IS and OUGHT

[henry quirk]

Surely, for behaviour or an act to be categorised as moral -"good" or "bad"- it must be motivated by an individual's own sense of right and wrong according to his own moral frame of reference. To behave in accordance with a set of rules, simply because they are the rules, whether they be God's rules or secular, man made laws, is no more than obedience, and contains no element of morality, unless you happen to believe that obeying rules is, in itself, a moral act. I must admit, that makes the whole question of morality a very simple matter for the individual. He only has one moral imperative: Do as you are told.

If you know your life, liberty, and property are yours, and you recognize every other person in the world has the same claim to his individual life, liberty, and property as you do to yours, it seems to me you have a pretty clear baseline for what's permissible between and among men. You're still a free will: you can choose to ignore the other guy's right to his life, liberty and property, but you're responsible (and, as aside, you ought not be surprised when the one you're tryin' to murder or slave or rape or rob or hurt or coerce holds you responsible and responds accordingly).

[Harbal]

If you know your life, liberty, and property are yours, and you recognize every other person in the world has the same claim to his individual life, liberty, and property as you do to yours, it seems to me you have a pretty clear baseline for what's permissible between and among men. You're still a free will: you can choose to ignore the other guy's right to his life, liberty and property, but you're responsible (and, as aside, you ought not be surprised when the one you're tryin' to murder or slave or rape or rob or hurt or coerce holds you responsible and responds accordingly).

Exactly. A cornerstone of our success as a species is our ability to cooperate with each other. In order to cooperate you need to be able to trust that the guy you are cooperating with isn't going to stab you in the back and keep the wildebeest that you've just caught together for himself. We have evolved to live socially, and a society where all the members feel free to kill their neighbour and take his property just isn't going to function very well.

[henry quirk]

If you know your life, liberty, and property are yours, and you recognize every other person in the world has the same claim to his individual life, liberty, and property as you do to yours, it seems to me you have a pretty clear baseline for what's permissible between and among men. You're still a free will: you can choose to ignore the other guy's right to his life, liberty and property, but you're responsible (and, as aside, you ought not be surprised when the one you're tryin' to murder or slave or rape or rob or hurt or coerce holds you responsible and responds accordingly).

Exactly. A cornerstone of our success as a species is our ability to cooperate with each other. In order to cooperate you need to be able to trust that the guy you are cooperating with isn't going to stab you in the back and keep the wildebeest that you've just caught together for himself. We have evolved to live socially, and a society where all the members feel free to kill their neighbour and take his property just isn't going to function very well.

It also means you don't have to cooperate.

For example: that wildebeest you killed on your own is yours and you don't have to share it, or can share with some and not with others. Compassion, or strategy, might lead you to share it but you have no obligation to.

[Iwannaplato]

It also means you don't have to cooperate.

For example: that wildebeest you killed on your own is yours and you don't have to share it, or can share with some and not with others. Compassion, or strategy, might lead you to share it but you have no obligation to.

You certainly can, but if that is your regular pattern, your socially more like a komodo dragon than a human. And while komodo dragons have been around a long time, we threaten them more than they threaten us. It's probably one of our strengths that we are diverse at the individual level. So, some komodo dragons in the tribe(s) might even be positive for the species. But in general it's very good that we tend to cooperate and share.

[Immanuel Can]

It does respond to the question, though. You defined this concept of ownership as being that P owns S if S ought to do as P wishes.

Actually, I didn't. Those are your words.

So who is the putative alternate "owner"? Or, if you prefer other wording, who is the entity who rightfully determines your "oughts"?

Hmm, I took what you said here:

Let's not say "owns." Let's just say, "Who has the legitimate right to say what a person should do: the person herself, or God?"

And turned it into ownership as "P owns S if S ought to do as P wishes," which I thought characterized what you said well.

Let that be.

Anyway. The question is "who is the entity who rightfully determines your oughts?" This is a loaded question, as you may well know. It has two terms that may be assuming moral realism at the outset: "rightfully" and "oughts." I do not think these terms have a sensible meaning. I don't know what it means to have a "moral right" or a "moral ought," if that's what you mean; so any answer I give would be some form of "the question itself isn't sensible."

I understand that, if that's what you genuinely mean. But logically, that also means you're a complete Moral Nihilist. And it is not my suspicion that that is actually the case. There's something profoundly inconsistent in the way you talk.

And on such thing is that you seem to attribute a sort of moral value to things like social beliefs, instrumental purposes, and personal values. You wobble back and forth between the three in your statements, so I find it difficult to locate which one of them you are actually grounding your "oughts" in. Hence, my question about which of the three you actually believe is fundamental...and I'm still not sure I know that answer.

So are you really a total Moral Nihilist? Or do you actually try to "save" a kind of moral "oughtness" through one of those three?

The moral realist position would be that "S ought to do what is intrinsically good."

Yes, but then you'd have to go on to say what makes something "intrinsically" good. For it is not the case that adjectives exist in some kind of Platonic realm as concrete nouns. An entity can "have goodness," but cannot BE goodness, because "good" is an adjective, not a concrete noun. An apple can "have redness," but it cannot "be redness itself." Nothing IS redness. "Red" is an adjective.

Beware the category error and Neo-Platonism there.

If we add the position that "If P creates S, then P rightfully determines S's oughts," then there is a problem if P's determinations are intrinsically evil:

That's not at all the Christian position, though. God is not evil. So He never "determines" us to do evil. And since we are free agents, we are responsible for our own choices, in that regard. We are not "determined" at all.

That's actually what morality is fundamentally about: will we, as choice agents, go God's way, or our own?

I think we intuit that creators of paintings may place them where they wish empathetically, and that what we're doing is still a form of instrumentalism.

Her thinking in choosing a place may be. But ours, in deciding that it is her who has that right, is not evidently so. Rather, we're deciding -- before all instrumental concerns even come into play -- that it is she who has the primary right to decide the disposition of her creation.

Why do we do that?

Because we have a value that says so.

That's circular.

I'm asking why we value that. Are we just gratuitously "valuing," or do we actually think that value aligns with some objective good or truth?

If we're doing it gratutiously, then it is NOT true that painters own the right to say anything about what happens in the disposition of what they create. It's totally a gratuitous claim, with no objective reality behind it.

But if it's actually better (in some sense; and we all think it is) to accord to the creator a right over the disposition of her creation, then WHY do we intuitively think that? If it's not gratuitious, there must be some real reasons behind it.

Those are the only two possibilities. Which shall we pick?

I think they are prone to agree with her because most humans have empathy...

Empathy is not a moral quality, though. It's merely an affective state. One can have empathy with evil people and things, and people often do.

Then, of course, we have to remember that values come in complex hierarchies.

That's a curious claim. I'm not sure what it can mean, more than the trivial observation that some people value some things more than they value others, but are under no obligation to do so.

Can you develop that thought?

Of course it's not a moral quality. On my view there is no moral anything until someone steps up to make a "moral truth" sensible.

"There is no moral anything" is too strong a claim, unless you have reasons for believing it. Personally not knowing the evidence isn't a strong enough reason.

Consider what happened when America had not been discovered. The king of Spain, say, might have said, "There is no continent across the seas until somebody steps up to make it sensible." That would be too strong. What he ought to say would be, "If there is a continent over there, I do not yet have reason to know there is." And that would be fair enough.

You don't know what would ground morality. Fair enough. That does not, however, warrant the belief there is none. It only warrants the claim, "If there is, Cat doesn't (yet) realize what it is."

As for the complex hierarchies claim, it is the observation that you note: people value some things more than they value others.

Then it's trivial.

For then, the hierarchies are arbitrary. That people happen to put some things higher than others, and others believe in different hierarchies tells us nothing about the legitimacy of any particular hierarchies. A value doesn't become "more valuable" simply because somebody happens to arbitrarily rank it "above" another.

But in fact, the very existence of hierarchies creates an additional problem for you to entertain: namely, that all hierarchies are criterial. People put one value higher than another for reasons, at least reasons they personally hold. (If they did not, they'd have no hierarchy of values, and they would simply be paralyzed in decision making. Because to make a decision is to make a definite choice about what to value in a given situation.) So what are the good reasons for making, say, the preserving of life "higher" than the eating of ice cream? Both are things people can "value," and everybody does, in fact, rank them hierarchically in relation to each other: on what basis can any such thing be done? What's the fundamental mechanism underneath the valuing and the creating of value hierarchies?

