The Mirage of the Cosmic Rulebook:

◉ A Response to Juan Gonzalez-Ramos

A recent Facebook group post of mine sparked a lengthy and detailed response from Juan Gonzalez-Ramos. Juan touches on everything from evolutionary biology to biblical exegesis to defend the necessity of a “transcendent moral system.” Below is my section-by-section response to his arguments.

The Original Post

1. The “Oroborus” Fallacy

JUAN SAYS, Let me tell you a story about a conversation I had with a soldier once who swore up and down that discipline wasn’t real because he’d seen wild dogs work together better than some Army units. Made me laugh because he was using disciplined reasoning to argue against discipline existing. You see the problem? Our friend here is doing something similar: making moral arguments about why we shouldn’t need moral arguments. Saying that compassion should trump rules while making rules about when compassion should apply. Declaring what’s truly good while insisting there’s no such thing as true goodness. That’s not philosophy, that’s an Oroborus; the snake eating its own tail.

Your “Oroborus” analogy is a clever rhetorical flourish, but it fails because it rests on a fundamental category error. You are conflating descriptive pro-social preferences with prescriptive metaphysical claims.

When I promote compassion or cooperation, I am not “making moral arguments” or “declaring what is truly good” in the sense of appealing to an invisible, universal, or “moral” law. Such claims are entirely unsubstantiated, and I invite you to substantiate the existence of this metaphysical system you claim I am “borrowing” from. In reality, I am simply expressing a preference for certain social outcomes—such as the reduction of suffering—based on my biological nature as a social primate and my cultural conditioning. To suggest that one cannot advocate for pro-social behavior without believing in “moral facts” is like suggesting one cannot prefer the taste of an orange without believing in a “Cosmic Theory of Universal Deliciousness.”

I am not making “rules” about when compassion should apply; I am observing that compassionate behavior generally produces more stable, flourishing environments for beings like us. You claim I am “using disciplined reasoning to argue against discipline,” but the more accurate comparison is that I am using reason to argue against superstition. I am not “eating my own tail”; I am simply pointing out that your “moral” currency has no gold standard behind it—it is an empty assertion.

2. The Source of Natural Order

JUAN SAYS, Let’s start with the wolves and bonobos. Beautiful illustration, wrong conclusion. When Scripture says in Romans 2:14-15 that those who don’t have the law “do by nature the things in the law” and show “the work of the law written in their hearts,” it’s not surprising that creatures exhibit pro-social behavior. Of course they do. The question isn’t whether order exists without someone teaching the Ten Commandments. The question is where that order comes from in the first place.

By quoting Romans, you are engaging in a classic case of circular reasoning. You are attempting to use the assertions of your “holy book” to explain the biological data, while simultaneously using that biological data as “evidence” that the book is true.

The “law written on the heart” is a poetic way of describing evolved pro-social instincts, but adding a supernatural author to those instincts is a leap into the dark that remains entirely unsubstantiated. We have a robust, evidence-based explanation for where this order comes from: Natural Selection. Social animals that cooperate, share resources, and minimize internal conflict are more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Cooperation is a survival strategy, not a “moral” imperative.

You ask “where that order comes from,” implying that order requires an Ordainer. This is a teleological assumption that you have yet to justify. In the physical world, we see order emerge from simple rules without a conscious rule-maker—from the formation of snowflakes to the orbit of planets. To claim that pro-social behavior in bonobos or humans is “moral” because a deity “wrote it” is to reify a concept without evidence. I demand that you substantiate this “writer” with something other than the very text that makes the claim.

3. Evolution: Filter, Not Random Chaos

JUAN SAYS, Our friend points at pack dynamics and says, “see, no cosmic rulebook needed.” But who wrote the pack dynamics? Who embedded reciprocity into social brains? Who designed the evolutionary pressures that reward cooperation? You can’t escape the question by moving it back one level. If you say “evolution did it,” then you’re just renaming the designer and calling it random. But random processes don’t produce reliable moral intuitions any more than hurricanes produce libraries.

Your argument relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary biology and the “hurricanes producing libraries” trope—a classic misdirection. Evolution by natural selection is the opposite of a “random process.” While mutations are random, selection is the ultimate filter. It is a non-random, rigorous process that preserves what works and discards what doesn’t.

Complexity emerges from the interaction of physical laws and environmental constraints. We don’t need a “who” to explain why a river carves a canyon or why water crystals form intricate, symmetrical snowflakes. A library is a collection of static information that requires an external agent to organize it. A biological “intuition” is a dynamic survival mechanism.

Reciprocity isn’t “moral”; it’s functional. In a group setting, individuals who cooperate (reciprocate) out-compete individuals who are purely selfish. Over eons, the “design” is simply the accumulated history of what allowed our ancestors to not die. To call these pro-social impulses “moral intuitions” is to project your own metaphysical desires onto cold, hard biological reality. I demand that you substantiate why a designer is a more parsimonious or evidenced explanation than the self-correcting mechanism of natural selection.

4. The Mechanics of Social Cohesion (The Japan Example)

JUAN SAYS, Now Japan. Twenty-three years there, impressive. Low crime rate is also impressive. But here’s what our friend isn’t asking: why does Japan value harmony over individual expression? Why do they feel shame when they violate social norms? Where did that shame mechanism come from? And most importantly, if morality is just whatever a culture agrees on, then on what grounds do we criticize honor killings in one culture while praising Japanese politeness in another?

Your questions regarding Japan’s social structure are easily answered by sociology, history, and evolutionary psychology without any need for the “moral” scaffolding you are desperate to erect. Shame is a powerful, evolved pro-social regulator. In a group-oriented society, the threat of social exclusion is a survival pressure. Japan has simply cultivated this innate biological capacity into a highly efficient social tool.

You ask on what grounds we can criticize “honor killings” if there is no objective “moral” truth. This is the “relativist boogeyman” argument. I do not need a “transcendent moral fact” to criticize honor killings. I criticize them because they are demonstrably anti-social, cause immense unnecessary suffering, and violate the principle of compassionate reciprocity. We can compare social systems the same way we compare engineering systems. We don’t ask which bridge is “morally right”; we ask which bridge is more stable and better at serving its purpose. A society that values politeness and low crime is preferable to one that practices honor killings because the former promotes flourishing and reduces suffering—outcomes that I, and most humans, happen to prefer. If your only reason for not committing an honor killing is that a book told you it’s “wrong,” then you are the one with the precarious foundation.

5. Functional Comparison vs. Metaphysical Smuggling

JUAN SAYS, See, the moment our friend says Japanese behavior is “superior,” he has smuggled in an objective standard. Superior, but compared to what? By whose measure? If it’s just evolutionary fitness, then the most brutal empire that survives longest is the most moral. If it’s just social cohesion, then totalitarian conformity beats messy freedom every time. Our friend here wants moral authority to judge between systems without admitting there’s a moral authority above all systems.

You are again mistaking a performance-based judgment for a metaphysical claim. When I say Japanese social behavior is “superior” in the context of crime rates, I am not appealing to a “moral authority above all systems.” I am making a judgment against a specific goal: the reduction of social friction and the promotion of safety.

If we agree that a primary goal of a social contract is to prevent citizens from being robbed or killed, then a system that achieves a lower crime rate is “superior” at meeting that goal. This is no more “moral” smuggling than saying a Boeing 747 is a “superior” machine for crossing the Atlantic than a rowboat.

Furthermore, your claim that “the most brutal empire… is the most moral” is a straw man. Brutality is often an inefficient survival strategy because it invites constant internal rebellion and external coalition-building. Pro-social cooperation, conversely, is a highly stable strategy. I don’t need “moral authority” to judge. I have reason, empathy, and data. I invite you once more: substantiate this “authority above all systems” with something other than your own intuition.

