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.overwhelmingevidence.com/oe/node/314
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/darwinordesign/?page_id=27
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.com/
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/event,155,Washingon-DC
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
.
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.
Catholicism does not hold that God ordered any killing, then or now. But it does hold that a war can be just under stringent conditions. Even then, how the war is waged must satisfy additional stringent conditions. Google Catholic Just War doctrine for details.
Catholicism is against the death penalty under most circumstances, and certainly under the circumstances prevailing in modern societies. But it allows that it can be justified where those circumstances do not obtain, for example where prisoner escape has a much higher degree of probability than is the case today. One wouldn't want a serial killer of children to have even a 10% chance of escaping, and in pre-modern times it was often higher than that, depending on local conditions. With the advent of modern prisons, the US bishops now believe the chance of high security offenders escaping is so small that the death penalty loses any justification on grounds of protecting the community.
What counts is that something being immoral is not determined by God's commanding us not to do it. God commands us not to do it because it's immoral. It's got nothing to do with Bush's theory of morality. For all I know Bush could be a closet atheist (some of the neocons are Straussian atheists). I believe the war never satisfied the criteria set out in the just war doctrine. Google them.
Could be you're just wrong, or confused, or both.
Do you have an argument, or merely a lot of questions?
Beliefs about anything are influenced by the social environment. But human behavior can carry on as shaped by an environment without necessitating specific moral beliefs. Perhaps pre-marital sex and boozing is too difficult and dangerous an activity in Saudi Arabia, and maybe everyone there pays its official immoral status lip-service. But that doesn't entail that most young adult Saudi men truly believe those are in fact immoral activities. It may be hard to tell what beliefs are really held as against behavior being controlled. The latter is much more strongly influenced by social environment than the former.
I don't think even conservative Islamists teach that a basic moral precept is that women aren't people. They might not actually treat women like people. But they don't say, "It is a basic moral precept of our religion that women aren't people."
Naturally. But that is not the issue. The issue is: why do most Israelis and most Palestinians and most Lebanese see nothing especially immoral with wearing bikinis in public, whereas just down the road in Saudia Arabia, it is deemed highly immoral. Both regions are Middle Eastern, both Abrahamic in religion, both sunny, both warm, both Semitic in language, both with good beaches, both historically part of the Ottoman empire until 90 years ago. If moral belief systems are just products of environment, we should not expect such a radical difference. It seems that moral beliefs are often selected, not environmentally determined.
And if you need another example, just look at the diversity of moral beliefs in America.
Comment by stunney — August 1, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 8:56 pm
There are so many sincerely excellent posts, comments, and questions, from you, and others since I've been on last.
I do believe this one has a simple answer. Like some areas of science, we have trouble with it simply because it is outside our normal experience.
Imagine some completely undetermined event — e.g. a hypothetically undetermined coin flip. We have no problem reconciling that with us or God or anyone knowing how it landed after it landed. How do we know? This knowledge is derived from the event. Causation flows from the event to the knowledge. So far, so good?
The difference between God knowing and us knowing is that we are bound within time. We don't get to take our knowledge into the past. We only get to bring it forward into the future — that is, unless we find some way to time travel.
God is not time bound. Indeed, how could the Creator of a space-time continuum possibly be bound within it?
The consequence is that God's knowledge of any event, even a completely undetermined one, is not limited to flowing forward into the future. God's knowledge, which exists outside time, is available to God without regard to our time.
This knowledge makes no necessary conflict with the events because the causal link still flows from the event to the knowledge — even if the knowledge is "subsequently" (in a causal sense) expressed / voiced at some time prior to the event.
So, if someone asks "What if I had chosen differently?" then that simply means that God would have observed that other choice and that is what God would have known you chose. There is no conflict with being able to make either choice.
NOTE: This only is possible with the Creator outside our space-time. It would not work with a merely "awesome" time bound deity. I don't know where grendelkhan gets the idea of keying into how "awesome" a deity is, but that doesn't really have any bearing on anything we've been talking about.
Comment by eric — August 1, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Jesus summarized the main core as
1. Love God
2. Love your neighbor as yourself (which also finds expression in the positive version of the golden rule that he gave)
Actually, even at the stage of the law of the Old Covenant, the idea that even kings were under the law was one example of how it was already ahead of the pack.
But the key problem has never been knowledge. The key problem is will. It would not be hard to know how to treat others well. Confucious already had the less demanding negative form of the golden rule, for example. (Don't do unto others what you wouldn't want them to do to you.)
Our problem is that we just plain don't want to, which leads to a profound reluctance to even acknowledge how far off the mark our behavior can be at times. Our concern keeps leaning toward ourselves. Our own pleasures and pains take our notice so much more so than those of others.
A very perceptive thought. Perhaps it is no surprise that this is why Jesus talked about how one must be born again — born of the Spirit.
Paul also wrote in his letter to the Galatians about how the law wasn't ever meant to be able to make us perfect, as if we could do so. He said it was meant to be something that points us to Jesus and the need for the gift of a new nature and God's participation in enabling us to learn and walk out a new life.
Later in that same letter he contrasts the fruits that progressively come from the presence of the Holy Spirit from the behaviors that come out of our unaided natures.
So again, the key has never been knowing the rules, or trying to simply be obedient to the rules.
No special pleading. Merely trying to be obedient to Jesus on our own steam doesn't cut it either. It is a fundamentally and qualitatively different proposition, one in which there is a union between Jesus and another individual, with other consequences following over time if it is genuine.
In the metaphor of companies, it is not simply trying to copy or emulate a pattern of success or correct principles of operation. It would be closer to compare it to a bankrupt company being purchased by a larger corporation that absorbs the debts of the smaller company and then invests the resources to transform it, thereby changing its nature.
Comment by eric — August 1, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Yo Pez,
Sometimes it does. The teachings of Christ, and of most or much of the New Testament is quite pure, therefore inspiring to humans.
Then they were disobeying Jehovah and the Bible.
Jehovah does not come close to the target and that's the problem I'm hammering, not that Christianity is lousy through and through.
Some of the history you cite seems quite biased, although I acknowledge nonbiased history is hard to come by. Maybe Paraguay was a nice exception. We're not talking black and white here. But I also note that some Christians like to pick out the rarest, most obscure and unheard of superstitions or bad events from another culture and highlight it, so that they can point fingers and make Christianity look better. A few of your examples are like that. Child sacrifice was hardly a common characteristic of native Americans. You also give credit to Christians for things which other societies have also done, and therefore it is questionable how direct the connection might be. Societies wax and wane, greater and lesser evil in government and tolerance in the religion come and go. Things like justice, equality for women and others, education and charity and so forth, are accommodated by the religions, but not necessarily caused by them.
Attributing the defeat of communism to Christianity seems quite a stretch.
That's precisely what I'm asking for. For example, Grendel asked:
g: 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?
No, Jesus would not tell anyone to ax toddlers, but Jehovah would – in fact he did.
Grendel also asked if it's OK to kill an old lady if she's a witch, to which Stunney said no:
Judge not lest ye be judged. That's what Jesus said. I think there's even a commandment in the Old Testament about killing.
but he's wrong. Jehovah said, "THOU SHALT NOT suffer the witch to live." It's a direct command to kill.
Pez, you probably missed my post a few days ago, but since you seem to be the only one with the intestinal fortitude to even begin to address my argument, I'll cut and paste a piece-
Back to you:
I agree. I was careless when I said only subjective experience exists. (True, but wrong argument.)
Oh, whoah Nelly! So now only Bible readers know God? Humanity does not know God?
There IS NO GOD OF THE BIBLE! That's my point. What Jesus taught, and what he said about the Father, does not describe Jehovah.
Now you have disrespected and misunderstood the Holy Spirit. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to enable you to fulfill that 'commandment."
But you said objective morality comes from the God of the Bible. How can those who think there is an objective morality from God make that argument when there no such objective morality presented in the Bible, nor a consistent teaching, nor a coherent God.
Grendel said:
Geez, Grendel, I get the impression from some of your comments that when the propagandists spoon feed you, you open your gullet like a babe taking his apple sauce.
You know, some people say that this life in the body is like a prison for the soul. So sure, we brought a lot of freedom to the Iraquis, we've liberated somewhere between one hundred thousand and six hundred thousand from their bodily prisons. And that's just in this latest go round. The ratio of deaths in the first gulf war, American to Iraqi, was something on the order of 1,000 to 1. I'm a little confused about that, because any other time I've read about those kinds of stats, the word 'war' was not used. There's another word, it begins with an m and has eight letters, a double s in the middle, 3 syllables.
Oh, but America could never do that.
Comment by onething — August 1, 2007 @ 9:53 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Still more excellent and thoughtful questions.
About #3, mtraven and possibly others made some very good observations earlier about how disputes and differences are not always about the moral principles, but may instead be differences from issues of facts or expectations about efficacy of methods, and so on.
Regarding real differences of central moral principle, these are not as great as we might imagine. See C.S. Lewis's book The Abolition of Man, which talks about this somewhat.
At the core, it really isn't hard to understand what it would mean to treat others well. As I just mentioned in my response to onething, we just plain don't want to, and this can lead to rationalizations that exaggerate differences as we seek to exonerate our departures from what would otherwise be plain.
The main point is that the problem isn't our knowing. It is our nature that doesn't want to, so we tend to close our eyes and ears. But it is there to discern by the willing. But see my point to onething and grendelkhan that merely knowing and trying still doesn't work, still isn't the answer.
About #1 and #2, please see my posts above regarding the non-arbitrary nature of the non-contingent Being, especially to Dave2. (I'm sorry that he hasn't responded. I would have liked to hear more of what he thinks.)
In short, God's nature, including the inherent moral and relational aspects, is the necessary shape of reality.
We are contingent and we see very little through a biased subjective lens. God sees all and sees it all as it is, to its deepest aspects.
NOTE: Again, this would not be true of a merely "awesome" contingent, time bound deity.
Comment by eric — August 1, 2007 @ 10:07 pm
August 1st, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Eric wrote:
It doesn't make any sense (to me at any rate) to talk of causal links between temporal events (the coin flip) and the knowledge-state of an atemporal being (God). Causality is hard enough to understand in the real world!
Since God is eternal and unchanging, he can't have knowledge states in the ordinary human sense. In fact, I don't see how an eternal and atemporal being can know or do anything, since both of those (especially the latter) involve time-bound processes. I'm sure books have been written on this as well.
Comment by mtraven — August 1, 2007 @ 11:00 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:11 am
Hi OneThing,
For over a millennium the Church forbade the persecution of witches for the very fact that right theology demonstrates there are no witches.
More likely they were reading it properly with regard to its proper context.
Some like to do the same thing but in reverse to make Christianity look worse. This is a bit of a hangover we are suffering from the biased scholars and revisionists who have set the stage from the 17th and 18th centuries – but it is being corrected.
As for the counter-examples, I have picked out nothing rare or unheard of. I am referring to things that I have come across in my normal day to day living.
Really? How rare was it? As rare as subjecting 9 year old girls to the strapado and burning witches on horses in Europe?
Perhaps, as the list of causes are probably endless and intricately intertwined, but it is an interesting point nonetheless. Are you aware of the role the German church had in the fall of the Berlin Wall?
Many of these things are not accommodated at all by other systems and they were not merely accommodated by Christianity. Christianity made charity a good thing to do and caused its spread in the Roman Empire by example. It was a central goal and duty of a Christian and not an accommodation of an institution they stumbled into. Their instruction was to care for, among others, widows, the poor, and the sick. As for women, while other institutions down-graded their status they took a central role in Jesus' ministry as well as those of his disciples. The Universities, as I mentioned, were caused by religion, as were Charlemagne's schools, and the education of foreigners by the Jesuits, not merely accommodated.
The Romans and Greeks before them educated the elite – the Christians educated the masses.
What was a witch, according to Levitical law? What do you do with malefactors and murderers when you are wandering in the desert without a prison system?
More careless reading.
The God of the Bible is not found only in the Bible. I said the God of the Bible is the source of morality.
Doubly careless reading. I have done no such thing and you are in no position to pass judgment upon my respect or understanding of God, the Holy Spirit. You sure sound like someone who thinks they know the truth about religion.
You sound like you are preaching a religious truth.
I don't trust your theology or your exegesis.
On whose authority do you make this claim?
But there is. Thousands of years of theology and study have demonstrated this to be the case.
When Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to "Love the Lord your God" He was referring to the Old Testament's words. Likewise when He said "Love your neighbor as yourself". It was the Old Testament that taught the feeding of the poor in the command to leave part of your field and vineyard for the poor and the alien to eat from. Leviticus tells us to help our neighbor when he is in danger, to judge justly, to hate no man, to take no revenge, etc.
Leviticus also preaches equality of races, telling the Israelites to treat the aliens and strangers among them as they do those born among them (whom they were to love as themselves).
Further, when He preached from the Psalms, Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah (et al) He was endorsing the teachings found there.
He confirmed this in Matthew 5:17, Matthew 22:31 (citing Exodus), Luke 24:44 (citing the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms), and the end of John 5 (citing belief in Moses' writings).
Overall, Jesus actually quotes from 24 of the Old Testament books.
And as I closed last time. None of this has any relevance to the question "is morality objective?"
[edit]
Hey eric, great comments.
Comment by Pez — August 2, 2007 @ 1:11 am
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:48 am
Grendel said,
It's an interesting point, that the antics of Yahweh are simply being quietly ignored, and dropped, while lip service is paid to the Bible being 'the word of God.'
Hello Eric, welcome back,
It wasn't really Jesus who summarized it. There's a story about Rabbi Hillell, who slightly predated Jesus, being challenged as to whether he could summarize the faith while standing on one foot. He did, by saying you should love God with all your mind and the golden rule. But my problem with Christianity is not what Jesus said. It's with that Johovah character, and unfortunately it lead to assumptions about God which influenced Christian theology negatively as well.
Your post was great and I agree with it almost entirely.
By the way Eric, Stunney,
My problem with free will isn't the omniscience of God but rather,
1 how to delink our actions from the chain of cause and effect
2 that I think people are far more paralyzed in their choices, and knee-jerk in their reactions based upon their subconscious and several other aspects of what has gone into making them who they are at the moment. In other words, I see people as sort of landing in this stage drama world and reacting and reacting. Life comes at you fast, as the ad says. Sometimes, when a person wants to act in a better way, they work on it, and eventually they make headway. So, looking back, were they really free before they were able to alter their behavior? It seems not. They wanted to act or react a certain way, but they could not muster it. So then should we remove the freedom of choice from actions to the desire to be a certain way? Freedom to wish? Then we have to wonder, what subtle causes lead them to desire or not desire to improve themselves.
3 To top it off, there are a bunch of scriptures, and I could possibly find them on a universal salvation site I visited, to the effect that God is really in control of it all.
None of the above means I don't believe in free will, I just suspect it is one of those spiritual paradoxes that lack a simple answer. One thing I am very sure of is that God never uses force. And is very patient. But the game is probably rigged, with only one possible outcome, no matter how long and unexpected the adventure.
Absolutely everything comes from God. There can't be anything that exists outside of God. How then, can anything be rejected by, or unacceptable to, God? How can there by anything impure?
Returning is the motion of the Tao.
Comment by onething — August 2, 2007 @ 2:48 am
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:18 am
mtraven wrote:
Yeah, maybe you should read some rather than simply declare that you don't see how God could X, or Y, or Z. This 'argument' style is no better than a YECist declaring that he doesn't understand how evolution could produce reindeer and snakes and sharks from a common ancestor, and proudly dismisses all the books about evolution as atheistic gobbledygook.
You complain about not being able to understand how God can have a relation to events in space and time. Scientists themselves are now openly doubting that space and time are really as fundamental as we thought they were even in physics. Yet you would demand that if God is to act he must do so in this prison that may not even be all that real after all? Now we have scientists like Randall and Sundrum openly speculating that information and energy may leak in and out of our brane into a possible higher dimension of infinite magnitude. I gave you the link before:
So there's that to consider.
Meanwhile, the interpretation of apparent wavefunction collapse is still not settled. But one obvious candidate agent of collapse is God, and it seems quite possible that God collapses the wavefunction in ways that integrate God's purposes with respect to creation, enabling a significant range of free, morally responsible willing, a large degree of intelligibly ordered physical regularity so as to make rational agency effective, and providential arrangements that enable within the broader physical order such things as 'miraculous' and 'lucky' escapes, 'spontaneous' remissions, etc, while drawing people by grace towards love and its fruit of eternal life in union with God, the ultimate 'religious experience'.
One thing that seems to be central to the causal order is energy. Does anyone really know what it is? This word is from the Greek energeia, an important concept in Aristotle's metaphysics, and which is translated in Latin as actus. Aquinas's metaphysical term for God is actus purus. God is not a being who acts. Rather, God is unlimited Being/Energy, and unlimited Being/Energy is Pure Activity. Being/Energy which is infinite must include all perfect intentional, rational, moral activity, since unlimited knowing and unlimited loving are the very perfection of agency. Being, or Energy in its pure, unlimited state is infinite Knowing and infinite Loving in perfect harmony. The analogue of Being in physical terms is energy. The analogue of Knowing in physical terms is information. The analogue of Loving in physical terms is activity. But these are analogies, limited to the finite physical order. They reflect but do not capture or imprison God's triune essence. In us, the analogues are life, understanding, and willing. These are closer, and indeed can partake of that Being/Knowing/Loving triune essence. Through and in love, they are crowned with God's own life, God's own energy, God's own Logos and Spirit. This was revealed in Christ, and will be revealed in the members of the Body of Christ.
It's not that God can't act in the physical world. He has eternally chosen to do so in the Body of God's own incarnate Word, animated by God's own Holy Spirit, revealing something of what unlimited goodness looks like, and something of how beautiful it is. A world that chooses to look away from that goodness ultimately can find only desolation, ugliness, and despair. Yet God chose to enter that desolate, ugly, despairing world and experience what it's like to feel abandoned to its cruelty and death so as to reveal in the very midst of its impact the goodness that is Being/Knowing/Loving.
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." (John 12: 32)
"These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." (John 16: 33)
Comment by stunney — August 2, 2007 @ 3:18 am
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:43 am
grendelkhan wrote:
No matter how much data was gathered, quantum mechanics, relativity, and Newtonian physics would never have been discovered without thinking of a very abstract, a priori sort. You could have observed every celestial body for the next 100 millenia, and not discovered that stuff. Humans, indeed, did just that before Newton and Einstein. Without mathematical theorizing of their sort we'd have no theories of their kind, just a vast amount of data.
Next, it is just plain silly to think that people reason about morality without an enormous input of empirical data. Like the empirical data that chopping up babies tends to cause wailing and distress:
"A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more."
(Matthew 2: 18)
Probably from the facts. One being he used a priori reasoning to come up with his theories of relativity. This was done several years before the Mercury observation confirmed the general theory. And because he put that theory together with much help from his mathematician friends using innovative and very abstract formalism.
In any case, the point is moot, since empirical data enter into moral reasoning all the time. If you don't think it does, why do you think people generally regard it as much more seriously immoral deliberately to infect unwitting sexual partners with AIDS than deliberately to sneeze in their face just at the moment of climax?
Comment by stunney — August 2, 2007 @ 4:43 am
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:26 am
Corrigendum
That should be 'solar eclipse observation'. I was simultaneously looking at grendelkhan's text just above mentioning Mercury, hence the slip. And it is not even clear if Eddington's eclipse data were as confirmatory as they were made out to be.
Comment by stunney — August 2, 2007 @ 6:26 am
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
So Christians are judging. Okay, then.
And you're calling me ignorant of Christianity? What parts of the Bible aren't generally understood to be myth and metaphor, in your estimation?
I'm aware of the 'Just War' idea; thanks. Given that the Catholic Church has engaged in quite a lot of killing over the years in God's name (also, I hope you don't believe that trying and condemning a person, then turning them over to the secular authorities for actual execution, absolves the condemning party in any way), does this mean that they don't hold themselves to be inerrant? You'd think that if it was so clear and simple, they'd have gotten the "no killing in God's name" thing down pat at least a thousand years ago.
That's good for them, but how do they deal with contradicting all of the Biblical laws which specifically mandate killing? You might as well just say that you're throwing out any religious laws which inconvenience you, since we're picking and choosing now. (That doesn't sound very objective to me.)
I was under the impression that being "non-contingent", your deity defined morality. If morality exists apart from your deity, then what do you need him for in terms of objective morality?
Nonsense; Bush's theory of morality is at the very center of the decision to invade–clearly he thought it was not only morally okay, but morally obligatory to do so.
It could be; do you intend on explaining how? The relevant quotes from you are: "First of all, lack of agreement strengthens the case for objective morality", then later, "The inherent sense of right and wrong is evidence for theism, which is closely related to the claim of objective morality." Which is it?
Both, really. I'm here partly to learn about other ways of looking at the world, you know, and the best way for me to do that has been asking questions in the past. You made what struck me as a pretty out-there statement, and I'm asking how you know the answer.
It doesn't have to be stated for the system to be built on it. A women's word is worth a quarter of a man's, she can't own property, she doesn't have full agency as a person, and so on. Whatever the mumbo-jumbo is which is used to justify the bog-standard patriarchal baggage, it clearly falls apart if women are endowed with the same natural rights that men are.
Comment by grendelkhan — August 2, 2007 @ 3:22 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:39 pm
I had also considered the words "spiffy", "keen" and "rockin'", but ended up sticking with my first choice.
My use of "awesome" to describe a deity related to the question of whether or not it would be morally acceptable or even morally required to (for example) chop babies if a deity told you do; I was told that the deity had to stand next to a painted wooden clown with its hand out and "You must be this omnipotent to order the dismemberment of babies" written on its chest, though I didn't get a straight-up answer that they would do it, nor that they would disobey their deity.
The closest thing to a straight answer I've gotten was stunney stating that chopping me up is okay if Jesus said so; I wonder if he'd look into chopping babies as well if they annoyed him enough.
Thanks! That seems pretty straightforward.
I must ask, though–are those in priority order, and does loving god mean following his rules, some of which don't seem very neighbor-lovey? Also, I could write that stuff on a cocktail napkin (though the first part is kind of a cheat if it involves following a large stack of rules); why bother with all the other stuff for umpty-thousand years until Jesus showed up if you could have just gone with that?
Does this mean Jesus talks to you, or communicates directly in some fashion, or makes his will known by any method other than urging you to read the Bible? (Though if the expectations are really just those two rules, it seems you could get along pretty well without even doing that.) I've been told repeatedly that Jesus doesn't directly talk to people or plant notions in their heads; can you be a bit more specific about the form which this union takes?
Comment by grendelkhan — August 2, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Did you somehow reach the conclusion that I thought the Iraq War was a good idea, or a moral one? That wasn't the point of the example, but believe me, you've got that one wrong. The point I was making was that if you believed that spreading freedom and democracy are good things, then your opinion on the Iraq War would differ based on your opinion on whether or not it would be effective towards those ends.
Comment by grendelkhan — August 2, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I'm pretty ignorant of the history of education as it relates to Christianity, but how do you square that desire to educate the masses with what happened to William Tyndale when he translated the Bible into English? Why the resistance to people getting the Bible for themselves rather than filtered through the priestly class?
Comment by grendelkhan — August 2, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Hi Grenelkhan,
I'm ignorant of the Tyndale case, but glancing at it at wiki and the Tyndale webpage I'd say it is an excellent case in point.
Tyndale was convinced that the way to God was through His word and he resolved to make the Scripture available to the masses. Tyndale was a Christian, after all, and a Catholic Priest to boot. Just as we have thousands upon thousands of copies of ancient manuscripts, the goal of Christianity has always been to spread the Word via the written word. That standard has been picked up over and over again, even if there were places and times where some stood it its way.
Tyndale followed suit and his standard was picked up and carried after him by other Reformers and translators who held to the same ideal.
This is what Christianity did – this is its history.
You can point to this or that instance and say "what about this guy?" and "what about the year such ought such?" but the history stands.
Knowledge is power and salvation in Christianity and Christianity preserved and promoted education and literacy to this end.
The fact that he defied authority to spread the truth and get the Word of God to the people, and was eventually martyred for this conviction is exactly what I am talking about. Some will deny that there is such a thing as religious truth, but there are men who felt they found the truth and were willing to die to preserve it and get it to the people. This is what they determined to be Right and Good.
Contrast this to those who are willing to kill when people deny their ideas.
And not that it matters to the case of morality, but Tyndale, as I read in his history, was not condemned for sharing the Bible and aiding literacy but as a heretic denying the teachings of the Catholic church and the supremacy of the Pope at a time of a bloody politic reinstatement of the Church into England. The Bible was already available throughout Europe in the vernacular anyway. When you read his "crimes" on the website available you see he was "guilty" of standard Reformed positions, and not of taking the Bible public. You also see here another great virtue of Christianity, and that is the primary place given reasoning, investigation and learning. As the Bible told us in the first place, ""Test all things; hold fast what is good" (I Thessalonians 5:21)"
This is what the Faith teaches, even when some get in its way.
Condemn the Church as you like, but on Tyndale we can read this:
http://www.williamtyndale.com/0crimesofwilliamtyndale.htm
Such is also the case of Martin Luther, who virtually invented the German language in his vernacular translations.
If you like literacy, if you consider education a path to morality, then you owe it historically in large part to Christianity.
PS.
Thanks for tipping me off to his story. This what I love about these forums – there's never any end to learning if you're of a mind to take advantage.
Comment by Pez — August 2, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
Obviously. Just that Jesus's command was not Judge not lest your actions be judged. It was Judge not lest you be judged. In other words, the injunction was to not judge persons, since only God truly knows what is in each person's mind, heart, and soul. I don't truly know what's in yours. Assuming you have 'em, of course.
You seem to have an enormous amount of difficulty grasping even the simplest of exegetical ideas because of an apparent rampant irrational bias against even the most mainstream versions of religious belief. It's almost as if you decide whether something is to be criticized simply because some moronic deity in the atheist pantheon ordered it to be criticized, resulting in a robotic determination not to comprehend ideas that your god told you are not comprehensible simply because your atheist master deity—is it the Mighty Dawkins, perchance?—-said so. It is quite impressive.
But only God knows if that's the case with you. I'm just saying it seems that way.
It seems that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mengistu, Hoxha, Ceaucescu, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Presidente Gonzalo, were atheist deities who had their followers persecute, imprison, torture, enslave, and kill scores of millions of people over the past 90 years. But what really went on inside their minds and hearts only God can judge. But sure, those actions weren't right. However, you don't have to be God to judge their actions.
I'm sorry if such subtle distinctions are ones you're determined to not grasp. I hope they don't cause you too much mental strain. You may wish to drink some green iced tea, lie down, close your eyes and picture your brain as a golf ball being clubbed and putted all over the golf course of life. I suggest that image since, as you know, Biblical fundamentalists think of themselves as footballs and pray that Jesus will drop-kick them through the goalposts of life. You seem to be a fundamentalist, though not a Biblical one, and hence the golf-ball image, rather than the football one. I did consider using a baseball image instead. But after much thought, the golf-ball one just seemed so right, somehow.
Oh, and you may be too young to remember this, but American astronauts once hit some golf-balls on the surface of the Moon. Yup, incredible but true. I remember watching it on TV. So that lunar connection was obviously a factor in my choosing the golf-ball image rather than a baseball one.
What was the movie where the Al Capone-type character batters one of his formally attired dinner guests to death with a baseball bat, apparently spilling the victim's brains all over the table, much to the alarm and gastric upset of the other guests? In case you had seen it and didn't like it, I thought it was safer to go with the golf-ball on the Moon idea.
Of course, I'm a soccer fanatic myself. But perhaps you're not.
Now, you wrote:
Yes.
If I write a book and say that "grendelkhan ordered Al Capone to beat someone to death with a baseball bat at a dinner party", that would not necessarily mean that you yourself in reality actually gave orders to some real Al Capone-type to beat someone to death with a real baseball bat. Besides, he may felt his own life threatened and thus have acted in a deranged way, and then they decided to make a movie, and then and only then do I decide to write the book and use the name 'grendelkhan' for the deranged behavior-permitting deity to whom the Capone character turns for advice and insight on who his enemies were, and on whether he should beat their brains out with baseball bat at the end of the dinner party
It wasn't Goodfellas, was it? Joe Pesci's performance as a deranged mafioso in that was pretty darn good, I thought. Do you remember the early "What d'ya mean, funny? Ya think I'm funny?" scene? That was superb.
