My spoil it all prediction for what the overall setting is

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Wilshire

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« Reply #75 on: December 08, 2013, 06:17:39 pm »

Wilshire,
To me, 'lol wow' seems the harsh remark to give.

I'm being straight with Curethan. I'm not hitting any balls that he is incapable of catching. What does 'lol wow' even mean, in terms of being straight with me?
I find most everything you say unnecessarily confusing. The fact that you are surprised that you spent 10 posts arguing with someone and then realized that neither of you are talking about the same thing is comical, and affirms my sentiments.

My specific comment "lol wow" was just my voicing more surprise (and hilarity). I dunno why the validation from your opponent is so important to you, or that the lack of it makes you so upset. So, to translate, I found your response both funny (lol) and surprising (wow).  ;)
« Last Edit: December 09, 2013, 12:21:07 am by Wilshire »
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Cüréthañ

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« Reply #76 on: December 09, 2013, 12:13:17 am »
Fair does.  I'll avoid making elaborate posts in future.

I can see how treating the terms 'metaphysical' and 'moral' as interchangeable can be problematic. Unfortunately, it seems from that interview that was quoted that Bakker conflates the two as well.

An internally consistent system of metaphysical laws that determine inescapably what happens to a person's soul by reference to what that person did in life is not necessarily the same thing as a logically sound objective moral system.

Showing that the former can theoretically exist is pretty easy. Using that to try and claim the latter can also theoretically exist is, at best, a bit of a cop-out, at worst an outright bait-and-switch. Or so it seems to me. ???

Meh.  The idea is that the metaphysical laws are applied to individual moral frameworks.  If you can quantify the level of guilt or righteousness or whatever that a person feels, then there can be a tipping point for relative consequence.  Like if you are holding on to the edge of a cliff and your weight to strength ratio determines you must fall.

With that, I am out of this thread.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2013, 01:22:26 am by Curethan »
Retracing his bloody footprints, the Wizard limped on.

Callan S.

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« Reply #77 on: December 09, 2013, 04:15:27 am »

Wilshire,
To me, 'lol wow' seems the harsh remark to give.

I'm being straight with Curethan. I'm not hitting any balls that he is incapable of catching. What does 'lol wow' even mean, in terms of being straight with me?
I find most everything you say unnecessarily confusing. The fact that you are surprised that you spent 10 posts arguing with someone and then realized that neither of you are talking about the same thing is comical, and affirms my sentiments.
I spent time playing chess, then the pieces were swept from the board before game completion. It's something else.


Mike,
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Callan - the onus is on the writer to make him/her/itself understood, neh?
I'd take it as being more like a tango. It takes two to do it - not just one.

Or if that's confusing, I'll just answer no.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2013, 04:25:44 am by Callan S. »

Callan S.

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« Reply #78 on: December 09, 2013, 08:32:33 am »
Back on topic,

I had a thought about reworking Curathans idea it's what people 'believe they should be damned for'. The idea is that people don't figure out any sort of salvation method for themselves - they think there is salvation, but they don't figure a method for it. This leaves how you are saved up in the air and ambiguous - which makes for pretty odd stuff if belief makes for existance.

The idea is that this up in the airness is what creates the 100. They are the fragmentary nature of a belief in salvation, without any concrete notion of how it comes about, solidified/coallesced into the 100 gods. That's why all the gods have their themes going on - they formed out of salvation fragments along that theme (kind of like a planet forms out of space dust).

All because folks don't think about how they can be saved - they leave it up in the air, and things form out of the fragments in the air. And rule like angry gods...err, because they are angry gods!

Duskweaver

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« Reply #79 on: December 09, 2013, 09:04:07 am »
+1 - But Bakker is riffing off the Bible so your unease might be a reflection of that text's poor internal logic?
That's no excuse. If the effing Bible is going to be Bakker's standard for internal consistency, then there's no point in me waiting around for The Unholy Consult. I might as well bug out now and save myself the frustration. :P

IMO, it's a pretty glaringly unfair comparison. The Bible was cobbled together from the work of multiple authors writing over several centuries, with each part subjected to generations of translation, possible transcription errors, and outright political manipulation. It's frankly amazing it makes as much sense as it does. A series of novels written by one guy over a decade really ought to be held to a higher standard, don't you think? Even if he's consciously going for a 'Biblical feel'.