6. Anchoring Mercy and Judgment

JUAN SAYS, The compassion argument is where it gets really interesting. I agree completely that compassion should inform how we apply principles. James 2:13 says, “mercy triumphs over judgment.” But notice what that verse assumes: both mercy and judgment exist as real categories. You can’t have one triumph over the other if neither one is anchored to anything beyond preference.

Your insistence that categories like “mercy” and “judgment” require a metaphysical anchor is a linguistic hallucination. “Mercy” and “judgment” are perfectly real, but they are social and psychological categories, not metaphysical ones.

Judgment is the cognitive process of evaluating behavior against an expectation. Mercy is the pro-social impulse to suspend a negative consequence in favor of maintaining a relationship or reducing suffering. We can observe these behaviors in primates and in human neurology. They are “anchored” in the very real requirements of group survival and the biological capacity for empathy.

You use the word “preference” as if it were synonymous with “whim.” But human preferences—such as the preference for not being tortured—are hard-wired biological imperatives. I don’t need a “transcendent anchor” to value mercy over judgment; I have the lived reality of a sentient being who understands that a society which prioritizes compassion is more stable and less miserable than one which prioritizes rigid, punitive systems. Your “anchors” are merely unsubstantiated assertions that add zero explanatory power.

7. The Biological Reality of Harm

JUAN SAYS, Our friend says compassion is “context-sensitive” and “harm-averse by design.” Fantastic. But whose definition of harm? The Spartans thought it was harmful to let weak infants survive. Some cultures think it’s harmful to let daughters choose their own husbands. Context-sensitivity without a fixed reference point means “whoever has power decides what counts as harm.”

Harm is not an abstract “moral” concept; it is a measurable state of biological or psychological distress. When a Spartan left an infant to die, that infant experienced biological harm—measurable through cortisol levels and pain receptor activation. The fact that the Spartans justified this doesn’t mean they didn’t know what harm was; it means they subordinated compassion to an unsubstantiated “moral” or “ideological” system.

In a compassionate, pro-social framework, the definition of harm is not decided by “whoever has power,” but by the feedback of the victims. We use reason and empathy to negotiate social norms that minimize distress. This isn’t a “fixed point” in the sky; it’s a constant, self-correcting dialogue grounded in the shared experience of being alive.

To suggest we need a deity to tell us that killing infants is harmful is to admit a staggering lack of empathy. It is your “perfect rules” that allow people to look at suffering and call it “justice.”

8. Compassion: A Calculus, Not a Zero-Sum Game

JUAN SAYS, And here’s the real problem with making compassion the highest authority: compassion for whom? When interests conflict, compassion becomes a zero-sum game. You can’t be maximally compassionate to both the wolf and the rabbit. To the criminal and the victim. To the invading army and the city being invaded. Someone has to lose. And whoever decides who loses is exercising authority that their own system says doesn’t exist.

Your “zero-sum game” objection treats compassion as a mindless emotion rather than a reason-guided orientation. A compassion-first orientation does not mean “being nice to everyone”; it means minimizing the total aggregate of suffering.

Compassion for the victim leads to the restraint of the criminal to prevent further harm. Compassion for the inhabitants of a city necessitates defending them against an invading army. These are pragmatic strategies for maintaining a safe society, not “moral facts.”

The “authority” in a pro-social system is collaborative and pragmatic, based on social contracts and the consensus of sentient beings who wish to coexist. It is not an “invisible moral authority”; it is the very visible authority of a community deciding how to best manage conflicts. The real nightmare is your alternative: a “fixed” system where the “authority” can declare that an entire group—even infants—must “lose” because an unsubstantiated dogma supposedly willed it.

9. The Dehumanization Defense (1 Samuel 15:3)

JUAN SAYS, Now let’s talk about 1 Samuel 15:3, because our friend thinks this is the knockout punch. It’s not… Exodus 17:8-16 records that the Amalekites attacked Israel… God gave them four hundred years… It’s the surgical removal of a metastasized cancer after every other treatment failed. But here’s what our friend really misses: he is using his moral outrage at this passage to prove morality doesn’t exist. Think about that. He is basically saying, “this is objectively wrong, therefore there is no objective right and wrong.” That’s philosophically incoherent.

Your defense of 1 Samuel 15:3 is the ultimate indictment of your “moral” system. You are attempting to provide a “rational” justification for the slaughter of infants by labeling an entire ethnicity as a “metastasized cancer.” This is the exact psychological mechanism used by every perpetrator of genocide in human history: dehumanization via collective guilt.

Calling a population of human beings—including nursing infants—a “metastasized cancer” is not a “moral” argument. It is a rhetorical device used to bypass the very compassion you claim to value. If your “perfect rules” lead you to conclude that stabbing an infant to death is a “surgical removal,” then your rules have successfully eroded your humanity.

My outrage isn’t based on a “moral fact” I’ve borrowed from you; it’s based on the biological reality of empathy. I am saying that by any standard of compassion or pro-sociality, the slaughter of infants is an act of extreme cruelty. A world where people believe in “moral facts” that can override their compassionate instincts is far more dangerous than one where we admit that our pro-social standards are something we must cultivate ourselves.

10. The Foundation IS the Mechanism

JUAN SAYS, What actually holds societies together? Our friend says it’s “evolved social capacities plus pragmatic institutions plus daily micro-choices.” But that’s just describing the mechanism, not the foundation… Evolution explains how we got the capacity for moral reasoning. It doesn’t explain why we should use it for good rather than evil… The nightmare isn’t a world with a cosmic moral system. The nightmare is a world where might makes right, where the powerful define good as whatever serves their interests, where victims have no appeal beyond the mercy of their oppressors.

You argue that I am describing the “mechanism” but not the “foundation.” In the real world, the mechanism is the foundation. The “foundation” of a house isn’t a metaphysical concept of “stability”; it is the physical concrete that keeps the structure from sinking. The foundation of society is the very real web of empathy, reciprocity, and shared interest that we have evolved.

We use these capacities for pro-social ends because “good” behavior allows us to thrive, while anti-social behavior leads to systemic breakdown. We choose it because we prefer not to live in a state of perpetual war. You claim that without a cosmic system, “might makes right,” but history shows that transcendent “moral” systems have been the primary tools used to justify the “might” of oppressors by claiming divine ordination.

In a pro-social framework, the appeal for a victim is to our shared humanity and the observable fact of suffering. We don’t need a “transcendent foundation” to stand against oppression; we only need to recognize that the oppressor is causing harm that we ourselves would not wish to endure. I am not “living off borrowed capital.” I am standing on the only ground that has ever actually existed.

The Takeaway: From Cosmic Shadows to Human Reality

The conversation with Juan highlights a fundamental divide between two ways of seeing the world. One side seeks a “fixed reference point”—an external, metaphysical anchor to justify why we should be kind, why we should cooperate, and what makes a society “good.” The other side, the one I am advocating for, looks at the functional reality of our existence as social animals.

Here is the core of the argument:

We don’t need a “Source” to have a “Standard”: Order doesn’t require an Ordainer any more than a snowflake requires a jeweler. Pro-social behavior is a successful biological strategy, not a “moral” debt.
Compassion is a Compass, Not a Rulebook: Unlike rigid systems that can justify the unthinkable (like the “surgical removal” of a population) by appealing to divine authority, a compassion-first orientation remains grounded in the observable reality of suffering.
The Mechanism is the Foundation: Our shared empathy, our capacity for reciprocity, and our pragmatic social institutions are not “borrowed capital.” They are the concrete reality of human coordination.

