuff the critics say are some of the best stuff out there. If people in the West aren't picking up on this even after almost 25 years of YKK being around and getting raved about by Western comics reviewers, then it's really not the series' fault.