No...no endorsing liberty does not mean being a Christian and a Conservative. That doesn't make any sense...especially the part about being a Christian. You could argue that conservatism is the liberty-oriented party. I'd disagree...but you could argue that. Being a Christian, on the other hand, means believing Jesus is the son of God/God or something of that nature. I can have political views that result in liberty without believing in Jesus.

@MrShittles Where do you believe the Western notion of Individual Sovereignty came from?

@MrShittles Allow me to elaborate...
You seem to be reading Christian as a noun; which it can be, I guess, depending on context.
But literally anybody can call themselves "a Christian", even Catholics.
That tells you nothing about their beliefs... or whether those beliefs are consistent with the claim.
What does tell you something about people's beliefs... is their behavior.

Christian is an adjective. It describes behavior that attempts to emulate the example of Jesus Christ. That emulation necessarily includes a sincere effort to understand the example of Jesus Christ in the first place, so you can recognize where your own behavior falls short of the ideal;
i.e., ...where your behavior is "un-Christian".
That describes a conscious endeavor.

But you are quite capable of Christian behavior and beliefs, whether you call yourself "a Christian" or not; just as you are capable of endorsing and displaying Orwellian or Machiavellian tendencies... regardless of whether you even know what that means.

The West derived and evolved its most fundamental and defining ideal, that of Individual Sovereignty, from Christianity. Before that, there was presumed to be literally nothing special about you in relation to the Universe. Natural and Human events occurred at the whim of one of a plethora of "gods"... and Sovereignty was claimed by whomever had the power to enforce it.
That evolution culminated in the American society; wherein nobody, even (and especially) the Government, has any sovereignty over anybody else. That Government derives what little sovereignty it exercises over the governed... from the governed themselves, and only by their consent.
Why? Because it simply has no natural right to do otherwise.
This is what is meant by the observation that America is a "Christian" nation.
Simply because... it is.
The fact that we've gotten Progressively (pun intended) worse at it over the last century or so notwithstanding.

Also, conservatism is not a "Party".
It's a tendency to favor the status quo, or the recovery of lost ideals/practices (status praeteritus?)
It's also context-specific. Everybody is "conservative" in one way or another.
I believe you are referring to Constitutional Conservatism, which is simply the desire to restore and preserve those founding ideals that informed the Constitution, and the contemporary Framework that was established to remain immutably within those constraints.
Most Constitutional Conservatives seem to end up in the Republican Party, but the Party itself doesn't seem to be particularly devoted the Constitution absolutely.
It's just that the other Party, Democrats, have literally abandoned all pretense of caring about the Constitution whatsoever.

@rway I would say deism and a dislike of English monarchy were major source for the founding father's views...noting that deism is basically secularism. Even Christian deism, I'm thinking, is probably going to be heavily rooted in secularism.

I read this: [britannica.com]

Benjamin Franklin appears to have been a deist. I think there's a pretty good chance George Washington was a deist too. Thomas Paine seems to have been a deist. Ethan Allen appears to have been a deist. James Monroe might have been a deist. John Adams might have been a deist...a Christian deist. Thomas Jefferson might have been a Christian deist.

The article says that, while Christianity was a major influence, deism influenced a majority of the founding fathers.

I don't think Christianity has much to say about individual sovereignty. I strongly suspect the founding fathers attained their interest in that because of their motivation to be different than the monarchy of Britain at the time.

@rway Right now cultural Judaism seems to be fairly common...that is to say, many Jews do not actually believe in God, or are agnostic towards the existence of God, but consider themselves Jewish in a cultural sense.

Then there are other religions such as Buddhism and Taoism that can involve beliefs about an afterlife or include mystical elements, or they can be purely atheistic, materialistic, philosophical views.

I would like it if someday God-belief went the way of the dinosaurs, except for agnostic versions of it. I would prefer that very few people have confident belief in an intelligent ruler of the universe. I would like a world in which Christianity has gone the way of a noteworthy percentage of Jews and Buddhists and become something philosophical, moreso than having to do with afterlife or God-belief.

Typically though, I don't think it's there yet and it won't be there for some time. I've only ever contacted you, and a self-described Christian philosopher who might accept someone as being Christian if they didn't believe in God, yet behaved as Jesus taught. I think, to the vast majority of people, being Christian means, at least in part, having a belief that Jesus is God and the son of God...although maybe Jordan Peterson might fall into that category too. It's been difficult for me to tell just what his beliefs are though.

I would never describe anyone as a Christian unless they believe Jesus is God, and I would call them a Christian if they believe that regardless of their behavior, because I think that would be the most clear way of describing things to society. If you don't want to do that...fine. That said, if a major part of your definition of Christian is not "believes Jesus is God," you're going to confuse a lot of people...maybe not in a hundred years, but you are now.

@rway Now, onto the rest of your post.

Christianity has been around for 2,000 years. Why then, did we not make slavery illegal until so recently? Why, only recently, have our superheroes had goals that involved saving the whole world? Why, only recently, has genocide been so harshly condemned? Why, only recently, has racism been so harshly condemned? Why, only recently, has society had such an interest in preserving individual rights?

I don't think there is much reason to believe Christianity had much to do with that. Christians...or at least people who called themselves Christians, have been quite barbaric throughout the ages, just like everybody else. I'm not saying they were worse than everyone else. The Vikings practiced human sacrifice, for example. What I am saying is that the whole world had been pretty barbaric until relatively recently. So...what might have changed?

Well, here's my theory: I think television might have saved us, and easy access to views of other people over the world. I think that through see other people's perspectives through TV and the radio and international news, and watching civil rights protests, and hearing other people's stories through progressively better and better access to written materials we've begin seeing one another as steadily more real of people...and through that, we've developed a stronger interest in maintaining personal freedoms in many ways.

In short, I think communication technology made us more empathetic. If I'm wrong about that, my only other explanation is that perhaps greater wealth makes cultures less barbaric...at least up to the point where most people's basic needs are routinely met...because they're less desperate and have time and energy to devote to assisting other people.

Regarding the idea that Christianity is responsible for individual sovereignty...no...the idea that the government is not the ultimate authority is just common sense. You don't need any philosophical or religious perspective to have that opinion. I think that the government is supposed to be a big friendly giant who occasionally steps on someone's car but drives the dragon's away. It's not supposed to be the ultimate moral authority. It's just supposed to hold society together and help society more than it harms it. There are reasons to obey laws...but I think we're foolish if we obey the government unquestionably, because its laws typically weren't designed as some ultimate moral authority.

I obey laws because I will be punished if I don't...unless I don't think a law is just, in which case I may break the law if I don't believe I will get caught, and advocate for the changing of the law. I think that's a pretty healthy way of doing things.

Sovereignty is still claimed by anyone who has the power to enforce it...and people still know, just as many people, although not all people, have always known regardless of whether they were Christian or not, that they don't necessarily have to follow those leaders.

@rway Finally...regardless of whether or not Democrats pay less attention to the constitution than other groups...I'm not sure how the Democrats are less interested in liberty than conservatives in general. Libertarians, for example, are fiscally conservative but socially liberal. They're therefore more interested in liberty than most conservatives are, in social contexts. Democrats tend to be fairly socially libertarian.

It's kind of iffy...but I don't see how we can say that if you care about liberty, you're conservative. Ask any pregnant Democrat in Texas. Texas is a prime example of how conservatives quite often don't care enough about liberty.

There's a good chance you'll disagree about my stance on Texas. I love little more than arguing about the ethics of abortion. I've spent about 30 hours doing it online after that horrid 8 week abortion law past. I think I've gotten enough practice to be pretty good at it and would welcome any discussion you'd like to have about it.

There's also the prior opposition to gay marriage, which I don't think made any sense...which just sort of pointlessly harmed society. I could discuss that too, if you'd like.

Also, conservatives are often very supportive of the military. That requires a lot of taxation...hence a reduction in liberty.

Stem cell research...gay adoptions....transgender bathroom issues...etc.

Now, regarding transgender issues...I could see both sides. That said, if we ban transgender people from using a restroom that their genitalia does not match, that is a reduction of liberty that dramatically impacts their lives.

If by a reduction in liberty you're talking about free speech censorship...I agree that's a problem in nations other than America. I don't like some of the rules in the U.K. and Scotland, for example...but you specifically mentioned Democrats. In the U.S., pretty much the only censorship that goes on is either from private companies or involves threatening the president or the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theatre.

@MrShittles Deism is belief in God, without all the superficial man-made bullshit that accompanies organized religion.
If you have confidence in Modern Science, then you have accepted the notion of causality; which should lead you to the irrefutable conclusion that something caused the Big Bang.
(If nothing caused it, then causality is not a thing and ALL of modern science has no foundation.)
Every repeatable experiment ever conducted has been a test of that axiom, and so far it's holding up pretty well.

"God" is what we call that something that "caused" the Universe.
Also: Order within any system does not come from Chaos (or from "nothing" ), without the application of energy from outside that system. That implies purpose, which implies intelligence.
If you "believe" in Science... but not God, then I just don't know what to tell you. Maybe you just need to think it through some more.

I'm not just talking about "the Founders", specifically. I'm talking about the evolution of Western Civilization over the last 2,000 years or so (with even deeper roots in Judaism.)
I believe many of the Founders were Deists, but there was a pretty good mix among them. I think Thomas Paine was an Atheist, although Britannica says he was a Deist. Maybe he wised up later in life.
But again; whether you believe in "some" God, a bunch of gods, one particular God, or as Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration: "Nature's God"... doesn't matter.
The principle of Individual Sovereignty holds just the same.
And that epiphany came slowly through Judaism, Christianity, the Roman Catholics' tragic experiment with Theocracy, and finally Protestantism.
The only part of which that matters, from a secular perspective, is who has Natural Sovereignty over You.
Your preacher... the Emperor... the King... the Pope? No. You do.
Christianity is all about Your personal relationship with God. There is no earthly intermediary between you and God. You are here on His "authority", with no more and no less Sovereignty than any other person on the planet.
I have zero Sovereignty over You, for example (I'm sure you would agree.)
And neither does any "collective" of equally-sovereign individuals have any sovereignty over you (7 Billion x 0 is still 0.)
And by extension, neither does any agent of a collective... like the Government.
That's Individual Sovereignty. It wasn't an "idea" that the Founders had; it's an inescapable implication of the Christian notion of every human's (not just Christians) place in the Universe.

And if speaking the Truth confuses people... they need to work on that.
It does them no good to hear a more comfortable Lie.

I'll see if I can work up a worthy response to the rest of your replies...

@MrShittles "Cultural Judaism" is just ethnic Jews who don't practice the Jewish religion.

Your Religion is the source of your moral code, and the Dogma that surrounds it.
And, everybody has one. It's a "reserved" spot in the human psyche.
Whether that Dogma is what you believe about Jesus Christ, the dozen or so "Sacred Texts" of the most well-known religions, or the futile attempt to keep up with the shifting winds of "Woke-ism" or any other secular attempt to mimic a moral framework with no foundation.
Which is, incidentally, why none of it has ANY business being pushed through the Government.
That is literally the establishment of Theocracy.
(There's nothing more dangerous than a religion that is too dumb to even realize it's a religion.)

"God-belief" is the only rational position to take, as I attempted to describe above.
You would prefer to live in a world full of irrational people?
Now... WHAT people think about God is a different matter. But why would you care what other people believe? If they truly believe in the "Christian" God, then their actions pursuant to those beliefs cannot have any impact on you whatsoever; or they're simply doing it wrong.
If their actions do not reflect that belief, then they don't really believe it. I think most psychologists would agree that: You can tell what someone believes by how they act, not by what they say... even to themselves.

When considering whether you believe that Jesus is God, and the Son of God, you first have to figure out what you mean by those terms.
Son of God is a given; we're all "children" of God, so to speak.
But if Jesus also is God... that implies by the Symmetry Property that God is Jesus; and that we're all, therefore, "children" of Jesus too. And, who did Jesus pray to then?
To me it just sounds metaphorical.
We know (with some confidence) that Jesus said something to the effect of: if you believe in Him then your existence will endure after your mortal death.
That's because if you truly believe, your actions will reflect that belief.
And if you don't... they won't (even if you get down on your knees once a week and say that you do.)
But... believe what about Him? What some Pope or preacher tells you to believe?
No... that doesn't follow the Individualist model, although mentors can be useful.
What we know about Jesus is what we've heard. We also have, presumably, God-given intuition and the tool of prayer for clarification ("seek and ye shall find".)
Historians have some confidence in first-hand quotes from the New Testament. But I don't believe that is meant to be our sole authoritative source. Early Christians certainly didn't have one.
And, according to the Bible... Jesus never once mentioned the Bible.
If it was that important, you'd think he would have said something... maybe once? ("Hey, there's gonna be this Book in about 400 years that you'll want to get your hands on..." )

Besides all that, you're still talking about whether someone is legitimately "a Christian" (as a noun.)
Christian is an adjective that means, literally, "Christ one". Or... someone trying to emulate Christ.
That's all it means.
If you want to argue whether someone is a "real" Christian or not... you'll have to get in line behind all the judgmental old ladies at the Pot Luck after church.

@MrShittles Christianity has nothing to do with what's legal in secular society, or what is the soapbox du jour that people are grandstanding on to make themselves look "compassionate".
Christianity is NOT a theocracy... it is between God and each Individual.
Government is a separate thing entirely.

We didn't manage to incorporate that ideal into a secular Framework until 1789, when we established a society consistent with Christianity, and in no-way contradictory to it... by adopting the core premise of Natural Individual Sovereignty.
Slavery was "illegal" from that very moment. It was getting everybody on-board and enforcing it that took another 75 years or so. Not bad for eliminating (ostensibly) a Global institution that had been the norm in every known society for all of recorded human history.

That's what changed.
And "...the idea that the government is not the ultimate authority..." was never "common sense", for all of that same human history, until we fought our way out from under King George and explicitly established that ideal.
And we're still fighting. The entire Left-half of the Bell Curve runs straight to the Government every time they get another "good idea" that they want imposed at gun-point on the rest of us.

The Information Age has pros and cons.
We have greater exposure to many different views, lifestyles, regions, perspectives, etc.
That can be educational to the extent that they are both accurate and contextualized... which is not nearly as much as we might think.
Moving information costs money, and people don't spend money without reasons.
Quantitatively, we've seen an explosion of content over the last few decades.
But, Qualitatively... I'm not sure we've gained anything. Most of it is noise.
The one thing that is even more detrimental than No-Information... is Mis-Information.