The fear that a world without a “cosmic moral system” collapses into a “nightmare of might makes right” is an anxiety, not an evidence-based conclusion. In truth, the real nightmare is any system that allows an abstract idea to override the clear, physical distress of a fellow human being. The innocent Amalekite infants were killed under this “moral” system. And I would have been condemned for trying to save them from their predators.

We don’t need to look to the stars for a reason to be pro-social; we only need to look at each other.

A Formal Demonstration of the failure of Juan’s Position:

Symbol key (so the later formalizations are unambiguous)

✓ $P$ denotes Phil.
✓ $J$ denotes Juan.
✓ $NR(x)$ means $x$ is a moral non-realist (denies objective moral facts).
✓ $ObjWrong(a)$ means action $a$ is objectively wrong (mind-independent).
✓ $Pref(x,a)$ means agent $x$ has a (possibly strong) preference about $a$ .
✓ $Goal(x,g)$ means agent $x$ endorses goal $g$ .
✓ $Better(a,b \mid g)$ means $a$ is better than $b$ relative to goal $g$ .
✓ $O(\psi)$ means $\psi$ is categorically obligatory.
✓ $O(\psi \mid \phi)$ means $\psi$ is obligatory conditional on $\phi$ (a hypothetical imperative).
✓ $A$ denotes the act-type “killing Amalekite infants.”

Blunder 1: Collapsing conditional normativity into categorical obligation

Juan’s move (implicit): treating Phil’s “if you want X, you should do Y” as “you must do Y, full stop.”

Juan’s inference pattern:
✓ $O(\psi \mid \phi)$
✓ $\therefore O(\psi)$

Why this is a blunder: the inference is invalid without the extra premise $\phi$ . A conditional obligation does not entail an unconditional obligation.
✓ $O(\psi \mid \phi) \not\Rightarrow O(\psi)$

Concrete countermodel (showing invalidity):
✓ $O(\psi \mid \phi)$ and $\neg \phi$ can both be true while $O(\psi)$ is false.
✓ $(O(\psi \mid \phi) \land \neg \phi) \not\Rightarrow O(\psi)$

Blunder 2: Strawman attribution of objective moral claims to an explicit non-realist

Juan asserts (about Phil): “you’re saying it’s objectively wrong.”

But Phil’s stated stance (as quoted by you in-thread) is: there is no moral realm for moral facts to reside in. That commits Phil to denying objective wrongness.

Minimal consistency constraint on Phil’s view:
✓ $NR(P) \to \neg ObjWrong(A)$

What Phil can say (and Juan repeatedly treats as forbidden) is preference plus goal-relative evaluation, for example:
✓ $Pref(P,\neg A)$
✓ $Goal(P,g) \land Better(\neg A, A \mid g)$

Juan’s strawman leap is:
✓ $(Pref(P,\neg A) \land Better(\neg A, A \mid g)) \Rightarrow ObjWrong(A)$

That implication does not follow.
✓ $(Pref(P,\neg A) \land Better(\neg A, A \mid g)) \not\Rightarrow ObjWrong(A)$

Blunder 3: Equivocation on evaluative language (treating “better/superior” as automatically “morally objective”)

Juan’s assumed bridge principle:
✓ $\forall a,\forall b,(,Better(a,b \mid g)\to ObjWrong(b),)$

This is a category mistake: “better relative to a specified goal” is not the same kind of claim as “objectively wrong.” Goal-relative comparisons are compatible with non-realism; objective wrongness is not.

The minimal separation Juan ignores:
✓ $\exists g,Better(a,b \mid g)\ \land\ \neg ObjWrong(b)$

Blunder 4: Treating goal pluralism as if it destroys all goal-relative assessment

Juan’s stated thought: societies can have competing goals, so evaluation is illegitimate.

His implied argument:
✓ $(\exists g_{1}\exists g_{2}(g_{1}\neq g_{2})) \to \neg \exists g,Better(a,b \mid g)$

Even ignoring the subscripts, the structure is invalid. The existence of multiple goals does not entail that no goal-relative evaluation is possible. At most, it blocks a single, universal ranking across all goals.

Correct logical form (what actually follows):
✓ $(\exists g_{1}\exists g_{2}(g_{1}\neq g_{2})) \not\Rightarrow \forall a,\forall b,\forall g,\neg Better(a,b \mid g)$

Blunder 5: “Psychopaths lack empathy, therefore you cannot restrain them without objective morality”

Juan’s implicit inference:
✓ $\neg Empathy(x) \to \neg \exists r,JustifiedRestraint(r,x)$

This is a non sequitur. Restraint can be justified instrumentally (self-defense, deterrence, coordination stability) without invoking objective moral facts.

A simple refutation schema:
✓ $Threat(x) \to JustifiedRestraint(r,x)$
✓ $JustifiedRestraint(r,x) \not\Rightarrow ObjWrong(\cdot)$

Juan assumes a hidden premise that all justification must be of the objective-moral kind. That premise is precisely what is under dispute.

Blunder 6: The “obligation requires authority; authority requires God” chain smuggles its conclusion

Juan’s core chain (as he uses it):
✓ $\forall \psi,(O(\psi)\to \exists y,Authority(y,\psi))$
✓ $\forall y,\forall \psi,(Authority(y,\psi)\to God(y))$
✓ $\therefore \forall \psi,(O(\psi)\to \exists y,God(y))$

Where the blunder sits: the second premise effectively defines all genuine authority as divine, which is the conclusion’s substance, not an independently supported premise.

You can expose the circularity by noting the definitional substitution:
✓ $\forall y,(Authority(y,\psi)\leftrightarrow God(y))$
Once inserted, the “argument” is just a re-labeling exercise.

Blunder 7: “Without objective morality, condemnation reduces to mere preference, so Nazis are not wrong”

Juan’s false dilemma structure:
✓ $(ObjWrong(\alpha)\ \lor\ MerePreference(\alpha))$
✓ $\neg ObjWrong(\alpha)$
✓ $\therefore MerePreference(\alpha)$

The disjunction is incomplete. There are intermediate normative frameworks that are neither objective-moral facts nor “mere whim,” including goal-relative rationality, contractualism, coordination equilibria, and institutional constraint systems.

Formally, he assumes:
✓ $\neg ObjWrong(\alpha)\to MerePreference(\alpha)$

But a more accurate partition is:
✓ $\neg ObjWrong(\alpha)\to (GoalRelative(\alpha)\ \lor\ Contractual(\alpha)\ \lor\ Institutional(\alpha)\ \lor\ MerePreference(\alpha))$

Juan’s conclusion does not follow without excluding these additional live options.

Blunder 8: The “you’re borrowing from theism” move is an underdetermined inference (and often a genetic fallacy)

Juan’s claim pattern:
✓ $UsesMoralLanguage(P)\to TheismTrue$

Even if we grant:
✓ $UsesMoralLanguage(P)$

the conclusion does not follow, because there are multiple competing explanations for the same datum.

Underdetermination can be stated as:
✓ $E \land (H_{1}\to E) \land (H_{2}\to E) \not\Rightarrow H_{1}$

Here $E$ is “people have strong evaluative intuitions,” $H_{1}$ is theism, and $H_{2}$ is any naturalistic genealogy of norms (evolutionary, cultural, game-theoretic, developmental).

Blunder 9: Self-contradictory interpretation of Phil’s semantics after Phil explicitly corrects him

Juan persists in attributing to Phil the claim:
✓ $ObjWrong(A)$

while Phil explicitly asserts $NR(P)$ . If Juan accepts Phil’s self-description as a premise (which he claims to), then Juan cannot coherently keep asserting that Phil is making objective-moral claims without adding an argument that Phil’s self-description is false.