I have given a very simple example involving only two values: I value property, I value life. I value life more.

Good example.

Why?

What criteria do you use to decide that life is of higher value than property? If they're both values, why don't you just value them equally?

So, the reason we have moral quandaries is because we have a lot of values, and they have different strengths.

Right. But that's only to say that we have tons of values, and we arrange them in hierarchies.

On what basis do we do so? What informs that choice?

As far as I can tell, all oughts are amoral.

So what Hitler did, to which I allude above, is, for you, simply amoral? It's not immoral?

Did it become immoral when he rounded up and gassed homosexuals, or would it still be just a matter of moral indifference to you?

Unless you can demonstrate there can be a moral ought, my position is that all oughts we experience in everyday life are instrumentalist oughts.

Well, that position would certainly be amoral, if not also Moral Nihilism.

Yeah, it follows that if all oughts are amoral (because they are all based on values, built by hypothetical imperatives), then "moral" does not have meaning, so it wouldn't make sense to say what Hitler did was "immoral." Correct.

Nor would it be "immoral" to gas homosexuals, because the word itself is without meaning.

I have to commend you on your rational consistency here. But about the morality of it, I think even intuitively, many people, including myself, would say you've clearly wandered into extremely dangerous territory, and possibly lost the thread of morality altogether here.

However, I don't think that's really the case. I believe you when you say you have a hierarchy of values. But I still have to know what criterion or criteria you personally employ to create that ranking.

I'm not sure that I agree that free agency is always good (is a being that always chooses evil somehow more good to exist than a being that only chooses evil because of its programming? That doesn't feel right even on moral realism),

I don't think that objection works. Because if a creature only ever chooses evil, in what sense can we speak of it having any "choice" in the matter? What would be our evidence that such an entity has moral free will at all?

Well, I think it's actually an interesting question. Plantinga asks it in God, Freedom & Evil (there's that guy again, lol). He supposes that it might be possible for God to be omnipotent but unable to create a possible world with free agents where none of them choose to take at least one evil action because there might be no such available world (in every possible world, every one of them out of infinity, at least one person takes at least one evil action). Plantinga (I think, or someone characterizing Plantinga's work) calls it "Transworld Depravity."

Plantinga has a fundamental problem here, and it's one of the areas in which I depart company with Plantinga. It's called "total depravity doctrine." It's part of the Calvinist package of theology, and it's a really poor idea. But it's derived from Calvinist Determinism, which is the belief that God's "sovereignty" means that God micromanages the universe in such a way that no person actually has any free will at all.

This, I think, is false doctrine, both ostensibly and actually. And I think there are obvious Biblical reasons for saying it's false. But that's a big debate. And for that reason, I cannot subscribe to this aspect of Plantinga's explanation. I think he's trying to salvage an errant worldview there.

I don't think Transworld Depravity as a concept is useful for our main discussion here

I agree. "Depravity" doctrine is not only not useful, I think it's actually false.

As a physicist I learn quickly that if I really want to test an idea, I need to test it at extremes and see if it holds up.

I have no objection to extreme scenarios, particularly those premised on real facts...as you say, they are often useful in pushing an argument to its logical conclusion. But I doubt that ones based on total fantasy are in any way so useful. They're not so much "extreme" as just "wildly speculative" and ultimately "irrelevant."

I mean, if I rejected discussing everything I thought to be total fantasy, I wouldn't even be talking about "moral truths" or God. Yet here I am.

Perhaps that's because you still think morality is possibly true, or that some case you don't yet know might still be to be made for it. But there's no such case for AI scenarios. There is, at this moment, no genuine AI. And what the moral status of an AI that doesn't exist, and perhaps never could, would be, we have no means to know. It's all speculation. We don't even, at present, know what the basic facts of such a scenario would be. We're in no position even to form premises, let alone draw conclusions.

Ok, yes. So what does it mean to say someone "should" value something?

That's the question of value hierarchy: what makes it the case that some values end up "higher" or "prior" in such a ranking than others? What's the mechanism there?

What does it mean to say I should value X?

It would appear to mean that if your value hierarchy is different, you're wrong. But we won't know why until we explain how hierarchies are assembled in the first place.

Anyway, you asked me, paraphrased, "Do oughts come from values, instrumentalist considerations, or social consensus?"

My response is that instrumentalist oughts come from values.

