I think this conversation would have been more interesting if they showed additional shots of the hot chick at the end.
The Financial Times lady was presenting the fallacy of consequence. Just because some religions allow some people to do good things some of the time does not make their beliefs true. Hamas is the #1 provider of social services to their community.
Additionally, the Tamil Tigers operate within the Sri Lankan Liberation movement that began as a Hindu response to Protestant missionaries. To say it is not rooted in Hinduism simply because of its current Marxism is to deny its historical roots.
As an atheist, ask yourself how aggravating it is to hear religious people said that you cannot be moral without God.
As a theist, ask yourself how aggravating it is to hear that you have to have religious motivation in order to commit the most hideous of atrocities.
To be frank, it is incredibly naïve to think that only the religious can be good and that only the religious can be bad.
Perhaps there is no moral good that we can do with religion that we could not do without it. But isn’t it equally the case that one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities?
I suppose one might ask whether or not abandoning religion would insulate one from bad behavior. (Which seems to be at large part of the message of the "New Atheists")
And it seems abundantly clear to me that neither is this the case now or in the past
Mitero, Hitchens has a nice line about this where he says something like while he's not sure that religion can make a bad person do good things, he is sure that it can make a good person do unspeakable things (suicide bombings, genocide, etc.).
I think that the new Atheists are fairly consistent on asking for rationality about how we approach moral issues. What naturalists like me think is that what good we can find in a specific religion is common to virtually all religions (the golden rule, etc.), while there are vestigial elements that are often dangerous (usually those associated with the need for authority from a controlling group, such as harsh treatment for those who disobey, and a dehumanizing cruelty for those not included in that religion's sphere of adherents).
I do agree with you that some who criticize the crimes of religious adherents risk estranging those who fear the loss of the morality on which we basically all agree.
I think the message of the new atheists is that challenging superstitions with reason can lead to a more effective social structure and, the social taboo which insulates religion from critical analysis should be challenged to accomplish the advance of reason.
In one of his books C. S. Lewis says, “If the Divine calling does not make men better, it will certainly make them worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.”
Who could argue?
But what does being able to show that the, “vestigial elements (of religion) are often dangerous” prove other than just that?
Couldn’t it be the case that someone like Torquemada was in fact a miserable ass and Christ still rose from the dead?
You rightly assume the fallacy of consequence when one takes historical horrors as argument alone for the dubios nature of the reurrection but, your illustration can work both ways.
Does the good deeds done by those in the name of Christ make the christian story true?
Muslims do good deeds and bad deeds, does either consequence in your mind make the stories of Mohammad true?
Mormons do amazingly good deeds and some fundamental LDS members do awful deeds, does that mean you believe that Joseph Smith was given golden plates by the angel Moroni?
Until you apply the same skepticism one would apply to a faith not their own to your given faith, you have not fully analyzed the question at hand.
Doing bad or good in the name of a certain religion does not make the truth claims of the person committing those acts true.
However, the unquestioned authority of a properly basic truth rooted in a personally revealed invisible relationship makes challenging that authority with reason impossible.
See John Calvin's treatment of Michael Servetus or Galileo's options when the Inquisition didn't like his theory of heliocentricity.
People of faith say their faith does not need to be subject to the kind of inquiry the subject other disciplines too because, they say, supernaturalism is beyond human reason.
I don’t actually agree that bad religious men are worse than other (non-religious) sociopaths – I think bad is bad. The complaint among the irreligious are of those instances where those who would otherwise follow their own instincts and rationality for group behavior follow a counter-intuitive dictate concocted by some ancient religion – stoning some poor woman, depriving children of medical assistance, blowing up innocents, etc. I don’t think all of those who participate in these crimes are born sociopaths, and I think it would be foolish to deny that a morality prescribed by their religion is the intrinsic problem in those instances.
What I think it demonstrates, since you asked, is that we should be able to agree that religious morality can sometimes be destructive. And that it should be possible for a modern society to discuss how to work towards reducing the impacts of these dangerous, vestigial beliefs that we’ve inherited from our ancestors. Religious evolution is one answer, and secular, rational consensus that seeks to entirely phase out morality from superstition is another. It’s a complicated, thorny issue, one that shouldn’t be solved by edict or overnight, but I think it’s reasonable for naturalists like me to look towards phasing out speculation about the supernatural as part of the conversation about what we ought and ought not do to one another.
Mitero: “Couldn’t it be the case that someone like Torquemada was in fact a miserable ass and Christ still rose from the dead?”
Well, the two are completely separate issues, and I agree that joining them together is illogical. Along that line, though, I don’t see how an understand of Christian theology could make me more moral. I think that atonement is immoral, for instance. Which is one reason that, were I to be a Christian, I would be a moral realist.
mitero said..."Perhaps there is no moral good that we can do with religion that we could not do without it. But isn’t it equally the case that one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities?"
Mitero i think its more about our upbringing society and social situations etc, that help shape and form who we will become.
And yes i agree with you, one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities.
But i think maybe you miss a point,can it be so helpful to societies that we actually have religious written books that faith groups follow, that suggest a need to shun and segregate and separate from certain groups of people?.Is it so healthy for our societies that the many religious books with bigotry claim their beliefs of gods as being above the gods of others?.
I agree one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities,but i dont think religion has really been so helpful as a role model.Finding two wrongs dont make anything right/ok ,i admit our societies are full of problems and its not been only religious folk involved in it.
But religion has played a big part of long being the (base role models) in our societies!.
So should we really expect our societies would have likely become so all inclusive,together,thoughtful of each others etc ....When many divisive bigoted religious faiths have long been around playing big part in our societies while suggesting needs of shunning,separation, segregation, and despising other peoples false gods etc.
With them long being the (base role models) of our societies and having long torn human societies apart,teaching such disrespect and even dislike of certain folks with differences to themselves.
With all these bigoted separatist type religious base role models arguing and dividing shaping our societies,for what reason then should we really expect HUMANS of our modern societies should likely now have grown to have many folks who ALL respect each other and not murder or steal or rape etc?.
Should we really expect to have such a all inclusive loving and caring human society,when the base role model faiths have long displayed has often been that of thoughtlessness division and attitudes of disrespect towards certain people who are not within your own particular group?.
Personally i cant see how it was really so helpful.I cant see how we should have expected any less than that what we now see we actually have.Societies where there is obvious attitudes that all to often lack respect of each other,where people will easily steal,hate,bash,rape or even murder often without a care or even giving it a second thought.
You are correct mitero .."one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities"
But i suggest much about religion has helped humans be more likely to commit the unspeakable atrocities we see.
A reply to much of what you said would, I’m afraid, only cause us to go around in circles.
But you do bring up a couple of new points that I would at least like to offer at.
1. Understanding Christian theology will not make you more moral.
I could not agree more. In his essay entitled, On Ethics, C. S. Lewis says, “A Christian who understands his own religion laughs when unbelievers expect to trouble him by the assertion that Jesus utter no command which had not been anticipated by the Rabbis - few, indeed, which cannot be paralleled in classical, ancient Egyptian, Ninevite, Babylonian, or Chinese texts. Our faith is not pinned on a crank.”
I would ask your Christian friends who claim this, how they make sense of Jesus’ call to repentance, if indeed recognition of the Christian ethic is essential to our understanding morality (right and wrong). Because there was no Christian ethic when the call was made.
2. Atonement is immoral.
In order for this statement to have objective meaning, morality must be objective. But I am not sure that this can be proven, can it? At least not proven in the way we could prove that the universe is expanding, for example. No atheist that I know of denies the expansion of the universe, but many deny objective moral values. So for your statement to have objective meaning you must show that objective moral values exist. Otherwise you are merely giving your opinion.
Do you believe reality (you can define that for me) intends for us to behave in certain ways that are in accord with an objection set of values? Are we free to rebel?
If so, how does it do this and why? And why doesn’t it behave in those ways?
This is to name a reconstruction of The Jesus Tradition as a whole which takes account of the anacronistic character of the term "Christian". It is developed on sufficient quotes from the works of Schubert Ogden, James M. Robinson and Hans Dieter Betz to make the claim that it reflects their thought. It is in the form of a letter to R. Josph Hoffmann. I believe that it connects the crucial dots necessary to reconstruct a creible image of the real Jesus. Its basic premis: none of the writhings of the NT is reliable Scriptural witness to Jesus. This Blog might find it to be of interst. It is located as 10 Comments to the blog: The New Oxonie, the Hoffmann essay entitled: The Importance of the Historical Jesus.
Do you believe it is morally wrong for an innocent person to suffer punishment for the guilty? And to have this punishment be designed so that the punished innocent atones for the admitted guilty?
I think I would like to say two things in response.
1. I think we would agree that there is a difference between something being (without qualification) morally wrong and objectively wrong.
Surely you know naturalists who do not believe that morally is objective. In other cases the naturalists will usually demand HARD evidence and yet there are plenty of naturalists who reject objective moral values.
So my question to you is, if it is objectively wrong to punish innocent people for the admitted guilty, why do so many naturalists not see this?
2. The Christian could respond, “Yes, it is morally wrong for the innocent to suffer punishment for the guilty.” Many Christians would in fact say this. C. S. Lewis for example, rejects penal substitution. I personally would say that the “what” is essential to Christianity, but that the “how” is not. Christ’s death has satisfied our debt, how it did that is a debate for others.
Why does an innocent need to die to fulfill a debt?
As an atheist I can see it is morally wrong for any system to call "good" the death of an innocent to satisfy either guilt or a debt.
The first part of your answer I didn't understand.
Why do you always appeal to the authority of CS Lewis?
I've read Lewis, he should have stuck to Medieval literature. His theology and philosophy are simple-minded and pretty much psychological evidence of one who survived the Luftwaffe. Nothing more.
One fine sunny morning, the irish priest took a walk in the local forest. He had been walking by the small stream when he noticed a sad, sad looking frog sitting on a toadstool.
"What's wrong with you?" said the irish priest.
"Well," said the frog, "the reason I am so sad on this fine day is because I wasn't always a frog."
"Really!" said the irish priest. "Can you explain!"
"Once upon a time I was an 11 year old Choir boy at the local church. I too was walking through this forest when I was confronted by the wicked witch of the forest. 'Let me pass!' I yelled, but to no avail. She called me a cheeky little boy and with a flash of her wand, turned me into this frog you see before you."
"That's an incredible story." said the irish priest. "Is there no way of reversing this spell that the witch has cast upon you?."
"Yes" said the frog, "It is said, that if a nice kind person would pick me up, take me home, give me food & Warmth and with a good nights sleep would wake up a boy once again."
"Today's your lucky day!" said the irish priest, and picked up the frog and took him home. The irish priest gave the frog lots of food, placed him by the fire and at bedtime put the frog on the pillow beside him. When the irish priest awoke, he saw the 11-year-old Choirboy beside him in bed,
And that my lord is the case for the Defense....... "
This story happened a while ago in Dublin, and even though it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock tale, its said to be true!
Chuck O'Connor, a Dublin University student, was on the side of the road hitchhiking on a very dark night and in the midst of a big storm.
The night was rolling on and no car went by. The storm was so strong he could hardly see a few feet ahead of him. Suddenly, he saw a car slowly coming towards him and stopped. Chuck, desperate for shelter and without thinking about it, got into the car and closed the door.. only to realise there was nobody behind the wheel and the engine wasn't on
The car started moving slowly. Chuck looked at the road ahead and saw a bend approaching. Scared, he started to pray, begging for his life. Then, just before the car hit the bend, a hand appeared out of nowhere through the window and turned the wheel. Chuck, paralysed with terror, watched as the hand came through the window, but never touched or harmed him.
Shortly thereafter Chuck saw the lights of a pub appear down the road, so, gathering strength, he jumped out of the car and ran to it. Wet and out of breath, he rushed inside and started telling everybody about the horrible experience he had just had.
A silence enveloped the pub when everybody realised he was crying and.... wasn't drunk.
Suddenly, the door opened, and two other people walked in from the dark and stormy night. They, like Chuck, were also soaked and out of breath. Looking around, and seeing Chuck O'Connor sobbing at the bar, one said to the other...
'Look Paddy.....there's that fucking idiot that got in the car while we were pushing it!'
O'Connor approached Mulligan's bar. On the step outside he was accosted by a nun, Sister Mary, who said:
"Surely a fine man like yourself is not going into this den of iniquity? Surely you're not going to waste your hard-earned cash on the devil's brew. Why don't you go home and feed and clothe your wife and children?"
"Hang on, Sister," spluttered O'Connor. "How can you condemn alcohol out of hand? Surely it's wrong to form such a rash judgement when you've never tasted the stuff?"
"Very well," said Sister Marie. I'll taste it just to prove my point. Obviously I can't go into the pub, so why don't you bring me some gin. Oh, and just to camouflage my intent, maybe you should bring it in a cup not a glass!"
"OK," said O'Connor and into the bar he breezed.
"I'll have a large gin," he said to the barman. "And can you put it in a cup?"
"My God," said the barman, "that nun's not outside again is she?"
I apologize if you thought that I avoided your question.
How did Jesus fulfill the debt? I don’t know.
Why does an innocent need to die to fulfill a debt? I don’t know.
I do not believe that one needs to know HOW or WHY bananas are good for you in order to know that they are.
I could be wrong here, but I am not sure that the Christian is committed to calling the death of Jesus “good.” But surely there can be instances where an innocent dies in the place of the guilty that in hindsight ultimately produced good.
The first part of my answer simply says that to merely call something good or bad does not make it so. If right and wrong are not objective, then who cares what you or I think about atonement.(You may not have understood because I accidently typed morally is objective, instead of morality is objective. I apologize)
Is there HARD evidence that objective moral values exists? And if so, why don’t all naturalists see it?
The obnoxious shot that you took at Lewis was rather childish. It was actually an insult to me. Not because I like Lewis so much, but because your comment implies that any sophisticated thinker should spot Lewis’foolishness from a mile off.
Ferguson the blacksmith came in with a badly damaged foot. The doctor was surprised, for Ferguson was a careful man. "What happened to you, Paddy?" he asked. "Well, thirty-three years ago I was a young apprentice with Twomey of Ballinanaspickbuidhe......"
"But about your foot.....?" "This is about me foot. Twomey had a daughter and your eyes could gaze on her like the way a bullock would eat good grass. The first night I was there she came in when I was in bed and asked if I was comfortable and if I wanted anything and I said I didn't. The next night she came in when I was in bed and she wearing her nightdress and she asked me if there was any single thing she could get me or do for me and I told her I was as comfortable as a bug in a rug.
"The next night she came in and the girl hadn't a thing on her and she asked me if she could do anything for me and not wanting to keep her standing in the cold and she without a shift I said there was nothing."
"What has that got to do with your foot, Ferguson?" asked the doctor impatiently. "Sure it was only this morning that I finally thought of what she meant and I was so annoyed with meself that I threw me ten-pound hammer against the wall and it rebounded and broke me ankle."
Paddy died in a fire and was burnt pretty badly. So the morgue needed someone to identify the body. His two best friends, Seamus and Sean, were sent for. Seamus went in and the mortician pulled back the sheet.
Seamus said "Yup, he's burnt pretty bad. Roll him over".
So the mortician rolled him over. Seamus looked and said "Nope, it ain't Paddy."
The mortician thought that was rather strange and then he brought Sean in to identify the body.
Sean took a look at him and said, "Yup, he's burnt real bad, roll him over."
The mortician rolled him over and Sean looked down and said, "No, it ain't Paddy."
The mortician asked, "How can you tell?"
Sean said, "Well, Paddy had two arseholes."
"What? He had two arseholes?" asked the mortician.
"Yup, everyone knew he had two arseholes. Every time we went into town, folks would say, 'Here comes Paddy with them two arseholes....'"
As soon as she had finished parochial school, a bright young girl named Bridget shook the dust of Ireland off her shoes and made her way to New York where before long, she became a successful performer in show business. Eventually she returned to her home town for a visit and on a Saturday night went to confession in the church which she had always attended as a child. In the confessional Father Sullivan recognized her and began asking her about her work. She explained that she was an acrobatic dancer, and he wanted to know what that meant. She said she would be happy to show him the kind of thing she did on stage.
She stepped out of the confessional and within sight of Father Sullivan, she went into a series of cartwheels, leaping splits, handsprings and backflips. Kneeling near the confessional, waiting their turn, were two old ladies. They witnessed Bridget's acrobatics with wide eyes, and one said to the other: "Will you just look at the penance Father Sullivan is givin' out this night, and me without me knickers on!"
I think Lewis is a good literature scholar but his religious perspective is heavily influenced by WWII, thus the war imagery which seems too black and white.
My questions regarding the crucifixion assume objective morality. Objectively, how is murdering an innocent for the crimes of the guilty "good"? Do you think it is?
I respect your comment about Lewis and I appreciate the manner with which it was delivered, thanks.
Just a note, the WWII imagery is found quite a bit in Mere Christianity. These (as I am sure you are aware) were BBC broadcasts given in fifteen minute segments. Lewis was “simpleminded” because he was addressing the normal, ordinary citizens of Britain. He used the war imaginary to allow his hearers to picture his ideas, and it makes sense that he would choose war images since Britain was in a war.
If you are interested (I doubt you are, since your mind seems to be made up about Lewis) he did give a highly sophisticated account of objective moral values at the Riddell Memorial Lectures, which was published in book form as, The Abolition of Man. Lewis appeals to reason and not to religion throughout these lectures.
To answer your question, how is murdering an innocent for the crimes of the guilty "good"? I don’t see how it could be. I am not sure how someone who accepts the theory of penal substitution would respond, but I do not accept this theory and am therefore not committed to the belief that God “murdered” an innocent for those who are guilty. It may surprise you to know that I also reject Lewis’preferred theory of atonement.
Will do Mitero but fair warning, I am not an expert on naturalism nor claim to be. I am read and writing this on my smart phone. I will answer further when I get to my computer. Thanks.
Sorry about the delay in responding - I was away and haven't had access to a computer for a couple of days.
Mitero: “Atonement is immoral. In order for this statement to have objective meaning, morality must be objective. But I am not sure that this can be proven, can it?”
I don’t have a well-thought out position on morality, but I don’t know that it’s required that morality must be objective for something to be immoral.
I also think that when you have a morality defined by all parties to that morality, the morality so defined is de facto objective. Systems of morality, for instance, that are defined for all members of a society prior to knowing what one’s role will be in that society, it seems to me, would be objective. I don’t think there would be a problem calling this morality objective, and under any system I can imagine flowing from that scenario I believe that atonement would be immoral (destructive).
Mitero: “No atheist that I know of denies the expansion of the universe, but many deny objective moral values. So for your statement to have objective meaning you must show that objective moral values exist.”
I don’t think its troublesome for (atheist) moral relativists to say that atonement is immoral (subjectively), and for those who construct their view of morality as I described above to call atonement objectively immoral. Either way, I think that both sides would conclude that atonement is immoral. It appears to me that the only system whereby atonement is widely considered moral is by theists who embrace the second horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.
Mitero: “Otherwise you are merely giving your opinion.”
Well, this only matters if you demand that morality be objective, and I think that many could reasonably disagree with you there.
Mitero: “Do you believe reality (you can define that for me) intends for us to behave in certain ways that are in accord with an objection set of values? “
I am not sure if I understand this question. It seems like a meta-ethics question. But I am confused by the language “reality intends for us.” I think if I rephrased the question like this, “Do you believe that reality intends for us to behave in a certain way that are in accord with the laws of physics?” you may understand my confusion. Maybe it’s not clear to you because you are a theist, but my naturalist preconceptions confine my mind to brute facts where maybe theist minds looks for metaphysical intent?
Mitero: “Are we free to rebel? If so, how does it do this and why? And why doesn’t it behave in those ways?”
Not sure what the “it” refers to in your second and third sentence above so I am loath to provide an answer.
I will say that I am not troubled by free will being perhaps an illusion because I think whether it is or not makes no difference to me, in the same way that whether or not reality exists as I perceive it or I am a brain in a vat makes no practical difference to me. I “know” that I make choices, and whether or not those choices were inevitable is a separate, and perhaps unresolvable, issue.
Thank you for your sincere answers, and of course taking time to respond.
I only have time for a couple of thoughts, so my reply or lack thereof is no indication that I don’t find your points interesting.
“When you have a morality defined by all parties to that morality, the morality so defined is de facto objective.”
I am not sure I follow you here. Are you then saying that because all the Nazi’s signed on to their idea that the extermination of Jews, gypsies, etc. was good for humanity, that therefore it is objectively good?
I must be misunderstanding you.
“Maybe it’s not clear to you because you are a theist, but my naturalist preconceptions confine my mind to brute facts where maybe theist minds looks for metaphysical intent?”
I mention this because of your use of the word “ought” in a previous post. This is confusing to me granting naturalism. To me it is like saying, the earth “ought” to be the third plant from the sun. It makes more sense (to me at least) to say that the earth “is” the third planet from the sun. So I guess the question is, why is it that you “ought” to do certain things if you are governed strictly by the same physical laws that the solar system is?
“I “know” that I make choices”
What is the difference between saying I am not troubled that god may be an illusion because I know god exists and saying I am not troubled that free-will may be an illusion because I know I make choices?
I have no doubt that you are a great guy and you have challenged me in this exchange. Above all, you are respectful and I sincerely appreciate that. No name calling and no cheap shots. Thanks.
I say this because I spend more time on these boards than I ought (I couldn’t resist) and may not reply to your response, but I will surely read it if you chose to leave one.
Me: “When you have a morality defined by all parties to that morality, the morality so defined is de facto objective.” Mitero: “I am not sure I follow you here. Are you then saying that because all the Nazi’s signed on to their idea that the extermination of Jews, gypsies, etc. was good for humanity, that therefore it is objectively good? I must be misunderstanding you.”
Thanks for the benefit of the doubt -- I was not very clear.
My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality. In that world, Nazism would be immoral, because those prescribing genocide of the Jews, gypsies, handicapped, free-thinkers, etc. might find themselves in the subjugated roles. Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped. Etc. On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc. This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances, and that this does not require a god.
Me: “Maybe it’s not clear to you because you are a theist, but my naturalist preconceptions confine my mind to brute facts where maybe theist minds looks for metaphysical intent?” Mitero: “I mention this because of your use of the word “ought” in a previous post. This is confusing to me granting naturalism. To me it is like saying, the earth “ought” to be the third plant from the sun. It makes more sense (to me at least) to say that the earth “is” the third planet from the sun. So I guess the question is, why is it that you “ought” to do certain things if you are governed strictly by the same physical laws that the solar system is?”
I think this question implies that I am robotic, that I don’t have desires. But I do. And since it is a brute fact of my existence that I do have desires, it only makes sense that I would adopt behavior that would allow me to satisfy most of my desires while doing the least to thwart the desires of others. The balance of these interests, and my ability to cooperate and increase the satisfaction of my desires by helping others satisfy theirs, provides me with the rationale I need for morality, and the “oughts” that some find to be so elusive without a god-grounded morality.
Me: “I “know” that I make choices” Mitero: “What is the difference between saying I am not troubled that god may be an illusion because I know god exists and saying I am not troubled that free-will may be an illusion because I know I make choices?”
The difference is epistemological, in that my thoughts are internal and their perception is knowable only by me (subjective), but God is external and presumably knowable by everyone in all circumstances (objective).
Mitero: “Thanks. I say this because I spend more time on these boards than I ought (I couldn’t resist) and may not reply to your response, but I will surely read it if you chose to leave one. All the best to you my man.”
I have enjoyed the conversation as well. All the best to you.
If you don't mind, I feel that Tony has a better handle on the philosophy of morality than I so, I'd like to observe your conversation. Speaking out with a fully honed perspective on this topic would be pretentious and premature. Thanks.
I'm sorry, but merely saying that "religious people do bad things" ISN'T an argument. Yes, a lot of crap has been done in the name of religion. But...so what??
What does that prove?
Can't a theist say the SAME thing to the atheist? "Hey, millions of people died because of atheism. Therefore, atheism is wrong and evil!" (I mean, Darwinian philosophies have brought about some pretty fun things, huh?)
What hasn't been presented yet is any convincing proofs that morality CAN actually exist apart from a morality "giver" or "source". It has to come from somewhere, right?
What makes all the atrocities committed by ANYONE (including you and me) "atrocious" in the first place?
"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, Ch. 6)
I don't think what christians see is that those of us who once were passionate believers (raises hand) had to practice willful ignorance towards christian theology if we were to accept the religion and god-concept therein as "good".
When I started questioning the "goodness" of my just desserts as crucifixion for "being" and the primary driver of christian delight being obedience to a being simply because that being made them, regardless what that being can and will do with his creation, I started seeing that what is defined as "good" in christianity would be defined as "totalitarian abuse absent the rule of law" everywhere else. It is an ideology every "god-fearing" american opposed when facing down Nazi Germany or the USSR.
The question is, how can giving glory to a being who allows children to suffer and mandates genocide (documented in His word) be a good life purpose?
Logic demands non-contradictiona and calling the character of god "good" despite his dependence on wrath indicates an illogical position.
I like John's blog so much because he, and folks like you, add such an interesting perspective to these discussions. (Although I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church, I wouldn't count myself as ever having been among the true believers.)
I do think it's interesting how theists often seem to think that morality is their ace in the hole, when I find it so obviously problematic (because of contradictions, the Euthyphro dilemma, etc.). But that's why we should all keep having these conversations.
I’m amazed at how frequently you guys have left comments on this post! Very impressive I must say. I’m generally unable to keep up with the pace of most discussion boards, but I do like them and enjoy dialoging with others who assert different ideas. I agree with the last comment Tony made “…we should all keep having these conversations.”
Tony…thanks for the “logic-coaching” by the way:) I’ll try to rephrase things a bit, and hopefully be rewarded with a cogent response versus a whistle and yellow card.
To be simple, let me hone in on one point. Morality.
First, what I’m NOT claiming here is any notion that religious people are somehow morally superior to anyone else. Also, I’m not claiming that Christians (specifically) have some kind of advanced moral-DNA.
I’m just acknowledging, like you (Chuck and Tony) have, that morality, ethics, right, wrong, good and evil DO in fact EXIST. Chuck, you know something is definitely WRONG when children suffer, and I agree. We all want to see justice, don’t we?
What I hear from you Chuck is that you do have and do experience an intrinsic sense of “good.” And I don’t doubt that you’re a great guy and probably considered by your friends to be morally “good”. My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized.
So my question is: What is your morality GROUNDED IN, if not a Transcendent Lawmaker? What is it’s adequate cause?
Tony, When applied to Christianity, “Euthyphro’s Dilemma” distorts the Biblical view of God. (straw man?) How well do you know Biblical Theology, specifically when it comes to the Nature of God?
iheckdude: “I’m just acknowledging, like you (Chuck and Tony) have, that morality, ethics, right, wrong, good and evil DO in fact EXIST.”
To be clear, I don’t have a firm position on moral realism. I would certainly agree that we have a moral sense, that we are built to perceive (and develop) morality.
iheckdude: “What is your morality GROUNDED IN, if not a Transcendent Lawmaker? What is it’s adequate cause?”
You asked this question to Chuck, but I am curious what you think might be wrong with my source for morality that I tried describing above, now quoted below:
Me: “My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality. In that world, Nazism would be immoral, because those prescribing genocide of the Jews, gypsies, handicapped, free-thinkers, etc. might find themselves in the subjugated roles. Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped. Etc. On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc. This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances, and that this does not require a god.”
iheckdude: “When applied to Christianity, “Euthyphro’s Dilemma” distorts the Biblical view of God. (straw man?) How well do you know Biblical Theology, specifically when it comes to the Nature of God?”
I am curious how the ED distorts the biblical view of God.
I was raised in a Christian church, took religion classes, a little philosophy, and a I participate in these kinds of discussions. So, a little, but I have never studied it with real interest.
U: “My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality.”
Me: Objective morality cannot be defined, namely because we are the ones defining it (the second horn of Euthyphro’s Dilemma), which therefore implies that we could have defined it differently. If all parties were to agree that rape was ok, knowing beforehand that they might be the victim, this would not make rape ok, this is what I mean by objective.
As difficult as it is for us to conceive of such a society, we have reasonable people in our society that find it difficult to conceive of abortion as not being immoral. And yet we live in a society that defines it as ok, or at least not immoral. How would your vote be cast on the issue of abortion? You said, “Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped.” Would abortion be immoral because, “one could find oneself in the role of the aborted?”
U: “I would adopt behavior that would allow me to satisfy most of my desires while doing the least to thwart the desires of others.”
Me: The defining of “I” must inevitably be done in terms of activity in the brain. You have no control over your brain activity, because “you” are brain activity. Even if it could be shown that different parts of the brain are in conflict, there is no “you” urging one on and trying to suppress the others. This would require something more than brain activity. So I must still contend that on a strictly naturalistic worldview, we are in a real sense, “robotic.” Stealing in words like I, you, my, etc. doesn’t help unless you define in physical terms what they mean and how it is they break free of the physical process.
U: “The difference is epistemological, in that my thoughts are internal and their perception is knowable only by me (subjective), but God is external and presumably knowable by everyone in all circumstances (objective).”
Me: The point is not a matter of epistemology, but rather of a logical absurdity. If at once we admit that free will is an illusion, how do we logically state that we “actually” make choices? The statement, “I make choices” seems to lose all meaning if we allow that free will is an illusion. To say that, “the brain acts in this or that way,” does not equal (to me), “I make choices.”
You said, "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized."
I don't understand this logic. God exists because I recognize right and wrong and therefore God exists. It seems circular.
My morality has consistently shifted throughout my life and is not a fixed thing. It changes as my understanding of reality changes. When I was Roman Catholic I thought the morally right thing to do when weighed down with guilt was to practice the Sacrament of Penance. When a nominal Buddhist I thought morality consisted of meditating to detach from desire and limit suffering. As a Calvinist Christian I thought morality was rooted in my willingness to make my life purpose a glorification of the biblical god, both in the character of the wrathful Yawheh and the peaceful god-man Jesus. This incoherence nearly drove me insane.
Much of what I defined as "morality" was really just a means towards "popularity" where "god" was my familiar community. It hasn't been consistent so, any "Law" given by a "Law-giver" has been subject to capricious experience.
I do have a basic sense of morality rooted in weighing my pleasure-seeking desires against how those desires might thwart future pleasure-seeking desires. I have recognized the supernaturalism you endorse as circular logic and "magical thinking". It seems nothing more than a crutch I thought I needed because I believed myself broken and if I tried to stand on my own, I would collapse. Claiming atheism and practicing critical thinking have made me realize that I do not need any gods to be good. I am gradually learning the philosophy of morality by considering things like Libertarian Freewill (does it really exist?); meta-ethics; and a particular form of moral philosophy known as desirism (loosely defined above).
I firmly reject the biblical definition of morality and think christian theology an evil epistemology where one must empower self-hatred to generate a numinous experience as evidence that he or she is good.
But, I will entertain your premise a bit when you say, "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized."
What God is the law-giver?
Remember, I was a Calvinist who adhered to biblical inerrancy so, I know a little bible. An alter call will not be well-received.
Use some logic and make a case for the authoratarian god who demands his creation give him glory as the source of morality.
If you are saying that the biblical god is the law-giver of morality than by Jewish bible standards genocide is moral and by Christian bible standards hating one's family and one's life is moral.
Those things do not fit within either my instinctive nor my fledgling-philosophical moral understanding.
I'm willing to listen to how you support this argument, "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized," without special pleading, begging the question or other forms of circularity.
Mitero: “Objective morality cannot be defined, namely because we are the ones defining it (the second horn of Euthyphro’s Dilemma), which therefore implies that we could have defined it differently.”
Yes, I see your point here but your question was how could I make a moral judgment about, say, atonement, and I think that the system to which I subscribe allows me to make that judgment in a way that is not entirely subjective, either.
But I believe I can ask you the same kind of question and that you face a similar problem (below):
Mitero: “If all parties were to agree that rape was ok, knowing beforehand that they might be the victim, this would not make rape ok, this is what I mean by objective.”
Now I have to ask you, how do you know that rape would never be ok? How do you answer the question of how you know it is that God’s nature is good (setting aside problems of how you know it biblically)? The standard apologist response seems to be that God’s nature is good, and God cannot do what is not in his nature. Again, setting aside other problems about what kind of God this then is who has no will of his own to act against his nature, it appears that you must assume your conclusion -- that God’s nature is perfectly good -- in order for you to say that you can know something like rape is objectively bad. In other words, without a separate, objective standard for morality that exists outside of God, you are still caught by the 2nd horn. In yet other words, I am saying that it is not God’s purported ability to change his mind that makes the morality of the second horn arbitrary, but the fact that the standard for goodness and God’s goodness are one in the same – they are arbitrary because we have no way of saying how it is that we can truly know that God’s nature is the perfect good.
Mitero: “As difficult as it is for us to conceive of such a society, we have reasonable people in our society that find it difficult to conceive of abortion as not being immoral. And yet we live in a society that defines it as ok, or at least not immoral. How would your vote be cast on the issue of abortion? You said, “Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped.” Would abortion be immoral because, “one could find oneself in the role of the aborted?” ”
I think that I haven’t made myself entirely clear yet on the system I have described for moral objectivity in a society where all interests (desires) are balanced. In this (idealized) system, morality isn’t a matter of taking votes, but of looking at the outcome of behavior and how it impacts other desires. Rape is a bad desire because it thwarts other desires – the desires of the raped to not be subject to violence, to preserve personal autonomy, etc. Rape would be immoral for those reasons. To the extent abortion would thwart other desires (if and when those desires exist), then to that extent abortion would be immoral.
Me: ““I would adopt behavior that would allow me to satisfy most of my desires while doing the least to thwart the desires of others.” Mitero: The defining of “I” must inevitably be done in terms of activity in the brain. You have no control over your brain activity, because “you” are brain activity. Even if it could be shown that different parts of the brain are in conflict, there is no “you” urging one on and trying to suppress the others. This would require something more than brain activity. So I must still contend that on a strictly naturalistic worldview, we are in a real sense, “robotic.” Stealing in words like I, you, my, etc. doesn’t help unless you define in physical terms what they mean and how it is they break free of the physical process.
Hmm. I didn’t think of my using words like “I” in this discussion would be considered stealing or cheating. I mean “I” to distinguish my brain activity, if that is how you’d like to characterize it, from your brain activity. I used the word robotic to differentiate myself from something that does not have desires. I don’t think this is controversial.
If you’re going to make an argument that free will is incompatible with causation then I think that will be difficult. (I see no intrinsic problems understanding consciousness as it’s explained by naturalists like Dennett, etc. ) If you think it’s necessary that free will somehow be disassociated from physical process, I would ask you how it is that you explain that dualism works – what is the process whereby the non-physical mind interacts with the physical brain. This one has perplexed dualists since Descartes, and nobody yet, despite lots of searching, has explained that one. So I’ll see your break free of the physical world question, and up you one interact with the physical world question. ☺
Me: “The difference is epistemological, in that my thoughts are internal and their perception is knowable only by me (subjective), but God is external and presumably knowable by everyone in all circumstances (objective).” Mitero: The point is not a matter of epistemology, but rather of a logical absurdity. If at once we admit that free will is an illusion, how do we logically state that we “actually” make choices? The statement, “I make choices” seems to lose all meaning if we allow that free will is an illusion. To say that, “the brain acts in this or that way,” does not equal (to me), “I make choices.” All the best.
Well, to begin with, there is causal free will and contra causal free will. Causal free will makes sense to me in what I understand of the world and what I understand of my own thoughts – that while all of my actions may be caused, that does not then entail that I am compelled against what I perceive to be my will.
But I think you have also sidestepped my question above as well in that you asked what the difference is between saying that we know our own thoughts and saying that we know that God exists. You appear to be equating them, and I believe it’s clear that the two are entirely different epistemologically, as the second one makes a truth claim about the outside world. (Unless you’re a mystical Christian who defines the Kingdom of Heaven only as a state of internal awareness, as Jesus seemed to, in which case I have no quibble and I put you in my favorite-kind-of-Christian category.)
Cheers. And good luck submitting a reply – it seems like it takes a long time now for comments to pop up.
iheckdude: "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized."
Chuck: I don't understand this logic. God exists because I recognize right and wrong and therefore God exists. It seems circular.
Hey Chuck, Let me try to clarify by unpacking that statement and split it in 2.
1) Recognition of Morality
I think we both agree that it’s possible to RECOGNIZE (observe & experience) morality, right and wrong WITHOUT God in the picture.
For instance, we can both OBSERVE an apple falling to the ground. Does our observation of the apple falling require any knowledge of gravity? No! (You’d think I was crazy if I said that it did.) The apple fell. It’s that simple. I don’t need to understand the laws of physics in order to make the claim, “Hey, that apple fell!”
But how would you and I MAKE SENSE of our observation? Wouldn’t an explanation of falling apples eventually require an appeal to gravity? Well I’d say yes because gravity is the LAW CAUSING “things to fall”. Gravity is the only thing that can MAKE SENSE of falling apples.
But, we CAN experience and observe gravity’s effects WITHOUT having any understanding of its nature.
In the same way, you and I both can observe the world around and recognize that some thing’s are GOOD, and some thing’s are NOT GOOD…even EVIL! Yes, we can make that observation WITHOUT God…but can we make SENSE of it?
2) Making Sense of Morality
So the point is this: In the same way that you CAN’T make sense of a falling apple without ultimately appealing to gravity (the cause, the law)…you WILL NOT make SENSE of morality without ultimately appealing to a Cause. (An Ultimate and Absolute Law.)
Can morality, apart from an Absolute Moral Law, even be considered “morality”? If there’s no absolute standard for what’s Right, Good, and True, then why do we insist on living with one?
If there is no Absolute Moral Standard, the logical conclusion is there is NO moral standard. No right. No wrong. That's it.
“In the name of whom or what do you ask me to behave? Why should I go to the inconvenience of denying myself the satisfactions I desire in the name of some standard that exists only in your imagination? Why should I worship the fictions that you have imposed on me in the name of nothing?” -Thomas Merton
There is nothing equivalent in your illustration. Gravity can be measured, morality can't. It is a strawman argument. Analogy has power when you are comparing similar things. You aren't. I will appeal to the law of gravity because it has objective and observable and measurable standards. Morality doesn't. I think I made that clear when sharing my experience. The thing that would stop you from satisfying your desires is the natural opposition you would face when thay desire thwarting desire would be snuffed out.
You are an Israeli in Jerusalem, a devout and Orthodox Jew who believes Israel is God's covenant to you and is evidence of his reality. I am a Palestinian who believes Allah seeks worldwide Islam and this necessitates Jihad to force the next Caliphate.
I strap C4 to my chest and walk into a market, while wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap (I have family back in the Motor City and became a fan of the game - it's a thought experiment, roll with me) I walk up to you at a cafe, smile and detonate the C4 killing you and me, while blowing the Tigers cap from my head.
Now, my family will sing praises for the moral martyrdom I practiced in service of Allah, Islam and Jihad while your family will curse the immoral act of the terrorist. One action, two moral interpretations based on who a person decides the law-giver is, Yahweh of Allah.
But, the descent of my hat to the ground will be calculated in the same way by both Jewish and Muslim physicists and the rate of descent and force of gravity will be agreed upon.
There is no moral law equivalent to physical law. It is an illusion.
iheckdude: “Can morality, apart from an Absolute Moral Law, even be considered “morality”? If there’s no absolute standard for what’s Right, Good, and True, then why do we insist on living with one?”
I don’t think I follow you here. There is no universal “up,” for instance, but that doesn’t stop us all from knowing what up is. So I’d say that morality can exist with an absolute standard in the same way that up can exist without an absolute standard.
Would you say that because there is no absolute standard for “Up” that therefore “up” cannot exist?
It seems more and more to me that the theistic questions about morality are a search for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
iheckdude: “If there is no Absolute Moral Standard, the logical conclusion is there is NO moral standard. No right. No wrong. That's it.”
There is no absolute standard for up but we have no problem saying that up exists. If there is no absolute standard for the color blue, does that mean that most of us cannot reliably identify the color blue, or that blue does not exist?
Merton: “In the name of whom or what do you ask me to behave?”
In the name of the society in which you interact and from whose contributions you derive benefit.
Merton: “Why should I go to the inconvenience of denying myself the satisfactions I desire in the name of some standard that exists only in your imagination?”
Because you will be punished for taking actions that thwart the desires of others, and receive benefit for taking actions that help fulfill more desires.
Merton: “Why should I worship the fictions that you have imposed on me in the name of nothing?”
For the reasons described above. Morality is a product of relationships, and appears to be a fiction the same way that 4 is a fiction of 2 x 2. Do you think that Merton believes (as he seems to imply above) that because there is no ideal of the perfect apple, apples do not exist?
TONY: There is no universal “up,” for instance, but that doesn’t stop us all from knowing what up is.“
If we ALL know what “up” is…(and you say we do), how is that NOT universal?
TONY: “So I’d say that morality can exist with an absolute standard in the same way that up can exist without an absolute standard. Would you say that because there is no absolute standard for “Up” that therefore “up” cannot exist?.”
First of all, Tony…you’re begging the question. First demonstrate that “up” DOES NOT have an absolute standard. I’d argue that it DOES.
TONY: “It seems more and more to me that the theistic questions about morality are a search for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
It sounds like you're just "thinking out loud" here, so I'll do the same: If by this you mean: “…the theists who questions just HOW IT IS an atheist makes sense of our world (where right or wrong exist) WITHOUT first demonstrating a SOUND FOUNDATION for morality??...” Then, Yes. I’d agree. That DOES feel like searching for something that DOESN’T exist.
Materialism just doesn’t make sense of morality or provide it with ANY true meaning.
TONY: “There is no absolute standard for up but we have no problem saying that up exists.”
Again, please show me how you came to that conclusion: “There is no absolute standard for up…”
“If there is no absolute standard for the color blue, does that mean that most of us cannot reliably identify the color blue, or that blue does not exist?”
iHeckDude: "If we ALL know what “up” is…(and you say we do), how is that NOT universal?"
Because it varies depending on where you are. Up in China is quite different from where I type, for instance. Where is up when you are orbiting the earth? Outside of our solar system? If you are being spun in a centripedal device on the equator, and you wanted to lessen the forces on your body, where would up be?
What Matt needs to demonstrate is how (or which) theistic theology is the most preferred explanation for morality. I see the survival benefits interdependence yields evolving like other cultural by-products. Morality is like language it exists for us to socialize and does not need myth to be explained.
U: “your question was how could I make a moral judgment about, say, atonement”
Me: I would have to look back on earlier posts, but I am pretty sure that I said your claim that atonement is immoral has no objective meaning unless moral values are objective. You then said that objective values can be defined. To which I responded that this would be the second horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.
U: “the standard for goodness and God’s goodness are one in the same – they are arbitrary because we have no way of saying how it is that we can truly know that God’s nature is the perfect good.”
Me: I would take this a step further. I would say that in order for us to escape Euthyphro’s dilemma, the good must be uncreated. So that God is not merely good, but goodness and goodness is not merely divine, but God. As Lewis writes, “The duality which seems to force itself upon us when we think, first, of our Father in Heaven, and, secondly, of the self-evident imperatives of the moral law, is not a mere error but a real perception of things that would necessarily be two in any mode of being which enters our experience, but which are not so divided in the absolute being of the superpersonal God." At present this can hardly be imagined, but what short of this allows us to escape the dilemma?
Our perception of the moral law may be arbitrary, but the law itself cannot be. Otherwise we can both throw in the towel.