So you see, just because the Bible says God did something, it doesn't necessarily mean that God really did it. Only Biblical fundamentalists think that, and they're wrong. Which you would know because you know, since you're an empiricist, that if I use 'grendelkhan' as the name of an irrational deity who orders mafia dons to murder people at the end of a superb dinner when they're smoking fine cigars and drinking excellent French brandy, that wouldn't necessarily mean that you genuinely are a mad deity giving orders to a syphilitic criminal who wants to be il capo di tutti capi, sticks horses' heads in people's beds while they're sleeping, and puts other people to sleep 'with the fishes'.
Likewise, just because you're picturing your brain as a golf-ball, soaring and bounding on the Moon, doesn't necessarily mean that your brain really is a golf-ball that bounds and soars on the surface of the Moon. Similarly, if an insane person thinks that Jesus has ordered her to pitchfork her babies, that does not necessarily mean that Jesus really is now taking orders from the deranged deity known as 'grendelkhan'.
And just as Bush might say 'God is on our side', and historians record this saying, and, fearful of being sent to Gitmo, decide to write as if God really is on our side to please the Dear Leader in the White House, so ancient historians, be they Jewish, Persian, Greek, or Roman, often wrote up 'official' histories for the military – political leadership. And so, the Bible includes that kind of thing too. It's normal. It's part of the 'Story of the Nation'. Like the Gettysburg Address, and Sherman's March through Georgia to the Sea. And spaghetti Westerns, Cowboys and Indians, and 'High Noon'.
Now, in the course of this 1500 year national Jewish history, the understanding of deity—-get this!——changed. And so we see how that understanding gradually became what later became known to cultural historians as 'ethical monotheism', where there's really only one transcendent God, not a polytheistic pantheon, and God's nature is concerned with what we now see as a more authentic ethics. But the whole history of Jewish thinking about God is traced, warts and all, just as one might trace the whole history of America with its conflicts, wars, scandals, corrupt leaders, and plenty of people saying 'God is on our side', 'God led us to victory', 'I have a Dream', 'Mr Gorbachev, bring down this Wall', etc, and yet still believe in freedom, democracy, and equal rights to life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness, and even believe that these rights ultimately derive from their inalienable endowment by God. And central to Jewish history, as any cultural historian will tell you is the emergence of their ethical monotheism.
But rather than ask you to think about any of this, I instead urge you to make yourself some nice iced green tea, and picture your brain as a lunar golf-ball. And remember, it's just an image. Just because I've expressed that image about your brain on the World Wide Web doesn't necessarily mean that your brain, as it actually is in itself REALLY IS a lunar golf-ball.
And yet it's an image that somehow seems just so right.
I've discussed this Euthyphro issue before. On this thread even. So it's wonderful that you bring it up again. Simply and truly marvellous. And thank you.
But I'd like to know the answer to something else which is much more useful, helpful, and enormously more fun and interesting, and which sadly they don't talk much about in philosophy, and I was wondering if you by any chance, might know the answer, O Great Lunar Golf-Ballian Deity.
What's the escape velocity for golf-balls launched from the surface of moon?
Comment by stunney — August 2, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Robert DeNiro as Al Capone in The Untouchables to Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness.
I loved it, but my mom said that the TV Eliot Ness was better – Robert Stack, I think?
Comment by Pez — August 2, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Pez, Tyndale's actions so inflamed the Christians of the time that they strangled him then set him on fire. I can understand that present-day Christians would rather identify with Tyndale than with his executioners, and that Tyndale was himself an ardent Christian and believed himself to be doing Christian work, but at the time, I'm sure it must have looked like Christianity as a whole wasn't really keen on the spreading of the good news, at least not through people reading it themselves.
(And yes, it's pretty fascinating how many phrases crept into the English language via Tyndale.)
Comment by grendelkhan — August 2, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:03 pm
You originally used the phrase to explain why you would disobey the commandment against suffering a witch to live. Clearly that had nothing to do with judging what was in the old lady's heart, any more than judging her because she was a retired librarian or any other such factor would have. (Of course, we suffer librarians to live all the time, but that's not the point, as Yahweh doesn't have anything against librarians.) Why are you going on about exactly what sorts of judging is allowed, when it has nothing to do with the original question, which I see you've dodged yet again?
Asking questions is a symptom of a rampant irrational bias to you? What ever happened to Christians being all about educating the masses? I think Pez would be disappointed in you.
I believe I've been pretty good about not making assumptions about you which aren't based on something you've said. It would be quite nice of you if you could extend me a similar courtesy.
It seems that you've responded to questions which seem pertinent to me with evasions, mumbo-jumbo and equivocation (see above, re: judging not), and are now, having run out of relevant things to say, claiming that I'm some sort of cult member.
I think you misunderstand me. I don't have a personal problem explaining why the actions of various authoritarian dictators and their followers are wrong. You started going on about objective morality as though it was the greatest thing ever, and I wanted to understand it, so I asked some questions, which is how I go from not understaning something to understanding it. You seem uninterested in explaining it, which is a bit confusing to me, as it sounds like a profoundly useful thing.
Could you do me the favor of explaining how you arrived at that conclusion?
But Al Capone is a contingent being, and thus his positions aren't… well, whatever the philosophical legerdemain was which was used as special pleading for how awesome Jesus was.
The stories in the Bible aren't presented as simply stories; there's a great deal of law in there as well, such as the aforementioned bit about suffering witches to live. Your interpretation of it as sort of a set of interesting stories may be polite and modern, but it's certainly a radical departure from what Christianity has been all about for much of its history. And I was under the impression that you consider yourself a theist, even a Christian–is this the case? Do you think that Christians from ages past, before our own secular age, would recognize you as such?
Yes, but could you boil it down for me, as it's kind of a yes-or-no question, and I can't figure out if you're answering yes or no? Not all of us are trained philosophers, and given the Christian (assuming you are Christian) propensity for enlightening others that Pez mentioned, I thought you'd be interested in telling me.
It's the same for anything else launched from the surface of the moon, but it depends if you want the golf ball to escape the orbit of the moon, the earth, the sun, the solar system, or the galaxy as a whole.
Comment by grendelkhan — August 2, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Hi Grendelkhan,
Yes, you and I can spend the next eternity with you Googling to find Christian atrocities and me Googling to explain them.
So what?
The facts are as I stated them in the first place – the Christian faith was responsible for the invention of Universities, the spread of schools throughout Europe and beyond, the spread of literacy, the education of the masses, the development of science, etc.
This is a characteristic of the teachings of Jesus, his apostles and the church fathers. Spreading the Gospel was done through reasoning with people and sharing the word. One is to love God with all his heart, mind and soul.
The fact that any given Christian will vary in his degree of moral adherence doesn't impact the fact that Christianity has advanced moral teachings. Christians, like everyone else, are fallen sinners who are prone to do wrong. This doesn't change what the Faith teaches or the historical facts of the unprecedented good which has come out of those teachings.
(The fact is that the Romans and Greeks taught the elite and Christianity educated the masses.
The fact is that the Pagans abandoned their sick to the Plague and the because of their teachings Christians served the sick – some argue this is one of the greatest reasons for the spread of Christianity.
The fact is that modern science emerged only out of and directly dependent upon Christianity.
Modern ideas of equality and freedom come from Christianity. Free enterprise and capitalism have their roots and owe their development to it as well. As Rodney Stark wrote in The Victory Of Reason, "there isn't even a word for 'freedom' in most non-European languages".
He also writes of the fact that slavery died out in Europe because Christians viewed slaves as men with souls. They were baptized and the sacraments were extended to them. They then imposed a ban on enslaving Christians (as well as Jews) which was an effective ban, in Christian Europe, on slavery in general.
From its inception, in fact, Christians raised money to buy slaves their freedom.)
And nor do the moral failings of the adherents change the truth of the religion. The fact that morality is grounded in objective truth is not falsified by the existence of sinners – just as ToE is not falsified by the existence of social evolutionists.
Just because a person might be near-sighted doesn't mean there is nothing on the horizon.
Light-years ahead? I'd say so – even without resorting to a reductio of subjectivism or relativism.
Comment by Pez — August 2, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:50 am
stunney tosses another softball:
Yes, there's a considerable difference. The YECist is objectively wrong. He's misinformed, deluded, mistaken, in error. The fact that he doesn't understand evolution reflects poorly on him, not on evolution.
Now, in theology, there is, as far as we know, no right or wrong. My opinion, while less learned than intellectual cutting-edge theologians like yourself, is no less valid, because I can pull stuff out of my ass just as well as anyone else. So, when I say "I don't understand x", that may just reflect poorly on me, but it's just as possible that it reflects poorly on x, due to x being muddled and contradictory.
Now, I am no theologian, but I am a certified Googlectual ™, so I can easily find publications which show that the contradiction I detected has been noted by actual theologians who are busy spinning their wheels trying to parse their way out of the self-evident contradictoriness of their belief system.
Uh, yes, because the definition of act implies temporality and causality. If time isn't real, action is even less real.
The rest of your post was Christian preaching, to which I am constitutionally immune. If I want to worship a dead religious huckster, I'll pick someone a little more contemporary.
Comment by mtraven — August 3, 2007 @ 1:50 am
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:46 am
mtraven pitches one juuuuuust a bit outside:
Good to see that you're not begging the question. Oh, wait…
I'd have thought that in theology, there is a right and wrong. For example, it's either right or wrong that God is trinitarian. When you say 'as far as we know', that statement is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of theological propositions.
Moreover, I thought you just said the YECist is objectively wrong. Hence the YECist's theory of Biblical interpretation must be wrong. And I'd have thought that is a part of YECist theology. So there is a right and wrong in theology after all, and so you're contradicting yourself.
Naturally, a YECist is not going to agree with you about YECism being in error. And he'll say that it's evolution that is objectively in error. You'll bring forward your scientific cites. And he'll dismiss them. To make your case, you have to equate objective truth with scientific findings. But he'll equate objective truth with 'Biblical truth', etc. You'll have to say why science is epistemologically superior to Biblical fundamentalism. And epistemology isn't science, it's philosophy. Is there a right and wrong in philosophy? If so, theology can't fail to have a right and wrong just because it's not science. And with philosophy you'll be into whole books or online articles, which contradict one another, I'm afraid, and at that point, you'll find that you'll be resorting to….
which….
Yes indeedee (though I'm not a theologian, learned, cutting-edge or otherwise). But at least you've concluded that yours smells nice. And when it comes to your 'objectivity', that's what counts, I s'pose.
Comment by stunney — August 3, 2007 @ 9:46 am
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:54 am
grendelkhan wrote:
Oh, it depends, does it? Can't you just give me a ballpark, sorry, golf-course figure?
How about fooooore?:lol:
Comment by stunney — August 3, 2007 @ 9:54 am
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
grendelkhan:
Er, isn't it obvious? I was answering your statement that Christians are allowed to judge. You seemed to think that they were therefore flouting an injunction given by Jesus. That's why. I then drew the distinction you missed. If it's too subtle for your tastes because it rejects your ridiculously simple-minded cramming of everything into a mental box of your own making, then tough.
I believe God desires no capital punishment for witches. However, executing witches is logically consistent with the injunction not to judge what is in a person's heart, as per the explanation in my remarks quoted above. She may have cast a spell causing all the geese in the village pond to die while flying over the village on her broomstick. She may own a black pointy hat. But the flying broomstick alone would probably raise suspicion. In other words, her behavior might indicate that she's engaged in witchcraft, even if what's really in her mind and heart is something only God can judge.
No. It's not that you ask questions. It's the sheer, utter zanyness of them that's symptomatic of irrational bias.
Nothing.
I wouldn't know.
I believe I've been pretty good about not making assumptions about you which aren't based on something you've said.
Yes, it would.
Well, I've not evaded questions I thought were pertinent. I've even answered some that weren't pertinent. It's not my fault that your questions most often presuppose a fundamentalist reading of Scripture and that you then get your knickers in a twist when I scornfully reject the presupposition as daft. That's not equivocating, or mumbo-jumbo, or irrelevant.
As for cult membership, are you suggesting that it's wrong to be a cult member? Or just that you're not one? Not that it matters, since I did not say you were one. I said you give the impression of being determined to criticize arguments uncomprehendingly like a robotic devotee of some god in the atheist pantheon and do so because said god has issued a talking points memo. And I said that because it's true. You really do give that impression.
Er, in what way did I indicate that the objectivity of morality was the greatest thing ever? I think you're imagining things. Best stick to imagining your brain as a golf-ball, bounding along the Moon. You won't go wrong if you keep that image close to you at all times.
By the way, when you explain that what these bloodcurdling atheist monsters did is wrong, do you mean objectively immoral? Or just that their world-historical butchery is something of which you don't approve?
There's more to understanding something than asking questions. It also involves rational thinking.
Well, as I said before, time is short and you're not quick on the uptake.
By reading some of your posts, for instance the ones in which you belittled the utility of rational argumentation, portrayed Einstein and mathematicians as not really engaging in a priori reasoning indicated that you are an empiricist fundamentalist and veritable True Believer in scientism. That, and your nutjob-esque comment about how much empirical science is more useful to humanity compared to reasoning about things we can't observe in laboratories, such as moral wrongness .
Er, are you saying that if 'grendelkhan' was a necessary being and somebody wrote a book about how 'grendelkhan' ordered Al Capone to bludgeon a dinner guest to death with a baseball bat, then that would mean 'grendelkhan' really did order such a murder?
There's a lot of stuff in the Bible.
I said there was some history in the Bible recounting warfare, and explained why some Israelites may have thought that God wanted them to wage warfare—for instance, their leaders may have told them that this was a) necessary for national survival, security, and freedom from oppressors, and b) something God was therefore commanding them to do. 'Exterminate the other lot' was the phrase I used. I don't think I pussyfooted around the issue. You may be imagining things again.
Some Christians have sometimes taken a similar attitude to those Israelites. And your point is what? That Christians are sinful? That God really wants Christians to batter everybody else's brains out? Or that God really doesn't want Christians to batter everybody else's brains out? Or just that war in general has a long and unpleasant history, and has been waged by all sorts of people for millenia?
Could you be a little clearer as to the brilliant point you think you may be making?
Yes.
Sure. I already quoted Aquinas on not being a literalist about interpreting Scripture. He died in 1274. Is that far back enough for ya?
The question is not as you've posed it above in square brackets. Morality is an abstraction from, and a way of referring to, moral value or goodness. The proper formulation of the question is therefore this one: Is moral goodness separate from God?
No.
God, indeed, is the primary referent of the term 'goodness'. Everything finite that is good is so only by analogy with and by participation in the goodness of God. All good finite things depend ontologically on God's omnipresent and sustaining power throughout each moment of their existence. Thus there is nothing, nor can there be anything, which is both truly good and truly separated from God.
Happy now?
Comment by stunney — August 3, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Pez wrote:
I suspected it was DeNiro, but I couldn't remember the name of the film.
I grew up watching the TV series when it was shown in Britain. Later we were inundated with American cop shows, but The Untouchables was untouchable. I think my mother had a big crush on Robert Stack.
Comment by stunney — August 3, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Now I have an urge to rent it again this weekend.
My favourite line, Sean Connery to Costner:
Comment by Pez — August 3, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
August 4th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
This is going around in circles. Let's recap.
I point out that Yahweh seems pretty keen on executing witches for being witches, and ask if stunney would suffer one to live. stunney replies that one shouldn't judge, lest they be judged, and also that Yahweh is against killing in general. I point out that Yahweh seemed to be keen on a great deal of killing in the past, as well as laying out laws about killing specific people, such as the aforementioned witches, which seem to require judgment. stunney replies that we're supposed to judge actions, not the contents of a person's heart, and that all the stories about genocide that Yahweh is rah-rahing are metaphors or something like that. I say that I don't see the importance of the distinction–whatever kind of judging is required, it's clearly the kind that Yahweh's okay with, and the "judge not" admonition has no relevance to the question of whether or not to execute witches, so why all the talking about it?
stunney then accuses me of following "some moronic deity in the atheist pantheon", and declines to answer my simple question.
In short:
Maybe I need a few years of advanced philosophy before I can grasp that one, eh?
So because I'm asking inconvenient questions, it's a symptom of irrational bias?
Please explain the chain of inference which led from me asking whether or not you'd suffer a witch to live to your conclusion that I'm taking orders from "some moronic deity in the atheist pantheon".
Well, how am I supposed to know which parts are obviously fundamentalist nonsense which should be read as metaphor and which parts are obviously eternal truths to live by? I thought you were in the business of discovering the objective morality here, not in the business of taking opinion polls of the majority of Christians to find out what they think is metaphor and which is eternal truth this week.
I am doing my best to comprehend you, really I am. I have a few simple questions, like asking how you know which parts of the Bible are to be taken seriously and which can be handwaved away, or whether or not you'll suffer a witch to live, and why. (Also, please apply the same logic to the question of whether or not you'd kill, assuming that, as witches aren't people, the two commandments aren't contradictory.)
Presumably you believe it's important, as it would cut through any sort of disagreement between people on what's right and what's wrong. Are you saying you don't think that the discovery of an irrefutable set of principles which everyone would immediately recognize as objectively true and therefore live their lives by would be a momentous occasion? I was under the impression that you were working on it because it was important.
A priori reasoning is done independent of experience; a posteriori reasoning is done based on experience. You're coming up with new and creative definitions of well-accepted terms in order to make it seem as though I said something I did not. Did you really think I was arguing that Einstein used no rational argumentation at all? I argued that Einstein's rational argumentation was based on the evidence, and drew from it. By your definition, any thinking whatsoever qualifies as a priori, and you've gone and defined the phrase out of existence.
Mathematicians, on the other hand, work in the abstract (though likely inspired by experience–why did Euclidean geometry predate elliptical and hyperbolic geometry by so long, otherwise?), but the usefulness of their abstractions can be determined only by reference to the empirical world.
I suppose it looks nutjob-esque if you don't read what I actually said. There are all sorts of things we can observe, and not all of them are observed in laboratories. I maintain that thinking based on the evidence is far more useful than thinking in a vacuum and trying to derive objective truths about the universe that way. I'm still waiting for a description of an important (preferably non-obvious) objective truth determined recently without the slightest dependence on our empirical understanding of the world.
No, I suppose the analogy doesn't work well; I retract it. I'm more concerned about the laws laid down than the history set up as an example to follow.
Yes, like an admonition to kill witches, which you're steadfastly ignoring. By what basis do you think that "thou shalt not kill" is to be taken seriously, while "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" is to be ignored?
Sure. There's a long history of the Church enforcing its laws and dogmas (I suppose you know that Aquinas referred to heresy as "a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas") by brutal force; either the Church got everything wrong for a very long time, or there are objective facts which you're supposed to take seriously in Christianity. The idea that the Bible is a nice bundle of bedtime stories doesn't match up with this.
Thank you for the straight answer. It seems to me like this is saying that all of Yahweh's actions are inherently good. Is this a fair reading, and if not, why not?
Comment by grendelkhan — August 4, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
August 4th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
While it is true that the Creator of our own space-time cannot be bound within our own space-time, that doesn't necessarily imply that the Creator is incapable of sequence or action. Remember, we are only observing that the Creator is not bound by our space-time, not necessarily that God is in every possible sense atemporal.
Why should we think that our contingent space-time is the only possible kind of temporal reality?
There are a couple obvious reasons why the idea of a completely atemporal God may not be an accurate picture. The first is that there is a beginning to this space-time continuum. On any view, whether theistic or not, the cause needs to be both able to act and outside the subsequent space-time continuum.
When we say God is eternal and unchanging, that indicates that His nature is unchanging, but not that he cannot act or cannot observe and know. The Bible also reports that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." which would indicate that His essential nature does not change.
The idea that events, including our choices and actions, could not register as knowledge for God is evidently not the case. Otherwise, God would be persistently unable to know of any contingent fact.
In short, the non-contingent quality of God's essential nature never means that God cannot observe, know, or act.
In imagery to stretch thinking, what is more solid and unchanging than rock? Contrast that with the fluid nature of water. And yet Christ is referred to as a rock that supplied life sustaining water.
Comment by eric — August 4, 2007 @ 8:34 pm
August 4th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Another excellent question. The answers have to do with the purpose one has in mind. Was that summary good enough? Good enough for what?
So, one part of the answer is to observe the difference between a summary of the moral essentials or core and the specification of the working laws of a nation. Jesus was giving the former, but the law given through Moses served purposes far beyond that. It was the law for a particular nation.
Regarding the purpose of living a moral life, the more important part of the answer is to go back to what I was saying about how it is never enough to obey the rules. It doesn't matter whether you have rules in detail or summaries of the essence.
You quoted my "It is a fundamentally and qualitatively different proposition, …" My preceding statement was "No special pleading. Merely trying to be obedient to Jesus on our own steam doesn't cut it either." So getting the moral summary from Jesus helps our understanding, but in itself it doesn't enable us to do significantly better. So the summary version isn't "good enough" either, for that purpose.
As I've said, its not that hard really to know how to treat other people well — if we want to. Our problem — a problem of our nature — is that this is not as important to us as it ought to be. We escape facing this by using our minds to find rationalizations for our own failings (but not our good deeds), while being often unwilling to be as generous with the failings of those that hurt us.
The Christian message says that do-good-to-be-acceptable has cause and effect backwards. We cannot make ourselves acceptable by trying to obey rules. Rather, because we have been accepted and God changes our nature, the effect will be that our behavior begins to change.
So onething's musing about behavior coming from nature rather than trying to obey rules was quite perceptive.
Note in passing, the reality of being "in him" precedes the consequences for walking. The behavior is a visible outward sign or effect of an unseen reality.
For some things, there is no adequate substitute for personally diving into the water yourself, first hand.
Comment by eric — August 4, 2007 @ 9:20 pm
August 4th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Everything ultimately comes from God. Yet God can also choose to make others who can choose and make. And if they are really free and able to choose and to make, there is no guarantee that they will always choose to walk in the light.
Earlier you also observed "The New testament says that God is light and in him is no darkness at all." That comes from the first chapter of 1 John (John's letter #1). The rest of the same passage makes it clear that not all choose to walk in the light rather than darkness.
That is the very same letter that also tells us "God is love." John accurately observed that God is both light (in which there is no darkness) and love. In his gospel account, he repeatedly affirms in both words and in multiple examples that Jesus was full of both truth and grace. If you read through that gospel account, you can see both, often side by side. Both gracious and generous beyond expectation as well as unwavering in affirming truth, including moral truth and the difference between right and wrong.
It is easiest for people to believe either one dimensional view of God and of Jesus, either as as an undiscerning kindness without standards or as an unloving, ungracious, unmerciful moralist.
Yet the reality is that both dimensions find harmony in God's nature. That reality is hardest for us because we so typically do not embrace both ourselves.
You may find it strange that Jesus should expect his life to necessarily lead to sacrificial death and a blood payment. But I would invite you to consider the possibility that this event was exactly and intentionally at the intersection of how God was able to embrace this world as it is with uncompromised harmony between love and light, between grace and truth.
In the words of one Psalm,
Life can be very strange at times — according to our own expectations. Einstein's greatest blunder came when he chose to overrule his equations when they indicated an expanding universe. He later found it hard to swallow quantum physics — yet there it is.
In John's gospel, see the example of chapter 9. There were some who thought the promised Messiah ("Christ" in Greek = "Messiah" in Hebrew) would be a certain way. But when he was not, they couldn't accept him or recognize him.
Do we dare to search for The God Who Is There, even if He does not oblige our expectations?
Comment by eric — August 4, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
August 4th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Hello Pez,
I'm sorry for my imperious tone.
I'd like to know more about the church refusing to persecute witches because they decided right theology demonstrated there were none.
You say child sacrifice by native Americans is nothing rare or unheard of. Unless you are talking about the Maya and Aztec, then yes, it is rare and upon googling it I could find nothing except the Maya and Aztec. You're going out of your way to pain the rest of the world in as bad as possible a light, and it's all about trying to make Christianity look better by comparison. The Maya and Aztec were perhaps the only horror to rival the inquisition. Very bad, but I am not sure why we have ended up there. I never denied there's a lot of bad stuff in the world, just that Christianity, like Judaism, and I suspect Islam, are worshipping both god and devil, so to speak.
Judaism often praised charity, it is a pillar of Islam and of Buddhism. Hinduism is very keen on karma. Among nearly all indigenous, precivilized people, charity and sharing are integral to the culture.
Yes, they did. But in the culture of Jesus, you shouldn't even talk to a woman in public. Like the woman at the well. And after an initial flowering, the men again took over and women no longer had any role at all. No say in any of the important decisions of the church for another 1800 years or so.
What you and stunney and eric are all doing is answering my allegations of the negativity of the Old Testament, and its effects on some of Christian theology as a result, with the best, new testament stuff. I am not arguing that Jesus said wonderful things and taught wonderful things. I am saying that because of the evil that is mostly from the Old Testament and the attitudes that it brought with it, Christianity is worshipping two gods, and that the message of Jesus has been thwarted thereby.
I don't know, do you?
I can appreciate that dangerous people might have to be killed if banishment won't work, but I hardly think witches qualify.
So when Jehovah says, Thou shalt not steal, he really means it, but when he says Thou shalt not suffer the witch to live, it's something that has to be read in context, and it really doesn't mean that there are witches?
Oh, OK.
I can make the argument based on scripture and logic. The Holy Spirit is my only authority. I don't need anyone's authority. Do you?
Yes, the Old Testament is not a 100% evil screed. If it were, who would be fooled?
You again mention that this is not relevant to whether morality is objective. But your argument for an objective morality is a religious one based upon the existence of God, and then you present a God who has permanently turned off many good, thinking people, such as Darwin, who said that no decent person could want Christianity to be true. And this is a major cause of people fleeing from belief in God, because of the negativity in Christianity. Christian theology in my opinion hasn't enough purity and truth to take upon itself the task of refuting atheism or materialism. So yes, it's relevant.
I certainly don't want the Christianity that is in general usage to be true. How could I? It is a cosmic nightmare of almost unimaginable proportions.
Comment by onething — August 4, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Hi Eric,
Here in heaven we only have dialup; now I know my Joy won't participate after a certain thread length.
As I mentioned to Pez, you answered my objections about Christianity, specifically Jehovah's behavior, with a message from Jesus. I laid it out 3 times in this thread some of the differences between what Jesus taught and what Jehovah taught.
That is only part of the story. Christianity has no solution because it isnt inspiring. We have a Jesus who teaches limitless and unconditional forgiveness, a Jesus who SELECTIVELY quotes from the Old Testament, among them, this line : Go and learn what this means, "˜I will have mercy and not sacrifice.'
And then we have a Christian theology who teaches that God remembers wrongs, that he will not or cannot forgive humanity without a blood sacrifice and a death, a God who accepts payment for sins, and who will punish people forever. Everything about Christian salvation theology is unspiritual and taken upon a human, materialistic mode of thinking. It is diametrically opposed to what Jesus taught.
But Christians are not held to a consistent standard because the Bible God doesn't have one either, and so they have no real imperative to get a new nature because God the Father has the old nature. Jesus has the new nature, and his role is to save us from the father. The father is the source of our fear and danger, and we do not love that which we fear and which threatens us. Very simple. Very simple! That, in my not so humble opinion, is why Christianity is unbalanced in its love for Jesus as compared to the Father.
Stunney said,
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." (John 12: 32)
Grendel said,
I'm thrilled if I misunderstood you. But it sounds like you think freedom and democracy are being spread to Iraq. That's propaganda, I believe.
Back to Pez,
It's quite a clever twist to take a church rule against letting the laity read the Bible that lasted I think for centuries, and then point to a rebel as the case for how good Christianity is about spreading knowledge. Islam has got Christianity beat. Right in the Koran, both men and women are to read it, and to be literate to that end.
STUNNEY,
First of all, I do have the impression that the Catholic church was very much fundamentalist on these matters until the very recent past. And second of all, it doesn't make the bible as revelation very useful. In other words, it ain't inspired at all. Oh, parts of it may be "“ but not the ones that the folks got sort of 180 degrees WRONG. So gee, maybe you agree with me that we need to use discernment about what parts of the Bible might be even loosely inspired by God.
Luckily, I'm pretty sure that a good deal of the horrid actions were greatly exaggerated.
Eric (and Stunney)
I mentioned some of my trouble with free will in the post of Aug 2, 2:48 am. Mayhaps you've missed it"¦
I'll answer your last post tomorrow.
Comment by onething — August 5, 2007 @ 12:56 am
August 5th, 2007 at 2:43 am
Hi Onething,
What records do you expect from the natives in America which would tell you if they were into human sacrifice or not and by which you could determine this to be rare – more rare, in fact, than the atrocities you've cited to Christianity? Where there are records, where there is archaeological evidence, from Mexico through Central America and into Southern America (yes, the Mayans, Aztecs, Toltecs, Incas, etc.) there is abundant evidence of human sacrifice. The mound (72) of the Cahokia in Mississippi contains the dismembered, beheaded sacrificial burial of four men with dozens of sacrificed women in one grave, the Iriquois ate the hearts of their defeated enemies, the Plains Indians like the the Pawnee of Nebraska are reported in the 1800s to have engaged in human sacrifice (they, of course, have no records of their own) and even the peaceful Tainos that Columbus encountered had altars for human sacrifice. They were also the same people who told Columbus about the vicious neighboring tribes, with whom they were often in conflict, and the cannibalism employed by those tribes. In the case of the Aztecs alone we are talking here about hundreds of thousands of victims. Evil did not follow Christian missionaries around the world any more than they found it, and tried to eradicate it, where they arrived.
Natives (in the Americas specifically right now, but around the world as well) wiped out other tribes, kidnapped and enslaved the defeated, and tortured their victims. They did this to man, woman and child. They raped women, mutilated victims, and caused them the greatest pain they could inflict. They put their sons through torturous rites of passage which they did not always survive.
To present the world as being peopled by only peaceful and noble savages and to contrast this with Christian atrocities is exactly what you keep trying to pretend I am doing but for opposite effect. The evil Christian Europeans did not stumble into Eden and pollute it as the romanticizers would have us believe.
To do this they have to ignore the empirical and historical evidence that it was Christendom, deriving principles specifically from Christianity, that had the effects I've written about previously.
No I'm not.
Why do you hardly think witches qualify when you just said that you don't know what a witch was? (This is parallel to the question "why do you presume child sacrifice was rare among natives?" I think the answer is that it fits your narrative. )
The person in Exodus whom you are not to allow life is a "chasaph", or "poisoner", somebody caught with a poison for deadly or hurtful use. A person who made, sold or used a poison that was meant to kill was to be put to death. As you said, you can appreciate that a murderer may have to be put to death.
Augustine taught that witches, as interpreted in the pagan sense of his day, did not exist. Only God could affect the laws of the universe, and neither the devil nor demons had this power. Therefore, the spell-casting witch of paganism, and of later medieval Europe, need not concern a person, as this person did not exist in the eyes of the early church.
Prohibitions against thievery, killing, lying, etc. all have to be read in context. There is no special pleading going on here and the accusatory tactic is unfounded.
I'm not a prophet but I try to learn from the Word of God.
Prophets with direct revelations from God need to be tested for their ability to get the truths right.
I've already found your truths and your presentations wanting.
Darwin was free to reject the truth base upon his distaste with it just as are many today – but that doesn't make it false. Lots of children turn against the disciplining of their parents as well, but that doesn't mean that their parents are wrong.
The argument for the objectivity of morality, as I see it, is twofold. First, it is an inference based upon the empirical observation that we all recognize that there is actual right and wrong (you included) and that it is not all merely relative, cultural, or based upon opinion.
The next part of the argument is based upon the logical necessity of such a morality being grounded in something which gives it transcendence that it is not merely relative, cultural or based upon opinion.
It is actually used as much as an argument for the existence of God as it is to be derived from His existence.
This is unfortunate. If they were to learn more about it, and follow God's Word rather than making things up to please themselves or trusting too much in the words of sinful men, this problem could be lessened.
1) Our wants don't dictate truth.
2) We all make mistakes when we trust the general populace too much on any issue. On this issue I prefer to go to the experts, those who study the languages, the texts, the context, the history, and the rationality – and then I interpret.
Prophets do little for me.
Comment by Pez — August 5, 2007 @ 2:43 am
August 5th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Hi again, OneThing,
It's quite clever of you to accuse me of picking and choosing while repeatedly doing it yourself. First, we are not talking about a single rebel but an entire movement, which was not unprecedented and, really, was quite continuous throughout Christian history.
We have tens of thousands of manuscripts from across North Africa, The Near and Middle East, into Europe and out into Asia from the first centuries of Christianity.
We have the writings of the church fathers in which they present their studies of the Jewish scriptures as well as the Apostles' writings and we have the New Testament all but duplicated in their quotations. The religion was founded upon spreading the Word, orally and in written form. The Apostles took pains to write down their stories and their teachings and to have them severally copied and distributed among the gatherings.
This was the basis of the spread of the religion, not conversion by sword but by education, love and charity.
Consistently, beginning with the Septuagint of the ancient Hebrew texts, the copying of the Bible, and the now-called New Testament into Aramaic, Coptic (copies in five different dialects), Syriac, Greek, German, English, Latin, Armenian, Georgian and even Gothic in the 4th century (etc.) attests to the fact that the goal was to get the written teachings into the hands of the people. It is likely that the Bible found its way into Anglo-Saxon versions by the 6th century and definitely we have copies from the 10th.
During the so-called Dark Ages Celtic Christians (men and women) travelled from the British Isles throughout southern Europe and toward Eur-Asia spreading literacy and knowledge of the Bible without authority or instruction from Rome but from the Word. In their monasteries they (men and women) studied and copied the Bible and taught it, along with reading and writing, to the illiterate. Additionally, as discussed before, they tended to the poor and sick.
As Christianity became entangled in politics, spread throughout the city-states of Europe and became a tool of society, yes, it had some bleak periods. But once again you conveniently ignore the fact that it was Christianity and the teaching of the Word which was historically responsible for the spread of literacy and education (and freedom, and reason, and innovation, etc.) in Europe and elsewhere. Speaking of "and elsewhere", as an aside, so greatly was literacy valued among Christian missionaries that in parts of Africa "Christians" actually meant "readers" – and, by the way, this education in reading was of the outcasts and not of the elite.
It's not about the text paying lip-service to literacy, but about the empirical facts and the actual practice of the religion and of the belief itself.
Comment by Pez — August 5, 2007 @ 3:47 am
August 5th, 2007 at 4:23 am
By the way, since you bring up "good, thinking people like Darwin", here we can explore what he had to say both about morality and the "savage" races as well as your implication that we ought to believe as true that which we find most appealing:
Chapter 4, Descent Of Man
And don't forget, Darwin told us he found it more noble to suppose our descent from monkeys than from savages.
Chapter 21, Descent Of Man.
Comment by Pez — August 5, 2007 @ 4:23 am
August 5th, 2007 at 4:52 am
grendelkhan wrote:
I know. And I know why. It's because you keep on interpreting the Bible like a dumbass fundamentalist interprets it, and you appear to be utterly ignorant of the fact that the great majority of reputable Biblical scholars, including all those Biblical scholars in my own Roman Catholic religious tradition going back all through almost two millennia, reject dumbass fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible.
Once you accept the fact that you're a complete ignoramus regarding Biblical interpretation, the next rational step to take would be either:
A) try to study mainstream Biblical scholarship
Or
B) shut the fuck up because you realize you've got no idea what the fuck you're talking about
What's it going to be, grendelkhan?
"˜Yahweh seems keen on executing witches' is your interpretation of a Biblical text. Which mainstream Biblical scholar believes that the Judaeo-Christian God really is keen on executing witches, on the basis of this or any other Biblical text?
That's right. None of them do. Shouldn't that give you pause? Or are you taking your orders from the atheist god Ignoramus?
I didn't say they were metaphors. I said they were expressions of the understanding of particular people at particular times of what God's will was. They believed God wanted them to survive, and enjoy freedom and security. Their leaders believed that their survival, freedom, and security required military success. Their leaders then connected that belief with the belief that therefore God wanted them to be militarily successful. And that conclusion was then written down, often using the epic genre of literature.
It's really quite a simple idea. However, not quite as simple as yours appear to be.
It's clearly nothing of the kind. Stick to studying golf-balls or whatever the hell it is you do. You're obviously out of your depth when it comes to studying thought, ancient or modern.
Bullcrap, chum. I didn't accuse you of actually taking orders from a moronic deity. I said you came across that way. And I didn't decline to answer your question. I answered your question more than once. My answer was too sophisticated for your tastes and like a devotee of a moronic atheist deity, you spat out your equally moronic stock "˜does not compute with my programming' auto-response.
No. Your ignorance of Biblical scholarship has little to do with your ignorance of advanced philosophy, and it's the former you need to remedy.
The word I used was "˜zany', not "˜inconvenient'. Believe it or not, those are non-synonymous words. And the zanyness of your questions betrays your chumphood and dunce status when it comes to even a modicum of knowledge of the field about which you've been spouting reams of ignorant garbage.
If it pisses you off that I refuse to accept your infantile attempt to require of me that I agree to a hermeneutic of Biblical texts to which no reputable Biblical scholar subscribes, because it exposes your ignorance and explodes assumptions upon which you've relied to support your atheidiocy, then here's a Kleenex.
Oh, that's easy. I didn't say you're taking orders. But moronic atheist deities typically use grossly ill-informed, simple-minded, wholly unscholarly Biblical hermeneutics to motivate their dupes. And you come across as such a dupe. You certainly argue like one.
How are you supposed to know anything?
Thassssssright:!:
Use common sense, acquire some common knowledge, and when puzzling questions arise in your mind or lunar golf-ball or whatever it is you use for learning, questions to which you don't know the answer, consult the relevant expert opinions. And if you're really keen to learn even more, study the appropriate reputable scholarly material in more detail.
I mean, duh.
Am I not allowed to discuss more than one idea within one thread? Or is more than one just too much for you to handle?
Now I know this may come as an enormous surprise, but it is actually possible consistently to believe both that morality is objective and that it's objectively morally wrong to burn witches (even assuming, which I do not, that there are any witches).
Biblical scholarship is a vast and complex field of study. Let's just start with translating 3000- and 2500- and 2000-year-old texts into modern languages. Then translate and study other texts in other languages of the same period, and compare them. Then do the relevant archaelogy, anthropology, etc, etc, etc. Let's assume we've then got some reasonable scholarly hypotheses on a number of issues in which we're interested. Then we have to apply a hermeneutical investigation into our own assumptions, biases, etc. Test out hypotheses with other scholars in the field, and submit research to refereed scholarly journals. Eventually, we have a partial, fallible understanding. Just like in the natural and social sciences, our understanding is partial, and fallible, and cumulative. Many earlier theories and claims in Biblical studies are now widely agreed to be untenable. For instance, many partial and even complete fabrications by 18th century deists and atheists have been discovered. And this partial, fallible, provisional scholarly consensus is then disseminated through our systems of education, just as biology, US history, algebra etc are disseminated by high school teachers (who are not themselves top scholars or original researchers), and it trickles down to the masses. Hopefully.
A very small example: Jesus is reported as saying, "Turn the other cheek". What did he mean by that? The explanation I've usually heard preached as an adult Catholic is this one.
Apply what logic? Let's start with what we have. Do we have two commandments that we know were given by God? No. What we have are two ancient Jewish texts indicative of ancient Jewish thought, but which require interpretation, as do all texts.
There are ancient Roman texts which refer to Roman emperors as divine beings. Does that require us to believe that those emperors really were divine beings, or really believed to be divine beings, or that those emperors were purely mythical characters and never really existed? Not every text has to be taken literally. But it doesn't have to be taken as completely false either. We have Shakespearean texts which refer to the quality of mercy as not strained, but which falleth as a gentle rain from heaven. Does that require us to think either that mercy is really a type of rainfall, or, if it's not really a type of rainfall, that there is really no such thing as mercy, or that Shakespeare believed mercy was a good thing, or what?
More of the same rubbish. You presumably believe that there's an objective fact about whether or not the number of technological civilizations in our galaxy currently exceeds 500. How does the existence of that objective fact cut through every sort of disagreement about whether or not the number of technological civilizations in our galaxy currently exceeds 500, or solve Fermi's Paradox? If it doesn't cut through such disagreements, does that entail that no human will ever have access to warranted beliefs about roughly how many such civilizations our galaxy contains?
You just haven't been listening, have you?
The discovery of important truths of any sort is, er, important. But that has got nothing to do with whether there are discoverable truths in a given area of inquiry, nor is it entailed by there being a set of important truths that they're all infallibly and effortlessly known as soon as we turn 5.
What important truths did we know about the universe in 1857? Were there any important truths we didn't know about it in 1857? Did our lack of knowledge of any important truths about the universe in 1857 prevent those truths from being, er, true in 1857?
Yeah, I'm one of those crazies who think morality is an important subject.
Please. There's nothing new or creative about my definitions. You're confusing necessary conditions for having beliefs about something with what justifies a belief. If a 12-year-old child knows that 7+5=12, the fact that the child couldn't have known it without having previous sense-perceptions of the world is irrelevant to whether that arithmetical knowledge is epistemically justified by such sense-perceptions.
The world looked the same before and after 1915. That is, sense-perceptions did not undergo dramatic changes. Prior to 1915, people saw apples falling. After 1915, people saw apples falling in just the same way. The Michelson-Morley experiment was already almost 30 years old. Einstein sat and thought about what the observations of humankind signified. He didn't say, "Hey look at that! See that big chunk of curved spacetime around the sun?!"
Your statements made it very hard to tell.
On the contrary, you've gone and defined the notion of a priori out of existence. You're simply confused. You're conflating necessary antecedents for a belief with what justifies a belief. The confusion is masked by the equivocation you're relying on in your use of the phrase "˜based on'.
An empirical belief is justified by a sensory observation (provided such observations should normally be taken as justification—-which is itself a principle not justified by observation, at least not if we require justifications to be non-circular). An a priori belief is not justified by a sensory observation.
Any theoretical belief is always underdetermined by the empirical data. It requires for its rationally warranted acceptability a priori reasoning that is justified on non-observational grounds. Modern science presupposes the rational justifiability on a priori grounds of a great deal of mathematics and, arguably, presupposes the existence of mathematical entities, in particular the entities over which set theory quantifies. (You ought to familiarize yourself with the debate surrounding the Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis).
Utility is not equivalent to rational justification.
You're still utterly confusing there being objective truths with their being determined as such by humans. Nobody (except maybe Plato, because he maybe thought souls pre-existed their embodiment) has ever seriously argued or claimed that there are any truths which humans can determine as such without the 'slightest dependence' on our empirical understanding of the world. Yeah, we have to understand that mummy's got dinner ready otherwise we won't grow up to understand calculus. Does this make the truths of calculus justified on the "˜basis' that we understood empirically that mummy had dinner ready when we were younger? No. Dependence and justification are not the same. One is a causal relation. The other is a rational relation. Of course some hardcore materialists argue that there really aren't any rational relations. And of course, if there aren't any, then their 'argument' contains none, which is a kinda self-defeating result.
Ignoring? You're joking, right? I've not ignored it. You must be imagining that I did not specifically and explicitly state that I don't interpret that text's presence in the Bible as meaning that God in reality commanded anyone to kill witches, any more than I would interpret a book I wrote about a nutjob deity called "˜grendelkhan' who commands an Al Capone-type character to beat a dinner-guest to death with a baseball bat to mean that you really are a nutjob deity who in reality issued such a command to such a murderer.
Rational thinking about ethics. The kind which has resulted in the widespread rejection of a divine command theory of ethics since, oh, Socrates.
He specifically argued that the death penalty was justified for use against heretics. If he was wrong, that indicates to me that there's an objective morality. Otherwise he wasn't wrong, but just had a different opinion from yours. And from mine.
Why is there an either/or here? I'm a Catholic. Does that require me to believe that no Catholic has ever sinned or been wrong about anything? If so, why wasn't I told?
The apostles "˜all fled' when Jesus was arrested. Saint Peter denied him three times, we're told. Sin didn't come to a screeching halt after he moved to Rome.
And unless I'm much mistaken, even a few non-Catholics have occasionally strayed from the path of righteousness. Does that entitle me to dismiss their worldviews? Every explicitly atheist regime ever to be in power has slaughtered a great many more people than the Spanish Inquisition managed to kill in its entire 350-year history. Maybe Dawkins has called for this fact to be printed on the back of those atheist t-shirts. If so, it seems I missed it.
It's a good job that idea hasn't been argued for on this thread, then, isn't it?
"Exterminate the other lot" is how I put it. Doesn't sound like a nice bedtime story to me. But maybe your mum rocked you to sleep with tales of genocide.
I'm afraid I'll have to teach you a little of the intro topic in Philosophy of Language 101. The problem is a thoroughly general one; it's not restricted to talk about God. It was made famous by Frege, and more recently by Kripke. It's a, perhaps the, central problem in analytic philosophy. It essentially concerns how thought (in general) relates to reality (in general). To tackle it, we must analyze how thought refers to reality.
It is a fair reading provided the term "˜Yahweh' is being used simply as a name to refer to God.
Suppose the Morning Star is the same thing as the Evening Star. But we're living long ago and don't know that our separate terms (e.g. Phosphorus and Hesperus in Latin, or whatever) actually refer to the same celestial object, i.e. the planet Venus. When we use the words 'Morning Star', we intend to refer to an object that is, as it happens, identical with the object called "˜Evening Star'. We could easily have false beliefs about that object. But those false beliefs are, in fact, about the same thing, namely the second closest planet to the star which is nearest the Earth. Now suppose "˜Yahweh' is just used to pick out the same thing "˜God' picks out. And suppose that thing is, as it happens, inherently good, just as the Morning Star thing is, as it happens, inherently the same thing as the Evening Star thing. We might have false beliefs about both things—-i.e., about the thing called "˜God' and "˜Yahweh', and about the thing called "˜Morning Star' and "˜Evening Star'. But our false beliefs have no effect on what those things are identical with in reality. Nor can our linguistic practices, in particular the descriptions we may associate with a particular name affect the way the world really is in itself. We might believe that the 'God/Yahweh' thing desires witches to be burnt. and hence believe (falsely) that a thing that in reality is good really desires witch-burnings. And we might believe (falsely) that the Morning Star thing is a different thing from the Evening Star thing, when in reality neither thing is a star, and each thing so called in reality is just one and the same planetary thing.
If you need more, google 'Frege and Kripke on sense and reference'.
Comment by stunney — August 5, 2007 @ 4:52 am
August 5th, 2007 at 8:51 am
onething wrote:
Well, let's consider a few things.
1. The Church existed for centuries before the canon of Scripture was fixed.
2. Once it was fixed, it was more than another 1000 years or so before any Bibles were printed or translated into the vernacular.
3. The vast majority of Catholics have been illiterate peasants until quite recently and knew next to nothing about vast swathes of the Old Testament. Even since the advent of mass literacy, Catholics have known very little about the Old Testament.
4. The two most influential Catholic theologians were Augustine and Aquinas. Neither was literalist or fundamentalist.
5. Among Catholic Bible scholars, the standard doctrine going right back to the early Chuch Fathers was that Scripture generally had a variety of senses.
Here is Pope Leo XIII of happy memory, writing in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus of 1893:
And here's some more on this subject:
You continue:
If God is to communicate or reveal anything of Godself to humans, how is God to do it independently of human (and hence historically and culturally conditioned) consciousness, human concepts, human understanding? Why bother to make us even have human consciousness, concepts and understanding, if they always had to be by-passed when God wanted us to know anything about what would be useful for our salvation? The question amounts to whether God should have made humans at all, rather than just stop at angels. What about cats? They can't understand the Bible. Is that a reason for God not to have made cats? How about stars? Or (Hollywood) starlets?
The difference, of course, is that God has to communicate with us without negating our freedom, including our freedom to sin, make mistakes, hold our hands to our ears, be alienated from God and not be puppets on a string. So it's not that our sin and folly won't distort God's message. But given God's respect for and purpose in creating human freedom, Scripture necessarily records our understanding of what God has to say, including lessons learned from previously inadequate understandings. It's not a word for word dictation from the Holy Spirit.
Well, let's take the 100 'nicest' Scripture verses, and suppose those constituted the entire Bible. Did having those prevent armies of nominally Christian nations inflict upon each other the horrors of World War I, or prevent slavery in American colonies?
Well, let me ask you this. Jews have had their Scriptures for over 2,000 years. Why did they not act far more barbarically than they have, given how seemingly 'barbaric' those Scriptures are? Why was it eugenics rather than, say, Old Testament hygiene rules that ushered in the most appalling atrocity in recorded history?
Is it possible that Jewish people understood their own Scriptures better than, say, grendelkhan?
You're right to be. What one needs to do is read other ancient texts. Exaggeration was all the rage. It was essentially two things: a) propaganda to intimidate potential enemies; b) camp-fire stories along the lines of, "Boys, I'm an old-timer, let me tell ya, but my ol' grandaddy coulda whupped all o' you kids. Yessiree. Why, he once single-handedly killed 900 mounted Apaches, even though he had six arrows in his body, and ran out of bullets after the first few dozen injuns. Then he rode into town, and fought 6 shootin duels before the next morn, after drinkin a gallon or two of bourbon at Kitty McGillicuddly's fancy saloon. Yup, ma ol- grandaddy coulda lassoed the whole buncha you bumfluffers afore ya coulda even see him comin' for ya. Yup."
Don't we all have trouble with free will?
I'll see what I can do. I tend, however, to agree with van Inwagen's take on it. Something which we strongly assume to be true must, in fact, be false. It's just a matter of picking which thing it is.
Comment by stunney — August 5, 2007 @ 8:51 am
August 5th, 2007 at 10:41 am
onething wrote:
Hi onething,
Your statement implies that free will depends on delinking our actions from the causal chain; in other words, that free will is incompatible with determinism.
Lots of folks hold your view. I usually hear it expressed in terms like this: "If my brain is a physical object, then its state one second from now depends only on its current state, plus whatever inputs it receives from its environment during that one second. This has been true every second of my life. I didn't choose the state of my brain at birth, and I didn't choose the environment I was born into. If the world is deterministic, the very thoughts I am thinking right now were determined by the state of the world before I was even conceived. Therefore I have no freedom even to shape my own thoughts, much less my actions. I clearly do not have free will."
The problem with this explanation is that it depends on the assumption that there is an "I" separate from my body whose true will — my free will — is somehow being thwarted by the relentless determinism of my brain, body, and the world at large. My "true" will is not being expressed, because determinism will not allow it to be expressed.
Yet we have no experience of being carried along helplessly while our bodies perform a predetermined dance. We feel that we are choosing what we say or do, and that our thoughts have causal power. So there cannot be a separate conscious will whose desires are being frustrated by the deterministic trajectory of the body.
True, you might concede, but what about the will we do possess? How can we call it "free" if the choices it makes were determined before we were even born?
The answer comes when you stop thinking about "I" as being somehow separate from "my body", and start thinking "I am my body (including my brain)." We are not just passengers in a vehicle; we are the vehicle, and there are no passengers.
If I am my body, then the problem of free will evaporates. My will is whatever my brain chooses to do. It receives certain stimuli from the environment and makes a choice; the choice it makes is different from what another brain would choose in the same circumstances. Each will chooses actions according to its own nature. What could be freer than that?
Well, one way you could be even freer would be if you were unconstrained by your own nature. But think about what that means. If you were truly unconstrained by your own nature, you would have no preferences. You may prefer Neapolitan to double-chocolate fudge, but that is only because you are constrained by your nature. A will that was truly free, in the sense of being unconstrained by its own nature, would express no preferences whatsoever, and would therefore act perfectly randomly.
None of us want that kind of freedom. We want the freedom to express our own natures. As I argue above, we have that kind of freedom, even if determinism holds.
Comment by keiths — August 5, 2007 @ 10:41 am
August 5th, 2007 at 11:24 am
But I thought you were all about objective reasons to do things. Why are you arguing from authority, then? If the majority of people calling themselves Christians started to engage in ritual sacrifice, would you be okay with that? What's the point of believing in the Bible (to whatever extent you can be said to do so) if you're just going to believe whatever a majority of people you pick vote on, and label people who take your stated beliefs at face value as "dumbass fundamentalists" Don't you occasionally go on about people who don't subscribe to Christianity having no basis for saying that genocide is wrong? Why doesn't the same argument apply to you, if your scripture is nothing but a batch of polite suggestions?
But I see that your two alternatives for me are learning the opinion of a bunch of authorities–clever folk, no doubt–or to "shut the fuck up". As I've stated, you've yet to provide me with a reason why your morality is so superior if you're picking and choosing the parts you like.
Silly me, I thought that words meant things. Shall we consult modern biblical scholars on whether or not genocide is wrong, or do you magically consider your beliefs on that front to be objective because there's near-unanimity among scholars there?
So the bits that quote Yahweh, in your opinion, are not actually his words? Do you have a different opinion on the bits of the New Testament which quote a deity?
I'm a little leery of attempts to hand-wave away the problem by calling me ignorant, especially when you've shown yourself quite willing to explain abstract philosophy in huge missives. Why is judging someone for being a murderer different from judging someone for being a witch, or for picking up sticks on the Sabbath?
I think that's a tad disingenuous, and the distinction is a fine and not particularly meaningful one.
From here, it looks like "Biblical scholarship" is in the business of explaining away bits of the Bible that don't click well with modern life, so as not to leave Christians such as yourself looking like medieval (or, I suppose, Bronze Age) savages. Where's the objective morality? Who's to stop a majority of Biblical scholars from agreeing that "thou shalt not kill" doesn't really mean that murder is prohibited, and one should engage in Biblical scholarship before taking any of these things at face value?
Mainly, I'm confused about how you can go on and on about what a fabulous basis for your morality you have, much better than all those atheists who can't tell what's wrong with genocide, and then turn around and appeal to a majority of fallible humans to tell you what's right and what's wrong, while pretending that you're doing something objective.
That sounds dangerously atheistic. Where do you figure out what Yahweh wants? You're just taking the opinion of a bunch of guys, an opinion which may change next week. Why does it matter that these guys base their opinions on interpretations of one particular text, interpretations so twisted that they'd make the most jaded literary postmodernist blush?
And what does this partial, fallible understanding confer upon those who go to the trouble of understanding it? What's the point? What makes it better than some guy's opinion? What benefit do you get from basing your lit-crit on the Bible rather than on, for example, the Koran or the Upanishads (or research in psychology and sociology, for that matter), since you can pull any meaning you like from the text? What kind of authority or validity do you think these interpretations have?
I suppose if the Roman histories are the foundation of your religion, it kind of does. If not, aren't you just making stuff up to suit your own prejudices, rather than following the edicts of your religion?
The question of the number of technological civilizations in our galaxy, while a fascinating one, isn't analogous to the question of what's objectively moral and what's not–the latter is important; people kill each other in alarming large and frequent skirmishes because people on both sides have the one true objective morality, which tells them to fight, fight, fight. It's not an abstract question which doesn't have much effect on peoples' actions, and it's kind of callous to pretend that it is. And yet you do assert that it's an important subject. Why the comparison, then?
Yes, because Newton's mechanics work well at human-perceivable scales and speeds. The advances due to relativity and quantum mechanics were based on observations of somewhat contrived situations, like shining a light on a plate and measuring the ejected electrons, or observing the orbit of Mercury.
Yes, he sat and thought about the observations of humankind. His theories were based on the evidence he was considering, which is what I said in the first place.
And in the example of Einstein, it's easy to imagine results for the photoelectric effect experiment or for the observed orbit of Mercury not being what they were, in which case Einstein's theories would not have followed from the evidence. Quantum mechanics and relativity are very much justified by the available evidence, and by your own definition, are not examples of a priori reasoning.
