I don’t think that science has disproven, nor even suggests, that it is unlikely that an Intelligent Designer was responsible for the world, and intended it to come into existence.
I don’t think that science has, nor even can, prove that divine and/or miraculous intervention is impossible.
I don’t think that the fact that we can make good predictive models of the world (and we can) in any way demonstrates that how the world has observedly panned out was not entirely foreseen and intended by some deity.
I think the world has properties that make it perfectly possible for an Intelligent Deity to “reach in” and tweak things to her liking – and that even if it didn’t, it would still be perfectly possible, given Omnipotence, just as a computer programmer can reach in and tweak the Matrix.
I don’t think that science falsifies the idea of an omnipotent,omniscient deity – at all.
I think that only rarely has this even been claimed by scientists, and, of those, most of them were claiming that science has falsified specific claims about a specific deity, not the idea in principle of a deity.
I do think that the world is such that IF there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity, EITHER that deity does not have human welfare as a high priority OR she has very different ideas about what constitutes human welfare from the ones that most people hold (and as are exemplified, for example, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), OR she has deliberately chosen to let the laws of her created world play out according to her ordained rules, regardless of the effects of those laws on the welfare of human beings, perhaps trusting that we would value a comprehensible world more than one with major causal glitches. In my case, her trust was well-placed.
I do think that the evidence we have is far more consistent with the idea that life and its origins are the result of processes consistent with others we see acting in the world, and not a result of some extraordinary intervention or series of extraordinary interventions, regardless of any question as to whether a benign or otherwise deity designed those processes with the expectation that life would be a probable or inevitable result.
I don’t think that it follows that, were we to find incontrovertible evidence of a Intelligent Creator (for instance, an unambiguous message in English configured in a nebula in some remote region of space, or on the DNA of an ant encased in amber millions of years ago) that that would mandate us in any way to worship that designer. On the basis of her human rights record I’d be more inclined to summon her to The Hague.
I think that certain theological concepts regarding a benevolent deity useful, inspiring, entirely consistent with science, and may reflect reality.
I don’t myself, any more, believe in some external disembodied intelligent and volitional deity, simply because I am no longer persuaded that either intelligence or volition are possible in the absence of a material substrate. But I do understand why people think this is false, and that consciousness, intelligence and volition are impossible, even in principle, to account for in terms of material/energetic processes, and I also understand that, although I think, for reasons that satisfy myself, that they are mistaken, the case is not an easy one to articulate, not least because of the intrinsically reflexive nature of cogitating on cogitation.
I think that “free will” is an ultimately incoherent concept; I think that the question “do we have free will?” is ill-posed, and ultimately meaningless. I think the better question is: Do I have the ability to make informed choices for which I am morally responsible?” and I think the answer is clearly yes.
Anyone else want to unload?
I deny that taking pleasure in torturing children is self-evidently immoral. Prove me wrong.
I consider myself a pragmatist so I go with ideas, concepts and rules for living that seem to be most useful and equitable. I think justification of something as “self-evident” appears post hoc justification but I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. The source of a concept matters little compared to its efficacy.
Now that just reads like consensus. The only issue here is I wonder if we mean the same thing when we use “moral” and “immoral”. Someone else here (apologies to that person, it was a while ago) made excellent points about the semantic confusion that arises between morals and ethics. Looking at this chart I’m probably guilty of sloppy usage.
Again, I suspect your use of subjectivism/objectivism is different from mine. Whilst I would talk informally of an objective view as in balanced or disinterested, in a formal sense objectivity can be approached by using shared experience, observation and experiment, in practice it is an unattainable goal.
I imagine I would. However the hypothetical case is ruled out by the laws of physics.
I don’t see the logic of your remarks here. In my ethical framework the children’s right not to be tortured is paramount. Joe has to be stopped from hurting children and his personal morals are irrelevant. It doesn’t make my position objective, though.
ETA Would it kill you to answer Keiths’s and Lizzie’s (or even with really real deleted) questions?
William,
You’re welcome to add a supplementary explanation to your yes/no answer.
Or you can continue to avoid the question.
And by the way, my answers to your irrelevant questions are:
1. No, and I never did.
2. No, because omnipotence doesn’t include the ability to do the logically impossible.
I’ve answered your questions. Now, how about answering mine?
onlookers,
keiths asks:
If you missed my previous answers to keiths, here is my answer. I leave it to reasonable people if this equates to being “unwilling” to answer, just because I won’t give keiths the “yes” or “no” answer he wants:
In my view of morality, whether or not a thing is available for moral judgement depends on if it necessarily helps or hinders the purpose of creation. That “helping” or “hindering” are the “necessary consequences” that affect all of creation, including the perpetrator. If I know an act carries with it no necessary consequences wrt helping or hindering the purpose of creation; then that act is no longer available for moral consideration.
