TreesNightly

Words are ultimately invented, with definitions that were chosen arbitrarily. They are meaningful today, because most of us have a common understanding of the context of each set of letters. They are meaningful because those definitions are relevant to most of us in that they correspond to something in our consensus reality or experience. Not, I find, when talking to religious apologists. They use theological jargon under the guise of common vernacular. Morality is defined, in part, as "that which can only exist with God." I've seen reason defined as "that which can only be accessed through God." I've often thought of making a master list of words apologists frame in terms of their deity, but it would always be incomplete. Words are invented, with definitions that were chosen arbitrarily. The apologists break no cosmic rule by creating their own language, but when they try to communicate in secular society with these identically constructed variants, they ho...

Search �morality� in Merriam-Webster and the first definition you�ll see is �beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior.� That�s beliefs, plural. This implies that what I believe is right and wrong isn�t the only belief out there, which should be obvious. Add the word �objective� in front of a word with a definition like this and the result is an oxymoron. Morality, by definition, is subjective. Case closed. Well, of course the case isn�t closed. I can�t cite Merriam-Webster and expect millennia of philosophy to buckle.  Honestly, it isn�t even justified. Merriam-Webster has four definitions for the word �morality,� and MW is hardly the only dictionary in circulation. Should I go with the terminology of Google? Wikipedia? Who is the linguistic authority here? Few theists will deny the reality that different beliefs of right and wrong behavior exist, they just believe one in particular belief is true in an absolute and objective way, conveniently, it�s their own...