This post is long overdue.
One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of moral outrage aimed towards theists in general and Christians in particular here at The Skeptical Zone.
Judgmentalism, oddly enough, is prevalent. A pungent odor of opprobrium frequently wafts its way forth from the atheist trenches, and it stinks.
Are we all moral realists after all? Do we all now agree on the existence of objective moral values? If so, what are they and what makes them objective?
As for you moral relativists, are there any of you left? Why ought anyone (including especially Erik, Gregory, myself, fifth, William) be subject to the vagaries of what you moral relativists think others ought to be doing or ought not be doing?
Such opprobrium. Based on what, exactly?
If you are going to claim that we have some moral obligation towards you, you really ought to support that claim or retract it.
After all, that’s the intellectually honest thing to do.
I agree with Gregory.
If there is some moral obligation to answer questions, some objective moral ought, where does it come from? [You don’t have to answer that.]
It would seem however, that the legal system in the United States does not recognize any fundamental right to not answer questions. But we probably don’t want to go there, due to concepts such as truth and justice.
But then, perhaps Patrick is searching for THE TRUTH.
But Justice? Justice is blind. Like Neil Rickert.
I disagree with Gregory.
The very idea of an atheist norm is ludicrous. Atheism lacks any content. Atheism is, as Patrick says, simply an absence, a lack.
As such, it can be filled, but it cannot fulfill. It’s not a firm foundation for anything. Unyielding despair makes a better foundation than atheism.
So?
I sense an implied ought. I’ve brought this to your attention before and you ran for cover. What do you think I am morally obligated to do [or not do] and why do you think I ought to do those things or ought not do those things?
Out with it keiths [you too Patrick]!
Let’s get these moral obligations codified into the rules, as soon as we can all agree on what they are and that they are objective moral values.
Mung, I don’t see how you can face each morning knowing you’re such a pitiful helpless Christian victim. Thoughts of the whiny butthurt messages you’re going to post a dozen times a day must be what gets you through.
So?
Here’s your opportunity to list all the things people here at TSZ ought to do or ought not to do and to offer an argument for morality and against immorality that doesn’t reduce to your own personal preferences. If you can.
Spit it out Adapa. Don’t be shy. That’s what this thread is for. You obviously have standards that you think others ought to abide by. What are your standards, and why ought others abide by them?
As far as I am concerned this is a “gloves off” thread. I’ll put in a request to the “admins” to respect that.
The insinuations of, if not outright allegations of, intellectual dishonesty, lying, cowardice, hypocrisy, etc. are running rampant here at TSZ in spite of, and in contravention of, the site rules. The admins themselves are compromised.
The question I raise is simple. What is the basis of your moral outrage?
Are you moral realists?
Do you believe in objective moral values?
If not, why ought anyone care what you think?
Which Mung wrote this post?
I’ll assume that’s the best you have to offer. Go back to your job as a retail store clerk.
The Opprobrium. It hurts.
You can, of course, as a “good atheist,” offer support for your claims. You apparently have morals. Did you steal them from someone else?
Another atheist with morals from nowhere. Apparently he thinks that false accusations are a “bad thing.” Unless he’s the one making them. Then they are a “good thing.”
I’m all for hope. It beats unyielding despair any day. But my hope that keiths will ever defend his claims appears destined for the trash heap of TSZ history.
Atheists aren’t immoral, but they sure as hell can’t muster an argument in favor of objective morality, in spite of their repeated claims that there is such a thing as objective morality.
Cheap good. Bigot bad. Another atheist with moral claims without a moral argument in favor of objective morality. Go figure.
I’m on lunch. The ‘two Mung” phenomena has been noted. I was just wondering which one was doing this.
keiths,
GR8 B8 M8 I R8 8/8
Do you think it’s moral to deny LGBT people equal civil rights? Do you think it’s moral to give Christians the power to ignore any anti-discrimination laws as they see fit?
You can defend your moral claims or you can’t. The evidence, so far, is clearly on the can’t side.
If I don’t provoke a response it just goes to show that you don’t have one. Those are your rules, not mine. Don’t back off now keiths, you have me right where you want me.
Christians ought to defend their faith because keiths sez so. Mung ought to defend his beliefs because keiths sez so. That’s where you’re at, currently, and it’s pretty pathetic.
Do you simply deny that you’re making appeals to moral values?
You’re up, keiths. Here’s your moment to shine. Don’t fail your atheist cohorts now.
Better title for this thread would have been ‘more old poutrage”.
Are you appealing to objective morality or subjective morality?
Do you make moral judgments based on what you personally think is the “right” answer to your questions?
Why do you do that, if you don’t believe in objective moral values?
Don’t be a coward now Adapa. You’re off the ignore list and on the radar. You have my attention. You’ve got a lot you need to get off your chest. Do you have an argument for your concepts of right and wrong?
Don’t be such a coward Mung, answer the questions. I though you Christians had the market cornered on morality. At least that’s what you keep telling us.
What, you three champions of skepticism are not even going to deny your moral outrage?
I love it. This is just classic.
Whatcha getting for Christmas? Anything good?
Can we safely assume that the same “standard” applies to your moral judgments?
Four horsemen. Twelve reindeer. I get the three stooges.
ah yes. the stench of moral outrage. I will not answer your questions because you are a coward!
Did you read the OP? I’m willing to concede that atheists have managed to corner the market on morality. They certainly seem to think so. Based on what?
Atheists are morally superior. To what?
Do you long for the hits of yesteryear? Do you like your science with two big steamy helpings of theology? Will this Christmas K-Tel has you covered with “Mung Presents: Uncommon Descent’s Greatest Hits”!!!
Groan along to such classics as:
Circle that square over there – the Banettes
Gonna fishing reel you in – KF (featuring mister leathers)
Your position can’t explain – chubby swearer
You stole science from Christians – Crash Landing
Hard on for Matzke – Harry Barrington
I’m sceptical of your skepticism – the Mungettes
Buy my book – Weapon of Math Nonfunction
Google alert “Evolutuon Can’t…” – DeNews
And many many more!
Are we going to dance along to the UD classics, Mung?
Do you have an argument, Richardthughes?
You are morally superior to what, exactly?
Are your moral beliefs equally arbitrary? Be honest.
Mung,
I suspect I have more feels and less thinks in my moral choices. There’s probably some feel-think recursion, though. Sometimes with morals you have to weigh up a few sides / positives and negatives. Knowing a book is batshit crazy and at odds with history / reality is easier IMHO.
Will no one deny the premise, or is it just too obvious to deny?
No one asked about your moral choices. The question concerns your moral judgments. If they are totally personal and arbitrary then they ought not be binding on anyone else. Do you agree or disagree?
Can you define what youngest by ‘Moral judgement’? ‘chubs is a bad person’? That’s not really binding.
Richardthughes bows out. Doesn’t know what his claims are or why they ought to be defended. Denies his claims have any moral content. Agrees they are not binding.
The best the atheists have.
God, I hope not.
I’ve moved some posts to Guano. I agree that the OP is offensive, but the game we play here is to tackle arguments on their merits (or lack of them) not whatever the other thing is. So I’ve moved the other things.
If you want to do the other things, take it to noyau. If you want to deconstruct Mung’s transparently deconstructable argument, you are very welcome to do it here, and I will add my two pence shortly.
Mung:
This is true. I’d say it’s a general truth – where there is a forum for disagreement, moral outrage will be aimed at those with whom the outragees disagree. Where Christians are in the minority, there will be more examples aimed at Christians. Where atheists are in the minority, there will be more examples aimed at atheists. Where catholics are in the minority, there will be more examples aimed at catholics. Where Republicans are in the minority, there will be more examples aimed at Republicans. I have yet to see any grouping based on philosophical, religious or political ideas, whether they share my views or whether they don’t, who don’t claim the moral high ground. We argue about not only what is true, but what is right. It’s the way people are. Neither Christians nor atheists are any exception.
It could scarcely be otherwise. We wouldn’t bother to say that someone else was morally wrong did we not think that we ourselves were morally right.
OK.
Opprobrium does tend to stink, I agree. I don’t see why its “prevalence” should be “odd” though. People who think other people are morally wrong tend to do so pungently. I think that religious people are often morally wrong, and that their moral wrongness derives from their religion. For instance, I think that the campaign against same-sex marriage is morally wrong, and I think the campaign against abortion clinics is morally wrong. What may indeed by “odd” is the fact that both those campaigns are waged by people on moral grounds. One problem, I think, and this may be the first real assymmetry, is that some Christians (not all), specifically, are prone to think not simply that they are right and others are wrong, but that they alone have the capacity to discern, or declare, what is right or wrong. So the argument becomes not about what is right and what is wrong, but about how the hell do non-believers think they have any right to hold an opinion. And I think this is essentially what Mung is asking here.
Addressing this question would be easier if there was any agreement on what is meant by “objective”. In my experience, Christians tend to mean, by “objective moral values” something like “values that we cannot know objectively but which objectively exist”, while atheists (and many non-atheist moral philosophers) mean something like “values that can be arrived at by independent observers based on a shared understanding of what constitutes harm”.
Anyway, the latter is my view.
Because we are no less smart than you, and thus no less capable of recognising when someone’s behaviour is likely to harm someone else.
The recognition that some behaviour harms other people.
Done.
Indeed.
I’d say it’s too obviously wrong to inspire much in the way of a rebuttal. But I’ve had a go.
Mung
Your argument seems to rest on the assumption:
A) “You cannot have reasoned moral outrage without an objective morality.”
As Lizzie says it is not so clear what counts as objective but if you define it on these lines:
B) “statement x is objective if x is true or false independently of any human attitude towards x”
Then I disagree with A. I, and others, have made this point many, many times over the years. Why raise it again? And why raise it in such an offensive fashion?
I not only disagree with it, I find it useless.
Let’s say that somewhere in, or beyond, the universe, there is a set of definitions of what is right and wrong that are “objectively true”.
How would anyone objectively determine what they were?
Yippee! Another thread on morality!
Well, let’s nail it this time.
I’m fed up of this “well atheists have no right to make moral judgements” schtick.
I appreciate that theists (some anyway) appear to think that while athests and theists can argue about WHAT is right and WHAT is wrong, only theists have any basis for believing that there is such a thing as moral wrongness in the first place.
I’d like a theist to justify that. It seems to me perfectly possible to hold that moral wrongness is a valid concept without believing in a God or gods who make it so.
Elizabeth,
If only!
Adding ‘objective’ to morality serves no purpose. Some people have the subjective sense that their moral outrage is based upon sensing that something is ‘really’ wrong, regardless what any human thinks about it.
No-one is ambivalent about moral questions they care about. No-one says they personally could not care less about gay marriage, but oppose it for the dispassionate reason that they believe it ‘truly’ wrong, and feel some obligation to stamp out ‘truly wrong’ things.
Time to make the morals vs ethics distinction?
Another formulation of the alleged problem for atheists is that we have no “basis” for deriving “an ought from an is”.
It seems to me that the origins of the human capacity to have a category of actions that are things we “ought” to do lies in our [evolved] capacity to be able to foresee the consequences of our actions not only for ourselves at some future time, but for others. It’s sometimes called mental time travel, but mental mind travel might be better if it didn’t sound tautological.
This capacity means that, unlike most other animals, humans have the capacity to choose between actions that will yield immediate benefit to the actor, and actions that may yield immediate cost, but greater benefit at some future time or to someone else.
In human language we frame these choices in language using the word “ought” – to reflect the tension between actions of immediate benefit to ourselves (“what we want to do”) and actions of more remote benefit (“what we ought to do”).
Like theists, we can argue endlessly about which actions we aought to do and which we ought not to do, but there is no problem in accounting for the concept that there are such categories of action within a non-theistic framework.
Elizabeth,
“Basis” could mean “cause” or “logical justification”. I think you just offered a cause. I don’t think there is an ultimate logical justification for deriving an ought from an is – that was Hume’s point. But you don’t need an ultimate logical justification for an opinion to have good reasons to have that opinion.
Right.
Well, we could use some clarity (as Alan suggests). I never quite know what theists mean when they question my right to a moral opinion. Are they saying that by being an atheist I have no way of knowing what is right, or no basis on which to say rightness is even a Thing?
I think the latter. I think they are wrong.
Elizabeth,
I am sure they mean the latter. Of course many people (including many theists) have offered objective logical foundations for morality which are independent of theism. I think these theories are all wrong but they do show that the issue is not primarily one of theism versus atheism.
I think another dimension to the argument is over “free will”. The idea, I think, is that without some “free” homunculus acting as the arbiter of our actions, we can only have the illusion of moral responsiblity, not true moral responsibility, therefore nobody is to blame for their actions – because they could (according to this view of atheist thinging) “do no other”.
Mung, FWIW, I’ve already discussed this issue at (alarming) length on several other threads. You may even have participated in one or two of those–can’t remember.
Anyhow, the fact that I don’t feel like going into this a fifth(?) time again now is not evidence for the argument that any non-theist claim that there are objective values must be retracted because it hasn’t been supported here. In fact, I allege that it’s received considerably more support than has any assertion you’ve ever made on this site yourself.
To theists who think their morality is inspired by god but who can’t actually agree between themselves what that objective morality consists of.
At least it’s not another “DNA is a REAL code, therefore GODDIDIT!!” equivocation-fest.