Fine, then. By your own definition–which, as I've pointed out, certainly excludes Einstein's work–what's an important, non-obvious and recent result which has followed from a priori reasoning?
Except that, as a Christian, you presumably believe in Yahweh in a way that you don't believe in Al Capone–that is, you believe that the former has the authority to define good and evil, while the latter doesn't; you follow laws set by the former but not by the latter.
Then what do you need Yahweh for?
As you've stated before that you can't make statements on what the objective morality actually consists of, does this mean that you regard the result of your much-vaunted "rational thinking about ethics" as merely your own opinion?
It certainly entitles you to doubt that they have a handle on objective morality–why would you regard the pronouncements of such an entity as anything more than opinions, since they've been wrong in the past and doubtless will be again?
And I see you can't resist pointing to other people who thought they had a handle on objective morality and pointing out that they were way worse than your group. Grading on a curve, are we?
You mean stories about how your ethnic group has been chosen by a mighty power, defeats all challengers and is promised all sorts of goodies because of said mighty power? Remember, the genocide is portrayed as a good thing in the Bible, as a Yahweh-ordained victory.
I thought they were synonymous for you. That's fine by me.
So, Yahweh appears to you in a burning bush, gives you the the speech (replace 'Jesus' with 'Yahweh', though aren't they the same guy?) and hands you an axe. What do you do?
Heh.
Comment by grendelkhan — August 5, 2007 @ 11:24 am
August 5th, 2007 at 11:49 am
grendelkhan wrote:
Indeed, that is what Leo XIII sanctions in the quote Stunney provided:
Which again raises the question: If God wants us to be moral, why are his moral teachings "wrapt in a certain religious obscurity" that creates disagreement among sincere believers?
Comment by keiths — August 5, 2007 @ 11:49 am
August 5th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
Let's go slowly, shall we?
1) There are objective moral reasons to do things.
2) If you wish to understand how properly to interpret a text, especially one that was written a long time ago in a language and in a social, cultural, and historical context of which you are completely ignorant, it is advisable to consult expert interpreters.
In what way does the second proposition contradict the first?
If you want to learn how to build an ocean-going ship, it's a good idea to study shipbuilding. It doesn't follow that the reasons for building or for not building nuclear-armed aircraft carriers are not objective, or that they rest upon the authority of the shipbuilding industry's expertise on how to build nuclear-armed aircraft carriers.
They're not relevantly connected. You know, logically separate questions. Grendel, listen to me! Listen to me grendel! Separate issues!
Oh God. I think he's fainted. Somebody call an ambulance. I don't think his brain can cope. An ambulance! Hurry!
Absolutely. Because as I have stated 500,092 times in this thread already, whatever the majority of self-described Christians decide to do is by definition morally right. It's got nothing to do with anything objective.
You must remember me drilling that into your head? I used an industrial strength drill, grendo, for crying out loud. You sure you don't remember?
No? Oh. Ok. You're right. I didn't say that.
There's none. There's no point. Just as there's no point in pretending that you're not the most idiotic person I've ever come across. There's simply none whatsoever. You know why? Because it doesn't matter what anyone ever says to you, or how often. You're just too stupid, it seems.
Only if there's no objective morality. For instance, if there's no objective morality, there's nothing objectively wrong with calling you a moronic fuckwit before beheading you in a public square and kicking your cranium all over Baghdad because you're not a devout Muslim.
Read it again, g-string.
Yeah, you spotted it! Yip, I tried to slip that 'if' past you a couple of times there, but you spotted it. I guess you're just too smart for me to catch you like that.
If it were, the same argument would apply. But it's quite possible you're too much like an utter imbecile to notice that I paraphrased Bible passages as saying "Exterminate the other lot".
No, I did not say those were the only alternatives. I said that your next rational alternatives were those.
Rational. Trust me, it's in the dictionary.
But what on earth makes you think I regard you as rational? Does it not seem obvious that I think you're borderline psychotic?
Ah, but grendel, I didn't say my morality was superior. I didn't even say that religious believers have superior knowledge of morality. You've probably forgotten that I said this, oh, it must be millenia ago by now:
Now, returning to the present scintillating entertainment you're so generously providing:
Oh they do. They're not always literally true, however. For instance, the words grendelkhan is the most intelligent being in the cosmos mean something. They're not literally true, however. Not to put too fine a point on it.
See the difference?
Biblical scholars are experts on interpreting the Bible. They're the folks one goes to for expertise on how to interpret what texts in the Bible mean.
If what you're looking for are objective reasons on why genocide is wrong, maybe one should ask a few senior citizens in Tel Aviv, or aid workers in Darfur if you're not sure. If you're into more serious thought, you could read Aquinas's and Kant's moral philosophy.
Obviously you're not into serious thought. I meant if someone apart from you was.
I don't magically consider anything. I think.
You do not, apparently. Apparently you're programmed to say whatever crap and drivel some atheist crap-and-drivel merchant told you to say.
No, they're words that evil Christians put there to show up how gullible atheist morons can be.
It's God's way of thanking us for putting up with your stupidity. I mean, their stupidity.
There's lots of those. I think the Q sayings are mostly authentic sayings of Jesus, or closely reflect those sayings, though often with some loss of their original context .
I'm a philosopher, not a Scripture scholar. But I've taken the trouble to read some mainstream Scripture scholarship. I don't to do that to find out what moral values people should live by. Catholic moral philosophy is not fundamentally Scripture based. It's based on ratio recta. In your case, it may be rectum irrationalem.
My first professor as a philosophy undergraduate was a Jesuit. He wrote an excellent book on this subject, entitled Authority in Morals. The principal authority he argued for, in line with Aquinas but also using a contemporary analytic philosophy framework, is the authority of right reason.
It would be wasted on you, though.
I don't think we should judge persons. That, indeed, was the subject of that Jesuit's Ph.D dissertation at University of Michigan, (Ann Arbor) back in the 1960s—that the moral evaluation of actions is quite a separate kind of activity from that of morally assessing agents. We should leave judgement of persons up to God.
Murder is wrong by definition. Picking up sticks on Saturdays isn't wrong by definition. However, if a landowner compelled his workers to clear sticks from fields on their only day off, thus exploiting them and preventing them from having a rest-day with family and friends, then that would be wrong.
I believe that was the context for that law in the Bible. An early form of labor legislation.
Now maybe you're against labor protection. If so, I regard that as objectively morally wrong, and shame on you, you blackhearted greed-bag.
No, it's not. I don't believe there really are any atheist deities. Except the Great Atheist Deity of Mind-Numbing Stupidity, GrendelkhantThinkStraight.
No, honest it means a lot. If there really was an atheist deity, I'd be amazed. On the other hand, it would be just like an atheist deity to not believe in its own existence. Atheist entities are often irrational and incoherent nincompoops.
I'm sure it looks that way to such a complete ignoramus and irrationally biased risible atheist wondermind as the one occuppying your perspective.
But so what? Your perspective is intellectually worthless.
They could say it means "Everyone should laugh at grendelkhan". But murder would still be objectively immoral. That's the great thing about objective morality, you see. It's objective. It doesn't depend on what the Biblical authors, or the Qu'ran, or some complete dickhead like Dawkins or his army of wanking pillocks say.
And it will still be objective no matter how many times utter cretins called 'grendelkhan' fail to grasp that point.
That is soooooooooo true.
I could not possibly agree more with you on that.
Ah, but grendoh, I don't think my morality has a fabulous basis. I think morality for all, morality as such has an objective basis. I know I could say you're a blithering idiot for not understanding the point. But why bother. It never helped you understand it before. I don't expect a different result this time, because unlike some, I'm not insane.
Only to someone who thinks that I've been claiming that morality is determined by whatever the Bible says. But unlike that kind of person, I'm not a friggin braindead dipshit. I think you at least seem to be that kind of person, because someone could no more get you to understand this point than you could climb out of black hole, which is where you're obviously now playing golf with that brain of yours. And I know I don't need to ask you what the escape velocity is from a black hole.
At least, I sure hope Einstein was right about those equations of his.
On Earth. That's my planet. What's yours called?
Ah, but grendoh, I'd just go to them for expert opinion on what the Bible means. Not on whether I should do what the Bible says.
See the difference? Of course you don't. Your mind is under the control of your master controllers. It's like talking to a very basic atheist computer program, the kind that goes with those t-shirts.
Why does it matter to consult Shakespearean experts on what Shakespearean texts mean?
Obviously, grendobabbler, if one wants to figure out what Shakespearean texts mean, you should consult 18 years' worth of Atheist Nutjob Weekly, especially the 1999 classic special issue on "What the Fuck Use Is Shakespeare Anyway When There's New Technologies For Calculating The Age of Big Rocks At The Core Of Uranus".
Can I get banned now?
Please? MikeGene? Joy?
Somebody help me! Please!
Hey, I'd love to stay. I know you churned oodles more idiocy. But you can shut down now, 'cos it's time for my brain stimulant.
Or Large Scotch, to use the technical Scottish expression.
Byeeeee!
Comment by stunney — August 5, 2007 @ 3:38 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Of course, as you know, it is important to quote accurately and in context.
That quote didn't say that "his moral teachings" were "wrapt in a certain religious obscurity". You started your quote with:
Placed back into context, "such passages" refers back to the immediately preceding statement (with emphasis added).
In other words, sometimes the Bible endeavors to express realities beyond human experience. Why should it be in any way surprising that "such passages" are difficult? Even our own language was shaped primarily to express those aspects of reality that are within our normal and direct experience.
Regarding moral teachings, your question seems to suppose that the issue is knowledge.
However, the issue is not knowledge but will. There is nothing too hard to understand about treating other people with the same love that we normally attach to ourselves and our own interests.
The remedy cannot come simply from moral teaching. Additional intellectual knowledge is ineffectual with regard to solving the actual problem, which is that we give priority to our own pleasures and comforts and interests over those of others.
Our tendency toward moral blindness and self interest is a symptom that comes from the fact that we are spiritually dead inside, regardless of any attempts to follow rules.
Comment by eric — August 5, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Some people find mercy that goes beyond all expectation to be inspiring beyond words.
But I would agree that if Christianity's solution rested on being inspiring, it would indeed have no solution at all. Inspiration is not nearly enough.
The problem with that assessment is that many of the very things you have trouble with are things that Jesus did teach.
Of course, anyone could take the path of saying that the parts we agree with were really taught by Jesus and the other parts attributed to him were additions or distortions. But the obvious danger of that is that we may be just fashioning an idol of our own design that fulfills our own preconceptions. We may miss the reality (cf. John 9).
There is an additional problem with this concerning his death, but before that there is a central question that needs to come first.
Regarding evaluating Jesus or Christianity, the central question of first priority is whether Jesus truly rose from the dead. If he didn't, then even Paul says that it would be foolish to be a Christian (cf. 1 Corinthians 15). None of the rest of it matters. In that case, it is simply false.
But if he did, then an inescapable question that follows is "Why did he come to die? Why did he need to do this?" Though it may not fit with the way we prefer to think about life, nevertheless it becomes a fact of reality that needs facing.
Likewise, though much of the Old Testament seems unacceptable to you, nevertheless it did anticipate that Jesus would come and die as he did (e.g. Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53). This is more data that needs an account, whether we like what the data says or not. Jesus certainly thought that what he was going through fulfilled Psalm 22, and he let others know this even as it was happening.
Jesus was intentionally fulfilling a plan, one with great benefit and great cost. Beforehand he prayed seeking if there was any other way. His ultimate resolve is confirmation that in his view there was no other way. It was needed. Why?
It cannot be understood through love alone. If that death were not also beneficial to others, there would be nothing particularly loving about going through with it.
It cannot be understood without love, else why would God bother to do this at all?
That's why I say, even setting aside whether Scripture is inspired, these facts of history cannot be understood through any one dimensional view of God. Yet they do make sense as the meeting point of grace and truth, of love and light.
Comment by eric — August 5, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
eric wrote:
Hi Eric,
Take another look at the quote:
eric:
Not just beyond human experience, but beyond human reason:
Leo leaves the obvious question unanswered: why did the Holy Ghost bother to express truths which no human is capable of understanding? And if humans are capable of understanding them, but only with divine assistance, why bother putting them in the book at all?
If God is willing to intervene to enable the understanding of difficult passages in the Bible, why doesn't he transmit the entirety of his word that way? Indeed, why does God allow all of the misinterpretations and faulty translations of his book to stand? Doesn't he care enough to step in to prevent honest seekers from being misled?
Knowledge and will are both important. For example, look at the issue of abortion. Almost everyone on both sides of the debate (excepting wackos like James Kopp) agrees that murder is morally wrong. What they do not agree upon is whether, and under what circumstances, abortion constitutes murder. If God is privy to the objective moral truth, he is strangely silent on this and many other moral dilemmas.
One can only conclude that if he exists at all, he is not terribly concerned about getting the message(s) across. Being omnipotent, he could impart perfect knowledge of morality to every human being with less effort than it takes for you or I to blink an eye — yet he doesn't bother.
Which do you think is more likely:
a) that the Bible, full of contradictions, obscurities, and culture-bound references, subject to hundreds of mistranslations and varying interpretations, disagreed upon (vehemently) by sincere believers, is the product of an all-powerful, loving God who wants us to get the message; or
b) the Bible is of human origin, with all of the fallibility that implies, and so naturally we would expect it to be contradictory, obscure, closely tied to the culture of its origin, and subject to misinterpretation and mistranslation. Either there is no God, or else he doesn't care enough to step in and rectify the confusion.
I choose (b).
Comment by keiths — August 5, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I have long stopped following this thread, but this caught my eye. stunney:
Being of Jewish background, I feel relatively safe in answering this — whatever moral superiority the Jewish people may have accrued to themselves over the centuries does not have its roots in scripture but in being stateless for most of those 2000 years. Jews with access to military power behave more or less like any other people with access to military power, as even a cursory reading of recent history will show. Every armed state is a bully and has at least the potential for barbaric behavior, although most do not take it as far as Nazi Germany, So, neither scripture nor pseudoscientific ideology determines whether a people will descend into barbarism– it's ability and circumstance.
Comment by mtraven — August 5, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Since it is indeed quite difficult to reason accurately and reliably about those things that are beyond our experience, I don't disagree or see that those observations are contradictory. Human reason can falter and go astray when we leave what we know.
If it were simply a matter of force, your reasoning might have been accurate and reliable.
Even if it were as you imagine, increasing knowledge without changing the will only increases guilt. It doesn't solve the problem.
With regard to morality, Scripture is plenty clear in conveying more than people are willing to follow. Increased magnification in viewing the discrepancies would not remove them.
As I was saying earlier, I believe the root issue is a matter of our broken spiritual relationship, leaving us spiritually dead. Has he bothered to do something about this? Yes.
Not all would agree that he has been silent. Is it silence or is it a matter of having ears willing to hear?
But you are quite right that with abortion as other cases, it is actually not a question of morality but rather of other facts, e.g. when is a person a person? By your own statement, the moral principle is already clear enough to most everyone.
He is quite concerned about getting across the message that is important to dealing with the problem. That may not be the message you expected or the means you expected, but reality does not always go the way of expectations, especially when dealing with realities that go beyond our own direct experience. Ask anyone in quantum physics.
Regarding Scripture and getting the message out, the central and important points are not hard to grasp. The fact that it also touches on realities that go beyond our experience is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that our ability to reason about such things is faulty, and only more so the further out you go. Consequently, it's not surprising at all that people disagree about these things, particularly at those edges beyond what is clearly addressed. All this is to be expected.
Regarding "misinterpretation and mistranslation", those are activities of humans outside of the making of Scripture itself. I don't believe those fairly bear on the question of the nature of Scripture. If Scripture is true, we should expect that some will misinterpret it (cf. 2 Peter 3:15-18).
I understand that you expect God should have insured it would be otherwise. The God you expect does not exist. The God who is real certainly isn't the kind of God you expected.
But then, is it reasonable to expect that the uncreated Creator, beyond space-time, who does not think by the means that we time-bound creatures think or perceive by the means that we time-bound creatures perceive should be as we expect?
Your objections are reasonable in the way that Einstein's objections to quantum physics were reasonable.
Comment by eric — August 5, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Just popped back, and I see my old buddy mtraven has commented thus:
I am sure that Jewish statelessness played a big role. But, without wishing to insinuate that you're not knowledgeable about your cultural background, I believe their ethical monotheism was a major factor in the Jewish people's not seeking state power in a national enclave of their own, until modern Zionism. No-one who has encountered Jews in large numbers—and I lived in Stamford Hill in London for several years where there lived perhaps the third largest concentration of Hasidic and other Jews outside of Israel and New York—or professionally or socially on a more personal basis, can doubt their remarkable mixture of intelligent resourcefulness and their general level of moral integrity and intellectual ability. One now has independent states as small as Slovenia, Latvia, etc. Of course, periodic persecution by Christians, and other legal obstacles played a massive role in shaping Jewish aspirations. But I honestly think it goes deeper than that. Jewish people knew in their hearts that an ethical God was their sole true ruler, and they therefore did not seek state power as much as other, one might say without unkindness or stereotyping, less able ethno-religious groups sought it.
I may be wrong, and the modern state of Israel may or may not begin to belie my intuition on this. But that is what I've always sensed, and perhaps is reflected in the ambivalence many Jews continue to feel about the very notion of a 'Jewish state' (as against a fully secular liberal democracy in Israel).
Not a point I wish to argue much, but I think there is that connection. Who knows how the world might have turned out had Constantine opted to remain a pagan. But I doubt the Jews would have become ambitious nationalists anyway to the same degree as others did. I think perhaps the Jewish people had internalized the deep meaning of their own Scriptures more authentically than Christians as a group ever have theirs.
Certainly Jesus did.
Comment by stunney — August 5, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I wrote:
eric replied:
Who said anything about force? God could poof the knowledge into all of us, leaving it up to us to decide whether, or how, to act upon it. No force necessary.
What you say would be true only if there were no cases — zero — of people wanting to do the right thing, but not knowing what the right thing is.
I wrote:
eric replied:
The fact is that sincere Christians who hold the Bible to be the inspired word of God nevertheless disagree on the morality of abortion. Why doesn't God resolve the ambiguity for them?
eric:
Surely you don't believe that God wants us to know the moral principle, but doesn't care whether we are able to carry it out. If God commands me not to kill zorks, I can go around all day decrying zork-killing as evil, but unless I know the difference between zorks and non-zorks, I can't very well follow the commandment, can I? A God who really doesn't want me to kill zorks will make sure I know what a zork is.
I wrote:
eric replied:
Apparently not, or sincere believers would have no trouble reaching a consensus.
But they are extremely important, because nobody has access to the original manuscripts, most people cannot read Biblical Hebrew or Greek, and most people depend on others to supply them with an interpretation of at least some parts of scripture. An omnipotent God who wanted to get the message across would take care to see that it did not get corrupted along the way.
That same argument can be used to defend, with equal validity, any of thousands of religious ideas that contradict Christianity. I don't think you want to hitch your horse to that post, Eric.
Comment by keiths — August 5, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
poofing uses force. Didn't you know?
But regardless, I said your reasoning might be appropriate if it were just a matter of force. But I don't believe it is.
You still seem to respond as though the real problem were knowledge, as though we chiefly needed clearer rules (even though we don't follow what we already know, and would still be dead inside even if we did).
Are you willing to even consider that God might not see it your way? That there could be an aspect to this that you are not yet appreciating? That perhaps giving spiritual corpses better dancing lessons is not the solution?
The particular observation you quoted wasn't a defense, in the sense you seem to imply, of some particular idea. In any case, I have no interest in defending religious ideas that contradict Christianity.
The point is that there is nothing surprising about the fact that God and spiritual reality extend beyond what we can fully comprehend. Why should this be controversial? It is a classic recognition in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as something many outside Christianity would affirm.
If one were to find a nice little religion that entirely fits neatly into a little box well within our ability to imagine, would that be a sign that it is a true picture of reality? Or more likely a sign that it is a man-made construction, the product of our own imagination?
I will not belabor this, but I think you are missing the point expressed in the preceding and following statements.
In short, regardless of how many reasonable reasons Einstein could give about why reality ought to be working differently — nevertheless, reality didn't first get Einstein's approval. Likewise, God does not fulfill your expectations. Noted.
However, not fulfilling your expectations is not the same as a fact that conflicts with Christianity. The fact that you think God ought to act in some way that he doesn't is a problem of your expectations.
Example: Scripture clearly states that some are misinterpreting and misrepresenting Scripture. You don't like the fact that people have this freedom, or at least don't think God ought to allow this. Yet he does, and this in no way conflicts with actual Christianity. It only conflicts with your expectations about what God and Christianity ought to be, given that God has poofing capabilities.
In general, God lets people run away. Yes this is true. Do you expect he should do otherwise? Apparently so. Does it conflict with what Christianity claims and expects? Not at all.
Here is something that would conflict with Christianity — the idea that evil is not real. Hinduism may call good vs. evil an illusion that we can rise above. Evolutionary thinkers may call morality and hence moral evil constructions of humanity. Christianity recognizes evil as real and genuine, and not something that God either affirms or merely poofs away. If evil were not real, Christianity would be necessarily false. (Hence, the atheist's argument from the existence of evil misses the target. An argument from the non-existence of evil might have a better chance.)
Knocking down straw men may be invigorating, but they should not be confused with the real deal.
The God you expect does not exist. The real God is not the kind of God you expected.
On another thought:
Thanks for many interesting exchanges. The best to you and yours.
Comment by eric — August 5, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
August 5th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
To everyone,
Contrary to my hopes for having more time just around the corner, I'm going to have even less. So I may not be able to spend much time if any at TT, at least for a couple months.
I'm thankful for the interesting exchanges.
The Best to you all.
Comment by eric — August 5, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
August 6th, 2007 at 12:45 am
Eric,
Sorry to hear that you're leaving us. Come back when you have the time.
In the meantime, your points deserve a reply. Perhaps one of your fellow believers will take up your end of the discussion.
You wrote:
I said that knowledge and will are both important, and I gave an example which shows that will without knowledge is morally impotent.
Sure, if you have evidence for another viewpoint. So far that evidence hasn't been forthcoming. You've simply waved your hands and declared that God is mysterious and beyond human comprehension.
I have no problem with the idea that there might be aspects of God, if he exists, that are beyond human comprehension. Indeed, I would be surprised if there weren't.
But we're talking about whether abortion is moral or not. That's a simple question that even a child can understand. Fully within the range of human comprehension. Why should God withhold information on something so easily understood, yet so morally important?
Nor yours. That's not much of a problem for me, as an atheist. For you it is a huge can of worms.
The problem is that you believe in a God who cares deeply about morality, and wants to get his message out; yet the evidence fits better with an indifferent God, or no God at all.
No. I wrote that God could poof moral knowledge into us, while still allowing us the freedom to choose our own path. Merely knowing what is good, and what is evil, does not guarantee that we will choose the good, obviously.
What you're calling a straw man is the God that most Christians (probably including you) believe in: a God who cares about morality, wants us to live moral lives, and is capable of getting the message across.
Comment by keiths — August 6, 2007 @ 12:45 am
August 7th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
onething wrote:
Why should we think they're de-linked? If they were, there would be no point in having free will, since we couldn't affect anything by our actions.
Believers in free will come in two varieties: compatibilists and incompatibilists. The former hold that having free will, and all our actions being caused by something other than our will at that moment (i.e. some past state of the world), are compatible. The latter do not, and hence hold that some of our actions are caused by our free will and not by anything other than or prior to our will at the time of its free willing.
Probably the majority of Christian philosophers and theologians have been compatibilists. Certainly most Protestant theologians have.
My own position is that of incompatibilism. And I believe human free will is real. I do not think this takes free will out of the causal history of the world. Just the contrary, in fact. God causes our free wills to exist in the world, and those free wills are causes of actions in the world.
I'd like you to consider the following propositions, and tell me which are false, and which is the most plausibly true:
A. There is no such thing as free will
B. Human wills are sometimes free, and each act of free willing of any given human at any given time t is caused by things, states or events prior to t that determine the will at t of the human whose willings they are.
C. Human wills are sometimes free, and each act of free willing of any given human at any given time t is not caused by things, states or events prior to t that determine the will at t of the human whose willings they are.
I am not able to see how A could be consistent with our most fundamental intuitions about our own agency and about moral responsibility. I am not able to see how B could fail to be self-contradictory. In other words I do not see how all our acts could be causally determined by prior states of the world and yet still be free on some occasions. I see how all our acts could be causally determined by prior states of the world. But if so, then I would say that entails A.
Compatibilists of course dispute that. They would say we want whatever we want, and sometimes do it or get it. But if what we want is determined at every stage by some prior stage, then I just wouldn't describe that as a case of free will. It's a case of will, to be sure. We can certainly choose how to act. We can certainly take steps to develop some type of character rather than another. Etc. But if all our desires and choices are determined, then we are not free agents, and A is true. So I opt for C.
In contemporary philosophy C is known as "˜libertarian free will' (not to be confused with libertarianism as a political philosophy—-they are quite distinct and logically independent. A political libertarian could easily believe A, for instance).
Possibly the biggest influence on my early thinking about free will was my reading, as an undergraduate, of the Luther-Erasmus debate. I thought Erasmus won it hands down. Later I became interested in Molinism (named for Luis de Molina, a 16th century Jesuit). This addresses the question of free will in relation to divine knowledge, and Molinism has become a central topic in current debates about that. Prominent defenders of Molinist-style solutions include Plantinga, Freddoso, Flint, Dekker, and Craig. Robert Kane has given a pretty good defense of libertarian free will in a recent book, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will . He has an online piece here.
I tend to think that libertarian free will, divine timelessness, and the Molinist account of divine knowledge fit well together. However, I would not for a moment contend that these concepts are not subject to vigorous controversy. My beliefs were formed prior to the current debates about Molinism. Though I was pleasantly surprised and enormously encouraged by the strong revival of Molinism since it matched the intuitions I had before I ever heard of Molinism, I would much sooner give up Molinism and divine foreknowledge and divine timelessness than I would give up libertarian free will. Note too that if it turns out to be metaphysically impossible for God to have certain kinds of foreknowledge of, or power over, our future free actions, then that would merely mean that divine omniscience and divine omnipotence do not extend to include impossible kinds of knowledge and power. But God could still have the maximum amount of the knowledge and power it's possible for any being to have.
While still a doctoral student I was invited to give a presentation based on a paper I had just had published to the philosophy faculty at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. On the basis of my presentation, the chair of the faculty offered me a teaching position there, though I chose to decline it. One of the faculty at that time was Linda Zagzebski, who had just published an important book on this topic, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge. Zagzebski thinks, and I tend to agree, that the foreknowledge and free will dilemma is simply a special case of a much more general problem:
I think this is on the right track. I have previously cited the important work of Huw Price, questioning whether temporal asymmetry is a true feature of reality. There are important scientific and logical considerations which suggest that it is not.
You then write:
I see this as a trilemma. There's no free will, OR there is, but all desires, choices and actions are nonetheless determined by the past, OR not all desires, choices and actions are determined by the past and our wills are sometimes free.
Now, I think the first two horns are deeply counter-intuitive. The third horn is very intuitive. However, from a scientific perspective, the third horn seems unacceptable. But quantum physics has punched a hole in the older concept of determinism. And as Price and others such as Brian Greene and the string physics crowd have suggested, it may well be that temporal asymmetry is not a fundamental property of physical reality, in which case the notion of the past determining the future is not a fundamental feature of reality. Moreover, as Zagzebski suggests, there is reason to doubt, or at least to question, whether temporally asymmetrical necessity is real. This has important implications for the notion of causation, in that if "˜the past' is what causes "˜the present', then that relation might really just be, er, a relation rather than a necessitating force. Similarly, my causing of my actions may just be a relation between me and my actions, rather than a necessitated consequence of the past. It would be a truth about me, but not a necessary truth about me, in which case my actions are not all necessitated. In which case my actions, or some subset of them, may well be free.
It pays to seek out the root source of the apparent problem, and I think that root is time.
The way the world really is in itself is the way it appears to a perfect omniscient mind. As God sees me, say, what does God see? Let me suggest that he sees an ordered sequence of intentions and intentional acts, and that constitutes a set, and that set = me. But that ordered sequence is not really, at the most fundamental level, a temporal object. It's a set, one whose members are certain relations between intentions and acts. Could it have had different members? Sets have their members essentially. But which sets exist is not necessitated. They are dependent on the free activity of minds. In this case, of two minds, God's and mine.
The set that = me we can call "˜the concept' of me. Leibniz has a lot of interesting ideas about the not-truly-real character of space and time, God's knowledge of the "˜concept' of each created thing, and hence about what causation really is—a kind of ordered harmony between these concepts. He was a compatibilist, but I think some of his ideas lend themselves also to a reasonable incompatibilist theory of free will, and ties in with certain key ideas in Molinism.
On my view God timelessly knows the "˜concept' of each human person. The person, in fact, is the concept of each of us that God apprehends. That is what each person really is in themselves, and thus in reality. And what determines the content of each such concept are intentional acts, including freely willed ones. In other words, free wills determine which persons exist (just as free minds determine which sets exist) because they determine part of the content of the concepts that God has. In reality, at its deepest, truest, 'reallyist' level, this is a timeless activity of free minds, God's and ours. It appears as a temporal process, and as a causally necessitated chain of events in our concepts, but not in God's concepts. It is the latter concepts which constitute the way the world really is in itself. And in reality, at its most fundamental level, there is no causal necessity in terms of these (i.e. God's) concepts' content. Their content is determined solely by free wills, God's and ours. Necessity is not real at the fundamental level. The fundamental level is just a free selection by minds of sets, a free activity of determining which sets exist, which is constituted by their freely chosen content.
I find it useful to focus on the general metaphysics of value before thinking about God specifically in relation to disvalue. My view is basically the Augustinian-Thomist one, which is that value simply supervenes on being. Evil is the privation of value, hence it is disvalue, and thus disvalue's metaphysical character is the privation of being. So, evil is not a positive object. It is the relative absence of value, and this can only occur by a diminishment of being relative to something's potential for being.
God is infinite being. Once we think about what infinite being implies, we can begin to understand what value is, and hence understand what evil is, and why God does not prevent it. For once there is created value, there is finite being, and finite being is necessarily something that can be diminished. Infinite being, by contrast, is necessarily something that cannot be diminished.
The activity of Being, and of beings, is Being.
Comment by stunney — August 7, 2007 @ 6:28 pm
August 8th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Pez and all,
But I think that's backwards. You need the Holy Spirit first. Then, you are supposed to judge the scriptures. I think there's a scripture to that effect.
Tested to see if they predict the future, like some prophets of old who advised the king on war strategy? How can you test my truths when you don't understand them? Who will test? Jesus was put to death because they found his truths wanting"¦
You've yet to listen because you're too defensive. I'm not telling you Christianity is rotten. I'm not telling you to give up God or Jesus. I'm telling you that Christian theology gives you a heart divided, and that the goodness of God is total, astonishing, a wonder to the human mind. Whereas the filthy gruel that the churches are peddling isn't even fit for respect, let alone love or admiration.
For example: When I stated that Christianity has no solution to the problem of people not wanting to follow the golden rule because it isn't inspiring, Eric answered:
I can only suppose that he is going on about the deplorable "utter depravity" and "we fully deserve to go to hell" doctrine that was certainly never taught in my church but I've run across it a fair amount. People are being told that our natural state is hell because we are so bad, so sinful, so utterly ugly and unacceptable to God, that it would be perfectly reasonable for God to have abandoned us to our fate. I have heard this preached!!! Who, I ask you, but Satan, would ever desire to fill human hearts and heads with such despairing drivel? What is so horrible about being born into a fallen state that you had no hand in, such that an omnipotent being should be infinitely offended by your fallen state, so that he could rightfully just abandon us to hell? That he should take neither responsibility nor respond with love and caring? Most people would do far better than that! What kind of God does he believe in that he is surprised at mercy?
People are just as much gullible as they are sinful.
This is a case of people knowing inwardly that God ought to be inspiring beyond all words, and drumming up some teary sentiment to justify calling "˜merciful' that Christian salvation theology which is nothing more than a bronze age tale of an earthly despotic ruler who expects perfect obedience of his subjects and exacts extreme punishments. And who must be paid if he is to forgive!
No he did not. Isn't it funny that we're talking about one of the ugliest, most shameful acts "“ human sacrifice, child sacrifice "“ and yet the Bible God supposedly based his ability to forgive the human race upon a blood sacrifice? A sacrifice of his own son? And if the human race has at its worst times engaged in this hideous thing, why did the God of infinite goodness require of Abraham that he be willing to do, in the name of obedience to the Infinite Good, Father of Lights, God who is Love "“ this very same child sacrifice? Is that any way to teach the human race? Wouldn't most Christians attribute such acts as human sacrifice to the influence of Satan? Is there no clear difference between God and Satan, then?
Eric says Jesus taught that. Typical Christian theology says God required a death to atone for the perfect Adam. This means God does not forgive but demands payment. If you are paid for your debt, there is nothing noble in forgiving it. If I call the bank and offer to pay off your credit card, the bank says fine, it's no skin off our nose if you want to pay Pez's debt "“ we just want our money. That isn't forgiveness. That's payment. But Jesus taught "“ over and over and over "“ that God forgives freely and we should too. He taught in the parable of the rich man and the servant (and by the way the amount the servant was forgiven was immense) that forgiveness is for the asking. No amount is too huge. I saw it in a Billy Graham book at a patient's bedside table "“ "God demanded a death." Very noble, very inspiring. Why, words just can't express. How can the world resist the beauty of it? God demanded a death.
Christians try to justify the baloney by saying God is also just. But Jesus already refuted that when he said to Billy, I mean to the Pharisees, "Go and learn what this means: I will have mercy and not justice."
It isn't necessary to swallow that Roman feudal law nonsense. The Eastern Orthodox church, second largest and oldest church, has never taught such a thing. They regard it as a horror. All these ideas I have, they are my own, but this one is not. The eastern church teaches that the sacrifice was one of love and reconciliation. Jesus comes out preaching in the first gospel to love your enemies, and forgive those who wrong you, and that the greatest love is to lay down you life for your friends. Well, talk is cheap. It has little impact, especially on us spiritual corpses. Jesus showed by example that he really meant it. He forgave those who were nailing him to the cross to the extent he felt pity for them and covered for them with prayer. He loved his enemies. He laid down his life for us to show us the meaning of love and reconciliation and to sear in our minds that which he was constantly harping upon "“ the nature of the Father and the kingdom of heaven. In the parable of the prodigal son the only one unhappy was the elder son who was jealous. It was his mind that prevented him from being in heaven, not rejection by the Father. Never, but never, does Jesus indicate that we are unworthy worms who should be grateful that God bothers with us at all, and that this is some sort of mind-boggling level of mercy.
We are not inherently depraved, we are fallen. And when someone is fallen, you lift them up. Salvation is not salvation from wrath. It's salvation from our spiritual condition. For that we need love, example, inspiration, teaching. God doesn't give a rat's copulation about payment of debts. He cares about lifting us up to where we can commune with him and be happy, on the level of love. We are sick, Jesus called himself a physician, and the cure is love. It's not amazing that God wants to help us up. God is good.
Comment by onething — August 8, 2007 @ 1:40 am
August 8th, 2007 at 4:55 am
Hi Onething,
How can this be backward when I named only one action? You need two to have a sequence.
And I didn't say I judge the Scriptures. I said I try to learn from them. I am hardly presumptuous enough to judge the Word of God.
I'm not defensive. I'm laying out a case which directly answers your claims.
You claimed that if there is an objective truth about morality, as Christians claim, then Christianity ought to be light years ahead of other systems.
I've shown that to make such a claim implies and relies upon there being an objective morality in the first place. You agreed that you do believe that there is such an objective morality.
I've also made a case that, by any measure, Christianity is light years ahead of other systems – warts and all.
You've made several erroneous assertions in trying to refute this.
These errors cast doubt upon your ability to ascertain and preach the truth about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. If you can't be trusted in the small things who should trust you with great things?
And this rhetorical bombast about "filthy gruel" is another cold helping in itself.
The Old Testament that you so deride is the same Old Testament that Jesus taught from. The two testaments tell us the same story about God and His plan.
The Jehovah that you say is of a demon is the same God that Jesus calls "Father". Jesus taught of Adam and Eve, of Noah's flood, and of Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac (practically on the spot where Jesus was later sacrificed). Jesus was sent by this same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Bronze age, despotic, baloney, gruel … try a little more rhetoric next time.
These "bronze-age" ideas are also explored quite thoroughly by modern minds which have been produced by the supposedly most advanced cultures of all time, both liberal and democratic. These ideas are defended by these great minds of theology, philosophy and science upon their coherence and philosophical merits.
At what time in your life did you not sin in any way and did you merit, by your own actions, to be in God's grace and presence?
1) God gave Himself. He did not offer a third party.
2) Yes, it is very much a way to teach the human race. It is such an effective way to teach the human race that Jewish scholars were still working out the intricacies of the teaching (as they are today) when Jesus came and made the teaching plain. Throughout their history the Jews knew that God had told them not to sacrifice humans, as He had told them over and over again.
The typology of the near-sacrifice, the supply by God of the ram, the deliverance of the only begotten son, and the promise to increase Abraham's seed through Jacob all gave the story an enigmatic quality which was fulfilled in the Incarnation, but these did not at any time make the Jews think they were supposed to send their children through the fire to Molech. As Martin Luther said, the Old Testament is a letter about Jesus, which He caused to be opened and read after His death.
You are conveniently forgetting that the debt you are paying is the one owed to you, not to the bank.
Could you muster a little more sarcasm? It would really make your points seem all the more profound.
Sounds like Christianity to me.
Yep.
And to do so you must first stoop. God was continually lifting up His people, and never because of their own merits. He demonstrated throughout his dealings with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, etc., that He is merciful to the fallen, and that He prefers honest disagreement to dishonest submission. The story of the Old Testament is that we do matter, each of as as individuals, to God and that He loves us despite our failures. Again, the Old Testament is telling us the same story that the New Testament tells us.
If you aren't amazed that God cares specifically about you, loves you enough to come running to you with open arms and welcome you back into His family then that is a speech about you and not about God.
I am amazed, overwhelmed, undeserving and exceedingly grateful that God bestows His Grace upon me in such a manner.
John Newton was amazed that he, a slave-trader, could be so loved by God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, that He could stoop to rescue even such a sinner who once was blind.
I too am troubled by the idea of sacrifice, indebtedness and atonement and the nature of the work Jesus did on the Cross. But I trust Him when He says that He died for our sins, and I trust Him when He says that He came to fulfill the Law, so I read that Law knowing that it bears a truth that I am not quite capable, today, of understanding. But I approach it with the humility that tells me that I can't fathom everything God is trying to tell me and that there is much I can learn. I approach it now, as I age, with the knowledge that I don't get to dictate to God how He should work out my salvation and under what conditions He should accept me.
And yes, it is amazing to me that God has such mercy upon me that He will welcome me home even though I can't earn my way there through any path of self-improvement or by any secret Gnostic learning.
Likewise, we know to serve the weak and the down-trodden not because they have some extra ounce of wisdom, or because they somehow merit favour in our eyes, but because God has modeled Grace for us when we deserved the opposite. He has also modeled the very unnatural act of forgiveness for us that we may accept and offer it – being all created in His image.
God is the housewife jumping up and down for glee over the found coin, the father running out to meet his prodigal son, the shepherd rejoicing over the returned lamb. His arms are always open to us and it is not by His desire that we turn away from His forgiveness. We don't need to be good, all we have to do is cry "Help" (thanks to Philip Yancey).
Moses, Isaiah and Micah told us this about God. They showed us that He is eager to forgive, not once, twice, or seven times, but repeatedly forever, just as Jesus later reminded us. "You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy" (Micah).
Jesus told us "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents." God rejoices because a single one of His children is returned to Him. Yes, to me that is amazing.
I am amazed to know that I am the beloved one of God.
Comment by Pez — August 8, 2007 @ 4:55 am
August 8th, 2007 at 6:38 am
Some critics of theists who believe in objective morality fret about the fact that its content is not infallibly known, or at least not known with sufficient certainty even in cases of major moral gravity. Abortion is cited as one such case. Another that might be added is pacifism. The idea is that if such matters are important, God could and should have imparted direct knowledge of their objective moral status, or at least a reliable means of discovering that status. And the implication is that God did not do so.
I wonder what makes the critic so confident that God did not do this. I can think of a couple of means by which God did do so. First, God created conscience. Second, God established the Church. We Catholics hold, indeed, that there is but one true Church—-unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam, and that it enjoys a sacred teaching authority known as its magisterium, deriving from Christ's mandate to the first apostles under the leadership of Peter to teach all things whatsoever entrusted to them by the Lord himself.
Legalized abortion is something fairly new on the scene. The Church has always taught that it's wrong. Opinion has varied as to whether it is murder, but it's always been taught that it's objectively and gravely sinful. The voice of conscience concurs. For even those who hold that it should be legal mostly agree that the act of abortion itself is intrinsically a bad thing, and justify it only on consequentialist grounds. We would be quite disturbed by someone who got pregnant regularly just so as to undergo abortions.
So opinion seems to fall into three categories:
1) Abortion is objectively wrong, and ought to be illegal
2) Abortion is objectively wrong, but ought to be legal
3) Abortion is objectively a bad thing, but is morally justifiable given sufficiently weighty consequentialist circumstances
1 and 2 are on a par as regards the morality of abortion. As regards 3, it seems that the right moral course should always be to prevent the circumstances that lead women to abort a pregnancy. I would happily see the oil companies' profits be subject to a windfall tax to provide the social services that poorer and emotionally fragile women need to support a pregnancy through to term. For others, the justification in terms of consequences is usually specious, since the consequences tend to be little more than a desire to avoid inconvenience. It would be very inconvenient to us to have to make a 9-month detour from our planned trek exploring the Sahara desert if we happened to find a wounded, waterless nomad, and realized that he would die if we didn't take him with us and head for a hospital far out of our way. But surely it would not be morally licit to not do so, leaving him to die instead.
On pacifism, we Catholics find that it is certainly a worthy ideal, and the world would be a much better place if everyone was a stout pacifist. Sadly, not everyone is. And so a doctrine of just war is taught. But how many wars have been fought that actually conformed completely to that doctrine? Precious few, if any. In modern warfare, the evils tend to be so great that it is hard to conceive of conditions in which proportionality would be maintained. It seems better to use methods of non-violent resistance and international pressure to bring down tyrannies and minimize other conflicts.
I think too that conscience is something that requires and is designed to make us engage in thinking for ourselves. The value of arriving at our beliefs this way rather than automatically should not be underestimated. God created us to be rational and moral agents, not purely instinctual, not purely hardwired animals. We see something of this value in the delightful way children grow and learn, and need mental as well as physical nurturing. We would be put off by babies who had all the answers to everything on the day of their birth. At least, I would be put off by such creatures.
It is also worth thinking about whether it's even coherent that there be physical beings whose knowledge was completely innate and who are also possessed of a genuinely autonomous intellect and will. I tend to doubt that this is in fact metaphysically possible. If this doubt is valid, knowledge for intentionally autonomous physical creatures would have to be not entirely innate, but allow room for learning. And this is what we observe—some degree of hardwiring and innate conceptual frameworks regarding basic moral and mathematical and linguistic intuitions, combined with plenty of scope for autonomous learning and responsibility.
Christianity has too a doctrine of the conseqences of the Fall for human nature. Alienation from God, who is Truth and Goodness, is alienation from, er, truth and goodness. So it should not be too surprising that humans are not infallibly knowledgeable about or compliant with objective morality.
It seems the critics think God should simply have created fully programmed computers. In which case it seems that this is yet another instalment of the perennially unpersuasive argument from the fact that…
If I Were The Intelligent Designer, I Wouldn't Have Done It This Way
Comment by stunney — August 8, 2007 @ 6:38 am
August 8th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Pez wrote:
Jesus had two natures. Monophysitism is a heresy. Why?
Why did the Church feel it necessary so solemnly to declare that Christ had a human soul, that is, a human intellect and will? Because he wouldn't have been truly human otherwise, and what is not assumed by Christ cannot have been redeemed by him.
Surely it was not necessary for him to be different from his fellow Jews in his basic cultural assumptions. Did his human intellect know the General Theory of Relativity, the dates of all US presidential assassinations, and who will win the soccer World Cup in 2010? If not, then there's no particular reason to credit him with being familiar with any other anachronistic or geographically inappropriate knowledge, such as the indigenous languages of Central America, car mechanics, or modern Biblical scholarship. What mattered was his spiritual insight into Jewish scripture, not whether he interpreted it as literally historical in all respects.
This is not to say that his soul was not in intimate contact with his divine nature, but this would likely have been experienced by Christ in the form that mystics report when telling of the human experience of God as present in the soul. God does not have three intellects or three wills, one for each divine Person. So although orthodox Christianity holds that Christ is a divine Person, this does not mean that he had his own separate divine intellect and will with which he communed with the Father's intellect and will, on top of his human intellect's interaction with the Father, etc.
As St Paul says, "Christ did not cling to his equality with God, but emptied himself…."
Comment by stunney — August 8, 2007 @ 8:13 am
August 8th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Stunney,
You state that Augustine and Aquinas were not literalists. But there is a great difference between not being a literalist, which is mostly about not recognizing metaphor, versus not taking scripture seriously at all, and instead ascribing whole chunks of it as merely an interesting historical perspective of a people. I agree that the Bible is worth preserving on that basis, but it's a far cry from that to calling it inspired or the word of God. And surely you can see the incredible destructive potential from doing so.
You quote a pope as saying the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Stunney, I would prefer to give my life than accept that statement. Much of the Bible was not inspired by the Holy Spirit, and to me it slanders God to insist that it is. Jesus came to teach us better, we have been taught quite clearly, and it should be good enough. Your explanations, or justifications, have merit, but then you cannot also say it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, because that contradicts the words of Jesus and the epistle to the Corinthians, for starters.
The Holy Spirit could never suggest to Moses or the prophets that God's name is jealous, or that he commands evil spirits and uses them to deceive earthly kings and prophets. Or command that women and children be killed, the virgins taken, and how much you can beat a slave, the capturing and selling of slaves, and going to war to take the land of other people. If the Holy Spirit wouldn't suggest it, then it wasn't inspired by God. These scriptures may have historic value, but it should be clear enough in people's minds what the true God is like so we have something coherent to emulate.
I'm not sure how far you can take the allegorical or nonliteral interpretation of the Bible, but it is foolish to present something to mankind which looks for all the world like it was written by a despot, and expect them to be spiritually uplifted thereby. I'm aware of the four senses of scripture but that does not detract from the above.
I'd say God would do better to find better prophets. Really. It's not that hard. Other reliious scriptures, I believe, are not nearly so corrupted with evil. Try the Bhagavad-Gita or the Diamond Heart Sutra or the Pali Canon or Nagarjuna or Huang Po.
Oh Stunney you are a clever one! But I knew that. I can almost entirely agree here. But it's not a matter of some distortion. It's a matter of scriptures worth a fair bit less than nothing. "˜Woe to those who call evil good and call bitter sweet"¦' What about the influence of evil upon the human mind? What about this devil? Is he not in the scriptures? Is that not the problem? If our understanding of what God has to say involves teaching that which Satan would love to teach, we have a problem. What if Jesus tried to correct the demonic influence that had crept into the Hebrew scriptures and the Hebrew mind and we would not allow it? Guess who won? That status quo, that's who.
I do surely believe it would have had an excellent chance IF THEY HAD STOOD ALONE. God presented as goodness unmixed – Is it too much to ask? In this world of lies "“ can we have a shining example to set our sights upon? How much salt can you take in your tea and still get a good cup of tea? Mixed, those 100 statements are of limited worth. The human mind is already good enough at rationalizing bad actions without adding more kindling. In the Old Testament, not only does Jehovah command and relish the wars against others, there are numerous places where Jehovah takes serious, murderous revenge upon the Israelites for angering him, disobeying him, or disrespecting him. Jehovah treated them approximately like Saddam Hussein.
"And the LORD said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel."
"So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel"¦"
Jehovah commands the people to have no pity.
Is it true that love is not provoked? Or was that just squishy, wishful thinking?
How can believing such things are the word of God be helpful to mankind in their struggle toward ethics? Knowing how people tend to justify themselves when they want to, why would you suppose it irrelevant to believe those multiple examples come from a just God?
We don't know how they behaved but the Bible says they were fairly bad. They were more or less coerced, though. If they didn't cooperate, Jehovah slaughtered them. If they tried to find relief in other Gods, he sent pestilence. They ran from Jehovah repeatedly.
They behaved better during the Diaspora but I am not happy with Zionism. So it's kind of equivocal. I see Jews as being the foremost victims of Jehovah.
When asked how to take the injunction not to kill seriously while ignoring the witch one, you answered:
Since when can people be expected to think rationally about ethics? Why oh why in that case should they be confused by a Bible which is none other than the erroneous thinking of warlike human tribal people, and place that drek on the same pedestal as St Paul's letter on the nature of Love? Why, if people were even somewhat inclined to come to the right answer on a question of ethics, the Bible might convince them otherwise! American slavery is a case in point. It was repugnant to at least some people from the beginning, and it does tend to go against obvious Christian ethics, yet they were able to use the Bible to support it. This is a travesty of the first magnitude. Why didn't God just tell the Hebrews that slavery was wrong? Was it too much truth for the human mind, and we have evolved since then?
Your Aquinas thought that those who held to their own religious opinions should get the death penalty. That would be me. And why not? Didn't Elijah put more than 400 priests of Baal to the sword in one day? You have indeed helped to rehabilitate Aquinas in my mind. Perhaps, without that kind of awful negativity, he could really have soared. But he was mired in the thought of his day. My best hope for him is that his deathbed revelations burned away all the dross. Too bad it didn't happen sooner. But then, he might have fallen to his own prescription.
Comment by onething — August 8, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
August 8th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Onething wrote:
There is. But I didn't say Augustine and Aquinas did not take the Bible seriously. Heck, even I take it seriously. But there is a difference between taking a text seriously and believing that it is ipso facto for all time and forevermore normative for conduct in every detail.
To say that the Bible is the inspired word of God does not entail that everyone is equally liable to interpret it correctly. This is one reason why I am not a Protestant. I reject the Reformed doctrine of private interpretation. It may be objected that Catholics did many bad things. But I'm not aware of any reason to suggest that this was due specifically to a formal official teaching based on an official interpretation by the Church's magisterium of a particular Old Testament passage.
The standard contrary example proferred relates to the Galileo affair and the book of Joshua. But it is quite obvious that the Church had long allowed the Copernican theory of heliocentrism to be held as a hypothesis for decades before Galileo. What Galileo held was that it wasn't just a hypothesis, but proven. As Cardinal Bellarmine noted in writing at the time, heliocentrism would require a revision in how to interpret the relevant verse of the book of Joshua. Galileo's error was in giving the impression that he could dictate to the pope that this re-interpretation was now definitively required. This pope and Galileo had been on friendly terms before, and had discussed the Copernican system. But Galileo wrote something the pope took to be a veiled insult to his intelligence. And later still, Galileo's Aristotelian enemies tried to shut him up. The irony of course was that Galileo was in fact wrong in claiming that his observations were at the time conclusive. It was only later that heliocentrism was definitively established. And then with Einstein, it became no more right to claim that the Earth is not the center of the universe than that it is. The Earthling makes no error, according to the Einsteinian picture, in declaring his own frame of reference the "˜center', provided he allows non-Earthlings to issue similar declarations.
The Holy Spirit inspires a lot of things. But what does inspiration mean in this context? I think it means that God wanted the Jewish people to record their religious development, because it's instructive and reveals the human search for, and frequent misunderstanding of, what God is like and what God really wants, a search that culminated in ethical monotheism:
This is what Yahweh asks of you: act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:
"˜Inspired' does not mean "˜All Human Sentiments And Actions Depicted Therein Are Divinely Endorsed'
You're a bit of a Marcionite. I'm not, because I don't think inspiration means what you think it must mean.
Why not? Jealousy is a human emotion most poignantly experienced in the context of sexual love. So the point would be to liken God to a jilted lover. I don't think that's a perfect image, but it's one people can understand.
Many earthly rulers are deceived by evil spirits. The Bible suggests that God has a purpose in allowing that to happen. If I say, Bush was deceived by an evil spirit, that may just be a way of saying that he was led towards disaster by neocon machinations, and God allowed that to occur so as to humble the project of neo-imperialism based on lust for oil and an exaggerated trust in military might. Along the way, Saddam Hussein was brought down.
So maybe God uses sin and folly to foil wicked designs or to bring about some long-term benefit, despite the sin and despite the folly. Short of abolishing free will, this may be all that can be done in certain circumstances.
Imagine you're an ancient Jewish leader. Warfare is an ever-present threat and frequent reality, forced labor an economic way of life (as it was in Greece, then the most "˜civilized' society in the Western world). Ask yourself this question: what is God's will?
It's easy to imagine you'd answer: fight the war against foreign terrorists very aggressively, and restrict the possibility of labor unrest since the economy needs to be put on a war-footing.
This is what American leaders did during World War II. They fire-bombed major Japanese cities killing scores of thousands of civilians. They restricted labor freedoms. They interned Japanese-US citizens. (My grandfather, an Italian immigrant to Scotland since 1906, was interned by the British government for the duration of the war). That was before they dropped atomic weapons. Did that stop most Americans from believing God wanted them to win? Not really. FDR and Truman are still considered great leaders.
Now, imagine you're an ancient Jewish chronicler. You're writing about events to which you're not a direct eyewitness, or even contemporary. What's going to happen? You're going to write "We dropped an atomic bomb on those motherfuckers, one that will teach any other motherfuckers out there that God is on OUR side". Or words to that effect.
And who's to say that God did not want World War II to be won by the Americans rather than by the Japanese? But have you seen Robert McNamara and the film The Fog of War. It was an unimaginably horrible business.
The task is to say what we are supposed to learn and think in a world that is frequently horribly cruel and unjust. I think the Bible is an extended series of reflections, and contradictory opinions, on that basic fundamental problem and predicament. God inspires us, and inspired the ancient Jews, to really think about, and think through, that literally existential problem. I think this is the same existential concern that motivates the Homeric epics, but those do not lead to ethical monotheism. The Bible does. That's why I regard the Bible, but not The Odyssey and The Iliad to be 'inspired by the Holy Spirit', because the Bible is about a sinful, stubborn, unfaithful people's quest for holiness in a very unholy world, and how despite it all, they did make some significant progress, with on balance positive world-history-changing consequences for humanity.
How do we know what the true God is like? How do we know God other than through our experience and reflection on life, sifted and discussed over generations, within the human community in which we live?
The odd thing is that the Jewish people seem to have got it broadly right about ethics, compared to say, ancient Romans or Greeks or Persians. Early Islam was also bloody.
I'm sure God inspires people of good will outside of ancient Israel. But Hindu society has long been monumentally unjust. So was China's, and south-east Asian society generally. I think the Jewish story of freedom, justice, and how God should be conceived in relation both to ethical concerns and the natural world, contains very important riches and insights that other, non-Abrahamic religious traditions have lacked. I'll come back to this point in a follow-up post. But I need to take a pause for now.
Comment by stunney — August 8, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
August 8th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Hi Stunney,
I'm looking forward to your follow-up and have really appreciated your posts throughout this thread.
Comment by Pez — August 8, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
August 9th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Keith,
Thank you for your post on free will. I wasn't really able to understand why the lack of a separable mind or soul inhabiting the body-brain helps get us past the problem of cause and effect. Indeed, it would seem to make it worse. The fact that I nearly always choose chocolate ice cream no doubt has a physio-chemical basis. Also you said:
No, that would be force. Unless you mean we come prewired. But that would be robotic. The thing is we have to figure it out for ourselves. This seems a hard point for a lot of people. We are useless until we become wise through experience and effort. Christians are taught to expect spoon feeding, but I've got news for them.
