Atheism is *not* inconsistent with morality – atheism cannot say where morality *came from*. To the atheist, it just *is*. In other words, an atheist cannot tell a person why they shouldn’t cheat on their spouse if they knew they could get away with it. A big problem.
@randyhelzerman This breaking of a promise would not be known though. There was no harm done in the real sense. In fact, your sexual desires might be fulfilled (one in the + column). I’m not trying to be trite here. It’s just an example that I frequently use – because it works. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying an atheist has no good reason to be faithful.
@kwmitch1 Think about it this way. Suppose God exists. If there was REALLY nothing wrong with breaking a promise--if no harm ever came from breaking a promise--then why would god forbid it? Since God does forbid it, there must be some harm that comes from breaking a promise. With me so far? If so, then why can't an atheist look at the harm that would come, and conclude its not moral to do it? Why wouldn't the inherent evil of the act be enough to be reason to conclude its wrong?
@randyhelzerman Let me put it like this. In a purely materialistic view of the world, one’s uncaught cheating is benign. An atheist cannot tell me why it is not. The atheist cannot tell me why a homeless person stealing food to fill his empty belly is wrong. I submit it’s purely logical in the materialistic worldview for him to steal – yet we know he ought not to.
@randyhelzerman No, of course not. But the atheist can’t tell me where that ‘ought’ comes from. It just *is*. The theist can say, “God has purposefully designed human beings to know that cheating is wrong”. The atheist must say, “We just know cheating is wrong.” Many atheists then go into the survival of the species, etc. That’s when they reveal the flaw. See cheating is not wrong in itself, it is simply wrong as far as survival goes.
@kwmitch1 I don't think I have to say "we just know cheating is wrong" at all. Nor do I think theists can say that God designed human beings to know that cheating is wrong, because I know plenty of people who don't think anything is wrong with cheating--did God just not design them correctly? And I don't think its any mystery where the ought comes from: it comes from the promise I made to my wife. A promise is the creation of an "ought" to keep the promise.
@randyhelzerman I think we’re talking around each other. You wrote that the ‘ought’ comes from the promise you made to your wife. That the promise is the creation of the ‘ought’. Is generic cheating ok without a promise? I think you would be hard pressed to find people that don’t feel cheating is wrong. Just cheat them out of their money to see their true feelings on the matter.
@randyhelzerman How can an atheist say, “God must have a reason for prohibiting this, so an atheist can have same said reason?” In a purely materialistic worldview, one in which we are nothing more than particles and elements crashing around – how can an atheist account for this alignment with God’s wishes? Your argument basically boils down to: *atheists know what evil is, so why can’t we just leave it at that?* That’s the whole point of Koukl’s piece.
@kwmitch1 I'm just saying lets assume there is a God, that God is exactly like you believe God is---then it STILL is the case that an atheist should be able to figure out whether its moral or not to cheat on his wife.
@randyhelzerman I agree. It is indeed the case the atheist can figure out whether it’s moral to cheat on his wife. I’d wager that many atheists are *more* moral than many theists. The atheist just has the* grounding* problem. It seems to me you’re using God’s *nature* as a springboard to give the atheist way out. Sort of a : If God’s nature deems it, so can I. God is not assessable to the atheist in this way. He doesn’t exist for the comparison.
@kwmitch1 Well I think the theist has exactly the same kind of accessibility problems which the atheist has. Sure, theists have the 10 commandments to tell them that murder and adultery are wrong. But how does the bible help at, e.g. what age do we let kids drink alcohol? (too bad we don't know the ages of the people at the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine). Is it moral or immoral to tax the top 5% of earners extra to save millions of lives a year through national health care?
@randyhelzerman To this question, I think you’re exactly right. Theists don’t have access to everything that fits on the moral scale, as it were. Government policy, taxes, etc. are extremely difficult to manage this way. To clarify, the theist, in this case,* Christian* has Scripture, but that’s not *why* he or she has access to a specific moral code. The atheist has the same access (e.g. knowing cheating is wrong). The theist is only able to ground it.
@kwmitch1 So suppose a theist and an atheist come together, talk about it, reason the pro's and con's, and agree that its ok to let kids drink when they turn 21. Is the theists belief in this moral principle any more grounded than the atheists is? if so, how? what gounds it?
@randyhelzerman Let’s say, the only reason a responsible theist and a responsible atheist would agree to this would be if it didn't unduly harm the community. While they both have moral reasons for deciding so (i.e. they don’t just pick an age out of a hat) only the theist can say why considering society is beyond a materialistic worldview. Again, the atheist has the exact same access and can provide reasons and proof just as the theist can, they just can’t pin down why *it* is so.
@kwmitch1 Hmmm....I still don't understand exactly what the theist has that the atheist doesn't have in this scenario. Suppose both the theist and the atheist agree on every specific harm which would happen to the community: they agree it would cause increased health problems, more drunk driving, more binge drinking, worse grades. What else is there left for them to disagree about? Don't they believe the same thing for exactly the same reasons?
@randyhelzerman Yes. This is what I mean when I say they can have the exact same access and can provide the exact same reasons. In a purely materialistic worldview, however, the atheist cannot say where this access comes from or why these reasons are mostly universal.
@kwmitch1 Hmmmm..... I guess I still don't get it. Seems like we are largely in agreement that both atheists and theists could, say, agree that teenagers shouldn't drink because it would hurt their grades. I don't see what adding "....and God grounds that moral fact" really adds. But that could be just do to lack of faith on my part.
@randyhelzerman I think we’re talking around each other. You wrote that the ‘ought’ comes from the promise you made to your wife. That the promise is the creation of the ‘ought’. That’s true as far as it goes, but is generic cheating ok without a promise? Finally, I think you would be hard pressed to find people that don’t feel cheating is wrong. Just cheat them out of their money to see their true feelings on the matter.
@kwmitch1 How could it be cheating without a promise? If you are not married to somebody, you can't cheat on your wife, because you don't have a wife :-) And how can you cheat somebody out of money if there wasn't a promise in the first place to be fair?
@randyhelzerman I mentioned *generic* cheating to try and separate it from infidelity (the promise). Let’s say, something as simple as cutting in line at the grocery. There’s no explicit promise. There’s no “I do”. There’s only the natural understood order. This helps my point. This natural moral order has constraints that don’t fit with a materialistic worldview.
@kwmitch1 Well, if you were a kindergarten teacher, you'd know there is no naturally understood order that humans know to stand in line :-) There are cultures which know nothing about lines and how to stand in them, and I would argue that if a person from that culture showed up at a grocery and cut ahead in line, they weren't doing anything wrong, because they did not know about our culture. In face "culture" is kind of a shorthand word for "all of the promises we make to each other".
I thought the theistic ground for morality was simply the distinction between right and wrong, and that this is absolute, and that the reasoning is intuitive and objective.
To me, the moral prohibition of slavery seems like an easy one to explain, unlike questions of what constitutes virtue.
It's simply a matter justification. A key principle within morality/justice is that a person's freedom may not be abridged unless it's as retribution for some infraction committed by that person.
Slavery constitutes an arbitrary and unjustified and, therefore, immoral abridgement of a person's freedom.
From our vantage point today, of course it is quite easy to explain the moral prohibition against slavery. The problem is how to do so from a theistic perspective, one which states that atheism cannot ground morality, because all morality is grounded by god. I do not see how this perspective explains or reveals the moral prohibition of slavery, especially given that every sacred text from the abrahamic traditions explicitly endorse slavery.
Your efforts to rebutt mr. koukl were subpar. Your "solution" to the grounding question, specifically to the question of slavery was "duh no, what more grounding do you need" this doesn't answer the question in anyway, it just assertst the view. Nor in your futher expounding do you better your lot, you simply throw out another moral rule, when the very question just is...how do you ground it? Also, despite what you said, you did reason from an is to an ought. this just wasn't a good response
Well, I believe virtue is its own reward, which is another way of saying morals need no grounding. But perhaps you could convince me otherwise? Why do morals need grounding? And how does the existence of God ground them? And maybe you could do what no theist has ever been able to do for me: how do you ground the moral principle that slavery is wrong? I can understand if you don't like my answer, but I'd like to hear your answer and your reasons for believing it.
[1] Hey Randy. Christian morality is grounded in divine principles as you note, but it goes a little deeper than just, "God says." What Jehovah says is rooted in the ideal function of the universe which he created and knows better than anyone. So the end of Christian morality is benefit for the individual, humanity, and the universe. (Ps 37:11; Isa 48:17, 18) There is no other way that will work. It is absolutely right.
As to slavery, you present a good principle, that we should love our family and everyone is family. But we dont live in an ideal world. So people commit crimes, there are wars, families starve and go homeless due to poverty. Slavery was the ancient world's way of dealing with these situations. (Ex 22:3; Lev 25:47) Modern society uses prison. Its not ideal to imprison your family members, but what do you suggest should be done when family tries to kill you or steals your stuff?
You are a moron and you can't even get your point across. You could use a bit of training and then you wouldn't have to keep saying, "uh ya know, I just don't understand...ya know." Simpleton
Lol.. icsdgeo, you have become consumed with me. You should get back to your life. You left an ignorant comment about America on a guitar video. It wasn't a video about international affairs. You deserved the lashing that you received. Now that you have been disabused of your silly ideas, go back to watching Sesame Street. And please, learn proper English if you wish to speak with me. I laugh through all of your comments but honestly I never try to make out what you are trying to say :-)
Oh boy, I love this; I have been reading Alvin Plantinga's response to the Euthyphro dilemma, brilliant stuff.........will it ever end..........????????
Hmmm.... I've been doing some reading of the turgid argumentation of philosopher Michael Martin on the Euthyphro dilemma, and well, it seems that Aquinas didn't solve this little dilemma after all; if the Christian Apologist cannot solve this question, it is definitely problematic, to say the least, in trying to ground objective morality in God..........
You can't have it both ways. You either believe in absolute morality or you don't. And if you don't believe in it then you really have no business telling people what they ought or should do. For then you would be telling them that they are wrong if they don't agree with you.
Hi oxo7oxo, people still come down with polio--does this mean we have made no progress in making a polio vaccine? Of course not. Similarly, sure slavery still exists, but every single government on earth prohibits it. This is hugh moral progress. Let me ask you a question: exactly how does god ground morality? How does this work, exactly?
Hi oxo7oxo, I already gave an example of how this is done in the video response, where I showed how an atheist might justify the belief that slavery is wrong. Did yoi have any more specific questions about that? If not, I'd really appreciate an answer to my question, because I've never had any theist even try to answer this, and I'd really like to know.
It can't be justified except from a position of absolutism. You see, when you use 'oughts' and 'shoulds' you are suggesting that anything else that would be done contrary to these is unacceptable. Hence you are arguing from a ground of moral absolutes.
As an atheist you can't do that and still be consistent with your worldview. It appears then that you are an agnostic rather than an atheist.
Hmmmmm. You say I can't do something which I just did :-). I showed in the video how to justify the principle that slavery is wrong without reference to god. You can't just claim I'm wrong, you have to show how my justification is wrong. The ball is in your court here, you have the burden of proof. And I will be very disapointed if you don't answer my question, but you will be in good company--no other theists have even tried to answer it either, so I'm forced to conclude they just can't.
Actually, the burden of proof is on you to prove that you are not being inconsistent with your own worldview of atheism by arguing from a ground of moral absolutes. Just because an idea is popular that doesn't make it right. The majority doesn't always rule in favor of the truth.
Again, if you are truly an atheist then you can't be consistent with your view that there are no moral absolutes while telling people what they ought to do in terms of how they treat others.
Incidentally, I use the term agnostic loosely because while your argumentation from the ground of 'ought to' and 'should not' implies that absolute morality exists, you aren't ready to concur that its source is God. ;-)
(cont, to oxo7oxo) for example, walk me through the steps here: today we are debating on universal health care. Presumably, you think that God makes it absolutely true that we should have health care, or absolutely false that we should have universal health care: how do we tell what God's absolute morality decrees on this issue?
You are arguing from the moral ground of should and ought. But does it really make sense to say that you should or ought to behave in a certain way when you don't believe in absolute morality?
And if you do believe in absolute morality how could you deny the existence of God and still make sense while doing so?
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to end our discussion. On reflection, I realize that I injected, however so slightly, an element of vociferousness into our debate, and if you found this to be the case, I apologize. I have learned a lot from our discussion, and it is a tragedy that too often we, I at least, view philosophic discussion or debate as something that has to be won, and my fellow discusser, someone to be conquered, thank you for your insights.....
Yeah we're starting to repeat ourselves, which is usually a good sign that its time to get off of the merry-go round. The discussion might have been vociferous, but it was better than most of thediscussions which happen around here. But you've conviinced me I need to make a video series about this, so I hope the conversation doesn't stop here; when I get around to posting them I hope you watch and comment, because you articulate very well what a lot of viewers would like to say, I'm sure.
by which to judge the "wrongness" of a societies moral system. Science, while necessarily involving communication between humans, is not solely a matter of inter-subjectivity, it is limited by the nature it studies.
You throw words, in a moral context, like "wrong" around in a matter that alludes to objectivity while denying an objective point of reference by which to condemn moral choices.
Hi Nietzschean101, I don't know exactly how to answer that. I mean, you are correct that saying a moral principle can be wrong is indeed to deny that morality is subjective. But it is a false dichotomy to think that things have to be either objective or subjective. I think we should just drop the words "objective" and "subjective" altogether; I don't see what they add besides confusion. I think we should talk about whether moral rules are right or wrong, not objective or subjective.
You say: "I've said over and over that just as scientists can be wrong about physics, societies can be wrong about morals."
What exactly do you mean that scientists can be wrong about physics? Well, I would imagine that it has something to do with a given conclusion not accurately reflecting objective reality. What do you mean when you say "societies can be wrong about morals?" To even make the claim societies can be "wrong" about morals presupposes a trans-societal standard
Just out of idle curiosity, why do you call yourself "Nietzschean"? Nietzsche pretty much demolished this sort of correspondence theory of truth which you seem to be espousing here. Be that as it may, its just too general of a question. For example, suppose there was some scientist who thought there was unicorns. What makes him wrong? What portion of reality is reflected by the statement "there are no unicorns?" Well, there's no unicorns in my pocket, so my pocket (cont)
(cont, to Neitz) makes him worng. But there's no unicorns on the sun either so the sun makes him wrong....on and on. There's no unicorns anywhere in the universe, so the whole universe makes him wrong. Yeah, this is a pretty vacuous answer, but there really is no portion of the universe smaller than the entire universe which makes him wrong. Same goes for morality. The entire universe makes the statement "There's no such thing as moral slavery" wrong.
You have identified moral truths as what a society adopts through a peer review process and in so doing, have rendered moral truths relative to the society that adopts them, and in so doing, one system of morality cannot be said to be better, and by better, I mean more "right" or "wrong", than any other system because to make that claim, one would have to appeal to a trans-societal moral reality or moral law that a given society may stand in violation of.
I have not identified moral truths as what a society adopts through peer review process. Just because something passes peer review doesn't mean its the truth.
Science is not destroyed by cultural relativity or subjectivity because reality, due to its nature, limits our ability to interpret it, but this nature exists external to the one doing the interpreting; you have located moral truth in the peer review, and in so doing, as the old saying goes: what's true for you may not be true for me. One member of a society leaves babies out to die, another cherishes the young, how can one adopted ethic be said to be "better" than the other?
Ok, Nietzschean101, just answer me this one question: in 1840, scientists measured meters with a platinum irridium bar in paris. Now they do it with wavelengths of light. Those 2 socieities used two different measuring sticks, and would therefore give two different answers for the question "how far is it from london to paris". Does this mean that physiics is culturaly relative? (cont)
(cont, to nietz) If your answer to that question is "NO" then why would you think that morality is culturallly relative just because one culture would give a different answer to the question of whether infant exposure is ok or not?
The Greeks societally adopted a system of infanticide, did that make the practice right or good? The Mongolians, under Genghis Khan, societally adopted a system of genocide, it was peer reviewed, should we conclude, in locating moral truth in the peer review system, that they were in the right?
Why should a societal standard be endowed with such power when societies are frequently found to be in the wrong? Consider, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, existentially concluded for himself, against the adopted societal ethical code, that Hitler was evil and the Nazis were in the moral wrong, and he sacrificed his life in this belief, but according to you, he was actually in the wrong because society ultimately decides what is right and what is wrong.
"When you say "one may conclude its right to rape" I disagree...... These things are determined by society,not by the individual."
So what if a society concludes the moral normality of rape, and concludes that the act is not worth our condemnation, does this make it right? What if a society, as the Germans did, peer reviews the various Nazi ethics, and concludes the goodness and righteousness of such a moral system, the whole blood on soil thing, does this make it right?
Hi Nietzschean101, I suppose I can see how a rather leaden reading of that statement would lead you to believe that I identified societal consensus with moral truth, but dude, I've said over and over that just as scientists can be wrong about physics, societies can be wrong about morals. I've stated that passing peer review doesn't mean somethign is true. Its kind of mysterious to me why you would take the conversation back in this direction after I've made those statements.
for ceasing to set mouse traps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house." While science may increase our understanding of the world, and human nature, and we in turn respond, we do not have the right to feel morally superior to our progenitors.
demonstrated, disastrous. It is good not to confuse moral progress with the advancement of knowledge of a scientific nature. For example, borrowing again from C.S. Lewis, are we more moral than our forefathers because we do not burn people alive because we believe them to be witches? Of course not, to quote: "It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: There's no moral advance in not executing them when you don't think they are there. You wouldn't call a man humane
The examples I've given you are not of the character of not believing in witches anymore. E.g. slavery. C.S. lewis point here is a big red herring here. If you had to go back to 1948 and live one week as an african american woman in Mississippi, I think you'd (a) be very happy when that week was up and you could come back, and (b) be very happy to say there's been tremendous moral progress since then.
Given that the 20th century was the most violent and depraved in all of human history, I do not see how it can be said that we have made moral progress; I think our progenitors would stand aghast, in trembling and palsy, before the bloodshed of the 20th century. Technology compounds the problem because our power to carry out innate destructive tendencies is augmented and if there is not a coinciding progress in morality with advancing technological prowess, the results are, as has been
Words like "moral progress" are thrown into the trash faster than Rush Limbaugh can shove OxyContin into his mouth. Progress assumes there is a measuring stick by which to measure it; you have located that measuring stick in the democratic process, and in doing so, "progress" is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
You use "measuring stick" as a metaphor, but lets talk about a real measuring stick for a while. Physicists used to define a meter as the length of a certain platinum-irridum bar in paris. But they stopped doing that, and now define it in terms of wavelenth of light. Using the new standard, they can show the old standard is worse. Does this mean that progress in physics is entierly in the eye of the beholder, because it was dependent upon the measuring stick they used?
You have located moral truths as democratic truths, ones to be found in a societal peer review process, and in so doing, even using the word "moral truth" is a bit contradictory; there would be no moral truths, just finite, contingent, judgments. A man saying it is ok to rape a child, goes from being as wrong as 2+2=5, to something that an individual or society has the last word on; a relative cultural judgment, as objective standards of moral abnormality have been denied.
Really, I suppose I could summarize my objections to this line of thought this way: every objection you've brought against the reality of morality could also be brought against the reality of physics :-) What counts as the standard kilogram is a "democratic truth" in your sense. Have you therefore demolished physics? Hardly. But you haven't demolished morality either.
or peer review will change some, not all, established facts. In the natural sciences, for example,reality puts limits on our ability to validly interpret it. Some conclusions drawn from peer review will be an accurate reflection of reality, others will not be, but this is ultimately because of reality, not the peer reviewers. It is the reality of the heart pumping blood that renders it as true that the heart pumps blood and not Mountain Dew- this is trans-societal.
Ok, lets consider a case which might help here. Currently, the standard kilogram is defined to be exactly the mass of a bar of platinum-irridium in France. But scientists are trying to replace that definition with something else. Now, on what basis are they going to make that determination? What trans-standard reality dictates what the mass of a kilogram is? To ask the question is to lapse into oxymoronism: there can not be any trans-standard way of evaluating the standard! (cont)
(cont, to Neitz) Same goes for morality--morality is the standard of conduct, so of course there cannot be any trans-standard way of evaluating morality. But of course, this doesn't prevent scientists from saying "its better to make the standard kilogram from platinum irridum than it would be to make it from ice cream", or from saying "we need a better standard than a 200-year-old hunk of metal". Think about how they would go about replacing the standard kilogram: they would try (cont)
(cont, to Neitz) several different ways out (e.g. now they are trying out things like spheres of silicon or electro-balances) and the scientists would say thing like "this works for me!" and another scientist would say "yeah, that works for me too!" or "no, you forgot about this..." until they could agree on some other standard. I.e. it would be decided by peer review. Its not decided by consulting God to tell us what the transcendantly TRUE real kilogram is. (cont)
(cont, to Neitz) But notice, its just silly to say that (1) because physics has a standard which we voted on, (2) therefore physics is not real, or is ungrounded, or subjective, yadda yadda. But we decide on moral matters in exactly the same way. One state legalizes gay marriage, and says "yeah, this works for me". Other states try it out and say "yeah, works for me too". Eventually the standard of conduct changes, indeed, improves.
Science is not a matter of dogmatism, or ought not to be, I well understand this; it would be ludicrous for a scientist to exclaim, once and for all time, the validity of a given conclusion, but not always, some science is indeed transperspective. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood, not a factory that produces unicorns; arteries carry oxygenated blood, not Mountain Dew; it is objectively true that deprived of oxygen for long enough, humans die- no amount of perspective
adopted standards, your individual, subjective judgment is, and only can be, an expression of taste or emotion. TRUTH or RIGHT/WRONG, in locating its ultimate source in the methodological process of peer review, is only whatever conclusions the peer reviewers draw from whatever available information. One may, for whatever reason, conclude it is perfectly right to rape, another may conclude it wrong, but the conclusions go no farther than the one's drawing the conclusions.
When you say "one may conclude its right to rape" I disagree. One may not do so, any more than I can decide that the price of a porsche is $1 and go down to the dealership and buy it :-) These things are determined by society,not by the individual.
