I've been with a liar for 15 years by Greykittymomma in Relationships

[–]knotsy 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

there is no future for your relationship with him. he is a full blown sex addict. if he is sharing pics of his "junk" on reddit, it probably isnt with females..

you should be concerned about him bringing home STD's to you, for real.

you had a child with the wrong man.

contact an attorney and leave him.

edward.

All morality is derived from the oneness of God by trident765 in nonmorons

[–]knotsy 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A rational person will not vote, because an individual vote has zero chance of influencing elections, so it has zero benefit to society.

This is a problem because in aggregate it is in the in the interests of society for intelligent people to vote.

You say it has no value to society, then you say it's in society's interest. This seems contradictory, it is in society's interest for me to vote, and therefore it is rational for me to do so.

This also seems like a rational justification here. There is clearly a rational reason to vote - its in everyone's interest including mine (assuming I am one of the intelligent voters you speak of) because as you say, we will all be better off if I do. Your non-voter just isn't perceptive enough to realize this.

This seems like being rational isn't the problem, so much as people not being intelligent enough to act rationally when the benefits of an action are subtle and not readily apparent.

All morality is derived from the oneness of God by trident765 in nonmorons

[–]knotsy 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

should also have the intelligence to recognize that it is preferable to attribute this morality to deities as Machiavelli explained so clearly.

I will take a look at Machiavelli's "Discourses on Livy", and your essay and respond to them, but I have some reservations about this as follows:

If you accept the God of the Old Testament, I do not see any ontological reason to prefer this God to Zeus or Marduk, or any other creation deity. You reference the 'morality' of the Old Testament, so I assume you choose this religion on the basis of already agreeing with the morality - i.e. the morality was the in fact the thing you chose the deity based off of, and had philosophical justification for, rather than belief in the deity

It seems backwards to me, like a post-hoc attribution, but again, I will take a look at your references and consider them and get back to you.

All morality is derived from the oneness of God by trident765 in nonmorons

[–]knotsy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No because most people are too stupid to understand the rational reasons for morality, so only religion works.

I rather agree that this is likely the case for most people. I am suggesting that for some people it is possible to have a philosophical basis of morality that does not involve deities

All morality is derived from the oneness of God by trident765 in nonmorons

[–]knotsy 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

How about natural law (per Gauthier) as a basis for morality?

The idea that I will desire to form voluntary agreements out of self-interest that lead to moral behavior. I do not wish to be murdered, and would wish to be defended, so I agree not to murder, and to defend my neighbors from murderers (obviously an oversimplified example but you non-morons should catch my drift). Game theory suggests these arrangements are optimal, and an entire code of moral conduct can be based on these ideas.

Whether or not these laws originate from a deity or not seems rather beside the point

So what happened to Snowden and Assange? by yabbit in politics

[–]knotsy 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Assange just got married in jail the other day.