Adrian wrote:
The Guardian headline: “Atheist says murdering atheists would be a ‘moral act.’”
So with your qualifications - that the morality of the majority defines that which is moral for that particular majority, we are forever left with competing moral claims by various majorities however they’re described. Thus my original claim “Without a transcendent moral standard, anything goes if that’s what the majority of people want.”
And with the second, we have the not insignificant problem that no person (or even majorities of persons) can unequivocally declare that certain behavior is intrinsically evil and is condemned, such as torturing babies for pleasure, or lining up innocent people to be sent to gas chambers. After all, if a majority of the people in culture X think either of those two behaviors are acceptable, then by definition they are moral. We can complain all we want, but they can tell us to shove off and create our own majority somewhere else.
Its this laissez faire attitude towards gratuitous evil where cultural relativism and emotivism come up wanting.
By anyone’s standard; any person or culture which has a criterion for determining if an offense is a capital one. So no matter what that criterion is, murdering an innocent (of a capital crime) person would be intrinsically evil. Given this definition, would not such a murder be intrinsically evil, irregardless of the majority opinion on the matter?
Oh the counterexamples that leap to mind: the Copernican Revolution, Einsteinian relativism, the Chemical Revolution, spontaneous generation, etc. and etc. I think a man named Kuhn might have excogitated on the subject . . .
You haven’t got it right. The supporting argument "If we all decided murder was ok, we wouldn't have a society anymore" was used to support the main argument that “atheism does not entail moral nihilism.” A nihilist would never use that supporting argument, because the whole notion of a society’s preservation is absurd. Only a non-nihilist would use that supporting argument. But the main argument is what is in question. So your supporting argument assumes that the main argument has been already decided. Its illicit to use supporting arguments which assume the truth of the argument their designed to support. Its like arguing with a creationist who only quotes from creationist authorities.
Not at all. My argument that atheism entails moral nihilism is just that: an argument. I detailed the premises for you earlier. It is not a presupposition.
I know you meant what you said, I’m just calling foul on your logic.
Are not human beings part of “nature”? Are not our actions “natural”?
Perhaps you prefer the other quote “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”
Was Dawkins out of line in expressing these sentiments, or do you agree with him?
Well, at least there is one irreducible moral truth out there. Now that that door is open, could there not be other culturally-transcendent moral truths?
No problem. I write most of these responses late at night when the girls are asleep, so forgive me if my exhaustion occasionally dulls my two-handed vorpal logic sword.
So is torturing babies for pleasure another example of an irreducible, culturally-transcendent moral standard?
Right, but it is the obligatory nature of moral standards which distinguishes them from mere opinion. Anyone can hold and proclaim an opinion, but they have no moral force behind them. That is, they do not impose a duty on the hearer to adopt the opinion. But when in normal conversation you say to your friend “John, it is wrong for you to cheat on your wife,” what you are conveying to him is that not only do you have an opinion on his behavior, but you are appealing to his sense of moral duty to agree with you.
Likewise to say to a Maoist that it is evil to starve your political opponents to death by the millions, you are offering more than your personal opinion; you are pronouncing that he is under a moral obligation not to starve his political opponents to death by the millions. For a moral realist like myself, affirming that moral values are mind- and culture-independent, this type of condemnation makes sense. For a cultural relativist such as yourself, this type of condemnation is mere wish-expressing with no moral punch. The Maoist could reply “I have my own majority-determined morality, so bugger off.”
Then you are faced with a moral impasse ad infinitum. Your “moral majority” (pun intended) has the same validity as the slave-trader’s moral majority, with no way to adjudicate between the two other than who has the bigger army.
Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You'll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me
And it would be immoral for you to do so, because your “condemnation” is just an opinion with no more moral weight than the smoker’s opinion.
This is why I say you cannot condemn the Nazis for genocide. Your moral majority doesn’t trump the National Socialist moral majority.
Any ethical theory that prevents one from unequivocally and intelligently condemning the Final Solution ought to be summarily rejected.
Yes!!! (Does the punctuation triple-redundancy make the reply more convincing? )
Its inconsistent for the atheist to reject nihilism and instead live in fairyland where we get to make up our own purpose and meaning and pretend that the universe gives a shit.
