Have you, or anyone you've ever known, played a paladin that does not worship a deity...

Not strictly relevant, but I once played paladin that worshipped ALL the LG and G deities of Forgotten Realms I found in the PhB, total of 9 or 10 gods if I remember correctly. I just picked a suitable god for the specific occasion to be the "benefactor" of that particular good deed.

the Long term plan was to make a new church dedicated to all the deities I worshipped, kinda like Elder Scrolls divines.

The character kinda ended after I got into a fight with the GM about what is Lawful Good and why I should play the stereotypical no fun allowed paladin

Still the dumbest thing that gets passed around as something profound, because without objective morality the concept of 'good' is meaningless.

Withou objective morality, the onus falls on us to decide what is and isn't good.

Played in a 5e campaign as a paladin who just worshiped the nebulous concept of "the good gods." This wasn't because of a lack of creativity on my part, but rather the DM being inexperienced with running a game and not establishing any actual dieties in the setting. Granted, it was still a super fun campaign, for a first timer he did a great job, but it was a bit annoying that I couldn't call out my god's name whenever I would smite dudes.

Its dnd, Good is an actual force in and of itself.
There can be gods, you just don't worship them. Easy.

No, but I've seen something close enough: an atheist cleric. He angrily preached atheism anywhere he went, and the gods were so amused by his antics that they decided to troll him by making him accidentally perform miracles, which always destroyed the point he was trying to make. The cleric was then forced to invent some bullshit logical explanation for these shenanigans. It also helped that the guy playing him was very funny and intelligent (no, that was not I).

Yes and without it objective morality you have nothing but subjective morality which is a random dart on a board based entirely on the whims, feelings and mental state of the person in question. Objective standards are needed if for no other reason than to prevent the decay of society.

It is what we are witnessing now, firsthand. We have demented, mentally ill people campaigning (successfully) to use any bathroom they want. What do you think would of been the result of such happening in the 50s?

Even my clerics don't worship sky fairies.

That is the most reductionist piece-of-trash opinion I have ever heard.
The fact that you are intelligent enough to spell and at least have a cursory think over morality and philosophy, and still think this, makes it even worse.

That's theism for ya.

So... They did have objective morality in the 50s?
We live in a world that inherently does not have objective morality, yet we have society and moral codes and concepts of good and evil.
Your argument is bullshit.

Why do you even think a paladin must have a deity to worship? A paladin can be just any knight with a devotion to a certain idea or person.

>decay of society
>would of been
>the 50s
Opinion dismissed.

A paladin based on epicurean thought would be a shit paladin, considering one of the ideas you would have would essentially be "don't help people about because people have problems and that would make you worry and then you wouldn't achieve a mind free from trouble."

>Confucianist paladin
>middle class
>jus wants to be a good and worthy person
>respects his elders and traditions
>helps people
>loves his job

They believed they did. Beyond that what did it matter? The result was the same, a community (local, state-wide or national) that held to the same beliefs, levels of decency, standards and acceptable behavior.

We have no moral codes anymore as we have turned away from religion and failed to establish something with which to replace it. Not as individuals but a a community, if you establish codes for anything you will find groups that wish to tear down part or all of them. Once you do that you no longer have objectivity, they are subjective and changed on a whim.

>beheads people on the spot for littering

Neither Paladins nor Clerics have ever actually been required to worship a deity. It's just a thing that's ingrained into the minds of so many people.

>We have demented, mentally ill people campaigning (successfully) to use any bathroom they want. What do you think would of been the result of such happening in the 50s?

We also have less suicides due to repression. Checkmate atheists.

But far more due to depression.

But less then before. Double checkmate!!!

>They believed they did. Beyond that what did it matter?
I'm not sure if you are trolling, but you are agitating for the opposite of your original opinion.
This is the definition of subjective morality. "They believe they did".

Objective morality implies a priori "good" or "bad" actions. That the central tenets of morality are ingrained in the fabric of the universe.

The fact that subjective moral standards were more homogenous in the 50s than today, doesn't make them objective.