The inconsistency can be pinned as:
✓ $NR(P) \land (NR(P)\to \neg ObjWrong(A)) \land ObjWrong(A)$
This set is inconsistent unless Juan supplies a defeater for the middle conditional or rejects $NR(P)$ .

Blunder 10: Scripture-citation as a premise in a dispute about whether Scripture has authority

Juan repeatedly uses:
✓ $BibleSays(\psi)\to \psi$

But that is exactly the authority principle under contention. In a debate with a non-believer, the rule is not neutral; it is a partisan inference rule.

Its non-neutrality is visible as:
✓ $\neg Accepts(P,,BibleSays(\psi)\to \psi)$
So Juan’s “proof” steps do not transmit warrant to Phil, because they rely on an inference rule Phil does not grant.

A Debriefing on Juan’s Attempt to Misrepresent My Position:

◉ Symbol key

✓ $P$ = you (Phil).
✓ $J$ = Juan.
✓ $NR(P)$ = you deny objective moral facts.
✓ $M(\phi)$ = $\phi$ is a moral fact claim (mind-independent).
✓ $E(\phi)$ = $\phi$ is an evaluative claim (goal-relative, preference-relative, or functional).
✓ $O(\phi)$ = categorical obligation.
✓ $O(\phi \mid g)$ = conditional obligation given goal $g$ .

◉ Tactic 1: Semantic capture (treating ordinary evaluative language as proof of objective moral commitments)

You keep using evaluative language—”superior,” “better,” “should”—while denying the existence of any transcendent reference point to anchor those evaluations.

✓ What he is doing: He tries to collapse the distinction between (a) goal-relative evaluation and (b) objective moral fact claims. If he can make that collapse stick, any use of “should,” “better,” or “superior” becomes evidence that you secretly affirm objective moral standards.

✓ The underlying maneuver:
✓ $E(\phi)\to M(\phi)$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: Many readers have a default linguistic intuition that “should” is always “moral should.” He exploits that ambiguity.

✓ What makes it weak: In ordinary reasoning, people constantly use functional “should” (engineering, medicine, athletics, policy) without implying objective moral facts. The correct bridge is not automatic; it depends on whether the “should” is conditional on an explicit goal.
✓ $O(\phi \mid g)\not\Rightarrow O(\phi)$
✓ $E(\phi)\not\Rightarrow M(\phi)$

◉ Tactic 2: Forced re-description (relabeling your compassion talk as a claim that dissenters are morally defective)

That’s not a preference, Phil. That’s a moral claim. You’re declaring it wrong, not just personally distasteful. You’re saying anyone who doesn’t share your preference is morally deficient.

✓ What he is doing: He upgrades your condemnation of an act into a condemnation of persons, then reads that as “objective” and “binding.” This is a re-description tactic: he tells the audience what you “are really saying,” regardless of your explicit meta-ethical framing.

✓ The hidden steps:
✓ $E(A)\to M(A)$
✓ $M(A)\to \forall x(\neg Agree(x,P)\to Deficient(x))$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It portrays your stance as covertly policing people’s character, which primes the “you’re smuggling morality” accusation.

✓ What makes it weak: Even if you strongly condemn an act as “cruel,” it does not follow that you are asserting objective wrongness, and it does not follow that you are asserting a universal defect in all dissenters. Those are add-on premises he supplies.

◉ Tactic 3: Lexical fallacy (arguing from the connotations of words to the ontology you must accept)

You called the Amalekite command “the ultimate indictment” of my moral system. Indictment is a legal and moral term implying guilt and wrongdoing. If there are no moral facts, there’s no indictment, just different preferences.

You wrote that my framework “has successfully eroded your humanity.” Erosion implies degradation from a better state to a worse one. That’s a value judgment requiring a standard.

✓ What he is doing: He treats word-choice as a metaphysical confession. If a term often appears in moral or legal contexts, he argues that using the term commits you to moral realism.

✓ The underlying inference pattern:
✓ $UsesWord(P,w)\to OntologicalCommitment(P,\text{the typical metaphysics of }w)$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It feels like “language forensics.” It invites the audience to think your vocabulary is a leak of your “real beliefs.”

✓ What makes it weak: People routinely borrow moralized vocabulary for rhetorical force, social critique, or goal-relative evaluation without endorsing objective moral facts. Word connotation does not entail ontology.
✓ $UsesWord(P,w)\not\Rightarrow M(\phi)$

◉ Tactic 4: False dichotomy (either moral realism, or “everything is morally equivalent”)

Are you a consistent moral non-realist who admits the Amalekite command, the Holocaust, and helping old ladies cross the street are all morally equivalent, just representing different biological preferences? Or are you actually operating with moral intuitions you can’t account for in your system?

✓ What he is doing: He frames your position as having only two options: accept objective moral facts, or accept a caricatured nihilism where all acts are “equivalent.”

✓ The forced-choice structure:
✓ $NR(P)\to (Equivalence(\text{genocide},\text{helping})\lor \neg NR(P))$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It makes your view look psychologically and socially unlivable, then pressures you to retreat to his framework.

✓ What makes it weak: Non-realism does not entail practical indifference or evaluative equivalence. One can deny objective moral facts while still having strong preferences, policy commitments, and goal-relative rankings (harm reduction, social stability, compassion-as-a-value, etc.). His dichotomy excludes the middle ground by fiat.

◉ Tactic 5: “Obligation laundering” (treating any normative pressure as objective obligation)

Why does measurable distress create an obligation for me to care?

But “should” is a moral category. Where does that obligation come from if not from something beyond biology?

✓ What he is doing: He insists that unless you can produce categorical obligation, you cannot justify any norm-guidance at all. Then he treats that gap as proof you are secretly relying on objective obligation.

✓ The move: replace motivations, commitments, and conditional norms with $O(\phi)$ .
✓ $\text{Motivation/Value/Goal}\to O(\phi)$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It makes your framework look like it cannot tell anyone to do anything, which sounds like “no standards.”

✓ What makes it weak: Many “should” claims are conditional on aims and constraints (health, cooperation, stability, predictability). Those can have real force without being categorical obligations.
✓ $O(\phi \mid g)$ can guide action without implying $O(\phi)$ .

◉ Tactic 6: Burden shifting (demanding you justify why anyone should want stability, flourishing, reduced suffering)

You say “if we wish to live in a stable, flourishing society” as if that’s a given. But that’s the whole question. Why should anyone wish that?

✓ What he is doing: He treats widely shared human aims as needing metaphysical grounding, then treats any inability to deliver “objective” grounding as defeat.

✓ The burden-shift form:
✓ $\neg M(\text{goal }g)\to \neg \text{RationallyDefensible}(g)$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It makes your view seem arbitrary: “just vibes.”

✓ What makes it weak: This is an inflated standard. In practice, many axioms and aims are taken as practical starting points (health over illness, safety over predation, coordination over breakdown). A meta-ethical position can be non-realist while still treating those aims as deeply entrenched features of human psychology and social viability.

◉ Tactic 7: Psychopath challenge (using edge cases to force you into moral realism)

Psychopaths have defective mirror neuron systems. Are they wrong to lack empathy, or just different? If just different, you have no grounds to restrain them. If wrong, you’re admitting a standard beyond biology.

✓ What he is doing: He uses a hard case to force a binary: either (a) you say psychopaths are “wrong” (which he labels moral realism) or (b) you lose any basis for restraint.

✓ The trap structure:
✓ $(\text{JustDifferent}\to \neg \text{GroundsForRestraint})\land (\text{Wrong}\to M(\cdot))$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It weaponizes a scary counterexample to make non-realism look socially disabling.