Morality isn't really rules. Morality is wisdom to do the right thing in each individual situation.
Stunney,
I meant how to break the chain of all the prior causes which should lead inexorably to one effect, and insert a new one.
Me too, except that I might change the wording slightly so that while we sometimes have free will, and it is not caused by prior events, yet it is influenced by them.
I was not really able to figure out what Zagzebski was getting at. I even wiki'ed some terms and came up empty. But I do concede that we just don't know enough about how this universe works to take too strong a stand.
Maybe so.
Yes, which means that evil is some form of ignorance, stupidity, derangement, or even insanity. But all those should be curable.
Perhaps you are saying that God doesn't prevent evil because it would diminish beings. I think that evil is the use of any kind of force against another being, or trying to enjoy oneself at another's expense, or a lesser form would be failing to do something for another being which needs to be done. God doesn't prevent it because we are free, because God never uses force, (that would be evil) and because the whole process going on here is about becoming. If God prevented anyone in the sandbox from stealing Tonka trucks or throwing sand, we would have a sandbox full of highly controlled toddlers whose inner nature is the desire to steal and throw sand, but can't. Would you want to spend eternity in heaven with them? Would God? Or if God magically poofs them into goodness just because they died and had signed the contract for admittance into the gaited golf community in the sky, doesn't that make them a bit robotic and isn't their crown a cheaply won one?
Comment by onething — August 9, 2007 @ 12:51 am
August 9th, 2007 at 4:54 am
onething wrote:
Hi onething,
Let me take a different approach to the problem. Look at stunney's description of libertarian free will:
If you take stunney at his word, then any act of free will must be uncaused by prior states or events. But that means that one's own nature, shaped by a lifetime of experience, can have no influence on one's choices. If I am a gentle person by nature, then my choice to take in a stray cat is not really free by stunney's definition.
Taking to its logical conclusion, his definition holds that a will is only free when the choices it makes are entirely random, unencumbered by any preferences or tendencies.
Of course, this strikes us as ridiculous. When we speak of free will, we really mean the freedom to choose according to one's own nature. A gentle person is still exercising free will when he acts kindly. Stunney is exercising free will when he insults mtraven, despite the fact that it is clearly in his nature to do so (over and over).
Looked at this way, there's nothing about free will that's incompatible with the physicalist view. A person in a given situation receives input through her senses, enumerates her options, anticipates the impact of various possible decisions, and chooses one which she thinks will best accomplish her goals. Put a different person in exactly the same situation and you will get a different sequence of thoughts, even if the ultimate choice is the same. Each person thinks and acts according to her own nature.
Note that nothing in the preceding paragraph depends on the person's will being free of the causal chain. In fact, as I indicated earlier, being truly free of the causal chain would require one to act randomly with respect to one's own nature.
Comment by keiths — August 9, 2007 @ 4:54 am
August 9th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Better get your butt over to China then, Dawkins. There's about ten thousand new christians a day who are not getting your message.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — August 9, 2007 @ 11:21 am
August 9th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
onething wrote:
So they say.:wink:
There is a lot of literature, ancient and modern, about war, murder, injustice, and human responses to it. That is part of our reality. And the question people have is what does it all mean. What is the meaning of life and death? Wrestling with that question is what reveals the answer to it.
It's the problem alright. The problem is evil and its influence on human life. That is what the Bible is about. That, and human responses to it.
There is no doubt that we have a problem. But we can't solve it unless we face it. Saccharine scriptures don't face it.
Now what is this problem? It is the problem of slavery and death. The Bible reveals the slow, painful transition from thinking that the gods will slavery and death, to the revelation that there are no gods, only God, and that God wills freedom and life.
At first, the ancient Israelites thought that God only willed freedom and life for Israelites. But eventually it began to dawn on them that God wills freedom and life not just for Israel, but for all peoples, and it was this ultimate revelation of God's universal ethical will, which finds its fulfillment in God's anointed Son.
That is why God sent his Son into the world, that the world might be saved through him.
The problem is that it would not have had much impact.
The Bible, as is, shows that God gets the fact that we live in an unholy world and that we have our own tendency to ally God to our own objectives, to demand that God be a guarantor of victorious national identity, and it shows that faith in such a deity is an illusory, mistaken conception of deity, and that the true God cannot be known or validly worshipped except by ethical living.
The Bible records how this misunderstanding and mischaracterization of God played out and gradually gave way to more adequate understandings and more accurate characterizations of God. It inspires the revelation of God precisely by recording this transition from a pagan conception of deity to a post-pagan conception, one that is universal, transcendent, and ethical. The Bible records the Jewish people groping their way towards this understanding. But God couldn't have been revealed to any non-groping people, because there are no non-groping people.
You want God to reveal Godself to humans ahistorically. But there can be no revelation of God to humans that is ahistorical. If there were, babies would be born knowing the Truth. But then they wouldn't be babies, and their being born at all would be pointless. The objection you're lodging is really the objection against God's decision to create humans, knowing they would sin and thus experience alienation from God.
Unmixed they'd have as much impact as a short essay on how lovely it would be if we were all loving all the time. In other words, not a whole heckuva lot. The Bible has an impact because of its grand, epic scale and its sharp focus on our existential plight, the plight that includes the perennial fact, experienced by humanity everywhere, that people are trying to kill us and enslave us, be it Darfur, or on the campus of Virginia Tech.
The issue is the ethical imprecision of human language and human minds.
There is no direct linguistic way to say God wants the Americans to defeat Japan because God knows that victory for Japan would be a bad thing without making it appear that God sanctions horrors.
Think of the Battle of Midway, or the Battle of the Bulge, and what US personnel had to do to win. They could not act as if they had pity. They had to act like devils bent on death and destruction. This is what we are like. To get through such unholy acts, psychologically, they had to think: "This is what God wills. This is what God commands. This is what God wants". You can't bomb German cities in thousand-bomber raids night after night and think God wants no deaths. Men can't think like that.
This is what The Iliad is about—-the horror of war, and how men have to think in order to endure the unendurable. But the message of The Iliad offers no hope of escape from this predicament. Its message is: this is just the way it is, for the gods so decree. The Bible offers a different message. Its message is: this is the way it is, but it doesn't have to be this way, for God does not so decree. But men have to think about not only what God decrees about the future—-life, freedom, justice, righteousness, and peace—-but about what God decrees right now regarding what I, we, should do in the face of these Amalekite motherfuckers and child-sacrificing Baal-worshipping scumbags.
That is the way we are.
We're not loving, however. That's the problem. If we were all loving all the time, there wouldn't be a problem. But we're not. So there is.
They're helpful because they help us understand that God gets it. God gets our predicament.
God gets that we're angry because the kid next door stole our toy. God gets that we're in a situation in which some Assyrian bastard is coming at me with a big fucking spear. God gets our elemental fear.
And if God gets it, God must be 'okay' with slaughtering. It is the way we are. Even Cindy Sheehan might shoot an Iraqi who was about to behead her son
It's the way we are. And God gets the way we are.
The examples come from our predicament. We live in an unholy world.
The reality is people die. It's natural to try to explain why they die, and draw a moral from it.
The reality is people die. It's natural to try to explain why they die, and draw a moral from it.
They are not victims of their God. They are victims of the unholy, and they seek to understand how to be holy in an unholy world.
onething, suppose God had a big sign up in the sky saying THINK RATIONALLY ABOUT ETHICS. Do you think people would think rationally about ethics? And if they did, would they never do anything bad?
Surely we all know from personal experience that it's quite possible to know that something is wrong, and yet we do it anyway?
Ancient societies were based on slavery. It would be like God being against our type of economy in which hundreds of millions toil at drudgery for global corporations so they and their kids can survive. Maybe God is against it. But how are we going to get our Nike shoes otherwise? That's the economic predicament we're in. Slavery was the result of their economic predicament.
Killing people with the wrong religious beliefs is an essentially political act.
Religion is what bonds people together by giving them a shared vision of order. What Aquinas would say is that disrupting the shared sense of order has, if unchecked, disastrous consequences for society. He'd say, if you had followed my advice, you wouldn't have had the 30 Years War, etc.
Social unity and order were incredibly valuable in the ancient and medieval world. Hobbes famously explained why they were incredibly valuable in Leviathan, in the section entitled: "Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery", describing life in the state of war of every man against every man:
" the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short "
Aquinas could not imagine heresy having any other outcome than social disintegration. All his intellectual contemporaries would have agreed with him and thought it obvious he was right.
Aquinas did not think Jews or Muslims should be killed. But for him a division within Western Christendom meant inevitable large-scale civil war, a complete breakdown of social authority and order, and so heresy had to be nipped in the bud.
Strenuously.
Comment by stunney — August 9, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 2:26 am
A follow-up to something I wrote previously, which was this:
This is from Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, by Stephen M. Barr, a fine book, published in 2003:
Ibid., pp. 65-67.
Barr is a physics professor at the University of Delaware's Bartol Research Institute.
Let me add that this notion of a rational creator is equally relevant to the moral realm as to the natural realm. Once one takes the rational concepts of universality, consistency, and purposeful order seriously, it becomes much harder to justify in any rational sense things like nationalism, racism, sexism, and oppressive social orders based on permanent caste or class divisions. Democracy, not merely science, has its roots in Judaeo-Christian thought. As that Jewish Christian Paul wrote to the Galatians:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Compare this with Eastern religion. Social position is fixed. The world is also fixed, like an illusive wheel, slowly turning, just an eternal cycle of shitty maya, etc. Cosmic dualism and quietism discourage the quest for freedom and justice, in essence saying that suffering and evil aren't real, the material world isn't real, and we should simply wait for the wheel to turn. Individual acts of compassion are encouraged, but not social liberation and tranformation. Ghandi was a major exception, but he lived his formative years in British Christian cultural environment. Which is itself an ultimately Jewish, Biblical one. It goes back to their belief that God had called them out of Egyptian slavery, to liberate them, and to treat themselves and others accordingly, righteously, and with loving kindness, hesed, and to look after the anawim.
Comment by stunney — August 10, 2007 @ 2:26 am
August 10th, 2007 at 4:00 am
Let's look at a couple of positions on free will I gave earlier:
Where does C say that any act of free will must be uncaused by prior states or events?
That's right. Nowhere. All C says is that free acts of will are not caused by prior states of the world that determine the will. It does not say that free acts of will have no prior causes. Just that those causes do not determine the outcome. Nor does C state that all acts of will are free. Hence, a lifetime of experience, etc, can certainly influence one's choices.
If I am an animal-loving person by nature, then my choice to take in a stray cat can still be free if my compassionate nature is not so strong as to determine that choice, but merely makes it probable that I do so. Alternatively, if my feline-loving nature is overwhelmingly strong and determines my act so that I can do no other, then it's not a free act. But in the first case it's free because it's not determined. Not taking in the stray remains an open possibility in that case. But it's nonsense to suggest it would be a random act to take in the stray in such a case.
C does not state that a will is only free when the choices it makes are entirely random, unencumbered by any preferences or tendencies. The confusion is in thinking that all causes determine their effects, a confusion which Kane berates in the article I linked to in my earlier post, and a confusion the well-known English philosopher (and my co-religionist) G. E. M. Anscombe identified in a classic paper of 35 years ago entitled, "Causality and Determination".
Comment by stunney — August 10, 2007 @ 4:00 am
August 10th, 2007 at 4:11 am
Hi Pez,
2 Tim 2:15 says you should "˜rightly divide the word of truth.'
If you cannot judge the word of God then how do you even know it is of God? How can you decide whether another's teaching is acceptable to you?
"But ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you.." 1 John 2:20, 27
No one answered the claims I made and cut and paste two more times. Eric is a very bright guy, and writes well, but he ignored the most difficult points. I agree you have tried to answer some, and you've made a start. But you have not been willing to see the real opposition between the OT and NT. Not that it's perfectly divided. You're a good goalie – no time to think – just keep those balls out! Just kidding.
I guess I find that statement so preposterous that I am just going to make note of it and move on.
What errors?
I'm not sure about that. Those historical assessments and opinions are in a different category.
You seem not to like it when I try to spice up my seriousness with a few more interesting words. Look at some of the bombastic things Jesus had to say about things he thought were abominable. He didn't hold back.
Alright, you describe something that is a terrible travesty and don't use any such words. Keep it mild. I don't like to see the reputation of the God that I love with all my mind and heart dragged through the mud. Christians seem to be victims of Stockholm syndrome. Ever heard of it?
Yes, he did at times, but it ends up being just a very few quotes. And, there are definitely some very good things in there. The OT is very big and I wish I knew it better. I certainly do not think it appears to have a consistent author or theme.
That's precisely what I don't believe. It appears to me that Jesus hoped to lay out the truth and let people come to the obvious conclusion that Judaism and its scriptures needed an overhaul. If they got born again as was his plan, that would have been a natural result. And it appears many Christians were doing that in the early years, but now it is rare.
Please tell me where Jesus mentions Abraham's sacrifice, or a phrase so I can look it up in a concordance.
Perhaps it was with Abraham that the Hebrew people became enslaved to Jehovah.
Jehovah was considered by early Hebrews as a god among gods. The Elohim were a plurality of gods. Jehovah may have been thought of as chief. How about this:
"When the Most High El gave the nations their heritage, when He divided mankind, He fixed the territories of the peoples according to the number of the sons of El. But Jehovah's share was his people, Jacob was his inherited possession." Deuteronomy 32:8
And Jehovah, that man of war, tried to make something of his possession. Jehovah is worldy. There was human and child sacrifice in those days. Moses was no stranger to it, neither was Abraham. Look at Exodus 4:21-26. It's a bizarre passage. It looks like something is missing, it's disjointed. Nonetheless, we go from the LORD telling Moses what he should do in Egypt with the pharaoh, (and how he will harden pharaoh's heart) and next thing he meets Moses at the inn, and seizes him to kill him! What??? And my Catholic bible explains that it was because Moses had neglected to circumcise his younger son. (How come the LORD doesn't do that sort of thing any more? Maybe the Most High El banished him.) But I suspect another possibility, and perhaps the missing passages hide it. It was done in those days for even a high ranking person, even a king, to sacrifice a child for victory in a pivotal battle. Was Moses planning to do that? He was very, very nervous about going into Egypt and facing Pharaoh. At any rate, his wife hurriedly circumcises the boy, and the LORD lets Moses go. She was furious with him, too. Was Zipporah making a substitutionary sacrifice so that Moses would not sacrifice her son?
The LORD suddenly decides to kill Moses. The LORD seems to be physically present, meets Moses at the inn, grabs him, lets him go. The LORD is appeased with the foreskin of Moses' son. Jehovah threatens Israel with annihilation if they follow other gods. He regularly purges his people for this or that. Jehovah forgives, but usually he has to vent his rage first. Seems like an abusive husband, who also loves his wife and feels remorse. They say that after a man beats his wife and then begs her forgiveness and professes his love, they have a little honeymoon period. It gets quite addictive. But it's dysfunctional.
Jesus told the Pharisees they were of their Father the devil, a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Jehovah does a lot of lying and murdering.
More than this 'sinfulness' that is overemphasized, humanity is gullible. It's a direct cause of them sinning, too. I understand that Satan is supposed to be incredibly clever, but I'm beginning to wonder. His lies are so simple, yet people fall for them. All he has to do is say "I'm God!" and that makes it so? One thing makes people more vulnerable though, and that's fear. Fear shuts down the mind, puts it in crisis mode. Notice next time you've in a real panic. The mind is very, very narrow. Almost everything ceases to exist, goes dark. And Jehovah loves fear. What but fear could cause Abraham to agree to the grim task the LORD asked of him? What was Abraham thinking? How, if he knew a wonderful, uplifting, magnificent and generous God could he suppose that this God would want him to stick a sword into his son? Where could such an idea ever arise in his mind if not for the fact that he was already familiar with it, at least from other cultures, and now his own god is demanding the same of him? What possible pleasure or satisfaction could the creator of the stars get from a bloody human dead body? Who but an evil spirit could enjoy it? Fear and grief and waste, that's what it would have been if Abraham had carried it out.
Can someone explain the glory of this? How could it be that human sacrifice is so ugly, yet the god who is the opposite of darkness somehow also flirts with it? Do you, as a Christian, think that burning one's children on the outstretched stone arms of Molech might be inspired by the devil? If so, or even if it is just a sinful human idea, then surely you can see that it is just a cute, if slightly pathetic attempt to act out their deepest and most beautiful spiritual intuition? Why the dears were playacting their own future salvation!
If God told them repeatedly not to make human sacrifice it only strengthens my claims. For there is more than one voice in the OT. But Jesus made it clear which one was his father. Why did Jesus find it important to say "Go and learn what this means, "˜I will have mercy and not sacrifice.'? Why would he say that, and say that child sacrifice was an abomination, but yet praise Abraham because he feared the LORD so much that he was willing to destroy his only son of his old age?
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear
There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear
Blah, blah, blah.
We all deserve to be in God's grace and presence by the nature of what we are. We are of God and we belong to God. God's grace and presence fill the world and permeate it. As Jesus said in the gospel of Thomas, "The kingdom of God is already spread out on the earth, but people don't see it."
Actions follow the heart: "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."
The spat between Catholics and Protestants over whether it is works or faith which saves misses the mark. As James pointed out, if your actions don't match your words, your faith is false. John Newton no longer desired to run a slave ship once he experienced grace.
You are right though, that purity is pivotal. We can approach closer to God to the extent we empty ourselves of our impurity. But it's not an all or nothing situation. It's a love affair, it's the bridal chamber, all sorts of things go on in there"¦but first you have to get in. The escort is the Holy Spirit. And you have to go in alone.
The doctrine, as I understand it, is that because Adam, the perfect man, sinned (Why doesn't Eve's sin matter? Because women aren't important, I guess. Yet woman have been told by men that this whole thing is all their fault. Why, then, didn't salvation come through a woman?) At any rate, Adam sinned, and God had to have repayment in order to forgive mankind. Like Billy Graham said "God demanded a death." Now you say it was God paying God. Fair enough, but it was Jesus the son here on earth who got to die. If God demanded it, then it was not a real sacrifice, anyway. And do you suppose the rich man in the parable actually moved some gold from one pile to another? That wouldn't make sense.
How about telling me why it is the most noble religion in the world, which says, God demanded a death? Even if you want to fudge it a little and say God was paying God, what is the great lesson here if a debt had to be paid? How does this jive with the many times Jesus taught that forgiveness is free, and that we should also practice this? If God the Father doesn't live up the words of Jesus, why should we? God was offended, God got his blood and gore, it's all good now. Why does God want blood and gore just like the demons (the gods of the pagans are demons)?
Sure, but that has nothing to do with my saying that we are not saved from God but from our fallen spiritual condition.
That doesn't mean God required a death to forgive us.
But if you have a bond with God that is inner, you should have, if nothing else, a moral-spiritual rudder that at least allows you to exercise some discernment. At any rate, don't be afraid to look. Don't think that if you find the church, or the Bible, or some pastor or doctrine wanting, that you need to fear. You always have God, even if nothing makes sense. Losing some parts of the above does not threaten your relationship with God or your salvation. You are willing to not understand some things. So be it.
I don't quite agree with that. Grace is a vehicle of cleansing, always accompanied by your assent to surrender, which you do as best you can. The more you purify, the more you are with God. (Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God.) If you were poofed from a sinful condition to perfection, not only would that be boring and cheap, it would mean you weren't really real, just something done to, like a robot. Like artificial insemination instead of the bridal chamber.
Some shy virgins have been promised that, but it's not allowed, and they will eventually be grateful.
Comment by onething — August 10, 2007 @ 4:11 am
August 10th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Hi Onething,
First, thank you for establishing that we will accept this letter as authoritative – your selective quoting of Saint Paul aside.
Second, the quote tells us to give diligence and be zealous, and with total effort interpret the Word of God. We must regularly and systematically interpret it as to its proper meaning. It does not say we are to dismiss the bits we don't like as being of the devil.
The chapter goes on to discuss the folly of arguing over words and vain babblings (perhaps I will soon heed this admonition).
Third, since you've already admitted 2 Timothy for our instruction then, of course, we must move to the next chapter and accept 2 Timothy 3:16.
Of course both your verse and mine come from the same man. If you believe tradition then that man is Paul, a pharisee trained in the Torah and raised on the scriptures we call the Old Testament. And Paul didn't say "all scripture except that which you don't accept and don't want to be bothered trying to understand…"
You mean your long list of supposed crimes of God? True that I didn't choose to address your vague accusations, but those aren't claims.
The claims I have answered are those such that you were claiming that if morality has an objective source then Christians ought to be light years ahead of others.
Jesus did not quote just a few times, but taught from almost half of what we now call "books" of the Old Testament.
If you are a prophet and speaking from the Holy Spirit you would get these right as well. God doesn't get history wrong.
Sure I have. In what way am I supposed to be a hostage?
It was not the scriptures that Jesus said needed an overhaul, but the "Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men."Â Â (Mark 7:6-7)"
Mark 7: 8-9 " For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, … Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition."
Mark 7:13 "Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye."
I am tempted to go into the various names of God throughout the Old Testament and provide their purpose and meaning. I am tempted also to develop the comparisons between the Dead Sea Scrolls , the LXX and the Masoretic texts to demonstrate that no matter how you choose to translate this verse (sons of Israel, sons of God, or angels of God) it does not entail the polytheism you wish – much less make any suggestion that Yahweh is anything less than the true one God and the single deity of the Hebrews – much less a demon!
But it is more than sufficient for my cause to cite Jesus. He quotes Deuteronomy more than any other book of the Bible. He refers to this very God, Yahweh as the only God. He tells us Whom he is talking about, the God who spoke to Moses in the desert, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Yahweh, Jehovah and the Father are One. Moses repeatedly demonstrates that God is both Elohim and Yahweh and uses the different names when discussing the different relationships (Genesis 1 and 2, for instance, are talking about the same Creator God but with the two different names – just as at the burning bush (where we have active the angel of the Lord, Yahweh and Elohim as one)).
Jesus quotes Deuteronomy — echoing the ancient cry of Judaism:  "Shema Yisroel! Adonai elohenu, Adonai echod!" "Hear, Israel!  The Lord is God, the Lord is One!"Â
But Deuteronomy is teaching that "
Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one: and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 These words, which I command you this day, shall be on your heart; 7"
Jesus is endorsing the God that Israel called Yahweh. He is endorsing the monotheism described here as well as showing us who the God is that He calls Father.
Abraham was thinking that he had faith and trust in God. He knew that God had promised to multiply his seed through Isaac and he knew that God would fulfill this promise. As he told Isaac, "God will supply the sacrifice" – and He did.
As he told the servants, "we (he and his grown son, Isaac) will return". He knew that he would be coming back from this near-sacrifice with his son.
Quote your insightful "blah, blah, blah" back to yourself. No, God does not require, request or desire a human sacrifice. He taught this through Abraham while he was surrounded by nations who did exactly that to their "gods". He instructed this repeatedly afterward and He foretold His own sacrifice for our sakes – a sacrifice we wouldn't understand until Jesus opened the books to us.
Why don't you doubt your doubts like you doubt the word?
It is not difficult to find explanations for the near-sacrifice.
God did not prove Abraham's faith to God, but to Abraham and to us. This is a literature (this doesn't mean it is not also a history) which talks to us as much as to Abraham. We are taught about faith, about Jesus, and about sacrifice. We are shown the type of Christ, in the three days between loss and return, in the carrying of the Cross, in the travel by donkey. in the supply by God of His own lamb, in the willingness to obey and demonstrate faith, etc. We are also instructed by God that human sacrifice is not desired by Him.
This was not a blind faith demonstrated by Abraham, but one based upon his earlier dealings with God and the specific promise of God. Through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus the sons of God come to glory.
Another endorsement of this near-sacrifice, and this God worshipped by Abraham, is the fact (as I mentioned earlier) that Jesus is of this God of Abraham, that Jesus quotes the same God who so identified Himself to Moses, that Jesus places in heaven, ABraham, Jacob and Isaac among the living.
If this Yahweh was not God, the Father, but was a demon how did the Patriarchs come to be in Heaven? As Jesus quotes Deuteronomy throughout His own Temptation, and refers directly to the same Yahweh as the one and only God, why does He never warn us about following the so-called demonic manifestations that you choose to impute to the Jewish scriptures?
Indeed.
Your fallacious appeal to chronological chauvinism lies flat on its face and your response is "blah".
Very nice. But irrelevant in support of your claims.
And yes, this Grace is amazing.
Check again with Billy Graham. The theories on the atonement are one thing – the fact is another.
So we aren't arguing about whether or not it is God reaching to and saving us from our fallen condition. Good.
We do. Our discernment is to be exercised in finding out what God meant – not in calling him a demon.
Good luck to you then.
Grace is an unmerited gift of God. It means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing we can do to make Him love us less (thanks again to Yancey).
We do not earn Grace, nor do we earn Heaven. That the Spirit convicts us of our sin and conforms us to the image of the Son is in no way the equivalent of saying that our own self-improvement brings us to heaven.
Comment by Pez — August 10, 2007 @ 2:42 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Stunney, your reasoning leads to several absurdities. You wrote:
1. Suppose there are two kindly men, Brad and Brian, who are legendary among acquaintances and relatives for their love of cats. Brad is constituted so that if a stray shows up on his doorstep tonight, he will take it in. Brian is constituted so that if a stray shows up, all else being equal, there is a 999,999,999,999,999 chance out of 1,000,000,000,000,000 that he will take it in.
A stray shows up at each house. To no one's surprise, each man takes the stray in. "Of course they did," say all of their friends. "That's how they are." Yet according to you, only Brian's will is free.
2. You are still defining freedom as being in opposition to one's nature:
Freedom, according to you, comes not from expressing one's deepest nature and convictions, but from the possibility of flouting them.
2. Though I'm sure you didn't intend it, your reasoning deprives God of free will. You wrote:
By that logic, if God's nature is to act with moral rectitude, then he does not have free will when it comes to moral questions.
Oops.
Comment by keiths — August 10, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
August 11th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Suppose a woodcut depicts two kindly men, Bob and Billy, who are legendary among acquaintances and relatives for their love of cats. Bob's take in a stray. Billy also takes in a stray. Bob's act of kindness was determined. At that moment he could have chosen nothing but to take in the stray. Billy, by contrast, could have decided differently. But he too chose to take in the stray. Bob's act was inevitable, since his will was constrained. Billy's act was not inevitable. Billy acted freely. Billy's will was not opposed to his nature. But it was not determined by it. Bob's was.
Freedom comes in choices that are not determined. Those choices may then determine one's nature thereafter. But if all of everyone's choices are determined by past events, free will does not exist.
My reasoning does not deprive God of free will. God's nature is to act with moral rectitude because God's free action and hence God's nature is timelessly good. Alternatively, even if God were not timeless, he could freely choose at t in such a way as to fix his character forever thereafter.
Seems there's more wood for the woodchipper. Oops-a-daisy.
Comment by stunney — August 11, 2007 @ 12:28 am
August 11th, 2007 at 2:14 am
Stunney,
No, I meant that they did take it seriously and said things about it that you do not.
That is so, but then you have faith in an institution that I do not, nor do I think such an institutional purity is in accordance with reality. But the problem is a bit bigger than some interpretive troubles. The problem is that the actions and speech of Jehovah, not occasionally but ad nauseum, are opposite to the teachings of Jesus, to what he says of the Father, and to what the NT writers say of the nature of God and love. So if we decide that all these scriptures are really just a pretty unique and valuable self history of a people who ended up being important, then in what sense are they inspired? And how do they compare with other writings of other peoples?
The real problem of course, is that if we have a wicked idea of the nature of the Father, it is going to affect our NT Christian theology. And this I think it has done.
I used to also. We Orthodox used to joke that in the Catholic Church you had one pope, and in the Protestant churches every man is his own pope. They of course don't believe in popes, but do believe in divine guidance for the church as a whole.