You agree with Laws that you think are "just". By what criteria?
If you don't have a coherent, objective criteria... then you're just attempting to impose your own moral judgment on your fellow citizens by using the Force of Government.
(And here I thought that it was "common sense", that Government wasn't the ultimate authority...)
Well (you might say)... what if most people agree with me?
That's called Democracy... mob rule. That's not a society based on Rights, it's a society based on the tyranny of the Majority; one in which any Minority has no rights at all.

This is why we have Principles, like Individual Sovereignty.
And why we stick to them, objectively, and universally... all the time.

@MrShittles Democrats are socially libertarian... but they want the Government to enforce their ideas about what that means, to them.
That's a conceptual oxymoron.
What a population of supposedly "free" people do while going about their day in the social/cultural spheres is none of the Government's business.
Unless and until one somebody violates another somebody's natural rights, the Government has no role in the situation, whatsoever. That's what Government is for, protecting Natural Rights.
That's all that it's for (domestically.)

You're only looking at half of the "liberty" equation.
Liberty means you can do whatever you want. Literally... anything.
The only legitimate constraint on your actions, is the same right that everybody else has to do literally whatever they want.
If what you want to do (like: abortion) will violate one of somebody else's rights (like: life)... then you don't have a right to do it.
Too simple.

Gay marriage is a Red Herring, a wedge "issue".
You want a real solution: get the Government out of the marriage business, where it never had any legitimate business in the first place.

The military is one of the few legitimate roles of Government, taking up about 20% of the budget. Social bullshit that was never any of the Government's business takes up about 80%... and that doesn't include a couple Trillion here and there for Democrats' special social-engineering projects; wait, I mean "crises".
Anyway, taxation is only a reduction of liberty because of the way we do it.
The income tax is a tool of coercion and intrusion; tyranny. Marx and Engels included it as one of their "10 Critical Planks of Communism" in the Manifesto for just that reason.
For the right way to gather public revenue in a free society, see the FairTax:
[fairtax.org]

You don't have any natural right to use a particular bathroom; follow the rules of the establishment. Public restrooms should be unisex, then nobody could cry about it.
(But they will anyway, guaranteed.)

Freedom of Speech (or any self-expression) is definitely under continuous attack.
"Private" companies have partnered with Government to create the worst of both worlds.
Not only by writing their own regulations and simply attaching a big check. But the major social platforms hide behind the Public protections of Title 47 Section 230 [ [law.cornell.edu] ] to gain immunity from liability as service providers, while they go about filtering their users' content to suit their own priorities; which makes them content providers under the Law (and therefore liable under the Law for all the content that they left out there.)
The main reason they're not held legally accountable for anything is Campaign Contributions and Party Donations.
And I don't think it's a huge mystery which Party they are writing checks to.
[newsbusters.org]

@rway I'm responding to your post starting: "Christianity has nothing to do with what's legal in secular society"

Your primary problem is that you see me as the one who has no objective source for my moral code. That's not the problem with my moral code...that's the problem with your moral code.

My moral code stems from the view that it is best to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, which makes sense because we have no other possible sensible way to distinguish right from wrong besides determining whether an action produces more pleasure and less suffering than other possible actions. Naturally, people with this view, who think about it enough, will have an interest in assisting their fellow life forms in achieving maximum pleasure and minimal suffering too, because that's already part of the goal we've established when we've noted that the goal is to increase pleasure and reduce suffering. Other people's pleasure and suffering will count too, and we'd have an interest in assisting them for similar reasons that we'd have an interest in assisting ourselves. What we'd end up with is a very mathematical view of morality in which we study what pleasure and suffering are in order to better understand how to, respectively, produce the most of the one and the least of the other. We'd also begin long term plans with the goal of building societies that function as progressively more efficient happiness factories...dedicated to improving life in general for all our fellow life forms. We can feel pleasure and suffering in different amounts. That means there are real quantities of pleasure and suffering produced by our actions, and that means there are behavioral routes that will be able to produce the most possible pleasure and least possible suffering, and those behavioral routes will be the objectively morally best routes because they will achieve the goal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering, noting again that we have no rational way of distinguishing right from wrong besides determining what actions produce the most pleasure and least suffering.

That said, even if you disagree with that, there are other proposed sources for morality than mine and yours'. You appear to have just sort of stated that your "individual sovereignty" is a more valid source for morality than the law, or people's subjective feelings about right and wrong, or cultural trends, or specific religious tenets or people's individual views of morality they've created, whatever they be. You have not explained why your views of morality are any better a source for morality than anyone else's...despite how much you've typed. You appear to have fallen prey to one of the strangest assumptions that God-believing people tend to make, that perpetually baffles me...that belief in God (somehow) provides someone with a more true source for morality than other views.

@rway I'm responding to your post that begins "Deism is belief in God, without all the superficial man-made bullshit that accompanies organized religion."

Yeah...and while that is subtly different from atheism, deists don't have any real sources for their moral code that atheists don't. Christian deists, for example, are the ideal Christians, to me. They've achieved my goal of having a their Christianity be a philosophy, without believing Jesus was divine. They therefore are probably getting their moral code from similar sources as most secular people do, and I like that. Jesus, to them is essentially a particularly impressive, child-friendly comic book character, like Superman or Hellboy (Hellboy was a demon raised by a human father who fights to protect humanity. A major theme of his comics is the view that it's not what we're born as that determines what we are, but the choices we make that do so...which is a message I love). Superman, I'd say, is a good rolemodel too because he has a just a fairly strong, nice-guy oriented, moral code that would be basically beneficial for humanity to adopt, and he follows through on that. He wanders around helping people, tries to avoid lying, etc. Jesus, like Superman and Hellboy, has been involved in plenty of stories that make him a pretty good rolemodel in many ways. I don't think any of them are perfect rolemodels...but the point is just to have a guiding force that's basically good, especially for children, because children aren't especially ready to think about more advanced ethical conundrums. They're still working out the basics. That's part of the danger of believing religion was divinely inspired as I see it too...that viewing of Jesus as something more than a comic book character. If you see things that way, I don't think you have much reason to move on to thinking about those more ethical conundrums that go beyond any experiences Jesus was involved with.

Next you say that if you believe in causality (which I do) I must believe that something caused the big bang (which I do). I am an atheist, and the vast majority of atheists and agnostics will agree with you about that. What we tend to disagree with theists and deists about is that we see no reason to believe anything intelligent was the source of the big bang. I would, furthermore, argue that it's actually more likely than not that our universe emerged from an unintelligent source than an intelligent one, merely because intelligence is more complex and difficult to come-into-being than non-intelligence, and therefore warrants more of an explanation for how it came to be.

Now you could say that "God isn't necessarily intelligent." In that case though, you have the exact same perspective atheists do, regardless of what you call yourself, and I don't why you'd distinguish "God" from any other non-intelligent possible source for the universe.

The bottom line is...if something had to create the universe, something also had to have created God. Now, I agree with many theists who say "God didn't necessarily have to have been created." If that's true though, we can say the exact same thing about the unintelligent universe. It's quite possible that there have simply been an infinite string of unintelligent reasons for the creation of the universe, or an infinite string of sources before it. It's quite possible that that's impossible too...that everything simply needs some magical, foundational starting point for reasons I don't understand. God must be included under that description though. If God can be the ultimate source for all things, an unintelligent source can be as well.

This idea that existence requires a God is another element of theistic/God-believer thought that is common, and that I'm consistently finding baffling.

So...God must be something more than what "caused the universe" unless you are content to have your definition of "God" be a force that an atheist could believe in...which some people (pantheists, for example) do...although their descriptions of their views tend to be very confusing due to that.

You say that "The only part of which that matters, from a secular perspective, is who has Natural Sovereignty over You."

No...that's just you not thinking about the secular perspective enough. I have no duty to obey any authority, just because they're an authority, regardless of who they are. We do not obey authorities merely because they're authorities if we're smart. We, rather, elect people to positions of authority because we have previously established moral codes that they share and can help us achieve the goals of better than most people, or who can assist society the most, or who can do their job best due to their skills, and we trust authorities in general because they tend to have earned their positions of authority.

Now, God-believers often trusted kings as authorities because they were believed to have been divinely appointed. This view, I would think, got a lot of corrupt bureaucrats into power. There are better secular arguments for kings, though, that would have lended them support. There is, for example, the view that if someone is raised to rule they'll be better at it than the average layperson in a democracy.

I don't know why so many God-believers are so driven to view secular thinkers the way they do. It so often appears that they just haven't thought about the moral ramifications of secularism enough, and I don't know why.

Thank you for having such a lengthy discussion with me though. I'm sure it's taken a lot of time for you, and I like these sorts of discussions.

@rway I'm responding to your post that begins: "Cultural Judaism" is just ethnic Jews who don't practice the Jewish religion."

I partly agree with that. I'll add on that they'll often practice tidbits of it. The point is, they don't believe in the Jewish depiction of God. That's what's important. That's what I like about their religious beliefs. I have concerns about God-belief. I think, if there's a parental figure who cares about us and has a plan for us, that teaches people to be less focused on fixing the world's problems themselves. Also, I think it's illogical to believe in an intelligent God, while be emotionally rewarding to do so. Therefore, people will experience emotional rewards for thinking about reality less, because they won't want to sacrifice the emotional rewards of God-belief. I think that'll often push theists, and sometimes deists, to ponder abstract concepts relating to morality or reality in general, and likelihoods, less than atheists and agnostics and other secular thinkers.

I see no signs of an intelligent guide of the universe. I see no patterns that point to the traits typically associated with gods, deistic or otherwise. I see no signs of intelligence existing outside of organic or mechanical brains. I see no signs of eternal, universe-creating beings. I see no signs of omniscience or omnipotence, and I see no reason why any of that would come into being, and can think of no reason why any of those traits would exist in our universe. I see significantly less reason to believe in a being with multiple of those traits. If a God exists...I would assume it would be an impersonal God who doesn't pay much attention to humanity. That said, I don't even see a reason to believe the universe was intelligently designed by anyone...and if it was intelligently designed, before believing a God did it, I would see much better reasons to suspect flawed, mortal aliens did it...perhaps as part of some computer simulation. At least, with aliens, we already have one example of how organic beings can use technology to gain great power over our universe. We have humanity to show us that, and humans have an interest in dramatically altering our surroundings and scientific advancement, so aliens could to. We don't have many examples of that...but we have at least one. We have zero known examples of gods though...much less gods who've created our universe.

You are incorrect about your religion being the source of your moral code. One's religion is simply a series of codes of conduct, beliefs about the nature and purpose of life, and perhaps afterlife views and views about how the universe works. No religions exist that are complicated enough to be a complete guide for our morality. We all get most of our moral codes through secular reasoning, regardless of who we are.

You have failed to show that God-belief is the only rational position in your posts, as I explained above, and that I've also explained in my post starting "I'm responding to your post that begins 'Deism is belief in God, without all the superficial man-made bullshit that accompanies organized religion.'"

If I believe in Jesus...that doesn't imply much about my behavior. Lots of people believed in Jesus who behaved monstrously. After all, Jesus never stated, so far as I'm aware, that he was opposed to the fairly barbaric actions of God and his followers in the Old Testament. That's my primary concern about the New Testament. We have a character who is pretty decent...but who never denounces the terrible behaviors in the Old Testament. Even in the New Testament things weren't perfect. Wasn't there some comment such as "Slaves, obey your masters?" I would look it up...but my computer is so low on memory that if I open multiple tabs things might mess up. That's what I get from having a $150 dollar laptop that I stuff full of everything.

@rway I looked at your fairtax website and video. That does look interesting.

That said, "liberty" was intentionally designed as a pretty vague concept I'm thinking, in the constitution. Hell, they didn't even have a problem with slavery when that concept wasp put in.

"Liberty" to me means "no unreasonable restrictions on personal freedoms." From that perspective, I don't see modern taxation as especially unreasonable. What I do see as an attack on liberty is the desire to not have gay marriage be legal...because if that's illegal you're basically taking liberty away from society just because you're in the mood to do so despite it not actually harming society in clear ways. You're taking away liberty for trivial, if any, reasons.

Regarding abortion...fetuses do not have the right to live. That's because rights benefit us, or they're not rights. Fetuses are not typically benefitted by life. They lose nothing from death, because they can't comprehend it. They can lose something of value of they experience pain when they cease to exist in an abortion....but the extreme majority of abortions appear to occur long before that point, so most fetuses lose nothing from death.

Fetuses do, on the other hand, at times have a right to not live that should be taken into consideration. No life form gains anything from coming into existence, because they'd be just fine not existing, and if you can't comprehend death or the future you lose nothing from ceasing to exist either.

Therefore, preventing abortion can, at times be an example of the sort of attack on liberty for trivial reasons that only harms those whose liberty is taken away without helping anyone.

The right to an abortion, of some kind, should be a constitutional amendment because of factors like that. Roe v. Wade is far too weak of a defense given how important that is.

Nobody wants to defund the military...but conservatives tend to want to spend more on it. Those military vehicles will eventually go obsolete. Those social programs, on the other hand, can often have long term benefits for society.

I don't necessarily agree that public restrooms should be unisex for the same reason that I think that transgender people using the restroom that their genitalia is not is controversial, rather than there being a definitely right side. Unisex restrooms is not a typical conservative desire though.

Regarding the last part of your statement, I don't know enough legalize to know whether your arguments are correct or not. That is an interesting possibility though.

@MrShittles If you seek to "...maximize pleasure and minimize suffering," that's great; good luck with that. But those goals are entirely subjective.
As such, they are quite prone to being misguided, driven by ulterior personal motives, or simply wrong.
The results of which, will also be entirely subjective... from other people's perspective. And when it comes to their lives... their perspective matters, and your perspective has no legitimate authority (sovereignty.)

Your Rights, and the Rights of the people affected by your "good intentions", are objective and unalienable (which, I believe I did describe above.)
That is the immutable, objective Framework within which you are free to establish any set of "moral" codes that make you feel good about yourself.
If you violate that objective constraint... you are wrong; regardless of your intentions.

That is the only rational and objective way to describe the concept of "Wrong" that I can come up with:
i.e., "something that you have no Natural Right to do."

Again... you can do whatever you want... for whatever reason you want... just stay within the objective constraints of your own Individual Sovereignty and it's nobody's business what you do, or why.

@rway I think I did a decent job of explaining why my stated goals are not subjective. My goal is not to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering based on my opinions of how to do that. My goal is to find how to, really, maximize pleasure and minimize suffering.

There is no reason for doing anything besides choosing actions that reduce suffering and increase pleasure more than other actions. Therefore that's both your, and my goal, whether or not we realize it. Therefore more pleasure and less suffering is better. Therefore, whatever path truly leads to the least amount of suffering and the most amount of pleasure...so far as I can tell, that's objectively the best path.

