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.
Well this discussion and the human history shows that there is a big disagreement in what we humans innately know.
But then you are not talking about “ought to” you are talking about preferences.
according to you there is no “ought to”? if you are an atheist the coherent answer would be yes, as “ought to” implies a goal. You have to do something instead other thing if you have a goal, if not is the same whatever you do.
Is the answer from the cat to Alice: If do not know where are you going all the ways are the same.
I have no problem to share my tought, but that is matter? It is my taste wht have to do with morality? what have to do with “ought to”
It might in fact indicate that human beings know very little innately and what we learn and come to know enters our consciousness via our sensory organs. What other way of knowing is there?
William? Blas?
I tought you said the scope of morality is what we ought to do. No matter you are escaping the answer again using the goal “do better”. with that goal I can do every thing also be selfish and harm others.
Michael Shermer wrote a whole book (The Science of Good and Evil) arguing that human morality evolved into us. Human societies have very consistent rules of right and wrong because these rules are the ones that worked for a gregarous species evolved in small cooperative groups. Those whose natures were incompatible with the rules got exiled, at a time when exile meant death. Selection at work.
Am I right in thinking that you reason to your morality? Am I right in thinking you claim your morality is based on your own reasoning? Yet I seem to have missed where you say what that morality is. Have I missed that bit?
As to make a jusgement you need to relate ideas, and the ideas are the result of judgements the humans to start reasoning something to start. Rationality is only explained if we have something innate idea/s or judgement. But I think it is self evident that we have morality (the feel that there are things rights and things wrong) but we do not have the answer about which are ones or the others. And the unique way to rationalize something about that is to found a goal in our lifes, then from there you can get some rules reltive to the choosen goal.
Your thought is matter? Sorry, not following you, Blas.
Human history shows that there is a big difference in what humans do, not in what they innately know. People may know a thing is wrong, but find some way to justify or rationalize it. Or, they may choose to simply ignore it.
I believe that my eating meat is immoral – but I do so anyway. Such is the power of free will.
Makes sense to me but then “nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. 🙂
Sorry for my english,
Does it matter?
Is a hard claim to know the true consciussness of all the humans. Do you have evidence for that claim? or what “You” think?
Ok, he established the goal “survival of my group”. That makes the Lizzie rule “be altruistic and no harm” relative to obtain that scope. First do not apply to others groups. Wars, bombing slavery are all moraly OK. second, also inside my group is important that the group br leaded by the bests. Then the bests should be shelfish and make harm in order to keep the leadership.
My point is that we only know that they **do** different things. We don’t know that they differ all that much on what they innately know about moral truths.
It is the assumption of my premise that all humans (with free will, anyway) share the same innate moral landscape because it objective (absolute) to all sentient minds with free will.
Not a great deal. What is your native language, just out of curiosity?
William J. Murray,
And how is it that you suppose we communicate or gather information from that landscape? What if many moral decisions need to be made, is there a queue? Is there “moral lag”? Who made the landscape? When? Is there a gardener?
Is it zero wavelength energy we use to “talk” to the landscape? Or some sort of lookup in a hash table when a moral decision needs to be made? Do we have to send it our entire mind and it reads it somehow and returns the “right thing” to do? Or do you just sent it the salient information for the current situation? If so, who decides what is salient?
What actual evidence do you have for your assumption here? A landscape has to exist. It has to be navigable. It has to have a way to get from place A to place B, a way to differentiate place A to place B.
It seems to me that this “objective innate moral landscape” only exists as long as humans exist. When we are gone, it will not exist any more.
If you dispute that, on what basis do you do so? What is your evidence?
You claim is as absurd as the IDers who claim that the physical brain is but a receiver for the “real brain” somewhere off in designer land. And it’s as evidence free, as any deviation from this “innate objective landscape” is put down to interpretation. So it can never be disproved. And as such is useless.
Of course they aren’t in most modern civilised societies..
But that is merely an assertion without any evidence to support it. And if you say “all sentient minds” then you include arguably everyone that ever lived and I think we can find many historical examples of cultures with vastly different outlooks. Are our cousins: chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orang utans ruled out or in as sentient?
