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.
Quite so, but it does mean that those who find your claims in contradiction with the truth have as solid a standing for their convictions as you have for yours. Thus, your claims become nothing more than empty assertions and those of us who find your claims erroneous need only dismiss them with a hand-wave.
I mean…if a person who in theory really, Really, REALLY believes something can’t be bothered to credibly support it, those of us who already find it to be nonsense really have nothing to lose in dismissing it.
I don’t think this is a reasonable request. My question was very straightforward, but let me rephrase it: how does a person who think that God is saying something to them verify that the message is indeed from God?
Your answer should not depend on whether I think it’s possible. I’m asking you why you think it’s possible, and, if so, how you would verify that you are correct.
I do not see anywhere where you have supported this assertion.
Robin said:
This is certainly not the case. 5MM’s premise is that there is a source of absolute truth which humans have access to and which can impart knowledge upon them in a manner that is certain. Does your worldview contain a premise where such truths are available to humans and knowable as such?
No? Then by the very nature of your worldview premise, you have no logical grounds for such convictions. 5MM, however, does.
You’re looking at this from your worldview perspective, not from 5mm’s. In a world where God presumably can impart truthful knowledge into a person in an unmistakable way, your question should be: given two people who claim such revealed understanding are saying what appears to be contradictory things, should one be accepted and the other rejected, and if so, how should others who hear these contradictory claims make that judgement?
I would guess that the answer would be to ask for guidance from god – for god to impart to you an understanding of which is correct, which would be consistent with the logic of 5mm’s premise.
Only if your view is true. If 5mm’s is true, you may have a lot to lose.
FMM seems to think that divine revelation is intrinsically self-justifying. If one has experienced genuine divine revelation, then one knows that the putative divine revelation is genuine. There’s no need for any further confirmation, verification, or corroboration. Those of you asking “how would you test this?” are missing the point:
And lest anyone be inclined to ask, “but do we know that divine revelation is intrinsically self-justifying?”, there is only one response: it is self-evident.
Therein we have what Sellars called “the Myth of the Given” in its purest form.
We have a word to describe people who receive knowledge from directly from God. Loon.
I haven’t supported it in this thread or per se anywhere else, however a brief sketch of that argument would be that under physicalism, all thoughts and emotions are simply brute physical facts we call experiences. We perceive the sky as blue not because it is logical that we do so, but rather it is just a fact of our perception. Other people may experience the sky as a different color. There is no logical reason why we should perceive the sky as blue; we just do.
Similarly, under physicalism, one’s thoughts are simple experiences caused by physical facts. Therefore, nothing we experience would have a rational justification, but rather would just have a physical cause. Even the sensation that a belief, thought or emotion was rationally justified would just be another physically-caused experience. The idea of logic itself would just be another experience caused by whatever physico-chemical processes happened to produce it.
Under physicalism, “rational justification” is just a description of a caused sensation and has no other meaningful value. There’s no real reason why any physicalist should even try to “rationally justify” their views, feelings and actions other than to perhaps make themselves feel good – like imagining you are a butterfly or riding a unicorn.
Just for the record — not to derail this thread any further — rationality has been successfully naturalized. This accomplishment was only announced recently, though it was a long time coming. See Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image by Joe Rouse.
Or prophet
Elizabeth,
Nor do I see where ‘non-physicalism’ has been shown to be rationally justifiable, simply because experience (a part of it at least) may not be physically caused ‘under’ it. We are entitled (by reason!) to assume that, since materialist morality is being asserted irrational, non-materialist morality avoids the pitfalls of the argument given. If they are talking of ‘consequences’, these aren’t the sole preserve of non-physicalism either.
Through a dozen threads, a common thread of repetitious assertion. There is no amount of clarity …
William J. Murray,
If this were so, there is no ‘real reason’ why a theist should even try to rationally justify their views either. Imagining you are one of God’s Chosen is plenty for some.
Imagining that God prefers those of his Chosen who at least make an effort, rationally, might be a carrot or stick to give rational thought a whirl. Shame that the actual results – ID, or fmm’s woeful attempts on the Species Problem, mostly consist of abandonment of reason in favour of hope, bad analogy and guesswork.
