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@Tarik
You literally used the phrase “moral standard” that literally means the standard is moral
In the sense you are interpreting the term within this sentence, it’s a tautology. The standard is moral according to its own self, because it is the very thing it is being judged against.
That’s not what we’re talking about.
You were appealing to a standard outside of it, which by definition means it is no longer the standard.
If A is my standard and B is your standard, and we want to resolve which standard is more moral, we need to invoke something else, standard C, so that A and B can be compared to it to see which one comes closer.
Without a third standard all we’re doing is saying A is closer to A, which makes A more moral. And you would no doubt claim that B is closer to B, making B more moral. This is not a means to a resolution, it’s just two individuals planting their feet on what they consider moral.
But if we do invoke C to judge A and B against, then C becomes our new moral standard. So A and B are useless.
And then of course someone can come along and claim D is the standard for morality. And on it goes…
This is why morality will always be subjective. There is no resolving this.
you claimed conflicting standards as the basis as to why morality is subjective, so that literally means the same as saying conflicting standards are moral.
To claim something is subjective is to claim that there is no right or wrong answer.
If there is no right or wrong answer then the statement A and B are both moral cannot follow, because you have to accept that there is a right answer as to whether either is moral to even assert it.
So no, that’s not literally what that means.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
A lesser disgrace than those who claim George Floyd was murdered. He wasn't even killed by the police.
If only we had video footage of the officer suffocating him for 9 minutes as he lay defenseless on the ground till he stopped breathing…
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I admitted that it might not be revenge... it could also have been an ongoing investigation. What it could not plausibly be is coincidence.
No one is claiming it was a mere coincidence, so this point is irrelevant.
I said you claimed there was no investigation at this time. You commit a strawman while claiming a strawman.
What I said was that the investigation was dormant. An inactive investigation and no investigation are two different things.
But in jumping at this point you ignored the more important point which I was referring to, which is your repetitive claim that my position on the seizure is that it was all about revenge. You know damn well that this is not my position, I made clear repeatedly that we don’t know what it was about which was the whole point. Every time you repeat this you are lying full stop.
He" refers to Joe Biden or this sentence makes no sense. No difference whatsoever between exposure to Hunter and exposure to Joe since they were a functional unit, part of the same criminal fucking conspiracy.
The “he” in that sentence refers to Hunter. And yes it makes a big difference because your allegation is that Biden got involved to protect him from Shokin’s investigation. If Hunter had no exposure then there is no reason for Biden to get involved as he would be risking his political career and legacy for nothing. Just another hole in your conspiracy theory.
only because you claimed (in post #97) that Biden feared no exposure because there was no investigation. Please, for your own dignity review your own claim before you say something like "dormant is still threatening", if it's threatening then your #97 claim still fails.
What are you talking about?
I never claimed that Biden feared anything here. That’s your claim which I have been refuting for weeks now.
I never claimed the investigation was a threat to Hunter or Joe. Again, that’s your claim which I have been refuting for weeks now.
I never used the words “dormant is still threatening”, so your quotation is just you making shit up.
Well I have your quotes, but you'll claim that was just a theoretical explanation for the seizures as revenge, you'll no doubt claim that you don't actually believe it was revenge.
Because that’s my position, and I’ve explained it to you multiple times, in detail, for weeks now.
And I also never used the word “revenge”. I said retaliation to which I went into detail to explain what I meant by that. As usual you twist every point I made so you can latch into something that sounds good to you, despite my clarifications.
And once again, this entire point is irrelevant to our larger disagreement, so the fact that you continue to put your focus towards this shows how vapid your position is.
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@Tarik
How can both standards be moral if they conflict?
First off, the standard is the very thing you are using to judge actions against, so claiming a standard is itself moral is incoherent. If it’s being judged against anything else then it is not your standard.
Second, I never said conflicting standards could both be moral. I’m pointing out that each system is moral to the individual using it, which is what a disagreement is. This is why morality will always be subjective, because no matter what your standard is you still had to choose that standard and anyone else can simply choose a different one. There is no resolution to this.
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@Tarik
Why didn’t you start with that rather than asking me to explain? Because you saying my answer makes sense to me isn’t a retort in the slightest.
You are the one who asserted that morality must be objective to make sense, so I challenged you to support your claim. That’s what open minded individuals do. When you failed to attempt justifying such a claim, I began explaining what was wrong with your assertion. This is how productive conversations are attempted.
My answer isn’t supposed to be a retort, it’s a description of what’s wrong with your position. Again, you are making the claim. Prove it.
in order for morality to make sense and we grasp the concept of right and wrong it must be consistent across the board
Correct. That doesn’t however require objectivity, all it requires is that we begin with the same moral standards. If we have conflicting moral standards then we are not going to agree on matters of right vs wrong, which happens all the time.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Oh it is to @Double_R who claimed there was not investigation at this point in time (November 2015) and indeed that Shokin's seizure of the oligarch's assets was revenge against Joe Biden for getting him fired.
We’ve been through this multiple times, and I have explained each time in pain staking detail that the retaliatory theory to explain Shokin’s seizure of assets was just one possible explanation I made up on the spot and through out there to demonstrate that we don’t know what this was about. You yourself admitted that because the seizure came well after Biden’s meeting with Porshenko we could not draw any definitive conclusions about what motivated it, so you were in fact agreeing with my point.
To take that and say that I claimed there was no investigation prior to the meeting and that this was in fact “revenge” against Joe Biden - despite me explaining multiple times that this is not what I argued - isn’t just arguing in bad faith, it’s flat out lying.
The only reason this point matters is because you are using it to make your case by presenting the seizure as evidence that Shokin was in fact prosecuting corruption, so the burden is on you to show that his motivations were clear. You cannot do that, so you have to lie.
He claimed there was no threat against burisma and therefore Joe had no personal reason to protect burisma.
I never claimed this. I said there was no threat against Hunter. Big difference.
