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.
Poor William. Reduced to pretending that his opponents are addled automata.
Okay, who is running the Turing test with the WJM-bot? It’s outrageous claims have lost their charm and I find myself too bored to chuckle. Please turn it off now before it repeats itself yet again. Thank you.
When it’s a choice between (1) evil, (2) grossly stupid, and (3) automata (that, for all practical purposes they assert themselves), #3 is, in my view, is the most considerate and respectful.
William,
No, the dilemma arises in the context of your theology. You have assumed (or in the case of #3, admitted) that:
1. Objective morality exists.
2. Objective morality is innate in God.
3. Humans can deceive themselves about what is moral.
Under those three assumptions, it is possible for you to mistakenly believe that something is “self-evidently” immoral when to God the opposite is true. Therefore, the dilemma applies: Knowing that God disagrees with you, do you continue to believe that it is immoral, at the cost of admitting that your morality is not God-based? Or do you ignore your conscience and change your view to match God’s, since “might makes right” — he’s big, he’s powerful, and he created you, so whatever he says is objectively moral by definition.
The dilemma is a problem for your theology, William. Will you address it, or will you continue to pretend that it’s not there?
As I’ve already answered, keiths, in my theology, there’s no such thing as “incontrovertible evidence”, and in my theology god certainly cannot provide it, because (which you seem programmed to be blind to) I have free will – the capacity to believe, or disbelieve, anything.
Even god cannot transgress my free will. But, apparently you cannot see any aspect of my theology that directly renders an explicit and necessary part of your argument entirely irrelevant no matter how many times I explain it to you.
I’m going to have to start a thread where I make a case about my free will/biological automaton belief. Note how keiths equates “admitting I have no physical evidence for a thing” with an “assumption” of the thing, as if a logical argument at least purporting to demonstrate the non-meaningful nature of non-objective morality (by making a case about it being relative, subjective, and without any necessary consequences) is **the same as** just assuming it to be so.
This corresponds exactly to my description of how biological automatons would behave; they process conceptual and hypothetical arguments as if they were claims of existence or fact.
My point is that you think I was making a point about a trivial aspect of the argument in the first place that was simply assumed from the beginning. Were you arguing that Darwinists or atheistic materialists or anyone other than theists claimed an “absolute” morality to argue for?
The entire argument was a comparison between absolute morality and relative morality, with theists serving as standard bearers for absolute, and Darwinists serving as bearers for non-absolute (relative, subjective) morality.
You might as well concede to my point that theists hold that morality is absolute. Or to my point that your posting name is Lizzie.
That doesn’t help your case. The dilemma exists even if the proof isn’t incontrovertible.
The evidence merely has to be strong enough to persuade you that your conscience and God’s morality are at odds.
The dilemma is a problem for your theology, William. Will you address it, or will you continue to pretend that it’s not there?
By the way, are you still claiming that you can choose to enjoy torture? What do you think about setting up an experimental test? (Don’t worry — we’ll arrange it so that you can stop the experiment the moment you discover that the “choice” is harder than you anticipated.)
Since when does “and” mean “equals”?
Read my statement again:
Getting desperate, William?
keiths,
You do realize there is a record here of what each of us has written up to now? Let’s look at the history of this conversation. Your original challenge:
My response:
Unsatisfied with that answer, you asked again, rephrased:
I responded:
Whether or not I was merely “believing” information that I believed came from god was obviously not sufficient for your challenge to be valid, because you replied:
But now that I’ve apparently gotten you to understand that the existence of free will in my theism thwarts the fundamental and necessary part of your challenge (that, up until now, was very important to you), that I can incontrovertibly “know” anything about what god wants, we’re back to belief – the evidence, as you say persuades me (to believe, since I cannot, with free will, be persuaded to incontrovertibly “know” anything) that what I believe to be a self-evident moral truth has changed overnight.
So we’re back to mere belief – which, as I’ve already said, is how I hold all of these things anyway – provisional beliefs, no matter how persuasive any evidence is.
As I said before, since it is impossible for me to “know” these things in the manner you demandedin your original challenge, and since what you suggest occurs is the appearance of a self-contradiction of something presumed to be absolute (torture babies is wrong/torturing babies is good, god a source of morality being immutable – god cannot change its mind about it), I would suspend my theistic belief system at least for the time being and consider the possibility that I am mentally ill, because I would have held self-contradictory views about a supposed absolute within the framework of a theism required to be rationally consistent.
