RE: Atheism and morality
July 7, 2013 at 1:00 pm
(This post was last modified: July 7, 2013 at 1:03 pm by Angrboda.)
(July 6, 2013 at 11:02 pm)Inigo Wrote:(July 6, 2013 at 9:22 pm)apophenia Wrote: 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.
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.
No, your first syllogism concluded that the instructive aspect of morals was the effect of an agent. Your conclusion of your second syllogism was that the agent from whom the instructions came was a supernatural agent with immense power over our interest. You cannot use the conclusion of syllogism #2 as support for the deductive validity of itself; that is a classic example of begging the question.
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