What would you lose if Christianity were not true?

[Hazelelponi]

If this life is all there is, and you followed a Christian lifestyle, what would be your loss if this life is the only existence we have?

Just to elaborate, I know Christians who claim they would lose nothing, but I think it's a contradiction, because same Christians claim they have given ALL to Christ also, like the hymn says... "I surrender all.."

I have learned love, forgiveness, joy, happiness, had perfect peace in this life, I have learned to forgive myself for my mistakes. As a true Christian racism is gone and the things of hate or fear. In general I've become a far better human being with Christianity than without.

So what is there to regret if I ceased to exist? That I missed out of the hedonistic orgy?

Yeah - Thank God for that! haha thats definitely something I'll never regret.

 

[FireDragon76]

I have learned love, forgiveness, joy, happiness, had perfect peace in this life, I have learned to forgive myself for my mistakes.

All good things, if true.

I think the concern is the number of people that are merely living being a Christian that don't seek those things, but instead use religion to forestall actually seeking them, because they are afraid of taking a risk. Some people have a very fear-based religion, after all, that has very little intrinsic rewards.

 

[FireDragon76]

I've been meaning to reply to this for a while, since the sort of almost mystical intuitions you've mentioned here can easily build a path straight to theism.

Are you at all familiar with the apophatic tradition? Recognizing that humanity's ideas of God would have to be almost by definition limited really ties in nicely with negative theology in general, so if you are not familiar with the ways in which some of these issues are tackled within theology worldwide, that is really a shame.

Don't try to misrepresent Christianity. Theism is far different from what was suggested. Feeling connection to life and the universe is far different from believing in an omnipotent personal being whose arbitrary decrees determine everything.

One book I would recommend, if you haven't read it yet, is David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God. He himself is Eastern Orthodox, but the book itself is much more universal than that, and almost more based on a Hindu understanding of religious experience than a Christian one.

David Bentley Hart is regularly denounced as a liberal over at The Ancient Way. His ideas are highly controversial, to say the least. Many, many Orthodox are actually religious fundamentalists or nationalists. They aren't into mystical contemplation of anything. That's just a gloss for their premodern and uncritical thinking. Mystery can be a doorway to metaphysics, after all. And metaphysics is all too often used to forestall genuine engagement with the world.

Our concern with marginalized people really does come directly from Christian revelation

In the West, that is true, but it's not true universally.

Well, yes. Corks in the ocean is a great picture. It reminds me of an Alan Watts quote: "You are something the whole universe is doing, in the same way a wave is something the whole ocean is doing." Losing faith in God has allowed me to see the universe and myself in a whole new light - we are indeed one. I wasn't "put here" by something external to the universe or our reality, instead I am a product of it, as much a part of it as you, my rabbits, black holes, oceans and flowers. A slave? Yes, in a sense - I didn't choose to exist, nobody else chose that I exist. Yet here I am, and I think it's absolutely... I want to say miraculous.

But I realize don't have to exclude God to feel like one with the universe and so forth. But I don't think I could've gotten to see reality in this way unless I'd lost my Christian faith. Maybe I'll believe again some day, but with a pretty different concept of God (even as a believer, I was very aware that any human's idea of God would by definition be limited).

I think that's a healthy place to be on the whole, vs. somebody who has very black and white thinking about the issue and assumes that somebody that doesn't believe in God is unspiritual.

One hazard I see in @Silmarien is alot of potential false dichotomies, and I believe that's simply due to inexperience. It's easy to get lost in a world of ideas divorced from practical realities. Reality has an elusive, subtle, and even playful quality and doesn't fit into our conceptual boxes in that manner. Truth is found in life, not in ideas about life.

 

[Hazelelponi]

All good things, if true.

I think the concern is the number of people that are merely living being a Christian that don't seek those things, but instead use religion to forestall actually seeking them, because they are afraid of taking a risk. Some people have a very fear-based religion, after all, that has very little intrinsic rewards.

Yes I agree with you. But as you know, Christianity in fact isn't a fear based religion at all.

It's a message of reconciliation of man to God...

What the unsaved do or don't do isn't between us and them, it's not communal in this way, it's personal and individual. The unsaved answer to God same as we do.

The communal aspects in Christianity are between the body of Christ and God, not between believers and the world...

But I agree this whole fear of hell, fear of punishment thing is what many operate on - but as the Bible says, Perfect Love drives out fear. Because fear is punishment based and Christianity concerns reconciliation and forgiveness as well as becoming more mature in Christ - overcoming selfish desires in favor of that which is better. And - through the Holy Spirit we can do that..

Therefore, anyone operating still in fear, has yet to find the reconciliation..

 

[FireDragon76]

Yes I agree with you. But as you know, Christianity in fact isn't a fear based religion at all.

I don't know that. My experience has mostly been with ones that are. Making people aware of fear, or even genuinely fearful, is part of traditional Lutheran preaching. People have to be kept on the straight and narrow through God's Word, and so on... to be driven by the Law to the Gospel. And much of the concern is really quite silly, in my mind. The world is facing the possibility of environmental catastrophe, and the pastor often preached about personal morality. It's just a huge disconnect and doesn't show sensitivity to enlightened, practical concerns that affect us all. Having naughty thoughts about sex or unkind thoughts about your neighbor? Picayune in comparison. This is petty, uninspiring morality.

 

[Hazelelponi]

I don't know that. My experience has mostly been with ones that are. Making people aware of fear, or even genuinely fearful, is part of traditional Lutheran preaching. People have to be kept on the straight and narrow through God's Word, and so on... to be driven by the Law to the Gospel. And much of the concern is really quite silly, in my mind. The world is facing the possibility of environmental collapse, and the pastor often preached about personal morality. It's just a huge disconnect.

Nothing temporal lasts forever.. this earth is finite, we are finite.. Everything has its end..

Isn't "the end of the world will be in 12 years" that AOC talks about or Bernie Sanders "most of the cities in the world will be under water in 8 years" so we must do x because o.m.g. we will all die - little different than those who run around saying "The end of the world is nigh" from their religious standpoint?

Civilisations rise and fall, animals become extinct, natural disasters wipe out many because in the end - everything we see is finite.

So what lasts then? What is most important in all of this?

Isn't it in who we are as people - now?

Even if your pastor speaks about personal morality - haven't we all been on the receiving end of malicious gossip, a thing the Bible calls sin?

What we have is who we are, right now, today, and what we can do is become the best of what and who we are...

I believe in God, I believe there is a morality that is from without - not from within, that we could all do well to adopt...

Should we pollute our earth? No.. but it doesn't stop all this from being finite either. The dinasours weren't littering, or expelling emissions - and they found their end too because they were finite.

There's nothing wrong with working on self - because who we are is what makes the biggest impact today, and can make impact even beyond our small finite lives.

 

[Silmarien]

Don't try to misrepresent Christianity. Theism is far different from what was suggested. Feeling connection to life and the universe is far different from believing in an omnipotent personal being whose arbitrary decrees determine everything.

I'm hardly misrepresenting Christianity by discussing apophatic theology. This is a fairly well developed trend that goes back to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite--the tension within Christian theology between cataphatic and apophatic theology is pretty well known, at least amongst theologians, and ought to be discussed more.

David Bentley Hart is regularly denounced as a liberal over at The Ancient Way. His ideas are highly controversial, to say the least. Many, many Orthodox are actually religious fundamentalists or nationalists. They aren't into mystical contemplation of anything. That's just a gloss for their premodern and uncritical thinking. Mystery can be a doorway to metaphysics, after all. And metaphysics is all too often used to forestall genuine engagement with the world.

People have a problem with David Bentley Hart primarily because of his universalism, I believe. Not because of his classical theism. Nobody complains about his classical theism--that is actually pretty standard, and since he's an evocative writer, he's one of the better people out there at expressing it.

One hazard I see in @Silmarien is alot of potential false dichotomies, and I believe that's simply due to inexperience. It's easy to get lost in a world of ideas divorced from practical realities. Reality has an elusive, subtle, and even playful quality and doesn't fit into our conceptual boxes in that manner. Truth is found in life, not in ideas about life.

Because "elusive," "subtle," and "playful" are not conceptual ideas about life.

 

[Sanoy]

You seem to be implying I'm just as guilty as a murderer. I'm not sure how that works out without seeming absurdity.



If it is like a hospital (a claim I do not accept, that simplifies religion's function in peoples lives far too much), it's often more like a hospital run by the sick. As Jesus said, "the blind leading the blind".



I went through the better part of half a decade of therapy to be able to accept myself. I am not prepared to throw that all away and believe something that is untrue merely because it would get me access to potential social networks and empty and hollow promises about the afterlife.

No, I reject your implication that I am an evil person, or that people in general are evil. People are often ignorant and can be educated, that's different from being evil.

No, I'm not saying you are as guilty as a murder. I never mentioned guilt, you are restating my position into a strawman. I am saying that under this world view morality is that which our moral faculties point to, whatever that may be.

We are all sick, so yeah it's a hospital run by the sick. Since you have brought up a health situation, you have bared me from discussion on this. All the same you should bar yourself from criticism of others morality, both because of your own struggle, and if your world view is that morality is subjective.

 

[Silmarien]

I like that term better than implying moral absolutism. Usually that is nothing but an attempt by Evangelicals to try to sell you on Jesus as the solution to a seeming deficit in perceived moral rectitude.

Usually "moral absolutism" refers to Kantianism and related ideas, not Evangelicalism. This is moral philosophy, not religion.

I think in the end that's a personal choice. I just don't find Napoleon to be all that bad compared to some figures of the time period. The British moral hypocrisy was rather borish, in comparison.

I find it interesting that you would complain about Christians conquering Europe at swordpoint (something that never actually happened), and then turn around and say that Napoleon's wars of conquest were perfectly acceptable. Not to mention that attempt to reinstate slavery in the French colonies.

Egoism isn't necessarily all that great of an evil in my book. If you don't look out for yourself, who will? "Love your neighbor as yourself" implies you actually love yourself in the first place.

I agree. There is a clear connection in Christianity between loving oneself and loving the other. That's a connection that Nietzsche challenges, though--he was not big on altruism at all. Now, if you want to be a conservative and say that wealth redistibution is a matter resentment of the rich, and that welfare makes people weak, you would be a great Nietzschean.

I'm not a fan of bronze age values, either. But I'm not convinced your representation of Christianity is accurate to the way it is actually practiced.

Bronze Age values? The classical world wasn't the Bronze Age, and neither was imperial Japan. Honestly, I see better values in the Old Testament than I do in classical Greece, so I don't care for using the word "Bronze Age" as a slur.

Maybe it's even self-contradictory. But I'm not convinced that's what people who reject Christianity are actually saying. I think you are generally drawing up a strawman here.

