Fundamentalist Dawkins Speaks Out
by MikeGeneI wrote this several weeks ago and it was destined for oblivion. But in light of the recent diatribes from Dawkins Fans, I suppose it's worth posting.
Richard Dawkins offers a "rebuttal" to some of his critics. Since this was brought to my attention, let's have a look. First he responds to his fellow atheists who wish to dissociate themselves from his "shrill, strident, intemperate, intolerant, ranting language."
Dawkins replies:
Objectively judged, the language of The God Delusion is less shrill than we regularly hear from political commentators or from theatre, art, book or restaurant critics. The illusion of intemperance flows from the unspoken convention that faith is uniquely privileged: off limits to attack. In a criticism of religion, even clarity ceases to be a virtue and begins to sound like aggressive hostility.
In other words, Dawkins's fellow atheists are confused, as he is simply offering clear criticisms and because everyone thinks religion deserves unique privilege, such criticism is breaking a taboo. It's as if Richard Dawkins is the first one in history who has dared to attack religion and been unwilling to grant it a place of privilege. I'm sure this will be news to many of Dawkins's atheistic critics, who, we are asked to believe, have never criticized religion out of deference to its privileged place in society.
In reality, the criticism of Dawkins has nothing to do with his own self-perception of being a pioneer in critiquing religion or faith. It has more to do with things like him labeling religious parents as faith-heads who abuse their children. Any enlightened person will recognize that such name-calling is closer to shrill, strident, intemperate, intolerant, ranting language than clarity and criticism. His rebuttal is rooted in self-delusion.
Dawkins then rebuts those who say you can't criticise religion without detailed study of learned books on theology:
For the rest, I cannot better the "Courtier's Reply" on P. Z. Myers's splendid Pharyngula website, where he takes me to task for outing the Emperor's nudity while ignoring learned tomes on ruffled pantaloons and silken underwear.
In other words, the rebuttal is a rationalization for refusing to engage the "learned books on theology." It never seems to occur to Dawkins that while such books might not scientifically prove God's existence (the thing Dawkins needs), they might call into question his assumptions, premises, and interpretations. Remember, that Dawkins abandoned his religion as a boy and it stands to reason that he still thinks about religion as that boy.
In response to those who point out that Dawkins is ignoring the good in religion, Dawkins writes:
If subtle, nuanced religion predominated, the world would be a better place and I would have written a different book. The melancholy truth is that decent, understated religion is numerically negligible. Most believers echo Robertson, Falwell or Haggard, Osama bin Laden or Ayatollah Khomeini. These are not straw men. The world needs to face them, and my book does so.
This would be fine if the objective of Dawkins's book was to criticize religious fundamentalists or extremists. But Dawkin's target is all God-belief and all religion. Thus, he has completely failed to "rebut" this criticism. As such, he cherry picks from certain religious extremists only because they help to faciliate his propagandistic message that religion itself is the root of all evil.
When he is accused of preaching to the choir, Dawkins replies:
The atheist choir, moreover, is too ready to observe society's convention of according special respect to faith, and it goes along with society's lamentable habit of labelling small children with the religion of their parents. You'd never speak of a "Marxist child" or a "monetarist child". So why give religion a free pass to indoctrinate helpless children? There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents.
So the goal is to get atheists to stop labelling small children with the religion of religious parents? Does Dawkins have any data that show what percent of the atheist choir participate in this labelling? Does he have any evidence that this is harmful? Or has he once again abandoned the need for evidence?
The more I think about it, the more Dawkins's anti-labelling argument is weak. But that's not important, because that is not the real issue he is after. He lets the cat out the bag with this question: "So why give religion a free pass to indoctrinate helpless children?" How does Dawkins plan to prevent people from indoctrinating their children?
Dawkins then replies to the observation that he behaves much like a religious fundamentalist:
No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may "believe", in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.
There is no evidence that indicates Dawkins would change his mind about God on the basis of "evidence." On the contrary, Dawkins shows a remarkable disregard for the evidence when it comes to promoting his atheistic agenda. In this interview alone, we see that he a) dismisses criticisms from his fellow atheists about his tone because of his self-perception about his own role; b) while making theological arguments, he close-mindedly refuses to read learned books of theology; c) he ignores the good that religion has done; d) provides no evidence that using a religious label for children is, on balance, harmful. To this, we could add much more, such as his pseudoscientific notions about religion and child abuse and his decision to use propaganda rather than evidence and reason. Dawkins is a fundamentalist atheist and even many other atheists recognize this.
Finally, Dawkins addresses atheists who note that many people need religion:
What patronising condescension! "You and I are too intelligent and well educated to need religion. But ordinary people, hoi polloi, Orwellian proles, Huxleian Deltas and Epsilons need religion."
This is nothing more than rhetoric that fails to rebut the observation. The only one who is condescending here is Dawkins, who seems to think "need" must be interpreted according to the prism of intelligence and education. Need is often more of a personality trait, which in turn probably has a distinct genetic component.
In any case, the universe doesn't owe us comfort, and the fact that a belief is comforting doesn't make it true.
But here we see some of Dawkins's fundamentalism in play. In his mind, God-belief is absoliutely false and 100% disproven. Thus, it becomes a simple binary choice of comfort vs. truth (actually, even the binary choice is not as simple as Dawkins assumes). But what if the choice is less absolute? What if someone has to choose bewteen belief A that brings comfort and has a 1% chance of being true vs. belief B, which is distressing and angst-ridden, yet has a 99% chance of being true? In such a situation, the truth would have to be powerfully consequential to override the comfort component.
Dawkins ends his essay with the following claim:
I too believe in people. I believe that, given proper encouragement to think, and given the best information available, people will courageously cast aside celestial comfort blankets and lead intellectually fulfilled, emotionally liberated lives.
Dawkins' idea for the proper encouragement to think is to label religious parents as faith-heads who abuse their children, people who are infected with mind viruses and addicted to narcotics, deluded people who are responsible for all the evil in the world. One can only wonder what Dawkins' idea of name-calling is.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:47 pm
It's not a rationalization; it makes sense that one should be able to debate the fiction or non-fiction nature of an entity without reading every bit of fanfiction ever written. Are you seriously stating that you're unwilling to make a pronouncement on whether or not Optimus Prime is really about to fall from space to save mankind without reading the entire archives of alt.toys.transformers.fanfic?
How? Which assumptions, premises and interpretations are you talking about? This is the very core of your dismissal of the Courtier's Reply, but you gloss over it.
Is that a license to dismiss the religious conviction of anyone brought up in their faith? That's a bit sweeping, don't you think? Especially since you go to such lengths to explain how the fundamentalists and their childish religion which Dawkins attacks have so little resemblance to the religion that most people–who more often than not grow up in their religions–practice.
Are you just airing your prejudices, or do you have some reason to believe that if suddenly the world started acting like it did in the Old Testament, that Dawkins would change his mind? Or are you just complaining that your standards of evidence happen to be shamefully low in this one area?
No, it's not. Did you bother to read The God Delusion? Reading the table of contents would have been sufficient; please let me know when you find the chapter titled "Why There Is No God".
Comment by grendelkhan — July 22, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Hi grendelkhan,
Did I say he has to read "every bit" of theology ever written? Why don't you tell us what works of theology he has read?
Whatever assumptions, premises, and interpretations Dawkins relies on. For example, he is someone who thinks science should be able to detect the existence of God, such that science's failure to stumble upon the existence of God is supposed to be highly relevant to the existence of God.
Nope. Dawkins left his faith as a young boy and has never given religious concepts much serious thought ever since. My guess is that a 60-year-old religious man who was brought up in a religious household doesn't quite think about religious concepts the same way as he did when he was fourteen.
So Dawkins needs to talk to a burning bush. He has never talked to a burning bush, therefore God does not exist. Look, I explained why it's rather clear to me this is not about "evidence" with Dawkins:
Comment by MikeGene — July 22, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 6:07 pm
The realization I came to after reading the God Delusion was that far from being some carefully thought out critic of religion and threat to "the faithful", Dawkins was actually little more than a fluff merchant who was hopelessly out of his depth and who had no real idea what he was talking about.
Why are we subjected to these clueless monologues by people that don't know what they are talking about. At least in the past we had serious atheists like Sarte, Camus, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Now all we have making noise are the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Myers. Oh for the days of competent and thought critics instead of the current band of clueless incompetents.
Comment by thesciphishow — July 22, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 6:11 pm
An additional thought. Is it just me or is Dawkins' criticism of religion on the same level as what he accuses critics of evolution of doing ? That is, not understanding the topic and seeking to criticize from ignorance ?
Now whether or not that is true of those criticising evolution (I think on the whole the answer is no, but it is a side issue anyway), does it make Dawkins an A grade hypocrite to behave the way he accuses "creationists" of behaving ?
Comment by thesciphishow — July 22, 2007 @ 6:11 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Hey Mike, great article - I just love it when the IDers get together to talk religion.
There's no way anybody could possibly imagine that there is a connection between ID and fundamentalist Christianity… that connection just doesn't exist does it? Anybody who suggests there is one is a liar and a fool, and probably an atheist too which means that nobody will listen to them anyway.
Heh, funny! If only the theologians had spent their time writing Harry Potter exegeses, they might have been able to reach a wider audience.
I think he spent a year studying advanced Stunneyism at the Stunney institute of advanced philosophy. It's the only school in Glasgow where a living phantasm teaches you telepathy.
Which religion's learned books? They all have 'em (even the Scientologists) and they mostly say that the other religions are dead wrong. There's enough truly bonkers stuff in the Bible. What else do you have to read - the tortured arguments of theologians who are desperate to make a bronze-age text seem relevant to the modern world.
Oh, but what about this:
http://www.overwhelmingevidenc...
If that's the standard of Student ID exegesis, I think we can say for certain that religion is bad for young minds. Case proven I think.
I'm afraid it's just you, unless of course you consider this to be quintessentially brilliant rhetoric:
http://thesciphishow.com/darwi...
I only hope that Denyse keeps on talking for the ID movement. She does it's credibility more damage than a hundred hitchens.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 22, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Hi Salim,
You mean its kind of like when ID critics get together and talk atheism, arguing which is the best way to evangelize for atheism?
There are connections from a sociological perspective, but it is also clear that ID appeals to an audience that is much broader than fundamentalist Christianity. What matters is the there is no logical connection, such that fundamentalist Christianity must be assumed or concluded in an ID analysis.
It seems to me that my criticism of Dawkins has struck quite a raw nerve. I must confess that it concerns me somewhat that many who claim to champion reason treat Dawkins as some type of messiah-like figure who is supposed to be immune to critcism. Why not show otherwise and tackle this one?
It is not only religious people who have interpreted Dawkins' language to be shrill, strident, intemperate, intolerant, and ranting. On the contrary, as Dawkins admits, this is a criticism he gets from many of his fellow atheists. Don't you agree there is some substance to this criticism?
Comment by MikeGene — July 22, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I think it is even worse than that for Dawkins. His position is internally inconsistent.
If a religious person were to try to suggest there were some objectively true standard of behavior for all humans, Dawkins would clearly reject that as some of the poisonous falsehoods that come from religion.
Yet, when he wants to talk about how people ought to prefer truth over comfort, or that we ought to take actions to prevent this harm to children, or that the actions that come from religion are predominantly evil, he is implicitly depending on appeals to a standard for human behavior that others should recognize, agree to and follow.
He has no consistent basis for claiming any such thing. He has no basis for saying any behavior chosen by others, whether comforting or not, truthful or not, is objectively wrong. On his terms, he can have his preference, but others will have theirs.
Comment by eric — July 22, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 11:06 pm
eric:
Exactly. Consistency is not one of Dawkins' strengths. One thing I noticed is that he claims that his shrill attitude is an illusion. Much the same way that creation is an illusion in his Blind Watchmaker boook? At least there is a wee bit of consistency in declaring anything he dislikes to be an illusion or worse, a delusion. But who should we trust here? The one who consistently believes that values matter, or the one who consistently believes that his own values matter?
Comment by Randy — July 22, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
July 22nd, 2007 at 11:34 pm
It is always easiest to apply the Universal Acid to the values of others, and ignore the implications for the values you want others to have.
For more on this theme, see also
Beckwith: Dawkins Unwittingly Endorses Purpose in Nature
Comment by eric — July 22, 2007 @ 11:34 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:01 am
eric
Yes, I read that one a while ago.
I'm into the arguments for and against the existence of God. I find all of them fascinating. However, I sense that Dawkins is not well versed in the arguments for God; particularly the arguments from morality. These arguments (and there are several prominent ones) stem from the argument for absolutes. Without absolutes we cannot hope to understand the nature of truth. Yet Dawkins seems to believe that consistency is for smaller minds than his own. I don't want to criticize him too much, because I actually learn a lot from him. However, as I have always believed, it is difficult to be a relativist and live consistently in that paradigm. Dawkins has nowhere to turn for absolutes than to his own fancy.
Comment by Randy — July 23, 2007 @ 12:01 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:38 am
eric:
That is the wheeziest, tiredest argument against atheism, whether propounded by Beckwith, Plantinga, or our own stunney. It's based on a very elementary confusion. Atheists believe there is no overarching purpose to life. That doesn't mean there aren't billions of local, evolved, particular purposes. Similarly, just because there is no Cosmic Voice in the sky defining good and bad doesn't mean that individuals can't have preferences for what is good and bad. And clearly, Dawkins believes that wasting your time on YEC is bad. And it's bad because YEC isn't true, and he values truth, not because Kurt Wise has a Higher Purpose Endowed by His Creator.
It might be interesting to know what Dawkins theory of values is. But it's just tedious and juvenile to pretend that because he's a naturalist he can't have one.
Comment by mtraven — July 23, 2007 @ 12:38 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 2:12 am
"Atheists believe there is no overarching purpose to life. That doesn't mean there aren't billions of local, evolved, particular purposes"
There is another word for "billions of local, evolved, particular purposes" it is called playing make believe.
Comment by thesciphishow — July 23, 2007 @ 2:12 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:00 am
Really, most scientific conferences do not talk about 'atheism' or religion at all. At a recent conference a friend of mine attended, she reports that God was not referred to once and nobody took time out from their research proposals to ask WWJD. The natural sciences (like it or not) are atheistic, that means that all that subjective stuff about individual scientists religious beliefs is largely irrelevant.
But please keep complaining about this, It's important that scientists who are otherwise disinterested in this ID vs Science debate should understand that the whole ID thing is a wedge issue to put religion and spirituality back into secular science. Nothing does this better than ill-formed conspiracy theories and hints that behind closed doors, in smoke filled rooms, misguided scientists and "ID critics get together and talk atheism, arguing which is the best way to evangelize for atheism"
Please keep it up mike! Otherwise I will have to keep sending people Jason's recording of Denyse Oleary.
Yes, a lot of new-agers like ID as well. Here's one:
http://icon-rids.blogspot.com/
And here is another:
http://www.frontlinescience.co...
It's rather kooky stuff isn't it - this stuff makes Denyse Oleary seem sensible by comparison. Who was it that said that we would get better science by "rejecting materialism" On balance, I think science is doing just fine without that little bit of advice.
Hardly, in my own country Dawkins is a primarily famous as a biologist whose atheistic beliefs are considered utterly unremarkable and entirely non-controversial. I do not see any evidence of sore nerves outside of the ID community.
I think dawkins would object to the phrase "felllow atheists" which is a contradiction. Atheism is not a fellowship or a system of beliefs, it's just a label we use to describe the rejection of some other belief systems.
And so if some unspecified non-religious people made some unspecified criticisms about some unspecified sections of his book, then whats the big deal?
Jason:
Yes, people are free to "make believe" whatever purpose they want to have in life. And if that means prostrating yourself in front of an imaginary sky-god, or writing books on why this is delusional be my guest! It's just a whole big pile of freedom.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 4:00 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 am
salimfadhley:
The natural sciences are neither religious or atheistic. That which the natural sciences are able to test for cannot resolve the issue of God's existence or non-existence.
Comment by Bradford — July 23, 2007 @ 5:33 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 am
The natural sciences are neither religious or atheistic. That which the natural sciences are able to test for cannot resolve the issue of God's existence or non-existence.
Science is not antitheistic, because as you imply, there is no method known to science that can say anything objective about god, existent or not. Science may inform an anti-theistic philosophy but philosophy is not the same activity as science.
Whether you like it or not, science certainly is atheistic in the strict sense: Atheism means lack of theism. Atheism does not mean anti-theism. Science is not theistic it requires nor suggests any knowledge about god.
Belief or lack of belief in god is utterly irrelevant to science. That is why scientists will rarely mention God, Jesus, Horus, Mohamed or L. Ron Hubbard while conducting their research. It's simply not relevant or helpful in any way.
But please keep it up - it's important that people who are undecided on this debate are left in no doubt that the ID agenda is inextricably muddled with the religious agenda.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 5:56 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:04 am
This is a trite statement. Knowledge about God is not needed to do math problems or cook spaghetti either. It doesn't make cooking atheistic. What it indicates is that questions about God's existence need not be resolved to cook or conduct experiments.
Comment by Bradford — July 23, 2007 @ 6:04 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 am
This is a trite statement. Knowledge about God is not needed to do math problems or cook spaghetti either.
That's right - neither of those activities are theistic either. I suppose you could try applying your Christian world view to the practice of cookery or maths, but what practical difference would it make?
It doesn't make cooking atheistic. What it indicates is that questions about God's existence need not be resolved to cook or conduct experiments.
Do you understand the difference between the words "atheism" and "anti-theism"
What word would you use to mean "having no position at all on issues of religion or spirituality". If you do not like "atheist" would you prefer the word "secular" I'd be fine with the suggestion that science is an entirely secular activity.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 6:26 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:33 am
That's good because 99.9% of other professions are secular as well.
Comment by Bradford — July 23, 2007 @ 6:33 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:37 am
That's good because 99.9% of other professions are secular as well.
So what is the difference between an activity that is "secular" and one which is "atheistic".
And how would you contrast the two with "anti-theistic".
Thanks
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 6:37 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 am
A secular activity is one that does not specifically relate to religion. An atheistic activity is one related to the proposition that God does not exist. While that position is not a religion, the issue of God's existence is inherently religious in nature.
Comment by Bradford — July 23, 2007 @ 6:52 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:07 am
Hi Salim,
I asked:
And you replied:
LOL! I'm not talking about scientists and science conferences. I'm talking about ID critics and their various blogs. Here's a nice example .
I'm not talking about your country, Salim. It's you that seem to be over-reacting. Just look at the way you jumped the gun and confused yourself above!
So you can't bring yourself to criticizing even his style/tone. You brought up kooky above. Don't you think such slavish devotion to Dawkins is a tad bit kooky?
Comment by MikeGene — July 23, 2007 @ 7:07 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:18 am
Can a secular activity relate non-specifically to religion? For example suppose a group of religious activists got together to advocate their world-view but did it in such a way that they failed to overtly mention their religious motives?
Would this activity still be secular?
So whats the difference between atheism and anti-theism? I think there is a big difference. The prefix "a" as in "asexual" or "apolitical" does not have the same meaning as the prefix "anti" as in "antidote" or "antifreeze".
It seems to me that the "a" prefix implies a lack of something whereas the "anti" prefix implies an opposition to something. So on those grounds it would seem entirely reasonable to say that science is atheistic because it lacks any theism.
Do you agree that science lacks theism?
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 7:18 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:33 am
Depends on what is advocated. If freedom is advocated based on a religious precept, the motive is irrelevant.
atheism (from a dictionary):
Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
Comment by Bradford — July 23, 2007 @ 7:33 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:40 am
I'm not devoted to him! I've never even met the man!
I have no trouble with his style or tone, however i think the issue you really have a problem with is his message, so lets focus on that.
No over-reaction here, I was just trying to show that most people I know and every professional researcher I know finds Dawkins' views on religion utterly unremarkable except of course for their obviousness. The fact that I live in the UK is significant: This is a less religious country than the USA.
But I don't want to see this debate end - it's important that people who are studying the origins of ID should see that it's published advocates are overwhelmingly tied to the kind of Christian philosophy that Dawkins criticizes. Lets not kid ourselves about ID being a non-religious movement.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 7:40 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:49 am
That does not answer my question at all - I wasn't asking about the morality of what was being advocated, just whether it was secular or not.
What is the difference between atheism and anti-theism? If I keep asking the question you might answer.
Do you see a distinction between lacking a belief and rejection of a belief, if so, what words best describe these two conditions?
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 7:49 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:59 am
There is nothing religious about my position that the sequential order of nucleotides in an initial genome entailed an intelligent causal component. There is however, a religious aspect to complaints about religious movements when such complaints are used as substitutes for legitimate critiques.
Will be away from a computer for awhile.
Comment by Bradford — July 23, 2007 @ 7:59 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:25 am
Sorry, but the elementary confusion appears to be on your end. I've never held the position that atheists and naturalists cannot have preferences or preferred values. You have apparently missed the point.
The general problem is that atheists can't seem to live consistently within their own paradigm.
More specifically, I've said that Dawkins is being internally inconsistent when he fails to recognize that his preferences do not have any superior claim over those that he castigates.
He thinks the values of Osama bin Laden are bad. Osama bin Laden would undoubtedly feel the same about the values and beliefs of Dawkins. That is a stalemate. Dawkins has no basis for claiming his own values have a superior claim to being true or the right ones to have or the ones other people ought to embrace.
Yet he rails against one thing and another as if his values were more than preferences of his own. Treated simply and consistently as Dawkins's own preferences, it all turns to mush.
To take one example, parents prefer to teach religion to their own children. Dawkins prefers they did not. Why should Dawkins's preferences be given any priority or consideration over the those of the parents preparing their next generation? Within his own framework, what makes his preferences so special that he can advocate for overturning the preferred (evolutionary) strategy of other parents?
He hasn't got a consistent leg to stand on when he rails away against other values as though any of them could be wrong. This is the unsurprising result of standing in a pool of Universal Acid.
Comment by eric — July 23, 2007 @ 9:25 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 am
Given Dawkins well-known world-view, what specifically should he do in order for his actions to be consistent with his world-view in your opinion?
For example, we all know that Dawkins believes that certain kinds of religious teaching are inherently harmful. Rather than advocate an end to that kind of religious teaching, what would be more consistent with this views?
I'm not asking you to say what would be most moral, only what he should do (in your opinion) to avoid accusations of hypocracy?
Do you really think that Dawkins has no basis for considering his own belief system to be superior to that of Osama Bin Laden? Is there really a moral stalemate between Osama and Richard?
Do you personally think that Dawkins views are more or less valid than those of Osama Bin Laden. By mentioning them in the same paragraph and using a word like "stalemate", do you meant to imply that they are morally equivalent in some context? If so, what context is that?
Thanks!!!!
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 10:22 am
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Eric is correct. There's a difference between stating that physicalism cannot account for reason, or morality; or that individual physicalists cannot be reasonable, or moral. They obviously can, however, the philosophy they hold is ultimately inconsistent with them being so. Norms cannot be reduced to the non-normative and still retain normative force. You can't have your pie and eat it, too.
This does not mean that moral relativism isn't true. In case of languages, it's obviously possible for various and very different conventional systems of norms to co-exist. A Finnish sentence necessarily conforms to the norms of Finnish grammar, but not to those of English. One could extend this to reason, or morality, with the obvious unpalatable conclusion.
I don't think that even moral relativism would make physicalism unproblematic, though. The emergence of social conventions presuppose free agents who intentionally and voluntaristically adapt their own behaviour to the norms they induce from the observed behaviour of others. In other words, I think some kind of intentionality, and valuation, is presupposed by emergentist accounts of norms as well.
In any event, the theistic account avoids the problem by taking reason and morality to be basic. More-or-less contingent, conventional systems of norms such as those of human societies would, more or less imperfectly, mirror some sort of natural law of ultimately divine origin. It's not necessarily more consistent or coherent than an extremely consistent, relativistic physicalist account. But it is in better conformance with our intuitions concerning morality, and with our own actions as (intermittently) moral agents. There's a similar issue as with free will, in that accepting its existence seems simply more commonsensical, more in tune with personal experience. In philosophy, I think this is not a weak argument.
Comment by MerlijnDeSmit — July 23, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Kevin Beck over at Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge has apparently been reading Telic Thoughts, and enjoying what he reads. He takes on Mike's complaint about Dawkins in this thread, and performs the expected mental gymnastics required to twist the point where he wants it to go. Which, also as expected, is toward ID as religion. Toward that end, Beck asks two questions that have quite simple answers he will of course ignore in favor of his own dogmatically rigid mindset.
When the militant hyperbole of the 'New Atheists' and self-styled 'Brights' attempts to justify hate speech and bigotry by appeals to biological science, it is reasonable for those who oppose hate speech and bigotry to notice, and to point out the dishonesty of the pretense to scientific validity. Just as if the KKK Grand Poobah were to publish a screed advocating the oppression of blacks by claiming science 'proves' that people with dark skin aren't human, but just another species of (particularly dangerous) chimpanzee.