Yeah...those goals will be entirely subjective from other people's perspective...but they'll be incorrect.

But...you still haven't explained why your view is any more true than all the views other people besides us regarding the source of morality. You have not described what your proposed inalienable rights are. Also, there are no truly inalienable rights besides fact that suffering is bad and pleasure is good. Whatever supposedly inalienable rights you believe exist...I gaurantee I will be able to explain to you some circumstance (however rarely it might occur) in which it would be morally best for those rights to be taken away, because in that circumstance removing those rights will maximize pleasure and minimize suffering.

If you believe in "inalienable rights" and your goals for advocating those inalienable rights is not basically a sub-category of my worldview rooted in the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering...your code of ethics is built on a foundation of sand just as much as the code of ethics of people who blindly obey their government's laws are. You, and they, would have no deeper reasoning process for obeying your rules besides...just...blindly following these arbitrarily determined rules, and your reasoning process will collapse into uselessness if you are involved in any ethical conundrum that involves much abstract thought.

Only moral codes resembling mine, that involve the goal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering, can reliably deal with any abstract ethical conundrum. Only my style of moral code can show the path to moral objectivity...because all other styles of moral codes are just, in various degrees, rooted in people's randomly determined impulsive, individual, off-the-top-of-their-heads views about right and wrong that they have no real reason not to change when their mood switches and they feel differently about things.

@MrShittles re: "Deism is belief in God, ..." etc.
Belief that there is a God, and belief that there is no God... is a subtle difference?
That "subtle" difference is the deist's real source for their moral code that atheists don't acknowledge.
Regardless, any moral code simply describes what you should do.
It is your Religion.
The notion of Individual Sovereignty has nothing to do with what you should do; only with what you can do, as an exercise of your own objective Natural Rights while preserving those of your sovereign peers in the universe. What you should do, within that Set of available options, is entirely up to you.
We (in the West) reached that epiphany, eventually, through our religious presuppositions.
But, that conceptual evolution led to the realization that the concept holds True and Sound whether you acknowledge the "Source", or not.
Indeed, if we (Christians) are to believe that God's Design describes Universal Truth... then we must acknowledge that any sincere and successful quest for such Truth, should be expected to end up at the same conclusion; regardless of the path of inquiry.
That's why the Right/Wrong dichotomy described as a function of Individual Sovereignty remains sound in a secular context; simply because it is sound, objectively.
If you prefer to ignore the reason that it is sound... that's your prerogative, and it makes no difference.

Jesus is indeed a "role model", in exactly the same sense that Superman et al are meant to represent the "ideal". It is this persona that Christians seek to emulate as they understand it.
Like all personae, it is fictional, or at the very least incomplete (which does not imply logically that it is incorrect.)
Our "understanding" of that ideal is meant to be fleshed out continuously through research, collaboration, introspection, and prayer (presumed to be a live, real-time intuitive connection to that objective, absolute "Truth"... no different from what some other religions call "meditation".)
There is no "modern" ethical conundrum that exists outside that range of consideration.
That's the entire point of axiomatic Principles... they hold True and Sound in any situation.
If you have the Natural Right to take your desired action... no matter what it is (which implies that nobody else's Natural Rights will be affected), then it is the "right" thing to do; and whether it is the "best" thing to do, in response to any particular conundrum... is entirely up to you and your personal "morals".
If you don't have that right, then it's the "wrong" thing to do; objectively.
Too simple.

I gave my impression of Intelligent Design in my original reply:
"Also: Order within any system does not come from Chaos (or from "nothing" ), without the application of energy from outside that system. That implies purpose, which implies intelligence."
Through natural entropy, any universe accidentally created by some "dumb" impetus would be expected to inevitably unravel into increasing Disorder, not Order.
Order simply doesn't happen in nature all by itself.
Your claim that: "...if something had to create the universe, something also had to have created God. " is not logically sound (which you seem to agree with as you continue...)
Any argument about God's "origin" is a temporal argument, which simply has no meaning outside the confines of our own physical universe (which includes the dimension of Time.)
Also, any argument that relies on the cop-out of "infinite possibilities" is, within our Universe: based on a false assumption, as our Universe is quite finite.
And, outside our Universe: logically impossible. If infinite possibilities were a sound way to explain "anything" specific, then it would necessarily be just as valid as a way to explain anything else... in general; thereby implying that Everything is True. "Everything" would include things that were mutually exclusive, self-contradicting, etc. i.e., "Paradox".

"The idea that existence requires a God", is not the argument for God.
The argument is that existence implies God; logically... and irrefutably.

If an Atheist (or any other... -ist) agrees with my attempts to describe God, then I don't see why I would want to discourage that.
But I would, then, wonder how they concluded that they were "an Atheist" in the first place.

Your Individual Sovereignty has nothing to do with any "...duty to obey any authority".
In fact, the assertion that You (and only you) have Sovereignty over your own life; implies the exact opposite.
The State has no authority, no sovereignty of its own; only that small portion of your sovereignty that has been conceded to it for the sole purpose of protecting others' rights from you; by your consent, in exchange for that same protection from others.
The State has no legitimate authority to compel any action from you; only to constrain your actions, and only under that single, very-specific circumstance.

People trusted kings, only to the extent that they believed the bullshit that they were divinely appointed; which I don't think was as common a belief as some might think. They played along, as a simple matter of tyranny.
A free society has no "ruler". We have positions of public administration with very limited authority and responsibilities. (Far more limited than those they actually exercise... which is: whatever they can get away with.)
A "good" candidate for such positions, is anybody who both understands and will observe the limitations of the position. To me, that is far more important (and rare) than any "talent" for public administration. That's what deputies and assistants are for.

"Secular thinking"; to whatever extent it denies an objective, natural (or "super"natural), and immutable source for their natural rights... leaves the concept open to subjective interpretation.
Historically, that doesn't go well.
Which should be no surprise, to the extent that it is effectively an attempt to override that natural reality itself.
Without a Foundation, it doesn't matter what you build. It's going to crumble to the ground.

Of course, thank you for providing more/different perspective and thinking it through together.

@rway God alone cannot be a source for a moral code. That's because there is no code of conduct associated with there just being a God.

Your definition of "religion" is incorrect. A "moral code" is not your religion. A "religion" is more complex than that in some ways, while often being less fully encompassing that one's moral code. Buddhism, for example, is a religion. It is a set of traditions and beliefs about the nature of reality. A moral code alone does not necessarily involve traditions or beliefs about the nature of reality. That said, different Buddhists have different moral codes...because the teachings of Buddhism will never be complex enough to fully encompass all situations.

You're not using the established definitions of words here.

If individual sovereignty has nothing to do with what you should do, only what you can do...then it's pointless to know about the concept. It's been common sense since the beginning of time. It's not like pagan tribes had forever blindly obeyed their chieftans without question before the rise of Christianity that supposedly established the concept of individual sovereignty in people's minds. They sacked their leaders from time to time just like modern people do.

I've not been ignoring your supposedly "sound reasoning" I've been reading your statements about it in great detail and explaining why I disagree.

The problem with your supposed "axiomatic Principles" is that you have not specified what your supposed "axiometric principles" are. You need to explain some kind of reason why those supposed "axiometric principles" are best in every situation or else they're not "axiometric principles." They're just arbitrarily determined rules we have no reason to follow.

You talk about "natural rights" but you have not specified what our "natural rights" are, or why they are "natural rights."

I have, on the other hand, attempted to explain why pleasure is always a good thing and suffering is always a bad thing. I have attempted to explain why you should perceive our goal as the maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering.

You described your definition of Intelligent Design here:

"Also: Order within any system does not come from Chaos (or from "nothing" ), without the application of energy from outside that system. That implies purpose, which implies intelligence."

In our universe, most "intelligent design" does not appear to come from intelligent sources. Ant colonies are an example of very intelligent design...but that's also an example of how intelligent design does not require a single intelligent guide intelligence, because there is no known single guide for an ant colony. Now...the deistic explanation for that is often "The reason why an ant colony appears intelligent is because it did have a single intelligent designer who'd programmed those ants or their ancestors," but an atheist could just as easily respond," No...I'm going to assume there was no intelligent designer, and therefore we have plenty of examples of life forms engaging in very complex tasks without guidance from single intelligent guides." So, in other words, if we start out assuming God created the universe, it looks like there are lots of examples of complex things created by an intelligent designer. However, if we start out from the atheistic perspective it looks like the vast majority of complex structures were designed through unintelligent sources. So we're somewhat at an impasse. That means complex structures in our universe, as we see them are not evidence of a God unless we can explain why that god should exist, independently of the existence of our universe.

So, only once we can think of a sound reason for the existence of a God in the first place does it make sense to propose God as a potential creator of our universe. Otherwise, we're doing the equivalent of saying, "I don't know what happened to my socks. I'm therefore going to assume gnomes took them."

Our universe does not imply any purposeful creation, so far as I can tell. We were born into some gladiatorial arena called evolution. We fought our way up through that through millions of years, and now we're, in many ways, destroying the world. The best thing we'll be able to do for the universe is dramatically alter it for the better through technology...which a designer with intelligence could have done in the first place.

You stated this: "Through natural entropy, any universe accidentally created by some "dumb" impetus would be expected to inevitably unravel into increasing Disorder, not Order"

I agree with that. That's of course one of our physical laws. Everyone agrees with that. That still has to apply to God as well though, unless we're talking about God being a being not subject to the laws of our universe due to being outside of it, and that's keeping in mind that whatever unintelligent source the universe may have had before the big bang may have worked exactly the same way.

People talk about "God" being the only explanation for the universe...but "God" isn't even an explanation. It's much too vague of a concept to even be a starting point. We don't know how a "God" works. We don't even know why a God would exist. A much more rational way of looking at things is just to acknowledge that we don't know a lot about the universe, and that we may never know much, and focus on learning one small aspect of reality at the time. We may never discover any ultimate source for all things...but perhaps, someday, we can discover a source for the big bang, and a source for that, and a source for that, and keep going as long as we remain curious.

I'm not sure what you meant when you began talking about "infinite possibilities." Our universe may not be finite. There's a lot we don't know about it. Furthermore, assuming it is, we could have still had an infinite amount of failed possibilities and then, finally, after an infinite amount of time, something brought about the big bang through the eventual chance of it happening after an infinite amount of time.

Regardless of how difficult it is to explain the origin of the universe, the thing to remember is that God-believers have the exact same problems explaining the origin of the universe as everyone else does, if not more, because in addition to having to explain how the universe got here, they've got to explain how or why the intelligent creator of the universe got here, as well as defining the thing in detail in the first place.

You stated this: "Secular thinking"; to whatever extent it denies an objective, natural (or "super"natural), and immutable source for their natural rights... leaves the concept open to subjective interpretation.
Historically, that doesn't go well."

You just described every single thing...ever, just about. Everything is open to subjective interpretation. The fact that we are in this discussion shows that your views are also subject to subjective interpretation.

@MrShittles re: "Cultural Judaism", etc...

(You said: "I have concerns about God-belief.")
I have concerns about delusion.
I've already described why I think that denying God is simply irrational.
Pretending that a sound logical implication is not True, because... you don't like it (I guess?); is the reasoning of a zealot, not a scientist.
It is, ironically, an example of what you describe as "thinking about reality less" in pursuit of emotional reward. Reality necessarily includes the Creator that started it all.
Now, the idea that God is "...a parental figure who cares about us and has a plan for us" is pure supposition; intuitive rather than rational.
I don't think that we should be too quick to assume that intuition is not a potentially-meaningful source of information... but still, it is subjective, often ambiguous, and an "art" (as opposed to a "science" ) at which most people never seem to develop any significant skill.

You see no signs of intelligence in the Universe?
Are you familiar with the expression "missing the Forest for the Trees"?
The Universe is the sign.
Are you familiar with the mathematical study of Probability? The more you learn about how things work, and more importantly... how they work together; the more convinced you will be that it is literally, mathematically impossible that it all came together by chance.
Each subsystem: sub-atomic particles, biological cells, geological processes, weather on Earth, myriad finely-tuned natural cycles to keep it all stirred up yet remain within slim tolerances so it doesn't all just spiral out of control... thousands more that we know about, plus an unknown number that we don't even know about; each one is either impossible or nearly-impossible, all by itself. But all of them working together? The combinatorics are mind-boggling (and computer-boggling.)
One mathematician tried to calculate the odds a while back... he didn't get very far before he was at a probability well below 1/[the estimated number of atoms in the universe].
It's just not possible, and everybody knows it. That's why they hide behind the "infinite permutations" cop-out. The only problem with that, is that it's wrong. The Universe is physically finite, and so is the amount of Time that has transpired since the Bang.
Just as surely as a Watch implies an intelligent Watchmaker;
the Universe implies an intelligent God.

Your description of one's "religion", I would call their "theology".
Your religion is your moral code and the rationale behind it.
For most followers of "Organized Religion" with their own canonized Dogma, the two are almost the same thing; at least ostensibly. But you're correct, at least some of their personal moral code likely comes from outside their theology; as it does for the rest of us.

(You said: "You have failed to show that God-belief is the only rational position...")
Well, I attempted to show it anyway... and you failed to refute it, so...
(It started in literally the next sentence, after the one you quoted in your response )
Here it is again:
"If you have confidence in Modern Science, then you have accepted the notion of causality; which should lead you to the irrefutable conclusion that something caused the Big Bang.
(If nothing caused it, then causality is not a thing and ALL of modern science has no foundation.)Every repeatable experiment ever conducted has been a test of that axiom, and so far it's holding up pretty well.
"God" is what we call that something that "caused" the Universe."
In fact, you've already agreed that "something caused the big bang".
And since "God" is what we call that something, then you believe in God; you just don't want to call it "God" for whatever reason.
What you have yet to accept, is that God has intelligence; which I went on to address in terms of the scientifically well-understood natural phenomena of Entropy:
"Also: Order within any system does not come from Chaos (or from "nothing" ), without the application of energy from outside that system. That implies purpose, which implies intelligence.
If you "believe" in Science... but not God, then I just don't know what to tell you. Maybe you just need to think it through some more."
(Actually, I just explained this part further in my most recent response.)