There is a book you should read. It's about nine prominent artists and intellectuals, and why they ultimately left Christianity behind. It seems to me many of their motivations are alot more noble than simply being nihilistic and not caring:

https://www.amazon.com/Evangelical-Disenchantment-Portraits-Faith-Doubt/dp/0300140673

You're the one drawing up a strawman if you think my claim is that people leave Christianity to be nihilistic and not caring. My claim is actually that they leave it behind and continue to adhere to its values, often in an unexamined fashion. That's probably for the best, since we don't need more alt-right people and violent anarchists wandering around, but there's very little content behind any of it anymore.

I'm also not an Evangelical, so I'm not sure why you think disenchantment with Evangelicalism would be remotely interesting to me.

Pete Buttigieg is an Episcopalian, and his views don't represent most American Christians.

So what? He's a public Christian figure who is saying precisely what you claim that public Christian figures do not say. It would be convenient for your narrative if the religious left did not exist, but it does.

Liberalism in the Church is dying and insignificant in the US. People aren't becoming religious liberals, they are simply leaving. Liberalism is failing to inspire people to actually be religious. Perhaps that is the terminus for Christianity, some have speculated about that of course, including Bonhoeffer.

Are you really calling Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter insignificant?

Tutu is a liberal Anglican whose views likewise wouldn't be well represented on this forum. He's fairly outspoken about gay rights and environmentalism, for instance, and he seems to have somewhat universalist sentiments. All those things could get you in big trouble here, and people would say you aren't really a Christian if you believe those things. So it's problematic to hold him up as an example of a Christian without acknowledging how unpopular and unrepresentative his views really would be.

Are you serious? Archbishop Desmond Tutu isn't a real Christian to you because all that matters is the American Evangelical microcosm representative of this forum? I am a liberal Anglo-Catholic--that is a thing that exists, as much as you might wish it didn't. If you want to fight with Evangelicals, go fight with Evangelicals. As an Anglican, I will not apologize to you for citing major Anglican figures, no matter how unpopular and unrepresentative you think they might be. Also, quit it with the Americentricism. There's a world outside of our borders.

 

[holo]

On the Euthyphro.
That God's nature is the good means that it's neither arbitrary nor not God which is the point of invoking the Euthyphro. Yes, God can only act according to His nature, but the Good does not refer to what He says, but God's nature.

Maybe I'm dense, but I still don't see how this makes God's morality somehow objective. It's not not an appeal to moral values being objective in and of themselves (again, that would have to mean they somehow existed even independently of God), but to authority.

MGB
God is maximally Good, which is a part of what is entailed by maximally great.

I guess this would be your answer to the above. But (again I may be dense) I don't see how it follows that because one is maximally great, one must necessarily be maximally good. Is that some sort of natural law?

Evidence vs Assertion on God and Faculties
There are other reasons to believe in God besides moral faculties, but that, and intellectual faculties is all I am talking about here. You have repeatedly behaved as if you do have faculties to point toward true belief and moral oughts.

My faculties point toward some truth (I assume), and definitely toward moral oughts. I just don't believe that just because my intuition is that something is moral in and of itself, that it therefore must be so. Again, take the example of my kids. If I have any moral intuition at all, it's that they are the most valuable things in the universe. I can't not believe that. Yet I know it's not objectively true. I know that this, like any other moral sensibility, is a value statement, not a truth statement. It's undoubtedly true that they are the world's most precious thing to me. But it doesn't make sense to say they are objectively worth so and so much as if it was a matter of fact.

But I don't have to use myself as an example. Looking at what passed for good morality in history, it's obvious to see that people's moral intuitions hardly point at some sort of objective reality. If it did, how can people be so wrong about it? If it's God-given, why is it a mystery at all?

Claims vs Actions
You brought up genocide as if it were a standard I would abide by, it was a gambit rather than merely a moral proposition I would recognize. You expected me to act accordingly, that is an external standard that you relied upon.

I assumed you would agree with me on the morality of genocide. Not because of some external standard, but because you and I, living in this day and age, most likely will agree on things like that. Was I wrong?

Moral competition and absolute moral epistemology.
In your reply you objectively stated that Morality isn't the only thing driving our actions and that they are in competition, such as Greed vs Charity. But this is just another example of you appealing to a moral standard because Greed and Charity are both potential morals under your world view, and yet you speak of one as if it is a moral, and the other as if it is not. This is again another vacillation into my world view to prop up your own.

Sure, greed and charity can be seen in moral terms. I could've said self-interest and empathy instead. I'm not appealing to moral standards here, I'm just stating that people are driven by many things at once, and the drives are often in direct conflict with each other.

I don't follow your statement here that I need to know what perfect morality is or I don't have it. Someone without perfect intelligence doesn't seem to lack intelligence. That doesn't seem to follow. I get my moral faculties from the same source as my intellectual faculties, if I can't speak of moral facts, then why should I be able to speak of any facts.

You said you wouldn't know what perfect morality would look like since you don't have it. Fine, but since your morality is corrupted or at best incomplete, how to you know that anything is morally right or wrong at all? If morality is objective and you, by definition, can't truly know fully what it entails, on what authority can you make any moral judgment at all?

For example, how do you know God is good? Is that just an assumption you make (if so, based on what exactly) or have you deemed his actions to be right and good?

Intellectual Faculties and true belief
You have not been appealing to intellectual faculties that 'know some truth about reality'. You have spoken of certainty, and called for evidence.

I don't need certainty as in indisputable proof, I'm asking for reasonable evidence for the existence of objective moral values. If I've understood you right, the evidence is
a) because we have moral intuition, objective morality must exist, and
b) God exists, is by definition maximally great, and maximally great necessarily means he must be maximally good

You have been appealing to a fully functional intellectual faculty while denying that it has any attaining degree. You say that evolution can give you some degree of efficacy, but survival does not require true belief, survival only requires survival behavior. You don't have enough reason to even warrant your belief that you are capable of knowing some truth.