And what you are saying is exactly my point; that sentiments of good and evil can still exist across the breath of a society, or even humanity at large, without good or evil being artifacts of the gods.

Incorrect. Morality doesn't have to be objective in order to be mutually agreed on. As humans, we even have pro-social instincts to make it easier for us to decide.

"Good" and "Evil" are mostly rhetorical devices - buzzwords - used to influence other people's opinions, but everyone has an idea of what either word means.

The fact that morality is subjective doesn't make it unimportant. We occasionally disagree on what is moral and what isn't - I disagree with a lot of people very often, myself - and whether or not this is a tragedy is in itself subjective.

Now go fuck yourself.

infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html

You're full of shit, 20-30's are killing themselves now more than they ever have. Almost double in every case.

That actually sort of exists in the Forgotten Realms already, just with three gods instead of 9-10. It's called the Triadic Church which worships Torm, Tyr and Ilmater and it has the Triadic Knights, paladins that specifically serve all three.

I get your argument. Secular morality is essentially a fiat morality. Whereas religious morality has faith in God backing it, secular morality doesn't have anything so grand backing it.

Still, there's a level of morality that's basic to human nature. Altruism has biological roots and one could argue that empathy is a basic, natural form of morality. Humans overcome this natural morality frequently, but they can overcome religious morality just as easily.

In that context, I suppose you could view secular morality as being backed by faith in human nature.

>I suppose you could view secular morality as being backed by faith in human nature.

No, secular morality is backed by whatever emotion the person is feeling at the time. There is nothing to overrule this, in the past it was commitment to religion (either eternal damnation or heavenly reward) that gave them strength to do so, now there is no reason or cause to.

You could argue that those gods are not real gods and thus not worthy of worship.

Did you read the three sentences before that? Because you didn't refute them, you just ignored them.

Also fear of divine punishment isn't the only path to morality. Plenty of religions and philosophies don't have a concept of eternal punishment and could still be said to have objective morality.

20-30s in general. That info says nothing about suicide rates among trans individuals in particular.

There's some forms of secular morality that develop naturally, usually as a method of maintaining cohesion of the community and as a matter of minimizing risk and preserving one's self and property.

For example, theft. Stealing from another member of the community puts that method of the community at a disadvantage and leaves them less able to effectively contribute to the community. Not only that but it also promotes strife within the community, as the victim of theft and his allies within the community will wish to know who stole from him and seek to reclaim their property and perhaps punish the thief. Finally, should the thief be discovered, the thief likely faces some form of punishment to deter them from hindering other members of the community in the future.

Morality is born from society. Get fucked, AnCap.

Probably folded in to the mentally ill. Evidence has shown that even wealthy, upper-middle class that have fantastic resources in support, family, employment and life in general still kill themselves in overwhelming numbers, even when they face no discrimination.

I agree with your last statement, morality is born from society, where else can it come from? But it becomes far, far stronger when there is a blueprint for such, base it on the Constitution, NAP, Catholicism, something that the vast majority of people can agree on, otherwise it means nothing.

That's basically the default form of paladin with my group. We don't try to Fedora, it's just that we prefer the Don Quixote heroism and justice for all sort of play style. If we wanted to worship a deity we would play a cleric.

Actually, now that I say that, I've also played extremely religious wizards, fighters, and a rogue once. So maybe we just want to be snowflake paladins.

>looking forward to a rational argument about objective morality without needing a deity

>it's just another /pol/ack bitching about bathrooms

fug

>base it on the Constitution etc
Yeah, morality in the US is real strong...

>That info says nothing about suicide rates among trans individuals

See: mentally ill.

Actually, people take the constitution in the US much more seriously than the people of Europe take the principles their laws are founded on and I say that as a European.

Maybe the closest thing to the defining morals of secular Europe would be the European Convention on Human Rights - but even then, lots of countries are trying to fight against it.

>but claiming the moral high-ground on a deity that decides what is and isnt moral isnt exactly his most sound advice
The quote predates the widespread focus on the singular Abrahamic uber-god.