Double_R never once suggested that Biden's threat was not the prime mover behind the firing, indeed that fact was central to his explanation of the movement against burisma.
I never claimed to know what the prime mover was, I accepted for the sake of argument your premise to demonstrate that even if we grant that, your argument still fails.
Again, these are your claims.
As I have explained and as Ram has explained as well, the US was not the only entity threatening to pull funding. I even quoted for you the article explaining the 4 billion that was in jeopardy from being pulled by the EU and the IMF, far more than the amount Biden threatened. You’ve ignored all of this.
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@3RU7AL
still probably an honest misunderstanding, at least initially
I wouldn’t doubt that it was honest, but I think it does show some serious confirmation bias. The sentence before made very clear what I was talking about, you really have to gloss over it without thinking twice to make that error.
immoral people get into heaven all the timeall they have to do is ask forgiveness and believe the jesus will save them
Very true
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@ADreamOfLiberty
That's what the word consensus means.No, it means complete or almost complete agreement. If I sneak into congress and declare I am the god emperor and no one dissents; that's not consensus.
Ok, so let’s recap here. I’ve provided a dozen articles written well before this issue ever became politicized explaining how Shokin was corrupt according to the US, the EU, and from a large swath of Ukraine and challenged you to find one - just one - article from that same time period arguing that Shokin was not corrupt and/or should have kept his job.
You can’t find one. And you clearly looked since you went as far as to translate articles written in another language.
But yet you believe you are sitting on rational grounds to claim that a consensus should not be assumed because there might be other people or other countries that didn’t think he was corrupt but just haven’t said so.
This is the classic example of an argument from ignorance. Your position here is based off of literally nothing.
there is no evidence that the grumbling of a few EU bureaucrats was anything but that which was latched onto as a bolstering excuse by the US executive campaign.
In other words, “here’s another possibility you haven’t proven false, therefore I’m rationally justified in accepting it as true”
A follows B. I haven't seen any evidence of international attention dated from before Hunter started collecting bribes.
That’s because Shokin wasn’t in the job yet.
We’ve been through the timeline already, that was the conversation where you failed to recognize that 4+6=10
Ah so you don't have the evidence you claim, you just want me to submit to the generic opinion of various columnists who almost certainly did no independent research.
No, I want you to recognize that when all of the evidence points in the same direction, the only rational position is to tentatively accept it.
Attack the credibility of anyone who wrote any literature on this subject as a middle man just parroting what they were told to say by some nefarious forceLike you attacked the credibility of Shokin and Giuliani.
No, not like that at all.
I attacked the credibility of Shokin and Giuliani by giving reasons and examples specific to those two individuals. Your attacks were indiscriminate hand waiving away of anyone who dared to take a position that countered your narrative. These are not the same thing. Context actually matters.
Well other than the senate committee everyone worked for Biden... so yea.
They didn’t work for Biden. The ambassador reports to the Secretary of State, who reports to the President. Biden also reports to the President. Contrary to your fantasy narrative, Biden was not ultimately in charge and the ambassador did not report to him.
I’ve explained this already. If you’re going to reply the least you can do is acknowledge what has been said.
As I explained several times, if you are not ruling out personal motivations then the overwhelming circumstantial evidence of corruption remains the best explanation.
We’re talking about whether there was a consensus around Shokin. Focus.
Rudy Giuliani was the president's personal attorney. He reported to no one else but Donald J Trump. Not the same thing.And Donald J Trump works for the American people.
You ignored everything I just said to draw a line that doesn’t connect.
Setting aside the laughable notion that Donald Trump ever saw himself as working for the American people… once again, Giuliani was Trump’s personal attorney, so this is already an apples to oranges comparison. Moreover, we’re talking about potential corrupt influences. Corruption is the product of corrupt individuals which in Biden’s case would have needed to start above him with Obama. It is incoherent to insert “the American people” as a corrupt influence in this conversation.
The evidence is the fact that internal affairs of Ukraine are none of our business + the fact of Biden's corruption + Ambassador works for Biden.
Your opinion on US foreign policy is not evidence of anything.
Biden’s corruption is the claim we are debating you’re being the question.
The ambassador does not work for Biden.
Biden doesn't need to tell the ambassador "look I'm taking bribes and I want you to go out and lie about Shokin", he just needs to say "look people don't like Shokin, we got to get rid of him".
A conversation you have zero evidence for nor any reasonable argument that it ever took place. Your entire case for this is that it fits into your narrative, which you are using as evidence. It’s classic question begging.
Already did with the Russian article. You dismissed it, not an authority you liked; big surprise huh?
Here’s the difference between you and I; I actually look at the articles and accept or reject them based on their merits. You base the merits on whether they agree with your narrative, just as you judge my ability to assess the articles on whether it goes along with your narrative.
I explained in detail what was wrong with your articles. You’ve since dropped that conversation and are now trying to use the fact that I do not accept your articles as evidence of your position as an argument that I’m somehow being biased. It’s absurd, but it’s also telling.
The reason I narrowed this conversation down to the question of whether there was a consensus on Shokin is because you can’t resolve a disagreement by referring to a scorecard of smaller disagreements, when those smaller disagreements are themselves unresolved. If you really believe your articles prove what you think they do then you need to stick with that argument or drop it. You can’t drop them and then pretend that the fact that I didn’t buy your BS proves anything else you have to say.
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@Tarik
And once you’ve done that, explain how getting into heaven is an objective basis for morality.Because only moral people can get into it
There is nothing about that answer which justifies the assertion that getting into heaven is an objective basis for morality. That is simply the basis which you chose because it makes sense to you, just as I choose well being because it makes sense to me.
That’s a self refuting definition when you take into account the diametrically opposed judgements people have regarding the same action
No, it’s not.
We’re all using a different moral standard which is why we have disagreements about right vs wrong. Nothing about that conflicts with the fact that we’re still using a system to judge the actions of others, I didn’t say we’re all using the same system.
