Another video on Secular Humanism and a challenge to DonExodus2

Some time before making his video entitled "thoughts on creationism", DonExodus2 deconverted. KabanetheChristian, TheIrrationalAtheist, and I tried to have a comment-section dialogue with him on this issue. DonExodus2 cited religious pluralism as a reason for his deconversion. He also said that the historicity of Jesus is questionable. This is why I say that he is not a Christian, although one can try to employ some sort of post-modern philosophy of language and say that he's a "christian", I think we should stick to modernism.

SCRIPT: I thought that it would be more than appropriate to sport this caricature of Frederich Nietzche in a discussion on secular humanism.
So DonExodus2 recently made his video called misconceptions about atheism. I want to get just one thing out of the way first. DonExodus2 is NOT a Christian, at least not in the conventional sense. Ill elaborate on this in the description box.
Second, Don claims that to say that atheism cannot exist with morality is a misconception about atheism.
This isnt so much a misconception about atheism as it is about atheists. While it is true that atheists can be moral, it is NOT true that one can be logically consistent and be an atheist and a moral realist at the same time.
There are two very similar reasons why this is so, the first coming from David Hume, one of the greatest philosophers to ever live, and the second coming from J.L. Mackie.
First the Humean argument. David Hume famously pointed out that one cannot extract an ought-statement from an is-statement. You cannot get an ought from an is, or in more technical terms, one cannot derive a prescriptive fact from a descriptive fact.
Now on an atheistic worldview, the only transcendental facts are descriptive facts. By Transcendental I mean facts which are true regardless of what anyone thinks.
Now this being said, there can therefore be no prescriptive facts on an atheistic worldview. Therefore, if DonExodus and other atheists are to be consistent, they have to move beyond their short-sighted secular humanism and move into the realm of moral nihilism.
Perhaps morality is just a property. Perhaps certain actions, like genocide, have the property of being wrong, and other actions, like altruism, have the property of being right. Sorry Ayn Rand.
Forgetting for the moment that morality is not descriptive, but rather is a series of statements of certain actions one ought to do or ought not do, we can turn to J.L. Mackies take on this.
To say that inanimate objects can stand in moral relations to eachother, and on naturalism objects are the only things that exist, is absurd. What does it even mean for one object to stand in a moral relationship with another object? It is meaningless.
The ethical skeptic watching this video might feel tempted to ask Why does God solve the is-ought gap? and feel as if he won the day. The problem is that Gods commands are not themselves descriptive, but are prescriptive.
For instance, when I say that my brakes ought to stop my car, I am saying this because it is my intention to stop the car. In the same way, morality is inextricably linked with some sort of intentionality, some sort of agent. This is why Morality cannot exist without God.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• DonExodus2
• Secular
• humanism
• nihilism
• atheism

[Gorzakk]

@Davin404 Greater good = Least amount of harm to all as a whole.

1. Show empirical proof that this is "good".

2. So if 5 sick people needed a different set of organs, and one healthy person happened to have all 5 organs that matched, we should clearly kill him and give the 5 people their health.

3. And what of people who are born "deficient" and will absorb more from society than they can contribute? Involuntary euthanasia?

[Gorzakk]

@Davin404 That is evolutionary biology, not morality. Morality is by definition a set of behaviours one ought to follow, not a set of behaviours which simply exist.

By your definition, a man who sees an ideal female who will provide good genes for his children should plant his seed in her - with or without her consent - as this is evolved behaviour.

[Clel0005]

You ripped this off someone else. I've read this word for word somewhere.

[TatsujinSan]

"It's not true that one can be logically consistent and be an atheist and moral realist at the same time."

It's not true that one can be logically consistent and be a moral realist or a theist.

[joelarnda]

@Davin404 Whoaa hold on there! Your comparing reptiles to humans for social comparisons? And you don't see how illogical this is? Also, it is rather disturbing to hear "it's that simple", what the heck are they teaching in schools today make erroneous comparisons and oversimplification of complex systems and formulating such nonsense. 

Have you had a course in comparitive anatomy? Lets talk about the "structure/function relationship" and compare the neuroanatomy of a komodo to a human.

[Davin404]

@joelarnda Greater good = Least amount of harm to all as whole. It's that simple. We, as a species, understand the benefit from working together. Think of the komodo dragon. This species is known to eat it's young and attack others of it's species. As a result, the species has learned to look out for itself. They avoid others unless absolutely necessary. We have examples of species who act without such morals, and the result is clean cut. Social species have similar morals, anti-social do not.

[joelarnda]

@Davin404 Would you agree that eugenics would be greater for the human species based on that it is "we work together for the greater good of the group?" Define what is the greater good? Are you talking about subjective morality or objective morality or even if morality exists at all? Have we with technology and Tranhumism evolved past morality of humans?

There is a better video than this, -Nihilism vs secular humanism- , that is a more coherent explanation in the description of the video.

[Davin404]

You can't honestly believe what you're saying. I mean, really, have you ever opened a textbook? We're a social species, that is where morality comes from. We work together for the greater good of the group. Way back when we were tribal, individual tribes didn't care for each other. It was not a crime to kill another tribe. Then they learned that tribes become stronger when two merge. This line of thought flows to society.

If you can't see the logic in that, you've got no place in this debate.

[joelarnda]

Physics has many terms that are indefinable and commonly used. Some of the terms have been around for millenia and even with 100's of years with the scientific method in place are still indefinable to this day.

Terms like space, time, and mass. Then taking these indefinable terms and making equations like F=ma.

If we can not define some of the most basic things in science, what makes you think something that is more complex than the physical universe would be definable?

[joelarnda]

As far as is, is concerned. I was hoping for you to ask to define the word is is. The famous answer to that would have been the Bill Clinton's response ".. It depends on what the meaning of is is." :-)

I also just saw your other response. Logic is immaterial because it is an abstract. If we go back 13.7 Billion years ago- 5 did not exist, logic did not exist, math does not exist- What laws would a universe follow without a human brain? This logic of yours is most absurd, don't you think