What is Morality?

[CaptainFritz28]

Sort of? Atheism is a lack of belief in a God who created the world and is still hanging around ruling things and interacting with people. That doesn't necessarily mean that an atheist doesn't believe that some power created the universe, just that that power no longer exists in a human-accessible form (if it ever did), and is not worthy of worship. This is the classic definition of a god, but it isn't exactly what your next arguments are based on.

MOctave, I think atheists often get confused about what to call what they believe. You don't believe in a a God that created the world and hangs around and helps the Catholic colleges win basketball games. That's fine. But that is not necessarily atheism. I think all it means is that you are not a Christian, Jew or Moslem. You can still believe in God. Just a different God that the monotheists talk about.

Deists, like Thomas Paine, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, didn't believe in the Bible one bit. They believed that God created the world, and then left, but God perhaps was not an entity like us, but something we cannot comprehend. Not someone who reads our thoughts and judges us, but some Thing that did the Big Bang (if you believe in that) and that is it. The universe is an expression of God, and I think Deists believe we are too.

You can be a pantheist who believes that God is in all things. Kinda like consciousness is in all cells of your body, not just the brain. God is the spirit that animates us.

I guess we were just going off of different definitions. By my definition, an atheist can still believe in God and be religious, but deistic instead of theistic. It seems like this is an uncommon definition, though, so I'll take your point.

I think that's generally just called Deism. However, I'll try to keep that in mind whenever you make a reference to Atheism.

[CaptainFritz28]

Going back to the original point. Is morality a standard to which we can aspire and grow toward?

It just seems we might need to sort some things out rather than issuing screeds about our own experiences. It seems a bit disingenuous to have a group of people each proposing their own particular brand of morality and then conveniently saying everything is okay except for that one.

For my part:

Morality is a standard and it can be moved toward or away from.

Thus I am not a moral relativist, because I see morality as a thing that circumstances can mitigate; but the basic rules of morality are fixed.

I agree with this entirely. I guess what I am claiming is that that standard is the Bible, whether people agree with it or not. That's what objectivity is, no? Truth no matter what your perspective (subjective view) is?

[CaptainFritz28]

I think many of us are in agreement that we need an objective outside moral standard because we each otherwise will come up with our own morality, and then what becomes the difference between Joan of Arc and Adolf Hitler, each following their morality to do what they thought was best, both promoting murder.

Total agreement here.

The problem that has not been addressed by those in agreeance is that the Bible can and has been interpreted differently throughout the ages and regions of the planet. Are the Rastafarians wrong in understanding that ganja is the tree of life? They are biblical people. Were the crusaders wrong? They based their murder and pillage on the bible. What about the purges of the heretics during the early and middle church periods? How many Christians were murdered by other Christians in order to get all to agree on what the bible is saying?

The Bible can and has been interpreted differently, yes. That doesn't mean every interpretation is consistent with the Bible, nor does it mean that the Bible itself is not a good standard. I could interpret the second amendment to mean that I should start my own militia armed with nukes and start blasting Washington D.C., but that wouldn't make the second amendment bad, nor would it mean my interpretation is right. Any murder is wrong. If a Christian murders another Christian because of their beliefs, then a moral evil has been committed. How do I know this? Because the Bible states directly not to murder.

And then there is the problem that the accepted Bible was written by men around the year 180 AD, when Christ died in around the year 30 AD, and his apostles may have made it to year 90 AD. The earlier versions of the bible, some of which were probably written by eye witnesses, were destroyed by the Church during its purges of people, thoughts, and books.

Not sure where you're getting 180 AD from here. Seems like most sources agree that the New Testament was written anywhere from 33-80 AD, and definitely complete by the end of the first century Anno Domini. You're going to have to provide a lot of evidence for your claims here.

Yes, we need a common standard that is outside of our own minds. One we can agree on. But the standard used in the Christian world is imperfect. But perhaps the answer should be, yes, it is imperfect, but what has man ever created that was perfect? This is the best we can do, and it is very good.

The Bible states that it is inspired by God. This would allow it to be free from human error. So what about it is imperfect?
Also, you state that the standard we need is one we can agree on. However, what humans agree on is subject to change. For example, if this had been applied in the 18th century, we would have a standard that says that the enslavement of African peoples is morally right. We need something that supersedes human sinfulness.