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@Shila
Because objectivity means not subject to opinion. So everyone sharing the same opinion is irrelevant
Double_R said: when people agree and share the same opinion they become irrelevant.
You’re misconstruing what I wrote. It’s not everyone that’s irrelevant, it’s everyone sharing the same opinion that’s irrelevant. Or to put it another way, it’s not everyone that shares the same opinion which is irrelevant, it’s that everyone shares the same opinion which is irrelevant.
The context here made that very clear.
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@Vici
Logical absolutes exist. Logical absolutes are conceptual by nature, are not dependent on space, time, physical properties, or human nature. They are not the product of the physical universe (space, time, matter), because if the physical universe were to disappear, logical absolutes would still be true. Logical Absolutes are not the product of human minds, because human minds are different, not absolute. But, since logical absolutes are always true everywhere, and not dependent upon human minds, it must be an absolute transcendent mind that is authoring them. This mind is called God.
If logical absolutes are authored by a mind then they can be changed by that mind, therefore they’re not absolutes.
Your argument refutes itself.
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@Vici
would you like me to send you bible so you can start repenting
Prove that the Bible is a reliable source of information for what exists beyond the observable universe first.
Then I’ll repent.
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@Sidewalker
The number of gumballs is either odd or even, that is not absurd reasoning.The three basic laws of thought are considered to be the basis of rational thought, they are 1) the law of identity, 2) the law of non-contradiction, and 3) the law of the excluded middle. The law of the excluded middle says for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true.You think that basic logic is absurd reasoning?
I already explained this to you.
The number of gumballs is either even or odd. There are no other options. If you believe there are, then you are by definition irrational.
The question however, is what do you believe regarding the number of gumballs. There are more than two possibilities with regards to this question, so the law of excluded middle does not apply here.
Here’s an example; I have a gumball machine in my house right now. Do you:
A) Believe the number of balls are even?
Or
B) Believe the number of balls are odd?
According to your argument either A or B is true and there are no other options. So which is it?
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@Sidewalker
Your constant assertion that you have no beliefs is in fact a statement that you do not have any knowledge whatsoever. To profess complete ignorance about the subject matters you spend so much time discussing just seems pointless.
The question we are discussing is; ‘does there exist a realm beyond the observable universe?’. Your position is that such a realm exists, my position is that there is no way for us to know.
The conversation we’re having is therefore not about whether such a realm exists, but whether we can know or be justified in believing such a realm exists. In other words, what we’re actually talking about is epistemology.
I don’t claim any ignorance on that subject. What I claim is that you have no idea how it works, which is why your arguments are nonsense.
LOL, if your thought process is so incoherent that you cannot connect the dots, then perhaps you should stop with the constantly declaring yourself to be more logical and rational, it’s got to be embarrassing.Let me try to dumb it down for you, try to follow along…
Stopped reading at this point. Being a colossal asshole is not a great way to make your point. If you’d like a response to whatever point you were trying to make try writing it again without the flagrant condescension and delusions of grandeur.
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@Tarik
So what does morality mean?
Morality is a system by which we judge the actions of ourselves and others.
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@Shila
Because objectivity means not subject to opinion. So everyone sharing the same opinion is irrelevant.Are you saying when people agree and share the same opinion they become irrelevant?
Please explain how you came to this understanding of what I said.
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@Tarik
How so? Care to “substantiate this position”.
Because objectivity means not subject to opinion. So everyone sharing the same opinion is irrelevant.
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@Tarik
And once you’ve done that, explain how getting into heaven is an objective basis for morality.Because everybody loves heaven.
Even if that were true, that still wouldn’t make it objective.
You ignored the rest of my post, I take that as a sign that you realize you can’t substantiate your position, or you’ve quietly changed it. Glad I could be of service.
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@Sidewalker
if it is not your position that an external realm doesn't exist, then it is your position that an external realm does exist (don't bother to say you didn't say that, simple logic applies)
That’s not how logic works.
You’re confusing the actual with the question of what one believes regarding the actual.
An external realm either exists or it does not exist. There are no other options.
I do not need to take a position on whether it does or does not exist. I can simply say “I don’t know”, and reject either claim as irresolvable since we have no access to such a realm or any product of it if something such as it were to exist.
A simpler way to think of it; a man in Texas has been accused of beating his wife. Do you believe he did it, or do you believe he didn’t do it?
If you are anything resembling a rational person, your response to this is something to the effect of ‘neither, because I do not have the information needed to make such an assessment’
This is the same thing.
I'm fully aware of the articles of faith for your fundamentalist atheism. Perhaps your scholarship could include using a dictionary;Faith:2. strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof:"To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance." - Eric Hoffer
This has absolutely nothing to do with anything a I just said.
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@Sidewalker
Yeah, like I said, I disagree with it. The existence of a transcendent realm is a matter of faith, you have faith that it doesn’t exist, and I’ll add that you are very dogmatic about your faith.
I never claimed an external realm doesn't exist nor is that my position. You made that up so that you could claim my beliefs are just as irrational as yours.
Yes, you did. That puerile burden of proof game you play isn’t valid, it demonstrates that you do not understand logic. “You have the burden of proof so I’m right” isn’t a logical argument.
I never made that argument. You’re once again, having a conversation in your head.
The burden of proof is a very basic philosophic principal rooted in skepticism. It’s not just a matter of external validation, far more importantly, it’s about internal validation. If you believe something you should have a good reason (aka evidence) for it. Without such reason, to continue to hold the belief is by definition irrational.
External validation here is simply the test of whether you actually have good reason, which is why those who aren’t interested in filtering out irrational beliefs hate talking about it.
So no, this has nothing to do with “winning” (a remarkably childish interpretation). Accepting the burden of proof as a valid principal governing acceptable thought is a prerequisite for having a rational dialog. So when you disregard it you show that you are not interested in that, at which point there is no reason to discuss anything with you.
