Category Archives: Ethics and morality

The (il)logic of intercessory prayer

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Suppose the standard OmniGod exists: omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

Now suppose that Mary contracts a serious illness.  Her family and friends pray for her health.  This makes them feel better, and it also makes Mary feel better.  The knowledge that others are praying for her may even affect her body in a way that contributes to her recovery.

The question is whether those prayers have any effect on God’s actions.  Being an OmniGod, he will always do the right thing, without fail, regardless of whether anyone asks him to do so.  How can prayer ever change what God does, if he always does the right thing in all circumstances?

In other words, is it ever possible that God is prepared to let Mary die, but decides to intervene simply because her family and friends pray for her recovery?

Theists out there: Do you believe in the power of intercessory prayer? If so, how do you resolve the problem described above? Ex-theists, I’m also interested in hearing about how you dealt with the problem back when you were still among the flock.

Libertarian Free Will

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As The Ghost In The Machine thread is getting rather long, but no less interesting, I thought I’d start another one here, specifically on the issue of Libertarian Free Will.

And I drew some diagrams which seem to me to represent the issues.  Here is a straightforward account of how I-as-organism make a decision as to whether to do, or not do, something (round up or round down when calculating the tip I leave in a restaurant, for instance).

LFW1

My brain/body decision-making apparatus interrogates both itself, internally, and the external world, iteratively, eventually coming to a Yes or NO decision.  If it outputs Yes, I do it; if it outputs No, I don’t.

Now let’s add a Libertarian Free Will Module (LFW) to the diagram:

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Naturalism, Normativity, and Nihilism

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Hopefully it will not be seen as an abuse of posting privileges if I share some thoughts I’ve been developing over the past few years.   But I’ve been prompted to share them by JLA’s assertion at Uncommon Descent that naturalism entails nihilism — an assertion that seems unquestioned in that forum. I think that that assertion collapses on closer inspection.

The problematic I’m concerned with here is about the relations between naturalism, normativity, and nihilism.  Each of these terms avails itself of a straightforward articulation, but I’ll be explicit: by ‘naturalism’ I mean that all real phenomena have a spatio-temporal location and participate in causal relations with other spatio-temporally locatable particulars.  By ‘normativity’ I mean that thought and action for at least some intelligent beings are governed by norms or rules of what counts as correct or incorrect, valid or invalid, good or bad.  And by ‘nihilism’ I mean that there is nothing of any real, genuine value, meaning, purpose, or fact in the world.

Now, does naturalism entail  nihilism?   It does, I submit, if — and only if — one has an a priori commitment to the further view that normativity is non-natural.  Put otherwise, if normativity is non-natural, but the natural is all that there is, then there isn’t any normativity — not really.   And nihilism follows as a result.

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Final word to KF

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In response to KF here: In my view it is no more, or less, slanderous imply a relationship between “Darwinism” and Nazi-ism than it is to imply a relationship between “anti-homosexualism” and Nazi-ism.  To point out that the Nazis conviction that the “unfit” should be “culled” may have owed something to their reading of Darwin, is at least equivalent, I would say, to pointing out that the Nazi’s conviction that homosexuals should be “culled” may have owed something to the view that homosexuality is deviant, immoral and dangerous.  To say the first is not to say that Darwinists are Nazis; to say the second is not to say that anti-homosexualists are Nazi.  To insist that the first is justifiable but the second slander, is, I suggest, to impose a double standard.  Moreover, to suggest, as KF does, that by “enabling” posters here to suggest a comparison between the anti-homosexualism of some religious views and the anti-homosexuality of the Nazis I am somehow comparable to the “good” Germans who “enabled of Nazi-ism is at least as “slanderous” as the comparison he objects to.  However, I can live with that.  The best response, in my view, to slander, is effective rebuttal, not censorship.

I agree with KF that comparisons to Nazis is inflammatory.  That is as far as I will go.