Your utilization of the word "progress" is an interesting case as you have located the invention of moral truths in the societal peer review process; who defines moral progress, given that any appeal to a trans-societal standard has been rejected on your part? If one society defines moral progress as how many more women were raped this year than last, and another society by how many prevented, and there is no trans-societal standard by which to judge the rightness or wrongness of the
I don't see how the problem of trans-societal standard is any different for physics or psychology than it is for morality. In neither case is there a trans-societal standard which can be referred to. In both cases, it is peer review which decides what is judged better and what is judged worse. Neither Scientists nor moralists can know that they are in touch with any trans-societal truth.
"We both espouse moral philosophies we could never hope to accomplish, spouting messages of peace and forgiveness, and violently fucking our women when no one is looking."
I shed any humanistic liberal illusions about any moral progress a long time ago, and knowing that we have a black President does not help me sleep more comfortably at night......
and so on and so forth, you can see why I am more than a bit hesitant to exclaim that our species has made "moral progress;" the template changes, but we remain a demonic species, one torn between our angelic and satanic nature, as our dear YouTube friend Azrienoch put it in his The Absurdity of Philosophy:
Come, come, now Randy, surely, looking at photographs of the Holocaust, or of the destruction of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, or on reading of Stalin's purges, or learning of Pol Pot's great orgies of slaughter, Idi Amin's depraved and violent regime, or on hearing of North Korea's internment camps, the mass killings in Darfur, Mao Zedong's record of genocide and torture and China's continued abysmal human rights record, on the "honor killings" being carried out daily in Pakistan
Hi Nietaschean101, you are confusing advancements in morality with advancements in the appllication of technology. Its like confusing advancements in surgury with advancements in application of surgery--for example, there's 100,000 people who are blind from cateracts in Bangladesh. But that doesn't mean there's been no advancement in cateract surgery, we know very well how to cure them. The technology just isn't being applied to them. (cont)
(cont, to Nietz) same goes for the cases you mentioned. Yeah, bad things happen, sometimes on industrial scales, but it used to be the case that bad things happend BECAUSE people thought they were good, rather than DESPITE people thought they were good. For example, the Bible has many instances where genocide was endorced by god as the proper thing to do. People once thought genocide was a moral imperative. Today they don't, that's progress in morality, if not in application.
You must see this, surely you do. In some sense, I do not see how the atheist universe can support anything but, in some final sense, a non-cognitivist, emotive perspective.....
No, honestly, I don't see. I'm willing to listen to your explanations of how this might be, tho. See if you can't more cogently frame the argument in favor of emotive morality.
Now, in science, the ultimate appeal is made to nature- that beloved "thing" that quashes and usurps mythological cosmological explainations of their explanatory power, but, in an atheist world view, there is no final appeal that can be made, because transperspective moral reality is denied, it is in this denial that renders as unjustified any claims that one moral system can be said to be better, or more reflective of a "right" or "good" moral reality than any other system....
*sigh* sorry Nietzschean101, science has no ultimate appeal. It is always left open that something, be it nature or even thought experiments (like Einstein's) might overthrow what was thought to be true.
The unidirectionality of scientific knowledge is ensured by an objective reality: nature. Of course, I know the difficulties associated with epistemological objectivity, but here, we are taking it as axiomatic that there is a noumenal world that exists and that this noumenal world puts limits on what we can know of the phenomenal world and noumenal alike, in short, a kind of ontological realism that renders certain perspectives as untrue.
dude.... "the unidirectionality of scientific knowledge is ensured by an objective reality" come on dude. Lets get real here. You arn't a nietzschean. Science does not claim to produce results which are objectively true. Science only claims to produce results which have passed peer review. No scientist is ever going to say that his results are objectively true.
"There is, moreover, a hierarchy among paradigms that is established by nature rather than man: the theory of relativity could not have been discovered before having discovered the Newtonian laws of motion. It is this hierarchy among paradigms that ensures a coherence and unidirectionality to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Why is it that we do not see the same kind of advancement in moral knowledge as we do in scientific knowledge?
Are you kidding Nietzschean101? No moral progress? Slavery is illegal everywhere now. Yeah it still happens, but it used to be that preachers would defend slavery from the pulpit. That's huge moral progress. We have a black president--more signs of hugh moral progress. Antisemitism used to be public policy, now it is frowned on and forbidden everywhere. Debtor's prisons have been eliminated. . . . I could go on and on. Yeah, a lot of bad things still happen, but (cont)
(cont, to Neitz) here's the thing--a lot of things which used to be considered morally ok, even morally good (slavery, discrimination against women, jews, etc) are now recognized to be moral evil. That's progress. W.r.t. your statement "peer review is always done with the pretext to the coming of an understanding of something external to the peer review" I think you need to more precisely state the point you are trying to make, because I don't see how morality isn't external(cont)
(cont, to Neitz) to the peer review process at least as much as, say, mathematics is (there is genuine dispute among mathematicians as to whether math is invented or discoverd) or lexicography is (the very act of publishing a dictionary changes the language for which it was a dictionary of) etc or computer science (any algorithm developed is first run inside of some computer programmer's head before its run on a computer). Or even the science of genetic engineering--is curing (cont)
(cont to neitz) a genetic disease internal or external to humanity? Is curing bad functioning of your kidney's any more internal or external than curing bad functioning of your morals? Or psychology, is that internal or external? I think this dichotomy you are trying to draw is as artificial as the subjective/objective dichotomy, perhaps indistinguishable from it. Again, a point which should be very congenial to somebody who calls themself "neitzschien".
Now try and understand why I cannot accept as analogous the scientific peer review and the moral peer review. I shall quote Francis Fukuyama, in the midst of defending his "End of History" thesis against skeptics such as Kuhn, a bit out of context but it works all the same:
Peer review is a matter of methodology, but, as in science, generally speaking, the peer review is always done with the pretext to the coming of an understanding of something external to the peer review; in short, the peer reviewers are discovering, not creating, in the process of the review, truth, or at least, empirical adequacy.
(cont, #5, to Neitz) expected to live a moral life. That's one of the things---not the only thing, of course!--but one of the things which distinguishes morality from physics, or biology. We are all expected to be experts in morality in that we know the rules well enough to follow them. So when a proposed moral principle comes up, we all get to peer review it. Does this mean that if we all agree on something, its THE TRUTH? Of course not. But the same goes for any (cont)
(cont, #6, to Neitz) other area of knowledge. We can be wrong. Experts can be wrong. We can look at the scientists of yore, or the scientists of another discipline, and say they are wrong. Same goes for morality. I would have no qualms about saying that rape is wrong, of children or otherwise, or that slavery is wrong. So I hope this addresses your concern about applying a standard to evaluate morals: the standard is the same as it is in any other area of human inquiry: peer review.
(cont, #7, to Neitz) So this is why I think that distinguishing between "objective" and "subjective" areas of knowledge is just a false, really, a useless, distinction. While it is true that nobody can appeal to any higher, transcendent principle to validate their morality, nobody can appeal to any higher, transcendent principle to validate physics, or math, or anything else either. Physicists can and have been as wrong as theologians sometimes. (cont)
(cont, #8, to Neitz) But, conversely, theologians have been as right, or even more right, than physicists and biologists have. In the 1840s, while the biologists were busy writing textbooks which said that the negroid races were less evolved than the european races, there were plenty of theologians saying we are all god's children, equally endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. Because we don't need any transcendent authority, as long as we have each other.
"Right" and "wrong" or "good" and "evil" lose all meaning as the terms have classically been understood: there would be no RIGHT, no WRONG, only what arouses emotional horror or joy, and if one derives joy in torturing another human being......who are we to judge?
Evaluation assumes standards, or, in evaluating you must evaluate by a standard. In evaluating morality, or a societally adopted moral code, you must apply a standard, even if the standard is there are no standards (moral nihilism), if the applied standard is subjective, it cannot be said to be a standard that is in any sense "better," or of a more encourageable nature, than another subjective standard.
In making any kind of claim that the society that blatantly accepts child rape is worthy of our moral condemnation, we must, if we are to be justified in our judgment as externally binding, make an appeal untainted by subjective perspective, in short, an appeal to objectivity, otherwise, we are merely expressing our personal distaste for such behavior.
And if the raping of a child is only in violation of a given society's set of norms, what of a society that has no issue with child rape, and has no level of admonishment against it? How can the former society, who respects the child's "right" not to be violated in such a manner, criticize the latter society's acceptance of such a behavior without making an appeal that is societally transcendent?
Michael Ruse has stated, "The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says, 2+2=5."
We certainly intuitively share his sentiment, but can such a statement of fact be established? Well, certainly not from an atheist perspective as: the man who raped a child is not in violation of an objective principle, one divorced from perspective, but is simply in violation of anthropogenically created and agreed upon values....
then certainly one, as a matter of principle, cannot make an appeal to any external, transcendent, or "higher" ethic in evaluating ethical principles, and if in this case, "man is the measure of all things," how can it be decided what given conflicting ethical systems are "better?" What is the standard by which we could draw conclusions regarding ethical conflict, given that, there is no absolute frame of reference?
As has been pointed out before, moral intersubjectivity is subjectivity intersubjectively; a popular agreement upon a set of moral principles by which individuals of a given society "ought" to abide by, ultimately tells us nothing about the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the standards of adoption; truth is not a matter of democracy, correct? And if one denies as a matter of presupposition that morality, or moral claims, can have truth content, true/false, ......
I certainly do not question the ability of an atheist to be an individual of moral integrity, and a person who embodies a wonderful philathranpic spirit, indeed, it would be nonsense to suggest otherwise as so many of our garden variety theists do, but I think that what is at issue for me is the ability of an atheist to be justified in making evaluative claims in the arena of morality with any externally binding force.
Please, good sir, do forgive my absence around these parts of late; I shall offer no excuses.
You know, I even broke out on old copy of Lewis's "Mere Christianity" on this one, ha ha.....God, I remember those days in my youth, desperately clinging to my comforting metaphysical beliefs, beliefs that are like a cold pillow on which to rest one's weary head at night after a tortuously long day, but that's all behind me now, but enough biography, back to the discussion.....
. . . man has it come to this? Somebody self-styled "Nietzschean101" is using C.S. Lewis :-) Gotta love the irony. Ok, is truth a matter of democracy? Lets talk about something which (at first) might seem more objective than morals. Say there's a new vaccine developed by some scientists. How do we know the truth of whether it is effective or not? Well, the gold standard is . . . . peer review. Yes, that's right. Other scientists get together and vote as to whether this vaccine (cont)
(cont, #2, to Nietz) is effective or not. They try it, they see if they can reproduce it, and if they agree that it is reproducible, then we say its confirmed. Same goes for mathematical proofs. Somebody gives a mathematical proof of a new theorem, then other mathematicians look at it, and if they agree that it is a good proof, they accept it. If not, they don't. Peer review is the cornerstone of the scientific method. Now you might say can't scientists be wrong? (cont)
(cont, #3) Sure they can. Something can pass peer review and still be wrong. The mere fact that all the scientists agree doesn't mean its the truth. And it doesn't mean that later on they won't reverse themselves. But the fact that they all agree about it is a good sign that they are on to something--perhaps the best sign we have that they are on to something. Now lets double-clilck on this peer review--scientists only count votes from their peers. I'm not a peer or them, (cont)
(cont#4). so I don't get to vote. So let's apply this peer review thing to morality: somebody proposes a new moral principle, like women should wear a burka, or that gays are allowed to marry. Who gets to vote? Everybody! Why? Well nit eveybody is expected to be an expert in physics or higher math,but everybody is
Excellent video and I agree vis-à-vis theism. However, your attempt to ground morality is open to an infinite regress, no? Unless you believe in axiomatic oughts from which all other oughts can be derived?
I would simply say that morality does not require grounding; we have moral claims and a moral tradition, this tradition is open to rational criticism and if you fall short of it you are deemed to have behaved immorally according to the best available (albeit fallible) moral knowledge.
Hi RowanFortuneWood, perceptive comments, as usual. I too believe that the desire to ground morality, in the sense of trying to reduce it to some non-moral language, is wrong. In fact, that's essentially another way of putting Hume's point: If you can't reason from an is to an ought, you certainly cannot ground morality. But of course, the mistake here isn't thinking that morality is real, the mistake is in thinkng that morality needs to be grounded in this sense. (cont)
(cont) But, as you say, this doens't mean that claims are not open to rational criticism. My exercise of justifying that slavery is evil, for example, explicitly wasn't reasoning from moral to non-moral principles, but was just showing that one moral principle implies another. Infinite regress, yes, well; inasmuch as the point of moral discourse is to reach agreement as to how we should live, how WE should live, you don't have to go "all the way back" you just have to (cont)
(cont, to RowanFortuneWood) have to go back to moral principles which you have in common with the people you are trying to live harmoniously with. But as you point out, this is in no way a grounding of those moral principles. Such a grounding cannot be given nor need it be.
Society A believes, has mythologically construed, that solar eclipses are the result of a sky dragon God eating the sun.
Society B believes that, has scientifically substantiated, solar eclipses are the result of the moon passing between the sun and earth.
Of course, because one society has adopted on view, and another society, another view, this does not put them on equal footing because of cultural relativity, but this is only because.....
The only reason that you cannot affirm your personal tastes in economic matters, a porsche 911 costing $5, or feeding the world by preference, is that the potentiality of your tastes are limited by an objective reality; it is objectively real that Porsche's do not cost $5. But in matters of morality, where is there an objective moral reality that can be appealed to in keeping one from adopting whatever moral code he or she is interested in adopting?
Hi Nietzschean101, again the phrase 'it is objectively real that Porsches..." is a very curious phrase for somebody styled 'Nietzschean' to use. Be that as it may, I claim that morality has the same claim to reality that the price of a car does, for very similar reasons. How do we measure what the price of a something is? Lets use stocks instead of cars, because the process of determining the price is more visible, although quite exactly the same. We offer it for sale and see what (cont)
(cont, to Nietaschean101) people will pay for it. It varies every day, and indeed, what somebody is willing to pay for it varies from person to person. Yet there's no doubt that there is a truth value to the price a stock has. But quite the same thing goes for morality. We all have our opinions about what courses of action are moral or not--some people highly value burkas, some don't, some highly value human life, some dont, etc (cont)
(cont, to Nietzschean101) but so what? Somebody who loves porsche's is willing to pay more for a porsche than somebody who doesn't, but that doesn't mean that we can't determine what the price of a porsche is. Similarly, in negotiations with each other, we can arrive at conclusions as to what is moral or not. I don't see how the reality of morals is any different than the reality of the price of stocks.
we can only affirm personal tastes, and these tastes have no binding power external to the one who makes the affirmation; judgment, in any ultimate sense, must be suspended.........
"we can only affirm personal tastes" uh, no. Think a little bit more about the parallel of morals with money. If I could affirm my personal taste in monetary matters, I would make a porsche turbo 911 cost about $5. Then I would feed the world by merely preferring that over starvation :) Morals are not a matter of personal taste any more than the price of a porsche is. Nor is is a matter of personal taste that the dollar is more stable than the peso or less stable than the euro. (cont)
(cont, to Neitz) This one example suffices to prove the complete fallacy of thinking that just because X is culturally relative or constructed by humanity, X is a matter of personal taste. It also suffices to prove the complete fallacy of thinking that God has to underwrite such, because god doesn't underwrite our monetary system. You'll need to come up with a better argument than this if you want to convince me.
One society adopts infanticide in regards to the mentally or physically deformed, another values children, even the "weak" ones who cannot actively contribute to society, what is the standard by which we can evaluate and judge one as being "better" than the other? We can say that it is good to affirm life and being, "they" can say otherwise; I am convinced without the possibility of an appeal to a societally (and individually) transcendent moral reality........
We can speak of efficiency, of a monetary system or currency, being more conducive to general economic well being, and by this standard, certainly, it makes sense to say one currency or economic system is "better" than another, "better" in a pragmatic sense, but when it comes to morality, and the morals/ethics a given individual or society adopts, who sets the rules of criteria by which we judge one as being "better" than another?
Cultural relativity has everything to do with the topic at hand; if one society intersubjectively sets up for itself a generally accepted moral code, and another society intersubjectively does the same, there must be a standard that is not intersubjective by which to judge the "rightness" of one society's set of morals over another, an objective standard, otherwise you end up pitting subjectivity against subjectivity, with no justification to claim one is "better" than the other.
I think that's simply wrong, for the same reasons that it is simply wrong that I would need a transcendent standard by which to judge whether one currency is better than another.
Consider a man who states: torturing babies is wrong.
Another man states: I don't think so, in fact, I quite enjoy torturing babies and derive much pleasure from doing so.
Who's statements reflect a "better" morality? Naturally, we feel inclined to say the former; is our intuition justified? If morality is only subjective, (intersubjectivity only extends the problem from the individual to the societal, i.e, Nazism or an altruistic and democratic society) we have no justification for labeling
How is this any different from an investor saying "I think I"ll invest in Poland rather than Mexicon, because I think the Euro is a stronger currency than the Peso?" Even tho both the Euro and the peso are constructs of their respective cultures, that doesn't mean you can't evaluate them. Of course you can't evaluate moral systems if you don't use moral language, but you can't evaluate monetary systems without using economic language either. (cont)
(cont, to pseudo-Nietzschean101) That doesn't mean that economic language is "ungrounded" or that we can't make judgements as to which is monetary system better. Nor does it mean that moral language is "ungrounded"or that we can't make judgements as to which moral systems are better. The whole issue of cultural relativity is a complete re d herring. Whether something is culturally relative or not has nothing to do with whether we can critique and compare it or not.
1) When you use the word, in regards to a monetary system, "better," this is in a morally neutral context; here, better is used pragmatically. When we speak of one moral or ethical system as being "better;" the usage of the word better is utilized as a value judgment, a moral judgment and it is not simply a matter of pragmatics, or ought not to be. To even use the word "better" presupposes an appeal to a non-subjective standard, one that does not exist in an atheistic world view.
our forefathers? We are forced to make an appeal to a transcendent standard if we want to utilize moral language in arguing for one value over another, or one system of morals over another, but in a naturalistic atheist world view, no such standard exists, and morality remains grounded in the human, which, in my eyes, is no ground at all.....
And do you think that because money has meaning only w.r.t. a particular country or culture, we can't compare whether one monatary system is better than another, or one currency is better than another?
Morality, divorced from transcendence over humanity, is subjective, even if it is intersubjective: morality has been reduced to nothing more than convention, a democratic agreement among the members of a society over the rules that we must play by, but this tells us nothing about whether or not the moral agreements are right or wrong in themselves; our society looks on slavery with disgust; we didn't, en masse, three centuries ago; by what standard do we think we are morally superior to
It is difficult to explain the divide between discovery and invention, though, I suspect there is one, and that it has to do with whether or not the rules are divorced from perspective; there has, of course, been a longstanding argument among the Platonist mathematicians and the functionalists over whether math is discovered or created- I for one, believe elements of invention and discovery are in play, but numbers differ from morals in that numbers are tautological in nature 1+1=2 a priori....
"A priori"?? dude, admit it, you are no Niedtzschean. . . . " 1+1=2 isn't a tautology, to prove that you have to stipulate some (not wholy uncontroversial) axioms. 1+1=2 is kind of like "batchelors are unmarried men" that way, but we certainly invented marriage and batchelors. We also invented numbers.
Well, logically, there will always also be problem with the grounding of God. It will certainly not solve any problem with grounding if we say God is the ground or origin of everything, it will only deny this problematic. You can always imagine something beyond what is called "God". The ground is absolutely necessary for morality. If the only possible grounding was an absolute one, morality could not be. Yet it is. The ground is always posited; it can be a blatant fiction, and yet ground.
in the mean time, we can trust ontologically, of course on condition one is a theist; God also would serve as the ultimate source of obligation......more to follow on that, out of time......
Why would a morality invented by us be any more "radically contingent" than, say, the concept of a computer? Is that "radically contingent?" Or the concept of numbers? Is that "radically contingent?"
Intersubjective morality is still subjective morality; just subjective intersubjectively; it does nothing to solve the issue from a deontological perspective. If the ultimate standard by which we differentiate good from evil is a human standard, then it is a radically contingent standard, as cultural anthropologists would probably be quick to point out; God would serve as the ultimate line of demarcation, even if we are denied access to that reality; it becomes an epistemological problem, but
The pragmatic question of what God can do for us in contrast with what we ourselves can do is interesting, but a bit divergent from God and the grounding of morality; in essence, at least as I see it, without the existence of God, there can be no transperspective moral reality- in the ultimate sense, morality is reduced to subjective morality; morality would only have its grounding in human subjectivity, but being subjective, can hardly be said to be grounded....
There is a third way: not objective, not subjective, but intersubjective. For example, money. Money isn't transperspective, but it isn't subjective, and it certainly is real. Is it ungrounded? Hardly. We invented money to smooth economic interactions, and we invented morality for other social interactions. What does God bring to the table? Not transperspectivity, God's perspective is still a perspective.
Randy, I always interpreted Nietzsche's 'the mad mans' comment "God is dead." to bring up just this issue. There was a time when Europe was united under Catholicism and everyone had reason to agree on moral issues. Once Christianity fragmented and free thinkers started coming out of the closet, a rational justification of morals became impossible.
Under atheism, particularly naturalistic atheism, I do not see the possibility for there to be a correspondant reality that can give a "moral proposition" truth content; under a theistic system, just such a reality exists: God.
Atheism is *not* inconsistent with morality – atheism cannot say where morality *came from*. To the atheist, it just *is*. In other words, an atheist cannot tell a person why they shouldn’t cheat on their spouse if they knew they could get away with it. A big problem.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 I'm an atheist, am married, and can give you a perfectly good reason not to cheat on my wife. Because I promised her I wouldn't.
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman This breaking of a promise would not be known though. There was no harm done in the real sense. In fact, your sexual desires might be fulfilled (one in the + column). I’m not trying to be trite here. It’s just an example that I frequently use – because it works. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying an atheist has no good reason to be faithful.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 Think about it this way. Suppose God exists. If there was REALLY nothing wrong with breaking a promise--if no harm ever came from breaking a promise--then why would god forbid it? Since God does forbid it, there must be some harm that comes from breaking a promise. With me so far? If so, then why can't an atheist look at the harm that would come, and conclude its not moral to do it? Why wouldn't the inherent evil of the act be enough to be reason to conclude its wrong?
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman Let me put it like this. In a purely materialistic view of the world, one’s uncaught cheating is benign. An atheist cannot tell me why it is not. The atheist cannot tell me why a homeless person stealing food to fill his empty belly is wrong. I submit it’s purely logical in the materialistic worldview for him to steal – yet we know he ought not to.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 Do you really believe that the only thing which makes cheating wrong is that God said it is wrong?