William,
Or that immaterial processes exist which can magically give you the ability to Genuinely (Genuinely, I say!) Reason.
Allan,
And it’s been going on — literally — for years.
Allan said:
Sure there is, under some forms of theism.
“…So early in the morning.”
I don’t know if this is the sort of response you think I ought to give, but here’s what I think.
We can look at the biological sciences (taken broadly to include ecology, cognitive science, affective science, and evolutionary theory) to find out what is true and false about human nature, and what factors tend to promote or inhibit the cultivation of human capacities. And so we can find out what tends to promote flourishing or well-being and what tends to inhibit it. On the basis we can explain why some kinds of inequality are bad for us and why other kinds might be good for us. We can correlate degrees of skillful moral decision-making with kinds of functional connectivity between different parts of the brain, and thereby devise ways of improving moral education and enlarging moral imagination.
Is there a difference?
I’m having trouble recalling the name of an Abrahamic prophet who didn’t recommend or condone genocide or conquest of some neighbor.
I suppose Jesus qualifies, but he was God; not a prophet.
William J. Murray,
Care to back that assertion up?
There must be something … I dunno, can’t put my finger on it … that leads to a disproportionate representation of people who supposedly have no ‘reason to reason’ among active reasoners – I’m thinking scientists and philosophers.
It is something of a self-defeating proposition, nicely oppositional to those ‘gotchas’ involving people being supposedly absolutely certain there is no absolute certainty. How, other than through reason, could one even reach the conclusion that one had no reason to reason?
So, if we collect those facts and run it through the science, and it turns out that it is an objective moral imperative, based on biological facts, that we should kill kill all homosexuals, own slaves and treat women like property, you’d be willing to adopt that morality and live by it?
No, that would be idiotic. We don’t look to biology in order to sort out which moral judgments are true and which ones are false. We look to biology to figure out what the truth-makers are of true moral judgments.
I understand that the above is 5thMM’s premise. The problem is that his conclusion (that we all accept and operate on that premise) not only doesn’t follow, but is erroneous.
I don’t need grounds for, never mind the convictions, to point out the absurdity of 5thMM’s position. I only have to show that his his conclusion and subsequent claims do not follow from his premise from anyone elses’ perspective. As such, nobody needs anything beyond a yawn to dismiss his claims.
I actually did ask that very question earlier in this thread and provided similar claims from other religious works to back up the question. 5thMM never provided a reason why his source provided truth while the others did not. He merely hand-waved them away. I don’t see that as a particularly strong rebuttal…
Well, Pyrephony says 5thMM is just off his rocker and Vishnu says that 5thMM is a false prophet, and Gond anything other than the Earth is irrelevant, so…
Not so. If anyone besides 5thMM’s view is true, my statement still holds.
Which is the whole reason I’ve engaged in this debate. So far I see nothing to remotely indicate that his view could be true.
ETA:
Basically William, I’m trying to get Fifth to understand that while his tactic of, “I believe my premise is true and I believe that because my premise is true, you are obligated to accept my claims as true. Therefore I win.”, is a novel approach to arguing the validity of his claims, it’s just plain absurd.
KN said:
I have no idea what you mean by this. Are you saying that you begin with “true moral judgements”, and then find biology that support those judgements in order to sort them out? Or are you saying that you begin with biology, and from those facts determine true moral judgements?
Robin,
It’s really this simple: you don’t understand how to properly engage 5MM’s argument.
ISTM like a parallel to the ID/evolution debate. Many ID supporters, and objective-moralists (somewhat co-extensive groups), seem to think that the only thing they need to do is find problems with ‘materialist reasoning’, and the curtain falls down from around God, Wizard of Oz style. Defeat A, and B wins by default. Then the curtain is hastily rehung, lest they try to see if the same, or other, flaws occur within this alternative worldview. A and B are not held to the same standard.
Why don’t you demonstrate?
Well, clearly I don’t know how to engage 5MM’s argument from his perspective. That doesn’t actually bother me however…In fact, I find that to be a very good thing!
Clearly, google is remiss in not offering a FMM to English translator, or an Eric to English translator.