That’s the point! If having a rational moral system isn’t necessary, then there’s nothing against which to justify said rational moral system. You can insist that some god is the only basis for a rational system, but since you can’t actually establish said god and freely admit that even having said god is not a requisite for leading a moral life, then your entire moral framework boils down to “whatever William says”, just like everyone else.
In other words, you’ve just admitted that since you can’t establish this rational absolute moral foundation god of yours and since it’s superfluous any given that folks can lead a moral life without it, there’s no such thing as a rational basis for morality.
Leaving babies out in the wild to cull the weak certainly seems at odds with “baby torturing” being self evidently wrong.
So it seems that the strength of this “innate moral system” leaves something to be desired. Seems simpler to conclude it just does not exist. Simpler and more supported by the available evidence.
And when we are guided by theistic principles what are the outcomes there?
I can think of several countries around the world ruled by religious precepts. Why don’t you live in one of those, if it’s so great?
You’re repeating the obvious and that which I’ve already explicitly and implicitly admitted several times. Whether or not there is any evidence to support a proposition has nothing to do with whether or not that proposition is necessary for a coherent, meaningful moral system.
Yes, morality may in fact be nothing more than relativistic feelings, and we might as well be arguing bout what flavor of pie is better and should be instituted as the basis for our pie-baking laws. Morality might be nothing more than evolutionary impulses that push one person to do X with equal authority that it pushes another to do not-X.
So? Whether or not I have any evidence for my propositions is entirely irrelevant to the point.
I’ve already addressed these questions.
Wow. That’s a stunning admission from someone who purports to be rational.
In effect you’re saying, “I’m afraid that a moral system based on reality would not be to my liking, so let’s ignore reality and base our morality on this beautiful fantasy of mine.”
I hope you can see why those of us who value the truth would question the wisdom of that suggestion.
Well, irrelevant for you maybe. Having some kind of justification for a claim seems rather central to me.
Thanks William. That answers my questions and gives me some understanding of where you are coming from.
Nonsense. There is absolutely no difference. Those who would argue that morality is absolute still rely on say-so (and make some pretty incomprehensible arguments). What does absolute morality want from us today, William? You don’t know? I have to intuit that? It was self-evidently true to the Yorkshire Ripper that he should kill prostitutes, and objective morality was whispering in his ear. I’m sure he gets full marks for having a rational moral system and not borrowing concepts from theism.
I don’t think killing is absolutely wrong – that is, I don’t think there is anything in the universe other than human beings that gives a flying shit about human beings. But while there are human beings, they are entitled to say what they would and would not like to be standards in their society. And to call it morality. There is nothing irrational in that – it needs no external implementation to make it rational.
No.
Dogs. 🙂
OK, human beings and dogs.
Nothing in the universe except humans, dogs and some cats gives a … OK, among the things in the universe that give a … 🙂
William,
This “morality as mere preference” characterization is bogus. My preference for cherry pie over apple is of an entirely different order than my preference that my loved ones (or anyone else) not be robbed and killed by strangers when they venture out.
Also, you don’t hear atheists clamoring to legislate pie flavor or other trivialities. Interestingly, it’s the most ideologically-driven societies, not the least, that tend to do this (e.g. North Korea, where even your hairstyle must be state-approved).
Your fears simply aren’t borne out. People continue to take their moral sense seriously even if they
Ironically, your theistic approach is more likely to undermine morality than atheism is. Consider:
1. We know that our moral sense is fallible, because sincere people disagree on important moral issues.
2. If our creator God is perfectly good and all-powerful, then a) he wants us to behave morally and b) he is perfectly capable of conveying to us exactly what we are supposed to do.
3. Because there is sincere disagreement on certain moral issues, those issues must not be important to God. If they were important, he would have communicated clearly and carefully to the people involved.
4. Therefore, even though those moral issues may seem important to us, they are not important to God. We can safely ignore our consciences.