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman No, of course not. But the atheist can’t tell me where that ‘ought’ comes from. It just *is*. The theist can say, “God has purposefully designed human beings to know that cheating is wrong”. The atheist must say, “We just know cheating is wrong.” Many atheists then go into the survival of the species, etc. That’s when they reveal the flaw. See cheating is not wrong in itself, it is simply wrong as far as survival goes.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 I don't think I have to say "we just know cheating is wrong" at all. Nor do I think theists can say that God designed human beings to know that cheating is wrong, because I know plenty of people who don't think anything is wrong with cheating--did God just not design them correctly? And I don't think its any mystery where the ought comes from: it comes from the promise I made to my wife. A promise is the creation of an "ought" to keep the promise.
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman I think we’re talking around each other. You wrote that the ‘ought’ comes from the promise you made to your wife. That the promise is the creation of the ‘ought’. Is generic cheating ok without a promise? I think you would be hard pressed to find people that don’t feel cheating is wrong. Just cheat them out of their money to see their true feelings on the matter.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman How can an atheist say, “God must have a reason for prohibiting this, so an atheist can have same said reason?” In a purely materialistic worldview, one in which we are nothing more than particles and elements crashing around – how can an atheist account for this alignment with God’s wishes? Your argument basically boils down to: *atheists know what evil is, so why can’t we just leave it at that?* That’s the whole point of Koukl’s piece.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 I'm just saying lets assume there is a God, that God is exactly like you believe God is---then it STILL is the case that an atheist should be able to figure out whether its moral or not to cheat on his wife.
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman I agree. It is indeed the case the atheist can figure out whether it’s moral to cheat on his wife. I’d wager that many atheists are *more* moral than many theists. The atheist just has the* grounding* problem. It seems to me you’re using God’s *nature* as a springboard to give the atheist way out. Sort of a : If God’s nature deems it, so can I. God is not assessable to the atheist in this way. He doesn’t exist for the comparison.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 Well I think the theist has exactly the same kind of accessibility problems which the atheist has. Sure, theists have the 10 commandments to tell them that murder and adultery are wrong. But how does the bible help at, e.g. what age do we let kids drink alcohol? (too bad we don't know the ages of the people at the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine). Is it moral or immoral to tax the top 5% of earners extra to save millions of lives a year through national health care?
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman To this question, I think you’re exactly right. Theists don’t have access to everything that fits on the moral scale, as it were. Government policy, taxes, etc. are extremely difficult to manage this way. To clarify, the theist, in this case,* Christian* has Scripture, but that’s not *why* he or she has access to a specific moral code. The atheist has the same access (e.g. knowing cheating is wrong). The theist is only able to ground it.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 So suppose a theist and an atheist come together, talk about it, reason the pro's and con's, and agree that its ok to let kids drink when they turn 21. Is the theists belief in this moral principle any more grounded than the atheists is? if so, how? what gounds it?
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman Let’s say, the only reason a responsible theist and a responsible atheist would agree to this would be if it didn't unduly harm the community. While they both have moral reasons for deciding so (i.e. they don’t just pick an age out of a hat) only the theist can say why considering society is beyond a materialistic worldview. Again, the atheist has the exact same access and can provide reasons and proof just as the theist can, they just can’t pin down why *it* is so.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 Hmmm....I still don't understand exactly what the theist has that the atheist doesn't have in this scenario. Suppose both the theist and the atheist agree on every specific harm which would happen to the community: they agree it would cause increased health problems, more drunk driving, more binge drinking, worse grades. What else is there left for them to disagree about? Don't they believe the same thing for exactly the same reasons?
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman Yes. This is what I mean when I say they can have the exact same access and can provide the exact same reasons. In a purely materialistic worldview, however, the atheist cannot say where this access comes from or why these reasons are mostly universal.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 Hmmmm..... I guess I still don't get it. Seems like we are largely in agreement that both atheists and theists could, say, agree that teenagers shouldn't drink because it would hurt their grades. I don't see what adding "....and God grounds that moral fact" really adds. But that could be just do to lack of faith on my part.
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman I think we’re talking around each other. You wrote that the ‘ought’ comes from the promise you made to your wife. That the promise is the creation of the ‘ought’. That’s true as far as it goes, but is generic cheating ok without a promise? Finally, I think you would be hard pressed to find people that don’t feel cheating is wrong. Just cheat them out of their money to see their true feelings on the matter.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 How could it be cheating without a promise? If you are not married to somebody, you can't cheat on your wife, because you don't have a wife :-) And how can you cheat somebody out of money if there wasn't a promise in the first place to be fair?
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman I mentioned *generic* cheating to try and separate it from infidelity (the promise). Let’s say, something as simple as cutting in line at the grocery. There’s no explicit promise. There’s no “I do”. There’s only the natural understood order. This helps my point. This natural moral order has constraints that don’t fit with a materialistic worldview.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 Well, if you were a kindergarten teacher, you'd know there is no naturally understood order that humans know to stand in line :-) There are cultures which know nothing about lines and how to stand in them, and I would argue that if a person from that culture showed up at a grocery and cut ahead in line, they weren't doing anything wrong, because they did not know about our culture. In face "culture" is kind of a shorthand word for "all of the promises we make to each other".
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman BTW, you seem very fair and gracious. Hard to come by these days. I appreciate that.
kwmitch1 1 year ago
@kwmitch1 haha I'm the fox news of atheism--fair and balanced :-)
randyhelzerman 1 year ago
@randyhelzerman Haha. Just don't cut my mic : )
kwmitch1 1 year ago
I thought the theistic ground for morality was simply the distinction between right and wrong, and that this is absolute, and that the reasoning is intuitive and objective.
evigheten1 2 years ago
To me, the moral prohibition of slavery seems like an easy one to explain, unlike questions of what constitutes virtue.
It's simply a matter justification. A key principle within morality/justice is that a person's freedom may not be abridged unless it's as retribution for some infraction committed by that person.
Slavery constitutes an arbitrary and unjustified and, therefore, immoral abridgement of a person's freedom.
Zdrazy 2 years ago
From our vantage point today, of course it is quite easy to explain the moral prohibition against slavery. The problem is how to do so from a theistic perspective, one which states that atheism cannot ground morality, because all morality is grounded by god. I do not see how this perspective explains or reveals the moral prohibition of slavery, especially given that every sacred text from the abrahamic traditions explicitly endorse slavery.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Wow..you really don't do the job here...begging the question a big step back.
veritaslogos 2 years ago
I totally didn't understand your comment can you rephrase?
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Your efforts to rebutt mr. koukl were subpar. Your "solution" to the grounding question, specifically to the question of slavery was "duh no, what more grounding do you need" this doesn't answer the question in anyway, it just assertst the view. Nor in your futher expounding do you better your lot, you simply throw out another moral rule, when the very question just is...how do you ground it? Also, despite what you said, you did reason from an is to an ought. this just wasn't a good response
veritaslogos 2 years ago
Well, I believe virtue is its own reward, which is another way of saying morals need no grounding. But perhaps you could convince me otherwise? Why do morals need grounding? And how does the existence of God ground them? And maybe you could do what no theist has ever been able to do for me: how do you ground the moral principle that slavery is wrong? I can understand if you don't like my answer, but I'd like to hear your answer and your reasons for believing it.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Sure, i'll take a stab at it. could you send ur question to my inbox and i'll give it some thought.
veritaslogos 2 years ago
[1] Hey Randy. Christian morality is grounded in divine principles as you note, but it goes a little deeper than just, "God says." What Jehovah says is rooted in the ideal function of the universe which he created and knows better than anyone. So the end of Christian morality is benefit for the individual, humanity, and the universe. (Ps 37:11; Isa 48:17, 18) There is no other way that will work. It is absolutely right.
heyalun 2 years ago
As to slavery, you present a good principle, that we should love our family and everyone is family. But we dont live in an ideal world. So people commit crimes, there are wars, families starve and go homeless due to poverty. Slavery was the ancient world's way of dealing with these situations. (Ex 22:3; Lev 25:47) Modern society uses prison. Its not ideal to imprison your family members, but what do you suggest should be done when family tries to kill you or steals your stuff?
heyalun 2 years ago
You are a moron and you can't even get your point across. You could use a bit of training and then you wouldn't have to keep saying, "uh ya know, I just don't understand...ya know." Simpleton
cjMhill 2 years ago
@cjMhill I see you are accusing all the people. Now i understand your behaviour. You need therapy "manipulated". LoL
"Manipulated", El mundo is not the way you think. Bitch!
icsdgeo 2 years ago
Comment removed
cjMhill 2 years ago
Lol.. icsdgeo, you have become consumed with me. You should get back to your life. You left an ignorant comment about America on a guitar video. It wasn't a video about international affairs. You deserved the lashing that you received. Now that you have been disabused of your silly ideas, go back to watching Sesame Street. And please, learn proper English if you wish to speak with me. I laugh through all of your comments but honestly I never try to make out what you are trying to say :-)
cjMhill 2 years ago
Consume? I am addicted to you. You are my best friend. Check you account. I wrote to you more! LoL. You the best toy i ever had.
icsdgeo 2 years ago
Oh boy, I love this; I have been reading Alvin Plantinga's response to the Euthyphro dilemma, brilliant stuff.........will it ever end..........????????
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Hmmm.... I've been doing some reading of the turgid argumentation of philosopher Michael Martin on the Euthyphro dilemma, and well, it seems that Aquinas didn't solve this little dilemma after all; if the Christian Apologist cannot solve this question, it is definitely problematic, to say the least, in trying to ground objective morality in God..........
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
yes ;-)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
You can't have it both ways. You either believe in absolute morality or you don't. And if you don't believe in it then you really have no business telling people what they ought or should do. For then you would be telling them that they are wrong if they don't agree with you.
And I got news for you; slavery still exists.
oxo7oxo 2 years ago
Hi oxo7oxo, people still come down with polio--does this mean we have made no progress in making a polio vaccine? Of course not. Similarly, sure slavery still exists, but every single government on earth prohibits it. This is hugh moral progress. Let me ask you a question: exactly how does god ground morality? How does this work, exactly?
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Let's not digress from addressing the problem that your argument poses:
How can you say anyone ought or should behave in a certain manner when you don't believe in absolute morality?
oxo7oxo 2 years ago
Hi oxo7oxo, I already gave an example of how this is done in the video response, where I showed how an atheist might justify the belief that slavery is wrong. Did yoi have any more specific questions about that? If not, I'd really appreciate an answer to my question, because I've never had any theist even try to answer this, and I'd really like to know.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
It can't be justified except from a position of absolutism. You see, when you use 'oughts' and 'shoulds' you are suggesting that anything else that would be done contrary to these is unacceptable. Hence you are arguing from a ground of moral absolutes.
As an atheist you can't do that and still be consistent with your worldview. It appears then that you are an agnostic rather than an atheist.
oxo7oxo 2 years ago
Hmmmmm. You say I can't do something which I just did :-). I showed in the video how to justify the principle that slavery is wrong without reference to god. You can't just claim I'm wrong, you have to show how my justification is wrong. The ball is in your court here, you have the burden of proof. And I will be very disapointed if you don't answer my question, but you will be in good company--no other theists have even tried to answer it either, so I'm forced to conclude they just can't.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Actually, the burden of proof is on you to prove that you are not being inconsistent with your own worldview of atheism by arguing from a ground of moral absolutes. Just because an idea is popular that doesn't make it right. The majority doesn't always rule in favor of the truth.