I have become something of a Gnostic I guess. I see things in a very different light, I find that I interpret passages differently than before, and I find the church teachings at times wanting in spiritual understanding. Sure, a friend or two suggested that I have had a spiritual fall. That is all an indoctrinated person can say. And for the most part, I have kept it all to myself and since I moved away anyway, few former associates know of my change. If this is a spiritual fall give me more. It may very well be that for most people a religious institution is the safest bet. They aren't capable to step out on their own and they feel it. But there comes a point for some people like me, when the authority just doesn't hold them anymore and there is no fear.
The problem is, though, that the institution may perhaps provide a bit of safety, but it also restricts. It's sad, though, how few people mind being restricted.
That's putting the matter a bit too narrowly. I rather think that certain attitudes and beliefs about the nature of the Father have influenced theology, and have led to different outcomes. Certainly, very few Christian groups have become as peaceful as the Quakers, the Amish, the Mennonites. Why should they when Jehovah is a violent man of war? I firmly believe that people have GOT to have a clear, consistent, and very uplifting ideal if they are to break out of the pattern and actually change. What complicates things is that Jesus, almost entirely (and I'm quite willing to assign a few mistranslations, both intentional and ignorant as well as interpolations) did give such an ideal.
Pope Gregory I said, "Hell is no mere phase; it is a dark and bottomless abyss "¦it is inextinguishable fire, corporeal and yet able to sear soul as well as flesh; it is eternal, and yet it never destroys the damned, or lessens their sensitivity to pain And to each moment of pain is added the terror of expected pain, the horror of witnessing the tortures of loved ones also damned, the despair of ever being released or allowed the blessing of annihilation."
Simply look at society from the vantage point of a theology that preaches an unimaginable horror from the pulpit, and answers the obvious question of pity for the damned, especially when it is one's own children or spouse in the flames, with the assurance that the saved shall have no pity for the damned. I have asked many Christians a bit jokingly if they will be sorry for me and they insist they will not. How does this mix with the exquisite, tender compassion taught by Jesus? A compassion that indeed requires a new level of spiritual understanding to even attain it? How are Christians to work on compassion toward their neighbor, about whom they may not be naturally inclined to care much, if they are made to steel themselves against feeling compassion as their own loved ones suffer?
There is no hell doctrine in the Old Testament, nonetheless the tendency to create modern Christian theology may arise from its God. Because of this doctrine, Christianity has become skewed to one of "believe or else." What this means is that regardless of how you dress up the niceness of God to let a few people into heaven who supposedly do not deserve it, belief in God and the church is totally coerced. What choice do you have when the alternative is the above paragraph?
The conscious mind can rationalize anything. But the subconscious knows the truth, sees the implications. I believe the two doctrines of a required payment of debt, and a believe-or-else-you'll-be-tortured theology paralyzes the spirit, rendering the teachings of Jesus as ineffective as possible.
No talk of love or mercy can compare with the brute fact of even one person suffering in unimaginable torment forever and ever and ever. If God is capable of that, how is he to be distinguished from the evil one? He and the devil are partners.
This takes salvation theology from focus on the truth of our spiritual poverty to one of hell avoision. This eternal hell belief, often with nothing the person could do to avoid it anyway, completely supercedes the teachings Jesus presented as to the nature of the Father. If you believe that paragraph above to be true, then it simply isn't true that God is love, or that he has no darkness, or that love remembers no wrongs. But its worse than that. Deny it as much as you like: you cannot love that which is the source of so terrible a fear. And you will have a very hard time developing ethics and compassion toward beings who are to be condemned anyway.
Now who would be interested in accomplishing all that? What liar would be capable of infiltrating minds and institutions? Who commands lying and deceiving spirits to cleverly insert nonsense into theology and so slander the character of God in the minds of the people so that in their subconscious minds they all but hate him and cannot put on Christ? Why was modern atheism born in western Europe?
The mind is easily deceived but the heart never.
Now the Orthodox church does not teach intense torment, nor that it is a punishment. Simply they say a person who rejects God will be unable to be in his presence and will remain unable to change his orientation. So this is interesting because it indicates that this whole doctrine is not necessary to Christianity, and further, it may be the influence of harsh Roman law which lead to the doctrine of the need for a sacrificial death as an atonement to satisfy God. Nonetheless, the Orthodox position is lame and uninspired.
I think that reverence for the Bible has reached the point of idolatry. I believe the church today is in a very similar position to Judaism at the time of Christ. It seems to be in the nature of things that they deteriorate over time and require renewal. They didn't want to hear it, and neither do the Pharisees of today. Patterns repeat themselves because there are psychological reasons for them. If Christianity is engaging in idolatry, it will perish as all idolatry does.
Yet who but you says this? Pez thinks that because I claim to have a better understanding of the nature of God, and it's true I give all the credit to the Holy Spirit, that I must be a prophet to claim it, and must therefore be able to have accurate predictions about when it will rain here and relieve this drought.
There must be something to it, because I came to many of the same conclusions all on my own. Once, I found an Elaine Pagels book about the Gnostics, and I said to my mother, "I guess I'm a Gnostic!" But later I understood better their belief about the demiurge and that the material world is inherently evil, which I don't accept. Since I would regard inspiration as an inner contact with the divine spirit, it would therefore not be an all or nothing thing. It could be a little, or a lot. So that means some scriptures will be more truthful than others. Yet Christians treat them all equally. But I do attribute the visitation of the Holy Spirit to be what Jesus meant about the need to be born again. The Holy Spirit quickens the life of the soul. Only then does it really begin to function adequately.
Because God is above and beyond jealousy, and he should tell people the truth. I don't regard the ancients as naive children.
I'm afraid the case of Bush is worse than that. Perhaps a brain implant or something.
We have a long way to go before they are humbled, I fear.
Besides, one of those scriptures describes Jehovah holding council in heaven against some king, and asking who can take care of it, and a couple of minions have inadequate suggestions, and then one offers to find the way to deceive him, and so Jehovah approves the plan. And consider, if Satan was able to offer Jesus worldly power, does it not stand to reason that it is Satan who meddles in human affairs so that he would be able to offer that?
Now the "˜prophet' who recorded this scene "“ was he hallucinating? Was he just knowingly creating a story? Do you think God really held such a council and if not how should people begin to think of such scriptures?
The thing you are describing re the history of the scriptures may be accurate enough, but if we had that sort of assessment commonly, I wouldn't be on this soapbox.
I'm a born again conspiracy theorist. I don't think any of the wars in this century had a lot to do with what people think was going on
.
The Holy Spirit teaches that.
It's not as though I don't think all humanity is in the same boat. I can best address the culture I have greatest knowledge of. I'd like to see Islam reformed, but it's not my place to try. One thing that amazes me is that Buddhism specifically makes compassion a pillar of the eight fold path, and mentions kindness to all sentient beings (includes animals) and yet the worst cases of animal cruelty I hear about come from Asian countries.
Comment by onething — August 11, 2007 @ 2:14 am
August 11th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Hi Onething,
What's your point in your exposition on Hell?
You claim that the Old Testament does not teach the doctrine (although Sheol and the Valley of Hinnom have all the same characteristics of Hades and Gehenna of the New Testament), but claim that somehow its corruption led us to believe in the doctrine.
Then how do you account for the fact that it was Jesus Himself who spoke most of Hell in the New Testament (over-estimates by critics aside)?
Jesus who tells us that it is a place of torment, of everlasting suffering, of fire and pain?
How do you acquit this teaching (which is not taken up by any of the apostles, nor by Paul in his 6-14 epistles) with the Jesus you prefer, He of love and compassion?
Is it possible that we are allowed to interpret His words? That some people writing about these words might have interpreted them in such a way as to give later interpreters a distorted image? That hundreds or thousands of years later subtleties of meaning and imagery can be lost? That we can find that what was meant by Jesus was metaphorical, symbolic or figurative rather than a literal endorsement of the pagan mythology?
Or, should we guided prophets just dismiss and blaspheme Jesus as a demon because He said things that abrade our modern sensibilities?
Comment by Pez — August 11, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
August 11th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Onething wrote:
Neither Augustine nor Aquinas = the magisterium of the Catholic Church. So I am allowed to be a Catholic while disagreeing with them on various points.
The ancient creed states the ancient faith in ecclesiam, unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam. It is this Church which is meant to transmit the Word and Sacraments entrusted to it. It is amazing that God should choose such dreadful sinners for such a precious task. But he did.
Because they refer to God. Once again one must understand the relation between thought and reality.
Ancient people could think of water, even though they did not know that water = H20. But that lack of knowledge did not entail that they were not really thinking about and referring to water. To use the philosophical jargon, reference does not reduce to sense. That is, reference does not reduce to whatever mental descriptions we happen to have in our head.
Centuries ago, people could refer to the universe even though they held many false beliefs about it. If one asked someone, even a leading scientist such as Newton, prior to the advent of Big Bang cosmology, relativity, quantum physics, etc, to describe the universe, they would have trotted out a number of descriptions which are false. Does this mean they were not in fact referring to the universe? No. Likewise, people could refer to God even though they held many false beliefs about God, and associated the term "˜God' with a number of false descriptions. (We ourselves probably do so too, just as some of our descriptions of the universe are probably false too.)
Now, this raises the question: how, then, is reference even possible? How can we succeed in referring to the real universe, or to the real God?
Kripke's answer is: directly, by naming. And naming is not the same thing as describing. This has surprisingly enormous implications. In particular, it shows how our thinking is able to be about reality in an essential way even though our thinking about reality is not perfectly and completely true. It also shows how our modal thoughts can be true, even though those thoughts refer to non-physical objects (the properties of, or involved in, necessity and possibility). Like Kripke and other philosophers, I think this means that naturalism is false, indeed is incoherent. (For a recent example of that type of argument, see World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism, by Michael Rea.)
Some thoughts on that can be found here;
and some reasons to doubt Pagels can be found here.
And for extra credit, you can read salon . com's review of the Da Vinci crock.
Nothing beats the sermon on hell in James Joyce's novel A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man, especially its images of eternity.
Funnily enough, Jesus speaks of hell a number of times. There's the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. There's the parable of judgement in which the damned ask when had they failed to feed, clothe, etc, the poor, and are sent off to the everlasting fire. There's the injunction to mutilate yourself lest your eye or hand cause you to sin since it's better to do that than be cast into hell unmutilated. There is the parable of the darnel:
Sounds like there might be some post mortem unpleasantness in store.
I'd say it arises from the New Testament, including Jesus's talk of hell. There is, however, some debate if the relevant Greek words should be translated to mean 'unending'.
That said, there is no requirement in Catholic doctrine to believe that any human being actually is damned. Catholic doctrine opposes the theory of double predestination.It is permitted to hope that all will be saved.
http://www.romancatholicism.org/cormac-apokatastasis.htm
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_28071999_en.html
My understanding is that in Orthodoxy, all enter the presence of God. For those who hate God and neighbor, this will be a tormenting experience. For those who love God and neighbor, it will be blissful. That seems right. The fire of hell just is the fire of God's love. How we experience that love marks the difference between heaven and hell; and how we experience it depends on us, on what we will in this life–love or its opposite.
I like the revelations given to Julian of Norwich, including the one in which God tells her, in answer to her puzzlement about hell:
All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well
This suggests that beyond the notion of hell, there lies the even greater mystery of God's love.
How, indeed, can it not?
Comment by stunney — August 11, 2007 @ 5:48 pm
August 11th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Stunney,
You ignored the first two challenges in my last comment, choosing instead to merely restate your original position. Is that because you don't have answers?
Regarding God's free will, you wrote:
For God's nature to be timelessly good merely means that it does not change through time. Neither does Brad's love of cats. Explain to us, then: why should the latter's constancy abrograte free will if the former's does not?
Then, by your reasoning, God's moral will is no longer free after t.
As you wrote:
That could easily be rephrased thus:
Alternatively, if God's moral character is overwhelmingly strong and determines his choices so that he can only do good, then his will is not free.
Comment by keiths — August 11, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
August 11th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Pez wrote:
Pez,
The fact that you regard the Scriptures as the word of God is itself a judgment.
The presumption is inescapable. We are not born into our religious beliefs. We have to decide what's true, even if the judgment is as simple as "Mommy and Daddy believe it, so I will too."
With that judgment comes responsibility. Atheists are often asked by Christians what they will say to God on Judgment Day, when God asks them why they rejected his Word.
I like to turn the question around. Suppose that God exists, and that on Judgment Day he asks every Christian, "That book, the Bible, which is full of contradictions, absurdities, violence and evil — how could you regard it as my inspired word? What were you thinking?"
"Did you really imagine that I said it was okay for people to beat their slaves to death, as long as they didn't die immediately? Did you really think that I couldn't keep my facts straight and avoid contradictions in my own holy book?"
Comment by keiths — August 11, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
August 11th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Your semantic point about judging was obvious, KeithS.
You have to read my comment in context.
And your presentation if God's questions to Christians has little to do with Christian belief and ignores thousands of years of scholarship.
Comment by Pez — August 11, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
August 11th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Keith,
Re your post on free will Aug 9 4:54. It all makes sense, but I still don't see what the physicalist view has to do with your points.
Are they accountable for their actions? How much freedom do they really have?
Stunney
More's the pity. How few Christians make it back! It can be done as a monotheist, you know.
Like divine right of kings?
That's the Hindu caste system, and it has been refuted by their greatest philosophers, such as Shankara. Buddha lived 600 years before Christ and he spoke in terms of the golden rule and of overcoming evil with kindness. But he never advocated violence or glorified it.
Like toddlers in a sandbox who don't mind bonking someone over the head, but cry such piteous tears when it gets done to them. For some reason, God passed up the opportunity to say "You didn't like being slaves, did you" Well, nobody else likes it either, so don't do it. Let that be our covenant." Instead he led his toddlers straight to war.
This is true enough, but has little to do with the problems of scripture, except inasmuch as you see it as a sort of philosophical dialogue. Perhaps the Talmud fits that description.
I'm the one facing it! So now the dissertation on love or Gospel of John are "˜saccharine'? So I'm right then, the old testament carries more punch. And this would have to be true, psychologically, because danger takes precedence over happiness.
Are you agreeing then, that there could be demonic influence in the scriptures? Christians acknowledge that the ruler of this world is Satan, that he has the ability to bestow worldly power and riches, and that he tries to sway the human mind constantly. My old prayer book said that he was like a ravening lion, seeking whom he might devour. And if they are Protestant they think the Catholic church greatly erred. Surely most Christians would say that schisms in the church are at least partly the result of evil influences. Yet somehow they suppose that through all the ignorance, selfishness, political maneuvering and whatnot, that their doctrines and their scriptures are untouched. Even though the scriptures have been under debate and not even agreed upon century after century. Even though Christians have admittedly continued to have very sinful minds, and have engaged in every bad behavior such as wars, tortures, murders, slavery, child abuse and slandered their women, nonetheless, their theology is pristine and pure, straight from God. Even though it was thought up by human minds and fought over relentlessly. The murderers in Constantine's family alone could fill a penitentiary.
Why do Christians give so much fame to "˜the adversary' while imagining that he has not had his way with us at all? Who, I ask you, would plant into the human mind that God requires a payment of a human sacrifice? Who would negate everything that Jesus died trying to convey to us about the magnificence of the Father if he could, by painting him as a vindictive torturer who never forgives?
The author of Christian salvation theology is Satan. This is his domain. He is loose here. His mode is the lie. The deception is strong, not weak. You will disagree but I doubt you'll ever forget this idea. The bell has been rung.
The problem with human beings is that they are gullible. They are like little children, believing in Santa. That is why we don't solve our problems. Because we believe every new lie that comes along. Like fashions they change. We're always a step behind.
Those "˜nice' scriptures have had a lot of impact.
The true God is known inwardly, ethics follows.
No, instead I am acknowledging that in the same way that God's Spirit may visit and influence a person and his writings, so can demonic influences, and this is what needs to be faced.
If that is so, it means humanity was not ready for Jesus when he came. It's a thought I've toyed with, that his purposes may only now be coming to their proper time of fulfillment.
Take look at that statement again. Until we stop believing the lies that send us to war, we are stuck. No progress. Every war we've been in this century has been secretly planned and the people were lied to and manipulated. Atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. We are the only country to have done such a thing. We have bombed more than 20 countries since WWII. We have bombed Iraq for 16 years now. In the gulf war we shot at fleeing civilians and soldiers from the air, against Geneva conventions. Somehow, Fox news failed to mention it. Yes, it is really high time men stopped believing that God wants them to kill and win.
But the question was about the nature of God, not us. As for us, with a nonloving God in our sights, we don't stand much of a chance. We were suppposed to have been able to put on Christ. Remember? We were supposed to become like our teacher.
Our predicament was stated quite clearly: We don't know evil from good, or darkness from light, or bitter from sweet.
The religion that they put their trust in should not contribute to the problem.
There were exceptions. But Jehovah wanted to make something of his inheritance"¦
And yet you said earlier that Judeo-Christianity led to justice but religious persecution has been the hallmark of Christianity more than any other religion, even Islam.
Comment by onething — August 11, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
August 11th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Pez wrote:
The context supports my interpretation. Onething suggested that you ought to judge the Scriptures, and you rejected that suggestion, calling it presumptuous.
Comment by keiths — August 11, 2007 @ 11:51 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 12:30 am
onething wrote:
I mentioned physicalism because if you agree with my reasoning, then an immaterial soul is not a prerequisite for free will. In fact, having an immaterial soul would not make you any freer than you are already.
It depends on what exactly you mean by 'accountable'. I would say that they are accountable in a de facto sense, because society treats them differently according to their actions.
Suppose everyone in society came to accept determinism. In such a society, it would still make sense for us to hold a person responsible for breaking a contract, to take one example. We might not believe that they are responsible, in some ill-defined "ultimate" sense, for breaking the contract, but society continues to work best if we treat them differently from those who do not break contracts.
To paraphrase Daniel Dennett's memorable book subtitle, they have the only variety of freedom worth wanting. Any more freedom just takes them further away from their own natures, as I have argued.
Comment by keiths — August 12, 2007 @ 12:30 am
August 12th, 2007 at 12:37 am
stunney:
Or to the real Santa Claus, or the real Tooth Fairy?
That's very insightful.
Every time Stunney cites Kripke I feel that either I'm stupid, or that there is something enormously broken with the way philosophers think. Fortunately I've recently come across some opinions that bolster the latter option, from philosopher David Stove (who is also an anti-evolutionist, but I won't hold it against him):
Comment by mtraven — August 12, 2007 @ 12:37 am
August 12th, 2007 at 12:58 am
On Hell
Here
also see Here
Comment by onething — August 12, 2007 @ 12:58 am
August 12th, 2007 at 4:03 am
Sometimes the idiocy of wood is breathtaking.
That God's nature is timelessly good means that it does not change through time. It timelessly and freely chooses the good.
Bob is not timeless. Bob's attitude towards cats does change. There was a time when Bob did not love cats. He made some free choices which generated his feline-loving nature which does not persist through all of time. Even less does it exist timelessly. But once that nature was in place, it determined his choice to take in a stray cat on a certain day.
Alternatively, if God is temporal, then, like Bob, God's moral character is determined by God's free choices up to t. After t, God's moral character is determined by God's free choices prior to t.
And, er, so what?
Mtraven wrote:
There is no real Santa Claus. There is no Tooth Fairy. There is water, by contrast.
Kripke's arguments are not designed to prove the existence of God or of water. Only a really dumb schmuck would make the grotesque error of thinking otherwise.
And I do mean a really dumb schmuck.
Indeed it is.
It's the first alternative. You're stupid. As in, really, really thick.
What is terrifically amusing is watching you still trying to take on Saul Kripke, for crying out loud, because you crashed so disastrously against his thinking and have been unable to let it go. Talk about digging a hole for yourself! Talk about mtraven making a pathetic fool of himself!:smile:
Your need for self-reassurance is positively poignant.
No. The human race isn't mad. David Stove, however, is. At least, he's mad if he thinks that the human race is mad.
Such as Dawkins' and mtraven's risible faith in materialism?
That's not an attempt at generality of thought?
I see.:lol:
Uh huh. His 'argument' amounts to: If most people don't think like me, it must be because they're insane?
Wow!
Er, don't call us, Dave. We'll call you.
Comment by stunney — August 12, 2007 @ 4:03 am
August 12th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Hi Onething,
You provide links without commentary on Hell.
I will presume you agree with the conclusions, and therefore will realize that they are in accordance with the comment I last addressed to you.
Unfortunately, you didn't bother to answer me.
The first link you provide requires page after page of apologetic and explanation as to why Jesus didn't mean what most think He meant when He discussed Gehenna and Hades. It is an excellent logical case, is not an easy train of thought to follow and requires us to read His language as figurative, symbolic and metaphorical. All of these, let me remind and assure you, I agree with.
Interestingly, however, to support this reading your apologist requires that we accept that the Old Testament is inspired and that it teaches nothing of the sort of Hell which has come commonly to be accepted by Christians.
This in the face of your attempt to smear the Old Testament and cast the blame for the subsequent (pagan) ideas of Hell upon it.
Also, we must interpret Jesus' use of parables and Peter's reference to fables about punishment after death as making use of, while not endorsing, the beliefs of His Jewish audience.
So, as I asked:
Funny how much effort you are willing to admit in defence of your ideas of Jesus when you are so eager to call Yahweh a demon without affording Him the same courtesy – especially since your very link has to presume the truthfulness of the Old Testament and Moses' writings to enforce its point concerning Jesus.
Comment by Pez — August 12, 2007 @ 4:16 am
August 12th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Stunney,
I see that you've again avoided answering my first two challenges. That must be tough on your ego, judging from the vitriol you proceeded to unload on mtraven and me in your last comment.
Moving on to the issue of divine free will, you state:
Yet earlier you said:
In both cases nature determines choice, which according to you means the choice is not free. Yet that inconveniently contradicts your theology, which holds that God has free will. To paper over the inconsistency, you emphasize the word "timeless", as if that solves the problem, but you never explain why. Timeless or not, if God chooses the good by his very nature, then how is he free according to your criterion?
Here's the part of your comment that was really funny: you actually make my case for me regarding a temporal God.
You wrote:
You describe Bob in the same way:
In both cases, free choices were made prior to t which then determined the choices made after t. Yet you contradict yourself by insisting that God is free but Bob is not.
Time to slow down and think this one through before your next reply, Stunney.
Comment by keiths — August 12, 2007 @ 7:27 am
August 12th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Here's this week's puzzle question:
There's no chance Bob will not do A because his will is completely determined to do A. There's a very slight chance Bill will not do B because his will is not completely determined to do B. How is this a cogent objection to the libertarian free will thesis?
(Hint: it's a trick question, because it's not a cogent objection at all.:grin:)
Now for some extra credits. I wrote:
I earlier said:
Where's the inconsistency? (Hint: it's a trick question because there isn't any.:grin:)
In the first case, there is nothing determining God's timeless free choice, and that timeless free choice is identical with God's nature. There is no prior divine nature because God is timeless. Some bits of wood might be arranged to spell out the claim that it's God's nature that determines the choice. But God's nature or essence is identical with God's existence because God is actus purus, and x can only determine y if x does not = y. There is no antecedent divine nature constraining any consequent divine act. Since God is actus purus, God is pure being, not a mixture of being and becoming, and hence God is identical with his eternal act of will. He has no prior nature which then acts. Rather, his nature = his infinite timeless act.
Thus it's incorrect to say that God chooses the good by his very nature, as if his nature was some prior constraint upon his will. His nature is not a constraint on his act of will because it's not something different from his act of will. And that act subsumes within it all of God's activity.
Now, not all theists believe that God is timeless. So, with them in mind I wrote:
And I described Bob this way:
In both cases, free choices were made prior to t (for some relevant values of t) which then determined the choices made after t. After t (for some relevant values of t), both Bob's acts and God's are determined and hence not free. Only certain character-forming acts prior to t were free.
In other words, if God is temporal, then, like Bob, his character-forming choices were free in the libertarian sense of not being determined prior to t. And like Bob's, God's subsequent acts after t are determined by that freely-chosen character. And so God's acts after t are determined and hence not free in the libertarian sense.
And, er, so what? It is not necessary to the thesis of libertarian free will that every act of will be free or undetermined. Proponents of libertarian free will such as Kane and van Inwagen make no such claim. Indeed they think that only a small subset of acts of will are free. If God is temporal, why think that all his acts must be free and not determined by his freely chosen character? I personally think God is timeless. Van Inwagen doesn't. Yet van Inwagen and I are libertarian incompatibilists about free will.
Would-be critics need to slow down and think this one through before their next bout of self-mutilating wood-carving. Or else stop altogether and just give up.
Comment by stunney — August 12, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
stunney:
I'm not trying to "take on" Saul Kripke. For one thing, he's not here. All we've got is your representation of his arguments, which I doubt is adequate (I'm sure he doesn't rely on name-calling and smileys). For another, so far I haven't heard anything from him (you) that is worth taking on — all there's been is empty definitions, circular arguments, grand invocations of modal logic as if it meant something. Now, I could just be too stupid to understand the depth and subtlety of these ideas. On the other hand, we've got a reputable philosopher who writes politely that they think Kripke's style of philosophizing is vacuous nonsense (Fodor) and another who writes not-so-politely that a great deal of philosophy is vacuous nonsense (Stove).
So, I don't feel so bad, my stupidity has led me to the same conclusion as a couple of reputable philosophers, with much less investment of time. But I'm still open to you or anyone who can explain Kripke's results in a way that makes sense, and draws some kind of useuful conclusion about the real world.
Here's your initial invocation of Kripke:
My reaction to this is Stovean — anybody who thinks this sort of stuff is a cogent argument for anything has got something seriously wrong with them. But unpacking just what it is that goes wrong is a daunting task. I tried, and got my comments thrown in the memory hole for my trouble.
Comment by mtraven — August 12, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
onething wrote:
Yes, it becomes harder to justify the divine right of kings.
Did these Eastern religious founders tolerate massive social injustice? You'll find fierce denunciations of social injustice in the Hebrew prophets.
God did not. Unless one is a Biblical literalist, there's no reason to think that "The Lord said"¦" was literally true, rather than just a way of saying, "This is God's will (in my opinion)".
They are saccharine if read in isolation from the worldly realities of warfare and injustice.
The Bible quotes Satan and other demons, so presumably there is.
There's a need to distinguish between what we are meant to believe on the one hand, and what people have in fact believed. The Bible says Moses killed a man in Egypt. It doesn't follow that we should kill people in Egypt. If some war is deemed justified in the Bible, it doesn't follow that all wars are.
Who's imagining that? Lots of Christians go on and on about their sins. Catholics even have a special sacrament involving confession of their sins and offer Masses for the dead so that their purgatory will be lessened. Most mainstream churches have a part of their liturgies asking for God's forgiveness. There was even a preacher on CNN the other night talking about the devil's influence and the huge need for exorcisms (which just happens to be how he makes his money). Read some Puritan sermons. They weren't imagining that the devil was idle.
Where does it say in the Bible that God required such a payment?
I don't interpret salvation that way. Jesus died because he preached the kingdom of God, and stayed faithful to, rather than abandon, that mission, even in the face of, and at the cost of, his own death. Given his divinity, this was a supreme act of love, one that makes up for all of humanity's failures and refusals to love. For this was an act of a divine person in human flesh and hence one that embodied an infinite self-sacrifice which bridged and atoned for the gulf between God and humanity due to sin.
In part because they are tied to a real history of real people, not a realm of Platonic ideals.
Who's not facing it? Even Scripture talks about people being killed by some who think they're doing a holy thing for God. The Pharisees and elders who mocked Jesus on the cross thought that was what was being done.
Of course the Biblical authors were fallible, limited, conditioned and sinful. But this is to miss the point, which is that the Bible conveys truths that God wants us to grasp and live by, one of which is that God has entered into relationship with people in a historical, and hence inculturated way. But sure, it's not the literal truth in every verse. If one interprets any lengthy text literally in every line, one can easily end up with absurdity.
If by "˜ready' you mean morally perfect, we'll never be ready.
The Bible is not a series of timeless ethical norms delivered by sinless oracles to humanity so much as it is a record of how real people over centuries experienced God in their lives, and struggled with that experience. It's not a record of how morally perfect people over centuries experienced God in their lives.