Go full Marcus Aurelius. Be a good dude, kick a lot of ass, and be righteous and wise as fuck.
There ain't much else to it. Don't need no gods to be a good man. If you need gods to keep you in line, you're not a good man.

>What do you think would of been the result of such happening in the 50s?

Ah yes, the superior objective morality of the 50s USA, where beating your wife was an accepted way to keep her in the kitchen, dirty non-white people were kept in their proper place, and a healthy dose communism paranoia made sure all those freedoms America was based on were worth little more than paper.

Good ol' 50s. Way better than the degenerate modern day. Checkmate atheists.

Would you say Artorias is a Paladin? He serves Gwyn but his own motivations are his own devotion to duty and honor.

Way to miss the point, fucko.

Good: to be desired or approved of.
So yeah do things that you find desirable. If you think people not starving to death is desirable than help feed the hungry. If you find the idea of murdering innocent people bad find ways to stop that.

It honestly confuses me how these "muh objective morality" faggots actually function. They make it sound like they are all sociopaths only held in check by the threat of eternal punishment.

Warcraft paladins generally follow a nontheistic religion that has much stronger beliefs in a universal force and a philosophy of improving yourself and the happiness of others to make the world an overall better place than any specific deity's preachings. Though Draenei worship of the Light has Naaru who are instruments of the Light's will, which is kind of like having angels but no god.

Not that Blizzard would ever focus on this, but their paladins and priests (of the Light) are probably the most well-known nontheistic paladins.

It's the anti-moralfags that were prevalent during the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Those were the days where it was popular to bitch about people who played paladins as asshole tyrants, about heroes who were good guys as horrific, brain-dead enforcers of a failed system and about any sort of stereotypical good-wins narrative as childish and naive.

Those were the days when A Game of Thrones was considered a fascinating and unique show full of depth and intrigue.

It's hard to tell either way, considering that everything we know about him, we only learn long after he fell to the Abyss, and from secondhand sources at that. We never actually hear his philosophy from his own mouth.

Yes, but uh, your D&D 5e question makes no sense without some setting context.

I'd say his actions speak for themselves. Sure he might have seen humans as garbage but so did the rest of the Big 4 but then you look at the fact that he went down into the Abyss to deal with Manus and sacrificed himself to save Sif

This is a good statement that I don't disagree with, but Marcus Aurelius never said it. A translation so far from the original that it's basically completely made-up.

Which I guess reinforces the point? It doesn't lose its value in my eyes even without a historical figure at its source. That's not a reason to discard reasoning that isn't dependent on coming from a particular source.

I played a cocky asshole ofa paladin who worshipped his subconscious. He was too dumb to realize that it was a deity pushing him towards an ultimate goal of self-betterment, and he became a paragon of good this way. Eventually. Played him like a cocky highschool football senior. Super fun

Why not though?

>on a deity that decides what is and isnt moral isnt exactly his most sound advice.
The roman pantheon didn't do this. Also, it's still perfectly sound advice even if there was a omnipotent god

You could get little Unknown Armies-y with it: paladins who tap into the metaphysical potential of the collective unconscious, like.

See pic related.

Euthyphro dilemma, bro.

Make him EUPHORIC

>objective vs subjective morality argument
here we go

>muh cultures
>muh cannibalism
>muh decline of civilization
Can we just cap it there?

>well yeah sure they embraced the warp but they certainly seem happier with themselves.

So, a knight.

Better that way. Objectivists always lose those but can not shut.

More like an actual historic paladin.

>They make it sound like they are all sociopaths only held in check by the threat of eternal punishment.
They are. After all, every "omnipotent" regime needs mad dogs held on a leash.

Fun fact: this quote isn't real.

It's not that it's not real, it's that it's probably a mistranslation. Which is not all that surprising, since people have been looking at this and translating it in different ways for centuries now. It's like how greatly the Bible can vary in wording on various passages.

But it is obviously based on a passage from the Second Book of Meditations - each edition of it that I can find on a quick google search has it.

Ah yes, the fifties, when the teen pregnancy rate was 64 percent higher and a quarter of men had been to a prostitute. You mean those fifties right?