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Eppur si muove

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Cornelius Hunter has a particularly odd post up, called: More Warfare Thesis Lies, This Time From CNN.  He takes issue with a report by Florence Davey-Attlee, on Vatican seeks to rebrand its relationship with science.  His complaint is that it promotes what he calls “the false Warfare Thesis, which pits religion against science” and “is too powerful and alluring to allow the truth to get in the way”.  He writes:

The key to a good lie is to leverage the truth as much as possible. In this instance, we have two truths juxtaposed to make a lie. You see Bruno did argue for an infinite universe, and he was burned at the stake. But those are two distinct and separate facts. The implication is that the Church burned Bruno at the stake because of his scientific investigations about the universe—a perfect example of the Warfare Thesis.

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The Dialectic of Darwinism and Anti-Darwinism

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I here present a number of theses, each of which deserves an independent argument in support of it, but which I think are both true and defensible:

(1) The resistance to Darwinism as expressed by creationism and by intelligent design largely arises from treating “Darwinism” as a scapegoat for the social ills produced by capitalism.  It has become commonplace among creationist and other anti-Darwinists to blame Darwinism for any and all of the following: eugenics, acceptance of homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, genocide, school shootings, abortion, and decline of ecclesiastical authority.

(2) Though the obsession with sexuality and anxiety about the ambiguity of embodiment are standard-fare among the religious far-right, my interest here lies in what it is about contemporary presentations of Darwinism that make it such a tempting target for these anxieties.

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What would Darwin do?

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At Evolution News and Views, David Klinghoffer presents a challenge:

Man needs meaning. We crave it, especially when faced with adversity. I challenge any Darwinist readers to write some comments down that would be suitable, not laughable, in the context of speaking to people who have lived through an event like Monday’s bombing. By all means, let me know what you come up with.

Leaving aside Klinghoffer’s conflation of “Darwinism” with atheism, and reading it as a challenge for those of us who do not believe in a supernatural deity or an afterlife (which would include me), and despite lacking the eloquence of the speakers Klinghoffer refers to, let me offer some thoughts, not on Monday’s bombing, specifically, but on violent death in general, which probably touches us all, at some time.  Too many lives end far too soon:

We have one life, and it is precious, and the lives of those we love are more precious to us than our own.  Even timely death leaves a void in the lives of those left, but the gap left by violent death is ragged, the raw end of hopes and plans and dreams and possibilities.  Death is the end of options, and violent death is the smashing of those options;  Death itself has no meaning. But our lives and actions have meaning.  We mean things, we do things, we act with intention, and our acts ripple onwards, changing the courses of other lives, as our lives are changed in return.  And more powerful than the ripples of evil acts are acts of love, kindness, generosity, and imagination. Like the butterfly in Peking that can cause a hurricane in New York, a child’s smile can outlive us all. Good acts are not undone by death, even violent death. We have one life, and it is precious, and no act of violence can destroy its worth.

Planned Parenthood

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Right now, for some bizarre reason (I have no idea how the topic relates to Intelligent Design), Uncommon Descent (“serving the Intelligent Design Community”) has an OP by Barry Arrington presented “without comment”, and consisting entirely of an image of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, next to a sickening piece of racist text, which is attributed to her.

It turns out (h/t to various members here) that this quotation is widely attributed to Margaret Sanger on the web, usually to the Birth Control Review, April 1933, No such words are found in that journal – indeed, no article by Margaret Sanger appears in that journal that I can find. Another reference gives it as Birth Control Review, October 1926. Well, I can’t find it there either.

In other words, this calumny has been passed around the web, with faux “authoritative” citations, with nobody bothering to check the primary source, which is, in fact, easy to check.

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Chance and Morality

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Scenario 1

 

Bob is drunk and driving too fast on rain-slicked streets. He runs a red light and doesn’t even see Belinda, a pedestrian who is crossing the street. He hits her and she dies.

