Debunking the Moral Argument - Tricks New Atheists Play (Part 5)

[cvanwey]

Prove that He is absent and I'll concede.

How do you 'prove' absence?

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

Pssst... in case you missed it, I don’t have a faith.

Kind of tough to wrap your head around it, but you seem smart enough. It’ll click sooner or later.

Pssst....how do you know God does not exist? or Pssst....how do you know the next time you drive or ride in an automobile you will not be in an accident? or countless other situations where we either lock ourselves in the house and dare not roll the dice or trust and have confidence that things will be okay. And when you reply by predication based on the past experience, I will ask on what basis do you know future experiences will be the same as past experiences?

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

How do you 'prove' absence?

You assume an absence, despite the evidence of millions of believers of your same kind, including rational, scientific, scholarly intelligent people. The assumption can also be called a "presupposition", and is "basic", or foundational to other beliefs, which is to say other beliefs or the answers to them are effected by this basic belief, and that is precisely what it is. Call it the "absence" of belief, but that same absence of belief is a belief, it is nothing that can be proven via your own assumed standards for testing whether a belief is valid or invalid, warranted or unwarranted.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

Prove that He is absent

No. You prove he is present. That's how this works.

You assume an absence, despite the evidence of millions of believers of your same kind, including rational, scientific, scholarly intelligent people.

Belief isn't evidence. I shouldn't have to say that.

Call it the "absence" of belief, but that same absence of belief is a belief

No. The absence of a thing is not that thing. Again, I shouldn't have to say that. But, here we are.

 

[HitchSlap]

Pssst....how do you know God does not exist?

I don't know "god does not exist." That's why I'm I'm agnostic.

or Pssst....how do you know the next time you drive or ride in an automobile you will not be in an accident?

I don't.

or countless other situations where we either lock ourselves in the house and dare not roll the dice or trust and have confidence that things will be okay.

My worldview allows me to use inductive reasoning. Therefore, I have reasonable confidence that "things will be okay." So does my bank, I guess, since they gave me a multi-year mortgage.

And when you reply by predication based on the past experience,

Yes, my worldview allows for this.

I will ask on what basis do you know future experiences will be the same as past experiences?

Broken record much?

As I said, my world view allows for reasonable assumptions to be made based on inductive reasoning. It's how I knew Harold Camping was wrong when he predicted the world would end in May 21, 2011. That's the problem with using theistic biblically based assumptions, as it allows for anything to happen, at any time. Fortunately, for those of us in the know, our inductive reasoning is valid, and precludes "judgement days" and "end times prophecies."

Now, when do you plan to demonstrate your god exists?

 

[HitchSlap]

You assume an absence, despite the evidence of millions of believers of your same kind, including rational, scientific, scholarly intelligent people. The assumption can also be called a "presupposition", and is "basic", or foundational to other beliefs, which is to say other beliefs or the answers to them are effected by this basic belief, and that is precisely what it is. Call it the "absence" of belief, but that same absence of belief is a belief, it is nothing that can be proven via your own assumed standards for testing whether a belief is valid or invalid, warranted or unwarranted.

I've already pointed out you're committing argumentum ad populum fallacy. By your own example then, we must conclude that Islam is the one true religion.

 

[Uber Genius]

The “grand scheme of things” is as irrelevant to me as I am to it. Meanwhile, I possess rationality, self-interest, and empathy, and these shape the way a fulfilling life would manifest for me and I act accordingly. It may be that a perfectly rational being would be consumed by existential despair in perpetuity. Good thing I’m not.

Again, prosaic but nonsensical.

Please prove that you possess rationality by, "employ(ing)s pragmatic empirical rationalism (aka science) as a method to make reasonable conclusions about reality," to find out how self-defeating your scientism is.

A fulfilling life for you is not the question now is it.

If one adopts scientism as the only way of knowing, then you can't prove even scientific theories are true since they are based on:

1. Mathematical truths not provable by science
2. Logic truths not provable by science
3. Philosophy of science truths not provable by science
4. The majority of which are tested empirically in an external world I can't prove exists using science.
5. Experiments are performed by scientists that also can't be proven to exist using science.
6. Further Science progresses over time which requires the past to be a real feature of this world which in turn is not provable using science.
7. etc.

