Objective morality, Evidence for God's existence

[Elioenai26]

So, I will ask here. Do you have any other evidence for objective morality? The line you were pursuing in the other thread struck me very much as an appeal to consequence.

You, and every sane person in the world. You all are my evidence.

 

[JGG]

Perhaps you could spell out this evidence?

 

[Elioenai26]

Perhaps you could spell out this evidence?

Of course.

It shall be dialectical in nature.

Is abusing and torturing a little child (for example....a 15 month old) wrong regardless of what anyone believes and regardless of what any group of people believes and regardless of what any society or general consensus of people believes?

Yes or no?

If you say no, then what you are saying is that there is at least one instance in which it would be justifiable or "right" to torture and abuse a 15 month old child.

 

[Gadarene]

Of course.

It shall be dialectical in nature.

Is abusing and torturing a little child (for example....a 15 month old) wrong regardless of what anyone believes and regardless of what any group of people believes and regardless of what any society or general consensus of people believes?

Yes or no?

If you say no, then what you are saying is that there are some instances in which it would be justifiable or "right" to torture and abuse a 15 month old child.

I notice the wrongness child rape is no longer the alleged objective moral value du jour.

 

[Paradoxum]

I wholeheartedly agree. As a theory, the T.E.N.S. (Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection) should be descriptive. However, naturalistic scientists go one step further and make it prescriptive by attributing to it causal powers of determining beneficial and nonbeneficial genes. This is unwarranted.

What do you mean? Genes beneficial to survival generally get passed on to the next generation because they aid the survival, and thus reproduction, of those individuals.

The italics underlined portions of your statement contradict each other.

What I meant was that evolution deals with the capacity for morality, it doesn't tell us whether that capacity is 'real' or an illusion.

Your statement about the origin of morality as not mattering so much as what it is is clearly incorrect. In fact, a great portion of the work and research conducted by secular ethicists, humanists, biologists, as well as sociologists are all conerned with moral ontology.

Prof. Shelly Kagan in his book The Limits of Morality (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989) has a good deal to say about the need for sound explanations in moral theory. He rightly maintains that "one of the things we want our moral theory to help us understand is how there can even be a moral realm, and what sort of objective status it has" (p. 13). He insists, "This need for explanation in moral theory cannot be overemphasized. . . . Ultimately, unless we have a coherent explanation of our moral principles, we don't have a satisfactory ground for believing them to be true" (Ibid.)

Read more: Contemporary Moral Arguments | Reasonable Faith

Why would you think I would disagree with this?

If you were to say person (A) was wrong for what he did to (B), from what basis, or on what grounds would you be saying that? What are you appealing to. In other words, what would you give as your reason for maintaining that he was wrong?

Well that pretty much requires me to explain my whole ethical theory, which would be a bit long just to reply to this one point. But very simply it comes down to the will of all people being equal. To act as if your choices are fundamentally more important than others is to act on a falsity. So it sort of comes down to living an objective life of truth.

When I speak of naturalism, I am speaking of metaphysical or ontological naturalism. Proponents of it maintain that all that constitutes reality can be explained via naturalistic explanations. This is not my definition that I made up. This is not my view of it either. Just do some research on it.

Depending on how it is defined, I'm not sure if I am a naturalist. But shall we leave that behind, since I would think that you are trying to convince atheists that God exists. I am an atheist, I believe in morality, I accept evolution, I doubt that supernatural spirits exist... do can't you discuss with me on this basis, rather than talking about naturalism?

Then you have an ontological view other than metaphysical naturalism. What is your view?

I'm not sure exactly how what I believe would be classified. I might be a naturalist. I believe that the physical exists, but so does subjective experience. Both are just as real as the other. But there is no God, or heaven, or immortal soul.

You're exactly right. They both exist, but differ in nature. A rock is a concrete object, a conscious subjective experience is what is commonly referred to as an abstract reality. Some, however, would deny that abstract realities really exist, but that is not germane to our discussion.

Experience isn't an abstract entity, like a number is. It could be said that numbers don't exist, but experience definitely real. In fact, I am more sure of the existence of my own experience than the existence of an outside world.

When you say: "It is the subjective that produces the foundation for morality", are you saying the subjective opinions of people produce the foundation for morality? What is this foundation you speak of and how is it produced?

By this I mean that the individuals volition/will is the starting point for morality. In the case of pain, there is normally a strong will to escape that pain. If someone is caused pain against their will, they will consider it a bad for them. They might say they had a bad day. This is the subjective (and none moral) use of the word 'bad'.

I'll continue this in my explanation of objectivity.