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@Tarik
The fact that I keep quoting you and responding PROVES that I’m indeed reading your posts. If you don’t like me bringing up old stuff then why do you insist on recapping?
I recap because you seem to like inventing your own conversations rather than replying to the one you’re actually engaged in. Like here, where you accuse me of not liking that you bring back up old arguments. I have no issue with you bringing back up old arguments when they’re (A) relevant, and (B) not used as a means of disregarding the conversation we’re engaged in. I explained this when I responded, you ignored all of that.
I took your example and used it against you showing no signs of subjectivity whatsoever
Ah, the weather example. Let’s look at that again…
I was subjected to this weather. That sentence has nothing to do with dependent on the mind for existence
Again, the *literal* definition of subjective is:
“based mainly on opinions or feelings rather than on facts”
So when you say subject to the weather, there are no opinions involved. The weather is what it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it. But when you say something is subject to an individuals say so then that necessarily, means it is dependent on that person’s opinion.
Your example doesn’t prove your point, it demonstrates the opposite.
Exactly so to tie this back to our discussion a fact is something that can be proven, so for arguments sake if love is what gets you into heaven then that’s the proof in the pudding.
Prove that there is such thing as heaven.
And once you’ve done that, explain how getting into heaven is an objective basis for morality.
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@Tarik
Seriously? Don’t act like there’s no common denominator between what you recently said and the “year old debate” that I brought back up, that referral was exactly that a reference/me simply addressing what you clearly have been ignoring.
There is some crossover, that doesn't mean they are the same points and it certainly doesn't mean you refuted anything meaningful. Let's start by reposting my argument that you ignored a few pages ago:
Let's recap. You claimed morality only makes sense if it's objective. I then asked you for an objective standard to which you replied "love". I then asserted "well being" as the standard for morality and challenged you to objectively resolve this difference. You have been tap dancing ever since.So let's just cut to the chase; there is no such thing as objective morality. You can have a moral system that objectively follows from the core standard, but the standard itself will always be chosen by the individual, making it necessarily subjective.If you claim God as your moral standard, I can easily reject God as the standard and as I already have, assert something else. At that point we have two different moral systems. There is no objective resolution to this, not even a god because if one does exist and weighed in on which is correct, the answer would then be *subject to* his will.
First thing to notice here is that the part you zeroed in on so you could drop the rest if it was the very last line. Now if you actually read the post you would notice that the point was made in the first two paragraphs. The last paragraph was not necessary at all, it was just thrown in for emphasis and could have been done without the last sentence.
But that's the part you want to talk about.
And what do you want to discuss regarding this last sentence? A year old debate where you challenged my statement that "subject to" is "literally how you define subjective".
Well, of you look up subjective in the dictionary does it use the words "subject to"? No, so I guess you win on that one. That's not how the word is *literally* defined, so, congratulations on the "gotcha"?
For those of us who care about actual ideas however, the point of what I'm saying still stands. The *literal* definition of subjective is;
"based mainly on opinions or feelings rather than on facts"
In other words, it's based on what the individual says instead of what's actual. Which is another of saying, *subject to* a person's say so.
This is pretty basic English.
So now would you like to address what I've said and substantiate the idea that live is an objective standard for morality, or do you have any other year olds debates you would like to rehash?
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@PREZ-HILTON
No one said they don't. You ignored every point I made in order to respond to an argument I didn't make.
Duties, just like rights, are not absolute. Especially when they come into conflict with each other.
This is really basic stuff.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Now there needs to be dissent huh?
Uh, yeah genius. That's what the word consensus means.
What if it's just that nobody else knew or cared about Shokin enough to protest the US executive branch demands?
First of all, you once again ignore the fact that the US was not the only country pushing for Shokin's firing. The reforms that Shokin was expected to put in place and was seen as ignoring came from the EU. No matter how many times I explain this to you you continue to pretend the US was at it alone.
The point here is not whether there consensus was wide spread enough to convince you that Shokin was corrupt. Yet again, the point of all of this is to address the question of whether Biden was more likely motivated by US interests or personal interests. The fact that other agencies within the US government and other countries were all on board with this is very strong evidence for the former. But your strategy for dealing with this fact had become crystal clear;
1) Ignore the fact that other countries wanted the same thing and when forced to deal with this fact pretend they were just following the US
2) Pretend that every article I posted covers every single individual who agreed so that you can pretend the number of people in agreement is as small as possible.
3) Attack the credibility of anyone who wrote any literature on this subject as a middle man just parroting what they were told to say by some nefarious force
4) Presume that anyone who agreed with Biden within the US government was just saying what Biden wanted them to say.
So with this strategy you have your bases covered. No evidence could ever be presented to you because they're either duped by the US government, or being controlled by Joseph R Biden. You have effectively put your conclusion inside of a box impenetrable by any facts or logic. It's classic conspiracy theorist logic.
Now any one of these points on their own could be the result of a reasonable assessment, but that's where this conversation is remarkably lacking. When pointed out that you have no evidence for any of these assumptions you've made you just revert back to "well it's possible", which is a blatant cop out. Anything is possible, if you were really going by that standard you wouldn't believe anything.
The equivalent claim would be that Trump could not have been personally motivated because Giuliani would have to follow through with his plot.
No, it's not.
First all, "could not" is not in my vocabulary, it's in yours. Please stop projecting.
But more importantly, the US ambassador works within the federal government, reports to the secretary of state, who reports to the president (not the Vice President), and ultimately works for the American people. Rudy Giuliani was the president's personal attorney. He reported to no one else but Donald J Trump. Not the same thing.
That aside, it's perfectly within reason to suggest that the US ambassador may have been improperly influenced, but that would require evidence. You have none, except for the fact that his actions conflict with your narrative, which always seems to count as evidence to you.
Giuliani meanwhile, has proven himself to be completely in the tank for Trump. From Mr. "Truth isn't Truth" to his all out pushing of the stolen election lies, his dishonesty and disregard for reality has shown no bounds. After being confronted for pushing objectively false election claims said it wasn't his job to fact check claims before repeating them, and his malpractice for Trump literally got him disbarred.
