The Moral Argument (revamped)

[ToddNotTodd]

For example male on male homosexual sex, makes the immune system very weak...

Posting nonsense doesn’t help your original premise. Which is also nonsense...

 

[createdtoworship]

Posting nonsense doesn’t help your original premise. Which is also nonsense...

I posted a peer review that proved it sir. But here let me post another quote: "Men who have sex with men (MSM) are the population most heavily affected by infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) [1]. The rate of a new HIV diagnosis among MSM is more than 40 times that of women and more than 44 times that of other men [2]. In 2010, male-to-male sex remained the largest HIV transmission category in the United States and the only one associated with an increasing number of HIV/ acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) diagnoses [3]. Although MSM represent about 7% of the male population in the United States, they account for 78% of the new HIV infections among males, reinforcing the need for intensive HIV prevention services and testing campaigns [4]."

eHealth Interventions for HIV Prevention in High-Risk Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Systematic Review

and here is the peer review that MSM, male on male homosexual sex has higher HIV than other groups:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2100144/

here is a separate court document proving AIDS caused by homosexuality:
AIDS caused by Homosexuality-Dr. Brendan Bain court document on MSM homosexual sex unhealthy.pdf

 

[gaara4158]

I posted a peer review that proved it sir. But here let me post another quote: "Men who have sex with men (MSM) are the population most heavily affected by infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) [1]. The rate of a new HIV diagnosis among MSM is more than 40 times that of women and more than 44 times that of other men [2]. In 2010, male-to-male sex remained the largest HIV transmission category in the United States and the only one associated with an increasing number of HIV/ acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) diagnoses [3]. Although MSM represent about 7% of the male population in the United States, they account for 78% of the new HIV infections among males, reinforcing the need for intensive HIV prevention services and testing campaigns [4]."

eHealth Interventions for HIV Prevention in High-Risk Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Systematic Review

and here is the peer review that MSM, male on male homosexual sex has higher HIV than other groups:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2100144/

I’d like you to move away from this tangent on the risks associated with gay sex. We can discuss what those studies actually demonstrate and what, if any, moral implications we can extract from these facts in another thread. Here, you’ve asked about the source of moral absolutes. I have an answer for you. The ethical rules found in all enduring societies, which you’re calling moral absolutes, are self-enforcing. This means that failing to uphold these moral codes as a community directly results in circumstances fatal to the community. If it’s normal to eat your children, your community will die of old age with no new generation to carry it forward. If it’s normal to kill people for fun, your community will shrink until it disappears, battle royale style. If it’s normal to torture people for fun, same result. These codes of conduct emerge out of the inviability of the alternative.

 

[createdtoworship]

so the question of what would happen if no one followed the moral law that God has given us, is simple. Less of a lifespan due to perversion, and unhealthy acts. Crime would be on the rise. It is not recommended to not follow the law that we all know exist. Again the question that the OP asks and that I ask, is where did this law come from? We know animals don't have this same type of consciousnesses, and I prove this from other posts. Even animals with same or larger brains. So evolution does not account for this law. So where does it come from?

 

[createdtoworship]

I’d like you to move away from this tangent on the risks associated with gay sex. We can discuss what those studies actually demonstrate and what, if any, moral implications we can extract from these facts in another thread. Here, you’ve asked about the source of moral absolutes. I have an answer for you. The ethical rules found in all enduring societies, which you’re calling moral absolutes, are self-enforcing. This means that failing to uphold these moral codes as a community directly results in circumstances fatal to the community. If it’s normal to eat your children, your community will die of old age with no new generation to carry it forward. If it’s normal to kill people for fun, your community will shrink until it disappears, battle royale style. If it’s normal to torture people for fun, same result. These codes of conduct emerge out of the inviability of the alternative.

saying that they are self enforcing does not explain where the laws come from.

 

[gaara4158]

saying that they are self enforcing does not explain where the laws come from.

Yes it does. The “laws,” as you call them, are created and enforced by their natural fatal consequences. It’s the same thing that enforces the “law” that no society tries to breathe water or eat concrete. Actions have consequences.

 

[createdtoworship]

Yes it does. The “laws,” as you call them, are created and enforced by their natural fatal consequences. It’s the same thing that enforces the “law” that no society tries to breathe water or eat concrete. Actions have consequences.

so your saying that a law is created by it's own consequence. That is a classic error of putting the cart before the horse. Can you explain your view a little more clearly, because it does not make logical sense.

 

[gaara4158]

so your saying that a law is created by it's own consequence. That is a classic error of putting the cart before the horse. Can you explain your view a little more clearly, because it does not make logical sense.

I don’t think I could be any more clear. The law is created by the consequences of the alternative. Try standing in a circle with five friends. Smack one in the face. What happens? You get smacked back. Maybe everyone starts smacking one another. It’s a fun game for a while, but then people get tired of being on guard all the time. The group either disbands or you all agree to stop slapping one another. The agreement arises organically from its consequences.

How is this putting the cart before the horse?

