>Hume is also susceptible to his own problem If one gave as one's reason for seeking truth "humans sometimes happen to seek truth" you are correct, this would

>Hume is also susceptible to his own problem If one gave as one's reason for seeking truth "humans sometimes happen to seek truth" you are correct, this would be an invalid reason because of the Is-Ought limitation. That cannot be the reason one seeks truth. >you think what atheists reason about the universe doesn't come from something more...I call it a feeling of existential validity. I believe also that my instinctual feelings come from something beyond, something greater, a higher order, whatever you want to call it but it's far beyond what we have knowledge of Discussing this issue is tricky because ultimately, being a Christian, I don't disagree with your experience in which you intuit something greater or with Hume's pinning of essences on a Supreme Being or with almost every person of every belief system I have ever met who feels very deeply something is actually going on here and I might refer to this universal experience as the supernatural existential or desiderium naturale. Ultimately I am not arguing against morals actually existing and so don't mean to put down this feeling you have, only let you know what is required for such a feeling to not to be dismissed as delusion. Strict Empiricism cannot account for it and must reject it but you, I, and even Sam Harris (cf. http://www.newsweek.com/rationalist-sam-harris-believes-god-73859 http://www.newsweek.com/rationalist-sam-harris-believes-god-... ) seem to reject this Empiricism. The Empiricist says your feelings here are a delusion but I'm saying they are not--quite the opposite. >mentioning of suffering, beauty, love The inclusion of terms like beauty and love is not at all illogical. What the "Is-Ought" Facts-Values gap shows us is that nothing is truly Immoral unless it holds such a quality objectively. In other words, unless murder objectively holds the quality:'immoral', when an individual says "Murder is Wrong" the meaning of that sentence is nothing more than "I dislike murder" -- a subjective opinion. The limitation is extended not only to 'shoulds' but to values generally. That is, we see the difficulty in locating 'beauty'. A sunset is not truly beautiful unless something about it objectively holds the quality:'beautiful'. If this is not the case, when an individual says "that sunset is beautiful"—even if 99% of humans agree with him (ad populum)—the meaning of that sentence is nothing more than "I like this sunset" -- another subjective opinion. In subjectivism, no one can ever be truly wrong about any value statement (what is moral, what has beauty, what deserves value/love) and so a sunset carries the same objectively neutral quality as excrement. Only if conditions are endowed with objective/mind-independent values, which cannot be located using empiricism, can something be understood to truly be beautiful or worth loving. >If life is good and meant to be A oft-assumed contingent that Empiricists do not have evidence for. And that pure Reason does not insist upon. As Hume writes "It is not contrary to Reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger".