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.
Not true. If you merely think something is illegal, but not immoral, you’ll do it if you think you can get away with it, whereas if you think it is immoral, you may abstain for that reason alone.
I repeat, would you prefer to live in a society where murder was not considered to be immoral?
Come on, Blas. Slow down and think.
Earlier in the thread, William wrote:
That, in a nutshell, is the mistake at the root of William’s and Blas’s confusion.
They are assuming that unless you believe that there is a single, objective standard of morality, then there is no reason to care about morality at all.
Nonsense. As I just explained to Blas, morality has huge impacts on society. Why wouldn’t I care about something that affects the society I live in? Also, morality has huge importance to me personally. I have a conscience. I have empathy. I don’t want to make others suffer, and if I do, I feel remorse. Why shouldn’t I care about those things? Those things matter, even if you don’t believe in a single objective standard of morality.
I accept your statement of your limitations at face value. I agree that a programmed machine – albeit a biological one – cannot choose what it likes and dislikes; it is entirely at the mercy of happenstance programming.
However, because I have free will, I can choose to like anything. Or dislike anything. Believe anything. Deny anything. You’d be amazed at what kind of power free will gives those of us who are not merely biological automatons. Which is one of the uses of “absolute” morality; those of us with free will are not constrained by the same emotional “feeling” limitations that are programmed into many (if not most) biological automatons. Empathy is something we can choose to ignore, and immoral activity is something we can choose to enjoy.
I didn’t assume it; I made a case for it in this thread.
coprophagia
Now THAT’S the word of the day!
I think we figured that out. It just means you derive your morality from some guy that lived a long time ago. As edited and amended and interpreted by other guys.
Really? You can choose to enjoy the taste of shit?
You can choose to enjoy having your fingernails pulled out?
I’m not buying it.
No you didn’t.
You assumed it, and you even admitted that you couldn’t back it up with evidence.
You claimed that it was a necessary assumption in order to have a “logically coherent and meaningful” moral system. But even if that were correct (and it’s not), a necessary assumption is still an assumption.
So what is your absolute goal? What are you trying to accomplish by this discussion?
In a rarefied philosophical context, devoid of any connection to Reality As She Is Spoke, it may well not matter which morality you follow. In practical terms, there can be severe consequences visited upon a person who follows a version of morality which differs from the consensus morality of the culture/society they live in. Unless your argument is that practical consequences aren’t important, yes, it bloody well does matter which version of morality you follow.
I’m still left wondering how things would differ, depending on the course of this discussion. Supposing I were convinced by one of our theist friends. How would I behave differently? Could I have an example?
Sorry keith, but you are confusing my point. First I said that everybody acts morally also the muslim suicide bombers. Second morality has huge impact when it is aand absolute moral not a moral that I like t choose.
You are confusing the free will to act with the free will to choose in wich way I will feel joy or pain. It is not the same. Unless you ccept as moral only what produces pleasure.
keiths: “Not true.If you merely think something is illegal, but not immoral, you’ll do it if you think you can get away with it, whereas if you think it is immoral, you may abstain for that reason alone.”
Me: If you merely think something is not immoral, you’ll do it if you think you can get away with it,
keiths: ” I repeat, would you prefer to live in a society where murder was not considered to be immoral?”
Off course I prefer to live in a place where murder is considered inmoral, but I would prefer to live in a where that “beleive” is not relative to what you think, feel at some time in some place.
And the point of the discussion is if atheist can build a founded moral, not if morality is good or not.
It will depend of how have you been educated in both cases. But without knowing that the big difference is that if you beleive the theistic view you will believe that there is no chance to get away with your morals violations.
Blas,
No, I’m not. William is, however, because he writes:
That’s simply not true, as my fingernail-pulling example shows.
Well then you both are confusing free will to act with free will of pleasure. Do we agree that the scope of morl is what we ought to do? How I feel when I pull my fingernails has nothing to do with moral. No matter masoquism as coprophagia exists.
It was you who claimed that:
I explained why your claim is incorrect.
What a rebuttal!