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In terms of being straight honest, I find both what you and Curethan are writing back and forth to be mostly unintelligible.
I find a good 80% of the stuff in this entire forum to be completely unintelligible. The remaining 20% is interesting enough to make up for that, though. ;)

If you can quantify the level of guilt or righteousness or whatever that a person feels, then...
(Emphasis mine.)
...the system is no longer objective by definition.

And that's without even getting into the question of whether a true psychopath would be immune to damnation in this system.

I do think you're onto something, though. I think that's essentially the loophole the Cishaurim use to avoid the Mark: not that they themselves feel no guilt (although that also seems to be true), but that their sorcery is based on manipulating the God's subjective 'feelings' and therefore cannot be objectively quantified and therefore 'judged'. I'm not sure that actually makes any sense, though, but maybe Bakker thinks it does?

All because folks don't think about how they can be saved - they leave it up in the air, and things form out of the fragments in the air. And rule like angry gods...err, because they are angry gods!
That's pretty neat. We're essentially back to Warhammer cosmology, though... :-\

("...My loss of faith replaced by doubt..." See what waiting so long for UC has done to me? I'm drowning in cynicism, arbitrary skepticism and Scandinavian gothic metal. It is too far... :P )
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locke

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« Reply #80 on: December 09, 2013, 09:04:07 am »
I've always found the utter hysterics over 'objective morality' to be pretty impenetrable reading.  Never been able to follow the mental convolutions necessary to share their universe shaking outrage over what is a pretty simple concept.  it's like getting angry at pi, or i.

No.  No, you cannot exist square root of negative one.  You are an outrage to existence, you are foul and hideous, go away now!

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« Reply #81 on: December 09, 2013, 03:23:39 pm »
Fair does.  I'll avoid making elaborate posts in future.

Not that I had intentions (other than demanding some more rigourous communicative efforts) but this outcome is unacceptable to me. Just sayin'.

Mike,
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Callan - the onus is on the writer to make him/her/itself understood, neh?
I'd take it as being more like a tango. It takes two to do it - not just one.

We've had versions of this conversation before. You can call it a dance, insist that we're doing the tango, but then you always seem to step as if you're expecting me to do the waltz (my understanding of traditional dance is spotty so apologies to anyone reading with a more relevant understanding than mine own)...

I work very, very hard in my day to day life and, probably even more so, here to be clear as to what exactly it is I'm trying to communicate. I know, only too well, many of the subtle ways in which communication fails and so I try to be clear about my connotations (the inutterals, which serve to fix the meanings of my utterals, in TSA parlance).

Do really you think you work equally as hard to make sure that what you think and say are what others take from your words? Do you even attempt to find out what other people take from your words (if anything) or do you constantly turn around and claim that the other side has committed a communicative foul?

Think on it.

That's no excuse. If the effing Bible is going to be Bakker's standard for internal consistency, then there's no point in me waiting around for The Unholy Consult. I might as well bug out now and save myself the frustration. :P

IMO, it's a pretty glaringly unfair comparison. The Bible was cobbled together from the work of multiple authors writing over several centuries, with each part subjected to generations of translation, possible transcription errors, and outright political manipulation. It's frankly amazing it makes as much sense as it does. A series of novels written by one guy over a decade really ought to be held to a higher standard, don't you think? Even if he's consciously going for a 'Biblical feel'.

Uh... +1 for historical notation.

Lol - I was only offering a suggestion. It could very well be that Bakker's committed the fallacy that you've posited. Or, perhaps, TUC changes the rules of the game once again...

Quote
In terms of being straight honest, I find both what you and Curethan are writing back and forth to be mostly unintelligible.

I find a good 80% of the stuff in this entire forum to be completely unintelligible. The remaining 20% is interesting enough to make up for that, though. ;)

Absolutely. It still doesn't follow that we shouldn't strive for unreachable communicative ideals, even in our nerdanels.