Scenario 2

Bob is drunk and driving too fast on rain-slicked streets. He runs a red light. Belinda, a pedestrian, is about to cross the street. Luckily she spots Bob’s speeding car in time and remains on the curb. She lives.  Bob doesn’t even see her.

Bob’s behavior is identical in the two scenarios, and the difference in outcome is due to something completely outside of Bob’s control: whether Belinda spots his car in time.

Questions for discussion

1. In moral terms, is Bob equally blameworthy in both scenarios, or does his culpability depend on the outcome?

2. The legal system will punish Bob far more harshly in the first scenario than in the second.  Is this appropriate?

Justify your answers.

David B. Hart and the problem of evil

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Why do evil and suffering exist if the world is presided over by a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly loving? That is the “problem of evil” in a nutshell.  In an earlier post (and in the comments) I explained and argued against two common theistic responses to the problem of evil.  Now I’ll tackle a third response from Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart.

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Apologies to Kairosfocus and Petrushka

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It seems I have given great offence to the commenter, Kairosfocus, at Uncommon Descent with my comment:

I see Kairosfocus is reading comments here.

 

I can’t tell for sure but is KF owning up to or denying banning mphillips? In case he finds time to read more…

Come on over, KF and, so long as you don’t link to porn and can be succinct enough not to overload the software, you will be very welcome, I’m sure!

 

I would like first to point out to Kairosfocus that he is mistakenly attributing the comment to Petrushka, a fellow commenter here and elsewhere. I would like to say sorry to Petrushka too for apparently initiating the misdirected criticism she has received.

I am sorry it wasn’t as obvious to Kairosfocus as it was to others that my invitation to post here contained a light-hearted reference to the only (as far as I am aware) IP ban ever meted out at The Skeptical Zone,  received by Joe Gallien in response to his linking a graphically pornographic image here. I hope that clears up any misunderstanding and if Kairosfocus changes his mind about commenting here, I am sure he will find the moderation rules will be adhered to fairly.

Is Any Form Of Atheism Rationally Justifiable?

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Definition of God:   First cause, prime mover, objective source of human purpose (final cause) and resulting morality, source of free will; omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent inasmuch as principles of logic allow. I am not talking in particular about any specifically defined religious interpretation of god, such as the christian or islamic god.

Definition: Intellectual dishonesty occurs when (1)one deliberately mischaracterizes their position or view in order to avoid having to logically defend their actual views; and/or (2) when someone is arguing, or making statements against a position while remaining willfully ignorant about that position, and/or (3) when someone categorically and/or pejoratively dismisses all existent and/or potential evidence in favor of a conclusion they claim to be neutral about, whether they are familiar with that evidence or not.

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Is purpose necessary to acquire any apparently purposeful effects?

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For purposes of this discussion.

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Chance = non-teleological causes that happen to result in particular effects via regularities referred to as “lawful” and stochastic in nature.

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Purpose = teleological causes that are intended to result in particular effects; the organization of causes towards a pre-defined future goal.

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My question is: can chance causes generate all of the effects normally associated with purpose,but without purpose? IOW, is purpose necessary to produce all, most, or some apparently purposeful effects, or is purpose, in effect, only an associated sensation by-product or side-effect that isn’t necessary to the generation of any particular effect normally associated with it?

A curious question by Barry Arrington on UD..

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…that I can’t seem to resist posting here:

I have a question for our materialist friends. Let’s imagine a group of chimpanzees. Say one of the male chimps approaches one of the female chimps and makes chimp signals that he wants to have sexual relations with her, but for whatever reason she’s not interested and refuses. Is it morally wrong for the male chimp to force the female chimp to have sex with him against her will?

If you answer “no it is not morally wrong,” imagine further a group of humans. On the materialist view, a human is just a jumped up hairless ape. Is it morally wrong for a human male to force a human female to have sex with him against her will? If you answer “yes, it is morally wrong,” I certainly agree with you. But please explain why on the materialist view it is not wrong for a hairy ape to force a female to have sex with him, but it is wrong for a hairless ape to force a female to have sex with him.