Which in my experience comes off as you being either edgy or an idiot.

If they are all powerful, control the weather, land or even your whole life and effect where you go after you die, what's the downside of praying/woshipping?

The best reasoning I can come up with is cartoon villain levels of pride or hubris

>I can't poop if there might be a tranny somewhere!

How about you get a life and stop worrying about you mongloid. For all the right whines about hands off they're sure eager to control other people's bathroom habits.

>Without Objective morality we face problems of:
>Using fucking bathrooms
God Forbid they use they a stall when a urinal would suffice.

Because I have too much freetime, here's four examples of the actual quote from Meditations that I can find. Notice the differences between them - one even marks it as the 8th passage instead of the 11th. I'm not too surprised that someone, in attempting to put it into plain English and shorter text, might change the meaning considerably.

Samara from mass effect is a good example. I believe she believed in a pantheon of gods but her ultimate loyalty was in her book of law which she was charged with upholding. I am willing to bet several justicars would eventually grow to be athiests due to their long lifespans but in theory they would all remain "paladins" devoted to upholding their code of law.

>Those were the days when A Game of Thrones was considered a fascinating and unique show full of depth and intrigue
>2000s and early 2010s
A Game of Thrones tv show didn't first air until 2011 and its viewership didn't actually pick up until 2014. Even then its viewership is continuing to grow so it is hardly as though it was viewed as interesting only in the early years as it is more popular than ever.

>where beating your wife was an accepted way to keep her in the kitchen
What's wrong with this? Marriage is a contract in which the woman freely subjugates herself to the man in exchange for access to his social status and resources. This authorizes a man to use limited means of violence to keep her obedient (in the same way a parent forces his children to be obedient: with restraint and using violence as only a last resort). Compare our much more progressive modern age, where a married man can never demand a woman holds up her end of the bargain (obedience and respect) but the woman can demand the man fulfills his end of the bargain (finances) even after the marriage has ended.

>dirty non-white people were kept in their proper place
Looking at the crime rates among non-white Americans (barring Jews and Asians) as well as parellel examples such as the end of apartheid in South Africa, I'd say the attitude of the 50s isn't such a bad thing. This is also a time when racial differences were freely acknowledged rather than denied, and a well-behaved black person could still end up doing very well for himself. On his own merit, ie. without affirmative action.

>and a healthy dose communism paranoia
You mean a healthy dose of fear for an ideology that killed more people than the largest war humanity has ever seen, killed a quarter of the population of a South East Asian country in a fucking decade and was spreading like a wildfire with confirmed cells active in America and its European allies? Yeah, how paranoid! Just like those idiots in 1936 who believed appeasing Hitler was a bad idea. I mean, he only wants the Sudenteland gaiz.

>all those freedoms America was based on were worth little more than paper
I hope you're being ironic here. If anything such shit as the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay, the whole new anti-"fake news" surge and a whole slew of other things I can't be bothered to mention only made things worse.

you sound like a bit of a cockwomble, but that's a solid argument from what I can tell.

pol pls

Historically marriage has been as you described, but nowadays - I can't say where this started, but the idea's been building over the last few decades at least - marriage is considered an equal partnership. You wouldn't slap a business partner or fellow employee if you wanted them to work, do you? And the reason that children are treated the way they are is because they are still growing and aren't mentally developed enough to make their own decisions. Why would you treat a full grown woman like that?

The problem with apartheid especially was that race was a barrier. The various racial groups were at least theoretically supposed to do everything independently. In reality, the Africans group were stuck on 'homelands' (that weren't, but where what the British had designated as native lands and the Apartheid gov adopted) that were overpopulated for their size and no good for farming (due to overfarming by too many people in one area), and they were forced to travel to White areas just to work shitty jobs. And they were intentionally kept in this position, and considered no good for anything more than manual labor. Everyone's quick to accept the outstanding good ones, but a system like that makes sure the good ones never get a shot at a better life - they were never educated as well as Whites or Asians, they were always poor, and the government and society intentionally kept them in a lower position because they wanted to maintain their livelihood (and in fact, even poor Whites were often snubbed to keep the rich richer, but that's more a point about how corrupt the system was).

Is the system we have now perfect? No. It's not like your points are without any merit. Ideally, today's system would be preparing things for future growth and eventual equality, but so many people are trying to force it NOW, and that's honestly hurting the system as a whole. But going back to a system that never attempts to solve any of the problems at all is even worse.

>marriage is considered an equal partnership
Legally it certainly isn't. Like I said, legally the man's obligation still exists, and in such a way that it actually rewards disloyal women and punishes loyal men.
Nevertheless, even if it were the case that wouldn't mean the morals have changed but only the circumstances. The man isn't no longer allowed to slap his wife because it's wrongbadevil, but because the woman no longer subjugates herself to him (and in return he's no longer expected to make his own resources accessible to her). Either system is fine, as long as it's enforced consistently. Today we're in limbo where neither system is enforced consistently and men are punished for marrying (and shamed if they do not). That's objectively a worse situation than the old one.

As for apartheid/colonialism, the situation was indeed far from perfect, I'll be the first to admit that. The problem is that the modern situation is worse. A relative lack of justice has been replaced with utter lack of control and order, where we effectively let the inmates run the asylum. I agree with you that a system geared towards preparation for future growth and eventual equality would be ideal, but such a system would require colonialism to continue for at least two or three more centuries if not more. A very controversial thing, to say the least.

Since the 1950s, the U.S. teen birthrate has declined while the proportion of teen births that are nonmarital has increased.

It's easy to skew statistics without proper evaluation and consideration of why, but the way you post makes me think you're not the type of person to worry about deep thought.

Ilmater: Hey everyone, he's at it again!

Gods of every alignment gather at the Divine Breakroom, watching through an omniscreen TV

Cyric: This gonna be good.
Waukeen: Okay guys, I got 1:20 on the may-I-be-struck-with-lightning and 1:10 on the instant transformation!
Talos: Shut up guys, he's starting.

Meanwhile, in front of a city temple:
Cleric: I TELL YOU, THERE ARE NO GODS. IF THAT WERE SO, THIS VERY STONE THAT I AM HOLDING WOULD NOT TURN INTO...

Gods: (chanting) Bread! Bread! Bread! Bread! Bread! Bread!

Cleric: ...BREAD!

Divine whoops all around

Kelemvor: Alright, Umberlee, pay up.
Umberlee: Fuck. He never turns stones into fish...
Kelemvor: Not my fault you made a bad bet. Anyway, whose turn is it?
Tyr: Oh, cool. It's Loviatar's turn.
Loviatar: Yeeeessss!

Suddenly, the stone on the cleric's hand turns into bread, wrapped in thorny branches.

Cleric: AAAAGH! (Drops the bread)

Spectators: It is a sign of Loviatar! All hail Lady Loviatar!

Cleric: YOU IDIOTS! THAT WAS...uh...CLEARLY A DUST-COVERED PIECE OF...er...THORNBREAD! THAT'S RIGHT, THORNBREAD! A PERFECTLY MAN-MADE, NOT-DIVINE MEAL FOR A MASOCHIST! STOP WORSHIPPING!

Meanwhile, the gods are having the time of their lives.

>while the proportion of teen births that are nonmarital has increased.
>literal shotgun weddings make it ok
>stop skewing things user!

>Looking at the crime rates among non-white Americans (barring Jews and Asians) as well as parellel examples such as the end of apartheid in South Africa, I'd say the attitude of the 50s isn't such a bad thing. This is also a time when racial differences were freely acknowledged rather than denied, and a well-behaved black person could still end up doing very well for himself. On his own merit, ie. without affirmative action.

You know this has got me wondering the difference in crime rates between the economic classes

Or perhaps you have no gods because none will have you.

If they are worthy of worship, but I am unworthy to worship them, my prayers are blasphemy.

Make a code, stick to the code.
Deities just make popular codes.

Yeah I do. I find that the law is all that matters and worshiping a deity would just cloud my judgment.