I make the distinction to exclude theistic evolution.
Evolution made what was once considered far outside of the mainstream (atheism), mainstream. I know several students who went from a nominal Christian faith to agnosticism/atheism after studying evolution at government universities. You can probably say the same. Its not an exclusively causal relationship, but there’s a relationship nonetheless.
That’s a convenient distinction for you, but you confuse purpose (which is teleological) with function (which is ad hoc). A smooth stone used to function as a hammer is not the purpose for that stone’s existence. There is no purpose for the stone, no matter what you do with it. There is no purpose to your life, no matter what you do with it. Neither example has a reason for its existence, they merely are. Its pointless to try to find in them a “subjective” purpose and thereby infuse meaning into either one.
The universe is not merely the stars and the space in between them, it contains you and me as well. If the universe is purposeless, you and I are purposeless.
Why argue with the obvious? Too scary?
Resistance is futile.
Purpose is teleological by definition, naturalistic evolution is non-teleological by definition. As Simpson said “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” Anthropomorphizing natural selection and mutation doesn’t get you from here to there, my friend.
Believe it.
Presuppositions are not arguments. Examples of presuppositions are the laws of logic, language conveys meaning, I exist, other minds exist, my senses give me basically accurate information of the world, etc.
Good talk, Adrian.
Quote:Yes, in Nazi Germany, at that specific time, in that specific country, it was considered moral to hate and want Jews to be killed. Hitler brainwashed the majority of the people to think this way, and for them, that was the moral truth. If the majority of the people in the UK said it was okay to murder atheists, then to that majority, the murder or atheists would be a moral act.
The Guardian headline: “Atheist says murdering atheists would be a ‘moral act.’”
So with your qualifications - that the morality of the majority defines that which is moral for that particular majority, we are forever left with competing moral claims by various majorities however they’re described. Thus my original claim “Without a transcendent moral standard, anything goes if that’s what the majority of people want.”
Quote:To atheists or other people it might not be, but that wouldn't change the majority public view of the murder. Certainly, morality is not determined by a poll, it is determined by what most of the people think. 200 years ago in the UK, most people thought it was immoral to be a homosexual; these days most people think it is not immoral. So we have two options; either morality is absolute and only one of these outlooks on homosexuality is correct, or morality is relative and both of these outlooks are correct within the time that they existed. With the first, we have problems as to what the absolute moral laws are, how we can know what they are, and if we really trust the source. With the second, the source is quite literally the changing nature of society.
And with the second, we have the not insignificant problem that no person (or even majorities of persons) can unequivocally declare that certain behavior is intrinsically evil and is condemned, such as torturing babies for pleasure, or lining up innocent people to be sent to gas chambers. After all, if a majority of the people in culture X think either of those two behaviors are acceptable, then by definition they are moral. We can complain all we want, but they can tell us to shove off and create our own majority somewhere else.
Its this laissez faire attitude towards gratuitous evil where cultural relativism and emotivism come up wanting.
Quote:Innocent by whose standard? I agree, killing someone who is innocent by our own standard is wrong, but what about killing the soldiers in Iraq? Some of them might have honestly believed they were doing the right thing by following Saddam, being loyal etc. There is a quote often used to express this problem: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Morality is relative, and we find it morally justifiable to kill a soldier in Iraq if he is fighting for an evil dictator, yet in his own country, in his own house, he may be one of the most moral men (by his country's standard).
By anyone’s standard; any person or culture which has a criterion for determining if an offense is a capital one. So no matter what that criterion is, murdering an innocent (of a capital crime) person would be intrinsically evil. Given this definition, would not such a murder be intrinsically evil, irregardless of the majority opinion on the matter?
Quote:Current scientific understanding is rarely wrong on the large scale.
Oh the counterexamples that leap to mind: the Copernican Revolution, Einsteinian relativism, the Chemical Revolution, spontaneous generation, etc. and etc. I think a man named Kuhn might have excogitated on the subject . . .
Quote:Oh come on now! So let me see if I've got this right...My argument is circular because I say something a non-nihilist would say, but I cannot have meant that because I am an atheist, and by your presupposition atheists are nihilists. To me that sounds like a circular argument made by you.