U: “I see no intrinsic problems understanding consciousness as it’s explained by naturalists like Dennett, etc.”
Me: Why is it that on every other issue the naturalist demands hard evidence? If science displayed hard evidence for free will, wouldn’t you think that more scientists would accept it? One would have to be a complete idiot to find hard scientific evidence for free will and then reject it. Surely you agree? But what about folks like Derk Pereboom? He writes, “Agent causation is a coherent possibility, but it is not credible given our best physical theories. Consequently, no position which affirms the sort of free will required for moral responsibility is left standing.” Or Paul Kwatz the author of Conscious Robots? He is asking for folks to produce evidence for free will on his web site http://www.consciousrobots.org/blog/?p=200
If there were hard scientific evidence I am confident that these gentlemen would hear it. No one wants to believe that we do not have free will.
U: ” I would ask you how it is that you explain that dualism works – what is the process whereby the non-physical mind interacts with the physical brain.”
Me: To answer your question, I don’t know. But there is difference between a logical absurdity and something unexplained.
U: “But I think you have also sidestepped my question above as well in that you asked what the difference is between saying that we know our own thoughts and saying that we know that God exists.”
Me: Sorry for the confusion, but my point was that if you admit free will is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know you have it. Just as, if you admit that god is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know god exists. These are both logically incoherent. That was my point.
For the record, I do believe that natural theology is a means to gain knowledge about God.
One final question, do you personally believe that abortion is immoral?
OK. I want to simplify things for a moment. I’ve been asking you “How do you make sense of morality?” but I’m not entirely clear on YOUR definition of “morality”…or “good”. Do you have one? Please provide.
Here’s my point: “Good” can only be “good” if and when there’s a STANDARD of GOOD. And if there is no standard to judge by, then it can never be known if anything is good or bad. Without a standard of “good” … “good” just becomes a word with NO MEANING.
“Good” by necessity, requires a standard. If there is no objective standard of good, then how do we know what good is?
Before you argue anything about “goodness” or “morality”, first establish an objective standard of good by which comparisons can be made.
After you define and rationally defend what good IS, then try to argue that we can actually be “good” without God.
Do you want a conversation or are you practicing a sermon.
Why don't you offer your standard of morality and let us proceed from there. The question becomes why morality demands external agency to predicate objectivity?
Also, you keep ignoring both Tony and me. Tony has defined his moral construct consistent with the philosophy known as desirism and I have discussed morality as a shifting moral construct like language which enhances social utility. You are begging the question by saying that morality demands objectivity so therefore god. Deal with the points we've already made.
iHeckDude, in your post previous to your last you declared that (contrary to my previous comment), up has an absolute standard, and then asked me four times how I would disagree. You even said, at the end of your post to another analog I mentioned, "Let's just deal with up first."
I responded directly to your question in my subsequent comment, as you requested.
But now, instead of addressing my response to the what you had only just had declared to be the question at hand, you now appear to want to change the subject.
You are the one making the claim -- that morality only makes sense if we appeal to an absolute moral law. You are the one with the burden of proof, and so far you have demonstrated that your claim is not fallacious.
Me: “your question was how could I make a moral judgment about, say, atonement” Mitero: I would have to look back on earlier posts, but I am pretty sure that I said your claim that atonement is immoral has no objective meaning unless moral values are objective. You then said that objective values can be defined. To which I responded that this would be the second horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.
I believe the second horn of the ED is where morality is merely what the Gods declare to be good. I have not invoked any Gods, but outlined a system whereby all the participants in a moral system could define morality objectively. I don’t think that I can be caught in either of the ED’s horns because God is not, as it is for the theist, invoked in the morality to which I refer.
The ED is a dilemma only for those who need to reconcile their morality and an all powerful deity or deities. I am a naturalist.
Me: “the standard for goodness and God’s goodness are one in the same – they are arbitrary because we have no way of saying how it is that we can truly know that God’s nature is the perfect good.” Mitero: I would take this a step further. I would say that in order for us to escape Euthyphro’s dilemma, the good must be uncreated. So that God is not merely good, but goodness and goodness is not merely divine, but God.
I think this reply does not answer the question I raised. Specifically, how would an uncreated good be known as good (anymore than a created good)? What is the difference between good and goodness? Your second sentence appears to be merely a tautology that declares, “God is good because good is God.” Like I said, this doesn’t answer my question, but simply makes an unsupported assertion that doesn’t address the real problem presented by the ED. (Hence, the difficulty of that pesky dilemma.)
Once again, how do theists know that the objective good defined by their God know that that morality is in itself the absolute good?
As Lewis writes, “The duality which seems to force itself upon us when we think, first, of our Father in Heaven, and, secondly, of the self-evident imperatives of the moral law, is not a mere error but a real perception of things that would necessarily be two in any mode of being which enters our experience, but which are not so divided in the absolute being of the superpersonal God." At present this can hardly be imagined, but what short of this allows us to escape the dilemma?
I think that Lewis is fairly up front here in declaring that the only way to escape the dilemma is to embrace incoherence – he seems to be saying that we cannot understand it through rationality. I am surprised that this admission would come from so well-beloved an apologetic.
Our perception of the moral law may be arbitrary, but the law itself cannot be. Otherwise we can both throw in the towel.
This presents the same problem that I mentioned earlier, that in order for the apologist to “know” that the good that is inherent to God is the same as the absolute good she must presume what she seeks to know. This is circular, and fails to justify what the theist asserts – that the existence of a theistic god is sufficient to justify our assertion that something is objectively good.
Btw, I don’t consider it throwing in the towel to admit what we can know of morality, including the fact that we cannot know, under any system, what the absolute and objective good is. I find the question to be unresolvable, but also unimportant.
Me: “I see no intrinsic problems understanding consciousness as it’s explained by naturalists like Dennett, etc.” Mitero: Why is it that on every other issue the naturalist demands hard evidence?
What? There is nothing but loads of hard evidence that brain activity and consciousness (including moral judgments) are related. The hypotheses that our brains provide us with what we call consciousness is based on all the evidence.
Mitero: If science displayed hard evidence for free will, wouldn’t you think that more scientists would accept it?
I think you are confused about science, consciousness, and free will. For one, I don’t think that science could even display had evidence for free will – this seems like an incoherent demand. Can you say how a scientist would disprove a hypothesis that that free will exists, for instance?
Also, speaking of evidence, what do you have in the way of statistics about scientists and their position on free will? (I’m guessing that most don’t even have a position on it, as it’s mostly a philosophical issue, and most scientists I know don’t care much for philosophical issues, especially those that may be unresolvable.)
One would have to be a complete idiot to find hard scientific evidence for free will and then reject it. Surely you agree? But what about folks like Derk Pereboom? He writes, “Agent causation is a coherent possibility, but it is not credible given our best physical theories. Consequently, no position which affirms the sort of free will required for moral responsibility is left standing.”
Derk Perebroom is a philosopher, not a scientist. I would like to know what he means by “the sort of free will required for moral responsibility,” because I’ll bet there are a lot of assumptions I don’t agree with in there.
Mitero: Or Paul Kwatz the author of Conscious Robots? He is asking for folks to produce evidence for free will on his web site http://www.consciousrobots.org/blog/?p=200 If there were hard scientific evidence I am confident that these gentlemen would hear it.
Paul Kwatz is a pseudonym. Right now it appears that the author(s?) have put up a website. Hard scientific evidence that wants to be taken seriously is submitted to scientific publications. What makes you think that setting up a website and accepting comments is how science proceeds (and that such a question can even be answered scientifically, for that matter)?
Mitero: No one wants to believe that we do not have free will.
This is patently false, as I don’t mind believing that (contra causal) free will may not exist. As philosophers like Dennet explain, however, the absence of contra causal free will is not really important to how we perceive the world or how we behave.
Do you have an argument for how morality (a set of proscribed and prescribed behaviors) would be impossible if there was no free will? For me that seems like saying that language or manipulation of our environment can’t exist without free will.
Me: ”I would ask you how it is that you explain that dualism works – what is the process whereby the non-physical mind interacts with the physical brain.” Mitero: To answer your question, I don’t know. But there is difference between a logical absurdity and something unexplained.
Unicorns are not logically absurd, but there is no evidence for them either. Why don’t you believe in unicorns?
Me: “But I think you have also sidestepped my question above as well in that you asked what the difference is between saying that we know our own thoughts and saying that we know that God exists.” Mitero: Sorry for the confusion, but my point was that if you admit free will is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know you have it.
But I don’t believe that I ever said that I know I have free will. My position is that whether or not I can truly escape the causal chain is irrelevant to me, because I perceive my thoughts and I perceive my choices, and the perception is the same to me whether or not those things truly exist. In other words, demonstrating that I have free will seems as doomed an enterprise as demonstrating that I am not a brain in a vat, and about as important.
Just as, if you admit that god is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know god exists. These are both logically incoherent. That was my point.
And I don’t think you have understood my point, as I tried to explain again above, that knowing that I make choices (perceiving free will) is a separate issue from knowing that my choices are in fact uncaused. But I can assert that I perceive my choices while conceding that my choices may in fact be caused without stating a contradiction. (In other words, I do not think, “I will go for a walk” and then observe me cooking an omelet instead. I perceive my will and my actions being aligned and related, and this gives me knowledge of free will even though it does not prove that I have contra-causal free will.)
One final question, do you personally believe that abortion is immoral? All the best.
Gents, (Chuck and Tony) I apologize if it seems like I’m ignoring your responses. I assure you I’m not. Honestly, I’m just trying to keep up! You’re both asking great questions that are making me think. I’m enjoying the dialog and definitely wanna keep the conversation going. Thanks for your patience guys.
Tony: “My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality."
What I appreciate Tony is your attempt to at least set out a blueprint for “objective morality without God”. This helps me understand what you’re thinking. By the way, is this "Nietzsche-like" system what you would PREFER?
OK. So, I agree with mitero’s initial comments in his response to the moral system you’ve outlined, but I’m also interested in hearing more…
First, do you have any examples of a culture where this system has been test-driven? What were the results?
Tony: "In that world, Nazism would be immoral, because those prescribing genocide of the Jews, gypsies, handicapped, free-thinkers, etc. might find themselves in the subjugated roles. Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped. Etc."
Do you believe that just “knowing” the rules would keep people from acting on their impulses? And what happens when the person, who NEVER raped anyone, gets raped?
I’m just curious to know if something like JUSTICE would fit into your system? If so, what would it look like?
What if a different culture existing nearby DIDN’T subscribe to that particular flavor of “morality”…would they be wrong for say, hating you?
Tony: "On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc"
Got no problem with that. Those “sound” great!
Tony: "This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances, and that this does not require a god.”
When you say: “this does not require a god.” Do you mean this in the ‘application’ sense? For example: “ME being moral doesn’t require a god.” Or do you mean it like: “MORALITY doesn’t require a god.”
You may have meant it in another way. I’m not trying to present a dilemma.
But just to be clear, my argument ISN’T that LIVING morally requires a God, but that MORALITY doesn’t have any MEANING without God.
Tony: “This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances…”
When you say: “true in all instances”, are you saying this objectively moral system is based on moral ABSOLUTES? (The emphasis is on the word "absolutes".) Can you help me understand your position a little more?
As great as it sounds, Tony, how would this system NOT fall on its head when practically applied? It’s hard to imagine this system working, partly due to the fact that it history provides no such success story. Barring examples you might provide, it seems like ANY evidence demonstrating “thriving world cultures” being created AND sustained, over a long haul WITHOUT RELIGION…is extremely lacking.
Chuck: “The question is, how can giving glory to a being who allows children to suffer and mandates genocide (documented in His word) be a good life purpose?
Chuck, your question is asked in such a way that it’s presents a false dilemma. It’s like me asking you if you still beat your wife. But, I think I understand what you're trying to say. Couple questions:
I'm curious to know which story you're referring to when you talk about genocide.
I’m also curious to know if you believe that "genocide, children suffering, etc" represent the Christian faith?
Chuck: "Logic demands non-contradictiona and calling the character of god "good" despite his dependence on wrath indicates an illogical position."
I understand the point you’re trying to make here, but it’s begging the question. God, as the Bible teaches, doesn’t “depend” on anything outside of Himself. He can't contradict Himself.
Would God really be GOOD if He DIDN’T punish evil?
P.Coyle: “Can you give us a definition and an example of an Absolute Moral Standard(TM)?”
Sure!
Definition: a transcendent and unchanging standard or “point of reference” by which humans gauge issues pertaining to morality, that is not derived from human invention, but comes from an absolute and transcendent authority… an authority that cannot be disproved by an appeal to any higher authority.
Example(s): the Creator God revealed in the Bible (the transcendent Authority); the Christian Bible (the point of reference)
Moral Absolutes found in the Bible= love, patience, kindness, self-contol, don’t murder, lie, cheat, steal, etc…
"Among the most inestimable of our blessings, also, is that... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to John Thomas et al., 1807. ME 16:291
iheckdude: “What I appreciate Tony is your attempt to at least set out a blueprint for “objective morality without God”. This helps me understand what you’re thinking. By the way, is this "Nietzsche-like" system what you would PREFER?”
Thanks for the nod and civil tone.
The moral system I describe is already somewhat in effect and its concept predates Nietzsche – I’d say it’s been part of public debate in the English speaking West since at least the Magna Carta, and you could probably draw all kinds of parallels with Roman (Justinian) justice, etc. Our Constitution, in particular the Bill of Rights, is similar to what I outlined.
iheckdude: First, do you have any examples of a culture where this system has been test-driven? What were the results?
I am a fan of the Bill of Rights, so I like the results.
iheckdude: Do you believe that just “knowing” the rules would keep people from acting on their impulses? And what happens when the person, who NEVER raped anyone, gets raped?
Do you think that anyone who reads the Bible is good to go on the morality front? Of course not. Why would you expect the same from another morality system. You seem to think that morality without a system for enforcement is possible. I am not so utopian.
iheckdude: I’m just curious to know if something like JUSTICE would fit into your system? If so, what would it look like?
Justice would be enforcement of the prescribed morality in relation to the extent it is followed or violated.
iheckdude: What if a different culture existing nearby DIDN’T subscribe to that particular flavor of “morality”…would they be wrong for say, hating you?
A different culture would be wrong for hating me if their hatred of me tended to thwart more desires than it tended to satisfy. What desires are satisfied, and what desires are thwarted, as a result of hating someone outside your culture tend to have? That is the answer.
iheckdude: Tony: "On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc" iheckdude: Got no problem with that. Those “sound” great!
I harbor a suspicion that skeptics and theists share nearly universal ground on questions of basic morality, which is one reason I think the issue is inflated.
iheckdude: But just to be clear, my argument ISN’T that LIVING morally requires a God, but that MORALITY doesn’t have any MEANING without God.
As I mentioned earlier I think this is the same thing as saying that up has no meaning because there is no absolute, standard direction for Up. I think the theist has invented a solution for which there is no problem.
iheckdude: Tony, how would this system NOT fall on its head when practically applied? It’s hard to imagine this system working, partly due to the fact that it history provides no such success story.
I think that the Bill of Rights is one of the most successful moral codes in history. We can do far better, of course, but there is nothing inherently impossible with both improving the ideals and their application.
U: “I don’t think that I can be caught in either of the ED’s horns because God is not, as it is for the theist, invoked in the morality to which I refer.”
Me: So when you say, “atonement is immoral” are you invoking nothing? Why should I accept your opinion over the next guys?
U: “The ED is a dilemma only for those who need to reconcile their morality and an all powerful deity or deities. I am a naturalist.”
Me: Let’s call it Tony’s dilemma then. Are things immoral because Tony says that they are? Or does Tony say so because they are immoral? How do you get out of this one without invocation?
U: “he seems to be saying that we cannot understand it through rationality.”
Me: Lewis is pointing out that the problem of the relationship of goodness to God ('the duality') is a problem of comprehension on our part because of our limited point of view. It is a problem that is created because we view the relationship between goodness and The Good from within the created world, but God is not limited to our perspective. This being the case we should recognize that the duality which appears as incoherent does not necessarily apply to God. God is not subject to the same limitations that we are as creatures. His relationship to goodness is different than ours because God is the ground and standard of goodness. This concept is only incoherent if you assume that a transcendent personal being such as God does not exist, but I believe we have good reasons to believe that it makes more sense to posit God as the best explanation for what we all assume about good and evil.
U: “I don’t consider it throwing in the towel to admit what we can know of morality, including the fact that we cannot know, under any system, what the absolute and objective good is. I find the question to be unresolvable, but also unimportant.
Me: I have no doubt that you can know of morality, but so can Ahmed the terrorist and he thinks that beheading you is morally good. You say, “No it is not.” He says, “Yes it is.” “No it is not.” “Yes it is.” Ahmed doesn’t give two cents about your opinions on morality. And he proceeds to behead you. Was it objectively “wrong” for him to do this? It seems that you think that this question is “unimportant.” But supposing you could show that he is wrong for beheading you. So what? Who is he accountable to? If on his deathbed he confessed to beheading a thousand people and added, “got away with it too.” What would you say to him? What would you say to the families of those victims? Can you promise them justice? Can you offer them hope? Can you tell them that it is going to be ok?
Mitero: So when you say, “atonement is immoral” are you invoking nothing? Why should I accept your opinion over the next guys?
I am invoking the objective, moral standards of the society in which we live, in which actions that tend to thwart other desire are immoral, and desires that tend to help fulfill other desires are good. It is not my opinion, but the opinion of the society.
In the society in which we live, sacrificing an uninvolved innocent so that the guilty go free is immoral for many reasons. That’s because sacrificing the uninvolved only thwarts a lifetime of desires of the sacrificed. And allowing the guilty to go free tends to thwart more desires than it satisfies because it removes the disincentive for curbing selfish behavior – unbridled selfish behavior thwarts more desires than it satisfied because it makes impossible the benefits of reciprocal cooperation, without which humans in our current state would probably not last a generation.
Mitero: Let’s call it Tony’s dilemma then. Are things immoral because Tony says that they are? Or does Tony say so because they are immoral? How do you get out of this one without invocation?
I have explained this many times now to the best of my ability, and I am certainly not an expert on this subject. You should either read up on Desirism, or better yet, explain why you think it is that morality cannot exist without an invocation to a deity.
Mitero: Me: Lewis is pointing out that the problem of the relationship of goodness to God ('the duality') is a problem of comprehension on our part because of our limited point of view. It is a problem that is created because we view the relationship between goodness and The Good from within the created world, but God is not limited to our perspective. This being the case we should recognize that the duality which appears as incoherent does not necessarily apply to God. God is not subject to the same limitations that we are as creatures. His relationship to goodness is different than ours because God is the ground and standard of goodness. This concept is only incoherent if you assume that a transcendent personal being such as God does not exist, but I believe we have good reasons to believe that it makes more sense to posit God as the best explanation for what we all assume about good and evil.
I am sorry to say that this (and the paragraph that follows it) is the weakest thing you have written here. You have completely ignored the problem I have outlined in relation to your knowing that God’s goodness is in fact good, and say that the problem is our limited understanding. Can you not imagine cult members from any other religion saying the same things about what they believe? “Yes, yes, we know it doesn’t make sense that our leader is God in the flesh and appears as a man and drive a Cadillac and sleeps with 12 year old virgins, but his ways are complex, and we are but mere, limited mortals…”
You are free to embrace the second horn, as Muslims do. But you appear to want to cling to a higher ground that it still appears your theology does not deserve.
TONY: "I think that the Bill of Rights is one of the most successful moral codes in history. We can do far better, of course, but there is nothing inherently impossible with both improving the ideals and their application."
Tony, thank you for providing examples, but I'm wondering why you didn't respond to the 2nd half of my question. (repeated below)
ME: "...it seems like ANY evidence demonstrating “thriving world cultures” being created AND sustained, over a long haul WITHOUT RELIGION…is extremely lacking.
Your examples (Magna Carta, Justinian, Bill of Rights, etc) were authored largely by people who were, at the very least, influenced by Religion... The argument could be made that they were basing the morals of society not in "Desire"...(which is subjective and fickle) but on Moral Absolutes, stemming from an immutable God.
It CANNOT be proven that there was ever a time in history where humanity has existed FREE from ANY or ALL theistic influence.
No "moral society" will ever be found to be without a lofty thought of God somewhere nearby.
iHeckDude: Tony, thank you for providing examples, but I'm wondering why you didn't respond to the 2nd half of my question. (repeated below) ME: "...it seems like ANY evidence demonstrating “thriving world cultures” being created AND sustained, over a long haul WITHOUT RELIGION…is extremely lacking.
Um, well, it wasn’t phrased as a question, for starters. Your second part read as an assertion, and it appeared so vague and amorphous that the goalposts are pretty much already on wheels and ready to go.
I responded to your previous question, as I had your prior ones. You have failed to respond to many of my prior comments or answers, so it’s not clear to me that that you were applying a stricter standard to my responses than your own.
What exactly would you like me to do with the 2nd half of your last comment – bring up (non-theistic) Scandanavian states, pretty much the most generous, non-violent societies we know of, so that you can cavil about their society having been originally based on Christianity, etc.? Been there, done that.
Which would be beside the point anyway, because your reasoning itself is so fallacious I don’t want to waste time by pursuing it. By your proposed standard, would you have had everyone put a moratorium on social and political experimentation because “nothing like it has been created and sustained, over a long haul...?” Well, there goes a post feudal society. There goes democracy. There goes a society without slavery. There goes women’s equality. Forget trying those out, folks, it hasn’t been created and sustained, over a long haul.
iHeckDude: “Your examples (Magna Carta, Justinian, Bill of Rights, etc) were authored largely by people who were, at the very least, influenced by Religion...”
What an idiotic thing to say. Really. Let me see, what could we say isn’t at very least, influenced by religion? Probably, nothing. Shoot, Karl Marx was influenced by religion. If his stuff ever worked out, would you want to take credit for that?
iHeckDude: “The argument could be made that they were basing the morals of society not in "Desire"...(which is subjective and fickle) but on Moral Absolutes, stemming from an immutable God.”