Depends on what you mean by warrant. I'm assuming some axioms, and I think we agree on those. For example, the axiom that you or I aren't the only consciousness that exists. Another axiom: through our senses we can know at least some truth about the world. For example the "law" of cause and effect. I could be that some of our shared axioms are wrong, but the axioms we actually disagree on seem to be
a) that morality can be objective
b) that there is a God

Subjective vs objective value.
I agree with your portrayal of subjective value to an extent. The issue is that you are using humans for the example rather than God. Life will always have an eternal value because there will always be one who values it. There are people who don't value life, you for instance (intellectually), but that doesn't change it's value. Not believing in the present value of a dollar doesn't change how much that dollar can purchase, the price tag objectively determines the value of the dollar regardless of the subjective value of the dollar.

But the dollar still doesn't have an objective value. It doesn't matter how many people agree on it, or on what it objectively can buy.

Like you say, life has value because someone values it. That's really my entire point. Value isn't inherent. It can't be. Just like love, art, or music, it doesn't doesn't exist in and of itself. We may say "this room is full of love," but it isn't. There's not some "love stuff" floating around in the room. It's not some invisible energy or field or vibration. It's something that happens in the minds of those who are there.

If God sets the price tag, none can change it.

I agree. If I'm worth this or that to God, then I'm worth this or that - to God.

Uniformity of morals among humans.
We have been around for what 300,000 years? Our morals are no where near optimized for passing on genes. Why not? They aren't even close, the best among us was Genghis Khan, and he was actually a detraction from the norm. So, without ad hoc attribution, how does this uniformity of morals, which goes against the best man evolution has ever provided us with, exemplify evolution. You spoke earlier about how strange it was that Christian morals progressed over time. But it seems evolutionary morals are devolving over time rather than evolving as slavery has largely been eradicated and we are more concerned with not passing on our genes than passing them on, both proactively and retroactively.

Our morals don't have to be optimal, they just have to be better than the competition. And I agree that moral values as we know them today, may not be the "best" evolutionarily speaking. Morality, just like any other evolved trait, may turn out to be less than beneficial when we're placed in a later time or different situation than where it came to be. Social anxiety is a great example. It's a perfectly natural reaction that made a lot of sense when we lived in small groups and depended on not being shunned by several people. For a guy living in a huge city where he'll never run into the same guy two days in a row, it's pretty pointless. It makes no difference if he makes a fool of himself. But his instincts are still those of a caveman.

Mental Consequences of this world view
I don't think you are insane, I think you are mistaken. But according to your world view you would be insane. It doesn't matter if you feel that your children are the most valuable thing in the world. The issue is that you are behaving in accordance with your perception of reality, and your perception of reality is the opposite of reality. That is no different than the person that talks to Gnomes at the bus stop. Insane is the right word.

I'm can't be bothered to take offense, but I hope you can see why many people would. You don't think I'm insane, but according to my own worldview I am... ok.

Anyway. Regarding my loving my kids, my perception of reality isn't the opposite of reality. Because it's not an objective fact that they're worthless. Just like it's not an objective fact that they're precious. Their worth isn't a fact, it's a value. It's a fact that I put this or that value on them, but their value doesn't exist in and of itself as if it were gravity or a mathematical law. The value exists in how I relate to them. When my boy brought home pebbles and rocks of all sorts, they were extremely valuable to him, and, by extension, to me. Nothing objective about it, but they were super precious to him, and he displayed them and guarded them and counted them. Now, Lego is the big thing and the rocks have become worthless and have been thrown out.

Led Zepplin
Whether a music album has objective value or not has nothing to do with whether or not objective value exists.

You don't (and can't) use objective measures to determine the value of something. I mean, is John Bonham (R.I.P.) of Led Zeppelin a better drummer than a two-year-old banging on pots and pans? If you're like most of us you'll say "yes, obviously." Well, according to what objective, ultimate standard? If you don't have an objective standard, does that mean it's pointless to say one is a better drummer than the other? Would it mean that nobody would care which of them performed?

What you lost without Christ

When you were a Christian your Kids had objective and real value. When you turned away from Christ for this world view they lost that value. Now if you never thought your kids have objective value even when you were a Christian

I didn't think too deeply about this stuff when I was a believer, other than that I bought into the idea that if God doesn't exist, then objective morality doesn't exist either. Which I actually agree with now, only that I don't see how morality could be objective at all, even in principle.

But in any case, I didn't lose the value of anything. My kids are still, probably even more so now than before, the most valuable thing in the world to me. If there is a god, maybe they're valuable to him too. Who knows? How could I figure that out?

Objectivity of a moral standard.
God either is or is not ultimate. Goodness either does or does not refer to God's nature. Those questions have objective answers that are wholly apart from my subjective judgement. So this is not subjective, I am and have been proposing objective facts.

Sure, the answer may be A or B, the question is if there are good arguments for either A or B.

 

[holo]

You're equivocating on the use of the term "moral judgment." The fact that a person is more liable to snap at someone if they're tired doesn't mean that their moral opinions change depending on their mood. If that were the case, they wouldn't feel guilt afterwards. I still don't see what this has to do with anything, though.

Brain damage can make you care less about people. Living in a different time or culture will mean different moral values. Yes, our mood (among other things) does determine our morality. The fact that you may regret being angry, for example, doesn't mean your morality is fixed. If there is some sort of unchanging, "real" morality in you, what exactly is it? What are your true moral values? Do they reflect the supposed ultimate, objective values? If so, how do you know? In what state of mind do you have perfect (or as good as it gets) morality?