If you believe in Jesus... that doesn't imply anything about your behavior.
It matters what you believe about Jesus. If you think He condoned slavery, or Socialism (as some people do), or any other imposition of your will over anybody else's... then I would argue that you have more "considering" to do.
As far as I know, His actions never implied any of that.
Google showed me a couple Bible verses that say, basically that slaves should obey their masters. Slaves is also translated as "servants" in some versions; and if we understood Ancient Koine Greek, we might interpret it as "Employees/Bosses" in a modern context... but it also probably included actual slaves. Anyway, it wasn't about slavery being acceptable or not; it was about how Christians should conduct themselves in different relationships, and slavery was a very real and commonplace relationship, as it has been throughout all of recorded history.
The two passages I saw were in Ephesians and 1 Timothy. These are two of many letters from the Apostle Paul to other Christians. Paul had started a bunch of churches in the early days of Christianity, and he was advising them on how he thought they should conduct themselves as "new Christians", as opposed to the non-Christian lifestyles to which they were accustomed.
One thing he didn't want them to do was to give the fledgling religion a bad name as a subversive movement. "Obey your Masters" is not an endorsement of the institution of slavery, it's merely a plea to "not make waves".
Anyway, Paul was just a dude with an opinion, trying to get his churches established and not burned to the ground. Don't blame him because some council put his letters "in the Bible" several centuries later.
The idea that "if it's in the Bible, it's the literal and infallible Word of God Himself!" is a grandiose and unsupportable claim (which Bible?); especially given its origin-story: [ [en.wikipedia.org] ].
The claim probably came from Roman Catholics, who put their Bible together about 4 centuries AFTER Christ died... in Latin no-less, which ordinary people throughout the empire couldn't read; so they could just "tell" them what it said (and what it meant), and demand strict compliance.
As far as I know, Jesus never once mentioned the (future) Bible. Neither did Paul.
Christianity, again... is about the attempt to emulate Jesus Christ; it's not about worshiping a book (that's actually idolatry.)
I think the Bible makes a great reference, especially if you read more than one version. And, I believe secular historians generally agree. But it's still a book. Written by dudes.

@MrShittles
maybe this is getting too complicated...

The axiomatic principle is that Sovereignty resides in the Individual.
The implication is, that each individual has the Natural Right to do anything they please, with one constraint: you can't violate anybody else's Natural Right to do exactly the same thing.

If you think you have a right to take any action that violates my rights, then please explain the origin of that right.

@MrShittles I was still working on last night's homework:

re: "I looked at your FairTax Website..." etc.

I think Liberty, in the phrase "...Life, Liberty, or Property" in the 5th and 14th Amendments, is a literal reference to being jailed or detained by the State.
In the Declaration, it's just an example of "certain unalienable Rights". How you interpret it is irrelevant, the statement is about the Rights themselves in their entirety.

The Founders explicitly denounced slavery (even the ones with slaves), and knew that it was not compatible (obviously) with the ideal that "all men are created equal", or the sovereignty of the individual. Many were anti-slavery activists, and some served on their State's Anti-Slavery Societies as officers.
They also knew that they had just made it illegal, and that it was the right thing to do (but I can't find that quote anywhere.)
But... there's a long road between establishing a principle and getting it universally institutionalized, accepted, and enforced. Especially when you're first obstacle is getting the Union established in the first place, and one of your fundamental guiding principles is Limited Power for the federal government.
That road included a lot of compromises, and eventually a war, to finally end legalized-slavery.
And that's just one thing. We've still got a long way to go to realize the goal established in the Constitution, and we've actually been going the wrong way, generally, for over a century now.

"...no unreasonable restrictions" is subjective, and therefore useless as a principle.
Modern taxation is a clear violation of your expressed 4th Amendment right to be "secure in your effects", and your 5th Amendment right not be deprived of [...] property, without due process of law; nor [have your] private property taken for public use, without just compensation.
The Income Tax proposal was clearly unconstitutional (as decided by the Supreme Court), which is why they needed the 16th Amendment. Which was passed on the lie that it would only "stick it" to the top 1% (which should sound ominously familiar as a bullshit sales-pitch.)
Regardless, they didn't repeal those clauses from the earlier Amendments, so the 16th itself is also unconstitutional (not: "due process of law".)
As far as staying true to Principal: the only just way to gather public revenue in a supposedly "free" society, is voluntarily. And the only way to do that, effectively anyway, is with a consumption tax.
It's actually a more-steady and predictable source of revenue than income.
It removes all the coercive bullshit and loopholes.
And the FairTax prebate actually un-taxes the poor, finally, after all these years of insincere promises and smoke & mirrors.

Gay marriage being illegal certainly was an attack on liberty; a violation of "equal treatment" and entirely outside the scope of the Government's legitimate authority in the first place.
In fact, any involvement whatsoever in the institution of marriage is outside that scope.
You don't have rights because they "benefit" anybody.
That benefit would be determined subjectively, and the rights endowed at someone else's discretion. And nobody has the natural sovereignty over you to do that (and you don't have it over anybody else.)
Humans have natural rights, simply as an implication of their existence as sovereign individuals;
which includes fetuses.

You have a right "not to live", but nobody else on the planet has the right to make that decision for you, or especially to provide for that right by taking your life. That would clearly be an exercise of their own sovereignty over you... sovereignty that they simply don't have.
Now that would be an "attack on liberty."
Whether the fetus would be "just fine" with having it's brains sucked out and being ripped apart with salad tongs, is simply not your call to make.
Roe v Wade is no defense at all... it's the dumbest rationalization ever. The whole pretense is the mother's "right to privacy". This ludicrous "precedent" actually makes it legal to kill and eat hitchhikers in the "privacy" of your own basement; by the same logic. Pure bullshit.
But there shouldn't be a "stronger" amendment in my opinion, to secure the right to an abortion; because no such right exists, and any such amendment would be just as unconstitutional as the 16th Amendment (and Roe v Wade.)

Conservatives do tend to want to spend more on the military; more, especially, than people who don't care about defending America because they hate it anyway and want to "fundamentally change" it. And, more than people who don't think we should be involving ourselves in anybody else's conflicts in the first place.
Those conservatives are also more likely to be getting big campaign contributions from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Fluor, DynCorp, et al.
More isn't always the right answer. But, like you said, those military vehicles will eventually go obsolete. Which means we'll need new ones.
At least national defense is a legitimate function of Government. The military is a public institution, because no private entity has the legitimate authority to act internationally on behalf of "the Governed".
Those social programs, on the other hand, started out obsolete. They have short-term benefits for the politician's peddling them, and long-term detriment for everybody else.
We've spent Trillions (with a "T")... that's TRILLIONS... since the 1960's on just the "war on poverty" programs. And the result: poverty is actually worse now than it was then.
Now, you will argue that we should just spend more. Or, at least that's what those politicians would argue. But there's no reason to suspect that doing the wrong thing harder and longer will somehow make it the right thing. That's really kinda dumb.
Besides, none of that is the legitimate purview of Government in the first place.
We created a Government to protect our rights from one another, and to otherwise stay out of our way while we go about doing whatever we please in the Private sector.
That's it: Law Enforcement. That's all Government is for (domestically.)
It has no legitimate authority to expand its own scope. And voters have no legitimate authority to give away the rights of their fellow citizens.
That's why we have a Constitution; to constrain the Government to its limited scope, (here's the important part: ) whether people vote for "Bigger Government" or not.
Those initiatives are supposed to be struck down as unconstitutional... but there's big money in pandering, and even bigger money in control; which just happens to be what these idiots are demanding their "right" to give away.
If you think you have a "good idea" for society, that's Great... do it.
Spread the word. If it really is a good idea, people will chip in and help out.
Remember, you can do whatever you want. Except.... The only thing you can't do (legitimately), is to Force your neighbors to comply with your "good idea" through the Government. Their actions are a matter of their discretion, not yours.

What could possibly be the problem with unisex public restrooms?

@rway I thank you for summarizing this view, which seems to be central to your worldview. Now I've got a much stronger understand of your view of things too, I think.

I'm responding to your post that goes:

"maybe this is getting too complicated...

The axiomatic principle is that Sovereignty resides in the Individual.
The implication is, that each individual has the Natural Right to do anything they please, with one constraint: you can't violate anybody else's Natural Right to do exactly the same thing.

If you think you have a right to take any action that violates my rights, then please explain the origin of that right."

My response is, I think what "rights" are and are not is largely beside the point, in regards to the foundational elements of my moral code.

Rights are important, but I'd argue we typically only call "rights" rights because there are very few circumstances in which it would be a good idea to remove those rights. For example, I consider women as having the right to vote. That's because without that we would not have a representative democracy. If, however, some disease made women's brains half their size, I might want that "right" removed because the long term consequences of letting women vote might not be worth maintaining that "right."

"Rights" to me, and I think to most of society, are things that, if they're violated, would cause massive amounts of harm we've not, as a society, agreed to risk experiencing and view as intolerable...or else they're social controls that may cause less harm, but with negligible or no benefits stemming from the violation of those rights. For example, telling me I can't verbally "I'm a Christian" on public property really wouldn't be terribly disastrous for anyone, I'd think...but it would be a fairly pointless sort of harm. It would be a violation of the rights we've grown used to over the centuries, and people would be rightfully ticked off about that.

That's noting that there are also legal rights, which are different from moral rights. That's also noting that, given that our founding fathers were often slave owners...I don't think the right of "liberty" in the constitution was intended to refer to closer-to-complete liberty your stated code of conduct advocates. We've got a ton of legal precedent backing that up too.

So your view is

"The implication is, that each individual has the Natural Right to do anything they please, with one constraint: you can't violate anybody else's Natural Right to do exactly the same thing."

So...in other words, I have a right to ignite the elderly on fire, so long as they have the right to ignite me on fire too. The problem with that is...there are certain people born without pain receptors. Most of these people will have consciences (presumably) however, some people believe that a rather high percentage of society are psychopaths. Psychopaths lack a sense of fear and remorse and I could imagine a psychopath without the ability to feel pain having a ton of fun igniting the elderly on fire and being totally willing to be ignited on fire as a consequence of that, because he'd like the pretty oranges and yellows dancing all around before the flames make him go blind.

Maybe you explain that away by thinking, "That's not the same circumstance unless they're actually feeling the same type of pain from that the elderly would be feeling."

Either way, though, you're going to find a lot of psychopaths who are willing to engage in dangerous activities because they lack fear and just don't care much about the risks.

I would argue that the reason why the psychopath did not have the right to ignite the elderly person on fire was, rather, in part because it was a totally pointless type of harm and involved an extreme and unexpected loss of control over one's fate and that it doesn't matter what the psychopath's opinions about whether or not they'd be willing to experience the same thing. What was wrong about it was simply the causing of harm...not whether or not the one causing the harm would be fine with that harm being caused to them.

@MrShittles Well yes, you could say it's a central tenet of my own philosophy. But what I think is hardly relevant.
It's the Founding premise of America, and arguably Western Civilization.
Individual Sovereignty is the argument for Basic Human Rights.

(haven't read the rest yet...)

@rway I'm now responding to your longer, most recent post.

God's existence is, in my opinion, more or less impossible. You've described your opinions about why God exists. I've responded to those opinions by explaining why I think your view is incorrect. Again, to summarize my views, belief in God has all the same problems as belief that the universe arose from an unintelligent source except that God-believers also have to explain how the creator of the universe came to be or why. They typically explain that away by saying something like, "It's the nature of God to be the foundation of everything." The problem with that is that doesn't make God's existence more likely. It makes God's existence significantly less likely. All they've done is add on an additional characterisitc of God not known to exist they've got to think of some reason to believe in.

A perfect analogy for the belief that the universe could not have been created without a god is, as I've been saying, "I can't find my socks. Therefore, I'm going to assume gnomes took them."

With both the prospect of gnomes having took one's socks, and the prospect of God having created the universe, it makes no sense to view either of those sources as probably until we have some reason to believe in the existence of the gnomes/God independently of the creation of the universe/missing socks.

Again, I'm defining God as a designer with a singular form of intelligence, because I don't know why someone would call anything without that a God.

Reality does not necessarily include a creator who started it all...even an unintelligent one. There are three possible sources for reality I can think of.

Option #1 is that reality has always existed in some form. That's, at least, not inherently impossible. There is no line of sound reasoning that's obvious to me that says things can't have just existed forever, although it does go against our instinctive reasoning, and sounds very odd to me.

Option #2 is that reality just popped up for no reason, from nothing. That sounds, to me, flat out impossible. That said, given how odd option #1 sounds as well...I'm not sure we can entirely exclude the impossible from the equation.

Option #3 is that there is some sort of answer that is beyond our understanding.

Note that "God did it" is not a valid answer for the formation of our universe. It's not a real answer. It answers nothing about why or how our universe exists besides "God did it" (whatever that means) and God having done it involves the exact same problems that all 3 of the other options have. Rational people lack confidence that God did create the universe for the exact same reasons that they are confused by option #1, 2 and 3.

Regarding your statement about order not coming from chaos...order does seem to come from chaos all the time. Just look at a tornado. Now, like I mentioned earlier, if you assume a God designed everything...then, naturally, it appears like order does not come from chaos because you've got a non-chaotic source. However, if your default assumption is that the universe was not designed by a God, then things look the opposite way. You see all sorts of examples of order arising from chaos, our entire universe, in fact.

Regardless of which perspective is more rational though, the view "order does not come from chaos" is merely an assumption. I would argue that nature has shown that assumption to be inaccurate...unless a God exists (maybe?) which I don't think it does, for reasons I've explained in at least one past post, that I'll explain again, briefly, now. I don't see any patterns in reality pointing to the existence of thoughts existing outside of brains, universe-creating immortal beings, telepathy, omnipotence, or omniscience, much less all those traits existing within one being.

Regarding your defense of Jesus...my main criticism of Jesus was his failure to condemn the Old Testament.

Your definition of God is just "The Creator" But that's a pointless definition to have. If that's the case, there is no reason to distinguish that from any other unintelligent aspect of the universe. I'm not arguing that it's wrong for you to think of an unintelligent source for the universe, or the universe as God for whatever poetic, inspirational, or emotional reasons you might have...but that's needlessly confusing for everyone else.

God has intelligence, to almost everyone on Earth. If most people found out that the universe did not have an intelligent creator, they'd feel very differently about things than they feel about them now if they believe in a God. They would, typically, describe our universe as Godless.

I do not believe in a God. Me saying I believe in one would be pointlessly misleading and confusing to people.

@MrShittles It's a simple logical proof, as I've tried to paraphrase. Here's a sloppy "pseudo-formal" version:
Proof: God Exists
Axiom 0: Causality; if something happened, something caused it to happen
Axiom 1: If X causes something to happen, then X must exist
Definition 1: "God" is the English word for the Creator of the Universe
Assumption 0: The Big Bang happened.
Assumption 1: The Big Bang was the creation of our Universe
Assertion 1: Something caused the Big Bang; by Assumption 0, Axiom 0
Definition 2: Let X = that Something in Assertion 1
Assertion 2: X Exists; by Axiom 1
Assertion 3: X created the Universe; by Assumption 1
Assertion 4: X = God; by Assertion 3, Definition 1
Therefore, God Exists; by Assertion 2, Assertion 4
QED

So, which line is wrong, and why do you think so?