Christ's message as it is understood today is a great standard.

And then what about the other cultures that have the Koran, the Upanishads, etc. Should we judge then based on our Christian morality?

If it is an ultimate standard, then yes. However, as Crazy A mentioned, we must judge in the manner in which we ourselves would be judged. That means we should not be hypocritical about it, which is something which, unfortunately, many Christians do (I'm likely guilty of it in many ways myself).

Anyways, what I'm saying is that we must have a singular ultimate objective standard, and I believe that the best standard is the Bible.

[CaptainFritz28]

I agree completely with Johny here.

I was responding to CaptainFritz28's general assertion throughout these threads that the Bible has an objective reading that provides perfect morality. My strong belief is that the Bible is ALWAYS interpreted by man, since we have no living God to clarify what parts to take literally, what parts to skip over, how to adjudicate what are clearly contradictions in its moral advice, etc. My other point is that, even with these clarifications, the Bible would provide only a very partial moral guide for many modern practical ethical problems — we clearly need some moral reasoning beyond strict scriptural interpretation to be moral people, so thr Bible cannot be the wellspring of ALL morality (again, these are pushbacks to the fairly extreme claims made by Fritz here and elsewhere).

I think I've clarified this more recently. The Bible is the ultimate standard of morality. If you do something in contradiction with its teachings, then what you have done is wrong. However, if you do something not in contradiction with its teachings, then you have not done something wrong. Seems fairly simple.

Day to day, there is not a specific guide on how to react to every situation. As CA brought up, the Bible is not written specifically to you, but to every believer across every age (except for the parts in the Old Testament which were written specifically to the Israelites, Levites, or specific commands in specific scenarios).

That my irl moral decision reflected some interpretation of "love" seems somewhat beside the point. The flip side of my stories is that my travel was decadent, my acts of kindness were not directed towards the most in-need, and I left a vulnerable homeless woman with a fairly high chance of falling on the pavement again without medical treatment. I have no way of knowing what Christian "love" really requires of me. Should I have stayed home, picked up extra shifts, and given the money to the poor? Should I have not only made the woman stay for the ambulance, but also taken her and her boyfriend into my home until such time as they were no longer homeless? Moreover, in the moment I did not feel motivated at all by Christian love, but rather by some other moral or social impulse. "Love" seems like an okay direction to aim in, but it's ultimately pretty weak moral guidance and its certainly not the only source of moral guidance (another of Fritz' claims).

Again, I have pointed to specific sections of the Bible which outline what love means. And again, so long as what you did was what you saw to be the most loving (in the sense of the aforementioned Biblical chapters) at the time, then you should be good. Often, that does mean sacrificing of your own pleasure to help others.
However, from what I understand of your beliefs, you miss a few things:
1) You are not indwelt with the Holy Spirit, meaning you do not have that guidance.
2) You do not truly believe the Bible's teachings, meaning of course they aren't going to be your default actions.
3) You do not have the connection to God through prayer.

This delves more into the spiritual side of Christianity. You must realize that God is a living God, and has the power to convict us of what we ought to do. Whether we follow that guidance is another matter. It is not a formula, nor a "do this and this will happen," but it is a result of legitimate belief in God and the Bible and a desire to follow God's commands.

[CaptainFritz28]

Thanks CA. Much of this comes in response to CF's views, which I would characterize as more extreme, bordering on Christian chauvinist.

By which you mean?

I like your characterization of how the Bible provides moral advice. Whereas CF seems to believe that a more-or-less literalist read of the Bible is all you need, I agree with you that any usable Christian morality will come from a debate among humans about the moral principles contained in the text. This will be a debate which no single participant will be able to claim that their reading is *the* correct reading of the Bible.

Of course my reading is not the only and ultimate correct reading. If I seem to have claimed that, I am sincerely sorry, for that is not at all what I mean, and that would be heretical to claim that I and only I know what God truly means.

As an example, the elder board of my church makes decisions only with a unanimous vote. This is because they believe (and I agree) that if there is a dispute, prayer and the Holy Spirit will give them discernment as to the correct way forward. So yes, it is more than just reading. However, that doesn't mean the Bible is not the ultimate standard.