These two claims are not remotely similar.
So in the absence of direct evidence you have decided that the ambassador wasn't taking any direction from the executive branch, decided to start railing against prosecutors, and he made such a convincing case that Biden himself took note and came down to personally quid pro quo the prosecutor out of office and that just happened to save burisma's oligarch.
Yet another, complete straw man.
I never decided the ambassador was not taking direction from the executive branch. I said his words are evidence of his position, because that's what words are. So in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the reasonable presumption is that he believes what he said he believes. You of course just hand waive it away because it doesn't suit your preferred narrative.
I also never suggested that Biden was convinced by the US ambassador resulting in him boarding a plane to Ukraine. That's just stupid. The claim I've made from the start is that the evidence very clearly supports that there was wide spread consensus on the need for a new persecutor in Ukraine. I'm still waiting for you to present anything showing the opposite.
And as I've pointed out already, we don't even need to look at what the world is saying. If you want to argue that Shokin was not guilty of everything he was advised of, all you have to do is show him engaging in the activities he was acused of not engaging in. It's remarkable that you haven't done that yet.
But we both know why, because this point is nothing but a matter of faith to you.
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@Tarik
Have any support for that assertion?
It's common sense. If you had a response you would have offered it instead of pretending I didn't say everything I did so you could bring back a year old debate in order to not have to address what I said.
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@PREZ-HILTON
I work from the assumption that people are logical and rational beings and make decisions based on those things.
Then you would be wrong. There is a reason your coffee cup says "caution, hot" on it, because people will burn themselves and then claim it's the Barista's fault for making it got enough to burn them.
You continue to look at this through the wrong lense. Any individual person can be smart, methodical, etc. That's not what public policy is based on, it's based on the masses. And time after time again the masses prove that extreme caution is necessary to protect people's safety.
That's not how rights work. If a government declares something a right they have to ensure the right, even if it means enslaving people to do so.
Rights are not some mystical force imposed by a diety. They don't come with magical powers, and they don't rule over us. So no, a government does not have to be willing to enslave someone in order to legitimately tell you that you have a right to an attorney. The defies basic logic and common sense, as enslaving someone is not only flagrantly immoral, but also deprives the enslaved of their right to freedom (a far more fundamental right).
Rights are a human construct. They are nothing more than one person or person's declaring that they will do whatever is in their power uphold them for those they are granting them to.
They are not a guarantee of outcome. A right to life does not mean the government is guaranteeing you that you will live, they are guaranteeing you that they will not kill you.
The same thing is true of positive rights; they are not a guarantee of outcome.
This is really basic stuff.
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@Sidewalker
Yes, and I believe that Kurt Godel “proved” that the principles of logic cannot be clearly defined, at least not in a consistent and complete manner.
I don't know nor do I care to know who Kurt Godel is, but if you believe the principals of logic cannot be defined in a consistent manner then you don't know what logic is.
That’s not a line I cross, don’t really give a crap in terms of expecting others to see as I do, or whether or not they even take my beliefs seriously.
Then why are we talking? What is your purpose here?
There is no faith required to not believe something.I’m aware of the Atheist playbook, and that Pavlovian response is not rational, belief in the existence of a transcendent realm is clearly a matter of faith, you are passing judgement on whether or not you believe it its existence, your associated belief that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence” is a matter of faith.
You are now having a conversation with yourself.
All I said is "there is no faith required to not believe something". So you understand what this statement means? Do you disagree with it? Do you have a resonse to it that is based on the conversation we're actually having?
LOL, Pavlov all the way, so help me understand, the basis of your beliefs, is that you believe that the beliefs that compete with yours, have a burden of proof they cannot meet, and that’s the basis of what you believe? That’s some circular logic you got there.
Never said any of this. Once again, having a conversation with yourself.
Yep, you either have faith there is a God, or you have faith there is not a God.
Or, you can look at the evidence and apply logic to arrive at a conclusion. I prefer the latter.
OK, so I’ll ask, what God is it you don’t believe in, and please “clearly define”.
I don't believe in a god that is perfect and yet created us with the desire that we worship him, because a perfect being would have no deficiencies and therefore have no need for others to worship him.
There are plenty more, but we can start there.
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@PREZ-HILTON
It's a low IQ move to use guns in general for planned murders, and they increase your chances of getting caught over more subtle methods of murder.
So what? You continue to ignore basic human nature. We're not talking about what's possible or what could theoretically work given the right set of circumstances. We're talking about how society actually works and what solutions actually address real problems within it.
Most people with the high IQ, drive, and patience for precision planning needed to commit the perfect murder have better things to do with their lives than kill people.
how would they gauruntee that right if every attorney refused to do it?
They don't.
This is like asking how the government can guarantee you that no one will murder you. What the government guarantees you is that they will do their part in ensuring you enjoy whatever rights you have, not that those rights cannot be taken away by the rest of society.
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@Tarik
That discussion was over the definition of subjective.Which we clearly disagree on, making your*subject to*emphasis meaningless.
This is what running out of arguments and realizing you cannot support your own position looks like.
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@Greyparrot
I'm not interested in the [explanation for how the world actually works].
Fixed.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
There is no reason the whole world apart from those working closely with Ukraine would have cared about this.Indeed, which is why the claim of "international consensus" incurred a burden of proof you couldn't bear from the moment you said it.
So your argument is once again, a strawman.
International consensus does not mean every country in the world agreed, nor does it even mean every major political figure in the countries involved all agree. It means that major political figures within multiple countries agreed and there is very little sign of dissent.
All your articles keep doing (besides supporting my case) is repeating that the given reason for Shokin being fired was corruption. It is not counter-evidence in the slightest.
If people from around the world saying that they wanted Shokin fired because he was corrupt, and celebrating his firing because they say he was corrupt, does not qualify to you as evidence that the world thought he was corrupt... then you do not know what evidence is.
