Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

[quote] Second mistake. You regard "morality" as some sort of physical aspect of the world - referring to moral "phenomena" or "sensations". As if morality were an aspect of the the universe like shape or color, which can be sensed of felt. This creates a false dichotomy where if it exists, then it exists independently and as an aspect of reality and if it doesn't then it is illusory.[\quote]

Once again, I 'conclude' that it is. Just telling me what I conclude - even if you do it in a certain tone and really dislike it - does not amount to any kind of challenge to my view or justify rejecting it. Morality is an agent, a kind of god, and I have explained why it must be. What you are doing is mistaking your dislike for this conclusion with a fault in my argument.

[LostLocke]

No, it is better to use 'Xing' as if one mentions a real case someone will dispute the normative issue of the rightness/wrongness of abortion rather than focussing on what the fact of disagreement tells us about our concept of morality.

It's better for you to use Xing because it allows you to be obtuse and vague so that you don't have to give a real world example.
Because if you had to give a real world example your entire premise would turn into jack shit.

[Inigo]

[quote] Morality "does" nothing of the sort - no more than books "educate", maps "guide", law "punishes" or guns "kill". [\quote]

Yes it does. It instructs and favours. That's just the nature of the thing I'm analysing (and that moral philosophers are analysing - read their works, they talk about its 'instructions' 'favourings' 'commands' requirements' all the time). If you do not mean to use the term 'morality' to refer to something that instructs, favours, etc, then that's fine - but you're not talking about what I'm talking about.

Maps don't actually guide. When you look at a map it doesn't tell you where to go. You do the guiding. Alternatively someone might have put a circle around something on the map and written 'go here' on it - now you're being guided, but someone wrote that and 'someone' is an agent. For instance, if you found out that a slug had dragged itself through a bowl of ink and had then slithered over the map - and by purest fluke left a trail that spelt out 'go here' - you would, upon discovering how this pattern had been created, conclude that there was no real instruction on the map. And that's the point. Something can look like an instruction without really being one. If atheism is true then our moral sense reports give us the impression there are instructions, when in fact there are not.

Instructions can be issued by agents. 'Shut the door!' - there, I just issued one. Whether one has reason to comply is a different matter. I haven't argued that morality is just any old agent, have I? I have argued that morality - or moral instructions and favourings - are those of a god who has control over our interests in an afterlife. This was because I could think of no other way in which an agent's instructions could come to be ones we'd all have reason to comply with.

[max-greece]

Xing in your example is confusing. Can we use a real example?

Abortion. Essentially 2 sides of the argument. The first is that the rights of the unborn child trump everything else. the second that the woman's right to choose trumps all.

If that is a dispute over the same moral issue then the role of your God is merely to flag up that abortion is a moral issue and then the individual comes down on one side or the other.

Doesn't seem like much of a role - seems far more like a decision to be made by an intelligence, us, independently. That decision would be made on the basis of upbringing probably more than anything else.

No, it is better to use 'Xing' as if one mentions a real case someone will dispute the normative issue of the rightness/wrongness of abortion rather than focussing on what the fact of disagreement tells us about our concept of morality.

I am entirely unclear how you arrive at the view that the role of the god is just to highlight that it is a moral issue. This is clearly not what my view is. A god's instructions determine the rightness or wrongness of a deed as wrongness in an action just consists in the fact it is an act a god instructs us not to perform. Moral disagreement is simply disagreement about what, exactly, morality instructs us to do.

Now that I did not get. You are now arguing for an absolute morality which I reject out of hand. There is not, nor can there be, an absolute fixed morality for the ages. Morality moves. God's morality is useless. Nothing remains morally fixed. No moral position can be taken, ever, that should not be contradicted by a morally sustainable position under certain circumstances.

We then get to the further problem of God's communication with us. Even if God could hold a perfect moral position at all times if he/she/they cannot communicate that to us in an unambiguous way, consistently, then they may as well not exist for all the use they are.

Fortunately - he/she/it/they are not there. Problem solved.

[Inigo]

Prove it. Prove afterlife and that onlythe instructions of a supernatural agent could possibly confer the necessary reasons.

? First, what I am arguing is that there would need to be an afterlife for moral instructions to exist. That's a conditional. I'm not saying 'there is an afterlife'. I am saying 'there would need to be if these sensations are to have anything that vindicates them'. If I am correct about that then our moral sensations are sensations 'of' the instructions of an agent who has control over our interests in an afterlife. And therefore those sensations would be defeasible evidence of such a person and a place. Note 'defeasible'. It isn't proof anymore than your visual impression that there is a computer monitor in front of you is 'proof' of such a thing.

---

No, it is better to use 'Xing' as if one mentions a real case someone will dispute the normative issue of the rightness/wrongness of abortion rather than focussing on what the fact of disagreement tells us about our concept of morality.