✓ What makes it weak: Restraint can be justified instrumentally (risk reduction, self-defense, institutional stability) without invoking objective moral facts. The inference “no moral realism, therefore no restraint” is not valid.

◉ Tactic 8: Guilt-by-association and power-slide (from “no objective morality” to “Nazis were not wrong” to “might makes right”)

The Nazis had power. The Stalinists had power. On what grounds do you condemn them if morality is just evolved preference?

In practice, it’s whoever has more power. That’s the inevitable result of your system.

✓ What he is doing: He slides from meta-ethical non-realism to political fatalism: if there is no objective moral law, then outcomes are determined only by force, and condemnation is incoherent.

✓ The slide:
✓ $NR(P)\to (\text{OnlyPowerDecides})$
✓ $\text{OnlyPowerDecides}\to \neg \text{CoherentCondemnation}$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It makes your view feel complicit with atrocities by implying you cannot say “wrong” in a meaningful way.

✓ What makes it weak: Condemnation can be grounded in goals, harms, rights-as-institutions, mutual constraints, and coordination norms without positing objective moral facts. Also, “power decides in practice” is a sociological claim; it does not follow from non-realism as a thesis about moral facts.

◉ Tactic 9: Argument from authority (Scripture as explanation, diagnosis, and closure)

Scripture explains this perfectly.

Romans 2:14-15 says even those without the law “show the work of the law written on their hearts.”

Romans 1:18 says people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

✓ What he is doing: He uses Scripture to (a) explain your psychology, (b) label your disagreement as suppression, and (c) present his conclusion as already settled.

✓ The structure (as an inference rule):
✓ $BibleSays(\phi)\to \phi$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It shifts the debate from shared premises to in-group authority, then portrays dissent as moral and spiritual failure rather than a live philosophical dispute.

✓ What makes it weak in your dialectical context: The inference rule is not neutral. If the authority of Scripture is precisely what is contested, it cannot function as a premises-to-conclusion bridge for your side.

◉ Tactic 10: Motive imputation (portraying your position as evasion of accountability)

Acknowledging the Lawgiver means acknowledging you’re accountable to Him.

That’s the real issue, Phil.

✓ What he is doing: He moves from argument to diagnosis: disagreement is not framed as a rational difference but as motivated resistance.

✓ The implied claim:
✓ $\neg Accepts(P,\text{God})\to MotivatedSuppression(P)$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It insulates his view from rebuttal. Any counterargument becomes further “evidence” of suppression.

✓ What makes it weak: It is largely unfalsifiable within the exchange and functions as a conversational trump card. It also reverses burdens: instead of defending his premises, he pathologizes your rejection of them.

◉ Tactic 11: “Performative contradiction” framing (you cannot talk this way unless moral facts exist)

Your entire blog post drips with moral condemnation that only makes sense if moral facts exist.

Your language reveals the truth.

✓ What he is doing: He treats your rhetorical intensity as a proof that your meta-ethic is false: if you speak as if something matters, then objective moral facts must exist.

✓ The core move:
✓ $\text{StrongCondemnation}(P)\to \neg NR(P)$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It plays on the intuitive thought that “seriousness requires objectivity.”

✓ What makes it weak: Emotional force and practical seriousness can attach to values, commitments, and social aims without implying mind-independent moral facts. The inference confuses psychological weight with metaphysical status.

◉ Tactic 12: Tightening the noose with “translation demands” (he rewrites your view into a cruder form, then demands you endorse it)

Either defend consistent moral non-realism (which means admitting nothing is actually wrong, just differently preferred), or acknowledge that your moral intuitions point to something beyond biology.

✓ What he is doing: He stipulates what “consistent non-realism means,” then forces you to accept his stipulated translation. If you reject it, he treats that as concession.

✓ The stipulation:
✓ $NR(P)\leftrightarrow \forall a,(\neg \text{Wrong}(a)\land \text{OnlyPreference}(a))$

✓ Why it works rhetorically: It frames you as afraid to own the consequences of your view.

✓ What makes it weak: It is not an agreed definition; it is an argumentative redefinition designed to make non-realism sound absurd and socially corrosive.

Juan’s core move is semantic capture: he treats your evaluative language (“should,” “better,” “cruelty,” “indictment,” “eroded humanity”) as if it automatically entails objective moral facts, formalized as $E(\phi)\to M(\phi)$ . From there he runs a set of reinforcing tactics: he forces a false dichotomy in which $NR(P)$ supposedly implies “everything is equivalent,” he launders conditional norms into categorical obligations by sliding from $O(\psi\mid g)$ to $O(\psi)$ , and he uses edge cases (psychopaths) plus atrocity comparisons (Nazis, Stalin) to claim you cannot coherently condemn or restrain anyone without moral realism. He then shifts burdens by demanding metaphysical justification for common human aims, and closes the loop by citing Scripture as both an authority and a psychological diagnosis (“suppression,” “accountability”), which insulates his position from rebuttal by treating disagreement as motive rather than argument.

10 responses to “The Mirage of the Cosmic Rulebook:”

Phil Stilwell

January 24, 2026

JUAN RESPONDS

Juan Gonzalez-Ramos

Phil, I appreciate the challenge, and I’ll accept it on your terms. You want logical dismantling? Let’s start with your foundation and work our way up.

You claim you’re not making moral arguments, just expressing preferences based on biological nature and cultural conditioning. But then you turn around and say that stabbing Amalekite infants is “by any standard of compassion or pro-sociality, an act of extreme cruelty.” That’s not a preference, Phil. That’s a moral claim. You’re declaring it wrong, not just personally distasteful. You’re saying anyone who doesn’t share your preference is morally deficient. That’s prescriptive, not descriptive.

When you say “demonstrably anti-social” and “cause immense unnecessary suffering,” you’re sneaking in words like “unnecessary” that assume a standard of what’s necessary versus what’s not. Who decides? You say “most humans happen to prefer” reducing suffering. But preference isn’t obligation. If I prefer chocolate and you prefer vanilla, neither of us is wrong. But you’re not saying the Amalekite command was just God’s preference. You’re saying it was morally evil. That requires a standard beyond preference.

Here’s where your system collapses: you keep using evaluative language—”superior,” “better,” “should”—while denying the existence of any transcendent reference point to anchor those evaluations. You say Japan’s low crime rate is “superior” at meeting the goal of reducing social friction. But why should societies aim for that goal? Why is reducing social friction better than maximizing individual liberty, even if it causes more crime? You can’t answer “because it reduces suffering” without explaining why reducing suffering is objectively better than increasing it.

You claim harm is “measurable biological distress.” Fine. Cortisol levels spike. Pain receptors fire. But so what? Why does measurable distress create an obligation for me to care? You say we should minimize total aggregate suffering. But “should” is a moral category. Where does that obligation come from if not from something beyond biology?

Let me tell you what Scripture says about this, because you’ve misunderstood the whole framework. Romans 1:19-20 tells us that what can be known about God is plain to everyone because He’s made it evident through creation. Verse 32 says people “know the righteous requirement of God” even when they suppress that truth. You’re not inventing morality from scratch, Phil. You’re operating with moral intuitions that were built into you by design.

When you say infant-killing is wrong, you’re borrowing from a theistic worldview whether you admit it or not. Your outrage proves the very thing you deny. If we’re just rearranged star dust with no inherent value, then there’s no such thing as cruelty. There’s just behavior you personally find distasteful. But you don’t talk that way. You talk as if human life has intrinsic worth, as if violating it is objectively wrong. That only makes sense if humans are made in the image of God, as Genesis 1:27 declares.

