RE: From atheism to tentative agnosticism
June 30, 2013 at 8:41 pm
(This post was last modified: June 30, 2013 at 8:48 pm by Angrboda.)
(June 30, 2013 at 8:01 pm)Inigo Wrote: Well, the same is true for morality. A disposition to experience the world as a place that contains external instructions with which we have inescapable reason to comply has no doubt conferred an evolutionary advantage on those who have it. It does not follow that any such things exist. The advantage was conferred by the mere appearance of such things. So, the hallucination of morality conferred the advantage. No need for morality to actually exist. And indeed, my whole point is that it doesn't seem possible for it to actually exist in the absence of a god.
1. How would one determine that moral reality, separate from moral phenomena (the "appearance" of moral truths), actually exists?
2. In what way would a god provide for the existence of, what in common parlance is called objective morality, and you call moral reality? (See various on the Euthyphro dilemma.)
3. You realize that your argument is fallacious, right? ("I can't imagine how morality without a god exists, therefore a god must exist" — argumentum ad ignorantum.)
4. There appears to be an unspoken but implied argument from consequences here; yes or no? ("If there is no moral reality, that would be bad; therefore there is moral reality, therefore a god must exist.") So what if there is no "moral reality" ?
5. You use the term "hallucinatory" as another fallacious implied argument, suggesting that because something only exists in the mind, it is not "real" or genuine or meaningful; memories exist only in the mind, are they then to be considered "hallucinations" in the same sense? (See the argument from consequences.) Calling a mental phenomenon a hallucination carries an implied value judgement, this makes using it this way fallacious.
6. What do you consider "real" that you know about by another means than the mind? In other words, is there phenomena and reality, or just phenomena?
7. What are the consequences if moral reality doesn't exist? (In other words, so what?)
This doesn't really belong in the introduction section, by the way, and creating two threads devoted to the same question is generally discouraged.