Toaster strudel alliance takes on drugs, atheists and liberalism

[jstrodel]

There's where you went wrong. There is no such thing as a definitive atheist political philosophy.

All atheist political philosophy.

The crux of the argument is that atheist ethics are highly subjective and individual, that atheist approaches to ethics become incommensurable, meaning they cannot be compared, that when the condition of incommensurable is reached, there is no way to know whether atheist ethical beliefs are true or not and if there is no way to know if they are true, people do not have to obey them. There can be no culture that people are bound ethically to accept from atheism, and no law that can proceed, other than the law of the force of one will, as in the Soviet Union.

What makes religious ethics any different? They aren't individual, but they are still subjective. Only if one presupposes the existence of god do religious ethics have any authority in that matter. It isn't that atheists don't have a moral rulebook, but that no such book exists. This does not mean anything goes, though, and there are many logically defensible moral rules. There are just too many exceptions to those rules on a situation by situation basis that it ultimately comes down to using your best judgment.

Christian ethics are commensurable within the tradition that they are in, if you presuppose that scripture, tradition, reason, experience and the Holy Spirit lead to an understanding of morality. Whether that is so or not of course you will disagree with, but if that proposition is true then Christian ethics are commensurable in a way that atheist ethics are not.

What was that atheist political philosophy you were talking about again? You just refuted it.

The incidental agreement between atheists that is obviously real and exists. I didn't refute it. It is different to say that atheists happen to have political beliefs versus atheist political beliefs are rational. Of course atheists have political beliefs and there is common agreement between atheists. That is totally different from saying atheist political beliefs are rational.

5. If the ground of ethics varies person to person with no common non-coincidental agreement, ethical statements are incommensurable

Non-sequiter. Isn't it possible that some people can simply be wrong? I bet Hitler wouldn't agree with you on ethics, does this makes ethics in and of itself null and void? It does not.

That is not what I am talking about. It is not the fact that some people are wrong, it is the fact that there is no way that people can be right. There is no way that you can say one person is wrong and another is right without presupposing what you are arguing.

Also, even what you said was true, that would not be a non-sequiter. That statement is argued to be true not from deductive logic but from a self evident definition of incommensurability.

From wikipedia:

Non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow"), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises.[1] In a non sequitur, the conclusion could be either true or false, but the argument is fallacious because there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion. All invalid arguments are special cases of non sequitur. The term has special applicability in law, having a formal legal definition. Many types of known non sequitur argument forms have been classified into many different types of logical fallacies.

definition of incommensurable from m-w:

Definition of INCOMMENSURABLE
: not commensurable; broadly : lacking a basis of comparison in respect to a quality normally subject to comparison

6. Ethical statements are incommensurable for atheists (MP 6,7)
7. If ethical statements are incommensurable, they cannot have a ground higher than them-self
8. Ethical statements between atheists cannot have a higher ground than them-self (MP 6,7)

[quote]
Six is false because five is false.

You have not shown that it is false. Read Alaisdair MacIntyre's critique of modernity. There is a powerful argument to say that atheist ethics or ethics are incommensurable.

point eight also applies to theists, but you don't see it that way because you believe in god. So...would it apply to god then? He just gets morals from himself?

This is the Euthyphro problem. There is an easy answer for this: God is holy, because God's existence is ontologically prior to creation and God is completely seperate from creation and morality does not exist until God creates it. Morality comes from the creation that God creates. Morality is teleological, meaning that it is intrinsically connected to the order of the world that exists. God is the creator, so God is prior to morality, and morality, being related to creator and bearing the image of God is related to God, not God to the creation.

Having morals from yourself does not instantly invalidate them and reduce them to mere opinions as you seem to think (unless they are logically indefensible, of course).

This is not self evident and you have not argued it. That is an extremely controversial premise.

9. There must be a ground for the will to rule and ethical statements between atheists cannot have a higher ground then themselves
10. If ethical statements are incommensurable, there is no way to know whether they are true or not
11. There is no way to know whether atheist ethical statements are true or not (MP 5 entails 10a, 10)
12. If there is no way to know whether a statement is true or not and the statement cannot have a higher ground than itself, it lacks authority
13. Atheist ethical statements lack authority (MP (10 & 7,12)

Atheist ethical statements are not incommensurable. I can use reason to defend them.

Of course you can defend them, but that does not show they are incommensurable. How can you defend ethical statements in a way that people should feel obligated to accept your view of ethics?



If you said for instance :
1. Human life is valuable
2. If human life is valuable, all murderers are evil people
3. All murderers are evil people (MP 1,2)
4. Hitler was a murderer
5. Hitler was an evil person (3, 4, syllogism)


This does not seem incommensurable, if you pressupose that people accept 1. But as soon as you have some people that deny 1, you have an incommensurable understanding of ethics. The problem is, human history is a story of people that have repeatedly denied that human life is valuable. Penn Gilletes argument that his desire to not kill is patently fallacious - that has never worked historically, and it will never work.

If you cannot prove 1, that human life is valuable, you have an incommensurable ethical system outside of that. And that proposition is presupposed without any evidence at all, esentially relying on the religious culture to transmit value of human life that cannot be defended from an atheist perspective.

Also, what is this "authority" you speak of? I thought appeal to authority was a logical fallacy...

I did not appeal to authority, I used modus ponens from deductive logic.

13. Atheist ethical statements lack authority (MP (10 & 7,12)

If ethical statements lack authority, that means there is no reason that people need to follow them.