No, they don't, actually. They come from "what works."

...the values either just exist in a person or they don't exist -- for nature and nurture reasons combined in some way, surely.

That wouldn't explain the hierarchy, though, or legitimize one hierarchy over another one might hold.

Goodbye, social justice.

No, everything still works the same way. People will value social justice, so they will fight for it because they will instrumentally form oughts based on their values. Other people will not value it, so they will resist. That is exactly what we see in reality.

Not quite. You're missing an element.

The jokers in the pink hats, or the pinheads burning down neighbourhoods don't just want to yell "I value rebellion." They want to tell me I should, as well. They want others to agree with their cause. That's why they hold up the signs, chant the slogans, seek out media opportunities, stage events, burn things, and so on. They hope and expect to effect changes in other people's value structures, to make them more favourable to their particular revolutionary goals.

But on what basis? Do they not want to self-present as "liberators?" And do they not want us to believe that being such a "liberator" is "better" than being a proponent of the status quo?

But if they don't believe racism is intrinsically wrong, say, then on what basis can they expect to change my mind? Are they nothing more than empty propagandists, hoping to convince me by nothing but show of force?

I don't think they are. I think they actually think they are, in some sense, "right." And they want me to believe they're "right," and to want to be "right" too, and that society itself won't be "right" until the laws and systems change to accommodate their view of the "right."

Moralizing is intrinsic to all social justice claims. So without morality, goodbye social justice. Instead, what you get is merely social upheaval, gratuitous destruction with no promise of "progress" at all.

For "justice" itself is a moral value. And a conception of "justice" must be argued for. We don't all have the same one.

Are you saying that we can understand what goodness is as a property if we see it in a person, but we would have to understand that it isn't pure goodness? We would have to say, "ok, this person has the property of goodness. I can imagine something having more of this property, a person with even more goodness. Perhaps there is something with the most goodness." Are you just saying that once we reach that part of our thought train, we're talking about God (as soon as we get to "maybe there's something with the most goodness")?

Correct.

That seems trivial to me, though: I already grant that if God is real and God is good, that God has the maximum of the property of goodness. So if that's all you're saying, then I guess this is sensible.

Okay.

But it doesn't tell me what goodness is, just that God has the most of it.

That's because "good" is an adjective, not a concrete noun. You will never find something called "a goodness" floating around in the ether. It's a property OF nouns, and particularly of people and of God.

I didn't say that. If you ever accurately describe anything as "good," you derive your attribution of or your recognition of their goodness from God's goodness. There is no other actual meaning for the concept "morally good." His is the prototypical "goodness."

Hmm. Chewing on this for while now.

If I say something is good, you say that I must derive my attribution of goodness to that thing from God's goodness.

More: that all human beings do.

But this sounds to me like if I am to say anything is long, then I must derive my attribution of its having length from a hypothetical maximum length, such as an infinite length.

Not at all.

"Length" is a physical property, not a moral attribute. That would be a category error.

So, I should be able to know what goodness is by looking at a person, without having to look at God.

"Look at" is the problem there. I'm suggesting your whole conception of the adjective "good" is derivative, and is instilled in you by God Himself, even if you've never consciously "looked at" God yourself.

We all understand, intuitively, what it means to say that something is "better" or "more good" than another thing. The ability to do so is an innate capacity human beings have been given by God, and that ultimately derives from the fact of His ultimate "goodness."

...properties being descriptors of the things that possess them.

This part is right.

So, I need to know what goodness is.

I think you do. But only intuitively. The intellectual task is to make that intuitive knowledge more conscious and rational.

But what does having the property of goodness mean on the moral realism view? Does it mean the person values the intrinsically good (but then what is that)?

Ultimately? It means to value God for that property. And it means to value things because of that property in them, the property which is only perfectly realized in God Himself.

2) You say "if adultery is wrong, it is because God is faithful," and other such things. "The ultimate reason for anything being 'sin' is that it 'falls short of the glory of God'". (Now, I am going to assume I can use "being a sin" and "being intrinsically wrong" interchangeably, let me know if that's not the case). But here we are sort of back to Euthyphro's fork again.

No, Euthyphro is dead. Socrates and I have both showed you that. I can't make you believe it, but it's certainly the case.