So, either my theism would be incorrect, or I would be mentally deficient.
Your argument was, as I said, contextually erroneous to my theism and my broader metaphysic.
How I interpreted that is a fair interpretation. If you claim that is not how you meant it, I accept your correction.
However, if that was not what you meant – if you are not equating “assumption” with “no physical evidence”, then your claim is flatly false. You may not think the argument I made about it was convincing, or even a good argument, but I did not simply assume it. Good or bad, I made a case for it in this thread.
“atheist cannot build a founded morality”? Nonsense. I’m willing to bet a month’s rent that what you mean here is, you don’t think “atheist [can] build a… morality” on a foundation which you, Blas would be willing to regard as a valid foundation-for-morality. Our mutual acquaintance WJM has that down to a science; WJM is very clear that he thinks because-I-think-so doesn’t constitute a valid foundation for morality. And I suspect that your view on this point is pretty close to WJM’s.
William,
That was an elaborate (and I daresay tortured 🙂 ) attempt to evade the dilemma, but it doesn’t work.
As I’ve already pointed out, the following three statements apply to your theology:
It is also (obviously) true that humans can be persuaded to change their minds. Let’s label this #4.
In my scenario:
a) You are initially convinced that torturing babies for pleasure is evil, and that God agrees, but you happen to be wrong (possible by #3 above).
b) You are persuaded (by whatever means) that you are mistaken, and that God actually wants you to torture babies (possible by #4 above).
At this point you claim that
But there’s no contradiction. You thought that God considered baby torture to be immoral, but you always knew that you could be wrong about that. After all, as you’ve conceded, people can deceive themselves about moral issues — and that includes you, of course.
Nevertheless, let’s say you consider the possibility that you are mentally ill and you end up rejecting it based on the evidence. You re-examine your theism and decide that it is still correct — after all, nothing you just learned contradicts the initial assumptions.
So now you believe that God wants you to torture babies, and you run headlong into the dilemma: You thought it was immoral to torture babies, but now you believe that God actually wants you to do it because he considers it moral. Do you decide that God is wrong, at the cost of admitting that your morality is not grounded in him? Or do you ignore your conscience and change your view to match God’s, since “might makes right” — he’s big, he’s powerful, and he created you, so whatever he says is objectively moral by definition.
Will you finally address the dilemma instead of evading it?
And by the way, do you still claim that you, personally, can choose to enjoy torture? Would you be willing to put your pain receptors where your mouth is, so to speak?
+1.
I shall duct tape my fingers to prevent my neurons from communicating further.
(signed)
the AllanMiller3000 brain-in-a-jarTM
Amazing really.
William, who has “free will” and is not an automaton is unable to make a moral choice (if to push one man onto the tracks to save 5) that the automatons can quite easily make.
Seems like it’s pointless to have free will if you are unable to use it due to imperfect knowledge of any choice you might make.
That would be interesting, William. Please do.
This is fascinating, William, although I think profoundly mistaken.
Can you explain a “conceptual state”? Assume for the purposes of this discussion, that I am capable of being in one.
Well, take me as an example. I think you’d have to agree (but maybe not) that I am capable of understanding what a conceptual framework is, because I used to have a very different conceptual framework, than the one I have now. In my old conceptual framework, I assumed that consciousness and intention was possible in the absence of a body, and thus capable of persisting after death. I called it the W for “will”, but it conformed pretty well to the concept usually called the Soul. I also extrapolated to assume that a conscious intentional, but bodiless (immaterial) being was perfectly possible, and, in fact probable, and I took this being to be the “ground of our being” and called him/her “God”. I took the capacity for intentional, conscious moral decision-making which seemed apparent to me in everyone (theist or non-theist) to be what the Quakers call “that of God in everyone”. I then discovered a different conceptual framework that did not require this extra, potentially bodiless, construct called W, but accounted for conscious Will in neural terms by reference to re-entrant loops, in which organisms with brains (ourselves being the paradigm case) are capable of modelling (conceiving of) themselves as agents and deciders.
Whether you think I went astray at that point or not, is not my point, here. The point is that I have had direct subjective experience of two very different “conceptual frameworks”. Would you agree?
I don’t understand this, possible because I’m not familiar with the clips. Can you explain in more detail?
Could you give a real life example of this?
Can you think of any Darwinist who, in your opinion, is probably NOT a BA? Or, to put this another way, do you think it is possible for any non-BA to be a Darwinist?
Well, I don’t think I am a BA, or anything like one. What I suggest, William, is that you have adopting the stance that you assume your BA interlocutors are taking: of being unable able to think outside your own conceptual framework. You think that you are capable of both encompassing the people-as-automaton framework, and the people-as-more-than-automaton framework, where as we are stuck only with the former. But from where I’m standing, you have failed to see that the distinction is an illusion; that there are not “automaton” decision-makers and “non-automaton” decision-makers, but rather degrees of complexity, in terms of self-referential, other-referential, self-at-past-time-referential, self-at-future-time-referential, self-as examplar-of-others-referential capacities, that render the description “automaton” moot. “Automaton” becomes a meaningless description, because it does not distinguish between a being capable of highly considered, imaginative, other-centred, based-on-experience decision-maker, and a clockwork toy.
In fact I’m glad I used the term “W” for the souly-thing I thought we had, because that leave me the word “soul” to use in Hofstadter’s sense, as a something that decision-making entities possess in varying degrees according to the depth and complexity (and Strangeness) of the nesting of their re-entrant decision-making processes.
Now, I anticipate that you will put this down to my inability to think outside the automotive box. But I will a) point out that I’ve been there, done that, and that b) it is just as possible that what you are assuming is a larger box, is in fact a smaller one.
That our conceptual framework encloses yours not the other way round 🙂
I think there is a point to be made here that to engage in a discussion one must be able to paraphrase the position of both sides. That’s a simplification.
It’s rather common to see both sides asserting that they are misunderstood.
From my side I am happy to concede that ID may be the ultimately true position, in some flavor or another, but that the truth or falsity of ID is orthagonal to the conduct of science.
OK, let me have another go at paraphrasing William’s stance, because I really would like to understand it (and it’s not as though I haven’t read his book):
William finds it self-evident that it is wrong to torture babies, even if it would give him pleasure to do so.
He sees two ways of reacting to this insight:
1. “I need to form some kind of moral code that is based on what I find self-evidently wrong”. But he rejects this as irrational – why not just dismiss your perception that it is “wrong” as a Darwinian miswiring in your perceptual system, and go for the pleasure anyway? Or adopt any other “moral” code that arbitrarily sanctions some actions and places a taboo on others? And what if other people have different perceptions of wrongness and different desires? That would mean there was no absolute moral code at all, just people with varying desires and revulsions and convictions that X is right but Y is wrong.
2. “Because I am a rational being, this perception that it would be wrong to do something that would give me immediate pleasure must derive from an innate sense that ultimately torturing babies would do me harm”. The only system under which this would be the case would be if there were a) a God who created me with the capacity for this innate sense of ultimate consequences and who b) created a system whereby there actually were ultimate consequences for ignoring that sense. In other words, if there were an absolute morality.
He therefore proposes that as 2 makes sense and 1 really doesn’t, 2 must be true.
Please don’t dismiss this paraphrase out of hand, William, but try, how ever difficult, to correct it so that it reads as you intend me to understand your view.
Moral rules are base neither in motives nor in consequences but in goals.
Well it depends of what consensus and what fiction and at the end for whom is dangerous.
Lizzie on April 26, 2013 at 2:03 pm said, in an attempt to paraphrase William J. Murray:
William J. Murray on April 26, 2013 at 3:26 pm explicitly stated in response to this mistaken characterization:
Your current paraphrase, not even a week later, completely reverses the “cart, horse” order of “my stance”, as you call it, yet again. After asking you to stop trying to paraphrase me, and being cajoled by others to explain why your paraphrasing is erroneous, I went ahead and gave you an extensive, numbered system of the steps I take, and in what order, to arrive at my moral code to correct the very “paraphrasing error” you repeat here.
You completely failed to retain the entire conceptual framework that precedes, rationally grounds and justifies the belief that a self-evident moral truth might exist and why you should try and locate one.
Now, I wonder which BA will be the first to say “but you have no evidence that such a framework is true” as if it matters to the argument?
BTW, I thought about your question about whether or not a BA can get free will (a soul). As I answered, if you ***are*** actually a BA, then ***you*** cannot get free will.
However, it might be that you are an entity “with” free will, so to speak (free will being the essential “you”, but that’s another debate), and are using your free will to believe something, and to do so you must subconsciously blind yourself to certain things and reason erroneously. IOW, you command the computer you inhabit to reach conclusion X, and the computer does so, even if it means ignoring data or outputting garbage.
If this is the case – if you are a free will entity that has willfully entered a state of denial about these things, then you still have access to free will to be able to extricate yourself from your self-imposed Darwinistic slumber. The problem, as I’ve explained more thoroughly in my books, is that what stands between you and the reclamation of access to your free will is devotion to your self-image – what you think you are, who you believe yourself to be, and what you “know” about the world and what it is.
This problem appears to be intractable; everything you hold “you” to be, and the world to be, is programming that removes free will from your reach. Yet again, in another sense, “you” cannot regain your free will, because it is the version of “you” that you believe and know yourself to be that by definition cannot have access to free will, which would shatter that self-image construct.
Unlike the BA’s situation, however, there is a solution to this, which virtually all religions and spiritualities agree to in one form or another. But such arguments and explanations crash like waves on cliff rock to those committed to who and what they are, and what the world is as they currently see it; no amount of evidence or sound argument to the contrary can penetrate either the programming of a BA, or free will denial of the obvious.
Nothing can move until the individual chooses – not computes, but chooses, outside of that which can be reasonably concluded or factually proven, reaching within to that primordial demiurge, becoming it, and crying out in refutation of all programming and knowledge, abandoning the prison of the veneer of self and letting god – the ocean behind your wave, which is still you, but the unfettered, unprogrammed you that you have hidden from your current self-image (you in the general sense) – wash away all of those worldly constraints and accepting that overwhelming power and authority to think and believe and know as you wish instead of as the computed positions of programming, the old, computed self washed away and the true you reborn in ..well … the glory of free will (god) and true liberation.
Man, I’d make a great cult leader.
TESTIFY! Amen. Rhada Soami. To thine own self be true. Namaste.
Please explain how goals are different from motives and consequences. How can they be separable?
To have a goal is to desire a consequence. To have a motive is to have a desire.
Desires and goals can conflict. I have a goal of losing weight. I desire to eat more than is compatible with the goal. Life is full of conflicting desires.
It is not difficult to understand cubist, look at this agreement between Lizzie and WJM:
”
WJM:All of morality is about oughts,
Lizzie:I agree.
WJM:If we want to eat at a popular restaurant at a certain day and time, we ought to make reservations. That ought is not a moral ought.
Lizzie:I agree. Let’s call it Ought_Self.
WJM:If we want to avoid going to jail, then we ought not get caught committing a crime. That is not a moral ought.
Lizzie:I agree, that is also Ought_Self.
WJM:If we want to succeed in life and be popular and have friends, then we ought socially conform to norms that would make this likely. That is not a moral ought.
Lizzie:Indeed. Also Ought_Self..
WJM:If I want to avoid feeling bad and guilty, I ought not steal from or harm others. That is not a moral ought.
Lizzie:Indeed. Also Ought_Self.
WJM:The only oughts that are moral have to do with fulfilling the purpose one is created to serve, whether they make us feel bad or good, whether they make us good citizens or not, and whether it harms others or not.”
You see, they agree everything that they put as:
“In order to get ….. we ought to …..”
And call that some kind of morality. Then they try to formulate the moral rule and they fail to agree. Why? Because they abbandone the form “In order to get ….. we ought to …..”. Why they abbandoned that form, because they have no rational goal for life. Atheists thinks that life is product of phisical laws that without goal, we could axists or not it was just chances, so everyone can choose his one goal, but that it is not rational it is gut. Every society can agree their goal but that would not be rational, that would be agreement of guts.
No rationale goal, not rationale way to obtain the goal, not rational morality. That`s it. If you and the others cannot see it is because do not want.
You have motives to reach a goal, but are not the same. The firsts are the explanation of the seconds. Reaching the goal is a consequence of my act but not the unique consequence of my acts, for example to reach a goal I can produce “collaterl damage”.
Agree, but you not every desire or every consequnce is compatible with your goal.