("...My loss of faith replaced by doubt..." See what waiting so long for UC has done to me? I'm drowning in cynicism, arbitrary skepticism and Scandinavian gothic metal. It is too far... :P )

+1 - I think, many of us are here with you, Duskweaver. In my quest, I've also tried burning Bakker's existing books in a ladle and tapping the soupy remnants intravenously but the meanings are never so clear as when I smoke them in a broken lightbulb ;).

I've always found the utter hysterics over 'objective morality' to be pretty impenetrable reading.  Never been able to follow the mental convolutions necessary to share their universe shaking outrage over what is a pretty simple concept.  it's like getting angry at pi, or i.

No.  No, you cannot exist square root of negative one.  You are an outrage to existence, you are foul and hideous, go away now!

Lol - perhaps, it reflects a ratio by which outrage is proportionate to an individual's remaining commitment to their worldly faiths?
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« Reply #82 on: December 09, 2013, 08:57:49 pm »
Right then, so this was originally going to be directed at Curethan, but since he has left the thread I'll just post my thoughts, maybe he'll see them, maybe not. I realize it takes me a while to respond here, and this is primarily because my desktop computer only stays on for about twenty to forty minutes, if that, before just shutting off with zero warning. Thus, writing up long posts is a pain in the ass (at this point I'm just doing it in a word document and hitting "ctrl+s" every few seconds). I can use my Kindle, which is what I've mostly been using for browsing the interwebs at the moment, but that too is a huge pain in the ass to write anything of decent length. If I was writing what I just wrote here, but on my Kindle, I might be done the first two sentences. It has an extremely annoying "auto-correct" feature, which is difficult to circumvent even when writing something more mundane, let alone a piece where every tenth word is Nonman or No-God or Sranc or some crazy shit that doesn't exist in the dictionary, even though I try to add them as I go along...but even this is very unreliable -- certain words seem to "stick", and others don't. For example everytime I start to type "google", fucking Gin'Yursis comes up, of all the random names for the damn thing to remember, and it seems very fond of reminding me that it has done so.

ANYWAYS

So over the last few days, I've actually pretty radically altered some of my thoughts on the metaphysics. This came through a combination of doing sporadic re-reads of semi-random parts from the books, and from re-reading old threads here, including the Thorstein's amazing write-ups, which I actually agree with largely, with some discrepancies.

To start with, I no longer think the gods are enforcing damnation per se, nor that they made up the rules of damnation in the first place. I do still believe, however, they are in no way worthy of any admiration, and that any plans/goals/missions to cut the bonds between the gods and the World (or just the Outside and the Wolrd) are, ultimately, a "good" thing. I use the word "good" lightly. To put it another, I think that shutting off the Outside is overwhelmingly beneficial to the sentient life of the Bakkerverse, human, Inchoroi, whatever.

I should probably outline my thoughts so as to better argue my point: I think Thorstein's ideas on the relation between quantum mechanics, and the concept in the Bakkerverse of the "circuit between watcher and watched being the foundation of reality", are pretty spot on. I already believed that the Bakkerverse is supposed to be, in a weird way, what our universe would be like if it was truly as anthropocentric as many religions (in this case, primarily Abrahamic ones) imagine it.

Earwa is, in perhaps a very literal sense, the center of the Bakkervese. We know that Earwa is special. Sorcery, it seems, can only be used there. In addition, we know the Bakkerverse is populated with non-human life, and these beings are very alien, which includes alien morals. And yet, the gods are incredibly anthropomorphic, as are the "rules of morality" that outline damnation. This means an entire universe of ensouled beings are being subjected to a purely anthropocentric set of morals, and being -- quite unfairly -- punished for it.

So, I think that the gods quite literally arose from the noosphere of Earwa's conscious beings (humans, who I suspect have always outnumbered Nonmen). Humans themselves aren't particularly special in-and-of-themselves, but Earwa is. The gods would have reflected whatever the noosphere of Earwa's dominant inhabitants held. Damnation, too, is a relfection of this noosphere, reflection of the collective consciousness of the Earwans.

I believe that the "circuit of watcher and watched" is what pins these things into existence. Ensouled beings, fragments of the God, watching each other (collapsing the wave function, if you will). This is why Cishaurim have no mark -- they've removed themselves from the circuit. This is why the gods can't see the No-God -- it was never part of the circuit of the to begin with. Once that circuit is broken, the rules no longer apply quite the same. The pin has been removed.