It's a crucial question that must be answered if you're going to make the claims you're making. I am not being stubborn in insisting that it does matter, because it really does.

I can see why you're perplexed. Like Euthyphro, you continue to insist that "goodness" must exist in a sort of Platonic difference from God. But again, if there is no separating the terms "what God likes" and "what is good," then you're perplexing yourself with trying to separate into two things that which is inherently one.

The utterance "if adultery is wrong, it is because God is faithful" does demand an answer to whether adultery is wrong because God is faithful (and so DCT is true*),

Well, I'm afraid that's just a Non-sequitur. It does not follow from what you say that DCT is entailed at all.

If the reason that unfaithfulness is evil is because God is faithful, it does not follow that commanding it makes it so. Rather, it follows that God is faithful, and that makes unfaithfulness immoral; and consequently, because He is also truthful and just, He commands us to be faithful too. But the command, so to speak, does no work in that equation. It is an after-the-fact issuance. We are told (or commanded) to be faithful because faithfulness is already moral, because God is already faithful and true.

So DCT is NOT true, on this account. Divine Command does not make things righteous. Rather, they are commanded because they are righteous, and righteous because they reflect the character of God.

If you really don't want to talk about Euthyphro,

I talked about him lots. But both Socrates and I see the problem you're missing. I don't quite know how to make it more clear, but perhaps the above helps.

...it seemed to me to be saying God's goodness is both qualitatively and quantitatively different from IC's.

No, I was careful. I did not say that.

Light is all the same thing, but comes in different intensities. The light of the Sun is very bright, and one might say, more pure. But the light of a candle is still light. It's not less real than that of the Sun, or less light, either.

Ok, so if I understand you right, then goodness is all the same thing, it just comes in different intensities. That would mean God's goodness isn't qualitatively different than a man's, it's only a difference in quantity.

This I understand, this is a cognitive, sensible aspect of the conversation.

Great.

I hope that clears up my use of the word "pallid," too.

What do you mean that our goodness has an admixture of evil in it?

I mean you can't call IC truly "good." You can say, perhaps, that he "has good in him," and it's genuine, perhaps. But IC, like all humans, is capable of pettiness, of spite, of rage, of maybe even violence...who knows what else? So is there any justice in calling him truly "good," since he can always do these things?

Moreover, even the alleged "good" things IC does can be tainted. Perhaps he runs for charity...but he does so only partly to benefit the poor; part of him does it to be seen to be charitable, and part of him wants a chance to win a coveted trophy. So is his spirit "good"? Partly. But only partly. His charitableness has an admixture of selfishness in it.

I mean I think I can make sense of this. Isn't this like saying that a yellow-green shirt has the property of being yellow but has an admixture of blue in it, and that we could conceive of a shirt that is pure yellow?

Alright, that seems okay.

Well, let me ask this: does the yellow shirt derive its yellowness from God?

Why would we think "yellowness" was a divine attribute? Why would we not simply say that it was a subjective effect of light on a retina, as created by God? I know of no Biblical passage that claims "yellowness" is any property of God...

I could just be misunderstanding you though. Like I said above, maybe you were just saying the trivial truth that we can look at a person and see the property of goodness and understand that the person doesn't have maximal goodness, and we could examine concepts of God and understand God does have maximal goodness. But that's so trivially true that I wasn't sure if it's what you were saying (is it?)

That seems right.

My position would be this. If goodness is a property like any other property, then it should describe whatever holds it as a property: be it a person, or an animal, or God: whatever it might apply to. It should be characterizable just from describing the thing that holds it as a property: it shouldn't require having to compare it to some greatest instantiation of the property.

One problem with that "should" you've inserted there: there is absolutely nothing that God has not created. So anything that has any property, is ultimately indebted to Him for that property, in that He makes it possible and real in the first place.

But moral properties and physical properties are, as you and I both know, quite different things. And nobody believes that God possesses in Himself all physical properties, as if they were all "excellencies" or "great-making properties," (to quote Plantinga). Moral properties ARE great-making properties: yellowness is not. Length is not. They are mere physical properties, and contingent ones, too.

I should be able to know what goodness is by philosophically examining a person with it as a property,

I'm not understanding why you say "should" here.