Again, if you are truly an atheist then you can't be consistent with your view that there are no moral absolutes while telling people what they ought to do in terms of how they treat others.
oxo7oxo 2 years ago
Incidentally, I use the term agnostic loosely because while your argumentation from the ground of 'ought to' and 'should not' implies that absolute morality exists, you aren't ready to concur that its source is God. ;-)
oxo7oxo 2 years ago
(cont, to oxo7oxo) for example, walk me through the steps here: today we are debating on universal health care. Presumably, you think that God makes it absolutely true that we should have health care, or absolutely false that we should have universal health care: how do we tell what God's absolute morality decrees on this issue?
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
You are arguing from the moral ground of should and ought. But does it really make sense to say that you should or ought to behave in a certain way when you don't believe in absolute morality?
And if you do believe in absolute morality how could you deny the existence of God and still make sense while doing so?
oxo7oxo 2 years ago
(1)
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to end our discussion. On reflection, I realize that I injected, however so slightly, an element of vociferousness into our debate, and if you found this to be the case, I apologize. I have learned a lot from our discussion, and it is a tragedy that too often we, I at least, view philosophic discussion or debate as something that has to be won, and my fellow discusser, someone to be conquered, thank you for your insights.....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Yeah we're starting to repeat ourselves, which is usually a good sign that its time to get off of the merry-go round. The discussion might have been vociferous, but it was better than most of thediscussions which happen around here. But you've conviinced me I need to make a video series about this, so I hope the conversation doesn't stop here; when I get around to posting them I hope you watch and comment, because you articulate very well what a lot of viewers would like to say, I'm sure.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
I would love for you to do some videos; I really liked your "Perpetual Review of the Perpetual Wound" series, and I would be glad to comment....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(2)
by which to judge the "wrongness" of a societies moral system. Science, while necessarily involving communication between humans, is not solely a matter of inter-subjectivity, it is limited by the nature it studies.
You throw words, in a moral context, like "wrong" around in a matter that alludes to objectivity while denying an objective point of reference by which to condemn moral choices.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Hi Nietzschean101, I don't know exactly how to answer that. I mean, you are correct that saying a moral principle can be wrong is indeed to deny that morality is subjective. But it is a false dichotomy to think that things have to be either objective or subjective. I think we should just drop the words "objective" and "subjective" altogether; I don't see what they add besides confusion. I think we should talk about whether moral rules are right or wrong, not objective or subjective.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(1)
You say: "I've said over and over that just as scientists can be wrong about physics, societies can be wrong about morals."
What exactly do you mean that scientists can be wrong about physics? Well, I would imagine that it has something to do with a given conclusion not accurately reflecting objective reality. What do you mean when you say "societies can be wrong about morals?" To even make the claim societies can be "wrong" about morals presupposes a trans-societal standard
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Just out of idle curiosity, why do you call yourself "Nietzschean"? Nietzsche pretty much demolished this sort of correspondence theory of truth which you seem to be espousing here. Be that as it may, its just too general of a question. For example, suppose there was some scientist who thought there was unicorns. What makes him wrong? What portion of reality is reflected by the statement "there are no unicorns?" Well, there's no unicorns in my pocket, so my pocket (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Neitz) makes him worng. But there's no unicorns on the sun either so the sun makes him wrong....on and on. There's no unicorns anywhere in the universe, so the whole universe makes him wrong. Yeah, this is a pretty vacuous answer, but there really is no portion of the universe smaller than the entire universe which makes him wrong. Same goes for morality. The entire universe makes the statement "There's no such thing as moral slavery" wrong.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(8)
You have identified moral truths as what a society adopts through a peer review process and in so doing, have rendered moral truths relative to the society that adopts them, and in so doing, one system of morality cannot be said to be better, and by better, I mean more "right" or "wrong", than any other system because to make that claim, one would have to appeal to a trans-societal moral reality or moral law that a given society may stand in violation of.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
I have not identified moral truths as what a society adopts through peer review process. Just because something passes peer review doesn't mean its the truth.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(7)
Science is not destroyed by cultural relativity or subjectivity because reality, due to its nature, limits our ability to interpret it, but this nature exists external to the one doing the interpreting; you have located moral truth in the peer review, and in so doing, as the old saying goes: what's true for you may not be true for me. One member of a society leaves babies out to die, another cherishes the young, how can one adopted ethic be said to be "better" than the other?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Ok, Nietzschean101, just answer me this one question: in 1840, scientists measured meters with a platinum irridium bar in paris. Now they do it with wavelengths of light. Those 2 socieities used two different measuring sticks, and would therefore give two different answers for the question "how far is it from london to paris". Does this mean that physiics is culturaly relative? (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to nietz) If your answer to that question is "NO" then why would you think that morality is culturallly relative just because one culture would give a different answer to the question of whether infant exposure is ok or not?
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(6)
The Greeks societally adopted a system of infanticide, did that make the practice right or good? The Mongolians, under Genghis Khan, societally adopted a system of genocide, it was peer reviewed, should we conclude, in locating moral truth in the peer review system, that they were in the right?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Just because somehting passes peer review doesn't mean its the truth.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(5) *blood and soil, sorry
(5)
Why should a societal standard be endowed with such power when societies are frequently found to be in the wrong? Consider, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, existentially concluded for himself, against the adopted societal ethical code, that Hitler was evil and the Nazis were in the moral wrong, and he sacrificed his life in this belief, but according to you, he was actually in the wrong because society ultimately decides what is right and what is wrong.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Just because something passes peer review doesn't mean its the truth.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(4) To quote you:
"When you say "one may conclude its right to rape" I disagree...... These things are determined by society,not by the individual."
So what if a society concludes the moral normality of rape, and concludes that the act is not worth our condemnation, does this make it right? What if a society, as the Germans did, peer reviews the various Nazi ethics, and concludes the goodness and righteousness of such a moral system, the whole blood on soil thing, does this make it right?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Hi Nietzschean101, I suppose I can see how a rather leaden reading of that statement would lead you to believe that I identified societal consensus with moral truth, but dude, I've said over and over that just as scientists can be wrong about physics, societies can be wrong about morals. I've stated that passing peer review doesn't mean somethign is true. Its kind of mysterious to me why you would take the conversation back in this direction after I've made those statements.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(3)
for ceasing to set mouse traps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house." While science may increase our understanding of the world, and human nature, and we in turn respond, we do not have the right to feel morally superior to our progenitors.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(2)
demonstrated, disastrous. It is good not to confuse moral progress with the advancement of knowledge of a scientific nature. For example, borrowing again from C.S. Lewis, are we more moral than our forefathers because we do not burn people alive because we believe them to be witches? Of course not, to quote: "It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: There's no moral advance in not executing them when you don't think they are there. You wouldn't call a man humane
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
The examples I've given you are not of the character of not believing in witches anymore. E.g. slavery. C.S. lewis point here is a big red herring here. If you had to go back to 1948 and live one week as an african american woman in Mississippi, I think you'd (a) be very happy when that week was up and you could come back, and (b) be very happy to say there's been tremendous moral progress since then.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(1)
Given that the 20th century was the most violent and depraved in all of human history, I do not see how it can be said that we have made moral progress; I think our progenitors would stand aghast, in trembling and palsy, before the bloodshed of the 20th century. Technology compounds the problem because our power to carry out innate destructive tendencies is augmented and if there is not a coinciding progress in morality with advancing technological prowess, the results are, as has been
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(9)
Words like "moral progress" are thrown into the trash faster than Rush Limbaugh can shove OxyContin into his mouth. Progress assumes there is a measuring stick by which to measure it; you have located that measuring stick in the democratic process, and in doing so, "progress" is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
You use "measuring stick" as a metaphor, but lets talk about a real measuring stick for a while. Physicists used to define a meter as the length of a certain platinum-irridum bar in paris. But they stopped doing that, and now define it in terms of wavelenth of light. Using the new standard, they can show the old standard is worse. Does this mean that progress in physics is entierly in the eye of the beholder, because it was dependent upon the measuring stick they used?
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(8)
You have located moral truths as democratic truths, ones to be found in a societal peer review process, and in so doing, even using the word "moral truth" is a bit contradictory; there would be no moral truths, just finite, contingent, judgments. A man saying it is ok to rape a child, goes from being as wrong as 2+2=5, to something that an individual or society has the last word on; a relative cultural judgment, as objective standards of moral abnormality have been denied.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Really, I suppose I could summarize my objections to this line of thought this way: every objection you've brought against the reality of morality could also be brought against the reality of physics :-) What counts as the standard kilogram is a "democratic truth" in your sense. Have you therefore demolished physics? Hardly. But you haven't demolished morality either.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
or peer review will change some, not all, established facts. In the natural sciences, for example,reality puts limits on our ability to validly interpret it. Some conclusions drawn from peer review will be an accurate reflection of reality, others will not be, but this is ultimately because of reality, not the peer reviewers. It is the reality of the heart pumping blood that renders it as true that the heart pumps blood and not Mountain Dew- this is trans-societal.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Ok, lets consider a case which might help here. Currently, the standard kilogram is defined to be exactly the mass of a bar of platinum-irridium in France. But scientists are trying to replace that definition with something else. Now, on what basis are they going to make that determination? What trans-standard reality dictates what the mass of a kilogram is? To ask the question is to lapse into oxymoronism: there can not be any trans-standard way of evaluating the standard! (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Neitz) Same goes for morality--morality is the standard of conduct, so of course there cannot be any trans-standard way of evaluating morality. But of course, this doesn't prevent scientists from saying "its better to make the standard kilogram from platinum irridum than it would be to make it from ice cream", or from saying "we need a better standard than a 200-year-old hunk of metal". Think about how they would go about replacing the standard kilogram: they would try (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Neitz) several different ways out (e.g. now they are trying out things like spheres of silicon or electro-balances) and the scientists would say thing like "this works for me!" and another scientist would say "yeah, that works for me too!" or "no, you forgot about this..." until they could agree on some other standard. I.e. it would be decided by peer review. Its not decided by consulting God to tell us what the transcendantly TRUE real kilogram is. (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Neitz) But notice, its just silly to say that (1) because physics has a standard which we voted on, (2) therefore physics is not real, or is ungrounded, or subjective, yadda yadda. But we decide on moral matters in exactly the same way. One state legalizes gay marriage, and says "yeah, this works for me". Other states try it out and say "yeah, works for me too". Eventually the standard of conduct changes, indeed, improves.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(6)
Science is not a matter of dogmatism, or ought not to be, I well understand this; it would be ludicrous for a scientist to exclaim, once and for all time, the validity of a given conclusion, but not always, some science is indeed transperspective. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood, not a factory that produces unicorns; arteries carry oxygenated blood, not Mountain Dew; it is objectively true that deprived of oxygen for long enough, humans die- no amount of perspective
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(5)
adopted standards, your individual, subjective judgment is, and only can be, an expression of taste or emotion. TRUTH or RIGHT/WRONG, in locating its ultimate source in the methodological process of peer review, is only whatever conclusions the peer reviewers draw from whatever available information. One may, for whatever reason, conclude it is perfectly right to rape, another may conclude it wrong, but the conclusions go no farther than the one's drawing the conclusions.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
When you say "one may conclude its right to rape" I disagree. One may not do so, any more than I can decide that the price of a porsche is $1 and go down to the dealership and buy it :-) These things are determined by society,not by the individual.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(4)
Your utilization of the word "progress" is an interesting case as you have located the invention of moral truths in the societal peer review process; who defines moral progress, given that any appeal to a trans-societal standard has been rejected on your part? If one society defines moral progress as how many more women were raped this year than last, and another society by how many prevented, and there is no trans-societal standard by which to judge the rightness or wrongness of the
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
I don't see how the problem of trans-societal standard is any different for physics or psychology than it is for morality. In neither case is there a trans-societal standard which can be referred to. In both cases, it is peer review which decides what is judged better and what is judged worse. Neither Scientists nor moralists can know that they are in touch with any trans-societal truth.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(3)
"We both espouse moral philosophies we could never hope to accomplish, spouting messages of peace and forgiveness, and violently fucking our women when no one is looking."