The point of acknowledging what you know to be true, is so that you can proceed logically to explore the implications.
Dismissing any facet of objective reality because you don't see the point... leads to unsound decisions based on incomplete information in the best-case.
And in the worst case: to entire hierarchies of self-validating false conclusions with ultimately no foundation in objective Truth.

@rway I'm responding to your post beginning "It's a simple logical proof, as I've tried to paraphrase. Here's a sloppy "pseudo-formal" version:"

I'll get to your other posts later.

You noted: "Axiom 0: causality; if something happened, something caused it to happen."

So...here's the thing about the term "impossible." The term "impossible" is quite a useful term. However, its meaning changes based on the context of the discussion. For example, if there is a question in which all possible answers are answers we'd ordinarily label "impossible" we must alter our definition of "impossible" and include possibilities we'd ordinarily consider "impossible" under our possible explanations for what the solution to our question is. I think someone could make a decent argument that all possible sources for the beginning of reality are impossible...so if we can think of an answer, it's going to be pretty odd. I do think that everything having come to be due to an endless string of reasons seems the least impossible though, so that's the option I tend to go with. (I know the term "least impossible" sounds rather odd, but I think when dealing with stuff this odd, odd terminology can be the only accurate terminology).

I agree that, at least ordinarily, if something happened something else caused it to happen. Therefore, a possible source for the big bang was and endless series of events, each causing each other to happen.

Nothing you've mentioned in your recent post disagrees with that possibility.

Now, what would still be impossible, according to your recent post, would be the universe coming into being for no reason out of nothing. I'm not so confident about that as you might be...but I do think it's more likely that there simply were an endless string of sources for everything than that our universe simply came into being from nothing for no reason.

So...I don't necessarily think any of your lines are wrong. At most, I'm less confident about things than you may be, but I don't think any of your lines are necessarily wrong. Given how odd whatever the source of the universe must have been...I'm quite open to the possibility that whatever the source was, that we're sort of like ants trying to explain the sky, and it's totally beyond our comprehension.

But, based on my primitive reasoning process, what seems most likely to me is that there were an infinite string of reasons which eventually led to the formation of our universe through the big bang.

Your post appears to agree with that stance, but with more confidence that that is the only possible reasonable stance to have. The difference between us is that you appear to be just calling that infinite string of reasons "God." whereas I see no reason to do the same.

That's because I see God as being intelligent...and a single being. According to your definition of God, and your opposition to things just popping up for no reason, you must also believe that there is an infinite string of reasons behind how and why a God exists too, which could imply multiple gods.

If you're willing to accept that a God can be an unintelligent eternal string of reasons for the creation of the universe...keeping in mind that would be a very rare definition of God, I would not have a problem with you claiming me to believe in God. I would never describe myself that way though, because I see no reason to be that misleading to most people...because they'll see the term "God" differently than you do.

@MrShittles Yes, you're trying to assign attributes (intelligence and singularity) to a thing that you won't even acknowledge exists in the first place; and then using your presumption of the implausibility of those attributes, to support the preconception that it doesn't exist.

(Intelligence is actually not implausible at all, as I've described before... it is, in fact, implied irrefutably by another simple proof; this time by Entropy.)
But for now... forget the attributes, that comes later. The first step in any analysis is to acknowledge what you know, and take it from there. All we know about God, is that He exists. We know that as a sound logical inference; with which you agree, line-for-line.

An infinite series of events would be one possible attribute; a way to describe God.
If it were plausible, that is. And if there were any reason to actually suspect that it is True.
But it's actually just kicking the same can down the road. Again... invoking "infinity" to avoid the simple answer.
I understand why it would have to be infinite; because anything less would bring us back to the same question: what "caused" that first event. And the answer would be the same.
But an infinite series would imply infinite Time, during which that series of cause/effect events could transpire.
And, according to mathematicians that I'm not qualified to argue with; Time began with the Big Bang.
There was no infinite trail of time leading up to the bang, as far as we know.

@rway Of course I'm trying to assign attributes (intelligence and singularity) to a thing I won't even acknowledge exists. That's normal behavior. That's how we treat every hypothetical entity we contemplate. I've also contemplated the traits of plasma-based creatures that might exist in the atmospheres of stars that I don't see reason to believe in the existence of. But...even aside from that...I'm not the one who invented the traits of God. Society already has. I'm the one using society's dominant definition of God. You are not.

No...we don't know that God exists if you define it as a "He." "He" implies intelligence. A more appropriate description would be if you stated that god could be a "he," or an "It" or a "they." Furthermore, I think I'm being extremely generous by even accepting that we call anything non-intelligent God. The problem with the term "God" is that it carries all sorts of additional meanings with the term, to many people. Not only is "God" typically associated with intelligence, and God is typically singular, "God" (especially with the capital G) is typically thought of a something to revere...and at bare minimum, I think the term pushes people to personify the universe, even if the person using it believes "God" does not necessarily refer to an intelligent being.

It looks like I basically agree with everything important you've stated there. Note that, so far as we know, time as we know it began at the big bang. There could have still be some infinite causal chain that led to the big bang before time worked the way it does now though.
So...let's move on to the question of whether or not God is most likely intelligent. That's our primary disagreement. That's the main disagreement we have that's rooted in something stronger than semantics, I think.

I will note, however, that your insistence that "I know" God exists is extremely irritating. I do not "know" God exists. I am being honest with myself and therefore acknowledging that, so far as I can tell, God's existence is basically impossible...keeping in mind the most accurate (because it's the most common) definition of God as an intelligent, singular, universe ruling-or creating entity.

@MrShittles Exactly my point: You are the one using society's erroneous definition(s) of God. I am not.

[still working on the longer replies...]

@rway If God is referred to as "He" it makes very little sense to define God as unintelligent. Almost everyone in the world who believes in what they call God defines the god they believe in as being intelligent.

What possible reason would we have to have a named title for some unintelligent nebulous concept that might merely be an infinite string of reasons for existence more resembling lead, dark matter, or a philosophical concept than a being? Do we call the concept of zero "He?" Do we give a name to light, or time, or a possible fourth dimension? No, because they're not feeling/thinking entities, so far as we know.

Now, if you want to name an unintelligent source for reality "God," for your personal emotional reasons, fine...but you're being unreasonable if you expect other people to do the same.

Also, here is a dictionary definition of "God:" [dictionary.com]

Now, I described God as "singular." That's iffy...because of how many people believe things like "we are all part of God" but I'd say that's still basically valid, because even most of those people believe that this being has a sort of central mind, perhaps in addition to us being part of it.

The important aspect of it, though, is intelligence.

Now, Baruch Spinoza, I'd say, would agree with you. Most people wouldn't agree with Baruch Spinoza though.

@MrShittles Sorry, I'm falling behind...

re: "God alone cannot be a source for a moral code..."

is no and cannot be are two different claims.
The principle of Individual Sovereignty was derived solely from the idea of there "just being a God." Even if it's just an avatar for the "Laws of Nature, or Nature's God" as Jefferson put it.
That principle describes, completely, what you can do without acting unjustly; i.e., without violating somebody else's Natural Rights.
If your moral code tells you that what you should do, is follow that principle; then you're done.
That is a code of conduct, associated with there just being a God.

But... as I stated before: "at least some of their (religious people's) personal moral code likely comes from outside their theology; as it does for the rest of us."

A religion is: "something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience" - Dicionary.com
Your definition is also correct, as are several others; which is why I describe what I mean when I introduce a term... just about always, although I probably miss a few here or there.
That's a good practice, to preclude misunderstanding. But it doesn't work if your reader ignores the description.

It's pointless to have a common understanding of what you do/don't have a Right to do?
That's a new take on it...
Your comment about Pagans sacking bad leaders only considers half the equation, and does so incompletely.
Sovereignty is about what you can do. But that has a very important implication, that is... everything else, is stuff that you can't do, justly; that is, without violating others' rights.
You're only looking at it from the "What's in it for Me?" perspective.
We've never had a problem with people clamoring to claim their own "right" to do just about anything you can imagine... whether that claim made any sense or not; and we still don't. That's probably 80% of "politics".
What's far less common is people regulating their own behavior, out of a commonly understood respect for other people's Rights.
Neither can be done effectively without establishing a common and objective Framework that describes those Rights completely and unambiguously.

Max-Pleasure and Min-Suffering are both subjective, and therefore useless as guides.
Neither are they particularly noble, beneficial, or even necessarily desirable.
A weightlifter "suffers"... on purpose, to great personal benefit. "Helping" him would only impede his progress.
A junkie has "pleasure"... temporarily, to great personal detriment. "Helping" him will likely kill him eventually.
There's nothing wrong with having "good intentions", just stay within your Rights while you're carrying them out, and that will minimize the damage you do unwittingly.
Life is not about being free from suffering and happy all the time. Some suffering is beneficial, even necessary to achieve anything meaningful. And meaning is far more important to many people than happiness.
In all cases: it's their call, not yours.
The only thing that's "always a good thing", is being free to exercise your own will.

Your comments on Intelligent Design...
So... the only reason we interpret complexity as evidence of intelligence, is because we assume that intelligence created the complexity... and if we just assume that it didn't... then we have lots of great examples of complexity with no intelligence...
At least you added: "...unless we can explain why that God should exist."
Because we can. And we have, already in this discussion. You agreed.
We don't assume God created complicated stuff, because we already assumed God's intelligence.
We infer God's intelligence, from the complicated stuff.
Show me a watch that magically spawned itself, and I'll stop believing in watchmakers.

No... gnomes didn't take your socks.
Think of it like this: If you see a shadow pass by along the wall, what do you know about it?
You look outside... nothing there. So, what do you know?
You don't know who, or what, it was. You don't know what it was doing, or why.
You don't know where it came from, or where it went. You don't know what it wants from you, if anything. You don't know a thousand other things about it.
The ONE thing you know without a doubt, 100%, is that it EXISTS.
Something got between your wall and the light-source outside.
To deny it, simply because you don't know what it is, is insane.

You say you understand the Entropy argument... but then you go right back to pretending there's no evidence of intelligence.
Allow me to suggest: maybe you don't understand the Entropy argument.

You said: "We don't even know why a God would exist. A much more rational way of looking at things is just to acknowledge that we don't know a lot about the universe, and that we may never know much, and focus on learning one small aspect of reality at the time. We may never discover any ultimate source for all things...but perhaps, someday, we can discover a source for the big bang, and a source for that, and a source for that, and keep going as long as we remain curious."
What in the world do you think we're talking about? That's exactly what I've been saying: start with what you know, and work from there. Don't give up because you don't understand the one thing that you know, and then just pretend it isn't true.
The one thing we know, from causality, is that God Exists.
The one thing we know, from entropy, is that God is Intelligent.
That's your known starting point: Go.

Do you believe in Gravity?
Because we know literally nothing about Gravity; what it's "made of", how it works, why it works... nothing.
To steal your phrase: "We don't even know why a [Gravity] would exist." We know the effect it has... we've seen it.
We know something causes that effect. How do we know?.... causality.
So we gave it a name: Gravity.
But, according to your same "reasoning" about God: Gravity doesn't exist.
And any decisions you make based on that reasoning, are likely to have tragic consequences.
In both cases.

There was no "infinite amount of time" for failed possibilities. Time began with the Bang.
And yes, the Universe is finite. It started as a singularity and has been expanding ever since.

Nobody's trying to explain how God created the Universe; only that God created the Universe.

Please explain... what is "subjective" about: "...an objective, natural (or "super"natural), and immutable source for [...] natural rights."

@MrShittles "Do we give a name to light" Umm.... yes: "Light"

@rway It's not capitalized though. It's lowercase, and it's not the name of a person. It's certainly not given gender. I'm sure a few creative poets have personified light here and there. Not many of them will have given light a gender like "he" or "she" though. We do that when we personify things, like boats we care about. Our personification of boats, however, can mislead us about the nature of those boats. It can push us to feel things about those boats we wouldn't otherwise, by further encouraging their personification, and that's one of my concerns about personifying the universe by calling it "He" or "God", or its creator, or reality in general - all that has and will be - if I don't believe it, or its creator, has intelligence.

Now, plenty of people would argue, "How do we define intelligence? Maybe God's intelligence doesn't work like human intelligence?" My response is, "I agree completely...but if this is not some kind of entity with thoughts that resemble that of a being, I'm not calling it God, and I suggest nobody else do it either, because I see no reason to give a name like "Clint" or "Lucy" to some force of nature or unintelligent property of the universe.

Now, there's an easy solution for people with atypical definitions of "God," like you and Baruch Spinoza did. You guys could all just do what Baruch Spinoza did (and he, to his credit, did it in a nice amount of detail) and describe what your definition of God is. Now, I have an idea of what your view of God is...just not in as much detail as Baruch Spinoza's, which would be unnecessary. I've accepted that...just rejected the idea that other people should view that as the definition of God.

We have to have some definition of God or we can't know what we're talking about the likelihood of existence of, so that means we have to list specific properties.

Now, oftentimes, people don't want to list specific properties of a God. So far as I can tell, that's typically because they don't actually know what they believe in when they say they believe in God. If we filter out Heaven, intelligence, sentient will, and those sorts of traits gods are often thought of as having...there really isn't much left, so far as I can tell.

So...on my side is that most people hold my definition of God, the dictionary, and more practical/less confusing reasons for using my definition over your's.

@rway I'm responding to your second-to-most-recent post starting: "Sorry, I'm falling behind... " re: God alone cannot be a source for a moral code..."

Take whatever time you want. I'm sort of responding at my leisure. I'd feel bad if you were missing out on anything important due to responding to this. After this post, I think I'll wait some amount of time, look over all your responses I haven't gotten to yet and any new responses and get that all out of the way in one group of posts when I've got some time to do so.

You start off saying that "is not" and "cannot be" are two different claims. Yes...and in this case the appropriate one of those is "cannot be." Now...some definitions of "God" could be...but if we don't specify what type of "God" we're talking about, "God alone" cannot be the source of a moral code anymore than electricity could.

*If the principle of Individual Sovereignty was derived solely from the idea of there just being a God...that doesn't make any sense because, again, even if we claim God is an intelligent being, nothing about the mere existence of a universe-creating, or universe-being intelligent being implies anything about anything besides there being a universe-creating, or universe-being intelligent being we call God. That's again keeping in mind that your definition of God is way, way broader than mine. Your "God" doesn't even necessarily need to be a being.

Furthermore, there have monotheistic Native American tribes. Islam was around for a long time before the foundation of the United States, and Judaism was around for a lot longer. I see even less reason to believe Christianity as having had anything to do with this than I see for God-belief to have had anything to do with this.