But I think you can have a sense of what goodness is with nothing more than reference to human beings. If you look at a sheet of paper that is somewhat white, but perhaps is dirty on one corner, you may, from that, be able to abstract the idea of a totally white sheet of paper. There would be nothing odd about doing so, and nothing remarkable. Still, you would never have physically seen a pure white sheet of paper. It would be an ideal concept you were deriving from a flawed example.

However, whiteness is a physical property. Things like "goodness" are more problematic, because one has to recognize them not with the eyes but with a moral faculty. And what does it tell us, to realize that we HAVE exactly such a moral faculty inside us? We can have some understanding of how the eye sees whiteness or yellowness; but how do we explain that we also "see" good and evil?

Likewise, if goodness is a property of beings, then I don't know why we need to point out that God, as creator, made all things able to have goodness because it seems extraneous to understanding what goodness is in the same way that God making the world (so yellow is possible) is extraneous to understanding what yellowness is.

You're still struggling with the Platonic view of moral values. You're wondering why you can't locate them as entities-in-themselves, floating around in a Platonic realm of some kind. But that, again, is simply a category error. You're expecting that which is unreasonable to expect.

You are going to have more success going looking for ultimate yellowness. At least yellowness is a physical property. But you won't find it, either, detached from a particular case of "yellow."


P.S. -- See? I told you we'd soon find something to chew over. It wasn't long, was it?

[Immanuel Can]

This is why an argument between an atheist and a believer about morality is totally absurd, and the amount of effort that has been put into it here has taken it to great heights of absurdity. If one man believes that morality comes exclusively from God, and another does not beliefe that God exists, how on earth can a resolution be reached? It is an exercise in complete pointlessness.

It can be.

But I think that few Atheists are willing to live as if their Atheism is true. In fact, I have never met a single one...and I have met many...who are prepared to be utterly amoral, to act as if there really are no moral constraints on anything they might wish to do or be. They all seem to want to live as if morality is, to some degree, a real thing, and continue to practice it, and to depend on it themselves, and refer to it whenever their own rights are violated. And that speaks well of their own moral intuitions, if not of their logical consistency. For if they were totally logically consistent, every Atheist would also surely be a total Moral Nihilist, and live that way, too.

That they don't, means that there is still some hope for them. The light of morality has not entirely been extinguished from their minds. It's still there. So the discussion can go on. And many Atheists can continue to be decent people while it does...thank God.

[Harbal]

But I think that few Atheists are willing to live as if their Atheism is true. In fact, I have never met a single one...and I have met many...who are prepared to be utterly amoral, to act as if there really are no moral constraints on anything they might wish to do or be.

I see you have abandoned the Scotsman in favout of begging the question now.

Atheism does not necessitate amorality, which is the fallacy you are trying to slip past unnoticed. A sense of morality is obviously intrinsic to human nature, it seems to me. We need it to survive, and we are equiped with it for practical reasons, despite our response to it being emotional. The question of God, or a belief in God, is not the source of morality and makes little difference, except in the case of the extremist. If it did, atheists would not be capable of social behaviour, and believers would not be able to fight in wars.

They all seem to want to live as if morality is, to some degree, a real thing,

It is a real thing in as much as it is hard wired into us. It is there to motivate our behaviour, in the same way that the feeling of love for our children motivates us to protect them at whatever cost to ourself.

And that speaks well of their own moral intuitions, if not of their logical consistency. For if they were totally logically consistent, every Atheist would also surely be a total Moral Nihilist, and live that way, too.

Logic doesn't come into it any more so for an atheist than for a Christian, so logical consistency isn't a relevant factor.

[Dontaskme]

But I think that few Atheists are willing to live as if their Atheism is true. In fact, I have never met a single one...and I have met many...who are prepared to be utterly amoral, to act as if there really are no moral constraints on anything they might wish to do or be.

I see you have abandoned the Scotsman in favout of begging the question now.

Atheism does not necessitate amorality, which is the falicy you are trying to slip past unnoticed. A sense of morality is obviously intrinsic to human nature, it seems to me. We need it to survive, and we are equiped with it for practical reasons, despite our response to it being emotional. The question of God, or a belief in God, is not the source of morality and makes little difference, except in the case of the extremist. If it did, atheists would not be capable of social behaviour, and believers would not be able to fight in wars.