There are manifold problems here. How does objectivity "transform" something? Are you saying that objectivity has causal powers? You are speaking about objectivity as if it were some type of intelligent force with volitional capacites, as if it determines and chooses and transforms the subjective opinion's of people into morality. What does this "objectivity" as you refer to it determine what is moral and what is not? How does it do this, and why would it do this?

I don't mean objectivity to be an intelligence, but that it is a mental process. The input is the subjective good or bad, and the output is morality.

This happens by us objectively seeing that all people are equal (equally important or unimportant), and that the will of each person is the same as all others. My will is no more important than anyone else's. So if I act objectively (on the truth), I must take into account the will of others. This means, in some sense, balancing my subjective good and the subjective good of others. This could now be considered morality.

Objectivity makes the subjective good an objective good, and the other name for this is morality.

People kill other people everyday for their food. It happens quite frequently in war torn nations, and poverty stricken nations. You may not see it often because of your geographic location, but the example is not unique, it is more common in the world than you would like to think or admit, and therefore quite relevant and clear, as well as convincing.

I know it happens, but I'm say I don't know if it is morally a clear cut case. If someone is starving then it is hard to judge them for fighting to stay alive.

No Paradoxum, not at all. Everything I have asserted about the T.E.N.S. is based upon what naturalists themselves say about it.

That doesn't mean they are correct. That isn't your fault, but then I want to give you the point of view of an atheist who believes in morality as objective.

Of course people have subjective experiences. I have never said they do not. Nor does a person have to believe in God to have subjective experiences. I have never said that either.

I didn't claim you said that. I say that you (or the naturalists you quote) seem to have forgotten the subjective.

Then you hold to some other worldview. What worldview do you espouse?

I know I said it above, but I'll say it again. There is no God, or heaven, immortal soul. There is no law giver, or platonic forms. As far as I can tell, there are only mindless natural laws. But the subjective also exists, and that matters. We are more than cold heartless robots. Morality is objective, and we can try to understand it.

Ok I get your point. You are saying that mathematics is true for at least one other reason than for its ability to aid in survival. Even if I agree with that, it does nothing to either undercut, or rebut what naturalistic scientists say regarding the outworkings, manifestations, and by-products of E.N.S. For the T.E.N.S. is concerned about survival and reproduction of species. A person can sit around and crunch numbers all day, but under the T.E.N.S., if it does not ultimately help the person survive in this harsh, dog eat dog world, if it does not help a species reproduce and survive, the T.E.N.S. eliminates it as superfluous. This is naturalistic science Paradoxum, not just my opinion. Once again, check it, research it.

Yes, the truth of math is unnecessary to survival, but it is true anyway. Math probably helps human survival to some degree, but some of our ability may also be an unnecessary by-product.

I'm not sure why anything you said goes against what I said. I roughly understand how evolution works. I know that things that aid survival tend to be kept.

Under metaphysical naturalism even our very own thoughts about metaphysical naturalism are simply the results of E.N.S. This was one of Darwin's main misgivings about his own theory, for he states to a friend:

"the horrid doubt always arises whether the conviction's of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy." [Charles Darwin to W. Graham, July 3, 1881, in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin (1897; repr., Boston: Elibron, 2005), 1:285.]

So when you speak about the fact that just because something is a product of evolution does not tell us whether it is real, I would go one step further and say, can we be sure that our thoughts about the theory of evolution itself are "real" as in "corresponding to reality"?

That is the question naturalists need to ask themselves.

They appear to be as real as anything else we consider real. I don't know if the world exists outside of my mind, but I have to assume a some basic things.

If you believe in the T.E.N.S. then you should accept him as an authority because he in a nutshell has defined what one must believe and hold to be true if one espouses metaphysical naturalism and the T.E.N.S. This is non-negotiable. What he says is no different than what any other naturalistic scientist would say regarding homosapiens if they remain true to naturalism and the T.E.N.S. as it is, and that is why I supplied his quote.

The theory of evolution is scientific, and separate from philosophical metaphysics. If you are saying that is definition is the only definition for naturalism, then by definition I am not a naturalist. I don't care if I'm not a naturalist. All we are doing is arguing over labels, and I don't care what you want to label me. I care about the content of the labels, and I disagree with the content of the quotes you gave.

The second issue I have with your above statement is that Nietzsche never once said that "God isn't real". He never said that Paradoxum. Not one time in any of his written work did he ever say that. Nor was Nietzsche a theologian but a German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and aphorism.*Wiki*- Therefore your analogy of Nietzsche and Ruse fails to persuade because Ruse is an expert in the field in which he is making his assertions, Nietzsche however, was more concerned with writing about God in an aphoristic, ironical, and metaphorical way. To compare the two is to compare apples to oranges.