Money and especially game rules are social constructs. I see no reason not to be cynical about either one of these things, so comparing morality to them doesn't help you in any way. If cheating is not inherently wrong, then why not cheat if you can get away with it?

I agree that cheating is wrong. It's destructive and unfair and against my values, and I think that the majority would agree with me.

If it's against some sort of objective standard, what exactly is that standard? How do we know what it is? Is it even possible for us to know what it is, or are we left to assume that our moral intuitions, feeble and changing and corrupted as they are, still point to some greater, objective reality?

Yes, in the same way that you care about the capitalist system and the rules of monopoly, apparently. Color me impressed.

Your point being?

The word "better" is ultimately meaningless if you toss out the notion of a standard. You can't use comparatives and superlatives without having some underlying method of comparison. One apple can be more or less red than another, but only if we have a fixed idea of what point on the color spectrum the word "red" refers to. If you have literally no way to judge the difference between what you're comparing when you say that one thing is better than another, we're at an odd sort of linguistic impasse. Might as well say that one thing is more awefcre than another.

I'm not tossing out the notion of a standard, I'm objecting to the idea that an objective standard exists. I think the burden of proof is on those who claim that it does. All I know is that yes, it certainly feels like there's an objective standard. But exactly what it is, apparently nobody really knows. I can't read it somewhere or calculate it, and though it's my intuition that tells me it exists, I know my intuition is false and can't tell me what it says. To me it seems as real as, say, a Thursday. Thursday is real, but where exactly does it exist apart from in our minds?

People have proposed naturalistic explanations for the axiom that effects have causes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that causality isn't an objectively true fact of nature. If you're asking for axioms to be "revealed," you're in trouble, since that isn't the way first principles work.

We need to assume some axioms, but I don't see why we should assume the existence of morality that exists outside of the human mind or human culture.

Anyway, my concern is one of coherency rather than proof. Every belief system is to a certain extent circular and unprovable, but some are internally consistent and others are not. "There is no objective morality, but what great moral progress we've made in the past century!" is really just an unfathomably terrible error in reasoning. At least the utilitarians bothered to try.

I don't see the problem with saying A is better than B just because I can't point to an external standard.

But I do see a problem with saying what really boils down to "this is wrong because God says so."

It's also full of naturalists with their eugenics, not to mention the utopian dreams of the Soviet Union, drenched in blood. None of which can be truly condemned if morality is just a convenient fiction, so again, I'm really not impressed.

Well I guess if I were somehow an "objective" being myself, then I could condemn them "objectively."

Sure, it's possible that a war criminal tries the "but how can it be objectively wrong" defense, but as you know it wouldn't get him very far.

 

[FireDragon76]

No, I'm not saying you are as guilty as a murder. I never mentioned guilt, you are restating my position into a strawman. I am saying that under this world view morality is that which our moral faculties point to, whatever that may be.

We are all sick, so yeah it's a hospital run by the sick. Since you have brought up a health situation, you have bared me from discussion on this. All the same you should bar yourself from criticism of others morality, both because of your own struggle, and if your world view is that morality is subjective.

You are presenting a false dichotomy. Just because I am skeptical of claims of moral absolutism doesn't mean I myself don't have moral intuitions.

Of course, Christianity has primed your mind to catastrophise about the lack of some big, final answer on moral questions. This is part of trying to gloss over the inherent uncentaity that is part of being a morally responsible human being. The solution to this is an attitude of intellectual humility and being willing to consider alternative perspectives in a measured, but wise, manner: to learn from experience.

 

[FireDragon76]

I'm hardly misrepresenting Christianity by discussing apophatic theology. This is a fairly well developed trend that goes back to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite--the tension within Christian theology between cataphatic and apophatic theology is pretty well known, at least amongst theologians, and ought to be discussed more.

About a year ago, I got into trouble for discussing something like apophatic theology taken to its most radical extension, "Death of God" theology. So it seems many, many Christians are deeply wary of any talk about God's unknowability and apparent hiddenness. There is a reason for this, because not knowing, not having final answers, necessitates personal freedom, something that many religious people deeply resent (as the story of the Prodigal Son demontstrates, and as I have myself observed).

 

[Silmarien]

Brain damage can make you care less about people. Living in a different time or culture will mean different moral values. Yes, our mood (among other things) does determine our morality. The fact that you may regret being angry, for example, doesn't mean your morality is fixed. If there is some sort of unchanging, "real" morality in you, what exactly is it? What are your true moral values? Do they reflect the supposed ultimate, objective values? If so, how do you know? In what state of mind do you have perfect (or as good as it gets) morality?

This is a little wild, honestly. You just tossed subjective morality out the window along with objective morality. Do you really think that whether an individual believes that murder is wrong depends on how angry they are in any given moment? If you're going to reduce morality to emotional states, there is really nothing left at all, since one societal purpose that morality has is to check those extreme emotional states in the first place.

I agree that cheating is wrong. It's destructive and unfair and against my values, and I think that the majority would agree with me.

If it's against some sort of objective standard, what exactly is that standard? How do we know what it is? Is it even possible for us to know what it is, or are we left to assume that our moral intuitions, feeble and changing and corrupted as they are, still point to some greater, objective reality?

I never said that I thought cheating was wrong at all. One could take a somewhat Nietzschean approach, claim that rules against cheating are meant to keep the herd in check, or even that people only refrain from cheating because they're too afraid to break the rules and assert their own power in the face of a society that favors mediocrity. The fact that the majority would agree that cheating is wrong means nothing except that the majority is the paralyzed herd. It may be better for the herd to not rise above its station, but a stronger man should disregard this slave morality altogether.