The moral guidance of the Bible is clearly incomplete. I suspect we'd agree that the Bible guides us to give charitably, but how much and to which charities requires an awful lot of moral reasoning that won't come straight from the book itself. It still isn't clear to me at all whether the Bible says emancipate slaves, or ensure they submit to their masters. It's likewise unclear whether to resist a totalitarian state, or to give Ceasars his due. That contemporary and historical Christians come to wildly different conclusions on these and other moral questions suggests to me that, even if the Bible has some perfect morality within it, it's functional unknowable for humans. I live in a country where "love your neighbor" was a justification for taking Indigenous children from their parents to be raised (and abused) in boarding schools — that a modern Christian can condemn this easily doesn't negate the fact that well-intentioned Christians reasoning from the same Bible justified an outrageous atrocity.

Giving charitably is a fairly simple instruction. You, ah... you give... charitably.
Again, the Bible is not a specific instruction for just you, Bert.
There are also pretty clear instructions in the Bible that kidnapping is not the best way to convert people to Christ.
That a well-intentioned Christian reasoning from the same Bible justified an outrageous atrocity doesn't mean that that Bible justifies an outrageous atrocity. Human reason is often erroneous.


Without a standard, there is no such thing as moral objectivity. People lie about what they fell "called" to, and people lie about believing the Bible's teachings in the first place. So yes, those people are moral relativists, because they believe that their own moral authority is above the Bible's. People falsely calling themselves Christians and misleading people into believing very anti-Biblical things does not make the Bible false.

[CaptainFritz28]

I was worried you'd take this approach Fritz. Instead of engaging in good faith on the obvious conflicts between the Bibles advice re: forgiveness and retribution you just state a personal preference for capital punishment that to me sounds deeply anti-Christian lol.

A) What conflicts? Forgiveness does not require that retribution be cast aside, nor vice versa. The punishment for ought to be fitting to the crime. If someone has murdered, and taken another's life, the just punishment is either their own life taken in the death penalty or in life in prison. Rehabilitation is good, but it does not mean that justice should not also be done.
Also, you are rather bold to be claiming what is Christian and what is anti-Christian when you do not believe in the basic tenets of Christianity. Something being anti-Christian means their is Biblical admonition against it.

Yes there's more to read about love in the Bible. None of it will tell you explicitly how to love your neighbor in all sorts of modern circumstances. It's a good place to start, but not an infallible guide to morality without some additional non-scriptural moral reasoning.

We've mentioned this a few times; the Bible was not written only for you. It was written for everyone. So sure, there may be some room for discerning what the virtues of the Bible mean specifically in every situation, but if the Bible says don't murder that means don't murder, and if the Bible says give to the poor it means give to the poor. How you do so doesn't particularly matter so much as you are trying to live out the commands given, as close to how they are given as possible.

I actually won't even engage with the "all this is determined by simply reading the Bible" because that's just so obviously untrue. You won't be convinced by me, but maybe other Christians can talk some sense into you on this point. Crazy Anglican made some interesting points recently about how a community debating biblical principles is a necessary part of thr process to reveal its moral guidance.

Yes, fellowship with other believers is a good thing, as in the example of the elder board of my church. As Crazy Anglican pointed out, Bible Study exists for a reason. But if a Bible study claims something that the Bible obviously contradicts, that doesn't mean that the Bible study is true, nor does it mean that the Bible is morally relativistic.

Again, I am not claiming that the Bible will tell you whether to give to the Salvation Army or Samaritan's Purse. What I am claiming is that what is in the Bible is always true. That's what being an ultimate moral standard means. If something contradicts the Bible, that thing is false. If something is in accordance with the Bible, then it is true.

[CaptainFritz28]

The trouble here is that Biblical love can be interpreted. There are enough seeming contradictions in the Bible that they can't all be factually true. Many of them are figures of speech, but which ones? I doubt God wants us all to buy swords, but what if he does? Obviously, a lot of what Jesus says goes against some of the stricter Old Testament traditions and beliefs. Does that mean that there are other traditions or beliefs that don't matter anymore? If so, which ones?

It is fairly clear what is a figure of speech and what is not. Sure, there is some basic logic to be put to it, as with any reading, and sure, historical context is incredibly important. Some of the things written in the Old Testament are written specifically to the Hebrews; for example, the book of Leviticus is written to the Levites.
What specifically are you referring to that Jesus said which "goes against" the Old Testament?

The interpretive part here is in which of these three is most important. Some people would argue that all wars are wrong because even by waging a just war you indirectly hurt innocent people. The Bible provides these guidelines, but doesn't deal very well with the edge cases.

And here is where we need discernment, which comes from the Holy Spirit, prayer, and fellowship/reasoning with other believers.

No. All of this is determined simply by reading the Bible and being CaptainFritz. Everyone presumes different things. If reading the Bible was all it took, then why did we have Crusades? Obviously, the religious (and secular) leadership in Europe was fallible and may not have been acting in accord to their Bible-centric morality, but what about the common people? Lots of them had read (or been read) these passages from the Bible, but they saw nothing wrong with going to war anyways.

People who pretend to be teaching the Bible saying things that are not Biblically accurate does not mean that the Bible itself is not a good standard. I might say that the Constitution allows me to stop rig any election I want, and to someone who is illiterate I can point to whatever part of the Constitution I want and say it is proving me right, and they might well nigh believe me. You must remember that the common people at the time of the Crusades could not read. Just because people lie doesn't make the Bible false.

It does? The existence of the Bible, even if it is only a collective hallucination, is objective. Everything else requires a certain starting set of axioms. With your axioms, you can easily prove it to be true. With mine, maybe not. With some atheists', it is obviously objectively false.

What the Bible says is true. People may say all they want about it, but that doesn't change what's actually in the Bible and what is actually true.

How different is this perspective from, say, a murderer refusing to stop killing people because they haven't seen anything on TV that told them that murder was bad?

The difference is that the Bible does not condone murder, and that TV is not an ultimate standard of morality.

Ah, so you should love thine enemies and also commit mass genocide? There are several places in the Bible where this command is present, such as with the Canaanites (who didn't really do too much to Israel to deserve it, if I remember correctly). Maybe God had a bigger purpose in mind than love would have provided for, but this is still a contradiction.

These were specific instances of commands directly to the Israelites. Just because God told the Israelites to attack Jericho doesn't mean I should go to Jericho and start killing the inhabitants.

This is also your opinion. I'm sure you have good reason to believe that the Bible is ultimate moral truth, but so far all the logic I've seen you use is circular: the Bible tells you to love people, therefore love is moral. Then, because love is good and the Bible agrees with you, the Bible is a perfect source of morality.

No, it is not my opinion; it's true whether I want it to be or not. Yes, it is circular. Any ultimate standard is circular, and everyone has an ultimate standard. If you don't think you do, then your ultimate standard is likely yourself, which is also circular.

To conclude, I have three questions for you:
1. What are your axioms?
2. Without referencing the Bible, what proof do you have that it is the "ultimate moral truth"?
3. If the Bible was never written, would there still be morality?

1. The Bible.
2. Well, if we look at a good few of the prophesies of the Old Testament, and then compare them to what happened, we can see that quite a few prophecies made about historical events (the specifics of the falls of empires and cities, the name of a king who would overthrow an empire, the fact that a king would go mentally ill in a specific way at a specific time, etc.) came true, sometimes centuries after the prophecy itself. These are instances of specific prophesy coming true precisely as they were foretold. The odds of them being true are astronomical, and point to divine guidance. Now then, if the prophets can be trusted to be under the influence of God, and they prophesied of a Messiah, then we should look for that Messiah. We should also look at what law they followed, what God they believed in, etc. That is the justification for the Old Testament being ultimate moral truth; because it came from God. As for the New Testament, the Gospels are a fulfillment of prophesy from the Old Testament, which prophesied Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The rest of the New Testament was written by the witnesses to that, as well as others who were faced with direct visions of God.
3. Yes. Morality would still exist, and the standards of the Bible would still be truth, but we would not have access to them in written form. Truth is truth, regardless of the Bible's existence. The Bible is simply God's form of communication of that truth to us.

[CaptainFritz28]

A couple of points that may help here.

Both science and spirituality are two different ways to perceive the world, and both are incomplete. Science tells much of the how, and spirituality tells much of the why. A unified approach is a mature approach.

Agreed.

Still, believing in the Bible is not necessarily a spiritual approach. This can be an intellectual exercise instead. One can memorize the Bible and try to lives one's life according to what it says, and still never feel God or touch God.

Also agreed. True Christianity is not just reading or believing the Bible, it is a relationship with God.