Which is why I say I wouldn’t consider it. It’s not available for moral consideration under my model of what morality is, and what can be morally evaluated.
So, my answer would be that, if I knew it carried with it no necessary consequences (wrt to the purpose of creation), AND, to note, this would also mean that I did not find it to be self evidently immoral (because of this additional, hypothetical knowledge), I would consider such torture amoral, not immoral.
No, I wouldn’t consider it immoral and I also wouldn’t consider it moral. I would consider it amoral – outside of the scope of moral consideration.
OK, so for you a statement is “self-evidently true” if you, William, find that you need nothing other than its terms and what they mean to judge that the statement is true.
But you make no claim that all people will find that statement self-evidently true.
So you regard as a foundational premise for your entire moral system a statement that you yourself find to be self-evidently true but which other people do not.
Right?
So tell me which of these statements would make an appropriate foundational premise for an entire moral system:
Even though it has necessary consequences for the child?
Just arguendo, what if child torture toughens the species? I think I could produce evidence that many people have believed that children benefit from conditions that moderns would consider torture. Certainly there have been well regarded teachers who enjoyed inflicting pain. I had one in junior high.
This is helpful, thanks.
But also profoundly odd (to me).
I sort of buy into the idea that unless an act has necessary consequences (well, I’m not hung up on the necessary – I’d be happy with probable) it is not available for moral consideration.
That pretty well rules out actions with unforeseeable consequences. Which is fair enough – we can’t be morally responsible for consequences of our actions that we could not possibly have foreseen.
But it seems to me that we do not have to postulate some cosmic consequential purpose to invoke this principle. Torturing a child is most certainly “available for moral consideration” because it has blooming self-evident consequences for the child. And indeed that seems the essence of the whole domain of morality – how we conduct ourselves when the consequences our actions are foreseeable and when the harms and benefits to one person are in competition with the benefits and harms to another.
Perhaps you might want to attribute our capacity to see that there is an issue here to some cosmic purpose in which how we decide matters. But we don’t have to do so – we could also attribute it to our evolution as a social species in which we are interdependent. But more to the point, the provenance is irrelevant to the observable fact that these harms and benefits to in fact compete, and that if we are going live in a society in which the net benefit to all is positive (i.e. a positive sum game) we are going to have to figure out some sets of criteria for figuring out what we should do when balancing the rights of some against the rights of others.
And those criteria, while differing from society to society, constitute the moral codes for those society, and some interesting commonalities emerge, one of which is, as I’ve said many times, reciprocal altruism + justice tempered with mercy.
And to me that’s a more objective foundation for morality than what one person happens to single out a self-evidently true moral statement. It can actually be derived mathematically.
Okay. So you are a moral subjectivist. Your morality is based on your subjective religious viewpoint.
If it has no moral consequences (all of which are by “natural law” necessary or inescapable), it’s not a moral question. It’s also why god cannot forgive you of anything. Even god doesn’t have the power to contravene the essence of what its being is – what moral acts, good or bad, produce in existence.
But you’re invoking a de facto objective morality here via your definitional fiat. If morality is subjective, I don’t have to consider the harm or benefit to others because that may not suit my subjective purpose.
I’ll grant that it’s a very deeply-layered, emotionally and rhetorically satisfying self-deceit, but at the end of the day when laid bare, it still boils down to – as do all presumed-subjective moralities, whether invoked by group or by individual – might makes right (because I feel like it, because I can; because we feel like it, because we can), and invites systemic abuse, corruption, and misguided intentions as you attempt to legislate morality.
But, I’ve already made that argument here some time ago.
But here’s the thing, William – how on earth does your system do any better?
How is the Wisdom of William J Murray superior to the Wisdom of Crowds?
And your repeated pejorative use of the phrase “might makes right” is a gross misrepresentation anyway. You might as well say that democracies are tyrannical because the majority rules.
Which may be true, but they are a heck of a lot less tyrannical than a single mighty tyrant, and your own system, in which what I find self-evidently moral is moral seems far more prone to abuse (because not subject to collective oversight and adjustment).