Then please make the argument. Make any argument. Collect your thoughts and test your thinking, please. Provide something I can respond to, or, respond to any of the many issues I’ve raised that contradict your prior assertions instead of moving on through a vague, greatest hits of apologetic tropes.
iHeckDude: “It CANNOT be proven that there was ever a time in history where humanity has existed FREE from ANY or ALL theistic influence.”
And this should be discussed how? And this matters why? What argument are you trying to make?
iHeckDude:: “No "moral society" will ever be found to be without a lofty thought of God somewhere nearby.”
I’ve lost count at what it is that you’re trying to say, or what you’d like to argue. Do you even see how worthless your statement is above – that you have yet to come to terms with how it is you would define morality, what it means to “find a society,” what defines a “lofty thought,” or the criteria for judging when God is “nearby?” That is one of the least arguable contentions I’ve ever read.
The thing is that there are legitimate problems with the theistic position, and you’ve ignored them. There are also legitimate problems with desirism, but you’ve raised none of them. I can have (much) better arguments in my head.
If you don’t raise some interesting questions that I haven’t considered or ask me to test my thinking in ways that I haven’t considered, I’m going to have to stop responding here. If your next response doesn’t try to present an argument worth discussing, I will have to ignore it.
It is a little ironic that you tear down my argument for objective morality because of its circularity, only to erect your own argument which is itself circular.
You said, “I am invoking the objective, moral standards of the society in which we live… It is not my opinion, but the opinion of the society.”
The argument goes like this.
1. Beheading someone is objectively immoral because it is the opinion of our society that it is.
2. Ahmed lives in a society that says beheading is not objectively immoral.
Mitero: “It is a little ironic that you tear down my argument for objective morality because of its circularity, only to erect your own argument which is itself circular.”
A circular argument assumes that which it sets out to prove. I don’t see how the argument you list (1., 2., 3.) is circular – it doesn’t even appear to be a coherent argument.
Have you read anything on Desirism yet? (Here’s a good link: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=2982.) Because it appears that you are arguing against a strawman of the position. Please take the time to read something on Desirism – you can raise practical objections to it, and there are things that I find circular in it, but I don’t think you have found circularity in what I explained.
Mitero: “Ahmed lives in a society that says beheading is not objectively immoral.”
Explain to me how in Desirism arbitrarily beheading someone tends to fulfill more desires than it thwarts. Please raise an objection that isn’t already addressed in the link that I provided above.
Desirism is not theistic morality, I’ll grant you that. Do you think that I am trying to argue that it is?
Thank you for the link. Does the below accurately represent your argument?
1.Beheading thwarts the desires of others.
2.Thwarting the desires of others is objectively immoral
3.Therefore beheading is objectively immoral
I am sorry if you feel that I was attacking a straw man, I am obviously having trouble understanding your argument. I hope that you can at least understand that when you say things like, “I am invoking the objective, moral standards of the society in which we live” how this might be a little confusing for someone to see how you then make your society's objective values binding for all other societies without reasoning in a circle.
Please accept my apology.
Could you please correct the above where it happens to misrepresent your position.
Your revised 1, 2, 3 is not my argument because I am arguing that (contrary to the normal theist positions), 1. morality can be objective outside of theism (what is and is not immoral according to Desirism is largely unimportant), and I am also arguing that, 2. theistic morality suffers from a failing (best exposed by the Euthyphro Dilemma) whereby the Christian must affirm that she cannot know that what God decrees is objectively good. Thus, I am arguing, the theist contentions that morality is especially well-grounded under theism, and that no other moral system can be objective, are false. That is my argument.
I think that you may still be confusing Desirism with both Hedonism and Pluralism. Desirism does not mean that “whatever I desire is good,” nor does it mean that whatever a local majority desires is good. I am loathe to explicate at great lengths because I am a dilettante at both moral theory and Desirism, and I believe that the link I provided earlier speaks with (far) greater authority about Desirism and moral objectivity than I can; please correct me if you read something there that you think I have misinterpreted.
It appears to me that you have (at least temporarily) abandoned trying to refute the second part of my argument above (that the theist cannot know that God is objectively good), and that you would like to disagree with the first argument that another moral system (like Desirism) can be considered objective. That’s fine, and I’m happy to see where this leads.
It looks like you have chosen to show that Desirism cannot be objective because you imagine a scenario where arbitrarily beheading someone, under Desirism, would be considered good.
But this seems easy to refute using the “Dial turning” analogy that Desirism proponents sometimes use. Imagine a dial that when turned to the left decreases the desire to arbitrarily behead people. When the dial is turned to the right the desire to arbitrarily behead people increases. In order to fulfill more desires (the object of Desirism, the objective good) we should turn the dial to the left because arbitraily beheading people thwarts more desires (the desire to not be subject to violence, the desire to continue living, the desires that would be fulfilled if I kept on living in a way that helped fulfill other desires, etc.) than it fulfills.
As I said earlier, Desirism is not theistic morality. But I believe it is objective in every meaningful way. If you disagree, please explain your thinking.
I am new to the idea of “desirism,” so it is only fair that I look further at the link you provided in order to better understand what it claims.
“I am arguing, the theist contentions that morality is especially well-grounded under theism, and that no other moral system can be objective, are false. That is my argument.”
If rape is “wrong” under a naturalistic moral system, so what? There can be no justice under any naturalistic moral system, because we ultimately all lose the game. What do you say to the rapist who has raped countless women, who on his deathbed chuckles and says, “not only raped them, but got away with it too?” He leaves loads of injustice behind him and no justice ahead of him. What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we assume that naturalism is true?
Now let’s assume that Christian theism is true. Not only is there hope for the victim and their families, but there is also justice for the perpetrator. He could chuckle all he wants, because he will not get away with it. Justice will be served. Exactly what his existence will be I am not sure we can say. That his state of experience will be miserable we can be sure (Matt 13:42). What the existence of the blessed will be like we cannot say either (1 John 3:2), but that it will be free from death, pain, and suffering we can be sure (Rev 21:4).
So even if desirism is objectively true, so what? I can disbelieve it and disobey it and have the same ultimate consequence as those it believe and obey. Not so with Christian theism.
“It appears to me that you have (at least temporarily) abandoned trying to refute the second part of my argument above (that the theist cannot know that God is objectively good).”
That we cannot know this in the sense of knowing that the earth orbits the sun I will grant. But morality, beauty, and all judgments of value are not known in that way. So we can know that God is good in the same way that we can know that a flower is beautiful. God’s goodness can be known intuitively. “Something or Someone” is trying to get me behave in certain ways. If that Someone is God, the things that God is trying to get me to do are things that I perceive to be good. I suppose God could be evil and God is trying to get me to do good. But it makes more sense to me that one of reasons God wants me to do good is that God is good. But I do not rely solely on intuition. I believe that Jesus Christ is God and because I have good reason to believe that Jesus was good, I have good reason to believe that God is good.
Mitero: “What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we assume that naturalism is true?”
This is simply a fallacious way of arguing. We are not arguing about what we want to be true, but what is true. (“I wish that we could fly. What hope can modern physics offer me if its description of reality explains that I cannot fly?” Do you see the problem with that question?)
Mitero: “That his state of experience will be miserable we can be sure (Matt 13:42).”
Quoting Bible verses at me is not an argument. Would you accept quotes from the Koran in an argument for Islamic law being true?
Mitero: “I can disbelieve it and disobey it and have the same ultimate consequence as those it believe and obey.”
There is some justice in this world. If you rape, you should go to jail, or worse. Why would you dismiss this as unimportant?
Mitero: “So we can know that God is good in the same way that we can know that a flower is beautiful. God’s goodness can be known intuitively.”
This is pure fluff and another retreat to circularity – that we can know God is good because we know that God is good. You sound like a member of any cult, repeating mantras instead of opening up yourself to analysis, argument, and evidence.
Mitero: “But I do not rely solely on intuition. I believe that Jesus Christ is God and because I have good reason to believe that Jesus was good, I have good reason to believe that God is good.”
No, you lie to yourself here, as any casual analysis has revealed. I don’t doubt that you believe that God is good, but you have no good reason, just a circular argument that only you will find edifying.
Mitero, you appear unprepared to form an argument, and immune to attempts to get you to engage in one. Although I’m sure this is insulting to you it does not have to be – ignorance is any easy thing to fix, and all it takes is some effort on your part. I’m sure you have the ability and aptitude, it is only a matter of your applying yourself to gain the tools you need to think critically. I say this also because your comments here would, I think, be embarrassing to apologists who agree with your beliefs but would find your thinking (as expressed here) to be appallingly inept.
“This is simply a fallacious way of arguing. We are not arguing about what we want to be true, but what is true.”
You missed my point entirely and chose to address a point that I did not even make. I said, “He leaves loads of injustice behind him and no justice ahead of him. What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true.”
This has nothing to do with whether or not I want naturalism to be true. If we assume that naturalism is true, what hope can the naturalist offer the victim’s family. The answer is as obvious as the nose on your face, NONE. The point was not whether I prefer naturalism to be false. The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer. There is nothing fallacious about that. Instead of just telling me my argument is fallacious, why don’t you show me where it is?.
“Quoting Bible verses at me is not an argument.”
Again, I was not quoting the Bible as an argument. I said, “Now let’s ASSUME that Christian theism is true.” This doesn’t say that I want it to be true. It says… well… ASSUMING that it is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope. Where is this fallacious? This is called a hypothesis, which is, “an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.”
“There is some justice in this world. If you rape, you should go to jail, or worse. Why would you dismiss this as unimportant?.”
Try to comfort a mom who had a six year old daughter that was beaten, raped, and tortured to death with these brute facts. Is everything ok because the bastard is in jail or worse? It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored. Again, where is this fallacious?
“Would you accept quotes from the Koran in an argument for Islamic law being true?”
YES, if we were ASSUMING Islam to be true. You miss the point again.
There is really no need to go on here. I think that I am wasting your time and considering the fact that you have made no effort to show how if naturalism is true, why it ultimately matters if someone is raped, but instead just tell me how fallacious it is for me to assert this, I am done as well. Thank you for you time.
Now, I have no way to "scientifically prove this", but...YOU are GOOD, my friend. I've enjoyed "eavesdropping" on your comments/responses, and thought you made some great points.
Mitero: “The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer. There is nothing fallacious about that. Instead of just telling me my argument is fallacious, why don’t you show me where it is?”
I did – I provided you an analogous bit of reasoning regarding my desire to be able to fly and the laws of physics. I am hard pressed to show you any more clearly.
Since you seem to have missed it the first time, I’ll copy this from Wikipedia:
Wikipedia: “Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for argument to the consequences), is an argument that concludes a premise (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a form of logical fallacy, since the desirability of a consequence does not address the truth value of the premise. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view. In logic, appeal to consequences refers only to arguments which assert a premise's truth value (true or false) based on the consequences; appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's desirability (good or bad, or right or wrong) instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is valid in ethics, and in fact such arguments are the cornerstones of many moral theories, particularly related to consequentialism.”
This is the very basic stuff, and it’s why I suggested you work on understanding logic or fallacies. Did you even look at the link I provided to you before you wrote your last comment?
Mitero: “It says… well… ASSUMING that it is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope. Where is this fallacious?
Again, see above. It’s so well known a fallacy it has its own Wikipedia page devoted to it.
Mitero: “This is called a hypothesis, which is, ‘an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.’”
This is not any definition of hypothesis I’ve ever heard. Where in the world did you find that definition?
Mitero: “Try to comfort a mom who had a six year old daughter that was beaten, raped, and tortured to death with these brute facts. Is everything ok because the bastard is in jail or worse? It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored. Again, where is this fallacious?”
Again, I refer you to the Wikipedia page above.
Mitero: “I think that I am wasting your time and considering the fact that you have made no effort to show how if naturalism is true, why it ultimately matters if someone is raped, but instead just tell me how fallacious it is for me to assert this, I am done as well.”
The reason I have made no effort to show how if naturalism is true it ultimately matters if someone is raped is because that has never been my claim. Where did you get the impression that this was my claim?
“Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for argument to the consequences), is an argument that concludes a premise (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a form of logical fallacy, since the desirability of a consequence does not address the truth value of the premise.”
Can you show me where in any of my posts that I said that naturalism is FALSE because it leads to undesirable consequences?
“This is not any definition of hypothesis I’ve ever heard. Where in the world did you find that definition?”
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. Although, if I am being honest, it must be admitted that I am not very good at being good, but I do try.
God bless you on your journey and may you ultimately find the JOY for which you have surely searched and will search your whole life.
Mitero: “Can you show me where in any of my posts that I said that naturalism is FALSE because it leads to undesirable consequences?”
I didn’t accuse you of that; I accused of employing the fallacy of consequences to argue against morality under naturalism (and for it under theism) because of comments like these...
Mitero: “What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true?”
and
Mitero: “The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer.”
and
Mitero: “It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian Theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope.”
and
Mitero: “It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored.”
If you do not admit that this is an appeal to consequences, then perhaps you can explain what the claim is that you were making that each of your quotes above support?
“If you do not admit that this is an appeal to consequences, then perhaps you can explain what the claim is that you were making that each of your quotes above support?”
“What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true?”
This claim supports the position that naturalism is true (hypothetical), and it offers no hope of justice to a murdered victim’s family.*
*note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it offers no justice. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it can’t.
“The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer.”
This claim supports the position that rape is wrong and naturalism is true (hypothetical) and that rapists and cancer curers ultimately end up in the same boat.*
*note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it tells us that good scientists and rapists end up in the same boat. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) they do.
“It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian Theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope.”
This claim supports the position that Christian Theism is true (hypothetical) and that ultimately justice will be served and hope will be realized.*
*note: I am not claiming that Christian Theism is true BECAUSE it ensures justice and the realization of hope. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it does.
“It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored.”
This claim supports the position that Naturalism is true (hypothetical) and no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss.*
*note: I am not claiming the naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) it can’t.
what are you saying? are you implying giving a person hypotheical hope is somehow endearing? how do you know the mother wouldn't spit in your face and see your hope as false illusory and shallow? just because you are comforted by children stories does not mean all will be.
19 years ago my cousin was raped and murdered. I've watched her father cling to the christian story as her killer remains at large and as my uncle sinks into crippling alcoholism. I grieved for her and alongside him as an agnostic at the time and faile to see how my "naturalistic" sorrow was qualitatively anymore inefficacious than my uncle's christianity which failed to innoculate him from crippling alcoholism.
Oh and Leonardo where I come from it is less than courageous to insult someone based on a superstition while remaining hidden (e.g. Not making your blogger profile visible).
How can you get anything else out of what am I saying than that if Christian Theism is true ultimately justice will be served and hope will be realized? How can I word it differently to get this point across?
I mean this sincerely. Tony seems to have the same problem understanding it too.
You are right, it is a hypothetical hope. But are going to honestly say that you can offer more than a hypothesis about what happens when you die?
I doubt the victim’s mom would spit in my face, because I would not spout religion to her in the first place. But if she was hoping to see her child again, and wanted to know what I thought, I would tell her that if Christianity is true, that hope can be realized.
What I am asking is, if naturalism is true and she asked you the same question what can you offer her?* *note: I am not claiming that naturalism is false BECAUSE it cannot offer hope to a victim’s mom. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true it can’t.
BTW if you can point out where any of this is fallacious, please do.
We ALL know where you came from, the VAGINA of some ORANGUTAN. I'm not interested in where you came from or where you are going. You & your buddies are like a pack of animals shitting all over the Internet.
You are a waste of space!!!
"Oh and Leonardo where I come from it is less than courageous to insult someone based on a superstition while remaining hidden (e.g. Not making your blogger profile visible)".
Naturalism does not eliminate empathy or compassion. If someone asked me if they were to see their child again I'd say, "I don't know." If you practice the brand of Christianity I did when I was a believer, Calvinism, I'd have to honestly say the same thing or, if I knew the child did not subscribe to my theology, I'd say she is in Hell. You can't embrace the good parts of Divine Command Ethics without concerning yourself with the doctrine of Hell. Naturalism may not provide an intellectual answer of after death destination but can provide in the moment compassion. Naturalism says I matter because I exist and therefore those that are suffering matter too. Can I invent a made up philosophy that satisfies someone's desire for vindication? No. Can I help the grieve? Yes.
I ask you to post your info on the off chance we may live in the same city so I could look you up and see if you have the balls to say to my face what you anonymously post online. Your response and your refusal seem to indicate you don't.
Mitero: “What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true?” Mitero: This claim supports the position that naturalism is true (hypothetical), and it offers no hope of justice to a murdered victim’s family.* *note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it offers no justice. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it can’t.
So your claim is not that theistic morality is true, but theistic morality is better? I agree that I would prefer a theistic universe is preferable (who wouldn’t want ultimate justice and eternal life with all of one’s loved ones) – no disagreement there. And you’ve already said that you’re not arguing that because theistic morality is better it must be true, so what is your point?
Mitero: “The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer.” Mitero: “This claim supports the position that rape is wrong and naturalism is true (hypothetical) and that rapists and cancer curers ultimately end up in the same boat.* *note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it tells us that good scientists and rapists end up in the same boat. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) they do.”
Again, lost me here. No argument from me on this one. If it’s true, yup, it’s true. And you’ve said that you’re not making a truth claim about the proposition theistic morality must be true because rapists and cancer curers end up in the same place under naturalism (that would be fallacious), so, what is your point then?
Mitero: “It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian Theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope.” This claim supports the position that Christian Theism is true (hypothetical) and that ultimately justice will be served and hope will be realized.* *note: I am not claiming that Christian Theism is true BECAUSE it ensures justice and the realization of hope. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it does.
Same as my comment above.
Mitero: “Try to comfort a mom who had a six year old daughter that was beaten, raped, and tortured to death with these brute facts. Is everything ok because the bastard is in jail or worse? It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored. Again, where is this fallacious? This claim supports the position that Naturalism is true (hypothetical) and no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss.* *note: I am not claiming the naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) it can’t.”
Same as my comment above.
Mitero: Was Webster’s definition sufficient?
I didn’t say it wasn’t sufficient. I said I thought it was unusual – that’s why I was curious about where you found it, and how you were using it – because your use appears very different from how I use the word.
Mitero: It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope. Where is this fallacious? This is called a hypothesis, which is, “an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.”
Then please tell me what argument your hypothesis supports. It can’t be that Christian theism is true, because you have said that you are not committing the fallacy of arguing the consequences.
108 comments:
I should watch the Overtime segment online more often...
Hopefully we get "God" removed from money and the pledge. That seems like a realistic goal. We'll work on removing church tax exemption later.
I think this conversation would have been more interesting if they showed additional shots of the hot chick at the end.
The Financial Times lady was presenting the fallacy of consequence. Just because some religions allow some people to do good things some of the time does not make their beliefs true. Hamas is the #1 provider of social services to their community.
Additionally, the Tamil Tigers operate within the Sri Lankan Liberation movement that began as a Hindu response to Protestant missionaries. To say it is not rooted in Hinduism simply because of its current Marxism is to deny its historical roots.
As an atheist, ask yourself how aggravating it is to hear religious people said that you cannot be moral without God.
As a theist, ask yourself how aggravating it is to hear that you have to have religious motivation in order to commit the most hideous of atrocities.
To be frank, it is incredibly naïve to think that only the religious can be good and that only the religious can be bad.
Perhaps there is no moral good that we can do with religion that we could not do without it. But isn’t it equally the case that one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities?
All the best.
Mitero,
The point is that the common cliche is that religion insulates you from bad behavior.
Which is obviously not the case now or in the past.
Chuck,
Thank you for the thought.
I suppose one might ask whether or not abandoning religion would insulate one from bad behavior. (Which seems to be at large part of the message of the "New Atheists")
And it seems abundantly clear to me that neither is this the case now or in the past
All the best.
Mitero, Hitchens has a nice line about this where he says something like while he's not sure that religion can make a bad person do good things, he is sure that it can make a good person do unspeakable things (suicide bombings, genocide, etc.).
I think that the new Atheists are fairly consistent on asking for rationality about how we approach moral issues. What naturalists like me think is that what good we can find in a specific religion is common to virtually all religions (the golden rule, etc.), while there are vestigial elements that are often dangerous (usually those associated with the need for authority from a controlling group, such as harsh treatment for those who disobey, and a dehumanizing cruelty for those not included in that religion's sphere of adherents).
I do agree with you that some who criticize the crimes of religious adherents risk estranging those who fear the loss of the morality on which we basically all agree.
Mitero,
I think the message of the new atheists is that challenging superstitions with reason can lead to a more effective social structure and, the social taboo which insulates religion from critical analysis should be challenged to accomplish the advance of reason.
Tony,
Very interesting thoughts… thanks.
In one of his books C. S. Lewis says, “If the Divine calling does not make men better, it will certainly make them worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.”
Who could argue?
But what does being able to show that the, “vestigial elements (of religion) are often dangerous” prove other than just that?
Couldn’t it be the case that someone like Torquemada was in fact a miserable ass and Christ still rose from the dead?
All the best.
Mitero,
You rightly assume the fallacy of consequence when one takes historical horrors as argument alone for the dubios nature of the reurrection but, your illustration can work both ways.
Does the good deeds done by those in the name of Christ make the christian story true?
Muslims do good deeds and bad deeds, does either consequence in your mind make the stories of Mohammad true?
Mormons do amazingly good deeds and some fundamental LDS members do awful deeds, does that mean you believe that Joseph Smith was given golden plates by the angel Moroni?
Until you apply the same skepticism one would apply to a faith not their own to your given faith, you have not fully analyzed the question at hand.
Doing bad or good in the name of a certain religion does not make the truth claims of the person committing those acts true.
However, the unquestioned authority of a properly basic truth rooted in a personally revealed invisible relationship makes challenging that authority with reason impossible.