Martin Luther stated it well when he say something like: Reason is the devil's whore.

Luther said... a lot of things. Some of which I don't agree with. I don't know the context behind this, but Crazy A already went over it.

Meaning, religion cannot stand up to the scrutiny of reason. Nor can spirituality either. But that does not make religion or spirituality wrong, instead, just incompatible with reason, which itself is flawed. I believe Hume proved that Logic itself was illogical.

It is actually rather reasonable. In fact, I would contend that Christianity specifically is the most logical worldview one can have. Obviously I'm a bit biased, but I have logic to what I believe. That said, I think I see your point.

But here it the ultimate conundrum that many have written about throughout the centuries. In fact Simon Magus made this argument to St. Peter, Julian the Apostate (one of best Roman emperors ever) made this argument in a pamphlet. Here it is.

How can an ALL KNOWING, ALL POWERFUL and ALL LOVING God create man knowing in advance that he would eat the apple, and be cast out of the garden, and suffer for generations as a result. Would a loving God set up man to fail and suffer like this? No. Would an all powerful God create such an imperfect failure of a creature? No. Would an all knowing God do this? Either God didn't know, God was incompetent, or God was cruel. What kind of God is that?

Are you claiming to know the ways of God? If so, you are putting yourself on a level with Him, and claiming that you know what God would really do. A bit heretical, no?
Anyways, one must remember that while God is loving, He is also just. And the most loving thing He could do for us would be to give us free will, not to be chained to obey His every wish but to want to do so. Love requires the ability to hate. So when we decide to hate God, there are consequences. And sure, He knew that we would do this, but He also knows the ending, in which He triumphs, by providing us a way to be forgiven, a way to enact justice for our sins, and a way for us to be with Him for eternity.
He knew it all would happen, and He knew that it was still more loving to give us free will. He has proven Himself competent, not only by creating the universe but also by providing a perfect sacrifice so that by His grace and through faith we may be healed to righteousness. He is not cruel, for while He enacts justice for our sins, He also gives us Himself as a sacrifice, showing the greatest act of love possible.

Ok, then to alleve the suffering of men in hell that God condemned us to, he sends his Son to "die for our sins" yet even this didn't work, since the majority of us still go to hell. What kind of half measure was this? So then was the Jesus stunt a failure? This is not the act of an all powerful or all knowing or all loving god.

Once again, giving us the ability to choose to love God or to deny Him is far more loving than to force us to bend to His will, even if many of us will deny Him. And anyways, are you claiming that this can all be reduced to the statistic of those in Heaven or Hell? Again, are you claiming to know God through and through?

So my thinking is that the theology is a mess, a total incoherent mess. The theology was made by imperfect men for other imperfect men. I believe in God, and God is the best and worst of all things, but these fantasies of theology are laughable. It is crazy to me that generations of men have succumbed to this. It demonstrates how stupid a race we are.

The trouble is that you assess the whole thing as if you knew all. You assume that you understand God entirely, and that things must be a certain way or else God is cruel and unloving. Do you determine what love or cruelty is? If so, then you are claiming to be God. Only when you humble yourself to understand that you do not make the rules of the universe will it begin to make sense.

[Crazy Anglican]

@Esq. Bert

You’ve made the claim several times now that the Bible is incomplete.

I’m wondering if we might be encountering an issue of semantics. Could you give an example of a complete moral guide to which we could compare? That way we know what you consider to be complete in a written moral guide?

When I see, “The Bible is incomplete” my natural inclination is to defend the Bible. Probably because I read it as, “The Bible is deficient in some way”. Whereas, if you had said the Bible is part of a Christian life, I would not have reacted the same way. In fact with the three legged stool analogy I used, and Capt. Fritz’s example of how his council of Elders operates: I think we would both agree with you. Part and incomplete are synonyms in one sense, but they certainly have different connotations.

Are you claiming that the Bible is inferior to other written forms of moral guidance, or are you merely claiming that it is nor superior to other forms?

If the former, which one(s) and in what ways?

If the later, okay but you’re not a Christian, so I wouldn’t expect you to necessarily acknowledge the value of something you don’t believe. As Capt. Fritz has said many times the truth of the Bible isn’t affected by our interpretations of it.

[Jamiet99uk]

It's 95 theses, isn't it? I always get that wrong :-/

I've got 99 theses but a bitch ain't one.