They all seem to want to live as if morality is, to some degree, a real thing,

It is a real thing in as much as it is hard wired into us. It is there to motivate our behaviour, in the same way that the feeling of love for our children motivates us to protect them at whatever cost to ourself.

And that speaks well of their own moral intuitions, if not of their logical consistency. For if they were totally logically consistent, every Atheist would also surely be a total Moral Nihilist, and live that way, too.

Logic doesn't come into it any more so for an atheist than for a Christian, so logical consistency isn't a relevant factor.

Well said Harbal, well explained and articulated with concise intelligent logic.

Ic thinks morality comes from some moral God, when in fact it comes from the very source of nature itself, it uses as a tool in order to survive. It's just another one of natures programmes that just happens to be within the 'big brain' that is known as human conscious awareness.

The only purpose a dna molecule has, is to replicate..that's it. There is nothing divine about life whatsoever. It's just a deaf dumb and blind dna replicating mechanical system.

[Harbal]

Well said Harbal, well explained and articulated with concise intelligent logic.

Thank you, DAM, I am certain that IC will also see it like that.

Ic thinks morality comes from some moral God, when in fact it comes from the very source of nature itself, it uses as a tool in order to survive. It's just another one of natures programmes that just happens to be within the 'big brain' that is known as human conscious awareness.

Yes, I think that's right.

[Dontaskme]

Thank you, DAM, I am certain that IC will also see it like that.

Not unless he sees himself as an object who can object to seeing it like that.

[FlashDangerpants]

But I think that few Atheists are willing to live as if their Atheism is true. In fact, I have never met a single one...and I have met many...who are prepared to be utterly amoral, to act as if there really are no moral constraints on anything they might wish to do or be.

I see you have abandoned the Scotsman in favout of begging the question now.

Atheism does not necessitate amorality, which is the fallacy you are trying to slip past unnoticed. A sense of morality is obviously intrinsic to human nature, it seems to me. We need it to survive, and we are equiped with it for practical reasons, despite our response to it being emotional. The question of God, or a belief in God, is not the source of morality and makes little difference, except in the case of the extremist. If it did, atheists would not be capable of social behaviour, and believers would not be able to fight in wars.

Is he even trying to do that argument? It looks more like he is assuming moral absolutism must be the case in order to use that for an Anselm-lite argument on behalf of God because iff there must be a moral absolute then that absolute must be the G man upstairs.

It seems he can barely be bothered arguing the moral case as he's in such a hurry to do the other thing.

[Immanuel Can]

Atheism does not necessitate amorality,

Logically, it does.

Nietzsche saw that, even if later, less courageous Atheists have run away from that conclusion as fast as they could.

It means that "morality" is merely a human phenomenon, a "thing-that-happens-among-human-beings," but no more deserving of special status that a rock falling off a mountain face.

Practically, it never seems to have that impact in Atheist's actual lives.

A sense of morality is obviously intrinsic to human nature, it seems to me.

I agree. But that's an inexplicable observation if there's nothing more behind it. Maybe we're just all deluding ourselves...and if we're Atheists, we have to believe that that's ultimately true.

Once God is dead, morality, as Nietzsche said, is nothing more than the weak trying to convince the strong not to take "their stuff."

They all seem to want to live as if morality is, to some degree, a real thing,

It is a real thing in as much as it is hard wired into us.

Who "hard wired" it in?

If it was God, then we have a duty to obey it, arguably. If it was just some impersonal accident of history, then it has no special status: it's no more dignified than the fact we used to climb trees and eat bananas. When we find reason to do so, we can abandon it all at a moment's notice.

By Atheist lights, you don't owe me anything. I don't owe you anything. When it suits us to "play nice," we can; but it won't always suit me to "play nice." And when it doesn't. I owe you no duty, no responsibility of anything. I can obey or subvert the morals you have, or that society has, whenever it pleases me to do so, and whenever I'm sure I can get away with it. If I'm smart, and if I'm more devious than you are, or if I can seize power, I win.

I get all the choc ices.

And that speaks well of their own moral intuitions, if not of their logical consistency. For if they were totally logically consistent, every Atheist would also surely be a total Moral Nihilist, and live that way, too.

Logic doesn't come into it any more so for an atheist than for a Christian, so logical consistency isn't a relevant factor.

Oh, it's very relevant.