You'll get no argument from me about US militarism. I just don't think the Bible says US militarism is fine, that's all.
Of course. Jesus taught that divorce and re-marriage was permitted due to hardness of heart. Probably that wasn't the only thing permitted on that basis. Not being pacifists might well have been another. Ditto hating your enemies and looking lustfully at women.
There is no such thing as religion independently of people. And people always contribute problems.
One could start a religion whose central act of worship was crucifixions of real people on the basis that since Jesus thought it was God's will to accept his own murder, everyone should accept their own murder. There's simply no way to stop some people from thinking, saying, and doing the wrong thing. God can either say nothing, or say something in the knowledge that free creatures will be liable to distort it. I think the Bible portrays precisely that dynamic.
I said it led to norms which made it harder to justify societal injustice. They provide a moral basis for a more egalitarian society. But that's perfectly compatible with accepting those norms in theory and flouting them in practice. In other words, it needn't lead to holier behavior. One reason is that we've not figured out a way to organize economic life fully in keeping with Judaeo-Christian moral ideals, though here again what progress there has been has come almost exclusively in countries with a strong Judaeo-Christian tradition. I'm thinking of things like labor rights and protections, income assistance for the poor, unemployed, disabled, and elderly, universal health-care provision (the US is the exception that proves the rule), equality of educational opportunity, regulation of key industries in the public interest, laws against racism and sexism in employment, etc.
Comment by stunney — August 12, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
stunney today:
stunney in this same thread:
I like you, Stunney. You make me laugh.
Comment by keiths — August 12, 2007 @ 4:53 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Mtraven wrote:
Anybody who thinks that most people are mad has got something seriously wrong with them.
So daunting, indeed, that it's laughable that you should think the many people who regard it as cogent to the point where they felt compelled to give up on the mind-brain identity theory have something seriously wrong with them.
I find it amusing you don't even see the contradiction between saying that buying Kripke's argument is an indication of serious nuttyness and saying it's difficult to pinpoint what's wrong with it.
Comment by Zoskie — August 12, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
keiths wrote:
keiths, it seems you have trouble reading. Stunney said it's incorrect to say God chooses the good by his nature as if God's nature was some prior constraint on God's will. He's not denying God has a nature. His other statement is simply saying that this nature is timelessly identical with God's will.
Stunney is indeed funny. And so are you, keiths. But he doesn't do it by being silly.
Comment by Zoskie — August 12, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Zoskie,
You're funny too.
You and Stunney are in the same boat. You want God to be unconstrained by his own nature, not realizing the cost of this stance. It means God's goodness is a mere fluke. You've purchased free will for God at the cost of rendering him unworthy of worship.
I recommend a dose of Dan Dennett for both of you.
Comment by keiths — August 12, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
me:
zoskie:
I didn't say that it's difficult to pinpoint what is wrong with it, there are at least three obvious things wrong with it. What's daunting is that so much braindamage is packed into such a small space that making a thorough explication of it requires writing at great length, and (b) it is difficult to imagine the mindset of someone who can take that sort of stuff at all seriously, and thus it's difficult to know where to begin trying to untangle their conceptual confusion.
For my previous efforts at this task, see here, here, and here.
Note: I am still open to the possibility that I just don't understand the deep profundities of Kripke, and so if anyone can explain it in a way that makes sense rather than nonsense, I'd be more than happy to acknowledge the fact and thank them for educating me.
Comment by mtraven — August 12, 2007 @ 7:40 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
keiths, you've erected a spectacularly false dichotomy, namely that either something is necessitated or it's a fluke; and in so doing you have emptied love and other forms of moral value of their meaning. Love is neither a fluke or necessitated. Love is not love if it's necessitated. Love is not love if it's a fluke. Moral value in general is neither a fluke nor necessitated. Moral value supervenes on certain choices of a rational agent's will. Love is the pinnacle of goodness precisely because it's freely willed and non-arbitrary, but is chosen in accord with the rational understanding of value. Your mistake is to think that choosing in accordance with rational understanding of value means that such rational understanding necessitates choosing in accordance with it.
God's goodness is worthy of worship precisely because, as Kant observed, the only thing that is unqualifiedly good is a good will. And a good will is necessarily, by definition, a free will that wills what is good. Which God's will timelessly does.
Comment by Zoskie — August 12, 2007 @ 7:48 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
mtraven:
Maybe you just need to let it go. Stunney's presentation was fine, but clearly you're having some sort of mental block that's preventing you from seeing the argument clearly. The whole of philosophy recognizes the enormous impact of Naming and Necessity. It is probably the single most influential set of three lectures in the history of analytic philosophy. It blew my mind when I read it.
But to be honest, if you're so convinced you're right, submit your critique to a philosophy journal and stop boring the pants off the rest of us with your ignorance and bruised ego.
Comment by Zoskie — August 12, 2007 @ 8:41 pm
August 12th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
zoskie:
And you and him must have some sort of mental block that's preventing either of you from answering any of my criticisms.
I don't give a rat's ass about the whole of philosophy. Has it had any impact outside of the hermetic world of philosophy? And for the better? Has anyone read Kripke and come out with an improved understanding of the real world or real minds? Kripke is certainly widely cited in linguistics and a few other fields outside of philosophy, so there's no argument he's had some influence, but it's not clear to me what the actual impact has been.
BTW, here's Fodor's dismissal of Kripke. I cite it only as evidence that you can be quite philosophically knowledgeable still think that the Kripke style of doing philosophy is pretty damn stupid:
zoskie again:
I may be ignorant, I may even be boring, but trust me, nobody on this site has succeeded in bruising, wounding, denting, or scratching my ego.
But you are right, I should let it go, since I can see there is no possibility of getting any sort of sensible answers out of you or Stunney.
Comment by mtraven — August 12, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
August 13th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Hi Zoskie. Jerry Fodor wrote in that LRB review:
And he quotes from the book by Hughes which he's reviewing:
There's no doubt about that. Quite so. Even Jerry Fodor is forced to acknowledge the tremendous impact of Kripke, and that he's generally considered to be the top philosophical genius since Wittgenstein. Which is no guarantee that Kripke is any match for mtraven, of course. We know that much.
But knowing what we know about Fodor, namely that most of his distinctive positions in philosophy, such as his language of thought hypothesis and his representational realism (a kind of warmed-over sense-data theory, with an endless addition of new ingredients), have been panned from both sides rather mercilessly for decades, it's easy to see why he's so jealous of Kripke's fame. If he can 'dismiss' Kripke in a two-page, two-bit review of a book about Kripke, then surely he, Fodor, deserves to be even more famous than Kripke? And how dare the philosophical community not recognize that it's Jerry Fodor's name, not Saul Kripke's, that should be up there in lights beside Wittgenstein's? This explains why Fodor thinks analytic philosophy has no rationale any more—the only rationale it could have would be to recognize Jerry Fodor's brilliance. But the philosophical community has had the temerity to worship at Kripke's feet and not Fodor's. What bastards we all are!
And it's not just the Kripkeans who think Fodor's wrong. Oh no. It's Dennett and other materialists who think folk psychology and/or its mentalese representation call for, shall we say, error-theoretic resources.
Poor Jerry Fodor. He's a voice crying in the wilderness, a lonely beacon of truth in a world misled. And by this impeccable reasoning, he concludes that since reductive materialists and property dualists both think he's basically been blowharding smoke out of his posterior cavity for the last 30-odd years, philosophy is not worthy of his unrecognized greatness, and that Kripke really, you know, really shouldn't have been thought to have overturned Quinean dogma, as he, Fodor, now deigns soberly to instruct us (or did seven years ago). Not quite in a refereed academic journal, mind you, since those are all controlled by those damn closet eliminativists or closet Kripkeans and might allow a serious reply, but in the hallowed pages of The London Review of Books, no less. Spurned by the philosophers who disagree with him (i.e., most of them—-he pens another poisonously vain, obviously jealous, appallingly self-serving, and extraordinarily misleading and tendentious review of Kripke's comrade-in-philosophical arms Hilary Putnam in that same august organ)——poor Jerry now takes his idiosyncratic truth to the, er, masses. (Okay. 'Masses' may be overstating matters. I may be the only person at TT, or indeed anywhere for all I know, who once subscribed to the pre-internet, paper version of The London Review of Books.)
The same warped thinking as Fodor's about Kripke lies behind mtraven's ill-advised determination to insist that if mtraven doesn't understand Kripke's celebrated modal argument against mind-brain identity, it's because philosophy in general is rotten to the core, as evidenced by the enormous impact that argument has had in philosophy in general and philosophy of mind in particular. Or, if it's true, it's trivial, because there just couldn't be an anti-materialist argument that was both important and not easily refuted by mtraven. So far we've had: a) a 10-year-old could spot the 'obvious' flaws in Kripke's argument; b) maybe mtraven doesn't understand Kripke, but it's the fault of stunney's presentation; c) mtraven has taken down Kripke; d) it doesn't matter if he hasn't because functionalism is not an identity theory (it was me who pointed out this escape route to mtraven, of course, while also pointing out that the pain qualia argument then kicks in—and Fodor himself admits qualia are a huge mystery); e) Kripke's not important, because what impact has he had on this year's tomato crop and other aspects of the so-called real world; f) Kripke's all just about words—-this being about as off-base a criticism of Kripke as it's possible to make. Even Fodor's 'history lesson' makes clear the general consensus has Kripke overthrowing the prior Quinean orthodoxy that modality and meaning are merely linguistic and conventional, not real and metaphysically significant); g) Jerry Fodor's a philosopher who disagrees with Kripke, just as Fodor disagrees even more vehemently with mtraven's favorite philosopher-who-talks-to-scientists, Daniel Dennett, accusing Danny Boy of double-talk, no less. And on and on it goes. But that's okay because mtraven is not endorsing any substantive criticism Fodor makes of Kripke's anti-materialist argument in this review. (And for the very good reason that, er, Fodor doesn't even mention that argument, let alone critique it, an omisson that's quite telling in itself, as I shall relate presently.) Not that these gyrations indicate that mtraven's ego is bruised or that he's looking for any port in a storm in order to salvage his illusions, you understand.
And talking of illusions, let's continue with the one and only Jerry Fodor. He goes on:
There are a number of things that can be said about this—-apart from its being something like what a cross between a dinosaur and King Canute would say. But I want to focus on just a couple.
Notice the fact I alluded to a moment ago, that nowhere in his review did Fodor even mention the application of Kripke's modal metaphysics to the question of mind. That in itself is a quite startling omission, since the mind is what Fodor's theories are supposed to be all about, and much of Kripke's influence has been in the philosophy of mind, especially in terms of the hard problem of consciousness and the application of modal reasoning to it (which is where mtraven came in). So, why doesn't Fodor talk about the mind, then, and focus instead on things like water and, er, smog? I think it's because the majority of materialists think Fodor's attempt to be anti-reductionist is not simply wrongheaded or confused, but that he lacks the intellectual integrity to forego his career-long pandering to populism in his capacity as self-appointed hero to the folk-psychological masses, while still veiling himself in the mantle of bien pensant respectability, aka scientific naturalism. You see, if he had tried to tackle Kripke's anti-materialist arguments head-on in the pages of a journal for the literati, he'd simply be exposing the entirely flip nature of his own anti-reductionism, thus alienating the lay, humanities-oriented intelligentsia he has so carefully cultivated (and to whom he panders yet again with his play at flattery of the likes of Derrida and Foucault. That alone tells you how low he's prepared to stoop.) Or else, he could remain the People's Champion, but at the expense of giving more ammo to his many materialist and scientific critics who've long accused him of being silly, if not of outright bad faith. The remaining option of siding with Kripke, or at least conceding the power and influence of Kripke's argument and that Kripke might even be right to be an anti-materialist, is unthinkable, even aside from the envy factor. For then all Jerry's remaining pals in cognitive science wouldn't talk to him any more. So best just not to mention Kripke's seminal contribution to philosophy of mind at all. It's safer, and has no downside other than making Fodor appear petty, which is something he's never been loathe to appear before.
I say 'remaining pals', because, of course, Jerry has had to correct the cognitive scientists too, you see. About 10 years ago, he published a book entitled with characteristic humility, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. It's this perceived combination of Fodor's non-stop pandering to, and 'correction' of, both sides of the fence, and the resulting perception of intellectual cowardice which has forced him to burn most of his bridges as far as analytic philosophy is concerned, and some of his bridges on the science side. I guess he just got called on it so often that most people simply didn't bother listening to him anymore, or viewed him with a mixture of pity bordering on contempt. I note that he even laments, as if jokingly, the fact that Foucault�s royalties probably dwarf his own: "I'm huffy about that," he tells us. Oh, come on, Jerry, don't feel so bad, it's probably just the impact of the internet, otherwise your royalties would have been of J. K. Rowling proportions. Your fans love you, they really do.
But let us suppose for one brief, mad moment that Fodor is actually right about the real unimportance of Kripke, and that now that he's done his Serv-Pro "as if it never really happened" commercial, the pre-Kripke status quo ante is miraculously restored, and that we are where we ought to have been, or have always really been, if only we'd known it. Let's suppose, in other words, that all there is to go on in philosophy is 'facts about concepts'. Does this help the materialist? Not in the least. Fodor himself would be the first to tell us that the concept of mind and other folk-psychological concepts are perfectly fine, sort of, and that, oh yes, most certainly the mind-brain identity thesis rests on little more than conceptual confusion, insufficiently advanced science, and so on. He strikes here the unflattering pose of the last of that almost extinct species: 'ordinary language' philosophers, while moonlighting as Mentor to Scientists of the Mind. Of course, this position of his is itself a bit on the trivial side as triviality goes (leaving aside the added recondite complications involved in Fodor's notion du jour of internal representational symbol systems). Yes, Jerry, we always knew that "minds are identical with brains" isn't, er, an analytic truth. And let's just pretend that Kripke never existed, if you'll pardon the unfortunate modal lingo. And let's just pretend that there's just science and conceptual analysis and nothing else, like in the Good Old Pre-Kripke Days. Okay, then. Except….
What are concepts, Jerry? (Don't just expect us to buy MENTALESE). You say that true modal intuitions depend on the facts which make them true, and that "as far as [you] can see, the only such facts are facts about concepts." So, what are concepts, Jerry, pray tell. And what is it to know facts about concepts, Jerry? Are they, er, you know, scientific facts? If not, is there some other kind of fact about whose existence you�re just being coy because it might mean Kripke isn�t as trivial or vacuous as you're making him out to be?
Uh. And, indeed, huh.
Now you know why Jerry felt compelled to write a book called Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. He had to hang on to his carefully cultivated image as a non-reductive but scientifically kosher People's Friend of Ordinary Mental Concepts. You see, those 'facts about concepts' (i.e. facts about meaning) are these strange, funny, pesky facts that science just can't seem to find inside people's heads despite science (and philosophy) having been informed by Fodor about these inside-the-head semantic, not merely syntactic, entities over 30 years ago, just as science can't seem to find their accompanying modal and normative and intentional properties. And yet such facts are absolutely fundamental to thinking, and hence to the reality of what minds are, and to what they are not identical with. Try deciding whether an inference is valid without knowing facts about conceptual meaning. And then try deciding what meaning is, and what reasoning is. Likewise, those pesky facts are absolutely fundamental to how thinking refers, not to descriptive semantic symbols inside human heads ( Fodor's brilliant original theory in a nutshell), but to truths about reality outside our heads, truths not all of which reduce to non-modal, non-normative, 'pure' descriptions of natural entities known purely empirically, as was required in those halcyon days of yore by Hume-Quine orthodoxy, whose imposition by decree of the naturalistic straitjacket strictly forbade any substantive a priori knowledge and any non-empirical entities. It was this imposition's warrantless character Kripke so ruthlessly exposed. And it was the implications of these pesky facts about thought not reducing to descriptions of the natural world contained inside human heads, and hence the reality which thought is about not reducing to purely non-modal, non-metaphysical, purely 'descriptive', 'natural' facts 'out there' which is what made Kripke so famous, and Fodor so upset that his 'inside the head' theory of mental representation didn't get all, or even most of the plaudits.
Which is why he also hates Putnam. On Fodor's London Review of Books profile, it simply notes where he teaches (Rutgers) and adds, "Everyone wonders why he is writing still another book about the language of thought." I suspect Fodor composed that sentence himself. It certainly smacks of his world-weary self-pity and obsessive need to justify his grande idee. And Putnam scotched the prospects for such an idea in the very same year Fodor proposed it in a book. And guess who got the fame and kudos.
Poor Jerry Fodor. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Comment by stunney — August 13, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
August 13th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
That harangue leaves the impression that Stunney was attracted to academic philosophy chiefly by the opportunities for gossip it presented.
Comment by keiths — August 13, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
August 14th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Wow, what a lot of boring drivel.
For the record, I couldn't care less if Fodor hates Kripke or if Putnam is jealous of Quine or if Chalmers is sleeping with Searle's wife. Intramural squabbles of philosophers don't matter to anyone outside the field, to a first-order approximation. I find it remarkable that people get paid to produce such arid, useless stuff — a description that applies to almost all of Anglophone philosophy of mind. Dennett may be an exception because he's a reasonably engaging writer and maintains a close connection to science, but the rest of them could be stuffed in a bag and dropped off a bridge with no appreciable loss to mankind's efforts to understand the world.
Comment by mtraven — August 14, 2007 @ 1:17 am
August 14th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
stunney wrote:
Perfectly.
keiths wrote:
It actually leaves the impression that stunney not only has an excellent grasp of philosophy, but is also a very entertaining writer.
mtraven wrote:
You shouldn't talk about yourself that way, even though you have ample reason for doing so.
Thank you for sharing. And thank you for being the one who brought Fodor's review to our attention. That was very considerate of you, given how you couldn't care less about Fodor, or Putnam, or Quine, or Chalmers, or Kripke. Your posts on the last-named, indeed, have been a veritable treasure-trove of carelessness. Especially carelessness of thought.
I must insist however that stunney's post was spot-on about the substantive philosophical issues. A "˜warmed-over sense-data theory' is a superb line and a great way to describe Fodor's theory in a nutshell.
Again, please accept my deepest gratitude for throwing Fodor into the mix.
But you're wrong about philosophical disagreements not mattering to any non-philosophers. Your own case disproves the statement. And the whole argument about ID turns on the criteria for inferring the existence of mind, which in turn depends on central topics in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.
You're as persuasive as a boy who's no good at and doesn't like some subject in school, and then loudly proclaims that it's boring and useless.
If you've read widely and in depth in philosophy and theology as I have (I'm now a doctoral student in theological ethics), then you might find a solid basis for your opinion, though I doubt it. You've demonstrated no such basis in any of your posts that I've read.
That's an epistemological claim. You seem to have this weird talent for self-refutation. It's positively uncanny.
Comment by Zoskie — August 14, 2007 @ 5:38 pm
August 14th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
me:
zoskie:
This immediately calls up a mental sound clip of Peewee Herman.
me:
zoskie:
I thought I made it pretty clear that the point of citing Fodor was to demonstrate that one can be dismissive of Kripke-style philosophy without being a philosophical ignoramus. It was not meant as any sort of endorsement of Fodor's position, whatever it is — as I said, I don't much care.
zoskie:
How so?
If philosophy had any useful answers to questions like inferring the existence of mind, or what is a mind, or how science works, then that would be very nice. Of course, if it had answers we'd be hearing about them rather than about inane arguments that prove water is water in all possible worlds, etc.
But there are many fields which I am no good at that I do not feel are boring and useless. I don't know much about quantum physics for instance, but I don't think it's useless. I can't play the piano, but I don't think music is useless.
And while I certainly would not claim any great philosophical capabilities, I still feel like I've poked a hole in Stunney's version of Kripke's argument. If I'm wrong, then one of you ought to be able to explain why I'm wrong, rather than claiming that I must be wrong because Kripke is a Great Man and I'm not.
Oy, another professional. Well, far be it from me to tell somebody learned in the field how to practice your craft, but if the best arguments you can come up with are the kind you are displaying here, maybe you should quit the philosophy game and try dental school.
me:
Are you implying that because I am down on most philosophy, I'm not allowed to make any epistemological claims? Am I allowed to claim that my desk exists, or is that an ontological claim that can only be made by a qualified D.Phil.?
Comment by mtraven — August 14, 2007 @ 9:51 pm
August 15th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
mtraven wrote:
Unfortunately, the book review by Fodor doesn't even mention Kripke's argument concerning mind-brain identity, let alone refute it. Your citing it several times merely served to underline how shaky your grasp is of the concept of relevance.
So you keep saying. Even Fodor's review did not see fit to take on Kripke's modal argument against materialism, however.
You're not a philosopher, yet you're conspicuously and sufficiently discomfited by the arguments of philosophers such as Dummett, Chalmers and Kripke, to post dozens and dozens of comments, revealing that their anti-materialist ideas do matter to you. People to whom such ideas do not matter just hang out at the mall. They don't spend hours and hours composing attempts at rebuttal.
In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a more disingenuous and less credible protestation that certain ideas do not matter to the person who is claiming that they don't.
Kripke gave his famous Naming and Necessity lectures in 1970. We've been hearing about them ever since. Mind-brain identity is a discredited idea.
An alternative, functionalism, is still in a mess because of qualia (also highlighted by Kripke's pain argument), forcing some materialists to become eliminativists, some to give up materialism in favor of epiphenomenalism, and others to become new mysterians, all of which are highly unsatisfactory 'solutions'. These positions are illustrative of the effect Kripke's ideas have had on the landscape of theories of mind. Even the concept of ID owes much to the change in the intellectual climate that Kripke's ideas have wrought, since they made Anglophone anti-materialism intellectually respectable after almost 200 years of growing materialist ascendancy.
Burying your head in the sand about the intellectual effect of Kripke just makes you look like an ostrich.
My analogy was with the degree of persuasiveness with which a teenager who's no good at and dislikes something in school proclaims its lack of utility. The analogy is not simply with not being good at something. It's with not being good at something, disliking it, and publicly alleging its uselessness. You're not proclaiming the lack of utility of music or physics, hence you're grossly mis-identifying the analogy.
You only think you poked a hole in it. As stunney pointed out explicitly more than once (for example here and here),
you failed to grasp the implication of the fact that human brains are a subset of the set of all brains, and that Kripke's argument applies to the set of all brains. Given Kripke's argument that the mind-brain identity version of materialism is false, then it's false as regards human mind-brain identity specifically. In other words, the argument's conclusion is that no minds are identical with any brain, hence human minds aren't identical with any brain.
This is a plausible conclusion anyway if we require that minds be conscious entities, since consciousness is not plausibly identical with a material object (it is more plausibly caused by material objects), but Kripke's anti-identity argument does not rely on consciousness. (His anti-functionalist argument does). Rather, the anti-identity argument follows from the modal analysis of identity statements in general and from the logic of names and natural kind terms in general. There is no special pleading involved. It's a thoroughly general metaphysical thesis. What Kripke showed is that if the identity version of materialism about minds were true in this world, it would have to be true in every possible world containing minds. But that would entail that atheism is true in every possible world (since God is an immaterial mind), and hence atheism is thus either an a priori truth or an empirical one in every possible world, both of which are absurd suppositions. And so Kripke, like the devout Jew and logician of genius he is, concluded that the identity version of materialism is not in fact true, since one of those absurdities would follow if it were true.
This is such a strong argument that together with the qualia argument and Plantinga's work in epistemology, it probably explains the great upsurge of interest in, and confident research and publication of, theism-friendly intellectual ideas over the last three decades. It has thus had a significant impact on what one might call the sociology of American intellectual and public life . Christians, Jews, and Muslims are now much more confident about challenging the idea of materialism in public on rational grounds.
My arguments are fine. I'm afraid yours cover the full range from non-existent to embarrassingly bad.
You're even allowed to think all epistemologists could be drowned with no appreciable loss of understanding. However, once one starts making epistemological claims, they require rational assessment by epistemologists, otherwise there will be an appreciable loss in our understanding of such claims, and hence a loss in our understanding of the world (since those claims are part of the world). Hence the self-refuting nature of your claim.
You're allowed to claim anything you like. You're even allowed to claim that you're smart enough to be worth my time debating.
However, you aren't. Worth the time, that is.
Comment by Zoskie — August 15, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
August 15th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Let's see. Imagine a balance scale. On one side is the naturalistic proposition that the mental activity is natural and implemented by the brain. On the other side, whatever it is you guys believe, that minds are ethereal beings from another dimension, or protrusions of the holy spirt, whatever.
On the first side, you can put all the evidence from science and medicine that altering brain anatomy and chemistry produces changes in mental functioning, that imaging technologies can detect changes in brain activity based on mental activity, etc.
On the other side, you can put your modal logic-chopping, circular arguments, and intricate fuddling with rigid designators and a priori vs a posteriori concepts, qualia, etc.
Which way the balance tilts is left as an exercise for the reader.
As far as this dialog goes, let's agree that each of us thinks the other is an idiot, and leave it at that.
Comment by mtraven — August 15, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
August 15th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
mtraven:
And on the other side you can place evidence from science that thoughts and emotions alter brain biochemistry etc.
Comment by Bradford — August 15, 2007 @ 3:49 pm
August 15th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Bradford wrote:
Bradford,
I'm amazed that you keep bringing this up, because it misses the target completely. It highlights a weak spot of your own dualist view, not of materialism.
If thoughts and emotions are material phenomena, then of course they are able to alter brain chemistry. Why shouldn't one material phenomenon in the brain be able to affect another?
On the other hand, you believe that the mind is immaterial. If so, how is it able to move material particles around? How is it able to change brain chemistry? Why don't we see evidence of physical laws being violated inside the brain as the mind steers it in a direction it otherwise would not have taken?
Comment by keiths — August 15, 2007 @ 4:08 pm
August 15th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Strawman. Never said that. If thought is immaterial (which it appears to be) it also interfaces with a material brain. We could be dealing with an interactive dual system.
Why would physical laws have to be violated? A thought occurs and a series of biochemical changes ensue. What you perceive as a violation of laws of physics could in reality signify a level of ignorance as to what is actually occuring. Would not be the first time this took place in the history of science.
Comment by Bradford — August 15, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
August 16th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Bradford wrote:
Your "interactive dual system" is precisely the concept I'm criticizing.
I wrote:
Bradford responded:
The laws of physics, as we know them, apply to everything physical, including neurons. You are suggesting a different set of physical laws which would apply inside brains, and allow for immaterial thoughts to steer physical processes away from the direction they would have taken otherwise, according to the known laws of physics.
It's time to haul out mtraven's balance again.
The question is, "How can thoughts and emotions alter brain chemistry?"
On one side of the balance we have the physicalist explanation, which says in essence "Thoughts and emotions are physical processes in the brain. Of course they alter brain chemistry. How could they not?"
On the other side of the balance, we have Bradford's explanation: "Well, there might be an immaterial mind or mind-component that nobody's ever detected, for which we have no scientific evidence; and that immaterial mind-component, if it exists, might able to reach into and alter the brain, via a set of unknown physical laws that nobody's ever detected and for which we have no evidence. True, this would appear as a violation, within the brain, of the known laws of physics, but please ignore the fact that nobody's ever seen this happen. Also please ignore the fact that cognition, memory, emotion, morals, humor, will, and decision making are not only influenced by changes or damage to the physical brain, but are utterly dependent on it, leaving nothing for the immaterial mind-component to do."
Why would anyone prefer the second explanation, which is enough to make Ockham spin in his grave?
Well, if like Bradford, you have a particular dogmatic belief that you wish to cling to, reason and evidence be damned, then that's enough to justify the second explanation.
P.S. to mtraven:
I laughed out loud at "ethereal beings from another dimension, or protrusions of the Holy Spirit."
Comment by keiths — August 16, 2007 @ 12:49 am
August 16th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Keiths:
We detect immaterial thoughts every time we think. What is physical about a thought? The association of it with underlying biochemical reactions? Assuming that the reactions themselves are thoughts is asserting the very thing you are seeking to prove.
What laws of physics are violated and how? We see no evidence that brain function is contrary to known laws. What we do see are many unknowns about which you are eager to explain in ways that complement your preconceptions.
Comment by Bradford — August 16, 2007 @ 8:50 am