The problem is that the gods themselves are only interested in Earwa. They want the devotion of humans, Earwans, because they're the ones who matter. All the ensouled beings in the universe don't offer anything. Thus, they're never given revelations. They didn't have Inri Sejenus, or prophets. They're damned without even knowing it, because they could never know otherwise.

Again, I think all of this stuff really hits home for people who grew up with a religious background (particularly an Abrahamic one), as Bakker did. It this on all these ideas that would crop up. If Jesus is real, he revealed himself to humanity as to save their souls, then what about the entire universe of sentient beings that didn't have a Jesus? Who, by their very nature, could not have anthropocentric morals, and so are doomed to damnation? It's just as the Inchoroi said -- they were born for damnation.

This also ties into why the number 144,00 is important. One of the chapter quotes in WLW is from "The Third Revelation Ganus the Blind" (hey, there's that blindness again), and it says:

Quote
The last of the wicked stand with the last of the righteous, lamenting the same woe. One Hundred and Forty-Four Thousand, they shall be called, for this is their tally, the very number of doom.

So, what happens when the population is ed to 144,000? This is the goal of the Consult, so obviously it must be something related to the Outside, or the gods, and the blocking/closing/ending there of. I suspect that by reducing the population of Earwa's dominant collective consciousness (humanity)...something important happens. The boundaries between the World and the Outside break. The gods lose their power. I don't know exactly what, but I do think that's where this story is headed.

I'll post more about how I think the No-God fits into this later.

But I digress.

To loop back around to the whole "objective morality" thing, I don't feel like I have many other ways of explaining my feelings on it. It just...I don't know. What people here are describing as objective morality seems to have virtually nothing to do with actual morality. There are "rules" underwriting existence. These rules, when broken, lead to punishment. Some of the people in this universe consider these rules to be a moral-framework. Alright, cool. It's still not some objective morality. It just...it doesn't make sense. Morality transcends these notions. I wish Sci was posting on this thread, because back on westeros when this was being discussed, he gave a very succinct explanation of my feelings on it, but I have little hope of ever finding that particular random post.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2013, 09:01:02 pm by Francis Buck »

Callan S.

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« Reply #83 on: December 10, 2013, 01:07:01 am »
Think on it.
Again, alone. Not us thinking on it. Just me.

What, do you want me to decide for you that I've put in enough effort, Mike? Are you allowing me to decide that for you?

Give me a metric for the effort you want. I want to rant on the time I spend on posts, even the time on paragraphs that I then delete anyway as they might just have convoluted things. Any appearance that I just type and type until I hit post is purely illusory - there are so many pauses.

This is just closing a door - as if there's a way out of 'think on it'. When there is no way out (unless I decide your own mind for you somehow?)

Callan S.

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« Reply #84 on: December 10, 2013, 01:21:57 am »
I've always found the utter hysterics over 'objective morality' to be pretty impenetrable reading.  Never been able to follow the mental convolutions necessary to share their universe shaking outrage over what is a pretty simple concept.  it's like getting angry at pi, or i.
It's like encountering someone who says they can measure 10cm, but if you actually compared their ruler to others, their 10cm is some other rulers 4cm.

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« Reply #85 on: December 10, 2013, 01:54:17 am »
I've always found the utter hysterics over 'objective morality' to be pretty impenetrable reading.  Never been able to follow the mental convolutions necessary to share their universe shaking outrage over what is a pretty simple concept.  it's like getting angry at pi, or i.

No.  No, you cannot exist square root of negative one.  You are an outrage to existence, you are foul and hideous, go away now!

Can you elaborate on this in some way? I honestly don't know if you're arguing against the people stating the plausibility of OM (that's what I'm calling it now because I'm tired of typing it) or those stating the implausibility of it.

Regardless, what strikes me as interesting is that we have people on both sides of the fence here. Some people (myself) just flat-out don't get it. I genuinely don't understand how people are looking at the situations proposed here and can say, "Yeah, that's objective morality". Likewise, there are people on the other side of the fence arguing the exact opposite, "Why is this such a hard concept to grasp?".

Why is that?