It means that while it is at least possible to live consistently as if morality is objective, it's not really possible to live as if it's not. Nobody can pull the trick off of living like a real, committed, consistent Atheist. It would seem they all have to taxicab their disbelief in God...taking it only as far as they find convenient, and then jumping out of the "cab" and running into the streets to avoid paying the toll. They don't want to end up where that "cab" was logically taking them...to amorality.

[Sculptor]

Is it a stupid question because for all we know fickle fortune is our owner?

She is a right bitch.

Probably the opinion of a man who has been bitten.

Don't get me wrong but I'd prefer a tickle to a fickle.

[Harbal]

Atheism does not necessitate amorality,

Logically, it does.

Nietzsche saw that, even if later, less courageous Atheists have run away from that conclusion as fast as they could.

It means that "morality" is merely a human phenomenon, a "thing-that-happens-among-human-beings," but no more deserving of special status that a rock falling off a mountain face.

Human morality is a human phenomenon, that is exactly what I am asserting. We afford it a higher status than a falling rock because it is vital to our existence.

Once God is dead, morality, as Nietzsche said, is nothing more than the weak trying to convince the strong not to take "their stuff."

Well it's quite important to me that the strong don't take my stuff, so I think you are undervaluing it with the term, "nothing more than".

Who "hard wired" it in?

If it was God, then we have a duty to obey it, arguably. If it was just some impersonal accident of history, then it has no special status: it's no more dignified than the fact we used to climb trees and eat bananas. When we find reason to do so, we can abandon it all at a moment's notice.

By Atheist lights, you don't owe me anything. I don't owe you anything. When it suits us to "play nice," we can; but it won't always suit me to "play nice." And when it doesn't. I owe you no duty, no responsibility of anything. I can obey or subvert the morals you have, or that society has, whenever it pleases me to do so, and whenever I'm sure I can get away with it. If I'm smart, and if I'm more devious than you are, or if I can seize power, I win.

It was hard wired into us as part of the process of natural selection. That does not make it an accident of history; neither does it make it dignified or undignified, it is merely a feature of our nature. As for abandoning it at a moments notice; I am no more prone to do that than you are.

If Christians tended to "play nice" any more than atheists do, your argument might be worth considering, although it would still be undermined by the fact that you are, indeed, more devious than I am. You are probably smarter as well, if that's any consolation.

[Dontaskme]

Atheism does not necessitate amorality,

Logically, it does.

Nietzsche saw that, even if later, less courageous Atheists have run away from that conclusion as fast as they could.

It means that "morality" is merely a human phenomenon, a "thing-that-happens-among-human-beings," but no more deserving of special status that a rock falling off a mountain face.

Human morality is a human phenomenon, that is exactly what I am asserting. We afford it a higher status than a falling rock because it is vital to our existence.

Once God is dead, morality, as Nietzsche said, is nothing more than the weak trying to convince the strong not to take "their stuff."

Well it's quite important to me that the strong don't take my stuff, so I think you are undervaluing it with the term, "nothing more than".

Who "hard wired" it in?

If it was God, then we have a duty to obey it, arguably. If it was just some impersonal accident of history, then it has no special status: it's no more dignified than the fact we used to climb trees and eat bananas. When we find reason to do so, we can abandon it all at a moment's notice.

By Atheist lights, you don't owe me anything. I don't owe you anything. When it suits us to "play nice," we can; but it won't always suit me to "play nice." And when it doesn't. I owe you no duty, no responsibility of anything. I can obey or subvert the morals you have, or that society has, whenever it pleases me to do so, and whenever I'm sure I can get away with it. If I'm smart, and if I'm more devious than you are, or if I can seize power, I win.

It was hard wired into us as part of the process of natural selection. That does not make it an accident of history; neither does it make it dignified or undignified, it is merely a feature of our nature. As for abandoning it at a moments notice; I am no more prone to do that than you are.

If Christians tended to "play nice" any more than atheists do, your argument might be worth considering, although it would still be undermined by the fact that you are, indeed, more devious than I am. You are probably smarter as well, if that's any consolation.

I think you are definitely winning this argument Harbal

We are still responsible for our actions, we have to be held accountable for our actions, because of our human laws that put bad people in prison, or even better execute them like the romans did to jesus, for pretending to be someone he wasn't aka god.

It' just wrong and bad to be a poser. It's morally good to be real and authentic.