Recap:US ambassador started the campaign against Shokin in late September (your source)
Yes, which supports my argument. You're claiming that Biden did what he did for personal reasons. If you are following basic logic here (aka Occam's razor) this means that for Biden's to successfully abuse his power he needed other US agencies to follow through with his plot. You can claim all day that this "could have happened" just like I can claim all day that the Earth's core is made of parmesan cheese. What you need is actual evidence that Biden improperly influenced these people for your claim to warrant serious consideration. As usual, you have nothing but baseless assertions.
Shokin is fired due to quid pro quo (source = Biden)
No one denies Biden's involvement and influence, but it is notable that Ukraine was also in danger of losing over $4 billion in finding from the EU and the international monetary fund because of Shokin. You would know this is you bothered to read what I posted.
Shokin moved against Burisma, you admit that the only motivation would be to go after Biden and therefore Shokin knew Biden was connected to Burisma
You are either lying or you don't read. I made clear, multiple times, that we don't know what Shokin's motivation here was, and made clear, multiple times, that the fact that we don't know how motivations was my point from the start. You even said as much at first before apparently realizing that you couldn't stick with that position and so you needed to change it. Whatever makes more views seem like legitimate discourse, reality be dammed.
That's why he garnered attention and that's why the attention started with US executive branch action and ended with US executive branch action.
Again, if you read the articles you would know that "the attention" did not start with Biden. As one of the articles you ignored put it "Even top Western officials, including the US ambassador to Ukraine, have publicly criticized Shokin". In other words, the fact that the US was getting involved came as a surprise to some since the main voices here was coming from there EU. But again, you will, with no evidence to the contrary of course, just hand waive all of this away.
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@Greyparrot
If it were so important to secure the documents, Somebody in the FBI should have been fired for taking 500 days to do it.
This has already been explained to you.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
We would expect this infamy and the specific acts which caused it to have been reported on and discussed by pundits and politicians around the globe. There would be clips of such discussions (dated to a time shortly after the infamous act was discovered).
I provided a dozen articles reporting on this at the time, you hand waived them all away as "middle men" parroting what they were told.
Those articles included multiple examples of politicians around the world agreeing with his firing, you hand waived that away as a 'small number of bureaucrats'.
You don't believe a word you're saying. You already have the evidence you claim would convince you.
You distort the circumstances to pretend the situation warranted more attention than it did. There is no reason the whole world apart from those working closely with Ukraine would have cared about this. Ukraine is a small country with a long history of corruption, this wasn't breaking news.
You also pretend there is some 'infamous acts' for which there would have been mountains of evidence showing Shokin's guilt. If you actually read the articles you'd know that Shokin was acused of not investigating corruption, so your claim that there would be evidence of his actions is a non sequitur.
And of course, you dismiss the fact that you have no evidence showing anything else. Your arguments defending Shokin - that it's all coming from Biden and everyone is just following suit, that the articles are all just 'middle men' parroting what they were told, that the only people who believed he was corrupt are the ones listed in these articles - it's all just taken on faith. I could make the same claims about anything, that doesn't give anyone a reason to believe them.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Let's assume for one moment - just for the sake of argument - that there was in fact a wide spread consensus amongst the US and international community that Viktor Shokin should be fired.
Q1: What evidence would need to be presented to convince you of this
Q2: What method would you say we should follow to determine if this was the case?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Here's you:
You go around googling all the middlemen and convince yourself you're uncovering mountains of evidence that Shokin was corrupt.
And here's what I actually said:
So does this prove that Biden was purely motivated by US interests? No. Does it prove that Shokin was in fact corrupt? No. What it proves is that Biden was not some rogue actor when he pushed for Shokin's firing.
So as you claim I'm not reading your posts, take a good look in the mirror.
If we cannot agree on the most basic facts then further conversation is pointless. This is why I scaled the conversion back to one very simple question, was there a wide spread consensus amongst the US and international community that Viktor Shokin needed to be fired? Yes or No?
The rest of this debate is pointless if we cannot agree on this one point.
So I posted a dozen articles from the time period in question, a time period far before the political right politicized this issue in the wake of Biden's public comments on it. A time period where it would have made absolutely no sense to write articles about anything other than what was actually happening.
Your response to this was as telling as it was predictable; you hand waived away all of it beforehand as a collection of "middle men" writing about whatever they were told to believe. That speaks volumes about the issue here; you do not care about logic and reason.
You have no evidence whatsoever that there was not a wide spread consensus on this, and you disregard all of the evidence that there was.
Until you can present actual evidence of your alternative narrative, something other than "dUh eVeryOnE wAS jUsT lISteNeNinG tO biDEn", there's no point in continuing.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Attempted assassination?
If there was one, to which I am not aware, I would take issue with it. That has nothing to do with the point I made.
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@Shila
Objectivity is not independent of mind. It is independent of personal feelings or beliefs and based only on facts and evidence.
Yes, and personal feelings or beliefs come from... Minds.
The assessment of what is objective necessarily requires a mind, that is something different.
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@Tarik
Double_R how many times do we have to go in this circle, this isn’t the 1st time you’ve made this argument that I already refuted.
You never refuted anything. That discussion was over the definition of subjective. We're talking about whether morality is objective, a point you cannot make and so you deflect as you have been doing this whole thread.
As absurd as it is to assert that X being *subject to* what one says about it does not make X subjective, that last line was not the point of the post. Address the post.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
The above articles include every single one I came across from 2015/2016 discussing Shokin and his standing within the country or international community. What is absolutely remarkable about going through this exercise is the absence of any article written by anyone, anywhere, talking about Shokin as if the push to get him out of office was anything but a wide spread consensus. All your articles talk about is what motivated the Ukrainian parliament, but that doesn't refute anything here, Biden's own words affirmed that his pressure was the main catalyst. It's also remarkable that you had to search through another language, which goes to show how little out there supports your objections.