Are we to suppose that if an ID supporter chose to speak out against such an ugly screed, it would somehow 'prove' that ID is all about promoting chimpanzees to human status? Or that only chimpanzees support ID? Would an intelligent person not perceive from that sort of outrageous garbage that anti-ID critics believe that people with dark skin are chimpanzees? Would the actual message conveyed by defense of such a screed be that science stands for the dehumanization and oppression of people with dark skin?
Criticizing Dawkins has nothing to do with advancing intelligent design, it has to do with Dawkins making such a brightly lit target of himself with his fundamentalist militancy and thirst for the public limelight. He's easy, thus quite fun to toss darts at. As Oxford professor of the public understanding of science, he's hell bent on corrupting science to justify his declared jihad against religion, and doing that as loudly and insultingly as possible.
The corruption of science by materialist metaphysics does have something to do with the issue of ID, in that by highlighting the metaphysical corruption it is made clear that this declared jihad *is* corruption. Once people recognize that science has been metaphysically corrupted, complaints by erstwhile 'scientists' against all who will not swear eternal allegiance to the corrupting metaphysics start looking like a lot like the same hypocrisy of human nature their 'enemies' are so famous for. Just more dueling metaphysics, having nothing at all to do with science.
In the comments to Beck's thread the ever-effervescent Shalini as well as PZ Myers weigh in. And unsatisfied with the usual epithets like "IDiot" or "liar," Beck coins a new one: "shitweasel." Doncha just love the highbrow vocabulary of these upstanding defenders of elitist privilege and intellectual superiority? They're so darned easy!
Comment by Joy — July 23, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:12 pm
There always has been and always will be a dueling metaphysics in the midst of scientific pursuit. Science, of all the disciplines, leads to such questions.
Comment by Randy — July 23, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:15 pm
How to win a science argument, by Joy:
1. Compare your opponents to the KKK
2. Claim that theories concerning human evolution are amoral and equivalent to racism.
3. ???
4. Win the debate
Can anybody help me with step 3?
Yes, those elitist scientists and their highfalutin words. I prefer my science folksy and down to earth.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:41 pm
3. Ignore counterarguments and if necessary throw them in the hole.
Comment by Raevmo — July 23, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 pm
In the case of Dawkins, PZ et. al Joy is right to point out that science is misused to support views that are normally viewed as bigotry.
Comment by Bradford — July 23, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
mtraven
They don't. Please tell me how you would impress your atheist worldview (incorporating whatever arbitrary set of morals, ethics…) upon another atheist who disagreed with your arbitrary set of morals and ethics. It might be functional for you to adhere to that arbitrary set…. but that certainly doesn't make it overarching, and more so not necessary that others who disagree adhere to your set.
Of course! This is the point. There seems to be an elementary misunderstanding on your point.
Again, this is the point….. and you are criticizing the theists for some elementary misunderstanding?
Comment by Doug — July 23, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Not quite. I might be mistaken but Dawkins and those that "invent their own meaning" are willfully delusional.
Comment by thesciphishow — July 23, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:57 pm
eric, MerlijnDeSmit,
Why would an atheist see objective morality as "poisonous falsehoo[d] that come[s] from religion" What about Plato or Aristotle or G. E. Moore? Why can't an atheist be an objectivist about morality? I mean, in contemporary philosophy, I'm pretty sure most defenders of objective morality are, in fact, atheists. So what gives?
And it's not like theistic accounts of morality have any obvious advantage. The Euthyphro dilemma looms. If you ground morality in God's will, things end up arbitrary and bereft of normative force. If you ground it in God's nature, you need an account of why God counts as good (presumably it's not simply that he declares himself to be good). Of course, you could give up, saying that God just is good and that's the bottom line. But then you might as well leave God out of it — you might as well say that e.g. torture just is wrong and that's the bottom line.
Comment by Dave2 — July 23, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Are you saying that any self-determined meaning is delusional or that any meaning in life other than the one that you believe your god has invented for you is delusional.
The mistake you make is to imagine that there is any practical difference between "inventing your own meaning" and using one that somebody (i.e. a religious authority) invented for you.
Supposing that inventing your own meaning in life were 'delusional', one would still be forced to agree that Mr Dawkins has done astonishingly well in his life despite his utter failing to fully accept the Scientology teachings of L. Ron. Hubbard.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 7:51 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:56 pm
It's easy, I simply burn him at the stake. One thing we atheists cannot allow is doctrinal dissent.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 23, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Hi Salim,
One can only imagine how excited you'd get at the chance to meet your hero.
Okey dokey.
Of course I have problems with his message: 1. He is undercutting the Dover decision ; 2. He propagates pseudoscientific bigotry and; 3. He encourages malicious propaganda as part of his socio-political agenda while pretending he is an ambassador for reason and science. Look, as you can see, I've address all this before, but it tends to upset the fans of Dawkins.
Why not invite some of those "professional researchers" to pay a visit to TT and defend Dawkins' notions about religious upbringings and child abuse?
It's also a country where construction workers have to hide their identities because they are trying to build a science lab at Dawkins' university.
LOL. I guess then it's just as important people see that many vocal ID critics also believe religious parents are child abusers, attack other atheists for being appeasers and cowards in their war with religion, and seem strangely reluctant to defend science against the animal rights terrorists.
Well, you need to make a distinction between the ID movement and the concept of ID. Just as I, and many others, would make a distinction between atheism and the New Atheist movement.
Comment by MikeGene — July 23, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Hi Joy,
I'll bet Beck has been nursing a grudge about this post. So yeah, let's have a look at those questions:
First, why didn't Beck quantify "so much time?" In the last four months, I've posted two entries on Dawkins and his anti-religious quest. One was simply a link to a review of his book and the other is the one that set off Kevin Beck. Apparently, two posts over four months time is oh "so much time." That suggests that someone is a little too sensitive when Dawkins is being criticized.
Second, Dawkins is not just some blogger or scholar who merely "criticizes religion." He is an influential person playing a lead role in a new socio-political movment that seeks to demonize all religious people, including people like Francis Collins. Look, it's a simple fact that even many atheists wish to distance themselves from Dawkins' approach.
Third, Dawkins represents a huge chunk of ID critics , which is probably where this most intersects with ID topics. Given that most critics hear "God" when "ID" is spoken or written, we can better assess their objectivity and the significance of their denials and nitpicking by factoring in their hostility against religion.
Fourth, PZ Myers himself explains another factor:
Well, Dawkins doesn't exactly excite me, but I can't deny that ever since he published his best-selling book, posts about Dawkins have been good for traffic here at TT. After all, Kevin Beck just sent some our way.
As for the second question:
LOL. Of course criticizing Richard Dawkins does not "advance intelligent design." I never claimed it did nor do I criticize Dawkins' sloppy thinking in order to "advance intelligent design."
Okay, so I answered the questions. In the end, I'm still left wondering why it is that criticisms of Richard Dawkins seem to cause so many of his fans to become so upset. This is a sincere question.
Comment by MikeGene — July 23, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Imagine away! Be my guest!
I always believed that IDers would be quite happy to see the Dover decision undercut. What about all those ID apologists who tried to re-frame the Dover decision as a victory for ID.
I wont respond to the other items on your list because they basically amount to "waaaaah, he said mean things about our cherished religious beliefs and I we don't like it".
Rather than spend time addressing Dawkins' anti-religious beliefs, which really are are utterly unremarkable - why not use the time to build a case for your own biology theories? Your time would be much more productively spent in a lab, getting down with the basic biology just like Dawkins did in the 1970s.
Incidentally, I note that sales of Dawkins' book "The Selfish Gene" seem strong more than three decades after it's original publication. Do you predict that "The Design Matrix" by Mike Gene or "Edge of Evolution" by Mike Behe will be as well-received by future generations?
No, it never causes upset - for one thing my patience is inhuman. Second, Richard loves it too when people write about him.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 24, 2007 @ 4:14 am
July 24th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I don't have the scientific or theological background as most people on these discussion boards do. But there are certain issues of common sense that grandstanders on both sides miss, I feel.
I propose that ultimate answers in this debate between scientific atheists and theists cannot be resolved as long as they confine themselves to books, laboratories, pulpits. I am a Christian who is outside of the Evangelicals and Catholics, I'm one of those (crazy) mystics. From my view, as long as scientists and religious continue in their egoistic desires and appetites, they unceasingly lead the pack of lemming-like human hoards to the precipice. Scientists and religious, clean up this dying planet! or all your debates will expose you for fools. Why Jesus and Buddha were so profound is because they didn't confine themselves to the Old Testament or the Rig Veda. They both struck out into the wilderness, with an absence of arrogance, and found profound communication there. The profundity, as always, attracted listeners, then, when it looked like it could be a winner, entrepreneurs started a church, then hung or burned anything that got in its way.
You scientists … If you limit your investigations of nature from a position of pride, you will not get answers more profound than how to manufacture a Lexus, so to speak. If you approached, with arrogance, a profound human being, such as Newton, Kepler, Heisenberg, Einstein, do you suppose they owe you an answer to anything? Of course not, for you are presumptuous. So if you approach nature with that same spirit of pride, do you suppose it owes you any kind of profound answer? There will be those who respond that nature does not deserve the reverence due to Newton or Kepler, for we are superior to nature. Well … perhaps that's why our planet is so screwed up … because of us.
And you nominal Christians, it might behoove you to reflect on Matthew 28:20 …" teaching them to observe ALL THINGS I have commanded you." It's the cross you are bound to bear before you are in a position to judge others, and it doesn't seem that supporting a neo-conservative regime which allows the rape of this planet finds you barking up the right tree.
Comment by willy shoemaker — July 24, 2007 @ 11:23 am
July 24th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Dave2: Fair enough - I realized after typing my posts that there are atheist Platonists (such as Penrose and perhaps Jerrold Katz?) as well as philosophical materialists who nonetheless hold the normative to be irreducible (Thomas Nagel). But I think there is significant overlap between physicalism and atheism - one example being of course Dawkins, whose musings about morality and Basil Fawlty's car at edge.org precisely pinpoint the way in which physicalism erodes moral objectivism. The position of e.g. Thomas Nagel (who would I suppose hold moral norms as well as rational norms to be irreducible to matter, yet remains a materialist) is not open to self-refutation charges. But it also leaves no place for what Popper called "promissory materialism" - the idea that someday, surely, science will solve the mind-matter divide (if it hasn't already). The idea is not rare in discussions about theism/atheism.
Comment by MerlijnDeSmit — July 24, 2007 @ 2:02 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
But Dawkins' example with Basil Fawlty's car falls apart even if you take the same assumptions that Dawkins dows. People react to being beat with sticks, to being imprisoned, to being punished in various ways. Cars, of course, do not. This is true whether you think it's because people have souls or because people are complex systems which react to external stimuli in complex ways without anything metaphysical going on.
I would assume that an ev-psych explanation for the impulse to revenge is that it's useful. A culture of people who can never be incited to violence, who always turn the other cheek, is sure to be overrun by neighbors who aren't so kind. A tense standoff, where we know that retaliation will follow if we do wrong, is a stable solution to this problem. And, in fact, when we justify punishing criminals, we do so in terms of rehabilitation, of isolating the criminal from the community, of trying to influence them not to re-offend. (We also do so in the name of revenge, but the state tends to shy away from explicitly saying this.) None of that is incompatible with Dawkins' view of things, and I'm puzzled as to how he draws the conclusions that he does–the reasoning behind punishing or isolating criminals works whether you use his assumptions or a more theistic set.
As for the erosion of moral objectivism, you might want to ask Future Toddler Chopper Vox Day about moral objectivism and systems consisting of "follow these rules, unless the Guy In Charge says otherwise", especially when the Guy In Charge lives in your head.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 24, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hi Salim,
That's because you have again been misled by stereotype.
There's another stereotype. First, you want me to focus on his message and then you change your mind. You won't respond because you can't.
Denying science while attempting to demonize religious parents as child abusers is not unremarkable.
I predict the DM will be read by a small number of people. We'll see what happens afterwards.
You are done in this thread, Salim.
Comment by MikeGene — July 24, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Grendelkhan,
Man that was chilling to read those people justify why they would slaughter the toddlers "if God told them to".
I think I need to go vomit now. . .
Comment by mcromer — July 24, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
mcromer: Isn't it just? If you'll look in the Haloscan comments for this post, there's an interesting comparison between the morality enforced by Chairman Mao ("If I do it, that means it's right") and the morality expounded by Vox ("If Jesus says so, that means it's right"). Apparently the question of whether god is good because he does good, or what god does is good by definition, is a pretty old one, and as you can see, still has the power to be mighty creepifying.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 24, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
a bit late but….someone said
http://richarddawkins.net/even...
in my opinion, this is rather moving toward a fellowship intent on propagating a certain system of beliefs, one of which is "we reject faith, but accept reason" (as if faith and evidence werent related in christianity, but why bother reading about christianity, all dawkins needs for evidence is the mainstream christians he meets, ones who have as little knowledge about christianity as he does). harris, dawkins, dennett, and hitchens do have a core set of beliefs they are pushing, and i believe this conference, from what ive seen for it, is a fellowship meeting of sorts, much as a church service is.
id rather like to raise the question again: what does dawkins consider name calling if not what he is doing? i really cant call anything ive heard out of his, hitchens, or harris' mouths as clarity nor objectivity based on evidence. im also not sure what evidence dawkins is presenting for us to consider is arguements and tone as passionate instead of ranting, etc.
why do the new athiests pretend that some christians havent been asking the exact same questions, and better ones about god for some time just because most christians dont ask those sorts of questions? myself for example, i am greatly interested in the philosophical aspects of dogma vs skepticism and how these play into religion. could i be presented with evidence not to believe my religion? sure, ive searched high and low for it so that i can be sure that im doing what is right, is there is such a universal thing, and ive seen some evidence against my religion, and some for it. ive weighed them out, etc, etc, etc. im rambling. sorry.
lets try this: "mr dawkins, you smell, and the recent pictures ive seen of you really make you look like a keywest zombiehead. sorry, but i mean just take a shower and get a hair cut, hippie"…sorry just a bit of objectivity based on evidence. im sure people will be offended by me breaking the social taboo of talking about how someone stinks, but well, someone had to say it because dawkins' smell is a threat to how people understand science, and most importantly, it is a threat to the lives of those around him.
Comment by dantedanti — July 24, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
To be more strictly accurate, it is the undirected evolutionary view of norms, values, etc. that becomes the Universal Acid that eats away at traditional notions of an objective standard for human behavior.
So, I would agree that atheism per se does not exclude this. However, I believe the grand majority of atheists also embrace the standard evolutionary picture with regard to the origin of humanity.
About your second point, I consider it to be a false dilemma (or trilemma in your formulation). I've commented about it recently in another post, though I don't recall which thread. (I'll look a bit more later.)
For now, I readily grant that if an atheist is willing to stay away from the Universal Acid of the standard evolutionary view, they are not necessarily required to deny an objective moral standard for humanity.
Comment by eric — July 24, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
July 24th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Care to square your notion of "an objective standard for human behavior" against the bit about Jesus ordering Vox to start chopping toddlers? You may hand-wave away the story of Euthyphro, but the point remains that sure, atheists don't have an objective basis for their morality as you would define it, but neither do you.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 24, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 12:10 am
Okay, it was a hard day and I was in a bad mood. If you want to post, fire away.
Comment by MikeGene — July 25, 2007 @ 12:10 am
July 25th, 2007 at 1:12 am
eric wrote:
This does not absolve the atheist who believes in objective morality of the rational obligation to defend a non-naturalist but also non-theistic account of the metaphysics of morality.
Such an account would have to say something along the following lines. There exist moral entities—-constituting some set of propositions, truths, standards, values, properties, principles, facts, duties, obligations, rules, norms, etc—-which do not arise out of physical nature nor out of any transcendent intention, but which nonetheless impinge with some kind of non-physical but objective force upon the behavior of a certain class of physical organisms.
The obvious analogy is with mathematical entities and other abstract structures associated with reason. The trouble with abstracta in general from a metaphysical point of view is that by nature they seem inherently and essentially correlative to, and knowable by rational thought, and hence seem directed toward thinkers or persons or minds. And it is therefore hard to imagine how such abstracta can exist independently of thinkers/person/minds, especially if it is merely a contingent, unintended, undesigned fact about the world that it ever contains any thinkers at all. It would seem to be a remarkable fluke that the world has morally aware organisms and that there also happen to be these mind-independent and also matter-independent moral abstracta that impinge upon and apply to those organisms, in rather like the way it has struck a number of people (such as Einstein and Wigner) that it seems a remarkable, unreasonable, incomprehensible fluke that there should be organisms who can understand, using the resources of the most abstract mathematics, the nature of the physical universe.
It's not just moral understanding, then, that we appear to have 'lucked out' on given this story, but also mathematical understanding, and let's throw in for good measure the capacity for aesthetic and religious experience, the capacity to study the past and predict the future, indeed, the capacity not to believe our species merely 'lucked out' to become so privileged across so many rich dimensions of experience compared to other species. We can, for instance imagine a mathematically talented species which knew nothing of morality or aesthetics, or a very ethical species which was hopeless at math, or a wonderfully artistic species which was also amoral. But we got all three, without, allegedly, any of this remarkable confluence of traits being in any way intended.
Hmmm.
As regards the Euthyphro dilemma, I've never quite understood its force if we're talking about not just any gods, but about the God of classical theism (the type defended by Aquinas et alii). The Euthyphro dilemma assumes that if a god wills certain conduct because it is good, then goodness is something external to the god, and it's merely a contingent fact about the god doing the willing that he happens to will something good. But this external goodness could only be the kind of mind-independent and matter-independent abstract entity I've mentioned with skepticism above. Goodness is by nature supervenient only upon minds. No minds, no goodness. Classical theism claims there is no such mind-independent abstract entity, 'goodness', as is assumed by the relevant horn of the Euthyphro dilemma , for there can be no entity that is independent of God's mind, which is infinite. Nor is it a contingent fact about the God of classical theism that God happens to will the good. It is God's very nature perfectly to comprehend and to will the good, which is what God himself is, namely infinite Being/Knowing/Loving, the triune divine essence.
Comment by stunney — July 25, 2007 @ 1:12 am
July 25th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Quite so. When I allow that a non-evolutionary atheism is not necessarily inconsistent with objective morality for humans, I'm trying to be generous and stick to what necessarily conflicts with merely the denial of God. Yet, trying to find a ground for such a combination is indeed hard to imagine.
I wouldn't expect that objective morality is reconcilable with materialism. I believe the atheist would need to reject materialism, just as you indicate. Else where could one locate the objective moral standard?
A standard for human behavior seems to necessarily imply an apprehension of humans. If it were true that "Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind." as George Gaylord Simpson said, that would seem to exclude that something in reality has expectations (in mind?) about how man should behave.
Comment by eric — July 25, 2007 @ 10:30 am
July 25th, 2007 at 11:07 am
(Also to Dave2)
Thanks for your straight talk and forthright observation about atheism and objective morality.
My original objective wasn't to prove that theists have a basis for objective morality, but more simply to point out that Dawkins is being internally inconsistent whenever he tries to argue as though the values of other people are wrong. I believe that is plainly inconsistent beyond any realistic hope of rescue.
Regarding Euthyphro issues, since you and Dave2 raise it (and I don't remember where my other post on this is), I'll make a couple comments.
Objective morality can be real, meaningful, and non-arbitrary because it is grounded in the non-arbitrary nature of the non-contingent Being.
Consequently, all objections of the kind that suppose that God could make anything at all "good" just by arbitrarily commanding it fail, since God's non-contingent nature is non-arbitrary and the moral expectations that proceed from it are non-arbitrary.
Man's contingent nature and the expectations concerning man's behavior can be connected by God's intention to being both in internal harmony and in harmony with the preexisting, non-arbitrary, personal nature of God. There is nothing inconsistent or arbitrary about God commanding contingent creatures to live in accord with God.
Wrong behavior on the part of mankind is fundamentally a rebellion against non-arbitrary, non-contingent reality. Rebellion, disharmony, inconsistency are meaningful concepts and non-arbitrary when the standard is non-arbitrary.
Comment by eric — July 25, 2007 @ 11:07 am
July 25th, 2007 at 11:33 am
p.s. Regarding Euthyphro, the classical treatment has "gods" in view. A god that is merely a contingent deity may not be an adequate ground for an objective moral standard. There is a fundamental distinction when one considers God in the sense of the non-contingent, non-arbitrary Being. stunney also alluded to this distinction earlier:
Comment by eric — July 25, 2007 @ 11:33 am
July 25th, 2007 at 11:57 am
I think the stock questions associated with the Euthyphro (but also found in Cudworth and others) immediately succeed at proving morality to be independent of God's will. This becomes most obvious with the questions "Why does God count as having the kind of authority that makes his commands worth following?" and "Why does God count as good?": it's hard to believe that God and his declarations have authority simply because he declares himself to have authority, or that God counts as good simply because he declares himself to be good.
Of course, this leaves open the possibility that it's not God's will, but something in the rest of God's nature, that grounds morality. But even here Euthyphro problems show up. Why does God count as good instead of evil? Some say it's because God has certain character traits (being loving, kind, faithful, etc.), but then why do those character traits count as virtues instead of vices? Simply because God declared them to be so? Hopefully not, otherwise we're just grounding morality in God's will in a roundabout way. And none of God's other divine attributes (omnipotence, eternality, etc.) have any obvious connection with goodness, and even then we'd need to know why they counted as conferring goodness rather than evil.
You can say (like Bill Alston) that we've got to stop somewhere, and God is good and God's nature sets the standard for good and that's the bottom line, dismissing questions like "Why does God count as good instead of evil?". But then an atheist utilitarian can say that pleasure is good and that pleasure sets the standard for goodness and that's the bottom line, dismissing questions like "Why does pleasure count as a good thing rather than a bad thing?"
Comment by Dave2 — July 25, 2007 @ 11:57 am
July 25th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
One more thing about objective morality defended by atheists: even though I brought up nonnaturalist views in metaethics, there are also naturalist options.
One stripe is the Cornell realist naturalist atheist like David Brink and his ilk. They think moral terms and concepts pick out natural facts and properties, and that this is grounded in something like a Kripke-Putnam causal story, the kind applicable to natural kinds like water. They tend to be utilitarians or something close.
Another stripe is the Aristotelian naturalist atheist like Philippa Foot and her ilk. They think moral evaluations are basically like evaluations of organisms according to their natural functions, and they think these functions can be given an adequate naturalistic account.
Another stripe is the rationalist-constructivist atheist like Michael Smith and his ilk. There's also Kantian constructivism (as far as I know, Korsgaard is an atheist, though I could be wrong) and several others.
Comment by Dave2 — July 25, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Oh, and regarding abstract entities that "impinge" on us, I'm pretty sure one hallmark of abstract entities is that they don't enter into causal relations. And I don't get why they'd have to depend on minds (though I do get the 'what a fluke!' design argument intuition).
Comment by Dave2 — July 25, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
eric:
No, that is not plainly inconsistent IMO. Dawkins probably believes, as I do, that there is no such thing as objective morality (if you think there is, please tell us exactly what it is). It seems to me it must simply be his opinion that certain values of other people are immoral (according to his own moral standards). For example, I think it is immoral to put unbelievers to death. Yet the Inquisition (who probably also believed they were operating under an objective morality) thought the opposite.
Comment by Raevmo — July 25, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Dave2,
Your post neglects common sense.
If God is the cause of all existence and if he creates the dichotomy between that which is good and that which is evil - and if God uses his own essence as the reference point for good… then what grounds do you have for doubting that?
You can't prove it by arguing definitions, you would need to show that God doesn't exist at all.
Comment by Doug — July 25, 2007 @ 1:23 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Can you break this down for me a bit? I think you're saying that while you'd say 'no' if Zeus told you to start chopping toddlers, you'd say 'yes' to Jesus, because Jesus is a much awesomer god. Is this about right? If I've gotten it wrong, please tell me your opinions on the toddler-chopping issue: Jesus appears in a fashion that leaves you as certain of his message as you are of his existence right now, and tells you to grab an axe and start dismembering. Is killing then morally okay? If so, is it obligatory?
I don't see why philosophical mumbo-jumbo about contingency and non-contingency has any bearing on this; if you do, please explain it to me. Please do let me also know about your membership or lack thereof in the Future Toddler Chopper club.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
You appear to be arguing that what god does is good by definition. (There are some theistic systems which don't assume an omnibenevolent creator, for example, which seem to contradict this.) Are you of the opinion that whatever god does is good? If so, what's your answer to the toddler-chopping question?
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
No, it's not right… it's laughable. Your misunderstanding and contortions, that is.
Oh you've gotten it wrong. Do you even know who Jesus is?
Oh of course not…. but raising the hypothesis of Jesus asking one to start hacking up kids is? You are silly.
To start explaning anything to you, one would seemingly have to start at such an elementary level…. it almost wouldn't be worth it.
Wow…. this is mind numbingly stupid.
Comment by Doug — July 25, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
You more than appear to be unable to grasp what I was saying.
And this proves……………
Do you know who Jesus is?
Comment by Doug — July 25, 2007 @ 1:50 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Is it good to exist?
