Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

What is someone talking about when they talk about 'personal morals'? Are these a person's beliefs about which acts are right or wrong?

I have no clue why you attribute to me the view that morality is something the content of which no human could know about. I have never, ever said that - so I don't know where you're getting it from.

If the god morality presupposes exists then you find out what is right or wrong the regular way - you engage in NORMATIVE moral theorising. So, you try to systemise the deliverances of your moral sense reports.

What we call 'science' is just an attempt to systemise the deliverances of our sense of sight and touch.

What we call 'normative ethics' is just attempts to systemise the deliverances of our moral sense.

Perhaps we are never in a position to be able to 'know' that a given act is right, or a given act wrong. But if that's the case (and I'm not at all sure it is) this has noting to do with morality presupposing a god. Rather, it has to do with the fact (if it is a fact) that our moral sense is not sufficiently reliable.

When I say no human could know about I mean know for sure, as a certainty.

It still seems to me that you're basing your belief in the existence of something on what the definition of a word is, morality is inescapable rational instructions, death is inescapable, god must exist.

There's still no proof that the inescapable instructions exist, which morals are truly right or wrong or that they are are inescapable.

This has nothing to do with the definition of words. They're just labels. What I am doing is describing morality. I am describing how things seem when I sense that an act is wrong. For I use words like 'wrong' and 'morally bad' and 'morally obligatory' to refer to such bundles of features. Now, perhaps you don't. Perhaps you use the term 'morally wrong' to refer to a piece of cheesecake, or a feeling of devastation, or the first Tuesday of the month. Then you're just not talking about or analysing what I'm talking about.
However, it seems I am not unusual either in what I am labelling my moral experiences or in my use of that label. For so far in my life it appears to me that other people are using those terms to refer to exactly the same impression. And in moral philosophy I have read many articles and books in which the authors describe a relevantly similar experience and use the terms as I do. And so I conclude that we are all talking about the same thing.

What I am referring to is an experience: an experience of something being externally instructed 'not to be done' and this 'not to be doneness' somehow giving rise in me to the belief that this act is one that I now have inescapable reason not to do.

That's just the description, not the analysis. It is just a description of something I experience and form beliefs about. It was what Kant was talking about, it was what Socrates and Plato were talking about, and so on. They didn't call it 'morality' in ancient Greece. Doesn't matter. The label doesn't matter. They were talking about the same feature of their reality -the same experience and trying, just as we are, to make sense of it.

So, once again, my premise that morality instructs, and my premise that morality's instructions aree ones that possess inescapable rational authority are just descriptions of the thing I am analysing.

Then there's the analysis. That's where the real work happens. If you disagree with the description then really you're just not talking about what I am talking about and I'm frankly not interested in you, just as someone who uses the term 'atheism' to refer to the baking practices of 18th century Denmark would probably be surprised at this site and wonder why no-one was addressing the topic they were interested in.

My analysis is that morality must be composed of the intructions and favourings of a god. That's the raw ingredient. Just as if one wants to analyse, say, peanut butter one would reverse engineer it. One would see what combination of more basic ingredients would create something that had all the same qualities as the original. You discover that if you mash peanuts up with a bit of oil you get something that has all of the same features as peanut butter. If you find that there is no other way of creating those features then you've discovered what peanut butter is made of. That, in effect, is what I am saying about morality. Given the features I have described the only way that I can see that you could get such feature in reality is if there is a god of a certain kind.

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I've seen you make many implicitly objective and positive/negative claims about God's nature, behavior, thoughts, and so on. Those indicate either an implicit claim that God exists, which attracts the burden, or speculation of no meaning to anybody but yourself.

You seem incapable of distinguishing between different arguments.

I am arguing first, that morality requires a god.

I would THEN argue that this argument is a good one:

1. Morality requires a god
2. Morality exists
3. A god exists.

That argument has as its first premise the conclusion of the previous argument. So, to block the conclusion of this argument you must either show that morality does not require a god (which would require refuting my previous arguments) or arguing that premise 2 is false.

Note, however, that premise 1 is consistent with atheism. For an atheist could run this argument.

1. Morality requires a god
2. no god exists
3. Morality does not exist

However, which argument it is more rational to buy depends on the relative plausibility of the premises. Both arguments have the same first premise, so we can put that one aside. The relative plausibility of these arguments now turns entirely on the plausibility of their second premises. Now, I would claim that it is more clear and distinct that morality exists than that there is no god. Of these two claims 'there is nothing right or wrong with anything' and 'no gods exist' I find the former implausible than the latter. And thus I think that it is rational to go for the first argument and conclude that a god exists.