(Sorry, sorry, I just had to).

[Jamiet99uk]

What I mean is that if there is no God, one of the assertions that has been made is that we know things are morally good or bad because of evolutionary biology, genetics, etc. When I say "believing in science" I mean believing this, that our standards of morality exist because we have empathy or something like it, which is given to us by science.

What I am saying is that, as mOctave pointed out, if there is no God, then science is no more than a construct of our minds.
Thus, if science truly does exist, if the laws of physics, biology, etc. do exist, and are not merely mental constructs, there must be a creator of them, being God.

You're still committed to this circular argument, eh...

Have I not stated it already? Yes. It is circular. Any ultimate standard is circular. But at least it explains why there is order in our universe, as opposed to random chaos.

But it doesn't explain where God came from.

[Crazy Anglican]

You're still committed to this circular argument, eh...

Have I not stated it already? Yes. It is circular. Any ultimate standard is circular. But at least it explains why there is order in our universe, as opposed to random chaos.

But it doesn't explain where God came from.

If time is a feature of the Universe, and it appears to be, there isn't a reason to think that God (who is by definition separate from the Universe as it's Creator) would be part of the timeline. The analogy C.S. Lewis used was akin to the one wouldn't expect the author of a book to be part of its plotline. The author is separate; if He is subject to something other than our time, it doesn't really have any bearing on us.

[Jamiet99uk]

But we can explain where the author of the book came from.

[Crazy Anglican]

Yes, but the actual question you're asking is not "Where was the author born" but rather "How wrote the author"

[learnedSloth]

But we can explain where the author of the book came from.

Origins can be thought of as points of a directed graph...

[DougJoe]

Anyways, what I'm saying is that we must have a singular ultimate objective standard, and I believe that the best standard is the Bible.

Which is an opinion based on your faith in the existence of the Christian God (and of that God's authority which makes the Bible an unassailable source of perfect truth). None of the rest of us can change your faith/belief, so why even bother to start this thread and ask the question of morality to the rest of us to which you have already decided on an unassailable answer that seems to deem that all other possible answers are wrong?

[CaptainFritz28]

But we can explain where the author of the book came from.

The characters in the book are not be able to.

If you wrote a computer program with sentient ai in it, and made certain rules in that program, the ai would not be able to understand how you bypass the rules, except that you can because you are the creator of them.

[CaptainFritz28]

You're still committed to this circular argument, eh...

Have I not stated it already? Yes. It is circular. Any ultimate standard is circular. But at least it explains why there is order in our universe, as opposed to random chaos.

But it doesn't explain where God came from.

Nor does it try to, for our temporal minds cannot grasp infinite existence.

[CaptainFritz28]

Anyways, what I'm saying is that we must have a singular ultimate objective standard, and I believe that the best standard is the Bible.

Which is an opinion based on your faith in the existence of the Christian God (and of that God's authority which makes the Bible an unassailable source of perfect truth). None of the rest of us can change your faith/belief, so why even bother to start this thread and ask the question of morality to the rest of us to which you have already decided on an unassailable answer that seems to deem that all other possible answers are wrong?

Don't be so arrogant. You have an ultimate standard as well, and are biased towards it. So do I. So does Jamie, Bert, Crazy A, and all the rest. The fact that each of us believe we are right does not mean we should not try to determine what morality is. Of course I think I'm right - why else would I believe what I do? It is a question to be asked for the sake of discussion.

[DougJoe]

Anyways, what I'm saying is that we must have a singular ultimate objective standard, and I believe that the best standard is the Bible.

Which is an opinion based on your faith in the existence of the Christian God (and of that God's authority which makes the Bible an unassailable source of perfect truth). None of the rest of us can change your faith/belief, so why even bother to start this thread and ask the question of morality to the rest of us to which you have already decided on an unassailable answer that seems to deem that all other possible answers are wrong?

Don't be so arrogant. You have an ultimate standard as well, and are biased towards it. So do I. So does Jamie, Bert, Crazy A, and all the rest. The fact that each of us believe we are right does not mean we should not try to determine what morality is. Of course I think I'm right - why else would I believe what I do? It is a question to be asked for the sake of discussion.

I'm not trying to be arrogant. I'm genuinely curious as to why you want to have the discussion.