Now let’s address 1 Samuel 15:3 properly, because you’re reading it through twenty-first century individualism instead of ancient Near Eastern corporate solidarity and covenantal framework. Yes, God commanded the destruction of the Amalekites. But you’re treating this as arbitrary divine cruelty when Scripture presents it as judicial execution after centuries of warning.

Deuteronomy 9:4-5 explains that when Israel displaced the Canaanite nations, it wasn’t because Israel was righteous. It was because those nations had filled up their cup of wickedness. God used Israel as an instrument of judgment against cultures whose practices—child sacrifice, cult prostitution, systematic violence—had become irredeemable. The same God who judged Amalek also judged Israel when they adopted those same practices. That’s not arbitrary. That’s consistent justice.

You call it dehumanization. I call it recognizing that some cultural systems become so toxic that they destroy everyone they touch. When a society systematically targets the vulnerable for predation, as the Amalekites did, judgment becomes necessary for the protection of everyone else. You yourself said compassion for the inhabitants of a city necessitates defending them against invaders. Well, the Amalekites were the invaders, generation after generation.

But here’s what you’re really missing: that judgment happened in specific historical contexts under specific covenantal arrangements. It’s not a template for all time. We’re not under that covenant. Hebrews 1:1-2 says God spoke in various ways in the past, but in these last days has spoken through His Son. Jesus came to save, not to destroy (Luke 9:56). The era of theocratic Israel executing divine judgment ended. Now the call is to love enemies and pray for persecutors (Matthew 5:44).

You want to judge that Old Testament command by your compassion meter. But your compassion is selective. You feel for the Amalekite infants. Do you feel equally for all the infants they would have grown up to slaughter? For all the vulnerable people their culture would have preyed on? Your compassion framework has no way to balance competing claims except personal feeling.

And that’s the fatal flaw in your whole system. You keep saying “we” should do this or that. “We” should minimize suffering. “We” should use reason and empathy. But you have no grounds to tell anyone they should do anything. Should implies obligation. Obligation requires authority. You reject transcendent authority but keep invoking moral obligations as if they exist anyway.

The Spirit you doubt? He’s the one who makes moral knowledge possible in the first place. John 16:8 says the Spirit convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. Every time you feel moral outrage, you’re experiencing what Romans 2:15 describes: the law written on your heart, your conscience bearing witness. You can suppress it, explain it away, attribute it to evolution. But it keeps surfacing because you’re made in God’s image whether you acknowledge your Maker or not.

You don’t need me to logically dismantle your arguments, Phil. You’re doing it yourself every time you make a moral claim while denying moral reality. Every time you say something is truly wrong while insisting there’s no such thing as true wrongness. Every time you appeal to what we “should” do while denying any authority that creates obligations.

The real question isn’t whether I can dismantle your reasoning. The question is whether you’re willing to follow your own reasoning to its logical conclusion: that in a universe without transcendent morality, nothing is truly wrong, nothing is truly right, and all your moral outrage is just neurons firing in patterns shaped by random mutation and natural selection, signifying absolutely nothing beyond your subjective preference.

I don’t think you believe that. And that’s the Spirit’s witness in your conscience.

Reply
1. Phil Stilwell
  
  January 24, 2026
  PHIL’s RESPONSE:
  
  Juan, I appreciate the consistency of your challenge. You are a tenacious defender of your metaphysical framework, but your latest response continues to rely on the same fundamental error: the belief that descriptive human experiences (like empathy and social goals) cannot exist without a prescriptive “moral” anchor.
  
  You’ve invited me to follow my reasoning to its logical conclusion, so let’s go there.1. The Semantic Trap: “Should,” “Superior,” and Engineering
  
  You claim that when I use words like “superior” or “should,” I am “sneaking in” moral categories. This is a common misunderstanding of how language works in a functional context. When I say the Japanese social system is “superior” at reducing crime, I am not making a metaphysical declaration. I am making a functional comparison.
  
  The Bridge Analogy: If I say an arched stone bridge is “superior” to a bridge made of wet cardboard for carrying a truck, am I “smuggling in” an objective moral standard of “bridgeness”? No. I am evaluating a structure against a specific, stated goal: load-bearing capacity.
  
  The Social Contract: When I say we “should” minimize suffering, it is a conditional imperative, not a cosmic one. It means: “If we wish to live in a stable, flourishing society (which our biology strongly inclines us toward), then we should act in ways that reduce harm.” You ask why reducing social friction is “better” than maximizing individual liberty. It isn’t “objectively” better in a cosmic sense; it is preferable to a social primate that values safety and cooperation. You call this a “preference” as if it’s a whim, but it is a hard-coded biological requirement for our species’ survival. I don’t need a “standard beyond preference” to know that being robbed is less desirable than being safe.
  
  2. The Biological “So What?”: Why Distress Creates Motivation to Act
  
  You ask, “Why does measurable distress create an obligation for me to care?” The answer is that there is no actual transcendent obligation. But there is a natual motivation to act in line with our values. This impulse isn’t found in a “righteous requirement of God,” but in the neural architecture of empathy.
  
  When I see another human in pain, my mirror neurons fire. I feel a version of that distress. This isn’t a “moral law written on the heart”; it is a biological feedback loop. We “care” because we are a social species whose survival depends on the well-being of the collective.
  
  The “obligation” you feel is the internal pressure of your own evolved social instincts. You want to call that the “Spirit’s witness,” but that is an unsubstantiated reification of a biological process. You are taking a very real, very human emotion and projecting it onto a cosmic screen to give it more “authority.” I find that the emotion is more beautiful when we own it as ours, rather than attributing it to a supervisor.3. The Amalekite “Justice” and the Dehumanization Trap
  
  Your defense of 1 Samuel 15:3 is where your system truly exposes its dangers. You argue that the slaughter of infants was “consistent justice” because their culture was “toxic.”
  
  Substantiate your system: You are essentially saying that if a deity labels a group “toxic,” then the compassionate impulse to save an infant can—and should—be overridden.
  
  This is the very definition of a “Might Makes Right” system. You’ve simply renamed the “Might” as “God” and the “Right” as “Justice.” By calling the destruction of a people “surgical removal,” you are using language to bypass empathy.
  
  As a moral non-realist, I see exactly what is happening: you are using an unsubstantiated metaphysical claim to justify an act of extreme, pro-socially destructive cruelty. I don’t need “intrinsic worth” to be outraged by this; I only need to recognize the biological reality of a child’s suffering. Your system allows you to look at a screaming infant and see “judgment”; mine forces me to see a screaming infant and see a tragedy that must be prevented. Which one is truly more compassionate?4. The image of the “Fallen Creature”
  
  You claim that man is a “fallen creature” who violates “moral law.” I see it differently. I see a biological creature with competing instincts—some selfish, some cooperative. We are not “violating a law”; we are navigating the messy reality of our evolution.
  
  Living in Tokyo for over two decades taught me that social harmony isn’t a gift from a creator; it’s a constant, disciplined social practice. It’s a choice made by millions of people every day to prioritize the group over the self. It is a human achievement, not a divine reflection.The Logical Conclusion
  
  You say that in a universe without “transcendent morality,” our outrage “signifies absolutely nothing beyond subjective preference.” I disagree. It signifies everything that matters to us.
  
  Our preferences for safety, love, and the reduction of pain are the most real things we have. They don’t need to be “anchored” in the stars to be meaningful. In fact, they are more meaningful because they are ours. We are the ones who decide that cruelty is unacceptable. We are the ones who build societies where infants are protected. We are the ones who choose compassion.
  