One could of course also ask to what degree we're already in a Nietzschean world, where moral prohibitions against cheating only favor those in power who pay no heed to such rules in the first place. The powerful already do whatever they want, and we can wonder whether moral prohibitions against cheating actually favor anyone besides our corporate overlords as it is.

I'm not particularly interested in arguing for an objective moral standard here. It's the attacks upon traditional concepts of morality that I'm focused on, since I think they're much more powerful than people realize. The only weak link I can identify in them is the underlying assumption of naturalism.

I'm not tossing out the notion of a standard, I'm objecting to the idea that an objective standard exists. I think the burden of proof is on those who claim that it does. All I know is that yes, it certainly feels like there's an objective standard. But exactly what it is, apparently nobody really knows. I can't read it somewhere or calculate it, and though it's my intuition that tells me it exists, I know my intuition is false and can't tell me what it says. To me it seems as real as, say, a Thursday. Thursday is real, but where exactly does it exist apart from in our minds?

Thursday doesn't strike me as remotely real. It's a social construct--spend a couple months alone in the desert and no doubt it'll fall apart. If you're kind of enslaved to social constructs you don't think are real, including morality, then that is your experience, but it's really not universal. Some people, upon coming to the conclusion that morality is not real, can very easily slip away from it. My initial complaint was that you told someone else that their sense of morality would not fall apart in the absense of Christianity, simply because yours did not.

We need to assume some axioms, but I don't see why we should assume the existence of morality that exists outside of the human mind or human culture.

Well, we don't have to, but human rights as a concept isn't going to survive very long in the face of potential environmental catastrophe if we don't genuinely think that human dignity matters. You just said above that morality depended on mood--for subjectivists, maybe that is in fact the case, but it's a psychological weakness that could prove disastrous if things get difficult.

I don't see the problem with saying A is better than B just because I can't point to an external standard.

But I do see a problem with saying what really boils down to "this is wrong because God says so."

I'm not a divine command theorist, but I honestly fail to see the problem.

Well I guess if I were somehow and "objective" being myself, then I could condemn them "objectively."

Sure, it's possible that a war criminal tries the "but how can it be objectively wrong" defense, but as you know it wouldn't get him very far.

Funny you should say this, since there's a quote by Mussolini that basically amounts to the same: "If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable."

This mentality definitely exists, and sometimes it accumulates a ton of power.

(Sorry if I'm coming across as overly harsh, by the way. I don't think you're immoral and I'm definitely not trying to persuade you that you have to convert. I'm a product of atheistic French existentialism, though, so I get pretty intense about this subject since I think they were right and the rest of the secular world is delusional. It'd probably be better to think of me as a representative of a rival atheistic school of thought here.)

 

[zippy2006]

About a year ago, I got into trouble for discussing something like apophatic theology taken to its most radical extension, "Death of God" theology. So it seems many, many Christians are deeply wary of any talk about God's unknowability and apparent hiddenness.

Many ideas are problematic when taken to their most radical extensions. That could basically be the definition of Christian heresy: making one idea central and taking it to the extreme. Heck, Nietzsche even considered that a kind of heresy.

Apophatic theology is pretty standard whether you're talking about Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, or even Judaism.

 

[FireDragon76]

This is a little wild, honestly. You just tossed subjective morality out the window along with objective morality. Do you really think that whether an individual believes that murder is wrong depends on how angry they are in any given moment? If you're going to reduce morality to emotional states, there is really nothing left at all, since one societal purpose that morality has is to check those extreme emotional states in the first place.



I never said that I thought cheating was wrong at all. One could take a somewhat Nietzschean approach, claim that rules against cheating are meant to keep the herd in check, or even that people only refrain from cheating because they're too afraid to break the rules and assert their own power in the face of a society that favors mediocrity. The fact that the majority would agree that cheating is wrong means nothing except that the majority is the paralyzed herd. It may be better for the herd to not rise above its station, but a stronger man should disregard this slave morality altogether.

One could of course also ask to what degree we're already in a Nietzschean world, where moral prohibitions against cheating only favor those in power who pay no heed to such rules in the first place. The powerful already do whatever they want, and we can wonder whether moral prohibitions against cheating actually favor anyone besides our corporate overlords as it is.

I'm not particularly interested in arguing for an objective moral standard here. It's the attacks upon traditional concepts of morality that I'm focused on, since I think they're much more powerful than people realize. The only weak link I can identify in them is the underlying assumption of naturalism.



Thursday doesn't strike me as remotely real. It's a social construct--spend a couple months alone in the desert and no doubt it'll fall apart. If you're kind of enslaved to social constructs you don't think are real, including morality, then that is your experience, but it's really not universal. Some people, upon coming to the conclusion that morality is not real, can very easily slip away from it. My initial complaint was that you told someone else that their sense of morality would not fall apart in the absense of Christianity, simply because yours did not.



Well, we don't have to, but human rights as a concept isn't going to survive very long in the face of potential environmental catastrophe if we don't genuinely think that human dignity matters. You just said above that morality depended on mood--for subjectivists, maybe that is in fact the case, but it's a psychological weakness that could prove disastrous if things get difficult.



I'm not a divine command theorist, but I honestly fail to see the problem.



Funny you should say this, since there's a quote by Mussolini that basically amounts to the same: "If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable."

This mentality definitely exists, and sometimes it accumulates a ton of power.

