RE: General question about the possibility of objective moral truth
September 14, 2015 at 9:42 am
Michael, I have been participating on this forum, off and on, for about three years. As another has pointed out, the objectivity and subjectivity of morality has indeed been extensively discussed. However, that repetition has allowed me to make a careful study of how atheists generally respond when asked about the source of moral guidance.
Their first approach is to present various straw man arguments they feel undermine biblical and/or theistic sources and standards.
They re-present the Eurythro dilemma which is only problematic for polytheistic religions and does not apply to monotheism.
The point to Mosaic laws governing slavery and harsh punishments inconsistent with modern sensibilities willfully ignoring specific dispositional eras and the Moses’s temporary appointment to the divine council for governing an ancient Hebrew theocracy.
They accuse God of crimes against humanity ignoring the need to eradicate the institutionalized injustice and perversity of irreversibly corrupted cultures and how that requires choosing between what is bad and what would be worse.
Etc. Etc.
Next they try to fill the absence of God with unsupported secular values. They have four general takes: absurdism and social cohesion, moral instinct, and enlightened self-interest. Only the absurdists have a consistent moral theory; all the rest irrationally hold mutually exclusive beliefs, as follows:
Those who refer to the evolutionary advantages of social cohesion nevertheless deny that humans have an essential human nature.
Those who appeal to positive emotional instincts, like empathy, ignore other less noble sentiments like disgust, covetousness, and envy.
Those who look to enlightened self-interest do not acknowledge a hierarchy of values terminating in a highest Good.
So while many atheists often portray themselves as the paragons of reason and defenders of logic, their own attempts to source moral values reveal how they must plagiarize religion rely on whim and sentiment to justify their favorite moral theories.
Their first approach is to present various straw man arguments they feel undermine biblical and/or theistic sources and standards.
They re-present the Eurythro dilemma which is only problematic for polytheistic religions and does not apply to monotheism.
The point to Mosaic laws governing slavery and harsh punishments inconsistent with modern sensibilities willfully ignoring specific dispositional eras and the Moses’s temporary appointment to the divine council for governing an ancient Hebrew theocracy.
They accuse God of crimes against humanity ignoring the need to eradicate the institutionalized injustice and perversity of irreversibly corrupted cultures and how that requires choosing between what is bad and what would be worse.
Etc. Etc.
Next they try to fill the absence of God with unsupported secular values. They have four general takes: absurdism and social cohesion, moral instinct, and enlightened self-interest. Only the absurdists have a consistent moral theory; all the rest irrationally hold mutually exclusive beliefs, as follows:
Those who refer to the evolutionary advantages of social cohesion nevertheless deny that humans have an essential human nature.
Those who appeal to positive emotional instincts, like empathy, ignore other less noble sentiments like disgust, covetousness, and envy.
Those who look to enlightened self-interest do not acknowledge a hierarchy of values terminating in a highest Good.
So while many atheists often portray themselves as the paragons of reason and defenders of logic, their own attempts to source moral values reveal how they must plagiarize religion rely on whim and sentiment to justify their favorite moral theories.
