From atheism to tentative agnosticism

[Inigo]

Morality is cultural. It has nothing to do with evolution in the biological sense. When Egyptian pharaohs were screwing their sisters it was not a biological advantage. If anything, the resulting genetic problems were counterproductive to what they were trying to accomplish. BTW, their people thought they were "gods" too.

I said that a disposition to view certain kinds of act as externally instructed 'to be done' and thereby to be acts we have inescapable reason to do would confer an advantage. So, as I explained, those disposed to view honesty this way would be people one could trust, and so on. It does not follow that it always and everywhere confers an advantage - just that it confers more advantages that obstacles and that it 'did' confer an advantage at some point, not that it always will.

Anyway, cultural or biological makes no difference to the point. FOr the point is that we do not actually have reason to comply with such instructions 'whatever' our ends. And thus moral instructions do not really exist. Not unless a god does, anyway.

---

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?)

That's a lot of questions. I will address no. 3 first as you say in it that I commit a fallacy. I did not. Furthermore I did not present the argument you attributed to me. My arguments go like this.

1.Morality instructs/favours/commands
2.Only an agent can instruct/favour/command
3.Morality is an agent

Note that this argument is not fallacious. It is deductively valid. Of course, it may be unsound. But 1 is a conceptual truth, surely? So 1 is rock solid. 2, well – it seems true to me. I can’t conceive of how anything other than an agent can issue an instruction. Maybe you can, but I await a counterexample.

Next step.
1.Morality’s instructions confer reasons to comply whatever of the interests of those to whom they apply. (So, if morality truly does instruct you not to kill you thereby have reason not to kill even if you really, really want to.)
2.Only the commands/instructions/favourings of a supernatural agent who controls our fate in an afterlife would confer reasons to all to whom they are applied.
3.Therefore morality’s instructions are the commands/instructions/favourings of a supernatural agent of the kind described in 2.

Again, this argument commits no fallacy. It may be unsound, of course. But again, I need to see evidence against one or more of its premises before I can become convinced of this. In the absence of any such evidence, those premises seem true.