This is the incoherence of your and the videographer's scientism.
It is also why most atheist philosophers abandoned it in the 1950s.

 

[Uber Genius]

established by a society according to the consensus of its inhabitants.

Hmm, then if Hitler won WWII and converted all in the world to his view,

and a few million Jews were found left, and the world voted that they needed to die to insure the atheist race (sorry meant Aryan race), your claim is that it would be MORAL to kill the remaining Jews since a consensus (usually just a majority is needed in supporting the subjective moral ontology)?

What if Killing the majority by few in power led to greater survivability of the species? Isn't that Hitler's idea?

If Darwin was right then individuals like Dawkins are right and all morals are illusory including not killing your neighbor.

 

[HitchSlap]

Hmm, then if Hitler won WWII and converted all in the world to his view,

This is a might makes right philosophy, which is usually theistic in practice (see for instance how the Christian nation of America systematically slaughtered and contained Native Americans - it seems early American leaders used Hitler's approach before Hitler was a thing.) Any modern notion of morality is not based on might makes right, for obvious reasons.

and a few million Jews were found left, and the world voted that they needed to die to insure the atheist race (sorry meant Aryan race),

Except in the case of Hitler, he was a Catholic creationist, doing the "lord's work."

your claim is that it would be MORAL to kill the remaining Jews since a consensus (usually just a majority is needed in supporting the subjective moral ontology)?

No one is saying that. Understandable though, as without a straw man, your petty argument doesn't hold water.

What if Killing the majority by few in power led to greater survivability of the species? Isn't that Hitler's idea?

No, that's not the idea. Your suggestion seems to be in the vein of genocide or ethnicide, the kind found in the OT.

If Darwin was right

And he was.

then individuals like Dawkins are right and all morals are illusory including not killing your neighbor.

Yeah, he never said this.

 

[Uber Genius]

Science is not scientism, so I don't know why you brought that up. Science as an epistemology doesn't need to be all-encompassing, and intuition is a useful tool for creating hypotheses or "starting points" for certain beliefs, but you have no business calling such things "objective values" if they are not the kinds of things that can be measured by any conceivable objective unit, e.g. morality, love, and justice.

Are you serious?

The entailment of a scientistic rather than scientific worldview is the view that only physical things exist. Which is assumed circularly. So in your attempt to prove you claim that science, rather than scientism, is what is going on, you give a textbook description of SCIENTISM.

Please, please, please, just do 30-seconds of research before responding.

In fact I will do the legwork for you:

https://www.coursera.org/lecture/ph...lecture-5-5-arguments-against-scientism-viFT3

You will find it only takes 15 mins to read.

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

I've already pointed out you're committing argumentum ad populum fallacy. By your own example then, we must conclude that Islam is the one true religion.

Why or how do we come to that conclusion? Considering Islam was based on a pre-existing religion, namely Judaism. See, all claims are not equally valid as you seem to suggest. From this junction it would turn into counter cult apologetics where we go through various concepts of God and explain how they are counterfeits of the real deal. If you also believed in satan, would you not expect counterfeit religions? Division, dissension, and heresies?

 

[gaara4158]

Again, prosaic but nonsensical.

Please prove that you possess rationality by, "employ(ing)s pragmatic empirical rationalism (aka science) as a method to make reasonable conclusions about reality," to find out how self-defeating your scientism is.

A fulfilling life for you is not the question now is it.

If one adopts scientism as the only way of knowing, then you can't prove even scientific theories are true since they are based on:

1. Mathematical truths not provable by science
2. Logic truths not provable by science
3. Philosophy of science truths not provable by science
4. The majority of which are tested empirically in an external world I can't prove exists using science.
5. Experiments are performed by scientists that also can't be proven to exist using science.
6. Further Science progresses over time which requires the past to be a real feature of this world which in turn is not provable using science.
7. etc.

This is the incoherence of your and the videographer's scientism.
It is also why most atheist philosophers abandoned it in the 1950s.