  I’ll stick with my “neurons firing” and my “evolved instincts.” They’ve managed to get us this far without the need for a cosmic rulebook that, when followed to the letter, can be used to justify the very things our hearts (and our biology) rightfully recoil from.
  Reply
  1. J. GonzalezRamos
    
    January 24, 2026
    
    Phil, you’re a persistent fellow, I’ll give you that. But persistence doesn’t equal correctness, and your latest response reveals the exact problem I’ve been pointing out. You’re still making moral claims while denying moral reality. Let me show you where your reasoning falls apart.
    
    Your bridge analogy is clever, but it commits a category error. Bridges don’t have competing goals. A bridge either supports the truck or it doesn’t. But human societies have radically different goals. The Spartans built a society optimized for military dominance through brutal discipline. The Romans built one optimized for expansion through conquest. Modern Japan built one optimized for social harmony through shame culture. Which goal is the right one?
    
    You say “if we wish to live in a stable, flourishing society” as if that’s a given. But that’s the whole question. Why should anyone wish that? Why is stability better than chaos? Why is flourishing better than domination? You can’t answer “because our biology inclines us toward it” without admitting that biology is creating a normative claim. And if biology creates norms, then you’re just renaming the lawgiver.
    
    Here’s the logical problem: you keep saying these are conditional imperatives, not cosmic ones. But then you condemn the Amalekite command as if it violates something more than your personal preference. You’re not saying “I personally wouldn’t kill Amalekite infants.” You’re saying it’s objectively wrong to do so. That’s not a conditional imperative. That’s a moral absolute.
    
    You write “I don’t need intrinsic worth to be outraged by this; I only need to recognize the biological reality of a child’s suffering.” But biological reality is just neurons and chemistry. Suffering is just certain neural states. Why should I care about someone else’s neural states any more than I care about their hair color? You say mirror neurons create empathy. Fine. But psychopaths have defective mirror neuron systems. Are they wrong to lack empathy, or just different? If just different, you have no grounds to restrain them. If wrong, you’re admitting a standard beyond biology.
    
    The Bible actually explains this better than your system does. Romans 1:21 says people “knew God” but “became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” You have the moral intuition, Phil. You know infant-killing is wrong. But you’re trying to explain it away through materialistic reduction while still acting on it as if it’s objectively true. That’s the futility Paul’s talking about.
    
    Now let’s address your claim that the Amalekite judgment is “might makes right.” That’s exactly backwards. In your system, might actually is right because there’s no standard above power to judge it. The Nazis had power. The Stalinists had power. On what grounds do you condemn them if morality is just evolved preference? They had different preferences shaped by different evolutionary and cultural pressures. You can say their preferences conflict with yours, but you can’t say they’re wrong unless there’s a standard above all human preferences.
    
    The biblical system is the opposite of might makes right. It says there’s a righteous standard above all human power that judges even the powerful. First Samuel 15 isn’t about God flexing divine muscle. It’s about a holy God executing justice on a persistently predatory culture after centuries of warning. Deuteronomy 32:35 says “vengeance is Mine, and recompense.” That means humans don’t get to claim that authority. Only God does, and He exercises it according to His perfect knowledge and perfect justice.
    
    You want to paint this as me choosing cosmic authority over compassion. But that’s a false dichotomy. The same Scripture that records divine judgment also commands “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” in Leviticus 19:18. It says “learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” in Isaiah 1:17. It says “what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God” in Micah 6:8.
    
    The difference is that biblical compassion is grounded in the nature of God who is love, as First John 4:8 tells us. Your compassion is grounded in firing neurons that could just as easily fire differently. You admit as much when you say it’s just biological feedback. But biological processes have no inherent direction toward good. Cancer is a biological process. Predation is a biological process. Why is empathy the process we should follow rather than aggression?
    
    You say living in Tokyo taught you that social harmony is human achievement, not divine reflection. But you’re confusing the mechanism with the source. Of course humans achieve social harmony through daily choices and discipline. But where did the capacity for those choices come from? Where did the ideal of harmony come from? Where did the sense that we ought to prioritize group welfare over pure self-interest come from?
    
    Evolution doesn’t explain this. Natural selection favors whatever reproduces, not what’s morally good. If deception and exploitation reproduce successfully, they’re just as “fit” as cooperation. You need an explanation for why we value cooperation over exploitation even when exploitation would benefit us personally. The biblical answer is Genesis 1:27, that we’re made in God’s image with His law written on our hearts as Romans 2:15 says.
    
    Here’s where your logic completely collapses: you say our preferences are “the most real things we have” and don’t need cosmic anchoring to be meaningful. But meaningful to whom? If I have a preference for domination and you have a preference for cooperation, whose preference wins? You say “we are the ones who decide that cruelty is unacceptable.” But who’s we? When preferences conflict, who decides whose preferences get enforced?
    
    In practice, it’s whoever has more power. That’s not me being cynical. That’s the inevitable result of your system. Without a transcendent standard, social morality is just the preferences of the powerful imposed on the powerless. You can call it social contract, but contracts are only binding if there’s an authority to enforce them. And if all authority is human, then the strongest human authority sets the terms.
    
    You write “we are the ones who choose compassion.” But the Nazis chose something else. The Stalinists chose something else. Pol Pot chose something else. On your system, you can say you don’t like their choices, but you can’t say they were wrong. They were just following their biological impulses shaped by their evolutionary history and cultural context, same as you.
    
    The biblical worldview says they were objectively wrong because they violated God’s standard revealed in Scripture and written on the human heart. Psalm 94:9-10 asks “He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see? He who instructs the nations, shall He not correct?” The God who created moral beings with moral intuitions has the authority to judge moral behavior.
    
    You want to cling to moral outrage while rejecting moral reality. You want to condemn systems that justify cruelty while using a system that provides no grounds for condemnation beyond personal distaste. You want to say your neuron-firing preferences are “more beautiful” when owned as yours rather than attributed to a Creator, but beauty is another transcendent category you’re borrowing without acknowledgment.
    
    Second Corinthians 4:4 says “the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” You have the moral sense. You have the outrage at injustice. You have the intuition that some things are truly wrong. But you’re suppressing the truth about where those things come from because acknowledging the Lawgiver means acknowledging you’re accountable to Him.
    
    That’s the real issue, Phil. Not whether you can construct a logical framework for morality without God. You can’t, and I’ve shown you why. The issue is whether you’re willing to acknowledge what you already know: that moral truth exists, that it transcends human opinion, and that it points to a moral Lawgiver who has revealed Himself in Scripture and supremely in Jesus Christ.
    
    Your neurons firing are doing exactly what they were designed to do: responding to moral reality. The question is whether you’ll acknowledge the Designer behind the design.
    
    Reply
    1. Phil Stilwell
      
      January 24, 2026
      
      You need to stop and correct yourself on the following.
      
      You’re saying it’s objectively wrong to do so. That’s not a conditional imperative. That’s a moral absolute.
      
      I’ve made it clear I’m a moral non-realist. There is no moral realm in which moral facts can reside. Rewrite your comment accordingly and post again. I’ll delete your first post soon.
      
      Reply
      1. J. GonzalezRamos
        
        January 24, 2026
        
        Phil, you’re claiming I misrepresented you, but your own words expose the problem. You say you’re a moral non-realist, yet your entire blog post drips with moral condemnation that only makes sense if moral facts exist.
        
        Let’s look at your actual language:
        
        You called the Amalekite command “the ultimate indictment” of my moral system. Indictment is a legal and moral term implying guilt and wrongdoing. If there are no moral facts, there’s no indictment, just different preferences.
        