Link.

  1. Is it wrong for a man but not for a chimp? Yes, it is wrong for a man but not for a chimp.
  2. Why is it wrong for a man but not for a chimp?
    1. It is a meaningful question in regard to a man, whereas it is not for a chimp, because human beings are capable of moral choice, by virtue of many factors, including our theory of mind capacity, our complex social structures and our capacity for linguistic cultural transmission.
    2. The answer to the meaningful question for a man is “yes”, because prioritizing our own desires the wellbing of others lies at the definitional heart of human morality, and rape is a clear example of such an act.

The morality thing again….

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A propos my banning from UD, Dr.Jammer (aka Jammer at UD) wrote at AtBC:

As for the discussion of morality, kairosfocus was right on the mark. Liz put up a valiant fight, but her argument for morality ultimately boiled down to argumentum ad populum.

If the members of NAMBLA (I suspect a few of you are card-carrying members) decided to start their own nation, with their own set of laws, and they all determined pedophilia to be not only legal, but moral, would that make it so? According to Liz’s reasoning it would.

With no ultimate source of objective morality, morality becomes nothing more than a popularity contest. It’s might-makes-right. That majority opinion becomes the might, and they decide what is right.

Even worse are the non-democracies, where might isn’t represented by the majority, but by a small section of the elite. This is what we witnessed in the early 20th century with the eugenics movement, where the elite decided that it was moral to decide who could and could not reproduce. That’s one of the more tame examples.

kairosfocus’ point isn’t that we can’t reason to right and wrong. We can, in large part because morality (seems to be) an attribute inherent to most human beings, which acts as our guiding light, so to speak.

His point is that the might-makes-right mentality that arises when one denies an objective, ultimate source of morality, is often a very dangerous thing. A look through any history book will confirm that he is correct.

I’ll post my response in the thread.

Honeys, I’m home!

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Thanks for keeping the site warm for me 🙂

Gotta lot of threads to catch up on, by the looks of things.

Still a bit gobsmacked by the number of Christians on Uncommon Descent who seem to think that William Lane Craig’s apologia for the divine command to genocide has any merit, and it’s left me somewhat sick of heart, but reassuring that Timaeus, and some others also find it abhorrent.

The idea that any action is good if you think that God commanded it seems to me so self-evidently dangerous that I simply cannot imagine how anyone can entertain it for a moment.  And that’s only one of the problems with it.

For those out of the loop,  the hoohah started here:

Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig

I think Dawkins’ excuse rings hollow, myself, but his link to Craig’s essay on the genocide of the Canaanites made my blood run cold.

 

 

Leo Behe on atheism

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There’s an interview with Leo Behe, son of Michael Behe, that has just been published by the Humanist and is available online.  Several blogs have commented on it.  Since Leo Behe discusses some of the issues that have arisen here (and were unfortunately deleted), this interview might be something we would like to discuss.

In brief, Leo Behe was raised a catholic.  But he has since become an atheist.

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Atheism and moral condemnation

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In another very interesting discussion on Uncommon Descent, Chris Doyle asked:

1. Why should… a miserable atheist bother with life at all?

2. How do you dissuade an atheist from free-riding?

 

And later, in a post on another thread:

…how can any atheist condemn Breivik in terms that can be reconciled with their worldview? If life is meaningless and we face oblivion then nothing really matters – there is no wrong or right, because there is no Good or Evil: even the purpose we forge for ourselves is an act of self-deception if the atheistic worldview is true.

I’m reposting selected portions of my original response below, because, although the conversation has continued in a lively fashion since then, Chris gave me an opportunity to think though my views on this, and I thought like to invite him, or anyone else who wants to continue the discussion, the opportunity to do so in the quieter backwaters of this blog.

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