You haven’t got it right. The supporting argument "If we all decided murder was ok, we wouldn't have a society anymore" was used to support the main argument that “atheism does not entail moral nihilism.” A nihilist would never use that supporting argument, because the whole notion of a society’s preservation is absurd. Only a non-nihilist would use that supporting argument. But the main argument is what is in question. So your supporting argument assumes that the main argument has been already decided. Its illicit to use supporting arguments which assume the truth of the argument their designed to support. Its like arguing with a creationist who only quotes from creationist authorities.
Quote:You have a presupposition that atheists are nihilists,
Not at all. My argument that atheism entails moral nihilism is just that: an argument. I detailed the premises for you earlier. It is not a presupposition.
Quote:and when I say something only a non-nihilist would say, it contradicts your premise. You are too stubborn to just accept that maybe you might be wrong about the whole atheism/nihilism thing, so instead you deny I could ever have meant what I said. Honestly, your debate tactics astound me.
I know you meant what you said, I’m just calling foul on your logic.
Quote:Dawkins was referring to the good and evil we tend to see in nature; he wasn't talking about morality. I think this point is self explanatory.
Are not human beings part of “nature”? Are not our actions “natural”?
Perhaps you prefer the other quote “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”
Was Dawkins out of line in expressing these sentiments, or do you agree with him?
Quote:Indeed, I agree with you. People want to do good things by their culture's standards because this is what is rewarding by the culture, and is how our morality has evolved. We needed to work together to survive, because on our own in the wild we are one of the most pathetic creatures out there. We aren't that strong, we don't have claws for killing and stripping prey, and we don't have very good teeth for devouring raw meat. We need to work together (i.e. be "good") or we will die.
Well, at least there is one irreducible moral truth out there. Now that that door is open, could there not be other culturally-transcendent moral truths?
Quote:Well the "torture babies for pleasure" thing was a misread on my part, and I apologise. My point about torturing babies and children out of fear they are witches stands though, and you asked for a source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUJSME0TORw (part 1 of 6 I believe). A search on YouTube for "africa child witches" will turn up a large quantity of results though.
No problem. I write most of these responses late at night when the girls are asleep, so forgive me if my exhaustion occasionally dulls my two-handed vorpal logic sword.
So is torturing babies for pleasure another example of an irreducible, culturally-transcendent moral standard?
Quote:I find myself repeating things again and again with you. Try to listen this time. The Nazi society found mass murder of the Jews morally acceptable. We do not. Thus we use our moral judgment on them and say "That is evil". It doesn't deny them their right of moral self-determination, it is an observation, nothing more. Now if we were to invade (as we did) and impose our morality on them, this would be denying them their right of moral self-determination, but as I previously mentioned, this is often the reward for victors in wars. If the whole world thought (don't use the word voted, it distorts the point) that murdering group X was ok, it would be a moral act for those people (not an absolute moral act). It wouldn't be moral for group X or anyone who opposed such thinking. People tend to want to be moral, because this is what their society demands of them. Most of us (with the notable exception of psychopaths) think that murder is in most cases wrong, and we all feel good about being in this state because we are the majority. However if a large number of people woke up one morning and all thought the complete opposite, then one of two things would inevitably happen. Either they would stay silent and keep wanting to be part of the majority, even though their individual morality had been changed, or they would become a vocal group and lobby for change in our ethical outlook. I believe a good example of this might be the BNP party in the UK, which is a notably racist party, and yet has (in this modern age, and in this country) gained a large number of members.
Quote:I never said "with the force of obligation", I said we could pass a moral judgement on them. We passed a moral judgement on Mugabe when he cheated in the election and tortured opponents, but he laughed at us. This didn't stop us from passing a moral judgement on him. Later of course we imposed our moral judgement on his country when we stopped trade. This of course is a parallel to the victor in war scenario.
Right, but it is the obligatory nature of moral standards which distinguishes them from mere opinion. Anyone can hold and proclaim an opinion, but they have no moral force behind them. That is, they do not impose a duty on the hearer to adopt the opinion. But when in normal conversation you say to your friend “John, it is wrong for you to cheat on your wife,” what you are conveying to him is that not only do you have an opinion on his behavior, but you are appealing to his sense of moral duty to agree with you.
