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Atheists, where do moral obligations and prohibitions come from if there is no moral law giver to prohibit or prescribe moral duties?
If you owe money, doesn't that give the creditor a legal claim on your resources?
Morality may or may not be, but obligations are.
Jeremy didn't say that; he said no moral law giver = no moral law. Ana the Ist and JGG, for example, have stated that they do not believe in moral obligations. Obviously then, they don't have to answer the question.
If the Silver Rule is a binding law, from what authority is it derived? Whose rule is it?
That would only be the case if Jeremy had not added the "if there is no moral law giver" to the OP, and not simply asked "where do moral obligations and prohibitions come from".
The fallacy here is Jeremy's false dichotomy: no moral law giver = no morals.
A distinction without a difference....Jeremy didn't say that; he said no moral law giver = no moral law.
Did I say it was binding? Like a scientific "law", it is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is no more binding than: I don't punch you in the face when I disagree with you because I don't want to be punched in the face.If the Silver Rule is a binding law, from what authority is it derived? Whose rule is it?
That would only be the case if Jeremy had not added the "if there is no moral law giver" to the OP, and not simply asked "where do moral obligations and prohibitions come from".
The fallacy here is Jeremy's false dichotomy: no moral law giver = no morals.
I said that?
I apologize if that sounds like a childish "why?" question... but if there is a "moral law giver to prohibit or prescribe moral duties", then what is the meaning of these "moral duties"?
We have evolved to be social beings and that means, getting along socially enhances the chance of survival.
So, people in general, want to be accepted in society and to do so, one has to be cognizant of how their actions impact others. We also all have, a conscious, that we have to live with in regards to our actions and this conscious impacts everything we do.
You seem to be confusing "belief in deities" with a moral compass.
Yes, it's called a "dirty cop".
Now, you seem to be equating "breaking the law" with a moral compass. That's not correct either.
You have the legalright to be an impolite, self-centered, egotistical, narcistic back stabber.
Sounds like he is a psychopath.
Ana the Ist said:I said there aren't any moral obligations so I don't have to answer the question?
Davian said:A distinction without a difference.
Davian said:Moral Law: a general rule of right living; especially : such a rule or group of rules conceived as universal and unchanging and as having the sanction of God's will, of conscience, of man's moral nature, or of natural justice as revealed to human reason. Merriam-Webster
Note that "God" is an option, not a requirement, hence the fallacious requirement of his "law giver".
Davian said:Did I say it was binding?
It sounds like Jeremy is a psychopath, and not even religion could make him moral.
In regard to the case study, Jeremy's moral development has been severely limited by ongoing psychopathy. No moral idea, whether derived from religion or something else, would have any purchase on him. He has little to no concept of what it means to be morally obligated. The psychopathy needs to be successfully treated if Jeremy is to develop any sense of morality at all.
I haven't read the entire thread...but can you see the absurdity of the statement you made here? I said there aren't any moral obligations so I don't have to answer the question? It's almost as if you believe that since I don't think they exist...then they don't exist for me.
Is that what you think? Or do you think they exist apart from your mind as "something you feel obligated to do/not do"?
If you believe they just exist in the mind ...then the answer of where they come from isn't going to be the same for everyone. Whether it's some social evolution, some function of humanity, political, or spiritual...it doesn't really matter does it?
If you believe they exist apart from the mind...that someone/something creates these obligations... then demonstrate they exist.
The Silver Rule: "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you".
Rather that this carefully constructed straw-man, I look at it from a different angle.
Evolutionarily speaking, it was only yesterday that humans were living in small, nomadic groups, competing for resources with other groups and wild critters.
Within these small groups, social behaviour could be the difference between survival and extinction. I would expect that groups that tolerated individuals that hoarded or stole food from others, or terrorized others within the group, would be at a disadvantage to those groups that made sure that everyone the group was fed, the old (for their knowledge) and young were cared for, and kicked those disruptive individuals out on their butt (or more harsher penalties).
Then, times get tough.
"The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change."
Population bottleneck - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The groups that didn't survive these times didn't get to be our ancestors. Social behaviour - what we call morality - was selected for as a survival trait.
The "social contract" within these surviving groups would eventually reach out to other groups with whom they found it advantageous to cooperate with.
The theft of an iPad left out on a counter does not invalidate the social contract.
So THAT was your point? That there are atheists who believe this?You see Mark and the others disagree with you Ana. They do affirm that we are under moral obligation to do and not do certain things.
Whose existence?So why do you not ask them to demonstrate their existence?
I'm saying that mistreating others is not just at their expense, but at one's own as well.
Because it is in his best interests.
There is a natural human good that is preferable to the alternatives precisely because he is a human being.
I don't assume anything. I regard the human good as real and beyond mere agreement or opinion. If he doesn't understand what that good is, then he lacks skill at living a human life. It's his loss.
Then, sadly, he will act in ways that are self-destructive and he won't be doing what he is ethically obligated to do.
I don't know what you mean by "pure self-interest". Perhaps you mean to ask me what if he intends to steal other people's iPads anyway? Then he will reap the consequences, both external and internal.
We can't live on pure desire or instinct.
We, as human beings, need to understand the world in conceptual terms and to reason from our understanding in order to produce both material and psychological values and thereby find well-being as human beings. That's part of what makes us the species that we are. There is no substitute for this.
Then he will be missing out on a longer, and probably better, life.
Yes, he is obligated, because it actually is in his best interests to do so.
I don't care what his definition of success is.
You actually need to address Mark and Archaeopteryx and everyone else who labels my fictitious case study protagonist as psychopathic.
You see Mark and the others disagree with you Ana. They do affirm that we are under moral obligation to do and not do certain things.
So why do you not ask them to demonstrate their existence?
Please detail how they are distinct.Not at all. It's perfecty possible to do ethics without the concept of a moral law. The ancient Greeks did.
"Man's moral nature", by all the evidence at hand, appears to be a product of evolution, of being a social animal. On what exactly are you going to hang Jeffery's "moral law giver to prohibit or prescribe moral duties" sign on in that circumstance?"God" may be an option; "law giver" is not. So the question is still there; if not God, then who or what? Merriam-Webster at least tries to give alternatives: "conscience", "man's moral nature" "natural justice as revealed to human reason". Do you want to go with one of those or do you have some other answer?
I note how you trimmed my response of my explanation of and in what manner it was binding.If it's not binding it's not an obligation.
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