You say the principle of Individual Sovereignty describes what you can do without acting unjustly. I'll keep that in mind for later....although again, there is no code of conduct associated with there just being a God. There aren't even any codes of conduct that completely tell people what to do in any full-fledged religions I'm aware of, like Islam and Judaism, which can get real specific. You're essentially claiming that the fact that the sky is blue implies that we should behave in way X. If someone has rights that can be violated...you're telling people what to do, or else we should not be mentioning "natural rights." "Rights" do not exist unless you're talking about legal or moral considerations.

So...you mentioned this when discussing your definition of religion: A religion is: "something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience" - Dicionary.com

In that case, you could have a view of Christianity as being rooted in what sorts of ethical behaviors one engages in and how one believes one should behave. Now I think I understand your view more, and your distinction between religion and theocracy.

If at any point I implied or stated that it's pointless to have a common understanding of what you do/don't have a right to do, that would have been a typo...which would not surprise me. I make those a lot, even if I double-check what I type.

You then make the following statements:

"Sovereignty is about what you can do. But that has a very important implication, that is... everything else, is stuff that you can't do, justly; that is, without violating others' rights.
You're only looking at it from the "What's in it for Me?" perspective.
We've never had a problem with people clamoring to claim their own "right" to do just about anything you can imagine... whether that claim made any sense or not; and we still don't. That's probably 80% of "politics".
What's far less common is people regulating their own behavior, out of a commonly understood respect for other people's Rights.
Neither can be done effectively without establishing a common and objective Framework that describes those Rights completely and unambiguously."

No...I've never focused on what's best for "me." My moral code, like your idea', focuses on what's best for other people too, just in a different way. Also, oftentimes those pagans would sack leaders because that's what benefited the tribe. Again, my moral code is "Maximize pleasure, minimize suffering," and the endless line of reasoning that implies. I'll just emphasize that when I say "Maximize pleasure, minimize suffering," I'm being literal. All pleasure would be included in that equation, as well as all suffering...which means all pleasure in every universe throughout all of time. It is my goal to increase that, for the same reasons I'd want it increased in me, or at least it should be my goal, or else I'm a hypocrite.

The problem with your view, is that nothing about God-belief describes those "rights" completely and unambiguously. Christianity at least gives a vague guide to behavior...but that's far from being a complete and unambiguous guide.

Furthermore, almost everyone's moral code focuses on issues besides what's best for "me." Even hedonists who believe the purpose of life is to avoid suffering and maximize pleasure for just themselves will likely feel like they're living a pointless life if they don't feel some sense of purpose in contributing something to society or someone else.

Then there is our instinctive drive we have as social organisms to benefit other organisms called our conscience.

No...min/maxing pleasure is not subjective. My opinion about what maximizes pleasure and minimizes suffering is subjective, because it might be wrong, but I can feel when something is more pleasurable to me than other things. I therefore have proof that there are specific quantities of pleasure and suffering produced by different actions. I can't be sure what quantities are produced...but I don't need to be sure. All I need to do is be able to estimate, and I have a fitting guide before me.

Even the subjective elements of it, our individual opinions about how to do that, are useful though. They've guided society to it's present state, encouraged selfless behaviors, etc.

You stated the following: (regarding pleasure maximization and suffering minimization)

Neither are they particularly noble, beneficial, or even necessarily desirable.

A weightlifter "suffers"... on purpose, to great personal benefit. "Helping" him would only impede his progress.
A junkie has "pleasure"... temporarily, to great personal detriment. "Helping" him will likely kill him eventually.
There's nothing wrong with having "good intentions", just stay within your Rights while you're carrying them out, and that will minimize the damage you do unwittingly.

All you need to do there is carry the equation further.
The reason the weightlifter suffers on purpose is due to the belief that it will cause the weight lifter more overall pleasure.
The reason most of us don't become drug addicts and die of an overdose at 23 is because we fear death, have more ambitions in our lives, care about what our relatives would think, and in other words, we estimate that doing that would lead to less overall pleasure than the alternative. I suppose we could be wrong. I can't be sure about exactly how the math works out...but that's our goal.

Maximization of pleasure means feeding starving children. If someone does not increase pleasure, it cannot be noble. If something does not increase pleasure, it will not be desirable. The maximization of pleasure and minimization of suffering is our only way of determining what is desirable, noble, and beneficial....if not in the more accurate context of what benefits the universe, then at least in the more personal, emotional context of what benefits oneself or some local group or other organism.

We only have three motivations for our goals, so far as I can tell. Option #1 is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering . Option #2 is following along unthinkingly or impulsively to cultural trends or religions or whatever. Option #3 is more emotional, felt impulses, such as a mother's love for her children. The only one of those that's in any way measurable is the attempts to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. The other two options are just purely subjective, although often very important to the individuals driven by those options.

Some suffering is indeed beneficial...because, overall, it will result in more pleasure than suffering, at least to someone (typically the person doing the activity). Otherwise we have reason to describe it as beneficial.

I do not interpret complexity as evidence of intelligence. That's a you/God-believer thing. That's not an atheistic thing. Atheists tend to look at stuff like, "Well...there are certain types of complexity that we have evidence of coming from intelligent sources because we see them made by humans. For example, if I found the words, "God exists," written into our DNA in Latin, I would be much more likely to suspect that we were created by an intelligent source than I do now.

On the other hand, a lack of intelligence appears to work just fine as the source of ant colonies though, even though they can create extremely complex structures. Curves...organic growth...mistakes...circles...those are often signs of unintelligence.

Now some people would argue "Well...don't mitochondria look suspiciously like factories?" Kind of...but not really. Organic stuff has a way of evolving from other organic stuff. It shouldn't be a surprise to us if that's how mitochondria developed. Factories, on the other hand, as we know them, are not simply grown. They're made of different materials than that.

In sort, things we know to be intelligently designed and things that are not known to have been intelligently designed just look different.

I'm going to focus on this statement of yours:

"At least you added: "...unless we can explain why that God should exist."
Because we can. And we have, already in this discussion. You agreed.
We don't assume God created complicated stuff, because we already assumed God's intelligence.
We infer God's intelligence, from the complicated stuff.
Show me a watch that magically spawned itself, and I'll stop believing in watchmakers."

You are blatently lying about me having agreed...and that's part of the reason I am so hesitant to define God as possibly not being intelligent. What I agreed with was the prospect of an unintelligent God...not the intelligent watchmaker that would supposedly be necessary to design this watch you're speaking of.

Again...you just lied. You should admit that to yourself so you can be wary of doing that in the future. You lied about me believing that an intelligent God exists. I'm not so saying that lie was intentional. Oftentimes our minds trick us into lying...noting that it's going to be far easier to trick yourself into lying about this sort of thing when you have the kind of definition of God you do.

Aside from that though...our universe is not a watch. A watch is made of structures that cannot be evolved or grown into existence. It had to be designed, unlike grass or cells, so far as you and I know.

You stated:

No... gnomes didn't take your socks.
Think of it like this: If you see a shadow pass by along the wall, what do you know about it?
You look outside... nothing there. So, what do you know?
You don't know who, or what, it was. You don't know what it was doing, or why.
You don't know where it came from, or where it went. You don't know what it wants from you, if anything. You don't know a thousand other things about it.
The ONE thing you know without a doubt, 100%, is that it EXISTS.
Something got between your wall and the light-source outside.
To deny it, simply because you don't know what it is, is insane.

My response is: That's my thought process...not the thought process of you or most other God-believers. The God you believe in is intelligent. If the God you believe in were not intelligent, it could not be your proposed "watchmaker" you mentioned above. You believe in the gnomes. I believe in the shadow with nebulous traits. You are the one assigning characteristics to this universe-creator not known to exist as a way to explain your missing socks, despite other options being available (such as you just having lost your socks). I have never denied the existence of this "shadow." I am merely still wondering about the traits of this shadow...with pretty much the only exception being that I don't believe the shadow to be intelligent (because shadows lack brains so I don't know why they'd be intelligent...and I don't see why a brain would have existed before our universe that would have been able to control it or create it either...so I think the comparison between shadows and God is a pretty good one actually.

The entropy argument only implies that our universe had a beginning...kind of...not an intelligent beginning. There's nothing about intelligence that gives the ability to build universes. That intelligence needs other traits to do that too. Actually...the entropy argument doesn't necessarily even mean the things that are ever-decaying needed to have been a beginning. After all, decay is not destruction so much as change. Maybe things will keep decaying and spreading out, but if you shrink down on smaller and smaller scales where, perhaps, things are more tightly held together, you'll find new structures are designed as a result of entropy, just like they've been on Earth, and when those decay you could, perhaps, shrink smaller, and just perhaps find an endless string of smaller and smaller structures being created due to entropy, as the layers above them eternally decay and spread amongst space. That's just an idea, but it's possible.

You state this:

The one thing we know, from causality, is that God Exists.
The one thing we know, from entropy, is that God is Intelligent.
That's your known starting point: Go.

No...we don't know a God exists. As far as I'm concerned, you've lost your privileges of defining God as potentially being unintelligent after you (very clearly) lied about me ever having agreed that it exists.

"Do you believe in Gravity?
Because we know literally nothing about Gravity; what it's "made of", how it works, why it works... nothing.
To steal your phrase: "We don't even know why a [Gravity] would exist." We know the effect it has... we've seen it.
We know something causes that effect. How do we know?.... causality.
So we gave it a name: Gravity.
But, according to your same "reasoning" about God: Gravity doesn't exist.
And any decisions you make based on that reasoning, are likely to have tragic consequences.
In both cases."

We don't know what it's made of or how it works to much of any degree...but we do know enough of its properties to make a definition of it. We don't that same type of knowledge about whatever the source of all reality as, if there was one.

You stated:

"There was no "infinite amount of time" for failed possibilities. Time began with the Bang.
And yes, the Universe is finite. It started as a singularity and has been expanding ever since.

Nobody's trying to explain how God created the Universe; only that God created the Universe."

My response is...I have heard that time began with the big bang. I am under the strong impression that anyone's views of what happened before the big bang are going to be very, very iffy though. Whether we call it time or something else...there could have been an infinite string of reasons why the big bang occurred.

I know nobody's trying to explain how God created the universe...at least not in much detail. Some people have vague ideas like, "thought is the only way to create rules, so the universe had to have been created by a mind," which is untrue, but an interesting possibility. I wish they would. After all, if we don't know how God created the universe, that's one less reason to believe that God created the universe.

@MrShittles Cool, I'll try to get to at least one a day so we don't lose all train(s) of thought.

For now: try to focus on the question: Does God exist?
I thought you had acknowledged, that causality implies God; and that Entropy implies Intelligence.
But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself...
The question "Did God create the Universe?" is a self-licking tautology. It resolves unavoidably to "Yes", because God is simply what we call the creator of the Universe.
The only other option, is that nothing did that. And that would violate the very foundational premise of all of Modern Science: Causality.

Forget about the fact the He's been given a name by convention. People give their boats names, and genders. Most Latin-based languages are gendered. Many people use "she" as the pronoun for their car, for example. That's all irrelevant.
Forget about what He is like; how tall is He, does He "care" about humans, does He wear a white robe, when is "lunch-time" in a timeless existence?
None of that has any relevance to the question: Does God exist?

You're wrong about Gravity... we literally don't know anything about it.
We can only describe the effect that we attribute to it.
Yet we know it exists. Something is "doing that".
There are different theories, of course. Many people are digging hard to detect and explain "gravitational radiation", or "graviton threads" that emanate from all matter in all directions... etc.
None of that research would be going on... if they had simply thrown up their hands and pretended there was no such thing as Gravity, simply because they don't know what it is.
That's the entire purpose of scientific inquiry... to figure out what stuff is and how it works.
Starting... necessarily, with what you know. We know it exists, because it must exist, logically.
It is something... now let's try to figure out what it is.

Your argument against God, is the same as arguing that Gravity doesn't exist because none of the theories about Gravity... so far... can be shown to be correct.
The Christian God, Allah, Thor & Friends, the Spaghetti Monster... are all theories about God.
NONE of them are likely correct, and certainly not complete descriptions; but that does nothing to dispel the known reality that there is something to be described.

@MrShittles Hi, I got a little time today (I'm still about 4 comments behind...)

re: "I thank you for summarizing this view,...." etc.

You said: "My response is, I think what "rights" are and are not is largely beside the point, in regards to the foundational elements of my moral code."

That seems to be because the foundation of your moral code is subjective, i.e, not tied to any enduring, grounded Principle(s).
We don't honor people's rights because they are "important", or because it "wouldn't be a good idea" not to... Those are both wildly subjective criteria.
I honor your rights, simply because I have no other legitimate option.
I don't have the Right... to decide for myself whether any of your rights are worth preserving.
Don't you see? In that situation you effectively have no rights at all... only the discretion of other people. That is absolute subjugation.

It is that abandonment of the entire notion of your unalienable rights that causes great harm to society. Whether any particular right that is being violated is "important", or particularly "consequential", is beside the point and entirely subjective anyway.
The mere fact that it is being violated is what matters; that is objectively important as an assault on your inherent status as a Sovereign Individual. And it's devastatingly consequential because, if one "right" is subject to the whims of other people's discretion... they all are.
Meaning, effectively: you have no rights.

What's Legal and what's Right are two different topics.
They should be identical, IMO, but they aren't. The Law is affected by myriad extraneous and subjective human influences, whereas nature is not.
Slavery remains a good example. While it was "legal", it was clearly not "Right" regardless.
Legal "precedent" that is objectively wrong, simply needs to be corrected.
That is the "path" that leads from where we are, to the Free society that was envisioned both as an expression and an acknowledgment of the natural (and unalienable) Sovereignty of every individual.
That's why it's important for everyone, especially voters, to understand the whole concept of what their rights are in the first place...

Civil "rights" are not Rights at all. They are privileges bestowed upon you at the discretion of the society. That's not how actual Rights work. Your natural rights are unalienable, meaning; they weren't "given" to you for any reason, and they can't be taken... or even given, away; by anybody.
They just... are.
When you are jailed for breaking the Law, for example, you haven't "lost" your right to Liberty. What you've lost (through due process initiated by your own actions) is the protection of that right by society; and only to the extent necessary for that same society to execute the "due process" associated with the offense.
That due process is executed by Force... not because society has any "right" to do it.

No, you don't have a "right" to set the elderly on fire; even if they want you to (rights cannot be "given" away.) Even if they beg you to do it, actually doing it would still be a matter of your own personal discretion; a clear violation of the simple premise:
"You don't have a right to violate someone else's rights, at your discretion."

