Turning the Euthyphro Dilemma around on atheists

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

Vinny, evolution doesn't have "whims". It's not a conscious entity. It has no agenda. It "dictates" nothing.

I think you're making the common theist error of interpreting the atheist "view of the universe" as one broadly similar to the theist one with "God" taken out and "evolution" inserted in its place.

There are two problems with this: 1. There IS no "atheist world view" as such; there are world views which are atheistic in nature but "atheism" is not a world view in itself. It's a single answer to a single question. 2. Evolution is not only NOT a conscious entity like a God, it isn't even an unconscious force like gravity.

Evolution is a CONSEQUENCE. It's what happens when life forms reproduce under environmental pressure. It's the RESULT of forces, not a force in itself. It doesn't "want" anything.

As such your "what if evolution dictated that torturing animals was good?" question is nonsensical*. Evolution dictates nothing and has no concept of "good". It merely favours characteristics which aid reproduction. By definition sadism doesn't aid anything. It wastes time and energy and creates unnecessary hostility.

God, by contrast, ABSOLUTELY has whims, and his morality is subject to those whims. He cheerfully orders genocide and infanticide while also commanding people to love their neighbours. He drowns the whole world then regrets it and promises never to do it again. He's anti-shellfish but pro-slavery.

It's theistic "morality" which is whimsical. Can you imagine a secular philosophy which would have mandated cutting little girls' vaginas off? You need God for that sort of depravity.

*Don't assume that asking an unanswerable question constitutes "victory". It might just be that the question makes no sense. What colour is fear? What does seven smell like? How tall is time?

That was an anthropomorphism, a figure of speech. Of course evolution doesn't have whims. "Whims" refers to the arbitrariness of evolutionary outcomes.

Evolution reflects the environment, promoting traits that provide evolutionary advantages in that particular environment. So one type of environment, one set of traits. Another type of environment, another set of traits. The traits selected for in polar bears is different from in swamp locusts.

So if you believe in evolved morality:
1) morality depends on the environment,
2) different environments produce different moralities, and
3) there can be an environment where harming strangers for no reason can be morally good.

You don't need "God" or an "atheist world view". Just understand natural selection.

Think about that further.

The standard human response to harm is negative, you say. But where does that standard human response come from? From evolution.

But like I've said before, evolution could have turned out differently such that we responded positively to unethical conduct.

Given a different path that evolution took, would you then consider animal torture a moral good, on par with feeding the homeless? Or even if your evolution made you respond positively to it, you would stop and think "Hey, there's something not right about this..."

There's a couple of things wrong with this, though: one is that... so what? Saying things could be different doesn't invalidate that things are as they are now. We've got to deal with reality, and there's no devaluing of events because there are so many other potentials.

Also, harm, by definition, is that which is harmful. I'm not saying harm is immoral because of our response to it, but because of what it objectively does in the real world. It invalidates the well-being of another creature, and therefore, regardless of how it makes us feel, it's an immoral act. As I said in my initial post, sadism isn't a sufficient justification for a harmful action; those positive feelings can be invoked using means that do no harm, and therefore there's no excuse.

It seems thus that the atheist can't escape the Euthyphro dilemma by appealing to human response, because all human reactions boil down to evolution.

And if our moral codes are predicated on the whims of evolution, then the rapist and the killer and the torturer are not truly evil, but have just evolved differently from us.

This isn't a matter of "everything we think is necessarily true, and therefore our morals are determined solely by our own pleasure," it's a matter of the physical facts of the world that exist objectively, externally to us. This is why Euthyphro doesn't apply here: the "objective source" of morality is simply the fact that we exist in a consistent world.

The rapist, murderer and torturer are performing objectively evil acts. Why? Because those acts cause demonstrable harm to their victims, beyond the responses of the actors themselves. It's just a fact, and their responses aren't justification. It's the same reason we restrict certain harmful chemicals, despite the fact that they produce favorable responses in those that ingest them; response isn't the premise for morality.

We're just asking a question: If evolution had taken a different path, for instance, making the torturing of children morally good, would you consider it morally good and torture children, or still consider it wrong? This is a realistic question because we are still evolving and morality might evolve in the future. So how do you answer?

You say harm is bad because it objectively causes damage in the real world by invalidating the well-being of others. This makes the well-being of others (or "conscious creatures", as Sam Harris' version purports) the arbiter of morality. But what makes well-being so special? If someone decides that "unwell-being" should be the arbiter of what is morally good, could you prove them wrong?

You couldn't- there's nothing special about well-being, it's just something one species desires. Does morality boil down to whatever a set of species desires? Or whatever makes you feel good?

Don't just listen to me, deconstruct it yourself. Ask yourself why "human well-being" but not "termite well-being"? Discrimination against species, you dirty speciesist.

Same question here- if morality is determined by families and societies, then if families and societies determined animal torture to be morally good, would you consider animal torture morally good?

If I was raised in a society that found animal torture good, say in torturing and sacrificing animals to a deity, and I had little to no exposure to other viewpoints as I was developing, then YES, I'd think it was morally good. I'd think my deity wanted it, and that I'd be offending him if I didn't do it. If I was raised in an old US Southern plantation family, I'd think slavery was morally right. If I was raised in fundamentalist Islam, I'd think it was moral to cut my clitoris off.

What's so fucking hard to understand about this?

The question isn't "WOULD YOU THINK IT'S GOOD?"

The question is "IS IT ACTUALLY GOOD?"

Don't get cantankerous with me, just pay attention to the discussion. It's ontological, not epistemological.

I think some of you have to remember the context the dilemma was made in. Plato put the dilemma in the mouth of Socrates. It boils down to whether or not morality is prescribed by the gods or merely recognized by them. Christian apologists essentially take Plato's answer to the dilemma: Plato said that what is good is the Form of the Good itself, and thus seemingly good things are but a pale reflection of that form, so it's a false dilemma for Plato. Apologists merely swap 'Form of the Good' with 'God'.

I think Swinburne takes a different answer. I always thought he was an original thinker.

Why stop there?

If the good exists independently of your existence, why can the good not exist independently of everyone's existence? If so, independently of all of existence, and thus good and evil exist independent of the material world, and thus metaphysical naturalism has some serious unanswered questions.

I stop there because that is all I can logically conclude from the given position. Taking a simplistic position and running with it to whatever conclusion may seem alright - like you have done - is not something a logical person would do.

Plato had the same facts as you, and he reasoned further. Was he illogical? Many great ethicists and philosophers pondering morality reasoned further.

Is everybody illogical except The Great Genkaus? Are we all building a center for ants, when you wanted a center for children who can't read good that is at least three times larger?

Perhaps you are right. It is your vision!