I am entirely unclear how you arrive at the view that the role of the god is just to highlight that it is a moral issue. This is clearly not what my view is. A god's instructions determine the rightness or wrongness of a deed as wrongness in an action just consists in the fact it is an act a god instructs us not to perform. Moral disagreement is simply disagreement about what, exactly, morality instructs us to do.

Now that I did not get. You are now arguing for an absolute morality which I reject out of hand. There is not, nor can there be, an absolute fixed morality for the ages. Morality moves. God's morality is useless. Nothing remains morally fixed. No moral position can be taken, ever, that should not be contradicted by a morally sustainable position under certain circumstances.

We then get to the further problem of God's communication with us. Even if God could hold a perfect moral position at all times if he/she/they cannot communicate that to us in an unambiguous way, consistently, then they may as well not exist for all the use they are.

Fortunately - he/she/it/they are not there. Problem solved.

I am entirely unclear how you arrive at these conclusions. I say something. Then you attribute to me a view quite different to any I have argued for. At what point have I asserted that morality is fixed over time?

I do not know what you mean by 'absolute' morality.

I have made clear what I understand by 'morality'. MOrality instructs and those instructions have inescapable rational authority.

[max-greece]

Prove it. Prove afterlife and that onlythe instructions of a supernatural agent could possibly confer the necessary reasons.

? First, what I am arguing is that there would need to be an afterlife for moral instructions to exist. That's a conditional. I'm not saying 'there is an afterlife'. I am saying 'there would need to be if these sensations are to have anything that vindicates them'. If I am correct about that then our moral sensations are sensations 'of' the instructions of an agent who has control over our interests in an afterlife. And therefore those sensations would be defeasible evidence of such a person and a place. Note 'defeasible'. It isn't proof anymore than your visual impression that there is a computer monitor in front of you is 'proof' of such a thing.

That takes a very dim view of humanity - and one that is encouraged by Religion so that all goodness can be allocated to God.

Morality is its own reward - there is no need for rewards in heaven. Its the feel good factor as much as anything else.

For example: the other day I was walking the dog and came across a wallet in the park. In the wallet was an a bank statement. The address was close by so I dropped it off on the way back. No reward required - I felt good all day.

[Inigo]

[quote]Actually, your argument is so unoriginal that it has its own name - the Divine Command theory.[\quote]

Er, I know it has a name. So? What's important is not whether the argument is original, but whether it holds up. Imagine we're at a crime scene and a man is lying on the ground with a giant knife in his back. I say 'well, my hypothesis is that someone stabbed him in the back'. YOu respond 'how unoriginal!'. Yes, but it is what the evidence suggests.

[LostLocke]

This just gets more fun as time passes.

Nothing like watching a 'philosopher' paint themselves into a corner.

[max-greece]

We then get to the further problem of God's communication with us. Even if God could hold a perfect moral position at all times if he/she/they cannot communicate that to us in an unambiguous way, consistently, then they may as well not exist for all the use they are.

Fortunately - he/she/it/they are not there. Problem solved.

I am entirely unclear how you arrive at these conclusions. I say something. Then you attribute to me a view quite different to any I have argued for. At what point have I asserted that morality is fixed over time?

I do not know what you mean by 'absolute' morality.

I have made clear what I understand by 'morality'. MOrality instructs and those instructions have inescapable rational authority.

I left in the part of my reply you ignored.

So are you saying that God's morality changes with time? So what is morally acceptable to God at one point in our history is not at a later point? How can that be?

Also - how do you know that "those instructions have inescapable rational authority?" Even if there is a God there is no reason the authority would have to be rational. Judging by most of the things you have posted they certainly don't appear to be.

[Inigo]

Then you are starting odd on the wrong foot. Your moral sense would be the result of descriptive morality of your society and therefore any normative moral code you come up with as a result would be a reflection of that

By your logic the way to find out what is right or wrong is to consult a sociologist and ask them what the prevailing norms of one's society are! Want to find out whether capital punishment is right or wrong? Just do a survey of your society.

For the purposes of my argument it does not matter what causes us to have the moral sensations we do. How many times? Moral sensations are not morality. If morality exists, they are the means by which we are acquainted with it. If it does not, they constitute a hallucination. Either way, they are not morality. So quite why you feel the need to give me a story about the causes of our moral sensations is beyond me. Moral sensation are moral phenomena, they are not morality itself. Morality is the thing our moral sensations give us an impression of. Your visual sense data is not the outside world, is it? It gives you the impression of an outside world. If there really is an outside world then one means by which you are acquainted with it is via your visual sense. If there is not an external world then your visual sense data constitutes a hallucination.
You must be confusing morality with moral sensations.

The existence of multiple moralities all with different instructions seems to belie your statement.

There aren't multiple moralities. You are misusing the word 'morality' or using it in a grossly misleading and silly way. You are using it to refer to different collections of moral beliefs. You are labelling a collection of moral beliefs 'a morality'. That's as silly as labelling a collection of beliefs about tables 'a table'.

Morality is not a collection of beliefs. It is the object of those beliefs. It is the thing believed. Ignore these elementary distinctions at your cost - most people do.