See John Calvin's treatment of Michael Servetus or Galileo's options when the Inquisition didn't like his theory of heliocentricity.
People of faith say their faith does not need to be subject to the kind of inquiry the subject other disciplines too because, they say, supernaturalism is beyond human reason.
That is a bad idea that leads to tyranny.
Mitero,
Thanks for the CS Lewis quote.
I don’t actually agree that bad religious men are worse than other (non-religious) sociopaths – I think bad is bad. The complaint among the irreligious are of those instances where those who would otherwise follow their own instincts and rationality for group behavior follow a counter-intuitive dictate concocted by some ancient religion – stoning some poor woman, depriving children of medical assistance, blowing up innocents, etc. I don’t think all of those who participate in these crimes are born sociopaths, and I think it would be foolish to deny that a morality prescribed by their religion is the intrinsic problem in those instances.
What I think it demonstrates, since you asked, is that we should be able to agree that religious morality can sometimes be destructive. And that it should be possible for a modern society to discuss how to work towards reducing the impacts of these dangerous, vestigial beliefs that we’ve inherited from our ancestors. Religious evolution is one answer, and secular, rational consensus that seeks to entirely phase out morality from superstition is another. It’s a complicated, thorny issue, one that shouldn’t be solved by edict or overnight, but I think it’s reasonable for naturalists like me to look towards phasing out speculation about the supernatural as part of the conversation about what we ought and ought not do to one another.
Mitero: “Couldn’t it be the case that someone like Torquemada was in fact a miserable ass and Christ still rose from the dead?”
Well, the two are completely separate issues, and I agree that joining them together is illogical. Along that line, though, I don’t see how an understand of Christian theology could make me more moral. I think that atonement is immoral, for instance. Which is one reason that, were I to be a Christian, I would be a moral realist.
mitero said..."Perhaps there is no moral good that we can do with religion that we could not do without it. But isn’t it equally the case that one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities?"
Mitero i think its more about our upbringing society and social situations etc, that help shape and form who we will become.
And yes i agree with you, one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities.
But i think maybe you miss a point,can it be so helpful to societies that we actually have religious written books that faith groups follow, that suggest a need to shun and segregate and separate from certain groups of people?.Is it so healthy for our societies that the many religious books with bigotry claim their beliefs of gods as being above the gods of others?.
I agree one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities,but i dont think religion has really been so helpful as a role model.Finding two wrongs dont make anything right/ok ,i admit our societies are full of problems and its not been only religious folk involved in it.
But religion has played a big part of long being the (base role models) in our societies!.
So should we really expect our societies would have likely become so all inclusive,together,thoughtful of each others etc ....When many divisive bigoted religious faiths have long been around playing big part in our societies while suggesting needs of shunning,separation, segregation, and despising other peoples false gods etc.
With them long being the (base role models) of our societies and having long torn human societies apart,teaching such disrespect and even dislike of certain folks with differences to themselves.
With all these bigoted separatist type religious base role models arguing and dividing shaping our societies,for what reason then should we really expect HUMANS of our modern societies should likely now have grown to have many folks who ALL respect each other and not murder or steal or rape etc?.
Should we really expect to have such a all inclusive loving and caring human society,when the base role model faiths have long displayed has often been that of thoughtlessness division and attitudes of disrespect towards certain people who are not within your own particular group?.
Personally i cant see how it was really so helpful.I cant see how we should have expected any less than that what we now see we actually have.Societies where there is obvious attitudes that all to often lack respect of each other,where people will easily steal,hate,bash,rape or even murder often without a care or even giving it a second thought.
You are correct mitero .."one need not be religious in order to commit unspeakable atrocities"
But i suggest much about religion has helped humans be more likely to commit the unspeakable atrocities we see.
Tony,
Thanks again for another excellent reply.
A reply to much of what you said would, I’m afraid, only cause us to go around in circles.
But you do bring up a couple of new points that I would at least like to offer at.
1. Understanding Christian theology will not make you more moral.
I could not agree more. In his essay entitled, On Ethics, C. S. Lewis says, “A Christian who understands his own religion laughs when unbelievers expect to trouble him by the assertion that Jesus utter no command which had not been anticipated by the Rabbis - few, indeed, which cannot be paralleled in classical, ancient Egyptian, Ninevite, Babylonian, or Chinese texts. Our faith is not pinned on a crank.”
I would ask your Christian friends who claim this, how they make sense of Jesus’ call to repentance, if indeed recognition of the Christian ethic is essential to our understanding morality (right and wrong). Because there was no Christian ethic when the call was made.
2. Atonement is immoral.
In order for this statement to have objective meaning, morality must be objective. But I am not sure that this can be proven, can it? At least not proven in the way we could prove that the universe is expanding, for example. No atheist that I know of denies the expansion of the universe, but many deny objective moral values. So for your statement to have objective meaning you must show that objective moral values exist. Otherwise you are merely giving your opinion.
Do you believe reality (you can define that for me) intends for us to behave in certain ways that are in accord with an objection set of values? Are we free to rebel?
If so, how does it do this and why? And why doesn’t it behave in those ways?
All the best.
This is to name a reconstruction of The Jesus Tradition as a whole which takes account of the anacronistic character of the term "Christian". It is developed on sufficient quotes from the works of Schubert Ogden, James M. Robinson and Hans Dieter Betz to make the claim that it reflects their thought. It is in the form of a letter to R. Josph Hoffmann. I believe that it connects the crucial dots necessary to reconstruct a creible image of the real Jesus. Its basic premis: none of the writhings of the NT is reliable Scriptural witness to Jesus. This Blog might find it to be of interst.
It is located as 10 Comments to the blog: The New Oxonie, the Hoffmann essay entitled: The Importance of the Historical Jesus.
Mitero
Do you believe it is morally wrong for an innocent person to suffer punishment for the guilty? And to have this punishment be designed so that the punished innocent atones for the admitted guilty?
Chuck,
I think I would like to say two things in response.
1. I think we would agree that there is a difference between something being (without qualification) morally wrong and objectively wrong.
Surely you know naturalists who do not believe that morally is objective. In other cases the naturalists will usually demand HARD evidence and yet there are plenty of naturalists who reject objective moral values.
So my question to you is, if it is objectively wrong to punish innocent people for the admitted guilty, why do so many naturalists not see this?
2. The Christian could respond, “Yes, it is morally wrong for the innocent to suffer punishment for the guilty.” Many Christians would in fact say this. C. S. Lewis for example, rejects penal substitution. I personally would say that the “what” is essential to Christianity, but that the “how” is not. Christ’s death has satisfied our debt, how it did that is a debate for others.
All the best.
Mitero,
I think you danced around the answer.
How did Jesus fulfill the debt?
Why does an innocent need to die to fulfill a debt?
As an atheist I can see it is morally wrong for any system to call "good" the death of an innocent to satisfy either guilt or a debt.
The first part of your answer I didn't understand.
Why do you always appeal to the authority of CS Lewis?
I've read Lewis, he should have stuck to Medieval literature. His theology and philosophy are simple-minded and pretty much psychological evidence of one who survived the Luftwaffe. Nothing more.
Leonardo,
Where do you live?
So I can come by your place and whip your ignorant racist ass or, do you just choose to sling your bullshit when you can hide on the Internet?
Fucking ignorant racist.
AN IRISH PRIEST
One fine sunny morning, the irish priest took a walk in the local forest. He had been walking by the small stream when he noticed a sad, sad looking frog sitting on a toadstool.
"What's wrong with you?" said the irish priest.
"Well," said the frog, "the reason I am so sad on this fine day is because I wasn't always a frog."
"Really!" said the irish priest. "Can you explain!"
"Once upon a time I was an 11 year old Choir boy at the local church. I too was walking through this forest when I was confronted by the wicked witch of the forest. 'Let me pass!' I yelled, but to no avail. She called me a cheeky little boy and with a flash of her wand, turned me into this frog you see before you."
"That's an incredible story." said the irish priest. "Is there no way of reversing this spell that the witch has cast upon you?."
"Yes" said the frog, "It is said, that if a nice kind person would pick me up, take me home, give me food & Warmth and with a good nights sleep would wake up a boy once again."
"Today's your lucky day!" said the irish priest, and picked up the frog and took him home. The irish priest gave the frog lots of food, placed him by the fire and at bedtime put the frog on the pillow beside him. When the irish priest awoke, he saw the 11-year-old Choirboy beside him in bed,
And that my lord is the case for the Defense....... "
PADDY O'CONNOR'S WEDDING NIGHT
Paddy takes his new wife to bed on their wedding night. She undresses & lies on the bed spreadeagled and says "You know what I want dont you?"
"Yeah," says Paddy. "The whole friggin' bed by the looks of it!"
A True Irish Ghost Story
This story happened a while ago in Dublin, and even though it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock tale, its said to be true!
Chuck O'Connor, a Dublin University student, was on the side of the road hitchhiking on a very dark night and in the midst of a big storm.
The night was rolling on and no car went by. The storm was so strong he could hardly see a few feet ahead of him. Suddenly, he saw a car slowly coming towards him and stopped. Chuck, desperate for shelter and without thinking about it, got into the car and closed the door.. only to realise there was nobody behind the wheel and the engine wasn't on
The car started moving slowly. Chuck looked at the road ahead and saw a bend approaching. Scared, he started to pray, begging for his life. Then, just before the car hit the bend, a hand appeared out of nowhere through the window and turned the wheel. Chuck, paralysed with terror, watched as the hand came through the window, but never touched or harmed him.
Shortly thereafter Chuck saw the lights of a pub appear down the road, so, gathering strength, he jumped out of the car and ran to it. Wet and out of breath, he rushed inside and started telling everybody about the horrible experience he had just had.
A silence enveloped the pub when everybody realised he was crying and.... wasn't drunk.
Suddenly, the door opened, and two other people walked in from the dark and stormy night. They, like Chuck, were also soaked and out of breath. Looking around, and seeing Chuck O'Connor sobbing at the bar, one said to the other...
'Look Paddy.....there's that fucking idiot that got in the car while we were pushing it!'
O'Connor & the Nun
O'Connor approached Mulligan's bar. On the step outside he was accosted by a nun, Sister Mary, who said:
"Surely a fine man like yourself is not going into this den of iniquity? Surely you're not going to waste your hard-earned cash on the devil's brew. Why don't you go home and feed and clothe your wife and children?"
"Hang on, Sister," spluttered O'Connor. "How can you condemn alcohol out of hand? Surely it's wrong to form such a rash judgement when you've never tasted the stuff?"
"Very well," said Sister Marie. I'll taste it just to prove my point. Obviously I can't go into the pub, so why don't you bring me some gin. Oh, and just to camouflage my intent, maybe you should bring it in a cup not a glass!"
"OK," said O'Connor and into the bar he breezed.
"I'll have a large gin," he said to the barman. "And can you put it in a cup?"
"My God," said the barman, "that nun's not outside again is she?"
Irish Medical Dictionary
Artery: The study of paintings.
Bacteria: Back door to cafeteria.
Barium: What you do when patients die.
Benign: What you be, after you be eight.
Caesarean Section: A neighbourhood in Rome.
Catscan: Searching for Kitty.
Cauterize: Made eye contact with her.
Colic: A sheep dog.
Coma: A punctuation mark.
Dilate: To live long.
Enema: Not a friend.
Fester: Quicker than someone else.
Fibula: A small lie.
Impotent: Distinguished, well known.
Labour Pain: Getting hurt at work.
Medical Staff: A Doctor's cane.
Morbid: A higher offer.
Nitrates: Cheaper than day rates.
Node: I knew it.
Outpatient: A person who has fainted.
Pelvis: Second cousin to Elvis.
Post Operative: A letter carrier.
Recovery Room: Place to do upholstery.
Rectum: Nearly killed him.
Secretion: Hiding something.
Seizure: Roman emperor.
Tablet: A small table.
Terminal Illness: Getting sick at the airport.
Tumour: One plus one more.
Urine: Opposite of you're out.
Chuck,
I apologize if you thought that I avoided your question.
How did Jesus fulfill the debt? I don’t know.
Why does an innocent need to die to fulfill a debt? I don’t know.
I do not believe that one needs to know HOW or WHY bananas are good for you in order to know that they are.
I could be wrong here, but I am not sure that the Christian is committed to calling the death of Jesus “good.” But surely there can be instances where an innocent dies in the place of the guilty that in hindsight ultimately produced good.
The first part of my answer simply says that to merely call something good or bad does not make it so. If right and wrong are not objective, then who cares what you or I think about atonement.(You may not have understood because I accidently typed morally is objective, instead of morality is objective. I apologize)
Is there HARD evidence that objective moral values exists? And if so, why don’t all naturalists see it?
The obnoxious shot that you took at Lewis was rather childish. It was actually an insult to me. Not because I like Lewis so much, but because your comment implies that any sophisticated thinker should spot Lewis’foolishness from a mile off.
Real classy...
All the best.
Paddy's Damaged Foot
Ferguson the blacksmith came in with a badly damaged foot. The doctor was surprised, for Ferguson was a careful man. "What happened to you, Paddy?" he asked. "Well, thirty-three years ago I was a young apprentice with Twomey of Ballinanaspickbuidhe......"
"But about your foot.....?" "This is about me foot. Twomey had a daughter and your eyes could gaze on her like the way a bullock would eat good grass. The first night I was there she came in when I was in bed and asked if I was comfortable and if I wanted anything and I said I didn't. The next night she came in when I was in bed and she wearing her nightdress and she asked me if there was any single thing she could get me or do for me and I told her I was as comfortable as a bug in a rug.
"The next night she came in and the girl hadn't a thing on her and she asked me if she could do anything for me and not wanting to keep her standing in the cold and she without a shift I said there was nothing."
"What has that got to do with your foot, Ferguson?" asked the doctor impatiently. "Sure it was only this morning that I finally thought of what she meant and I was so annoyed with meself that I threw me ten-pound hammer against the wall and it rebounded and broke me ankle."
Paddy Died in a Fire
Paddy died in a fire and was burnt pretty badly. So the morgue needed someone to identify the body. His two best friends, Seamus and Sean, were sent for. Seamus went in and the mortician pulled back the sheet.
Seamus said "Yup, he's burnt pretty bad. Roll him over".
So the mortician rolled him over. Seamus looked and said "Nope, it ain't Paddy."
The mortician thought that was rather strange and then he brought Sean in to identify the body.
Sean took a look at him and said, "Yup, he's burnt real bad, roll him over."
The mortician rolled him over and Sean looked down and said, "No, it ain't Paddy."
The mortician asked, "How can you tell?"
Sean said, "Well, Paddy had two arseholes."
"What? He had two arseholes?" asked the mortician.
"Yup, everyone knew he had two arseholes. Every time we went into town, folks would say, 'Here comes Paddy with them two arseholes....'"
As soon as she had finished parochial school, a bright young girl named Bridget shook the dust of Ireland off her shoes and made her way to New York where before long, she became a successful performer in show business.
Eventually she returned to her home town for a visit and on a Saturday night went to confession in the church which she had always attended as a child. In the confessional Father Sullivan recognized her and began asking her about her work. She explained that she was an acrobatic dancer, and he wanted to know what that meant. She said she would be happy to show him the kind of thing she did on stage.
She stepped out of the confessional and within sight of Father Sullivan, she went into a series of cartwheels, leaping splits, handsprings and backflips.
Kneeling near the confessional, waiting their turn, were two old ladies. They witnessed Bridget's acrobatics with wide eyes, and one said to the other: "Will you just look at the penance Father Sullivan is givin' out this night, and me without me knickers on!"
Mitero
I think Lewis is a good literature scholar but his religious perspective is heavily influenced by WWII, thus the war imagery which seems too black and white.
My questions regarding the crucifixion assume objective morality. Objectively, how is murdering an innocent for the crimes of the guilty "good"? Do you think it is?
Christians,
Looks like Leonardo is one of yours.
Care to put him in his place?
Chuck,
I respect your comment about Lewis and I appreciate the manner with which it was delivered, thanks.
Just a note, the WWII imagery is found quite a bit in Mere Christianity. These (as I am sure you are aware) were BBC broadcasts given in fifteen minute segments. Lewis was “simpleminded” because he was addressing the normal, ordinary citizens of Britain. He used the war imaginary to allow his hearers to picture his ideas, and it makes sense that he would choose war images since Britain was in a war.
If you are interested (I doubt you are, since your mind seems to be made up about Lewis) he did give a highly sophisticated account of objective moral values at the Riddell Memorial Lectures, which was published in book form as, The Abolition of Man. Lewis appeals to reason and not to religion throughout these lectures.
To answer your question, how is murdering an innocent for the crimes of the guilty "good"? I don’t see how it could be. I am not sure how someone who accepts the theory of penal substitution would respond, but I do not accept this theory and am therefore not committed to the belief that God “murdered” an innocent for those who are guilty. It may surprise you to know that I also reject Lewis’preferred theory of atonement.
Would you answer my questions now?
All the best.
Will do Mitero but fair warning, I am not an expert on naturalism nor claim to be. I am read and writing this on my smart phone. I will answer further when I get to my computer. Thanks.
Mitero,
Sorry about the delay in responding - I was away and haven't had access to a computer for a couple of days.
Mitero: “Atonement is immoral. In order for this statement to have objective meaning, morality must be objective. But I am not sure that this can be proven, can it?”
I don’t have a well-thought out position on morality, but I don’t know that it’s required that morality must be objective for something to be immoral.
I also think that when you have a morality defined by all parties to that morality, the morality so defined is de facto objective. Systems of morality, for instance, that are defined for all members of a society prior to knowing what one’s role will be in that society, it seems to me, would be objective. I don’t think there would be a problem calling this morality objective, and under any system I can imagine flowing from that scenario I believe that atonement would be immoral (destructive).
Mitero: “No atheist that I know of denies the expansion of the universe, but many deny objective moral values. So for your statement to have objective meaning you must show that objective moral values exist.”
I don’t think its troublesome for (atheist) moral relativists to say that atonement is immoral (subjectively), and for those who construct their view of morality as I described above to call atonement objectively immoral. Either way, I think that both sides would conclude that atonement is immoral. It appears to me that the only system whereby atonement is widely considered moral is by theists who embrace the second horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.
Mitero: “Otherwise you are merely giving your opinion.”
Well, this only matters if you demand that morality be objective, and I think that many could reasonably disagree with you there.
Mitero: “Do you believe reality (you can define that for me) intends for us to behave in certain ways that are in accord with an objection set of values? “
I am not sure if I understand this question. It seems like a meta-ethics question. But I am confused by the language “reality intends for us.” I think if I rephrased the question like this, “Do you believe that reality intends for us to behave in a certain way that are in accord with the laws of physics?” you may understand my confusion. Maybe it’s not clear to you because you are a theist, but my naturalist preconceptions confine my mind to brute facts where maybe theist minds looks for metaphysical intent?
Mitero: “Are we free to rebel? If so, how does it do this and why? And why doesn’t it behave in those ways?”
Not sure what the “it” refers to in your second and third sentence above so I am loath to provide an answer.
I will say that I am not troubled by free will being perhaps an illusion because I think whether it is or not makes no difference to me, in the same way that whether or not reality exists as I perceive it or I am a brain in a vat makes no practical difference to me. I “know” that I make choices, and whether or not those choices were inevitable is a separate, and perhaps unresolvable, issue.
Tony,
Thank you for your sincere answers, and of course taking time to respond.
I only have time for a couple of thoughts, so my reply or lack thereof is no indication that I don’t find your points interesting.
“When you have a morality defined by all parties to that morality, the morality so defined is de facto objective.”
I am not sure I follow you here. Are you then saying that because all the Nazi’s signed on to their idea that the extermination of Jews, gypsies, etc. was good for humanity, that therefore it is objectively good?
I must be misunderstanding you.
“Maybe it’s not clear to you because you are a theist, but my naturalist preconceptions confine my mind to brute facts where maybe theist minds looks for metaphysical intent?”
I mention this because of your use of the word “ought” in a previous post. This is confusing to me granting naturalism. To me it is like saying, the earth “ought” to be the third plant from the sun. It makes more sense (to me at least) to say that the earth “is” the third planet from the sun. So I guess the question is, why is it that you “ought” to do certain things if you are governed strictly by the same physical laws that the solar system is?
“I “know” that I make choices”
What is the difference between saying I am not troubled that god may be an illusion because I know god exists and saying I am not troubled that free-will may be an illusion because I know I make choices?
I have no doubt that you are a great guy and you have challenged me in this exchange. Above all, you are respectful and I sincerely appreciate that. No name calling and no cheap shots. Thanks.
I say this because I spend more time on these boards than I ought (I couldn’t resist) and may not reply to your response, but I will surely read it if you chose to leave one.
All the best to you my man.
Me: “When you have a morality defined by all parties to that morality, the morality so defined is de facto objective.”
Mitero: “I am not sure I follow you here. Are you then saying that because all the Nazi’s signed on to their idea that the extermination of Jews, gypsies, etc. was good for humanity, that therefore it is objectively good? I must be misunderstanding you.”
Thanks for the benefit of the doubt -- I was not very clear.
My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality. In that world, Nazism would be immoral, because those prescribing genocide of the Jews, gypsies, handicapped, free-thinkers, etc. might find themselves in the subjugated roles. Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped. Etc. On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc. This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances, and that this does not require a god.
Me: “Maybe it’s not clear to you because you are a theist, but my naturalist preconceptions confine my mind to brute facts where maybe theist minds looks for metaphysical intent?”
Mitero: “I mention this because of your use of the word “ought” in a previous post. This is confusing to me granting naturalism. To me it is like saying, the earth “ought” to be the third plant from the sun. It makes more sense (to me at least) to say that the earth “is” the third planet from the sun. So I guess the question is, why is it that you “ought” to do certain things if you are governed strictly by the same physical laws that the solar system is?”