Off course, that is what moral is about, conflict of desires and consequences that can be resolved only if you have a goal. If you do not have a goal which parameter will you use to evaluate which desires are going to try to comply and which consequences are going to accept.
So to be moral one must conform to a creator’s purpose.
I do not see how that solves any problems. Did WJM say that god cannot make 2+2=9? Does that imply there is a mathematics or logic of morality that cannot be violated by a creator?
I am not a biblical scholar, but I once looked through the Bible for a foundational definition of goodness. I was unable to come up with anything that was not in some way related to health and well being.
I don’t see that rationality is served by moving the source of morality to god’s gut. This is just extending the parent-child or master-servant metaphor.
On the other hand, if god is tapping into some necessary laws of rationality comparable to mathematics, then religion is superfluous. Morality can be derived without reference to any creator whether real or fictional.
As a personal aside, I was from a very early age, offended by many Old Testament stories. By age 10 I had a list of stories where I thought god was behaving badly. No one taught me to think like this; in fact I was taught that my inner sense of moraity was subservient to god’s mysterious ways.
Well, you have to start with not hinking that God, if it exists, is somebody that one days wakes up and says I´m bored the 2+2= 4 for today I´ll make 2+2=5. God is eternal not because he do not dies and stands all the time but because he is outside the time. He created the time. And if it exists, He is goodness do not look another definition on the Bible. And moral is better defined with conform our purpose that is the one God thought for us.
In what sense is caring about the long term well being of others not a goal?
I have children. I care about their welfare in the same way I get hungry, and probably for the same reason. By extrapolation I care about having a just society to ensure the best prospects for my descendents.
Now I find it irrational to think the mod of my creation has any bearing on the rationality. Whether my goals are inborn as the result of being reated that way or the result of evolution does not affect my goals.
That corresponds to the premise of an absolute morality. Only an absolute creator (god) has absolute purpose (not subjective or relative purpose) available; that is the only thing an assumed absolute morality in humans can be rationally derived from.
This is rationally figuring out what metaphysical/conceptual framework is necessary to support an assumed premise. For my money, the interesting part of the argument is whether or not there is good reason to premise that an absolute morality exists in the first place. IOW, why should anyone (1) premise an absolute morality, and (2) care whether or not one exists?
I choose to premise an absolute morality because:
(1) Without it, all goods and evils are equal outside of their relative moral construct. Any purpose is available to a society by which to construct their list of oughts and thus defining “what is moral”; from society to society (moral construct A to moral construct B), what is good can be X in the first, and not-X in the next.
(2) So, without an absolute morality to refer to, I have no principled basis by which to challenge not the ethics, but the entire basis for the moral structure fo the society I am part of. In Liz’s example, I’m not challenging the ethical interpretation of how Altruism is best implemented – I’m challenging altruism itself, or “most benefit for most people”, or “peaceful society” – I’m challenging her definition of morality as prescribed by whatever goal informs the oughts derived from it.
(3) Under the non-absolute framework, the only principle I have available to challenge or deny the “purpose” (that is the basis) of a moral system, such as “obey the word of god” or “do what mohammed commands” or “do whatever promotes the greatest procreation of the species” is “because I think so”. If I refer to humanism, or altruism, or pragmaticism, those are just different, relative purposes with their accompanying set of “oughts”. There’s no basis, other than another assumed, relativistic one, to compare them by. This is question-begging into infinite regress with no end in sight.
(4) only if one assumes an absolute moral “end”, and an absolute purpose, can one have the conceptual framework by which one can make a principled challenge to any moral assertion by any group, society, authority, etc.
(5) the only way to avoid hypocrisy and infinite regress of conceptual question-begging without the premise of the absolute is by admitting the “because I think so”, relativistic nature of ones morality.
(6) [Insert prior argument about necessary consequences and meaning here]
(7) For me, a “because I think so”, relativistic and haphazard consequence morality is useless and meaningless. Why bother calling it “morality” when all you’re going to do is whatever you find most pleasing, one way or another, even if what pleases you the most is altruism and self-sacrifice, or if it is most pleasing to you to avoid potential social redress, or if what pleases you most is avoiding empathetic pain? Why care about it when the consequences are haphazard at best, and it is up to a probably corrupt system to create “moral” laws and enforce them? I can see caring about avoiding system punishment, but certainly not about the underlying, supposed moral rule.