(Sorry if I'm coming across as overly harsh, by the way. I don't think you're immoral and I'm definitely not trying to persuade you that you have to convert. I'm a product of atheistic French existentialism, though, so I get pretty intense about this subject since I think they were right and the rest of the secular world is delusional. It'd probably be better to think of me as a representative of a rival atheistic school of thought here.)

You seem to harp on the supposedly problematic nature of naturalism but have I ever really given any indication that I am naturalist? After all, I accept at least some kind of subjective experience after death. That doesn't fit with what is generally called naturalism.

You're really trying to lump together and pidgeonhole different ideas into narrow categories where they don't necessarily apply. There are many different potential reasons for being a non-theist and you can't lay it at the feet of scientific naturalism.

 

[holo]

This is a little wild, honestly. You just tossed subjective morality out the window along with objective morality. Do you really think that whether an individual believes that murder is wrong depends on how angry they are in any given moment?

Yes. One of our rabbits were just killed by a cat, and while trying to comfort my devastated kids, every moral fiber in me screamed that the morally right thing would be to choke the offending cat to death. It didn't take too long for me to return to a sort of moral baseline, but yes, my sense of right and wrong was definitely changed for a moment. So there's stuff like that. I also find that the more I learn about other people, and about animals, the more my morality toward them changes. So much of my moral condemnation of others are just a result of what I know or assume about others. I remember when I was a homophobe like most everybody around me. It was because I didn't know what homosexuality was, I had wrong ideas like "gays are super horny and want to rape any member of the same sex." So mood and knowledge are two (among several other) things that determine what we think is right and wrong.

That's why I ask in what state of mind you are "truly" moral. When is your morality "pure", as it were?

If you're going to reduce morality to emotional states, there is really nothing left at all, since one societal purpose that morality has is to check those extreme emotional states in the first place.

Emotional states aren't "nothing" though.

I never said that I thought cheating was wrong at all. One could take a somewhat Nietzschean approach, claim that rules against cheating are meant to keep the herd in check, or even that people only refrain from cheating because they're too afraid to break the rules and assert their own power in the face of a society that favors mediocrity. The fact that the majority would agree that cheating is wrong means nothing except that the majority is the paralyzed herd. It may be better for the herd to not rise above its station, but a stronger man should disregard this slave morality altogether.

One could of course also ask to what degree we're already in a Nietzschean world, where moral prohibitions against cheating only favor those in power who pay no heed to such rules in the first place. The powerful already do whatever they want, and we can wonder whether moral prohibitions against cheating actually favor anyone besides our corporate overlords as it is.

Sure, in some cases the ends may justify the means. It can be morally right to lie in some cases, like if it's to save a life.

I'm not particularly interested in arguing for an objective moral standard here. It's the attacks upon traditional concepts of morality that I'm focused on, since I think they're much more powerful than people realize. The only weak link I can identify in them is the underlying assumption of naturalism.

It's the assumptions part I'm attacking. It certainly feels like some things are right and wrong in and of themselves, I just don't see any convincing evidence for it, or how it can be true in principle.

What would be an example of an objective moral truth, and how would we know it is true? Doesn't it ultimately boil down to subjectivity, to an emotion?

Thursday doesn't strike me as remotely real. It's a social construct--spend a couple months alone in the desert and no doubt it'll fall apart.

And so would the idea of "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." Just like if you were the only one left on the planet, money would lose any value.

If you're kind of enslaved to social constructs you don't think are real, including morality, then that is your experience, but it's really not universal. Some people, upon coming to the conclusion that morality is not real, can very easily slip away from it. My initial complaint was that you told someone else that their sense of morality would not fall apart in the absense of Christianity, simply because yours did not.

I'm sure it can happen, but I doubt it. My (admittedly limited) experience is that people who fall away from religious beliefs certainly don't become less moral. On the contrary, often it seems to go in the opposite direction: since they no longer feel obliged to think that something is right or wrong because God says so, they develop a sense of moral rights and wrongs based on whether or not others are free, happy etc.

Well, we don't have to, but human rights as a concept isn't going to survive very long in the face of potential environmental catastrophe if we don't genuinely think that human dignity matters. You just said above that morality depended on mood--for subjectivists, maybe that is in fact the case, but it's a psychological weakness that could prove disastrous if things get difficult.

I agree that in the face of danger, morality can largely go out the window. My compassion for others depends, at least to a large degree, on my access to food.

I'm not a divine command theorist, but I honestly fail to see the problem.

I think the problem is that if you point to God as the source of right and wrong, you're not appealing to objectivity, but authority. In other words, things aren't right because they are right, but because God says so. You lay down your sense of morality and replace it with rules. And God's rules are all over the place, depending on which religion you happen to believe in.

Now, humanism is a religion as good as any. That worldview, too, assumes axioms and supernatural ideas like "all humans have rights". But some supernatural ideas and axioms are better than others. IMO it's much much better to try to agree on values, rather than just assume and assert that some god has commanded this or that. I think that, for the most part, humanistic values are closer to what most of us instinctively feel are the right values, than what you tend to get from religions.

Funny you should say this, since there's a quote by Mussolini that basically amounts to the same: "If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable."

Well I certainly don't agree that all ideologies are of equal value, and I don't think Mussolini did either

This mentality definitely exists, and sometimes it accumulates a ton of power.

Yes, but I don't think the idea that moral values are absolute and/or god-given is much better.

 

[Silmarien]

You seem to harp on the supposedly problematic nature of naturalism but have I ever really given any indication that I am naturalist? After all, I accept at least some kind of subjective experience after death. That doesn't fit with what is generally called naturalism.