William J. Murray,
Tried and failed. If your basis for choosing a moral approach is grounded in the comparative legitimacy of your actions in the control of others, you appear to have departed even from the theistic version. You think you have a rational basis to impose your views on others because you believe you are acting in service of some higher authority – THEIR might makes your actions ‘right’.
But more typically, theistic (and other) morality is grounded in what YOU personally ‘ought’ to do, not fundamentally about imposing those views on everyone else (though plenty of theists take that upon themselves also). If subjective morality fails on the ‘right-to-impose-on-others’ question, objective morality does by exactly the same token – even if one side happens to actually be more right than the other. They both suppose themselves to be, an entirely different matter, and it would be indistinguishable from subjectivity but for the suspicious backdrop of holy orders From Above.
Flippant response:
How do you know what god (not the Christian version – I’m sure I learnt something about absolution) can and can’t do? Are you emulating Neale Donald Walsch?
Serious response:
Remember the child? The child’s right to freedom from torture is paramount. Do you disagree?
What the heck is a “moral consequence”? And what is NOT “necessary or inescapable” about the consequence that a child suffers when it is tortured?
What I do find bizarre about your approach, William, is that it seems so divorced from any actual consequences of our behaviour on other people – the very thing that to me seems to lie at heart of goodness!
But perhaps if I knew what these “necessary consequences” that you envisage are, that would help? Are they unpleasant if you do something immoral?
If you live in my society you do. If you step outside the ethical limits by, for instance, torturing babies, whether for your own personal pleasure or otherwise, you will be subject to severe sanctions.
Has it gained any traction with anyone else, anywhere, at any time?
What difference would that make to anything?
No, what I have to consider is getting away with what I want to do – making sure I cover the angles and place safe bets as far as the potential arbitrary consequences are concerned.
“Being subject to” is dependent upon “being caught by someone with the power to harm me”. That’s just a matter of being careful and developing a system for thwarting detection and minimizing any potential penalty. My society – America – is pretty much organized top to bottom for predators to be able to take advantage of people – if you set your mind to it and understand the system.
All moral consequences are necessary; not all necessary consequences are moral.
If I attempt to help someone, and due to unforeseen circumstances that attempt ends up making things worse for them, what arbits the morality of my act – the intent (purpose), or the actual physically observable consequences?
So what it looks like is that you think the only motivation to behave morally (to do what you find self-evidently moral) is the certainty of adverse consequences for the perpetrator of an immoral act, not the certainty (or probability) of adverse consequences for someone else.
Does that not strike you as ironic?
What about the who in someone?
It might suggest to you whether your argument made any sense to anyone else. But I guess that wouldn’t matter to you either.
The take-home lesson is “don’t get caught”.
I do not understand your point. You said:
Are you seriously saying that a child’s distress and pain at being tortured is not a “moral consequence” of the torturer’s action?
And that in the absence of some cosmic necessary adverse consequence for the torturer, the issue of whether to torture a child would not be not a moral one?
I’ve already explained that in detail.
Then you have failed to read in this thread where I explicitly explained why my system is superior to both the subjective model (group or individual) and the command authority model because (1) it takes legislating morality off the table because there is no need for us to police morality; (2) it puts mankind in the humble and responsible position of accepting that he is subjectively, individually and fallibly interpreting a natural-law morality (not just making up whatever he wants to call moral, or presumably offering the arbitrary dictates of god); (3) it provides a system of inescapable consequences to help control immoral proclivities and to help motivate living up to one’s moral obligations; (4) it avoids might makes right (which subjective morality and command morality necessarily boil down to; (5) it successfully models the way we actually make statements and behave – as if morality was an objectively valid, universally binding commodity, in some cases obligatory commodity that gives us unalienable rights and significant responsibilities.
Well, for one thing, I really don’t feel comfortable leaving the legislation of morality up to “the crowd”. I’d prefer a system where individuals had unalienable rights that “the crowd” and even divine decree has no authority to infringe upon. You can only get that with certain kinds of natural-law morality, like mine.
I think it might have been helpful to establish a few facts about William J. Murray’s personal moral code with a few examples. Perhaps William might like to help by responding to Lizzie’s questions:
Torturing children for pleasure is wrong
Homosexual sex is wrong
Beating disobedient children is right.
How do you tell which of these statements, all of which some people claim are “self-evident” is, for really real, “self-evident”?
Ignore “for really real” if it bugs you, William.