True, I did wonder as I writing it if I was just making stuff up. The point is just that what Ruse is saying is philosophy, not science, so I don't have to accept it like a scientific theory.

What he did say was:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
—Nietzsche, The Joy of Science, Section 125, tr

Well, one of the things he said.

This again is fraught through with inconsistencies and baseless assertions. What are the justifiable reasons that humanists have for making moral judgments? How can you explain what is good and bad? What is good? What is bad? How do you distinguish between the two? Why do you distinguish between the two? When? Who determines what is good and bad? What is this foundation you speak of? What standard are you appealing to when you say (A) is wrong or (B) should not have done (C)?
I could go on and on....

I think I sort of explained that above.

I did not say everything "created" by evolution is an illusion. So your usage of mathematics to prove your point is basically aimed at a strawman.

You seemed to be saying that morality isn't real because it evolved.

My my my! This is indeed miraculous! Pardon the pun, but I agree. But you have still failed thus far to present a coherent ontological explanation for morality.

I know. At least, morality seems to be beyond science at the moment, and perhaps always.

Well, maybe we could all stand to learn more?

Naturalistic scientists who propagate the T.E.N.S. in their attempt to use it as a worldview, in the end, must attribute to it, properties that as a theory, it simply does not possess or warrant. This is promissory naturalism, or the idea that one day science will explain everything, this amounts to no more than scientism, which is an excercise of faith in science, an exercise that the same scientists ridicule the religious for engaging in. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

I suspect that science will explain all things that happen, though it may not explain subjective experience in its current form.

 

[Illuminaughty]

Is abusing and torturing little children wrong regardless of what anyone believes and regardless of what any group of people believes or any society believes?

It seems the Lord would say no if the Old Testament accurately reflects his views. If he tells you to do it then it's perfectly moral.

""Then I heard the LORD say to the other men,Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children."
-Ezekiel 9:5

 

[Gadarene]

It seems the Lord would say no if the Old Testament accurately reflects his views. If he tells you to do it then it's perfectly moral.

""Then I heard the LORD say to the other men,Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all - old and young, girls and women and little children."
-Ezekiel 9:5

Bravo, this example is as bad as Elioenai's last example to attempt to justify this argument, it being one of the many things Yahweh was inclined to command in the past.

 

[JGG]

Of course.

It shall be dialectical in nature.

Is abusing and torturing a little child (for example....a 15 month old) wrong regardless of what anyone believes and regardless of what any group of people believes and regardless of what any society or general consensus of people believes?

Yes or no?

If you say no, then what you are saying is that there is at least one instance in which it would be justifiable or "right" to torture and abuse a 15 month old child.

No. The Bible says it's right and justifiable.


Proverbs 30:17 - The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 - If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

 

[Gottservant]

For the sake of the discussion,

Be aware, that morality is a function of objectivity (not merely an adjunct to it).

 

[Elioenai26]

It seems the Lord would say no if the Old Testament accurately reflects his views. If he tells you to do it then it's perfectly moral.

""Then I heard the LORD say to the other men,Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children."
-Ezekiel 9:5

I would laugh at the use of the exclamation marks in the biblical text, if it was not so pathetic.

This is also a Red Herring fallacy, because you see, I did not ask you to answer me by supplying me with a passage taken out of context from a source you probably do not even believe as being authentic. In fact, I was not even talking to you.

Now if you want to start a new thread about the Bible, then I would simply love to discuss it with you. But please, no more fallacies for the night. I am full of kipper that Gadarene fixed already!

 

[JGG]

Of course.

It shall be dialectical in nature.

Is abusing and torturing a little child (for example....a 15 month old) wrong regardless of what anyone believes and regardless of what any group of people believes and regardless of what any society or general consensus of people believes?

Yes or no?

If you say no, then what you are saying is that there is at least one instance in which it would be justifiable or "right" to torture and abuse a 15 month old child.

Also, this would seem to point toward an argument for universal morality rather than objective morality. Which are you wishing to discuss?

 

[Illuminaughty]

Now if you want to start a new thread about the Bible,

No, I would rather post it here

 

[Elioenai26]

No. The Bible says it's right and justifiable.

A Bible believing atheist who thinks its permissible to torture 15 month old children!

You are indeed a rare gem!

May I quote you?

 

[Illuminaughty]

Not his fault the Bible teaches that. The Bible is the correct place to find objective moral teachings right?

 

[JGG]

A Bible believing atheist who thinks its permissible to torture 15 month old children!

You are indeed a rare gem!