Read my response again. I'm not a proponent of scientism. I've already explained this to you. Engage my points, not a strawman, please.

 

[gaara4158]

Are you serious?

The entailment of a scientistic rather than scientific worldview is the view that only physical things exist. Which is assumed circularly. So in your attempt to prove you claim that science, rather than scientism, is what is going on, you give a textbook description of SCIENTISM.

Please, please, please, just do 30-seconds of research before responding.

In fact I will do the legwork for you:

https://www.coursera.org/lecture/ph...lecture-5-5-arguments-against-scientism-viFT3

You will find it only takes 15 mins to read.

Yeah, I never, ever claimed that only physical things exist. What I'm claiming is that the only things that can be objectively measured are physical things. And I'm right. Please pay attention.

 

[Uber Genius]

Not quite. AnticitizenX employs pragmatic empirical rationalism (aka science) as a method to make reasonable conclusions about reality, to include the existence of other people, the past, etc. It's a little more complicated than "intuition." It's not special pleading to refuse moral intuition the "objective" status of scientific facts.

Unfortunately for you I Paid Attention.
You did realize we can go back and actually look at what you claimed. It is not so uncontroversial as "I never, ever claimed that only physical things exist. What I'm claiming is that the only things that can be objectively measured are physical things."

So we would have seen a post that what, morals aren't measurable by science.
Or that we can't weigh morals, or identify their atomic mass.

This is a complete red-herring. The video claims morals don't exist. Not that they are immaterial. That is a obviously true. Pay attention to the video claims.

In fact we don't use science as a way to measure whether moral truths exist and here above we see you claim that these, immaterial, abstract moral objects can be proven by employing a, how did you put it again, "pragmatic empirical rationalism (aka science) as a method to make reasonable conclusions about reality, to include the existence of other people, the past, etc."

So far from saying "these moral truths, if they exist, are not measurable because they are not physical", you actually support enthusiastically using "science" as your method.

You are talking out of both sides of your mouth.

On your method and AntiCitizenX's method, you can't prove science is the only way to know reality, in fact it is self-refuting.

Look up a guy named Rene Descartes. You will start to realize why no atheist philosopher since the 1950s agrees with your scientism.

Next video I will debunk is AntiCitizenX's video suggesting, "No one can prove 2+2=4 since no scientific evidence can be provided to support that claim." You will then defend his video and at the same time claim you don't deny that numbers are not physical. Nonsense.

 

[HitchSlap]

Why or how do we come to that conclusion?

Now you're suggesting argumentum ad populum is only valid for your particular religion?

Considering Islam was based on a pre-existing religion, namely Judaism.

And Judaism is based on Canaanite and Babylonian religions.

(religions evolve too, in case you're unaware)

See, all claims are not equally valid as you seem to suggest.

Of course all claims are not equally valid. You seam to have forgotten that I previously responded to you that all religious faiths can't be right, but they could all be wrong. And since we're talking about your particular religion, now's your chance to demonstrate it's veracity.

From this junction it would turn into counter cult apologetics where we go through various concepts of God and explain how they are counterfeits of the real deal.

And how many angels fit on the head of a pin, how much does a soul weigh, what does heaven look like...yada yada. I get it.

If you also believed in satan,

Only in a mythical sense.

would you not expect counterfeit religions? Division, dissension, and heresies?

Of course, they all seem to have the earmark of man-made institutions.

 

[gaara4158]

Eh, I honestly see no reason to face the possibility that the traditional sense of morality is subjective, because a psychologically based virtue ethics can get you quite far. As for absurdity... the whole tradition of Christian existentialism deals with that issue, so it really is not the case that one side is dismissing problems associated with human subjectivity. They just have a different answer to said problems.

This is really the underlying issue, though. You can say that we have to accept the possibility that morality is subjective and absurd, but we simultaneously have to accept the possibility that it is objective and actually deeply important existentially. For the theistic moral realist in particular, to deny moral realism because it fails to meet a specific standard of proof is in a certain sense an act of rebellion. What is lost for the subjectivist is the possibility of moral growth, since there is nothing to grow towards--no up, no down, just a never-ending circle of whatever you wish at any given time. And the consequentialist doesn't do much better.

