You’re mixing up two things: knowing right from wrong and having the capacity to act on it. Hume’s right: you CAN be brilliant and still vicious. But that’s not an argument for inherent morality; it’s proof that knowledge alone doesn’t shape behavior. Your literate friend ‘chooses virtue’ because he can. His life gave him stability, models, and the luxury of slip-ups. Your dad, the lawyer who cheated? He had power without consequences, which is its own kind of support system: one that rewards harm.
The difference isn’t ‘moral vs. monster.’ It’s who had the tools to practice what they preached. and who didn’t. You’re arguing that ‘good people’ are the ones who succeed at morality. I’m saying morality is a skill, and skills require resources. No resources? No skill. Just survival.
‘Plenty of monsters with support systems’ - so were they inherently monsters? If yes, then they couldn’t help it, like a polar bear can’t help hunting. We don’t call polar bears ‘monsters.’ We call them predators, which is what humans become when their ‘support’ teaches them cruelty, not care.
‘Plenty of decent people beaten down by life’ - same logic. No inherent goodness, just luck: someone, somewhere, showed them ‘don’t be cruel’ before it was too late.
You personally don't have to engage at all. In fact with the way algorithms work, very specifically do NOT engage if you're not ready to go all in. But be aware that there are plenty of people out there ready to fill the information void with whatever nonsense that benefits them.
Nobody has to be a crusader against misinformation, but I'd strongly caution against thinking that just ignoring the problem will make it go away.
If objective reality doesn't exist, then your definition of 'subjective' is just a consensus-based hallucination you inherited from your own comfort. How do you know your 'multiverse' isn't just a realist's cage you haven't recognized yet? Your own argument destroys the premise upon which it rests. Also, what if my subjective experience includes what I would characterize as objective reality? You would be imposing your own definition on to me, again destroying your own premise.
Good on you for asking!
Dawkins doesn’t prove there’s no God; he argues the idea isn’t necessary to explain reality. The burden of proof isn’t on him to disprove an unfalsifiable claim, it’s on those making the claim to provide testable evidence. That’s how critical thinking works.
As for "How do you learn without learning?" you don’t. But a lot of people confuse rote repetition (parroting Dawkins or the Bible) with understanding (grappling with the arguments themselves). One’s memorization; the other’s understanding.
Wow, that’s… not quite what I meant. The goal isn’t to reject objective reality, it’s to question how we define it and who gets to decide what counts as “real.” Pushing people to explore their own perspectives is one thing, but encouraging pure solipsism just replaces one dogma with another. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, yeah?
I feel like on Lemmy it's really difficult to ever post anything but total agreement without it immediately becoming an argument. Glad we found common ground!
I get what you’re saying, but you’re kind of setting up a strawman yourself here here. Not every idea deserves endless debate, sure, it’s about the habit of dismissing things as "stupid" without even considering them.
Sure, lizard people and bricks fixing teeth are absurd. But those examples are extreme on purpose, and they don’t really address the core of people rejecting ideas out of hand just because they’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable. If an idea is actually bad, it will fall apart under scrutiny. But if the default response is just "that’s dumb," we’re not thinking critically, we’re just avoiding the work, and worse, we are participating in a culture where it's okay to do so. Which is exactly what leads to people getting (and abusing) terrible ideas.
Kinda. Or at least beginning to exit it. The Matrix has plenty of intentional Buddhist undertones. And Revolutions features a vedic hymn in its soundtrack, also signaling the idea of waking up from illusion.
You’re mixing up two things: knowing right from wrong and having the capacity to act on it. Hume’s right: you CAN be brilliant and still vicious. But that’s not an argument for inherent morality; it’s proof that knowledge alone doesn’t shape behavior. Your literate friend ‘chooses virtue’ because he can. His life gave him stability, models, and the luxury of slip-ups. Your dad, the lawyer who cheated? He had power without consequences, which is its own kind of support system: one that rewards harm. The difference isn’t ‘moral vs. monster.’ It’s who had the tools to practice what they preached. and who didn’t. You’re arguing that ‘good people’ are the ones who succeed at morality. I’m saying morality is a skill, and skills require resources. No resources? No skill. Just survival.