Why? Because of legal implications? Ok you have to be smart enough not to be caught, or go to a society where everybody agree with your moral. That makes that from a relative moral muslim suicide bombers are equals to their victims. Or native nordamericans are equals with the europeans that killed them. If a moral cannote differentiate that behaviors to me is useless
Blas,
Slow down and read what I actually write. I do not agree with William that we can choose to like anything. I have never said, nor implied, that I agree with that statement. It’s silly and obviously untrue.
…as my fingernail-pulling example shows.
Do you seriously claim that you can choose to enjoy having your fingernails pulled?
Probably because I make a mistake in the quotation you didn´t understan my answer. You said that moral prevent acts where a person feels can go away with the law and I said that with this kind of moral you can go away always. There are no consequences for your moral faults How then moral would help?
You are not following me. The fact tht it is probably true that we cannot freely choose what we like that do not means that we cannot choose as moral whatever we want to choose as moral. It has nothing to do with pleasure, at least not with phisical pleasure, maybe intelectual pleasure. think that people found moral flagellate themselves.
Close enough for this discussion.
I already explained this:
Also because of social implications.
Assuming that there is any such society, emigrating to it may be an option, sure.
If you have any system of morality at all, you can differentiate between those behaviors just fine. Differentiating between those behaviors is the whole point of a system of morality, is it not? Granted, people who subscribe to different systems of morality may well disagree about which behaviors should be considered ‘moral’. What of it? Since this is true even when every one of the people involved sincerely believes that their particular system of morality is Absolute and Deity-Given, I don’t see that this is in any way an argument that supports the proposition that ‘absolutely morality’ exists.
You are right, absolute morality exists only if God exists and that God let us know our life goal. But the point here is not to proff an absolute morality. The point here is that atheist cannot build a founded morality.
But that is out of the point. Is your moral rationally founded or are your feelings, your education, the pressure of the society on your behavior? That is the point. Because if it is not rationally founded, it is not absolute everybody can say morality is only social rule to protect the weaks.
But founded moralities are founded on fiction, so they are much more dangerous than moralities founded on consensus.
keiths,
keiths,
I cannot choose the raw data of physical experiences. If I were to have my fingernails pulled out, it would probably cause me great deal of pain.
However, i still am in complete command of what I believe about the situation, and how it is contextualized in my mind. There were many cultures that welcomed the challenge of enduring physical pain and even welcomed death to either prove themselves, or to be able to serve their god(s) or some other idea/ideal. Some believed that pain puriifed the spirit and made one even stronger.
With the right set of beliefs and mental context, even great physical pain can be enjoyable – whether you (keiths) believe it or not … but then, you’re not in control of what you believe, are you? So why should it matter to me that you believe me or not? You believe whatever biology and physics tells you to, whether it makes any sense or not, and whether it is to your benefit or detriment.
As far as I know, nobody here has attempted to support such a proposition. The proposition under consideration is whether or not such moral systems (absolute vs relative, theistic vs Darwinistic) could be rationally coherent and meaningful if they were to actually exist.
Of course. We’ve been telling you all along that morality is not absolute.
Try letting go of your assumption that morality must be objective in order to be useful, and see what happens. You’ll find that nothing horrible ensues and that morality is still “coherent and meaningful”, to use William’s terms.
It isn’t simply a matter of choice, William. If it were, then torture would always be ineffective. Everyone would simply choose to enjoy it.
I never claimed that everyone was capable of such choices. In fact, I explicitly stated that only those of us with free will are.
That quote was from cubist, not Blas.
How do you know that only some people have free will, and how can you tell which they are?
Can non-free-will owners acquire it?
And you have not responded to my claim that perfectly coherent systems of morality are impossible.
All moral choices are based on the consequences of actions, and consequences cannot perfectly be foreseen.
Nor is it rational to base morality on motives, because motives imply knowledge of consequences.
I think I’m ready to concede William’s point that atheists don’t have an absolute morality.
I’m still unclear what use such a thing is, though, without an evidence-based methodology for finding out what it is.
I do disagree with William that we can’t have a rational morality. I think basing a morality on what maximises the opportunity for everyone to benefit is extremely rational.