I shed any humanistic liberal illusions about any moral progress a long time ago, and knowing that we have a black President does not help me sleep more comfortably at night......
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(2)
and so on and so forth, you can see why I am more than a bit hesitant to exclaim that our species has made "moral progress;" the template changes, but we remain a demonic species, one torn between our angelic and satanic nature, as our dear YouTube friend Azrienoch put it in his The Absurdity of Philosophy:
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(1)
Come, come, now Randy, surely, looking at photographs of the Holocaust, or of the destruction of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, or on reading of Stalin's purges, or learning of Pol Pot's great orgies of slaughter, Idi Amin's depraved and violent regime, or on hearing of North Korea's internment camps, the mass killings in Darfur, Mao Zedong's record of genocide and torture and China's continued abysmal human rights record, on the "honor killings" being carried out daily in Pakistan
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Hi Nietaschean101, you are confusing advancements in morality with advancements in the appllication of technology. Its like confusing advancements in surgury with advancements in application of surgery--for example, there's 100,000 people who are blind from cateracts in Bangladesh. But that doesn't mean there's been no advancement in cateract surgery, we know very well how to cure them. The technology just isn't being applied to them. (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Nietz) same goes for the cases you mentioned. Yeah, bad things happen, sometimes on industrial scales, but it used to be the case that bad things happend BECAUSE people thought they were good, rather than DESPITE people thought they were good. For example, the Bible has many instances where genocide was endorced by god as the proper thing to do. People once thought genocide was a moral imperative. Today they don't, that's progress in morality, if not in application.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
You must see this, surely you do. In some sense, I do not see how the atheist universe can support anything but, in some final sense, a non-cognitivist, emotive perspective.....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
No, honestly, I don't see. I'm willing to listen to your explanations of how this might be, tho. See if you can't more cogently frame the argument in favor of emotive morality.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(5)
Now, in science, the ultimate appeal is made to nature- that beloved "thing" that quashes and usurps mythological cosmological explainations of their explanatory power, but, in an atheist world view, there is no final appeal that can be made, because transperspective moral reality is denied, it is in this denial that renders as unjustified any claims that one moral system can be said to be better, or more reflective of a "right" or "good" moral reality than any other system....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
*sigh* sorry Nietzschean101, science has no ultimate appeal. It is always left open that something, be it nature or even thought experiments (like Einstein's) might overthrow what was thought to be true.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(4)
The unidirectionality of scientific knowledge is ensured by an objective reality: nature. Of course, I know the difficulties associated with epistemological objectivity, but here, we are taking it as axiomatic that there is a noumenal world that exists and that this noumenal world puts limits on what we can know of the phenomenal world and noumenal alike, in short, a kind of ontological realism that renders certain perspectives as untrue.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
dude.... "the unidirectionality of scientific knowledge is ensured by an objective reality" come on dude. Lets get real here. You arn't a nietzschean. Science does not claim to produce results which are objectively true. Science only claims to produce results which have passed peer review. No scientist is ever going to say that his results are objectively true.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(3)
"There is, moreover, a hierarchy among paradigms that is established by nature rather than man: the theory of relativity could not have been discovered before having discovered the Newtonian laws of motion. It is this hierarchy among paradigms that ensures a coherence and unidirectionality to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Why is it that we do not see the same kind of advancement in moral knowledge as we do in scientific knowledge?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Are you kidding Nietzschean101? No moral progress? Slavery is illegal everywhere now. Yeah it still happens, but it used to be that preachers would defend slavery from the pulpit. That's huge moral progress. We have a black president--more signs of hugh moral progress. Antisemitism used to be public policy, now it is frowned on and forbidden everywhere. Debtor's prisons have been eliminated. . . . I could go on and on. Yeah, a lot of bad things still happen, but (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Neitz) here's the thing--a lot of things which used to be considered morally ok, even morally good (slavery, discrimination against women, jews, etc) are now recognized to be moral evil. That's progress. W.r.t. your statement "peer review is always done with the pretext to the coming of an understanding of something external to the peer review" I think you need to more precisely state the point you are trying to make, because I don't see how morality isn't external(cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Neitz) to the peer review process at least as much as, say, mathematics is (there is genuine dispute among mathematicians as to whether math is invented or discoverd) or lexicography is (the very act of publishing a dictionary changes the language for which it was a dictionary of) etc or computer science (any algorithm developed is first run inside of some computer programmer's head before its run on a computer). Or even the science of genetic engineering--is curing (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont to neitz) a genetic disease internal or external to humanity? Is curing bad functioning of your kidney's any more internal or external than curing bad functioning of your morals? Or psychology, is that internal or external? I think this dichotomy you are trying to draw is as artificial as the subjective/objective dichotomy, perhaps indistinguishable from it. Again, a point which should be very congenial to somebody who calls themself "neitzschien".
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(2)
Now try and understand why I cannot accept as analogous the scientific peer review and the moral peer review. I shall quote Francis Fukuyama, in the midst of defending his "End of History" thesis against skeptics such as Kuhn, a bit out of context but it works all the same:
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(1)
Peer review is a matter of methodology, but, as in science, generally speaking, the peer review is always done with the pretext to the coming of an understanding of something external to the peer review; in short, the peer reviewers are discovering, not creating, in the process of the review, truth, or at least, empirical adequacy.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(cont, #5, to Neitz) expected to live a moral life. That's one of the things---not the only thing, of course!--but one of the things which distinguishes morality from physics, or biology. We are all expected to be experts in morality in that we know the rules well enough to follow them. So when a proposed moral principle comes up, we all get to peer review it. Does this mean that if we all agree on something, its THE TRUTH? Of course not. But the same goes for any (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, #6, to Neitz) other area of knowledge. We can be wrong. Experts can be wrong. We can look at the scientists of yore, or the scientists of another discipline, and say they are wrong. Same goes for morality. I would have no qualms about saying that rape is wrong, of children or otherwise, or that slavery is wrong. So I hope this addresses your concern about applying a standard to evaluate morals: the standard is the same as it is in any other area of human inquiry: peer review.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, #7, to Neitz) So this is why I think that distinguishing between "objective" and "subjective" areas of knowledge is just a false, really, a useless, distinction. While it is true that nobody can appeal to any higher, transcendent principle to validate their morality, nobody can appeal to any higher, transcendent principle to validate physics, or math, or anything else either. Physicists can and have been as wrong as theologians sometimes. (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, #8, to Neitz) But, conversely, theologians have been as right, or even more right, than physicists and biologists have. In the 1840s, while the biologists were busy writing textbooks which said that the negroid races were less evolved than the european races, there were plenty of theologians saying we are all god's children, equally endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. Because we don't need any transcendent authority, as long as we have each other.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
"Right" and "wrong" or "good" and "evil" lose all meaning as the terms have classically been understood: there would be no RIGHT, no WRONG, only what arouses emotional horror or joy, and if one derives joy in torturing another human being......who are we to judge?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
In summary:
Evaluation assumes standards, or, in evaluating you must evaluate by a standard. In evaluating morality, or a societally adopted moral code, you must apply a standard, even if the standard is there are no standards (moral nihilism), if the applied standard is subjective, it cannot be said to be a standard that is in any sense "better," or of a more encourageable nature, than another subjective standard.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(7)
In making any kind of claim that the society that blatantly accepts child rape is worthy of our moral condemnation, we must, if we are to be justified in our judgment as externally binding, make an appeal untainted by subjective perspective, in short, an appeal to objectivity, otherwise, we are merely expressing our personal distaste for such behavior.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(6)
And if the raping of a child is only in violation of a given society's set of norms, what of a society that has no issue with child rape, and has no level of admonishment against it? How can the former society, who respects the child's "right" not to be violated in such a manner, criticize the latter society's acceptance of such a behavior without making an appeal that is societally transcendent?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(5)
Michael Ruse has stated, "The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says, 2+2=5."
We certainly intuitively share his sentiment, but can such a statement of fact be established? Well, certainly not from an atheist perspective as: the man who raped a child is not in violation of an objective principle, one divorced from perspective, but is simply in violation of anthropogenically created and agreed upon values....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(4)
then certainly one, as a matter of principle, cannot make an appeal to any external, transcendent, or "higher" ethic in evaluating ethical principles, and if in this case, "man is the measure of all things," how can it be decided what given conflicting ethical systems are "better?" What is the standard by which we could draw conclusions regarding ethical conflict, given that, there is no absolute frame of reference?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(3)
As has been pointed out before, moral intersubjectivity is subjectivity intersubjectively; a popular agreement upon a set of moral principles by which individuals of a given society "ought" to abide by, ultimately tells us nothing about the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the standards of adoption; truth is not a matter of democracy, correct? And if one denies as a matter of presupposition that morality, or moral claims, can have truth content, true/false, ......
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(2)
I certainly do not question the ability of an atheist to be an individual of moral integrity, and a person who embodies a wonderful philathranpic spirit, indeed, it would be nonsense to suggest otherwise as so many of our garden variety theists do, but I think that what is at issue for me is the ability of an atheist to be justified in making evaluative claims in the arena of morality with any externally binding force.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(1)
Please, good sir, do forgive my absence around these parts of late; I shall offer no excuses.
You know, I even broke out on old copy of Lewis's "Mere Christianity" on this one, ha ha.....God, I remember those days in my youth, desperately clinging to my comforting metaphysical beliefs, beliefs that are like a cold pillow on which to rest one's weary head at night after a tortuously long day, but that's all behind me now, but enough biography, back to the discussion.....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
. . . man has it come to this? Somebody self-styled "Nietzschean101" is using C.S. Lewis :-) Gotta love the irony. Ok, is truth a matter of democracy? Lets talk about something which (at first) might seem more objective than morals. Say there's a new vaccine developed by some scientists. How do we know the truth of whether it is effective or not? Well, the gold standard is . . . . peer review. Yes, that's right. Other scientists get together and vote as to whether this vaccine (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, #2, to Nietz) is effective or not. They try it, they see if they can reproduce it, and if they agree that it is reproducible, then we say its confirmed. Same goes for mathematical proofs. Somebody gives a mathematical proof of a new theorem, then other mathematicians look at it, and if they agree that it is a good proof, they accept it. If not, they don't. Peer review is the cornerstone of the scientific method. Now you might say can't scientists be wrong? (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, #3) Sure they can. Something can pass peer review and still be wrong. The mere fact that all the scientists agree doesn't mean its the truth. And it doesn't mean that later on they won't reverse themselves. But the fact that they all agree about it is a good sign that they are on to something--perhaps the best sign we have that they are on to something. Now lets double-clilck on this peer review--scientists only count votes from their peers. I'm not a peer or them, (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont#4). so I don't get to vote. So let's apply this peer review thing to morality: somebody proposes a new moral principle, like women should wear a burka, or that gays are allowed to marry. Who gets to vote? Everybody! Why? Well nit eveybody is expected to be an expert in physics or higher math,but everybody is
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Excellent video and I agree vis-à-vis theism. However, your attempt to ground morality is open to an infinite regress, no? Unless you believe in axiomatic oughts from which all other oughts can be derived?