 

[createdtoworship]

I don’t think I could be any more clear. The law is created by the consequences of the alternative. Try standing in a circle with five friends. Smack one in the face. What happens? You get smacked back. Maybe everyone starts smacking one another. It’s a fun game for a while, but then people get tired of being on guard all the time. The group either disbands or you all agree to stop slapping one another. The agreement arises organically from its consequences.

How is this putting the cart before the horse?

so then it naturally follows that why don't animals that have the same or larger brains, figured all this out? You can't answer that. Because the type of morality humans have is superior than that of animals. I still think your logic is sloppy, However assume this is valid. That does not explain why sperm whales or dolphins or apes or other animals that have large brains don't have the same morality we do regarding for example sharing food. Humans have charities of all shapes and sizes and for just about every trouble. But I am taking food for example in this one situation. We have 60,000 food charities in the US. Humans perform something called "paying if forward." Where if you are in a coffee, line and you want to pay it forward, you pay for the person behind you. And so on. I don't see dolphins saying to their neighbor, "oh you first, please eat freely." Our morality is far superior and it's not because we have larger brains. So you still need to answer why we have figured out that 'laws are created by the consequence of the alternative" and the animals have not.

 

[createdtoworship]

So this is a denial that objective moral values exist.
Fair enough. So that would entail that there are no culturally independent values or duties. Fair enough.

On that view it seems that you would support the German Final Solution as moral. Which was of course the same argument they gave at Nuremberg.

Further, you reach your moral nihilism via a genetic fallacy. Assuming that explaining how we come to perceive moral values and duties explains or explains away their existence.

Further, the premise in various versions of the moral argument are justified by our uniform experience of obvious truths, exclusive of belief in God.

William Lane Craig replies to similar objections this way:

"That such an appeal is not question-begging should be evident from the fact that the majority of non-theists, including atheists, believe in the truth of the premiss precisely on this basis.

Louise Antony, herself a non-theist, put it so well in our debate a few years ago at U Mass, Amherst: Any argument for moral scepticism will be based upon premisses which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves. That seems to me quite right. Therefore, moral scepticism is unjustifiable.

The humanist philosopher Peter Cave gives the following example:

Whatever sceptical arguments may be brought against our belief that killing the innocent is morally wrong, we are more certain that the killing is morally wrong than that the argument is sound. . . . Torturing an innocent child for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong. Full stop.[1]

In moral experience we encounter objective moral values and duties, and so, in the absence of some sort of defeater of that belief, we are perfectly rational to hold to it. Moral realism is the default position, and the moral sceptic needs to provide some powerful defeater to overcome it.

One can make the same point another way by comparing, as William Sorley does (p. 128 of On Guard) our apprehension of the moral realm with our apprehension of the physical realm. Just as we can’t get outside our moral perceptions to try to justify them, so we cannot get outside our sensory perceptions to try to justify them. Just as, in the absence of some defeater, we trust our sense perceptions that there is a realm of objectively existing physical objects around us, so we trust our moral perceptions that there is an objectively existing realm of moral values and duties. For any argument for scepticism about our moral perceptions we could run a parallel argument for scepticism about our sensory perceptions. But you’d have to be crazy to doubt the veridicality of your sense perceptions of a realm of objectively existing physical objects. Similarly, until we are given a defeater, we ought to trust our moral perception of a realm of objectively existing values and duties."


For more see: Justification of the Moral Argument’s Second Premiss | Reasonable Faith

Secondly:

"How is moral knowledge possible? This question is central in moral epistemology and marks a cluster of problems. The most important are the following.
4-Evolutionary: Where do human morals come from? A familiar and widely accepted answer is that human morals are in essence, despite their modern variations, Darwinian adaptations. As such morals are about survival and reproduction and have nothing to do with moral truth. Moreover, while the intuitive, emotional basis of moral judgments was useful to our ancestors, this basis is out-dated and unreliable in modern industrial society and thus current moral thought in such society, which inevitably embeds this basis, is without rational foundation."

For more see:

Moral Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Good post, you sure do your homework. Also, you can always ignore posters that are being rude, I recommend that rather than encouraging the behavior. The ignore function is on the profile of the person using ridicule or slander (abusive ad hominems). Take care, God Speed.

 

[gaara4158]

so then it naturally follows that why don't animals that have the same or larger brains, figured all this out? You can't answer that. Because the type of morality humans have is superior than that of animals. I still think your logic is sloppy, However assume this is valid. That does not explain why sperm whales or dolphins or apes or other animals that have large brains don't have the same morality we do regarding for example sharing food. Humans have charities of all shapes and sizes and for just about every trouble. But I am taking food for example in this one situation. We have 60,000 food charities in the US. Humans perform something called "paying if forward." Where if you are in a coffee, line and you want to pay it forward, you pay for the person behind you. And so on. I don't see dolphins saying to their neighbor, "oh you first, please eat freely." Our morality is far superior and it's not because we have larger brains. So you still need to answer why we have figured out that 'laws are created by the consequence of the alternative" and the animals have not.