I would like to see the rational demostration that we ought to do what maximises the opportunity for everyone. Starting for rational definition of who is everyone, opportunities for what and rational rules for solving conflicts.
But also if you get there, and that moral the would be rational would it be founded?
We ought to do what is considered rational? Why?
What a ridiculous thing to say. Are you also willing to concede my “point” that your posting name is “Lizzie”?
Until you get to the part about what the definitions of “morality” and “benefit” are, who comes up with them, how your morality is enforced, why anyone (not just those that agree with it) should care, and what you do about members of your society that disagree with those definitions, and how you justify your actions.
I guess in your society everyone who disagrees moves somewhere else or commits suicide.
I don’t know it. It’s my opinion. All you really have to do is ask a person if they can choose what they believe. If they say no, IMO they probably do not have free will. In many cases you can just ask them if they have free will – they’ll say no.
A biological automaton might be “taken over” by an individual with free will, but it’s not the same thing as the biological automaton “acquiring” free will. Biological automatons are vehicles, so to speak, not drivers. A vehicle on autopilot is not the same thing as a vehicle with a driver.
IMO, of course.
Sorry, I don’t understand your point.
Well, no. It’s really not that difficult.
So what, in your view, is the difference between a person with free will and a person without? Both, it would seem, are capable of considered choice – of weighing up options and acting on the one most likely to achieve a given goal. Also of choosing goals. At least I have not yet found a person who couldn’t.
I suspect that if we were to conduct an experiment, we would find that you are unable to choose to enjoy torture.
Are you game?
So, having justified your morality to yourself (it has to have an external, objective source) you have carte blanche to do something about members of your society that disagree, and can justify your actions – if not to them, at least to yourself? This luxury being denied to the poor, benighted materialist?
Some, including Sam Harris, claim that they do. (I think he smuggles in a subjective moral axiom or two, but that’s a topic for another time.)
The theistic attempt to ground morality in God also fails, however, which is why William has carefully avoided addressing the dilemma I laid out earlier:
And:
There are many differences. IMO, BA’s have a real hard time distinguishing between conceptual arguments and claims of fact because a BA has no experience of conceptual states, so they most often just mistake such references for claims of fact or a claim that something exists, or references to physical facts.
Thus, BAs don’t understand the importance of conceptual frameworks because they have no real idea what a “conceptual framework” is (although they are able to use the term in a somewhat appropriate fashion, like a Turing machine); when you challenge one to suspend their beliefs (for them, their programming) to see a problem from the outside of their conceptual framework, they have absolutely no idea how to compute such a challenge – it’s like challenging a computer to step outside of it’s program and compute the problem with a different application not available to it.
You end up with a series of “the three stooges” clips like “who’s on first?”, because the BA cannot grasp the concept that “who” and “what” are not being used as placeholders for unknown commodities, but are rather the names of the players in question.
IMO, BAs often assume the philosophical foundation that is being challenged because they have no way to “perceive” their philosophical foundation (Turing-like responses notwithstanding). For them, their programming is just “what is”, which leads them to interpret every word or phrase accordingly, even ones explicitly explained to lie outside of that interpretive framework. But they don’t even know what an “interpretive framework” is; for them, it’s just the physical computation rendered by their programming.
Many in the ID community think that most Darwinists are guilty of deliberate deceit and bad faith tactics, but I don’t hold this view (even though on occasion I have called one or two a liar or stupid, but that is always from the belief framework that they are actual free will beings, which I usually avoid). I think that if one really pays attention, what they more closely resemble are really good versions of a Turing machine, with the only necessary blind spot being the fundamental assumptions of their own programming.
I mean, that’s really pretty much what they consider themselves to be anyway. I just take them at their word.
keiths,
As I explained in my post about BA’s (biological automatons), I’m not responsible for the fact that BA’s (like you, apparently) can’t compute something that genuinely lies outside of the context of their programming. The idea of god that is necessitated by the kinds of questions you ask, and their structure, is not the same context as my idea of God.
I’ve already fully responded to those posts; that you don’t comprehend them as responses is not my problem. It’s a software issue on your side. Take it up with your programmer.