I think this question implies that I am robotic, that I don’t have desires. But I do. And since it is a brute fact of my existence that I do have desires, it only makes sense that I would adopt behavior that would allow me to satisfy most of my desires while doing the least to thwart the desires of others. The balance of these interests, and my ability to cooperate and increase the satisfaction of my desires by helping others satisfy theirs, provides me with the rationale I need for morality, and the “oughts” that some find to be so elusive without a god-grounded morality.
Me: “I “know” that I make choices”
Mitero: “What is the difference between saying I am not troubled that god may be an illusion because I know god exists and saying I am not troubled that free-will may be an illusion because I know I make choices?”
The difference is epistemological, in that my thoughts are internal and their perception is knowable only by me (subjective), but God is external and presumably knowable by everyone in all circumstances (objective).
Mitero: “Thanks. I say this because I spend more time on these boards than I ought (I couldn’t resist) and may not reply to your response, but I will surely read it if you chose to leave one. All the best to you my man.”
I have enjoyed the conversation as well. All the best to you.
Mitero,
If you don't mind, I feel that Tony has a better handle on the philosophy of morality than I so, I'd like to observe your conversation. Speaking out with a fully honed perspective on this topic would be pretentious and premature. Thanks.
I'm sorry, but merely saying that "religious people do bad things" ISN'T an argument. Yes, a lot of crap has been done in the name of religion. But...so what??
What does that prove?
Can't a theist say the SAME thing to the atheist?
"Hey, millions of people died because of atheism. Therefore, atheism is wrong and evil!"
(I mean, Darwinian philosophies have brought about some pretty fun things, huh?)
What hasn't been presented yet is any convincing proofs that morality CAN actually exist apart from a morality "giver" or "source". It has to come from somewhere, right?
What makes all the atrocities committed by ANYONE (including you and me) "atrocious" in the first place?
"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, Ch. 6)
Whoa, who, iheckdude, don't use up all your misrepresentations, strawmen, and fallacies in one comment. Pace yourself, man.
Tony,
I don't think what christians see is that those of us who once were passionate believers (raises hand) had to practice willful ignorance towards christian theology if we were to accept the religion and god-concept therein as "good".
When I started questioning the "goodness" of my just desserts as crucifixion for "being" and the primary driver of christian delight being obedience to a being simply because that being made them, regardless what that being can and will do with his creation, I started seeing that what is defined as "good" in christianity would be defined as "totalitarian abuse absent the rule of law" everywhere else. It is an ideology every "god-fearing" american opposed when facing down Nazi Germany or the USSR.
The question is, how can giving glory to a being who allows children to suffer and mandates genocide (documented in His word) be a good life purpose?
Logic demands non-contradictiona and calling the character of god "good" despite his dependence on wrath indicates an illogical position.
Chuck,
I like John's blog so much because he, and folks like you, add such an interesting perspective to these discussions. (Although I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church, I wouldn't count myself as ever having been among the true believers.)
I do think it's interesting how theists often seem to think that morality is their ace in the hole, when I find it so obviously problematic (because of contradictions, the Euthyphro dilemma, etc.).
But that's why we should all keep having these conversations.
Cheers.
Chuck and Tony,
I’m amazed at how frequently you guys have left comments on this post! Very impressive I must say. I’m generally unable to keep up with the pace of most discussion boards, but I do like them and enjoy dialoging with others who assert different ideas. I agree with the last comment Tony made “…we should all keep having these conversations.”
Tony…thanks for the “logic-coaching” by the way:) I’ll try to rephrase things a bit, and hopefully be rewarded with a cogent response versus a whistle and yellow card.
To be simple, let me hone in on one point. Morality.
First, what I’m NOT claiming here is any notion that religious people are somehow morally superior to anyone else. Also, I’m not claiming that Christians (specifically) have some kind of advanced moral-DNA.
I’m just acknowledging, like you (Chuck and Tony) have, that morality, ethics, right, wrong, good and evil DO in fact EXIST. Chuck, you know something is definitely WRONG when children suffer, and I agree. We all want to see justice, don’t we?
What I hear from you Chuck is that you do have and do experience an intrinsic sense of “good.” And I don’t doubt that you’re a great guy and probably considered by your friends to be morally “good”. My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized.
So my question is: What is your morality GROUNDED IN, if not a Transcendent Lawmaker? What is it’s adequate cause?
Tony,
When applied to Christianity, “Euthyphro’s Dilemma” distorts the Biblical view of God. (straw man?) How well do you know Biblical Theology, specifically when it comes to the Nature of God?
iheckdude: “I’m just acknowledging, like you (Chuck and Tony) have, that morality, ethics, right, wrong, good and evil DO in fact EXIST.”
To be clear, I don’t have a firm position on moral realism. I would certainly agree that we have a moral sense, that we are built to perceive (and develop) morality.
iheckdude: “What is your morality GROUNDED IN, if not a Transcendent Lawmaker? What is it’s adequate cause?”
You asked this question to Chuck, but I am curious what you think might be wrong with my source for morality that I tried describing above, now quoted below:
Me: “My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality. In that world, Nazism would be immoral, because those prescribing genocide of the Jews, gypsies, handicapped, free-thinkers, etc. might find themselves in the subjugated roles. Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped. Etc. On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc. This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances, and that this does not require a god.”
iheckdude: “When applied to Christianity, “Euthyphro’s Dilemma” distorts the Biblical view of God. (straw man?) How well do you know Biblical Theology, specifically when it comes to the Nature of God?”
I am curious how the ED distorts the biblical view of God.
I was raised in a Christian church, took religion classes, a little philosophy, and a I participate in these kinds of discussions. So, a little, but I have never studied it with real interest.
Tony,
U: “My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality.”
Me: Objective morality cannot be defined, namely because we are the ones defining it (the second horn of Euthyphro’s Dilemma), which therefore implies that we could have defined it differently. If all parties were to agree that rape was ok, knowing beforehand that they might be the victim, this would not make rape ok, this is what I mean by objective.
As difficult as it is for us to conceive of such a society, we have reasonable people in our society that find it difficult to conceive of abortion as not being immoral. And yet we live in a society that defines it as ok, or at least not immoral.
How would your vote be cast on the issue of abortion? You said, “Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped.”
Would abortion be immoral because, “one could find oneself in the role of the aborted?”
U: “I would adopt behavior that would allow me to satisfy most of my desires while doing the least to thwart the desires of others.”
Me: The defining of “I” must inevitably be done in terms of activity in the brain. You have no control over your brain activity, because “you” are brain activity. Even if it could be shown that different parts of the brain are in conflict, there is no “you” urging one on and trying to suppress the others. This would require something more than brain activity. So I must still contend that on a strictly naturalistic worldview, we are in a real sense, “robotic.” Stealing in words like I, you, my, etc. doesn’t help unless you define in physical terms what they mean and how it is they break free of the physical process.
U: “The difference is epistemological, in that my thoughts are internal and their perception is knowable only by me (subjective), but God is external and presumably knowable by everyone in all circumstances (objective).”
Me: The point is not a matter of epistemology, but rather of a logical absurdity. If at once we admit that free will is an illusion, how do we logically state that we “actually” make choices?
The statement, “I make choices” seems to lose all meaning if we allow that free will is an illusion. To say that, “the brain acts in this or that way,” does not equal (to me), “I make choices.”
All the best.
iheckdude,
You said, "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized."
I don't understand this logic. God exists because I recognize right and wrong and therefore God exists. It seems circular.
My morality has consistently shifted throughout my life and is not a fixed thing. It changes as my understanding of reality changes. When I was Roman Catholic I thought the morally right thing to do when weighed down with guilt was to practice the Sacrament of Penance. When a nominal Buddhist I thought morality consisted of meditating to detach from desire and limit suffering. As a Calvinist Christian I thought morality was rooted in my willingness to make my life purpose a glorification of the biblical god, both in the character of the wrathful Yawheh and the peaceful god-man Jesus. This incoherence nearly drove me insane.
Much of what I defined as "morality" was really just a means towards "popularity" where "god" was my familiar community. It hasn't been consistent so, any "Law" given by a "Law-giver" has been subject to capricious experience.
I do have a basic sense of morality rooted in weighing my pleasure-seeking desires against how those desires might thwart future pleasure-seeking desires. I have recognized the supernaturalism you endorse as circular logic and "magical thinking". It seems nothing more than a crutch I thought I needed because I believed myself broken and if I tried to stand on my own, I would collapse. Claiming atheism and practicing critical thinking have made me realize that I do not need any gods to be good. I am gradually learning the philosophy of morality by considering things like Libertarian Freewill (does it really exist?); meta-ethics; and a particular form of moral philosophy known as desirism (loosely defined above).
I firmly reject the biblical definition of morality and think christian theology an evil epistemology where one must empower self-hatred to generate a numinous experience as evidence that he or she is good.
But, I will entertain your premise a bit when you say, "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized."
What God is the law-giver?
Remember, I was a Calvinist who adhered to biblical inerrancy so, I know a little bible. An alter call will not be well-received.
Use some logic and make a case for the authoratarian god who demands his creation give him glory as the source of morality.
If you are saying that the biblical god is the law-giver of morality than by Jewish bible standards genocide is moral and by Christian bible standards hating one's family and one's life is moral.
Those things do not fit within either my instinctive nor my fledgling-philosophical moral understanding.
I'm willing to listen to how you support this argument, "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized," without special pleading, begging the question or other forms of circularity.
Mitero: “Objective morality cannot be defined, namely because we are the ones defining it (the second horn of Euthyphro’s Dilemma), which therefore implies that we could have defined it differently.”
Yes, I see your point here but your question was how could I make a moral judgment about, say, atonement, and I think that the system to which I subscribe allows me to make that judgment in a way that is not entirely subjective, either.
But I believe I can ask you the same kind of question and that you face a similar problem (below):
Mitero: “If all parties were to agree that rape was ok, knowing beforehand that they might be the victim, this would not make rape ok, this is what I mean by objective.”
Now I have to ask you, how do you know that rape would never be ok? How do you answer the question of how you know it is that God’s nature is good (setting aside problems of how you know it biblically)? The standard apologist response seems to be that God’s nature is good, and God cannot do what is not in his nature. Again, setting aside other problems about what kind of God this then is who has no will of his own to act against his nature, it appears that you must assume your conclusion -- that God’s nature is perfectly good -- in order for you to say that you can know something like rape is objectively bad. In other words, without a separate, objective standard for morality that exists outside of God, you are still caught by the 2nd horn. In yet other words, I am saying that it is not God’s purported ability to change his mind that makes the morality of the second horn arbitrary, but the fact that the standard for goodness and God’s goodness are one in the same – they are arbitrary because we have no way of saying how it is that we can truly know that God’s nature is the perfect good.
Mitero: “As difficult as it is for us to conceive of such a society, we have reasonable people in our society that find it difficult to conceive of abortion as not being immoral. And yet we live in a society that defines it as ok, or at least not immoral. How would your vote be cast on the issue of abortion? You said, “Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped.” Would abortion be immoral because, “one could find oneself in the role of the aborted?” ”
I think that I haven’t made myself entirely clear yet on the system I have described for moral objectivity in a society where all interests (desires) are balanced. In this (idealized) system, morality isn’t a matter of taking votes, but of looking at the outcome of behavior and how it impacts other desires. Rape is a bad desire because it thwarts other desires – the desires of the raped to not be subject to violence, to preserve personal autonomy, etc. Rape would be immoral for those reasons. To the extent abortion would thwart other desires (if and when those desires exist), then to that extent abortion would be immoral.
- cont'd
Me: ““I would adopt behavior that would allow me to satisfy most of my desires while doing the least to thwart the desires of others.”
Mitero: The defining of “I” must inevitably be done in terms of activity in the brain. You have no control over your brain activity, because “you” are brain activity. Even if it could be shown that different parts of the brain are in conflict, there is no “you” urging one on and trying to suppress the others. This would require something more than brain activity. So I must still contend that on a strictly naturalistic worldview, we are in a real sense, “robotic.” Stealing in words like I, you, my, etc. doesn’t help unless you define in physical terms what they mean and how it is they break free of the physical process.
Hmm. I didn’t think of my using words like “I” in this discussion would be considered stealing or cheating. I mean “I” to distinguish my brain activity, if that is how you’d like to characterize it, from your brain activity. I used the word robotic to differentiate myself from something that does not have desires. I don’t think this is controversial.
If you’re going to make an argument that free will is incompatible with causation then I think that will be difficult. (I see no intrinsic problems understanding consciousness as it’s explained by naturalists like Dennett, etc. ) If you think it’s necessary that free will somehow be disassociated from physical process, I would ask you how it is that you explain that dualism works – what is the process whereby the non-physical mind interacts with the physical brain. This one has perplexed dualists since Descartes, and nobody yet, despite lots of searching, has explained that one. So I’ll see your break free of the physical world question, and up you one interact with the physical world question. ☺
Me: “The difference is epistemological, in that my thoughts are internal and their perception is knowable only by me (subjective), but God is external and presumably knowable by everyone in all circumstances (objective).”
Mitero: The point is not a matter of epistemology, but rather of a logical absurdity. If at once we admit that free will is an illusion, how do we logically state that we “actually” make choices? The statement, “I make choices” seems to lose all meaning if we allow that free will is an illusion. To say that, “the brain acts in this or that way,” does not equal (to me), “I make choices.” All the best.
Well, to begin with, there is causal free will and contra causal free will. Causal free will makes sense to me in what I understand of the world and what I understand of my own thoughts – that while all of my actions may be caused, that does not then entail that I am compelled against what I perceive to be my will.
But I think you have also sidestepped my question above as well in that you asked what the difference is between saying that we know our own thoughts and saying that we know that God exists. You appear to be equating them, and I believe it’s clear that the two are entirely different epistemologically, as the second one makes a truth claim about the outside world. (Unless you’re a mystical Christian who defines the Kingdom of Heaven only as a state of internal awareness, as Jesus seemed to, in which case I have no quibble and I put you in my favorite-kind-of-Christian category.)
Cheers. And good luck submitting a reply – it seems like it takes a long time now for comments to pop up.
iheckdude: "My point isn’t that you wouldn’t recognize right and wrong without God, my point is that you need God to MAKE SENSE of what you’ve recognized."
Chuck: I don't understand this logic. God exists because I recognize right and wrong and therefore God exists. It seems circular.
Hey Chuck,
Let me try to clarify by unpacking that statement and split it in 2.
1) Recognition of Morality
I think we both agree that it’s possible to RECOGNIZE (observe & experience) morality, right and wrong WITHOUT God in the picture.
For instance, we can both OBSERVE an apple falling to the ground. Does our observation of the apple falling require any knowledge of gravity? No! (You’d think I was crazy if I said that it did.) The apple fell. It’s that simple. I don’t need to understand the laws of physics in order to make the claim, “Hey, that apple fell!”
But how would you and I MAKE SENSE of our observation? Wouldn’t an explanation of falling apples eventually require an appeal to gravity? Well I’d say yes because gravity is the LAW CAUSING “things to fall”. Gravity is the only thing that can MAKE SENSE of falling apples.
But, we CAN experience and observe gravity’s effects WITHOUT having any understanding of its nature.
In the same way, you and I both can observe the world around and recognize that some thing’s are GOOD, and some thing’s are NOT GOOD…even EVIL! Yes, we can make that observation WITHOUT God…but can we make SENSE of it?
2) Making Sense of Morality
So the point is this: In the same way that you CAN’T make sense of a falling apple without ultimately appealing to gravity (the cause, the law)…you WILL NOT make SENSE of morality without ultimately appealing to a Cause. (An Ultimate and Absolute Law.)
Can morality, apart from an Absolute Moral Law, even be considered “morality”? If there’s no absolute standard for what’s Right, Good, and True, then why do we insist on living with one?
If there is no Absolute Moral Standard, the logical conclusion is there is NO moral standard. No right. No wrong. That's it.
“In the name of whom or what do you ask me to behave? Why should I go to the inconvenience of denying myself the satisfactions I desire in the name of some standard that exists only in your imagination? Why should I worship the fictions that you have imposed on me in the name of nothing?” -Thomas Merton
Looking forward to your response Chuck.
Matt (me)
There is nothing equivalent in your illustration. Gravity can be measured, morality can't. It is a strawman argument. Analogy has power when you are comparing similar things. You aren't. I will appeal to the law of gravity because it has objective and observable and measurable standards. Morality doesn't. I think I made that clear when sharing my experience. The thing that would stop you from satisfying your desires is the natural opposition you would face when thay desire thwarting desire would be snuffed out.
Meant to say that, not thay, desire. Typos suck.
An illustration Matt to clarify my point.
You are an Israeli in Jerusalem, a devout and Orthodox Jew who believes Israel is God's covenant to you and is evidence of his reality. I am a Palestinian who believes Allah seeks worldwide Islam and this necessitates Jihad to force the next Caliphate.
I strap C4 to my chest and walk into a market, while wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap (I have family back in the Motor City and became a fan of the game - it's a thought experiment, roll with me) I walk up to you at a cafe, smile and detonate the C4 killing you and me, while blowing the Tigers cap from my head.
Now, my family will sing praises for the moral martyrdom I practiced in service of Allah, Islam and Jihad while your family will curse the immoral act of the terrorist. One action, two moral interpretations based on who a person decides the law-giver is, Yahweh of Allah.
But, the descent of my hat to the ground will be calculated in the same way by both Jewish and Muslim physicists and the rate of descent and force of gravity will be agreed upon.
There is no moral law equivalent to physical law. It is an illusion.
iheckdude: “Can morality, apart from an Absolute Moral Law, even be considered “morality”? If there’s no absolute standard for what’s Right, Good, and True, then why do we insist on living with one?”
I don’t think I follow you here. There is no universal “up,” for instance, but that doesn’t stop us all from knowing what up is. So I’d say that morality can exist with an absolute standard in the same way that up can exist without an absolute standard.
Would you say that because there is no absolute standard for “Up” that therefore “up” cannot exist?
It seems more and more to me that the theistic questions about morality are a search for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
iheckdude: “If there is no Absolute Moral Standard, the logical conclusion is there is NO moral standard. No right. No wrong. That's it.”
There is no absolute standard for up but we have no problem saying that up exists. If there is no absolute standard for the color blue, does that mean that most of us cannot reliably identify the color blue, or that blue does not exist?
Merton: “In the name of whom or what do you ask me to behave?”
In the name of the society in which you interact and from whose contributions you derive benefit.
Merton: “Why should I go to the inconvenience of denying myself the satisfactions I desire in the name of some standard that exists only in your imagination?”
Because you will be punished for taking actions that thwart the desires of others, and receive benefit for taking actions that help fulfill more desires.
Merton: “Why should I worship the fictions that you have imposed on me in the name of nothing?”
For the reasons described above. Morality is a product of relationships, and appears to be a fiction the same way that 4 is a fiction of 2 x 2. Do you think that Merton believes (as he seems to imply above) that because there is no ideal of the perfect apple, apples do not exist?
iheckdude: If there is no Absolute Moral Standard, the logical conclusion is there is NO moral standard. No right. No wrong. That's it.
Can you give us a definition and an example of an Absolute Moral Standard(TM)?
Tony,
You ask some very good questions and make some very good points. I should have time for a reply this evening or this weekend.
All the best.
TONY: There is no universal “up,” for instance, but that doesn’t stop us all from knowing what up is.“
If we ALL know what “up” is…(and you say we do), how is that NOT universal?
TONY: “So I’d say that morality can exist with an absolute standard in the same way that up can exist without an absolute standard. Would you say that because there is no absolute standard for “Up” that therefore “up” cannot exist?.”
First of all, Tony…you’re begging the question. First demonstrate that “up” DOES NOT have an absolute standard. I’d argue that it DOES.
TONY: “It seems more and more to me that the theistic questions about morality are a search for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
It sounds like you're just "thinking out loud" here, so I'll do the same:
If by this you mean: “…the theists who questions just HOW IT IS an atheist makes sense of our world (where right or wrong exist) WITHOUT first demonstrating a SOUND FOUNDATION for morality??...” Then, Yes. I’d agree. That DOES feel like searching for something that DOESN’T exist.
Materialism just doesn’t make sense of morality or provide it with ANY true meaning.
TONY: “There is no absolute standard for up but we have no problem saying that up exists.”
Again, please show me how you came to that conclusion: “There is no absolute standard for up…”
“If there is no absolute standard for the color blue, does that mean that most of us cannot reliably identify the color blue, or that blue does not exist?”
Let’s just deal with UP first. :)
iHeckDude: "If we ALL know what “up” is…(and you say we do), how is that NOT universal?"
Because it varies depending on where you are. Up in China is quite different from where I type, for instance. Where is up when you are orbiting the earth? Outside of our solar system? If you are being spun in a centripedal device on the equator, and you wanted to lessen the forces on your body, where would up be?
Etc.
Well said Tony.
What Matt needs to demonstrate is how (or which) theistic theology is the most preferred explanation for morality. I see the survival benefits interdependence yields evolving like other cultural by-products. Morality is like language it exists for us to socialize and does not need myth to be explained.
U: “your question was how could I make a moral judgment about, say, atonement”
Me: I would have to look back on earlier posts, but I am pretty sure that I said your claim that atonement is immoral has no objective meaning unless moral values are objective. You then said that objective values can be defined. To which I responded that this would be the second horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.
U: “the standard for goodness and God’s goodness are one in the same – they are arbitrary because we have no way of saying how it is that we can truly know that God’s nature is the perfect good.”
Me: I would take this a step further. I would say that in order for us to escape Euthyphro’s dilemma, the good must be uncreated. So that God is not merely good, but goodness and goodness is not merely divine, but God. As Lewis writes, “The duality which seems to force itself upon us when we think, first, of our Father in Heaven, and, secondly, of the self-evident imperatives of the moral law, is not a mere error but a real perception of things that would necessarily be two in any mode of being which enters our experience, but which are not so divided in the absolute being of the superpersonal God." At present this can hardly be imagined, but what short of this allows us to escape the dilemma?