I've been on pretty much every side of the issue as far morality goes (aside from divine command and deontology, and probably not utilitarianism either), and I do think that subjectivism has a very negative impact on the way we view moral character at all. Even just from a secular perspective in which moral reasoning is an aspect of human existence, this is a problem, but from any religious viewpoint, that problem becomes far, far more serious.

You have valid concerns about morality if it is true that it is subjective. I have concerns of my own if it turns out morality really is objective (in fact, I have a hard time conceptualizing a definition of morality that could be called objectively true). I'm just not sure either of our concerns have actual solutions. They have practical/psychological solutions, sure, but I don't know if they have airtight philosophical solutions. These aren't reasons not to believe in the possibilities that disturb us, they're reasons to find out which one is really true. I'm partial to a Hobbesian contractarianism currently as an explanation to our moral intuitions, but I go all over the place, especially when I'm active here. In the context of evaluating the moral argument for God's existence, though, premise 2 (objective moral values and duties exist) must be established as true, and I haven't seen that happen yet.

 

[St. Helens]

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[Nihilist Virus]

A class in philosophy might be required in order to catch the trick,

Lol, a class in philolsophy. What did the philosopher say after he got his degree? "Would you like fries with that?"

 

[gaara4158]

Unfortunately for you I Paid Attention.
You did realize we can go back and actually look at what you claimed. It is not so uncontroversial as "I never, ever claimed that only physical things exist. What I'm claiming is that the only things that can be objectively measured are physical things."

So we would have seen a post that what, morals aren't measurable by science.
Or that we can't weigh morals, or identify their atomic mass.

This is a complete red-herring. The video claims morals don't exist. Not that they are immaterial. That is a obviously true. Pay attention to the video claims.

In fact we don't use science as a way to measure whether moral truths exist and here above we see you claim that these, immaterial, abstract moral objects can be proven by employing a, how did you put it again, "pragmatic empirical rationalism (aka science) as a method to make reasonable conclusions about reality, to include the existence of other people, the past, etc."

So far from saying "these moral truths, if they exist, are not measurable because they are not physical", you actually support enthusiastically using "science" as your method.

You are talking out of both sides of your mouth.

On your method and AntiCitizenX's method, you can't prove science is the only way to know reality, in fact it is self-refuting.

Look up a guy named Rene Descartes. You will start to realize why no atheist philosopher since the 1950s agrees with your scientism.

Next video I will debunk is AntiCitizenX's video suggesting, "No one can prove 2+2=4 since no scientific evidence can be provided to support that claim." You will then defend his video and at the same time claim you don't deny that numbers are not physical. Nonsense.

They removed my reply to you because I implied you knew better than to say what you just said, but maybe that’s not the case. Maybe you honestly read my post wrong. Anyway, no, I never supported science as a method of measuring moral truths. In fact, I’ve been arguing this whole time that the fact that we can’t do that is the reason we can’t call our morality objective.

It would be a more productive angle for you to discuss why morality can be objective, or why its immeasurability doesn’t make it subjective. But don’t put words in my mouth.

 

[Uber Genius]

They removed my reply to you because I implied you knew better than to say what you just said, but maybe that’s not the case. Maybe you honestly read my post wrong. Anyway, no, I never supported science as a method of measuring moral truths. In fact, I’ve been arguing this whole time that the fact that we can’t do that is the reason we can’t call our morality objective.

It would be a more productive angle for you to discuss why morality can be objective, or why its immeasurability doesn’t make it subjective. But don’t put words in my mouth.

I quoted you in context. Including the entirety of your reply.

Don't know why they (I assume mods) would remove anything you posted. eightfootman child was the only one out here not engaging the topic, goading and ranting incoherently, you were engaging the topic you just didn't agree.

So you are saying my assessment of the video is correct?

You are agreeing that, "it is absurd to demand empirical proof (AKA science) to justify abstract objects that are both immaterial and causally effete like numbers, sets, concepts, morals?

After you answer those questions we can focus on how one justifies morals as objective instead of subject-dependent.