Liz, take a moment and try to remember why are even discussing this. Keiths asked me a hypothetical, about whether or not I would consider the torture immoral **if** I knew there were no moral consequences. My answer was that I would consider it amoral – outside of the scope of moral consideration — IF I knew that there were no moral consequences.
If we are no longer considering keiths absurd premise:
The moral wrongness of the intent, and the moral damage done to the child can be immediately felt and recognized by any sane person. You know the purpose of god has been damaged when you see that child. However, not all moral consequences are as easily observed, and some of them may not be observable or quantifiable in by us here in the physical world.
No, I don’t think that’s the only motivation, but I do think it’s the most effective and practical.
I guess the irony, if there is any, is lost on me.
No-one ‘makes up’ their morality. Not even a subjective-moralist. They respond to what does, and does not, appear to them to be ‘the right thing to do’. The fact that there may exist other individuals in the world who also respond to their own personal constraints, which may differ, in no way invalidates one’s personal response.
The restraints on the subjective moralist are a mix of the genetic and cultural. Which, when boiled down, is the same as the self-defined objective moralist. There is a strong tendency to adhere to the tenets of one’s local religion, which forms the peer group for adherents. And they, though they would fight tooth and nail against notions of genetic ‘control’, are also human, with common genetic heritage.
You also have to have a “got caught” strategy and system in place, even if you hope to never use it. The system is corrupt, Alan. Surely you realize this.
Corruption can be addressed and contained. Remember the fairness/stability balance. Otherwise, do what I do. Live in a very unimportant corner of a very unimportant country.
So can you please explain: what is a “moral consequence”?
Can you give an example?
Right, so the damage to the child IS a moral consequence. Why would it NOT be so if there were not, IN ADDITION, some cosmic “necessary consequence” for the perp?
What does the last part do to the equation?
The moral damage is the moral consequence. There’s a difference between physical damage and moral damage.
The question is only meaningful if one assumes they two are different things – which is what I tried to tell keiths. That is how you assume things to be; that’s not my assumption. From my perspective, you are asking me why do I need to add moral damage to the moral damage. I do not. The cosmic moral damage and the moral damage to the child are the same thing – the child is part of the cosmos, an intrinsic end unto itself – as we all are. When any of us are morally damaged, it harms the entire structure.
So what is the difference? And are you really saying that if you physically damage a child, that would not be a moral issue unless there were a necessary cosmic adverse consequence for the perp?
So what is this moral damage?
And what about the child’s torn vulva, and her terror? They are not moral concerns?
If by accident I physically damage a child, there is no moral damage. If I deliberately tease,berate and humiliate a child, there may be no discernible physical damage, but I have still morally damaged the child. Physical damage is not the same as moral damage.
I will add: IMO, the perpetrator is ultimately doing more moral damage to himself than to anyone, or anything, else.
And these are the assumptions you choose to make about the world, right?
You don’t claim they are true?
And that is of concern to you?
To whom?
What if you were a drunk driver at the time?
What would constitute moral damage?
What if … what if .. .what if ..? Heheheh
Moral damage is when the purpose of creation has been caused detriment or hindered.
I’m more than satisfied with this debate for now, and I’m not interested in satisfying fishing expeditions or dares. If anyone has anything of real substance to discuss further on this topic, I’ll join back in.
William,
Lizzie’s question is a good one. It looks like you are trapped between yet another rock and yet another hard place.
You wrote:
By your criterion, a drunk driver who accidentally kills a child has caused no moral damage.
You can either admit that your criterion is wrong (quelle horreur!), or you can affirm that drunk driving is perfectly acceptable in your system of morality.
Or you can declare yourself “satisfied” with the debate and hope that the onlookers buy it.
William,
Echoing Alan’s question, what constitutes ‘moral damage’? You say that
Suppose a psychopath tortures a child, feeling no remorse then or at any later time. He doesn’t care whether “the purpose of creation has been caused detriment or hindered”. What ‘moral damage’ has he brought upon himself? Please be specific.
William,
Pay attention, William. This is what I asked:
Pay attention. William is tuned into the Purposes of Heaven.
I suppose it would be rude to ask to see the objective list of those purposes.
Regarding subjectivity and objecitvity, I see there was an OP and discussion here on TSZ not that long ago.
It’s not so much William’s logic that causes misunderstanding, as his assertion that things exist that only he can see. I would call it the Harvey theory of morality.
If you assume that creation has purposes and that William can see them, some of his thoughts fall into place. I get a bit stuck on the part where creation chooses to reveal itself to some people and not to others.