(8) If one can find such a relativistic, because-I-think-so morality personally sufficiently meaningful as such, the the “meaningful” part of my argument is inapplicable to you.
(9) And so, because of the above, I think it is worthwhile to hypothesize an absolute morality that would allow a conceptual framework that resolves these issues and provides for a mechanism by which it is possible to be “a good person” in a meaningful and rational context beyond just doing whatever society (or “the collective”) says to do.
That’s an argument from consequence. A fallacy. Hardly rational.
You desire a fully rational morality; therefore the basis for it must exist. Details to be filled in by your imagination or the imagination of some ancient priest.
But you have simply pushed the origin from man’s gut to god’s gut. You have not found a rational basis, merely the will of a father figure. If the basis is absolute it can be derived without reference to willful entities.
So you solve the problem of infinite regress simply by asserting the existence of an entity separate from existence as we know it.
You are saying that because you want a simple answer there must be one. A rather universal desire but hardly a rational solution.
The “Meaning” part of the argument is from consequence, but what argument about “what is a proper morality” is not an argument from consequence – purposefully pursued consequences (goals), or the haphazard or necessary consequences of good or evil behavior?
Yes, many morals are only that. I said the moral of “follow the leader” like the social animals.
I´m still waiting here someone to show a rationale derived morality. I will you a tip. Kant said that to amke a morality he needed an afterlife, a Judge (God), the judgement and rewards and punishments.
God was behaving badly according to what?
It it interesting when we see a movie like the Indiana Jones series and the bad guys dead massively indirectly because of their behavior or Indiana Jones acts everybody feels good but when reading the Bible we see the bad guys punished by God we feel bad.
Still waiting a rational solution here.
Sigh. My neurons stagger numbly into action and force me to type … all you have done is generate an external – ‘because it pleases someone else’ to circumvent difficulties arising mostly from your own somewhat limited understanding of humans. ‘Because it pleases someone else’ (or trangression displeases them) is pretty much the basis of ‘our’ morality too. It’s just that the someone else is another animal, not some eye in the sky. Pleasing other people produces a pleasurable sensation – it’s nice to be nice. Displeasing them is distasteful. Society’s collective view both grows out of, and conditions, the individuals within it.
It is a perfect goal. It is the goal of your life? It is for what you live? That is the primary goal that any other goal, desire should be sacrifice in order to achieve it? That goal is mandatory for everybody? Is the goal that have to achieve every human been?
I already answered about the mod of God.
Maybe because you didn´t established your goals rationally.
I think you will wait a long time. Rational solutions do not exist because you wish for them. God does not exist because you wish it.
Your perfect logic seems to take the form:
God must exist in order to have a perfectly rational morality.
I wish to have a perfectly rational morality
Therefore god exists.
There is no reason a perfectly rational morality must exist other than your desire for it to exist. That’s not rational.
Define everybody. I thought the ending of that movie was rubbish.
It’s true that Hollywood movies manipulate you to wish for the failure of the bad guys, but anyone with half a brain realizes they are being manipulated. I don’t go to many movies.
I’m sorry, but the Bible does not establish in any believable way that the masses of women , children and fetuses butchered or drowned are all bad. the god of the Old Testament is a monster comparable to Hitler.
Amen.
No, that it is not my rationale.
I never said that a perfect morality must exists. My point was the answer to the question of the post that eveerybody seems forgetted.
Lizzie were trying to rebutting Kairosfocus affirmation that atheists cannot make a founded moral. After 640 comments seems that nobody was able to show a rationale logical morality. So I think Lizzie failed, and I´m not surprised because sinc my first comment I said the only way that a founded logical morality can exist is IF God exists.
Then maybe moral rules are all the result of the manipulation.
That is your opinion or you have an objective parameter to define who is bad and who is a monster?
I would eny that a fully rational morality is possible at all. The prospects are not improved by assuming a creating entity. One merely pushes the origin problem back a generation.
Killing not in self defence is my criterion.
Jerico is a special case since it involves both genocide and theft.
A summary of the problems I see in William’s argument and in his moral system:
1. William complains that under “Darwinian morality”, moral disputes can’t be conclusively resolved because the justification for a moral decision boils down to “because I, personally, think so.” He doesn’t seem to realize that moral disagreements can’t be adjudicated under his system, either, because the justification for a moral decision boils down to “because I, personally, think this is what God wants.”