5. Of course, a better conclusion would be that even if these issues don’t matter to God (or if he doesn’t exist at all), they do matter to us, and that’s reason enough to heed our consciences.
I said I cannot prove it, not that I cannot establish it. I have established quite well logically than an absolute moral basis is necessary for any rationally coherent and meaningful morality. That one doesn’t require it to behave morally doesn’t mean that most people behave morally, and doesn’t mean that understanding the nature of morality is not useful.
We cannot prove the principles of logic; nor is it necessary that anyone have a well-ordered understanding of logic to live well and do things. That hardly means that the principles of logic are not established nor does it mean they are superfluous.
My argument doesn’t extend from the theology you imagine, Keith.
keiths,
Do you think a morally lazy person like myself LIKES the idea of necessary consequences?
You don’t believe that God is perfectly good and capable of communicating morality to us? That seems to contradict your statements from earlier in the thread.
WJM puts a great deal of stock in having a rational basis for morality. When you “look under the hood” of the system of morality WJM has presented, you discover that it consists largely, if not entirely, of the fallacy of Assuming One’s Conclusion. What more is there to say? What need to engage with WJM on this topic?
Yes, because you desire a “meaningful” moral system and you believe (incorrectly) that morality can’t be meaningful without “necessary consequences”.
The conclusion of my argument is “Darwinian morality is (1) rationally incoherent, and (2) not worth caring about.
Nowhere in my argument did I assume that.
Wrong. I have no desire for a meaningful moral system.
I justified my actual claim, which only required an exercise of logic. What I didn’t justify, apparently, was some claim you imagine I made that requires evidence.
keiths said:
Whether or not one’s moral choices are important to god is irrelevant to the point of necessary consequences.
Claiming it is of a different order is not demonstrating it to be so.
You’ve already demonstrated it for me. The very fact that you chose pie flavor preference as your example shows that it is of an entirely different order from preferences against murder and robbery.
Look how your statement reads now:
Now see how it reads when you substitute murder for pie preference:
William,
Your moral system rests on the assumptions a) that God is perfectly good, and that his morality is The Objective Morality; b) that God shares a “mental architecture” with us; and c) that this shared mental architecture is correct when it indicates that something is “self-evidently” moral or immoral.
As you admit, you cannot provide evidence for (a) and (b). You simply assume them without evidence. We know that (c) is wrong, because if it were correct, sincere people would never disagree about what is self-evidently moral or immoral.
The fact that (c) is wrong already invalidates your system, and your lack of evidence for (a) and (b) puts the nails in the coffin.
You also argue that “Darwinian” morality, by which you really mean atheist morality, is incoherent and meaningless.
To show that something is incoherent, you need to show that it leads to a contradiction. You haven’t done this, and you apparently can’t. Therefore neither you nor we have any reason to take your claim of incoherence seriously.
As for meaninglessness, the very fact that atheists find their morality to be meaningful disproves your claim.
You came here to show that “Darwinian” morality was incoherent and meaningless, and you failed. Along the way you revealed that your own moral system is invalid, being based on two baseless assumptions plus a third that is known to be false.
Isn’t it time to take a breather and think things over? You can always come back if and when you are able to come up with a better argument that you think will withstand critical scrutiny.
William,
You should start a Wiki then. Williams Wiki.
Related screed from VJTorley the Prolix, famed logorrhoea sufferer
Yes, I saw VJTorley’s essay. I think it’s time for a new thread on this. I have one in mind 🙂
Well, it was based on a premise that may or may not be true. Does that not require evidence?
AARRGH! NO! PLEASE NO!
The required reading would be too much to bear, particularly if he disgorges the 30-chapter book he mentions.
(Am I alone in being fed up to the back teeth of being regarded as some kind of lower form of life because I, having examined it, think the evidence for evolution past and present is strong, and that for disembodied intelligent designers weak to non-existent?)
Actually, I didn’t mean on VJTorley’s essay! I meant on the issue of “free will” and moral responsibility.
It was what I struggled with for fifty odd years (yes, I started young). I think I get it now.