Our perception of the moral law may be arbitrary, but the law itself cannot be. Otherwise we can both throw in the towel.
U: “I see no intrinsic problems understanding consciousness as it’s explained by naturalists like Dennett, etc.”
Me: Why is it that on every other issue the naturalist demands hard evidence? If science displayed hard evidence for free will, wouldn’t you think that more scientists would accept it? One would have to be a complete idiot to find hard scientific evidence for free will and then reject it. Surely you agree? But what about folks like Derk Pereboom? He writes, “Agent causation is a coherent possibility, but it is not credible given our best physical theories. Consequently, no position which affirms the sort of free will required for moral responsibility is left standing.” Or Paul Kwatz the author of Conscious Robots? He is asking for folks to produce evidence for free will on his web site http://www.consciousrobots.org/blog/?p=200
If there were hard scientific evidence I am confident that these gentlemen would hear it. No one wants to believe that we do not have free will.
U: ” I would ask you how it is that you explain that dualism works – what is the process whereby the non-physical mind interacts with the physical brain.”
Me: To answer your question, I don’t know. But there is difference between a logical absurdity and something unexplained.
U: “But I think you have also sidestepped my question above as well in that you asked what the difference is between saying that we know our own thoughts and saying that we know that God exists.”
Me: Sorry for the confusion, but my point was that if you admit free will is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know you have it. Just as, if you admit that god is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know god exists. These are both logically incoherent. That was my point.
For the record, I do believe that natural theology is a means to gain knowledge about God.
One final question, do you personally believe that abortion is immoral?
All the best.
Chuck and Tony,
OK. I want to simplify things for a moment. I’ve been asking you “How do you make sense of morality?” but I’m not entirely clear on YOUR definition of “morality”…or “good”. Do you have one? Please provide.
Here’s my point:
“Good” can only be “good” if and when there’s a STANDARD of GOOD. And if there is no standard to judge by, then it can never be known if anything is good or bad.
Without a standard of “good” … “good” just becomes a word with NO MEANING.
“Good” by necessity, requires a standard.
If there is no objective standard of good, then how do we know what good is?
Before you argue anything about “goodness” or “morality”, first establish an objective standard of good by which comparisons can be made.
After you define and rationally defend what good IS, then try to argue that we can actually be “good” without God.
Matt
Do you want a conversation or are you practicing a sermon.
Why don't you offer your standard of morality and let us proceed from there. The question becomes why morality demands external agency to predicate objectivity?
Matt
Also, you keep ignoring both Tony and me. Tony has defined his moral construct consistent with the philosophy known as desirism and I have discussed morality as a shifting moral construct like language which enhances social utility. You are begging the question by saying that morality demands objectivity so therefore god. Deal with the points we've already made.
iHeckDude, in your post previous to your last you declared that (contrary to my previous comment), up has an absolute standard, and then asked me four times how I would disagree. You even said, at the end of your post to another analog I mentioned, "Let's just deal with up first."
I responded directly to your question in my subsequent comment, as you requested.
But now, instead of addressing my response to the what you had only just had declared to be the question at hand, you now appear to want to change the subject.
You are the one making the claim -- that morality only makes sense if we appeal to an absolute moral law. You are the one with the burden of proof, and so far you have demonstrated that your claim is not fallacious.
typo in my last comment there - it should have said that you have NOT demonstrated that your claim is not fallacious.
Me: “your question was how could I make a moral judgment about, say, atonement”
Mitero: I would have to look back on earlier posts, but I am pretty sure that I said your claim that atonement is immoral has no objective meaning unless moral values are objective. You then said that objective values can be defined. To which I responded that this would be the second horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.
I believe the second horn of the ED is where morality is merely what the Gods declare to be good. I have not invoked any Gods, but outlined a system whereby all the participants in a moral system could define morality objectively. I don’t think that I can be caught in either of the ED’s horns because God is not, as it is for the theist, invoked in the morality to which I refer.
The ED is a dilemma only for those who need to reconcile their morality and an all powerful deity or deities. I am a naturalist.
Me: “the standard for goodness and God’s goodness are one in the same – they are arbitrary because we have no way of saying how it is that we can truly know that God’s nature is the perfect good.”
Mitero: I would take this a step further. I would say that in order for us to escape Euthyphro’s dilemma, the good must be uncreated. So that God is not merely good, but goodness and goodness is not merely divine, but God.
I think this reply does not answer the question I raised. Specifically, how would an uncreated good be known as good (anymore than a created good)? What is the difference between good and goodness? Your second sentence appears to be merely a tautology that declares, “God is good because good is God.” Like I said, this doesn’t answer my question, but simply makes an unsupported assertion that doesn’t address the real problem presented by the ED. (Hence, the difficulty of that pesky dilemma.)
Once again, how do theists know that the objective good defined by their God know that that morality is in itself the absolute good?
As Lewis writes, “The duality which seems to force itself upon us when we think, first, of our Father in Heaven, and, secondly, of the self-evident imperatives of the moral law, is not a mere error but a real perception of things that would necessarily be two in any mode of being which enters our experience, but which are not so divided in the absolute being of the superpersonal God."
At present this can hardly be imagined, but what short of this allows us to escape the dilemma?
I think that Lewis is fairly up front here in declaring that the only way to escape the dilemma is to embrace incoherence – he seems to be saying that we cannot understand it through rationality. I am surprised that this admission would come from so well-beloved an apologetic.
Our perception of the moral law may be arbitrary, but the law itself cannot be. Otherwise we can both throw in the towel.
This presents the same problem that I mentioned earlier, that in order for the apologist to “know” that the good that is inherent to God is the same as the absolute good she must presume what she seeks to know. This is circular, and fails to justify what the theist asserts – that the existence of a theistic god is sufficient to justify our assertion that something is objectively good.
Btw, I don’t consider it throwing in the towel to admit what we can know of morality, including the fact that we cannot know, under any system, what the absolute and objective good is. I find the question to be unresolvable, but also unimportant.
Me: “I see no intrinsic problems understanding consciousness as it’s explained by naturalists like Dennett, etc.”
Mitero: Why is it that on every other issue the naturalist demands hard evidence?
What? There is nothing but loads of hard evidence that brain activity and consciousness (including moral judgments) are related. The hypotheses that our brains provide us with what we call consciousness is based on all the evidence.
Mitero: If science displayed hard evidence for free will, wouldn’t you think that more scientists would accept it?
I think you are confused about science, consciousness, and free will. For one, I don’t think that science could even display had evidence for free will – this seems like an incoherent demand. Can you say how a scientist would disprove a hypothesis that that free will exists, for instance?
Also, speaking of evidence, what do you have in the way of statistics about scientists and their position on free will? (I’m guessing that most don’t even have a position on it, as it’s mostly a philosophical issue, and most scientists I know don’t care much for philosophical issues, especially those that may be unresolvable.)
One would have to be a complete idiot to find hard scientific evidence for free will and then reject it. Surely you agree? But what about folks like Derk Pereboom? He writes, “Agent causation is a coherent possibility, but it is not credible given our best physical theories. Consequently, no position which affirms the sort of free will required for moral responsibility is left standing.”
Derk Perebroom is a philosopher, not a scientist. I would like to know what he means by “the sort of free will required for moral responsibility,” because I’ll bet there are a lot of assumptions I don’t agree with in there.
Mitero: Or Paul Kwatz the author of Conscious Robots? He is asking for folks to produce evidence for free will on his web site http://www.consciousrobots.org/blog/?p=200 If there were hard scientific evidence I am confident that these gentlemen would hear it.
Paul Kwatz is a pseudonym. Right now it appears that the author(s?) have put up a website. Hard scientific evidence that wants to be taken seriously is submitted to scientific publications. What makes you think that setting up a website and accepting comments is how science proceeds (and that such a question can even be answered scientifically, for that matter)?
Mitero: No one wants to believe that we do not have free will.
This is patently false, as I don’t mind believing that (contra causal) free will may not exist. As philosophers like Dennet explain, however, the absence of contra causal free will is not really important to how we perceive the world or how we behave.
Do you have an argument for how morality (a set of proscribed and prescribed behaviors) would be impossible if there was no free will? For me that seems like saying that language or manipulation of our environment can’t exist without free will.
Me: ”I would ask you how it is that you explain that dualism works – what is the process whereby the non-physical mind interacts with the physical brain.”
Mitero: To answer your question, I don’t know. But there is difference between a logical absurdity and something unexplained.
Unicorns are not logically absurd, but there is no evidence for them either. Why don’t you believe in unicorns?
Me: “But I think you have also sidestepped my question above as well in that you asked what the difference is between saying that we know our own thoughts and saying that we know that God exists.”
Mitero: Sorry for the confusion, but my point was that if you admit free will is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know you have it.
But I don’t believe that I ever said that I know I have free will. My position is that whether or not I can truly escape the causal chain is irrelevant to me, because I perceive my thoughts and I perceive my choices, and the perception is the same to me whether or not those things truly exist. In other words, demonstrating that I have free will seems as doomed an enterprise as demonstrating that I am not a brain in a vat, and about as important.
Just as, if you admit that god is an illusion, you can’t then turn around and say that you know god exists. These are both logically incoherent. That was my point.
And I don’t think you have understood my point, as I tried to explain again above, that knowing that I make choices (perceiving free will) is a separate issue from knowing that my choices are in fact uncaused. But I can assert that I perceive my choices while conceding that my choices may in fact be caused without stating a contradiction. (In other words, I do not think, “I will go for a walk” and then observe me cooking an omelet instead. I perceive my will and my actions being aligned and related, and this gives me knowledge of free will even though it does not prove that I have contra-causal free will.)
One final question, do you personally believe that abortion is immoral? All the best.
Like up, I think it depends on the situation.
Gents, (Chuck and Tony)
I apologize if it seems like I’m ignoring your responses. I assure you I’m not. Honestly, I’m just trying to keep up! You’re both asking great questions that are making me think. I’m enjoying the dialog and definitely wanna keep the conversation going. Thanks for your patience guys.
Tony: “My view of objective morality without a god would be a system where all parties define moral behavior PRIOR to knowing what their role in the society would be governed by that morality."
What I appreciate Tony is your attempt to at least set out a blueprint for “objective morality without God”. This helps me understand what you’re thinking. By the way, is this "Nietzsche-like" system what you would PREFER?
OK. So, I agree with mitero’s initial comments in his response to the moral system you’ve outlined, but I’m also interested in hearing more…
First, do you have any examples of a culture where this system has been test-driven? What were the results?
Tony: "In that world, Nazism would be immoral, because those prescribing genocide of the Jews, gypsies, handicapped, free-thinkers, etc. might find themselves in the subjugated roles. Rape would be immoral, because condoning that one could find oneself in the role of the raped. Etc."
Do you believe that just “knowing” the rules would keep people from acting on their impulses? And what happens when the person, who NEVER raped anyone, gets raped?
I’m just curious to know if something like JUSTICE would fit into your system? If so, what would it look like?
What if a different culture existing nearby DIDN’T subscribe to that particular flavor of “morality”…would they be wrong for say, hating you?
Tony: "On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc"
Got no problem with that. Those “sound” great!
Tony: "This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances, and that this does not require a god.”
When you say: “this does not require a god.” Do you mean this in the ‘application’ sense? For example: “ME being moral doesn’t require a god.”
Or do you mean it like: “MORALITY doesn’t require a god.”
You may have meant it in another way. I’m not trying to present a dilemma.
But just to be clear, my argument ISN’T that LIVING morally requires a God, but that MORALITY doesn’t have any MEANING without God.
Tony: “This seems to me that it would be an objective morality, true in all instances…”
When you say: “true in all instances”, are you saying this objectively moral system is based on moral ABSOLUTES? (The emphasis is on the word "absolutes".) Can you help me understand your position a little more?
As great as it sounds, Tony, how would this system NOT fall on its head when practically applied? It’s hard to imagine this system working, partly due to the fact that it history provides no such success story. Barring examples you might provide, it seems like ANY evidence demonstrating “thriving world cultures” being created AND sustained, over a long haul WITHOUT RELIGION…is extremely lacking.
Chuck: “The question is, how can giving glory to a being who allows children to suffer and mandates genocide (documented in His word) be a good life purpose?
Chuck, your question is asked in such a way that it’s presents a false dilemma. It’s like me asking you if you still beat your wife. But, I think I understand what you're trying to say. Couple questions:
I'm curious to know which story you're referring to when you talk about genocide.
I’m also curious to know if you believe that "genocide, children suffering, etc" represent the Christian faith?
Chuck: "Logic demands non-contradictiona and calling the character of god "good" despite his dependence on wrath indicates an illogical position."
I understand the point you’re trying to make here, but it’s begging the question. God, as the Bible teaches, doesn’t “depend” on anything outside of Himself. He can't contradict Himself.
Would God really be GOOD if He DIDN’T punish evil?
P.Coyle: “Can you give us a definition and an example of an Absolute Moral Standard(TM)?”
Sure!
Definition: a transcendent and unchanging standard or “point of reference” by which humans gauge issues pertaining to morality, that is not derived from human invention, but comes from an absolute and transcendent authority… an authority that cannot be disproved by an appeal to any higher authority.
Example(s): the Creator God revealed in the Bible (the transcendent Authority); the Christian Bible (the point of reference)
Moral Absolutes found in the Bible= love, patience, kindness, self-contol, don’t murder, lie, cheat, steal, etc…
CHUCK O'CONNOR IS DESCENDANT FROM AN APE!
NO! I THINK ITS FROM AN ORANG-OUTANG!
"Among the most inestimable of our blessings, also, is that... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to John Thomas et al., 1807. ME 16:291
iheckdude: “What I appreciate Tony is your attempt to at least set out a blueprint for “objective morality without God”. This helps me understand what you’re thinking. By the way, is this "Nietzsche-like" system what you would PREFER?”
Thanks for the nod and civil tone.
The moral system I describe is already somewhat in effect and its concept predates Nietzsche – I’d say it’s been part of public debate in the English speaking West since at least the Magna Carta, and you could probably draw all kinds of parallels with Roman (Justinian) justice, etc. Our Constitution, in particular the Bill of Rights, is similar to what I outlined.
iheckdude: First, do you have any examples of a culture where this system has been test-driven? What were the results?
I am a fan of the Bill of Rights, so I like the results.
iheckdude: Do you believe that just “knowing” the rules would keep people from acting on their impulses? And what happens when the person, who NEVER raped anyone, gets raped?
Do you think that anyone who reads the Bible is good to go on the morality front? Of course not. Why would you expect the same from another morality system. You seem to think that morality without a system for enforcement is possible. I am not so utopian.
iheckdude: I’m just curious to know if something like JUSTICE would fit into your system? If so, what would it look like?
Justice would be enforcement of the prescribed morality in relation to the extent it is followed or violated.
iheckdude: What if a different culture existing nearby DIDN’T subscribe to that particular flavor of “morality”…would they be wrong for say, hating you?
A different culture would be wrong for hating me if their hatred of me tended to thwart more desires than it tended to satisfy. What desires are satisfied, and what desires are thwarted, as a result of hating someone outside your culture tend to have? That is the answer.
iheckdude: Tony: "On the other hand, helping others when you can, at little expense to you, would be moral in all instances. Returning favors as well. Etc"
iheckdude: Got no problem with that. Those “sound” great!
I harbor a suspicion that skeptics and theists share nearly universal ground on questions of basic morality, which is one reason I think the issue is inflated.
iheckdude: But just to be clear, my argument ISN’T that LIVING morally requires a God, but that MORALITY doesn’t have any MEANING without God.
As I mentioned earlier I think this is the same thing as saying that up has no meaning because there is no absolute, standard direction for Up. I think the theist has invented a solution for which there is no problem.
iheckdude: Tony, how would this system NOT fall on its head when practically applied? It’s hard to imagine this system working, partly due to the fact that it history provides no such success story.
I think that the Bill of Rights is one of the most successful moral codes in history. We can do far better, of course, but there is nothing inherently impossible with both improving the ideals and their application.
Tony
U: “I don’t think that I can be caught in either of the ED’s horns because God is not, as it is for the theist, invoked in the morality to which I refer.”
Me: So when you say, “atonement is immoral” are you invoking nothing? Why should I accept your opinion over the next guys?
U: “The ED is a dilemma only for those who need to reconcile their morality and an all powerful deity or deities. I am a naturalist.”
Me: Let’s call it Tony’s dilemma then. Are things immoral because Tony says that they are? Or does Tony say so because they are immoral? How do you get out of this one without invocation?
U: “he seems to be saying that we cannot understand it through rationality.”
Me: Lewis is pointing out that the problem of the relationship of goodness to God ('the duality') is a problem of comprehension on our part because of our limited point of view. It is a problem that is created because we view the relationship between goodness and The Good from within the created world, but God is not limited to our perspective. This being the case we should recognize that the duality which appears as incoherent does not necessarily apply to God. God is not subject to the same limitations that we are as creatures. His relationship to goodness is different than ours because God is the ground and standard of goodness. This concept is only incoherent if you assume that a transcendent personal being such as God does not exist, but I believe we have good reasons to believe that it makes more sense to posit God as the best explanation for what we all assume about good and evil.
U: “I don’t consider it throwing in the towel to admit what we can know of morality, including the fact that we cannot know, under any system, what the absolute and objective good is. I find the question to be unresolvable, but also unimportant.
Me: I have no doubt that you can know of morality, but so can Ahmed the terrorist and he thinks that beheading you is morally good. You say, “No it is not.” He says, “Yes it is.” “No it is not.” “Yes it is.” Ahmed doesn’t give two cents about your opinions on morality. And he proceeds to behead you. Was it objectively “wrong” for him to do this? It seems that you think that this question is “unimportant.” But supposing you could show that he is wrong for beheading you. So what? Who is he accountable to? If on his deathbed he confessed to beheading a thousand people and added, “got away with it too.” What would you say to him? What would you say to the families of those victims? Can you promise them justice? Can you offer them hope? Can you tell them that it is going to be ok?
more response to your reply later...
All the best.
Mitero: So when you say, “atonement is immoral” are you invoking nothing? Why should I accept your opinion over the next guys?
I am invoking the objective, moral standards of the society in which we live, in which actions that tend to thwart other desire are immoral, and desires that tend to help fulfill other desires are good. It is not my opinion, but the opinion of the society.
In the society in which we live, sacrificing an uninvolved innocent so that the guilty go free is immoral for many reasons. That’s because sacrificing the uninvolved only thwarts a lifetime of desires of the sacrificed. And allowing the guilty to go free tends to thwart more desires than it satisfies because it removes the disincentive for curbing selfish behavior – unbridled selfish behavior thwarts more desires than it satisfied because it makes impossible the benefits of reciprocal cooperation, without which humans in our current state would probably not last a generation.
Mitero: Let’s call it Tony’s dilemma then. Are things immoral because Tony says that they are? Or does Tony say so because they are immoral? How do you get out of this one without invocation?
I have explained this many times now to the best of my ability, and I am certainly not an expert on this subject. You should either read up on Desirism, or better yet, explain why you think it is that morality cannot exist without an invocation to a deity.
Mitero: Me: Lewis is pointing out that the problem of the relationship of goodness to God ('the duality') is a problem of comprehension on our part because of our limited point of view. It is a problem that is created because we view the relationship between goodness and The Good from within the created world, but God is not limited to our perspective. This being the case we should recognize that the duality which appears as incoherent does not necessarily apply to God. God is not subject to the same limitations that we are as creatures. His relationship to goodness is different than ours because God is the ground and standard of goodness. This concept is only incoherent if you assume that a transcendent personal being such as God does not exist, but I believe we have good reasons to believe that it makes more sense to posit God as the best explanation for what we all assume about good and evil.
I am sorry to say that this (and the paragraph that follows it) is the weakest thing you have written here. You have completely ignored the problem I have outlined in relation to your knowing that God’s goodness is in fact good, and say that the problem is our limited understanding. Can you not imagine cult members from any other religion saying the same things about what they believe? “Yes, yes, we know it doesn’t make sense that our leader is God in the flesh and appears as a man and drive a Cadillac and sleeps with 12 year old virgins, but his ways are complex, and we are but mere, limited mortals…”
You are free to embrace the second horn, as Muslims do. But you appear to want to cling to a higher ground that it still appears your theology does not deserve.
TONY: "I think that the Bill of Rights is one of the most successful moral codes in history. We can do far better, of course, but there is nothing inherently impossible with both improving the ideals and their application."
Tony, thank you for providing examples, but I'm wondering why you didn't respond to the 2nd half of my question. (repeated below)
ME: "...it seems like ANY evidence demonstrating “thriving world cultures” being created AND sustained, over a long haul WITHOUT RELIGION…is extremely lacking.
Your examples (Magna Carta, Justinian, Bill of Rights, etc) were authored largely by people who were, at the very least, influenced by Religion...
The argument could be made that they were basing the morals of society not in "Desire"...(which is subjective and fickle) but on Moral Absolutes, stemming from an immutable God.
It CANNOT be proven that there was ever a time in history where humanity has existed FREE from ANY or ALL theistic influence.
No "moral society" will ever be found to be without a lofty thought of God somewhere nearby.
iHeckDude: Tony, thank you for providing examples, but I'm wondering why you didn't respond to the 2nd half of my question. (repeated below) ME: "...it seems like ANY evidence demonstrating “thriving world cultures” being created AND sustained, over a long haul WITHOUT RELIGION…is extremely lacking.
Um, well, it wasn’t phrased as a question, for starters. Your second part read as an assertion, and it appeared so vague and amorphous that the goalposts are pretty much already on wheels and ready to go.
I responded to your previous question, as I had your prior ones. You have failed to respond to many of my prior comments or answers, so it’s not clear to me that that you were applying a stricter standard to my responses than your own.
What exactly would you like me to do with the 2nd half of your last comment – bring up (non-theistic) Scandanavian states, pretty much the most generous, non-violent societies we know of, so that you can cavil about their society having been originally based on Christianity, etc.? Been there, done that.