May I quote you?

No, you asked if there was one instance in which it is justifiable. If one believes in the Bible, there is an instance (multitudes, actually) where it is justifiable. This is what I was asked to find, was it not?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I wholeheartedly agree. As a theory, the T.E.N.S. (Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection) should be descriptive. However, naturalistic scientists go one step further and make it prescriptive by attributing to it causal powers of determining beneficial and nonbeneficial genes. This is unwarranted.

I don't think you are using the word "prescriptive" correctly here.

E.N.S. is my acronym for Evolution by Natural Selection.

Your statement about the origin of morality as not mattering so much as what it is is clearly incorrect. In fact, a great portion of the work and research conducted by secular ethicists, humanists, biologists, as well as sociologists are all conerned with moral ontology.

Prof. Shelly Kagan in his book The Limits of Morality (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989) has a good deal to say about the need for sound explanations in moral theory. He rightly maintains that "one of the things we want our moral theory to help us understand is how there can even be a moral realm, and what sort of objective status it has" (p. 13). He insists, "This need for explanation in moral theory cannot be overemphasized. . . . Ultimately, unless we have a coherent explanation of our moral principles, we don't have a satisfactory ground for believing them to be true" (Ibid.)

Read more: Contemporary Moral Arguments | Reasonable Faith

More copy-and-pastes from Reasonable Faith? Have they hired you to promote their website?

If you were to say person (A) was wrong for what he did to (B), from what basis, or on what grounds would you be saying that? What are you appealing to. In other words, what would you give as your reason for maintaining that he was wrong?

What are you appealing to in saying that he is wrong?

Of course people have subjective experiences. I have never said they do not. Nor does a person have to believe in God to have subjective experiences. I have never said that either.

In the past you have expressed bewilderment at the notion that anyone could even see anything at all without believing in deities.

Ok I get your point. You are saying that mathematics is true for at least one other reason than for its ability to aid in survival. Even if I agree with that, it does nothing to either undercut, or rebut what naturalistic scientists say regarding the outworkings, manifestations, and by-products of E.N.S. For the T.E.N.S. is concerned about survival and reproduction of species. A person can sit around and crunch numbers all day, but under the T.E.N.S., if it does not ultimately help the person survive in this harsh, dog eat dog world, if it does not help a species reproduce and survive, the T.E.N.S. eliminates it as superfluous. This is naturalistic science Paradoxum, not just my opinion. Once again, check it, research it.

Superfluous? There are many things which may be deemed "superfluous", but which are none-the-less conserved across evolutionary history.

Under metaphysical naturalism even our very own thoughts about metaphysical naturalism are simply the results of E.N.S.

This was one of Darwin's main misgivings about his own theory, for he states to a friend:

"the horrid doubt always arises whether the conviction's of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy." [Charles Darwin to W. Graham, July 3, 1881, in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin (1897; repr., Boston: Elibron, 2005), 1:285.]

So when you speak about the fact that just because something is a product of evolution does not tell us whether it is real, I would go one step further and say, can we be sure that our thoughts about the theory of evolution itself are "real" as in "corresponding to reality"?

How so? My sense is that you have a poor understanding of evolution.

This again is fraught through with inconsistencies and baseless assertions. What are the justifiable reasons that humanists have for making moral judgments? How can you explain what is good and bad? What is good? What is bad? How do you distinguish between the two? Why do you distinguish between the two? When? Who determines what is good and bad? What is this foundation you speak of? What standard are you appealing to when you say (A) is wrong or (B) should not have done (C)?
I could go on and on....

What are you appealing to?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

With regards you your question, Dawkins sums it up neatly when he asserts that: "everything is well on the way to being explained by science..."

In other words, if anything requires an explanation, it either has been, or will be explained by science and the explanation will be a natural one.

If they are faithful to metaphysical naturalism, they must maintain that nature encompasses all that exists throughout space and time. Of course you have some slippery naturalists who, when pressed to validate their view, will try to slither and slide out of it by attempting to redefine the term.

But just read the current work of scientists who are naturalists. They will tell you. I have supplied some of their quotes already for review.

You have selected quotes from particular naturalists and proclaimed "This is naturalism!" You have ignored the writings of naturalists who disagree with them.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Yes it shows itself in the real world. Any student of history can tell you that the most destructive ideologies were based on godless worldviews.

How does one destroy in the name of no god?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Not his fault the Bible teaches that. The Bible is the correct place to find objective moral teachings right?

Since Elio is fond of William Lane Craig, perhaps he would like to defend Crag's position on the killing of children in the Bible? The children who received an "infinite good", according to Craig?