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’m not sure how that is more to the point.
It seems that it is the very same point but in the case of the revelation it was made long before the genetic evidence was in.
peace
That’s very kind of you. Thank you.
You probably just failed to identify the premise. Else you contradicted yourself.
You can’t agree with it and then say it’s wrong. Well, you can, but that would mean you contradicted yourself.
And I’m fed up with being accused of things I’m not guilty of. The argument is not that atheists have no right to make moral judgements. So that’s a straw man.
Atheists, as you readily admit, consistently make moral judgments. They project their moral judgments on to others as if they were based on objective moral facts that everyone else, including the person at which they are directed, ought to agree with or accept as obvious. They [atheists] are as judgmental as anyone else when it comes to morality.
Even you can’t avoid it, hard as you try. Why are you “fed up” Elizabeth and why ought anyone care? Are you taking a moral stance? Do you not see the implied ought in “fed-up-ness?
Why do you think you don’t have access to it?
I don’t understand why anyone would want to say that moral norms aren’t objective — or, as I would prefer, universal.
I often get moral relativism from my students, and it always seems terribly confused to me. My students always tell me that beliefs morality differ from culture to culture, but they’re not able to tell me if the norms themselves differ from culture to culture. And they are not able to distinguish moral norms from taboos, customs, conventions, religious doctrines, and so on.
As I see it, moral norms just are the norms of conduct that apply to everyone. That is, everyone ought to practice lovingkindness, work for justice, respect the rights of others to peaceable co-existence, and so on. There’s no mystery to figuring out what being moral involves. It’s just really, really hard to extend the scope of one’s moral community beyond one’s tribe.
And they believe it by faith. Interesting.
My revelatory capabilities must be on the blink, please tell me why I am mistaken.
Speaking for myself. No, that’s not it.
What bugs me personally is all of the implied if not stated outright moral judgmentalism along with the implied moral judgment that I ought to care.
keiths, as an example, obviously thinks I ought to “defend my faith” and that my refusal to let him bait me ought to be understood as a moral failing (e.g., cowardice). These are obviously attacks against the person. Against the rules. He’s been asked in the past to defend his moral stance and declined to do so. Apparently also another moral failing (at least when applied to others).
If we are all moral realists and if we all agree that there are in fact objective moral facts, why can’t we all just say so? The divine foot. Same old same old.
Yes indeed. So why single them out for opprobrium?
New to this revelation business, you seem to be under the impression that my interest is not sincere. So it is possible ,in your view, to think and not exist?
I’m not sure. If I had to guess it’s probably because you openly reject God and his truth and he therefore leaves you to your own devices when it comes to biblical exegesis.
I mean no offense by this and would withdraw it in an instant if you could provide a convincing case for your interpretation that gives all the glory to God as sovereign Lord and lawmaker of the universe.
quote:
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
(1Co 2:14)
end quote:
peace
No I believe it’s possible to think and not know that you exist.
check it out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion
The knowledge that thinking persons (like me) exist is revelation just as I said.
If you disagree tell me specifically how you know that thinking things exist and how you made that determination
peace
If you find something objectionable about the way that keiths handles moral questions, why do you generalize that to all atheists?
People are different. Some people are very judgmental. Others are not. And those differences seem to cross theist/non-theist lines.
Even if i did that, which I haven’t, you seem to find it morally objectionable.
I have observed pretty much every atheist here doing so. They, of course, are welcome to do so. But where do they derive their sense of morality from?
Are they moral realists? Do they believe in objective moral values? If so, then why can’t we all just agree on those points? Then perhaps we could discuss the origin of morality, the moral sense, and moral values.
Your own view seems to be that you don’t know their origin, therefore you cannot agree that they are objective. Do I have that right?
Nah. I changed it. But I changed it before I posted it not after. So you just had the timing off. No problem.
😉
Revelation seems limited, what element of the situation would more knowledge allow us to make a educated guess of the morality?
No revelation is not limited, we are limited so we need revelation which God provides
all the elements, The more information we have the better our educated guess. That goes for knowledge of anything not just moral choices.
pretty standard stuff.
peace
My own view is that a moral theory is an attempt to systematize morality. But morality cannot be systematized. People in a community can agree on broad principles, but they disagree as soon as they try to deal with specific details.
Yet we still discuss and argue about moral issues, because moral decisions are part of what binds a community.