You're really trying to lump together and pidgeonhole different ideas into narrow categories where they don't necessarily apply. There are many different potential reasons for being a non-theist and you can't lay it at the feet of scientific naturalism.

I wasn't responding to you at all, so I'm not sure where you got the impression that I thought you were a naturalist. I had Nietzsche and Marx, both of whom were naturalists, in mind.

 

[Silmarien]

Yes. One of our rabbits were just killed by a cat, and while trying to comfort my devastated kids, every moral fiber in me screamed that the morally right thing would be to choke the offending cat to death. It didn't take too long for me to return to a sort of moral baseline, but yes, my sense of right and wrong was definitely changed for a moment. So there's stuff like that. I also find that the more I learn about other people, and about animals, the more my morality toward them changes. So much of my moral condemnation of others are just a result of what I know or assume about others. I remember when I was a homophobe like most everybody around me. It was because I didn't know what homosexuality was, I had wrong ideas like "gays are super horny and want to rape any member of the same sex." So mood and knowledge are two (among several other) things that determine what we think is right and wrong.

That's why I ask in what state of mind you are "truly" moral. When is your morality "pure", as it were?

The example of homophobia really doesn't indicate that morals are the result of shifting emotions. It looks more like the way you view people adjusting to incorporate better information. You're not going to find many moral realists who would deny that moral growth is possible--the idea that one's personal morality can improve really kind of depends upon it.

The cat example is much stranger. Maybe being susceptible to something like that is a side effect of moral subjectivism, since if you're slowly starving the intuition that moral truths exist, you will be more vulnerable to changed emotional states.

Emotional states aren't "nothing" though.

Crimes of passion are a thing. If in a rage, someone decides that it's morally correct to commit murder, then they're going to commit murder. If morality is reduced to how we feel in the moment, then we're left in a situation where there are moments at which we feel like committing crimes, and others in which we don't. We don't even have subjective moral principles anymore.

Sure, in some cases the ends may justify the means. It can be morally right to lie in some cases, like if it's to save a life.

None of what I said had much of anything to do with utilitarianism, though. There's a difference between saying that the ends justify the means and saying that the whole concept of morality is a vehicle of oppression that ought to be overthrown.

It's the assumptions part I'm attacking. It certainly feels like some things are right and wrong in and of themselves, I just don't see any convincing evidence for it, or how it can be true in principle.

What would be an example of an objective moral truth, and how would we know it is true? Doesn't it ultimately boil down to subjectivity, to an emotion?

Honestly, no. I would deny that morality is primarily a matter of emotional states at all. I'd suggest taking a look at some of the Aristotelian ethicists--Philippa Foot is a good non-theistic member of that club. That school of thought would connect morality to the types of behaviors that contribute to the flourishing of the individual, not to whatever emotional states they might be feeling.

And so would the idea of "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." Just like if you were the only one left on the planet, money would lose any value.

Sure, the aspects of morality that involve the communal side of human life require the existence of other people, though that doesn't actually make them a social construct in the same way that the days of the week are. There's a difference between a social convention concerning how to divide time and the rational recognition that another person is a living, thinking individual.

I'm sure it can happen, but I doubt it. My (admittedly limited) experience is that people who fall away from religious beliefs certainly don't become less moral. On the contrary, often it seems to go in the opposite direction: since they no longer feel obliged to think that something is right or wrong because God says so, they develop a sense of moral rights and wrongs based on whether or not others are free, happy etc.

To be very blunt, you also said in this post that your compassion towards others depends largely on your access to food. That is not developing a sense of moral rights and wrongs based on whether or not others are free and happy--it's holding moral views only when it's convenient to do so, and a significant step away from what most religions would consider the moral ideal.

I think the problem is that if you point to God as the source of right and wrong, you're not appealing to objectivity, but authority. In other words, things aren't right because they are right, but because God says so. You lay down your sense of morality and replace it with rules. And God's rules are all over the place, depending on which religion you happen to believe in.

This is not necessarily true. The classical way to resolve the Euthyphro Problem is to deny both that things are right because God says so, and that God says they are right because they are right, and to instead identify the source of goodness with the divine nature itself. I think it's most coherent when you add Trinitarianism to the mix--treating other people well isn't good because God commands it, but because God's nature is ultimately one of self-giving, perfectly loving community, and that this is an objective fact of reality that should be reflected in more authentically moral human societies. Truths about morality don't flow from a set of rules, but from the nature of the Trinitarian God.

It's harder to make it work with other religions, or at least I've never been able to figure out a way to make sense of a grounds for communal morality without a communal God.

Now, humanism is a religion as good as any. That worldview, too, assumes axioms and supernatural ideas like "all humans have rights". But some supernatural ideas and axioms are better than others. IMO it's much much better to try to agree on values, rather than just assume and assert that some god has commanded this or that. I think that, for the most part, humanistic values are closer to what most of us instinctively feel are the right values, than what you tend to get from religions.

If you think that some supernatural ideas and axioms are better than others, you're back at needing a genuine standard against which to measure that.

Anyway, I think this conversation has pretty much run its course and there's nothing much more to say, and I need to get some work done anyway, so have a nice night.

 

[FireDragon76]

I wasn't responding to you at all, so I'm not sure where you got the impression that I thought you were a naturalist. I had Nietzsche and Marx, both of whom were naturalists, in mind.

I don't agree with Nietzsche on everything: some of his views about Christianity's plausibility were rooted in very early biblical criticism, for instance, and drew premature conclusions that would make some of his assumptions naive. But on other points I believe he was a brilliant thinker.