Matthew Flannagan says he isn't banning me, but his website still is, so I reply to him here

 See update below, I'm trying to make sure Matthew either fixes the spam problem and allows me access again for this allegedly unintentional banning, or else I need to show that Matt suspiciously shows no intention of fixing a ban that just happens to allow him to duck and dodge the one question he has proven before that he cannot or will not answer.


After trying several times to post a reply to Matt's blog where I'm attacking his critique of moral relativism, suddenly, the website blocked me, alleging that I had "spammed" it too much.

Since I also couldn't even post the reply using Tor and inputting a different email address, I suspect Flannagan is telling the truth and his website's spam-blocker has some type of bug that is causing this.

I emailed dr. Flannagan, and he denied banning me, but he also didn't say he'd be looking into why I was banned.

I emailed Flannagan a second time, just today, with the link to my blog, so that he could post here until his own website problems are fixed, or until he tells me what different thing I need to do to resume my successful posting at his own blog.

So for those who were watching us debate, here's the latest, and my reply follows:

=================== 

Matt,

 You said:

 “It seems to me there are objective facts which determine whether a given bedtime is correct or incorrect. To see this, imagine the parent demanded that the 7-year-old was not to go to bed till 5 am on a school night and get up for school at 7am. This would obviously not be a correct judgement about when the child should go to bed. This is because such a bedtime would harm the child and parents have a duty to not harm the child.”

What moral standard are you appealing to, to justify saying parents have a duty not to harm their child?

Matt

Jul 16, 2018 at 11:29 am

Barry, so to be clear, are you contesting the claim that parents have a duty to not inflict the kind of neurological and psychological harms that come about from children having a only a couple of hours sleep every night? If that’s what you have to deny to defend your skepiticism then it seems to me that really shows how implausible it is.

Also, I am willing to bet that if a religious community told parents it was ok to cause serious physical or mental harm to their children, you and other sceptics would be all over it and condemning this. Which shows that these sceptics do think its wrong to harm children and its wrong even if your community teaches otherwise. Can you clarify here if you would claim that a religious community that taught this was a duty were incorrect?

 I reply:
Suppose for the sake of argument that my personal moral belief is that depriving children of sleep, in the manner you describe, is a good thing.

If the basis for objective morals is outside my own mind and existence, as you allege to be the case,  then my personal moral opinions could not possibly handicap you from demonstrating that the immorality of said sleep-deprivation is true for objective reasons.  What I believe about morality would be totally irrelevant to the positive case for objective morality.

My suspicion is that, for all of your talk, the only people you could possibly "convince" with your arguments about objective morality, are those who already agree with you that certain human actions are always immoral.  When you come up to people who don't necessarily agree with your moral opinions, then suddenly, you run out of steam...and all you have left, is to assure that person that their views are "implausible" as you do above...or assert that they have a position mildly close to sociopathy, as you did previously when you said:

...If you have to say that there is nothing wrong with actions I spelt out in 1 and 2 to justify the kind of religious scepticism you want to justify then your position is implausible and to put it mildly close to sociopathic.
----(from Matt Jun 26, 2018 at 9:50 pm)

 ...and a finer example of a pitifully weak argument could not be imagined, than the one that is incapable of convincing anybody outside of those who already agree with it. 

You are so busy telling the world about the fallacies of moral relativism, you never get down to establishing the positive evidence in favor of objective morality.  So go ahead...establish that any human act you wish to use as an example, is objectively immoral, and do so without bringing up the subject of how wrong the moral relativist position is.

Just like you don't need to focus on the fallacies of the car-deniers, in order to fulfill y our own burden to show that cars exist.  You are a philosopher, you know perfectly well that the prima facie case is different than a rebuttal-case.  

 You don't prove the Trinity is a true biblical doctrine by restricting your comments to the fallacies and out-of-context quotations about that doctrine which can be found in Jehovah Witness literature. The prima facie case you need to make, does not require you to focus exclusively on the errors of those who disagree with you.  So stop exclusively focusing on the alleged errors of moral relativism, and make your prima facie case that some actions of human beings are immoral for objective reasons.

By the way...are you going to answer my question?  It was:

***What moral standard are you appealing to, to justify saying parents have a duty not to harm their child?***

You'll excuse me if I've noted before how reticent you are to identify this allegedly objective standard you believe in.  Now would be the best time to stop dodging the bullet.  If that objective standard exists and doesn't depend on what any particular person feels about morality, then demonstrate that objective standard without appealing to what any particular person feels about it.  Feel free to cite the "persons" of the Trinity if you think it is their opinions that are the basis for objective morality.



 UPDATE:  July 27, 2018
I found a video of Flannagan on YouTube, so I replied there, reminding Flannagan and his viewers of this problem:



UPDATE:  September 7, 2018
Apparently the ban problem was fixed and I've since posted a reply to Flannagan.  I draw the conclusion that Flannagan actually didn't ban me and never tried or intended to.

UPDATE: November 5, 2018:
As of this date, a screenshot shows only obvious spammers have responded to my criticism, Flannagan has chosen to respond to me on other topics at Youtube, but has chosen to avoid responding to my September 15, 2018 posting at his blog: