Part D of my meta-ethical exchange with Clear404 [Moral necessity defeats God]

Part C of my meta-ethical exchange with Clear404 [The Joycean acknowledges sensei Joyce before surpassing him]

Part B of my meta-ethical exchange with Clear404 [Clear404 and NJ take off the kiddy gloves]

Part A of my Youtube discussion with the theistic reasons internalist Clear404

Being the lazy, truant person that I am (all hail Slaking!), it's taking me awhile to finish my first paper on meta-ethics. So as compensation, I'm positing this interesting back-and-forth on meta-ethics and divine command theory.

While I was acting like an idiot savant via my Youtube channel, I ran into a theistic apologist named Clear404 in late May 2012 or early June 2012 on the video "The complete idiots guide to atheism" (by strangestdude). So if you want to see the context for the discussion which follows, please go to the comments section of that video. We commented back and forth for awhile and then continued our discussions via Youtube PMs. Unlike virtually EVERY proponent of God-based ethics or divine command theory and the moral argument for God I've encountered (outside of professional philosophers), Clear404 had actually done some reading in meta-ethics and knew what he/she was talking about. He/she was still wrong, but at least they were wrong in an intelligent way. So I leapt at the chance to engage such a theist. The discussion was stimulating and allowed me to hone many of the ideas that will appear in my posts on meta-ethics. 

With Clear404's permission, I've decided to post the PMs, with the only modifications in them being the removal of personal information. Unfortunately, this will again leave me looking like a jerk in a few places. However, unlike in my discussion with Mentat1231, I think I was cordial most of the time and whenever I got pissed off with Clear404, it was justified (ex: his/her's abuse of the charge "question-begging."). At the time of the discussion, I will still deciding between moral nihilism and moral naturalism; currently, I lean more towards the latter. Hope this spurs some discussion.

Readers new to moral philosophy should probably start with my post Morality: Realism, Nihilism, and God before reading this exchange. That post serves as a useful introduction to the terminology Clear404 and I use in this exchange. For those in a rush, I'd recommend focusing on the intro to section I of that post, along with section I-B-2b, to get the gist of the terminology. Sections I-B-1a, I-B-1b-i, and I-B-1b-ii may also be helpful.

Here we go!:

Part 5 of my discussion with Mentat1231, or "the debate concludes [No seriously; I mean it this time]."

Part 4 of my discussion with Mentat1231, or "why you NEVER piss off the Joycean"

Part 3 of my discussion with Mentat1231, or "Noct shows his first signs of intelligence; Mentat concurs with this assessment"

Part 3 of a trilogy always blows... unless its "the Dark Knight Rises" or "Evil Dead" or "Pokemon" (though that's more of an installment franchise, as opposed to a trilogy) or... Anywho, here's the third installment of Mentat1231's and my Youtube private message discussion.

Part 2 of my discussion with Mentat1231, or "NJ has no life; Mentat's fulfilling personal life reminds NJ of this"

Backed by popular demand, a continuation of my Youtube private message discussion with the theist Mentat1231:

Part 1 of my Youtube exchange with Mentat1231

I decided to include this interesting back-and-forth to tide people over until I post my meta-ethics paper.

While I was acting like an idiot via my Youtube channel (if you've encountered me on Youtube, you know I can be a jerk; on Youtube I'm nothing like what I am in chat rooms or on this blog), I ran into a theistic apologist named Mentat1231 in late May 2012 on the video "Is God Necessary for Morality? William Lane Craig vs Shelly Kagan Debate" (by bdw5000). We commented back and forth for awhile and then continued our discussions via Youtube PMs. So if you want to see the context for the discussion which follows, please go to the comments section of that video. The discussion was stimulating and allowed me to hone many of the ideas that appeared in my paper on the ontological argument, and my subsequent papers (currently in the works) on meta-ethics, Kalam, and the teleological argument. With Mentat1231's permission, I've decided to post the PMs, with the only modifications in them being the removal of personal information. Unfortunately, this will leave me looking...how do I put this nicely..."immature" in a lot of my posts. Well, being 21 is no excuse. At the time of the discussion, I will still deciding between moral nihilism and moral naturalism; currently, I lean more towards the latter. Hope this spurs some discussion.

Also, please remember that ALL CAPS is the only way to add emphasis in Youtube private messages; bold, italics, and underlining are not transferred. So when I or Mentat1231 employ ALL CAPS, we are (usually) not yelling at one another; we are just trying to emphasize a point.

[I also never asked Mentat1231 to stop calling me "sir", though I never asked them to call me that either. My raging, 21-year-old ego would not allow it]:

Pokemon Noobs

I just wanted to troll Rayndeon for a bit.

Trolololololololololololololololololololololololololololololol


Rayndeon: you may know a lot about philosophy, but your Pokemon knowledge is sorely lacking. How could you not know that there were originally 152, NOT 151 pokemon? How could you forget MissingNo? That's like discussing Platonism without knowing who Plato was! I think I'm going to have to start an informal course educating people on the nuances of Pokemon.


Anyway, with that matter out of the way, I should have a new post on meta-ethics by the end of this weekend or the end of next weekend. Hopefully, all 3 of you are looking forward to it. 


Peace.

Ontological Arguments: A Critique

Well this is it: my first serious blog post ever.

I'm almost as nervous as I was the first time I rode my bike without training wheels. I've tried to keep technical terminology to a minimum, and provide lots of useful examples and analogies, so my arguments should be relatively easy to follow. I still don't know how to insert links into the outline section so that readers can easily jump to the section they want (if anyone could tell me how to do this, I would greatly appreciate it). So if you want to jump to a certain section, I'd recommend just copying and pasting the section heading from the outline into the "Ctrl + F" menu. Only underlined headings appear in the body of the text. 

Given this post's length, feel free to use the shorter argument map to keep track of all the arguments or, if you're in a rush, as a substitute for the longer post itself.

Without further ado, let's tackle ontological arguments for God!

Getting started

I'll be posting something on the ontological argument very soon, along with some subsequent posts on the following subjects:

- meta-ethics (moral arguments for God, the is/ought problem, moral nihilism/naturalism, etc.)
- "function" in the context of naturalistic evolution and the Intelligent Design movement
- my take on the Kalam cosmological argument for God, especially its relation to philosophy of mind
- why I prefer seinen manga to shounen and why most popular shounen manga blow
- random insanity

Hopefully I'll learn how this new-fangled blogging system works.

See ya, and hope things go well for you.