KN has brought up a distinction that is probably worthy of it’s own OP.
Not everything that is an ought is a moral ought.
This thread concerns the directly stated or implied moral ought that often accompanies posts by atheists when addressing the comments of theists. If the comment by the atheist towards/about the theist is not of a nature such that there is an implied moral force, what is it’s purpose, exactly?
If the direct or implied moral force consists merely of “I don’t think you ought to do that,” where (or what) is it’s moral force?
Does moral force arrive at 51 v 49?
How to systematize something that doesn’t exist. I can see how that might be a problem. No one asked what your view of a moral theory is.
Mung,
Actually, I don’t think you ought to defend your faith. I think you should admit that you can’t defend it and that your faith is emotionally motivated but not rationally justified.
By itself, your refusal to defend your faith isn’t a problem. People would actually respect you more, not less, if you admitted that you can’t defend it rationally.
Kantian Naturalist,
But the entire point is how do arrive at those particular criteria as examples of morality? Why doesn’t your list of moral actions include not walking on grass barefoot, or charging a reasonable fee for Bull fights?
keiths,
You can defend your faith rationally? I doubt it.
It maybe be rational to you, but that doesn’t make it rational.
I for one don’t see what is so hard about defending a faith in a God. The world appears to be designed by a God-that is pretty obvious even to people who don’t like to admit it. (One point for a God)
Next we are conscious, and we have morality (another mark for the God column of belief)
Next, many people have an innate sense of a relationship with a God. What should one do, chalk it up to another accident which helps you breed, or believe its real. (Having the illusion of faith doesn’t seem like it would affect your baby output much. Let’s call it at least another half-point for a God).
Gravity, Strong and Weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, planets…Let’s go with at least two points there.
Near death experience research. Half point I would say.
I got it at about 5-0 in favor of a God. Still the first innings, but its looking like it could be a route.
Does it appear to be designed, or was it designed?
Dont’ forget we have hair, usually. The presence of hair is a give away because every time I see Jesus he has a full beard. Therefore god likes lots of hair.
With “a” god? How many do you think are out there? How do you know you’ve dialed the right one up on the prayer dial?
You do know that 100% of the universe (bar a small error margin) is unsuitable for human life, right?
You forgot about ghosts! Go and ask William about ghosts, he’s haunted daily!
“A” god? I think the real one is going to be pissed at you!
Just take a look at the world around you for the answer to that.
OMagain,
Even the God that you are so angry at, still has more evidence for him then evidence for chaos making organized, integrated complexity.
God still in the lead, in a shut out.
Can’t be angry at what I don’t think or can know exists.
Who is claiming that chaos makes organized, integrated complexity? Do you have a citation for that?
Which God?
William J. Murray,
I tend to avoid the tiresome repetition of dumb slogans. But yes, I would interfere if (for example) someone was murdering someone else, because I ‘felt it’ wrong not to. That is morally and rationally justifiable. You may delude yourself that you would not, in fact, ‘feel like’ interfering, but do so anyway. I would suggest that you were mistaken. If you stirred yourself into action, it would be an act of volition, based upon what you felt like doing at the time, granted that one could factor in the fact that you persuade yourself that this feeling has an objective basis – that whatever you do, you ‘really are’ acting in accord with some external entity or system that will reward or punish your action or inaction.
fifthmonarchyman,
Our genetic kinship as human beings is one reason for certain moral universals, is the point. Some lame attempt to chalk one up for Biblical inerrancy isn’t.
Atheists don’t really believe morality is just an accident (Wait, what word do you choose, help me out, naturally sieved?), just like we said.
Obviously not, since you believe that a god exists. Talk about a redundant statement.
How many worlds besides this one have you seen, and how did you determine which ones were made by gods?
It isn’t obvious to me, at all, because I don’t see how you answered the previous question. Until you have some method to determine what kinds of worlds gods preferentially produce (if any), I don’t see how you can say the world you happen to live in “appears” to be the product of one.
So, you mind taking a stab at the question above?
Why would these even be points in favor of god? How many gods do you know anyway? How did you determine that gods are generally in the business of making conscious beings with moral opinions and emotions?