So does this prove that Biden was purely motivated by US interests? No. Does it prove that Shokin was in fact corrupt? No.
What it proves is that Biden was not some rogue actor when he pushed for Shokin's firing. It proves that your conspiracy theory ignores a perfectly reasonable explanation for Biden's involvement. It proves that the simple Occam's razor test for what best explains Biden's motivations are at the very least matched by the prospect of him acting to get Shokin fired because Shokin was believed by nearly everyone to be corrupt. In other words, it proves that your assertion that Biden really got involved for his own personal interests is at best just one possible explanation out of other possible explanations which are just as reasonable.
If you cannot admit to this one point then there is no sense in continuing.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I see that there was an error with the links I provided, so we'll clarify that issue first. Let's try the following experiment: Google "Victor Shokin 2015", then scroll down and open up every article written about him in late 2015 or early 2016.
Spoiler alert... Here are the results:
"The United States and other Western nations had for months called for the ousting of Mr. Shokin, who was widely criticized for turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and for defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite."
"The amazing thing is not that he was sacked but that it has taken so long. President Petro Poroshenko appointed Shokin to the role in February 2015. From the outset, he stood out by causing great damage even to Ukraine’s substandard legal system. Most strikingly, Shokin failed to prosecute any single prominent member of the Yanukovych regime. Nor did he prosecute anyone in the current government"
"The European Union has welcomed the dismissal of Ukraine's scandal-ridden prosecutor general and called for a crackdown on corruption, even as the country's political crisis deepened over efforts to form a new ruling coalition and appoint a new prime minister."
"Since he was appointed as prosecutor general by Poroshenko in February, Shokin has not brought any cases of corruption to court involving Yanukovich or his partners. Nor has he prosecuted the hundreds of high-level corruption cases that have been brought to his office by Ukraine’s parliamentary committee on preventing and combating corruption."
"The country’s controversial prosecutor general has been criticized repeatedly for failing to jail corrupt senior officials and undermining an anti-corruption effort that would pull Ukraine closer to the European Union.
That’s a problem, since cracking down on graft and sidling up to Europe were two keys demands of last year’s street revolution. Even top Western officials, including the US ambassador to Ukraine, have publicly criticized Shokin.
Last week, the Ukraine branch of watchdog Transparency International claimed the country’s chief jurist was “personally responsible” for failing to make good on his promises to battle graft. It said the 63-year-old had picked dubious bureaucrats, who served under ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, to choose a new anti-corruption prosecutor."
"US officials think this took far too long, and they are losing patience with Ukraine's government, especially since Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, a Poroshenko confidant, has delayed filling the anti-corruption position. In September of this year, Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Kyiv, took an unusual step. He tweeted - albeit in a convoluted, diplomatic manner - his demand for Shokin's dismissal."
"Ukrainians stand to pay a high price for Poroshenko's focus on self-preservation. According to Kaleniuk, Poroshenko's support for Shokin not only jeopardizes visa-free access to the EU, but risks costing Ukraine $4.4 billion in desperately needed financial assistance—$1.2 billion from the EU and $3.2 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
Ukraine's civil society reformers are right to demand the Prosecutor General's ouster—and Poroshenko's decision to protect Shokin is inexcusable. If Poroshenko continues down this path, he will surely receive more visits from the determined activists of the Euromaidan."
"Scores of protesters have rallied in the Ukrainian capital, demanding the resignation of the country’s top prosecutor, who has been repeatedly criticized as an impediment to badly needed anticorruption reforms."
"Shokin's perceived unwillingness to clamp down on corruption and go after the lawmakers suspected of murky deals has caused public outcry and repeated calls for his resignation."
"As the drive to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin gains momentum, the discredited and distrusted official has opened an embezzlement case against one of the country's most prominent anti-corruption groups."
"Anti-corruption public activists note that the country saw no expected relaunch of the prosecutor's office and full investigation of high-profile cases under Shokin."
"Western leaders and reform-minded Ukrainians had been calling for Shokin’s removal for some time. Critics claimed he failed to prosecute any major cases, including the killing of more than 100 protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014 and cases against allies of former President Viktor Yanukovych."
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@Tarik
Except what I find pointless is a part of your argument that I’m questioning (that you still haven’t answered, wonder why 🤔) so yes that makes it very relevant.
Let's recap. You claimed morality only makes sense if it's objective. I then asked you for an objective standard to which you replied "love". I then asserted "well being" as the standard for morality and challenged you to objectively resolve this difference. You have been tap dancing ever since.
So let's just cut to the chase; there is no such thing as objective morality. You can have a moral system that objectively follows from the core standard, but the standard itself will always be chosen by the individual, making it necessarily subjective.
If you claim God as your moral standard, I can easily reject God as the standard and as I already have, assert something else. At that point we have two different moral systems. There is no objective resolution to this, not even a god because if one does exist and weighed in on which is correct, the answer would then be *subject to* his will.
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@Tarik
I didn’t say they’re the same thing, I’m saying that assessing the state of your existence is pointless if you don’t love yourself.
What you find pointless is irrelevant. Objectivity means independent of the mind. Demonstrate that love is the standard for morality independent of the mind and that well being is not.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Must be nice, if they are caught, convicted, and wrist slapped only though whistle-blowing and special prosecutors you say "see no problem here" and if they aren't you declare that it's a conspiracy theory and once again "see no problem here"
The fact that you cannot meet the burden of proof you give yourself when you make a claim is not my problem.
You have repeatedly asserted it, but you have not presented convincing evidence. A few articles talking in the past tense about how some bureaucrats aren't happy is not a national and international consensus.
Ok, let's run through this... Again.
As I have repeated multiple times now, I presented 6 articles from all over the world talking about Shokin and his corruption. Two of those articles were not as you describe "past tense", they were written in November 2015, before Biden got involved in the push for Shokin's removal. I explained this to you multiple times.
I also showed you a bipartisan Senate letter once again, saying the same thing.
