Comments by "PM" (@pm71241) on "Morality, God, and Murder (Pt. 2) | Dennis Prager & Michael Shermer | SPIRITUALITY | Rubin Report" video.

  1. That will not happen. And Potholer54 has already explained why. He (and others) have no reason to believe that Steven Crowder has any interest in objectivity. That makes a conversation completely useless, since any fallacious BS can be thrown without any chance of fact-checking. (Crowder has already demonstrated this as his MO). Basically ... it makes it way too easy to exploit Brandolinis law. So Potholer54 has offered a written(recorded) back and forth where each part document sources and arguments with references and where replying allows time for scrutiny of claims wrt. sources. Crowder has ignored this offer, - most likely since he knows that will not let him get away with his superficial but catchy talking-points.
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  2. yeah... when you understand which argument Shermer is trying to explain to him, it's clear nearly every single time Prager doesn't get the point - *at all*. Also ... I have to puke every time I hear a climate science denier brag about how he's guided by a primary desire to "be good". - while actively contributing to the single thing which threatens the existence of human civilization the most.
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  3. +Qrow Branwen It's perfectly possible to not deny climate science and still ALSO care about wolrd hunger rates and poverty and wars. It's not related. Your argument is a non-sequitur. It's actually very simple. If you deny well established scientific facts without the evidence to back it up - you are a denier ... period.
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  4. +Resplendent Your argument about "trillions of tax dollars" are completely redundant as long as your premised are totally decoupled from the factual physical world. Morally good people start by accepting the factual physical world and how the problems is described as a matter of physical facts given by nature. ... THEN they evaluate the best solution. So when you try to present the problem as a matter of "spending money to change the temperature" (and, I assume arguing that even a little temperature change costs a lot" and NOT as the problem nature ACTUALLY is, namely STOPPING changing the temperature as has been CLEARLY demonstrated by science that we actually DO to a degree where it is VERY dangerous for the future of human civilization and in not outright will end it, then AT LEAST will cost "trillions of dollars" in damages year after year in the decades to come. - a bill this generation will leave to future generations. ... THEN I have a VERY hard time seeing how this blatant denial of scientific facts for ideological reasons is moral.
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  5. +Branden Parisi I don't underestimate the threat of pathogen resistance. ... it's just another (different) problem. If the problem of global warming was finite (had an upper limit we could reasonably estimate) it would mostly be a matter of "taking the loss" and adapt - namely those who could afford moving their cities inland and adapt their agriculture would do it - others would die. And those who would win the ensuing wars would prosper after that. I have a hard time seeing that as the "moral" solution, but sure... our "species" would easier adapt to that. However, - global warming does not have an upper limit for severity which we could reasonably adapt to. If we re-create the Perm/Trias conditions (which we could very well do) the results could very well be worse than a pandemic of highly resistant bacteria.
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  6. > He does understand that against which he argues. Oh no he doesn't ... as an atheist, I've seldom felt more strawman'ed than when listening to Prager. Also ... whenever he ends up talking about science, it just comes out as nonsense. and WTF has "leftists" to do with atheism or science anyway... Why do you keep conflating epistemology with politics?
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  7. +youngthunker1 The basic principles guiding how morality expresses it self at a given time (for a given species) can very well be immutable even though the concrete evolutionary result of that is not. Even people who argue that moral has to be objective can't deny that what society has regarded as morally acceptable has changed much during the last 2000 years.
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  8. +Mr Pants. Do you really think that the word "exactly" is useful for that kind of questions - or are you just trying to obfuscate? Sea level rise depend of a lot of factors and you cannot give "exact" answers. But several meters within this century is very likely. Also ... I would have hoped you could have figured this out yourself - but when you are dealing with a problem which by it's very nature gets increasingly worse over time, you CANNOT make so simplistic arguments like you just did and extrapolating from the past. It's like arguing while driving full speed towards a wall that no one has been injured in the car the last few minutes, so therefore there's no problem. ... and science doesn't operate by "proof" ... it's not mathematics. Science works by evaluating the accumulated weight of the entire evidence.
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  9. +Branden Parisi We agree that the potential consequences of loosing the battle of antibiotics to resistant pathogens are indeed scary - and that it in much the same way as climate change is driven buy a combination of politicians not capable of doing the right thing and business interests lobbying them not to. I still doubt, however, that we will do as much damage to the species with a pandemic as we will by making the oceans anoxic and releasing waste quantities of H2S to the atmosphere. - as seem to be what the geological record tells us is could be a likely worst case for climate change. (H2S, btw... generated by bacteria).
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  10. +Emperor's NudeClothes I'm pretty sure that verdict doesn't come from "not agreering with him", but by judging the amount of stuff he doesn't understand while still pretending to understand.
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  11. Originally it was: (Quoting) "The Rubin Report is essentially a forum dedicated to applying reason to the big questions of the day. No subject is off limits. None is spared the light of logic." I know that's no longer the case though...
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  12. +Van A And by making the assumption (as you evidently do) that just because someone thinks Prager is a moron, then they must be "on the left", you have supported every one of the negative characterizations of the fact-free partisan right. Congrats.
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  13. Well... I agree with him. I'm a classical liberal (georgist). It's perfectly possible to conclude that Prager base his world view mostly on fantasy and doesn't really understand much about what he is arguing against - without being "on the left".
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  14. +Loki Owl I'm pretty sure nobody argues that "Objective morality" is when it's given by something else than "human intellect". If you listened to Shermer you would also have heard him suggest that that "something" could just as well be "nature". Of course, then religious people come and argue that you can't derive "ought" from "is". However, that of course relies on the assumption that there's anybody capable of judging when we speak of "ought" and not "is" who do not already have ther capability to make that judgment shaped by how things just "are". Case in point - as Shermer argued - The moral sense which humans has can easily have been shaped by evolution from naturally occurring objective facts, like the game theoretical optimal solution to the iterated prisoners dilemma problem. (which is basically "The golden rule") ... this naturally given sense of right and wrong shapes a moral arc over long time periods. - and is objective in the sense that it arises form natural facts independent of human existence. It is however not an "ought" outside any other realm than where "iterated prisoners dilemma" is relevant (such as group social animals like higher primates (and others)) ... but is IS given by nature. Any religious person arguing that it doesn't count because there's nothing which says that's how things "ought" to be either already presumes a God, or is influenced by the very same naturally given sense of right and wrong to believe there's something more than the evolutionary process giving rise to it. If you are shaped by evolution to perceive the world in a specific way you naturally have a hard time judging whether that's the "right" way or not.
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  15. +Loki Wol > "You find yourself in the ever-widening camp of people here who remain willfully ignorant of what 'Objective' means" No - I don't find my self thus... But I'm willing to accept any definition of "objective" you make as premise for the arguments. - and you just defined it as (quote) "In order for 'Objective Morality' to exist, a creator or higher arbiter of Truth than that of the human intellect is necessary to exist," ... and I described for you a higher arbiter of Truth than that of the human intellect. If you want to change the definition, then by all means... but If you as a matter of principle can only accept "a creator" as such a source then you have simply reduced your own argument to: "I define that objective morality can only come from god". ... and if you do that, then I'll just have to point out that until we see evidence of God (which we haven't) then (by your definition) we will have to assume that what ever morality we observe - it's not objective and that objective morality just doesn't exist - at all. However... I just pointed out to you that mathematical objective facts about nature can give rise to emergent evolutionary development of things like the golden rule. If you can't accept that just because it's not "a god" then the discussion suddenly falls into religious subjective dogma and becomes uninteresting.
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  16. Prager doesn't understand anything...
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