Comment by Doug — July 25, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Doug: Feel free to call me names, but could I ask that you answer my questions in the process of doing so?
[I ask if eric was saying that what Zeus does is not good-by-definition, but what Jesus does is, specifically if chopping toddlers up is morally obligatory for Jesus, but not for Zeus.]
Could you take the time to explain why?
Is there a reason you're not telling me what you would do in the event that you feel a large, Jesusy voice in your head telling you to chop, chop, chop? I was under the impression that in the Christian system, Jesus is a manifestation of the single creator deity, who has a history of telling people to do things like that. (See: the Amalekites or the various bits of ethnic cleansing when as the Hebrews realize their Manifest Destiny to spread through Canaan.)
Given that Jesus is apparently in the business of having political opponents stabbed, I think it's quite relevant.
I'm not saying that your distinction between Zeus's godliness and Jesus's much awesomer godliness doesn't make a different, just that I don't understand how the distinction impacts the problem outlined above.
I'm not saying that you're just throwing out brave words to avoid answering any of my questions, but the "I'm too smart for this" brush-off is indistinguishable from you just not wanting to answer me.
So you're not arguing that what god does is good by definition?
… that a creator god is not necessarily good by definition, according to plenty of theists.
I still eagerly await your answer to the toddler-chopping question. If you're trying to answer that Jesus would never do such a thing, please say so explicitly; if not, then give your answer or explanation.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
grendelkhan, if a kook commits murder and blames it on his understanding of humanism or liberalism are you then going to claim that either belief system leads to murder? Jesus is no different from anyone else in one respect. His actions would be expected to be consistent with his values. If you know his value system that should constrain estimates as to what is acceptable behavoir in his eyes.
Comment by Bradford — July 25, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Dave2 wrote:
That's, er, exactly my point.
Minds, by contrast, are causally interactive, not least with respect to their capacity for moral agency. So morality seems much more plausibly dependent on minds than on a realm of impersonal moral abstracta.
The idea is Brouwer's, and developed more recently by Dummett and others with respect to mathematics:
One can apply a similar understanding to morality: morality is a free activity of the mind, independent of any human language or Platonic realm of moral entities, and therefore is based on a philosophy of mind. Essentially the point would be that like mathematical rationality, moral (and aesthetic) value supervenes on minds and cannot exist otherwise. The materialist thinks that minds supervene on certain types of bodies and cannot exist otherwise. And the objection to materialism is that the essentially and objectively normative properties of reason and value cannot be naturalized via reduction to the properties of material bodies.
I'm familiar with Brinks (he applied for a job where I was but didn't get it), and of course Foot (my dissertation topic was on whether virtue ethics could yield a theory of justice as egalitarian in its implications as Rawls's). But with regard to utilitarian, neo-Kantian, and neo-Aristotelian attempts at grounding an objective morality, however, you've correctly surmised my objection: why on earth should the world be like that if it wasn't intended or designed to be. In other words, my objection is that morality, like rationality, is essentially about rational minds (and their personal, intentional agency), and such things are far more plausibly explained by a Designer than otherwise.
Comment by stunney — July 25, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
Didn't the Columbine killers invoke Darwin's ideas as justifying their rampage?
"See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven" Matthew 18: 10
Some people are insane.
And some people make incredibly idiotic arguments.
Such as yours.
Comment by stunney — July 25, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Certainly not; I never meant to give that impression. But then again, humanism and liberalism don't say anything about it being a moral imperative to follow the commands of voices in your head.
But if good exists as something separate from "what Jesus does", that brings up the matter of why it's separate and where it comes from in this cosmology. Regardless, it is the sort of thing Jesus would do; see any list of Old Testament bloodshed for more examples.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
This is the process: (a) Jesus's followers assert that he speaks through voices in your head. (b) Followers hear voices in their heads, assume it's Jesus. (c) Followers proceed to obey said voices.
This differs from, for instance, someone reading an AiG-level summary of the theory of evolution and using it to justify their impulse to kill, kill, kill, in that while the person in question is in both instances clearly disturbed, the doctrine of Christianity clearly encourages them to act on their disturbed impulses.
In addition (though this is peripheral, perhaps irrelevant), spree killing is a terrible way to encourage the success of your genes. You'll note that neither Harris nor Klebold left any descendents, which leads one to wonder exactly what description of 'fitness' was satisfied by them dying an early death.
So I take it you're asserting that Jesus would never have his followers chop toddlers. (If you were to go one further and assert that Jesus is an out-and-out pacifist, that disqualifies a darn lot of Christians.) Regardless, isn't Jesus (insert phrase relating to the Trinity here) the god who said the following?
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Sam. 15:3.
As I've just told Doug, it would help your case if you explained why these arguments are wrong. If they're as incredibly idiotic as you claim, it should be straightforward to dismiss them with argument rather than invective.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Voices in the head is one of those charicatures that can take on a life of its own if you forget how the term originated.
Jesus is no different from anyone else in one respect. His actions would be expected to be consistent with his values. If you know his value system that should constrain estimates as to what is acceptable behavoir in his eyes.
Look at it logically. If Christ is God incarnate then he has the authority and the power to define morality. If not then it is not worth worrying about.
Comment by Bradford — July 25, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
This is baloney.
Comment by Bradford — July 25, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
How did it originate? Is my characterization of listening for voices that no one else can here and that speak to you alone something that Christianity doesn't have a history of encouraging?
I've pointed out twice now that ethnic cleansing and genocide are okay with Jesus. (I'm under the impression that the Old Testament Yahweh and Jesus are sort of the same person; if I'm getting Christianity wrong, let me know how it's defined.)
Whether or not I believe in him, his fan club is certainly real, and may be worth worrying about. But this "power to define morality" is the worrying thing; it's what Chairman Mao was claiming that he had–that things are right and wrong because Chairman Mao says so. Similarly, in the Christian view, things are right and wrong because Jesus says so. (This doesn't sound like "objective morality" to me, but perhaps I'm getting it wrong. If so, please explain why the Amalekites should have said "oh, all right then" and offered up their necks, while the Tibetans are justifiably outraged at the Chinese attempts at genocide. It seems odd that we hold Chairman Mao to a higher standard than Jesus.)
Is it? How else is Jesus supposed to communicate with his followers? There's a "personal relationship" involved, right? It sounds awfully one-sided if you just talk to Jesus and never get an answer back. So far we have (a) Jesus talks to you through voices in your head ("speaks to your heart" if you prefer), and (b) it's a moral imperative to do whatever Jesus tells you. Which half of that is baloney, and why?
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
grendelkhan,
you want me to tell you what I would do if Jesus contradicted his OWN teachings and declarations and requested me to perform some act you randomly concocted in your head for the sake of showing some inherent flaw in his teachings?
Come on… I'm supposed to take this seriously?
Comment by Doug — July 25, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
You don't get it. You are the one making up these bold contradictions of Christ's behavior (preaching/declaring on thing and then flipping the script and requesting a Christian to slaughter children).
You think you've stumbled on some defeater of Christian belief with this? It's laughable.
Then, you claim that you are worried about what those believers may do in the true name of Christ - again - based off of some innane request that you for some odd reason think that Jesus would request of his believers.
If there's anyone to be worried about… it's yourself.
Comment by Doug — July 25, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Dave2 wrote:
I assume you have in mind the question of what it is about God's nature that makes it good. And you may be thinking of something along the lines of Moore's open question argument against identifying goodness with any natural property, and you may be treating God's nature, in the sense relevant to Moore's argument, as just another set of natural properties.
In Moore's formulation, goodness is a simple, non-natural, indefinable, unanalyzable property. It's not clear we should grant this conclusion, since water may be identical with H20 even though this fact about the stuff we use 'water' to designate is only knowable a posteriori and hence if true, is so non-definitionally, i.e., it's not an analytic truth. But let's grant Moore's conclusion. Then there seems to be two ways to go. Either goodness is a Platonic entity, and is subject to my previously mentioned skepticism about such mind-and-matter-independent entities; or else goodness is a supervenient property, albeit an irreducible one. If it is an irreducible supervenient property, it seems far more plausible that it supervenes on mental states than on non-mental states. And if it is, as Moore argued, a non-natural property, it seems far more plausible that it didn't just pop into existence when contingently existing mental states popped into existence, but was already supervening on some necessarily existent mental state. And this necessarily existent mental state is, as Aquinas would say, what all men call God.
Comment by stunney — July 25, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Come on now.
Let's not slur that enlightened Jewish carpenter from Nazereth with all the disgusting things found in parts of the Old Testament. . .
Comment by mcromer — July 25, 2007 @ 5:10 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Bradford: Voices in the head is one of those charicatures that can take on a life of its own if you forget how the term originated.
I've spent a considerable amount of time with sincere Christians and they do not talk about hearing voices. That does not mean they cannot know God's will which is revealed scripturally but the voices stuff is the type of thing critics love to embellish on every time a mentally unbalanced person claims voices motivated him to do this, that or whatever. All humans, not just the ancient Canaanite tribes known for child sacrificing and other ugly practices, are programmed for death by their creator. I asked you to look at this logically because the God who would wipe out a tribe had those individuals already targeted for death. Your issue is on another level.
You're right about one thing. Values are at the core of disputes about religion and metaphysical implications of scientific theories. Someone at TT commented today that a particular IDist's views were skewed by the IDist's religious concerns. I think the same could be said of ID opponents.
Comment by Bradford — July 25, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
I know many followers of Jesus. Not one of them asserts that Jesus speaks to them through voices in their head.
Some people are insane.
Some insane people believe falsely that some people are trying to kill them.
Some sane people believe correctly that some people are trying to kill them.
Some people really do try to kill people who are sane.
One can take any insane or at least irrational belief you like, and attribute it to a believer in any worldview you like who insanely or at least irrationally connects it to that worldview, and come up with murderous consequences.
Let me give you three such examples: Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and, still on the scene, Kim Jong Il's North Korea. Virulently atheist regimes responsible for tens of millions of deaths.
Why don't you conclude on that basis that atheism is false or immoral? Is it because it's not a sound basis for that conclusion, by any chance?
What invective? I said your argument is incredibly idiotic. It is. It's as incredibly idiotic as arguing that atheism is false or immoral because atheistic regimes have been responsible for tens of millions of deaths over the past 90 years.
Yup, your argument is that dumb, grendelkhan. Whether you yourself are dumb is something about which I make no comment. Though of course I reserve the right to draw my own conclusions.
Comment by stunney — July 25, 2007 @ 5:27 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
grendelkhan, why do you claim that Christianity encourages its adherents to act upon phenomena such as 'inner voices' which are due to mental illness?
Is it your view that Catholic moral teaching says that it's okay or indeed mandatory to chop up small children if a voice in your head which is due to mental illness tells you to provided you think it's God's voice?
If so, let me ask you some follow-up questions:
1) Are you posting from a psychiatric prison, by any chance?
2) Are you mentally retarded?
3) Have you read any mainstream Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish Biblical scholars?
4) Do you support abortion which involves the chopping up of small children's bodies?
Comment by stunney — July 25, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
That defense would result in a "guilty" verdict in five minutes by any jury in the country.
It's not sensible to defend the slaughter of innocents. Isn't it better to admit to ourselves that the morality of the Old Testament simply doesn't measure up, and give credit to Jesus for transcending that sort of barbarous tribalism and shining a beacon of the light of universalist love across all of humanity?
Comment by mcromer — July 25, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I didn't concoct this; if you look upthread, you'll see where a moderately prominent Christian blogger took it upon himself to claim that the answer was "yes, I'd chop 'em, and I'd do it with a song in my heart".
I suppose you don't have to, but I certainly do.
Did you miss the bit of scripture that I posted? Here, I'll paste.
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Sam. 15:3.
I'm not the one "flipping the script", as you put it.
I'm less interested in "defeat[ing] Christian belief" than I am in finding out whether or not you're ready to start chopping heads if someone slips you the brown acid.
Given that he requested, nay, demanded this of his followers in the past, it doesn't seem so out of whack. Plenty of Christians believe that Jesus told them to do things; they're frequently not murderous or illegal, but they are acting on instructions from voices in their heads.
I don't see why, given that I'm not the one listening for voices in my head to go off and slay "man and woman, infant and suckling".
It's not just mentally unbalanced people. And there's a big difference between "it's right because Scripture says so" and "it's right because voices in my head say so"; you're denying that Christianity relies at least in some part on personal revelation, which is simply untrue.
Doesn't that sound kind of… nihilist? I mean, from that point of view, what's wrong with killing people, since they're all "programmed for death" anyhow?
So, again, what kind of "personal relationship" is that? All that talk about letting Jesus into your heart is metaphorical? About letting the holy spirit speak through you?
You're not listening to me. Of course any sufficiently fanatical follower of a cause will become loony and dangerous. Consider the animal-rights people using terrorism who are mentioned here. My point is that Christianity specifically tells its followers to listen to voices in their head, which your examples of evil atheist regimes didn't. They did claim that the dictators running them defined good and evil, with predictable disastrous results.
Well, yeah, it's because it's not a sound basis for that conclusion. The problem is that claims about "objective morality" are very easy to turn into claims about how Chairman Mao or Jesus-in-my-head define right and wrong, which is extremely relativistic. And I think it's more instructive to look at what these regimes have in common–morality defined as "it's right because so-and-so said so"–than how they differ.
You said my argument was idiotic without explaining how. And you still haven't; you've asserted that No True Christian believes that Jesus speaks to them personally, which I have a hard time believing, and you've
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Hm. I don't know if I got cut off before, or I just didn't remember to finish that sentence. But, continuing:
… and you've gone on about how evil atheism is, which isn't particularly relevant here–at least not in the way you seem to think it is.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 25, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
No, I'm denying that personal communication between human and deity must take some sort of spooky voices in the head form. A conviction of certainty can be sufficient.
Comment by Bradford — July 25, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 12:12 am
I agree; I use the spooky-voices-in-head image because it's effectively striking. But the point remains that revelation is accepted as a way of knowing, even encouraged.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 26, 2007 @ 12:12 am
July 26th, 2007 at 12:34 am
stunney, I'm really not following you. We're trying to figure out what moral properties are like. I think you're posing it as a choice between abstract entities and mental entities. And, since you seem to think moral properties have causal powers, you tend to favor the latter. What I don't get is why you think moral properties have causal powers. I would have thought moral properties are a clear case of properties that don't enter into causal relations. So I see no problems on this score with identifying moral properties with abstract entities. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
Also, even if moral properties supervene on mental phenomena, they might still be abstract entities. To be somewhat anachronistic, Sidgwick might have held a view like this: value properties like goodness are sui generis abstract entities that supervene on mental phenomena like pleasure and pain. Any old-school (biting the bullet on the experience machine) utilitarian with Moorean metaethics will hold this view. So I don't think supervenience gets at the heart of the dispute.
So at the end of the day, I don't get why moral properties would have to be in any way mental.
Regarding "why does God count as good", I don't mean to run an open question argument. I just think there ought to be an explanation available for a thing's falling under the extension of a moral concept. Perhaps an explanation like, "anything fitting such-and-such profile counts as good, and x fits the profile". Now, since few people are hardcore enough to be a full-blooded divine command theorist, we're presumably going to exclude the 'self-appointed goodness' explanation: "anything declared good by God counts as good, and God has been declared good by God". But then I want to know what the explanation is.
If there's no explanation available, then I fail to see how God-based metaethics has any advantage over naturalistic metaethics.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 12:34 am
July 26th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Doug, I'm not sure what your position is. If you're saying that God freely assigns moral statuses to things, then you face stock arbitrariness and 'hypothetical sadistic commands' problems. If you're saying that God is already good by nature, and then his nature constrains his moral commands, then I want to know why God's nature counts as good. If you say that there's no further explanation available and that you've reached bedrock, then why can't an atheist utilitarian follow suit, saying that pleasure is good and that's the bottom line?
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 12:40 am
July 26th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Dave2 wrote:
I don't get how they could be anything other than mental.
Correct.
Correct.
Per se they don't. Mental states, upon which moral properties supervene, however, do.
Per se they don't. As supervenient upon mental states, however, they do. For instance, I take it you believe that pitchforking babies for fun is immoral. That's a mental state of yours, in other words. And the property of being morally right supervenes on that mental state.
Comment by stunney — July 26, 2007 @ 2:20 am
July 26th, 2007 at 2:39 am
grendelkhan wrote:
I wonder why.
It could be because it's like listening to a bucket of piss.
Of course. So why the are you making such a moronic argument, grendelkhan? Is it because you're a moron?
Your point is a stinking pile of moronic imbecility in that case, or complete and utter crap to use the technical expression.
Christianity does not specifically tell its followers to listen to voices in their head.
Only a stupendously mind-boggling moron would think it did.
Away and raffle yourself before you ridicule yourself any further.
Comment by stunney — July 26, 2007 @ 2:39 am
July 26th, 2007 at 2:41 am
But just because one property supervenes on another, causally efficacious property doesn't mean the first one has any causal influence. Take aesthetic properties. Or take mental properties according to epiphenomenalism — they're supposed to supervene on causally efficacious physical properties and yet lack any causal influence themselves.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 2:41 am
July 26th, 2007 at 2:49 am
grendelkhan, amazingly enough, you haven't answered one of the questions I posed. Is it because doing so will expose you as a complete fraud without an intellectual or moral leg to stand on?
I'll give you one more chance. Here's the question again:
Do you support abortion which involves the chopping up of small children's bodies?
Comment by stunney — July 26, 2007 @ 2:49 am
July 26th, 2007 at 2:53 am
Dave2 wrote:
Indeed. That's, er, why I said:
Comment by stunney — July 26, 2007 @ 2:53 am
July 26th, 2007 at 3:16 am
Dave2 wrote:
I already gave you it. Here it is again:
[Emphasis added]
Comment by stunney — July 26, 2007 @ 3:16 am
July 26th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
stunney, I thought you held that moral properties have causal powers and that's why they can't be abstract entities. But your support for the claim that they have causal powers seems to rely on the claim that they supervene on mental states. But now it seems you are agreeing that such supervenience doesn't deliver causal powers. So now I don't know why they can't be abstract entities.
Regarding why God counts as good. I'm not exactly sure how your explanation goes, but I'm guessing it's something like "anything that's all-knowing and/or perfectly loving and/or with the maximum of neo-Platonic-style 'Being' counts as good, and God has just those features". But omniscience is prima facie irrelevant — an evil demon could conceivably be omniscient. Being loving passes the 'evil demon test', but now we need an explanation as to why being loving counts as making a thing good rather than evil — and hopefully our explanation isn't just that God declared being loving to be a good-making characteristic. And, while I'm not too comfortable working with Being (maybe you just mean necessary existence or aseity or something like that), I suspect it will fall victim to at least one of the two problems — being morally neutral and irrelevant like omniscience (omnipotence, eternality, etc.) or at least standing in need of an explanation as to why it counts as a good-making characteristic in the first place.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
You wouldn't be able to truthfully/correctly claim that it is arbitrary. You would be in no position to determine what in reality would be arbitrary, if God truly did create the universe - using Himself (the one immutable, necessary being) as the reference point for all which came after Him. I wouldn't face stock arbitrariness - because, in the event of His actual existence, what else could possibly be the reference point except Him?
1st, I have no reason to believe that Jesus (fulfilling the Law given to the Israelites) would contradict his own fundamental teachings (love your neighbor/enemy).
2nd, invoking Amalek (Old Testament - unfulfilled Law) without explaining the reason for God's demand to Saul (why God demanded Saul to perform accordingly) betrays the full context of the demand.
Comment by Doug — July 26, 2007 @ 1:07 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Dave2 wrote:
How am I agreeing that their being supervenient upon mental states does not deliver causal powers? You had written:
To which I replied:
Per se they don't. Mental states, upon which moral properties supervene, however, do.
In other words, I'm saying that if they don't supervene on mental states, moral properties are indeed causally impotent. Hence my use of the phrase per se. But suppose they do supervene on a mental state. Then such properties are not causally impotent.
Suppose, for instance, you have a mental state of believing that choking a co-worker is, however desirable, immoral. Then a moral property supervenes on your mental state, constituting it as a moral belief (as against a belief of some other non-moral sort). And suppose it's a moral belief that, say, causes you not to choke your co-worker. And suppose it's the moral properties of the belief that explain your refraining from choking the co-worker. Then that belief's moral status is what guides, motivates, and explains your non-choking conduct towards your co-worker; and that status is constituted by a supervenient moral property, which ensures (in the example) that your belief has a certain normative property, above and beyond its merely descriptive non-nomative properties. Your belief, simply described, is a mental state of yours having a particular content: that choking my co-worker is immoral. But we can ask why that content should have any power to restrain you from choking your co-worker; and the answer is that supervening on it is a normative property of which you are aware and cognizant, and which you experience as providing a reason and a motive. Analogously, the property of being irrational does not per se have any causal potency. But rational beliefs do, in part because of their having or instantiating the normative properties of rationality. We experience those normative properties as providing a reason to believe certain propositions and to not believe other propositions.
On your view as so far stated, it would seem that either abstract entities have causal powers, or (since it's agreed abstract entities don't) that the moral and rational properties that beliefs and desires frequently instantiate play no role in the explanation of human actions, which on the face of it is absurd.
This seems to be Moore's open question argument, as I surmised before. But if so, you have put yourself in a bind. Either, as Moore held, goodness is a simple, non-natural, indefinable, unanalyzable property; or, pace Moore, it isn't. If it is, then your request for an explanation of why God's nature is good is ill-conceived, since no explanation of goodness is possible ex hypothesi. But if it isn't, then you must disallow use of the open question at some point, and being loving seems as good a point as any at which to disallow it.
Moreover, I capitalized Being/Knowing/Loving, aggregated the terms, and referred to it as being what the triune divine essence is for a reason, which has to do with the infinite, perfect, and mutually implicating character of what those terms refer to in God as conceptualized in Catholic theology. I explain this a bit more here and here. So it's not just that being loving is good, though it is. It's that what goodness is, what it turns out to be, what it has as its primary referent so to speak, is Being/Knowing/Loving, and everything else that is good is so by analogy with that triune essence.
Your hope is vindicated. What is good-making is resemblance to the nature of God.
Being is not morally neutral or morally irrelevant. For something to be good, it first must be. A primary characteristic of evildoers is their penchant for destruction in net terms. War and murder and other forms of violence are bad because they are (at least for the most part) gratuitously destructive. Global warming is a moral issue in part because it threatens destruction, at least some of which we might be able to prevent. Etc.
The metaphysical connection between being and goodness is classically delineated in Aquinas.
Comment by stunney — July 26, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Doug, I don't think arbitrariness here is simply a matter of opinion. If God has no reasons at all backing up his commands, then his commands count as arbitrary just by definition. So hopefully that's not your position. But if God does has good reasons backing up his commands, then those good reasons (and not God's will) are doing all the work.
As to the sadistic commands, no one needs to claim that God has made or will make sadistic commands. The question is this: if God did make sadistic commands, would we be morally obligated to follow them? Hardcore divine command theorists will say yes, but that response has obvious problems and implausibilities. Of course, one strategy is to avoid the question by saying it's impossible for God to make sadistic commands, but that means there are limits on God's power set by a moral standard independent of God's will.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 5:28 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
An ultimate, necessary being needs reasons? No, He would need no other reason above and beyond himself. This isn't an argument for His existence, but it is an argument that His actions would not be arbitrary. But you assuming that there does or would exist reasons above and beyong Him than He is no longer what we suppose Him to be.
Hopefully? Whatever. My point should be clear enough to anyone not attempting to shoehorn some inherent dilemma into the situation.
Again, God would not be an ultimate, immutable, necessary being if this were the case. But then you aren't arguing against any Christian conception of God… but more so some conception that you concocted in your head and chose to critique.
You're making up a situation…. why should I assume that it would ever happen?
It is not a fault of His power if he doesn't do something that contradicts his essence.
When theists say that God is all-powerful, they do not mean that God can do anything whatever, but only that he can do anything that power can do.
If I was given inifinite power it doesn't mean that I could roll a 7 on a single die.
Comment by Doug — July 26, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
stunney,
First, I take it your view is that, if property P supervenes on property Q and property Q has causal powers, then it follows that property P has causal powers. But I think this view is false. Take epiphenomenalism in the philosophy of mind: mental properties supervene on physical properties, the physical properties have causal powers, and yet the mental properties have no causal powers. Is it your position that epiphenomenalism is impossible? Or take aesthetic properties: whether a work of art is beautiful supervenes on its physical properties, the physical properties have causal powers, and yet the aesthetic properties surely do not have any causal powers. Supervening properties do not inherit any causal influence from the properties they supervene on.
Second, I think we're using 'moral properties' differently. You seem to be referring to content properties of mental states: one property of a belief is that it is a moral belief as opposed to a belief about agriculture. But I'm referring to moral properties like goodness, being right, being virtuous, and so on. So maybe a racist belief can have the moral property of being vicious or wrong, in addition to and due to its content properties.
So my claim is not that the content properties of mental states are causally inefficacious — I agree with you that they have causal powers. My claim is that, when it comes to moral properties like goodness or wrongness, then there's no prima facie plausibility to the claim that they have causal powers, and so there's no prima facie reason to deny that they are abstract entities. I'm willing to hear more, of course, but I don't get the appeal.
Finally, I'm not running any straightforward move from 'these terms aren't synonymous' to 'these terms don't pick out the same in-the-world ontology'. So I don't think I'm running an open question argument. My claim is that if two terms do pick out the very same in-the-world ontology, then there ought to be an explanation for it. I'm allowing for Kripke-Putnam style explanations or other relatively newfangled explanations.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Oh, and as always, if you say that you don't need an explanation, then an atheist utilitarian can say the same thing about goodness and pleasure.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
A.C. Ewing -
Comment by Doug — July 26, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Doug, there are plenty of Christians who disagree with you about God's commands being completely without reason. In fact, I think there are very few historical figures who would agree with you on this hardcore divine command theory position. Maybe Ockham, Scotus, Luther, and Calvin would. Maybe Descartes. But even with those figures, it's somewhat controversial to attribute this extreme position to them.
On the other hand, I do think your position is orthodox in Sunni Islam.
But I don't even think you hold this position. You talk about God's essence stepping in to do some work. It starts sounding like God does have reasons, but these reasons are grounded in the rest of God's nature (not his will). Maybe God's will really is constrained by limits set by the rest of his nature. If so, you're back with Aquinas and the rest, and you've given up on extreme divine command theory.
Also, if you're unwilling to consider hypothetical scenarios to test the truth of general principles, then I give up.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Doug, I don't see what that quote has to do with the issue at hand: whether supervening properties necessarily inherit causal efficacy from the properties they supervene on.
Comment by Dave2 — July 26, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Dave2 wrote:
That is not my view, because I don't think it's true in all cases. For example, the property of not being a prime number supervenes on the property of being the president of the United States. Having the latter property normally entails having causal powers. But the former property has none. But the property of being a human supervenes on the property of being US president, and having the property of being a human does entail having causal powers.
That is what the epiphenomenalist maintains. But I'm not an epiphenomenalist.
No. Just that it's false in the actual world.
But the perception of aesthetic properties may cause someone to buy a painting or propose marriage. The person may then say truthfully, "Its beauty" or "Her beauty" in answer to the question, "What caused to buy that painting?" or "What caused you to ask her to marry you?"
If taken as a global statement about properties I think that is straightforwardly false. Let's suppose that the properties of pleasurable qualia supervene on the physical properties of some state of your brain. It seems to me that pleasureable qualia and othe phenomenal properties easily can and often do cause behavior. Which is one reason I'm not a materialist or an epiphenomenalist.
Actually, that was precisely what I was maintaining, namely that in addition to merely descriptive properties of mental content states, there can also be normative properties that supervene on them. Read what I wrote again (with added emphases):
Moving on, you wrote:
I find that statement itself to be grossly implausible. There's no even prima facie plausibility to the claim that morality guides our actions because of the normative properties of moral beliefs and their place in our hierarchy of reasons for acting?
Are you sure you really mean that?
You continue to miss the point. If they're just (mind-independent) abstract entities then they're causally impotent. But they're not just mind-independent abstract entities. They are among the normative properties of minds. Their supposedly merely abstract status is itself an abstraction from their original ontology as mental properties.
If you are not running an open question argument, then appeal to God's nature as the primary referent of 'good' is not ruled out by Euthyphro or on any other a priori ground. So the property of being good is, the theist may readily suppose, discoverable to be the property of being God-like, even though it's not an analytic truth any more than it's an analytic truth that water is H2O or that Phosphorus is Hesperus. We merely have two different Fregean senses or modes of presentation, also complicated by the fact that only God is literally and perfectly God-like.
Comment by stunney — July 26, 2007 @ 8:59 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
I would say that you are mixing and confusing distinct questions from different categories. Each kind of question is legitimate, but treating one as the other would be a category mistake.
One category of questions concerns the nature of morality, goodness, evil, etc.
The other category concerns a question of personal knowledge. How do I know whether it is right or wrong to do this or that?
All of the questions about "If Zeus appeared… If Jesus appeared…" become questions of knowledge and how I should reliably know whether something is what God wants me to do. Especially since Jesus and his apostles warned about false Christs, false spirits, and issues of deception, it is completely appropriate to reject presentations that are contradictory to the way already designated for disciples of Jesus.
Appealing to the what the nation of Israel did under the old covenant does not apply to the guidance and knowledge questions for disciples of Jesus, since Jesus was also explicit about the fact that He was not setting up an earthly kingdom (i.e. capturing a piece of land to define a domain), and that through His death He was setting up a new covenant. Disregarding these facts and grabbing excerpts out of the old and attaching it to the new for guidance would be another category mistake.
For any disciple of Jesus, an accurate treatment of the practical knowledge and obedience questions cannot be legitimately separated from this fact: "By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." (See 1 John 2:1-6)
How did Jesus walk? Did he chop toddlers or bless them?
Questions about knowledge are pragmatic questions that need safeguards against the real possibilities of deception, error, confusion, misunderstanding, mental illness, etc. They don't address the issues of the philosophical nature of goodness vs. evil, nor should we expect them to. That is a different category.
Concerning any contingent god or other being or even any universe, it is meaningful to ask, "Well, what if it had been some other way?" It is not meaningful to ask that about the non-contingent Being, whose nature is not arbitrary. Change the universe or anything in it and the non-arbitrary nature of the non-contingent Being must remain the same.
There is a whole series of possible Euthyphro questions about "What if that god commanded such-and-such? Could a god make anything good just by commanding it?"
It can be meaningful to suppose that the commands of contingent deities might be arbitrarily different. This is not valid concerning the non-arbitrary nature of the non-contingent Being (God).
The non-arbitrary nature of the non-contingent Being anchors the rest of reality, including moral reality. Evil and wrong doing are in their fundamental essence rebellions against some aspect of reality.
Are concepts such as inconsistency, contradiction, disharmony, denial, etc. meaningful? Yes, of course. There are moral equivalents to insisting on trying to walk through a wall instead of the door.
But a contingent deity does not anchor reality in this way by their (potentially variable) nature.
Comment by eric — July 26, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
If Dawkins were speaking and writing as though what he said "must simply be his opinion" I would not claim his position is inconsistent.
For example, you are quite right to point out that beliefs differ. Now if Dawkins stopped there where you stopped, there would be no contradiction. And I don't see a contradiction in what you have stated.
It is when he gets on the soap box to argue in effect that "their way" is not merely different or not what I prefer myself, but wrong that he steps across the line into contradiction.
If we were to take his outrage and translate it into the language of merely personal preference and opinion, the moral force of his statements would turn to mush. For example, why should his anti-religious preferences be given sway over the pro-religious preferences of the majority of parents? Why should his evolutionary strategy choices hold more weight than those of the majority?
Is Dawkins entitled to have his own idea of what is decent, lamentable, etc.? Certainly. Is it consistent for him to talk as though he were appealing to truth rather than to his own merely personal opinion and preference? No.
As I mentioned to you in another thread, it seems quite hard for atheists to stay consistently within the Universal Acid. They seem to want to step out when it suits their purpose to argue against the errors even of the majority view.
Comment by eric — July 26, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Just to be sure we are clear, it is important to distinguish between a naturalist explanation for the appearance of various ethical systems and preferences on the one hand, and on the other a supposed naturalist defense of the idea that there really is a way that all humans ought to behave.
I would not question that there are causes related to why this or that person or group feels that they ought to do one thing rather than another. Nor would I doubt that those from a naturalist perspective would have various ways of attributing this to entirely natural causes.
That said, none of that begins to become a defense that there really is an objective standard for human behavior that all humans ought to abide by.
If you think any of the examples you point toward actually do the latter rather than the former, please elaborate.
A hallmark of the latter is that the "ought" does not depend on differences of belief, or of preference, or of feeling (e.g. what I would like to do). Beliefs and preferences and feelings are subjective and can be attributed to causal chains that lead to many different end points. That is what the former systems deal with and attempt to explain.
We are questioning whether materialism, for example, can support the existence of an objective standard beyond those subjective inclinations.
Comment by eric — July 26, 2007 @ 10:23 pm
July 26th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Correct. Its not simply because God declared them to be so. When we talk like that, we have in mind the idea of an arbitrary declaration, as though one could just pick one thing or else just pick another, rather than something that is inherent to reality.
There is at least one relevant key divine attribute that you did not include.
When people talk about love being a fundamental characteristic of God, have you considered how it is that that could possibly be so, if everything other than God is contingent? Who does God love before the rest of creation exists?
In the Christian view, God is one being consisting of three persons. In that view, it is quite meaningful to consider a trait such as love to be inherent in God's nature.
As such, it is also inherent in the nature of reality. Creation (i.e. contingent reality) does not start from a clean slate that can be filled out in any arbitrary way. There already exists a non-arbitrary, non-negotiable, inherent community that the rest of creation may or may not accord with.
Evil is inconsistent with fundamental, inherent reality.
Comment by eric — July 26, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
July 27th, 2007 at 12:38 am
Why? An atheist can have values, you agree. But for some reason he is supposed to keep them to himself rather than argue persuasively that other people should share them, whereas religionists are free to harangue the rest of us from their large, tax-exempt pulpits. Seems a bit unfair.
Probably you are confused by Dawkins' dual roles as a scientist and as a polemicist. Speaking strictly as a scientist, you are right, he is not entitled to make value judgments. As an essayist and as a normal human being, he obviously is just as free as anyone else to not only have values but to urge others to share them.
I think you are implying that if Dawkins writes criticially about, say, the bloodcurdling stories of the Old Testament, he has to include a disclaimer with every value judgment: "Lot gave up his daughters to be sodomized by a mob, and I find this horrifying, and I think you should too, but bear in mind that it's just my opinion, other people may feel differently". That's plain stupid, because aside from the fact that it would be unreadable that way, intelligent people know how to read statements of value and can separate them from statements of fact without being told.
Comment by mtraven — July 27, 2007 @ 12:38 am
July 27th, 2007 at 2:56 am
eric,
I totally recognize the distinction (accounts explaining moral psychology as opposed to accounts of moral facts with normative authority), and I assure you that the naturalist metaethical theories I mentioned really are supposed to be accounts of the second type. As for elaboration, all I can tell you without writing a book is that this is mainstream metaethics. You've got naturalist defenders of objective morality (Brink, Smith, Jackson, Foot, Korsgaard, Railton) and naturalist opponents of objective morality (Gibbard, Blackburn, Mackie, Joyce, Harman), and even the last camp tends to defend a sort of objectivity (Blackburn's 'quasi-realism'). Now there is a recent resurgence of nonnaturalism (Shafer-Landau, Huemer, McNaughton), but this seems to have no connection with theism or atheism; everyone's still a naturalist or an atheist or something close to it. The discussions in philosophy of religion concerning divine command theory (Adams, Quinn, Wierenga, Alston) are, near as I can tell, completely unnoticed in contemporary metaethics.
Regarding the divine attribute of being loving, it's an important one, and I have mentioned a few times in other posts. The familiar problem, as I see it, is that we need an explanation as to why being loving counts as conferring goodness rather than evil — an explanation not based on an arbitrary declaration.
stunney,
Regarding the 'inheritance' claim, if qualia are not identical to physical states, then any causal powers they have would be (I would think) independent causal powers, not derived from the physical states they supervene on. Of course, I will agree that supervening properties inherit causal powers from the properties they supervene on in the special case where the supervenience relation is an identity relation. But otherwise, I don't think supervenience does any transferring of causal powers. So I don't see qualia as presenting any counterexample.
In general, it seems like you are attributing causal powers to properties due to their entering into mental content. Now, I assume you don't think that numbers have causal powers simply because our mathematical reasonings are often guided by the mathematical facts. But it seems like you should think that, based on what you say about morality guiding us. I mean, even if I mention moral facts or mathematical facts in explaining why someone thinks a certain way, I wouldn't attribute causal powers to them. And I would certainly want to distinguish experiencing something as being a good reason from experiencing something as a cause.
Finally, I don't intend to provide an a priori argument against a metaphysical identification of the property goodness with some suitable theological property. I am requesting an explanation for the claim that the terms for the first property also serve to pick out the second property. Explanations are forthcoming in Hesperus-Phosphorus cases and water-H2O cases. But I have a hard time seeing how it will go in the case in question. So it's a light challenge/request, not an a priori argument. Maybe we can see a priori what the form of a good explanation would be, and then do some work with that, but I wouldn't presume.
And remember the comparative nature of the challenge/request: I want to see why this identification fares any better than an atheist utilitarian's identification of goodness with pleasure. This is key to my posts, from the very first one on.
Comment by Dave2 — July 27, 2007 @ 2:56 am
July 27th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Dave2 wrote:
I don't think their naturalism does any work in terms of deriving their opinion that morality is objective.
No. It depends on whatever (contingent) psycho-physical laws happen to obtain. You're assuming (wrongly, in my view) that there are no such laws.
Again: It depends on whatever (contingent) psycho-physical laws happen to obtain. You're assuming (wrongly, in my view) that there are no such laws.
It's really weird that you keep saying such things, as if I haven't said umpteen times from the start that I don't believe that merely abstract entities have causal powers, when my whole point from the start has been that I don't think merely abstract entities have causal powers.
That's because you keep on thinking that mathematical entities are mind-independent. I think you are wrong to think so, which is why I referenced Brouwer.
The distinction is obscure.
I don't.
An enormous amount of such work has been done. Your ignorance of it isn't an objection.
Do the relevant reading, then.
What's key to your posts is your ignorance with respect to the relevant literature.
Comment by stunney — July 27, 2007 @ 7:52 am
July 27th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Well, I seem to have missed quite a few posts. I was on the road yesterday; I'll do my best to catch up.
I see that stunney has wondered if I'm posting from a mental institution, mentally retarded, or completely unread in modern biblical scholarship. stunney has compared me to a bucket of piss, called me a moron ("a stupendously mind-boggling moron", even), and referred to my arguments as "a stinking pile of moronic imbecility" and "complete and utter crap".
I am not terribly well-versed in modern biblical scholarship, so if stunney would like to summarize some points that I'm missing in layman's terms, I'd appreciate it. If I knew everything about modern biblical scholarship, I wouldn't be asking these sorts of questions, because I'd already know the answers.
Ah, and then stunney complains (just shy of three in the morning) that I am "a complete fraud" because I had gone to sleep at that point. My apologies for not answering those, but I didn't think they were relevant; I'll explain why presently.
Questions about my sanity, criminality, intelligence or personal stance on baby-chopping are all red herrings. As stunney has shown a predilection for responding to any questions or points I make with attempts to insult me personally as though that were an answer, I don't think I'll be answering any of them. Feel free to assume that I'm an insane criminal with subnormal intelligence who thinks abortions are better than ice cream sundaes. None of my questions or my points have depended in the slightest on my own personal virtue, and they're unaffected by this. So, by all means, assume me to be evil, but please have the courtesy to answer me amidst all the insults.
To restate, for convenience: If Jesus speaks to you through a burning bush, sky writing, deep conviction that appears from nowhere, voice in your head, whatever, telling you to start chopping toddlers–and you have as much confidence that this is Jesus talking to you as you do that Jesus exists in the first place–is it then morally allowable to chop toddlers? Is it then morally obligatory?
Comment by grendelkhan — July 27, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
July 27th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Ah, an actual response. Thank you.
Isn't this just a word game? Aren't you just saying that if Jesus says so, that means it's not arbitrary? I'm imagining the following dialogue here.
It looks like just a batch of special pleading, claiming that sure, it's evil and cruel and arbitrary, but because Jesus is special, it's suddenly not. And again, this objective morality looks a lot less objective when it's defined as "Jesus said it, therefore it's right". In fact, it looks a lot like "Chairman Mao said it, therefore it's right".
(Also, if there's something that I got wrong in that dialogue, apart from "Jesus wouldn't say that!", please let me know.)
If there's some reason why Jesus would have done this prior to 33 AD, but not afterward (a sort of Old Testament/New Testament thing), I'd like to know it. I'd also like to know if you feel that had you been a random tribesman in those days and had gotten an analogous command from a burning bush, it would have been okay/required at that point, and I'd also like to know exactly how objective and eternal your morality is if it changed so drastically. (Also, isn't it kind of mean of Jesus to watch all these people get blasted and plagued and set on fire and generally smote for thousands of years before deciding to have a bad weekend so it can all stop? Does that get filed under the "it's good because Jesus said so" heading as well?)
Thanks for the response; I'll be back in a bit to continue.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 27, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 12:34 am
stunney, why are you being such a prick? Did I do something to deserve this treatment?
Comment by Dave2 — July 28, 2007 @ 12:34 am
July 28th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Well, whatever it is, it looks like I've done it as well, judging by all the name-calling.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 28, 2007 @ 12:44 am
July 28th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Dave2:
Dave2 and others in this thread- TT is a tolerant place but there are limits. Tone down the personal insults and focus on the issues instead.
Comment by Bradford — July 28, 2007 @ 12:59 am
July 28th, 2007 at 1:13 am
The original question did presuppose that you were absolutely convinced that there was incontrovertible evidence that Jesus was communicating with you. You can think of it as analogous to when Jesus initially appeared and brought teachings that were contradictory to the Old Testament (as toddler-chopping was okay then); in that case, I think you're considering acceptance of that change in policy as a good thing, but acceptance of a proposed further change in policy as a bad thing. How do you justify that?
Are you just rejecting the hypothetical because you can't imagine Jesus proposing that? I've pointed out that policy has apparently changed in the past, and thus it's not beyond possibility that it might change again. This is also the sort of thing that gets mentioned in the standard appeal to Mysterious Ways, in which Jesus Moves–who are you to tell him what he can and can't do?
Isn't this just restating the idea that when Jesus does it, that means it's not wrong? It reeks heavily of the sort of special pleading that lets Nixon explain that what he does is by definition not illegal, or Chairman Mao explain that he has the power to define right and wrong. It looks like you're repeating that because of who Jesus is, what he does is by-definition right, and that it's as contradictory to describe Jesus doing evil as it is to describe a four-sided triangle.
It's telling, I think, how quickly it's assumed that any system short of out-and-out command theism must be based on utter moral relativism and nihilism. We can appeal to a shared experience of an external world; we can reason about it independently and arrive at similar conclusions because while the sort of absolute objectivity asserted by the theist is unattainable, the results of reason do have more weight than a simple opinion, and can't be legitimately brushed aside with a breezy "that's your opinion".
Oh, come on. Reason and evidence can exist quite well without dodgy philosophical meanderings about "objective morality" and such. I think you have a view of the effect of the "Universal Acid" that Dennett wouldn't recognize; it strongly resembles the weird nihilism that seems to exist largely (if not only) in the minds of theists imagining what it must be like to be an atheist.
Perhaps the problem isn't so much that atheists are incapable of consistency as it is that you're claiming that they're inconsistent based on ideas that aren't actually held.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 28, 2007 @ 1:13 am
July 28th, 2007 at 1:18 am
grendelken, you can craft any hypothetical you wish and argue based on it but the problem you face is one of projection. The real Jesus has a real character and is not boxed in by your hypothetical ruminations.
Comment by Bradford — July 28, 2007 @ 1:18 am
July 28th, 2007 at 1:35 am
The commenters here should have learned by now that name-calling is stunney's preferred mode of argument. You'd think someone who claims to be a professional-grade philosopher could do better than hurl rather juvenile insults, but apparently not. My advice is to learn to enjoy it — he's kind of fun to provoke, actually, and it means you don't have to take anything he says seriously.
Comment by mtraven — July 28, 2007 @ 1:35 am
July 28th, 2007 at 1:57 am
But is boxed in by your particular mental picture of this character?
In any case, the question doesn't depend on whether or not you think Jesus would do such a thing; I'm told that he's quite capable of Moving in Mysterious Ways. Whether or not you think a hypothetical situation is likely or even possible is kind of interesting, but it's a poor dodge for refusing to answer an uncomfortable question.
I may not think a genie popping out of a bottle and providing me with the three proverbial wishes is likely or even possible; I may not think the opportunity to travel back in time and shoot my great-grandfather in his youth is logically possible in any conceivable universe. Yet I can still answer these sorts of questions. I understand that no one here thinks it's likely, and many think it's impossible, but that doesn't mean the question can't be answered.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 28, 2007 @ 1:57 am
July 28th, 2007 at 4:36 am
No. His character would have an objective existence independent of our perception of it.
To the contrary, my behavoir would be linked to my assessment of what Christ would think and do. You cannot define a realistic hypothetical about my behavoir by disregarding crucial information related to my beliefs.
Comment by Bradford — July 28, 2007 @ 4:36 am
July 28th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Also to Dave2, mtraven,
Reasoning and evidence can exist. But how much can they accomplish on their own regarding morality?
Reasoning and evidence of themselves are ineffectual at creating moral truth. As evolutionist Allen_MacNeil correctly point out earlier:
You cannot derive an "ought" conclusion without having premises that incorporate "ought". Without denying that an atheist can have preferences, how does "reasoning and evidence" convert those preferences into something others (who do not share those preferences) "ought" to follow?
How is this done without a question begging argument that assumes the values one aims to derive?
To make it concrete and in tune with the theme of this thread, Dawkins clearly prefers that parents were not permitted to teach religion to their children. Those parents prefer otherwise. They value the results of that instruction, whereas Dawkins does not. If it matters, they are in the majority and Dawkins is not.
I'd invite any of you to use "reasoning and evidence" (but without question begging assumptions of value and without internal contradiction) to show within an evolutionary framework and a proper understanding of the Universal Acid that the preference of the parents to teach religion to their children is morally wrong.
Comment by eric — July 28, 2007 @ 12:32 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
p.s. From the evolutionary standpoint, the verdict of evolutionary history is that humans are predominantly disposed to the spiritual and the religious. Whether you imagine that this is nothing more than superstition is irrelevant to the fact that it has received the green light of passing selection pressures.
So, Dawkins is in the position of arguing against the historical verdict of evolutionary history. On what basis? Because Dawkins doesn't like the results? This is "persuasive"
Comment by eric — July 28, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
eric asks:
The hard distinction between ought and is is rather simpleminded, but let's go with it.
Ultimately arguments about values and morality do boil down to a preference. But everybody has preferences, many of which are shared among all members of a community or all of humanity. Some of them probably ground out in biology (ie, everybody prefers being well-fed to being hungry). Reasoning can be used to link preferences and consequences, or to show that preferences are contradictory, or similar forms of reasoning.
For example, Dawkins puts a high value on truth (as he sees it), and assumes that his audience does as well. He takes this farther than most when he says that teaching children religion amounts to child abuse. But he's arguing from presumed shared values of truth and that children shouldn't be lied to.
It is certainly possible that someone reading Dawkins does not value truth, or doesn't give a rat's ass about children. Many people seem to prefer lies. It's pretty hard to convince such people. You can point out internal contradictions (for example, the divergent creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis) but not everyone puts a high value on consistency. If someone's intellectual value system is built on "The Bible says it and that settles it", there's not much hope, although you can point out places where the Bible contradicts other values they may hold (ie, if they believe God is loving and kind you can point out the many places in the Bible where God is jealous and cruel).
So you can call it question begging if you like, but ultimately any argument about morality boils down to presumed shared values. There's no reason an atheist can't make such arguments. Being an atheist doesn't mean not having any values.
Yes, so? There is nothing about the scientific theory of evolution that requires us to like all of its consequences. Didn't you start out by pointing out the distinction between "ought" and "is" You ought to think more deeply about what that means.
You seem to think that being a scientific naturalist also requires one to be some sort of tranced-out mystic who believes that everything existing is in a state of moral perfection. That's not how it works.
Comment by mtraven — July 28, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
You seem to not understand my position. The consequence of the evolutionary framework is the Universal Acid, which implies there is no such thing as "moral perfection" or any objective moral standard against which the values of other people can be measured and found to be wrong. The Universal Acid eats away all such notions.
You argued that Dawkins values truth. In that framework, the absence of any objective moral standard is part of the truth. There may be different strategies and different values, but none are objectively morally wrong in that framework — including the strategy of the advantageous lie.
I haven't been claiming that Dawkins needs to like any of its consequences. (Recall, I am not objecting to preferences.) The point is that this reality deflates his argument.
You point out "For example, Dawkins puts a high value on truth (as he sees it), …" Yes, so? The verdict of evolutionary history would seem to be (from the truth as he sees it) that evolutionary history has not put a high value on truth.
Since evolutionary history evidently does not place a high value on "truth" as Dawkins sees it, within that framework why should we?
In other words, how does one conclude that evolutionary history has taken a "wrong turn" by developing religions and the widespread thirst among humans to seek the spiritual?
Given the numerical success of this trend, why should we think it should be abandoned or resisted rather than encouraged? Moral reasons?? Dawkins's own values are just another product of evolutionary history, no less so than the religious ones. Other than personal preference, what makes his values superior to those he wants to displace?
Those who value Dawkins's values will agree with Dawkins's values, but this truism is just as strong if we replace Dawkins with X.
From an evolutionary perspective there are no morally wrong turns. Yet, Dawkins is not just saying "I don't like this turn." He is writing as though we ought to think that some developments are wrong turns. When he does so, he is stepping outside of the evolutionary view that tells us his own values are also just another evolutionary product like those that he detests.
In short, Dawkins writes as though his own values held a superior privileged place of dry land that rises above his ocean of Universal Acid.
As I said to Raevmo:
Comment by eric — July 28, 2007 @ 3:51 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
eric says:
I understand it perfectly, but it's wrong, as I've explained several times already.
This is at least partially true. Evolution has produced both truth-telling and deception. You can find instances of both in animal behavior, and its plausible that human communication, while vastly more complicated, obeys some of the same evolutionary pressures. So, humans have the capcity and propensity for truth-telling and lying. Dawkins prefers the former, which is why he is a professor rather than a used-car salesman. And the presumption is that his readers are going to share these values to a large extent.
I don't know what you mean by "within that framework". Within a strictly scientific framework you can't value judgments at all. As I've already explained twice (and this is the last time), when Dawkins or anybody else makes value judgments they are doing it from the framework of their own value system, which might be informed by science but lies outside of it. It's really not that complicated.
"Universal Acid" is Dennett's phrase, not Dawkins. And I would be very surprised if you can find me a place in Dawkins' writings where he claims that evolutionary theory is universal in the sense that you can derive ethics from it.
Comment by mtraven — July 28, 2007 @ 5:06 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Mtraven, the fact that stunney has made a fool of you so often obviously rankles you quite a bit. But does your attempt to mask your anger and resentment behind a display of mocking bravado have to be quite so strained and lame? As for your self-appointed role as advisor about whom not to take seriously, it seems to me you should issue advisories more vigilantly regarding your own team on that score. Unless of course you actually think that we should take seriously the idea of a toddler-chopping Jesus, 'cos if we don't, America might become a theocracy in which chopping up toddlers will be legal because the theocrats hear the voice of Jesus in their heads telling them it's okay.
Comment by Zoskie — July 28, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Zoskie:
How about that? Good old stunney has himself a genuine fan club.
Comment by Raevmo — July 28, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Whether stunney has made a fool of me or not, I don't feel the least bit rankled by it. He's the one who regularly is forced to resort to sputtering and name-calling, so I suspect he's the rankled party in our little interchanges.
I don't play for any team and am not responsible for anybody's thoughts except my own (although I do appreciate the presence of Raevmo, keiths, and Zachariel, since I actually can learn something from their posts).
I haven't been bothering to follow that thread — but it appears to be about what to do if God or Jesus orders you to kill children. Nobody seems to have pointed out that just such a situation is present in one of the founding stories of Western monotheism. Of course, God eventually said ha-ha only joking, but Abraham didn't know that would happen — he was going to go ahead and kill his own child in obedience to the voices in his head.
Comment by mtraven — July 28, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
mtraven, you can't help but mistell the account to match your prejudices. Where is it written that the voices were in his head. I cited this tactic before and got an admission that it was done to exacerbate the negative effect. When someone mistates a readily documented passage it makes me wonder what else they doctor up.
Comment by Bradford — July 28, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Bradford:
The Abraham story itself was obviously doctored up (or do you actually believe it's a true story?), which makes me wonder what else was doctored up in the Good Book.
Comment by Raevmo — July 28, 2007 @ 8:02 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
What's your evidence for that?
Comment by Bradford — July 28, 2007 @ 8:08 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
OK, have it your way — it was the actual, external Voice of JHVH telling him to go sacrifice his kid. The important thing in such cases is what Abraham (or other would-be religious murderer) thinks the voice is, not what it actually is.
Comment by mtraven — July 28, 2007 @ 8:16 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Bradford:
Well, didn't he live for almost 200 years according to scripture? That settles it for me.
Comment by Raevmo — July 28, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
If there is no discrepency between the thought and the reality then that is the main point.
Comment by Bradford — July 28, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
July 28th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
It is so crashingly obvious once you open your eyes and look. Most of the Old Testament is of demonic origin, and Jehovah is a pretender. He is absolutely not the Father that Jesus spoke of. Jesus was quite clear about it.
That was not God. Satan is called the God of this world and he is the God of much the Old Testament and some of the new.
This is the sort of horrific justification that the frightened human mind must concoct in order to justify the obviously unjustifiable.
As if that which is obviously cruel and inhumane is suddenly holy just because we have attributed it to God.
It is utterly illogical and contrary to scripture. The new testament is completely clear about the nature of the true God, and about the nature of Satan. Jehovah is not the true God.
The Christians who continue to buy their heads in the sand to protect their fairy tale are slandering God. I realize how hard a thing that is to say, and I realize how strong the motive is to keep it up, but once you break free you'll be amazed you ever fell for it.
As for the atheists here, yes, it is true your spiritual faculty is asleep, but at least you have the sense to hold out for a God worthy of the name, and for that you are to be commended.
The OT does have some gems, here's a favorite:
Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
The New testament says that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. That God is love, and that love is not jealous, not provoked, remembers no wrongs, and thinks no evil.
Jehovah commands, assists in and personally commits:
murder, treachery, deceit, killing of children and pregnant women, rape, servitude, harsh punishment, revenge. He is so jealous that he says his name is Jealous. He is given to "fierce anger" that only violence appeases. He commands evil spirits and sends them to deceive rulers and lying spirits to deceive prophets.
Think God's morality turned 180 degrees because times change? A moment's reflection should take care of any such absurd thought. Besides, scripture again:
[in the Father] is no variation nor shadow of turning.
To attribute both good and evil to God is to make of him a kingdom divided.
The pharisees were scripture worshippers, and Jesus said they were of their father the devil. Because some townspeople were inhospitable to Jesus and his disciples, they asked him if they should call down fire to consume them, as Elijah had done. But Jesus rebuked them, and said "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of."
They wanted to emulate the great Elijah. Yet Jesus said that it had been done in a spirit of evil.
Comment by onething — July 28, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Well, thank you for that, that was certainly the most original and entertaining thought I've encountered today.
Although I still prefer the more traditional, JHVH is an Alien Space God and Still Threatens This Planet theory.
Comment by mtraven — July 29, 2007 @ 1:40 am
July 29th, 2007 at 4:58 am
raevmo wrote:
Do you have to be so blatantly jealous about it?
mtraven wrote:
Uh huh.
—mtraven, March, 2007.
Obviously. That's why you didn't chime in.
Oh, wait.:lol:
Here's mtraven at the beginning of this month:
[Emphases added]
Given where you're starting from, there may be some truth in what you say.
So, you mean that in the founding story of Abrahamic religion, we were taught that child-chopping even in apparent obedience to divine orders really wasn't what God wanted?
Wow. I mean, who knew?
Would someone let grendelkhan in on the secret before he tops his unfortunate offspring, if any?
Comment by stunney — July 29, 2007 @ 4:58 am
July 29th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
If you understand it, then why do you repeatedly respond with comments and observations aimed against ideas that are not even close to my position? Some examples:
Understanding my position requires understanding that I'm saying something quite different from the straw men you seem intent on knocking.
If you don't know what I mean, how is it you can confidently say about my position "I understand it perfectly"
I don't mean simply "science doesn't give values". By "that framework" I mean the standard evolutionary perspective of the origin and nature of life and especially of man, i.e. a worldview that is informed by science but not limited to it. That has implications for the nature and place of values and preferences.
In particular, the Universal Acid undermines the idea that there exists a single objective standard by which all preferences should be measured such that some may be reckoned as morally wrong. All one is left with is differences and the opportunity to individually have preferences and to choose to value whatever you choose to value.
Dawkins's own preferences have no compelling claim over anyone else, though he writes as though they should. The idea that there is something wrong about not preferring what he prefers needs to be smuggled in inconsistently from outside that worldview.
Earlier I invited people to try, but so far no one has shown how one can consistently derive the idea that teaching kids religion is wrong from within a standard evolutionary worldview. That is not to say everyone needs to prefer it. But to those who prefer the religion path, the evolutionary worldview has nothing to say against it as being wrong.
The fuming and fussing of Dawkins is a personal aggravation due to personal preferences, which may be shared by others in his choir with similar personal preferences. He has no basis for implying his preferences are on higher moral ground other than as measured by his own self-affirming preferences. (And of course, the same is equally true for everyone else that Dawkins despises. Their values also affirm their values.)
Nevertheless, Dawkins seems either unable or unwilling to recognize and consistently acknowledge this.
p.s. Just consider this question. Does Dawkins consider his position to be morally equal to or superior to, say, Osama bin Laden — objectively speaking? Yes, of course everyone subjectively prefers what they prefer, but then so does the other guy.
Comment by eric — July 29, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
It seems as though you are not taking much notice of the fact that Nixon and Chairman Mao are both contingent beings. That distinction, of course, is central to my point. I have not and would not say that any contingent aspect of reality defines objective morality.
You should also take care not to confuse categories. As I mentioned before, the problem of the nature of good (vs. evil) is a distinct category and a distinct issue from the matter of how we should know whether something is what God wants us to do.
The distinction between questions of nature and questions of knowledge is a standard distinction. Yet your response doesn't seem to address that distinction.
For example, yes it is contradictory and nonsensical to suppose as a starting assumption that the non-contingent Being whose nature anchors reality will be inconsistent with itself. It is like recognizing that pi is a circle's circumference divided by diameter and then supposing that you can assume pi has some arbitrary value including values other than pi — a self-contradictory assumption.
Nevertheless, the practical question of knowledge is distinct. How do you know who Jesus is? Is he just another man or more? How do you know this is Jesus? Is it one of the false Christs that he said would come and that we should not follow? How do you know whether he should be trusted, especially if his commands contradict what Jesus taught and did before? And so on.
Progress is impeded when categories are confused.
Comment by eric — July 29, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I accept that your conviction is sincere, and I quite understand the difficulty you have in elaborating without writing a book. I hope you will likewise recognize and understand that your assurance by itself still does not alleviate my skepticism.
For example, I do not see how any naturalist system can successfully reconcile these three points:
1. Mankind's existence is accidental, not intentionally planned or designed. There was no prior intention for mankind to exist as they do.
2. Mankind's behaviors and preferences are diverse. There is no one way that people behave and not even a single consistent preference on how to behave. (We all like pleasure, but should we seek our own best average pleasure, our family's best average pleasure, our tribe's, our species', or some other standard regarding pleasure? Our own pleasure speaks only to what happens to please us.)
3. There exists some objective standard that has normative authority over human behavior and preferences such that some of those behaviors are objectively wrong and ought to be avoided, even if we find we prefer them. An independent normative standard is not synonymous with "Do whatever you happen to want."
The idea that such a standard could exist prior to humans seems to be ruled out by #1, but that seems to make the standard itself contingent. If contingent, how is it not variable, especially if human nature is variable? If contingent or variable, how does it have normative authority?
Sorry, my fault for not being more clear. I know you mentioned love before, but I was pointing past love to another attribute you hadn't mentioned, i.e. the trinity. It becomes relevant because it means that community and right relationships are not contingent or new with creation or with humans. They are inherent, necessary aspects of reality, including moral reality.
Reality doesn't start from an empty slate that can be written on in any arbitrary manner, not even with regard to relationships. Love is an inherent aspect of right relationships because it is an inherent aspect of reality, including moral reality as expressed in community.
We don't make the color blue to be blue by declaring it so. We don't create animals by giving them names. Rather, the reality comes first and the declarations follow.
Love is not good because of any arbitrary declaration to make it so. Rather, the declarations regarding love are founded on and in line with the inherent and necessary reality regarding right relationships. Moral reality has existence, shape, truth, and meaning that is prior to any commands to humans.
Comment by eric — July 29, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
mtraven wrote:
Can you direct me to where I've stated that atheists don't believe that there are particular, local, evolved purposes? Can you direct me to where I've stated that if atheism is true, we have no control over our destinies? Can you direct me to where I've stated that if atheism is true, that we shouldn't attack racism?
Or are you simply addicted to attributing arguments to me that I did not make?
The argument I have made is in the form of a dilemma facing materialists. The first horn of it is that if, as many atheists (such as Ruse, Mackie, and Raevmo) have held, morality has no objectively normative status, then a common set of fundamental human intuitions and experiences is erroneous (for most people do believe that morality is objective). But then naturalism's own epistemic status is undermined, for if we can be wrong about basic moral experiences and intuitions, then we can be wrong about basic sensory experiences and intuitions, since a Berkeleyan-style argument against the existence of mind-independent matter is at least as plausible as an error theoretic account of morality. The other horn is that if there really is an objective morality, how can such a thing be made to cohere with materialism.
One common way of trying to retain moral objectivity while denying the existence of matter-independent properties is via some form of reductionism (examples include utilitarianism, contractarianism, and neo-Aristotelian eudaimonism.) The trouble is the well-known one that if moral properties reduce ontologically to non-moral properties, then one faces the problem of the 'naturalistic fallacy'. What that boils down to is the problem of explaining adequately how reason can be both a material process and yet also be capable of objectively adjudicating the factual picture presented by human behavior without smuggling in irreducibly moral, normative properties or values; while on the other hand, how to ensure that any such reduction, even if otherwise persuasive, does not sacrifice morality's objective normative status in the process, given that no purely descriptive facts about human perspectives and desires (to which any successful reduction would have to end up at) is, or can be, in fact, normatively objective, rather than just a majority collection of subjectively believed norms and desires.
Here's what I said before about that:
This problem is essentially the same problem as that of how reason can be naturalized, that is, how the normativity of reason in general can be naturalized. Either one reduces normative properties to non-normative properties, in which case you 'solve' the Is-Ought problem by getting rid of the Ought part; or you retain the Ought as something irreducible to the Is, in which case you compromise materialism.
You really are fixated on childish images of divinity, aren't you?
Yes, individuals certainly can have preferences for what they deem good or bad. Some preferences are for aiding the poorest of the poor in Third World slums. Other preferences are for ridding Europe of the Bad Thing known as 'the Jews', ridding Cambodia of the Bad Thing known as 'people not deemed useful to the Pol Pot regime', ridding Rwanda of the Bad Thing known as 'Tutsis', etc.
Yup, individuals definitely can have preferences for what is good and bad.
Comment by stunney — July 29, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
eric:
You are confusing "individual preferences" and "choice". We don't necessarily choose our preferences.
But yes, there is no single objective standard of morality. Deal with it.
I already dealt with this argument several times, for instance here. You keep asserting the same wrong points. It's extremely boring.
He has exactly the same basis as any other human being.
Comment by mtraven — July 29, 2007 @ 4:56 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Eric said,
Well, perhaps it is because those advocating a single objective standard are often Christians who have failed to note that the Bible has no such standard. Perhaps you can explain to me where this standard is to be found in light of the following:
The New testament says that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. That God is love, and that love is not jealous, not provoked, remembers no wrongs, and thinks no evil.
Yet Jehovah constantly commands, assists in or personally commits:
murder, treachery, deceit, killing of children and pregnant women, rape, servitude, harsh punishment, revenge. He is so jealous that he says his name is Jealous. He is given to "fierce anger" that only violence appeases. He commands evil spirits and sends them to deceive rulers and lying spirits to deceive prophets. He threatens his followers endlessly, is angry frequently, and his followers (captives?) flee from him generation after generation, which is not at all how people normally behave in regards to religion.
Think God's morality turned 180 degrees because times change? A moment's reflection should take care of any such absurd thought. Besides, scripture again:
[in the Father] is no variation nor shadow of turning. (epistle of James)
How is it that Jesus teaches us imperfect beings the ideal of limitless forgiveness and love for even enemies, yet Christian theology expects to inspire us with a God who will punish infinitely for finite sins, and does not forgive freely but only under contract and requires his wrath or offendedness to be appeased by a death?
How come Jehovah demands several times that his followers fear him, but John says : There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear: because fear hath torment.
Yet the most prominent evangelical tool of Christians tends to be an existential threat of unimaginable magnitude. In other words, fear.
Well then.
Stunney points out,
Similarly, Jehovah lead the Jews (he was praised after a battle in a song, calling him a 'man of war.') into various battles and ethnic cleansings. Jehovah is the prototype, probably the inspiration for, earthly despots. He was a lot like Hitler.
How are we poor Christians supposed to improve or make a difference in the world with an example like that?
Comment by onething — July 29, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
mtraven wrote:
We on this side already did, sunshine.
If there is no single objective standard of morality, then there is no single objective standard of anything, given that moral intuitions are as fundamental to human experience as sensory intuitions, if not more so (as Berkeley correctly surmised).
You've not at any point justified why sensory experiences should be privileged above moral experiences. One is more ready, in a laboratory, to attribute the position of the dial to a random electrical disturbance, than one is to attribute the notion that we should not rape our grandmothers to an illusion, or a mere lack of desire to do so. Naturalism, in order to dismiss morality as a projection or illusion with no really objective claim upon us, ends up having to deny the validity of the only thing that would even render itself (naturalism) plausible in the first place—the deliverances and character of the subjective conscious experiences of human beings.
Here's what you wrote:
Your stupefying idiocy knows no bounds, doesn't it?
Nobody is claiming Dawkins is required to include a disclaimer with every value judgment he makes. Talk about missing the point!:roll:
The point is that: if Dawkins' picture of the world is right, his value judgements have no greater claim to objective correctness than the Taliban's or anyone else's, since on Dawkins' picture of the world, there is no such thing as objective moral rectitude.
I mean, duh.:roll:
In other words, he has no objective basis whatsoever provided Dawkins is right about human nature.
In other words, eric is spot on and has blown your daft muppetry out of the water.
Comment by stunney — July 29, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
July 29th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Mtraven:
Er. and um.
Do you really not see the problem here? Come on. You're just funning with us, aren't you? If not, I begin to feel sorry for stunney, who has tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to show you where your thinking is flawed, but you're clinging so hard to your ill-thought-out position that you either refuse to see it, or refuse to acknowledge you're wrong.
Here's the problem: Dawkins (and you) contend there is no objective standard of morality–correct? Well then, if that is the case, neither you, or Dawkins, can make objective pronouncements about morality. As in, teaching religion to children is harmful. As in, parents who inflict religion on children are child abusers.
Those are moral judgments. And is means, er, is. It means what's on one side of the word is equivalent to what's on the other side of the word. In other words, it's an objective statement about what is true.
Now, follow along closely–here's the issue. If there is no objective standard of morality, no one can make those is statements. Not the Pope. Not stunney. Not Dawkins. And certainly not you. All Dawkins can say is, "I think such is the case," or, "it is my opinion." Like, I can say "I think it would do mtraven good to take a few philosophy classes. See? Strictly my opinion. Not an is statement. If this worldview is true, that's all anyone can say.
And yet Dawkins is indeed attempting to make objective pronouncements about religion–which, if his worldview is correct, he cannot do.
As eric and poor, poor stunney have pointed out to you. Ad infinitum.
Comment by Zoskie — July 29, 2007 @ 11:36 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 12:13 am
I love it when geniuses like stunney and zoskie talk down to me:
I understand your criticisms perfectly, and I don't accept them, as I've explained repeatedly.
Right. We can make subjective pronouncements about morality.
Actually I don't know what Dawkins position on morality is. It is possible to be an atheist and a moral realist at the same time. But it doesn't matter, because Dawkins is not pawning himself off as a moral philosopher. Whether moral values are subjective or objective, given by God or pulled out of the newspaper, Dawkins as a human being has a right to have and express them.
It's not.
If I say "eating people is wrong", that is shorthand for "I believe eating people is wrong and you should too." Anybody capable of understanding ordinary discourse knows this. Statements of value do not have the same semantics as statements of fact. They are usually prescriptive rather than descriptive, for one thing. Consider: If everybody already knew and agreed that eating people was wrong, there wouldn't be much need to say it. Yet articulating moral codes is one of religion's chief businesses. If morality were objective and universal, we wouldn't have needed Moses to bring down the laws.
The question of moral realism and the semantics of moral statements is more complicated than this, of course. But the argument that somehow because you don't believe in God you don't have a right to moral opinions is not complicated at all. It's simple, simple-minded, and wrong.
Comment by mtraven — July 30, 2007 @ 12:13 am
July 30th, 2007 at 12:42 am
mtraven,
It doesn't seem like you've quite answered on target. You haven't explained what logical basis there is for people bothering to have moral opinions. In general, I agree that a materialistic universe is ultimately meaningless, whether it has morals or not. Nonetheless, I don't think thisstatement of Zoskie is quite accurate either:
If, for the sake of argument, we accept Dawkinsworld as true, we can then say that the one overarching value of the universe is life and the imperative to live. Following from this we can say that that which promotes life is more moral than that which doesn't. That which promotes a balance of life forms for a healthy ecosystem is more moral than its opposite, and within any particular species, that which promotes life will also include that which promotes emotional health, since stress and emotional derangement definitely decrease fitness. Therefore, if religious parents and other adults asure a 15-year-old girl that her recently and suddenly and unexpectedly deceased friend is most certainly burning in hell as punishment by God for not being of the right religious persuasion, some people might not consider that good for the psyche, and therefore antilife, and therefore immoral.
Comment by onething — July 30, 2007 @ 12:42 am
July 30th, 2007 at 3:22 am
mtraven wrote:
So can Nazis. So can mass-murdering atheist dictators like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceaucescu, Mengistu, Enver Hoxha, or Kim Il Sung.
Or blood-curdling atheist-geniuses like Abimael Guzman.
Let's hope you puke every morning that you wake up to the realization that you share a worldview with the biggest mass-murdering bastards in the whole of recorded history.
Comment by stunney — July 30, 2007 @ 3:22 am
July 30th, 2007 at 3:54 am
onething wrote:
That's why it's a good idea not to to take universal Biblical literalism seriously.
Comment by stunney — July 30, 2007 @ 3:54 am
July 30th, 2007 at 4:32 am
Stunney,
Heh, well, that seems like a pretty easy dismissal of a pretty big problem, but I do appreciate that it might help a little. At any rate, you have a quite fine understanding of God, and you do good work on that score. How you hold it all together I don't know and I don't want to know because I feel that I am not supposed to delve into this sort of thing with you.
Besides, I'm president of your fan club.
Comment by onething — July 30, 2007 @ 4:32 am
July 30th, 2007 at 5:10 am
When I discovered that Hitler liked his eggs served exactly the way I do, I could never look at a poached-egg ever again.
But seriously, we know that there have been murdering leaders of all religious persuasions (except of course the scientologists).
The common factor behind politicians who lead murderous reigemes seems to be the tendency towards authoritarian rule and a belief that one can justify certain crimes in the name of "the greater good" or that they are exceptions to the rules that they wish to apply to others.
The moral pronouncements of authoritarians are often tinged with hypocracy. This is as true for historical murderers like Stalin as it is today for moral-crusader types who turn out to to be frequent customers of prostitutes or rent-boys.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 30, 2007 @ 5:10 am
July 30th, 2007 at 8:58 am
"You should too" implies there's something here beyond opinion. If you say to me "you should too" my next question is "why?" at which point you'll be expected to trot out your evidence as to why it is that you believe this is wrong (there it is again, an "is" statement–eating people is wrong), and then, on the basis of the evidence, I will decide whether your claim has merit–in other words, is your claim true.
But even beyond that, think about what it means to believe something–if you believe it's wrong to eat people, doesn't that mean that you think it's a true statement? And apparently, since you're not saying "I don't like the taste of people but you may find them quite tasty" you believe it's true across the board that eating people is wrong. In other words, you believe it's objectively wrong to eat people. Whoops. Can't say that–Dawkins won't let you.
Eh, I give up; I'm not wasting my time simply to have you respond over and over "la la la I can't hear you!"
I believe mtraven is an idiot and you should too.
Comment by Zoskie — July 30, 2007 @ 8:58 am
July 30th, 2007 at 9:05 am
So what you're saying is that life is objectively valuable? In Dawkinsworld, you can't say that–you can only say "well, to me, life seems valuable, but you may think differently. Thus, I cannot make laws preventing you from killing people because it's only my opinion that it's wrong."
And excuse me, but I am the president of the stunney fan club!
Comment by Zoskie — July 30, 2007 @ 9:05 am
July 30th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Comment by salimfadhley — July 30, 2007 @ 9:26 am
July 30th, 2007 at 11:37 am
stunney emits:
Indeed they can and do (make moral statements). That doesn't mean you have to accept their version of morality.
Salim already made the smart-ass reply I was going to make.
Your arguments are old and senile, I'm beginning to think you might be as well. If I was as intellectually ill-equipped as you I'd counter with the 30 years war and pederast priests and Osama, but that would be as irrelevant as your attempt to smear me with Enver Hoxha's crimes. We're talking about the nature of morality, which is independent of the consequences of our theories about it.
So, let's assume for a moment that a belief in a subjective theory of morality leads to terrible crimes while an objective theory of morality leads to a world that is all ice cream and magic dancing ponies. Sadly, that still wouldn't make the objective theory true, because truth does not necessarily conform to our best interests. If you lived in this imaginary world and fancied yourself an intellectual, you'd have a dilemma — should you go after the truth, which might have bad consequences, or accept the comforting illusion that leads to better behavior?
