Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

Well, I'd point out more about your use of the law of parsimony, and in particular, the distinction between the strong and weak versions of it, but I'm feeling lazy, so perhaps another time. Unless you are employing the strong version, the law of parsimony is not a deductive inference, but merely a probabilistic one, and therefore your syllogism becomes one of determining the most likely explanation given a range of explanations, and, under that view, must then be probabilistically evaluated in comparison to all other hypotheses. It is no longer a deductively valid syllogism in its present form, given your interpretations.

And you're making more arguments from silence. The fact that we are ignorant of the moral authority's absence, or ignorant of the disconnect between agent and instruction, is not evidence of its non-absence, nor evidence that the agent and instruction are unified.

You still have failed to provide anything more than a bare assertion that your account explains moral desert. Most here, as well as many moral philosophers, would argue that your account does just the opposite. How is the fact that some agent can make my eternity unpleasant lead to the conclusion that I am deserving to be treated that way by this possibly non-existent agent for failing to satisfy its desires?

First, no my original argument showed that morality required the existence of a supernatural agent with immense power over our interests. The 'catcher in the rye' god is still a god - still an agency with immense power over our interests. So the argument stands.

Plus the inescapable rational authority of moral norms has a little bit more to it than just inescapable rational authority but it would have been cumbersome to put in every qualification. Straightforward inescapable rational authority requires the existence of god. However, I have never suggested that inescapable rational authority is sufficient for qualification as a moral requirement, rather it is necessary. And that's all my arguments require to establish that morality presupposes a god.
However, moral instructions seem to create reasons for compliance rather than merely be a report on reasons that are already present. And that feature is captured by making the instructor into a vengeful god.

Re 'arguments from silence'. What are you on about? My appeal is to your moral experience. Moral instructions seem to create reasons for compliance. That characteristic is matched by the instructions of a vengeful god. She, the issuer of the instruction, will harm your interests if you do not comply with that instruction. So she, the source of the instruction, is creating the reason to comply.

Re desert. you say I have failed to provide anything more than bare assertion. That's just plain untrue. First, what is it like to sense that someone deserves to come to harm? I suggest that it is as if there is some kind of external yearning for this person to come to harm. Morality, or the moral source if you prefer, wants it to happen. It is not of a piece with there being a moral obligation to create the harm, though it sometimes seems to give rise to there being a moral instruction to create it. nor, when we sense that someone deserves harm, are we sensing that harm 'will' come to this person. We are sensing an external desire or favouring of such harm.
If a vengeful god exists, and if our moral sense is roughly tracking this god's desires, then when someone does wrong- when someone fails to comply with one of her desires - we will sense that the source of morality now wishes this person to come to harm. Moral desert is not just accounted for on this view, it is positively predicted. that, frankly, is an amazing feature of this view and it should send a shiver down your spine. Bare assertion indeed!

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So, you accept that in a world with no god and an afterlife Jack has no reason to refrain from disembowelling a prostitute.

Now, does he do anything wrong if he disembowels a prostitute?

Note what I am asking you. I am asking you if HE did anything wrong. Don't tell me he doesn't believe himself to be doing anything wrong. I am not asking you that. I am asking you if he did anything wrong.

Jack has plenty of reason to refrain from doing such. But his disorder prevents him from such control over his own actions.

Do I personally think he's doing something wrong? Well of course. That should have been obvious to you in my explanation that we generally don't go around killing each other. It would be detrimental to our survival. So again I say, FROM AND EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT, morals have utility.

You keep changing your position. Originally you said he had no reason. Now you are saying he has a reason. What reason? He doesn't give a damn about the survival of the species. What's that to him? He doesn't care. He wants to disembowel a prostitute and he's going to die very shortly. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing so. YOu can go on about 'the species' all you like - he doesn't care about the species.

Now, let's go back again - does he have reason not to disembowel the prostitute? (And this time do stick to one answer!)

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Personal abhorrence?

Unfortunately there are people that are born with no conscience. We lock up those people when they harm others.

I agree with Rahul. Personal abhorrence. Why? Because experiences directly affect your body. They've measured karma in the works.

I read an article a few years back about a new field of genetic science called epigenetics. Simply put, epigenetics is the genetics of genetics. It regulates what genetic switch goes on or off.
This experiment involved cloned mice. After cloning them, the mice had the exact identical epigenome. One was put in a cage with a maternal mother, one with a neglectful mother. That was the Only difference in the mice experiences: Experience. After some time they tested the mice which had totally different epigenomes, and the mouse with the mother who was neglectful had all sorts of illness markers and physical symptoms. For one it was predisposed to high blood pressure and anxiety. What fascinates me about the implications of this is that experience alters your body. When they switched the mothers with the baby mice: the factors resolved or deteriorated.

The quality of parental care has a broad impact on mental health, including the risk for psychopathology [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. Studies in the rat directly link the maternal care environment to long-term effects on neural systems that regulate stress [6], [7] emotional function[8], [9], learning and memory [10], [11], [12] and neuroplasticity [10], [13], [14], [15]. Naturally occurring variations in maternal care in the first week of life in rats are associated with changes in brain and behavior that persist until adulthood [16]. These effects are reversed by cross-fostering, [7], [9] demonstrating a causal link between maternal care and gene expression programming.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/...ndGenomics+

He doesn't have any personal abhorrence. He likes disembowelling prostitutes. It is his thing. Just as you like eating rice pudding and watching nature documentaries he likes disembowelling prostitutes. it doesn't upset him in the least. He likes it. And he's about to die. He's go nothing to lose.
Now, does he have any reason not to disembowel a prostitute?