Which would be beside the point anyway, because your reasoning itself is so fallacious I don’t want to waste time by pursuing it. By your proposed standard, would you have had everyone put a moratorium on social and political experimentation because “nothing like it has been created and sustained, over a long haul...?” Well, there goes a post feudal society. There goes democracy. There goes a society without slavery. There goes women’s equality. Forget trying those out, folks, it hasn’t been created and sustained, over a long haul.
iHeckDude: “Your examples (Magna Carta, Justinian, Bill of Rights, etc) were authored largely by people who were, at the very least, influenced by Religion...”
What an idiotic thing to say. Really. Let me see, what could we say isn’t at very least, influenced by religion? Probably, nothing. Shoot, Karl Marx was influenced by religion. If his stuff ever worked out, would you want to take credit for that?
iHeckDude: “The argument could be made that they were basing the morals of society not in "Desire"...(which is subjective and fickle) but on Moral Absolutes, stemming from an immutable God.”
Then please make the argument. Make any argument. Collect your thoughts and test your thinking, please. Provide something I can respond to, or, respond to any of the many issues I’ve raised that contradict your prior assertions instead of moving on through a vague, greatest hits of apologetic tropes.
iHeckDude: “It CANNOT be proven that there was ever a time in history where humanity has existed FREE from ANY or ALL theistic influence.”
And this should be discussed how? And this matters why? What argument are you trying to make?
iHeckDude:: “No "moral society" will ever be found to be without a lofty thought of God somewhere nearby.”
I’ve lost count at what it is that you’re trying to say, or what you’d like to argue. Do you even see how worthless your statement is above – that you have yet to come to terms with how it is you would define morality, what it means to “find a society,” what defines a “lofty thought,” or the criteria for judging when God is “nearby?” That is one of the least arguable contentions I’ve ever read.
The thing is that there are legitimate problems with the theistic position, and you’ve ignored them. There are also legitimate problems with desirism, but you’ve raised none of them. I can have (much) better arguments in my head.
If you don’t raise some interesting questions that I haven’t considered or ask me to test my thinking in ways that I haven’t considered, I’m going to have to stop responding here. If your next response doesn’t try to present an argument worth discussing, I will have to ignore it.
Tony,
It is a little ironic that you tear down my argument for objective morality because of its circularity, only to erect your own argument which is itself circular.
You said, “I am invoking the objective, moral standards of the society in which we live… It is not my opinion, but the opinion of the society.”
The argument goes like this.
1. Beheading someone is objectively immoral because it is the opinion of our society that it is.
2. Ahmed lives in a society that says beheading is not objectively immoral.
3. Therefore beheading is objectively immoral.
Am I misunderstanding you?
All the best.
Mitero: “It is a little ironic that you tear down my argument for objective morality because of its circularity, only to erect your own argument which is itself circular.”
A circular argument assumes that which it sets out to prove. I don’t see how the argument you list (1., 2., 3.) is circular – it doesn’t even appear to be a coherent argument.
Have you read anything on Desirism yet? (Here’s a good link: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=2982.) Because it appears that you are arguing against a strawman of the position. Please take the time to read something on Desirism – you can raise practical objections to it, and there are things that I find circular in it, but I don’t think you have found circularity in what I explained.
Mitero: “Ahmed lives in a society that says beheading is not objectively immoral.”
Explain to me how in Desirism arbitrarily beheading someone tends to fulfill more desires than it thwarts. Please raise an objection that isn’t already addressed in the link that I provided above.
Desirism is not theistic morality, I’ll grant you that. Do you think that I am trying to argue that it is?
Mitero,
It seems that when you can't summon objective proof for your imagniary friend you go the predictable route of all theists and construct a strawman.
Tony,
Thank you for the link. Does the below accurately represent your argument?
1.Beheading thwarts the desires of others.
2.Thwarting the desires of others is objectively immoral
3.Therefore beheading is objectively immoral
I am sorry if you feel that I was attacking a straw man, I am obviously having trouble understanding your argument. I hope that you can at least understand that when you say things like, “I am invoking the objective, moral standards of the society in which we live” how this might be a little confusing for someone to see how you then make your society's objective values binding for all other societies without reasoning in a circle.
Please accept my apology.
Could you please correct the above where it happens to misrepresent your position.
All the best.
Mitero,
Your revised 1, 2, 3 is not my argument because I am arguing that (contrary to the normal theist positions), 1. morality can be objective outside of theism (what is and is not immoral according to Desirism is largely unimportant), and I am also arguing that, 2. theistic morality suffers from a failing (best exposed by the Euthyphro Dilemma) whereby the Christian must affirm that she cannot know that what God decrees is objectively good. Thus, I am arguing, the theist contentions that morality is especially well-grounded under theism, and that no other moral system can be objective, are false. That is my argument.
I think that you may still be confusing Desirism with both Hedonism and Pluralism. Desirism does not mean that “whatever I desire is good,” nor does it mean that whatever a local majority desires is good. I am loathe to explicate at great lengths because I am a dilettante at both moral theory and Desirism, and I believe that the link I provided earlier speaks with (far) greater authority about Desirism and moral objectivity than I can; please correct me if you read something there that you think I have misinterpreted.
It appears to me that you have (at least temporarily) abandoned trying to refute the second part of my argument above (that the theist cannot know that God is objectively good), and that you would like to disagree with the first argument that another moral system (like Desirism) can be considered objective. That’s fine, and I’m happy to see where this leads.
It looks like you have chosen to show that Desirism cannot be objective because you imagine a scenario where arbitrarily beheading someone, under Desirism, would be considered good.
But this seems easy to refute using the “Dial turning” analogy that Desirism proponents sometimes use. Imagine a dial that when turned to the left decreases the desire to arbitrarily behead people. When the dial is turned to the right the desire to arbitrarily behead people increases. In order to fulfill more desires (the object of Desirism, the objective good) we should turn the dial to the left because arbitraily beheading people thwarts more desires (the desire to not be subject to violence, the desire to continue living, the desires that would be fulfilled if I kept on living in a way that helped fulfill other desires, etc.) than it fulfills.
As I said earlier, Desirism is not theistic morality. But I believe it is objective in every meaningful way. If you disagree, please explain your thinking.
YO CHUCK & the other Orangutans,
The best thing you lot could do is to drop into Afghanstan & debate the Pedophile Warlords on the finer points of BULLSHIT ATHEISM.
I'm sure you would have a great time.
Tony,
I am new to the idea of “desirism,” so it is only fair that I look further at the link you provided in order to better understand what it claims.
“I am arguing, the theist contentions that morality is especially well-grounded under theism, and that no other moral system can be objective, are false. That is my argument.”
If rape is “wrong” under a naturalistic moral system, so what? There can be no justice under any naturalistic moral system, because we ultimately all lose the game. What do you say to the rapist who has raped countless women, who on his deathbed chuckles and says, “not only raped them, but got away with it too?” He leaves loads of injustice behind him and no justice ahead of him. What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we assume that naturalism is true?
Now let’s assume that Christian theism is true. Not only is there hope for the victim and their families, but there is also justice for the perpetrator. He could chuckle all he wants, because he will not get away with it. Justice will be served. Exactly what his existence will be I am not sure we can say. That his state of experience will be miserable we can be sure (Matt 13:42). What the existence of the blessed will be like we cannot say either (1 John 3:2), but that it will be free from death, pain, and suffering we can be sure (Rev 21:4).
So even if desirism is objectively true, so what? I can disbelieve it and disobey it and have the same ultimate consequence as those it believe and obey. Not so with Christian theism.
“It appears to me that you have (at least temporarily) abandoned trying to refute the second part of my argument above (that the theist cannot know that God is objectively good).”
That we cannot know this in the sense of knowing that the earth orbits the sun I will grant. But morality, beauty, and all judgments of value are not known in that way. So we can know that God is good in the same way that we can know that a flower is beautiful. God’s goodness can be known intuitively. “Something or Someone” is trying to get me behave in certain ways. If that Someone is God, the things that God is trying to get me to do are things that I perceive to be good. I suppose God could be evil and God is trying to get me to do good. But it makes more sense to me that one of reasons God wants me to do good is that God is good.
But I do not rely solely on intuition. I believe that Jesus Christ is God and because I have good reason to believe that Jesus was good, I have good reason to believe that God is good.
All the best.
Mitero: “What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we assume that naturalism is true?”
This is simply a fallacious way of arguing. We are not arguing about what we want to be true, but what is true. (“I wish that we could fly. What hope can modern physics offer me if its description of reality explains that I cannot fly?” Do you see the problem with that question?)
Mitero: “That his state of experience will be miserable we can be sure (Matt 13:42).”
Quoting Bible verses at me is not an argument. Would you accept quotes from the Koran in an argument for Islamic law being true?
Mitero: “I can disbelieve it and disobey it and have the same ultimate consequence as those it believe and obey.”
There is some justice in this world. If you rape, you should go to jail, or worse. Why would you dismiss this as unimportant?
Mitero: “So we can know that God is good in the same way that we can know that a flower is beautiful. God’s goodness can be known intuitively.”
This is pure fluff and another retreat to circularity – that we can know God is good because we know that God is good. You sound like a member of any cult, repeating mantras instead of opening up yourself to analysis, argument, and evidence.
Mitero: “But I do not rely solely on intuition. I believe that Jesus Christ is God and because I have good reason to believe that Jesus was good, I have good reason to believe that God is good.”
No, you lie to yourself here, as any casual analysis has revealed. I don’t doubt that you believe that God is good, but you have no good reason, just a circular argument that only you will find edifying.
Mitero, you appear unprepared to form an argument, and immune to attempts to get you to engage in one. Although I’m sure this is insulting to you it does not have to be – ignorance is any easy thing to fix, and all it takes is some effort on your part. I’m sure you have the ability and aptitude, it is only a matter of your applying yourself to gain the tools you need to think critically. I say this also because your comments here would, I think, be embarrassing to apologists who agree with your beliefs but would find your thinking (as expressed here) to be appallingly inept.
I would suggest you go to a link like this:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html
and begin to educate yourself on arguments, logic, and fallacies.
All the best, but I don't think I'll have much more to add here.
Tony,
“This is simply a fallacious way of arguing. We are not arguing about what we want to be true, but what is true.”
You missed my point entirely and chose to address a point that I did not even make. I said, “He leaves loads of injustice behind him and no justice ahead of him. What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true.”
This has nothing to do with whether or not I want naturalism to be true. If we assume that naturalism is true, what hope can the naturalist offer the victim’s family. The answer is as obvious as the nose on your face, NONE.
The point was not whether I prefer naturalism to be false. The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer. There is nothing fallacious about that. Instead of just telling me my argument is fallacious, why don’t you show me where it is?.
“Quoting Bible verses at me is not an argument.”
Again, I was not quoting the Bible as an argument. I said, “Now let’s ASSUME that Christian theism is true.”
This doesn’t say that I want it to be true. It says… well… ASSUMING that it is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope. Where is this fallacious? This is called a hypothesis, which is, “an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.”
“There is some justice in this world. If you rape, you should go to jail, or worse. Why would you dismiss this as unimportant?.”
Try to comfort a mom who had a six year old daughter that was beaten, raped, and tortured to death with these brute facts. Is everything ok because the bastard is in jail or worse? It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored. Again, where is this fallacious?
“Would you accept quotes from the Koran in an argument for Islamic law being true?”
YES, if we were ASSUMING Islam to be true. You miss the point again.
There is really no need to go on here. I think that I am wasting your time and considering the fact that you have made no effort to show how if naturalism is true, why it ultimately matters if someone is raped, but instead just tell me how fallacious it is for me to assert this, I am done as well. Thank you for you time.
All the best.
Mitero,
Now, I have no way to "scientifically prove this", but...YOU are GOOD, my friend. I've enjoyed "eavesdropping" on your comments/responses, and thought you made some great points.
Keep it up!
Mitero: “The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer. There is nothing fallacious about that. Instead of just telling me my argument is fallacious, why don’t you show me where it is?”
I did – I provided you an analogous bit of reasoning regarding my desire to be able to fly and the laws of physics. I am hard pressed to show you any more clearly.
Since you seem to have missed it the first time, I’ll copy this from Wikipedia:
Wikipedia: “Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for argument to the consequences), is an argument that concludes a premise (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a form of logical fallacy, since the desirability of a consequence does not address the truth value of the premise. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view.
In logic, appeal to consequences refers only to arguments which assert a premise's truth value (true or false) based on the consequences; appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's desirability (good or bad, or right or wrong) instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is valid in ethics, and in fact such arguments are the cornerstones of many moral theories, particularly related to consequentialism.”
This is the very basic stuff, and it’s why I suggested you work on understanding logic or fallacies. Did you even look at the link I provided to you before you wrote your last comment?
Mitero: “It says… well… ASSUMING that it is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope. Where is this fallacious?
Again, see above. It’s so well known a fallacy it has its own Wikipedia page devoted to it.
Mitero: “This is called a hypothesis, which is, ‘an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.’”
This is not any definition of hypothesis I’ve ever heard. Where in the world did you find that definition?
Mitero: “Try to comfort a mom who had a six year old daughter that was beaten, raped, and tortured to death with these brute facts. Is everything ok because the bastard is in jail or worse? It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored. Again, where is this fallacious?”
Again, I refer you to the Wikipedia page above.
Mitero: “I think that I am wasting your time and considering the fact that you have made no effort to show how if naturalism is true, why it ultimately matters if someone is raped, but instead just tell me how fallacious it is for me to assert this, I am done as well.”
The reason I have made no effort to show how if naturalism is true it ultimately matters if someone is raped is because that has never been my claim. Where did you get the impression that this was my claim?
Tony,
“Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for argument to the consequences), is an argument that concludes a premise (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a form of logical fallacy, since the desirability of a consequence does not address the truth value of the premise.”
Can you show me where in any of my posts that I said that naturalism is FALSE because it leads to undesirable consequences?
“This is not any definition of hypothesis I’ve ever heard. Where in the world did you find that definition?”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis
All the best.
Iheckdude,
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. Although, if I am being honest, it must be admitted that I am not very good at being good, but I do try.
God bless you on your journey and may you ultimately find the JOY for which you have surely searched and will search your whole life.
Further up and Further in.
Mitero: “Can you show me where in any of my posts that I said that naturalism is FALSE because it leads to undesirable consequences?”
I didn’t accuse you of that; I accused of employing the fallacy of consequences to argue against morality under naturalism (and for it under theism) because of comments like these...
Mitero: “What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true?”
and
Mitero: “The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer.”
and
Mitero: “It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian Theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope.”
and
Mitero: “It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored.”
If you do not admit that this is an appeal to consequences, then perhaps you can explain what the claim is that you were making that each of your quotes above support?
Tony,
“If you do not admit that this is an appeal to consequences, then perhaps you can explain what the claim is that you were making that each of your quotes above support?”
“What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true?”
This claim supports the position that naturalism is true (hypothetical), and it offers no hope of justice to a murdered victim’s family.*
*note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it offers no justice. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it can’t.
“The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer.”
This claim supports the position that rape is wrong and naturalism is true (hypothetical) and that rapists and cancer curers ultimately end up in the same boat.*
*note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it tells us that good scientists and rapists end up in the same boat. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) they do.
“It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian Theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope.”
This claim supports the position that Christian Theism is true (hypothetical) and that ultimately justice will be served and hope will be realized.*
*note: I am not claiming that Christian Theism is true BECAUSE it ensures justice and the realization of hope. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it does.
“It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored.”
This claim supports the position that Naturalism is true (hypothetical) and no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss.*
*note: I am not claiming the naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) it can’t.
Was Webster’s definition sufficient?
All the best.
mitero
what are you saying? are you implying giving a person hypotheical hope is somehow endearing? how do you know the mother wouldn't spit in your face and see your hope as false illusory and shallow? just because you are comforted by children stories does not mean all will be.
According to 2 Peter 2 Chucki O'Connor & his Merry Band of Gobshites are compared to a DOGS & SOWS.
I couldn't have done better!!!
YO CHUCKI,
Did CARL SAGAN DIE OF AIDS??????
ATHEISTS ARE LIKE DOGS CHASING THEIR TAILS!!!
Leonardo
19 years ago my cousin was raped and murdered. I've watched her father cling to the christian story as her killer remains at large and as my uncle sinks into crippling alcoholism. I grieved for her and alongside him as an agnostic at the time and faile to see how my "naturalistic" sorrow was qualitatively anymore inefficacious than my uncle's christianity which failed to innoculate him from crippling alcoholism.
Oh and Leonardo where I come from it is less than courageous to insult someone based on a superstition while remaining hidden (e.g. Not making your blogger profile visible).
Chuck,
How can you get anything else out of what am I saying than that if Christian Theism is true ultimately justice will be served and hope will be realized? How can I word it differently to get this point across?
I mean this sincerely. Tony seems to have the same problem understanding it too.
You are right, it is a hypothetical hope. But are going to honestly say that you can offer more than a hypothesis about what happens when you die?
I doubt the victim’s mom would spit in my face, because I would not spout religion to her in the first place. But if she was hoping to see her child again, and wanted to know what I thought, I would tell her that if Christianity is true, that hope can be realized.
What I am asking is, if naturalism is true and she asked you the same question what can you offer her?*
*note: I am not claiming that naturalism is false BECAUSE it cannot offer hope to a victim’s mom. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true it can’t.
BTW if you can point out where any of this is fallacious, please do.
All the best.
Hi Chucki,
You DUMB ASSHOLE:
"19 years ago my cousin was raped and murdered. I've watched her father....."
Can you not see the difference???
It was HIS DAUGHTER, she was YOUR COUSIN. Cousins are a DIME A DOZEN, but DAUGHTERS are PRECIOUS to FATHERS.
Now take your HEAD OUT OF YOUR ARSE & see reality for a change. You are a waste of space & like Judas, it would be better if you were never born.
YO CHUCKI,
What do you want, AN INVITATION TO TEA?
We ALL know where you came from, the VAGINA of some ORANGUTAN. I'm not interested in where you came from or where you are going. You & your buddies are like a pack of animals shitting all over the Internet.
You are a waste of space!!!
"Oh and Leonardo where I come from it is less than courageous to insult someone based on a superstition while remaining hidden (e.g. Not making your blogger profile visible)".
Mitero
Naturalism does not eliminate empathy or compassion. If someone asked me if they were to see their child again I'd say, "I don't know." If you practice the brand of Christianity I did when I was a believer, Calvinism, I'd have to honestly say the same thing or, if I knew the child did not subscribe to my theology, I'd say she is in Hell. You can't embrace the good parts of Divine Command Ethics without concerning yourself with the doctrine of Hell. Naturalism may not provide an intellectual answer of after death destination but can provide in the moment compassion. Naturalism says I matter because I exist and therefore those that are suffering matter too. Can I invent a made up philosophy that satisfies someone's desire for vindication? No. Can I help the grieve? Yes.
Leonardo
I ask you to post your info on the off chance we may live in the same city so I could look you up and see if you have the balls to say to my face what you anonymously post online. Your response and your refusal seem to indicate you don't.
Wow, these posts by Leonardo should have been deleted. They will be in the future. We want a respectful discussion here or none at all.
Leonardo is a prime example of the confusing psychology one accomodates when they attribute the bible's brutality as "love".
Mitero: “What hope can you offer the victim’s families if we ASSUME that naturalism is true?”
Mitero: This claim supports the position that naturalism is true (hypothetical), and it offers no hope of justice to a murdered victim’s family.*
*note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it offers no justice. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it can’t.
So your claim is not that theistic morality is true, but theistic morality is better? I agree that I would prefer a theistic universe is preferable (who wouldn’t want ultimate justice and eternal life with all of one’s loved ones) – no disagreement there. And you’ve already said that you’re not arguing that because theistic morality is better it must be true, so what is your point?
Mitero: “The point is if rape is wrong and naturalism is true, it ultimately does not matter whether you rape someone or find a cure for cancer.”
Mitero: “This claim supports the position that rape is wrong and naturalism is true (hypothetical) and that rapists and cancer curers ultimately end up in the same boat.* *note: I am not claiming that naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE it tells us that good scientists and rapists end up in the same boat. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) they do.”
Again, lost me here. No argument from me on this one. If it’s true, yup, it’s true. And you’ve said that you’re not making a truth claim about the proposition theistic morality must be true because rapists and cancer curers end up in the same place under naturalism (that would be fallacious), so, what is your point then?
Mitero: “It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian Theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope.” This claim supports the position that Christian Theism is true (hypothetical) and that ultimately justice will be served and hope will be realized.* *note: I am not claiming that Christian Theism is true BECAUSE it ensures justice and the realization of hope. I am saying that BECAUSE it is true (hypothetical) it does.
Same as my comment above.
Mitero: “Try to comfort a mom who had a six year old daughter that was beaten, raped, and tortured to death with these brute facts. Is everything ok because the bastard is in jail or worse? It is unimportant because IF naturalism is true, justice will never restore what the mother has lost. Only if there is an afterlife can justice be served and relationships be restored. Again, where is this fallacious? This claim supports the position that Naturalism is true (hypothetical) and no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss.* *note: I am not claiming the naturalistic morality is false BECAUSE no amount of justice will restore the mother’s loss. I am saying that BECAUSE naturalism is true (hypothetical) it can’t.”
Same as my comment above.
Mitero: Was Webster’s definition sufficient?
I didn’t say it wasn’t sufficient. I said I thought it was unusual – that’s why I was curious about where you found it, and how you were using it – because your use appears very different from how I use the word.
Mitero: It says… well… ASSUMING that [Christian theism] is true… There would be ultimate justice and hope. Where is this fallacious? This is called a hypothesis, which is, “an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.”
Then please tell me what argument your hypothesis supports. It can’t be that Christian theism is true, because you have said that you are not committing the fallacy of arguing the consequences.
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