Same as previous response.

There is a difference between appealing to authority illegitimantely, the argument from authority is not necessarily invalid. But the authority of people to rule is not based on epistemology, it is the validity of their beliefs.

(* Basically, if you are nice to other people and respect their rights, society will flow a lot more smoothly. Kind of like the golden rule; you wouldn't want people to harm you or those you care about, so logic and empathy dictate that you don't harm others either)

Why should people see society as the end of their actions and not themselves, or a new society they want to violently create in place of the new one?

1. In order for moral decisions to be legitimate, they must be logically defensible.
2.The concept of human rights is logically defensible.*

See my above argument. I think human rights is a defensible concept from a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, view of the world, which is teleological. I do not think that human rights is a defensible concept from an atheist point of view. How would you defend your beliefs about human rights?

Also, when you reason, you should reason from self evident propositions to good conclusions. 2 is not self evident, or even close to being self evident, that show go in a seperate argument.

3. Therefore the concept of human rights is legitimate. (2, 3)

4. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

You have already appealed to authority a lot of times in this argument. When you talk about "human rights" you are appealing to authority. When you discuss anything that is not absolutely self evident, you are appealing to authority or anything that is not percievable.

And this is not really true. When people do academic research, they appeal to authority all the time. It is not a logical fallacy, it just does not demonstrate the truth of what you are saying. But many things cannot be demostrated.

Authority is one of the most important concepts in life. People have to deal with following rules in life that are not based on self evident deductive logic. It is not irrational to do so, it is necessary for survival. Philosophy is a specialized subset of life that exists inside of a world based on authority, that has its own perspective on the nature of that world. But it is not necessarily wrong to appeal to authority, especially if you can demostrate that it is reasonable to do so.

5. Logical fallacies are by definition not logically defensible.

When you say 'logical fallacies', you are appealing to authority. To argue that something, by definition is something else, you are appealing to that authority. It may be that you can demonstrate what you are saying somewhere else that is self evident, as in a book of proofs. But the way that you are talking about this, you are appealing to authority.

6. Any moral rule appealing to authority is not logically defensible (unless deemed legitimate in the abscence of such authority) (4, 5)

This is self refuting, since are appealing to an undefined authority of "logically defensible". What does it mean to be "logically defensible"? Do you use the logic of aristotle, the logic of frege, modal logic? What sort of epistemology and metaphysics to translate sense perception and culture into langauge? There are of course a million Christian approaches to these subjects. But you are appealing to authority when you talk about what is "logically defensible".

The second part of the statement is really confusion. What does it mean for something to be deemed legitimate in the abscence of such authority? If a moral rule appealing to authority is not logically defensible, why do you say "unless" deemed legitimate. Wouldn't it have to not appeal to authority if it isn't logical defensible if it does?

7. All Christian moral rules appeal to the authority of god in place of a logical argument

What do you mean when you say "logic"? This term is unclear. Have you ever read Thomas Aquinas? He uses logic quite a bit in his construction of ethics.

8. All Christian moral rules that are not independantly confimed to be logically defensible are illegitimate. (6,7)

Why do moral rules have to be independently confirmed. I think that Anselem and Aquinas both had philosophical systems in which they proved every element of their morality, from method to final product. You have not defined what is logically defensible.

9. Given the complexity of life and situational factors, developing moral rules that apply in all situations without exception is impossible

This is a false premise. Christianity is not about rules. Study Romans or Galations. Have you ever read through the whole New Testament with a Commentary and a Systematic Theology next to you and actually wrestled with the theology. I don't mean to offend you, you are a nice person, but you are really ignorant of theology and arguments like this one will hurt people.

10. Christian moral rules are claimed to be absolute.

This is a false premise. See above. The Bible does not claim to teach moral absolutes in every single circumstance, only morals that can be widely applied. God's will changes significantly from Old and New, and even if it didn't, there are some things that are absolute in all cultures, murder for instance, is always wrong.

11. Absolute rules apply in all situations withot exception.

I would dispute this premise. It is possible to have rules that are basically absolute that change a little bit over time. This is how the Christian church typically functions. It is wrong to murder, it is wrong to commit adultery, but some things change with culture.

12. Christian moral rules are illegitimate on two counts unless independently logically defensible (8-11)

Christian moral rules are independently logically defensible, as can be seen by the large number of people that have percieved the logical consistency and evidence of the existence of God and the wisdom of the law of God and converted, many of them the greatest intellects of history.

That said, you have not defined logic. What exactly do you mean when you say logic? Logic is a very technical subdivison of philosophy. I do not think that based only in logic, which is really closer to mathmatics than religion you could really accomplish very much.

The success of logic is based on what people know and how they know it. Christianity is defensible, and there are good arguments for God's existence. It takes a very long time to be able to learn about religious beliefs through logic.

Ultimately, logic is based on reasoning from self evident propositions to conclusions using formally valid mathmatical reasoning. What is logically is closely related to what you know about the world.

If you want to understand Christianity, you have to actually study the propositions and attempt to assess their validity yourself, such as "is spiritual experience real". Logic is not really going to give you very many tools to assess whether Christian morality is good or not, it will help you to understand your pressuppositions.

Philosophy is a very poor substitute for theology. You can know very, very little using philosophy alone and the results are disastrous. There is no possible way, not in a million years what you believe is logically defensible. I would say that Christianity is, but in order to be able to see the truth of the propositions that justify it takes work and sacrifice and real spirituality.