But in the real world, it is moral absolutism that leads to great crimes. It's people who think they have a lock on objective morality who use it as an excuse to whip up armies and kill the unbelievers. The source of their belief can be religion or mock-religions like the Pharonic personality cults of Nazi and Marxist dictators, but it amounts to the same thing. Moral relativists tend to be wimpy rather than warlike. By nature, they aren't disposed to tell others how to live, let alone impose a morality by force.
Comment by mtraven — July 30, 2007 @ 11:37 am
July 30th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Smart-ass?
I'm going to do some axe-murdering tonight with my atheist buddies, and I will probably get away with it as well thanks to my friends in the the evil atheist conspiracy.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 30, 2007 @ 11:52 am
July 30th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
onething wrote:
Statements of morality and value ultimately ground out in innate biological or socially-conditioned preferences. As a result, while morality is not objectively dictated by some heavenly authority, neither is it completely arbitrary.
So, to take a simple example, if you are hungry then you will put a high value on a hamburger. This is not because food is good in some absolute sense, but because you have an evolved biological disposition towards it.
Inter-personal morality is considerably more complicated because the evolved mechanisms that underlie sociality are more complicated. But they exist. For instance, we can't help putting a higher value on the interests of someone we have face-to-face interaciton with on a daily basis than on some stranger far away. Right now I'm sitting here ignoring the plight of people in the Sudan, whereas if my neighbors were in a similar plight I'd feel a need to do something about it.This is highly immoral if I think about it, but mostly I don't, and neither do you.
Sort of, but not really. In Dawkinsworld, there is nothing called "life", there are instead billions of individual replicators all trying to replicate themselves, and often competing to do so. I might value human life but disvalue the life of, say, a malaria parasite or a tuberculosis pathogen.
But yes, our morality is based on evolved propensities which support our kind of life, or at least did in the environment in which they arose. Whether those propensities can work and adapt in the drastically new environment we've created for ourselves remains to be seen.
Comment by mtraven — July 30, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
mtraven wrote:
His reply was as irrelevant as your would-be one would have been, and as your actual reply, er, actually is.
The argument I have made is not and has never been that atheists must act like Stalin, Mao, & Co, or that atheists can't or don't lead morally good lives. It's that insofar as they believe in objective morality, this is incoherent with materialism; and insofar as they are subjectivists about morality, this is incoherent with basic moral intuitions about major baddies like Stalin etc, intuitions which we have no more reason to regard as 'merely' subjective than we regard basic sensory intuitions as merely subjective, pace Berkeleyan idealists.
You're mistaken on both counts. And I'm not beginning to think that your arguments are old and senile. More, you know, sorta non-existent.
Of course, I've long thought you are pretty bad at even understanding an argument.
If you were as intellectually ill-equipped as me, that would be a major improvement. You'd also have grasped that I made no attempt to smear you with Hoxha's crimes. I merely expressed the hope you'd find them to be emetic.
On some views, the consequences of our moral theories might in fact be relevant to deciding which theory is correct, since some theories define correctness in terms of what we have the best reasons to accept, and such reasons may be consequentialist in nature. For instance, some versions of rule-utilitarianism hold that the objectively correct moral rules are those whose general acceptance leads to the best consequences. One might then apply this principle to rule-utilitarianism itself to determine whether that is the theory we have the best reasons to accept.
However, once again you're missing the point. I brought up major baddies not with a view to arguing whether belief in objective morality leads to better consequences, but simply to illustrate the point that it is not just that most of us prefer societies that aren't murderous tyrannies, whereas murderous tyrants prefer societies which are ruled by their own murderous tyrannies. Rather, most people believe murderous tyranny's immoral character isn't constituted by or reduces to what most people prefer. It's not just that people wouldn't want to live under such regimes. Most people wouldn't want to live under a well-meaning but ineffective government either. But the intuition that certain things are not just to be avoided, but are morally wrong, in a word evil, is as forceful a part of the human psyche as the anti-Berkeleyan intuition that material objects exist even when unobserved. Since naturalism rests ultimately on the force and given-ness of sensory experience, attempts to reject the moral intuitions of objective goodness and evil undermine not just moral objectivism, but naturalism itself. For I'd sooner believe with Berkeley that matter does not exist than believe that the wrongness of Nazism, Stalinism, the Armenian, Cambodian and Rwandan genocides etc was merely a matter of my or anyone else's distaste for such behavior, and were not objectively evil.
You seem to think that I have been arguing that moral objectivism leads to better outcomes than moral subjectivism, and is to be preferred on that account. That is yet another instance of you mis-attributing an argument I didn't make. Your addiction in this regard is becoming quite a sight.
My argument has nothing to do with whether a belief in objective morality is justified on consequentialist grounds. It is that the materialist can either accept objective morality but can't reconcile it with materialist metaphysics, or else can reject objective morality but in so doing undermines the epistemic basis that grounds materialism itself.
Comment by stunney — July 30, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Stunney last night:
Stunney today:
Your shameless and clumsy attempts to disavow your own rhetoric aren't fooling anybody, except maybe yourself. Backpeddle all you want, the internet never forgets.
I suspect you don't have a clue about the epistemic basis for materialism. Here's a hint: it's not based intuition.
Comment by mtraven — July 30, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Your concern is awfully sweet, but part of what's required to do so is a belief that what Jesus tells you to do is by definition the right thing, and I'm afraid I don't share that.
Eye-rolling emoticons aside, morality not derived from some 'objective' source (by which I mean something nearly-random which has been declared as objective) generally comes from some starting point which most people share–which has no more objective correctness than any other starting point, but which is generally held, such as "it's better for people not to suffer", "hurting other people is a bad thing", "people different from me and my tribe aren't really people" and so on. From there, you can reason and argue your way to questions of policy, and because you're reasoning from a bit of common ground, you can end up arguing about how you got to your conclusion, but it's hardly the contest of whims that you insist on portraying it as. If you're reasoning from different basic precepts, of course, your differences are irreconcilable and no one's going to be convinced of anything. But then, I don't think you'd have much luck convincing Osama bin Laden to give up Islam either; his set of objective morals are presumably different than yours. (Or, actually, they may not be; the difference may solely lie in the set of exceptions that Big Papa indulged in according to him.)
Isn't this explained somewhere in a philosophy course?
How's that? Why does the idea of objective morality have any influence on "the epistemic basis that grounds materialism" Morality is about what should be; materialism is about what is, isn't it?
Okay, so like I said before, "while you'd say 'no' if Zeus told you to start chopping toddlers, you'd say 'yes' to Jesus, because Jesus is a much awesomer god". Your problem isn't with an authority figure telling you to chop kids, it's with an authority figure that's insufficiently awesome telling you to chop kids.
But I thought that the sets of things which are good and things which god wants us to do were identical. Isn't that what you've been arguing?
"Teaching religion to children is harmful" isn't a moral stance, it's a proposition, as falsifiable as any other. (Note that I'm not saying it's true, and I'm not saying it's false–whether teaching religion to children is harmful or not isn't the point here.) "Teaching religion to children is wrong" is, in fact, a moral stance, which depends on adding together a moral conviction that "harming children is wrong" with the proposition "teaching religion to children is harmful"; the former moral is probably reducible to something simpler, but the point is that it's not a mere preference or whim. If you like, it can be rephrased to look more like "if you think harming children is wrong, then teaching them religion is wrong", which moves the statement clearly into the realm of the arguable, and if you're both standing on the common ground of believing that harming children is wrong, I don't see why you can't speak the same language.
You appear to think that all statements that don't claim an objective, universally-true morality carry no authority whatsoever–because the only authority you can imagine comes from someone in charge decreeing that It Is So. But subjectivity can be reduced to a small number of precepts (truths, if you will, which we hold to be self-evident, or axiomatic), and from that point, you can build a system of morals which, in practice, works the same way as a set of "objective" morals.
Also, would anyone be so kind as to lay out the objective morals which are the basis of the Christian system, explain how they are identical to or different from the Jewish or Muslim set, or if that's a bit much, just let me know if "if Big Papa opens his mouth, ignore the rest of the rules and do what he says" is one of them?
Hm. A belief that the rules don't apply to you, a belief that what the big man says and does is always right… this sounds oddly familiar.
But he didn't explicitly say "Enver Hoxha"! Brace yourself for the stunney victory dance, which may involve fart jokes, as befits a trained philosopher.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 30, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
mtraven wrote:
And you never learn to comprehend the English language, apparently. I said I hope you find the crimes of mass-murdering atheist regimes so revolting that they make you sick. How that's supposed to equate to smearing you with Hoxha's crimes is a mystery, to put it mildly.
I know you have no clue about the meaning of the word 'intuition' as used in philosophy, particularly in the field of epistemology, though your mistake is a common one. Intuition commonly means knowledge that is not based on inference, but is immediate and direct. This applies both to internal cognitive states such as those constituted by memory, basic moral intuitions, and basic mathematical intuitions, and to externally directed cognitive states including the knowledge provided by external sense-perception:
So tough luck, but you're wrong yet again.
Comment by stunney — July 30, 2007 @ 5:00 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Well, that's certainly… counterintuitive. If I hadn't had it explained, I'd assume that intuition and perception didn't generally refer to the same thing. Philosophy is weird. And I still don't get how objective morality has some effect on this.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 30, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Zoskie,
Look, I'm playing devil's advocate here and I think it ny idea works. I handed it to mtraven on a platter. Yes, I'm saying that life is objectively valuable. I'm saying that in this accidental universe, we can say that the imperative is "survive!" So I'm saying two things, first that the survival of life forms is the ultimate game in town and that it could be considered an objective value, and that following that premise, we can then decide that some things are promoting of life and health, and others are not. Eating babies, for instance, is very traumatic and causes overwhelming emotional wounds to people, the mothers, the siblings who watch, the father, etc. So it's bad.
Aw, you're just a new member.
mtraven,
Is that the way you see it?
Can you explain to me why it is wrong to steal? For that matter, why are you morally obligated to take any interest whatsoever in the plight of people on another continent? From an evo-psych point of view, it makes plenty of sense to take an interest in one's immediate neighbors. And, although in my materialist objective morality I can argue that eating babies is bad, I don't really see why genocide could be objectively wrong, so long as those killed are replaced by their killers who then live happily on their land.
Eric said,
Yes, a different category, but an understanding of what is good and evil should have a strong bearing on our decision as to the latter. If someone who calls himself The Lord tells you to kill babies, how will you judge it? Can you?
Well said. Because one would hope that those objective morals coming from God are not a matter of arbitrary whim, but are grounded in reality, in which case they are truly immutable and apprehensible by logic or feeling.
It looks like there is definitely a firm basis for at least some morality in Dawkinsworld, but the reason it doesn't go very far isn't because of an objective, decree-making authority, but because if spirit, immortality and underlying unity are real, the perspective becomes completely different.
Comment by onething — July 30, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Grendelhan wrote:
Nor do I. Nor does Catholic moral theology. Nor does mainstream Protestant moral theology. Your implication to the contrary is so off-base that it demands :roll:.
It is important not to conflate the question of what causes there to be some moral code or other (such as shared interests), with the question of whether a given moral code or particular moral belief is correct, rationally credible, justified, right, true, etc. And although some might think that a rule against hurting people has an obvious causal origin in evolutionary sociobiology, many societies have organized themselves historically on the basis of hurting large numbers of people, such as women. The plain fact is that institutionalized injustice and cruelty have been behaviorally par for the course since time immemorial. So we can't 'read off' or 'explain' morality simply by looking at human behavior, since a vast amount of human behavior has been and continues to be morally wrong, often horrendously so. You may have heard about Darfur, for instance.
The issue has to do with foundationalism in epistemology. Intuition in epistemology is any kind of knowledge that is not based on inference, but is direct and immediate. The deliverances of immediate sensory awareness are the uninferred foundational knowledge that is used to justify theories about the material world. At bottom, there is immediate observational data upon which theories are then built. But those foundational data are not the only kind of immediate data of human experience, nor the only kind of uninferred knowledge. There's also mathematical intuition (needed at least for axioms), memory, and basic moral awareness (only if an accused doesn't know right from wrong in general is an insanity plea accepted in criminal law). But if the materialist advances an error theory of morality (as some do), then the case for not advancing an error theory of matter (a la Berkeleyan idealism or other forms of phenomenalism) is also undermined, since both belief in morality and belief in matter are both ultimately based on extremely powerful kinds of intuition about basic experiential data.
Comment by stunney — July 30, 2007 @ 6:20 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
mtraven, et al;
mtraven has pointed out (repeatedly) that atheists can have subjective moral opinions and have a right to express them. I have repeatedly affirmed this and have repeatedly pointed out that that is not in question and it is not the problem. Let's see if we can look at it from a different angle to get past the communication impasse.
Given the above quote by Dawkins as an illustration, which of the following comes closest to how we should read his position.
a) Dawkins has subjective morals that differ from these other people, and he would like to persuade as many people as he can to adopt his values, but he realizes, acknowledges and readily grants that objectively speaking his views have no objective moral superiority to the morals and values of those other people.
b) Dawkins believes his values and moral preferences are not merely subjectively preferable to himself and those who share his views and values, but also objectively morally superior to the morals and values of those other people that he clearly denounces and apparently despises.
It is a crucial distinction.
If we have two distinct things, A and B, it is meaningless to say "A is closer than B". Closer to what? A is clearly closer to A, but then B is clearly closer to B. It is a truism into which we could arbitrarily substitute any instance.
The claim "A is closer than B" only has significant meaning if there is some other standard C that A can be closer to than B.
Objective superiority of a moral position is meaningful only in the context where there exists an objective standard by which comparison becomes possible. Deny any objective standard and one immediately removes the basis for claiming objective superiority.
So, does Dawkins show any indication of the humble admission that his moral judgments and values have no objective moral superiority over those of his chosen opponents, only a subjective preference that he would like others to adopt?
Or does he write as one who believes his morals and values have some objective moral superiority, in spite of their being minority positions?
For extra credit, in light of his reference to Jerry Falwell, does Dawkins believe that the majority view on a question of morality can ever be objectively wrong morally? Or is it only the case that the majority is only wrong in the subjective sense that it differs from his own minority view, but position each can be equally correct morally when viewed according to its own perspective and standard?
Comment by eric — July 30, 2007 @ 8:41 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Hi Eric,
This has gone far enough that I can no longer ignore it.
Facing and/or challenging something is not the same as condeming it or declaring it wrong.
Many religious people tend to suggest their is something wrong with questioning faith. It was this type of thinking that convinced me to search out other religions when I was younger.
If anything needs questioned, it is faith including my own.
Facing and challenging faith needs to be done, not because it is right or wrong but because that is what people who think for themselves do.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 30, 2007 @ 9:32 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
eric asks:
Well, you know my answer, let's see what Dawkins says about it. The God Delusion has a couple of chapters on morality. The first is mostly is about grounding morality in evolution. At the end he discusses the categorical imperative, which he judges inadequate to ground out morality in general. He says:
So, he is not a moral absolutist.
In a later chapter he discusses the changing moral Zeitgeist pointing out that the moral norms of society shift over time (certainly true), and there's a general consensus in modern, liberal societies about morality (probably not). But certainly things that were part of "objective morality" a century or two ago (such as slavery) are now not…I'm not going to bother to try to summarize the argument, read it yourself. But it's clear that (a) he's not a moral absolutist, and (b) he is not merely putting forth his own subjective views, he's pointing out that the morality of religion is at odds with the actual moral beliefs of society. In other words, his morality grounds out not just on his private beliefs, but what he takes to be the general set of shared values that are likely to be held by his readers.
Comment by mtraven — July 30, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
July 30th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
mtraven wrote:
All this means is that moral beliefs change, with the result that beliefs about morality that were common at one time may cease to be common, and beliefs about morality that were not common may become common.
Indeed. Likewise, beliefs about the physical world also change, with the result that beliefs about the physical world that were common at one time may cease to be common, and beliefs about the physical world that were not common may become common.
But these sociological facts per se do not entail that we should deny that there is an objective morality, any more than that we should deny that there is an objective physical world.
The question of how we might come to know or be rationally justified in believing moral propositions is an interesting but logically separate issue from the question of the existence of objective morality, just as the question of how we might come to know or be rationally justified in believing propositions about the physical world is an interesting but logically separate issue from the question of the existence of an objective physical world.
A slaveowner in the pre-Civil War could have appealed to a general set of shared values that were likely to be held by most Southerners to argue that the morality enjoined by the religious beliefs of Northern abolitionists was at odds with the prevailing moral beliefs of Southern society. But it's not clear that this appeal to the doxastic status quo is a moral argument at all, let alone one that impugns or is even relevant to the question of whether morality is objective. Certainly most people today would say not merely that the slaveowner's view is not one they share, but that the slaveowner was wrong, just as Aristotle was wrong about some people being 'natural slaves' and just as Aristotle's views on women were wrong. Etc. People don't just say that beliefs about slavery and the status of women and the nature of stars have changed. They say those earlier beliefs were mistaken, wrong, false.
The question is: can such implicit acknowledgements of objective rational and moral normativity co-exist consistently with evolutionary naturalism? I think they can't for reasons well explained by quite a few atheist philosophers themselves:
But to state the obvious, and as is recognized by its proponents, moral skepticism is very counter-intuitive. Swindling an old lady out of her life-savings, strangling her cat in front of her, and then tying her up and setting the house on fire so that she burns to death, is a pretty evil thing to do, but as influential a moral skeptic as Mackie held that such a statement is false because it predicates of those actions a property, wrongness, that does not exist. On Mackie's view, the moral conceptual framework is a systematically erroneous theory about what exists. (I believe Ruse takes a similar error theoretic stance.)
The trouble of course is that all knowledge or justified belief ultimately rests on something that is not justified by something else, on pain of generating an infinite regress which would itself generate global epistemic skepticism; and there is no good reason why basic sensory experience should be any less vulnerable to an error theory about an objective physical world than basic moral experience is with regard to objective morality.
Of course, for theists, the objective nature of both the moral and physical order is secured, because both are intended by a mind that is both epistemically and morally perfect.
Comment by stunney — July 30, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 1:24 am
stunney:
Dawkins was not using the changing moral zeitgeist to argue against objective morality. I think he thinks that that point of view is so obviously false it doesn't merit a lengthy refutation (I tend to agree with him there).
He's arguing that there is an evolving moral consensus that gets "better" with time, in that it more closely resembles some liberal/progressive ideal, and the less it has to do with religion. I don't want to get into the business of explaining or defending this point of view because I don't think I agree with it all that much. But I must note that it is close in spirit to your view, which seems to be that moral beliefs get progressively closer to the ideal of objective morality, much as science comes up with progressively better models of the physical world.
The fact that (some) people think they have a handle on objective moral truth does not mean that it's so. People have an unfortunate tendency to project their local morality onto the rest of the world, across time and space, regardless of whether it is appropriate or not. Everybody thinks their morality is the one true one (the exception ought to be philosphers, who should have training that lets them think outside the box of their immediate cultural situation, but I can see I expect too much. Anthropologists are better).
Let's consider that in a couple of hundered years morality may have shifted (advanced?) to declare some things that we now think are fine to be immoral. Maybe meat-eating is considered a barbaric atrocity, or abortion. On the other hand the citizens of that era might engage in practices we think are appalling (let's say, raising decerebrate human clones for spare parts). So, does that era have the right to judge us? Or vice-versa?
The problem is that there is no agreement among theists about what that objective morality is. An objective reality that you can't access might as well not exist.
The comparision of moral knowledge and scientific knowledge is specious. There are well-defined procedures for figuring out how close a scientific theory matches the underlying objective reality. I can't even imagine how you would go about constructing such a procedure for moral knowledge.
Comment by mtraven — July 31, 2007 @ 1:24 am
July 31st, 2007 at 1:30 am
After writing that, I recalled one of my least favorite intellectuals, Leon Kass, who does have a procedure for verifying moral judgements and it seems very close to stunney's — things are wrong if he thinks they're icky. In his case, this applies to everything from cloning to homosexuality to birth control to eating ice cream in public. I'm going to assume stunney doesn't share all of Kass's sensitivities, so the question is, who gets to decide whose moral instincts are the objective ones?
Comment by mtraven — July 31, 2007 @ 1:30 am
July 31st, 2007 at 3:07 am
mtraven wrote:
First of all, lack of agreement strengthens the case for objective morality, and weakens the case that morality is subjective but caused by human evolution. If the latter were true, we should expect that subjective moral judgements should not diverge so radically as they do between, say, Saudi Arabia and San Francisco, since preferences would be subject to the same selective pressures that the human race has had to endure for millenia, resulting in the most adaptive set of moral beliefs winning out. In other words, moral codes should converge on the one that's most adaptive. Since we've all evolved over tens or hundreds of thousands of years, our preferences should be convergent on things like homosexual freedom, use of violence for political ends, euthanasia, abortion, government intervention in the economy, the rights of women, the duties of children to their parents and extended family, capital punishment, land use, and more. Yet opinions about the ethics of such things are much more divided than before, despite globalization and worldwide media of information.
The comparison is not specious.
First, scientific procedures have only been around for a few centuries. There's no reason why moral epistemic procedures must keep pace with other areas of inquiry such as natural sciences. You might want to think about how the social sciences fare relative to natural science in terms of epistemic performance.
Second, physical objects are much easier to understand than moral value. Hence, given an objective morality, one that's independent of our preferences, finding good procedures to arrive at moral truth should be expected to be difficult.
Third, if morality is subjective and does not refer to anything other than evolved human sentiments, then there can be no such thing as a requirement to match up our moral preferences and beliefs with something external to those preferences and beliefs, because, ex hypothesi, there is no external something.
There being no possibiity of an objective mistake, a guaranteed failure to hit the epistemic target (guaranteed because there is no such target), should actually make it easier, not less easy, to identify and select procedures aimed at consensus since they can't refer to anything outside ourselves on an anti-realist moral theory. Indeed, this is why Mackie's book was titled Inventing Right and Wrong. You can't make a mistake about some moral system you invent, because there's no fact of the matter about what's correct, if the only criteria for judging correctness are something you supply. And since our species has a long, and fundamentally common history, the most adaptive choice of moral criteria should be nigh universal. But that is not what we observe. And it's not just the millions who revere the likes of bin Laden, Moqtada al Sadr, or the Taliban I'm referring to in connection with increasing moral polarization, but moral opinions about Bush are also polarized to a remarkable degree, in case you haven't noticed.
Comment by stunney — July 31, 2007 @ 3:07 am
July 31st, 2007 at 3:43 am
I earlier wrote:
I want to add that there is no good reason why basic sensory experience should be any more reliable a source of knowledge about an objective physical reality than basic moral experience is with regard to objective moral reality.
To illustrate:
Now ask people this question. Which of the following propositions would you more readily accept as being likelier to be true:
1) Phenomenalism is true and so physical objects as things in themselves that are independent of sensory experience do not exist.
2) Swindling an old lady out of her life-savings, strangling her cat in front of her, and then tying her up and setting the house on fire so that she burns to death, is not an objectively evil thing to do.
As long as you think either 1 is the more probable or that they are more or less equally probable, then there is no reason why basic moral intuitions should not be considered as epistemically respectable as basic sensory intuitions.
Comment by stunney — July 31, 2007 @ 3:43 am
July 31st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Is it okay to do that if she's a witch (you know this because your Jesus-sense was all a-tingle), and you donate the resultant money to a Christian charity? You're not supposed to suffer them to live, right?
As for the dichotomy, I think that as the question about phenomenalism has nothing to do with how we act in the real world–it strikes me as a bit similar to the free-will question, or the brain-in-a-jar question, in that a world corresponding to one answer is indistinguishable from a world corresponding to the other. In contrast, the other question talks about the real world; while I don't know which one people would be more likely to accept as true, I can tell you with relative certainty that they'll care more about the second one.
Ah, but there are morals found in every culture (or at least nearly every culture; I'm not aware of exceptions, but that doesn't mean they don't exist); "incest is bad", for example, or some version of the idea that people who do wrong should be punished.
And of course you can make a mistake about a moral system you create (or more likely arrive at by consensus with the bulk of your society); the rules which you establish to get at your aims may fail to accomplish their goals. The system may be self-contradictory or lead to unintended consequences. These are all mistakes, and none of them require the existence of an omnipotent overseer to define.
To some extent, the disagreements over Bush's policies are the result of a disagreement on whether or not they're a good way at getting to a particular end. Many of his supporters and his critics would agree that "freedom" is a good thing, and that more people getting it is a good thing. Disagreements about how this freedom can be provided aren't disagreements about basic moral philosophy, and can be argued in such a way that both sides can actually communicate with each other.
I'd also submit that both Bush and bin Laden appear to have the Abrahamic moral system which includes the rule "if God/Allah says it, then it's good, even morally obligatory"; they may disagree on the particular commands that God/Allah issues, but not on the basic rule that these commands must be followed–they're mortal enemies, but not because of basic moral differences. Dinesh D'Souza has explained this in detail. An adherent of a moral system which doesn't fit in with this may be able to coexist with them based on their actions, but argument is fruitless, as they're not standing on common ground.