Yeah the key word there is “a” God. Not just God-God. People have innate senses of relationships with their culturally acquired religions, which can range from anything to “The great creator crocodile” to the Sun. People who grow up secular and atheistic pretty often either don’t have these supposed divine relationships at all, or just talk about general good feelings of connectedness with the universe, or other people and things like that.
This is actually a point in favor of naturalism: Religions and religious emotions and sensibilities extremely strongly correlate with childhood upbringing together with geographical and culturally determined traditions.
You’ll have to believe all of them, then, even mutually contradictory ones. And then make up some patently ridiculous and ad-hoc excuse to try to make it appear as if they are all somehow “divine senses”. An effort that amounts to nothing more than sticking that same label on all of them, despite their wildly different, if not outright contradictory contents and natures.
Things don’t have to exist because they aid reproduction and survival. The average human heart weighs approximately 300 grams (iirc). That doesn’t mean hearts were ever selected (or designed) to encumber the body with an additional 300 g of weight. There is such a thing as a byproduct of something else, both on design and on evolution.
At best, AT BEST, the mere existence of something that doesn’t immediately aid reproduction is in favor of neither theism or naturalism.
What? So gods, in general, are in the business of creating forces of attraction and repulsion? How did you determine this? It seems we’ve been over this one already above, about the whole “world” looking like it was designed thing. Again, how many worlds have you checked, how many of them were created by gods, and how did those worlds look?
Are you telling me you somehow know the mind of god? What a preposterous suggestion.
In what way? You’ll have to elaborate. More assumptions about gods are stuffed in here it seems, too. Such as the idea that gods would design afterlives. How do you know?
Supposing you mean to say people are experiencing various purported “afterlives”, this one fits in with the general “religious experiences” argument above and suffers from all the same flaws too.
You can get anywhere you want with the right kind of assumptions and nobody pointing out whether you’re walking in circles.
As long as the argument is stuck in straw man mode, I’ll just observe that for theists, morality is whatever the pontificator says it is.
petrushka,
And what is it for atheists?
Same thing, sometimes with pontification, sometimes without. Morality is always about whatever a person wants to do.
When you scrub away the hypocrisy and priestly bullshit, you are left with the necessity of having politics and laws.
Yet you and William and fmm can’t actually agree about a single component about this “objective morality” you all three claim exists.
If it exists but you can’t agree on anything about it, perhaps you are *all* mistaken. It certainly seems that way to me.
So why don’t you start a new OP where you, William and fmm can work out the first thing you all agree on regarding what you all claim to exist.
OMagain,
I have never claimed that morality in people’s heart’s is the same for everyone. What I claim is that what is in your heart, was given to you divinely.
The choice to ignore it is up to the individual.
That explains a lot of things.
OMagain,
Theist octagon — three theologies enter, fourteen sects leave.
Thank your god from me for planting those “heart” feelings in the ISIS paris terrorists.
Its is hypocritical for the atheist to claim what the terrorists do is wrong.
You have no standard for judging what is wrong.
We have exactly the same standard as you have.
Except the difference being if a man wearing a dress who never has sex tells us how we should live our lives, we know it’s just Dave from the rugby club out on the piss again. And ignore him. Not put him on a bleedin golden throne!
Ah, objective morality does not exist at all according to you!
Interesting, verrrry interesting.
So what we have is guys who were made by god to be black on the left side and white on the right side fighting guys who were made by god to be black on the right side and white on the left side.
Forever.
And it’s all objective.
phoodoo,
phoodoo quotes my two statements without making a point, though I suppose the point is obvious enough. However, those statements are entirely compatible.
The first relates to certain things that do tend to be common to all moralities (starting with the fact of morality itself: a capacity to ascribe labels ‘right’ and ‘wrong’). There clearly are such things.
The second relates to an all-encompassing universal morality. There clearly is no such thing.
phoodoo,
Well … uh .. no indeed. You have been foisting upon us the view that we do believe morality is all ‘just accidents’. Since we don’t accept that, of course we don’t act like it is.
Allan Miller,
So far you haven’t given me any word other than accidents that describes it. Don’t blame me for you not being able to articulate it accurately.
Allan Miller,
But there’s an equivocation in “universal morality” between (a) moral norms that really do hold of all sane persons, regardless of whether those norms are acknowledged and (b) universal acknowledgment of those moral norms.
You seem to think that the absence of (b) either directly entails, or at least is evidence for, the negation of (a). Is that your view?