Just for the heck of it, I went through Google and found 4 more articles from that timeframe saying the same thing.
You dismiss all of these, not with conflicting evidence, but just because it's not enough to meet your high standards of evidence. Standards which you throw out the window when it comes to Fox News talking points of course.
So this appears to be the heart of our disagreement. You continue to pretend that there is some other reality where Shokin was not corrupt, seemingly as a matter of faith. The fact of the matter is that if you actually use Google and look this up yourself, you'll notice that Every. Single. Peice. Of literature about Viktor Shokin written in late 2015 or early 2016 all says the same thing; that he was a corrupt prosecutor fired for not prosecuting corruption. Find one article written by any major publication saying otherwise. I'll wait.
A microcosm of the double standards I've been talking about. You insist on literalism only for the letter I found. If you applied litteralism to the senate letter you would admit that it doesn't contain the words "fire Shokin"
I've already explained to you what the language in one letter clearly implies vs what the language in the other letter clearly implies. Rather than engage in a good faith conversation about how to interpret words, you retreat to a purposefully overly simplistic characterization that sounds good to you so that you do not have to make an argument you know you can't support.
Address the arguments I made.
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@Shila
Between love and well being we need to identify the object under consideration. Is it a person, a feeling or doctrine?
If morality is objective then it's not about our considerations.
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@Tarik
Love is an emotion. Well being is an assessment of the state of one's existence. These are not the same thing.
So again, how do we objectively resolve this?
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@Tarik
And what is your objective moral standard?Love
I reject your moral standard and assert 'well being' as the standard of morality.
How do we objectively resolve this?
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@Tarik
The only way morality makes sense is if it’s objective.
And what is your objective moral standard?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
As I anticipated, you're classing special counsel Durham as a natural check which is pure semantics.
And I anticipated that you would hand waive it away without any attempt to explain what is wrong with it.
Again, the individual who presented the case to the judge lost his law lisence for over a year and was sentenced to 400 hours of community service. If that is not a check to you then you do not speak English.
They are given the Hunter laptop and they sit on it, intentionally; and a bunch of them claim (without evidence) that it is Russian disinformation.
3 nonsense claims within 25 words.
The first, that the FBI "sat" on the laptop, implying they did nothing with it. You do not know what the FBI is or is not doing with it, that's not public information nor has there been much reporting on it. What we do know is that it is being used in the investigation of Hunter's finances which is reportedly nearing it's final stages where charges are considered.
You do not know what their intentions are here, you do not work for the FBI and probably don't know anyone who does. This part is just made up whole cloth.
But the letter comment is the most egregious in this example as this is easily verifiably false. Here's what the letter actually says:
"We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement"
So when you say they 'claimed without evidence' that it was Russian disinformation you are either being intentionally dishonest, or you are demonstrating your willingness to accept and repeat right wing talking points without the slightest interest in verifying them first.
Your entire post is like this, which is why I'm not going to respond to every nonsense claim within it.
But then, despite repeatedly showing you how there was a national and international consensus regarding the desire to fire Shokin, suddenly your standards go through the roof as even article after article after article written at the time, well before this issue became politicized in the US, all say the exact same thing and yet you still dismiss it as a series of one offs.
Moreover, if Shokin was (as you have suggested) not corrupt and actually holding public officials and oligarchs to account, all you have to do is provide the examples. Instead you sit there with your arms folded claiming no one here has done a good enough job holding your hand through it.
So when it comes to claims that suit your narrative, all you need is to hear it on Fox news or OANN to accept and repeat it, but when it comes to claims that don't, suddenly source after source after source all saying the same thing and no source saying otherwise is not enough.
And in the face if this remarkable double standard being pointed out, your go-to is to advise me if doing the same:
You explained a scenario in which the implications I drew were wrong without further evidence.
It wasn't "a scenario", it was what your letter actually said.
You presented a letter written months before the time period in question to argue that it showed there was no consensus, which already fails.
I then pointed out that the "Good job" remarks you were focusing on explicitly talked about his "agenda", which logically translates into "we're excited to see what you're going to do", not "we're happy with what you've done".
It's not that I'm dismissing the possibility, it's that your letter does not logically support it.
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@Shila
If God whose existence is denied by Atheists cannot set the record right. How can God be credited with what Theists believe about him?
I don't credit god for anything. I mostly credit the human inability to face our own mortality for what theists believe about him.
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@Sidewalker
Belief in God is a matter of faith and it is about faith in a transcendent reality, it makes no sense to require a transcendent reality to be “clearly defined”.
So you believe in something you cannot clearly define.
Not being facetious here, genuinely asking... Do you believe in the principals of logic?
Belief in God is a matter of faith, there is no “burden of proof”.
Anyone who makes a claim carries with it, a burden of proof. So technically, sure, merely believing in something does not obligate you to prove your beliefs to anyone else. But when you cross that line by expecting others to see as you do or to even take your beliefs seriously, you absolutely have a burden to prove it.
Theism is a choice one makes, as is Atheism, the Theistic conclusion in not logically coercive, neither is the Atheist conclusion, neither is a matter of proof, both are a matter of faith.
There is no faith required to not believe something.
To claim that theist and atheism are not logically coercive means that no position on this subject can be. So on what basis do you believe anything?
Theist and Atheist present themselves as competing beliefs, defining Atheism as simply a lack of belief obfuscates the issue and is not explanatory.
It's not atheists presenting atheism as a competing belief, that's a strawman theists invented in order to convince themselves that they are not the only ones who have a burden of proof they cannot meet.
The term atheist doesn't need to explain anything other than an individual's position on whether there is a god, just as the word theist tells us nothing other than an individual's position on whether there is a god. These terms do not tell us what god, they don't tell us whether the individual is religious, they don't tell us how long they have believed nor how convinced they are. If you want to know more about an individual's position, just ask. Expecting a single word to convey all of this is just lazy and is not an argument against the notion that atheism is simply a lack of belief.
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