Also, opposition to or support for Bush may be an expression of tribalism, and have very little to do with who he actually is, what he actually does, or what he actually believes, and more to do with a sense that he's "one of us", as expressed through various totems of authenticity.
That's weak, especially since humans' inherent sense of right and wrong–the agreement that does exist–has been cited as evidence for theism, which is closely related to a claim of objective morality. Are those that make that claim wrong? Do you really believe that shared beliefs held by cultures which hadn't had contact with each other are evidence againt the existence of objective morality?
By that argument, our bodies should be convergent on things like skin color, eye color, hairiness, lactose tolerance, tendency to resist certain diseases, height, and so forth. Variation in these things comes from differing environments, of course, and one could reasonably come to the conclusion that the environment in which a culture developed influences the morals it espouses, and certainly influences the way in which its ethical system is derived from that moral basis.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I think this is a sterling case of how irreconcilable differences can occur even when the underlying morality is identical. Kass and that guy on BMEzine's modblog who enjoys poking metal rods through his viscera may both believe that if something inspires disgust, it's wrong, but they're going to disagree just as strongly with each other. Perhaps there's some formal distinction to be made between systems of morality which depend on subjective preferences and ones that don't, at least not at the most basic level. Then again, perhaps such a distinction is impossible to make.
The discussion about how certain cultural differences are at their root irreconcilable reminds me of this lovely bit from Iain M. Banks. I haven't read the book yet, but the question of how one culture could adapt to the appearance of one with a radically different moral structure reminded me strongly of the bit I'd seen quoted.
In other words, it's not the sort of gap which can be bridged; the best you can hope for is that you get to a similar point from the two different starting sets of morals, and that you can live together relatively peacefully.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 12:29 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 1:09 pm
stunney says:
Um. no. First, morality is not completely determined by evolution, it's a set of cultural memes that ground out on evolved biological propensities, and thus there are many variations on common themes. The closest analogy is language, which pretty obviously depends on some innate hardware, and thus varies a lot while retaining some root commonalities. Second, even if culture was completely determined genetically, there could still be variation — if you haven't noticed, there is considerable genetic variation in humans for things like skin color. Third, I cannot see for the life of me how variation in morality strengthens the case for objective morality.
The rest of your post seems to be trying to support last that point but it makes absolutely no sense to me. It appears that you are saying that if morality is subjective, we should have all converged on something we made up, but being objective it's hard to discover and thus we have the radically divergent views we actually have. That's the dumbest argument I've heard since you trotted out Kripke.
Comment by mtraven — July 31, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 2:09 pm
I do believe that there is one quasi-objective basis for morality.
It is the notion of love, the golden rule, of treating the other as yourself. And I believe that this is a development that comes out of our recognition of the Oneness of Being that some more enlightened people have perceived. And this kind of perception creates a genuine altruism for those who experience it. I see evidence of this in the teachings of Jesus and Guatama Buddha, for examples.
Other than that, it seems to me that morality is much as the atheistic naturalists have described — social, cultural and individual strategies to get along in the world effectively. And these kinds of evolutionary moralities all appear even in religions and beliefs which were founded on more altruistic ideals.
We should judge those moralities by how well they adhere to the principle of universal compassion.
Comment by mcromer — July 31, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 3:13 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
It seems that no matter how often one says that morality is objective and hence that moral truth does not depend on what any human thinks, but is what it is independently of human judgements, some people will still be unable to hear the phrase 'objective morality' being used by anyone who believes that morality is objective without thinking that such a person is ipso facto claiming to have superior knowledge of what moral truth consists in than they do or than those in general who are skeptical of the notion that morality is objective. That, of course, is precisely the opposite of the conclusion suggested by morality being objective and hence not reducing to human beliefs about it, and indeed is more consonant with the idea that morality does reduce to whatever most humans within a given region of spacetime think about how one should conduct oneself. It's almost as if one should conclude that since there was no way of probing or even knowing anything about the Big Bang until recently, there was no objective fact of the matter until modern cosmological science and astronomical techniques developed in the last few decades for doing so.
But the same people will be the first to uphold the objectivity of scientific claims, and would laugh at those who would object to the scientific enterprise for claiming to have superior knowledge about how old the world is compared to what their Biblical faith subjectively tells them in their heart is the case about the age of the world. It's as if 'objective' mysteriously changes its meaning from 'dependent on subjective opinion' when used in reference to morality to 'independent of subjective opinion' when used in reference to dating the universe. They'll gleefully tell you that Vikings used to see nothing wrong with pillaging and plundering the eastern coast of Britain, or that Albanians, Pakistanis and many others see nothing wrong with honor killing, as if that somehow meant there couldn't really be anything objectively immoral about pillaging, plundering, and honor killing. What about the African practice of genital mutilation of young girls, or the Taliban practice of stoning adulteresses to death? (I mention in passing that I think one reason Jesus was seen by the first Christians as a true revelation of God was precisely his moral teaching about arbitrary, unforgiving, and inhumane man-made rules and customs, which the gospels frequently recount him as vigorously opposing.)
Now what of course the critics of objective morality often mean is that if some area of discourse is amenable to yielding scientific conclusions, then what that area of discourse refers to is something the truth about which is objective. But this just means that they're using the word 'objective' to mean 'amenable to yielding scientific conclusions'. Yet there are surely many statements which are objectively true or false, and hence many objective facts about reality, which are not amenable to yielding scientific conclusions, not even in principle, because they're not testable by scientific methods. Here's some:
There are no objective facts which are not amenable to yielding scientific conclusions
The only possible rationally warranted beliefs are those yielded by the methods of science.
The only real entities are those which are posited by the natural sciences.
Matter exists independently of perception
Life had no intelligent designer
The number of rational minds in the universe to date is prime
It seems clear that at the very least, the implied equation between 'objective' and 'scientific' is neither true as a matter of definition nor true as a matter of empirical testing. As philosophers say, it's neither an analytic nor a synthetic truth. But then, it is not an equation that can be legitimately used to argue to the conclusion that morality is not objective. To do so is to confuse ontological with epistemological questions. We don't make this confusion when talking about the physical universe, and comparing what we can know about it now with what we could have known about it for almost all of human history and all of human pre-history.
But is it even the case that we don't really have knowledge or warranted true beliefs about what is right and what is wrong? Surely most people know or at least justifiably believe, and most people that have ever lived since the dawn of civilization have known or justifiably believed, that torturing and murdering old ladies for kicks and for cash is wrong, and known it more clearly, more definitely, and more justifiably (despite what sundry sociopaths may have thought to the contrary) than what the tiny coterie of cosmologists may tentatively conclude nowadays about the inflationary epoch or whatever; or, indeed, than what a tiny coterie of evolutionary biologists may tentatively conclude about the Cambrian explosion or an RNA world.
In this light, it seems unwarranted to say that science knowsTM 'hard' objective factsTM about the objective worldTM, whereas morality is wishy-wooey stuff that is basically whatever the majority evolved opinion du jour says it is. This is not to say that there are no difficult and controversial issues regarding morality. But science is not immune from difficult and controversial issues either. Such as how the brain generates and interacts with consciousness. And whether strong AI is really possible. And what quantum mechanics really means. And whether string theory is or isn't the best route towards a quantum theory of gravity.
And how life began. And what the criteria for detecting design ought to be. To pretend as some do that morality is a sea of chaotic controversy while science is a sea of rational consensus and tranquillity is a far cry from the truth.
And that's before we get on to things like history, or social sciences, or social policy, or economics. You should see those guys.
Comment by stunney — July 31, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 3:40 pm
mcromer wrote:
I don't really disagree with this.
Morality is determined or constrained by two things: human biological nature (or some other nature), and a sort of Platonic, quasi-mathematical abstraction thatl ies at the core of divergent moral codes. The golden rule or the categorical imperative is taking morality to a level of abstraction where it may be considered to be independent of the specific context in which people actually live.
Let's imagine that we make contact with intellignt methane-breathing lifeforms from Rigel. We don't have much in common with them. They might not be able to understand most of our culture, and vice-versa, but hopefully we could communicate the Pythagorean theorem to them, since that is at a level of abstraction that makes it universal, or so we think. The same might be true of the golden rule (although who knows, aliens might not even have the concept of individuals to do unto). Let's hope so.
The nature of mathematical objects is controversial and unresolved — do they exist in some Platonic idea-space, or are they inventions? Morality at this level is subject to the same unanswered questions.
But the real problem with this abstract view of morality is that it doesn't get specific enough to be of use in real life. Do unto others as you would be done unto, sure — but what others? Does it obligate us to take care of the whole human race as we would ourselves or our children? Sounds nice, but it's not gonna happen. It apparently doesn't resolve questions like whether homosexuals should be allowed to marry, or whether blastocytes should be considered persons. These questions remain resolutely stuck at the concrete, specific, biological level of moral discourse.
Comment by mtraven — July 31, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 4:26 pm
That's a heck of a sentence. But what good is it to claim that there exists an objective morality when no one can actually tell you what it is? mtraven put it as eloquently as possible: "The problem is that there is no agreement among theists about what that objective morality is. An objective reality that you can't access might as well not exist." What's the point?
What sort of advances could conceivably aid in the discovery of this objective morality which you assure us exists where no one can make use of it? How is this situation analogous? As I pointed out earlier, questions of morality have important effects on how we conduct ourselves; if important information about what the Invisible Objective Morality is is inaccessible, then how does it even matter that it exists? And how does its existence matter in the first place–what's the difference between a world with and without it?
(Also, it seems like a pretty mean move for a loving god to demand that his subjects follow a set of rules he refuses to make available.)
Are you being purposely obtuse, or are you just ignorant of the difference between claiming objective knowledge of morality and claiming knowledge of the various things learned via the scientific method? Science doesn't deal in absolutes; it deals in gradations of evidence ranging from promising hypotheses to things we're so certain about that we regularly stake lives on their accurately describing things. If a magic word was discovered that, when spoken, allowed one to float, it would require a lot of previously-held ideas to be thrown out and/or revised. We don't know that there's not such a magic word, but it's very unlikely, given the rest of what we know.
It looks like you've noticed that science doesn't deal in absolutes, and so, for you, it's no more valid than the sort of hand-wavey assertions about conveniently-inaccessible "objective morality" you're so fond of. In short, you don't see what benefit empiricism confers, and that's kind of breathtaking. You're writing this on a computer, using the internet.
Yes, looking "in [your] heart" (by which you apparently mean looking in the Bible; I'm curious as to how you equate the two) to determine the age of the earth is an inferior method compared to collecting and evaluating evidence. Are you disputing this?
The thrust of your argument appears to be that reliable but not absolutely certain knowledge is pretty much no better than a random guess. It's the sort of thinking that explains that 2^500 is a finite number, and 3 is a finite number; there's really not much difference between them.
(Also, I have a long post waiting in moderation, which will appear here eventually, I hope, which poses a few other questions for you.)
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Well, ya can't lose for winnin'.
The problem I have with Christians talking about an objective morality is that they can't say what it is, and the Bible seems to make things worse rather than better. You'd think after 4,000 years of special, privileged information they'd be obviously light years ahead of the pack.
Another problem I have is that this objective morality is treated as something inaccessible or separate from the human, but if humans are not fundamentally linked to God in their nature then they will never be good. True goodness must come out of one's nature, not some sort of obedience, which will always be stilted, contrived, unnatural.
Comment by onething — July 31, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I bet there's some kind of special pleading for that–something like: normally, obedience will be stilted, contrived and unnatural, but when you're obedient to Jesus, it's not.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Hi Onething,
One problem with your theory is that if Christianity has advanced moral knowledge then their habit of sharing with others, evangelizing and spreading that word will have brought those others along with them - thereby eradicating some of those light-years of separation you'd expect to see.
Another problem is that it is arguable that Christianity is light-years ahead of the pack. One could argue that it is light-years ahead of the child-sacrificing Native Americans they ran across a few hundred years ago, or the wife-burning Muslims, or the child-slaving Buddhists, or the sati-encouraging Hindis - don't you think?
And it's mere question-begging to suggest that the ideas that inform traditional religious morality is not light-years ahead of that which informs secular positions.
This sounds like an objective realist position. Are you claiming that there is such a thing as "true" goodness?
Is it objectively true that obedience to Christ is not a good thing?
Comment by Pez — July 31, 2007 @ 5:58 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Why is that? How is that question-begging? What conclusion is part of the premise of that argument?
The ideas that inform "traditional religious morality" include ideas like "women are property", "people in the other tribe aren't really people" and "because you follow a totally awesome god, what you do to conquer everyone else is right, no matter what it is". Do you believe these to be "light-years ahead" of positions such as "women are people", "people in the other tribe are also people" and "doing evil in the name of doing good doesn't stop it from being evil"
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 6:11 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Hi Grendelkhan,
The one I named.
Very selective lists here.
Nice question-begging putting the last three in the "secular" camp as well.
Oh yes, and what makes those last three more moral than the ones you've decided belong to religious list? Just an opinion, right?
Comment by Pez — July 31, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 6:42 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
What good is it if there's an objective truth about what the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics is, or about whether Jesus fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, or whether 3237 alien civilizations already know we exist, if no one can tell you what it is? Perhaps there is none. However it would be fallacious to conclude in such cases that there is no objective truth about the matter.
This is highly amusing given previous discussions I've had at TT about Dummett's anti-realism with respect to universes forever devoid of sentient life . It seems nobody on your side can keep their story straight for longer than five minutes.
One minute, completely undetectable reality is fine and Dummett's making an idiotic argument. Next minute, complete undetectability is the same thing as not being real at all. 
You guys should put your show on the road. Maybe a world tour, then a movie deal. You're that funny.
Er, advances in rational argumentation, of course. What other common way of accessing objective truth exists?
You should try it sometime.
Did I say it was inaccessible?
Or did I just say that its objectivity doesn't entail instant perfect universal knowledge of it?:roll:
Well, let's see.
One contains objectively existing value and minds capable of understanding it and deriving moral norms from it, and the other doesn't. For instance, in the latter, no moral belief is mistaken or false because moral relativism describes that world, or there simply are no moral beliefs in that world, perhaps because there are no animals with the right kind of minds in that world.
Yes, that would be mean, not to mention incoherent. If it happened.
But that's a) a big if, and b) doesn't follow from anything I've said.
That's uncanny. I was about to ask you the same thing.
No, I'm not ignorant of the difference.
Yes, I even allude to its tentative nature. I am not sure why you are so hellbent on DEMANDING that moral knowledge can't be similary tentative without that entailing that morality is not objective.
Ah, so it's like moral claims, then.
That's what I thought.
Said, even.
I know the magic word. But I won't tell you what it is because if I did I'd have to kill you. Although if Jesus told me to interrupt my baby-chopping duties to tell you the magic word and then kill you anyway just so we could put a video of the look on your face on You-Tube and laugh at it, I'd consider it.
Moral value offers the world far more benefits than empiricism ever has or ever will.
Er, no. Do I really have to do this? How about you just take my word for it? It's inferior.
Oh, wait, here's Saint Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century about how to interpret Genesis:
In short, medieval Christianity did not insist on a literal, young Earth, 6-day creation, reading of Genesis. Neither did Saint Augustine eight centuries previously. It seems you are unaware of this.
And what did Augustine and Aquinas rely on to reach such a position? Rational thinking. That's why they are considered Doctors (meaning Teachers) of the Church. The sooner you give up your ill-informed superstition that people only became capable of rational thinking about 500 years ago, the less confused and boring you'll be.
How the hell you reached such a conclusion may defy mankind's ability to find an explanation for it forever.
You're the one who's claiming that if we don't have absolutely certain knowledge of what objective morality enjoins, then we must press the panic button or simply declare it's a random guess as to what it enjoins, and that therefore objective morality is useless. I'm the one who's claiming that just because we don't have instant, universal, infallible knowledge of what objective morality enjoins doesn't mean that we have no knowledge or no justifiable or no true beliefs about it.
There are times when I wonder if you are as rational as 'brights' claim to be. This is one of those times.
That's a very inapt analogy, even if your previous characterization of my position hadn't been as mind-bogglingly inaccurate as it was.
I'm thrilled.:sad:
Comment by stunney — July 31, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 6:49 pm
eric wrote:
Eric, stunney, or anyone who believes that God is the basis of objective morality:
1. What, specifically, is it about God that makes his moral opinions objective, while ours are merely subjective?
2. Why, specifically, does this particular characteristic make God's morality objective?
3. If God is morally good, and if he wants us to choose (freely) to be morally good, then why does he not communicate his morality clearly to all of those who honestly seek it? Why are there so many diverging opinions about morality among sincere seekers?
Comment by keiths — July 31, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 8:18 pm
You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You'll also note that I didn't claim that the negation of the three examples I gave was secular; it's simply the negation of three moral precepts frequently espoused as traditional religious morality. If you happen to think of those as secular things, that's for you to hash out.
Haven't you been paying attention? Basic moral precepts aren't arrived at through argumentation, and they aren't simply opinions. Rather, they're the consensus of a social group which is based on them. If you think that "women are property" is a basic moral precept, there's not much I can do to convince you otherwise. I think you're wrong, you think I'm wrong, and there's nowhere for us to meet in the middle.
Also, I didn't decide that those were traditional moral precepts of the Abrahamic religions; the Abrahamic religions did. If you have a problem with it, I guess you'll have to take it up with Jesus.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 8:18 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Favorite-movie-ever!
Comment by mcromer — July 31, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Hi Grendlelkhan,
You don't?
I do. But that's not a surprise, since I'm the one using the phrase.
Oh, I see.
So it really wasn't an answer to the statement of mine which you quoted immediately preceding your reply:
My statement involved a comparison of the two, and you were just negating the one. You weren't speaking in parallel to answer my claim as I thought. I get it.
Is this a consensus opinion or did the social group arrive at knowledge of a fact?
How can I be wrong (if, hypothetically, we disagreed on those basic moral precepts)?
Am I wrong to prefer hamburgers over sushi as well?
No, I won't.
I'll discuss the ideas with rational fair-minded people when they choose to and question the integrity of people who present them as you did.
Comment by Pez — July 31, 2007 @ 8:50 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Yes, but in such cases one can conclude that while it's an interesting question and well worth batting around over cheese fries at the diner, the answer doesn't really matter. The existence of objective morality, you keep claiming, matters.
I am a different person from Dummett. He and I are different people. I've heard the name before, but I couldn't tell you what his ideas are. If my opinions or conclusions differ from his, it doesn't show that he's a hypocrite who can't keep his story straight, and it doesn't show that I'm a hypocrite who can't keep my story straight. (We may both be, but this doesn't show it.) This is because one person saying two contradictory things is incapable of keeping a story straight; two people saying one thing each, which, when placed together, are contradictory, are not.
Isn't this sort of thing part of one's education as a philosopher?
What sorts of useful objective truths have been derived solely from a priori reasoning? What sorts have been derived recently, and how? What makes you think that sitting in an ivory tower and thinking is a better way of accessing truths about the universe than examining it?
I think you're blurring the distinction between not having any knowledge of it at all and not having instant perfect knowledge. Given how often an outline of this "objective morality" is requested and how finding out what it actually entails is like nailing jello to the wall, I figured that it was closer to the former. Please explain what this objective morality consists of, to the extent that you know of it.
But if this morality is inaccessible–as you seemed to be saying it was–then even if there exist minds capable of understanding it, they won't know about it, and they won't know how to act in accordance with the objective morality. The question was how a world with an inaccessible objective morality (which is what I thought you were positing, and I'll cheerfully withdraw that assertion once you post the parts of this One True Ãber-Morality that you know so far) differs from one without it.
Ah, I see what you're saying here. I'd be a lot more forgiving of the tentative nature of the objective morality if it were actually produced at some point.
There are also plenty of nondisprovable things about the universe which which we assume, and which deny the idea of getting objective knowledge about reality. You could be a brain in a vat; you can't prove that everything you think about the universe is objectively true and not based on illusion. We may as well proceed as though empiricism uncovers objective truth–a world in which it does is indistinguishable from one in which it doesn't–because what we perceive is consistent with it. However, as you've pointed out, the existence of an objective morality does have effects, which is why it's interesting, if it does in fact exist.
Maybe it's redundant, but a world in which you know the magic word and refuse to use it or tell anyone is indistinguishable (to anyone who isn't you) from a world in which you're lying. Thus, it's not a particularly interesting proposition.
So, do you think that Jesus would have you put an axe through my head, even if (as everyone else here seems to think) he'd never tell anyone to axe toddlers? Does this mean that you'd kill me if Jesus said so?
It's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison, isn't it? Without morality, we wipe ourselves out in violence and savagery. Without empiricism, we don't have much in the way of civilization. Things kind of suck pretty hard when you take either one away; I suppose it sucks worse if we're all dead than it does if we're all stuck in the Stone Age, but I'm not terribly keen on either.
On the other hand, I don't see how the specific objective morality everyone keeps talking about offers the world any benefits if people don't know what it is. If people knew what it was, wouldn't they be shouting it from every rooftop, because it's so nifty? The question has been posed at least three times in this thread alone, and has yet to be answered, even with the most tentative outline.
I'll have a bit of trouble giving up a superstition that I don't hold, and haven't put forth. Where did you get this idea about me from?
That's kind of close, but it's more accurate to say that I'm the one who's claiming that since all we know about objective morality is that people claim real hard that it exists, and that they contradict each other, it's evident that a majority of such claims are false. You're claiming that the morality which you have hidden in your hat, honest, for real, no joking, just like the magic antigravity word, is very nice, and I'm being a big meanie for not agreeing with you that it's the greatest darn thing ever.
I like to think I'm rational enough not to attempt to slap labels on you which you haven't adopted. I wish you'd show me the same courtesy.
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Begging the question is a logical fallacy. It means something specific–in order to come to an answer, one assumes that answer as part of the premise. It's a form of circular reasoning. I don't see how it applies in the situation you referred to, and I asked you to explain how it does.
Traditional religious morality is Bronze-Age savagery. Comparing it to anything short of an authoritarian dictatorship makes it look bad. To claim that it's "light-years ahead" of anything else seems to betray either stunning ignorance, highly selective memory or a conviction that "women are property" and the like are really darn great ideas.
Moral precepts aren't facts, and they're not discovered; that's not what consensus means.
Are you paying attention? Like I said before: If you believe in that as a basic moral premise, and I believe in the opposite, there's no way for us to reason with one another. I may believe you to be wrong, and believe it real hard, but that's not going to matter to you. I may try to reason with you, and you with me, but as our moral precepts don't come from reason, they're not going to change by arguing.
If you'd rather eat hamburgers than sushi, and I don't have "eating hamburgers is wrong" as a component of my morality, then we can live together so long as you don't stop me from eating sushi. What's your point here?
Comment by grendelkhan — July 31, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
July 31st, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Hi Grendelkhan,
That looks about right to me.
What I said:
What is in question:
Can we make moral judgments from a secular point of view as opposed to from a religious point of view - and what does it mean to claim that we can?
Can we determine what is it to be moral or immoral apart from the religious framework which includes an objectiveness of morality?
Can we measure improvements in morality apart from an objective standard of morality?
Likewise, can we compare two different moral systems where there is no independent standard?
etc.
To presume to measure and compare any of these is to presume already the answer which is to be demonstrated, ie. that this can be done apart from a system which accepts objective morality.
No it isn't. But even if it were, by what standard do you determine that this is not light-years ahead of anything else?
"Ignorance" implies a state where certaiin knowledge is lacking.
Knowledge of what, then? Fact? Nope? Opinion? Who cares?
Interesting assertions.
I know a traditional religion which teaches that
Galatians 3:28
This religion doesn't merely teach that you don't hurt people because you wouldn't like to be hurt but that you treat them as you treat yourself because you are one in the same body. This does not betray a conviction that "women are property".
So they are not facts, these moral precepts.
And you say they are not opinions. So what are they?
But toward what do we reason?
Not truth, surely. Not a discernment of fact, obviously.
Can we reason to an opinion? Hardly.
So to what do we reason, in your system where morals are not objective?
My point is "answer the question".
How can I be "wrong" (as opposed to just having a different opinion or preference) when our moral precepts collide?
And how could you have "eating hamburgers is wrong?" as a moral precept?
So moral precepts are not facts.
They are not discovered.
They are not opinions.
And they are not reasoned to.
So I ask again, what are they?
[edit: massive repetition removed]
Comment by Pez — July 31, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 12:24 am
grendelkhan said:
This is roughly the theme of Kafka's The Trial, aside from the loving part. Speaking of which, I recently saw the Orson Welles film adaptation starring Anthony Perkins, which is phenomenal — highly recommended.
