Toaster strudel alliance takes on drugs, atheists and liberalism

[Darkstar]

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.

I think you said that it would be evil, and destroy many lives to give false advice. If you presuppose both that god exists and that he is the ultimate moral authority (neither of which can be supported) then you might be right. But you can't demonstrate them. What you are doing, then, is even worse. You are taking subjective morals and claiming they are objective. Slavery? It's fine, it's in the bible, after all! Genocide? Well if they're filthy non-belivers, sure! Do you really want to use the bible as a moral authority?

The incidental agreement between atheists that is obviously real and exists. I didn't refute it.

Exactly. Now, these incidental agreements do not constitute a comprehensive "atheist philosophy", but rather the fact that they are merely incidental refutes it.

It is different to say that atheists happen to have political beliefs versus atheist political beliefs are rational.

What does that have to do with anything? You could say the exact same thing if you substitute in "Christians". But it doesn't amtter, because as a group, atheists don't have the same political beliefs simply because they are atheists.

Of course atheists have political beliefs and there is common agreement between atheists.

You've refuted yourself...again.

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.

Really? Are you telling me that you can't logically defend the immorality of murder?

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.

Oh, you're right. My mistake.

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.

That is pure moral relativism, something I do not subscribe to. There are arguments for and against basically every system of morality ever designed (and there is more than one that does not invoke god). Whether they are powerful or not in your opinion probably only depends on if they are for or against your position. Morality is a lot more complex than you might think.

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.

Let's say that, for the sake of argument god exists and he is the ultimate moral authority. So, now what? Which god? Which morals? (Jesus contradicts some of the OT laws) Is there a need for interpretation? Here's something to think about: god never said "thou shalt not abuse cocaine", therefore it is not immoral to do so. How would you respond to this?

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.

Ending racial segregation was also extremely controvesial. If you can defend a moral "rule" through reason (respecting empathy) it can be demonstrated as good. Killing isn't wrong simply because god says so...or do you think that is the only reason? (I admit that this response is an incomplete argument. This post is so long already, though, so...)

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.

Humans don't value their lives unless thay have religion? The more you know...

I would argue this in the same way I argue for human rights. If someone claims human life has no value, then they must concede that their own life has no value, and is liable to be abruptly taken in the same way they kill others. These dictators devalued human life because it was convenient for them; had they been on the recieving end, I doubt they would have just laid down and died so easily.

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.

I made this mistake twice, it seems. I confused validity with soundness. It appears your argument is valid, even if not necessarily sound.

(* 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?

Let's say they see themselves as the end of the actions. Same result. If they are living in society, they don't want it to become a free for all (well, most people don't) and so still would want to preserve peace. If they are living outside of society...well...that's kind of hard. As for revolutionaries, they still want a society, just a new one. The US constitution gives the citizens the right to overthrow the government if it becomes seriously oppressive.

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?

I already did, if you were reading my post. Humans agree on rights as a social contract. It is to everyone's benefit to respect each others' rights and in return have them respect yours.

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.

See above. Is now a good time to point out that god and his alleged moral authority are not self evident?

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.

Yeah, you're right (at least about that last part). Just curious, but what authority am I appealing to?

I am going to skip some points because they would all be answered somewhere along the lines of "Oh, that's what you consider an authority.

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

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.

These "basically" absolute rules that sometimes change with culture are not as different from atheist moral (not that there is such a code!) than you think.

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.

Raw logic is indeed closer to mathematics than anything else. I should have said "reason" or something else that was a tad more generic. You continue to argue that these rules are good because god knows what he's talking about. However, there are some of gods laws that aren't considered moral anymore. Also, you continue to presuppose god's existance, something I do not do. I ahve heard many arguments for god, but none of them were strong, as you claim that strog arguments exist. (No arguments from ignorance, please) Putting that aside, I still argue that one can defend morality's existence apart from god. You can defend the idea that killing is generally wrong without saying "because god said so"...right?

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.

I would argue the exact opposite. And for the same reasons you do. People can take theology and claim they know everything whilst knowing nothing of value. When you say "real spirituality" do you mean self-delusion? This would be a serious question if I didn't already knw the answer. It is just that some memebers here were theists for decades and sought god, but never found him. Drich always argued that they did something wrong, but refused to specify as to what it was. I await your "logical" defense of Christianity...or maybe not, these posts are becoming enormous...