Your reasoning: "...so long as they have the right to ignite me on fire too." misses the point entirely. You can't "acquire" sovereignty over somebody else, by being willing to accept the same violation. That would assume that their Rights are up to you in the first place.
And they're not.
Whether you "cause harm" is also irrelevant. The violation is the harm.
The consequences just make it even worse; and would be avoided in all cases if people simply honored other people's rights with no excuses at all times.
Indeed, they have no Right to do otherwise.

@MrShittles re: "I'm now responding to your longer, most recent post."

All of your arguments against "God", are merely arguments about God.
I've made no claims about God at all, except that Intelligence is implied (irrefutably) by the defeat of Entropy in the ordered universe.
The gnomes are merely one Theory about who took your socks, just as there are different theories about what Gravity is... or God.
Any argument against other people's definition(s) of God, is the same as arguing that Gravity doesn't exist because none of the theories about Gravity... so far... can be shown to be correct.
The Christian God, Allah, Thor & Friends, the Spaghetti Monster... are all theories about God.
NONE of them are likely to be literally correct, and certainly not complete, descriptions; but that does nothing to dispel the known reality that there is something to be described.
Just like Gravity: the one thing you know for sure... is that it's a thing.
Pretending it's not will guarantee that you never figure it out.
Besides, it's simply irrational.

Regarding your 3 Options for what started it all:

1. According to everything we think we know so far... the Universe had a beginning.
2. According to Causality, the foundational premise of everything we think we know so far... things don't happen for no reason.
3. Well, the idea that it's beyond our understand is almost certainly correct... but it doesn't explain anything.

"God did it" does not explain the origin of the universe either, it simply attributes the origin of the universe.
Just like: "Gravity made the apple fall to the ground."
"What's Gravity?"
¯\(ツ)/¯

Re: "order from chaos":
Entropy is not an idea that I dreamed up, it's a fundamental tenet of Modern Science, derived from the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Basically: the universe (and every subsystem within it) moves naturally and unavoidably toward Disorder... not Order.
Order, in a closed system (like the Universe) can only come from the directed application of energy toward that purpose, from outside the system itself.
The principle is fundamental to (from Wiki "our understanding of chemistry and physics, in biological systems and their relation to life, in cosmology, economics, sociology, weather science, climate change, and information systems including the transmission of information in telecommunication."

It's not "my assumption."
[en.wikipedia.org]

Your reasons for not believing that a God exists:
You said: "I don't see any patterns in reality pointing to the existence of thoughts existing outside of brains, universe-creating immortal beings, telepathy, omnipotence, or omniscience, much less all those traits existing within one being."
Where did you get that list? And why do you believe that this set of "traits" is both necessary and sufficient to describe something that you know literally nothing about, that could "create" a universe... a process that you also know literally nothing about?
And how does that "reasoning" override the objective, empirical observation that a thing happened, therefore a thing made it happen?

re: Jesus
The "Old Testament" didn't exist when Jesus was on Earth.
Do you mean the Jewish Torah... which is basically just an historical record?
Or is there some version of some other ancient text that some organized religions include in their version of "the Bible" that you have a problem with?
If so, then why would you expect Him to have "condemned" those parts 2,000 years ago?
And... how do you know He didn't?

You say that identifying God as "The Creator" only, is pointless without making up a bunch of shit that we don't know to fill out the character-sheet.
Again, it's no more pointless than identifying Gravity as a thing. It's a starting point.
Besides, reality doesn't have "a point"... it just is.
What is truly pointless, and irrational, is ignoring any part of objective Reality... pretending that you don't know something that is easily shown to be irrefutably True.
What's the point of that?

@MrShittles My response to: "I'm responding to your post beginning ..."

You said: "[if] all possible answers are answers we'd ordinarily label "impossible" we must alter our definition of "impossible"..."
And based on that... you go with the "least impossible" explanation (which is random and subjective, but not an unreasonable approach in lieu of options.)
But, your explanation assumes that the universe was created by chance... with no "thought" put into it. As literally the most-complex thing in known-existence (as the Set of "all things" ), that is likely the "most impossible" explanation; made even more-so by the fact that an endless string of cause/effect events would take an endless amount of Time... which did not exist before the event that you're trying to explain.
Again... hiding behind the magic of "infinite permutations" seems to be the inevitable cop-out of unsound logic, but it's objectively impossible, as it presumes an infinite context that is simply incorrect.

If you believe that something created the universe... then you believe in God.
You may not want to tell people that, so that they don't draw erroneous conclusions about that belief... such as you seem to do with me; but it's true nonetheless.
That is a refutation of Atheism.
It is the refutation of Atheism, as the belief that "there is no God".
Now... characterizing God, or beginning to formulate a theory about God, is the next logical step for a rational person that has realized He must exist.
But that second step could never proceed without first acknowledging the premise from which it stems.

Your initial attempt at that second step; an infinite series of (undefined) "events", seems to be an understandable attempt to salvage both sides of the fence. But that theory doesn't hold water.
Don't give up, though. Keep thinking it through...
However, as is true in all such endeavors: if you have to dismiss something that you know to be True to salvage your theory, then;
your Theory is wrong.

@rway So…in this post I’m just going to cover every single important thing we’ve went over all at once. I’ll probably repeat stuff I’ve said before…but oh well. I’m discussing your statements in the order you posted them.

#1. In my first response to you, I said “No, endorsing liberty does not mean being a Christian and a Conservative.” I was correct about that. To disagree with that stance, you have to have inaccurate views of both Christianity and conservatism. Your inaccurate views of Christianity are pretty obvious, and needlessly confusing. Whatever you personally call Christianity doesn’t matter. What matters is what most of society thinks of Christianity as being, and most of society says being a Christian means Jesus is the son of God and God…which has nothing to do with liberty. Regarding conservatism…given how many nations exist, whether or not “conservatives” are the ones who want more liberty or not is going to depend on what nation you’re talking about. In America, given the social restrictions conservatives often want, it’s pretty obvious that someone could at least make a strong argument that conservatives are not the more liberty-minded ones.

#2. It’s pretty obvious that the western idea of individual sovereignty did not come from Christianity…keeping in mind the accurate definition of Christianity I mentioned above. I can’t think of anything in the Bible that advocates individual sovereignty anymore than Judaism, or Buddhism, or, or Taoism, or agnosticism or whatever.

#3. You made the statement: “The West derived and evolved its most fundamental and defining ideal, that of Individual Sovereignty, from Christianity. Before that, there was presumed to be literally nothing special about you in relation to the Universe. Natural and Human events occurred at the whim of one of a plethora of "gods"... and Sovereignty was claimed by whomever had the power to enforce it.”

That stance of yours is totally nonsensical regardless of how you define Christianity. You’re just, flat out, straw-manning literally every worldview in existence besides Christianity. It is an innate part of existence, regardless of what our worldview is, to view ourselves as special in relation to the universe. That comes with self-awareness…to everyone. We all feel, and therefore understand, that we are separate from the universe. We all therefore have the potential to understand the importance of liberty, regardless of our worldview…and there’s nothing about Christianity that advocates liberty more than any other worldview. The main themes of the Bible are advocating obedience to God, forgiveness, and, I’d argue, humanitarianism…in the New Testament, at least. I can’t think of anything in the Bible that really focuses on liberty.

#4. In a later paragraph you state: “If you have confidence in Modern Science, then you have accepted the notion of causality; which should lead you to the irrefutable conclusion that something caused the Big Bang.”

And my response to that is the pretty obvious one…”God” cannot possibly be the causality we’re looking for. “God” is not specific enough of an answer for that. “God” alone is a fairly meaningless term…aside from it implying that an intelligent, powerful, being exists. The existence of some nebulous universe-creating intelligent being does absolutely nothing to explain how or why that intelligent being came to exist.

#5. In your next paragraph you say your religion is the source of your moral code. Your definition of “religion” is incorrect, and therefore pointlessly confusing. The true definition of a “religion” is more along the lines of being some system of traditions and behavioral guidelines that discusses the cause, nature, and purpose of existence and usually (but not always) involves some supernatural deity or deities. We can tell that, because when I type “religious makeup of the world” into a google image search, I get the top three largest religions being Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam…keeping in mind that none of those religions contain full moral advice about what to do in every situation. So, if we made a ven diagram in which the left circle was religion, and the right circle as moral codes, they could overlap in the middle a bit, but they would be different circles.

#6. In a later paragraph we get into a discussion of ethics. I say that my goal is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. You respond that those goals are entirely subjective. I don’t care whether we call them subjective or not, either way, I would argue that’s the only rational way to create moral codes. We have no way of distinguishing between right and wrong besides weighing how much pleasure something creates against how much suffering it creates. You have to use some variant of that way of thinking, or you don’t have a sensible moral code. You, rather, just have a randomly chosen series of behaviors you’ve advocated…so, if you have a moral code, you need to explain why it (at least for someone or something) creates more pleasure than suffering, or else you have no reason why anyone should follow that moral code…and if you’re talking about what government policies we should have, your goal is definitely going to either have to be what benefits, at minimum, the people of the nation, if not some larger group, such as the species…so there is no rational way to argue what national laws or national policies should be without focusing on whether or not they produce more pleasure than suffering for the people of that nation, if not the people of that nation and other groups as well. In your reasoning for your proposed moral code (which I’ve never fully understood) your focus has not been on why your worldview maximizes pleasure and minimizes suffering, and therefore, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve not really been making arguments for why your worldview is correct.

In that same paragraph you state: “Your Rights, and the Rights of the people affected by your "good intentions", are objective and unalienable (which, I believe I did describe above.)
That is the immutable, objective Framework within which you are free to establish any set of "moral" codes that make you feel good about yourself.
If you violate that objective constraint... you are wrong; regardless of your intentions.
That is the only rational and objective way to describe the concept of "Wrong" that I can come up with:
i.e., "something that you have no Natural Right to do."
Again... you can do whatever you want... for whatever reason you want... just stay within the objective constraints of your own Individual Sovereignty and it's nobody's business what you do, or why.”

The problem with that is that there are no objective, natural rights, in the way you’re thinking of them, at least. I would definitely argue that pleasure is objectively good, and suffering is objectively bad, and that we therefore have an objective, natural right to avoid as much suffering as possible and obtain as much pleasure as possible, but only to the extent that it does not decrease the total quantity of pleasure produced by life, or increase the total quantity of suffering produced by life. That’s not going to translate to the sorts of moral codes you appear to be endorsing though, throughout your discussion.

#7. And in a later paragraph we get into a discussion about the likelihood the universe having been created through intelligence. You talk about the supposed low likelihood of the events that resulted in the creation of the universe having occurred. The simplest refutation of that stance is to point out that, however unlikely that is, an intelligent creator having done it would only make that more unlikely, because not only would you have to explain how the universe came to be, but how the intelligent creator came to be. You need some reason for believing in an intelligent creator before engaging in that type of thinking, or you’re doing the equivalent of not knowing where your socks went, and explaining that away by assuming gnomes took them (because, while gnomes having took them would indeed be an explanation for where your socks went, that explanation would result in more questions than answers, just like the existence of a god/a.k.a. intelligent creator of the universe would.) In other words, it doesn’t make sense to propose an explanation for an event than is less likely, or no more likely, to have occurred than the event. Also, regardless of how low the odds of the universe having formed without intelligent guidance would have been…there being a chance of that meant it could happen, and that it did happen means there is a 100% chance of that having happened. I can’t think of any way an intelligent universe-creator could come into existence without having been evolved through traditional, organic processes though, and then some kind of technological innovations invented by flawed, mortal beings…and therefore I would argue that the likelihood of a sort of ultimate, un-created source for all things that is intelligent is basically zero. I don’t even know why we’d consider the possibility of a God’s existence, unless that god had been created by some alien civilization…and then, of course, you have the problem of answering the question of, “What evidence do we have that some type of simpler, more likely to have come about universe does exist, in which the first god could have been designed?” which is just another brand of the ever valid “what created god?” question.

#8. You elaborate on your view of what natural rights are by stating: “The axiomatic principle is that Sovereignty resides in the Individual.
The implication is, that each individual has the Natural Right to do anything they please, with one constraint: you can't violate anybody else's Natural Right to do exactly the same thing.
If you think you have a right to take any action that violates my rights, then please explain the origin of that right.”

My response is: So, in other words, you have no right to not provide me with a living wage if you grew up luckier than I did, because not providing me with a living wage, if you grew up in a better existence than I did through luck, is a form of theft of my wealth, because you, presumably, view me to not have the right to steal from you. So…where’s my living wage? (I’m not saying I necessarily want a living wage…but that’s an example of how your description fails. If natural luck gave you something, and natural misfortune gave me less, the end result is you having more than I do, that you do not deserve. You could solve that by giving me some of your wealth. You not doing so is therefore, in some fairly valid ways of seeing things, a form of theft)…and yet you advocate conservatism. You could just as easily be advocating communism…based on your description…so I don’t see your statements as being especially sensible. Now…on the other hand, of course, you could argue that me demanding a living wage is a form of theft. It is, after all, relying on force to take money from you, so the phrase “you can’t violate anybody else’s natural right to do exactly the same thing” isn’t really saying much. It allows for basically any behavior. I think you need to get much more specific about what your views of rights are.

#9. I’m largely skipping the comments about Fairtax because, while it looks interesting, I’m not yet sure how it would actually work out. Furthermore, I think it would be a mistake to view certain vaguely stated elements of the constitution the way some people view religious scripture, bickering over possible meanings eternally and framing everything we do around them. I think it seems pretty clear that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were intended to be noble, but vague aspirations rather than anything specific. Also, from what I understand, property and income taxes have been working out the way they’ve been working out for a strong century or so now. We’ve got a lot of legal precedent supporting the way we’ve chosen to do things through our democratically elected congressional representatives.

One of my concerns about the Fairtax system is that it doesn’t sound like there’d be many routine, reliable sources for government funding…without property tax and income taxation. Also, it sounds like they’d obtain most, if not all, government income through taxes on certain bought goods. I love the idea of used products not being taxed. I love the idea of luxury products being taxed (a lot). I love the idea of poor people getting to keep their whole paycheck and not pay property taxes. It’s definitely worth considering. I’ll definitely think about that if I ever see a candidate that supports that, or if I see something like it on the voting ballot.

That said, while I think you could be right about it being a more constitutional…ish way of doing things…I think it would be a mistake to reorganize our entire society based on vaguely defined statements made by people who lived centuries ago. We’re supposed to be basing our society off the way we want it run, so I think decisions of Congress should be most important, regarding our policies…so I probably wouldn’t be supporting it based on it potentially being more in line with the constitution than other policies.