If absolute brain size were the sole determining factor of a species's cognitive and social skills, sperm whales would be the most advanced and progressive civilization on Earth. I don't know why you keep going back to brain size. As it is, we do observe varying levels of moral behavior, empathy, and sense of fairness in other animals, all the way down to chickens. Moral behavior is not at all unique to humans.
Humans have had to develop complex moral systems not only because of how intelligent we are, but because of how necessary cooperation has been for our survival, historically. We are a relatively frail species, so we could never rely on brute strength or toughness to protect us in the wilderness. Additionally, we have a relatively long gestation period, meaning a woman can only have roughly one child per year, and children are virtually helpless for the first five or or so years of their lives. This makes a child an enormous investment of time and energy, which is where the clear benefit of the nuclear family, extended clan, or local tribe comes in. We are required to cooperate or else we face extinction, unlike other apex predators who can get by on brute strength and can afford to discard a child or two if they're born in litters. Just as fish can breathe water but we can't, other animals aren't required to follow the same stringent moral codes we are for survival.
Your knowledge of animal behavior is clearly very shallow. Animals share food all the time. In fact, some animals have a structured hierarchy that determines who gets to eat first. I don't know why you're so fixated on sea mammals.

In short, the consequences of not cooperating on the level we do are not as severe for other animals as they are for us, so they have had no need to develop moral codes as complex as ours.

 

[durangodawood]

so then it naturally follows that why don't animals that have the same or larger brains, figured all this out? You can't answer that. Because the type of morality humans have is superior than that of animals. I still think your logic is sloppy, However assume this is valid. That does not explain why sperm whales or dolphins or apes or other animals that have large brains don't have the same morality we do regarding for example sharing food. Humans have charities of all shapes and sizes and for just about every trouble. But I am taking food for example in this one situation. We have 60,000 food charities in the US. Humans perform something called "paying if forward." Where if you are in a coffee, line and you want to pay it forward, you pay for the person behind you. And so on. I don't see dolphins saying to their neighbor, "oh you first, please eat freely." Our morality is far superior and it's not because we have larger brains. So you still need to answer why we have figured out that 'laws are created by the consequence of the alternative" and the animals have not.

I dont think dolphins have figured out a way to store food. Thats a big enabler of out sharing culture. Lots of animals share the kill when its fresh.

 

[createdtoworship]

If absolute brain size were the sole determining factor of a species's cognitive and social skills,

what else other than the brain is responsible for cognitive skills? What else other than the brain is responsible for social skills? Logic simply states that all cognitive functions including language etc come solely from the brain as it's source. So far your posts as informative and lengthy as they are, are reporting errors in logic.

 

[gaara4158]

what else other than the brain is responsible for cognitive skills? What else other than the brain is responsible for social skills? Logic simply states that all cognitive functions including language etc come solely from the brain as it's source. So far your posts as informative and lengthy as they are, are reporting errors in logic.

Cognitive skills, as I tried to explain, are not the only factors that contribute to the development of moral systems. I am only picking out the errors you're making that are directly relevant to the subject we're discussing, which is the origin of morality in humans. My posts would be far more lengthy if I jumped on every error you made.

 

[createdtoworship]

I dont think dolphins have figured out a way to store food. Thats a big enabler of out sharing culture. Lots of animals share the kill when its fresh.

so point out some animals that share their food, with other animals in the same pack. Not their children. You can't.

 

[gaara4158]

so point out some animals that share their food, with other animals in the same pack. Not their children. You can't.

Why do you make that assumption? It took me 2 seconds to google it and find that food sharing within an ingroup is extremely common among social species. It’s done systematically in hive insects, for goodness’ sake! Are you posting in good faith, gradyll?

 

[durangodawood]

so point out some animals that share their food, with other animals in the same pack. Not their children. You can't.

Scroll down to animal altruism in mammals.
Altruism (biology) - Wikipedia

Some of it is food sharing.
Its easy to find other examples too.

 

[createdtoworship]

Cognitive skills, as I tried to explain, are not the only factors that contribute to the development of moral systems. I am only picking out the errors you're making that are directly relevant to the subject we're discussing, which is the origin of morality in humans. My posts would be far more lengthy if I jumped on every error you made.

so then was your original statement false? I am saying this because you seem to be saying something different now.

 

[createdtoworship]

Why do you make that assumption? It took me 2 seconds to google it and find that food sharing within an ingroup is extremely common among social species. It’s done systematically in hive insects, for goodness’ sake! Are you posting in good faith, gradyll?

not talking about hive insects. I was talking about animals not insects.

 

[createdtoworship]

Scroll down to animal altruism in mammals.
Altruism (biology) - Wikipedia

Some of it is food sharing.
Its easy to find other examples too.

I don't honor wikipedia as a truly scientific source of information. When reading the list of the top ten, it said "citation needed" several times. This just goes to show that wikipedia is written by public, not by people with degrees in the field of the article, I could post several articles on wikipedia errors if you wish.