        You wrote that my framework “has successfully eroded your humanity.” Erosion implies degradation from a better state to a worse one. That’s a value judgment requiring a standard. Without moral facts, there’s no “better” or “worse,” just “different.”
        
        You said “by any standard of compassion or pro-sociality, this is an act of extreme cruelty.” But moral non-realism means there are no binding standards, just personal preferences. If cruelty is just a biological response you happen to have, then someone without that response isn’t wrong, just wired differently.
        
        You accused me of using “the exact psychological mechanism used by every perpetrator of genocide in human history.” That’s not preference language. That’s moral equivalence language, putting me in the same category as mass murderers. If you’re truly a moral non-realist, then genocide isn’t wrong, it’s just unpopular with people who share your biological wiring.
        
        Here’s your core contradiction: you keep using evaluative language that assumes objective moral standards while simultaneously denying those standards exist. You say things are “demonstrably anti-social” and cause “unnecessary suffering” as if those are facts that create obligations. But in moral non-realism, there are no obligations, only inclinations.
        
        When you write “the real nightmare is any system that allows an abstract idea to override the clear, physical distress of a fellow human being,” you’re making a moral claim about what systems should and shouldn’t do. But moral non-realism gives you no grounds for “should” beyond “I prefer.”
        
        Scripture explains this perfectly. Romans 2:14-15 says even those without the law “show the work of the law written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.” You can’t escape making moral judgments because you’re made in God’s image with His law inscribed on your conscience. You can deny the source intellectually, but you can’t stop operating as if moral truth exists.
        
        So which is it, Phil? Are you a consistent moral non-realist who admits the Amalekite command, the Holocaust, and helping old ladies cross the street are all morally equivalent, just representing different biological preferences? Or are you actually operating with moral intuitions you can’t account for in your system?
        
        Your language reveals the truth. You know some things are genuinely wrong. You just won’t acknowledge the Lawgiver who makes that knowledge possible.
        
        Reply
        
        Phil Stilwell
        
        January 24, 2026
        
        I’ll give you an hour to get honest.
        
        Reply
        
        J. GonzalezRamos
        
        January 24, 2026
        
        Phil, an hour to “get honest” about what exactly? I pointed out the contradiction between your self-identification as a moral non-realist and your use of condemnatory moral language throughout your argument. That’s not dishonesty on my part. That’s pointing out ambiguity in yours.
        
        You can’t simultaneously claim “there are no moral facts” and write that my position is “the ultimate indictment” or has “eroded my humanity.” Those phrases only carry weight if moral facts exist.
        
        If you need an hour to clarify whether you actually believe genocide is just a “different preference” rather than genuinely wrong, that tells us something important about your system.
        
        The offer stands: either defend consistent moral non-realism (which means admitting nothing is actually wrong, just differently preferred), or acknowledge that your moral intuitions point to something beyond biology that you haven’t accounted for.
        
        Romans 1:18 says people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Your language reveals you know moral truth exists. The question is whether you’ll acknowledge it or keep suppressing it with philosophical labels that contradict how you actually reason and speak.
        
        Reply
        
        Phil Stilwell
        
        January 24, 2026
        
        Check the new formalization section in grey above. Fourty minutes.
        
        Reply
        
        Phil Stilwell
        
        January 24, 2026
        
        Juan has been blocked. I ran out of both daylight and patience.
        
        A debriefing has been added above in the light blue section of the article.
J

January 24, 2026

Has Juan considered the problems with divine command theory and could he address the following?:

a.) What makes Christian versions of morality preferrable vs. Islam, Eastern Religions, Humanism, etc? (e.g. Eastern Religions are perhaps better equipped in some ways than Christianity to deal with the environmental crisis by their frequent insistence on the value of all life. Think of Buddhism’s insistence on “right livelihood” and emphasis on the avoidance of causing suffering to other creatures.)

b.) Building off of the above, what would make a Muslim (or follower of any other non-Christian religion) wrong in claiming that their deity/deities were responsible for morality and that their law codes were superior to those of Christian countries? Wouldn’t it be best to have an external standard to judge each belief system such as their benefits for the general welfare or their ability to foster empathy?

c.) Would any Christian be willing to justify modern-day war crimes through “contamination” reasoning or claims that God “commanded” it? If not, then the justifications for the killing of the Amalekites and children of other Near-Eastern cultures (such as that it was under a special historical “covenant”) look like special pleading to maintain biblical inerrancy.

d.) When he talks about the “Spirit’s witness”, what does he understand to be the criteria for differentiating between a spirit-filled believer and an unbeliever who does not have the Holy Spirit “indwelling” them? Doesn’t the Bible (and Christianity in general) teach that the Holy Spirit enters a person upon conversion? (It seems like the appeals to a universal spirit-guided conscience are meant to avoid the possibility that moral values are able to arise regardless of whether a culture is familiar with Christianity. Hence the simple unfalsifiable assertion that the Christian god must have somehow written a code in everyone’s heart.

e.) Is an appeal to a monarchical deity who happens to offer forms of reward and punishment really the best basis for morality? To use an example from a certain ancient Greek philosopher, wouldn’t a more ethical person be someone who “gained through philosophy” the ability to behave ethically without needing the “fear of the law” (i.e. punishments)?

f.) Expanding further on the above, doesn’t the appeal to the Christian God for morality ultimately break down into a claim that people need to be promised a reward (i.e. heaven or eternal life) or presented with a punishment (i.e. eternal damnation or annihilation) to behave well? Now take the example of two people who performed a charitable act, one from a desire for the well-being of others and one because he hoped for a future reward. I think we would consider the first person to have the more moral motivation. But isn’t the situation of a religion offering someone eternal life (a reward) more analogous to action of the second individual?

g.) While many Christians doubtless find hope in the idea that virtually any sin can be forgiven, the flip side to teachings of this sort is that there is little to truly discourage someone from committing a heinous act like murder, since they can just count on developing a penitent attitude later. (A afterlife that emphasizes actions or construes heinous crimes as unforgiveable, like that of the Ancient Egyptian, would have an advantage in this regard.) But denying that love is about forgiveness rather than reward or punishment is open to a critique similar to that presented in the last sentence of point (f) as well as the charge of undercutting the whole purpose of a divine lawgiver in the first place. (i.e. Why is a lawgiver administering necessary for the existence of genuine love and empathy?)

h.) On a different note, claiming that children in cultures such as the Amalekites and the Canaanites would only grow up to be irredeemably wicked only dodges other problems like the following:

1.) The attempted defense leads to the question of whether children (who cannot choose the circumstances of their upbringing) are simply being presented as the product of their environment. But that would mean that the fate of any given child in the Israelite vs. Amalekite/ Canaanite scenario is not only determined by where they happened to be born but is simply the result of a historical process that a supposedly omnipotent and all-good deity decided not to prevent in the first place.

2.) God had other means to prevent such a wicked culture (I’m treating the biblical depictions of other cultures as correct for the sake of argument) from continuing to bring doomed individuals into the world. For example, in Genesis, God sends a plague on the Egyptian pharaoh and his household that prevented them from reproducing in response to taking Abraham’s wife into his harm. Why couldn’t he have simply prevented the supposedly wicked Canaanites from having children and thus prevent hundreds of thousands of doomed children from coming into existence? It’s not as if he actually allows every possible individual to come into existence (because for an omnipotent deity the potential number of humans is infinite.)

(Never mind that according to the Bible, the Israelites also suffered casualties when battling the Amalekites and Canaanites, so a divine intervention that prevented reproduction among those populations would have spared many members of the more righteous group.)

Also, given that he apparently restated or re-emphasized many of the original points quoted in the piece above, the new response is probably already effectively rebutted by your various Free of Faith pieces.

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