#10. Abortion is not an attack on liberty, because that would imply that fetuses lose something from death. They typically don’t. We’re talking about what are basically nonhuman organisms. The law treating them like humans, is absolutely absurd. They think differently. They’re part of a woman’s body. They should not be treated like humans. This is just a common sense issue. If a dog suddenly developed adult human-level intelligence, we’d probably want them treated like a human. Similarly, if a person is permanently brain-dead, we tend to treat them differently from most humans too. Mental state matters a lot. It’s the main thing that matters. We give a little bit of leeway for people with severe mental disorders and such…but I think a fitting stopping point for that is when the person is no longer part of a woman’s body.

Regarding Republicans spending more on the military than progressives…The U.S. has a military that would stand a pretty good chance of being able to annex Earth right now. We have way, way more military might than we need to defend ourselves…on top of being relatively isolated from all potential enemies by oceans…with a large group of our European allies being between us and potential future enemies on one side, and the other side being the larger ocean. We use our military might, almost exclusively, to engage in foreign affairs. No large military force would ever be nutty enough to attack the United States with anything less than nuclear warfare for now. The only real threats we face, in terms of violent attack, involve things like biological warfare, nuclear warfare, cyber attacks, and small-scale terrorism by small, poorly organized groups, and that’s mostly going to be stuff countered by the CIA, not brand new jets. American military funding is, by far, the best example I can think of, of using people’s money to go well beyond basic safety and necessities of government. We’re taking taxpayers money, and forcing them to support all sorts of international political views we may not agree with, through violence. If we can do that, I have no idea why a living wage is out of the question…funded by property and income taxes.

Regarding unisex public restrooms…I’d be concerned about women’s discomfort and potential sexual assault. With just transgender people being allowed to use the restroom of the gender they identify as…I think that’s going to be considerably less risky, given how few transgender people there are, and how, if we force transgender people to use the restroom of their birth gender, the transgender people would end up either being at greater risk, or alarming people. I don’t think there’d be a need for a third transgender bathroom type…but I think having nothing but unisex bathrooms would be about as bad of an idea as forcing transgender people to use the restroom of their birth gender. Either way, you’re going to be making a lot of people uncomfortable or risking an increase of sexual assault. Plus, that’s just not something we’re used to, and I don’t see a need to force us to get used to that. Now, if what you’re talking about is unisex restrooms in addition to male and female restrooms…that doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me, but I don’t see much difference between that and just having transgender restrooms.

#11.

Finally, you posted this:

You said: "[if] all possible answers are answers we'd ordinarily label "impossible" we must alter our definition of "impossible"..."
And based on that... you go with the "least impossible" explanation (which is random and subjective, but not an unreasonable approach in lieu of options.)
But, your explanation assumes that the universe was created by chance... with no "thought" put into it. As literally the most-complex thing in known-existence (as the Set of "all things" ), that is likely the "most impossible" explanation; made even more-so by the fact that an endless string of cause/effect events would take an endless amount of Time... which did not exist before the event that you're trying to explain.
Again... hiding behind the magic of "infinite permutations" seems to be the inevitable cop-out of unsound logic, but it's objectively impossible, as it presumes an infinite context that is simply incorrect.
If you believe that something created the universe... then you believe in God.
You may not want to tell people that, so that they don't draw erroneous conclusions about that belief... such as you seem to do with me; but it's true nonetheless.
That is a refutation of Atheism.
It is the refutation of Atheism, as the belief that "there is no God".
Now... characterizing God, or beginning to formulate a theory about God, is the next logical step for a rational person that has realized He must exist.
But that second step could never proceed without first acknowledging the premise from which it stems.
Your initial attempt at that second step; an infinite series of (undefined) "events", seems to be an understandable attempt to salvage both sides of the fence. But that theory doesn't hold water.
Don't give up, though. Keep thinking it through...
However, as is true in all such endeavors: if you have to dismiss something that you know to be True to salvage your theory, then;
your Theory is wrong.

Your explanation, like mine, also assumes the universe was created by chance. How did a god come to be? If it was created by unintelligent life forms, that would have come about through chance. If it would have, just, always existed, I can’t think of any reason why that would have been true by default, so that would have had to have occurred by chance. The main difference between our two positions is that you are assuming that a brain sprung out of nowhere for no reason and somehow gained psychic powers to create universes, whereas I’m remaining more agnostic. My main position is that, while I’m not sure what the source for all things was, if there was one, I’m pretty confident it wasn’t a psychic brain, floating in space, that insta-poofed into existence for no reason, or that always existed, because I don’t know how it could have always existed either.

We can’t know how everything came to be…but we can filter out things we don’t have evidence for, such as psychic, universe-creating brains that either insta-poof into existence for no reason, or that have eternally existed, because we can’t think of patterns that point to those sorts of things. Nor do we see examples of them. Nor do we see examples of many of their traits, such as immortality or telepathy or things popping up for no reason, or being eternal.

You’re working backwards, and that’s a problem. You’re proposing God as an explanation before we have a reason to believe in an intelligent creator (keeping in mind the accurate definition of God as being an intelligent creator). I’m merely remaining agnostic about the source of all things…if there was any, like all atheists do.

The problem with your worldview is that, if you propose God as an explanation for the existence of our universe before having a reason to believe in God, I could propose other infinite potential explanations for the source of our universe I also have no reason to believe in. For example…what if the universe was farted out by a giant space amoeba? This is an immortal space amoeba, by the way. It has always existed. That space amoeba therefore explains everything…and in the exact same way that you can’t explain why intelligence would come about in a God, and you don’t think you need to, I can’t explain how the space amoeba created everything, and I don’t think I need to. It just did it. It’s beyond our comprehension. There is absolutely no difference between the sensibleness of a god having intelligence…just because…and a space amoeba being capable of farting out the universe as it is…just because.

@MrShittles Ok... one last pass through all the same arguments:

#1. Your argument is based entirely on what you believe makes you a Christian... not based on any reasoning whatsoever, simply on what you think most of society says.
Arguing from the "authority" of a perceived consensus is just a logical fallacy.
Besides, "most of society" is wrong... a lot... about a lot of things.
Regardless, your argument has nothing to do with my assertion.

You pretend that I'm creating a Strawman, simply by refusing to accept your own Strawman as a counterargument. But I wasn't making a counterargument. I made an assertion... one that you've failed to address, let alone "refute":
Christian is an adjective. Whether it describes you is a function of your behavior, not by what you claim to believe when asked on Sundays.
Christian can also be a noun, as you keep pointing out, but it has no strict (and therefore, useful...) definition as such. For many people who call themselves "one of them", a claim to believe that "Jesus is the Son of God and God" is one of the defining characteristics. That belief is, however, neither necessary, nor sufficient, to make the claim.
There are many people who call themselves Christians, who would argue that the Trinitarian view is a corruption introduced by the Romans almost 4 centuries after Christ; when they took over Christianity as the State religion, along with myriad pagan influences from around the Empire, establishing a FrankenReligion that we call Roman Catholicism.
If you would like to convince them that they've got it all wrong, and that you know better, feel free... but that would be a theological debate that might extend a little deeper than a vocabulary quiz or a Wikipedia entry.
Your confusion about conservatism is almost exactly the same problem. As I've already described ad nauseum, the word is meaningless without context.
Constitutional Conservatism is about restoring and preserving the Constitution.
I have no idea what you're calling "conservativism"... but It appears to be based on popular stereotypes (what "most of society says"... ), Party affiliation, or some other irrelevant criteria with no defining context.

#2 and #3. Your argument seems to be that the Western notion of Individual Sovereignty, which culminated (in my opinion) in the U.S. Constitution, is no different than what every other society has always assumed anyway...
Seriously? I don't even know how to address that

Individual Sovereignty has nothing to do with how "important" Liberty is.
It has to do with WHAT is Right, and WHY it's Right.

#4. Then you must not believe in Gravity either. Gravity is just a non-specific, "otherwise meaningless" term for something that we know exists. We know because we can observe the effect, but we know literally nothing about what causes it. Whatever it is, we call that: "Gravity".
Personally... I believe in Gravity. And in God, for the same reasons.
You're arguing that, because you don't believe any of the popular theories about God... then God must not exist. That is quite simply a logically unsound inference; a fallacy.
None of the existing theories about Gravity are demonstrably true, either.
To infer that, therefore: Gravity Does Not Exist... would be the single most ridiculous and non-scientific conclusion that you could reach.

Not believing in Gravity... is just irrational.
Not believing in God... is just as irrational, for all the same reasons.
And, to simultaneously believe in one... but not the other... is an impressive feat of religious delusion.

#5. I described your religion as "...the source of your moral code, and the Dogma that surrounds it."
"Your Religion", in that sentence, is not a reference to whatever label you pin to your shirt on Sunday mornings: "Catholic", "Baptist", "Muslim", "Buddhist"... whatever. That may be the depth of Google's notion of what religion is, but it is neither sufficient nor necessary to describe where morals come from.
As I also stated previously:
"For most followers of "Organized Religion" with their own canonized Dogma, the two are almost the same thing; at least ostensibly. But you're correct, at least some of their personal moral code likely comes from outside their theology; as it does for the rest of us."

So... to explain even further... if you are a "Lutheran" for example, you have likely developed part of your moral code around the Dogma of that denomination. And you almost certainly have additional moral values that are either not accepted, or simply not addressed at all, within that Dogma.
THAT superset of values that make up your moral code, is your "religion".
It may include one of the commonly-recognized "major" religions... and it may not. It quite likely includes parts of many different organized belief systems, and none of them in their entirety; whether you realize it or not.

You don't have to agree with that definition to understand it, that is the whole point of describing terms as they are introduced; especially terms with shallow and ambiguous meanings about which most people have never given a moment's thought.
There are hundreds of organized religions, not just Google's "Big Three". And not all of them even call themselves a "Religion" in the first place; that's the whole reason for pointing it out.
The point of bringing it up in the context of "Liberty"... which seems to have been avoided entirely, is that your religion helps to describe what you should do.
As such, it has nothing at all to do with Individual Sovereignty; which describes what you have a right to do.
What you should do is entirely up to you... as long as it's something that you have a right to do in the first place.

#6. You can't build a coherent system of morals on subjective criteria.
If what any particular value "means", is up to each individual... then it means nothing.
And it will be abused; subjectively interpreted and self-righteously imposed as a "moral imperative". This happens both predictably and historically as a pure function of Power and Force by anybody in a position to get away with it; often with the "best of intentions" (ostensibly anyway.)
This is nothing more than another example of Theocracy... that's (again) why it is important to recognize that claims to the "moral high-ground" are not exclusive to Google's "Big Three" organized religions.
"Pleasure" is not always beneficial, and "Suffering" is not always detrimental. So, not only are your criteria uselessly subjective; they're simply wrong... misguided.
We do have an objective way to distinguish Right from Wrong:
If you don't have the right... it's wrong.
You can seek to maximize people's pleasure and minimize their suffering (by your subjective assessment) all you want... just stay within that underlying framework of their objective Rights while you're doing it, and it's nobody else's business how you interpret, or misinterpret, those "imperatives".
It's not up to you what's "best" for other people. As a human being yourself, you will be wrong; frequently... often tragically. Staying within their rights minimizes the damage that you do to them when you are wrong.

The Government doesn't exist to "produce pleasure" in people's lives. It exists to protect their rights from one another, and to otherwise stay out of their way.
Seeking "pleasure" is hedonistic and superficial; not to mention subjective, often misguided, and even destructive in the long-term.
Seeking "fulfillment" or "meaning" in life, is far preferable to many people. And that invariably includes some suffering along the way.
The point is: none of that is your decision in their lives. It's their call.

#7. The realization that something can't have happened by chance... is the reason to conclude that it happened on purpose.
Purpose implies Intelligence.
Clinging to an impossibly-wrong answer, just because you don't know the right answer, is not science.
Once again.... you do believe in Gravity, don't you?

#8. Your "living wage" example literally makes no sense.
You don't have a right to anything if it has to come from me. "Providing" you with something that belongs to me, is entirely a matter of my discretion, not yours.
Your "bad luck" does not endow you with any additional rights over other people.
That's not where rights come from.
I have no Natural obligation to provide you with anything, whatsoever... ever.
I may feel a Moral obligation to help in some circumstances... but that is, again... entirely subjective, and entirely up to me.
If Society tries to make that decision for me, that is nothing less than an imposition (by Force) of Theocracy... i.e., somebody else imposing their morals on me (see: Spanish Inquisition.)

That realization does not allow for "basically any behavior."
I don't have have a right to exert my will over yours, and vice versa. That precludes a lot of behavior... including forcing me to pay anything other than what I'm willing to pay for any given commodity or service.
It's only "unclear" if you insist on not getting it... just like an intelligent Creator.

#9. Consumption is actually a steadier, more reliable source of public revenue than income.
There's nothing vague about its alignment with the Constitution, or about the Income Tax's unconstitutionality.
The Government has no legitimate authority to take your stuff against your will.
Never did.

#10. The claim that a fetus is not human is 100% un-scientific.
If it was part of the mother, it would have the mother's DNA. If it was "something else"... anything else, it would not have its own unique human DNA.
Human Rights are not a function of intelligence or mental acuity. They are merely a function of being human; no more, no less.

You're comparing Republicans to Progressives... those are not mutually exclusive groups.
There are many war-mongering Democrats as well, answering to war-machine donors.
The point of the comparison is that National Security is a legitimate function of Government.
Making internal moral decisions for supposedly "free" citizens, about an imaginary and undefined "living wage" for example... is not.

There are many places with unisex public restrooms (group sink-area, private stalls) that don't seem to have a problem with it; mostly in Europe that I've seen.
Facilities of a single design that can accommodate "anybody", is the more efficient and practical approach. Creating separate facilities that attempt to accommodate "everybody" is a foolish road to go down... quickly becoming an intractable and futile approach. Not a good way to spend public money, let the private businesses do it however they see fit.

#11. "How did a god come to be?" is a temporal question.
Time is a feature of our natural Universe, not of whatever context within which our Universe exists.
The question simply has no meaning in that supernatural context.
I don't assume that "...a brain sprung out of nowhere".
I don't assume a brain at all, just a Mind. And I don't assume that it "sprung out" at some point...
It just is.
For all we know that's all there is; and our Minds are either comparable to it... or simply parts of it.
Logically, we know that "it is". To draw any further conclusions, in the absence of any empirical knowledge or logical implications, would be to make unfounded assumptions.

And to pretend that "it isn't"... just because we can't explain it... is irrational.
You can call it a Space Amoeba if you like; that doesn't change anything. But I thought you were insistent upon using the "commonly accepted" words for stuff...
God is that word.