All I know is -- and I've basically said this same thing twenty times in twenty different threads -- every single argument I see somehow explaining how this OM works...has nothing to do with morality. It's like saying there's a universe, we'll call it Francoverse, and in Francoverse, there is, "Musical Objectivity". In this universe, some music is objectively better than other music. The reason for this is, because, if you don't like the music that has been labeled "good music", you get punished for it, because that's how the Francoverse works. But what is this actually saying? It has nothing to do with music, or the appreciation or interpretation of music. It's just one superior force, subjugating another, weaker force, based on arbitrary rules set by...whatever. The Subjugators, the universe itself, it doesn't matter. It's still all bullshit. It has nothing to do music, because music, and the enjoyment of it, is inherently subjective. That's it. Sure, we can rant on about the logical quality of the music. We can talk about how me throwing my feces against the wall and recording the sound it makes is nothing compared to the blood, sweat, and tears Beethoven put into his work...But it's still fucking subjective. And here's the big kicker: it's all based on the observer.

This is why different cultures have different conceptions of morality. This is why the Inchoroi feel injustice at being damned, when they're being punished by anthropomorphic rules. Because objective morality DOES NOT EXIST. It cannot exist, by virtue of what it is. This is what I was hinting at with my concept of an anthropomorphic universe filled with non-anthropic creatures. The OM we see here is not actual morality. Morality is nebulous. It changes. It has no definite structure. It. Is. Subjective. This is the nature of consciousness. It doesn't matter if you're a human, a dog, an Inchoroi, one of the Hundred, or Jesus Christ himself. Morality transcends all of it, because it's only relevance is upon the observer.

It's because we're dealing with something that is inherently subjective. You cannot make it objective. Period. Like...that's it. It doesn't suddenly become objective just because the universe bends to those particular rules.

Royce

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« Reply #86 on: December 10, 2013, 12:39:07 pm »
Quote
DOES NOT EXIST

Right there. Few words and to the point.

You just have to answer the question: How can it exist? How can countless subjective opinions become "the objective morality" unless they all state the
exact same thing? Which is impossible, so it can not exist.

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« Reply #87 on: December 10, 2013, 01:25:20 pm »
I realize it takes me a while to respond here, and this is primarily because my desktop computer only stays on for about twenty to forty minutes, if that, before just shutting off with zero warning. Thus, writing up long posts is a pain in the ass (at this point I'm just doing it in a word document and hitting "ctrl+s" every few seconds). I can use my Kindle, which is what I've mostly been using for browsing the interwebs at the moment, but that too is a huge pain in the ass to write anything of decent length. If I was writing what I just wrote here, but on my Kindle, I might be done the first two sentences. It has an extremely annoying "auto-correct" feature, which is difficult to circumvent even when writing something more mundane, let alone a piece where every tenth word is Nonman or No-God or Sranc or some crazy shit that doesn't exist in the dictionary, even though I try to add them as I go along...but even this is very unreliable -- certain words seem to "stick", and others don't. For example everytime I start to type "google", fucking Gin'Yursis comes up, of all the random names for the damn thing to remember, and it seems very fond of reminding me that it has done so.

Lol'd. You have my condolences, FB. Affect change, you need to keep writing.

ANYWAYS...

It has the making of a sound nerdaneling, FB, observers fixing reality in place and such BUT... for me there still remains a distinction between the Mark and Damnation as per the sight of the Judging Eye, that I don't think you, or anyone, has adequately addressed.

Quote
To loop back around to the whole "objective morality" thing, I don't feel like I have many other ways of explaining my feelings on it. It just...I don't know. What people here are describing as objective morality seems to have virtually nothing to do with actual morality. There are "rules" underwriting existence. These rules, when broken, lead to punishment. Some of the people in this universe consider these rules to be a moral-framework. Alright, cool. It's still not some objective morality. It just...it doesn't make sense. Morality transcends these notions. I wish Sci was posting on this thread, because back on westeros when this was being discussed, he gave a very succinct explanation of my feelings on it, but I have little hope of ever finding that particular random post.

It's because we're dealing with something that is inherently subjective. You cannot make it objective. Period. Like...that's it. It doesn't suddenly become objective just because the universe bends to those particular rules.

Quote
DOES NOT EXIST

Right there. Few words and to the point.