Yes, but the idea that tends to recur is that “naturalism” or whatever they’re on about is self-refuting. So if your basis of knowing happens to be seriously flawed, what good are your claims in the first place?
Which would be fine, if they weren’t simply making empty claims on their side, and if we didn’t have reason to trust our senses. There really is nothing self-refuting about using our senses to understand the world that has never been able to be reliably known via revelation or starting with some Truth, and since the revelation and Truth claimed across various people manages to diverge markedly, those are in fact the self-refuting claims. They think they get around it by having the Real Truth, yet can give us no reason to prefer their Real Truth over, say, Buddhism’s Real Truth.
In the end it’s about consistency and usefulness. People who understand that we neither have nor need Real Truth go off and study things, making discoveries, while Real Truth people merely reassert their Real Truth. Meanwhile, they’re unwilling to be tried according to revelation or someone else’s Real Truth, hence they are inconsistent. They don’t make discoveries, and they fail to be consistent with practice. To be sure, they can say that real discovery depends on their made-up claims, but that appears to be another made-up claim.
In the end, it’s really about having their own mindset, which they seem to think is superior to all others. Not much of an enticement, however, since it is of no real use beyond ego stroking.
Glen Davidson
No, we don’t know why to engage fmm on his own terms, since it’s an old and useless view that no longer even tries to come up with an adequate basis for its claims, as medieval philosophy did.
Glen Davidson
FMM doesn’t have an argument. He has an assertion that he’s unable to explain or justify, so all he can do is repeat it ad nauseum.
Premises are not assertions.
Bwhahahahaha!!!!!
Neither are presuppositions. They are true by definition.
In that case the answer is simple
God reveals it to me.
It’s a pity you do don’t feel inclined to answer my question. If you did you might get an answer that you find to be more satisfying
peace
Don’t you see? God reveals to FMM that God has revealed something to FMM! What could be simpler? Of course! Of course!
Not in my worldview.
But I’m asking about yours
Is it possible in your worldview for an omnipotent God to reveal stuff to you in such a way as you can know it even it you refuse to believe in him?
peace
Bingo
Correct,
They are like axioms in mathematics assumed to be true in a particular system.
peace
I don’t think they share much with mathematical axioms.
Mathematical axioms are entertained because they produce useful results.
Actually I asked you to let me know what your deity of choice was so we could evaluate it together. So far it’s been crickets from you on that one.
You can’t get actual knowledge from a hypothetical God.
If you have a particular God you feel is as qualified as Yahweh to impart knowledge I’d love to talk to you about it.
But you just can’t throw a bunch of would be deities that you don’t even believe in at me and hope the confusion will be enough to make your case.
quote:
For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
(Psa 96:5)
end quote:
peace
peace
how do you know that?
😉
Peace
Can you not see that the answer to the question: “how do you know it is God revealing something to you?” cannot possibly be “God reveals it to me”?
Do you understand what circular reasoning is?
Elizabeth,
Now you’re beginning to understand why the Given is a Myth!
(My point being that this circularity is implicit in all theistic arguments. It’s completely evident in FMM, but it runs rampant through theistic arguments generally.)
FMM has already admitted that his reasoning is entirely circular, and that circularity is in fact the biggest problem with presuppositionalism.
I’m right and you’re wrong isn’t exactly reasoning.
Of course I do. I’m not sure you do however.
That is why I ask you if it is possible for God to reveal stuff to me so that I can know it
Of course it can.
God is the only ultimate source of knowledge including the knowledge that God is the ultimate source of knowledge.
If there were any other sources of ultimate knowledge God would not be God and any knowledge whatsoever would be impossible.
quote:
For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
(Pro 2:6)
end quote:
Do you honestly think it’s impossible for an omnipotent God to reveal stuff so that I can know it?
Peace
Elizabeth,
Understand? It’s practically the only reasoning he uses!
How do you know that circularity is wrong? Please explain with out appealing to circular reasoning.
peace
circularity is implicit in all arguments.
If you disagree tell me how you know stuff
peace
I don’t aspire to know stuff in the sense that you mean by know.