Morality without God: the realm of Arbitrariness

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Is is acceptable to hurt people is some cases, such as approved by a 2/3 majority in Congress and implemented by a government?

"Nobody is hurt" is pain a demarcation of righteousness and evil?

"That's not fair" is symmetry in transactions another such demarcation?

Age of Consent -> Here now, the drinking age is 210, and you are considered a minor until the age of 85. Make any sense?

We the State Congress of Tennessee define Pi to be 22/7ths.

Any thoughts?

Life is arbitrary. Now let me ask you this: has everyone who has claimed to uphold a Christian creed upheld the same morality? Some have upheld southern slavery, some have upheld killing heretics, some have been complete pacifists, some have railed against the church, some have upheld the way it works, some have opposed women's rights, while others support the notion. What isn't arbitrary?

Look into the Non Aggression Principle/Zero Aggression Principle as well as Harm Theory...

Neither require Religion and would not accept your arguments.

No, and just because a person claims to be something doesn't make them one.



Physics and mathematics.

I hereby decree that the Gravitational Constant is 6.67*10^+11 (N*m^2/kg^2)

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a plane circle to its diameter. Given that definition one can prove pi is NOT 22/7. In fact p is not even an algebraic number (one that is a solution to a polynomial equation with rational coefficients)

The Tennnessee definition is not even Biblical. In the Bible pi is defined to be 3 (I Kings 7:23), a very crude approximation.

ruveyn

Yes, with the extra verbiage it should be "a line of 31 cubits, 1 span, and one inch."

Ok, but that applies to your view of God.


Hmm.... well, the constants are arbitrary, as Newton could not account for them, and people stopped trying after that. Not only that, but the scientists are arbitrary, as they often failed to find the charge of the electron after Millikan simply because they didn't want to rock the boat, so they would lower their findings until they were closer to Millikan's. As for mathematics, a person cannot know if their proofs are valid, as even Ramujan had bad proofs, and math could be argued as a species specific thing, as linguist George Lakoff has attempted.

Math could be argued as a species specific thing, especially since most species do not employ math in writing. As for within human communication, there are roles of senders and receivers (which roles can alternate) who use signals to carry information. It would be correct to say that the use of base ten is arbitrary, but the concepts of addition and subtraction, at the least, are intuitive in most humans. Why is it that °° apples and °°° apples makes °°°°° apples?

It doesn't. You only think it does.

Not entirely true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_theory

I don't see how that relates to the gravitational constant. It only relates to things like pi or e. I was actually talking about brute fact numbers that are beyond examination.

Let's see here. Arbitrary notation (I personally prefer dozenal over decimal, while computer science folks might like hexadecimal, octal, or binary). None of those symbols has any intrinsic meaning beyond what we all mutually agree to give to them. And then Newtons, meters, and kilograms are all arbitrary units. A kilogram is defined as a mass equal to that of a piece of platinum sitting somewhere in France if I recall correctly, and I think a meter is defined in terms of the distance light travels in a second, with a second being defined as the length it takes for a cesium atom to transition between two levels of the ground state under conditions that are not regarded as physically possible.

Yep, I'm seeing lots of arbitrariness here.

That's a big part of what research in a lot of the sciences is about (especially in Quantum Mechanics), not just finding out how things work, but finding out why the hell the constants are what they are. To a person such as myself that considers the universe as a giant, extraordinarily complex equation, that would put things like the gravitational constant, Planck's, and all those other constants into the realms of Number Theory.

The big issue is that any equations have constants or values inserted in them such that they will have outputs. The universe has an output, so it can't just be a relationship between variables, but there must be some arbitrary number inserted in there.

Morality with God: "The Bible, except all that nasty stuff in OT."