I would simply say that morality does not require grounding; we have moral claims and a moral tradition, this tradition is open to rational criticism and if you fall short of it you are deemed to have behaved immorally according to the best available (albeit fallible) moral knowledge.
RowanFortuneWood 2 years ago
Hi RowanFortuneWood, perceptive comments, as usual. I too believe that the desire to ground morality, in the sense of trying to reduce it to some non-moral language, is wrong. In fact, that's essentially another way of putting Hume's point: If you can't reason from an is to an ought, you certainly cannot ground morality. But of course, the mistake here isn't thinking that morality is real, the mistake is in thinkng that morality needs to be grounded in this sense. (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont) But, as you say, this doens't mean that claims are not open to rational criticism. My exercise of justifying that slavery is evil, for example, explicitly wasn't reasoning from moral to non-moral principles, but was just showing that one moral principle implies another. Infinite regress, yes, well; inasmuch as the point of moral discourse is to reach agreement as to how we should live, how WE should live, you don't have to go "all the way back" you just have to (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to RowanFortuneWood) have to go back to moral principles which you have in common with the people you are trying to live harmoniously with. But as you point out, this is in no way a grounding of those moral principles. Such a grounding cannot be given nor need it be.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
I entirely agree then, thanks for your intelligent response to my comment :)
RowanFortuneWood 2 years ago
I must say, I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Response pending......
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
lol thanks Nietzschean, I've enjoyed it as well.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Please excuse the disorder, but the numbering 1,2,3 should help ease the confusion.......
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Comment removed
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(2)
Imagine:
Society A believes, has mythologically construed, that solar eclipses are the result of a sky dragon God eating the sun.
Society B believes that, has scientifically substantiated, solar eclipses are the result of the moon passing between the sun and earth.
Of course, because one society has adopted on view, and another society, another view, this does not put them on equal footing because of cultural relativity, but this is only because.....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
(1)
The only reason that you cannot affirm your personal tastes in economic matters, a porsche 911 costing $5, or feeding the world by preference, is that the potentiality of your tastes are limited by an objective reality; it is objectively real that Porsche's do not cost $5. But in matters of morality, where is there an objective moral reality that can be appealed to in keeping one from adopting whatever moral code he or she is interested in adopting?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Hi Nietzschean101, again the phrase 'it is objectively real that Porsches..." is a very curious phrase for somebody styled 'Nietzschean' to use. Be that as it may, I claim that morality has the same claim to reality that the price of a car does, for very similar reasons. How do we measure what the price of a something is? Lets use stocks instead of cars, because the process of determining the price is more visible, although quite exactly the same. We offer it for sale and see what (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Nietaschean101) people will pay for it. It varies every day, and indeed, what somebody is willing to pay for it varies from person to person. Yet there's no doubt that there is a truth value to the price a stock has. But quite the same thing goes for morality. We all have our opinions about what courses of action are moral or not--some people highly value burkas, some don't, some highly value human life, some dont, etc (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Nietzschean101) but so what? Somebody who loves porsche's is willing to pay more for a porsche than somebody who doesn't, but that doesn't mean that we can't determine what the price of a porsche is. Similarly, in negotiations with each other, we can arrive at conclusions as to what is moral or not. I don't see how the reality of morals is any different than the reality of the price of stocks.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(3)
we can only affirm personal tastes, and these tastes have no binding power external to the one who makes the affirmation; judgment, in any ultimate sense, must be suspended.........
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
"we can only affirm personal tastes" uh, no. Think a little bit more about the parallel of morals with money. If I could affirm my personal taste in monetary matters, I would make a porsche turbo 911 cost about $5. Then I would feed the world by merely preferring that over starvation :) Morals are not a matter of personal taste any more than the price of a porsche is. Nor is is a matter of personal taste that the dollar is more stable than the peso or less stable than the euro. (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to Neitz) This one example suffices to prove the complete fallacy of thinking that just because X is culturally relative or constructed by humanity, X is a matter of personal taste. It also suffices to prove the complete fallacy of thinking that God has to underwrite such, because god doesn't underwrite our monetary system. You'll need to come up with a better argument than this if you want to convince me.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(2)
One society adopts infanticide in regards to the mentally or physically deformed, another values children, even the "weak" ones who cannot actively contribute to society, what is the standard by which we can evaluate and judge one as being "better" than the other? We can say that it is good to affirm life and being, "they" can say otherwise; I am convinced without the possibility of an appeal to a societally (and individually) transcendent moral reality........
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
We can speak of efficiency, of a monetary system or currency, being more conducive to general economic well being, and by this standard, certainly, it makes sense to say one currency or economic system is "better" than another, "better" in a pragmatic sense, but when it comes to morality, and the morals/ethics a given individual or society adopts, who sets the rules of criteria by which we judge one as being "better" than another?
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Cultural relativity has everything to do with the topic at hand; if one society intersubjectively sets up for itself a generally accepted moral code, and another society intersubjectively does the same, there must be a standard that is not intersubjective by which to judge the "rightness" of one society's set of morals over another, an objective standard, otherwise you end up pitting subjectivity against subjectivity, with no justification to claim one is "better" than the other.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
I think that's simply wrong, for the same reasons that it is simply wrong that I would need a transcendent standard by which to judge whether one currency is better than another.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
one as better than the other in any ultimate sense.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Consider a man who states: torturing babies is wrong.
Another man states: I don't think so, in fact, I quite enjoy torturing babies and derive much pleasure from doing so.
Who's statements reflect a "better" morality? Naturally, we feel inclined to say the former; is our intuition justified? If morality is only subjective, (intersubjectivity only extends the problem from the individual to the societal, i.e, Nazism or an altruistic and democratic society) we have no justification for labeling
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
How is this any different from an investor saying "I think I"ll invest in Poland rather than Mexicon, because I think the Euro is a stronger currency than the Peso?" Even tho both the Euro and the peso are constructs of their respective cultures, that doesn't mean you can't evaluate them. Of course you can't evaluate moral systems if you don't use moral language, but you can't evaluate monetary systems without using economic language either. (cont)
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(cont, to pseudo-Nietzschean101) That doesn't mean that economic language is "ungrounded" or that we can't make judgements as to which is monetary system better. Nor does it mean that moral language is "ungrounded"or that we can't make judgements as to which moral systems are better. The whole issue of cultural relativity is a complete re d herring. Whether something is culturally relative or not has nothing to do with whether we can critique and compare it or not.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
1) When you use the word, in regards to a monetary system, "better," this is in a morally neutral context; here, better is used pragmatically. When we speak of one moral or ethical system as being "better;" the usage of the word better is utilized as a value judgment, a moral judgment and it is not simply a matter of pragmatics, or ought not to be. To even use the word "better" presupposes an appeal to a non-subjective standard, one that does not exist in an atheistic world view.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
our forefathers? We are forced to make an appeal to a transcendent standard if we want to utilize moral language in arguing for one value over another, or one system of morals over another, but in a naturalistic atheist world view, no such standard exists, and morality remains grounded in the human, which, in my eyes, is no ground at all.....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
So do you think money is ungrounded? Or doesn't exist? Or is only subjective?
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
And do you think that because money has meaning only w.r.t. a particular country or culture, we can't compare whether one monatary system is better than another, or one currency is better than another?
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
(2)
Morality, divorced from transcendence over humanity, is subjective, even if it is intersubjective: morality has been reduced to nothing more than convention, a democratic agreement among the members of a society over the rules that we must play by, but this tells us nothing about whether or not the moral agreements are right or wrong in themselves; our society looks on slavery with disgust; we didn't, en masse, three centuries ago; by what standard do we think we are morally superior to
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
It is difficult to explain the divide between discovery and invention, though, I suspect there is one, and that it has to do with whether or not the rules are divorced from perspective; there has, of course, been a longstanding argument among the Platonist mathematicians and the functionalists over whether math is discovered or created- I for one, believe elements of invention and discovery are in play, but numbers differ from morals in that numbers are tautological in nature 1+1=2 a priori....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
"A priori"?? dude, admit it, you are no Niedtzschean. . . . " 1+1=2 isn't a tautology, to prove that you have to stipulate some (not wholy uncontroversial) axioms. 1+1=2 is kind of like "batchelors are unmarried men" that way, but we certainly invented marriage and batchelors. We also invented numbers.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Well, logically, there will always also be problem with the grounding of God. It will certainly not solve any problem with grounding if we say God is the ground or origin of everything, it will only deny this problematic. You can always imagine something beyond what is called "God". The ground is absolutely necessary for morality. If the only possible grounding was an absolute one, morality could not be. Yet it is. The ground is always posited; it can be a blatant fiction, and yet ground.
matowana 2 years ago
Well, maybe not blatant, but consciously a fiction anyway.
matowana 2 years ago
in the mean time, we can trust ontologically, of course on condition one is a theist; God also would serve as the ultimate source of obligation......more to follow on that, out of time......
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
Why would a morality invented by us be any more "radically contingent" than, say, the concept of a computer? Is that "radically contingent?" Or the concept of numbers? Is that "radically contingent?"
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Intersubjective morality is still subjective morality; just subjective intersubjectively; it does nothing to solve the issue from a deontological perspective. If the ultimate standard by which we differentiate good from evil is a human standard, then it is a radically contingent standard, as cultural anthropologists would probably be quick to point out; God would serve as the ultimate line of demarcation, even if we are denied access to that reality; it becomes an epistemological problem, but
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
The pragmatic question of what God can do for us in contrast with what we ourselves can do is interesting, but a bit divergent from God and the grounding of morality; in essence, at least as I see it, without the existence of God, there can be no transperspective moral reality- in the ultimate sense, morality is reduced to subjective morality; morality would only have its grounding in human subjectivity, but being subjective, can hardly be said to be grounded....
Nietzschean101 2 years ago
There is a third way: not objective, not subjective, but intersubjective. For example, money. Money isn't transperspective, but it isn't subjective, and it certainly is real. Is it ungrounded? Hardly. We invented money to smooth economic interactions, and we invented morality for other social interactions. What does God bring to the table? Not transperspectivity, God's perspective is still a perspective.
randyhelzerman 2 years ago
Randy, I always interpreted Nietzsche's 'the mad mans' comment "God is dead." to bring up just this issue. There was a time when Europe was united under Catholicism and everyone had reason to agree on moral issues. Once Christianity fragmented and free thinkers started coming out of the closet, a rational justification of morals became impossible.
pseudonous 2 years ago
Under atheism, particularly naturalistic atheism, I do not see the possibility for there to be a correspondant reality that can give a "moral proposition" truth content; under a theistic system, just such a reality exists: God.
Nietzschean101 2 years ago