2. Under a subjective system, conscience is the ultimate arbiter of morality. Yet William’s system actually encourages people to ignore their consciences at times:
2a. It can lead people to declare things moral even when their consciences tell them otherwise, as when people allow “holy” books to override their moral sensibilities (cf William Lane Craig’s defense of genocide because God commands it in the Bible).
2b. It can lead people to believe that God doesn’t care about certain seemingly important moral issues. In William’s theology, God is capable of communicating his morality unambiguously to his creatures. If two sincere people disagree on what God thinks about a particular moral issue (same-sex marriage, for example), it can only be because God failed to communicate his morality to at least one of them. If he doesn’t bother to communicate his morality in this case, people may be tempted to conclude that he doesn’t care about the moral issue being disputed, even if it seems important to them or pricks their consciences.
3. William tries but fails (see #4) to justify the choice of God’s morality as the single objective standard. Since he can’t do that, he’s effectively reduced to saying that God’s morality is objective “because I say so.”
4. William says we should conform to God’s morality because he is our creator, but this argument is bogus. Suppose that humans eventually learn how to create universes. If some pimply-faced teenager creates a universe in his basement, are its inhabitants morally obligated to obey him merely because he is their creator?
5. I suspect that William doesn’t really subscribe to his own morality. I’ll bet (and admittedly, this is speculation) that if William learned that God wanted him to torture babies for pleasure, he wouldn’t change his mind and conclude that torturing babies was a good thing. Instead, after reflection, he would continue to trust his conscience and would decide that his creator was commanding him to do an evil thing.
Just as I doubt William’s claim that he can choose to enjoy torture (and I doubt that William believes it, either), I doubt that he would begin to believe that baby torture was moral merely because God commanded it.
6. The claim that we should obey God because he is our creator is itself a moral axiom. Yet it is clearly not grounded in God, because to say that we should obey God because God says “obey your creator” would be as absurd as saying that we should obey Donald Trump because Donald Trump says “obey the star of The Apprentice. ” Those aren’t answers; they merely invite us to ask the original question again: Why should we do what God (or Donald Trump) says?
7. If William tells us we are obligated to obey God because otherwise we will face the “necessary consequences”, then he is implying that our moral obligation is based in our own self-interest, not in God. If he doesn’t say this, then the “necessary consequences” have nothing to do with determining morality and are unnecessary for a coherent moral system, contrary to William’s earlier claim.
8. William stated earlier in the thread that the existence of objective morality is a necessary assumption for any “meaningful” moral system, but this is clearly not true. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder, and those of us who believe that morality is subjective do not see it as meaningless. I believe William has retracted this false claim.
9. William claims that morality can’t be “logically coherent” unless it is based on an objective standard, but this is also untrue. There is nothing contradictory about X being moral in one system but immoral in another if you accept that morality is subjective.
In short, the whole thing is a train wreck. William would be wise to stop defending the indefensible and instead spend his time looking for a better moral system (and preferably a rational one this time).
I have most kept out of this discussion. But let me throw in my two cents.
I am not convinced that William has actually presented an argument or a moral system. There is a lot of rhetoric, but what William seems to say in one post, he denies having said in the next post. He often parses his words very carefully, so that he never did commit himself to what he seems to have said.
There’s another problem. He often seems to talk about Darwinian morality, but it is far from clear what that means or whether there is such a thing.
Perhaps I have missed something, but it sure seems that there has been a lot of rhetoric but not much real content.
It’s all show me yours first. Since I have been asserting that a fully rational morality is neither possible nor desirable, I won’t hesitate to argue that law is the embodiment of secular morality.
And it is a mess. I’m not happy with it and I’m sometimes in despair over it, but I like it better than Leviticus.
When theists cannot agree on the most basic precept then color me unconvinced that they are all working off a shared objective morality.
Whomever your deity defines as a monster, a monster they be.
law is the embodiment of secular morality.
As, indeed, is religion, insofar as it offers ‘oughts’. The ‘universal’ aversions are formalised, a few cultural or personal prejudices of the writer thrown into the mix, then let the finger-pointing begin! The original writer is erased, God’s name put in their place.