Comment by mtraven — August 1, 2007 @ 12:24 am
August 1st, 2007 at 1:15 am
Hey Pez,
No, that won't work. There's just too many places Christianity hasn't penetrated, and too many places where it is no better than anything else. There have been some very nice societies found, none perfect, but Columbus is supposed to have praised the islanders he found for their generosity and goodwill. Naturally, he decided that God had given them and their land into his hand, for which he thanked God. Those people were quickly enslaved, and in fact have almost entirely perished from the face of the earth. The cruelty of the Spanish toward the indigenous is legendary. Imagine the morality of that: no question that a found land belongs to one's country simply because one is, well, superior and of the right religion. Imagine thinking, assuming, that God condones that. Where could they have gotten such an idea? Um, try Jehovah. With Jehovah as a precedent, it is no wonder Christians have been confused. That's why I'm on the warpath here. It's time to stop the confusion and have a consistent faith, a consistent idea of God, so that Christian people can have an inspiring ideal to live up to.
That said, it would be a grave mistake to discount the real advances that Christian ideals have encouraged. Of course they have. For example, Christianity ultimately won out against slavery, and may have done so in the first centuries as well.
No, I'm afraid not. What about the rule that allowed girls as young as nine to be subjected to the strapado? What about when a horse was burned at the stake along with its master, for witchcraft? What about when after 1400 years of Christianity, it suddenly became a good idea to go to Africa and raid it for slaves? How did they justify that in light of Matthew 25? I'll tell you how - with the Old Testament. Frankly, it would be tiresome to go on and on. This tack just won't get us anywhere because the facts won't support it. What's this about child-sacrificing native Americans? All societies seem to have their embarrassments; and the antics of the Hebrews under their despot Jehovah are no exception whatsoever.
Why wasn't Jehovah an exception????
I'm not sure what you mean about child-enslaving Buddhists, but at the onset of the industrial revolution, we had many children that were virtual slaves, except they were treated worse.
I can't really imagine why you say that. Many secular people have pretty decent moral ideas, albeit they are products of modern, western culture. Some of the gains in western culture may be attributed to the better side of Christianity, and some to the enlightenment, which was more of a free-thinkers rebellion. You may have missed my earlier posts on the behaviors of Jehovah in the old testament. Like when I called him the prototype of tyrants.
Rock, on another thread, hit it on the head:
The theists here see the blindness of the materialists, and the materialists are unimpressed with religion as they see it, but from where I sit both are defending their own blind spots. Or what do you think "“ your side is completely in the right and these other people are 100% deluded. Oh, if only life were so simple.
If Christians had a coherent and consistent theology of God, the morality might follow, and you wouldn't be losing this argument.
It's really not that hard. Get for yourself the Holy Spirit and then use your discernment to judge the scriptures, whether they be of God, and jettison the garbage. Otherwise, Christianity is a house divided. A one-legged man doomed to walk in circles.
Why, yes. I have no idea what objectivist realism is. I'm not that kind of philosopher.
Obedience is good if you understand the why of it; my point was that while you might try to commit certain actions because you have an idea it's what Christ wants, until you act that way because that is what you yourself prefer, you have not become good. That's what the Holy Spirit is for. One isn't good if the act is according to the rules but against one's inclination.
Comment by onething — August 1, 2007 @ 1:15 am
August 1st, 2007 at 1:47 am
keiths wrote down some questions that haven't been answered yet. Here's another one for the God-minded among us:
- God presumably has perfect knowledge not only of the current state of the universe, but all of its past and future states as well (at least, that's my impression of the standard theological model — God is outside of time and thus not bound to perceive the world from a particular locus in spacetime like we are). Given that, he must know exactly what we are going to do — to him, we've already done it. So, how do you reconcile the existence of an omniscient and eternal God with free wil? If yu dispense with free will, as it appears you must, how do reconcile that with your theory of morality?
Comment by mtraven — August 1, 2007 @ 1:47 am
August 1st, 2007 at 2:02 am
Keith,
1. What, specifically, is it about God that makes his moral opinions objective, while ours are merely subjective?
Good question. It is, I think, a category error. There is no nonsubjective experience.
2. Why, specifically, does this particular characteristic make God's morality objective?
It's because we are derivative of God. Duality is true, (we are separate beings) but less true than unity (we are all one intermingled being) because unity is a deeper and more causal aspect of reality. Our immorality is a reflection of our confusion, our lack of inner alignment with unity. It's not that God has some different, abstract or mysterious morality. It's that consciousness and reality are the only games in town, and God is consciousness and reality.
3. If God is morally good, and if he wants us to choose (freely) to be morally good, then why does he not communicate his morality clearly to all of those who honestly seek it? Why are there so many diverging opinions about morality among sincere seekers?
Oh, but are they sincere? Are they really sincere? I don't think there is much disagreement among the truly sincere.
I don't really believe that the divine Absolute communicates in books or words. If you want to hear from God, deepen your "˜vocabulary.' He doesn't communicate "˜clearly' (in words) because then we'd be overwhelmed and not free, and he wants us to grow up and not be spoon fed. He doesn't tell us in words because only by experience can we learn to prefer the good and following rules doesn't cut it.
Using any type of force against another being is the definition of evil. God never does that.
(Nor will God defend him/her/itself. That's why I have to do it.)
Mtraven,
The question of free will is beyond me.
PS to my previous post:
A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
When the Great Tao is forgotten,
Justice and piety appear.
Comment by onething — August 1, 2007 @ 2:02 am
August 1st, 2007 at 4:00 am
Hi OneThing,
Your references to the atrocities of Christians and Christianity are embarrassing and painful indeed and this post is not meant as a denial of such things, nor as a whitewash. But you forget that it is the very Christianity, the very teaching itself, and not some accident of history, which brings an end to such atrocities.
For over a millennium the Church forbade the persecution of witches for the very fact that right theology demonstrates there are no witches. The faith took a wrong turn and then was corrected. (Yes, I can speak of right and wrong, but only because there exists a target, even when we are off.)
As you mention, Christianity won out against slavery in the West - twice, in fact. It is the very fact of the birth of Jesus as an outcast and an outlaw, into the race of a subjugated people, and who taught that all were one in His Father, that made the abomination, in the end, untenable.
You mention the actions of the Spanish in America and ignore the fact that from Rome the weakened Church spoke against these actions. And that it was Cortes' priest who opposed his use of force against the Aztecs. In fact, as cruel as the Conquistadors could be, their priests, missionaries and friars were most often revered by the natives. The priests in America preached, as elsewhere, that the settlers were bound as Christians to love the natives as themselves.
And it was also the Christians who embraced the native people of the Americas and protected them because they were God's children and created in Paraguay the world's first completely literate (as well as being free) society. This included abolishing the death penalty, establishing free services for the poor, building schools and hospitals, etc.
If education has any role in progress to morality then we can thank Christianity for creating schools across the Empire under Charlemagne, the Church (as well as the Reformers) for the invention of the University, the worldview for the creation of science and for the literacy in Europe in general.
We also have them to thank for hospitals and for taking on the duty (and showing it as a moral duty), modeled and preached by Jesus and the apostles, to act as agents of healing in the first centuries since Christ. And for ending infanticide in Europe. And for the promotion in importance of the individual and his right to privacy and freedom. And for the defeat of communism in Europe. And for providing free legal service in the middle ages. And for the western legal system itself.
Even the Roman Empire, at times when it rejected Christianity, was appalled by the fact that Christians were so much better at such things as charity (the worth of which they were among the first to demonstrate) than were the pagans, and so modeled such institutions on theirs.
Meanwhile, every other system continues with its abominations. Slaves were taken, children sacrificed, nations eradicated, animals hunted to extinction and enemies tortured in the New World before Christianity ever "found" it. The first natives Columbus met, incidentally, attacked him. Slaves were taken in Africa prior to European Christians finding them there and the practice continues today. Across Asia slavery continues and outcasts are tortured and experimented upon and their organs are harvested.
I can't see how it is remotely possible to imagine one group or world view which has done so much moral good - despite the fact that it carries with it its share of moral failings as well - as Christianity.
As for warpaths, you've lost the argument.
America kills a million babies a year in the name of choice, tolerance, morality and freedom. If we follow the rule of subjective morality to choose a system where we listen to our hearts to determine our morality, or pick a morality where the least harm is done, or subjectively rank actions and weigh their morality-quotient, or pick based upon whether or not the weakest members are protected, or where humans are not treated as a means to an end, then I choose this field and the game is over.
Even with much repair to be done and light-years to go yet, Christianity wins, hands down and by light-years.
Yes, we need to look at the question with open eyes. This means that we have to face and correct errors wherever we find them. But it also means we have to have the humility to doubt our doubts as well as our beliefs. And, again, only with a target and an objective morality ( for Keith and you, what makes it "objective" is that it actually exists, and that it is not dependent upon human emotions and prejudices (Stunney already outlined this long ago)) can we even talk about being ahead or behind. And that comes only from God - the God of the Bible.
We can speak of oneness, tolerance, hearing the Holy Spirit, etc. but Christianity is the religion whose first commandment is to love God and whose second is to love one another as you love yourself.
Philippians 4:8-9
But this has nothing to do with whether or not morality is objective.
Comment by Pez — August 1, 2007 @ 4:00 am
August 1st, 2007 at 7:42 am
mtraven wrote:
Oh well, if you cannot see for the life of you how variation in morality strengthens the case for objective morality, then that settles it, because everyone knows that if mtraven can't see for the life of mtraven how variation in morality strengthens the case for objective morality, then variation in morality can't possibly strengthen the case for objective morality.
Thank you for mounting such a superb argument. And I think I speak for everyone who's ever lived in saying so.
Oh well, if you can make absolutely no sense of it, then that settles it. Because everyone knows that if something makes absolutely no sense to mtraven, then it can't make any sense, period.
Thank you for mounting such a superb argument. And I think I speak for everyone who's ever lived in saying so.
You'll never live that down, will ya?:lol:
How Mtraven Demonstrated That Kripke's Modal Argument Against Materialism Is Dumb, by Mtraven, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.:lol:
For others, on Euthyphro questions, go here
and here, and here and here.
Comment by stunney — August 1, 2007 @ 7:42 am
August 1st, 2007 at 9:09 am
grendelkhan:
Um, let me think about it….
Oh, I know.:idea:
Mathematics.
Because Einstein did it that way.
I'm not. You were.
Don't beat up old women for kicks and cash. There's more, but time is short and you're not quick on the uptake.
How true. But maybe it's not.
Inaccessible, that is. I never said it was, you know.
Ah, so you're asking what I know about what objective morality enjoins?
Okay.
Don't beat up old women for kicks and cash. There's more, but time is short and you're not quick on the uptake.
A miracle! A miracle!
Let's make a deal. Describe how life evolved exactly as it really happened, then I'll tell you about how genocide and slaughtering babies a la Herod is objectively wrong, even if Herod thought it wasn't.
Objective morality has no effects. Objectively good and objectively bad minds have effects.
It's a subtle distinction, though if you visit Auschwitz, as I have, it might just dawn on you.
I was kidding. I don't really know what the magic float-enabling word is.
I kinda thought that would be obvious and that you were not made of wood.
I now see how wrong I was. Sorry.
Not if Jesus told me to. Just if I had the chance.:lol:
You may wish to study the history of the 20th century. Heck, maybe even visit Auschwitz. Oswiecem, in Poland. They used cyanide. Zyklon B.
The 20th century was the most technologically advanced, ever. It had two world wars, and Communism killed scores of millions. People are still dying in North Korea because of it. You should maybe go there to see how marvellous society is when they get past all that medieval nonsense about sin, and grace, and good and evil. When they don't believe in God, people will believe in anything. Even Stalin, Mao, and the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.
You're so wise, it's amazing to be living on the same planet as you.
If they don't, it wouldn't. But visit North Korea.
Visit North Korea.
Probably your posts.
Er, if lots of people say objective morality exists but don't agree 100% on what it enjoins, then that doesn't mean that objective morality doesn't exist. Their claims that it exists could be 100% true, in fact.
So I'm glad you realize that so clearly.
It's like electromagnetism, and what people used to say about it. It's corpuscles, it's a wave in the aether, it's this, it's that.
But there it was, all along, existing objectively.
But you make it so hard, grendelkhan. Why do you do that?
Why?
Comment by stunney — August 1, 2007 @ 9:09 am
August 1st, 2007 at 10:56 am
mtraven wrote:
There are whole books on this topic.
Some Christians are compatibilists about free will. Some are not. Some atheists are compatibilists about free will. Some are not. But even atheist compatibilists don't think their compatibilism about free will entails a denial of moral responsibility.
I'm not a compatibilist. In fact, I lean towards Molinism, and even published an article in a refereed philosophy journal in which I took a Molinist line on divine omniscience and divine timelessness. But even since then there's been more books published about divine omniscience and free will.
But I always come back to a simple image. The image I have is of sitting in a cafe (Mercedes at Venice Beach) with a friend and ordering breakfast. My friend orders blueberry pancakes. I just order a mimosa and coffee. I now know my friend ordered blueberry pancakes.
And yet the strange thing is, as I sip my mimosa, I can't shake the intuition that my knowledge that my friend ordered blueberry pancakes does not mean that my friend did not freely order them. What's more, I have an intuition that I would have the same intuition about my friend's order being freely willed even if I were omniscient when we sat down to order breakfast.
But as I said, there are whole books devoted to this topic. It's even possible that some of them are true.
Comment by stunney — August 1, 2007 @ 10:56 am
August 1st, 2007 at 12:07 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
Judge not lest ye be judged. That's what Jesus said. I think there's even a commandment in the Old Testament about killing.
Something like, Thou shalt not kill, though oddly enough, it wasn't written in olde English, and didn't even include a clause along the lines of: unless you're insane and imagine that Jesus is ordering you to kill, in which case killing is just fine. In fact, you ought to kill if you're insane and imagine that Jesus is ordering you to. And by the way, the more wars, the better.
Vat. Also not to be confused with bat.
You're right. They'll sign their names to the first for ten bucks, but even fifty bucks might not be enough to secure their signatures to the second one. People are simply too principled.
You're going out on a limb, I see.
They're not moral mistakes, however, if objective morality doesn't exist. Which was my point. Which you missed.
Why am I not dumbfounded that you did that? There must be a reason.
Some people think he has God's ear. Others that he is the Anti-Christ.
Some people (me, for instance) think the war in Iraq is immoral, not merely an unwise or ineffective means to a good end.
There is no such rule in Catholicism, which has long rejected the divine command theory of ethics. Catholicism is an Abrahamic religion. The first Eucharistic prayer of the Mass even says, "Abraham, our father in faith".
You're simply imagining things which are not true, probably because you're hopelessly ill-educated about the matters you're discussing.
I wouldn't trust Dinesh D'Souza to explain anything to do with morality.
The Vatican opposed the Iraq war on moral grounds. So did I.
The inherent sense of right and wrong is evidence for theism, which is closely related to the claim of objective morality. But, as I keep on explaining, neither theism nor the objectivity of morality entails universal perfect moral knowledge any more that it entails universal perfect omniscience. And Jesus did not say that only knowledgeable people go to heaven. Indeed, I'm quite certain that many illiterate people who know nothing about the finer points of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, utilitarian bioethics, or Catholic moral theology, are much better people than me.
Er, no. I simply point out that if morality reduces to beliefs about morality and if beliefs survive because they're adaptive, then we should expect to see greater moral consensus than we do.
It's when facts are unknown that there's greater scope for disagreement in belief. But if a class of facts are just constituted by beliefs, and if beliefs are adaptive constructs, then there's less scope for disagreement.
Wrong. We select our beliefs. You may not believe abortion is wrong. Others believe it is. People do not select skin color, etc.
Apart from Michael Jackson, of course.
Environment does not explain why women don't wear bikinis much on the sunny, hot streets of Riyadh or Karachi, while even on cool days you'll see them doing so in southern California.
Not that I go out of my way to, of course.
Comment by stunney — August 1, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 1:31 pm
stunney wrote:
I don't doubt it; probably wars have been fought over it.
They used to write lengthy books about squaring the circle too.
I see you've gone back to smileys and lame sarcasm, indicating you don't have any actual new arguments to make. You seem to be sticking with the manifestly ridiculous idea that there should be more convergence of actual moral codes if there is no underlying objective moral code, than if there was. And backing up your arguments with nothing but your subjective feelings — if stunney feels that morality is objective, then it must be so. Yawn.
Comment by mtraven — August 1, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
But those truths are useful only insofar as they map onto the real world, and that mapping can't be determined by a priori reasoning. Also, we're talking about the use of a priori reasoning to discover valuable moral truths, which I think are pretty different from "if you assume Euclid's five axioms, then all triangles have interior angles summing to a straight line". Try again, and pick something that's legitimately part of philosophy this time.
Quantum mechanics and relativity weren't discovered by sitting in a room and thinking; they were discovered by gathering a heap of evidence, then sitting in a room and thinking about it. Quantization wouldn't have been discovered without experimental data about blackbody radiation and the photoelectric effect. Relativity wouldn't have been discovered without empirical data about the orbit of Mercury. Where did you get the idea that Einstein made his discoveries using a priori reasoning?
So that's a basic moral premise, not something derived from a deeper principle? Is beating up old women for reasons other than kicks and cash okay under this morality? Beating up young women or old men? Again, does it make a difference if they're witches? (I'm quite willing to accept an "I don't know" in response to these; I'm thrilled just to have someone finally answering me about what The Objective Morality contains in the first place. Also, a quick outline of how you know these things would be just peachy.)
You were certainly acting awfully coy about it, and you're still not being particularly helpful.
See, this is where you're, as I said before, "blurring the distinction between not having any knowledge of it at all and not having instant perfect knowledge"; I have a pretty basic handle on current theory in vertebrate evolution, but, of course, there are plenty of things which are unknown, or which are, though we think we know them, actually wrong. You're equating that state of things with not being able to tell me why genocide is bad–I'm not asking for much, just a basic outline, some heuristics and an explanation of the rationale for reaching them. Asking you if genocide is wrong or not is not analogous to asking for a complete and correct phylogenetic tree of life; it's (vaguely) analogous to asking if the bird lineage or the mammal lineage split from the reptiles first.
Don't you define the latter in terms of the former? If objective morality has no effects, direct or indirect, why should we care about it? (Also, I'm a bit surprised to see you splitting minds into objectively good and objectively bad. Isn't that a little simplistic? Reminds me a bit of Star Wars.)
Does the Holocaust come back as "bad" when run through the Objective Morality Machine? If so, then one might consider that had the folks in charge been aware of this morality, they wouldn't have done it, and that would certainly have been an effect. If the Holocaust comes back as good or neutral when run through the Objective Morality Machine, then… well, I'd be a little surprised.
Because of a history of people attempting to handwave away things they'd said as not really serious when pressed, I tend to make a point of taking everything that I feel could possibly be serious, seriously. So…
…you're okay with murdering me. That's a bit surprising.
It would be nice if one could get past that medieval nonsense about right and wrong being defined by an authority who lives in the sky, or in the Kremlin. Alas, we seem to be stuck with it.
Yes, world wars are terrible, terrible things. Why, I'm sure that we'd be better off in pre-technological societies. Oh, look, someone's done a bit of research. "Percentage of males estimated to have died in violence in hunter gatherer societies? Approximately 30%. Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world wars and a couple of nukes? Approximately 1%." I suppose you can go back to hunting and gathering, but I'd rather stick with civilization, if it's all the same to you.
But I thought that "Objective morality has no effects"; I'm confused here.
Could you be a tad more specific, preferably pointing out a post where I said something remotely resembling the opinion you're tacking to me?
Right; the fact that people disagree doesn't mean it's nonexistent, just that it may as well be right now, since it's inaccessible. And as we can't get to it through empiricism, then how do we get to it? What sorts of advances have been achieved recently?
The analogy doesn't hold; we can do experiments and whittle down hypotheses about what electromagnetism entails. How do we do that with objective morality, given that truths about it are not acquired by experiment?
Comment by grendelkhan — August 1, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 3:09 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
And I answered:
I noticed later that you equated rational argumentation with a priori reasoning. But this equation is inaccurate, and certainly too restrictive, for inductive and abductive reasoning may include lots of empirical data. And this is also the case with moral reasoning. Thus, we might say that it's morally wrong to give small children loaded guns to play because we know empirical data about what can happen if you do. Of course, there is also an a priori element since moral reasoning must at least implicitly refer to value, and no empirical data logically entail the existence of value. A nazi may not value Jewish life, but if so, he need not be making an empirical error (though that can come into it too.)
I take it you think morality, and hence moral reasoning, is useful. And so you can add that to mathematics as an example of rational argumentation that is not, or not purely, empirical but helpful all the same.
And of course, even empirical reasoning isn't purely empirical, since it involves, er, reasoning. Inferences have to be rationally connected, etc.
And, moral beliefs, like any others, can be justified by reasons. But like all beliefs including scientific ones, justification rests on something if it is finite. There's a stopping point that is purely intuited. In the case of science, it's observation of the physical world. In morality it is the apprehension of value. If someone is mentally disturbed, they may think the observational data of science is an illusion created by aliens, and/or they may think that the lives of all Chinese people have no value. It's impossible to convince them of ordinary scientific and/or moral statements. This has no rational bearing on the objectivity of science or morality, even if it were to turn out somehow that he's right about both science and the Chinese, which is a bare logical possibility, though not by any means a rational one.
Comment by stunney — August 1, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Clearly we're supposed to judge, given that you immediately followed up a commandment not to judge with a rule to be followed. The Old Testament also contains plenty of instances where Yahweh orders his guys to kill (I see no reason to depart from the ever-popular example of the Amalekites), as well as a number of laws which command the death of those who break them. It appears that the real commandment is "thou shalt not kill, unless I tell you different". Do you disagree?
If by principled you mean 'have a lick of sense in their heads', I suppose. As I've explained, it doesn't reflect that people are more sure about one proposition than the other or have a greater level of knowledge, but that they care more about one than the other.
It's certainly more than you've done.
Does Catholicism hold that the various murders that Yahweh ordered in the Old Testament were evil, that murder is okay when he orders it (which is what you seem to be denying), or that there was a policy change and while Yahweh would have ordered it (in fact, did order it) then, he wouldn't order it now? (If I recall, Catholicism is against the death penalty, even though it's featured prominently in Biblical law–how do they justify that, anyway?) What's their policy on what one should do in the event that one is ordered to kill by Yahweh?
If I'm hopelessly ill-educated, the least you could do would be to point out some good resources for having these questions answered, or even answer them in good faith yourself.
Well, neither would I, but he seems to be rather well-credentialed in his area of expertise.
There's nothing there that contradicts what I said. What's your point? If you differ on whether or not Jesus told Bush to invade (given that you both believe in divine command theory), then the invasion goes from moral to immoral based on that. If you don't believe in divine command theory but Bush does, the invasion goes from moral to immoral based on that.
But you just said that the lack of agreement on what's right and what's wrong is evidence for objective morality, which is closely related to theism. I sense some "heads I win, tails you lose" here.
By what basis do you declare that? What is your basis for the level of moral consensus we should see? Why do you believe that differing environments and differing challenges over the years would lead to cultures and moral systems with that degree of similarity, and why is the level of similarity higher for evolved as opposed to objective (is this synonymous with 'divinely-decreed'?) morality?
If by 'select' you mean 'choose', I don't think most people would agree. Basic moral beliefs are heavily influenced by the society in which one grows up, to the degree that no, you can't say that individuals select their beliefs like they select what flavor of ice cream to have on a hot day.
If there's a basic moral precept that women aren't really people, but rather property, and so you need to keep them covered up so they don't get vandalized or stolen, then it's not going to be much of a priority to keep them comfy. Environment (by which in this case I mean history as well, as it's the environment in which a culture grows) determines the level of patriarchy in a culture, the family structure, the laws and so forth; these things in turn determine what kinds of clothes women wear in public.
Comment by grendelkhan — August 1, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 8:38 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
The rule did not say that we should judge a person. God alone can judge persons. Christians can judge whether an action is right or wrong, whether a person committed some act or didn't, and whether that person should be detained for the well-being of others. But only God can judge the person's true intent and level of responsibility.
Yes I disagree. God did not order people to be killed. Catholics are not Biblical fundamentalists. The Old Testament recounts some history, but Yahweh ordering killing needs to be interpreted as the Israelites' understanding that God wanted them to be a people, and in the ancient world warfare was often unavoidable. So the Biblical authors interpreted what we might call the moral right to self-defense (which God does permit) as requiring in their circumstances being as strong militarily as they could manage. This folk memory is then written up as 'God ordered us to slaughter the other lot', because they recognized that God did want them to survive, escape slavery, and enjoy freedom, and so they reasoned that God must have ordered them to do whatever their leaders felt was necessary. Without understanding the historical context, it is easy to misinterpret any text. But yes, God did not want them to be exterminated. In the ancient world, that meant God must have 'wanted' them to exterminate the other lot. But that is a human interpretation of what God must have wanted. But gradually the Jewish understanding of God developed. And it's that developing history of understanding that Scripture records. When we get to the time of Jesus, there's a showdown between God wants us to destroy the Roman occupier, God wants us to follow the law rigidly, and God wants us to live the ethic of love creatively.
It's that last understanding of God that Christianity (and people of other faiths) believes is most authentic.
Oh, I think they're much surer that it's immoral to torture than that the physical universe exists wholly independently of minds existing.