Likewise to say to a Maoist that it is evil to starve your political opponents to death by the millions, you are offering more than your personal opinion; you are pronouncing that he is under a moral obligation not to starve his political opponents to death by the millions. For a moral realist like myself, affirming that moral values are mind- and culture-independent, this type of condemnation makes sense. For a cultural relativist such as yourself, this type of condemnation is mere wish-expressing with no moral punch. The Maoist could reply “I have my own majority-determined morality, so bugger off.”
Quote:Might does not make right, but majority does. The majority of people involved in the Second World War thought that the Nazi's were evil, hence why they invaded and stopped them. The slave trade was a moral action by the culture at the time, I do not think it is a moral action today.
Then you are faced with a moral impasse ad infinitum. Your “moral majority” (pun intended) has the same validity as the slave-trader’s moral majority, with no way to adjudicate between the two other than who has the bigger army.
Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You'll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me
Quote:As I said above, condemnation in no way implies we should go and do something about it. I condemn people who smoke because I think it is an idiotic and disgusting habit, but I'm not going to go around stamping on people's cigarettes.
And it would be immoral for you to do so, because your “condemnation” is just an opinion with no more moral weight than the smoker’s opinion.
This is why I say you cannot condemn the Nazis for genocide. Your moral majority doesn’t trump the National Socialist moral majority.
Any ethical theory that prevents one from unequivocally and intelligently condemning the Final Solution ought to be summarily rejected.
Quote:Inconsistency???
Yes!!! (Does the punctuation triple-redundancy make the reply more convincing?
)Quote:Atheism as nothing to say about morality, it only deals with gods. How is that inconsistent???
Its inconsistent for the atheist to reject nihilism and instead live in fairyland where we get to make up our own purpose and meaning and pretend that the universe gives a shit.
Quote:I don't deny naturalistic evolution (commonly called...evolution),
I make the distinction to exclude theistic evolution.
Quote:but I deny that it has anything to do with atheism. Ken Miller is the most prominent textbook author on Evolution and is a devout roman catholic, and the leader of the Human Genome project is a devout Christian too. I still fail to see the link between atheism and evolution.
Evolution made what was once considered far outside of the mainstream (atheism), mainstream. I know several students who went from a nominal Christian faith to agnosticism/atheism after studying evolution at government universities. You can probably say the same. Its not an exclusively causal relationship, but there’s a relationship nonetheless.
Quote:I've acknowledged that from the beginning. I don't think there are any absolute moral laws, therefore objective purpose does not exist. However as in my rock analogy, something can easily have no objective purpose yet have a subjective one.
That’s a convenient distinction for you, but you confuse purpose (which is teleological) with function (which is ad hoc). A smooth stone used to function as a hammer is not the purpose for that stone’s existence. There is no purpose for the stone, no matter what you do with it. There is no purpose to your life, no matter what you do with it. Neither example has a reason for its existence, they merely are. Its pointless to try to find in them a “subjective” purpose and thereby infuse meaning into either one.
Quote:Subjective! A purposeless universe doesn't come into it!
The universe is not merely the stars and the space in between them, it contains you and me as well. If the universe is purposeless, you and I are purposeless.
Why argue with the obvious? Too scary?
Resistance is futile.
Quote:You have a very warped view of evolution. Each individual aspect of an organism evolution has a purpose: to adapt to the environment that it is in. We have adapted legs to love about, arms to use tools, and brains to think. Each of these has a purpose! Morality is no different, and it serves a purpose as well.
Purpose is teleological by definition, naturalistic evolution is non-teleological by definition. As Simpson said “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” Anthropomorphizing natural selection and mutation doesn’t get you from here to there, my friend.
Quote:Read it, found it very immoral (by my standards of course). Can't believe people think the god who endorsed slavery is the god who creates our moral law.
Believe it.
Quote:Then I shall expect you do discard your presupposition that atheists are nihilists.
Presuppositions are not arguments. Examples of presuppositions are the laws of logic, language conveys meaning, I exist, other minds exist, my senses give me basically accurate information of the world, etc.
Good talk, Adrian.