You just have to answer the question: How can it exist? How can countless subjective opinions become "the objective morality" unless they all state the
exact same thing? Which is impossible, so it can not exist.

I think, I've got it, FB. It has come to me while reading your posts.

You've either never been inside such a system, really, or you've forgotten what it was like to believe but God, not humans, decides what satisfies moral conduct...

This whole shtick about "This is why different cultures have different conceptions of morality" (FB) is such historically disparate conception and, in fact, you'd still probably be hard pressed to convince many persons living that this is the case.

Think of Cnaiur's thoughts on the Warrior-Prophet/Dunyain.

In theological frameworks, God decides morality, therefore it is objective, neh?

I think you've simply struck upon faith, FB.

Think on it.
Again, alone. Not us thinking on it. Just me.

What, do you want me to decide for you that I've put in enough effort, Mike? Are you allowing me to decide that for you?

Give me a metric for the effort you want. I want to rant on the time I spend on posts, even the time on paragraphs that I then delete anyway as they might just have convoluted things. Any appearance that I just type and type until I hit post is purely illusory - there are so many pauses.

This is just closing a door - as if there's a way out of 'think on it'. When there is no way out (unless I decide your own mind for you somehow?)

Callan, you decide your own level of participation. These are simply things I don't need to address.

But all I really did ask of you was to answer a couple questions that you ignore:

Do really you think you work equally as hard [as others] to make sure that what you think and say are what others take from your words? Do you even attempt to find out what other people take from your words (if anything) or do you constantly turn around and claim that the other side has committed a communicative foul?

No one is going to censor you or demand that you communicate a certain way. But people will just choose to stop engaging you.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2013, 01:29:49 pm by Madness »
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« Reply #88 on: December 10, 2013, 08:48:10 pm »
Quote
I think, I've got it, FB. It has come to me while reading your posts.

You've either never been inside such a system, really, or you've forgotten what it was like to believe but God, not humans, decides what satisfies moral conduct...

This whole shtick about "This is why different cultures have different conceptions of morality" (FB) is such historically disparate conception and, in fact, you'd still probably be hard pressed to convince many persons living that this is the case.

Think of Cnaiur's thoughts on the Warrior-Prophet/Dunyain.

In theological frameworks, God decides morality, therefore it is objective, neh?

I think you've simply struck upon faith, FB.

Eh, it's possible, but I'm not sure. For what it's worth, I did grow up in a semi-religious household, and I went to extremely strict fundamentalist Baptist high-school (which was a major influence on my current beliefs). Before going to that school, I believed in God, in some form. I had "faith". It wasn't nearly as strong as what a fundamentalist might feel, but even so, it was there.

But again, I feel myself looping back to the idea that, even if a God existed, and even if that God laid out the rules of morality...they're still not objective. If that God says that women are spiritually inferior to men, then I disagree. Because they're not my morals. This goes back to the quotes from Epicurus, and Mark Twain. A God setting up rules of morality doesn't mean anything about real morality. They're just the arbitrary rules the God set. His omnipotence and omniscience is irrelevant. He can punish me for not following his way, but that doesn't change the basic nature of morality. Just like if a God said, "This is piece of art is objectively superior." Well, maybe for God it is. For me it sucks. I don't follow the line of reasoning that a being of great power, setting a punish-reward system based his own conception of morality, suddenly makes that moral framework objective.

In the case of Earwa this is even more so dramatic, since the gods, are neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Again, it's one powerful being saying that its morals are the right ones, and then punishing people for it. That doesn't make those morals objective in any way, shape, or form.

Now, from that quote Curethan posted, where Bakker says how the inferiority of women to men was a fact, like atomic weight, as it was in Biblical times, THAT makes sense to me, because it's just the people of that time thinking these morals are objective. But they're not ACTUALLY objective. It's a delusion. That's what I'm confused about, to some extent. I don't know if Bakker's trying to say the former -- that it's simply the Earwans' idea of morality being objective, or whether he's saying these morals in Earwa are in some way literally, metaphysically objective.

Hopefully I'm making some kind of sense here.

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« Reply #89 on: December 10, 2013, 08:55:55 pm »
he's saying in earwa, the delusion is not a delusion.